Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Desert Island Discs
Presented by Kirsty Young
Animator best known for creating Wallace and Gromit, and for winning multiple Oscars including for Creature Comforts.
Eight records
Make Me Smile (Come Up and See Me)
I remember it it had disco was in the seventies and it seemed so timeless.
I was animating a scene of a very sad scene of Gromit leaving home and being with his tears welling up in his eyes. ... As an animator you are really an actor, you're taking on the character in your own body and you sort of have to somehow imbue character into the clay. And so I used to listen to this record to just get myself into a sad state of mind, to get myself in into Gromitz state of mind, basically.
Elvis Costello & The Attractions
Um well it really reminds me of my um National Film School student days in London. This was in the charts around them. I love songs with great lyrics and he's just one of those he's a poet, you know, he's a very clever songwriter.
I love that rawness that they have. I like w I like when songs have double meanings and you know it's kind of a love song, but it's also got a kind of spiritual element as well.
Oh yeah. Uh this next one is one of my favourite comedians really uh and writes very funny songs.
I find it kind of intoxicating, the the poetry. I'm I'm just amazed by the power of uh of words.
I Forgot That Love ExistedFavourite
Actually probably one of the artists I listen to the most in the car is Van Morrison, and I just love this song. I love the album Poetic Champions Compose
This is um A song by Joe Rose, he's the son of some very good friends of mine in Sheffield, artists in Sheffield that I was at art school with, and their son I think is a very talented, inspirational young songwriter in Sheffield.
The keepsakes
In conversation
Presenter asks
You've been called Preston's answer to Walt Disney. Do you have any plans for a Wallace and Gromit theme park?
At the moment in discussions with uh a theme park. We are um in the middle of discussions with uh Blackpool Pleasure Beach about a Wallace and Grommet ride, yeah.
Presenter asks
You were one of five children. Were you creating a nice quiet corner for yourself in the house by going up into the attic?
I probably was. I mean, the the house was always very busy. I was the middle one of five children. My mother tells me I I was the quietest one, and I I spoke very late because I think my older brothers used to speak for me and uh but I always felt, I guess, like the invisible one. I was told as well that I used to if even though I was quiet, I would observe people and I would go and draw. I loved drawing, and I could sit on my own quietly and draw for hours. I loved being in my own world.
The recording
Timestamps play the recording from that turn
Presenter
Hello, I'm Kirsty Young. Thank you for downloading this podcast of Desert Island Discs from BBC Radio 4. For rights reasons the music choices are shorter than in the radio broadcast.
Presenter
For more information about the programme, please visit bbc.co.uk/slash radio four.
Presenter
My castaway this week is the animator Nick Park. Wallace and Gromit are his most celebrated characters. Gromit the silent but wise dog, Wallace his well meaning owner with notably less brain power, surely the only movie star these days confident enough to wear a hand-knitted tank top and drive a bread van. His creations are, yes, old fashioned, archetypally British, and the antithesis of cool, but his success is international. His first Oscar win was in 1990 with Creature Comforts. In a scene that wouldn't have been out of place in one of his films, he forgot to pack a bow tie for the ceremony, so ended up cobbling one together from wrapping paper and seller tape.
Presenter
He says of Wallace and Grommit, I do love their characters. They're like my children. I love to see them doing well out there in the real world.
Presenter
You've been called Nick Park Preston's answer to Walt Disney. I'm wondering if you've got any plans for a Wallace and Grommet theme park. The rides would be good, wouldn't they, Sheila?
Nick Park
Actually yeah, well we are actually um
Nick Park
At the moment in discussions with uh a theme park. We are um in the middle of discussions with uh Blackpool Pleasure Beach about a Wallace and Grommet ride, yeah.
Presenter
Where better to have it than Blackpool Pleasure Beach? And in terms of I appreciate you know negotiations are a delicate thing, but can you give us any clues as as to what form the ride might take?
Nick Park
Um, yeah, well it's not a hair raising, terrifying ride. It's a kind of family friendly ride and uh it's nice'cause it's a family run business and they're very local. You know, Blackpool is just down the road. I used to go there as a kid for the switching on of the lights and um it feels right.
Presenter
I can hear the cues forming as we speak. What a wonderful prospect. Um so you've got four Oscars, that's right. And you've four. Yes, and you've had a BAFTA for every single movie that you've made. I know somebody who interviewed you once and said he really did bring his Oscar out of a shopping bag.
Nick Park
But a one
Nick Park
That's right. That was the first time back in nineteen ninety when Creature Comforts weren't. Well, they don't give you anything to put it in and uh I think my mum sewed together a bag when I got home. That's all I had was a Woolworths carrier bag and stuck it in the uh suitcase.
Presenter
You of course create these wonderful miniature worlds of, you know, tea strainers and anti macassars and Jacob's cream crackers. I'm wondering what your real world is like. Do you drive a Maserati and use an iPad? Or are you quite a nostalgic character yourself?
Nick Park
Right.
Nick Park
Yeah, I have a bed that kinda tips up and tips me down.
