John Lasseter Interview – The Disney and Pixar chief talks Princess & the Frog

John Lasseter—co-founder of Pixar, the history-making computer animation studio, chief creative officer of Walt Disney and Pixar Animation Studios; and the principal creative advisor to Walt Disney Imagineering— is one busy guy. Always at the forefront of what can be accomplished within animation, Lasseter is so excited for Walt Disney Animation Studio’s release, THE PRINCESS AND THE FROG – on DVD and Blu-ray June 21st – which marks the return of the musical fairytale with a Princess at the centre.

John, how did THE PRINCESS AND THE FROG come about?
Ed Catmull and I, the day I returned to the Walt Disney Animation Studios, said that we wanted to bring back John Musker and Ron Clements. So, once we brought them back, I empowered them to come up with their own project. I mentioned to them one idea that I had, just a nugget of an idea at Pixar. I love the story of “The Frog Prince,” and I love New Orleans. And I thought that it would be a great place to set a story like that…and that’s all I mentioned to them. We always ask for the directors to come back to us with not just one idea, but three ideas…and they came back with nine ideas. These guys were so prolific, they’re fantastic. And one of them was THE PRINCESS AND THE FROG—they had this wonderful twist on the story, where the main character, Tiana, kisses the frog, but she’s not a real princess, she gets turned into a frog as well. That was their clever twist on it. They wanted it to be a musical, set in New Orleans, and they wanted Randy Newman to write the music which, of course, I loved, because I’ve worked with Randy Newman on all of the movies that I’ve directed. Randy grew up in both New Orleans and Los Angeles. He would go every summer to New Orleans, so he knows the city and its music. It’s like he was born with it. It’s in his DNA, and so I think he was a phenomenal choice for it.

Why the return to fairy tale animation now?
I’ve always loved animation it’s the reason why I do what I do for a living – the films of Walt Disney. This art form is so spectacular and beautiful. And I never quite understood the feeling amongst animation studios that audiences today only wanted to see computer animation. It’s never about the medium that a film is made in, it’s about the story. It’s about how good the movie is. And so one of the first things that I did when I came back to the Walt Disney Animation Studios was to ask John Musker and Ron Clements to come back to the studio and just empowered them to say, “Come up with a movie that you really want to tell.” And THE PRINCESS AND THE FROG was born. In glorious Disney fairy tale animation. It’s just spectacular.

How is THE PRINCESS AND THE FROG a continuation of this incredibly rich legacy that is Disney Animation?
You know, what’s exciting about THE PRINCESS AND THE FROG, is that it’s the return to the sincere fairy tale. It’s a return to the musical, which hasn’t been done in quite a while. You know, it’s so classically Disney in every way, yet it’s brand new, it’s something you’ve never seen before. And that’s what’s so exciting about this. When you sit and watch THE PRINCESS AND THE FROG, I mean, I helped make the movie, but I sit there and I watch it and I think, “I forgot how much I love this!” It’s all those things combined, the animation, the sincere fairy tale, the musical, the great characters, the talking animals, the princess, the prince, all these things combined, it’s so classically Disney yet it’s so completely original.

Tell me a little bit more about the story of THE PRINCESS AND THE FROG
The story of THE PRINCESS AND THE FROG is about a fantastic character named Tiana. She is such a strong character. She’s a waitress, but she wants to own her own restaurant. It was her father’s dream that she’s carried on, and she works double, triple shifts to raise money to buy this old sugar mill that she thought would make a great great restaurant right in New Orleans. And on the verge of getting her restaurant, someone buys it out from under her and her entire dream is just pulled out from under her.

So at this moment, she does what she said she would never do, she wishes on the evening star, which is what her best friend Charlotte always does, because Charlotte only wants to marry a prince—Tiana is more practical—but she finally does wish upon an evening star. And then, she looks down and sees a frog and thinks, “Oh great, a practical joker,” you know. And she’s at a masquerade ball and she’s dressed as a princess. She looks down and she says, “I take it you want a kiss now,” and the frog answers, [IN A FRENCH ACCENT] “Kissing would be nice, yes?”

And it freaks her out because this frog is talking, and she finds out this is a frog that claims he’s actually a prince. So he cons her into kissing her. But instead of the frog turning into a prince, she actually turns into a frog, because she’s not a real princess, it was a costume party. So now here’s a prince, and here’s Tiana as a frog, and they have to travel the Bayou to turn this spell around, they have to find this voodoo fairy godmother named Mama Odie to reverse the spell that Dr. Facilier, the evil voodoo practitioner, has put on the prince, and now, Tiana.

Along the way they meet this fantastic alligator named Louis, who’s a jazz trumpet-playing alligator, and he’s hilarious, he’s fantastic. And they also meet a firefly, a Cajun firefly named Ray. And these two become close friends with Tiana and Prince Naveen. And it turns into this fantastic journey for them to become human again. And along the way, they might fall in love. I don’t want to give away the ending. And I’m not gonna say anymore than that.

Could you talk about the filmmakers?
It was really exciting to get John Musker and Ron Clements to come back to the Studio. I went to College with John Musker, so we’ve known each other for a long, long time. I think they are Disney. When you think about the movies they made, especially THE LITTLE MERMAID and ALADDIN, I mean, those are two of the great Disney animated films. And I think that it was so exciting to get them to come back to the Disney Studios.

