Party with the Animals
Northwest Filmmaker McGrath on Returning to Madagascar

The last time I talked to filmmaker and Northwest native Tom McGrath in May of 2005 we were discussing the chances his Summer animated comedy from Dreamworks Madagascar was going to be a hit. We also spent some time pondering the projects he hoped to tackle next after his foray into the wild with a collection of New York Central Park Zoo animals had come to its end.

Co-Director Tom McGrath (second from left) and other members of teh creative team behind DreamWorks' Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa

Needless to say, the fact we were sitting in a suite in downtown Seattle’s Fairmont Olympic Hotel talking about his new film Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa should tell you the outcome of that first part of our previous discussion. As for that second question about moving onto different projects and dissimilar characters?

“Around the time we were talking before [co-director] Eric Darnell and I were secretly kicking around ideas for a second movie,” laughs McGrath with a grin. “But as we didn’t exactly know what the reception was going to be those were ideas I couldn’t actually say aloud. The fact is we’d been working on these characters for five years, we’d been working with Ben [Stiller] and Chris [Rock], and we had great ideas as to what the next step would be.”

While not a critical success (although, admittedly, it made me laugh and thusly earned what I still think was a much-deserved positive recommendation), the first film made a killing at the box office both in the United States and internationally while also doing solid business on DVD. The follow-up picks up where the last concluded, zoo animals Alex the Lion (Stiller), Marty the Zebra (Rock),Gloria the Hippo (Jada Pinkett Smith) and Melman the Giraffe (David Schwimmer) hooking up once more with the penguins to get back to New York, inadvertently crash-landing in the heart of an African nature preserve.

“We thought it would be really cool and take all of what we knew and what we had learned about the characters and try to [tell] a better story than we did in the first one,” admits the director candidly. “We’re proud of [Madagascar] but we knew we could do better and that’s where we came up with the idea of telling the story of Alex, of going back to Africa and showing how he was taken off of the preserve. We felt this was a more relatable story and was something that could be more [emotional] for audiences while still opening up plenty of doors for comedy.”

That conviction to do a better, more character-driven job really shows in the finished project. For all the original’s strengths storytelling wasn’t one of them. The first played more like a series of Max Fleischer or Looney Tunes-inspired shorts than it did a feature-length motion picture, the plot itself more a haphazard device to move things along to the next gag than it was anything else.

Not so this time. McGrath and Darnell show far more confidence in their decision making abilities, they and fellow writer Etan Cohen (Tropic Thunder) constructing a character-driven entertainment the whole family is almost sure to love. “In a way we’re our own worst critics,” states McGrath with utmost seriousness. “In a way you kind of end up agreeing [with the reviewers] about the first movie, but then that was a tough story to do, the predator-prey story. It actually could have gotten really dark, and towards the end of the movie I don’t think it was as good a job of storytelling as we would have wanted.”

“We knew going into the sequel we wanted to make sure and get it right, and it helps that we knew the characters so well because that allowed us to go deeper into them and we didn’t have to spend so much screen time setting them up. We just wanted to improve upon ourselves, to keep that same level of humor but also add an emotional content some might have thought wasn’t there in the [Madagascar].”

The gang's all here in DreamWorks' Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa

I ask McGrath about the technical aspects of the production. Animated films typically take years to produce, much longer than the typical live-action film, each beat of the story fleshed out and solidified long before the first frame of film is officially handed over to the animators. Working again with Darnell and returning to characters he felt affinity towards, it almost goes without saying the director had to find things a bit smoother sailing the second time around. Or did he?

“One thing I can tell you it is not is easier,” he says with rigid certainty. “You’re always trying to make it bigger and better, trying to push the technology to do something new and incredible. You’re always working on the story trying to make it even better. The only leverage up you have is that you know the characters, but even that can be an obstacle, you’re desire to see them do something different and incredible tempered by the fact you need to keep them true to their inner personas.”

“But there are no excuses with an animated movie,” a comment McGrath also made during our previous interview, “because animation is always changing. I mean, we had several different villains during the production process, one of them being Alec Baldwin playing himself as a hunter, but while that’s pretty funny in your head when you put it up on storyboards you quickly realize it’s just not going to work. And so we tried out several other villains, moving in various directions trying to find the right one, ultimately coming upon Makunga, our lead lion [bad guy] who ended up being voiced by – of course – Alec Baldwin.”

“And it’s great having that freedom to change things, which is the number one idea behind that philosophy. You are able to really focus on story for three, three-and-a-half years in order to try and get it right, going through all the ideas in your head searching for that one great one that’s going to make everything come together just as you’d like.”