Nick Park
Through the sunroof of the car and well, I think my PA would like that'cause then I'd be on time for meetings.
Presenter
And a machine to put your shirt sleeves on.
Nick Park
Machine to cook.
Nick Park
And that's right.
Nick Park
Talking of vehicles though, I have a VW camper van and that that's kind of my pride and joy at the moment. And I love all the, you know, the pop top roof and you know, the things that fold out and that that kind of thing.
Presenter
Right.
Presenter
Um, it is, I mean, that world that we take with us on the road in in, you know, things like the Volkswagen camper and so on, it's quite a miniature world. Do you quite
Nick Park
Prince
Nick Park
Yeah.
Presenter
You feel quite at home in those small recreated worlds.
Nick Park
Uh yes, I I do. I I mean I've I do like um a limited world. I don't like living in big open spaces and in in terms of a house.
Presenter
A Matter of Loaf and Death was your most recent film. That was thirty minutes long. How how long did it take to make?
Nick Park
And that was about eight months.
Presenter
And so how many seconds I mean, it it you do measure it in seconds, I'm guessing. How many seconds a day on average would you be getting down on film?
Nick Park
Well, one animator working with one puppet would probably do about three seconds a day, two and a half to three seconds a day on average. It can vary a great deal. On a feature film there'd be twenty-five to thirty animators and each one of them would be doing about three seconds a day. So it's actually, you know, the the rushes at the end of the week are, you know, there's quite a few minutes. Quite a few seconds. We kind of open a bottle of champagne if we achieve a minute within a week.
Presenter
Gone into the minute.
Presenter
Because
Presenter
Let's have some music then. What are we going to hear first of all this morning, Nick Park?
Nick Park
I got an old favourite, which is uh Steve Harley and Cockney Rebel.
Presenter
And why do you like this? Um
Nick Park
I remember it it had disco was in the seventies and it seemed so timeless.
Speaker 4
Come up and see me, make me smile
Speaker 4
I'll do what you want.
Speaker 4
Running wild
Speaker 4
There's nothing left All gone and run away
Speaker 4
Maybe you'll tarry for a while.
Presenter
That was Steve Harley and Make Me Smile. You've been described, Nick Park, as the most unusual man in the British movie industry. What do you make of that? Unusual.
Nick Park
Yeah.
Presenter
Um
Nick Park
Yeah.
Presenter
I don't know.
Presenter
Compliment or not? I'm not sure who said that actually.
Nick Park
Yeah.
Nick Park
Um I suppose that's nice. I mean I mean um I d I don't know in what way though.
Presenter
Well, I suppose you're not the archetypal slick movie person, are you? You're not you don't appear to have an ego the size of the Isle of Man. You're not wearing a very sharp suit, although your clothes are nice. You're not you know, you're not that sort of
Speaker 4
Uh
Nick Park
So nice.
Presenter
That big person who wants to be noticed. I mean, a lot of movie people are like that.
Nick Park
People are
Nick Park
No, although it's funny, I mean, I I've always been quite ambitious in a way, in a quiet sort of way. But, um, what's in a way nice for me is that I don't
Nick Park
I've never felt I have to kind of get out there and sell myself and, you know, big myself up and It's nice that the work speaks for itself, you know I hope.
Presenter
Do you think then, I mean, you have you must surely have in what is a very um competitive industry and one that demands huge amounts of hard work and dedication, you must have a sort of bit of a core of steel running through you to to to have gotten this far.
Presenter
They determined.
Nick Park
I I ha I was. I mean, I remember, you know,'cause I started making films as a kid, I used to I used to often think to myself, you know, if as a teenager, if I if I watch T V, you know, if I just watch anything that comes on T V, I'm just never gonna do anything. I and so I used to get back up into the attic and carry on making almost like pushing myself really.
Presenter
And you were one of five children. Now now, when I read that about you, I was quite surprised,'cause I I sort of um had you down in rather a cliched way, more fool me as as probably an only child. So were you really were you creating a nice quiet corner for yourself in the house by going up into the attic?
Nick Park
So what you really
Nick Park
I probably was. I mean, the the house was always very busy. I was the middle one of five children. My mother tells me I I was the quietest one, and I I spoke very late because I think my older brothers used to speak for me and uh but I always felt, I guess, like the invisible one. I was told as well that I used to if even though I was quiet, I would observe people and I would go and draw. I loved drawing, and I could sit on my own quietly and draw for hours. I loved being in my own world.
Presenter
Uh
Speaker 4
Mm.
Presenter
When did your love affair with the Bino start?
Nick Park
Um oh that was another yeah, I used to um probably I was about seven years old and got the Beano every Thursday. I I used to love being off school ill because I could just sit there in my bed and just read a pile of old Beano's. I'm just remembering a Christmas Day about nineteen sixty seven when um there was a cardboard box from one of the presents and I I remember sitting in that box nearly all day and reading my new annual Beano Annual from cover to cover.
Presenter
What a perfect day. He was. Let's have some more music then. We're on disc number two now. What are we going to hear next?
