Press - Rough Draft Studios

As Mike Scully mentioned in his previous interview, when Matt Groening and company finally gave The Simpsons Movie a green light, they came to realize the work was just way too much for their usual production studio, Film Roman. To help them out, they then called on old partners Rich Moore and his company Rough Draft.

For those who read the credits, Rough Draft is one of the busiest for-hire studios in the world. It’s Korean operation does a ton of work on anything from Warner Bros. to many of the top anime shows Japan has to offer. Moore is one of the partners of the Los Angeles branch. His work has won him four Emmy nominations and two of the actual statuettes (both for Groening’s other beloved animated project, Futurama).

Speaking of which, Moore is also hard at work on the upcoming direct-to-DVD escapades of Fry, Bender and the crew of the Planetary Express. So to have a shot of actually talking to the extremely busy man could not be ignored. Here’s what he had to say about working with Mr. Groening and his latest success:

Newsarama: Now you’ve worked with Matt Groening before the movie, right?

Rich Moore: I worked on The Simpsons for the first five seasons. I worked with them when they were being done by Klasky-Csupo and when they moved to Film Roman. Now to make things clear, when you look at the TV show and see the Rough Draft listing, that’s really Rough Draft Korea, who does the overseas work. Rough Draft has a studio here in Los Angeles as well as overseas. But yes, I’ve worked with Matt both on The Simpsons and on Futurama.

NRAMA: What’s it like working with Mr. Groening?

RM: It’s great. He’s a very creative and funny guy. I’ve had a lot of respect for him since I was in college and reading Life In Hell. I started working with him when I was a 25 year-old kid just when I got out of college, which to me was a dream come true.

NRAMA: Was there an education process for him?

RM: I started on The Simpsons when it was a TV series and past being on The Tracey Ullman Show. I think Matt fell right into animation. From what I understand, he literally hit the ground running. What many don’t realize is Matt has a pretty extensive understanding of animation in general.

NRAMA: So how did you guys get to work on The Simpsons Movie. From what I understand there was just too much work for Film Roman.

RM: Yes. The schedule was a really big one. It needed to be done quickly. We had worked on Futurama. So it was decided by Gracie Films that they needed to split the workload in half. So Film Roman did one half and we did the other.

NRAMA: Was it literally split in half, like Film Roman did one half and you did the other?

RM: No, but proportionately it was half and half. I directed the very beginning of the movie and then I was responsible for the climax of the film.

NRAMA: So, did you work on the skateboard sequence?

RM: No. I worked on the motorcycle driving off the Dome, the Emperor Moe sequence and all the stuff at the end though.

NRAMA: One thing I gathered from Mike Scully was there were a lot of improvatory, last minute changes while making the film. A good example is the Spider Pig bit. That was thought up in the last six months.

RM: Yes. That was thought up really late in the process. We storyboarded that section and then handed the animation part to Film Roman. That was really working on the fly.

NRAMA: So it wasn’t uncommon for Matt or someone else from Gracie coming in with an idea saying it had to be done immediately.

RM: Oh yes. I’ll be honest. The last six months of the movie was challenging.

NRAMA: So was it like the animated version of Casablanca, if you know that story?

RM: Yes, I do. We would get new pages every other day. A lot of times it would be new pages on things we had just started or were already in production. I remember conversations going like ‘Well, wouldn’t you like to see the first version?’ and them saying ‘No no no…we want to do it this way.’

NRAMA: Did they come at least with the voice tracks already recorded for you?

RM: Yes. We would get the pages one day and then the voice tracks would follow.

NRAMA: So I imagine there’s a lot of guys at Rough Draft now sporting toupees from all the hair they lost.

RM: Actually I’m getting mine fitted today. Believe me when I say that everyone on the staff feels the extra five or so years they’ve lost in the time we worked on the project (Laughs).

NRAMA: Well, one thing I have to congratulate both you and the Roman guys for is the seemlessness of the movie. It’s hard to tell the two of you apart.

RM: Thank you. That’s to the credit of all the sequence directors keeping the movie focussed and on track. It was never competitive. What it’s about is with The Simpsons there is a certain style and look and we all aimed for that target.

NRAMA: But wouldn’t you also say the quality of the animation is stepped up for the movie?

RM: We did more animation and, more important, kept more of it here in Los Angeles. Usually, with the TV show, you do the main posing of a scene and then sending it overseas. A lot more work is done in Korea. On the movie, we were doing pretty much 65-75% of the work in Los Angeles. We were only sending to Korea for clean-up.

