Better Man Movie. Credit: Facebook page of Better Man Movie
Toronto/CMEDIA: Director of the TIFF 2024 movie ‘Better Man’ Michael Gracey portrays the protagonist Robbie Williams from start to finish using CGI animation and brings the singer Robbie Williams to life as a photorealistic chimpanzee.
When Williams casually called himself a “performing monkey,” Gracey took the remark to an unexpected level.
Asha Bajaj, IBNS-CMEDIA correspondent on the sidelines of TIFF 2024 in conversation with Michael Gracey to learn more about his use of CGI animation in bringing the singer to life as a photorealistic chimpanzee. An excerpt of the conversation follows…
What was your motive for creating this film?
Mr Michael Gracey: This film was created from a series of recordings with Robbie Williams. After listening back to these recordings that happened over the course of a year and a half I found Rob constantly talking about being dragged up on stage to perform like a Monkey many times. I felt there’s really something to this performing monkey that he sees in himself. When I asked Rob what animal he sees as himself, he said after a minute that he sees himself more as a monkey. So that motivated me to portray him as he sees himself and it led to something really special. So I am indebted to Rob, and Jonah Davies who plays Robbie in the film.
To Robbie: The idea of performing like a monkey is one thing and driving it all the way through to finishing a film with all the complications involved is another thing. What were the steps along the way that actually got you from the brilliant idea to this.
Robbie: It was really special because all three of us watched the film together for the first time. My background is in animation and visual effects so I know how difficult this is and even when I was shooting it I kept looking over at Luke the visual effects supervisor for approval. Dave, the animation supervisor, was on since the preview where we were working it out and then used that preview as very crude animation with cameras. We actually showed that to distributors, investors to convince them that a monkey could convey the emotion we wanted.
Fantastic Robie you were hilarious in introducing the movie but there’s a lot of pain in the story as you’re going through the process of the screenplay and going through these experiences again in the production and the edit and you must have to be reliving.
Yes I’m in the middle of having an overwhelming feeling so this is the fourth time I’ve watched it and it’s a different experience. The thing about crying is that you feel as though it’s never going to stop. When Paramount Pictures said that I was doing it right, I began enjoying the overwhelming experience. I know I’ve got to say words.
Can you talk about first of inhabiting the spirit and story of Robbie but then also the technical challenge in acting the movie. You’ve got musical numbers, you’ve got a lot of physical things and the emotions that are not easy for an actor to. How did you build those different layers of the performance?
Robbie: The biggest challenge for me was being able to recreate affecting space the way that he does so it was analyzing interview after interview of course. Robbie had the fortunate and unfortunate experience of having a lot of this life in the public eye and so there’s a lot of stuff out there and then bringing a side to rob that the world hasn’t seen. That’s the vulnerable person that was led to believe that Fame would solve everything when Fame was actually creating a lot of the issues and so adding those details in. And trusting my wonderful team day after day gets all those moves out. And then Michael just created an ethos across the whole production that trickled down and just bled passion and and bled professionalism to create what we think is going to be something really special from the director’s point of view. It was extraordinary to watch. We would look back at the footage and just marvel at what he was wearing just a gray wet with tracking markers and had a camera that was hanging out in front of his face to capture his facial expressions and his his his wetsuit was soaked through with sweat in so many of those takes because he would just go again and again and again it it was really extraordinary.
To Robbie: People have done motion capture pieces before but not singing and dancing like this and with the detailed study of Rob that you see so much of Rob in that performance. Can you elaborate on this.
Robbie: I think loads of pain in it with each experience, very different. But today because the audience was in and then that overwhelming feeling of acceptance led me to do it again. When I say give me Fame give me Fame give me Fame what I really was asking for is acceptance and to be understood. I think anyone who watches Better Man will see so many artists, people in public are looking for that same kind of acceptance. But there’s a self-awareness that allows you to have a film like this made and it’s in the lyrics of so many of your films as well. I feel Better Man takes things to another level and as far as I’m concerned for what a music bio can look like within this genre and understanding that this now becomes the definitive screen history of Robbie Williams.
To Michael: What do you want this film to do as it goes out into the world?
Michael: it’s really interesting because what people take away from the film always fascinates me and I had that on my first film I thought there was really specific things that people would take away and then people would just blow my mind when they would pick one moment or one look or one lyric and they would talk about how it completely changed a situation for them. I think it’s true that it’s such an emotional roller coaster and there are so many moments of dealing with different things. I think that people will take different things away from it which is a really beautiful thing. It’s such a privilege to create not only stuff like that on a global scale but also to have the ability to affect people in that way.
Robie I just want to see if there’s anything further you want to say about what this has meant to you to have this story literally up so magnified on the big screen for you.
I think more will be revealed to be honest with you. Being a professional attention seeker, I need to facilitate this.Then the night it came out I got emails from people all telling me how much the film touched them. From that moment on it became something different to me. I realized that I have done something that was touching people, healing in some sort of way. They saw themselves in me. So right now reporting live from what it’s doing is having some sort of healing effect because tears are healing,
