'Madagascar' / 'Tortoise & Hare', John Stevenson

0:00John StevensonThe cast of Seinfeld got transported from New York and plunked down in the jungle, how would they survive? So the setup was very, you know, clear and funny. T… bunch of New York animals who only know being pampered in zoo life, and then transported. Conrad came up with the gingerbread man for Shrek, you know, and…

0:19Jawad MirOne of my favorite characters.

0:21John StevensonYeah. It was a, it was a little throwaway which showed... I think the whole point of that was basically to establish how evil Lord Farquaad was.

0:29Jawad MirGoing back to Tortoise and Hare, so you said earlier that Dreamworks knew that it was gonna fall apart.

0:35John StevensonIt was in production. They were at… I mean, they had sets built and they were... I mean, I saw animation. I saw shot animation that had been done, that probably shouldn't have been done because the story was nowhere near g… you know, good enough to go, you know, to go into production. So they had…

1:07Jawad MirWelcome back everyone to another episode of Kingdom of Dreams podcast, the making of stories. I'm your host Jawad Mir. Today my guest is John Stevenson, who I had the pleasure of having couple of times on this podcast. Once for Kung Fu Panda, which he co-directed, and Labyrinth and Dark Crystal, on which he worked on back in the '80s. Today he's here to talk about, Madagascar as a storyboard artist. Some incredible stories from the film, behind the scene stories, as well as the abandoned project, Tortoise and Hare, by Aardman and DreamWorks Animation. He gets a little bit into that, and a whole lot of other fun stuff. So without further ado, here's my conversation with storyboard artist, animator, director, John Stevenson. I'm really excited because I've been looking forward to chatting with you again. We spoke obviously about Kung Fu Panda, we spoke about, Dark Crystal and Labyrinth, and now we're gonna talk about Madagascar. So your let's just start with what was your official role on the film?

2:03John StevensonI was a story artist, and I'm credited as such on the film. It's a while now, so I'm trying to remember the exact sequence of events. I sort of joined DreamWorks in the late '90s, either like '97 or '98. I can't remember…

2:23John Stevenson... Exactly when. And I was hired as to be the head of story on a film called Tusker, which ended up never happening.

2:34Jawad MirRight. Right.

2:35John StevensonBut while Tusker was getting ready, I was assigned to Shrek, the first one. So I was a story artist on Shrek, and I'm credited on that, and I got a couple of scenes, i… in the movie. And then I think after Shrek, you know, as was very common, at DreamWorks at the time, you know, if you, y… you know, you were just sort of, while you were in the hiatus between your next official gig, you were just a sort of, available to help out on other productions. So I…

3:10Jawad MirYeah

3:10John Stevenson... I'm not quite sure of the sequence of events. I know I did a little stint on Spirit Stallion of the Cimarron on a sequence. I know I worked on, Sinbad, Legend of the Seven Seas, and, worked on the introduction of Eris. And somewhere in there, I think I started on Madagascar, and then I think I was sent, to Aardman, who were making a film called Tortoise and Hare, which was in trouble. And I think I got... I, this is my memory. That I had begun on Madagascar, that I was pulled off Madagascar to sort of do a 911, you know, emergency post to be sent to Bristol in the UK because the film was in trouble. And I think, I'm trying to think who the other... There was a, there were some other DreamWorks folks there. I know Steve Hickner was there.

4:12John StevensonMaybe David Soren was there. I'm trying to remember exactly who. It was like four guys from DreamWorks, you know, working at Aardman. That film was in trouble, and it very obviously in bad trouble when I got there, you know. And it got canceled while I was there. So I was sent to sort of try and help, you know, rescue it, but it became pretty apparent that it was beyond rescuing. And we knew before, the DreamWorks people knew before the Aardman people did that the film was gonna get shut down. And so that was, that was a very uncomfortable day when there was this big announcement to the whole of Aardman that we knew exactly what it was, but they did not. And, I remember that very clearly. But so then the film was shut down. Everybody was laid off. It was a big, you know, disaster for Aardman.

5:14John StevensonBut then I was sort of, I was over in the UK in Bristol, you know, with my wife and my, you know, my new baby, and I didn't have a film to work on. So I th… what I remember is working on Madagascar again in my little flat in Bristol, you know, sitting on the floor drawing storyboards, you know, with, you know, Carol and Faith until pretty much the end of my assigned time on, in the UK. So I spent more time, in fact, on Madagascar in the UK than I did on the film that I'd been sent to the UK to work on, because it got, it got shut down after, you know, I don't know, a month or something like that after I was there. Then I had another few months of being in the UK, and then I came back And continued, I think this is right, but I will caveat with, you know, as, you know, the older I get the more clearly I remember things that never happened, you know?

6:15John StevensonSo as Mark Twain said. So, you know, the… allowing for none of that. But I think I came back and went back into Madagascar full time as a story artist. And then at some point, I was fired and I went on to, Shrek 2. And the exact sequencing of that I'm not entirely sure of.

6:43Jawad MirIt's okay

6:43John Stevenson... I think like that. I think it's that. You know, it might be... I believe I'd started on Madagascar, went to the UK, worked on Madagascar in the UK, came back and worked on Madagascar. It's possible that I started Madagascar in the UK and then did some more when I came back to the US. Not quite sure, but…

7:06Jawad MirYeah

7:06John Stevenson... Yeah, definitely was. I rem… the things I remember, spending a long time, we spent a, you know, everybody in story spent a long time working on act one, reworking act one, re-reworking act one over and over again. And, a… and that was fine. You know, the setup was very clear. You know, it was basically, you know, the idea, I think the, basic idea was, like, if the cast of Seinfeld got transported from New York and plunked down in the jungle, how would they survive? So the setup was very, you know, clear and funny. It's a new, bunch of New York animals who only know being pampered in zoo life and then transposed to the jungle. That was clear. The thing that was not clear to me, which got me fired, was what happened in act three. You know, it was like, okay, that's the setup, but where or what's the payoff? And the pa… and I, you know, after working and, you know, reworking, act one, I, you know, a… and I am going to own the fact that, you know, I could be a pushy and cranky, little prick.

