Hi, my name's Lisa Stewart. I'm the producer.
Hi, I'm Rob Letterman, one of the directors.
And I'm Conrad Vernon. I'm the other director.
And there's our opening.
Just so everyone knows, we're in London right now.
And it is 10:00 at night. You guys just flew in from where?
- We just flew in from Berlin. - And the night before, we were in LA.
- We're on our way to Madrid tomorrow. - I think I've been up for 24 hours.
Yeah, you guys...
But we should say everybody did an extraordinary job.
- We'd be lost without them. - We had the best crew.
- They were awesome. - Absolutely.
And a pleasure to work with.
That was our prologue of the meteor coming...
We should say, FAB220 is our meeting room where we do all our meetings.
It stands for "Feature Animation Building Room 220,"
- where we spent countless hours. - Going over the story again and again
- and again. - That paddle ball thing,
we should talk about, since we kind of did that on purpose.
One of our board artists, Hamish Grieve, actually came up with that gag
when he was boarding this section out.
We had this rule that we gave ourselves: we were not going to just poke stuff
out at the audience on purpose.
We were just gonna try and really subtly and masterfully use this 3D.
And then we saw that gag and everyone cracked up and said, "We gotta do this.
This is the one time we can do it. "
Good friend of mine, Kent Osborne, doing that voice.
Brother of Mark Osborne, director of Kung Fu Panda.
That's right.
The other voice is Stephen Kearin, our fabulous reader who worked with us
- with all the other actors. - Who does an amazing Dr. Cockroach.
- And an amazing Link. - And an amazing Susan.
His Susan is fantastic.
This, for a long time, was a wheezing voice that I did.
And then we replaced it with this much better monster-y wheeze.
Although, your wheeze was pretty good.
- There's my fine performance. - Lisa Stewart's the girl in the middle.
I like the "S" they put on her pajamas, like Laverne from Laverne & Shirley.
There's the fantastic Paul Rudd.
"The folk art and craft show. "
Even Paul's most sincere lines have an edge of...
- Sarcasm. - He actually cringed
- when he said that line. - That's right.
He can make the most sincere thing insincere.
Lovely. I like that guy on the right. He was always kind of freaky looking.
Well, he has lipstick on. It's really... How'd we get away with that?
Those were actually his lips that you saw the lipstick going on.
Oh, yeah.
- Jeffrey Tambor. - Yes.
Who we made cry for hours.
- Every take, we had him cry. - Yeah.
Because we were entertained by watching him cry.
Yeah. We tortured him with the crying.
Carl was one of the hardest characters to get right.
That's Conrad, being the fabulous Mama Dietl.
- Mama Dietl. - You do a good woman, Conrad.
- Thank you, I think. - A good woman from Jersey.
Thanks, honey.
- Whose gag was the thumb gag? - That was mine.
- That was Rob. - That's right. I shouldn't say "gag. "
It's a true story. Those are what my thumbs look like.
Everyone was like, "That's not real. " Then I would show my thumbs
- and no one said anything. - His other one has a manicure
- with fingernail polish on it. - Right. It's strange how that happened.
It was a late addition to the show,
and one that we ended up being very happy about.
Yes.
This was the scene that Paul Rudd, I think, cringed the most in.
- I know. - He was just...
"Really don't like this guy. "
Was this our first scene with Reese?
- This was... Yeah. - I think so.
This was our first scene with everything.
- This was the first one... - Well, with our main actors.
But also, I think it was one of the first scenes we put through.
- No. Well, we did war room first. - It was war room. First contact.
But this was directly after that.
We actually blocked this out with a motion capture stage.
- Remember that? - Yeah.
And Matt Sharack and Kara were in the spandex outfits.
- That was amazing. - They really sold it.
Yeah. With the little white balls all over them.
We used two crew people, Matt Sharack and Kara Ulseth,
who worked in the story and art department,
dressed them up in little jumpsuits
and shot them with the mo-cap camera.
- It seems like we did that in the '90s. - It sure does.
Yeah, this was a... this was the test sequence for a lot of things:
3D, the lighting.
Did we decide to make her hair brown all the way through early or late?
- I can't remember. - Make her hair change, you mean?
Yeah, I mean...
We tried to figure out how to afford to make her hair change.
- Right. - I remember that.
And then we had this whole thing, when she was at the beauty parlor,
- we were just like... - Hair up or down?
"Derek likes it down. No, he likes it up. " And then...
- Then we got all confused. - We got confused...
We couldn't remember whether it was up or down.
And then we had to model two sets of hair, and then the budget came in
and said, "We can't afford to do it up. " There was this whole rigmarole.
This is the lovely and talented Latifa Ouaou doing the...
It's my favorite. I think it's hilarious.
- We had to use that. - It made the scene.
No offense, Reese.
First of all, Reese... Does she know that's Latifa's "Uh"?
- She does now. - She does now.
She does now.
The mother is played by the very talented Tony award-winning Julie White.
- That's a hot dress the mom's wearing. - Yeah.
She's going clubbing after the wedding.
Here comes the guys from...
Should we say what the name of the secret monster prison used to be?
- No. - We got to keep it secret forever.
All right. Fair enough. That's why I asked.
- There's the old lady we fought for. - Yeah.
Well, we sort of fought for her. We wanted a guy in drag.
And then we compromised and made it an old lady.
They were like, "We don't have the money to make an entirely new old lady. "
And I said, "Well, grab a guy and put a wig and some lipstick on him. "
Yeah. Guerilla filmmaking.
Weird. There were a couple of scenes... shots that we had in here of the...
Didn't he try to put the ring on her finger?
Yeah, there was a longer version of this.
Yeah.
- Early on, this was your... - Ted Knight.
Ted Knight impersonation of the priest. Yeah.