Nick Park
Yeah, we're gonna hear one from Neil Young. It's a very sad one actually called Four Strong Winds. Um my fellow animator on The Wrong Trousers, um Steve Box, I remember him playing this a lot. And I was animating a scene of a very sad scene of Gromit leaving home and being with his tears welling up in his eyes.
Presenter
Very sad is when he's been forced out by the penguin.
Nick Park
Yeah, that's right. As an animator you are really an actor, you're taking on the character in your own body and you sort of have to somehow imbue character into the clay. And so I used to listen to this record to just get myself into a sad state of mind, to get myself in into Gromitz state of mind, basically.
Speaker 1
Yeah.
Speaker 4
To Alberta
Speaker 4
Weather's good there in the fall
Speaker 4
I got some friends that I could go to working for.
Speaker 4
Still I wish you'd change your mind
Speaker 4
If I ask you one more time.
Speaker 4
But we've been through this a hundred times.
Presenter
That was Neil Young and Four Strong Winds and powerful memories there, Nick Park, of making Grommet sad in the long trousers. Um your mother was a seamstress, your mother who made the bag for the Oscar, and your father was an architectural photographer. Mhm. Yes. So do you think that you inherited the creativity from both?
Speaker 4
Yeah.
Nick Park
No.
Speaker 4
Yeah.
Nick Park
Uh
Speaker 4
I'm trying.
Nick Park
The bag for the Oscar
Nick Park
Um yes, I I mean my dad passed away ten years ago, but yeah, he was very active in photography, wood carving, building things, and my mother is still you know very active with making stuff for the village fair. I always feel very grateful really for a very happy childhood. Rainy days, you know, were never boring. In fact, people would come to our house because my my mum and dad would always supply us with tons of paper or, you know, we'd d make giant papier mache monsters and in a way it was like an ethos really. My my granny used to say, you know, if you if you're good at something you should use it, you know, you should just go and do it.
Presenter
Yeah.
Nick Park
What
Presenter
One of the reasons that parents often aren't encouraging is because of the amount of mess it creates. I mean, imagine if there were five children doing things and five children's friends in the house doing things, and your parents also doing things. I mean, did you live in a huge, rambling house? Well, no.
Nick Park
Well, actually, it sounds like, you know, the Adams family or something, but we lived in a nineteen sixties bungalow, really, which is where my mum lives now, and um it was uh a bungalow with an upstairs, so I shared a bedroom with three brothers. But we had a big garden shed where my my dad that was his domain.
Presenter
What was there was there a touch of the amateur inventor about your father?
Nick Park
Uh yeah, there was very much actually. In fact, um after making A Grand Day Out, you know, where Wallace builds a a this rocket in the basement of his house, I remember thinking after I've made that that I've actually made a film about my dad,'cause I remember we bought this old decrepit, like, nineteen sixties caravan from someone for about ten pounds, and we got it home and my my parents stripped it down to the chassis and built this kind of wooden box on it, which was a caravan with uh wallpaper inside and bunk beds and lots of things that fold out and and it was a little home from home really that seven of us went on holiday to North Wales in. We we went we used it for two or three years I think and it was like a square box.
Presenter
And it there were seven people living in it.
Nick Park
Yeah, yeah. Cramps.
Presenter
Right.
Nick Park
Yeah, we camped in a field in North Wales and um I've got a cine film of it somewhere.
Presenter
Come here.
Presenter
Have you? When yes, when did the filming start?'Cause your mother did your mother have a Cine camera?
Nick Park
Puerto Rico.
Nick Park
That's right. My dad bought it for my mum as a present. And I remember one of the first things they said was, you know, you kids should take this camera and get out there and make films, you know, do things with it. I think very early I I latched onto it and and I started turning my cartoons into animation, either by flip books or making paper cutouts out of them or or felt cutouts from my mum's scrap box.
Presenter
When did you make Walter the Rat? There was a film that wasn't there.
Nick Park
That was about then, about 1972. I had my own character called Walter the Rat, which I drew on all my school notebooks and everything. But I had this ambition to it'd be how great would it be one day to have my characters out there, the famous I guess. And it was a secret ambition. I would never tell anybody about it, because it it felt kind of a you shouldn't you shouldn't want to do that kind of thing.
Presenter
But
Nick Park
It's not
Presenter
Some more music. What are we going to hear now? We're on disc number three.
Nick Park
Yeah.
Presenter
Yeah.
Nick Park
Yeah. Yeah.
Nick Park
Oh yeah, my next choice is Elvis Costello and Every Day I Write the Book.
Presenter
And why this track?
Nick Park
Um well it really reminds me of my um National Film School student days in London. This was in the charts around them. I love songs with great lyrics and he's just one of those he's a poet, you know, he's a very clever songwriter.
Speaker 4
Chapter one, he made it really crazy. Chapter two, I think I fell in love with you.
Speaker 4
You said you'd stand by me in the middle of chapter 3, but you would love to your own tricks in chapters 4. Five and six there. I'm giving you a long look. Every day, every day, every day, every day I write the book.