8:20John StevensonSo I am sure I did not handle this in a very diplomatic or, as politic way as it could have been handled, and I probably shouldn't have done it anyway. So, you know, now I think back on it, the firing was probably com… completely justified. But I was very frustrated trying to set things up that I didn't know what the payoff was. And we kept changing, you know, redoing scenes, but I was like, "But what is, where are we going?" You know, if I knew where we were going, I'd know, I'd have a better idea of how to set it up…

8:58Jawad MirSure

8:59John Stevenson... From the beginning. And, I think at some point I got, I got so frustrated with not knowing where everybody was going to land in the third act, you know, in term… so I didn't know how to, you know, try and help set them up in their introductory scenes in act one, that I made some big chart. Like, you know, if this happens in act one and blah, then it could be, you know, option A, and blah option. You know, and I think I marched that in to Mireille Soria, who was the producer's office and kind of said, you know, "Which one of these do you want?" Some version of that which did not go down well at all. And then I said, you know, Mireille didn't say much. I went back to my office and I think about 15 minutes later somebody came in and said, "you're now gonna be working on Shrek 2, so I'm just gonna take these drawings and, thank you. Bye." And so I sat there for, you know, a few minutes and I walked down the off…, walked down the corridor to Eric Darnell, you know, it was one of the director's offices, and I said, "Eric, did I just get fired?"

10:08John StevensonAnd he said, "Yep." So I was like, "Okay, just wanted to know. Thanks." You know, so that, you know, that was sort of how Madagascar ended for me. And, you know, and I should, I should have done that. That was just, that was, that was definitely overstepping and that was definitely, you know, not the right way to go about things. And, you know, I think Mireille was probably right to show me the door.

10:35Jawad MirYeah.

10:35John StevensonBut, I did f… you know, I went, you know, actually perhaps informed by that experience when I, when I'm working on something and people say, "Where should we start?" I always say, "At the end. Let's start at the end. Let's have an, let's have an idea where we're going."

10:58Jawad MirYeah. I agree with you.

10:59John StevensonYou know, when, and we can always change on the way if we find a better thing, but I don't wanna start off on the journey without knowing what the destination is. 'Cause then I could go, you know, you could, you know, if it, if…

11:12Jawad MirYeah

11:12John Stevenson... If you have some idea of, you know, if we end here, this will be satisfying, then you can, you can sort of have a better idea of, okay, well, if that's where we wanna go, if it's a story about, you know, redemption or, you know, whatever it is, then clearly the character has to be in this place at the beginning in order to, you know, complete that arc. So I like to feel secure that I know where a story is going to end in a way that I think will be satisfying, and then that makes setting up the opening easier, at least for me.

11:50Jawad MirSure

11:50John Stevenson... So yeah, on Madagascar I know I worked, like everybody on the story department, we all worked and reworked setting up the characters, in the zoo and, you know, all those kind of, you know, just trying to establish their person… individual personalities. I think the only thing of mine that I can… I think I can point to that I got in the movie. You know, very often, you know, on any animated feature, you know, you have a lot of people working on the same material. That, you know, somebody will start a scene and then it will be revised by other people. So it's, you know, it becomes, you know, obviously it's a, it… it's a collaboration and a group effort, and it… and it's, it's hard to say, you know, exactly, you know, who did what. Sometimes it's very clear. You know, sometimes, you know, s… somebody like Conrad Vernon or Mike Mitchell, you know, Chris Miller will have a standout scene that just basically goes into the movie, you know, with minimal changes, and you can absolutely go, "Well, that's a Chris scene.

12:54John StevensonThat's a Conrad scene. That's a Mike scene." But most scenes are sort of a bit of Chris, a bit of Conrad, a bit of this, you know, sort of a kind of a melange of things. I think the idea that I got in was in trying to set up Marty and Alex's relationship. I remembered, you know, the lion tamer putting, you know, the head in the mouth of the lion to show their control over a lion a… and the trust that they had in, i… in that. And I think, I got the idea that, Marty puts his head in Alex's mouth to sort of look at a, something caught in his teeth, and that would show how much, you know, Marty trusted Alex not to eat him because Alex is, you know, even though he is a carnivore, he's not aware that, you know, Marty would cry. So I think that scene is... I haven't seen Madagascar in years, but I think that got into the film.

13:55John StevensonOther than that, I worked on later in the movie when, you know, Alex is really hungry and Marty comes to him, you know, when, you know, the herbivores are all doing fine and Alex is doing, you know, badly 'cause he, you know, he doesn't understand where meat comes from. And I remember that scene. I remember doing a bunch of stuff on the foosas chasing Marty and Alex. Various explorations of that. I sort of... A couple years ago I was, you know, I realized I had all these boxes of storyboards and art I'd been carrying around the world forever, and I just decided to get rid of it all. So all the storyboards I did for Madagascar, I remember sending back to, which I still had, and any DreamWorks project storyboards I still had, I sent back to DreamWorks and it was like they came out…

14:50Jawad MirOh, that's nice of you

14:51John Stevenson... Picked up. Well, then I had a bunch of stuff I did for the Muppet Show and Dark Crystal and Labyrinth and things, and I sent that too.

15:00Jawad MirYeah.

