Sadly, there were no actual dinosaurs on the beautiful blue and green carpet outside the El Capitan theater last night, but the mood was jovial as cast members Jeffrey Wright (Catching Fire), Marcus Scribner (Blackish), Anna Pacquin (True Blood), Sam Elliot (Justified), young leads Raymond Ochoa (Arlo) and Jack Bright (Spot), and the rest of the cast, other guests, and their families came together to celebrate the premiere of Pixar’s The Good Dinosaur!
This being a Pixar movie, this Hollywood premiere was different than most in that the kid contingent was in full force. Kids of all ages ran up and down the carpet dressed in their film premiere best. One kid wore a vest and bow tie, even as he dragged a blue blanket behind him in a way that was reminiscent of Linus from Peanuts. Another kid really had to go to the bathroom and couldn’t wait for his parent to hurry up with the giving interviews on the press line because he had things to attend to! It was all very cute.
Cuter still was one of the stars of The Good Dinosaur, Jack Bright, who does the voice of Spot, the human pet to Arlo the dinosaur. I asked him what it meant for him to be in a Pixar movie, having been a big fan of them for so long. “You can really enjoy it,” he said. “Like, I grew up watching all the movies, having all the toys, having everything – pajamas, everything – all the movies, everything. And I never really thought I would be in one of the movies and make it come to life. It’s really nice.”
I then asked him about the challenges he might have faced doing the voice of a character to doesn’t talk so much as grunt. He explains his character, and what the process was like:
[Spot] doesn’t talk, ’cause he’s a caveman – he doesn’t know how to talk. But throughout the movie, Arlo teaches him how to talk, say some words, and throughout the movie I make noises, grunts, howls, and it’s really fun!
It is really hard, but at the same time…like, I’ll feel weird like not getting it down, like Oh, I can’t get this down. It would take me a long time to get something down. But my director, Peter Sohn, he makes it so easy for you to make it come to life. If you don’t know how to do something, he’ll tell you Oh, this is how you do it. He’ll give you an example. He was really cool.
As I said, there were loads of guests there, many of whom brought their kids. One such guest was singer/songwriter Lisa Loeb, who came with her 5 year old daughter to see the film. Both of them are huge fans of Pixar films! “I think there’s something about the way they look that’s so real and yet you know they’re telling a story,” she said. “It’s able to exaggerate reality in a way that really captures everyone’s imagination. Kind of like when you read a book, there’s all those extra details.”
Loeb is no stranger to child-friendly fare, having recorded lots of music for children, including a new album, Nursery Rhyme Parade, which can be found exclusively at Amazon. She’s also no stranger to voiceover work, having done it for both commercials and films.
I asked her if she’d ever written music for an animated film before, or if she’d want to. “You know, I’ve never done that before,” she said. “I do write a lot of kids’ music. I do voices for animation sometimes, so that’s actually even more of a dream of mine. With voiceover for animation it’s amazing to try to capture the look of the character in your voice, you know? It pushes me a little bit harder than when I’m sitting in the studio singing my own songs.”
The Good Dinosaur comes out on November 25th – just in time for Thanksgiving weekend. It will also be accompanied by a short called Sanjay’s Super Team, which explores a geeky Indian boy’s relationship to his dad, Hinduism, and superheroes! Check out this clip:
After the turkey is done and the pumpkin pie has been digested, will you be checking out The Good Dinosaur next weekend?
(Most images are mine; Jack Bright via Paul Redmond/FilmMagic/Getty Images; Lisa Loeb via Paul Archuleta/Getty Images)
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