Based on the popular Chinese graphic novel "Tibetan Rock Dog", written and illustrated by Zheng Jun (renowned as one of China’s first and most popular rock stars), the animated movie Rock Dog follows a Tibetan Mastiff named Bodi (voiced by Luke Wilson) on his journey to becoming a rock ‘n’ roll star. To succeed, he must leave his home on Snow Mountain, defy his father’s wishes, and head to the city to find the legendary but reclusive musician Angus Scattergood (voiced by Eddie Izzard), who is not exactly in the mood to help anyone do anything, let alone a young dog looking to fulfill his dreams.

During this 1-on-1 phone interview with Collider, actor/comedian Eddie Izzard talked about what convinced him to sign on for Rock Dog, the highly collaborative experience he had with director Ash Brannon, getting to do an ad-libbing voice session with co-star Luke Wilson, that Angus is an amalgam of every rock ‘n’ roll person he’d ever heard of or met, and why creative people have to never stop evolving. He also talked about writing his first dramatic feature film, Six Minutes to Midnight, why it’s a subject that he’s so passionate about, and how he hopes to get it into production this year.

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Collider: Angus Scattergood is an interesting character because he has much more adult dialogue and speech than we would expect from an animated feature. Were you able to have free reign with finding who this guy is?

EDDIE IZZARD: That’s interesting. That is a good point. I don’t know how to do kid’s dialogue, and I don’t think I would do it. I think it’s more fun when it sounds adult, but the kids can get a handle on it, so that the older people watching it can go, “I like this, too!”

How was your experience collaborating with Ash Brannon, as a director?

IZZARD: I really wasn’t sure, at the beginning, if I should do this. The character of the fading rock star is a bit been there before. The greatest thing that Ash Brannon did with me was allow me to try things and test it out and see where we could get to. I just went into this place where I liked him. He let me go wherever I felt, in the moment. And I was doing that with Luke [Wilson]. Me and Luke got together in Dallas and we did a session together, so we were ad-libbing. The idea of swearing, and then putting a car over it, really worked and was very real. A lot of that chase afterwards was ad-libbed, as well. Ash just let us go, which was a great thing. If you’re locked down and locked into the script, it’s less compelling. I just like doing it, if they’ll let me go.

Were you and the director always on the same page about this being a much more collaborative process than is typical for animated movies?

IZZARD: I think so. It started from the fact that it was slightly outside the box. He wanted to try different things to see where it would go. As long as you keep in the direction of the script and you know where you’re going in the scene, you can muck about, and I find the mucking about so much fun. All this weird stuff comes out, and if they don’t like it, they can cut it.

Who is Angus Scattergood to you? Did you see him as similar to any one or a combination of rockers, or did you see him as very much his own being?

IZZARD: I saw him as an amalgam of everything. I thought of every rock ‘n’ roll person I’d ever heard of or met, and comedian, and solo performance artist, with this idea that you have this living based on your imagination, but your imagination isn’t doing anything. So, I was channeling all of that. It wasn’t anyone specific. That’s how it came out. I channeled everything, and that’s what came out.

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Image via Summit Entertainment

Who was Angus, at the top of his career, compared to who he is now, when we see him in the film?

IZZARD: I think he really was the protagonist of his band. I think he put it together, got in there and was the driving force, but then either left or got fired from the band, and he can’t stay creative. Rock ‘n’ rollers, and maybe even some actors, get to a place and they think, “I’ve made it, and now I’m gonna cruise on in.” But if you take your foot of the pedal, you will stop creating. [David] Bowie is a great example. He would go from artistic and quirky to mainstream and playing stadiums. He just kept reinventing and moving on. You have to be brave enough to destroy what you’ve created because people will get bored of it. You’ve got to do something good, and then move on, which can be a scary thing to do.

Can you sympathize with Angus’ writer’s block, or are you someone who doesn’t believe in writer’s block and thinks you should just keep pushing through?

IZZARD: That’s an interesting point. I haven’t had or gone through writer’s block. They also talk about hitting a wall. Apparently, when you hit a wall, if you just keep writing, you’ll come out of it. I think it’s more of a psychological thing. I don’t feel like I’ve experienced it. Very early on, I remember saying to my parents, “You’ve gotta get somewhere, and then you just cruise on that for the rest of your life.” I think I said some sentence like that. And then, I realized that you have to keep evolving and changing. Change is the thing. It’s not getting somewhere and just sitting on it. I don’t hit the wall or get writer’s block because I just keep going somewhere else. You’ve got to always be starting. You’re always competing with the people just coming onto the scene, so you’ve gotta figure out where you go next.

You’ve written the feature film, Six Minutes to Midnight. Is that something you hope to get into production soon?

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Image via Summit Entertainment

IZZARD: Yes, it’s definitely something I hope to get into production soon. Film is my first love. Comedy is probably my second love. It was about getting into films, initially, but then I backed off of that, thinking that I couldn’t do drama. And then, when it took so long for my comedy to break through, I thought, “I’m going to do drama, as well,” and I doubled down. I have two separate agents in the U.K., and I’m pushing in two directions, which are different. So, I do want to get that into production, hopefully this year. I believe it can work. It needs to be good. The trouble is that I knew I didn’t want my first film to be something where people go, “Woah, that was really not good.” As long as it’s a basic level of good, you can build upon that and make it better than good. And I just knew that I didn’t have the perfect sense of drama structure. For my comedy, I developed a system that’s very left field and the idea associations sweep through little vignettes. I knew that style would not be able to make good films. They would be really weird. Wes Anderson films are wonderful, and that’s a direction I’d like to head towards. I do like the beauty of his films, and the magic worlds. It’s beautiful and each shot is like a painting. It’s just a wonderful thing. Making films is really what I wanted to do, in the first place, it’s just taken a long time to get there because I’ve had these other things to do. That’s just the way life is.

What is it about this story, in particular, that keeps you passionate enough about it to keep at it, even though it’s taking some time to get it into production?

IZZARD: It took a long time to get it out of me. Celyn Jones is the co-writer that I worked with, and I needed Celyn to work with. When I write, I don’t actually write on paper. I just try out my stuff by ad-libbing, and then having the audience react. But I needed to work with someone else, so I worked with Celyn. He started writing scripts. Set Fire to the Stars was his first film. And then, we met again at the Cannes Film Festival and said, “Let’s do it now.” So, we decided to do this project, which I’ve been working on for five or six years. Suddenly, we got it done much quicker with him. It’s set in the summer of 1939. It seems like we’ve just headed back to the 1930s, so suddenly this film has become something that can really resonate. Half of the world seems to be falling backwards, hating people left, right and center, for absolutely no logical reason. Somebody said, “Let’s go hate these people because it’s their fault.” It wasn’t back in the 30s, and it isn’t now. I just happened to find this place in my hometown that had loads of German girls who were being taught English. There were different schools there, and one was full of girls, some of whom were linked through the leaders in Germany in the 30s. I just that that was too good of a start point not to build a story from. We’ll see how it lands, but I think it can be very interesting.

Rock Dog is now playing in theaters.

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