Interview with Director Rich Moore & Producer Clark Spencer of Wreck-It Ralph!

Last month, during my tour of Disney Animation Studios, I had the chance to interview the very talented Director Rich Moore & Producer Clark Spencer of Wreck-It Ralph! They were so down to earth & kind and it was so amazing interviewing them. Below, learn about some of the references to watch out for in the movie, the hardest part of making the film & more!

Question: Where did the idea for the movie come from?

Rich Moore : I started working at Disney four years ago and was invited by John Lassiter, who’s a dear old friend, to develop some ideas for movies, one of which I would direct. There had been a notion of like a video game based movie here for several, several years that had not been cracked. It had been kind of put back on the shelf about a year before I started here in 2008. There used to be this idea for a movie about video game characters. I thought, “Well, I like video games. I like that type of world. It could be very kind of rich and fun and something that people would enjoy.

And so without going to the versions that had been done before, I just started with that notion. And, after about two days, I thought, “This is a really, really bad idea.” The characters have no life. You know, they just kind of have one thing that they do. They have no free will. They do their same job over and over again every day. Who’s gonna want to watch that? That’s boring.

And then I took a moment. And I thought, “Well, what if the main character didn’t like his job? What if everyone else loved their jobs? And the main character didn’t like his job. That would be a fantastic kind of internal conflict for a protagonist to have. And it began that simply.

Question: How many references are in the film?

Rich Moore: There are a lot as you saw. Hundreds I would say. It is just layer upon layer. We start with characters from other games and references to other games. And then, just seeing the other games, seeing the other characters. We have graffiti referencing certain things from other games. And there’s jokes about other characters and games.

Clark Spencer: But I think one of the things we tried to do is make sure that we did it on multiple levels. So there’s graffiti in there, and if you want to look at the graffiti and it means something to you, you’ll enjoy that aspect of it. Otherwise, if you don’t play games, it’s just graffiti in a train station, which you would expect in a train station.

Rich Moore: Right. That just kind of adds to the believability of the world. I love the classic Disney films like Pinocchio, where, you know, that first shot of coming down into the little village- as a kid I remember looking at that background painting and thinking, well, what’s behind that door? If you go around that corner, what’s down there? All those movies had such a believability and a richness to them that it was really important to me to have that same feeling in this movie of kind of a world that’s lived in and that sparks the imagination of the audience.

Question: What was the hardest part of making the movie?

Rich Moore: I never consider it hard, because it’s a joy to work with everyone here. I would say the most challenging was that there’s very, very different styles of look, of animation, of camera in those different worlds.

Question: Was it a conscious choice to make the female character not princess-y?

Rich Moore: Well, I don’t think that it was something from day one that was like, “We want to do this.” It was just one of these things that develop over time. As we kind of work with the character and we got to know her, it’s just one of those things where we think, that’s not who she is. We love her as her. So it becomes a point where it becomes a conscious decision, but it was not something that began on day one.

Question: To what degree did the actors affect the characters?

Rich Moore: Well, I think John {John C. Reilly} also becomes more like Wreck-It Ralph. He starts with kind of an image in his head. And he’s trying to discover it. We’re lucky to have worked with some fantastic actors on this movie. I’m a huge fan of John’s. What I love about him is how organic he is in finding his character and his performances and how he shapes them.

I set up a time where the animators and John could get together and talk about the character. We did a lot of video reference of John acting out scenes as Ralph for the animators to study. What I think is so unique about animation is that it’s a split performance. You have this vocal track. And, you know, one person is doing it, and then you have a group of animators who’s giving a physical performance. As a director it was great to kind of bring the vocal talent and the visual talent together and have them kind of communicate to one another. It was like watching two halves of a brain come together and talk about their process and how it works.

Clark Spencer: And I think because the animators look at that reference it does start to definitely influence the mouth shapes, the eye shapes, the brow shapes, how the hair may move. All of those things become a component of it.

You can see Wreck-It Ralph in theaters starting THIS Friday, November 2nd!

Note: Disney provided my travel and accommodations to cover this event. All experiences are authentic & all opinions are my own.