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I'm sorry to disagree with Tv's Craig Ferguson.
When he says that the movie about a girl fighting against being sold into a cultural slavery was one that had no gender.
I'm going to be sexist here.
I can be because I am female.
Only a female would have been able to know the true consequences of being chattel.
You may hold the hand of the mother of your children as she gives birth.
But someone would have to double up their fist and hit you in the groin while you were suffering the pain of passing a kidney stone the size of a basket ball through your penis before you'd know the pain she was going through.
I hope in your next life that you are born the daughter of a clan chief in ancient Scotland.
That way you can comment on the situation.
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Posts
The interview from link above
ReplyDeleteSipping a protein shake that seems to fuel his boundless enthusiasm, Andrews explains how he and his fellow Pixar wizards brought Pixar’s first female-driven animated feature to the big screen.
Q: Merida is Pixar’s first female heroine. How is she different from previous Pixar protagonists?
Andrews: She isn’t any different. She’s like Woody. The thing that makes “Toy Story” work is that Woody’s problems come about as a result of his own faults. The thing that makes “Brave” take off is a result of Merida’s own faults. She’s the cause of her own woes, as is usually the case with most of us. In “Brave,” (the villain) is the internal force. We have other things that bring in more conflict to the story like this demonic bear or the overprotective parent or the clans’ rivalry. All those things heighten the stakes of the story to make this a real powder keg of a situation that quickly becomes the issue. So Merida is like every great Pixar protagonist, regardless of her gender. You can relate to her regardless of your gender. You want to be her. You care about her. You want to see her succeed.
continued in next post
inteview continued
ReplyDeleteQ: Her long curly red hair is absolutely stunning. Why was the hair so important?
Andrews: When Brenda developed this story as a relationship study between mother and daughter, she knew the mother needed to be this strong person. She has this long hair too but it’s kept in this perfectly bounded braid. She’s this statesman and she talks with this mannered, very light Scottish accent. Who’s her daughter going to be if there’s going to be a conflict? Well, she wears a dress that already looks like it’s torn up. She’s gotta have wild crazy hair, if her mother’s is bound up. And she’s kind of a troublemaker, a firestarter and passionate, so we made it red.
interview continued
ReplyDeleteQ: What do you think you added to the story when you became the director?
Andrews: I knew what the story was. I’d been an unofficial consultant on it already, being a medieval buff and a Scottish buff. I do archery and sword fighting and I ride horses. Being a director here at Pixar, being part of the brain trust, I was there for every version of the reels that come with it. I understood the story and what some of issues had been. I tried to help Brenda get through those. Then they came to ask me to jump on 18 months ago to take the film and finish it. It had just gotten stuck and they had to break it loose from the story mire in which it had gotten stuck.
interview continued
ReplyDeleteQ: Is it unusual to change directors midway through production?
Andrews: It doesn’t happen all the time but it does happen. We’ve had four director changes here at Pixar in the history of our films. It’s unfortunate but it does happen.
Q: What did you bring to the film?
ReplyDeleteAndrews: There’s an objectivity that I brought with me because I hadn’t been invested for the previous five or six years the film was in the works. It’s what Brad Bird, brought to “Ratatouille” (when he took over from Jan Pinkava). He brought that objectivity and said there’s too much clutter here. What’s the story about? Bam. He didn’t change it from the original story about a rat that cooks. I didn’t totally change Brenda’s original pitch of what Brave is about. Pixar loved it; we just had to make it work.
coming into the home stretch
ReplyDeleteinterview continued
Q: Was there anything cut that was painful?
Andrews: Not for me. I know there were scenes the story artists had worked on such as one where the lords were trying to talk to Elinor through the door to her room, thinking she’s in there, but it’s actually the triplet (sons) who are trying to distract them. It’s funny and they spent a lot of time on it but the whole idea was just lifted (out). Also, animals weren’t in the film at all (before I came onboard) so I put animals in. The tech guys who spent two years creating scenes with snow weren’t happy with me because I cut out those scenes. I had an alternate beginning that takes place in the snow. I had the snow in there but we weren’t starting with our main characters right off the bat. It was hurting the story. We came up with the idea of Merida and Elinor when they were having that great mother-daughter relationship when she was younger. That got us into an emotional beginning off the bat.
interview continued
ReplyDeleteQ: What message do you want kids to take away from this movie?
Andrews: That they are brave themselves. Brave isn’t this thing where you can fight monsters or run into a battle or something like that courageously. It’s about looking at yourself. The world’s a scary place, especially for a kid on the verge of being an adult. Teenagers are in one of the most awful places there is because they’re teetering between being a child and going into adulthood.
more interview
ReplyDeleteQ: The original title was “The Bear and the Bow.” Why did you change it to “Brave?”
Andrews: “The Bear and the Bow” was a working title. We need to call it something before we find the title. “The Incredibles” was originally called “Hero.” “Ratatouille” was originally called “Rat.” “Up” was always “Up” because it was simple—the house goes up. One of our production titles was “Bravehair,” which was a play on (Mel Gibson’s Scottish epic) “Braveheart,” but everybody hated that. We needed to call it something so we shortened it and called it “Brave.”
last question
ReplyDeleteQ: How do you think the title ties in with the movie?
Andrews: It’s the epitome of the theme of the movie. It works on every level. If you look at the movie and watch the characters they all go through an experience of being brave: Brave enough to say you’re wrong. Brave enough to make a mistake. Brave enough to face the thing you don’t want to face because it would mean giving up something. There are all these aspects to bravery that are in the film.
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ReplyDeleteDoing reasearch.
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