Part of getting it right was reassembling the core members of the original cast, the four principals plus Sacha Baron Cohen and Cedric the Entertainer all returning to lend their creative ideas. “You can’t really replace any of those guys,” concedes McGrath. “It was a big leap of faith they put in with us on the first movie because they didn’t know what it was they were getting into. They don’t get a [complete] script. They act on their own in a sound booth without the comfort of their co-stars. They don’t really know in the end how it is all going to look until we show it to them when it’s finally complete.”

“After the first one, I think all of them had such a good experience working with us when asked if they wanted to come along for another one they were gracious enough to join the ride. It excited them, and they really put their imaginations into it and were really focused on the emotional journey of their characters. We collaborated a lot with [the cast], worked with them on how we were going to get from A to B doing a lot of improvisation before finally laying down the audio tracks.”

“We actually pitched the story idea to Ben early on and he had a lot of great input. He’s a great writer and director and producer in his own right, and as the story is mainly about Alex it just seemed right to get his thoughts on it. He added so much to the final product that I can’t even describe. I don’t think the film would be near as good without his work on it.”

It makes sense that they would get Stiller involved so early into production as it is the dynamic between Alex and his father Zuba (the late Bernie Mac) that becomes the emotional center of the movie. While so much going on around them echoes the hysterical lunacy of the first film, the breadth and the depth of this estranged, long thought lost relationship is the one thing about the piece you remember long after you’ve left the theater.

A scene from DreamWorks' Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa 

“We wanted to have a dad who could be so much different than his son,” explains the filmmaker, “but one you always knew still loved him. This wasn’t The Great Santini after all, and if you didn’t get the balance just right than nothing else you did was going matter. So casting was critical, and in comes Bernie Mac, and he has such a richness to his tone you just knew that he loved his son.”

“And we kind of needed that because you could potentially hate the father for being a jerk and you want to know deep down that he loves [Alex] but doesn’t understand him. The only one we could think of who could pull that off was Bernie and now I can’t think of anyone else you could have done it. When he laughs, it’s just infectious, and the movie comes alive in a way I think is truly special every time you hear his voice.”

All of which must have made it even more difficult when the crew learned of the actor’s untimely death. “It was really sad and shocking for us,” McGrath says sadly. “He had just finished the movie and we wanted to show him his character because he just likes to work where he doesn’t see anything. Ultimately he told us he wanted to see the finished movie with his granddaughter and he never got that opportunity.”

“We showed it to his family recently and that was a great moment because they just loved it. But, it really was so sad because he was such a great comedienne, but more than that he was just a great man and it’s like, wow, he’s not going to be able to do any of that anymore. I feel really fortunate that we had him but it’s just so sad, too. He’s become like part of the family, so this was just a great loss for all of us.”

Inevitably, those wanting to find some way to complain about the film are going to latch upon the similarities to Disney’s animated classic The Lion King, going out of their way to call the sequel something of a half-baked satire. While I personally think these sorts of comparisons are a tad idiotic, it’s still easy to understand where they come from, both pictures sagas of feline animal rulers surveying the African tundra, and although McGrath can’t dismiss this judgment out of hand he can still disagree.

“I can’t say we’re not conscious of [the comparisons],” he says with a relatively resigned shrug, “but in our minds we felt this was just a totally different story. There may be similarities in that there is a king, an alpha lion, and his young son, but it was a story point for us to just show the differences between father and son. Alpha lions fight their way to the top. [Alex] is a showbiz song and dance man. That’s a great contrast to create conflict.”

“Our villain, meanwhile, is this comedic buffoon. He has this crazy self-image that Alec delivers so well that it is this kind of tongue in cheek [satire] on all animated bad guys whether they be from The Lion King or some other animated feature. The idea was always to not be the serious hardcore villain but be the comic villain, and Alec really nails it. But, I guess, if you’re going to have a bad-ass lion he’s always going to be compared to a character in The Lion King. I don’t think there’s anything you can really do about that.”

The penguins are still on the march in DreamWorks' Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa

With time running down, I take McGrath back to our original 2005 conversation once again and ask him about what he thinks the box office prospects for this film are, what he’d like to attempt next and if returning for a third Madagascar is something he’d be open to. “We’re working on a third one,” he says with a crooked grin, answering all my queries in six little words. “I don’t know what the involvement will be. After all, you get so invested in these characters you just hate to see them go in the wrong direction, and you really do have to get them back to New York, I think, at some point. But we’ll just have to wait and see. I’m sure the answer will present itself in time.”

- interview reprinted courtesy of the SGN in Seattle

Additional Links:

-  Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa Theatrical Trailer