- I think Ted Knight's a good paradigm. - Ted Knight is always a good paradigm,
along with Charles Nelson Reilly and Paul Lynde.
Mama Dietl's back with the thumb gag. Fantastic moment.
For a long time, we had Reese's voice in here,
and it wasn't carrying the timbre that we needed it.
It wasn't until the last mix that they started putting a little reverb on it
and really made it sound big, which was great.
I have never heard that before.
- That "... personnel. " - Then they added the,
- "Get the baby on the bus. " - I love the "Get the baby on the bus. "
Those very last minute adds.
- That was new. - Yeah.
Can we take it out? Is it too late? I'm sorry, I have notes.
Oh, boy.
We worked very hard. We had so many different versions of this scream.
- This joke got worked to death. - Yeah.
- But it finally... - It came back around.
It finally came back to exactly how it was in the first place.
It landed just like it did in the boards after many iterations.
Yeah.
- Is that you, Rob? - I can't remember.
- You guys cut me out. - We did not cut you out.
- That's not true. - You still fly the plane later.
- I'll raise my hand... - Oh, I fly the plane? Oh, yeah.
No, any time there's a nasally Jewish voice, that would be me.
The hair in this is... I have to say, pretty...
The hair's amazing. This is one of my favorite moments coming up here,
- when she walks out. - You should talk about that.
This is one of my favorite moments coming here.
Would you like to be more specific?
- I also like it a lot. - Yeah.
This is when we just started getting the previs, you know, like a...
We just started getting comfortable with it
and Damon O'Beirne, who's our head of layout,
and basically our cinematographer on the movie,
started playing around in here
and really exploring the space in 3D, which was awesome.
Yeah.
This shot right here was really nice.
- And that, in 3D, looks pretty great. - It's pretty wild.
- And then this shot, so nice. - It was so great to drop everything out
and just have silence.
Remember, we went back on this shot and we finally...
This is when we finally figured out, you know,
to get down on the ground with her and shoot up.
Right.
Yeah, that was a last minute add at the very end.
And we never thought that there'd be a complete misdirect
where you were like, "Is she small or is she big still?"
But sometimes people go... When they hear that crunch and they look down,
they see the chair, they go... "Oh, I see... " I hear people do that.
So something is working in there.
I've always truly loved this introduction to Cockroach.
- Should we talk about that porridge? - No. Let's not talk about the porridge.
I really don't want to talk anymore about the porridge.
- We went through... - It is some stiff porridge.
We went through so much for that porridge.
- We have to talk about the porridge. - I'd rather talk about Hugh Laurie
- than talk about the porridge. - We sculpted it. We fought for it.
It's Shrek's mud. We just reused Shrek's mud.
That was a joke...
"I don't have a back" was a joke from a completely different scene.
That's right. We used it... Wasn't that Rob's...
- Yeah. - ... thing? That was that scene...?
Rob Porter. It was when she was rescuing them from General Monger.
- Yeah. - Right.
- A different version of this movie. - When she breaks the plane
and he keeps dropping out of it.
- General Monger... Exactly. - Version 132-A.
Monger, at one point, was gonna recapture everybody,
and she was gonna break them out again.
And then this used to be completely different till the very last minute,
when we added this gag.
And there was a version of this movie where...
A long time ago, all the monsters had therapy.
- That's right. - I was a big fan of therapy.
- Yeah. - Yeah, we all were.
We always wanted to be the One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest intro
to the monsters, and they would all be sitting around, you know, in chairs.
It wouldn't have been this scene. It would have been the next scene.
- After the war room. - It was after the war room.
When we come back and time has passed
and they're in a group therapy session, she's acclimated.
And Link and Dr. Cockroach get into a big fight.
- Right. - Yeah.
In the earliest version, Link was dancing with the blow-up doll. Remember?
Yeah, the good old days. And our therapist was Tip.
- Tip Summers. - Summers.
I think Ginormica clipped her fingernail and it shot into the wall,
and Dr. Cockroach pulled it out and snuck it into his jacket
- and started chewing on it. - He was gonna use it as a weapon later.
Yeah.
I forgot what B.O.B. was doing.
The ham out of a cannon.
Remember, the endless amounts of effects experiments on the...
- We had the B.O.B. task force. - ... dissolving of the ham.
- B.O.B. task force. - We talked about the B.O.B. task force.
Yeah.
- During our interviews for the press. - An amazing job on Insecto's fur.
That was incredible. 'Cause it's not just fur.
It's like 350-foot-tall grub fur, which means those...
Each one of those hairs is a quarter of an inch thick. It's pretty wild.
This is one of my favorite little runs of Reese.
- Well, another monster? - By the way, my son,
- the new favorite is General Monger. - He loves General Monger?
- He loves General Monger. - That's great.
You know, we were at a press conference today and Kiefer was talking about
coming up with the voice for this, and he actually said,
"I love the general from Full Metal Jacket and I love Yosemite Sam. "
And then he went, "That varmint rabbit. " He did this perfect Yosemite Sam voice
- and cracked me up. - It was really funny. Remember?
When we first... I remember he first came in for the recording session
and he had that voice and was screaming through the whole thing.
I remember saying, "Hey, let's not burn your voice out. "
He goes, "Nothing can burn out this instrument. "
- "The truth about monsters. " - This scene was sort of originally
a transition moment, and then they did such a good job with it
and the set was so incredible, that it really became a scene unto itself.
- Yeah. - Yeah.
After layout did all those shots, it was amazing.
- We had to open it up. It was so great. - I mean, all these shots.
- You want to see the monster prison. - Yeah.
And this shot is fantastic, when she shoots up.
- Yeah. - And we switch and we're going counter.
It was really... Those guys did an amazing job.
- Was that the Bee cow? - That was the Bee cow.
- That was the Bee cow. Bee Movie cow. - No, no. But that's reversed.
