Disclosure: I was given an all-expense paid trip to the Los Angeles area by Disney in exchange for sharing my experience with all of you! ALL opinions shared are my own. 
I was so excited to have the opportunity to interview the two main minds of the movie Tomorrowland when we were in LA a few weeks ago. I was interested in learning about their vision for the movie, how they worked with the cast and what their takeaways from the movie were. Now that I am back home and Tomorrowland releases on Friday in theaters, I am pleased to bring you the exclusive Brad Bird & Damon Lindelof interview from the Tomorrowland Event.
How did the information from the Disney archives help you to bring tomorrowland to life on the big screen?
Damon: I think that we are both fascinated with imagineering and particularly Walt’s futurism. A lot of that stuff was rampant in the early days of designing the Parks itself. And in Tomorrowland, obviously, he came up with the concept in the 50s and 60s but I think that this sort of treasure trove of roads not taken, the part that Brad and I particularly zeroed in on was the 1964 world’s fair where there were a number of attractions like the magic skyway and small world of course. It would be really great to see those on the big screen kind of re-create that feeling. Our initial ambition was a lot higher but again the world’s fair as what they represented at the time, particularly in the 60s, the connection to Disneyland that was really the stuff that we kind of locked in on. But it’s also that world’s fairs in and of themselves were a thing where people would bring together their brightest minds and talk about the future. And they were semi regular event where people came together from all over the world and kind of traded ideas. And they had a utopian aspect. And when we were talking about what happened to the idea of a positive future we kind of started to notice that that great future sort of disappeared around the time the world’s fairs disappeared. The, you know, the world was, went through world wars and had plenty of strife but people clung to the idea of things in the future will be better. And that idea seems to have been retired. And we are now everybody seems to be going, yeah it’s going to suck. You know? And is there anything we can do about it? No. So we’re all just kind of –, thank you. We’re all just kind of on this bus that we have no control over the destination. And we were just kind of looking at each other going, why did that change? And when did it change? And you know, how do we get back to it? So that was kind of trying to do sort of a fable around that idea was kind of on our minds.
Photo Credit: Louise Bishop / Momstart.com
Both of you are very creative individuals and it seems like you just love storytelling. So what do you do to feed that creativity and just help you tell those stories?
Brad: Coffee. Yeah. It doesn’t have to be Starbucks by the way.
Damon: I think, you know we watch, we watch a lot of TV. We go and see a lot of movies. And we tell our wives and children that that’s work. But it is the idea of constantly sort of surrounding yourself. I do feel for me in particular and I think that Brad shares this is we sort of grew up in that culture and the idea of saying like, I want to do this one day. But where we start almost every time that we get together is oh, did you see this? Did you read this? What do you think about that? And I think that we are so steeped we are fans of this material ourselves. The fact that we get to make it. And I think the minute that you start to seal yourself off and say, I’m just going to become completely introverted and write my own stuff and you close the gates to everything that surrounds you. I think in a lot of ways this movie as Brad was just saying is a little bit of a response to these other you know, to the sort of apocalyptic storytelling that we’ve been kind of barraged with. And we love the hunger games. And I want to see mad Max. But I also think like there’s got to be a future that isn’t of people trying to kill each other in the desert or teenagers killing each other.
Photo Credit: Louise Bishop / Momstart.com
In terms of the future itself there’s a lot of technology in the movie. It is great that we can touch something and get transported somewhere else. What part of technology would you like to have today from the ones that we see in the movie?
Damon: Well, I would love to be able to travel somewhere without having to actually get on a plane. I mean I love the idea of walking through a doorway and being somewhere else. I think that that would probably change the planet in wonderful and nightmarish ways. But I think that there are a lot of sort of dream concepts in this movie. And that was one of the things that attracted me was getting a chance to glimpse those things. Of course, you sit there and talk about all the things that you could put on screen and that’s a wonderful pie in the sky moment of any movie. And that’s usually very early. And then pretty soon you have to get down to the sobering reality after binging all my on what it could be, ha, ha. You know? And then you go, then you go, well wait a minute now that was great last night. I’m kind of hung over now but it’s two hours, we only get to spend this much money and we have a story to tell which means we can’t spend two hours just going, woohoo. So, you have to start saying what ideas are central to the story that you’re trying to tell. And sometimes your favorite notions don’t fit into the story you’re trying to tell. So you save that for another day.
Photo Credit: Louise Bishop / Momstart.com
So when you’re writing this and with the storytelling do you bounce ideas off of one another or do you write in collaboration?
