MOSLEY: THE KIRBY ATKINS INTERVIEW

Sometimes the most meaningful journeys come from the humblest beginnings. Twenty years ago, a young animator named Kirby Atkins, drawing upon both his own upbringing and new life as a parent, began crafting a story about a species of domesticated creatures called Thoriphants, bound by human chains but always clinging to their rich heritage and powerful tribal bonds. The result is Mosley, a thrilling and very moving celebration of family and destiny that was brought to life as a $US20million New Zealand/Chinese co-production “They are absolutely phenomenal,” says Atkins of his Chinese artists. “I had five studios in China that were doing animation for me remotely.”

SCREEN-SPACE chatted at length with Atkins (pictured, above) only a few hours before the 2019 Asia Pacific Screen Awards, for which Mosley had earned a Best Animated Film nomination.  

SCREEN-SPACE: What did you base the design and functionality of the Thoriphants upon? What research went into their movements?

ATKINS: I wanted Thoriphants to feel like something that you hadn't seen before, but also to feel familiar as soon as you saw them. Most of their body is very elephant-like and there's this certain nobility that is attached to elephants and elephant bodies. Then there are certain aspects [that are] like donkeys, this sort of melancholy quality. It was about not making something that was going to be bizarre, but something that felt like you could just see grazing in a field somewhere. Yet the whole hook to them is that they can speak, and that their faces are expressive. That's what makes ‘the orphan’ different, at least in the movie, than a horse or an ox or anything like that.

SCREEN-SPACE: I believe that Thoriphants want to be like humans, but they want to be the best part of humans. They're striving to be upright and to have hands, but also to represent what's best about us.

ATKINS: A good thing about fairy tales and fables is that people read their own story into them, and there are no wrong answers to that. The concept of standing upright, if you were to take the angle of social injustice, recalls the experience of being black in America. Where you feel like you're treated like shit in one part of the world, but you were kings in another part of the world. It's about discovering what you are meant to be, and using the concept of evolution or devolution as a means to say, "How tragic would it be that you couldn't evolve as far as your heart was meant to go." That existential longing of wanting to recapture the thing that you were intended to be, and not the thing that you turned out to be. You can apply that to any working stiff out in the world who feels like he was meant for greater things. That allegory can be very personal or you can talk about societies like the Maori in New Zealand or the native American experience. People reclaiming dignity based upon a heritage, haunted by the fact that life was not meant to be this.

SCREEN-SPACE: That first act, the first half hour, is quite dialogue heavy. There's an establishing of character and personality in all the creatures. I sensed then that this movie was, yes, beautiful family entertainment, but also it was going to be deep. It was going to be more from that point on…

ATKINS: I know anime does this all the time, but generally Western animation is pretty much fart jokes; cartoons that you put on to keep the kids busy while you do something else. This is the animated film that I always wanted to see, but it didn't feel like anybody was going to make. Animation can do other things besides comedy, right? And what I've always wanted to see is an animated film that had weight to it. That had teeth to it. It's sort of like the family films that they use to make. I remember when I was a kid watching The NeverEnding Story, there was a scene where the horse drowns in the quicksand, and I was devastated when I saw that and it marked me; for some people it was Bambi that marked them, or Watership Down. [It reinforced] the fact that animation can do drama, can deal with character. Animation is about stylizing an entire narrative in a way that that shouldn’t just be fart jokes, pies in the face, pop songs and pop culture references. Let's just tell a straight story with animation. Let's let the tense parts be tense. The last fight in Mosley, I wanted it to feel like a fight, that somebody could get hurt, not a fight in a cartoon movie. There's something about cartoon and cartoon physics that allows you to think, "None of this is real, nobody's going to get hurt." And I wanted you to forget that you were watching animation.

SCREEN-SPACE: You set the emotional stakes very high from the start. The auction scene is a heartbreaker…

ATKINS: Exactly. You're going to care about this movie in the first two minutes, or this isn't going to be worth your time. I want the audience sucked in and engaged, and rooting for these characters to make it as soon as I can. And so that opening sequence was all about that. Obviously comedy follows pretty quickly. But that first sequence I wanted to knock the breath out of you. So you're going, "Okay, this movie's not playing around. This is going to be a real story. This isn't just packing peanuts (laughs)."

SCREEN-SPACE: A voice-cast like Rhys Darby, Lucy Lawless, John Rhys-Davies and Temuera Morrison is remarkable…

ATKINS: I'll tell you, it was a blast! Sonically, think about what you have. John Rhys-Davies, Mr. Classically trained, I- Claudius, Lord of the Rings, an Old Vic kind of actor, right? And then you have Rhys, Mr. Improvisation, think on the spot, come up with some gag right there. You put them together, you’re going to have peanut butter and chocolate; a whole new flavour comes out. There’s very little that goes off the script, but there are about three or four moments where they added a line or something. And it just wasn't Rhys, but John did some of this too, and it was pure gold. And everybody was in the room together. I worked on Warner Brothers’ The Ant Bully and we had Julia Roberts and Nick Cage, right? They were never in the room together. And usually good actors can make it sound sort of natural, right? But I knew that if I got Rhys Darby and John Rhys-Davies in a room together, bouncing off of each other, I knew nothing but good was going to come out of that. I don't know if you remember these lines, but there's like, "You distract, I'll ambush,” then “Your whole life has been a distraction." And John made up that line. (Picture above, from left; Atkins, editor Kathy Toon, and actors John Rhys-Davies and Rhys Darby) 

SCREEN-SPACE: Mosley is every bit as good as most of the things that Disney Pixar puts out; better than the last few, quite frankly. One opinion suggests maybe this kind of film wouldn't be made without the path laid by Disney Pixar. Then there's the shadow that Disney Pixar casts and how tough it can be to break away from that legacy…

ATKINS: Yeah, I'll tell you, the industry is fickle in this regard. Another Disney film will come out and you’ll hear, "Oh God, why does everything have to be like Disney?" And there’s me saying, "Well, this isn't like Disney. We'll make something." And they're like, "Well, why isn't it more like Disney?" Sometimes you can't win, right? (laughs) People who work in animation want animation to do more. The invisible powers in the larger studios that fund animation stories [determine that they] must be attached to a pre-existing franchise or some sort of merchandising. Generally, studios create such narrow categories for animation. But my editor, Kathy Toon, came from Pixar, moving to New Zealand to make Mosley. My animation director Manuel Aparicio came from Walt Disney, from working on Moana. So all of these guys came for the express purpose of going, "This is the sort of movie we all wish the industry would make. We can tell stories that are full of heart and whimsy and humor, but they're not just the same old thing. We can tackle big themes. We can have some teeth to it. It can be a little scary." It can be more cinematic in that regard.

MOSLEY will be released April 8 in Australia and New Zealand on DVD and digital platforms; other territories to follow.