'Spider-Verse's' Phil Lord And Chris Miller Explain How Inclusivity Makes Their Movie, And One Specific Character, Better

Interview with Phil Lord and Chris Miller

Transcript

00:00You know in throughout the movie people are asking each other to listen

00:06Right like four or five different times, so it felt like a miracle of purpose, right?

00:11and it's all about parenting and the developing relationships between

00:16Children and parents and how they both need to evolve together and grow up together, right?

00:20and also like about leadership right that like Miguel is leading this big group and some of that leadership means like

00:28You know leadership used to mean laying down the law, right?

00:32But you know, but when like one of the things we've discovered as filmmakers is that filmmaking is really about listening

00:39It's not about telling and and it means you watch a movie and you listen to the movie with your body

00:44You listen to the crew members. You're not if you want to

00:49Direct or produce a film because you like being in charge

00:52Definitely get another job

00:55I'll tell you a quick story about that, which is that you know in an early version of the movie with

01:02Pavitra's talk up was very different and a number of Indian Indian American

01:08Indian Canadian Canadian

01:11animators

01:12Okay, like wrote us an email saying like we think

01:15Pav can be better and more interesting

01:18Just cooler

01:20So we we like had a zoom with them and like okay tell us what you think

01:24I mean obviously, you know

01:25It would be great to know like how we can how we can make him better and they sort of it laid out how they want

01:31him to be cooler basically, and so we got together a

01:35group of

01:36Indian Indian American writers for a roundtable and we're like, how can we make this guy more aspirational more like?

01:44Like a real like kid in Bombay today

01:47and and out of that came a whole different version of his intro and opening and

01:53And he became so much better and everyone was so much happier and the fact that you can like listen to your teammates

02:01and and help make something better and more authentic and more interesting and more fun and he became like he became a real

02:09Favorite it transformed this sequence. So that's the thing that like you could see that email as a speed bump, right?

02:15that's just sort of like an obstacle or you can see it as an opportunity for the movie to get better and and

02:23Right, so so and it it really did like it turned a sequence that people enjoyed

02:30Into a sequence that people loved and not just Indian people, but everyone

02:36And and that's the thing about you know, this is we're getting a bit off-topic, but the thing about like

02:42Inclusivity is that it is good for the audience. It's good for the film

02:48It makes the movie more

02:50Entertaining for everyone right for everyone and that's and we often say that like people make the punitive case

02:57or like de I like

03:00They need to make the affirmative case, which is like how much better everything gets

03:04Yeah, right exactly. Well, and it's an incredible credit to both of you guys that that's your that's your creative process

03:10Is that you always are? Thank you for sharing that