00:06one thing that i always love about the ice age movies is just like we always try to add
00:10a new cast to the cast that we love now what's gonna be the next character that's when buck
00:25buck is a weasel uh who has been down in the uh sort of prehistoric underworld for quite a while
00:33on his own he's the only mammal in this kingdom of the dinosaurs and uh it's driven him a little
00:39bit crazy i woke up one morning married to a pineapple an ugly pineapple buck has basically
00:45taught himself to survive in this hostile environment he's like a little rambo but he
00:49happens to be a sort of weasel buck is uh yeah he is the epitome of superhero there's no kryptonite
00:57involved he is infallible he is the best he is like indiana jones for the prehistoric era
01:06he's everything that crash and anyone want to be and more no zone season they're in awe of this guy
01:11he's a total like crazy military green beret little rascal and so they you know they find
01:18this guy that they just love and they adore and they in there they kind of worship you know so
01:22they get into more trouble but uh but now they have a guy that they actually respect
01:26this is awesome i think the fun part of buck was actually really coming up with a backstory for him
01:34coming up with like who is buck buck didn't start too much being the weasel like he was at one
01:39point
01:39he was a possum he was the cousin of ellie or something like that we explored the possibility
01:44of his being a badger or a wolverine we thought it'd be fun if he was a weasel because they
01:49weren't
01:50quite sure whether he was real or not and manny in particular was a little bit skeptical look when
01:54exactly did you lose your mind buck's definitely out of his mind he's just been alone for too long
02:00he speaks to the trees and to the shrubs he has relationships with stones he talks to pebbles
02:06frequently hello yeah i can't talk right now yeah no i'm trying to recover a dead sloth he's maybe
02:12a few sandwiches short of a picnic finding somebody to cast um to play the role of buck was was
02:18a
02:18challenge because we needed to find somebody who was going to not compete you know with the sound
02:25of ray romano or john leguizamo he needed to sound unique the first sort of incarnation was was quite
02:31sort of posh and swashbuckler he started out being a bit more like this sort of hello bit more sort
02:36of
02:36swashbuckling matter of life and death but it didn't seem to fit with the character so simon kind of
02:41brought it down into more like a a gruffer guy living off the land around him and that fit much
02:46better with with what we were doing for always listen to buck the idea of playing him was exciting
02:52because he's such a sort of a force of energy and as quite a chaotic character and they sort of
02:58wrote
02:58him like robin williams slash daffy duck i mean he was just crazy and bouncing around all over the place
03:05and then simon peg came in and he played him dead serious he instead of going nuts and crazy he
03:11played him like every insane thing he said made perfect sense you mean buck oh he's wacko i am no
03:19one
03:20thing that was really fun there's a sequence where he's using skulls to talk and he's using
03:25different voices cool thing about that is he did that all in one take and he created sort of four
03:29personalities including the the buck character so it's really fun to watch him do that the skull's
03:35right take a load off mammals we always videotape the actors as they're recording the lines yeah the
03:40animators definitely look at the the footage of simon um you know as he's speaking his lines because he's
03:45very like you know animated doing all the facial expressions and and actions it actually encourages
03:51you to really to use your whole body if you just stood there and just used your voice you probably
03:56wouldn't get the same performance that the animators can look at that and think oh that was quite nice
03:59let's use that or whatever and then they do that amazing thing of translating it into a you know into
04:04an animation i'm always so impressed with with animators because they create performances out of thin air
04:10with drawings and with renderings it's something i can't even comprehend and i admire enormously
04:15animating buck is i think an animator's dream there's so much range that he has in his personality and
04:21his style of movement buck's a weasel and the great thing about drawing weasels is that they're long and
04:26tubular there's a lot of potential for fun animation and for all kinds of hijinks buck has the ability to
04:34twist to twist around in any direction um be very comfortable standing with his spine twisted around we like this
04:40idea that that buck had sort of a very twisty and bendable spine or he can get down on all
04:47fours or
04:47he can also kind of bend like an inchworm sort of shape and there's actually a fun scene where he's
04:52completely wet and he rings himself out by twisting his body up like a like a towel it was fun
04:59to figure
04:59out how he might unwind
05:05staring into the eye of the great white beast originally you know i think we didn't necessarily
05:13have it written into the script that he lost his eye it made it feel like kind of had to
05:17repair himself
05:18in this world so now he's he's almost like that scar created an obsession almost between him and this
05:25gigantic white dinosaur it's interesting with uh with with rudy and buck in that their first exchange
05:31took on a sort of biblical edge because um buck lost an eye and uh rudy lost a tooth which
05:37uh which
05:37buck wears with pride he quotes the the old the old adage but gets it slightly wrong an eye for
05:42a tooth
05:42an eye for a tooth a nose for a chin a butt for a well it's an old saying we
05:48kind of played off
05:49this idea sort of a borrowed idea that that buck has this sort of relationship with rudy that's not
05:55too different than ahab and moby dick so moby dick is this great white whale and we decided to sort
06:00of
06:00apply that same kind of idea to rudy hello rudy i don't know if rudy's really involved in that
06:07relationship he just wants to eat buck but buck kind of sees him as his sort of you know his
06:12mori
06:12artsy as it were we played around the different endings but we always felt that the most satisfying
06:17way would be if he managed to fulfill his dream which was to face off rudy better luck next time
06:24snowflake he is happy in that world he'll never survive again back in the ice age i'd love to see
06:30him come back in some form or another um but one of the thematics of the movie is that the
06:35people need
06:35to find their place within the herd i forgot what it was like to be part of a family
06:40box place is to stay down in the lost world with with rudy
06:47i'll have them out of there before they're digested
06:51he's uh he's an adventurer at heart and i think this will provide so much of that
06:55that he's uh he's uh he's getting a kick out of it
07:03pop goes the weasel
07:04pop go
07:04like
07:05so
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