Ron’s Gone Wrong is the story of Ron, a walking, talking, digitally-connected B*Bot who is malfunctioning and Barney, a socially awkward middle-schooler, who just wants to make his “Best Friend out of the Box” right, sending them on an action-packed journey in which boy and robot come to terms with the wonderful messiness of true friendship. Locksmith Animation’s hilarious and touching debut starring Zach Galifianakis, Jack Dylan Grazer, Olivia Colman, Ed Helms and Rob Delaney, is sure to delight audiences young and old.
We had the absolute pleasure of attending the global press conference for Ron’s Gone Wrong and everyone was there. Moderator Edith Bowman gave us quite the show as we dived deep into Ron and Barney’s relationship. Just take a look at the amazing guest list:
TALENT
Zach Galifianakis (“Ron”)
Jack Dylan Grazer (“Barney”)
Ed Helms (“Graham”)
Kylie Cantrall (“Savannah”)
FILMMAKERS
Julie Lockhart (Producer)
Jean-Philippe Vine (Director)
Sarah Smith (Director, Writer & Exec Producer)
Octavio Rodriguez (Co-Director)
Peter Baynham (Writer, Exec Producer)
Check out some of the highlights:
Edith:
you’ve been part of this project for quite a few years, so
you must have seen this whole project and this character kind of grow and develop. And I
was just interested to kind of hear your thoughts on that and how you ended up finding how
you wanted to play Barney.
Jack Dylan Grazer:
Well, yeah, I started, wow, I guess I started back in 2017, I was 13 and I’m 18 now, so it’s been a while. But it’s been a whirlwind of a process and there’s so much evolution has happened, especially with Barney and the story as a whole. I remember the script, and there were so many different people, it was a whole other ballgame when I started. But I’m so glad that I stuck around and here we are now, and I’m so thrilled.
Edith:
Ed, this wonderful character Graham, the father character, there’s so much physical comedy around him when we watch him in the film, and I just was interested to find out from you how you achieve that with it being voice work, in terms of how you really animate that through your voice?
Ed Helms:
That’s a really interesting question, because the short answer is that I did none of it, it was all the talented animators and directors who did all of the physical comedy. But the more nuanced answer is that obviously as a brilliant voice actor, I’m able to infuse little nuggets of physicality. No, really, it’s all there on the page. It’s really fun to just bring these lines to life and these guys can tell you that the filmmakers… I don’t hold back in the booth, I’m definitely physical in the space and that I think helps it sound right and helps it sound physical and gets me there mentally.
Edith:
Zach, congratulations on this, because I was interested to find out about how you approached playing a computer, basically, a piece of technology, but bringing it to life and giving it a personality, and also an emotional personality that reacts to the story as he learns with you, which is really interesting and finds this friendship.
Zach Galifianakis
I think that that was a joint effort, to find that voice. Sometimes I would be too emotional, I think, and then I would get feedback from the booth like, “That’s too… we’re hearing a little crack of emotion there”. And I thought, God, I think I’m doing this wrong. I saw the buyer’s remorse in Sarah’s face. No. But I think honestly, it was a little tricky just to find it because you don’t want to do a robot. Obviously, they didn’t want that. They wanted more of my voice. But then how do you walk that line of not too much emotion, but likeable or lovable? So I had a lot of help, really, because I needed it. Also, it’s a tone thing too, in an animated thing there’s a lot of it. There’s a lot of imagination that’s required in the beginning, because
you don’t see a lot of visual stuff quite at the beginning. You’ve been told what’s happening and that’s a little bit of it. Sometimes it’s a little challenge, but honestly, I had help and they were very patient with me, which was, you know, when you don’t know what you’re doing like me, it’s helpful.
Edith:
Kylie, there’s some really beautiful messages in the film, and important ones as well. And I was interested to hear how you think Savannah, your character, plays into that, particularly around the world of young people and social media and the kind of journey that she has within the film.
Kylie Cantrall:
Savannah, you know, she’s your classic popular girl in school and from the outside, I think, she seems like she has it all together. And, social media is a huge part of this film and she’s taking these cute selfies and she’s doing these makeup tutorials. But I think underneath it all, she’s just a young girl trying to figure herself out, and I hope that young girls can relate to her and understand the pressures that she goes through and kind of resonate with that part of her.
Edith:
Octavio, I’m going to come to you now because I want to talk to you about this world that you’ve created, this landscape and this town and the home and the school that you created. And all of that is so important to the characters and to the progression of the characters and the way that the story unfolds. And I wondered if you could talk a little bit about creating that world and what the inspiration was with regards to that?
