FW: Did you also do the scenes as the little kid main character?
TH: Yes. It was a big challenge. Because the three main kids in the movie were really three adult actors. And of course, it is really rare that you get to take on a role and say okay, `I'm playing an eight-year-old kid on a train going to the North Pole.' It was ridiculous amounts of fun and the movie studio created a recess atmosphere.
FW: But the boy's voice, is also yours?
TH: The visual aspect of the movies is now beyond almost imagination but the sound is different. At first, we tried to change the voice with the computer and it didn't work. There are other characters that have my voice but for the youngest, we had to add some dubbing from another young actor, the main character from Spy Kids, Daryl Sabara.
FW: How many characters did you play in all?
TH: Five altogether, all the adults played young characters as if it came out of their own consciousness. From the express train conductor, to the child, the mysterious man, Santa Claus and also the father.
FW: Could you have filmed the same movie, normally, without the drawings?
TH: First of all, I think it would have been impossible to film certain action scenes, like when the train stops in the middle of the ice. In fact, a movie like that would cost a billion dollars. Seen from that side... (laughing) we saved Warner Bros US$900 million. Besides, from the beginning, we wanted to include the art and drawings from the original book, in the story of the movie.
FW: Can you produce with these kinds of digital effects, a virtual Robert Redford or Jack Nicholson, when they aren't around anymore?
TH: This type of technology is very close to doing that, yes. But in our case we did not want to achieve any kind of realism, we wanted to show it like the original illustrations in the book.
FW: You mean to say that in 100 years, with your image scanned in the movie, they can hire any actor and add his digitalized face from a movie, although it is not the real Tom Hanks?
TH: Yes, it is possible. In that sense, it is all a question of money (he laughs). My image doesn't work for free, even though it will be my grandchildren making those deals. There are a huge number of legal things that have to be worked out, copyrighting of likenesses, how the Screen Actors Guild is going to feel about that the state of actors that go down and what permission is used. It is as much as a conundrum as everything that's on the Internet. You can look at the music business right now and understand how that it is as confused and how much of a mess it is, and yet at the same time, how much freedom it gives you.
FW: And the Oscars? If it is not an animated cartoon, what category would it be in?
TH: We will have to see about that, because we need a new category. Or we should ask Santa Claus for that. The best gift, ever.
RSS