This interview is published in the Mar./Apr. 2002 issue of SCREENTALK magazine.

Temple Mathews

Living Life Through Children’s Eyes

By Kimberly Shane O’Hara

Temple Mathews has written animated sequels for Disney: the February 2002 release Peter Pan: Return To Never Land–the first sequel to a Disney classic animated film to have a theatrical release–and the successful video release of The Little Mermaid II: Return To The Sea. He also wrote Mickey’s Once Upon A Christmas and had his spec script, Lucy’s Moon, optioned by Imagine Entertainment (Ron Howard’s company).

What was the process of keeping the character consistency and development from the original Peter Pan to the sequel?

I think it’s a matter of immersing yourself so deeply into the characters, becoming such friends with them, that when it comes time for them to speak, they do so with consistency. Peter was really a great deal of fun as he’s such a giddy fellow. He brings out the kid in all of us. And Hook was absolutely a scream to write. The man’s a raving lunatic who pretty much behaves as though he’s got a flounder in his shorts.

Did you gain inspiration from Barrie’s original work, or did you work strictly off the first Pan film?

I re-read the Barrie book a few times and of course screened the original film, so it was a combination of the two.

Did the executives at Disney provide you with a detailed outline, or was it your original concepts (the war, older Wendy, Hook still alive)?

The Disney executives, Sharon Morrill, Ellen Gurney and others, were terrific and we worked very closely together developing the story, and from our earliest discussions we felt that the Blitz would be a prominent element in the film. We wanted to revisit Never Land again, of course, and it just felt right that Wendy’s daughter Jane, might, under the circumstances, very well be a doubter–and that it would be terrific to watch her be charmed by Peter and the Lost Boys and Never Land.

Two words stuck out to me, one was "doubter" and the other was "disbelief"–two very strong words. Jane even goes on to say that "Everyone grows up ... the sooner the better." Is the objective here to show modern day kids that there is no need to be in such a hurry to "grow up"?

Absolutely. I mean, who wants to grow up anyway? And it’s during the most difficult times in our lives that we need desperately to retain our sense of wonder, our ability to laugh at ourselves. My own daughter Manon is 13 and I encourage her daily to giggle at adversity.

What limits do you find these days with animated children’s movies in the sense of adult visuals? The Jurassic Park movies struck me as a bit too shockingly graphic for kids to view.

I agree with you. When my wife and I first saw Jurassic Park we shuddered at the thought of our five-year-old being bombarded with those dinosaur chomping images. But Jurassic Park wasn’t marketed to young children. Of course, the line keeps moving, so now things which seemed shocking a few years ago aren’t so shocking now. We become numb. Most PG fare is, I think, pretty tame stuff and appropriate for children.

"The pirates look down at the bleached skeletons of Logan and Boone floating in the pool." was one of your descriptives in Pan. I found it well written but darkly jarring for a kids’ film. Did this visual end up in the final version, and what is your meter for crossing the line?

This particular visual didn’t make the final cut, but it was never intended to be horrifying. I think they drew it in the pencil tests and it was more comical than anything. You can show a skeleton in a funny way. No two people agree on where the line is. You just have to be honest with your own set of values.

What is the writer’s role with the actors and director during the recording of the voices? Do script changes occur while recording, or is there a read-through and locked script prior?

If his or her schedule permits, the writer attends some of the voice recordings and offers input. The script, as written, is almost always recorded first, and then alternate lines are recorded as well. That part of the process is incredibly fun, having these talented actors reading the lines you wrote, bringing them to life and all that. And when you’ve written a stinker of a line, you’re the one blushing. It’s a valuable process for a writer.

Do you think fewer kids in this day and age believe less in fairy tales than the "olden days" and if so, do you as a writer make strides to modernize the tale so that this generation will pay more attention to the strong moral messages embodied in these tales?

It’s so hard to generalize about "kids these days." I think we all want to believe in fairy tales, no matter what our age. But children take to them in a special way. They always have and I think they always will. For years my daughter has been a sucker for Penny Stories, little bedtime snippets I conjure up featuring a tiny copper heroine. Somehow, these stories comfort her. That’s about the best proof I have that today’s kids still want to believe in fairy tales. And hey, look at Harry Potter. I don’t consciously try to "modernize" anything I write.