Octavio Rodriguez:
The basis for us was trying to make it as grounded as possible and setting the tone over in San Francisco. I like the woods, because there’s some beautiful pieces that we have with Barney and Ron, tumbling in the leaves and all. But I think the idea was just trying to find a way to ground it with the technology and the social networks and social media as a discussion, but finding a way to find a connection for us as well. So it was important to us just to keep it simple in one way, but also having again, the technology that’s in front of us.
Edith:
J.P., to accompany that, you have decided on the look of the animation and what that would actually look like. We’re so lucky that, as fans of animation, there are so many different types of animation and looks and feels of animation. How did you come to decide on what your animation would look like and the characters?
Jean-Philippe Vine:
Well, one of the big things was we wanted this world to feel stylised, gently stylised, but actually really plausible because we’re trying to tell a story that communicates to kids figuring real lives out. It’s a coming of age story in the era of social media, so we wanted it to feel like it had atmosphere and depth and richness. So our design and animation style, it’s definitely heightened, there’s all that comedy rhythm and timing that we love and all the physicality Ed’s talking about, we amplify it. The animators take all that reference footage and do great stuff with it. But at the same time, our characters are designed in a way that
supports who they are and what their emotional…, you know, Donka is like a force of nature and full of love, and you just want to hug her. So we’ve just designed her with that kind of lovely strength. So it’s all character driven. Good design has got to be character and story driven.
Edith:
And the start of this is obviously the story, coming up with the idea of what this story’s going to be and Sarah and Peter, I was really intrigued to share with everybody, if you wouldn’t mind, about the seed of this and what you wanted the story to be about and what you wanted people to take away from this film.
Sarah Smith:
For me, it sounds ridiculous for an animated movie, but actually the idea of it came to me when I saw Her, the Spike Jonze film, and I thought, I’ve got to make a movie like that for my three year old who is sitting there immersed in her iPad, believing every single thing that she’s reading or hearing on it, including which is the best fabric softener, etc. And, for me, I don’t know why people make movies for grownups, right? Who do we really care most about in our lives? It’s our children and our families.
And I, as a filmmaker, want to make movies that I can watch with my kids. That is proper ‘movie’ movies, with ideas that are sophisticated, something for us to talk about and obviously hilarious. And so the two things going on in my household is my kid going through, as all children do, the issues of friendship, and at the same time us as parents going, how do we help them in this world in which friendship is mediated by technology? So that was my emotional worthy reason for wanting to make the film. And then when I pitched the idea of it to Pete, and he said, well,
how about if the device is basically an idiot yet that can’t get upstairs? So Pete brought the comedy idiot in!
Peter Baynham:
I was really excited to have a story because, once Sarah mentioned this, we talked about a boy and robot story. You look at them and they’re all set in some imagined future. And we thought, no, have this now because that’s what kids and adults and everyone is going through now. And then, like we said, like Sarah said, to have this being an idiot… You know, this kid and it’s everyone, I’m like this with a printer, I want to throw it out the window because it doesn’t work. And I remember being as a kid, I would get some crap version of what every kid gets. And you’re just so frustrated and to have a friend that doesn’t actually
function, that’s not connected to the internet, that’s got four percent of its download… That just became a fantastic, you know, it’s funny, just a clownish character, but then it’s a blank canvas, and then he can gradually go along. And I think, with Ron, what Zach did so brilliantly was to then take this character, that’s almost blank, and just keeps repeating things back to you, but then that to become this comedic joy. It was just such a fun, fun thing to take on.
We then moved swiftly onto a huge Q&A and we got to ask Zach Galifianakis a question!
Edith:
Zach one’s next for you,from James Lister from Get Your Comic On, “What makes the bond between Ron and Barney so special, do you think?”
Zach Galifianakis:
Well, if you’ve ever been desperate for a friend, you know, that sometimes can make an interesting relationship. I think what’s neat is just to see the juxtaposition of all the cool kids with the toys that are supposed to work the way they are and then Barney’s given this more humanlike, if you will, robot with his flaws and glitches and just to watch that kind of natural progression. And they kind of fall in love with each other. I mean, Edith, you saw it. You see how charming Jack is. Yeah. I mean, if he’ll just shave that moustache, things will be fine.
Are you excited for Ron’s Gone Wrong? Let us know your thoughts in the comments. Ron’s Gone Wrong is in cinemas now. Be sure to check it out! Don’t forget to check out more film news here.
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