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Hangin' With Archives
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Lost in Space –The Zathura Brothersby Lynn B
Josh (or his digital counterpart) played the character of “hero boy” in The Polar Express with Tom Hanks. He’ll be Robin Williams’ son in the comedy RV in 2006 and co-starred in Kicking & Screaming with Will Ferrell. Young Jonah has appeared in Around the Bend with Michael Caine and in several films appearing at the Sundance Film Festival. He’s also the voice of Austin on the Nick series “Backyardigans” and will be a voice in “The Fox and the Hounds 2”. When we talked with the duo recently in Beverly Hills, we found the two guys to be a comic riot and way beyond their years in smarts. They could do a routine at a club. Josh, in Abercrombie t-shirt and Jonah, in space theme tee, told us about the fun of fighting on-set monsters and pulling pranks and how they both navigate the shark-infested waters of family life and Hollywood hype. At one point during the interview, Jonah’s mom stepped forward to open his water bottle for him and got a frowny “Hey, I can do it Mom!”. AGW: So, Josh, was it easy for you to relate to Jonah because you have a little brother? Josh: It was so much easier, I mean, it made it a lot easier for me to get into character and everything just because I’ve had nine years of training for this role basically with a younger brother, so I totally know how it is, the arguing 24/7. AGW: Jonah, I’ll bet you hated that “It’s for Babies” line. Jonah: Yeah. Every scene I had to say that line, I had to go back to my trailer and drink some tea. AGW: Did they let you guys hang out and get to know each other or did you just have to get the jobs and start filming? Jonah: The first day we met we hung out a little bit and at the end of the shoot we were really good friends. Josh: We became like good friends to where like we’d hang out, and he carries himself so much older for his age, and he’s a really awesome kid, and just sometimes it’s hard for me to yell at him. I’d feel so bad doing it, but we kind of just both look at it as an acting kind of thing, so it wasn’t serious at all. AGW: Josh, are you mean to your brother to the point where you don’t want him to play with you? Josh: There are some points when that happens, actually one time I remember, I think I was trying to show him a wrestling move, which never goes over well with my dad, and he was running away from me and he grabs the phone, runs in the bathroom and locks himself in the bathroom and calls my mom and told her I was trying to kill him. But I was just trying to show him the wrestling move, so there’s a lot of times where everything is carried away and then we get mad at each other and we both go in separate ways, but we end up making up and hanging out again. AGW: There is a lot of long dialogue you have to say in this movie, is it easy for you guys to remember all of that? Jonah: Well, we have like rehearsals and stuff, and we have the sides [script pages] so every time we have to read the sides before we even do the rehearsal, so we kind of memorize it. But then again, if we mess up we can just do another take. AGW: What was the most fun thing you did on the whole shoot? Jonah: For me it had to be flying on the harness. Josh: I really liked doing the harness work too, and also with all the effects, because the robot was really there in front of us, it was a guy in a suit, and it added so much to our performance I think, because there was something there to look at and you weren’t just being scared to death by a green screen, there was something there actually chasing you or snarling at you, so that was probably the most fun for me just getting to work with all these different creatures and special effects. AGW: What was director Jon Favreau like to work with? Jonah: He was so nice and so funny, and he was a big help for us to be scared, because he had his air-horn. There was a scene in the basement where I had to be scared by a noise, but in the movie it was just a little noise and I had to look, but really when I was shooting it there was a BAAA, BAAA, BAAA [the noise of the air horn] Josh: For me working with Jon was really awesome. We had a lot of fun on set and everybody joked around a lot, but also he’s an actor and a director, so the way he directs from an actor’s standpoint, which is easier I think for actors to understand, and also he’s really good at working with kids and he’s really nice and helpful, and he’s like, ‘Don’t worry if you mess up, we’ll just do another take.’ We had a lot of fun. AGW: What was that big robot like? Jonah: He was really cool because he had a tiny head, tiny legs, tiny waist, tiny feet, tiny arms but his chest was grrrrrr (spreads his arms out to the side indicating gigantic) It was huge. The guy in the suit, he didn’t have like arms that he could put his arms in, he put in his arms in the chest, the chest is huge, it was just so cool. Josh: : What I thought was really cool about the robot was that from his waist up, and not including his arms, he was this big, mean, metal thing right in front of you. And it was a stunt guy inside of it, and like how little like his head was on a remote control, like remote cars kind of, and the head could like swivel, his eyes could move around, his little ear things could go up or down or side to side, and it was really cool because sometimes the stunt guy would be like, ‘Could I get a Diet Pepsi?’, ‘oh, after this take.’ And then you’d have to go and be scared of it. It was really cool. That kind of helped us not be scared because we knew there was a nice, harmless stunt guy underneath. AGW: We heard that you played jokes on some people on the set. Josh: Oh we did, remember when we had these shocker pens? (Jonah says ‘Yeah’) and we’d go around and it was like shock therapy, I mean it woke you up, it was a good pick up in the mornings. So you’d asked somebody to write something, or draw a picture of something, and they’d click it and it would go, zzzzz, and they were like AHHHHHH. And we got quite a few people. Jonah: Oh, oh yeah! And remember that one day I brought my hand buzzer to the set and got Dax [Shephard]? I just put it on my hand and (makes buzzing noise) Hi Dax, buzz. AGW: And Dax was on “Punk’d” so getting him was good. How about those Zorgons, the big lizard guys. Were they also nice guys in suits? Jonah: Yeah, they were just regular guys in suits, and you could see their heads because the Zorgon is hunched over like this (demonstrates). The head of the Zorgon is remote control, just like the robot’s head, so they put a hole in the suit so the guy’s head could come out, but then they just put a little mask over it and then they took it out. So they weren’t that scary.
Josh: We got along great on set and we had a lot of fun, and in some ways me and Dax are a lot alike. We both are really into old fashioned cars like ‘60’s, ‘70’s cars, like muscle cars, (Jonah says, ‘Like Corvettes) like Corvettes, he loves Corvettes. And also we used to always go to Fudruckers and we used to try to see who could wolf down the quarter-pounder quicker, and he always won because he has a bigger mouth I think. AGW: Is there something that you guys hope that kids your age will take away from this movie – maybe be friendlier to their brother? Jonah: Yeah, I hope they’ll learn to be better to their sibling, and that goats in space have four eyes and glowing green poop, so if you’re ever in space and see that on the floor, it’s not candy so don’t eat it [at this point we’re dying laughing]. Josh: That’s definitely important but I think another thing that people will learn is that you have to not be nice to just your brother, which you always have to be nice to, but just be thankful for everything you have because you never know, you could be playing a board game and get launched into outer space or launched to Candyland, so you’ve got to really be cautious of how you treat people. AGW: Some of the movie may be scary to little kids watching it, do you think that’s good? Jonah: Well, I think this is more like a family movie. But I think kids under three or something can get scared by the Zorgons. Josh: But I think if the Zorgons do look a little bit scary, I think it adds to the realism. I think like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, these giant talking turtles would normally freak me out if I saw a six foot tall turtle talking to me, but it has like a realism, and there are a couple of times when the Zorgons are big, stupid fat alligators standing up and they bump into each other and it’s kind of silly so I think that kind of takes it a little less scary. AGW: We heard a lot of it was practical on the set – like the fires were on the set – we you ever scared of anything that was happening on the set? Jonah: Yeah, because when we were doing the flaming couch scene, I thought maybe our clothes could get on fire or something, and we would have to do that whole stop, drop and roll thing. AGW: Kids know a lot about space, so when you read the script you probably thought, ‘Wait a minute, a couch can’t burn in space. What’s the deal with the open doors, and why are we still breathing’? What do you tell kids who might say that? Josh: I think I would just tell somebody ‘hey, it’s a movie’ (we all laugh), because since it is, we are launched into outer space by a board game, if you can believe that we’re in outer space because of a board game, I think you might be able to believe that we’re