All Lego aficionados should rejoice the day in fall 1993 when filmmakers Phil Lord ’97 and Chris Miller ’97 met as freshmen at Dartmouth. The duo wrote and directed “The Lego Movie” (2014), which has received an overwhelmingly positive reception from critics and moviegoers, earning $69.1 million over its opening weekend in early February. The animated movie features the voices of Chris Pratt, Will Ferrell, Liam Neeson and Morgan Freeman. Lord and Miller’s previous films include “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs” (2009) and “21 Jump Street” (2012).
How did you two meet and begin to work together?
CM: We met our freshmen week at Dartmouth when we had some friends in common who told each of us, “I know someone who is just as weird as you.” And we met, but we didn’t really become great friends until I accidently lit Phil’s girlfriend’s hair on fire. She lived right down the stairs from me in Hitchcock, and Phil and I became best friends and have been ever since.
Where did the idea for “The Lego Movie” come from?
PL: Our producer Dan Lin had the property and asked us if we wanted to work on it, and we originally refused. That’s too commercial. We went off and started thinking about the homemade movies people we’re making online with their Lego products. And so we started wondering if we could make something that looked like a $100 million dollar version of one of those Lego home movies. We started thinking maybe we could make a really subversive, grassroots movie about art-making in the guise of a huge commercial movie. And we pitched that to Dan and he insanely thought that was a good idea.
In your opinion, what makes “The Lego Movie” work? Why do you think it resonated with both audiences and critics so well?
CM: There are a lot of reasons. There’s something universal about Lego. There’s something really special about making something so iconic and tangible that comes to life. We also had an amazing crew and team of people that make this so enjoyable and the film coherent.
PL: I still can’t believe people are still responding to “The Lego Movie.” There’s something about projecting a narrative onto inanimate objects. It’s why the Muppets and animation is so appealing to people. I think there’s something about Lego and how crude they are that makes it even more special and fun.
How has Dartmouth played into your careers?
PL: We had an animation professor, David Ehrlich, who did a lot in the independent animation world. He taught us a kind of entrepreneurial independent self-starting approach to animation. He got us off our duffs and gave us a sense that we could be professionals. I’m sure he was probably hoping we would make something more blatantly artistic. Also, he taught us that with the right attention and focus you could take anyone, a math major or engineer, who didn’t seem like an artist and turn them into a filmmaker. Every year we took a film class with him and watched him inspire people who hadn’t really been artists to be artists. That belief is in the DNA of our movie, and I think it’s in the general Dartmouth education, or at least in my Dartmouth education. There was a sense of independence and a do-it-yourself mentality that was pervasive on campus for me.
Can you speak about your experience at Dartmouth and how it has affected you?
CM: We did a lot of stuff that we weren’t supposed to do. I met both my work partner and my wife at Dartmouth, so it has affected all aspects of my life.
PL: We are also working on “22 Jump Street,” which is the sequel to “21 Jump Street.” This one takes place at college, and so we used some of our own college experiences. We put a little bit of pong played Dartmouth-style in the film. There’s actually a scene where Channing Tatum and another actor are playing pong, and Phil and I are actually just off camera playing against them. We were the only people on set who knew how to play.
What advice would you give to aspiring student filmmakers?
CM: You need to make a bunch of stuff. That’s the way to do it. Don’t make stuff other people want to see but make stuff you’re excited about even if they suck, which they probably will, but eventually they will stop sucking.
PL: I agree. It’s so easy to make films. It used to be so hard. All you need is your phone, which is crazy. There is no reason people shouldn’t be making films all of the time.
What failures have you experienced and how have they affected you?
PL: How much time do you have? Our whole career is a lot of failures. If I watched my student films now I would see that they were slow and long and not that amazing, but they somehow led us to a job. We came up with a bunch of bad ideas for TV shows. And our TV show, “Clone High,” which we thought was pretty good, was pulled during its first season and was a massive failure. It caused a hunger strike in India. We worked on countless terrible sitcoms. We’ve just done a lot of failing. And according to the New York Post, we’re still failing. Even in success some people think you suck, but that’s okay.
What film work inspires you?
PL: I like the amateur filmmakers. I like the folks who are just making something naively but with a lot of enthusiasm. Sometimes the best stuff comes that way. The boring answer is a long list of people that other people like too.
CM: We could go on and give you a long standard list that a lot of other people would say like the Coen brothers and Wes Anderson. We should say the videos we saw in people’s dorm rooms, like the ones I tried to show everyone like “Harold and Maude” (1971) and “The Jerk” (1979). When we were in school, you couldn’t download a movie. You would bring videotapes from home, and if you had a good collection, you were really popular. We would end up watching the same ones over and over again. “Cutting Edge” (1992) was a great ice skating film and a great influence by that measure. I mean we didn’t get Fox right? The Upper Valley didn’t have Fox Network.
PL: My sister would videotape episodes of “The Simpsons” and send them to me in the mail, and we would invite people over to watch them because there was no other way to see it. It was crazy.
CM: We’re old. [Laughs]
This interview has been edited and condensed.“The Lego Movie” was screened in advance at the Hopkins Center on Feb. 1. The film is currently playing at Entertainment Cinemas in Lebanon.
The article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction appended: February 17, 2014
The original version of this article swapped the attributions of quotations byLord and Miller, and it has been revised to correct the error.