Presenter
That's Elvis Costello and Every Day I Write the Book. You said, Nick Park, that that was chosen mainly because it reminded you so much of uh your time at at film school. It must have seemed like a very ambitious thing to do, to apply uh to film school. After all, as you said, it didn't seem a realistic thing that you could have a career doing drawing and making plasticine things, and yet there you ended up. W w was it tough to get in?
Nick Park
Um well it I it was easy, you know, in the in the sense that I got it.
Presenter
Uh they don't take on many animators though.
Nick Park
No. And I guess, you know, coming from Preston, I always felt very uh you know, what am I doing here? Uh, you know, people from Preston don't go to film school, you know. I was so overawed by going there and uh, you know, the number one place in the country to study film.
Presenter
And that was when you started making A Grand Day Out, was it while you were still in film school? Oh yes, gosh. You said that when you f finished uh A Grand Day Out, it came out in nineteen eighty nine, that that you've you realized you'd made a film about your father. Sometimes when I'm animating Wallace, I see my father there in his eyes. Tell me more about that.
Nick Park
Tell me
Nick Park
It's true. I mean, in his attitude he he would often just get an idea and disappear into the shed and you know, you'd hear all the bang you know, cartoon sawing and drilling and two days later he would come out with a a a big cabinet or shelf or something and or bunk bed, you know.
Presenter
This idea of seeing hi seeing him in the character's eyes, though, is interesting. I mean, are they actually I would say plastocene? Is it actually plastocene they're made of?
Nick Park
It is, it's it's good old-fashioned plasticine, yeah.
Presenter
Yes, so the idea that you can embody, which which you do so brilliantly, so much personality in little plasticine figures.
Presenter
How do you do how do you capture the spirit?
Nick Park
Yes, well on on one level, every model maker I work with you could they often can be accused of making models look like themselves. If you take Morph for example, which was created by my business partners, Peter Lord and Dose Proxton, who uh set up the company back in the seventies. This is Ardman. Ardmann, yeah, and they created Morph. I can tell if Pete's animated Morph, or I can tell if one of the other animators is animated, because it takes on their personality.
Presenter
Yeah.
Presenter
Uh when you were a an impoverished, struggling filmmaker, is it true that you asked Plastocene to send you some free stuff?
Nick Park
Oh, that's right. I was planning a grand day out and uh, you know, as a student you after any kind of freebie, and I di I did. I wrote to what was then Harbert's Plasticine, and I said, Could you give me some Plasticine, expecting a few packets if I give you a credit on the end of the film? And they just said, How much can you carry? And so I took a van.
Nick Park
Uh
Nick Park
And uh loaded up about half a ton of plasticine.
Presenter
Half a touch.
Nick Park
Which is very generous of them.
Presenter
It certainly was. Where did you store it?
Nick Park
I think I'm still using it.
Presenter
What colour
Nick Park
What was it?
Presenter
I mean, it comes in different colours, but it does
Nick Park
It does, it came in ten different colours.
Presenter
So you had a selection. They didn't give you a half a ton block of brine. No, that would have been. Yeah, that would have been unfortunate.
Nick Park
No, that wouldn't.
Nick Park
I'd have had a a lot for Grommet's ears and uh Wallace's trousers. I'm not even sure we're allowed to call it plasticine. Yes we
Presenter
Yes, we should say that other modelling clays are available. Yes, and equally as good given that we're on the BBC. I'm wondering if they hadn't sent you this huge half ton uh block in ten different colours, if you wouldn't have ended up sort of doing finger puppets or or something else. Do you think your your your path of animation might have changed?
Nick Park
Available.
Speaker 1
Yeah.
Nick Park
Mm-hmm.
Nick Park
What's the
Nick Park
No no, I don't think so, because I I ought to feel that, you know, the plastic scene or the clay is really important and Grommit, for example, was born, I think, out of the the the medium itself. I always remember coming to do the first shot in a Grande out where Wallace is sawing through a plank and is using Grommit as like a trestle. to support the plank.
Presenter
Yeah.
Nick Park
You know, Gromit's looking pretty hacked off really, and I was actually planning to give Gromit a mouth, and I found it so difficult to change his mouth that I just moved his brow up and down. And it was in that moment, out of economy or laziness, I don't know, but suddenly his character was born, and I realized he could say everything.
Speaker 1
Okay.
Nick Park
And I hadn't predicted that at all. I didn't know that was going to happen. So I like that. I like the way you discover things as you go.
Presenter
Let's have some more music. We're on number four now. What is it we're going to hear?
Nick Park
Yeah.
Nick Park
We're gonna hear The Proclaimers and Sunshine on Leith. I love that rawness that they have. I like w I like when songs have double meanings and you know it's kind of a love song, but it's also got a kind of spiritual element as well.
Speaker 4
While the chief
Speaker 4
Sunshine on me
Speaker 4
Off that candy
Speaker 4
For this what?
Speaker 4
You buy it.
