Russell: It was in our original version for budgetary reasons. We were going to tour with it, but we didn’t know how to represent such a young child. So, we were going to go down to Toys ‘R’ Us and buy a doll and stick it in a baby carriage and have nice lighting and hopefully the audience would believe that it’s a baby that can sing. When Leos came aboard, coincidentally, he wanted to represent the child the way that it is in the movie.
I don’t know if we should give way any more than that. But the way the child is represented in the movie is Leos’ idea, and we think it was amazing to do that because it gave a whole other layer to the film and the way that the actors treat that character like it’s a real flesh and blood child…it’s really amazing. There’s never a question that that’s not a real child, even when you see that to the contrary it’s not. So, we’re happy that Leos chose to do something as extreme as that.
For people who may not know, this was not your first attempt at bringing a musical to life. You were working at one time with Tim Burton to make Mai, The Psychic Girl. Did any of the thematic journeys from that make it into this? Was there any bleed over, or is that still its own separate piece?
Ron: It’s more that from a technical standpoint, when we worked on Mai, The Psychic Girl in the early ’90s, we came up with a way to incorporate dialogue into a musical context that always wasn’t traditional in making a song that’s sung/spoke in a musical background. The technical things are carried over into Annette, where stylistically but not thematically, it has a similar feel to our first attempts at a film musical.
Obviously, I wouldn’t say that either of you are anything like the character of Henry McHenry in terms of how he would deal with things in life. But I also wonder if there are parts of these characters that maybe were built on pieces of you? I mean, Ron, a lot of what you do is like being a stand-up comedian where your lyrics are meant to satirize themes you want to focus on. So, I’m wondering how much of you are actually in some of the characters?
Ron: Well, I think just the idea of challenging an audience– obviously the character of Henry McHenry in the film challenges the audience in much more extreme ways than either of us would ever do. But, the idea of doing something so extreme that you’re almost pushing the audience to a point of saying, I don’t expect this anymore… I would like to think that maybe something as self destructive as that is something that we don’t have in us, but that we just wrote into the character.