- We designed it, Bee used it... - We made it, then they borrowed it.
- We borrowed it back. - ... and then we reused it.
- Look at all the little guys. - People will be fascinated
- in that story. - Yeah. Yeah. That happens all the time.
Yeah.
Just a big doggy.
Ethan and Erik did a great job with these sound effects,
and we had a long, long rigorous search
for Insectosaurus', you know, signature scream.
We wanted to get it like kind of a Godzilla thing, but not be Godzilla.
This was a great gag that came in... The Great Escape gag at the end.
You know, we met with... As Conrad said, we were doing a press conference today
and the guy referenced it as The Great Escape moment.
It is. It's classic.
But he used to be eating himself, remember?
He used to take a spoon, take a chunk out of himself, eat it
and then it would pop back into the little hole he made.
This was that "Hang in there," that's Jed Diffenderfer's gag, right?
- Yes. - He came up with that
in the storyboards. It's very funny.
- And that line cracks me up. - That was Kiefer.
"Little Debbie, don't cry. It makes my knees hurt. " It was an ad lib
right out of the blue and...
- It kind of set a tone for Monger. - He's not that bad of a guy deep down.
It would probably be inappropriate to talk about
some of the alternative names for Ginormica.
That would definitely get bleeped out of the commentary. So let's do it.
Our introduction to the villain, Rainn,
who was unbelievably fun to work with.
He was amazing and hilarious...
and evil.
Just reminded me of our whole series
with him mispronouncing everything.
Oh, yeah, we started off in a different place with that character.
When we first started, it was a woman and then...
- Started with a woman. - At one point,
she was a woman, but she was sort of a lava lamp of a woman. Remember?
In a sequin, you know, spandex outfit.
- We were... - But no, there was the Gallaxhar...
What was Jed's whole dialogue thing for Gallaxhar?
Where he...
- He mispronounced human words. - Computard.
- Computard and...
- E-arth. - E-arth.
E- arth.
The computer would say, "Locally known as Earth,"
and he goes, "Stupid computer, it's pronounced E-arth. "
We kind of went in that direction with it for a long time.
We had a... the whole...
There was a whole Gallaxhar plot that went away.
And we had it for the longest time where that gigantic ship was supposed to be
- like a humongous SUV and Gallaxhar... - That's when he was out for oil.
He was coming down to the Earth to suck all the oil out of the Earth.
He was gonna use the gravitron ray to float the people off.
Suck the Earth dry and that...
All our oil was gonna be able to power that ship for the Earth equivalent
- of two days. - It was gonna power the ship
to get him to the next planet. Then he'd burn out all the fuel.
Then eventually we decided it would probably be appropriate to have
- what he wants be what she has. - Yes.
- Yeah. - We should say this is...
Our political commentary on the world just kind of went right out the window
for better jokes.
This is Renée Zellweger and John Krasinski doing
a favor cameo for us.
"This is the worst date ever. "
- Gym-nasty, ladies and gentlemen. - It gets a big laugh.
- It does. - This right here gets a huge laugh.
I mean, I think it will.
- The oldest scene in the movie. - Well, except that shot,
which we re-did 3,000 times.
Another Office alumni, Ed Helms, playing the reporter.
His comment, "What's that, Henshaw?" That's my ode to my mother.
Henshaw's her maiden name. There you go, Mom.
Don't say I didn't do anything for ya.
- Rob Letterman. - That is me.
- There you are. - You're right.
We had such a huge, you know, battle
getting the right design for this robot.
We had thousands of designs for this robot.
I love the look of the president. When we first saw...
We should say David James and Ken Bielenberg showed us
the colored, textured, lit version of his face,
and that's when it really started to come together. It was amazing.
- He's a spectacular looking character. - Yeah.
Look at that profile in that shot.
Kind of Reagan and Kennedy mixed.
And Fred... Who's the actor that we always...?
- He looks so much like... - Fred MacMurray from Flubber.
- Yes. - In the '50s.
- Or The Apartment. - Or The Apartment.
DX7, everyone... who used to play keyboards in the '80s.
- Yeah, it's been replicated exactly. - We went and... Exactly,
except for the funk button. That doesn't exist.
This has some sounds that I... have never heard before.
Dancing Secret Service men.
The dog. That's the only thing that made it through all three years.
I know. I love that dog so much.
That dog actually turns out to be Erik, the sound designer's, dog.
- Is it really? - Yes.
And he actually put his dog... He's also in that opening shot,
when we pan down over Susan's house.
He put a little bit of his dog in there as well.
More amazing sound design done here.
There's all sorts of roller coasters clinking.
We should also just comment on the spectacular Stephen Colbert,
one of the wittiest people I've ever encountered.
- So funny. - There was the thing he did about,
- "Let's brainstorm this, guys. " - "For M&M's. "
"Every good idea gets an M&M."
"It's called positive reinforcement. "
"Who wants to freeze my head?" came right out of his whole run.
He did the whole run about freezing the head. That was really funny.
- This was Stephen also. - Yeah.
This was his whole thing. Remember, he's like, "You know what would be funny?
What if he does eat lead?"
He goes, "Funny. Robots do eat lead" and then "I am a brave president. "
Before he says anything, he starts laughing to himself.
You're going, "What's he laughing about?"
He finally lets you in on what he's thinking.
And he sort of says, "Hold on one second. " Then he jots something down,
starts to laugh and then says, "All right, let's try this. "
The controversial butt scanning joke.
- These background lines are hilarious. - Yes.
"Let's install our own approved government within the robot. "
But remember, that all came from one... Didn't we have that one day
- with all the storyboard artists? - Yeah.
- And they just came up with lines. - They just came up with lines.
Conrad Vernon, everyone.
As the effeminate southern government official
that is in so many different movies for some reason.