The Little Mermaid 2 was a sequel from an enormously successful first film. Did you watch the original film many times to gage the characters personalities and dialogue?

I watched the original film a few times, then basically dove into my own ocean to write The Little Mermaid 2.

The film jumps very early on from Melody as the baby of Ariel and Eric, to her as a feisty pre-teen on her 12th birthday. The theme of ‘being different as a teen’–misunderstood–is paralleled to being a mermaid ... like thinking you are nothing like your parents as your parents hide their secrets and their past to seemingly protect their children. Was the thematic intention of making the Mermaid sequel to attract the teen audience who would be experiencing their life changes?

The film was developed and written independent of the marketing department. Even though the theme relates to teenagers in a big way, I think younger kids relate to it, too. When I sit down and work out a story, I don’t think about whom the audience may or may not be. I just try to tell the most entertaining story I can.

Mothers and daughters go through some really hard times in the teens. Ariel sees that Melody is frustrated by a past she knows nothing of (the life of a mermaid). By the time Ariel says "It's time I trusted her with the truth," it is too late and Melody has taken matters into her own hands. Is this a message to parents to be honest with their kids about where they have come from and who they are?

Yes, I think you’ve nailed this one. The notion is clearly that it’s best not to be a hypocrite with your children, sooner or later they’ll figure you out. It’s hard, too, because while, as parents, we shouldn’t have to give our kids guided tour of our past indiscretions, we also shouldn’t pretend to be so damned squeaky clean. Finding the balance between truth and good intention is the trick. One which, I must say, I haven’t yet mastered.

I enjoyed the crab stuck in Melody’s party dress bow, leading to the wild chase between the chef with the cleaver and the crab. How much fun do you have writing these scenes and where do you get your comedic beats from in your writing?

Writing comedic actions scenes is usually a whole lot of fun, but it’s challenging, too, because what’s in your head, how you visualize the movie you’re seeing, is always very different from what the director comes up with. That’s one of the first painful lessons you learn as a young screenwriter, that what you had in your head and put down on paper ain’t what’s projected onto the screen. Films are totally collaborative. I’ve learned to be delighted by that process rather than to try and fight it, because you can’t fight it. It’s part of the magic.

How general do you keep the script for the animators and director to play with?

When I write any script, live action or animation, I use a combination of master scenes and use specific directions and camera angles only when I want to emphasize something to make a point.

There is also a strong hero theme in the film within the walrus and the penguin who want to do good but always seem to botch things up. Was your objective to show the hero hungry for recognition?

Tip and Dash are a couple of big time losers who were really fun to write because they remind me so much of myself and just about everyone I know. Characters who do things right are boring. It’s much more fun to watch someone screw up, and the bigger screw up the better. If you’re going to trip and fall, it might as well be down a flight of stairs.

Your spec script, the non-animated story, Lucy’s Moon, was set up at Imagine for a while. I enjoyed the script and found your characters unique with Carol as an Interior Designer specializing in children’s spaces, Andy as a radio announcer for the Seattle SuperSonics home games and Jamie as the book reviewer for the Seattle Times. Do you have dossiers of all your characters before you write, and how much of that becomes subtly implied in the writing of the character's actions and dialogue?

I don’t make a bunch of notes about what the characters should be like before I write because once I create them, I don’t want them following a specific script. Okay, that sounds idiotic. But it’s true, and you hear it again and again. Once you give life to some characters, they have a sneaky way of just taking over and telling you what they want, not the other way around. The young girl in Lucy’s Moon, Lucy, was in complete control during the writing of that script.

I just finished Steven King’s marvelous book, On Writing, and it was so refreshing to hear him validate the process of allowing the muse to guide you as you write rather than outlining everything to death. It’s all about energy, and if you spend too much time thinking and rethinking on outlines and cards, it’s tough to have any creative energy left to write the script.

Your 30’s are a time of serious reevaluation of everything. Did you write this as a reflective look at this decade? Or was this more a script about the child caught in adult love triangles?

I wrote Lucy’s Moon because I felt that the children in these situations are given short shrift. As a "blocking" character in a romantic comedy, Lucy has an incredibly strong, morally defensible point of view, and for that reason, she is a formidable opponent for Andy.