Speaker 4
I'm waiting.
Presenter
That was the Proclaimers and the Sunshine on Leith. You have Nick Park, of course, had this uh long and hugely successful professional relationship with uh Peter Salas, the actor who is the voice of Wallace. It began very early on. It began indeed when you were at film school. You you just what you wrote to him, you called him up?
Nick Park
Yeah.
Speaker 1
Yeah.
Nick Park
Yes, yes. I knew him from Last of the Summer Wine of course, as Cleggy. So yeah, I wrote to him and he was very, very kind and um actually I only had fifty quid, you know, to pay an actor at the time, so he was doing it really as a favour for a student. Yes. And he offered to come out and to the film school and record for a day, which was what we did. And I'd never directed a a proper actor before, so I was quite nervous.
Speaker 1
Yeah.
Presenter
And did he just do it, or did you have to say, No, when you say Wensleydale, can you say it like this? Or did he just sort of?
Nick Park
But there was a bit of that. I and I told him how I'd like him to say Grommit, to really sound the T as Grommit.
Nick Park
I remember telling him that.
Presenter
And why was that important? I think it's
Nick Park
Because I had this in mind that he would use his teeth. I designed Wallace with a very heavy row of bottom teeth, and I wanted him to sound his teeth. But I didn't know his mouth was going to go that wide, and it's really the way that Peter said cheese
Speaker 4
G
Presenter
Please
Nick Park
In a cheese grommet that suddenly made his mouth go very wide.
Presenter
It was quite a while before you troubled him again, was it not?
Nick Park
It was. I I did that morning's recording.
Nick Park
And then um it took me another seven years to complete the film.
Nick Park
I was partly on my own doing it at the National Film School and then Aardman offered me work and you know I was working on morph and things like that and that's why it took a few years to finish it.
Presenter
Uh so he was in his early fifties when you started working with him and he'll be ninety next year. Yeah. So you know, is it a very close working relationship?
Nick Park
Yeah.
Nick Park
It's his. I mean, he's been lovely actually. He's we we have a very close working relationship.
Presenter
And how collaborative is it, then? Does he is he very much still the actor who comes in and reads your words, or does he tell you when he thinks you know, I'm I'm not sure Wallace would do that?
Nick Park
Yeah, he does have his opinions.
Presenter
How does that go then?
Nick Park
A lot of the time, I mean, Wallace is just shouting, Grommit, you know. But I remember showing him the storyboard of Wrong Trousers and he was doing all this ah, Grommit, you know, shouting and stuff. And then he said,
Nick Park
Why doesn't he just get off the train?
Nick Park
Yeah.
Presenter
Missing the point, yes. You won your your first Oscar then for Creature Comforts. Um I mean the bow tie being made out of sellotape and wrapping paper. Yes. Was that a stunt? Or did you really forget your bow tie?
Nick Park
Or did you
Nick Park
Uh I didn't have one with me. I was gonna get one while I was there, that was that was the plan. But there was no time in the end, so I nipped out to a news agent round the corner and bought like sixty cents worth of some elastic and some wrapping paper and some seller tape and just made this bow tie very quickly. And I thought, well, it's the Oscars, I'm an animator, do something a bit larger than life, a bit cartoony, and uh I actually didn't realise how big it was. I turned up with this massive green bow tie on and, you know, LA
Presenter
Good.
Nick Park
People loved it. It w didn't look that out of place, really.
Presenter
The Oscar ceremony itself, then, you are given lots of of tips and instructions about a what a winner should and should not do at the moment that your the Oscar goes to is read out and the Oscar goes to Nick Park for creature comforts. What's the feeling?
Nick Park
Should not do
Nick Park
Oh gosh, utter um complete dread. It was like an out-of-body experience really. I I was just so nervous. Um well also I had two films nominated. I'd come from nowhere and suddenly had Creature Comforts and Grande Out just got finished at the same time by chance. And um I was nervous that if I did win I might thank the wrong set of people. When I see footage of myself I look just so nervous and uh just dying to get off stage basically.
Presenter
Let's have some more music. What are we going to hear uh next?
Nick Park
Oh yeah. Uh this next one is one of my favourite comedians really uh and writes very funny songs. Uh it's John Shuttleworth, A Fleece the World.
Speaker 1
God bless the fleas, it brings you inner peace. I can't conceive of a finer outer garment.
Speaker 1
I'm surprised that the police haven't championed the fleece for constables on the beat or even the sergeants.
Presenter
That was John Shuttleworth and Fleece the World. Um there was a point then when Ardmann Animations went into partnership with a big American studio. It w it was Dreamworks, and you made very successfully Chicken Run, which can you remember how much money Chicken Run took at the box office?
Nick Park
I think it was a hundred and sixty million dollars or something.
Presenter
Having cost around about forty odd million to make. So that was yeah, that's good business. And then there was the Curse of the Were Rabbit. That was in two thousand and five. Um were you filled with trepidation at the thought of working with these uh big Hollywood players?
Nick Park
Yeah, that's good.