In the end, when they came back, we just wanted them back at the Studio, because they belong at the Disney Studios. So when they came back, I said, I want you to do a movie that you really want to do, something from your heart. And so we had talked about a bunch of ideas and there was just a nugget of an idea that I have had up at Pixar, which is to do a retelling of “The Frog Prince” set in New Orleans, and that’s all I had.

And so I just mentioned that to them and they took it and created the most original and fresh twist to the story, and they came up with THE PRINCESS AND THE FROG. And they wanted it set in New Orleans and they wanted it to be a Musical. So it was so exciting. I think John Musker and Ron Clements are just phenomenal in their leadership, their storytelling, their creativity, their knowledge of animation, their knowledge of filmmaking, it’s just fantastic.

Tell us about Tiana –
I’m so proud of Tiana. Tiana is such a strong character. She is the newest Disney Princess, but unlike the other Disney Princesses, she’s not waiting around for a Prince to come. She starts out not even a Princess. She’s a waitress that wants her own restaurant. It’s a dream her father had and she works so hard for this, and what she learns through this adventure is that life is a balance of things, of hard work, but also love. You can’t live without love and she just grows tremendously as a character through this movie. And she’s so beautiful, the way she’s designed and the way she’s drawn. I’m so proud of this character.

And Prince Naveen?
Every fairy tale needs to have a Prince and we have a fantastic Prince. Prince Naveen, from the mythical country of Maldonia, and he is terrific. He’s so fun. He’s sort of this playboy, a rich kid character, but he has been turned into a frog by the evil Dr. Facilier. But through being a frog, he learns a lot from Tiana. He learns a lot about responsibility and he falls truly in love for the first time in his life. And he’s just such a funny character.

Talk about the two sides of magic.
One of the things I love about putting the film in New Orleans is the magic. And we have both sides — the dark and the light — side of magic in New Orleans. And so we have Dr. Facilier, the bad guy and he is, I tell you, he is one of the best Disney villains that’s ever been done. He’s so charismatic, charming. He has a musical number and it just stops the show, it’s so beautifully animated. Then we have the sort of Fairy Godmother, you might say. Mama Odie, and she is just so funny and so charming. And she lives in the deepest, darkest part of the bayou in this shrimp boat that’s stuck up into this tree. And she has her seeing-eye snake, Ju Ju with her. She’s really funny, she steals the show.

And the two characters they meet in the bayou?
After Tiana and Prince Naveen are turned into frogs, they travel the bayou looking for Mama Odie to turn them back into humans. On the way, they meet two characters who are just phenomenal. One is an alligator – that is a jazz playing alligator—he plays a trumpet, his name is Louis. And he is so sweet, so funny, and he wants to be human, too, so he could play jazz with all the big bands. He’s kind of a scaredy cat, but that’s what so charming about him. He’s so funny.

And they also meet a Cajun firefly named Ray, and he’s got so much heart—he’s lovesick, he’s so madly in love with the love of his life. The main characters learn a lot about true love from Ray—he’s really just so funny and so sweet.

You returned in 2006 and now it’s 2009. It took you only three years to make this beautiful film?
Yes.

Is it a risk to bring back a classic animated movie?
Animation, for me, it’s a wonderful art form. I never understood why the studios wanted to stop making animation, you know? Maybe they felt that the audiences around the world only wanted to watch computer animation. I didn’t understand that, because I don’t think ever in the history of cinema did the medium of a film make that film entertaining or not. What I’ve always felt is, what audiences like to watch are really good movies. And my partner at Pixar, Andrew Stanton, said this—and I thought it was true—that it seemed like 2D animation became the scapegoat for bad storytelling. What I don’t want to watch are bad movies. I believe that if there’s a studio in the world that should be doing the highest quality classic animation, it’s the studio that started it all, the Walt Disney Animation Studios. This is a gorgeous art form. Now, there are subject matters that lend themselves to classic animation, and subject matters that lend themselves to computer animation. And at Pixar, we’ve always prided ourselves on choosing the right subject matter for computer animation at that place and time, because computer animation is constantly growing in what we can do. And that’s why back in 1991, when we started Toy Story, everything that was produced by computer animation looked like plastic, so why not make the main characters plastic, you know, toys? It’s perfect, right? And so it’s that kind of knowledge. Knowledge of what the computer can and can’t do. And the same goes for classic animation. To be honest, look at Snow White, newly out on HD and Blu-Ray DVD. Honestly, look at the dwarfs, like Dopey, at how brilliant those dwarfs are, with the squash and stretch. Even today, that would be really, really hard to do in computer animation. There is some things you can and can’t do. And I think when you watch, for instance, the character Louis in THE PRINCESS AND THE FROG, the way he’s animated, that would be very hard to do in computer animation. Plus, I think the painted backgrounds are absolutely stunningly beautiful. There’s something really special about this medium. I don’t believe audiences have grown past it. I think what audiences love is to be entertained—thoroughly, deeply entertained, and that’s what I’ve always set out to do. And I think there’s something really special about a sincere fairy tale, and something special about a musical, and we haven’t seen that in a while. I think it’s really great, so I’m excited.

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