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Hangin' With Archives
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From Hawaii!Jon Heder and Shia LeBeoufWe’re in Hawaii interviewing the stars of “Surf’s Up”!by Lynn B The Surf’s Up poster tells us that the new animated film from Sony Pictures is “A Major Ocean Picture”. After seeing the fabulous waves generated by the talented animators, we have to agree! Wow! Oahu’s North Shore never looked so good. For their various scenes, some of the voice actors recorded their parts together in the same recording studio for a change. Usually, in animation, actors have to play off a director reading them the other guy’s lines or just do their parts alone. Disturbia’s Shia LeBeouf who plays lead surfing penguin Cody Maverick, got to record his scenes with Blades of Glory’s Jon Heder, who voices crazy mid-western surfer Chicken Joe, in a booth together and the guys told us they had a blast. Surf’s Up is about finding joy in your work and play. We asked the guys if they are still joyful when they aren’t in a big hit? Interesting. Of course there was mention of their future projects.
AGW: How are you guys? Jon: It’s great here, huh? I’m not complaining. Shia: Me either. Anyway, Jon you have some slick pants, buddy! Jon: Hey, I’m just being professional. No, I’m doing the Hawaiian thing man. Shia: [looking at his own outfit] Yeah, I know. I’m a loser. I didn’t pack well. AGW: I think you’ve both done voices for animation before. This time, you got to go into the recording studio with some of the other actors. How was that experience.. compare and contrast. Jon: I did one voice on another movie, Monster House and even then I’ve never done a normal voice over, because that was all motion capture. So, that was like shooting a film. We had props and everything. On this, we had the little music stand with our dialogue and stuff, but it was kind of in a big open room. I have a couple of scenes with Shia and then one with Zooey [Deschanel] and it was kind of cool and different because it was interactive. We would actually wrestle and move around and that helped a lot. Shia: The only cartoon I’ve done was the Naushika (A 1984 Miyazaki film) translation and you had to stick to script a lot of the time. And [on Surf’s Up], when you have a lot of the actors in the room, you get to adlib and [the directors] would encourage it, because it was ‘reality show’ live. So, the cadence was different. It’s not like the ba da bing (makes symbol crashing noise) joke. It’s more ‘Spinal Tappy.’ There are these little intricate moments that you get when you get the other actors there. Noises you wouldn’t write down on a piece of paper in scripted form. So, it was great that we were encouraged to do it and that Sony let them encourage us to do it. So, we were in a really good environment for this. AGW: How did you get a full-body performance with just your voice?
AGW: Shia, your career is going great lately. Why do a voice in an animated film? Shia: Well, I am a huge animated film fan period, especially in the last ten years. Animation has completely changed and I’ve always been a big fan. AGW: And you were younger when you recorded this too. Shia: Yeah. I was going through puberty while we were making it. That was tough. So it was very strange. Jon: They had to tweak his voice. Shia: Yeah. It was very strange. AGW: What are your favorite animated characters or animated movies? Shia: Toy Story. That is one of my favorite films, not just in animation. And you meet people involved in that, so that was reassuring. So, I guess you just go into it like you would in any other film. It’s not like your performance changes just because you’re in animation. If that would happen, that would be very strange – for me. AGW: What makes Cody Maverick such a great character? And why was he fun to play? Shia: Cody wants to be a winner and he comes from a family of people who aren’t encouraging him to follow his dreams so he’s the underdog. We are not playing up a lot of the penguin thing. He’s very human. And often times in animation you don’t get that. You don’t get the reality in the character. Sometimes it’s just too shticky. Banana peel, slip. ‘Ah, ha-ha-ha.’ And in a movie like this, you get to find the thread of the soul of the character and get to explore a bunch of stuff you wouldn’t normally have in animation like the fact that he doesn’t have a father. That’s pretty dramatic for animation. Stuff like that was fun. Jumping around from joking with Jon and having all those laughs and then going into this romance with Zooey. And then going into the father-son thing with Jeff [Bridges], that was a lot of fun for me. Just as a performer period. AGW: What does it take to play a penguin? What sort of research goes into that? Shia: You gotta talk to other penguins [Laughs]. You gotta get into the mind of a penguin. We would have a lot of great penguin actors who had come off ‘Meet the Penguins.’ And had come on to our set who were like some of the best in the business. They are very prima dona types though. (he’s totally kidding). Jon: Really? I didn’t meet them. I worked with chickens. AGW: Did you share any thoughts with Elijah Wood and Robin Williams from that other animated penguin movie? What were your thoughts when you were working on this film and Happy Feet came out? Shia: Well, we started before they started. Our movie has been five years in the making. It took them like two or three to make theirs. So take that! Jon: Theirs was way too easy. This was surfing. That’s just penguins being penguins. Shia: Cakewalk! Jon: And singing! Yeah, that’s true. AGW: This film is about keeping the joy in what you do; not just going out to win all the time. Have either of you ever lost the joy in your work? Do you lose it when something isn’t a hit?