Nick Park
Two thousand five
Nick Park
Um yeah, absolutely. I mean I'm constantly kind of in awe really of how things have gone, you know, from playing with plasticine at home. And that's what I still feel I'm kind of doing really. The way it started was it was after making a close shave and we were you know, we were ambitious to do something bigger at that time and we we'd been waiting for this opportunity. I was with a close shave out at the Sundance Festival and got a call from Steven Spielberg's company, from Geoffrey Katzenberg, um Stephen Spielberg's partner. And he sent his private jet to pick up, you know, me and my colleagues and fly us out to LA for a meeting just for one evening.
Presenter
Just
Presenter
Okay.
Nick Park
And uh so we did that.
Nick Park
So it comes from the
Presenter
So you can't just leave that one there. So you're sitting in the private jet. What do you do? Do you crack open Geoffrey's champagne?
Nick Park
Yeah.
Nick Park
Open
Nick Park
Um I think we were a bit nervous. We were like thinking, you know, opening all the cupboards and, you know, trying to find glasses and
Nick Park
I think we did probably open a glass of champagne, but we're more thinking we need an idea to pitch.
Presenter
Right.
Nick Park
And and it was a more case of Nick, you've got an idea, haven't you? What about that idea about chickens? And and I happened to have it scribbled down on the back of a piece of paper, so it all seemed very, very attractive, and they seemed to really like what we did.
Presenter
In terms of them understanding what you did, though that's a slightly different thing. I mean, of course it is a it is a very, very British product that you make, even though it has this international appeal. I'm thinking particularly of almost my favourite line in The Curse of the Ware Rabbit, where a man complains that the giant rabbit has ravaged his wife's brassicas.
Presenter
And they try they try to get you to say that line up.
Nick Park
That was one of the lines, yeah. There was well, you know, you go through uh such a rigorous process. That's why coming back to the BBC and making a short film was so refreshing again,'cause, you know, every page is checked out by lawyers and uh you can't say this, you can't say that. That was one of the lines that they wanted us to take. We thought we fought for that line and kept it in.
Presenter
Method.
Presenter
Thank God. What sort of things did they try to change?
Nick Park
I mean I don't want to be on phone. I I like working with Jeffrey a lot actually, but uh there was a conversation at one point about does he need that Austin A thirty five? Isn't it a little bit too old-fashioned? To which me and Steve were thinking, well that's why it's good. We were spending our time digging our heels in and I think that can get a bit tiresome. Although in the end, you know, I think we're all happy with the end result.
Presenter
Did it make you sort of rethink what it was you wanted? You know, the opportunity to make.
Presenter
big budget feature films. Did it make you think actually
Presenter
Maybe I am more of a sort of British handmade creation myself. Maybe I don't quite fit in the in the Hollywood Hills, in among the private jets and the champagne.
Nick Park
Uh yes, I I think there is that actually. I mean I never felt that we we were manipulated or or lost control, you know, on those films. I there was enormous respect both ways really, y but there were fights, definitely, and I and I think it was more comfortable for us all in the end just to to get out really.
Presenter
Let's have some more music then. Tell me what we're going to hear next. We're on disc number six, I make.
Nick Park
Well, um I'm a great fan of Bob Dylan. Again, I think he's just a poet really, a great, great songwriter. And uh I've chosen The Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands. I find it kind of intoxicating, the the poetry. I'm I'm just amazed by the power of uh of words.
Speaker 4
With your mercury mouth
Speaker 4
In the missionary times
Speaker 4
And your eyes like smoke And your prayers like rain
Speaker 4
And your silver cross And your voice lack chance Oh who do they think could be?
Presenter
Bob Dylan and Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands. So, Nick Park, all of this great box office success must have brought you a degree of financial security. What do you spend your riches on?
Nick Park
Uh
Presenter
Yeah.
Presenter
Why are you laughing, has it not, Brock?
Nick Park
Well, I I can't complain. The way I th tend to think of it, it it's great as a as an artist or or as a filmmaker, you know, to be in a position where people want to buy what you do. Um, I still feel kind of guilty, you know, that that they enjoy it so much that they shouldn't be being paid for it.
Presenter
But given that you are paid for it, you have to shoulder that burden.
Nick Park
Yeah.
Nick Park
But you have to
Nick Park
Well the thing is, I have everything I want really. I've got a lovely little house that's I'm slightly expanding it at the moment. And I've got my camper van and I love the British countryside. Yeah, I don't I'm not after yachts and things like that.
Presenter
You're not, yeah,'cause I'm thinking a campervan might have come in thirty grand tops. So I'm not
Nick Park
Uh
Presenter
I've noticed with Wallace that over the years, romantically, he's become a good deal more confident. When he met with Wendel in Ramsbottom, he he he could hardly open his mouth, and yet when he encountered Paella Bakewell, you know, he was ready to fix her brakes at the drop of a hat.
Nick Park
Yeah.
Presenter
Are you conscious of that?
