November 5th, 2021 
Jackson Murphy 
Paramount’s new live-action/CG Clifford the Big Red Dog feature film opens in theaters this Tuesday Nov. 9 and also streams on Paramount+ starting Wednesday Nov. 10. Director Walt Becker discusses designing the look of this Clifford and adding a chapter to the iconic character’s legacy. (This Animation Scoop Q&A was edited for length and clarity.)
Jackson Murphy: First of all, how does it feel after the delays and with COVID that this movie’s finally out in theaters and at home?
Walt Becker: It feels really good. To have the uncertainty that everybody felt for a year and a half of “Are theaters even ever gonna come back?” And then to see signs of life a little bit was really nice. You go into it thinking, “Oh wow. Are people ready to go back?” But I think they are. I think they’ve been yearning to get that theater experience again. So we have a really good long weekend in a period of this nice holiday season… I think people are gonna resonate at that time with the vibe and feeling of the movie for sure.
JM: Yeah. And I’m glad the movie is in Regal Cinemas locations and that Paramount and Regal were able to make a deal happen. I grew-up with the Clifford books. I also really liked the animated series with John Ritter. It was really sweet. What did you take from that series as inspiration and put into this film?
WB: John Ritter was friends with one of my dear friends, so I had met him a few times. It was very sad when he passed. I thought he brought, as a character and voice to Clifford, so much of that warmth and unconditional love. That’s… the type of human being he was. In our film, like the original books, we don’t have him talk but we still wanted to capture the essence of this young puppy with more love to give than any being around him. From that series, it’s really just capturing the heart of what John brought to Clifford as a voice. He did a really terrific job for all those years.
JM: Heart and warmth, absolutely. And what went into the design of the CG Clifford we see in this? It’s so much fun watching him small and then very, very big.
WB: It took quite a while. We had an amazing visual effects company, MPC. They’re in London, Canada and the States. They had just come off of The Lion King – the live-action, [Jon] Favreau, updated one and also had done [Favreau’s] Jungle Book. After seeing what they could do with animals and animal behavior, the producer and I felt really strongly that they were the right company to actually bring a behaviorally correct animal to the screen. It took us quite a long time to figure out… “How does puppy fat look?” I don’t think they had done a dog before. They might’ve done wild dogs but not a giant puppy. A lot went into the design. Everything from how fur reflects light to the different modeling. I was very impressed. I don’t think we could’ve made the movie actually even five years ago as the live-action version. The technology.
JM: There are a lot of sequences with vehicles and driving and crazy stunts. So as a director, how do you make those work and anticipate when the big red dog is gonna come-in over the top of a lot of cars?
WB: It’s an interesting and really fun process to blend the visual effects, which aren’t gonna be there, with the practical special effects that are getting caught in camera. For instance, we had that truck Clifford goes into quite a bit. And on that truck, we had four bladders. Our special effects guys would be able to take the truck and the back end can just dump, as if he’s stepping onto it. We figured the dog weighed between two and three thousand pounds if he was real. It would basically dip the thing. We could have the truck go side to side. You’re literally having to choreograph what we think the animation is gonna look like and then into the practical effects that they’re handling and get it into camera. And then we go back and match it. So it really was a testament to not just our great visual effects people but the great people who were outstanding New York crews. This was one of the best companies I’ve ever worked with on practical effects. The New York crews did an incredible job.
JM: Good. What’s interesting is you also directed Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip – and that came out in 2015. So Clifford is not your first time with a live-action/CGI combo. What did you learn on that Alvin and the Chipmunks movie that you applied to this, when it comes to that combo?
WB: It’s weird… after doing Alvin and the Chipmunks when the lead actors are 11-inches. What people I don’t think think right out of hand is: if you’re shooting this as a director, there’s issues of massive scale problems. If you have an 11-inch hero and then a human being is literally Attack of the 60-Foot Woman or Man, that’s the size difference. You’re trying to create this environment where they’re playing off each other. In that movie, we had to put them up on things because I wanted to shoot them like we would cover a regular actor. In order to do that, they had to be almost eye to eye.
And then in Clifford, this was actually the exact opposite problem of scale. So now all of a sudden the humans were much smaller when he’s 10 feet tall. And for us, it was really about figuring out the sweet spot in size because when you get into a practical live-action world, if he’s much bigger than 10 feet, he is not going through doorways without literally ripping buildings apart. You don’t want to do that through the whole movie. So we had to figure out, “How can he live in our world and still be able to go inside, outside and all that?” Maybe there’s another one that’s even bigger, but it was nice shooting visual effects with really small worlds and then shooting one with really big worlds.
Walt Becker
JM: John Cleese plays Mr. Bridwell. He also does a little narration at the beginning and the end of the film. His voice is so iconic. I think about Shrek 2 and many of the other animated projects he’s been in over the years. When working with him, what do you honestly think of his voice and the way he uses his voice in this with the narration and with the way he delivers lines?
WB: First of all, that was a huge bucket list for me, actor-wise, to work with John Cleese. Having watched Monty Python since I was very little, he was a legend in comedy for me. When I found out that we were gonna be able to get him, he just added… he’s such a sweet human being in real-life but he added a sense of magic to the script just walking on. He’s a huge guy. He’s like 6’6″. His voice: there’s just something so incredibly intoxicating with it. Having him, not only like you said Jackson, read the narration, but just the way he talks… I really feel like if we didn’t get that character right, we’d have problems selling the whole conceit of the movie. He really did bring this sense of magic where you buy in and lean in… Bridwell does have this kind of magical quality and can get this little pup who needs Emily and Emily who needs this little pup together. He really elevated the movie.
JM: [There are] one or two lines he delivers early and one or two lines he delivers late, where I hear him say them and I go, “Huh. I’m getting a new perspective on life a little bit – and a new perspective on how you look at things.”
WB: Yes!
JM: A friend of mine went to CinemaCon in Vegas this summer. [He] went to the Paramount presentation and was surprised when they said, “And now: we’re gonna show all of you Clifford the Big Red Dog!” Did you get advance notice about that? How do you find those things out – those big surprises?
WB: Yeah. They told us that that was gonna happen. We had tested the movie, and it tested outstandingly, like 94 with parents and kids. When you get a movie that tests equally well with the kids and parents, you feel kind of bullish. The industry is obviously a little more jaded in terms of all the movies that come to them, but [Paramount] just thought it was a really nice way to show exhibition that Paramount was behind them – that they’re still gonna swing for in-theater experiences and not just close shop and go all online or streaming. They told us about that. I was actually glad they did that.
JM: There are so many animated dogs. There have been for decades. What do you think makes Clifford one of the all-time great animated dogs?
WB: The thing that resonated at least with [producer Jordan Kerner] and I about the Clifford books in general: he really, at its core, just represents unconditional love. People can feel that from puppies. That was the one thing we really wanted to save. We have to keep the essence of this unconditional love in this puppy and bring it to the screen. And it’s not even the size – although there is something very magical about him being 10 feet tall. And when we researched Normal Bridwell’s intent when he was writing it, he basically said it all came about because he had fantasized about having a dog so big he could ride him like a horse. That size dog and something about being able to ride your dog as a horse, that image is resonated across time and made Clifford a bit more special than other dogs.
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