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Compiled by: Jack Foley
Q. How many records has Shrek 2 now set, because it seems
that everywhere you go you tumble another one.
A. I guess it's probably tumbled the record for making
the most amount of people happy. I think the box office things
are certainly wonderful, but I think for all of us, whatever the
numbers are, the real reward is to stand at the back of movie
theatres and hear the laughter.
That's the thing that, literally, cannot happen enough times for
any of us, and that's the reward for all of us.
Q. How many times do you reckon you have seen it?
A. Hundreds.
Q. What's going to happen in the Shrek franchise?
A. Well, one of our secrets that we were all way too
scared to ever admit to anyone, is that there actually is a larger
story to Shrek, which we very much talked about and fantasised
about when we made the first movie.
But the first film was such a risk, and one that we were very
anxious about, because it was such a departure from anything anyone
had ever done before in animation.
So we had fantasised about the larger story, of which you have
now seen two of four chapters.
If you actually look at it, you sort of see that Shrek 1 left
open a very large question. Who was Fiona and why was she locked
away in this castle guarded by a fire-breathing dragon? And who
had put this spell on her? And what are the consequences of this
spell having been broken by an ogre, as opposed to her promised
Prince Charming?
Two literally starts where one ended, and proceeds to answer a
lot of questions about one.
The other two chapters - three and four - we are working on now,
and each of them go to complete what is ultimately the full story,
when the full circle will be completed. We will ultimately come
back to where we started, with Shrek, which is in the swamp. How
did he get there? I can't tell you any more than that.
But I have to say that for all of us, as storytellers, to be able
to tell the story that we had in our mind originally, is one of
the real great rewards that have come back to us by the success
of these first two films.
I think probably the greatest cinema triumph of, certainly my
years in the movie business, is what Peter Jackson did with the
Lord of the Rings trilogy.
They had the guts and the courage to step back and do it all at
once, and it's an amazing thing. It is stand-alone as a singular
accomplishment in film-making and story-telling.
But we're having do it in an equally challenging way. It will
take us 14 years to tell our four chapters!
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Q. Did you ever receive phone
calls from people who wanted to be in the movie?
A. It actually didn't work that way. I guess we were
under the radar when we start these things, they're so many years
in advance. So each of the people here were our dreams. We were
actually blessed, because it's that rare thing, to actually get
who you hope for.
It doesn't matter who you are - whether a producer, or director
- it's so rare that their schedule and your ambition, and what
they want to do in their career, actually comes together. It sort
of happens once in a lifetime.
Q. When you are sending up a recognisable piece of comedy
business, based on another film, is permission needed? And are
people willingly taking part?
A. Some of them are public domain things, or things that
are absolutely people's intellectual properties. So, if that's
the case, we go to them, whether it's Starbucks, or Versace. Those
are things that we did approach and get permission to do.
Mission Impossible became absolutely the property of Tom Cruise;
that's his franchise, he's worked very, very hard to make that
an important franchise, and he's not let that piece of music out
for anybody, under any circumstances, in the last ten years.
But we approached him, we showed him the movie, and he loved it,
and, yes, Justin Timberlake...
The amazing thing about that, it just shows you how crazy things
are in life. One of the directors had the idea of going around
Fiona's world as a princess, and having Sir Justin. So they made
this poster up, for by her dresser, and we got permission from
him a couple of years ago. Literally, two and a half years ago,
and we called him, showed him the poster and he signed off on
it.
But then a year and a half later, boom, bada-bing, I wasn't sure
whether I was supposed to call up Cameron and explain the irony
of it. But she was a great sport.
But we did, as I say, anyone who had intellectual property there,
we went to them.
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