"We need to declare a global war on robotics. " That was the one.
- That's really good. - Tom McGrath said. It was so funny.
- He said it with such anger. - This is one of my favorite lines
in the movie. It's a very subtle Wally Wolodarsky line.
Very Wally Wolodarsky. Really genius.
If you break it down after the fact, you realize just how funny it is.
Exactly.
Now...
Monger has just scanned his rear end.
- Yes. - He has not come out...
He's not coming out of the bathroom. A really important concept to grasp.
Unless you think coming out of the bathroom's funnier,
- then, by all means, laugh. - He's coming out of the bathroom.
His little spittle on the side of his mouth.
This whole scene is such a nice, loving tribute to Dr. Strangelove.
There's a lot of stuff that we had to do, to talk technically for a moment,
to make sure that everyone was looking in the right place because there's...
You really don't realize it as much now, but there is so much going on
- in that war room. - Just in scenes like this,
all the background characters are moving.
There's actual atmosphere fog in between 'cause everything was in 3D.
- We couldn't shoot anything. - The computers are going.
There's even stuff on the big war room screens of, you know,
boats and missiles and things that are tracking.
Another good line: "A scientific machine. "
That's 'cause we wrestled with what it could be.
- A transmorgraphication something. - And then we gave up.
We just called it a scientific...
Trying to use incredible technical terms and ended up with "scientific machine. "
They did that in the '50s movies too, where they were trying to speak
technically, and they ended up just saying something like,
"We used science to figure this out. "
There they are, the team.
We went back and forth on whether this should come first
or the introduction to the monsters should come first.
- Yeah. - Rob's still undecided.
No. No, no, no. I'm very decided, now that it's done.
Yeah. That it should have been the other way around.
That is a song that takes me back
to depressing family picnics on Sunday afternoons.
This joke took a while to work out the math. Remember?
We couldn't figure out what game to play.
They're not actually playing gin. The rules of gin clearly state...
And then how was Insectosaurus cheating and when he cheats,
what does B.O.B. have in his hands?
And what does he need to put down... And... Oh, boy.
Our art department did a fantastic job creating these little doohickeys
that Cockroach... There used to be a lot more,
but this one was really great.
And every one of those things is an actual plastic bottle,
and a pizza, can, and a Lite-Brite, hair spray.
- Which came from when they... - Plunger on her chin.
Remember, they... After San Francisco, they hole up in Alcatraz...
- Right. - ... and then Dr. Cockroach
built the computer and B.O.B. was gonna be the plasma screen.
That's right.
That's awesome in 3D.
Pop!
I will also mention that the animators
did a spectacular job of creating different ways of moving
for every one of these characters.
We did a lot of development on how these guys walk and move,
so that they had their own personalities just in the movements that they have.
- This is a Jon and Glenn joke. - Yes. This is genius.
Jon Aibel, Glenn Berger. The dead Invisible Man.
In this additional material that I'm working on... Rob...
- We brought back the Invisible Man. - You did?
- He does impressions. - So he's alive.
He's alive. It's set in 1968. He's still alive.
How do you explain the chair? Was he sitting there and didn't tell anybody?
- No, it's a prequel. - It's a prequel.
- It's set in 1968. - Oh, I see.
- I love it. - He's not yet met his demise.
Love it.
You know, what I thought was a breakthrough moment,
when we decided that Cockroach should have a turtleneck instead of a tie.
- Yeah, that's right. - So good.
I'm so glad he has a turtleneck. He's a beatnik scientist.
And the plaid pants, which I just love dearly.
And his giant wingtips.
- Seth's runs. - Those runs.
- Remember the run...? - Five minutes long.
There's a run where they're in San Francisco,
and then Dr. Cockroach stops to explain the plan to him.
And he keeps asking the questions and then...
Conrad, you and I wrote a bunch of stuff just before Seth came in
just to get him started. And then he just went crazy.
It was like a one-man Abbott and Costello.
And it was like, you know, Cockroach is going,
"You get up to the top of that building, stretch yourself between the two towers
and make sure that they do not get through. "
Then you go into this whole rigmarole, and he was just like, "All right.
So you're gonna go up. No, no. "
Just like one of those things, it was really good.
That last bit was so funny. "Do you have any more questions?"
"Just one. Do you think in Cockroach or English?"
Yeah.
- There was a ton of those too. - Arnett came up with the convenient...
Inconvenient Truth line.
The convenient truth. Yeah. That was genius.
We should give David James also a great acknowledgement
on the coolness of the transport plane.
- Yes. - Yes.
- That thing was great. - All this stuff is cool.
We should tell the David James story of the San Francisco scout.
We actually went to San Francisco. We got in a helicopter
and we flew over all of San Francisco and the Golden Gate Bridge
to just kind of scout it out and get a feel for it.
- We went under and over it. - But we were done, we were safe.
We were in the helicopter and we were safe. We're going home
and David James is in the front in the copilot seat.
And we all had headphones on, and you could hear him say these words:
"Hey, man, let's see what this bird can do. "
- That's right. - We immediately nose-dived
into the ground, and all I remember is being underneath
- the Golden Gate Bridge sideways. - At an angle.
At an angle, and just wanting to kill David James for saying that.
- I was thrilled. I loved it. - That was frightening.
We were sideways under the Golden Gate Bridge and then we went straight up.
Then we turned around and went straight out over the ocean.
It was crazy.
And I just looked over at Ken Bielenberg
and he was literally gripping the glass.
Ken was unhappy.
And blood was streaming from his fingertips.
This is my favorite sequence in the... This thing is...
This was great. It took us two and a half years to do this sequence.
Really fantastic and one of the best recording sessions we ever had,
even though Reese will not agree, was we brought her in,
and we showed her these two sequences in rough layout form
before they were even animated and said, "OK. We need a lot of efforts
and gasps and heavy breathing and screams from you. "
She watched this, and in the moment did everything you're hearing,
as far as running and screaming and...