15:01John StevensonAnd I sort of, I just kinda cleaned house of that stuff. So I don't have any, I don't have any DreamWorks, you know, boards, you know, anymore.

15:13Jawad MirYeah.

15:13John StevensonI gave up all the work, DreamWorks archive. But as I went through it, I remember s… scenes of Marty and Alex being, you know, being chased by the foosas through canyons. I did a s… some kind of thing where there was a crashed airplane in part of the chase and…

15:30Jawad MirYes

15:31John Stevenson... And they got into the airplane, and the airplane broke into two bits and, you know, it was rolling down the hill and stuff. So I remembered there were, I think those were boards that I sent back to, DreamWorks. I remember stuff I did of, you know, a starving Alex sitting on a log in a clearing and Marty coming up and trying to, you know, having a conversation. And a lot of stuff in the New York Zoo of Marty and Alex talking and, you know, Alex getting steak and all that kind of stuff. But the only bit I think was where, the only, the only bit I can really go, "Well, that I think it was in, was my idea," that was just that moment of, Marty putting his head in Alex's mouth. Everything else is just a con… contribution to…

16:22Jawad MirSure

16:23John Stevenson... The work of a lot of people. A lot of people from that, crew ended up working on Kung Fu Panda, you know, like Jed Diffenderfer and, Rodolphe Guendin and, Alfred Cimino, Alessandro Carloni. You know, they were all, you know, went on to work on Kung Fu Panda later. Claire Knight, Claire Dechenu as she was then, was our editor on Kung Fu Panda, editor on, Madagascar. Jen Nelson, you know, worked on it and became a head of story on Kung Fu Panda. And Katherine Neurauter, who's her sister, who I worked with at PDI in Palo Alto, I think she was the head of story on the pro… or certainly one of the primary story artists on Madagascar. 'Cause that was mostly a PDI project. Kendall Cronkhite was the, production designer. So that, you know, it was mostly sort of, initiated at PDI, you know?

17:30John StevensonSo I must have w… I must have worked at it, at PDI for a bit, 'cause I didn't move down to work on, didn't, to work at the Glendale facility full-time until 2003. So it was, you know, I'm not exactly, you know, exactly when…

17:48Jawad MirThat's fine

17:48John Stevenson... This stuff happens has got a little bit kind of mushy.

17:54Jawad MirThat's, that's understandable. And I think, I mean, in all that you mentioned, a lot of things to unpack, but let me just start off with I'm glad you mentioned the tor… the Tortoise and the Hare because I remember when I used to run the website, I remember reading the press release about that, and, how it got canceled because I think it was after Chicken Run And before Wallace and Gromit Curse of the Were-Rabbit, right? So thank you for bringing that up. Tusker, I remember. I remember seeing storyboards of Tusker in the late '90s or the early 2000s that were released. I think there was like one, not a storyboard, like a concept art necessar… essentially. A herd of elephants just sort of walking. Kind of reminded me of Jungle Book. And Madagascar, of course, I didn't realize, I mean, I know the concept of it came from Jeffrey Katzenberg from his childhood experiences at Central Zoo and how that sort of derived into the story, but I never put the Seinfeld connection with that. I mean, it makes perfect sense now because, I mean, there was like three male, one female…

18:56John StevensonYeah

18:57Jawad Mir... And the similar kind of…

18:58John StevensonThat was…

18:58Jawad Mir... Chemistry.

19:00John StevensonYeah, that was the shorthand. I, when I was put on it, I remember that was one, the shorthand that people were saying, you know, the to, you know, to understand what this is, it's like imagine the cast of Seinfeld, you know, and then dr… dump them in the jungle and how would they, you know, how would they get on? They would be, they would be ill-equipped to, for life in the jungle, and they would bring all their neuroses and sort of, you know, weird interpersonal relationships with them, but they wouldn't be very good at, you know, getting food or making shelters…

19:34Jawad MirYeah

19:35John Stevenson... Or any of that stuff. So that, you know, is a very efficient way of kind of targeting, okay, that's sort of the tone and the kind of the comedy of the piece. So, I didn't come up with that. That's just me reiterating what I remember people saying at the time when I started working.

19:58Jawad MirYeah. And I think one of the reasons, so I remember when Madagascar came out, obviously it was a huge success that generated two sequels and also spinoffs. But to me, and I'm sure you would agree, nothing to take away from the main story, but one of the reasons it succeeded was because of the penguins and King Julian, like Sacha Cohen Brown. Like it w… it just kind of made these memorable characters, and penguins had their own film I think, if my memory serves me right. Which were voiced by some of the d… one of the directors and producers I think, right? Er… Eric Darnell was one of the voice, voices behind it?

20:32John StevensonTom McGrath, he's the…

20:34Jawad MirTom McGrath

20:35John Stevenson... He's the captain.

20:36Jawad MirYeah.

20:37John StevensonThat was Tom's, you know, definitely Tom's idea, the penguins that was, you know. And very often it happens that, you know, like, you know, people like Tom McGrath and Mike Mitchell and Conrad, they will come up with, an idea which is maybe at first a throwaway that becomes kind of the linchpin, you know, for…

21:00Jawad MirYeah

21:00John Stevenson... Conrad came up with the gingerbread man for Shrek, you know? And…

21:06Jawad MirOne of my favorite characters.

21:08John StevensonYeah. It was a, it was a little throwaway to show, I think the whole point of that was basically to establish how evil Lord Farquaad was, and so he was just there torturing the gingerbread man and they, and then the gingerbread man, you know, was just such a funny, you know, character, you know, that he became, you know, took on a much bigger life and then got put into more scenes, expanded roles in sequels and what have you. But originally it was sort of a throwaway and I think, I think the penguins kind of started out as a funny idea that Tom came up with that ended up being so funny that people just wanted more and more of them. That often happens that, you know, something which is originally just designed as a small moment, you know, unexpectedly, you know, takes on a much larger role. And it's kind of part of the process when you're in story on an animated film, but of deci… you know, you find out a lot of the things that you thought were gonna be, you know, the things you thought would be the winners turn out to be meh, you know?

