THE GOOD DINOSAUR: Sam Elliott, Anna Paquin, and Peter Sohn Discuss Western Theme and Message
Pixar’s The Good Dinosaur was a freakin’ animated masterpiece. This is easily my favorite film that Pixar has made so far, and a couple of the reasons for that are the message that it delivers and the film's western frontier setting. This movie was packed to capacity with heart and soul, and you can read my review for it here.
I had the opportunity to talk to Sam Elliott, Anna Paquin, and more about the movie, and they all happily jumped at the opportunity to work with Pixar on this film. This project was basically like a dream come true for them. They also praised director Peter Sohn for the incredible work that he did on the film, and how he knew exactly what he wanted when he was directing them.
A couple of the things I was most interested in learning about the film was the message behind it and the western frontier influences. When talking about the message of the film, Elliott explained:
“It’s like a universal tale, this thing. It speaks to human kind. You know what I mean? I mean we’re all goin’ through it, we all go through maybe all our lives. You now, fear of the unknown. Survival, tryin’ to do what's right…or wrong. I think there’s a lot of different themes and a lot of different lessons to take away from this. The most exciting thing to me is that it’s great family fare. We’ve all done the dark stuff and I’ve done a couple of these family shows before, but the fact that it’s family fare, you know we're in the entertainment business. You know the fuckin’ world we’re livin’ in today, as dark as it is, horrific as it is, how lucky are we to be the ones sitting hear making these kinds of movies? It’s a real gift. I’ll always look at this as a gift.”
This really is an amazing emotional story that has the power to reach everyone’s heart. When asked about her favorite aspects of the film, Paquin said:
“I like that it delivers a message of the things that are struggles, and hard, and setbacks in your life, and how they can also be the things that make you stronger and make you reach higher and be a better stronger person and eventually be able and sort of return the favor to other people. We see him [Arlo] go from being completely weak and defenseless and terrified, to being in a position to take care of his friend who’s been there for him. I like that sort of circular message.”
We then got into the western aspect of the film, which Sam Elliott is obviously an expert at. The guy has starred in a ton of westerns and he’s as close as anyone can get to being a cowboy. He said:
“I think there’s some value in that genre. I think the simplicity of it is one of the things that kind of black and white and the lack of grey area, which I think is in this as well. And I think there’s a lot of elements in it that are common to this, and that's mans struggle against man, man's struggle against nature, and man's struggle against himself. Those are the three kind of themes to me that were most important to me in most of the westerns that I did. I think that those speak to a lot of people, and I think on some level, although, the younger audience may not intellectualize that, but they’ll be turned on to it. Their curiosity will be piqued. You don’t see many kids playing cowboys and Indians anymore.”
With recent films like The Good Dinosaur, The Hateful Eight, and Bone Tomahawk, it’s good to see that the western genre is alive and well. When asked about what inspired the western and frontier theme for the movie, director Sohn said:
"It was early on, just the idea of like a farmer. The first drawing that I had done were of dinosaurs plowing and farming the earth. It was like ‘whoa! they’re big tractors!’ But then taking the herbivores into farmland and carnivores to ranchers was like, ‘oh! this is wild if like everyone is trying to survive,’ there was this real survival quality to this that was really interesting. And what I loved about westerns was that fact. That these were homesteaders and everything like that.”
It wasn’t always like that, though. At one point, they were looking a making it more of a comedy that made fun of the westerns. The director continued:
“Early on in this production we tried westerns going all the way down to where like, ‘There's a saloon, and the T-Rex are like ‘Hey man! Who are you messin’ with!?’ It was stuff like, boy, we’re just makin’ fun of what we loved about westerns. It was like boiling it down to, 'OK, what is it about the western that we’re trying to say?' We call it a frontier film, where it's like obviously the ranchers are definitely those cowboys that you know, but they weren’t even family early on, they were JR, JW, and JL, and they were just these kind of jokey like ‘ding dang damnit my bottom half’s not goin’ anywhere…’ and it's just we’re making fun of it.”
It wasn’t until they were sent on a research trip in which they went to spend time with a farming family in Oregon named McKays that the direction changed. Sohn explained that while they were there, they fell in love with this family and the way they lived their lives. He explained how the family was so pure, and that they were surviving in this incredible country. They connected with this family and that's what inspired them to focus on this one family of dinosaurs living their lives in the frontier, instead of making it a silly comedy.
“We wanted to honor this kind of lifestyle in the film. It wasn’t making fun of anything anymore.”
The film is so much better off by taking it in this direction. It’s hard to imagine The Good Dinosaur being anything other than what it is. You’ve really got to see this movie. It may be a little dark at times, but hey, that’s life. This film is about facing your fears, rising above them, and becoming a stronger person through your trials. Make sure to check it out sometime this weekend if you haven't already!