It was a full workout. She ran through this entire sequence.
In place and did all the screams. As she saw something happening,
like jumping, she was going...
So we have in our possession
a 60-minute CD of just this.
- Reese Witherspoon's workout video. - Exactly.
This, also, a fantastic gag by Bob Persichetti
- of her falling off the building. - Falling off the building.
- A great moment. - Yeah.
We spent millions of dollars to get to Bob's gag.
Yes.
But, you know, after Reese was done, it was like, exhaustion.
She was just like, "I hope I never have to do that again. "
And Eric Dapkewicz, one of our editors, said, "We just need a few more. "
And he sent her back, I think, three, four, five times even.
And we got what we needed. And it worked kind of great.
We have a library of Reese efforts that could last five sequels.
The entire franchise.
- That was a great shot. - That was a great...
Unbelievable.
All this stuff.
- Is that Sean Bishop? - I think it is.
Now this scene, this is another great shot I really love.
But that, in 3D, when we put it really deep,
- I think made my left pupil explode. - The whole thing is so amazing.
I mean, the bridge, the water is incredible.
They did a great job with the bay.
We wanted to make a live action feel, and we really got it.
And we have this crazy camera at DreamWorks that lets us go back in,
and we actually... These shots are actual handheld shots.
Yeah. That's right. We have them all perfect in the computer
and then Damon would go back with the InterSense camera,
the handheld thing, and make sure that it had that organic feel.
We just go back and every shot got broken up just a little bit.
We want to get that human error in there. It really makes a big difference.
I can't believe the studio let us get away with this sequence,
now that I'm watching it. It's terrifying.
- It is. It's remarkable. - Yeah. But it's absolute fun to watch.
Great moment, the water coming off Insectosaurus.
- That's a great shot. - When they showed us water,
- that was... that was amazing. - I think I watched that on a loop
for about five minutes.
Yancy and Ken did a great job.
It's really great, in these, to just watch the team
give you shots every day that are just a little more done,
a little more done, a little more done, 'cause you really get to see it,
you know, grow from just drawings into this.
And every time they'd make another advancement in, like, the water
or this right here, it was just such a joy to watch this stuff
come through every day and just be blown away by it.
The whole design of San Francisco was really great too.
And, you know, when you go back in, you'll realize every window is skewed
- or stretched a little bit. - Well, even the Golden Gate Bridge.
Everything's got a little bit of caricature in it.
I was doing an interview with National Geographic Kids,
and everything we say about a cockroach I found out isn't true.
He was like, "So how is Dr. Cockroach like a real cockroach?"
I said, "You know how you try and stomp on a cockroach
and it's hard to crush them. They have a shell.
He's like, "No, actually, you can crush a cockroach pretty easily. "
- Oh, no. - All right.
Some poor kid's gonna go out and crush a cockroach
and then realize, "Oh, no. Oh, no, he's not gonna live. "
Crawling on walls isn't necessarily true.
- They don't wear lab coats. - Yeah.
- They don't have English accents. - They don't have English accents.
Or pencil mustaches.
Well, they might, I just can't see it.
I hope they have penciled mustaches.
Make them just a little more classy.
How long did we work on the music for this sequence?
- A long time. - Too long.
- Henry did a great job. - Poor Henry.
Yeah, we just... It was just such a hard sequence.
He scored three movies in this sequence.
Yeah.
But talk about just a... I mean, it's really, if you look at it,
from the moment, you know, that the robot busts through the building
at the very beginning, all the way to here,
it feels like one big action sequence and it starts and stops and slows down
and ramps up and it's really hard to keep that pacing.
- I love the helicopter. - Music was important.
- We added the helicopter last minute. - I love it.
The news... Yeah, the news copter.
Amy Poehler is the computer.
Those recording sessions with Amy were extraordinary.
We had the driest lines and she made them funny, always.
Then she did the sexy voice and she was eight and a half months pregnant.
Right.
Oh, boy. I feel the tea gag coming.
- We're not... Are we at the tea gag? - Yes, we are. Right here.
There we are. Yeah, we are. Aren't we?
Let's see. Ten, 11, 12 times...
we did this?
So, what was supposed to happen? Can I say it?
- Yeah. - Please. Now's our moment.
Instead of dumping it in his ear, he was supposed to lower it off-screen
and sip from below and spit it out.
And, wow, we got a reaction. That was unbelievable.
He pulled it up to his mouth and he blew the steam off it
and then it went down off-screen and you heard slurp,
and people just went, "Whoa!"
There was a guy sitting next to me in a test screening who said, "Whoa!"
- I don't necessarily think that's bad. - Then you had your...
No, it's a great reaction, but then we had your line in scratch.
- It's like, "That's good black hole. " - "Morning blend. "
"That's a good cup of black morning blend. "
- "Black hole morning. " - "Black hole morning blend. "
The combination of it all was a little much.
And every time we tested that line,
I would just feel this anxiety come bubble up.
We went from people just going "whoa" to...
- To crickets. - "What?"
- Total confusion. - "What's he doing?"
Did we... have we passed the cat's "me-wow"?
- No, this it right here. - No, right here.
I love this line.
B.O.B.'s face, all the way through that, is priceless.
Have we talked about Hugh Laurie yet? We need to talk about Hugh.
We have not talked about Hugh Laurie yet, how great he was.
You know, Hugh is such a well-spoken, like...
- Erudite. - Erudite, kind, intelligent,
really, really funny guy. And he came in and he started...
You know, this stuff he's doing here is what you'd think he'd do,
but then when he went mad scientist,
he would just... just let out this huge mad scientist laugh.