Nick Park
That's true actually. Yes, he has. That was a kind of reference to Brief Encounter, whi which has always been one of my favorite I'm a bit of a sucker for romance, you see, and and romantic films.
Presenter
Yeah.
Presenter
Yes, you see, this is where I'm going. I'm wondering if there's a parallel here. I'm wondering if if your own confidence has grown over the years.
Nick Park
It probably has grown, I don't know.
Nick Park
Are you one for the ladies? That's really what I'm asking.
Presenter
That's really what I'm asking, Mick Pike.
Nick Park
I think I think I'm better at it than Wallace.
Presenter
Yeah.
Nick Park
That's
Presenter
Uh
Nick Park
Uh
Presenter
Uh
Nick Park
It's not saying much really, no.
Presenter
It's weird.
Nick Park
But I
Presenter
Are you good at relationships? Are you romantically involved?
Nick Park
Yeah, I I like um I'm a romantically inclined kind of bloke. Yeah, I I am actually.
Presenter
Uh
Presenter
Yeah.
Nick Park
Yeah.
Presenter
Let's have some more music then. Tell me what we're going to hear next week.
Nick Park
That's the part. We're disk number seven.
Presenter
Uh
Nick Park
Ah, yes. Actually probably one of the artists I listen to the most in the car is Van Morrison, and I just love this song. I love the album Poetic Champions Compose, and it's a song called I Forgot That Love Existed.
Speaker 4
I've forgotten that love existed.
Speaker 4
Trouble in my mind
Speaker 4
Hardy girl party
Speaker 4
Worry all the time.
Speaker 4
I forgot that love system
Speaker 4
That I saw the light
Speaker 4
Everyone around
Presenter
That was Van Morrison and I Forgot That Love Existed. And it strikes me that Wallace and Gromit have sort of become the Morecambe and Wise of our age. You know, it's on Christmas Day what we watch is a fab well, I think they're fabulous, a Wallace and Gromit movie. They get that sort of prime time slot. Does that sit well with you as a creative person? That's the place that they occupy in British culture?
Nick Park
Well, it's a it's an enormous honor for them to be given that status. I'm not sure they live up to what Morkham Wise were, you know, it's but it's it's a it's a lovely thing, you know, that that's what's happened, that's how they're perceived.
Presenter
And the and the stamps too, they're even on the front of our our Christmas cards. Yes. Did you did you design the stamps?
Nick Park
I I did, yeah, yeah. It was great. I mean, again, it's an enormous process to go through, you know, where the Queen has to approve them and many levels of of approval from the from the Royal Mail.
Presenter
Of course, you're you're well, I probably shouldn't say friends with the Queen, but you do have a you have a relatively close relationship anyway. You've had lunch, though.
Nick Park
I have, actually, yes.
Presenter
Actually sitting next to Her Majesty.
Nick Park
Uh yeah. It's about three years ago. I I got invited for lunch with the Queen and the Duke. And look there was about ten people there at at this lunch and all the corgis. The the corgis outnumbered us, I think.
Presenter
You have to pretend to like the Corkies.
Nick Park
I did like them actually, and there's something to talk about as well,'cause she was kind of feeding them under the table with their digestive biscuits and telling me their names and uh I don't know if you've got time, shall I tell you my story about the chocolate sponge?
Presenter
Right.
Presenter
Please do.
Nick Park
I'll make try and make it quick. Well, I didn't really get to talk to the Queen until.
Nick Park
About halfway through the meal actually, but I was always conscious that the Queen might turn to me at some point and talk to me. But eventually, when the w the pudding came for the dessert, this chap was one of the waiters oh with white gloves on, sort of pouring the chocolate sauce onto and the Queen turned to me at that point and said, Ah, that looks interesting, doesn't it? You know, you're trying to make small talk, at the same time your brain is kind of going, It's the Queen
Nick Park
She's looking at me. But anyway, I was trying to keep my cool and just make conversation. And I think I said something like.
Nick Park
Oh, I shouldn't eat all this chocolate. It was it was Easter next week and I said, M oh, my mother will probably be making loads of things like this and I shouldn't really eat them. And then anyway, I had this kind of half-hour long conversation with her, which was really int she was very switched on and talking about theatre and films and and I wasn't wanting to stuff my face. So I think she must have thought that I wasn't liking the pudding. So she called the waiter and said, Could you take this away, please? His mother says he shouldn't eat it.
Nick Park
Uh
Presenter
Did you have to wrestle it from his grasp?
Nick Park
Yeah.
Nick Park
'Cause he'd been ordered by the Queen, he tried three times to take it off me, and I eventually won it back'cause I really enjoyed it. It was it was very good. But, um as if I uh yeah, eat what my mother told us.
Presenter
But
Presenter
Um I'm going to cast you away on this desert island, Nick, of course. You will be alone. And might you try to escape? Will you fashion a raft wallis like?
Nick Park
I don't know about a raft actually. A catapult? It depends which where I am really, I suppose. What kind of island.
Presenter
You'd probably prefer a Scottish one, would you?
Nick Park
I probably would. I love going up the west coast of Scotland. I've done that many times.
