Food Fight with
Anna and Bill!
by Lynn Barker
 Fun actor/comics Anna Faris and Bill Hader perform the voices of weather girl Sam and scientist/inventor Flint in the long-awaited, animated, 3-D comic adventure Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs based upon the popular kids' book from the '90's in which an experiment goes wrong launching giant food items from the sky like rain!
You know Anna from the Scream movies and House Bunny. Bill is on "Saturday Night Live" and in Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Adventureland with Kristen Stewart and the recent Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian in which he played General George Armstrong Custer.
This duo is just funny together. But, in between silly moments at our interview, they actually answered our questions about playing make-believe in a recording booth while pretending to dodge giant burgers, fries and pickles. Okay, we admit it, some of our questions were silly too.... but fun! It was a relaxed but stylish scene. Picture platinum-blonde with bangs, petite Anna in a cute Dolce and Gabbana white chiffon, puffy-sleeved blouse adorned with black butterflies. She wore darkwash jeans and comfy flat sandals and Bill was in casual gray tee and jeans.
AGW: Anna, you are very bright, but you often play these roles that are a little less than bright. In this film, your character Sam Sparks is hiding her intelligence. Could you identify with her at all?
Anna: No ‘cause she was really smart (laughs). No. It was really fun to have that reversal. Normally, you have the nerdy girl become hot and cool, and it was fun to flip that on its head, a little bit. Thematically, I guess it’s a little sad that she feels the need to suppress that. But, I had a blast doing it. I thought it was just going to be a total cake walk. I was like, 'It’s an animated movie. It will be easy, easy, easy.' But, no. It was so hard.
Bill: It was really tough.
AGW: Was there a message in the film that you really liked?
Anna: I love the father-son relationship. It’s so moving. And, I love the idea of embracing your passions and interests with pride. Especially right now, in this place that we’re at in the world, there is this idea of excess, greed and gluttony. I love that the movie has more than one theme to it.
 Bill: The thing I could relate to the most was having something that, in your little community, makes you kind of weird and people don’t really get it, and no one is into the thing that you’re into, but that makes you unique and you should just commit to it 100% and enjoy it because that makes you a unique person. I think that’s a cool message.
AGW: Was it your first animated film, Bill?
Bill: No. I had done some animated stuff before, but I’d always done different voices. This was the first thing I had done, where they were like, 'No, we want your normal voice,' and I was like, 'How do I do that?' That was really tough. And, also, it’s so insanely draining, just doing this work. If you watch it, we’re all at a (level) 10, through the whole movie. For four hours, you're just screaming and yelling into a microphone, and then you think you’re done and they’re like, 'All right, now we need efforts,' which are like 'Ooof, argh' [he pants and makes lots of funny sound effects]. And then, they’re like, 'Give us some running' [he pants like out of breath]. 'Okay, now give us some getting hit in the stomach 'Ooof, ooof'. It's crazy.
Anna: Early on, we didn’t have any animation to work with, so they would describe the scene and say something like, 'She’s walking. Now, she’s hopping from one fry to the next, through a river of hot, boiling oil, ....so make that noise.' (we laugh). I don’t know.
AGW: Did you ever record in the same room with each other? A lot of times you are just reacting off the recorded voice of the other actor.
Bill: There were two days, where we were in the same room. That was good, just to see how Anna was playing it.
Anna: But, a journalist complimented us on our chemistry. 'You guys were hot'.
AGW: And you weren't even in the room together most of the time. That's acting! Did you get a chance to ad-lib things at all?
Bill: I don’t remember doing a ton of ad-libbing. The script was really funny. You would just do stuff, and then they would say, 'Oh, that was good. Do you want to try anything?' And, most of the time, I was like, 'No, that was good.'
 Anna: And, their vision was so specific. A lot of times, as you go further along in the animated process, you’re locked into whatever your line is. But, I felt a little bit like I was in over my head. I didn’t feel like, 'Oh, I’m in complete control of this.' It’s not like I didn’t feel comfortable in front of (writer/directors) Chris [Miller] and Phil [Lord], in terms of ad-libbing, but I just felt like the whole process was like, 'Oh, man, I don’t know what I’m even doing here.'
Bill: We thought it was going to be easier than it was.
AGW: Do you think about the characters you play in an animated movie, the same way you would about any other character? Do you act them with the same depth?