And go crazy. And then immediately grab his forehead
- and walk away from the microphone. - Yeah, he'd walk away, pace around.
- And just go, "Was that all right?" - And... "Oh, man. "
"I really feel strange doing that. "
And then we'd say, "Could you do it one more time? 'Cause it was great.
We just need a few of them. " And then he'd go crazy in front of the mic
and then grab his head and walk away and pace.
And then, "Can you do it one more time?"
I said, "One more time" about 1,000 times.
Yeah.
We'll talk about it later. But we tortured the poor man dancing.
I actually think he eventually embraced the "moo ha ha's. "
Yeah.
He got good at that mad scientist laugh.
Yeah.
This was a great gag from Wally and Maya.
And that B.O.B. throwing it off camera and just smashing happened...
That little gag came in during animation.
I remember trying to explain to Julie White that the...
- The ham? - ... the ham line.
- Oh, yeah. - Rob just came up with that in the...
I came up with it on the spot. She was like, "What are you talking about?"
And I had to tell her, "Just trust me, it's gonna be really funny. "
This was a great gag.
Him thinking she was Derek.
For not knowing what she was doing, she did an excellent job.
That... Look at the thin layer of B.O.B. all over her. That's amazing.
This scene was great because we had Paul and Reese together at the same time.
And just stuck them in the booth and let them go crazy.
And then Paul did this whole run. This is so funny.
This whole part, yeah.
And they'd worked together a hundred years ago on a little seen movie
called Overnight Delivery. We brought them back for this movie.
And now they're working together again in the Jim Brooks movie.
- I feel like we reunited them. - We did that. We got... Yeah.
We made that happen.
It was such a magical experience, being in the booth together again.
That's a great bit of animation.
All this is really beautiful in here.
It was a... I'll talk about another version of this as well.
There was a version where... this is where Susan got angry,
and she went on the rampage through Modesto with the monsters
and chased Derek through town.
There's also the version where she was with him and the cops came
- and kept on saying... - That's right.
- ... saying, "Put him down. " - "Put the man down. "
"Don't eat him. " And she's like, "Why would I eat him?"
What was the joke? "How do you break up with a 50-foot woman?
- E-mail. " - "E-mail. "
The other night, in a screening, I heard someone behind me go, "What a jerk. "
Here's our signature image from the movie.
This image started the whole thing.
There's a painting in the halls of DreamWorks of that.
By Tim Lamb.
That line I will say was a... was a... just ad lib out of the blue.
"I think that Jell-O gave me a fake phone number. "
Oh, my God, that was funny.
- This was all really... - The animation here is amazing.
This little move that she does when she gets up, I love it.
Line Andersen animated her throughout this little... these few shots here.
But all the way through, this was really tough,
because a number of animators worked on her through this.
And it was tough to get her to build
from just defeated and sad,
all the way through this in one scene.
It was what?
- That's amazing. - Oh, boy!
Oh, my God.
How many times were we just like, "You're amazing. You're amazing. "
That word does not belong in any other movie ever again.
We used that word... There is a version of this scene
where she must have said it 100 times.
Remember how much Reese wanted to do this again?
We came back in with this scene and she goes, "I can't believe it.
It's amazing. We're doing this scene again. Amazing.
I'm gonna say the same lines one more time. Amazing. "
That being said, she was always a tremendously good sport about it.
- Boom. - All of our actors were truly
- a pleasure to work with. - Great.
Arnett would just... When there were particular lines that he didn't like,
he would just... he would just chew the scenery with them
in such a way that we would never use them.
- It was kind of passively fantastic. - It was a gentle hint.
OK, how about that unitard.
That electric unitard, very cool outfit.
Reese was joking today about the fact that...
Do you remember the recording session when we were doing San Francisco
for the fifth time and she thought that was the end of the movie?
- Yeah. - Oh, yeah.
It was like, "No, we're only an act and a half in. "
"San Francisco. You've destroyed the bridge and the city. The movie is over?"
She goes, "This movie is really short. "
Yeah, that's right.
We were like, "What do you mean?"
"What do you mean? We have two more years to go with you, Reese. "
"And we've got two more acts. " She was like, "So how does the movie end?"
- We heard this in German today. - And then we saw the trailer in German.
At the beginning when you hear Tifa scream "Here comes the bride,"
it was just like...
- Were people laughing? - Yeah.
At the jokes? Does it translate?
We were laughing at the German. The Germans were laughing at the jokes.
This is another great Jed Diffenderfer idea, her smashing through the tunnel,
going after Gallaxhar.
It's really nice, the way we kind of went from tunnel to tunnel to tunnel.
I mean, Jed boarded it getting tighter and tighter in space.
And then bursting out into this huge middle area.
This whole third act just reminds me how we made Peter Ramsey storyboard
- the third act... 22 times. - Twenty-two times.
He was always nice about it.
But he... I mean, he literally storyboarded it 20 times.
Well, and the first, I think, 12 or 13, we didn't have this place designed yet.
- So it was such a waste. - Having to make up stuff.
- There was no way to really do it. - We had a bathroom scene at one point,
- where all the monsters... - That was funny.
"Let's go to the bathroom and re-collect ourselves and talk about
- what we're going to do next. " - But the very first bathroom scene
was so great because they go in to hide out,
and then they leave the bathroom and Dr. Cockroach stays behind
- to go to the bathroom. His line was... - Well, when nature calls.
"Well, when opportunity knocks... "
- That's right. - And then there's one where...
the clone is in the bathroom
and he covers his eyes and he says, "I wasn't looking,
- I wouldn't know where to look. " - That was Reese.
- "Or anything weird like that. " - That was Dr. Cockroach.
Yeah.
There was that whole gag where Cockroach,
when they went in the bathroom,
he scuttled along the bottom of the stalls to make sure no one was there.
