Stephen Root

0:00Stephen Root, thank you so much. I appreciate it. I'm looking for this film. We're talking about Rango here because it's not an animated picture. It was probably shot differently than most animated pictures from what I'm told. You guys did full-on rehearsals and everything. Well, we shot the whole film actually. Like you would a play. I don't like you would a play. We could do rehearsal clothes and rehearsal props, which the animators used a lot of the hand motions I guess and some of the angles. Because there was a motion capture. It was just something Gore wanted to be able to see. We looked like it's different animals. And then used that dialogue where they're Mike and I would you go to the booth afterwards? We would do the scene and I think they used some of that that we did on stage.

0:49But then we go immediately to a sound stage afterwards and recorded. Immediately afterwards. So do the scene and then get in the booth and do it again. Yeah, but you know what you're doing. That's crazy. That's great. And in terms of animation, you're playing three characters in Rango. So three separate voices. Right. Now we know you have many, many talents for voices. How does a process work for a voice in a film like that? You come up with them and go to Gore and say here's what I'm thinking and does he have ideas for you? The theoretical average. I mean he hires people he wants because he knows probably what he's going to get. So I came up with a voice for the banker. The voice for the drunk rabbit was you know pretty much what it was going to be. It must be nice to be a character. I always feel that would be the best, especially coming from stage. That that would be the dream job. Because you get to play all these cool roles.

1:35You're not really the best friend. You're not really the leading guy. You get to do all the cool roles that you know it's something that you can do up into your 90s which obviously people have done. You know Harry Dean Stanton was on Rango. Right. And then they do. And then they do. I mean where are you going to get to work with legends like that except really now in animation that they don't do film shows or something like that. How do you find time? I mean seven films this past year. Seven films in 2011. I guess you're not all shooting them the year before they can take a while to come out. Just you know a quality project is a quality project and the writing is pretty much what interests me. A character interesting is the writing interesting. Are you going to be able to work with somebody you've never worked with before. And so I got to work with you know Redford as an actor this year. He actually acted with him to work with Clint Eastwood on J Edgar.

2:21It's the quality of people you get to work with. And Kevin Smith as well. It's a completely different role than he has ever done right. Yeah so fun. You know Kevin is Kevin is great. And I think that movie is fantastic. Yeah well especially for Kevin Smith fans. Tell me about that experience. I'd worked with Kevin Ford in Jersey girl. He'd wanted to do another project with me for a while and I was booked and this one turned out to be something that we could both do quickly. I mean the shoot was 29 days. And he was editing on the fly? He was editing that movie the night after I shot the last scene and I think he was done the next day. Because he would maybe get three hours of sleep tonight. But that's what he does anyway. Have you ever worked on a project that goes that quickly? Well the J Edgar shoot was maybe 35 days.

3:09Oh wow. I mean Clint Eastwood shoots you know two takes and it's good. How is that different from Gore and Rang? I guess this wasn't really shot. But yeah well that's completely different from Rango. Although that is the only movie that I've ever done in the rehearsal on camera. We do something called Five Questions. One more quick questions. One more answers. Animation or live action? Live action? Lendner McCartney. Oh always Lendner. Greatest character actor of all time. God that's really hard. What do you look up to? No blank. No blank. There's an ambient here every day. All right. Roll your most proud of. Probably news radio. Nice. And in one word Stephen root. Working.