22:16Jawad MirYeah. That's, yeah.

22:17John StevensonSo like, you know, that isn't, that isn't the goal. And then things that you didn't really think much of, like a side character like the gingerbread man or the penguins, that turns out to be where the audience puts their love, you know?

22:32John StevensonAnd so you have to re… then you have to recalibrate the story, which is, okay, they don't want, they want less of that and more of that, you know? Or they don't know that, but that's what your job is in story creation. You realize, okay, these scenes are working great, and these scenes are not working so well. You know, clearly there's stuff going on here that isn't going on there. We should, you know, it's like wa… like making a complex stew. You're trying to figure out, you know, how much thyme, how much oregano, how much basil. You know, you might think, "Oh, this stew is, it needs a lot of basil." And then you start tasting it and you go, "You know what? That's way too much basil. I want a bit more oregano." You know? And then you sort of rebalance until you hopefully find something that works. Clearly they did on Madagascar, you know, massively successful, you know, first film and multiple sequels. And I was probably, the thing that I was, you know, had me going, you know, the sort of frustration that had me going into Murray's office and getting fired, I was probably wrong about.

23:41John StevensonI mean, I was certainly wrong about the way I approached it. That was definitely, you know, me being impetuous and, undisciplined. But I, but I kept feeling that there was a sort of a, you know, a Chekhovian gun that was placed on the table in act one that was not being fired in act two, which is quite a dark gun, and they didn't wanna, I don't think that was a place they wanted to go. And I thought… The film needed to go there. But I don't… but I was clearly not right, 'cause people loved the film the way it was.

24:20Jawad MirYeah.

24:22John StevensonAnd you don't have a hit that big in sequels if people, you know, don't really respond to the material. So I think the thing that, you know, the bee in my bonnet that, you know, made me sort of want to get to grips with X3, I was probably wrong about. So.

24:38Jawad MirThat's fine. But Madagascar, one of the things I'll ta… say something about Madagascar, but I wanna go back to Tortoise and Hare if you don't mind. I love the animation from Madagascar. So because it was a comedy, obviously a lot of animations are, but this had like a Seinfeld feel to it, as we talked about. It didn't feel like computer animation, but it didn't feel like hand drawn, so it was like a very perfect cross between the two, the two. And that made the story and the characters stand out as opposed to, you know, going, "Oh my God, look at that animation," like Lion King or Prince of Egypt and stuff. So it stayed grounded, and I think one of the reasons it worked was also that visual, uniqueness to it.

25:19John StevensonWell, yeah, I think there was a conscious decision for Madagascar to be allowed to be cartoony in a way.

25:28Jawad MirYeah, that's the right word.

25:29John StevensonCartoony was a, was a word you know, you didn't use at DreamWorks at the time. Cartoony was sort of considered sort of, you know, slightly bad, like a, like a slightly dirty word to say cartoon. We're not making cartoons, we're making, you know, animated films. We, you know, whatever. You know, she c… but there was a conscious choice in the, you know, the character designs that Ray Kilborn, who did the designs, they're very, you know, pushed and exaggerated and simple with great graphic, you know, lines. And then Kendall Cronkhite, who was the production designer, you know, came up with this kind of sort of Rousseau-esque, you know, inspired art direction. And I think it was definitely, you know, they were definitely going for something different to Shrek, which sort of has a slightly more kind of…

26:27Jawad MirYeah

26:27John Stevenson... Even though they're fairy tale creatures, but it's sort of a slightly…

26:29Jawad MirYeah

26:29John Stevenson... More realistic lighting approach and stuff. And this, I think, was unapologetically, you know, cartoony, and I…

26:38Jawad MirYeah

26:38John Stevenson... And benefited from that. You know, it, you know, I think they were experimenting with squashy, stretchy, you know, snappy kind of cartoon, Warner's, sort of Warner Brothers-esque animation that was absolutely not appropriate for Shrek. Shrek was much more physics-based, you know, where I, it was definitely more sort of squash and stretch and Tex Avery-esque stuff in Madagascar and, all of that was very conscious as I remember. But there was a…

27:13Jawad MirYeah

27:13John Stevenson... Way of distinguishing Madagascar from Shrek and trying something different with CG, which was still pretty, still pretty new. There had only been a handful of CG films, so we were still trying to figure out what it could and couldn't do well.

27:31Jawad MirYeah. No, that's, that's, that's well said because yeah, I think Madagascar really changed a lot of things, not in terms of obviously storytelling of animation, but also the way the animations were done because there was that rise of 3D, which still is there, right? But I think Madagascar kinda became a little speed bump, in the way of the 3D world, which is still there. I mean, but now Spider-Verse and other type of films that are coming out, they're changing that feel and look too. Going back to Tortoise and Hare. So you said earlier that DreamWorks knew that it was gonna fall apart, but To… people at Aardman did not. So what stage was it at, in the entire process, that they realized it wasn't gonna work, and why did they realize? Was it the story? Was it the budget?