NRAMA: Must be nice to be doing that much of a movie.

RM: It is. It felt like how it must of felt back in the golden age of animation when they did everything in the studio. I mainly have a television background, having worked on The Simpsons, The Critic and Futurama, and I always used to dream about doing more over here. So here was this great chance to do that.

NRAMA: That hasn’t really happened since Filmation. Say what you will, they kept it all over here.

RM: They did. It was a crazy stock system where only about 10% of any episode was ever new animation, but it was.

NRAMA: So do you feel satisfied with the movie?

RM: It was Mike Reiss, one of the writers, who said ‘After seeing it, I kind of think to myself that it was ALMOST worth it. He was just joking, of course. It was a lot of incredibly hard work but it did feel good to sit in the theater at the debut and seeing it was playing, the jokes were landing and this thing that was like a blood cyclone and sucking everything we had out of us somehow congealed into a really entertaining movie.

NRAMA: How do you feel about the public reaction? Being #1 at the box office and all that.

RM: I can tell you that we were at San Diego Comic Con the night of the national debut and hearing that the film was going to make $30 million that night just felt overwhelming. Our jaws dropped to the floor. I mean we knew it was going to be good. But that good? Who knew?

NRAMA: It must also be nice to see a traditional pen and ink movie doing so well.

RM: It is, and I hope it finally puts to rest the idea that all feature films must be computer generated and the whole notion that 2-D is dead. It’s not. I think we’ve now seen enough 3D movies bomb to have the studios realize that CGI is not the magic bullet they thought it was.

NRAMA: Even Disney is back doing traditional movies.

RM: And that’s great. It’s great news for a lot of traditional animators in L.A. We had a lot of Disney animators working on this movie. Hopefully, after Futurama, a lot of them will go back to their roots.

NRAMA: So with that cue let’s go back to the future. Now the first Futurarama is subtitled Bender’s Big Score?

RM: Yes. We just got the animation back and it looks really great. I think the fans are going to go nuts for it. It’s got everything that Futurama is all about. It has the Fry and Leela romance, there’s great action running through it, as well as great moments from Bender, Zoidberg and everyone else. It’s just a very satisfying, well woven film. Animation-wise, it’s also very worthy of being on the big screen. It would make a terrific theatrical feature.

The animation will be a blend of traditional and CG, much like the original TV show. We do have a CG department because there are certain effects that are very hard to do traditionally. I mean if you enjoy science fiction movies, there are certain things that you expect and they must look good. If it looks kind of shlocky then fans will end up saying the whole film isn’t great.

NRAMA: Well there must be something about Futurama considering how Adult Swim runs it so much even these days.

RM: I think it’s just people love those characters. It’s not like The Simpsons, who everyone can easily relate to, which is based on your average American family. Futurama is genre-based. It’s heavy science fiction. If you like science fiction, then you can immediately identify with it. I mean Fry’s the hero. Leela’s the leading lady. The Professor is the wise old sage. Event though they play with them, they are the conventions of science fiction. But it also takes a little longer for the general audience to accept that. Once they did, they realized there’s a lot of depth to the show. There’s also a lot of comedy from all those science fiction conventions, but just like The Simpsons Matt has made it easily accessible. There’s something for everyone from children to adults.

NRAMA: It’s the entire original voice crew, correct?

RM: Yes. Everyone’s back.

NRAMA: In a way to me that’s just as important. Even if someone like Lauren Tom was missing, it wouldn’t be the same.

RM: It wouldn’t be. We’re very lucky to have not only the original voice cast back, but just about the entire original animation staff back. I mean this time David Cohen put together a smaller writing crew, but it’s comprised of a lot of the principles from the original series. So it’s really great to be working on it again.

NRAMA: So this is the first of three direct-to-DVD releases, right?

RM: Actually, it’s four. The first of four. It’s slated for around November 27.

NRAMA: What a nice holiday gift?

RM: Perfect, isn’t it? You can watch them carve up the world while you carve up your turkey leftovers.

NRAMA: So things are going pretty good at Rough Draft?

RM: Yes. We finished The Simpsons Movie just in time to get to work on Futurama. We have some other things in the works, too.

NRAMA: Anything you can tell us about?

RM: Not yet. We starting to do some original stuff and we’re also talking to other people about their projects. Hopefully they’ll soon the be the source of more interviews.

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