Moore says working for Disney now has been great to kind of get back together with friends from college, and meeting new people at the Studio. He also says," these four years have really, creatively, they’ve been probably the most fulfilling of my career."
Moore said working with other Studios or gaming companies to bring all of the characters to Wreck-it-Ralph was somewhat easy. Moore, talking about getting the rights for Pacman, he said, "Pacman’s a very important, seminal game, we would be in the wrong not to have, you know, Pacman in this movie. And then I would go about kind of pitching the story boards,to those folks at NAMCO,saying, “This is how we would like to use Pacman.” And nine times out of ten, they would say, “Yes, great.”
Full interview with director Rich Moore below...
Is this the first time you’ve actually paired the actors? Because that’s very unusual in doing animation.
RICH MOORE: I think it may be the first time at our studio, you know, at Disney Animation, because yes, you’re right. The usual process is to record the actors separately, individually on different days. But we felt, you know, this is a movie with John C. Reilly, you know, and Sarah Silverman. And the audience is gonna want to hear that chemistry, you know, between those two actors. So it’d be kind of silly not to have them together to play off of one another. So I made that happen.
How did a guy from the Simpsons, and Futurama, wind up at Disney? I mean, had they seen your stuff?
RICH MOORE: Yeah, shhhhhhh. Well, it kind of goes back to - my background before all of those things was Cal Arts, the college that I went to. And there’s a big family, you know, from Cal Arts, of people that graduated from that character animation department. And our sensibility and our roots go back pretty deep to that place. I went to school with Andrew Stanton, as you know, who directed “Finding Nemo” and “WALL-E”; and several of the people that founded Pixar. When we all graduated, our paths kind of split. You know, some of us went into television; some of us went into films. My path took me to the Simpsons, you know, where I was a director there right after graduating, very - very quickly out of college. And Andrew and I always, you know, had a - kept a strong relationship, you know, we’re very good friends. And I became friends with John Lasseter, you know, through that friendship with Andrew. And there was always an invitation, you know, to, “Hey, come on up. You know. We’re doing something great up here. Come up to Pixar. Come work up here.” And it always seemed like that there was always something keeping me back, you know - that there was another show starting, or, “We’re gonna do another season of Simpsons.” But you know, it’s kind of like George Bailey in “It’s a Wonderful Life”, you know, of just, “Someday. Someday I’ll take that big trip.” You know. So circumstances never kind of lined up where it was, you know, convenient to go, to go work up at Pixar. And then when Disney and Pixar merged, Andrew called me up and said, “Look, you know, we’re working with Disney now. You wouldn’t even have to move up North. You could work in Burbank, you know. Why don’t you jump on? You know, I think, I think you would really, really like it, because it’s just like school, the way our process is - is like college. It’s like Cal Arts.” And I said, “You know what? Why - why am I not letting this happen?” Yes, of course, I would - because it’s fun to work with friends, you know. And it’s been great to kind of get back together with friends from college, and meet new people at the studio right now.
So that was four years ago, when I started. And it’s been, I would say - now, don’t get me wrong - Simpsons and Futurama, those shows were fantastic, and the people were fantastic. But I’ll have to say that working at Disney right now, and where the studio is, as kind of you know, a - it feels like a - even though it’s the oldest studio, you know, in L.A., animation studio - it feels like a new studio because it has new energy in it, you know, right now, and a lot of great projects, you know, in the pipeline. And these four years have really, creatively, they’ve been probably the most fulfilling of my career.
How much did you have to school yourself in retro arcade gaming?
RICH MOORE: It’s not so much like drawing 8-bit, it’s more like kind of potato printing, you know. Well, fortunately, I did a lot of research as a teenager, you know, on games. So I brought of that research with me. My parents would have called that wasting time back then, but now it’s - it turned out to be research. And it’s funny how you just, you never know, like something that people could say to you as a young person, “You know, this is a waste of time,” could turn out to be a boon for something down the line, so - and it was fun to kind of go, to go back and look at those old games, you know, to study them, you know. Not just to play them but to study them and really, critically look at them and say, “What makes these unique?” You know, “Why do I like these? What is fun about these?” And so it’s been an interesting experience, you know, to kind of revisit those things from childhood.
And I’m assuming you had to get clearance from all those, all those characters.
RICH MOORE: No, we are expecting tons of lawsuits. No. Yeah, we did.
Would anybody not clear you? Did anyone not want to be part of that?
RICH MOORE: No, I, I would say just about everyone we went to said yes. You know. And the way that I approached them was - we didn’t send out lawyers to kind of say, “We want to use Pacman.” You know. It was very much kind of meeting with the people face to face, you know, introducing myself, and telling them that, you know, I’m working on this movie about video games. And in the case of, say Pacman, and Pacman’s a very important, you know, seminal game, you know, that we would be - we would be in the wrong not to have, you know, Pacman in this movie. And then I would go about kind of pitching the story boards, you know, to those folks at NAMCO, you know, saying, “This is how we would like to use Pacman.” And nine times out of ten, they would say, you know, “Yes, great.”
It seemed there was one big omission in the games. I didn’t see any Tron references.
RICH MOORE: Tron? Yeah, well, Tron, that’s a big character. And we looked for a way to use Tron. We didn’t want to just do, like cheap kind of walk-ons. We wanted all of cameos to kind of mean something, or be appropriate,to the scenes. So it was difficult to kind of, with some characters, Tron being one of them, as the director, to have to make that decision, you know. It would be great to have them in here but we have not found, you know, the perfect way to use them. So if we’re lucky enough to, you know, if the audience, if the world likes this, you know, movie the way we do, the filmmakers do, and we’re lucky enough to do, you know, a sequel, then I would like to be able to have those other characters, like in my back pocket, to be able to kind of find, you know, the perfect use for them.
What about the screenplay made you want to work on “Wreck it Ralph”?
RICH MOORE: Well, Phil Johnston, who wrote the screenplay, and I developed the script ourselves. So it was something that Phil and I worked on together. So it did not exist when I came on to the project. But just the notion of - when I started it, it was - John Lasseter had kind of mentioned, “You know, we - the studio has been trying to do a video game movie for many, many years. And no one’s really cracked it.” So - and John with his directors at Pixar, and at Disney, likes to hear kind of several pitches. He doesn’t like a director, kind of, when they’re moving on to a new project, to kind of focus and become precious with one thing. You know, he likes the directors to kind of work on at least three things, you know, of which we kind of choose, like, “Okay, which one of these should go forward.” And John had said like, “I’d like you to kind of consider video games, you know, as one of your pitches.” And what I liked about it was, well, having, you know, history playing them, you know, and a love for them, for that medium. And also the ability to take that big, you know, spectacular world of different genres of games, and putting a very kind of simple, profound, you know, story in the middle of it. You know, a man, a simple man wondering if this is all there is to life. You know. And set against the backdrop of these fantastic worlds, you know. So that, that to me - once that, you know, that angle was kind of cracked on the video game idea, that’s when I became very, very interested and thought this could be, you know, something I would like working on. And this would be something I would, if I were an audience member, I would love to see, you know, that I would love to see this movie.
Thanks, Rich.
MI News Desk
Recent Articles