What circumstances does a person need in order to truly feel safe enough to finally find their voice? This is the question directors Will Speck and Josh Gordon are hoping to unravel with their upcoming live-action, CGI comedy musical Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile. Originally a 1960s-era children's book, the decades-long directing duo immediately gravitated toward the original story's inherent sophistication. While yes, Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile is a magical tale of a singing Crocodile named Lyle (in the forthcoming movie, portrayed by Shawn Mendes) landing himself amidst a family of humans, Speck and Gordon immediately recognized that Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile, along with its contemporary 60s-era stories like Charlotte's Web and Corderoy, blended classic children's literature tropes with darker, more melancholy themes. Speck described, "this undercurrent of something other than what just appears on the surface," that feels incredibly relevant for present-day children to engage with and unpack. Gordon explained that these original books offered, "more sophisticated stories that deal with adult themes, but in a voice that children could understand." Of gravitating toward developing Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile in particular into a film, Speck explained that:
...what we loved about the book was the original author [Bernard Waber] worked in advertising and he really missed his family everyday, and he would sit at his desk and doodle, and he would image that he was a surrogate in the form of this crocodile spending time with his family because he couldn’t. So there’s something that we picked up on about the longingness and the loneliness, but also the idea that in your absence, that something could come in and bring your family unexpected joy...It’s always stuck with us because of that undercurrent of melancholy, but also the idea that you can infer change onto an inanimate object, or a character that doesn’t speak, or an unlikely delivery system for bringing you change was interesting to us.
Gordon continued with:
I think also for us the story, whether it meant to or not, is really about acceptance. It’s about fear of the other, and it’s about finding your voice — both themes that felt important to put out into the world. And we have kids now, and wanted to kind of reintroduce a new generation to those themes.
Directing a Live-action, CGI Musical Comedy Is a Balancing Act
Balancing the pressures of actualizing such beloved source material with quite a complex array of cinematic moving parts was no small feat. To bring Lyle to life with as much of Mendes' inherent gentle-genius nature as possible, Speck and Gordon leveraged all sorts of creative tricks. First, they recorded Mendes' performances in his vocal booth so as to capture as much of Mendes' personality as possible. The animators then used these recordings as jumping-off points for Lyle's character development. And the creative solutions didn't stop there. On set, instead of going the route of traditional motion capture, Speck and Gordon hired an actual actor (Ben Palacios) to portray Lyle during production. By using this method, the spirit of Lyle became much more present, tactile, and believable for every on-set collaborator involved. Speck explained the process:
So he sort of had a cage on his head and it was funny because on set…Lyle’s eyes were up here but the actor’s eyes were here and we’d constantly be like 'look up, look up, look up!' But in the end, it worked out great...It really allowed, I mean our actors are so fantastic, but the suspension of disbelief to not just be acting opposite nothing. To have an actor there to pull your emotions. And it was a great thing for us because we could direct him to sort of guide him towards empathy, or humor, or surprise, and the animators then could look at that actual performance and start to dig into it.
How They Enticed Javier Bardem to Join the Cast
And even so, the process was not uncomplicated, beginning with onboarding Javier Bardem to play Lyle's charismatic owner, Hector P. Valenti. Before Bardem became the scary, powerful presence of an actor he's so well-known as today, his career actually began in comedy. Knowing this, having recently seen Bardem's work in Being the Ricardos, and wanting this movie to deliver a nuanced depth that so few children's films do, Speck and Gordon knew Bardem was their absolute first choice. Of the casting process, Speck explained:
We said Javier, and the studio said well you’ll never get him, but good luck. And then six Zooms later, he finally, reluctantly said yes. I think he was nervous about jumping into something that he perceived to be very comedic in his mind. Because he was really swinging out there...We talked to him about the integrity of the character and finding the dramatic roots to the character ultimately so that it wasn’t just played for jokes, but that we wanted to play this as a fully dimensional, real character and that, that’s why we wanted him. Because we wanted it to not be an expected performance of something you’ve seen. And what was exciting about him was I feel like you haven’t seen this guy before. You haven’t seen Javier do this and his voice was great.