Bill: There is an emotional thing to it. There were scenes in it where I would approach it like an actor. It’s not all just going in and yelling and screaming. With other animated movies I’ve done, it was like, 'You’re a British guy,' or whatever, and you just do that and it’s a little character. But with this, when Flint’s in the trash can [throwing himself away], and they were really talking me through it. They were like, 'You’re really sad.' And then, I saw that scene in the movie and my wife got really sad during it. She was like, 'Aw, you’re in a trash can.' And, the end of the movie really gets people, and the relationship with the dad. You don’t just walk in. You really do have to think about it. For research, I read a couple interviews with Tom Hanks about Toy Story and how he approached that. And, in one of those interviews, he said, 'Oh, it’s really hard. It’s really exhausting.' And, I was like, 'Oh, good, I’m not a pussy. I’m not just a wimp.'
Anna: Like with all movies, unless you’re directing it, you attempt to find what the tone and the balance is. This one presented a different challenge with that. For the scene where my character goes into anaphylactic shock and she’s yelling, trying to save Flint, sometimes they would say things like, 'Okay, that was good, when you delivered that line, but this time, actually be sincere. You actually are scared. That was too funny and broad.' You just don’t know exactly what’s happening, until you see more of the animation.
Bill: They were really good at walking you through it and saying, 'No, this is a real moment. This isn’t a funny moment. We want this to be a real moment.' They’d be like, 'Okay, the spaghetti twister is coming toward you. This is a real moment.' (we laugh).
AGW: If you didn’t have much of the animation to begin with, did you just have a basic character sketch or any line drawings to guide you?
Bill: They would say, 'Here’s what your guy looks like.'
AGW: Did that help you at all with your characterization?
Anna: No, not really but I loved the way she looked. I thought that was awesome. And, I liked that she had hips.
Bill: Yeah! She had it going on!
Anna: What I also liked about playing her was that she’s feisty and frustrated. They really had a specific character. Sometimes you play a character and you have no idea what the character is like, and the character is just serving other characters softballs, or something. But, this was great, and I love the way she looks.
AGW: Okay, pretend you are age 12. What food would you order to fall from the sky?
 Anna: My favorite food, for the kids, is nachos. And then, Poi.
AGW: That Hawaiian goopy stuff... ewwwww.
Bill: For me Pork buns and momofuku (noodles).
AGW: Ooookay. How do you come down on the three-second rule, with food falling out of the sky? Just pick it up and eat it or what?
Anna: I worked in a restaurant, and there was the five-minute rule.
AGW: Another ewwwww. What was the biggest thing you learned from doing this project?
Bill: I learned that I can gasp for two minutes, for the scene where we all gasp. You have the ability, in movies now, to splice takes together. You can make food fall from the sky, but apparently you can’t do a gasp for two minutes. Phil and Chris were like, 'Give it to us, for two minutes,' and I was like, 'I’ll die.' I had to sit there for awhile and then try to do it for as long as I possibly could. And then, I’d be done and I’d get all light-headed, and they would say, 'No, it’s not what we want. It’s more from the belly. It’s raining burgers.'
AGW: Was there anything that you just couldn’t picture, when they tried to explain it to you?
Anna: I was really confused about being inside the food machine, the army of roasted chicken, and the peanut brittle. It was all so amazing to see.
Bill: They would appeal to my movie-nerdness. I’d go, 'I don’t get the chicken thing' and they’d be like, 'Dude, it’s that shot in Aliens'. And, I went, 'Oh, right! I know what this scene is. Okay.'
AGW: Did you know the book?
Bill: Oh, yeah. When I was a kid, that book was in every classroom. I really loved it. I’ve read a lot of people on line, who have seen the trailer, say, 'That’s not the book!' And, I’m like, 'If you actually just did the book, it would be a two-minute movie. You can’t just do a direct adaptation of the book.' But, I knew Chris and Phil’s stuff from "Clone High" (on TV), and I knew they were really funny. They showed me the scene of Sam Sparks walking on Jell-O. It was just a test thing, but it looked really cool. And, they showed me the storyboard scene of Flint throwing snowballs at people, and he goes into that house and hits people with snowballs.
pictures
courtesy of and copyright Sony Pictures, 2009 |
