00:00It's a project that's just been the sum of a lot of yeses.
00:05You know, when you come from where I come from and you look like me, you hear a lot of no's.
00:10But Morgan Neville said yes, Lego said yes, Focus said yes, Universal said yes,
00:17and the universe itself said yes.
00:30I firmly believe that everybody has talent, beauty, and potential.
00:34Thanks for being here, Pharrell.
00:36You say in the film that Legos are the best way to express yourself.
00:41How did you discover that and why?
00:44I don't know if I discovered that as a kid.
00:46I think I was just given Lego sets as a child and that was like a really amazing platform
00:55for me to allow my imagination to just flourish and to learn things about myself.
01:05As it has for most kids and, you know, a lot of people, you know,
01:09millions and millions of people on this planet.
01:14Cinematically, what are the limitations of making a Lego movie
01:18and then what are the things that allow you to do things
01:21that you would not be able to do in a live action biopic?
01:25Well, you know, unlike most documentaries that are dependent on the visual
01:32and the audio of whatever the documentarian has captured,
01:38we had more cinematic license to depict and illustrate literally and figuratively
01:48whatever it is the person was saying who was doing the interview at the time
01:52or, you know, the person who was being interviewed.
01:56So it gave us like a cinematic liberty that wouldn't otherwise exist.
02:02And doing it through the guise of Lego, it's obviously the first of its type.
02:07It makes it an unprecedented exercise, which was fun.
02:13I also want to ask about the PG rating.
02:16You know, there's explicit music and there's allusions to drug use very creatively.
02:23Why was it important for you to make this an all audiences movie?
02:27Well, there are no explicit lyrics in the songs and the portions of the songs that were used.
02:33And there were there was no allusions to anything.
02:41But the PG spray was a good, clever touch.
02:44No, it just needed to be PG because there was there are things that are far beyond
02:50their subject matter, but not drug related and not rated R in the lyrics.
02:58It's just the energy of the story is a bit mature for kids who might otherwise
03:08work with Lego sets.
03:12But there was no there were no references that would be that would be.
03:23And purposefully, there were no references that would allude to anything that we wouldn't
03:27want children doing.
03:29Can you talk about the process of bringing in all of the people who are in the movie,
03:34Kendrick Lamar and Jay-Z, et cetera, et cetera, and who had maybe the funniest reaction to
03:39saying you're going to play a Lego?
03:42Well, we purposely did not tell anyone that that was going to be the finishing,
03:50that that would be the finished product.
03:52We wanted people to just answer the questions and really give their full unedited
04:02reactions to the opportunity to do the interviews, because if we would have said, OK, this is
04:10going to be in Lego, then people then they would they would have sort of curved what
04:15they were saying to try and.
04:21I don't know, I'm not saying that they would be trying to contribute to the direction,
04:27but I think we didn't want them to be influenced by what we wanted.
04:31We wanted the purest part.
04:32And that's, I feel like, part of the magic of what makes this film pop the way it does
04:38is because it's so vivid and it's not scripted.
04:41You know, it would have started to have felt like, oh, we're making this for kids.
04:45And it's like, no, we're not.
04:46We're making this for human beings.
04:48And, you know, while I am a black man that comes from a marginalized community,
04:56we wanted this story to feel universal.
04:57And that was the reason why we we told it through the guise of Lego.
05:01And were they surprised when they found out the format?
05:03Everybody was like pleasantly surprised and incredibly supportive.
05:07Look, this film is a it's a it's a project that's just been the sum of a lot of yeses.
05:18You know, when you come from where I come from and you look like me, you hear a lot
05:22of no's.
05:23But Morgan Neville said yes.
05:25Lego said yes.
05:26Focus said yes.
05:28Universal said yes.
05:30And the universe itself said yes.
05:33So like when people ask me about this project, I tell them like, man, we're working on the
05:37impossible because this is nearly impossible.
05:41And for all the yeses that we got, we also got an equal weight in commitment.
05:46People were committed.
05:47And that is the reason why we're at this juncture right now.
05:50And I could do an interview for variety like this is this is a this is a dream that I never
05:58knew I had.
05:59And when my mom and dad bought me Lego sets for Christmas, I never knew it was going to
06:04lead all the way to this place right here.
06:07Well, we're happy to have you.
06:08And thanks for sitting down with us.
06:09No, thank you.
06:10Yeah.
06:11Thanks.