AGW: So you think it’s your fault? Jon: It can be a combination of anything. But, still, to me it’s not so much about whether a movie is a hit or not, it’s if you enjoyed your own performance or you buy it. Of course, at least I am thinking with most actors you are going to be critical of your own work. You are watching it and you’re like, ‘OK, I dunno if this is going to be a big hit or not.’ You want it to be. Obviously you want success, but even with a successful film, you are still critical ‘Okay, I can do this better’ or ‘Alright, I can see how I could have done a better job here.’ AGW: Shia, do you find the joy in every role? Shia: If I didn’t enjoy it, I wouldn’t be doing it. It’s not like I’m forced to do this. Financially I’m pretty stable. The last couple of movies haven’t been financial gain in major ways. I mean, I’ve been getting paid less and less, it seems like, but I’ve been enjoying it more and more. Humm, it sucks. My rate is dropping, plummeting [he’s kidding again]. AGW: There has got to be some joy in hits. Especially with Disturbia and Blades of Glory? Jon: I love the whole process. I mean, shooting the film is really fun; the pre-production and of course you’re getting really excited when you read the script and then you shoot it and then you have a lot of time. And then it’s really just the waiting period. ‘Alright, let’s see what happens when it comes out in theaters.’ And you want it to do well and you see the preview and you are excited. Whether or not it does well, I love seeing the finished product. I love having my own little private screening. Of course a hit feels great because you’re like, ‘Alright, we did something right.’ AGW: Shia, what about the surprise success of Disturbia? Shia: Nobody really expected it to do that well, so when it did really well and it continued to do really well and the drop offs weren’t major and Spider-Man didn’t knock us out, it was like, ‘Wow. This is incredible’ And good movies came out in our time, like Fracture came out and I really liked that movie, but sometimes it’s not even about the quality of the film. It’s just we hit a group of people that really wanted a movie like this at the time. Marketing is a whole other side of this that we’re not really involved with directly. There is a science to it. It’s a whole different thing. AGW: Do you want to be a winner like Cody does? Shia: Yeah, I think that’s in everybody. I think that’s my biggest flaw. You always want to succeed. You never strive to fail. AGW: Big Z is Cody’s surfing idol. Do you guys have any acting idols? Shia: Well, Jeff Bridges is definitely one of them, so that helps. Jon: Yeah, I’d agree on that too. Shia: There are like a list of ten or twenty, where you are like, ‘Oh, man, if I ever get to meet these people, let alone work with them.’ I dunno if I can pick one and go, ‘Boom! That’s the guy.’ But yeah, Jeff was definitely that for me while we were working on the movie. AGW: He’s done a lot of great films. Can you talk about what it was like to work with Jeff? Shia: Jeff is just really playful. He’s like a nine-year-old with all the experiences he has and the knowledge, but his imagination is that of a nine-year-old. He’ll just riff all day long. He doesn’t care how it sounds or how it comes off. He’s very playful and you feel like you are in a sandbox. And it never stops. There is never a cut off point. There is never a ‘Cut’ and he’s off in his own world again. He just maintains it. There is a lot of joy that he brings to the table when he comes to work. And there’s not a lot of excuses or complaints or anything. AGW: Now that you guys are here in Hawaii, are you going to do any surfing? Jon: No, no. I have never surfed. I may try. I’m not saying I’m not interested. I’m more about going under the water. I like to snorkel and scuba. Shia: I’ve surfed yeah. When I was like 13 and then I stopped because work started and insurance won’t let you. And when we get out of here, we stop doing press around 5 pm or so, by then the tide is not something you want to be involved in. And there is really no surf out here, but there is surf at Diamond Head. Jon: Nothing but excuses here. [Laughs]. AGW: If you guys aren’t surfing, what other athletic activities are you into?