And then when the door came open, you found the Gallaxhar clone
was hanging upside down to go to the bathroom.
- The toilets were on the walls. - They were on the ceiling.
That's how they use the restroom.
Here we go. Another...
- Well-worked sequence. - ... feat of comedy mathematics.
This was just... Man.
And we had different opinions on the funniest version.
- It took forever. - "I like the first, I like the second. "
We had two test screenings and people laughed at different spots.
- It made it so hard. - Yeah.
I just remember when you first pitched the idea, Conrad, it being,
"That's perfect. It's totally funny, that's exactly what we should do. "
- And then the iteration began. - Yeah.
One of those things that was easier pitched than done.
Rainn was a good sport about the multiple versions of this as well.
Were you just making those popping noises of his planet, Conrad?
Oh, yeah. That was a line that he had.
- Oh, yeah. Remember that version? - He was like...
- Gallaxhar's! - Instead of Gallaxhar's planet,
it was, "Let the birth of my new planet, now called... "
- You know, this whole... - Rainn did The Gods Must Be Crazy
- language in the middle of the... - Yeah.
Yeah.
Click. Yeah.
How many different tag lines did we have under there?
I think Bill Riling wrote a thousand...
He wrote, like, 500 of them, and it was fantastic.
And we came out with "U-F-Uh-Oh. "
I'm hearing the background voices much clearer than I normally am.
"It's an alien up there. "
"Oh, no. "
"Oh, really?"
So upcoming is the famous code brown joke, which we fought for,
- for a very, very long time. - We fought so hard.
We even enlisted Stephen Colbert in our fight by telling him that the studio
wasn't sure it was appropriate,
and he came to our aid by sending Jeffrey a box of brownies that said...
- "Save code brown. " - "Please save code brown. "
That was it, that was all it took.
He also made a video appeal, where he said,
"Mr. Katzenberg, in these tough economic times,
people deserve code brown. Won't you give it to them?"
- "Give the people what they need. " - Now, it's in the trailer and TV spots.
- It's all over the place 'cause... - Heartily embraced.
By the way, another B.O.B. run, we just missed.
That was the... the long, crazy, trippy one.
So there's a blooper reel here,
maybe the most genius thing that's ever happened.
So we should explain that all the clothes on the characters are simulated
by the computer. So they actually are...
The characters are animated and the computer simulates how the clothes move.
So every once in a while, and it happens all the time,
the clothes just fall off. And the characters end up being naked.
So that one shot where Monger salutes,
there's a version where his pants are off,
and he's standing there saluting in his bare butt.
You're over... you're up behind Monger looking at the monsters.
And then, I can't remember if B.O.B...
B.O.B.'s got this weird look on his face,
and Cockroach looks awfully interested in what he's seeing.
B.O.B. is offended and Cockroach is proud.
Oh, no that's what happened. He salutes, his pants go off
and B.O.B. goes, "That's rude. " And Cockroach goes, "That's not rude. "
- "It's a sign of respect. " - "It's a sign of respect. "
- That was good. - It was fantastic.
It was one of those very happy accidents.
And didn't we strongly consider leaving it that way?
- We really should. - I have the still.
I have it up at my office. I made them pull the frame
- and put it up in my office. - So funny.
- That's Rob Letterman right there? - Yeah, that's me.
- You just missed... - Glad we talked over it.
- This is a great shot. - Yes.
This was an amazing shot.
This was one of those shots that we went back into and 3D'd it.
That was a Chris Miller joke.
Oh, yeah we added this last minute. This is funny.
Conrad, talk about you pitching this in animation.
How did I pitch it?
When you were saying, "No, the first guy goes... "
Oh, yeah, I had to direct this in animation, and it's like,
we literally had to choreograph it. He points at these guys,
all three step up and one stays back. Then the three go back and two come up.
- It was very involved. - It seemed to suddenly mimic
what Gallaxhar was doing with the clones.
Yes, yes, exactly.
And then I started going... to the animator.
These shots inside the mothership, I hope people appreciate...
It's so complicated and so huge,
and involved every single person on the crew.
- It's amazing they pulled it off. - And our lighters.
- With thousands... Those poor lighters. - Worked amazingly hard
- to get this stuff done. - Beautiful but didn't we figure out
that centerpiece of that mothership was roughly the size of San Francisco?
- Something like that, yeah. - It's humungous.
There's all the clones. They took the place of the oil.
OK, this gag coming up, we have to give Bill Damaschke props for.
Absolutely, Bill Damaschke our president of production, wanted this gag,
fought for this gag, and he was absolutely right.
- Absolutely. - Hysterical.
After the code brown fiasco, I was like, "Are we really going to just blow
one of these guys away?" I'm so glad we did it.
The first time we played it in a test screening, it got a huge laugh.
- The biggest laugh of the movie. - Bill just sat there with a very
- pleased smile on his face. - He leaned over and said, "I'm happy. "
It was a funny gag.
- Yeah, it's really funny. - Very good.
- And then, he's just there. - Just there. Laying there.
Hugh Laurie was funny in this scene. He was great when he was doing this run.
By the way, Hugh came up with this little...
- The interruption. - Yeah, the scene following.
- He really... he came up with this bit. - That's right.
"Hail Gallaxhar. "
- Love his little chuckle. - That was him actually laughing.
- Yeah, at himself. - At himself, and we used it.
And there's the main power core.
We just wanted the audience to know exactly where they were going.
It was tough getting the geography of this place down.
I mean, everyone kept asking us, "Where are they in the ship?"
But do you really ever know where Han Solo and Princess Leia
and Luke Skywalker are on the Death Star?
No, but I remember having very serious conversations about Star Wars.
- Yes, that's true. - About that very moment,
we had a nerd fest about Star Wars.
- Our homage to the best movie ever. - Yes, Destroy All Monsters.
