CraveOnline: Do you find yourself having to reign in the clog dancing and experiments when working on the Last Vegas-type movies?
Mark Mothersbaugh: Well it all depends on the project. In the case of “Pee-Wee’s Playhouse,” it was the perfect venue to do all that stuff. In the case of a big feature film, you have other duties that you have to perform. When little plastic bricks are everything, they need their little plastic hearts to beat, in those little plastic bricks.
Which is why I really wanted to use a lot of electronics. I went and looked for electronic sounds that would sound like, you know, millions of LEGO bricks turning into the cloud of an explosion. Expanding. Or to be an ocean wave with a pirate schooner on top of them. Because they were undulating. I was looking for little “bit” sounds, you know? But you also need the other side of it. With all animation, the animation is very dependent on music, and usually a live orchestra is needed to bring things to life. To bring emotion, and help make anything emotional pay off for a film.
When you have a hundred people on a stage… Like for this movie, I had a hundred players, and a 40-piece choir. All those humans… you don’t hear it consciously, you don’t hear their hearts beating, you don’t hear the blood pumping, or the inhaling and exhaling, but it’s there on the recording. And it’s there in the room. And that’s a really important factor for helping to bring to life even the best animation in the world. Animation doesn’t capture grass growing, and the things you see, and you just take for granted ’cause you’re seeing ’em every time you look at a movie that’s live-action. Even though it’s just a minute amount of movement or growth or things are just crawling around that you don’t really consciously notice, but it’s all there. A human orchestra helps fill in the gaps.
What sort techniques did you use to bring those separate feelings to life? The bits or electronics…
I used a mixture of electronics through the ages! I used Devo synthesizers mixed with modern circuit-bent toys. And kind of everything in between. I investigated what kind of sounds the Skrillexes and the Deadmau5’s of the world were using. And also old Morton Subotnik kind of sounds and Devo sounds. And I put together a kind of universe, and a movie-specific palate for LEGO.
Well, I read their most earliest pamphlets back in 1980. And I called up the number on the pamphlet. And I just wanted to find out if they were real. Because I thought this is the coolest! These people are either insane or their an art movement. Unfortunately, they were an art movement. Because I loved the pamphlets, and I loved the doublethink. And they had a great sense of humor about what they were doing. Unfortunately, though, the Church of the SubGenius – “Bob” Dobbs came in and started giving Devo advice! They kind of drove our career into the rocks. But he’s that kind of a deity. He’s got kind of a means sense of humor where sometimes you’re the brunt of the joke, and you didn’t even know it.
Have you ever collaborated with the Church?
We did collaborate! The first thing that happened was on one of our videos, for a song called “Love Without Anger,” [SubGenius founder] Ivan Stang did the animation of Barbie and Ken in their living room. He did stop-motion animation where they got in a big fight, and there’s a picture of J.R. “Bob” Dobbs on the wall in the video, if you ever look at it. So we collaborated there, and for a couple of years, I was the honorary prophylactic J.R. “Bob” Dobbs at devivals.
I haven’t been to a devival yet. They never came to Los Angeles.
Well you were probably just a kid or a child when it started. Those were the early days when they’d make it out here. Their all-inclusionary, no-exclusionary policies kind of… they just collapsed under its own weight. But every once in a while – like athlete’s foot or something – the Church of the SubGenius kind of shows up here or there.
I’d like to ask you about DEV2.0…
You say you wanted to be an art collective, and now you’re doing more and more art.
It’s definitely more visual now. I’ve done about 125 gallery shows in the last 10 or 15 years, but now I’m doing museum shows. Some museums took interest and they’re making retrospectives.
Witney Seibold is the head film critic for Nerdist, and a contributor on the CraveOnline Film Channel, and co-host of The B-Movies Podcast. You can read his weekly articles Trolling, and The Series Project, and follow him on “Twitter” at @WitneySeibold, where he is slowly losing his mind.