Brad: Yeah, Damon has been developing this idea with Jeff Jensen for about six months and I was an admirer of Damon’s work on Lost. My family and I are totally into Lost and watched it together. And any time the episode credited Damon had a screen credit on that script I would like, go like that to my wife and go, this is going to be good. You know? Yeah. But I was a fan of Damon’s work. And on mission impossible at the very end when the movie was basically shot but there were a couple of things that were right. And so there wasn’t very much wiggle room. And Damon came on for about a month and help us fix some really very specific things. It was like brain surgery kind of writing where it had to fit into here and they are. And he did a wonderful job. So we were just hanging out. And I said, what are you doing next? And he mentioned this idea that he’d been developing with Jeff. And it just sounded amazing to me. So that’s when I kind of jumped on board.
Damon: Yeah, and I think just in terms of the process, the writing process was Brad was really wonderful because you know, he would come down to LA. We’d hold up in a hotel room for a couple of nights. Yeah, or I’d come back and forth and we’d just flip our laptops open and just sort of sit and talk. And every time that I write in collaboration I write in a different way but I don’t like writing alone. And I really enjoy that process. And Brad makes it great. He makes the perfect English muffins I have to say. I started writing very slow just so I could get more English muffins. That’s really what it was all about. Sorry, go ahead.
Photo Credit Dawn Monroe/The Frugal Mom
Can you tell us more about the discovery of the 1952 box and how that inspired you in the movie?
Damon: Yes, you know, I will say that the origin –. The more that we look into you know, what the origins of the box are and where it came from and who found it, the less –, you know, the less defined answers that we get. Suffice to say we became fairly convinced looking through it that we didn’t know exactly what it was. The items in it could have been you know, probably 80% of them were completely and totally uninteresting. But the ones that were interesting to us felt like, what if we were kids in third grade and someone put this box in front of us and said, tell us a story about the things that you find in this box. How would they all connect? And we took some things like the design for the, it’s a small world ride and Flushing Meadows in 64. And this weird kind of like disk that might have been an animation that Orson Welles might have had some interest in. And we sort of said, what if Walt Disney was a member of this secret group of geniuses plus ultra. Tomorrowland itself was actually a cover for a real place that they built in an alternate dimension? And then we were kind of off to the races. And the box became just sort of you know, a part of the prompt- the “santa myth.” It became sort of the North Pole but we were more focused on trying to leave presents under people’s trees. Bad metaphor but, Santa is real.
What do you think people will learn or take away from watching this film?
Brad: Well, I think we are hesitant to make it like broccoli and say you know, although I like broccoli –. But you know, this –, go see this movie because it’s good for you. That’s the sure way to have sagebrush blowing through the theater.
Damon: Do you like broccoli kids? You’re going to love Tomorrowland. Yeah. Broccoli and homework? Yeah. We’re doing some viral with the broccoli industry. On the back of the box just a tie in.
Brad: A talking broccoli.
Damon: Yeah, absolutely. Hey kids. I’m good for you just like Tomorrowland. No one is writing this down. This is great!
Brad:But I mean our goal first and foremost is to make a great time at the movies. And you know, go well with popcorn and all of that. That said, my favorite rides in terms of movies are rise where I still think about them later. And there’s a lot of very loud, very fast, very disposable entertainment right now!But you know, it’s all of that. And then you are –, before the like even come up in the theater you’re thinking about something else and you know that you paid money, you know that you were not bored. And you know that you heard a lot of loud sounds and saw some flashy movement. But there’s not a lot to take away. And I don’t think those two things need to be mutually exclusive, you know. I loved ET you know, years ago. And you know, on the face of it, it’s a movie about a rubber alien puppet you know, but it absolutely swept you away and got you emotionally involved. And you thought about it. You know? And we, I think we would like to be that. And we would like people hopefully to think –, come away thinking I have a hand in the future. I’m not a passenger on this bus. I can be the driver. And that we collectively are in charge of where we want, what we want the future to be. That it’s a malleable thing that’s changing every day. And it’s being created by what people do today.
Damon: We have a young woman in the movie that you guys are well aware of and she is being barraged with the polar ice caps are melting, things are going to be much worse in the future. And she asks the only relevant question which is, can you know, can we fix it? And we hope that you walk out of the movie at the end saying, you can but you have to do something. You can’t just sort of sit around and the future isn’t something that happens to us it’s something that we make happen. And I think that she certainly comes out of the movie feeling that way.
Photo Credit: Louise Bishop / Momstart.com
Being a huge Welles fan and now seeing the amazing Tomorrowland, your imagination is incredible. I was just wondering do you know where you’re going with the storyline from start to end or does it change? Because I’m noticing and lost in Tomorrowland it just blows me away. It’s so creative and I don’t know if you know where you’re going with the story from the start.
