Fred Willard stars in
WALL•E. He actually stars in it. He's not providing his voice to an animated character. He is appearing in the film. In video playback explaining what has happened to the earth, Willard appears as a presidential figure urging humans to pack up and leave for space, leaving the robots to clean up the planet.
WALL•E's Live-Action Willard
"As an actor I love it of course, because you don’t want to be anonymous," said Willard. "I’ve done voices in movies. Actually I was in Monster House and I looked at my character they drew for me and I said, ‘I like the character better than me. He’s more expressive.’ But it’s fun to be the only person. I’ll be the last one to ever be in a Pixar movie and then I’ll be kind of a trivia question. Who’s the only actor…?"
Flying into space seems like a fool proof plan, right? Nothing could ever go wrong there. "They asked if based him on any political people. I based him more on the pilot of an airplane. We get on an airplane and that very soothing voice, ‘We’ll be taking off very shortly. Flying time is 3 hours and 40 minutes. Get comfortable.’ And then you sit a long time and something’s up. ‘This is your captain speaking. Unfortunately we have a little delay. ‘ And then by the end it’s, ‘I have some bad news. We’re going back to the gate. The flight has been cancelled. We should have you on another plane in no time.’ That night you’re in a cheap motel waiting to fly out the next morning. That’s his idea. Keep a good front, do the best they can. Everyone is doing the best they can but it’s out of everybody’s hand."
When it is revealed how bad things really got, Willard's character even says, "Stay the course." "That’s obviously a salute, an homage, to George W Bush. It was in the script."
Filming his live action segments at Pixar's San Francisco office, Willard got to visit neighboring productiosn. "It was just me and Andrew Stanton directing. The only thing I got to [do] with another cast he said, ‘Do you want to come over to the next soundstage and watch them sink the Pirates of the Caribbean ship?’ So suddenly I was in another movie with this big ship. It was built to size, an explosion, it tilted over. They explained how they slowed down the action. ‘Well, now let’s go back and do another [take]…’
At least he got to see a preview of the WALL•E animation. "I did see very rough animation. And Pixar was very secretive about the plot. For a long time I couldn’t tell what I knew of the plot. I couldn’t tell that I was the only live action person in the movie. So I find it strange that I’m here today. I thought for a while that maybe they wouldn’t allow people to see the movie, so none of the secrets would be given away."
WALL•E opens to theaters on June
27th.
For the trailers, posters, stills and more movie info, go the WALL•E
Movie Page.
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