Spencer & DeBlois
Dean DeBlois and Clark Spencer, co-director and producer respectively of LILO AND STITCH are, like so many Disney folk, big kids masquerading as grown-ups. Stitch, the alien of the title, is like nothing so much as Buster Keaton’s evil alter ego, and Lilo, the little girl who adopts him, is more like the typical Disney nemesis, not heroine. The result is a dynamite film that works on many levels, from just plain fun to seriously therapeutic. It’s also a film that parents will enjoy as much as their kids. Plus, it’s got Elvis on the soundtrack. It doesn’t get better than that.
We talked about the hard time the guys were forced to spend doing research in Hawaii, and how what they learned there influenced the part of that island state that they wanted to include in the film, and why casting a kid, Daveigh Chase, was the only option for the voice of Lilo. I was also pleased to note that the women in the film were not exactly of impossibly Barbie-doll proportions.
Pleakely, to whom the guys refer at the end of the interview, is pictured at right. Note the one eye.
I spoke with DeBlois and Spencer on May 10, 2002.
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