- If you haven't seen it, go watch it. - Unbelievable.
Rent it.
This is great stuff. This is what...
We were talking about this earlier today, in the press,
how we went through so many iterations of...
"OK, we've built up to the actual monsters versus aliens.
- So the plan has got to be awesome. " - Monsters versus aliens?
Well, you know, we complicated it and complicated it.
And they needed to get here and go there, they needed to do this,
and came over here and they did that and...
Finally, at the very end we just went, "Wait a minute.
Let's just have the monsters fight the aliens. "
And here is return gag.
- Callback. - Callback.
That is in the MVA dictionary.
"OMG," man.
And we have to give props to Rob Porter for coming up with...
- Rob Porter came up with... - ... this idea.
And Hugh Laurie came up with "OMG" right there.
- Here, we made him dance endlessly. - We all LOL'd.
- That was funny. - When we screened the movie for him,
I went to see him after it was over,
and he... I sort of went into the darkened theater at the end of it
and the lights came up and he was watching with Stephen Fry.
- No way! Oh, my God! That's amazing! - Yeah, I was like, "Oh, hi. "
- I know, it was great. - Where? In Los Angeles?
- In Glendale, at the studio. - That's so cool.
Stephen Fry was extremely complimentary.
Wow, that's really cool.
Those of you who don't know, Stephen Fry was Hugh Laurie's partner in a show
they did together. I'm not sure a lot of people know that in America.
Spaceballs...
homage.
- Rick Moranis' finest. - Yes. I believe so.
Pizza the Hut.
- Yogurt. - Yogurt.
We went back and forth, "OK, should it be five minutes
or be four minutes? Six minutes? Is that too long?"
We made Amy count every possible number.
She started at 10,000 and we just had her go all the way to one,
and then we could use anything we needed.
And we only used five, four, three, two and one.
We didn't see this finished until about six hours ago.
- A much deliberated moment. - Yes.
- It worked itself out. - Yeah.
Do you remember the day that we were making Reese
do all of her Bruce Willis Die Hard-y lines.
Yeah.
She... when she was doing them and she was in the booth,
she kept on pointing her fingers like guns
trying to get into that action hero mode.
Callback.
Is this from the car shoes? These were the flying tennis rackets.
And everyone kept asking, because they didn't know what they were
without the other debris from the hovercraft around.
People were going, "What are those flying tennis rackets?"
We had to fight to save this sequence. Remember?
- This almost was out. - It's really...
Yeah, and it's so incredible.
- Great effect. - Yeah.
Yeah, all those lights going on on the ceiling and everything,
it's just so much detail, thought.
That's a really cool shot that one of the layout guys came up with,
of the contrail going past his eyes.
Here we are. Heroine versus villain.
These are her tough action girl moments.
I believe at one point she said, "You should probably get Angelina Jolie
to do this part. "
What were some of the lines she used to say? "Nobody's dying, not today. "
- I enjoy that line. - "Have fun exploding"?
Yes.
Butt-kicking Susan Murphy.
- Get the gun. - This was hilarious
because, believe it or not, the guy who was animating this...
William Salazar, had never seen The Three Stooges.
- He's French. - He's French,
and he had never seen The Three Stooges.
And so I said, "You try to poke each other in the eyes with the fingers. "
- He says, "Why would you do that?" - "That makes no sense. "
And I said, "Well, you know, because you poke someone in the eye
and they would put their hand up to block... "
- What's funny about that? - "Yes, of course.
Why wouldn't you put your hand up to block the guy
who's trying to poke you in the eyes?
I don't understand. Why is he poking him in the eyes?"
So, anyway, he did a fantastic job
because he understood the humor behind it.
A good Wally and Maya line there.
The effects work in this was the...
From here on through the... the ship blowing up
is some of the most intense effects work.
They really came through, man, those guys just did an incredible...
Look at that stuff.
And... this shot right here, unbelievable.
Boom, boom, boom.
It's really nice.
There's Amy's semi-sexy computer voice.
- Yeah. - But maybe her fir...
- Remember her first countdown? - Right.
Ten, nine...
I think, at one point, there was a lady
that had just walked into the theater and saw this part only,
and cheered.
We get... This joke was Amy's. It was a great idea.
That was very good.
I like... They also added, like, the dog.
In first contact, they added to have some seagulls in there.
- Wow. - Lady Buck Teeth.
I think that was the first time I heard the Butterflyosaurus scream.
Oh, yeah?
Julie White delivered this line beautifully.
We had to go back in with Paul to make sure that he was...
properly... oily.
- He just wasn't enough of a jerk. - Yeah.
- He's so good at it. - He is, he's really a natural.
No comment.
- What is it? Is it amazing? - Amazing.
It's amazing, you guys.
Hope you like the word "amazing. "
Over the credits, we should have had every background character say amazing.
- Just in a really... - Just to prompt the audience.
Yeah.
This gag coming up was added at the tenth hour.
- It's so great. - We didn't even know it was happening.
The animator ran it past our animation lead, Dave Burgess,
and it was...
He just kind of put this in. So we're all watching this part right here,
not knowing what's about to come up.
- You knew, I didn't know. - I didn't know. Right there.
I saw it in the screening. I was cracking up.
Me too. I had never seen that before, and I laughed really hard.
As you can tell, it's a collaborative effort here.
Yes.
And we got rid of that background character you loved.
Thank you, I really appreciated that.
- That strange woman. - She needed to be turned off.
Look at B.O.B., he's like kind of elongated there. I love that...
when a character just does something freaky for some reason.
- Needed it to get over the eyelashes. - That's right.
- Lovely, lovely Modesto. - Yes.
- Wow! I love that. - Isn't that great?
It's a great idea.
Thank you, everybody.
- Thank you. - Hope you enjoyed the movie.
- Take care. - Take care.