“Polar Express” Transcripts
Here now is a transcript of director Robert Zemeckis talking to his CGI team while making “The Polar Express”…
Hey, CGI team. I have a couple notes. First, I want to make sure these kids almost adorable, but with dead eyes. Can you make sure they have dead eyes? When people just start to get won over by the sheer Christmas-ness of the story, I want them to look into these dead eyes and fall to pieces.
(later)
We spent all this time with Tom Hanks in the motion-capture suit and it looks somewhat natural, but I’d hate for people to feel comfortable with what they’re watching. So when Tom moves, make sure it looks like animatronics.
(still later)
Even though this is technically an animated movie, and we could make the characters as good at acting as we want, I want to have the children in this movie on the same level as Jake Lloyd from “Phantom Menace.” Do you have a Young Anakin setting you could use? Just borrow it from George (Lucas). Like… the kids should look to the side for no reason, and they should be glazed over—don’t forget about the dead eyes—and when they deliver lines, it should be book ended with awkwardly long pauses.
(later again)
What’s that? The camera can’t go do what we’re showing, and by doing those camera moves we’ll completely take viewers out of the movie? Perfect.
Keep up the good work, guys. Keep spending millions of dollars to make Tom Hanks look like Tom Hanks. That’s money well spent.