Presenter
Would you try to get off though, that's what I'm saying. Or would you be quite happy with your own
Nick Park
I would be very happy actually,'cause I love doing a bit of mackerel fishing and uh camping and and living off in the wild. I've always dreamt of spending a season, you know, on an island, in a cottage.
Presenter
Right. So you're practical?
Nick Park
No. I probably wouldn't last that long as soon as it got cold. No, I I miss people though. I I've tried uh I once stayed on Iona, off the Isle of Mole, just for a week, and that really got to me.
Presenter
And was that bird watching, or was that partially a sort of spiritual retreat?
Nick Park
It was a bit of both, really.
Presenter
Right.
Nick Park
Right.
Nick Park
And uh I joined in there's the Iona Abbey, they had sort of pilgrimage tours of the island and I joined in that, which was very enriching. Even though I like I'm very happy with my own company.
Presenter
Absolutely.
Nick Park
But I like to be able to see people.
Presenter
Let's have your uh your last uh piece of music then, Nick Park. What are we gonna hear?
Nick Park
This is um
Nick Park
A song by Joe Rose, he's the son of some very good friends of mine in Sheffield, artists in Sheffield that I was at art school with, and their son I think is a very talented, inspirational young songwriter in Sheffield. This is one of his songs called Plain Songs.
Speaker 4
I don't see
Speaker 4
Somewhat beneath my feet
Speaker 4
Words I've not heard begun to sinking.
Presenter
What's up?
Speaker 1
No.
Presenter
That was Joe Rose singing Plain Song. Now, Nick Park, we come to the point then where I'm going to give you the books. You get the Bible and the Complete Works of Shakespeare. You're allowed to take a book of your own. What books that can be?
Nick Park
I think it's gotta be my Colin's bird book. It's a bird identification book on birds of Britain in Europe.
Presenter
It's yours. And um you're allowed to take a luxury as well.
Nick Park
I think it would be my amazing pair of binoculars. I would never get bored looking at the wildlife, really.
Presenter
Okay, the binoculars, it is then. Um and if you had to choose just one record out of the eight to save from the waves, which one
Nick Park
Uh
Presenter
Uh
Nick Park
Uh
Presenter
Record would you choose?
Nick Park
Goose.
Presenter
Yeah.
Nick Park
Um, well I'm tempted to say Joe's song actually, that last one, just listening to it now. But no, but I think.
Nick Park
The one I play mostly time and time again is Van Morrison.
Presenter
Okay, it's yours, the Van Morrison then. Nick Park, thank you very much for letting us hear your Desert Island Discs.
Nick Park
Oh, it's been a pleasure and a great honour. Thank you very much.
Presenter
You've been listening to a download from the BBC. You'll find more information on the Radio Four website bbc.co. uk slash radio four.
Presenter asks
Was there a touch of the amateur inventor about your father?
Uh yeah, there was very much actually. In fact, um after making A Grand Day Out, you know, where Wallace builds a a this rocket in the basement of his house, I remember thinking after I've made that that I've actually made a film about my dad,'cause I remember we bought this old decrepit, like, nineteen sixties caravan from someone for about ten pounds, and we got it home and my my parents stripped it down to the chassis and built this kind of wooden box on it, which was a caravan with uh wallpaper inside and bunk beds and lots of things that fold out and and it was a little home from home really that seven of us went on holiday to North Wales in.
Presenter asks
How do you capture the spirit and personality in little plasticine figures?
Yes, well on on one level, every model maker I work with you could they often can be accused of making models look like themselves. ... I can tell if Pete's animated Morph, or I can tell if one of the other animators is animated, because it takes on their personality.
Presenter asks
Were you filled with trepidation at the thought of working with big Hollywood players [like DreamWorks]?
Um yeah, absolutely. I mean I'm constantly kind of in awe really of how things have gone, you know, from playing with plasticine at home. And that's what I still feel I'm kind of doing really. ... I was with a close shave out at the Sundance Festival and got a call from Steven Spielberg's company, from Geoffrey Katzenberg, um Stephen Spielberg's partner. And he sent his private jet to pick up, you know, me and my colleagues and fly us out to LA for a meeting just for one evening.
“I've never felt I have to kind of get out there and sell myself and, you know, big myself up and It's nice that the work speaks for itself, you know I hope.”
“I was actually planning to give Gromit a mouth, and I found it so difficult to change his mouth that I just moved his brow up and down. And it was in that moment, out of economy or laziness, I don't know, but suddenly his character was born, and I realized he could say everything.”
“I think I said something like. Oh, I shouldn't eat all this chocolate. It was it was Easter next week and I said, M oh, my mother will probably be making loads of things like this and I shouldn't really eat them. And then anyway, I had this kind of half-hour long conversation with her, which was really int she was very switched on and talking about theatre and films and and I wasn't wanting to stuff my face. So I think she must have thought that I wasn't liking the pudding. So she called the waiter and said, Could you take this away, please? His mother says he shouldn't eat it.”