It’s a miracle that two of the best writers in Hollywood can still get work. Phil Lord and Christopher Miller make films that call the industry out on creative laziness and executive complacency. This year they delivered The Lego Movie – a branded film that satirises corporate culture – and 22 Jump Street, a sequel to a reboot that ridiculed Hollywood’s chronic case of sequelitus. 22 Jump Street took over $100m at the US box office. The Lego Movie has topped $200m. Those figures must make their pitch meetings less awkward. Imagination at the executive level of mainstream movie-making has slumped to a low, even if the writing – thanks to the likes of Joss Whedon, Guardians of the Galaxy co-writer Nicole Perlman and Lord and Miller – is better than ever. Spider-man has been re-spun, Marvel’s super slate will deliver hits well into 2019. In the meantime, Lord and Miller – geeky subversives in the employ of the mainstream, but not in thrall to it – are as close to punk as Hollywood is going to get.
Should people be cynical about The Lego Movie? It’s been called a cash grab with a heart … Phil: “I wish I could say we grabbed a bunch of cash! It’s not like we’re shareholders.” Christopher: “We made something that uses Lego as a medium to tell a story, rather than a story to sell Lego. We saw it as a way to talk about creativity.” P: “We wanted to make an anti- totalitarian film for children. Something that was talking about the importance of freedom and innovation in keeping society honest. It’s a political film. You satirise the oil industry, marketing, capitalism …What’s fun for us is that both sides of the political spectrum have taken ownership. People on the right AND the left see it as a critique of the other side.” C: “We were using it as a Trojan horse to slip in some subversive ideas, under the cover of making a very corporate-friendly family movie.” Are you commenting on Hollywood too? C: “President Business [The Lego Movie’s baddie – a dictator who insists on everyone following the instructions] is based on bosses we’ve had.
But we have a gentle touch. We don’t punch anyone in the face, we just poke them.” How did you two meet?Chris lit my girlfriend’s hair on fire. C: “She was playing Tetris and I was drunk playing a game called Let’s See How Close I Can Get This Lighter to Heather’s Hair Without Her Noticing. And felt terrible about it.” P: “I just went up: PHWOOM!. She didn’t seem to notice.” P: “We were in our underwear drawing cartoons. And our friends would stop by and say: ‘I just had this intense interview with Morgan Stanley … C: “… in suits with a briefcase and the Wall Street Journal. We were being silly while other people were preparing to ruin the economy.” Your films are normally about a guy aching to be something he isn’t, then settling for something that’s almost there. How do you write about that journey when you’re successful? C: “We were both very small growing up and that attitude has stayed with us. We feel like the little guys.
And probably will for ever.” P: “Some people survived the neolithic age by being brave, others by being cowardly and smart. Our ancestors were hiders.” Did you see Frozen?I love that it has reminded Hollywood that female protagonists exist. And the fact that boys went to see that movie!” P: “I think we’re going to be very embarrassed in a few years, when we see a lot more women film-makers. People will look back and ask: ‘How did it take so long for you to figure this out?’” C: “When we started out making cartoons they’d say to us: ‘Girls watch shows about boys, but boys won’t watch shows about girls. So make it about a boy.’” P: “We immediately pitched a show about a girl.” C: “And they did not buy it.” Do you have kids? C: “I have two kids. A son who’s five and a daughter who’s two. My son is the voice of the Lego movie’s Duplo alien.” P: “He’s a passionate film-maker … C: “He’s been working on Star Wars: Episode C.
He thinks by the time he’s an adult they’ll be on episode 100.” I’ve got a scoop here …[to Chris]: Do you want to give any story details?” C: “It involves Anakin Skywalker’s father … P: “I guess that technically makes it a prequel?” C: “A pre-prequel I guess. Yoda’s grandson is also in it … P: “So it takes place 1,400 years in the future?” C: “I don’t know. It’s not that crazy an idea. Look at the hype for the Star Wars reboot. Star Wars 100 could happen. It’s like the real revenge of the nerds at the moment! P: “Perhaps, but you don’t want to be in some kind of nerdocracy. We saw that in high schools we visited for Jump Street. We thought that the jocks would be the kings because they’re the coolest looking, but it wasn’t the case. The nerds had more sex appeal.” C: “I like superhero films and I love Star Wars movies, but I want to make sure there’s a wide diaspora of films getting made. For those films you’re paying for a massive spectacle.