28:23John StevensonWell, I can't speak to budget, you know, a… and, you know, I was literally sort of... I remember Pete Lippman or Jesus, somebody like telling me that I was gonna be assigned, taken off what I was doing…

28:42Jawad MirYeah

28:42John Stevenson... Whether that was Madagascar or Sinbad or whatever it was, and get sent to the UK. And I think one of the reasons that it's, they thought I might help was because, you know, even though I was living in America and had been for a while, you know, I obviously came from England and they, and they, I think there was definitely a them and us kind of thing happening…

29:11Jawad MirOf course

29:11John Stevenson... At Aardman. You know, Aardman had, you know, had always been its own kind of self-contained little world, and then it had done this deal with DreamWorks for three pictures, and the first one certainly hadn't been very successful. But I think there was this sort of resentment of the Americans, you know, you know, being in their world and coming in with their way of doing things versus the Aardman way of doing things. And so there was some lack of communication going on there. A… and apart from whatever I might have been able to contribute to helping the story, I think they possibly thought, "Well, maybe John's got a foot in both worlds. You know, d… you know, he comes from the UK, he understands the English…"

29:58John Stevenson"... Ability." You know, not just an English sense of humor, but maybe a, you know, a sort of a lower register type of aggression from England. And he cer… I mean, I certainly understood the DreamWorks way of doing things, which was, you know, you know, Jeffrey want… wanted the most direct… You know, the shortest distance between A and B, you know, and never mind anybody's feelings really. You just, you just needed to get good fast. And maybe that kind of DreamWorks approach was kind of running into a slightly more, you know, I don't know, laissez-faire, gentle, you know, English approach, and the two things were not working. Anyway, I don't know. Nobody ever explained it to me. I was just told, you know, "You're going to England next week to..." All right. You know, there you go. It was, it was in production. They were ac… I mean, they had sets built and they were...

31:00John StevensonI mean, I saw animation. I saw shot animation that had been done, that probably shouldn't have been done because the story was nowhere near g… you know, good enough to go, you know, to go into production. So they had, you know, and I'm just sort of parachuting into a mess and trying to…

31:23Jawad MirRight

31:24John Stevenson... Pick up on, you know, how has it got here and whatever. I couldn't understand why they'd already jumped into building sets and animating scenes when the s… the story was still clearly not working, and that was an expense that, you know, that seemed to be premature, you know? And, you know, the scenes I remember were beautifully animated, but I didn't understand... It was like, how is this gonna fit in the film? You know, like, it was very languid. You know, I rem… I remember there was one scene, it was like a long tour of Tortoise's room. But Tortoise was voiced, I think, by, Michael Caine. You know

32:16Jawad MirOh, that's cool.

32:17John StevensonYeah. But it was this like, you know, it just the shot went on forever. It was beautifully done. The guy looking at his room and coming to him in the bed sleeping. And I was just like, "Why?" You know, "Why do that shot?" You know, it just, it was nice, but it was like, do you need that shot? Do you need it to be that long? You know, what is this shot doing re… You know, there was a lot of that kind of stuff. And it s… it felt like there was an assumption that it was all gonna work out and they would just build things the way they always had and make the film. And, you know, DreamWorks folks are much more used to sort of being, you know, the meat grinder of story and working and reworking and kicking the tires and, you know, having your ideas torn apart, and rebuilt and, you know, to try and get to the best possible version of a scene.

33:21John StevensonAnd you didn't, you know, and you didn't, you know, go into production until, you know, you had something as robust as possible. This was another reason that Tusker never happened, you know. You know, e… even though there was a, there were many really good things about Tusker, you know, the story was not ready to go into pro… production by the time it needed to. And that was the call that had to be made was, to stop it before it did. 'Cause once you, once you jumped from pre-production, which is a fairly small team, 30, 50 people, to full production, which is hundreds of people, you know, now you're really burning money. And if you haven't got your…

34:03Jawad MirYeah

34:04John Stevenson... Ducks in a row, you know, and you suddenly realize you've gotta do a massive rewrite of something in the middle of that, shutting that down is really expensive. And I, on Tusker, I think it was incredibly painful. I'd been, I'd worked, you know, working my ass off on that thing for, I don't know how long, 18 months, something like that. So that w… that really hurt when that was shut down. But coming into Tortoise and the Hare, I thought, "Yeah, this is double." you know, and then it was kind of like a race against the clock. It was like, "Can we find a way of making this better before the hammer falls?" And we could not. You know? So we…

34:56Jawad MirYeah

34:57John Stevenson... We knew... I don't think any of us knew that they were gonna cancel it. I think we knew that there was a very good chance that it was gonna be, you know, put on pause until it could be…

35:12Jawad MirYeah

35:12John Stevenson... Made better. And we knew that would be incredibly difficult for people in Bristol. It's not like if you work at Aardman and you're a puppet builder or a costume maker or a prop maker, it's not really like there's an awful lot of other studios who do that kind of thing in the UK, never mind in Bristol. We knew that would be painful, but I don't think any of us actually thought one would be completely canceled. That was still a very unusual step to take at that time for a film that had clearly had a lot of investment already made in it. But yeah, I remember, I remember Cecil Kramer, who's, one of the DreamWorks producers, pulling the DreamWorks people into a secret meeting and warning us, it's like tomorrow they're gonna tell Aardman that they're, they're closing the film down. So we knew…

36:09Jawad MirYeah

36:10John Stevenson... So, and we had to go in to that meeting without letting anybody know that we knew what that meeting was going to be. And it was an awful meeting.

36:23Jawad MirYeah.

36:23John StevensonAnd I don't think that had ever happened to Aardman at all… So I think they thought it was gonna be good news. So everybody's coming into the commissary, and it's all sort of jolly banter, and we're sitting at the back, you know, like, waiting for the horrible thing to happen, and knowing that all these people are gonna be out of work. And it was, it was awful really. You know, I think of it now, my insides all kind of clench up. Really unpleasant, situation.