breathing in outer space. So that could kind of play into it a little bit. Jonah: And if you believe that we were launched in space by a board game, you could believe that a Zorgon could walk into your room at night. AGW: Did you guys see Jumanji? Josh: Yeah, I’d seen it many times before and I didn’t realize that it was by the same author, I didn’t even know Zathura was a book until after I’d read the script. I read the book, and it was so cool because it was by Chris Van Allsburg, and I did Polar Express too, which was the other movie Chris Van Allsburg’s book has been made into. So it was kind of a weird coincidence for me to be doing both these movies. It was amazing how they took this 12 page picture book and made it into this super elaborate script. Jonah: Yeah, and for me I heard about Zathura and heard that it was like Jumanji, and then I got the video and saw it, and I could sort of relate that it was the same sort of thing, the game, and that things are coming out, and that sort of helped me get an idea of what Zathura was about. AGW: Who’s into classic rock and roll? Did you grow up with that playing in the background with your folks? Jonah: It’s me. Yeah, my dad he’s a real music guy, and I have a favorite band, Green Day and I really love them and I know most of their songs by heart. AGW: What was it like doing the meteor shower scene? Jonah: The meteors [on set] they were all foam, like the meteors that were stuck in the ground and stuff. They were all foam, and the meteor that crashed the TV, that was a real plastic meteor, and they just made it like steam with the special effects, and they put I think a red light under it, so it made it look like it was burning. Josh: When we actually shot the meteor scene, we had this entire choreographed thing we had to do, because they had these air cans in the ground that would shoot up debris to make it look like the meteors were coming down and hitting the ground. Later on [with CGI] they added in the little meteors shooting through. But we’d have to run here and stuff would explode in front of us, and then take three steps that way, and hit the other air can, and go that way, and then dodge into the fireplace, so there was a lot of rehearsals we had to do too. AGW: What was it like working with Kristen Stewart as your big sister – was she fun? Did she treat you like real brothers? Jonah: Yeah, she didn’t treat us like real brothers, she wasn’t really that mean to us. She wasn’t mean at all. She was nice. Josh: She and I, were kind of closer to the same age, I was like 12 and she was 15 or something, so we were not close, but we were like at this age where we kind of liked the same things and so that was cool because we had something to talk about. AGW: If you guys really found a musty old game in the attic, would you play it? Jonah: I’d take it out and maybe take the box and go ‘Eww’ and throw it away. AGW: Do you prefer to play videogames nowadays rather than board games? Jonah: Oh yeah, definitely. Josh: I personally like board games better myself, which is – (Jonah looks totally shocked by his answer and we all laugh). Don’t have a heart attack, it’s okay. But I enjoy board games better, just because they allow more room for you to imagine and picture yourself playing the game. With videogames it’s like getting a toy preassembled, it’s not as much fun to play because it’s already pre-visualized and pre-thought-of, but with board games, like whenever I’m playing Monopoly I picture myself driving down the street in a car, looking at different properties and deciding which one to buy, kind of. So I like visualizing stuff better. Jonah: And I like videogames better because you can actually drive in a car, you can actually … and it’s all right there in front of you on your TV. AGW: Do you guys do school on the set while you’re working or do you go to a school? Jonah: Yeah, we had special tutors and a special school trailer. It was just us, and he had his own tutor and I had my own, because we can’t be in the same class, because I was in the second grade and he was in sixth. AGW: Do you miss going to school with other kids? Josh: Kind of, but not really, because I hear middle-school kids are really mean, so I’m kind of cool just doing it on my own. Jonah: I’ve heard that too.
Pictures courtesy of and copyright Columbia Pictures, 2005 |
 
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Young
actors Josh Hutcherson, 12 and Jonah Bobo, 8, had the time of their lives
as brothers who play a magical game that launches them and their house
into space in the action adventure sci-fi film Zathura based
upon the short illustrated book by Chris Van Allsburg who wrote “The
Polar Express” and “Jumanji”. 
AGW:
So you guys had fun with Dax playing the astronaut?