Cli-Fi: Director Tomm Moore’s Song of the Sea

If Song of the Sea follows The Secret of Kells to an Oscar nomination, or even a win, would the studios be able to entice you to make a blockbuster? Are you interested in that?

Tomm Moore: Not particularly. I thought about that more seriously around The Secret of Kells, and was particularly interested in some story departments, because I was impressed by how Pixar makes movies that appeal to massive audiences. But I got to be friends with some artists there who were saying, “Look, keep going, you’re going to learn more by making your own movies.” It’s tricky, because we’re always on a shoestring budget, but if I can keep making films outside of the system, I’m happy to. Any interest generated by a nomination for Song of the Sea will hopefully allow me to keep making more movies like it.

Sounds sensible to me.

Tomm Moore: I interpreted it as that when we got the Oscar nomination for The Secret of Kells. It felt like my peers and colleagues in American animation were saying, “Great! Let’s see more of this!”—rather than, “Come over here and make The Smurfs!”

Let’s rewind back to Richard Williams. I’m sure animators know who he is, but I feel the rest of the world still doesn’t.

Tomm Moore: It’s really a pity, isn’t it? He gave such gifts to animation during those dark days of cheap TV shows, and rescued greats like Ken Harris and Art Babbitt and sort of accumulated all their knowledge. I once met Roy Naisbitt, his art director/layout man and, funnily enough, also his studio administrator, which I could really relate to. I think there should be a statue built for Richard Williams somewhere. It’s interesting because while he never got to finish The Thief and the Cobbler, he did leave behind a legacy of teaching and understanding. He collected all that knowledge from the Golden Age and carried it forward. In animation circles, he inspired so many of us to see that animation could be an art form.

His work is so fluid, and has such a velocity. I think of the chase scene in Thief where the Thief is chased through dizzying patterns…

Tomm Moore: Yeah, the references to Bridget Riley and Op Art blew me away. In documentaries, Williams said animation could do Rembrandt but just hasn’t yet, that the height of animation wasn’t Disney, that the height of animation hasn’t even been reached. Now that we are living in such a graphic and visual society—where animation is basically everywhere, including our phones—there’s an opportunity to do what Williams was talking about, and was struggling to do in a much more limited era.

Well, I don’t want to put any pressure on you, but after The Secret of Kells and now Song of the Sea, students are going to be looking to you and asking you what you think.

Tomm Moore: Bizarre! What I really like about Richard Williams is that he never wanted to copy anyone. He wanted us to learn technique and technology, but he also wanted everyone to do their own thing. Even in his master classes, he’d say, “I’m just teaching you about this, so don’t copy me. Don’t be the Woody Woodpecker fan who just wants to remake Woody Woodpecker, again and again. Use the mechanics of animation to make something personal, in your own style.” That was what was so inspiring to us in Cartoon Saloon; we took Irish art and gave the world our take on it, but that isn’t to say that another Irish animator shouldn’t take the same thing and do something else. The fundamentals that Williams talks about may be the same, but the results should be different. That’s what I find most exciting, not copying each other but constantly reinventing ourselves, using the fundamentals.

You seemed to have learned that lesson, because when people see your films they know they are yours.

Tomm Moore: Yeah, which is actually great, even in a strange, purely capitalist way of thinking about it. I think there’s value in that. It’s obviously not what we think about in the first place, but now we want to keep moving forward with it, and carve out a little space for ourselves.