You don’t want to see it on the plane.” I first saw The Lego Movie on a plane. P: “The way it was meant to be seen.”Creator Christopher Miller:'The Lego Movie did better than we could possibly have imagine' HENRY FITZHERBERT meets the college ‘knuckleheads’ who have put the heartback into Hollywood blockbusters NEW YORK TIMESFor Phil Lord and Christopher Miller “Everything Is Awesome”, to borrow the title of the irritatingly catchy theme song from The Lego Movie which they wrote and directed.Not only did the film earn a fortune (£300million worldwide) but Lord and Miller also directed this summer’s hit sequel 22 Jump Street,starring Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill, cementing their status as arguably the most reliable hit makers in Hollywood. Since their feature film debut with 2009’s Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs, the pair, both 39, have not put a foot wrong, earning critical acclaim and monster box office. The Lego Movie is tipped for awards glory and this week beat Disney’s Frozen to win Best Feature Film at the BAFTA Children’s Awards in London.
They offered us a job as a team. It kind of happened by accident “The Lego Movie did better than we could possibly have imagined,” says the fresh-faced Miller. “We were very nervous that people would discount it because it is called The Lego Movie.”They were not alone. The Lego Group was very jittery about damaging a brand that needed no help in selling kits from Hollywood. “The attitude of a bunch of Lego executives was basically ‘we have a very healthy business, we don’t need this film’,” says Lord as we chat in a London hotel.It did not help that Lord and Miller (a pair of “knuckleheads” in their own words) had plans to spoof, as much as celebrate, the product with an adventure set in a world of mind-numbing uniformity and a dim-witted hero who was a lobotomized drone: Emmett, voiced by Chris Pratt.“Lego have a number of guidelines regarding the way they want the brand to be perceived and we broke all of them,” chuckles Lord, who met Miller when both were students at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire.
The pair, however, were adamant the film would work only if it did not feel like a toy commercial.Indeed, they initially turned it down because of such fears. “We said very clearly it can only work if it does not feel like it is coming from The Lego Group or Warner Brothers,” says Miller. “So we said: ‘We’ll come on board only if you let us make it the way we think it should be made. It can’t feel like it’s a corporate product."They wanted the film to have a "grass-roots” feel inspired by the hundreds of homemade stop-motion fi lms using Lego bricks posted on the internet, made by enthusiasts. They realized “what a fun tool for creativity” Lego is and on that basis found common ground with the toy company. “The brand stands for creativity and innovation and quality and those are all things that are important to us,” says Lord.It is that ability to work both sides, corporate and the exuberantly creative, that have turned the pair into such in-demand filmmakers. At the heart of the success of The Lego Movie and 22 Jump Street lies the duo’s wickedly successful signature approach to blockbuster filmmaking: embrace it but send it up at the same time.
So are they just out to disarm critics? 22 Jump Street makes constant references to the fact that it is a sequel to a story that really didn’t need one.“It is a cynical attempt to critique ourselves before anybody else does,” laughs Lord. “I think it’s our personality as filmmakers. We are so aware of how silly our movies are as we’re making them.” Some of the biggest laughs in The Lego Movie come from the incorporation of Lego versions of movie icons like Hans Solo, Dumbledore and Batman (the latter now being rewarded with his own spin-off Lego movie). “That was the big comedic possibility of the picture,” says Lord. “Suddenly Batman and Hans Solo can have a conversation.”Still, what was easy enough to write in a screenplay proved tortuous in terms of negotiating the necessary legal hurdles.“We wrote it assuming we’d get all the rights but it was very hard to actually make that happen,” says Miller. Lord quips: “In legal terms it’s very hard to express: ‘it would be really cool’.”
However, there is more to their work than just a stream of clever gags. All their pictures have heart and the pair attribute that to the steep learning curve they experienced making Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs.Before coming aboard to direct the film, based on a popular children’s book, the pair (then best known for writing Clone High, an MTV comedy show) were first hired to write the screenplay. They got fi red and other writers came and went.A year later they were rehired and also given the opportunity to direct. “We said we’ll come back but only if we’re the real authors of the movie,” says Miller. As they developed the screenplay, however, they hit a sticky patch with Amy Pascal, the head of Sony. “She got so angry with us,” recalls Miller. “She kept saying: ‘I don’t feel anything’.”The script was full of jokes but there were no substantial relationships. “We wereso afraid of being sincere or earnest, we just wanted to be cheeky, that ultimately we couldn’t hold your attention or make you care.”
After laborious reworking the end result did just that and now the duo “try to put as much heart into our movies as possible”It is a lesson makers of today's spectacle driven blockbusters should heed. Although the pair admire much contemporary Hollywood product (“Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes was really well done,” says Miller), they cite the “original” blockbuster Jaws for its quieter human moments.“It’s easy to forget that when you take out all the shark stuff, Jaws is a really beautiful human drama,” says Lord. “I think that part of the formula has been lost.” Next up for them is a sequel to The Lego Movie. “We’ll be typing up the first pages on the flight back tomorrow,” says Miller, revealing: “Emmett and many of the characters are back.”It has been a dizzyingly rapid ascent up the A-list for this personable, down-to-earth pair. And it might never have happened had an interview with Miller in the Dartmouth College magazine not caught the eye of then Disney boss Michael Eisner.“