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Since his birth in 1978, the lazy, tubby tabby named Garfield has become an institutional pop culture figure akin to other cartoon celebs, such as Snoopy, Bugs Bunny and Mickey Mouse. After scratching his way to stardom and being syndicated in more than 2,800 newspapers, Jim Davis’ furry phenom has been featured in TV specials, calendars, T-shirts and bedsheets for over five decades. This month he is back in The Garfield Movie, a new CG-animated feature from Columbia Pictures and Alcon Entertainment, animated by DNEG and directed by acclaimed animation veteran Mark Dindal, best known for directing The Emperor’s New Groove and Chicken Little.
Presenting such an iconic orange figure to the digital generation required great care and responsibility. Dindal and Jason Boose, his animation supervisor at DNEG, were certainly up to that tall task, crafting a dynamic tale of Garfield’s estranged father, Vic, suddenly reappearing in his leisurely life and asking for his cynical son’s assistance.
Adding to the mayhem are the movie’s vocal stars, Chris Pratt as Garfield and Samuel L. Jackson as Vic, who enlivened the project with their chemistry. Joining them are Brett Goldstein, Bowen Yang, Nicholas Hoult, Hannah Waddingham, Cecily Strong and Ving Rhames.
Pop Cultural Paw Print
“Garfield came out in the newspaper in 1978 — that was the year I went to CalArts in California to study animation,” Dindal tells Animation Magazine. “I was introduced to Garfield in the reverse order of how he was introduced to the world. The television special was in 1982, then I discovered the compilation books, then I saw it in the newspaper. At CalArts, we didn’t get the newspaper, there was no internet, nobody had a phone or a TV, so we were cut off from what was happening — until four years later when we were out in the world reconnecting with society. Then there were four years of comics that existed at that point, so Garfield was well established.”
As Dindal began researching the database of comic strips, he noticed that you could flip back 10 or 30 years and still see Garfield’s core consistency and continuity.
“It was a conscious thing on Jim Davis’ part to keep him universal and not tied to any current social thing,” says the director. “So that when you look at these comic strips, they’d still seem relevant. It’s that universal quality that connected with people; otherwise, Garfield wouldn’t have stayed around.”
‘It all started with Jim Davis … Everything we did was to try and honor the world that he created and bring it into this CG world.’
— Director Mark Dindal
Boose and his crew were responsible for the entire visual performance, covering anything that moves or emotes, and were inspired by the hallowed legacy of this lasagna-loving cartoon cat.
“I loved him in the ’80s,” Boose adds. “My parents are moving out of their house and they’re having a big clear-out. When I was home visiting them, they were making me go through all my old stuff. I found a sketchbook of mine from the ’80s, and it’s full of Garfield drawings. Even some of the drawings I was replicating for this movie. I loved that pose then and I love that pose now.”
The simplicity of the comic strips’ human emotions and commonplace situations is what grounds the source material and helps keep Garfield evergreen. Screenwriting duties landed with Finding Nemo’s Oscar-nominated scribe David Reynolds, co-writer of The Emperor’s New Groove, who composed a fun, family-oriented plot with collaborators Paul A. Kaplan and Mark Torgove that greatly expanded Garfield’s usual posse.
“The story basically is an unexpected reunion of Garfield and his irresponsible street cat father, who’s played by Samuel L. Jackson,” Dindal explains. “Upon this reunion, Garfield is pulled out of his very comfortable pampered life at home with Jon out into the outside world to join Vic in this high-stakes heist. Garfield is going to come to learn certain things about Vic that he’d made assumptions about and had misjudged [about] him. It’s all about how their relationship is transformed as a result of this adventure.”
Keeping that classic shape language, color palette and character design fans have come to expect was of vital importance, and Boose was diligent in retaining those longstanding poses.
“I can’t speak for Taylor [Krahenbuhl], our brilliant character designer, and Pete [Oswald] and Jeanie [Chang], our production designer and art director, but it all started with Jim Davis,” notes Boose. “Everything was to try and honor the world that he created and bring it into this CG world. Pete always talked about wanting a painterly, handmade kind of feel — a lot of backlit, very painterly brushstrokes. The backgrounds almost have a look of miniatures, which give it a really unique quality. It’s a perfect setting for Garfield to play out his story.
“Animation-wise, Mark [Dindal] really wanted us to push boundaries with the animation style on this one. We let the emotion and the story drive the animation. Sometimes the movie is very naturalistic and the movement is very relatable. And sometimes it’s crazy, wacky cartoony, like a Tex Avery film. Then sometimes it sort of hovers in between. The story drives everything.”
One of the stylistic influences that emerged early on was the feel that Dindal got as a youngster playing with his View-Master toy.
“I remember wanting to step into that world,” he adds. “Those were in stereo 3D, and we do have the stereo 3D version of Garfield, which I was so excited to see for the first time because it re-creates that feeling of stepping into this environment. But I even get that in the flat version because of the atmosphere Jason [Boose] mentioned, and it just creates a world that I feel like I want to walk around in and explore. I know that it’s not real, but it feels so real.”
‘Anytime we could hit one of those iconic Garfield poses — that deadpan, sardonic Garfield that we all know, love and remember — we’d do it.’
— Animation supervisor Jason Boose
Scoring such talents as Chris Pratt and Samuel L. Jackson to play Garfield and Vic was a godsend, and the A-list performers relished their time in the recording booth finding the two cats’ voices.
“We started with a clip of Chris Pratt from a talk show early on when we were experimenting with different actors, and we’d cut sound bites to the storyboard drawings to see if that voice would fit the character,” recalls Dindal. “He was talking about a restaurant or eating, and it just seemed to fit so well. Then I had a phone conversation with him, and he said, ‘Yeah. I know this character. I enjoy food and eating. I can relate to this guy.’”
He adds, “We wanted to have a foot in the Garfield that everybody knows, but this movie is also going to explore further dimensions of the character, and the demand for the acting was going to have quite a range. He’s pulled out of his comfort zone, so we’re going to see him not in control and devastated and panicked and worried and afraid. I felt Chris knew all of that, and I was very excited for him to see how he’d handle those different emotions. It’s always fun to see how they embody the character. We’d get some many wonderful choices on every scene.”
For Samuel L. Jackson’s scruffy father performance, Dindal encouraged the energetic actor to embrace the freedom to create a new character in the Garfield universe by ad-libbing and making it his own.
“He just hit it. And I knew he would be able to do that. Then it was just a matter of going through the scenes and telling him the context so he knew where he was in the story and where he was in the relationship, and we’d just sit in awe and watch these people work.”
Preserving and respecting the 45-year history of Garfield on this new feature provided not only the creative motivation for everyone involved but also extreme gratification.
Perfectly Posed
“We would always refer back to the original Jim Davis poses of Garfield whenever we could, and we really wanted to honor what he’d done because his drawings are beautiful,” notes Boose. “I loved them as a kid, but I actually appreciate them even more as a professional when you look back and realize there was so much skill in what he did. So anytime we could hit one of those iconic Garfield poses — that deadpan, sardonic Garfield that we all know, love and remember — we’d do it. The most fun was working with Mark; he’s an animator’s dream as a director.”
As Dindal reflects deeply on the whole experience, he believes that the most rewarding aspect is always the crew he’s working with. “It’s such a long production schedule that if that’s miserable it’s going to be unbearable,” he says. “The process is just fun for me. I’m happy to say that after all these years it’s always fresh and new. When you see it finally done and you’re pleased, the result is icing on the cake.”
Columbia Pictures and Alcon Entertainment will release The Garfield Movie in theaters nationwide on May 24.
