By Christina Radish
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John Travolta at the premiere of "Bolt" held at the El Capitan Theater in Hollywood, Calif. on November 17, 2008.
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For super-dog Bolt (voiced by John Travolta), every day is filled with adventure, danger and intrigue, at least until the cameras stop rolling. When the canine star of a hit TV show is accidentally shipped from his Hollywood soundstage to
New York City, he begins his biggest adventure yet -- a cross-country journey through the real world. Starring in a superhero series since he was tiny, the pup has the delusion that all of his amazing feats and powers are real. With the help of two unlikely traveling companions -- a jaded, abandoned house-cat, named Mittens (voiced by Susie Essman), and a TV-obsessed hamster in a plastic ball, named Rhino (voiced by Mark Walton) -- Bolt must learn to cope while trying to make his way back to his co-star and human pal, Penny (voiced by teen superstar Miley Cyrus), discovering along the way that he doesn’t need superpowers to be a hero.
Academy Award nominee John Travolta spoke to MediaBlvd Magazine about taking on his first animated feature, with Disney’s Bolt.
MediaBlvd Magazine> You have a very long development process for your characters. How different was it to do an animated character? Did you have to get in touch with your inner dog?
John Travolta> Fortunately, I’m already in touch with my inner dog. But, it was a new process for me. I had done advertisement voice-overs as a kid, for radio and television, so I was very comfortable with the microphone, but I had not yet gone on the journey of discovering how animated features are put together. Our director and his partner really helped me and guided me through this process because, to some degree, it’s a leap of faith. You don’t have the other actors with you, and you don’t really know what the animators are conjuring up as an end result, so you feel like, “Take me there and show me the way, and I’ll just give you a Chinese menu options.” You do 15 to 25 versions of one sentence, and then the animators hopefully like one of them when they put it together. That’s how it works.
MediaBlvd> What was it specifically that attracted you to this project, in the first place?
John> My good friends have done great animated features. Tom Hanks did Toy Story and Robin Williams did Aladdin, so I didn’t want to do an average film. If I was going to do an animated feature, I was going to do a great one. Michael Eisner had offered me a couple, and I didn’t quite think they were there, and then finally Dick Cook called and said, “I think we’ve got the one for you, and it’s going to be high end.” Miley was involved, and I thought, “Jeez, this is starting to look like a really high-end animated feature, so maybe this is the one to say yes to.” When I read the script, although I couldn’t really imagine what it would end up like because it’s only in the animator’s imagination, you have to take a little bit of a risk and trust that it’s going in the direction that you want. I thought, “I can play a dog with my eyes closed.” People always compared me to a dog growing up, and I didn’t know whether to be insulted or not. I also knew that they needed this other quality from a guy that’s in action movies and, because I’ve done a slew of those, I knew how to do that. Plus, I knew how to do the heart-breaking side, so I knew that I could help them.
MediaBlvd> Do you have a lot of close friends? Are your friendships important to you?
John> I do have close friends in my life and I’m very loyal to them, and have been for many, many years. The easiest part to identify with, in this character, was the friendship part. I’m a big guy in that area, as far as loyalty and commitment to my friends.
MediaBlvd> Did you draw on any experience with your action movies for this, since it’s a bombastic action movie in some places?
John> Yes, actually, I did. I wasn’t sure how much of a reality to put into it. It’s an animated feature geared mostly towards young people, so I couldn’t do the edgier stuff, but I could do a modified version of what I did in
Broken Arrow and Face/Off, and then balance it with all the naivete and the guilelessness.
MediaBlvd> How does voice work compare to live-action work?
John> You really only need your voice in animation, except when the animators need a little help with expression, and they’ll film you doing your voice so that they can add another layer there. You can help them with certain personal expressions, but technically you really only need your voice. I learned that from actually doing TV ads when I was a teenager. I was on Broadway and the producer from Madison Avenue said, “John, you’re not on stage right now. I just need it from your voice, I don’t need it from your face.” So, I learned to just focus on the vocal expression to give cadence and different styles there.
MediaBlvd> Growing up, did you have an animated character that you were partial to?
John> One of my favorite animated movies was 101 Dalmatians, but I also liked Peter Pan. Those were probably my two favorite animated features growing up.
MediaBlvd> What was it like to work with Miley Cyrus for your duet together?
John> We finally did the video together, where we sang together, but we had to sing our parts separately on the duet. I was so popular, when I got home. As if doing a movie with her wasn’t big enough news, singing and dancing with her was a whole other thing. I can dine out on that for months.
MediaBlvd> What did you take away from doing this part?
John> You’re so busy doing 100 versions of what you think is needed, and all out of sequence, so you don’t really get a sense, while you’re doing it, of the impact you’re creating. You just know that you’re hoping that the animators like your choices and they find the one out of 100 takes that is going to be the one for the movie. It’s really in the totality of the end result that you get the impact, as an audience might. So, when I saw it, I cried five times, and I laughed probably a ton more than that. I just didn’t know how clever this movie was really going to be. As an audience member, it left me touched, and wanting to go home and hug everybody I loved, including my pets.
