just a few quotes, because.
... a photograph will never work...
Sanders: Our artists were traveling all over the place in Hawaii with their easels and their paints, because a photograph will never work. You have to go on-site and paint the actual things so you come back with the actual colors. They were collecting stuff that became the vibe of the film and making very careful observations architecturally. What the curves look like, what the window frames look like.
Sluiter: The sand is very iron rich. You walk on the beach and all of a sudden it looks like a giant dropped a bag of potatoes, but they’re lava rocks and they’re just piled all over. One day we were sitting on the beach at night having dinner by the ocean. The sun was setting and the waves were coming in. The water was turquoise, but the sea foam was pink. “How can the white foam be affected that much by the color of the sky, but not the water?” You’ll see in the surfing scene, we did that. Most people would’ve just done the water with white foam or grayish blue foam. We made it pink because that’s what we saw.
.... A great actor, who is right for the role, will change the course of the film...
Carrere: I think Chris asked me, “How would you say good-bye in Hawaiian?” I said, “Well, there’s this, the most famous Hawaiian song, a song of love and farewell written by Queen Liliʻuokalani in the palace, and it’s ‘Aloha Oe.’” They said, “Can you sing for us?” And they’re like, “Oh my gosh, that’s perfect.”
Sanders: When we were in the recording session, she even called her grandmother on the phone to make sure she was getting all the words exactly right.
Carrere: Later, when I did the PR for Lilo & Stitch, we did a TV special in Hawaii. (Kelly Slater was doing some talks on the surfing scenes.) The director said, “Hey, can you sing ‘Aloha Oe’?” I said, “Can my grandma sing harmony with me?” We sat under a banyan tree in Hawaii and she sang the harmony. Much later, on her deathbed in the hospital, it was one of the last things we did. I sang “Aloha Oe” with her, and she was harmonizing with me. My cousin played the ukulele. That’s so deep for me. That song.
Sanders: I believe that characters tend to avoid things. Because I do it in my own life. So when Nani sings “Aloha Oe,” she’s saying goodbye to her sister, but she’s not really facing up to it. That worked beautifully for the film. If it hadn’t been for Tia, who was the right voice, who was Hawaiian, who was perfect for the role, and who helped to bring that into the whole story. A great actor, who is right for the role, will change the course of the film.
Carrere: They asked me other things like, “If somebody almost hits you with the car, what would you say?” I’m like, “Oh, you stupid head.” It’s like such a Hawaii thing. And when I say to Lilo, “Oh, Lilo, you lolo.” These are turns of phrase that we would use in Hawaii when I was growing up.
... Everybody gets a weekend...
DeBlois: When we arrived in Florida, we knew these people because we had worked on Mulan with them. That was a difficult film to finish. There were lots of divorces and ailments that came out of that process. I remember myself working daily until well past 11 p.m., listening to people riding the Tower of Terror and poor custodians pushing around vacuum cleaners in these trailer buildings. So we made a decision. We sat down with the entire crew when we got there. We said, “Okay, here’s the deal. We have a lot less money. We have less time. But we want to figure out how we can make this movie so that everybody goes home at night to have dinner with their loved ones. Everybody gets a weekend. We’ll figure out how to make this and be happy doing it.” That became the spirit of making the film. There were all sorts of barbecues and kayaking in Florida Springs and taking little road trips down to the Keys or out to the coast. Ric Sluiter would take us out on weekends and we would go scalloping or shrimping late at night. Dropping lights into the water and catching shrimp.
Sluiter: Mulan was five years of hell. Lilo & Stitch was two years of bliss. Everything went so smooth. Because Chris and Dean were writing the movie and storyboarding — they did the whole movie themselves, an incredible feat. So basically once they knew that the style was there, they just left me alone. They did all the approvals, everything, but they left it to me so they could focus on stories.
... you have your animators who are also actor...
Sanders: Dean and I found our comfort zone in not telling animators what to do. These are our actors, and, of course, if you’re in animation, you have your actor actors, and you have your animators who are also actors. And we made the decision early on that if they check all the boxes that a moment or scene needs, then we are done. We’re not going to get into a thing where, “I kind of saw it more like this.” Now you’re in a situation where some poor animator is like, “So you want him to do what?” They’re suddenly like somebody taking an order instead of doing what they do best.
... if we made it just Stitch...
