FILM

Aardman’s latest caper ‘Arthur Christmas’ hits cinema screens this month. Robin Askew is our man in a red cape and white bushy beard.

It's an unusually balmy early October morning in central London. Outside, people are still wearing T-shirts and shorts. In the foyer of the Empire Leicester Square, however, Christmas has come early. Literally. Hordes of kids are wearing balloon antlers, writing letters to Santa and being entertained by carol singers. Seasonal pop of the 'I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday' and 'Merry Xmas Everybody' variety, which torments shop workers from November onwards, is being pumped out on a loop. We're all here for the first screening anywhere of Bristol-based Aardman Animations' 'Arthur Christmas'. It's been five years since the unhappy experience of their last feature film, 'Flushed Away', which concluded the studio's relationship with US giant DreamWorks. This is the first fruit of their new alliance with Sony. It's also the directorial debut of Aardman's creative director, Sarah Smith, who joined the company during the split with DreamWorks in 2006. No pressure then. Immediately after the screening, which gets a rousing round of applause, she scurries off to complete the unfinished end credits sequence.

A week later, she finds time to talk about the project that has swallowed four years of her life ("20 hours a day, six to seven days a week"). Interestingly, her background – and that of co-writer/long-term collaborator Peter Baynham – is in much more adult comedy. She's written, directed and/or produced the likes of 'The League of Gentlemen', 'Nighty Night' and Chris Morris's 'Brass Eye'. He's best known for writing 'I'm Alan Partridge' and the Borat and Bruno films for Sacha Baron Cohen. 'Arthur Christmas' is a family-friendly 3D CGI fable about the logistics of delivering presents to every child in the world in one night, and the dysfunctional Santa family who just about make it happen.

'Arthur Christmas' is refreshingly free of knowing movie in-jokes. But you did chuck in a 'Wrong Trousers' reference, didn't you?

We did. That's the only thing in the movie. An animator pitched me that joke. And I thought, you know what? I love that piece of animation. It's one of my favourite things in animation ever. And it seemed like a funny joke to repeat the idea.

There's also no romance and no villain, which is unusual for animation.

It's just our own personal taste. I really don't buy romance very much. I think it's one of the things kids are least interested in, frankly. So I never quite understand the love story element. I don't know quite who it's for or why it's considered a required thing. In terms of not having a villain, that's part of the fundamental idea of the movie. What we were trying to say is that what is wrong with the world today is not that there are evil people; it's the pernicious thing of people not quite getting it. The failure to realise what's important or what's really valuable. It's not an actively evil thing, but leads to a terrible kind of slow falling apart of everything that matters.

Were there any cultural sensitivities involved?

We did research Christmas round the world, so at the beginning when you see all the presents being delivered there are different customs and habits represented. But there are all sorts of problems with it. Somebody actually put their hand up in one screening and said "But in Germany (or wherever it was), we celebrate on the fifth of December." And we all went, "Shit! It doesn’t work. We can't deal with that!" Early on, we thought about the idea of using time zones, so the mission would be moving with the hours of darkness around the world. But you have to simplify a bit. I also think the sad truth is that although there are different customs in different countries, the British and American version of what Christmas is – Victorian Santa in a snowy landscape – is kind of what's being adopted around the world.

There's an extraordinary piece of product placement for the Co-Op. How did that come about?

It was absolutely not at all product placement! I was passionate that where the little girl lives should properly look like England. We have seen England in other animated movies and it looks like a completely American version of England. I had a European design team and the first images they drew of Trelew, the village in Cornwall, were like Italian hilltop towns. So in the end I sent the design team down to Cornwall to take pictures. What came out of it is fantastic and gorgeous and authentic. And of course, the local shop in your average village is a Co-Op.

Mrs Santa is usually a rather passive and redundant figure in Santa movies. But you gave her a key role. Was this a blow for feminism?

Yeah, absolutely. Our idea about Mrs Santa is that she's in one of those rather awkward roles, like the wife of a president or the spouse of a monarch, where it's not really your job to get involved in the business or politics of it. And yet, very often, those women are actually one step ahead of all of the men and waiting for them all to come to their senses. That's what Mrs Santa does.

Who's your favourite character? Personally, I'd have enjoyed seeing more of Bill Nighy's crotchety Grandsanta.

I love Grandsanta too. I feel very tenderly towards Arthur, because he is properly an idiot. He's totally passionate and sincere. But Grandsanta, I guess, is the character we have most fun with. He's my grandmother, really. And I love Bill Nighy's performance.

You could almost make a Grandsanta movie.

We have thought about that. The prequel is basically Grandsanta in wartime.

Were you at all daunted at taking on such a vast enterprise as your first feature?

Absolutely. Every single day. It's massively complicated. Animation itself is complicated, CG is complicated, and this is a particularly over-ambitious thing. Nick Park said to me it's like running a marathon, but it's a sprint. And it really is like that. Endurance is the key. I also had a baby in the middle of it…

'Arthur Christmas' was prepped in Bristol but made in LA. Does that mean we can't make these films here?

To be honest, nobody had made a CG movie with such a sophisticated look in the UK. All of the CG films that have been made here have been on lower budgets. Sony had this pipeline sitting in LA and they were really keen for us to look at that. The idea of doing it in Bristol is very attractive, but there are several issues. One is recruiting people from around the world – because there are a handful who are at the top of their game – and getting them to move their lives to Bristol.

After 'Flushed Away', Aardman co-founder Peter Lord told Venue that he would never again make a film in the US. But you've just done that. Presumably things are very different with Sony.

It is different. Pete and Dave [co-founder Dave Sproxton] were nervous about the idea of us doing it there because you're kind of putting your movie into the dragon's den. But they also knew that I was fairly feisty and would fight all comers. You're very close to the studio's influence, I suppose. But there were various things that helped us. 'Flushed Away', almost from the very beginning, was done in America. All the creative development was done there as well. We did ours in Bristol. So I had the protection of all of that time in the UK to work the movie out and stand it on its feet. I had a year where virtually nobody saw anything, which is a fantastic luxury. When we showed Sony what we had, they were delighted and excited. So by the time we moved to LA six months later, we had won a lot of their confidence.

When you joined Aardman, was it your intention to broaden the look and style of the studio's output?

That was my instinct when I went there. A lot of what people think of as Aardman is really Nick [Park]. And no company can live off one person's work. But within the company, there are an awful lot of other styles of work that people aren't so familiar with. It felt to me that what identifies the company is not the Nick Park stop-frame style but a common sensibility and a tone. And you could pursue that in all sorts of different ways in movies and have a much more eclectic range. 'Pirates' [Peter Lord's feature, due for release next March] looks like an Aardman stop-frame movie, but in comedy terms it's quite different from what Nick does. 'Arthur Christmas' is very different from anything Aardman has done, and yet at the heart of it are comedy underdogs. And loveable idiots are a very British, very Aardman kind of thing.

'ARTHUR CHRISTMAS' OPENED ON 11 NOV. SEE REVIEW.

Copyright Robin Askew 2011