37:00Jawad MirYeah. And I think, you know, the… it's a shame that we didn't get to see it because claymation of Tortoise and Hare, the slow movement versus fast, and obviously the story itself would've been really cool to see. But I also think, I have no way of providing any evidence behind this, but I'm guessing aside from the fact of the story, because around that time, Sinbad had come out. And one of the reasons DreamWorks, at least that's according to reports, started falling apart from a standpoint of money was because of the failure of Sinbad.

37:36John StevensonYeah.

37:36Jawad MirIt l… it literally tanked. And it had a big impact on their stock mark, I think their IPO. But I think if that movie was around, in pre-production around that same time, I'm wondering if Sinbad had been successful if it had been not canceled. You know what I mean? Like, I'm wondering if there's that factor too, because there was, DreamWorks was struggling in the 2002s and threes or fours.

38:00John StevensonI can't, I honestly can't say. All I can say is I think there was enough story in The Tortoise and the Hare story that I saw for a nice half-hour special. The story there for a, you know, an 80-minute feature. I, it, and it sort of felt like it was being kind of, you know, whatever, what story there was being kind of…

38:26Jawad MirDragged out

38:26John Stevenson... Spread out. And…

38:28Jawad MirYeah

38:28John Stevenson... And it felt like, you know, at the time, you know, the kind of the timeframe that Aardman was probably most comfortable was that half-hour special. You know, they'd done The Wrong Trousers, which is, which packs, you know, a huge amount of story into, you know, a fantastic half hour. And Tortoise and the Hare might have been a good half-hour special, but it didn't seem to have enough going on to, you know, there wasn't enough new things to make it. It was the, as far as I remember, it was basically a version of The Tortoise and the Hare story with sort of slightly modernized attitudes, but that was…

39:17John Stevenson... You know, nothing, don't remember anything that you hadn't expected to see happening really. And I just, you know, I think that was the reason. There just wasn't enough story there to justify, you know, 80 minutes. And whatever development had happened, prior to my arrival, you know, it was only confirming that to DreamWorks, which is there's not, it's not a movie. There's no movie here. And we weren't able y… you know, there was definitely some, I felt, resistance, you know, from Aardman to... And we were trying to help. I mean, my, you know, my memory is that we knew, 'cause we were intimately, you know, had intimate knowledge of how it was working directly with Jeffrey and his, you know, his lack of patience in things getting good in a timely fashion.

40:21John StevensonAnd there was a sort of slightly lackadaisical attitude, you know, and it was like, "You guys are in trouble. You need to step it up, you know. You know, if you don't, some, you know, something bad's happen." And they didn't, it, my memory is they didn't, didn't take the note

40:44Jawad MirYeah

40:44John Stevenson... Take it seriously in our, you know, in our efforts to try and convince them to, you know, work harder and push harder to try and resolve this stuff. And, you know, it didn't come as a surprise, but it was still kind of shocking when…

41:06Jawad MirYeah

41:06John Stevenson... They, you know, they're gonna pull the plug.

41:10Jawad MirYou know, it's, it's, it's, I remember, and this is just me making a comment, you don't need to say anything about that, because I remember when Chicken Run came out, around that time PDI was PDI DreamWorks, and then it became part of DreamWorks. And I remember reading once, wait, this is long ago, so this could be just pure speculation, that there was some sort of, not necessarily clash, but like a little bit of a reluctancy wall between Aardman and Jeffrey. Especially after, even a… even after the success of Chicken Run. 'Cause I, there was speculation that I think DreamWorks wanted to sort of completely absorb Aardman, and Aardman wanted to be completely obviously independent, which I think in the long s… grand scheme of things worked out better because Aardman is still around. And DreamWorks, you know, even though it's still around, but it's part of like, Universal now. I mean, it's gone through so many different ways. But that's something I read too I remember.

42:09John StevensonYeah, no, I'm, I'm sure you're right. You know, they, you know, Aardman have always been fiercely independent. You know, they'd grown themselves. You know, it was, it was a weird thing. Like, to, in order to, for them to get bigger, they needed more money than the BBC or their normal sort of, you know…

42:31Jawad MirYeah

42:32John StevensonThe, whatever the UK could provide in terms of financial support, you know, was not enough. It was, it was enough to do a half hour special…

42:41Jawad MirYeah

42:42John Stevenson... For something like The Wrong Trousers. But to do, to get the money to do a theatrical feature, you needed, you know, a different source of money, and DreamWorks could do that. But you don't get free money, you know? You know, if you're taking someone's money, you get their requirements, because it is a business, you know? If someone's investing, you know, millions and millions of dollars, you know, they want a say in how that millions of dollars is going to…

43:12Jawad MirBe spent

43:13John Stevenson... And I think there was a thing of, you know, like, "Well, we don't need you to tell us how to spend the money. We, you know, we know, we know how to do this stuff. We're Aardman, and we've done things." Which was true, but they hadn't done features until, you know, Chicken Run. And…

43:31Jawad MirWell, Chicken Run, Chicken Run I wouldn't even count, sorry to interrupt you, because that was like The Great Escape. They just took that and they just kind of transferred it into, like, the whole chicken scenario, right? But there were obviously a little bit of changes and stuff.

43:41John StevensonIt's still, you know... Yes, I mean, it's exactly The Great Escape with chickens. But it, you know, it is still the first time Aardman makes a, an 18-minute feature, and it has slightly different tone to a, you know, there's the thing of American casting and certain Americanism which they sort of, I'm sure, you know, by DreamWorks to make it, you know, not too parochial, you know, so it would appeal to an American audience.

44:15Jawad MirYeah.

44:15John StevensonAnd I, and I, and they're absolutely, you know, when I, when I got to Aardman, there w… I definitely felt there was a sort of resistance to Americans at DreamWorks telling Aardman how to do something.