Sanders: Roy Disney prompted one of the biggest changes in the film. At one meeting, he said, “I liked Stitch when I thought he was a baby. But when I realized he was a grown-up that was in charge of this whole gang of aliens, I didn’t like him as much.” I thought, Okay, this is too large a note; we have to deal with this right now. I said, “Okay, if we made it just Stitch, maybe they move him around in a jar and people or aliens in hazmat suits handle him. It’s almost like he’s a virus.” The room got really quiet. I looked over at Tom, and Tom was looking at me and he didn’t look away. I said, “The equivalent of a virus would be a genetic mutation. If Stitch was a genetic mutation, then he can be the problem by himself. We can eliminate all these other characters.” So we went into the meeting and there was a whole gang of aliens, and we left the meeting and there were no more aliens. All these people didn’t know, but their parts were cut.
..."Nobody cares about the watercolors.” I said, “We’re going to teach them what it is....
Schumacher: By the time the movie came out, there was a lot of frustration that it wasn’t CG. The marketing people asked, “Well, how do we release this movie? It’s not CG.” There was even a suggestion by a very important player that we do the commercial in CG. I said, “That seems a little dishonest.” The movie works because it’s not CG. You can show me a leaf from Pocahontas, Hercules, Mulan, Lilo & Stitch — a leaf — and I’ll tell you what movie it came from. Because if it was from Hercules, it has a Gerald Scarfe spin on it. If it’s Pocahontas, it has a seam going up, and there’s one color here, one color there. Lilo is going to be watercolor. They all look different. There’s a sameness you can get into unless people really push the boundaries. Having worked in both, this film was such a celebration of hand-drawn animation.
I kept being told by the publicists, “Nobody cares about the watercolors.” I said, “We’re going to teach them what it is.” We went to the Cannes Film Festival to promote it. Clark, Dean, Chris, me. Roy and Patty flew us there on Air Roy, a private 737 they owned. I think we put 500 journalists through a class where they got to learn how to watercolor paint. They all got a kit with exactly the four colors of paint you needed, rock salt, and you had to float your paint on the wet paper. It was amazing.
... The houses are like the houses that I grew up around...
Carrere: I just thought, “This is so beautiful.” The paintings of these places in Hawaii feel like actual specific places, not a broad-stroke rendering of some nondescript tropical island, you know? The houses are like the houses that I grew up around. Nani looks like what a local girl would look like, with the sturdiness of her legs and her body. She’s not like Cinderella painted brown. I love that Chris and Dean were cognizant of what they were putting in front of the world. It was so ahead of its time on so many levels. The social services, the older sibling taking care of the younger sibling and the chaos and mayhem that ensues, that this family is sort of this odd cast of characters that you cobble together and that have each other’s back. I think that’s a thoroughly modern theme. To think that we did that 20 years ago is kind of amazing. Also, to have the Indigenous story, the local people’s story front and center in Hawaii, whereas usually Hawaii would be the fetishized beautiful backdrop for Caucasian lead characters. On so many levels, I was so proud to be able to represent Hawaii.
... This is their family — it’s broken, but it’s their family...
Schumacher: … Don’t lose sight of what this movie is actually saying. That here are these two young women, who are on their own through tragedy, and they build a family, right? This film is so much about kindness and embracing the other. I cannot watch the movie without tearing up. When Stitch goes outside and says, “I’m lost.” How does anybody watch that and not tear up? And her unconditional love for him. The sacrifice, patience, the trying to understand another’s thinking? How does he see it? They do that and that they build this family, and Pleakley and Jumba come in their own way to be part of this family. This is their family — it’s broken, but it’s their family. The idea of kids watching something about a family that’s busted up and broken, but knowing that if they care about each other, they can build a path forward.
... I would show their life after the film ends...
Sanders: At the very, very end, I was sitting at my desk and Tom Schumacher called, and he said, “Chris, if you had an extra minute, what would you do on this film?” I said, “Well, I would do a postscript to the film. I would show their life after the film ends.” He said, “You guys have been so on budget, you have a couple of million dollars left over. Do that ending.” We added those two minutes, and I think it totally changed the film.
...We can all make our own families...
Schumacher: I think that whole celebration at the end of the movie, when you see them all together, with the photographs and stuff, and you see them skiing and everything. I think it just says, “We can all make our own families.” For those of us who have had to do that, I think its legacy is: It’s beautiful. I think for the industry to see what these artists could do is extraordinary, and I think its actual themes are as valuable or more valuable today than they’ve ever been.
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2087
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