CS Weekly Archive > From the Trenches > 3/14/08

Getting Their Voices Heard:
Horton Hears a Who's Cinco Paul & Ken Daurio

By peter clines

The guys behind Bubble Boy talk about how they landed their dream job—adapting one of the most popular children's books of all time.

When Cinco Paul wrote a musical play for his church, the last thing he expected to get out of it was a writing partner. In fact, when he and leading man Ken Daurio got to know each other, they ended up forming a band. Once they realized their common interest in writing (and their shared sense of offbeat humor) they teamed up and wrote Special, the story of a man pretending to be handicapped in order to get a special football for his fiancée's son. The script was pretty much universally loved by everybody in town, but not enough to make it into a movie. However, it cemented the two as a writing team, and after years together, they're now applying their talents to the classic Dr. Seuss tale, Horton Hears a Who.

Horton (voiced by Jim Carrey) is a friendly and popular elephant in the jungle of Nool who hears an odd sound coming from a mote of dust. It's the voice of the Mayor of Whoville (v. Steve Carell), a microscopic city on the speck populated by thousands of Whos, all unaware of the precarious nature of their home. Horton and the Mayor form an alliance that grows into friendship as the elephant struggles to carry the speck (resting on a small poppy flower) across the jungle to the safety of a small mountain cave. But the other animals have noticed Horton's disturbing behavior, and as the law-giving Kangaroo (v. Carol Burnett) explains—"If you can't see it, hear it, or feel it—it doesn't exist!"

Daurio and Paul took some time to talk on the phone with CS Weekly and laugh about the Marx Brothers, Jim Carrey, and the constant fear of what the ghost of Theodore Geisel might do to them if they messed up this film.

How did you both end up as writers? Cinco actually studied screenwriting, yes?
Cinco Paul: Yeah, I was at USC. I got my Masters in screenwriting and then my thesis script was optioned by Disney and that got me an agent. The next script I wrote sold as a spec, and that's what actually got my writing career going. It's a script called Band of Gold, not made yet.

Ken Daurio: Yet!

Paul: Exactly. (laughs)

Daurio: I was the little kid who wanted the movie camera for Christmas and got it and started making home movies. That translated into me, right out of high school, making music videos for any band that would scrounge up a couple bucks and let me film it. I did that for almost 10 years, and I'd made a hundred videos.

Paul: And he'd made a hundred dollars.

Daurio: Well…almost (chuckles). But that's really where I learned to tell stories. I always saw that as the stepping stone to becoming "the filmmaker," but really the step was taken when I met Cinco. That's really the first time I seriously got into screenwriting, when we wrote our first thing together.

Was there any film or story that particularly inspired either of you to head into filmmaking?
Daurio: I just grew up in the fantasy worlds of Star Wars and George Lucas and Spielberg and E.T.. Raiders of the Lost Ark, all that stuff. To me, those were the worlds I wanted to live in. That was really my inspiration to make movies, and I made bad versions of those over and over with my Super-8 camera.

Paul: I saw my first Marx Brothers movies when I was eight, and that did it for me. I fell in love with the Marx Brothers, and I just watched all the old comedies, then I made my own. Ken made his own versions of Star Wars; I made my own versions of Duck Soup. (laughs)

Daurio: Cinco was an odd child.

How did you end up on Horton Hears a Who?
Paul: We wrote a script called Let It Rain, which was originally going to be a live-action, singing-animal movie for Disney. But then it became an animated movie and ended up at Fox Family, and [executive producer] Chris Meledandri loved the script. One day I got a call from our agents saying, "Chris is interested in you guys doing Horton Hears a Who." I knew that was Ken's favorite book, so I called Ken and said, "What book, of all books, would you most want to adapt into a movie?" So we immediately said, "Yeah, we are on board for this." I don't think they asked anybody else. We came in and came up with a take. Then we went down to San Diego to meet with Audrey Geisel—Mrs. Seuss—and present it to her. She liked our take and liked us and then we were on board. That was four years ago.

Probably everyone reading this read this book as a kid and reads it to their kids now. All that being said—was there anything where you sat down and said, "Wow, that has to change for it to work in a movie?"
Daurio: Well, that was the beauty. We've been saying for a while this is the one Seuss book that really is set to be a movie. It actually has a beginning, a middle, and an end, whereas a lot of the Seuss books are just these crazy adventures that don't really follow that structure. There is actually a movie there. Some things have to be filled in, but there's a three-act structure there that will translate perfectly to a movie. So, it was really about finding the pieces that would go in between, finding ways to flesh it out and still stay in a world that felt like Seuss and stay true to the spirit of the book. When you watch the movie, you'll see that the entire book is in the movie, we just added things to fill it out.