So, a main goal was to show how the children have a lot to deal with as much as the parents do, in break ups and separations, and honesty is the best policy? Liar Liar was one film that stuck out in my mind as touching upon this concept.

Yes. Andy was in danger of being dishonest to himself and to Carol by proposing a marriage that would certainly have been "comfortable," but not one based on the deep currents of romantic love. When he’s honest with Lucy (Carol’s little girl), I think it’s an emotional and meaningful moment. Life’s paradoxes are painful.

The Lucy/Doug (Carol's ex-boyfriend) dynamic shows that the cat and mouse game between opposite sexes starts early. Lucy, as a young girl, many not know it, but she is modeling her mother in her rigidity and lack of lightness. Doug is a symbol of the freedom she could have later in life if she could lighten up a bit. Tell me a bit about the evolution of creating this young girl with an old soul.

As I mentioned before, Lucy is a character who very much came to life on her own. By that I mean that her POV and dialog just came spilling out onto the page without a great deal of premeditation. Since I’ve experienced the wounds of divorce amongst friends and family, seen how the kids are often neglected in the equation, Lucy’s plight is all too familiar.

Lucy’s dialogue is just witty enough in the script for it to be believable with her 11 years on Earth as an observant mature kid. Is this the parallel you are after–with kids having the freedom to tell how they are feeling without having the understanding, while conversely, adults understand but won't say how they feel?

Yeah, I think oftentimes kids just come right out and state the obvious, say what needs to be said in a given moment, without pondering or calculating so much. That can be a good thing. Or very embarrassing. My daughter, who at the time was quite a bit younger than Lucy, walked in and looked at my good friend and said: "Wow, you’ve got a really huge nose." We just sat there for a second, then burst out laughing. What the hell else can you do? His nose really is quite impressive, I think he’s actually won some awards.

When your life is thrown for a loop, I have found that there are these slow reflective moments, like realizing the rush rush rush of your 20's is over and now it is time to ponder. Are these your thoughts behind Andy giving in to his confusion, walking in the rain, standing under a gushing down spout?

Andy stands under a rainspout, purposefully getting drenched because I once did it after a girl broke up with me. I was going for drama and hoped she was watching. She wasn’t, and I ruined a perfectly good sweater.

The driving mother who has it all together challenged by the daughter who "feels" emotion and can't understand why, in the 7th grade, she is being driven to think about college. Explain this dynamic's growth in the story.

Sometimes parents are so focused on planning for the future, working, saving money, looking into good schools and colleges, that they forget to live in the moment, which is something kids do exceedingly well. This is another anecdote, but I recall being stressed and trying to hurry my daughter out of a grocery store. She wanted to walk out slowly, stepping only on the gray tiles, not the white ones. I was about to yell at her when it hit me that I was being idiotic. Why the hell not step out on the gray squares? I did, and shared a moment with my daughter. We laughed.

Jamie and Lucy negotiating in the park is great. Jamie is the 30-something adult needing to have this wonderful spontaneous love and Lucy is the young girl desperately needing the same love and protection without the sex. What is your message here in this parallel of how we look at love as a need as we age?

Again, I think it touches on the innocence of childhood and how their needs are so unclouded by lust. Lucy needs Andy for a father, a friend, someone to hold onto. But she also needs to learn that there’s something else afoot in the dance of love, and that is what adults call romantic love. Once she begins to experience those stirrings in her own heart she can finally understand Andy’s predicament.

When Lucy discovers that her birth father abandoned her, and Carol won’t be marrying Andy, she says, "I just can’t seem to keep a man." This is a huge impact on a child and her growth in future relationships. Are you giving a message that we have to ‘own’ what we start, even as young adults?

In this scene, Lucy’s just sharing her emotions, telling Andy the truth, that she feels responsible for her father leaving, which is what kids so often do. Blame somehow makes the whole situation make some kind-of painful sense, whereas grownups shuffling about, changing partners, falling in and out of romantic love, no matter who’s hurt–this doesn’t make a great deal of sense to a kid.

Kimberly Shane O’Hara is a SCREENTALK staff writer. She produces through O’Hara/Klein, her company with partner Eric M. Klein, in Los Angeles, CA. They are completing postproduction on the feature film, Happy Hour, starring Eric Stoltz and Anthony LaPaglia, written by Mike Bencivenga and Richard Levine.