While in LA, we also had the chance to chat with Christopher Robin’s Director Marc Forster. Throughout our interview, you could tell this was a passion project for him. In fact, he loved working on this film so much that he actually watched it after it was done, which is something he doesn’t typically do. I’ve seen this movie twice and he has very good reason to be proud, it is a great movie.
Here is what Director Marc Forster had to say…
- His 6 year old daughter and him were on a plane together and while watching a Winnie The Pooh cartoon, she asked if he’d ever make a film that she could actually watch. They jokingly talked about how he could make a Winnie The Pooh movie and 3 years later, it happened.
- The idea to have Christopher Robin have a daughter instead of a son may have indirectly been because he himself has a daughter (who didn’t get to see him much while he was working on this film). “…It’s sort of like life imitates art or art imitates life. Especially last few months and she said ‘I never see you'”.
- A lot of research was done for accuracy. “we did a lot of research and the idea was going back to the mid Twenties sort of when Pooh was created and Chris Robin played with him…and, and then the film ends sort of like at post war nineteen forty-nine and the interesting thing is also just in the early Fifties was actually a time and in England, people had suddenly paid vacation. So that all sort of aligned with our storytelling of Winslow Luggage. When he brings up this idea of it being important for people to do nothing and we take a vacation and sort of enjoy that.”
- Director Marc Forster likes metaphors and uses them throughout the film. Examples are when Christopher Robin is wearing a red sweater at the end of the film or when the honey falls onto the drawing and that is what wakes up Pooh. “…Because the idea was that when he actually sees the drawings, that’s sort of when they come back in is consciousness and that’s sort of like when the animals sort of come alive again…”
- The character’s look in this film came from combining what they liked from Shephard’s early drawings and the first black and white animation drawings from Disney…it took a few months of getting the right look.
- They did a lot of filming in in Ashtown Forrest. “…Literally next to where Milne’s estate is and a woods forest where he was surrounded by…probably like ten miles down the road where we shot and the little river where we built our Pooh bridge is connected to the same river from where the real Pooh bridge is, so it’s all the same woods and neighborhood…”
- They were hoping Richard Sherman would write them song for the beginning of film and he ended up writing 3 songs, so they used them all and had Richard Sherman performing one of the songs during the credits (the beach scene). “…So I felt it would be great to show them all on a beach and we didn’t have it in the schedule…so I said to line producer,I’m just going to over to the beach. We have so many extras here. Just stick them in bathing suits, run over, I’m taking a camera. Just shoot it…I can do this in two hours…I suddenly said now we need the piano on the beach as well to have him play the piano…All came spontaneous to me to put the four chairs next to a guys and put the animals in there…that all came literally within five minutes…”
Want to know more about the Christopher Robin movie? You can check out my Christopher Robin World Premiere Recap and my interviews with Ewan McGregor (“Christopher Robin”), Hayley Atwell (“Evelyn Robin”), Bronte Carmichael (“Madeline Robin”), Jim Cummings (voice of “Winnie the Pooh” & “Tigger”).
Christopher Robin is officially in theaters!