44:30Jawad MirWhat to…

44:31John StevensonAnd we understood, you know, as the, you know, people in, story department who were from DreamWorks. There was some English storyboard artists too. But we understood the company whose money they were spending.

44:49Jawad MirYeah.

44:50John StevensonWhat DreamWorks was like, and what they wanted and what they needed, and the DreamWorks work ethic. And it was a very different work ethic to the Aardman work ethic. Clearly, you know, we, you know, you know, you were used to being sort of kicked in the pants until it got good at DreamWorks, and no excuses. And there was a little bit more of just, "Yeah, we'll just figure it out in our own time," at Aardman. And, you know, we knew that was gonna rub, well, obviously it was…

45:21Jawad MirSure

45:21John Stevenson... Rubbed Jeffrey up the wrong way. He has very low patience for, you know, things not being, getting good fast. He expects you to, you know, make things good fast. And that's the DreamWorks way, that's not necessarily the Aardman way. And there was a, you know, there was definitely a kind of a culture clash.

45:42Jawad MirYeah.

45:43John StevensonBut we knew the consequences of making Jeffrey unhappy, and they were severe.

45:48Jawad MirYeah.

45:49John StevensonAnd I don't think Aardman did know the consequences. I didn't, I don't think they realized if they had a three-picture deal, that didn't mean if Jeffrey wasn't ha… wasn't happy with your picture, that picture could go away. I don't think they had got that, and then it landed like a, you know, like an anvil.

46:07Jawad MirSure. Yeah. No, that makes sense. That makes sense. No, this has been, terrific. So when we talked about Madagascar, we talked about Tortoise vs. Hare. Let's talk briefly as we wrap it up, what are you up to now, if that's something that you're willing to discuss or talk about?

46:25John StevensonYeah.

46:25Jawad MirJust what's keeping you busy?

46:27John StevensonI'm, I'm working on, a, I have a, as a project, I developed, during COVID, for an adult, drama to be told in animation based on a true event from the First World War. We have a, you know, easy for me to say, but this, bizarrely this is true, it's actually the best script I've ever read in, like, 50 years of, you know, reading scripts, you know? The, Matt Harvey, the guy who wrote the script, for us, you know, delivered a first draft that just made me go, "It's Bill Matt, that's, that's it. That's great." We have a great script, and what we're doing now, I asked my friend, Neil Boyle, who, did the 2D animation on Sherlock Gnomes, and we became friends on that. I asked him to be, you know, co-director with me on this.

47:28John StevensonSo we called in favors from, you know, old school hand-drawn animator chums.

47:37Jawad MirYeah.

47:37John StevensonAnd we're at the one-minute proof of concept teaser, just how this could work, you know, so we will have the script. And, but then we'll also have a minute of full finished animation so no one can say, "I don't un… I don't know what it's gonna look like." It's gonna be, "Well, it'll look like Matt." so that's, that's, we've been working on that for a while. It's all volun… voluntary, and when time permits. But I'm hoping we'll have that done by the end of the year. There's that, and then there's the usual crop of, you know, Hollywood projects that may or may not ever…

48:14Jawad MirRight. Right. So what's the, what's the logline for this project? If that's something that's possible to be shared.

48:25John StevensonThat's actually a good question. I'm not, I don't know that we've got... To be honest, we've got a good… We have a, we have a good script. I don't know that we've got a good logline. So the m… so that's something to work on. It, without s…

48:38Jawad MirOr just a synopsis. Like, just like a couple of sentence just to get an idea what it's about.

48:43John StevensonIt's, it's, it's about a secret deep sea diving unit of the Royal Navy, in the First World War that would dive onto, wrecked German U-boats and recover logbooks and secret codes so that they would know where the Germans were going to deploy their submarine fleet and lay their mine. And the Germans never knew how they were getting this information because it was so insanely dangerous. This is, this is like 19, you know, or 1914, you know, so it's, it's old-timey diving suits. It's not scuba. It's, you know, it's sort of brass helmets and lead weights and diving in pitch black and fighting your way into submarines full of corpses. It's, it's called The Tin Opas, and that was their nickname. They were called a special, division of the Royal Navy and, but their nickname was The Tin Opas.

49:45John StevensonAnd it was... Most of it has been kept secret for a long time. It's all covered by the National or the Official Secrets Act. But I started researching it during COVID and yeah, I'd love to see that made. And originally I was thinking it was a live action film, and then my wife said, "Well, why don't you do it in animation?" And it was like, "Oh." and it, and it actually allows the nightmarish quality of, you know, being underwater in darkness, you know, cutting your way into corpse-filled submarines to... It can be nightmarish without being…

50:30Jawad MirYeah

50:31John Stevenson... You know, too revolting. Do you know what I mean? There, it's…

50:37Jawad MirYeah. I get it. I get it.

50:39John StevensonAnyway, so that's…

50:40Jawad MirAnd it's…

50:40John Stevenson... Personal project that I'm, that I'm laboring on

50:43Jawad MirExcited. That's really cool because I mean, have you seen the most recent Mission Impossible?

50:48John StevensonYes. Well, exactly. That second act in the… I mean, that's a big, you know, I mean, World War I, you know, submarines and Unterseeboots, U-boats were much smaller than the kind of nuclear sub that, you know, so you're dealing with much more confined and cramped and primitive spaces.

51:09Jawad MirYeah.

51:10John StevensonThat claustrophobic feel that they did so brilliantly in, Mission Impossible. I looked when we were watching, you know, we went and saw it in, you know, IMAX and all big and loud and it's great. Well, the s… the second two hours were great. The first hour is like, come on.

51:30Jawad MirI agree. I agree with that. Yeah.