Paul: One thing we knew we needed to add right away was for Horton to have a specific goal in mind. In the book he's holding it and he's going to protect it, but we wanted him to have to go on a journey. One of the first things we added was that he finds the perfect spot where he knows the speck will be safe. Once he's found that spot, he's like, "All I have to do is get the clover to this spot and then everything will be okay." And then his hero's journey can begin.

The "Seussical" rhyming narration helped blend the new material with the original. How much of that extended poem was your work?
Paul: Our goal was that it would blend in so well that people would say, "Wait, was that in the book or not?" As far as the narration goes, I think half of it is the book and half of it is us. That would be my guess, but we never counted. We really wanted to use quite a bit of the narration from the book, but you can't just suddenly have the narration drop out for all the scenes that you created that aren't in the book. There was a lot of studying of the Seussian meter and trying to channel Dr. Seuss. And not have him come in ghostly form and curse us. (chuckles)

Jim Carrey has a reputation for ad-libbing constantly. Did this make it troublesome to write dialogue for Horton the elephant?
Paul: Here's the thing. He obviously has that reputation because he's a genius and he's incredibly funny. When we were in the recording studio with him, what was nice was he would always do it exactly as it was written, he'd do it a zillion ways, and then he'd start to expand. But he expanded in such a respectful way, and it was so true to what was already on the page, that it never bothered me one single time. When it's changed, you can see that he's making it better and expanding and exploring.

Daurio: What really impressed me was, I had expectations. I thought I knew what it was going to be like to go in there with Jim Carrey, and he was just going to be spewing things. I thought, "Okay, we're going to watch him bounce off the wall and hope he says something close." He was so not like that. He ad-libbed, but he did it in such a way that he was totally respectful of his character and the story. He thought out everything that came out of his mouth, and he made sure it wasn't going to affect the story or his character in any way. He understood the character and was aware of everything that character was going to do in the story, and he based all his ad-libs and the places he went off that. It was great to watch him.

Was it odd doing an animated script over a live-action one?
Daurio: When you write the first draft, it's just like writing any movie. Then you turn it in and you realize, "Oh, it's never going to stop." It just keeps coming back and you keep changing and molding and rewriting. So that was very different.

Paul: On a live-action movie, you write your script, you turn it in, maybe you're invited on set for the 10 weeks or so they shoot, and then it's done. But this was four years of almost every week people saying, "Rewrite this and change this." Because they can. And they do (laughs). That part was grueling, but it was also much more hands-on than anything else we've ever done.

How did you manage to maintain writing credit on this when solo writing credits are so very rare in animation?
Paul: I don't know. We loved this so much, we've been with it since the beginning, and I really just have to thank Chris Meledandri for respecting us and taking care of us in that way. They just hurl writers at projects, in animation and live action. This is the only thing we've ever worked on that got produced where we weren't replaced. That also made it a great experience

Daurio: It really was. I think it was about Chris believing in us. When we got to the end of one draft or one phase of the production, it wasn't like, "Okay, let's bring in the new guys to take the next step." It was about, "Let's start back at the beginning with these guys and see if they can actually move the thing the way it's supposed to be moved." It was about him giving us those opportunities to show we could evolve with the story and change and not hold onto everything. It was about him just allowing us that.

Paul: I think there's a real value to keeping one set of writers all the way through. You look at those Brad Bird movies and they're amazing. I think this is the best thing we've ever done, and I think it helps to keep a consistent voice throughout.

Were you nervous, going onto this project? None of the recent Dr. Seuss adaptations have gone over terribly well with critics or audiences. Did that put any extra pressure on you?
Daurio: Yes it did (laughs). The pressure came when we were on our way down to San Diego to present our ideas to Mrs. Seuss. That was a little stressful. Like Cinco said, this is one of my favorite books ever, and I think we both went into this knowing how a Dr. Seuss movie should be made, and knowing the things you certainly shouldn't do. I felt good knowing that we weren't worrying about getting certain audiences in or trying to push for any certain rating. We just wanted to make the true version of this book.

Paul: And I think the fact that Cat in the Hat was universally despised helps us (laughs). There's nowhere to go but up. But we're still waiting for the critics to weigh in on this. There's going to be purists out there who are going to be upset if you change anything. But our consciences are clear.

Peter Clines has had a lifelong love affair with the movies. He grew up in New England, where he studied English literature and education, and now lives and writes somewhere in Southern California. If anyone knows exactly where, he would appreciate a few hints.

Cinco Paul & Ken Daurio, Dr. Seuss' Horton Hears a Who! courtesy Twentieth Century Fox

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