01 February 2010 (Movie Interview)

Words: John Balfe

The Merrion Hotel in Dublin was the setting for a series of interviews with some of those responsible for Disney's latest massive hit, The Princess and The Frog. I was scheduled to spend some time in the company of some of the most renound animators on the planet, as well as a multi-talented (and completely lovely) actress, Anika Noni Rose. Indeed, when informed by me that The Princess and The Frog opened to a bigger box office in France than Avatar, Rose let out a most un-princess-like scream. No airs and graces in this interview, that's for sure!

Straight from the collective imagination of two of the most successful filmmakers in the studio's history, comes the latest animated hit off the Disney assembly line. The same minds that brought you The Little Mermaid and Aladdin are now putting a modern twist on a classic fairy tale, featuring a beautiful southern belle and a frog prince who wants nothing more than to be human again. Set in 1920's swinging New Orleans, The Princess and The Frog is a return to Disney's classical hand-drawn animation style and comes complete with an eclectic mix of comedy, adventure, music and particularly a strong sense of heart, which has become Disney's key signature over their long history.

Tony Award winning actress Anika Noni Rose voices Tiana. Rose, notable for her performances in Broadway productions of Caroline, or Change and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, as well as the Oscar winning Dreamgirls, is in the unique position of being the first African-American princess in Disney's long history. Snow White she certainly ain't.

"She's a 19-year-old chef living in the Jazz age of New Orleans", smiles Rose. "It's her dream to open up her own restaurant. She's lucky because she comes from a family where she had a daddy who was extraordinarily supportive, who told her to dream big, to wish big but to know that nothing worth having is worth it without the work to get there. And not to forget to love. So she's got the work ethic down!"

"She's extraordinarily self-sufficient. She's not uncomfortable with where she is in her life but she's so positive and forward-moving and forward-thinking. I think it's wonderful that she doesn't feel that her life is not complete without her Prince Charming. So when she does find that Prince Charming, it's more of a compliment than a completion."

Also featuring the considerable vocal talents of Oprah Winfrey and Terrence Howard, The Princess and The Frog is a classic Disney piece, hitting all the marks and themes you'd expect while tugging at the heartstrings one moment and making you laugh the next. Tiana is an attractive, independent and hard-working young woman. She is headstrong in her goals but has them interrupted when the royal outcast Prince Naveen of Maldonia shows up in town. A little spoiled, Naveen has made his way through life on his good looks and undeniable charm. Things start going haywire when the wiry voodoo priest Dr Facilier transforms the prince into a frog in an attempt to steal his royal privilege.

The traditional style of Disney animation is well-known to us all. Their familiar and comforting style of animation had flourished for decades until a young animator by the name of John Lasseter broke onto the scene with his 1995 film Toy Story, almost single-handedly reinventing the genre of animated film.

As the technology behind computer animation improved, so did the medium's prominence. Other studios, beyond Lasseter's Pixar, were now spending big bucks on their animated output leading to huge hits such as the various Shrek and Ice Age movies which have proved to be big earners at the worldwide box office. Almost overnight, it seemed, computer animation replaced its hand-drawn counterpart as the most popular animation style going - which led to films like Monsters Inc., The Incredibles, Finding Nemo firmly establishing computer animated films as a viable commercial success, while simultaneously earning the plaudits of critics.

"In terms of expense, at one point computer animation was less expensive that hand-drawn animation, around the time of Lion King. Computer animation has gotten more and more expensive as it's become more popular", explains co-director Ron Clements. "We love digital animation and we're huge fans of the Pixar films, but we were certainly inspired by hand-drawn."

Did this shift towards new technology threaten the future of traditional hand-drawn animation? Clement's co-director John Musker elaborates. "Disney had decided that CG was more commercially viable. They literally sold some of the animation desks that the artists worked on, some of the artists were laid off and paper was banished from the studio. Fortunately, though, John Lasseter (now Chief Creative Officer at Disney), the guru of CG animation, who coincidentally enough I went to school with 30 years ago, he studied hand-drawn animation and loves it.

He was very supportive of the idea [behind this film]. He's always thought that the key things were the story and the character, not the medium. Whether it's hand-drawn of CG, as long as you exploit whatever medium you're in to tell a good story - that's the most important thing."

One of the benefits of working with the most famous and productive animation studio of all time is the access the filmmakers were afforded to examples of Disney's previous work. The aesthetic feel of the film was attained by using original drawings from Disney classics as guidelines.

"The characters were drawn very volumetrically", says Musker comparing his film with Lady and the Tramp. "We looked at it for the Victorian homes, trying to find a way to reduce so much detail into a more manageable thing, both to paint and to look at. We also looked at Bambi for the organic backgrounds in the Bayou. The animators pulled out some of the original Bambi paintings and looked at how they were achieved.

I think computers do inorganic forms well. That's why they started with Toy Story, because they were inanimate objects. The computer does perfection well. Imperfection not so well. A drawing is all about imperfection, in a way. It's a stylised version of reality. You have a blank piece of paper and a pencil, and it can come very quickly from your mind, through your heart, to the hand and to the paper".

Anika Noni Rose agrees. "I think particularly when you're talking about a fairytale, there's a sense of warmth and comfort, a softness that's involved in hand-drawn. I don't think anybody does this the way Disney does it. The colour palette is so distinct and vibrant, yet muted in a hazy way so you could see the humidity in New Orleans."

It's clear by the reverence in which Rose speaks of her experiences on this film that she's honoured to now be part of the Disney family, saying that she would have accepted any part in The Princess and the Frog - luckily, though, she got the lead! "I'm a huge Disney fan. Would I have been just as happy to have been a duck? Yes!" she laughs.

"I'm really, really excited that I'm here in this time and it was my time to do this. But had it been five years earlier and I was a shoelace, I would have been really excited too! This is above and beyond what I dreamed of and it's hard even for me to sometimes to express the joy that I feel with this project."

Amidst the frog princes, voodoo priests and jazz-playing crocodiles another character is very evident in this film - the city of New Orleans. It is portrayed by the filmmakers as a cultural hotbed, an eclectic mix of music, art, history and the epicentre of high society. New Orleans is engrained in our minds for very different reasons these days however as the city which was pummelled by Hurricane Katrina.

"It happened 5 years ago and was really devastating for the city. Our movie is set in the 1920s, we are celebrating New Orleans - a kind of fairytale New Orleans", says Musker. "The city is on the mend from Katrina and has made really great strides since then.

"It's a great city and it has a great spirit", continues Clements. "It's a wonderful and unique city - certainly the most European city in the United States".

Rose goes on, "I think it's a beautiful representation of New Orleans. We've seen New Orleans in the guise of destruction over the last few years. I think [this film] is a love letter to them. If you're in the Garden District in the spring, it's like somebody took a brush and painted it. It's also a centre of cultural creation - jazz came out of New Orleans, the culinary arts have come out of that area. It's so ethnically diverse. I think it's wonderful to be able to represent the city in all its magic".

Magic - that's the key word. If there's one thing that Disney have proven over the last seven decades it's that they do magic well. It's evident in The Princess and The Frog and with the right kind of eyes, you can just about see where they've sprinkled their pixie dust in this film.

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