51:32John StevensonOnto the sub and then into the wahoo in the, airplanes. It was all, it was all groovy. But I looked over at my 27-year-old daughter who was watching the film in the submarines and she had sort of compressed herself into her seat, you know, 'cause she was so tense and anxious with, everything. She was like almost in a little fetal crouch in her chair. So I thought, "Oh yeah, that's, that's working. That's working really well." So yes, it's got, it's got, you know, that same kind of nightmare, you know, being stuck somewhere that could kill you at any point. You know, for any number of…

52:12Jawad MirYeah In so many different ways too, right? There's so many possible ways you can get tired.

52:15John StevensonVery fast ways. And it also, it sort of follows on from my, the, my short film, you know, Middle Watch.

52:24Jawad MirI was gonna say that. Yeah.

52:26John StevensonSo…

52:26Jawad MirYeah. Yeah. But that's cool because...

52:30John StevensonNo, it literally followed on from that. I mean, I, Middle Watch I made, I'd started before the pandemic, but we made it primarily during the pandemic.

52:40Jawad MirYeah.

52:40John StevensonAnd one of the other things that while we were trying to not lose our minds during the pandemic, you know, my wife saw, either an interview or a master class with Werner Herzog. And somebody, and I'm paraphrasing this, but somebody had asked him, you know, this sort of terrible question that people get asked, like, "Where do you get your ideas from?" You know, like, and there's no good answer to that. You know, I, you don't know what subconscious well ideas are coming. But Werner Herzog, being Werner Herzog, had a very specific answer. And he said something like, "I listen to Beethoven for two hours and I write what comes into my head." My, and, you know, my wife Carol said, "We should try that." And so we started, you know, I downloaded, you know, the nine symphonies and we started, you know, in the afternoons Carol and I would sit on the couch with a notepad and put on Symphony Number One and, you know, and just spend two hours listening to Beethoven and just write whatever came into our heads.

53:49John StevensonAnd from that, I had an idea about raptures of the deep came to me. And from my research into raptures of the deep, that led me to eventually down the rabbit hole of discovering the story about this, secret diving unit because the leader of, you know, the commander of that unit was…

54:16Jawad MirYeah

54:17John Stevenson... W… was a diver who had experienced raptures of the deep and had been in, you know, had kind of held a record for deep sea diving at that time, and had, created the compression tables, which were all mathematical. They weren't, you know... Had figured them out. So because of that, I abandoned the original raptures of the deep idea and started following…

54:41Jawad MirWent for this one. Yeah It's incredible. I always find music and nature are two of the sources, at least for me, I'm sure there are more, that generate some of the most craziest ideas. For me, it always has been nature more than music. But I completely agree with you that it's, it's... These things come out of nowhere sometimes. And, you know, like, one of the most, the project that I'm working on right now, I wasn't even remotely thinking to touch that subject, and one day it was just out of some frustration I had that little idea and it just sparked into something a lot bigger…

55:19John StevensonYeah

55:19Jawad Mir... Right? It's just one of those things.

55:21John StevensonYou never know. A… a… but the Beethoven thing, and I think it is specifically Beethoven, I mean, other people may be able to do it with o… other music. But I, once we started listening to Beethoven that way, I totally understood why Werner Herzog said, you know, it brings things up. There's, there's something in the construction of the music. And I am not musical at all. I can't play an instrument.

55:48Jawad MirYeah.

55:48John StevensonI don't know anything about it. But if you listen, if you immerse yourself, you know, and do really sort of that kind of trance-like listening to Beethoven, there is weird things that happen to your subconscious. You know, there's stuff going on in the music that actually did trigger things, brought, bubbled ideas up that, you know, that, you know, they weren't fully formed, but they were an idea that you could then take and develop. And, you know, that story came, it wasn't directly from that, but the in… something about the, some of the rhythms or underlying, you know, structure o… of the piece made me think of, you know, underwater. I mean, I'm, I'm attracted to that anyway, so it's nothing new obviously. I…

56:40Jawad MirYeah

56:40John Stevenson... Blue Water's a nautical tale. I've always liked things to do with the sea, so it's in my DNA anyway.

56:48Jawad MirSubconscious. Yeah. 100%.

56:51John StevensonThat's what bubbled up. And then from that, you know, little first, you know, shoot of an idea, the research into that led me to some other place, and then that was a very deep rabbit hole trying to do historical research on that idea. That finally led to getting Northern Ireland Screen involved, who paid for the script, which is fantastic. I hired, a naval historian to help me make…

57:20John Stevenson... Try and get the facts, 'cause the facts were all o… all over the place. And so I got, I did a lot of fact ch… checking of my writing to make sure I wasn't putting events in the wrong order and, you know, it all, that was a big factor. Now we're into how do we, how do we get this thing made, you know? How do we get, you know, $5 million so we can make a hand-animated World War I, you know, naval adventure story.

57:49Jawad MirWell, I'd be really thrilled to see it because it sounds very exciting, and concept is unique, and I can already envision in my head how it sort of unfolds from an animation standpoint and the tightness of the environment and everything. So I wish you all the best on that. But thank you so much, for taking the time to talk about Madagascar and Tortoise Versus Hare, and your next project.

58:12John StevensonWell, hopefully. But we don't know. But I'll, as soon as we've, when I get the piece, fully animated. I mean, the actual line animation is done. We're now working on backgrounds right now. So I'm hopeful that, you know, maybe by the end of the year we'll have everything... Done. When it's fully done, I'll send, I'll send you it.

58:33Jawad MirSure. Sounds exciting. Awesome. Thank you so much, John. Appreciate it, man.

58:38John StevensonOkay. Take care.

58:39Jawad MirAll right. Take care, buddy.