Nick Park, Dug & Hognob
Click here to listen to the interview (14:20).
Click here for the full review of EARLY MAN.
Four-time Oscar-winner, Nick Park knew from a very early age that he was what he describes as a clay man. That’s something that came up towards the end of our talk on February 13, 2018, about his latest film, EARLY MAN, a film he has been plotting for 10 years. We started, though, with the question I ask all animators, do you dream in animation?
We moved on to Park not being a football (soccer) fan, yet making a film in which it plays a central part; his love of sprinkling the background of his films with little jokes; using CGI with the stop-motion without losing the warmth if imperfection; the fine art of choosing just the right nuance for each character’s expression; and the origins of those signature Aardman teeth that Park’s characters sport.
We finished up talking about how Eddie Redmayne influenced the way his character, Dug, looks; the possibility of future Wallace and Gromit films despite the death Peter Sallis, who voiced Wallace with such blithe obliviousness; why French pomposity is the funniest of the pomposities; why he has trouble watching EARLY MAN; the shots he couldn’t get; character nuance; and when he knew he was going to devote his life to animation.
This is Andrea Chase and I’m talking with director Nick Park about Early Man, is a mammoth film 10 years in the planning. Eddie Redmayne is the voice of Dug, a caveman who dreams of bigger game than rabbits, only to have his wish come true. Sort of. When his peaceful tribe is displaced from their verdant valley home by the Bronze Crazed Lord Nooth, Dug and his tribe, with the invaluable assistance of Hognob, Dug’s sidekick hog, are forced to relearn football, the game that they invented eons earlier thanks to a divine intervention, in order to defeat the invaders, and return home from the pyrotechnically agitated badlands. Weaponized mammoths, toilet paper with unusual tensile strength, and tweets of the biological type figure in this whimsical look at culture clash, gamesmanship, and the value of fair play. The film co-stars Tom Hiddleston, Timothy Spall, Maisie Williams, Miriam Margoyles, and in his voice work debut ,Nick Park as Hognob. Park directed from a script he co-wrote with Mark Burton. His previous work separately and together includes the Wallace and Grommit short films, three of which won him an Oscar™ , CHICKEN RUN, and THE CURSE OF THE WERERABBIT, for which he received his fourth Oscar™..
EARLY MAN, a mammoth film 10 years in the planning, stars Eddie Redmayne as the voice of Dug, a caveman who dreams of bigger game than rabbits, only to have his wish come true. Sort of. When his peaceful tribe is displaced from their verdant valley home by the bronze-crazed Lord Nooth, Dug and his tribe, with the invaluable assistance of Hognob, Dug’s sidekick hog, are forced to relearn football, the game that they invented eons earlier thanks to a divine intervention, in order to defeat the invaders, and return home from the pyrotechnically agitated badlands. Weaponized mammoths, toilet paper with unusual tensile strength, and tweets of the biological type figure in this whimsical look at culture clash, gamesmanship, and the value of fair play. The film co-stars Tom Hiddleston, Timothy Spall, Maisie Williams, Miriam Margolyes, and in his voice work debut ,Nick Park as Hognob. Park directed from a script he co-wrote with Mark Burton. His previous work separately and together includes the Wallace and Grommit short films, three of which won him an Oscar™, CHICKEN RUN, and THE CURSE OF THE WERE-RABBIT, for which he received his fourth Oscar™..
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