Canadian Talent Drives Ice Age 3
Interview - Ice Age 3 Director Mike Thurmeier, Regina-born Animator
Oct 25, 2009
And Mike Thurmeier's been a big part of it. From Fight Club and The Sopranos to No Time for Nuts, Horton Hears a Who! and all three Ice Age movies, he's drawing his way into pop history. Altogether the three Ice Age films have grossed a whopping $1,889,000.00. “I’ve been very lucky and fortunate to work on ‘cool stuff’”, he says. He has an Oscar nomination and an Annie Award for his labours and says it wasn’t such a long road from Regina to Hollywood.
MT - I always knew I had a knack for drawing. Growing up I wasn’t into Disney films, I liked them they were good, but I was more into Wiley Coyote, the Warners cartoons. They were so entertaining and immediate and interesting, a completely different style from Disney which was soft, sweet and slow. When I was a kid in high school, every little boy wanted to be a movie director like Steven Spielberg. I had that but didn’t know what to do with it. I saw an ‘Adrienne Clarkson Presents' special on Canadian animators living in the US. It blew me away. I hadn’t considered it, and then right then Aladdin came out in theatres, I was like wow! I wanted to be a part of this. I had the support of my parents who were a little worried but supportive, and I found out about Sheridan College in Oakville. I moved there and managed to get a foot in the door.
AB – So the die was cast?
MT - It was life affirming. I knew what I wanted to do. I was obsessive; any artform needs an obsessive vision. To focus on the common experience the first time you make something move and give it life and spark, it’s like a hit of a drug and you get the flavour for it. It fuels more.
I got a job at Blue Sky out of Sheridan and then Pixar’s Toy Story came out. That was for me! Jurassic Park in 1993 blew my mind. And Toy Story was a transcendent. This was where it was all going. I cemented the path I was taking, and crawled up the ladder. I animated on Ice Age, the original short film, and supervised on Ice Age 2 and directed Ice Age 3, so it was incremental, each step led to another and I had an incredible amount of luck. I’m sitting at the Academy Awards and I’m dumbfounded and soaking it all in. I have been blessed.
AB – Many terrific Canadian animators work in Hollywood and I wonder if there are so many in part due to the influence of the National Film Board’s long-running animation presence?
MT - There’s a culture in Canadian film history of animation and it’s supported. There was a connection between the NFB and Sheridan College. Filmmaking is ingrained in the culture, and so is support.
AB – Why can some people draw and some can’t?
MT - Look, I can’t draw. The people I work with they can draw, I can sketch, but some people’s work floors me. I don’t know how that works. There is that frustrating connection between brain and hand, it makes it all the way or it gets lost. I can’t verbalise it. I constantly see paintings and sharp perception and imagination and I wish I had the answer.
AB - The Ice Age franchise isn’t just for kids. You have to be careful to appeal to all demographics when you make a film, don’t you?
MT - The cost of making animated movies is prohibitive. When you go in you have this preconception of driving the box office, making something that has mass appeal. You can’t make a genre movie for $15 million and expect to earn $90-$100 million. It’s a business return on investment but you have to make something artistically satisfying. Making a film that appeals to people equals artistic sellout but people realise in the end that you want to make something you want to see and find fulfilling. You work with that knowledge and the responsibility. You create entertainment, you weigh it all, and you had an adventure and had a good time. We approach it in the purest manner that we can. Families will see the film together so we take due diligence and are careful what we put in the films, so that it’s safe for kids and adults.
AB - How expensive is animation?
MT - It’s expensive, easily over a million dollars a minute. More than 350 people worked on Ice Age 3. Everything you’re seeing somebody created, designed, applied textures, built in computers moved, put in the eye dart, the blink. Nothing exists, something hasd been willed into being. Like talking it into being. How long did it take? We started in 2006.
AB - Would you like to do a live action film?
MT - I would love to some day but right now it is a daunting idea. But someday.
Mike Thurmeier co-directs Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs on DVD now.