Damon: It was originally called lost in Tomorrowland. Kind of gets you off the hook, too. Hey, I didn’t say I was going to find anything. Thank you for saying all of that. I think that when I get engaged in a story there is a fair amount of sort of mystery involved in it. I just, I love the idea of the unknown and sort of like what is that? Especially when we go to movies these days and you see the trailers before the movies. And it sort of feels like, oh in two minutes they just told me the entire movie. There’s like, I want to go see the avengers but I kind of feel like I just saw the avengers. And so we were engaged by this idea of Tomorrowland because you hear that title and you go, it feels familiar, it creates an emotional idea in me but I don’t exactly know what it’s about. And the same is true of Lost. At the same time you can’t write unless you know where you’re headed. Because every time you come to a crossroads, every time you’re at a fork, if you don’t know where you’re headed you’re just going to sit there and basically not know which way to turn the wheel. That said, as you’re driving. Often especially if –, some –, if you switch the driver and the passenger from time to time you make all these very interesting discoveries which is why I love collaborating. And I think that when Brad and I and Jeff Jensen and I all sort of got together and started talking about the story of Tomorrowland, we all kind of felt like we knew what the story that we wanted to tell was. And how it was going to end. Where it goes from here, there are a number of different possibilities. But we didn’t want it to feel like this movie is a cliffhanger or were setting up a franchise or there’s nine different characters coming in at the end. And you know, now we’re setting up our own Tomorrowland universe. We sort of felt like if this is the only movie that we get to make we wanted to feel like it’s complete which is a much different storytelling mechanism that TV where every episode is designed to get you to watch the next episode. So, there was somewhat of a relief to say you know, this is their journey. This place has a problem. These characters fix that problem and things are much better off than they were when we started the movie.
So, what did you think? I really enjoyed learning about their vision of Tomorrowland and what things they found in the 1952’s box. This interview was great to hear about the bottom line planning and coordinating of the movie. Once we had this interview, it was great to hear those playing the part in the movie tell their stories and compliments about working with Brad and Damon.
Tomorrowland opens in theaters on Friday, May 22 and is rated PG, making it a family friendly movie. You can see in the text above that Brad and Damon allowed it to be made that way! 🙂
Here’s the movie trailer:
TOMORROWLAND
DISNEY
Website and Mobile site: www.Disney.com/Tomorrowland
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Genre: Mystery Adventure
Rating: PG
U.S. Release date: May 22, 2015
Running time: 130 min.
Cast: George Clooney, Hugh Laurie, Britt Robertson, Raffey Cassidy, Tim McGraw, Kathryn Hahn, Keegan-Michael Key, Thomas Robinson
Director: Brad Bird
Producers: Damon Lindelof, Brad Bird, Jeffrey Chernov
Executive Producers: John Walker, Bernard Bellew, Jeff Jensen, Brigham Taylor
Story by: Damon Lindelof & Brad Bird & Jeff Jensen
Screenplay by: Damon Lindelof and Brad Bird
STORY SYNOPSIS: From Disney comes two-time Oscar® winner Brad Bird’s riveting, mystery adventure “Tomorrowland,” starring Academy Award® winner George Clooney. Bound by a shared destiny, former boy-genius Frank (Clooney), jaded by disillusionment, and Casey (Britt Robertson), a bright, optimistic teen bursting with scientific curiosity, embark on a danger-filled mission to unearth the secrets of an enigmatic place somewhere in time and space known only as “Tomorrowland.” What they must do there changes the world—and them—forever.
Featuring a screenplay by “Lost” writer and co-creator Damon Lindelof and Brad Bird, from a story by Lindelof & Bird & Jeff Jensen, “Tomorrowland” promises to take audiences on a thrill ride of nonstop adventures through new dimensions that have only been dreamed of.
ONE-LINER: In Disney’s riveting mystery adventure “Tomorrowland,” a jaded scientist and an optimistic teen embark on a danger-filled mission to unearth the secrets of an enigmatic place somewhere in time and space.
OFFICIAL BOILERPLATE: From Disney comes two-time Oscar® winner Brad Bird’s “Tomorrowland,” a riveting mystery adventure starring Academy Award® winner George Clooney. Bound by a shared destiny, former boy-genius Frank (Clooney), jaded by disillusionment, and Casey (Britt Robertson), a bright, optimistic teen bursting with scientific curiosity, embark on a danger-filled mission to unearth the secrets of an enigmatic place somewhere in time and space known only as “Tomorrowland.” What they must do there changes the world—and them—forever.
Featuring a screenplay by “Lost” writer and co-creator Damon Lindelof and Brad Bird, from a story by Lindelof & Bird & Jeff Jensen, “Tomorrowland” promises to take audiences on a thrill ride of nonstop adventures through new dimensions that have only been dreamed of.
The film also stars Hugh Laurie as brilliant scientist David Nix, Raffey Cassidy, Tim McGraw, Kathryn Hahn, Keegan-Michael Key and Thomas Robinson.
“Tomorrowland” is produced by Damon Lindelof, Brad Bird and Jeffrey Chernov and directed by Brad Bird, with John Walker, Bernard Bellew, Jeff Jensen and Brigham Taylor serving as executive producers. “Tomorrowland” opens in U.S. theaters on May 22, 2015.