Shrek the Third
Antonio Banderas On Shrek the Third
"Sometimes I am just playing the character and I go out of the microphone," said Banderas. "Somebody has to say, 'The microphone is here' because I move a lot when I am performing the cat. And as you probably know, we have a camera in front of us so it made us look for that material, to see if they could incorporate some of the body language that we have into the character."
Seeing an animated cat behave like the gesticulating Banderas was a freak experience for the actor. "Especially in close-up, you see this eye thing that he does and there are little touches here and there that you recognize as yourself but it's fun. The process is fun. As much as you know it and you know the method, you're practically allowed to do anything that you want. No idea is going to be said no in the beginning. They may just put it in the garbage later but you are allowed to actually improvise or just say the lines in many different ways so they have a lot of material with which to work."
Puss was such a hit in Shrek 2 that Banderas was a bit nervous about delivering the goods again. But any fears faded away quickly. "The only pressure was like, did I do something special that I was not totally in control in the second one that made the character so special and I may have just forgotten? But, no, immediately I got in front of the microphone and it was almost like a continuation actually of the other one. As everything was so specific at the beginning, we had a script that actually we know that is going to be changing all the time in making the whole entire movie. So, you don’t put a lot of attention into that. You know that the characters are going to growing the course of the movie."
Shrek the Third changes things up by switching Puss and Donkey's voices for a few reels, thanks to a botched spell by Merlin. " I couldn’t believe I was going to be trapped in that sack of potatoes, but it’s just 15 minutes in the movie. No, I think it creates more comedy for the characters. You see a donkey talking like a cat and all that. It actually just makes stronger the rivalry between the two characters, which is great, because at the end they actually love each other very much."
That rivalry goes surprisingly deep for a cartoon. "There is something very interesting between those two characters that I love. It is kind of a message that there was a solitude that both were living until they found Shrek and actually that is the essential motif for Donkey to be upset and jealous, because he approaches him coming from nothing. Suddenly this cat comes with a totally different flair, but in reality he has a different history. So they are both of them competing for Shrek’s friendship. And when they get it, I think that is a beautiful message. The kind of message about diversity that the whole entire movie is giving and the counter-cultural side of it, which was really important for me even when I wasn’t part of the family and I was a spectator and I enjoyed the first movie."
Shrek the Third opens to theatres on May 18th.
For the posters, trailers, stills and additional info, go to the Shrek the Third Movie Page.
Stay tuned for updates.
|
Add to Heffee!