As Collaborators, Speck and Gordon are Each Other's Perfect Compliments
The duo has been in creative partnership with one another since they first graduated from NYU Film School. With decades of experience working together, they've found their collaboration's unique rhythm. When asked what the key to sustaining their partnership all of these years has been, Gordon pointed to trust, saying:
I think we’re brothers in a lot of ways. We kind of grew up together. We started immediately out of NYU Film School and it worked so well that we never really strayed. We never really needed to go anywhere, but you know, you grow, I mean we’re different people than when we started. And I think there’s just a creative trust and a… I always know that I have a partner that will support what’s important to me, and I think he does as well, which I think, in this industry, is rare.
Speck agreed, adding:
We just also have a rhythm and there’s things I think that we both tend to gravitate to on set, just different things that we both like…but I think it just works really well.
What It's Like Making Your First Movie Musical
Gordon and Speck's familiarity with collaboration has undoubtedly helped them navigate this new world of movie musicals they've found themselves in while directing Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile. A bonafide musical, Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile will feature 8 new songs, including "Heartbeat," a new Shawn Mendes original track recorded specially for the movie. Of working in this new movie musical medium, Gordon shared:
We learned quite a bit about musicals from Benj Pasek and Justin Paul who are masters at it and it’s a much more efficient narrative storytelling structure. Characters can accomplish growth in a single song that would take ten minutes in a normal movie. So [coming] out of much more narrative filmmaking, it was interesting how quick and efficient the audience is willing to move with you.
As Pasek and Paul delivered incredible pop song after pop song in the production process, most often simply using a piano, a guitar, and an iPhone, Speck and Gordon saw their task as finding what either before or after the song could be reduced, because so much of the story was now being conveyed through the power of song. They also felt pressure, Gordon explained:
...[to] really like elevate these musical numbers so that they’re as infectious as the songs. And really, that took months of rehearsal, camera rehearsal, digital previsualization oftentimes trying to constantly beat it up so that it didn’t just feel [like a] Proscenium and flat, but that you were in the experience like in "Rip Out the Recipe," you felt the euphoria of that song.
And while navigating this new dynamic of working in a musical format obviously required confronting a learning curve, Speck and Gordon found some relief in working in the world of children's storytelling rather than adult comedy. Of the differences in finding humor in this kind of project versus their other films like Office Christmas Party and The Switch, Speck said:
We had such a beautiful script from Will Davies who wrote this script. What happens on comedies is you’re constantly throwing jokes on the day to best it, and it’s a little bit of an exhaustive driving on a highway because, you know, you do a scene and you’re like well how can we plus that joke? How can we plus that joke? Sometimes you have punch-up writers on set with you, or you’re asking the actors to improv, and there’s a little bit of that kind of penny stock, short-shift exhaustion. And it was funny because on this movie, the first couple days, it would be like an earnest scene where like Josh would say to his mom okay I’m going to school and we’d be like cut, and be like… is this it? Should we do something else? It seems good right? Like it’s fine, we just move on? Like that’s what we do? We don’t ask him to do it like 19 different ways?...It was fun to do something a little more emotional, a little different for us, for sure.
In Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile, Gordon and Speck Promise an Empowering Narrative Full of Heart
By centering their story on realizing the nuance of their original source material, finding creative solutions for producing such a complicated project, leaning into their decades-long collaboration, pursuing the casting picks of their dreams, and venturing out of their comfort zones and into new creative territory, Gordon and Speck are primed to deliver their most heartwarming movie yet. In their protagonist, Lyle, they're hoping audiences witness a character finding his voice and learning to trust again after a heartbreaking bout of exploitation. Speck said of Lyle's journey:
Lyle the character is a great conduit for understanding that...your best version of your best self is when you’re sort of supported unconditionally, and that can be any shape, any form, any person, any gender.
Now that sounds like the makings of a lovely story we could all use right about now. Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile hits theaters on October 7, 2022.