Shia: I am a season ticket holder to Dodger games. I go to every Dodger game I can go to. Every single one. And I’ve never been more athletic in my life. Just because of the occupation, y’know? I have to. AGW: Jon, you studied animation. Have you fully devoted yourself to performing or will you ever go back to animation? Jon: Oh, yeah. I’ve always been in love with animation. I remember when they asked me to do this role, that’s one of the biggest reasons I took it, because I loved the character design and I loved how they were doing all the technology with the wave. The look of it looked really cool. And I was like, ‘This looks like a really cool project to get involved in’ but I’m still planning on getting involved with animation; writing and directing and hopefully producing some day. Features. AGW: Let’s talk other projects. How is Transformers going, Shia? Have you seen it? Shia: Yeah, I have seen pretty close to final. We are done shooting and they are getting down to the final voice-over stage. And Hugo Weaving is great as Megatron. AGW: Now that we know you are in the next Indiana Jones movie, will you be making suggestions on the character to Steven Spielberg? Shia: Well, you don’t make any demands to Steven Spielberg. You just say, ‘Yeah, alright, great. That sounds like a good thing to me.’ And [George] Lucas isn’t involved as Spielberg with the actors, it’s all Steven, but I don’t imagine I’ll be questioning anything he says. Of course you have to find your voice as an artist. You’re the tool and you gotta have some say. But I don’t imagine it’s going to be very easy to say, ‘You know Steven, I don’t think that’s correct. I think I should do it this way.’ I dunno. We’re still trying to figure it out. We haven’t gotten into any rehearsals. It’s just been a lot of stunt rehearsals and weapons training and stuff like that. We probably start shooting in June. Jon: I’ve got this movie and Mama’s Boy coming out, I believe, in November. And for now, that’s it. AGW: Jon, fans keep asking. Is there any discussion at all to do Napoleon Dynamite 2? Jon: No, not really. We have never said no to it, I think it’s just a timing thing since everyone else is involved in other projects. I mean, I wouldn’t get your hopes up, but I’m not saying it would never happen. We’ve never said, ‘Oh, absolutely not.’ So, right now? No. AGW: Shia, I know you have taken some bigger roles to get your smaller movies funded. Are there any pet projects you’re working on you think you might do after ‘Indy’? Shia: Yeah, there are a couple of them. None of them are fully developed to the point where I’d want to start tell you about it. But, yeah, there are a handful of things. If your movie opens well, you go ‘okay, now the industry will let me make a small movie’. So, you start coming up with ideas. You start brainstorming with your team and people start finding books and other things and properties that you are interested in. Or life stories that you are really interested in. AGW: You’ve both hosted “Saturday Night Live”. Fun? Jon: Yeah, It’s pretty awesome. I loved it. It was always a dream to do. I watched the show growing up and then, of course, I got the call and it was one of those thing where I got really nervous. The week of shooting my nerves actually went down surprisingly. Even the day of, I wasn’t that nervous doing it, but all the build up, the month and a half of knowing I was going to do it, I was really nervous. But, it turned out that it was a blast. And it goes by so fast. You’re done and you’re like, ‘Oh, we’re done?’ You’re kind of happy because you are like, ‘I can’t screw up anymore!’ But it was a lot of fun. And it’s a very lively show. There is a lot of energy, because it is so insane backstage. Shia: With all the wig changing? That’s nuts. Jon: And they strip you down [to change costumes]. AGW: You guys have done it all. What are your preferences? Animated or live-action, TV, big budget, low budget? Jon: Each project is very similar in that you approach the characters the same way. Of course I love independent, because starting out, you have complete control and you don’t worry at all. It’s ‘Oh, right. People may see this. People may not. So, who cares?’ You just kind of give it all out. As opposed to obviously a studio movie that you know will probably have this kind of opening, but I don’t know if I have a preference. It depends on what you are doing. Shia: Yeah. It’s all fun. One summer you want to be a [jerk]. You want to be upset and find those other things in you that you don’t always get to do in a comedy or in a studio film. Sometimes you want to be that surfacey guy. Sometimes you don’t want to be that surfacey. It’s human. I’m kind of bi-polar. It just fluctuates really strongly. It’s all over the place. At this point the publicists make the guys move on. Shia: Good to see you. Enjoy Hawaii.
The “Ultimate Penguin Flop Off” consisted of a platform over the sea, holding several contestants dressed in silly but cute penguin costumes, a lot of onlookers who watched from other platforms and a catamaran and our two guys on a platform designed to look like a surf shack backed with real and cardboard set surfboards. Lots of spectacular flops later, a winner was announced! What a crazy way to spend a day in Paradise! Photo credits: Penguin Flop-off and Dolphin feeding - copyright Lynn B, 2007 other pictures - copyright Dreamworks Pictures, 2007 |
 
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We
did our interviews at the Kahala Resort on Oahu where you can feed and
play with Dolphins in the pools outside. On a gorgeous, sunny Hawaiian
day, we checked out the friendly little guys who were playing with toys
even when their trainers weren’t asking them to perform. Later,
inside the hotel, we sat down with Jon and Shia and could hear the surf
pounding outside. Jon was cute and funny in a beige polo shirt and some
wild plaid shorts that Shia just had to comment on. Shia, hair slicked
back, appeared in black tennies, dark gray jeans and a vintage green tee
from a parks and recreation department labeled “Mochoville-Dan:
Join in the Fun” so… we did. 
Jon:
Well, when you are in a scene and there is some kind of action laid out
you are kind of doing it [waves his arms around] even though you know
the camera is not going to see any of this. I’m not sure if they
showed it to the animators, sometimes they watch it, but it just helps
you get into your voice and shows through your voice. There are a couple
of scenes where we are like kind of pushing each other and wrestling a
bit and I think it plays through the voice even though you don’t
ultimately see us. You see a chicken and a penguin.
Jon:
I think if you have something that isn’t a hit, then you’re
like, ‘I’ve got to try harder.’ 
Jon:
Hmmm. Yeah, I like to ice skate now. I do. That was my favorite part of
learning how to ice skate and I do a little bit of racquetball and tennis.
Later
on, we went down to the beach in back of the Kahala and saw that the guys
were judging…. are you ready? A penguin belly flop diving contest!
Shia had changed into white baggy board shorts, tossed his flip flops
ashore and was ready to watch the crazy antics. Far from “American
Idol” but, fun none-the-less.