The_Film_That_Changed_My_Life

Paper Moon
169
Am I wrong to make the connection between the character of Boo in
Monsters, Inc. and Tatum O’Neal’s Addie in Paper Moon?
Docter: No, not all. In fact, initially, we were even closer to Addie’s age
with Boo. In our first draft, she was an older kid. And we really liked the sort
of the scrappiness of Addie. She can stand her own against this grown man,
intellectually but emotionally, too. She is just a force to be reckoned with.
She’s a great character.
You said you watched it in reference to Monsters, Inc. How did that
process work? What were you looking for in particular?
Docter: Yeah, we do that pretty much on any film. As soon as we kind
of identify what type of film we’re making—you know, a buddy film in the
case of, say, Toy Story—we start to watch as many as we can. Good, bad,
whatever. We just try to notice what other filmmakers do and don’t do with
a similar subject. With Toy Story we watched 48 Hrs., Midnight Run, and
The Defiant Ones, which is pretty classic. We started to realize there are key
moments that each one of these hit.
So, with Monsters, Inc., when we realized, “Oh, this is a film about an
older professional guy who’s stuck with a little kid,” we watched The Professional,
Paper Moon, and Little Miss Marker with Shirley Temple.
We watched a lot of these films, again, just kind of looking for the benchmarks
that these kind of films hit. What are the things we like? What are the
things we don’t like? I’m such an admirer of Bogdanovich, in this film especially,
and of his control. He’ll have these shots that are, what? A minute long, two
minutes long? I mean, I think our average shot length is two seconds. It’s just a
bold move, just lock the camera down on the front of the car and off they go.
They have this whole relationship. You can’t save anything in the cutting,
which is what we’re used to doing, not necessarily for animation but for
dialogue. You can use little snippets of stuff and piece it together in a sort
of Frankenstein way. The performance that we get was never really there
naturally, if that makes sense. Whereas in Paper Moon, it’s either there or it’s
not—and it certainly is there in this film.
Were you familiar with his other films? Because this was his third hit,
after The Last Picture Show and What’s Up, Doc?