Interview: John A. Davis

Interview by Clint Morris

Interview with John A. Davis
Writer and Director of the film The Ant Bully.

It’s not everyday that Tom Hanks sends you a package, and though filmmaker John A. Davis admits he was excited to find a gift from the Oscar Winner on his doorstep, he was a little disappointed to find what was under the wrapping.

Hanks had sent the filmmaker – known for his work on the Jimmy Neutron series - a copy of John Nickle’s children’s book The Ant Bully. Egged on by his son – who adored the book – Hanks, via his production company Playtone, was on a mission to entice someone to make a movie out of it.

Davis was flattered, but frightened.

“When Tom first sent the book to me, to be quite honest, I was disappointed to see that it was about ants – because there were already two CGI ant movies”, Davis admits. “I remember wondering whether I could do it with bees instead?

After further discussions with Hanks, Davis realised that they weren’t doing another Bug’s Life or Antz at all – so ants it was.

“I realised that Ant Bully would be dramatically different to the other films. Not to mention the fact that the story was so good that it deserved to be its own movie anyway. I knew it would be a good one to tell, and thought we could do a lot of things [here] that haven’t been seen in other movies about bugs. And regardless, there’s lots of different movies with cowboys in them – Blazing Saddles, Brokeback Mountain – so why not?!

The film centres on Lucas Nickle, a young troublemaker, who upon flooding an ant colony with his watergun, is magically shrunken down to insect size and sentenced to hard labor in the ruins.

“I saw it as a tribute to [legendary stop-motion animator] Ray Harryhausen’s films – where someone battles giant wasps and frogs, and beasts – so it ultimately became more of an action/adventure film.

“I didn’t want to do anything to make the author unhappy, but I did want to change a few things. I talked to him though, and he was really great. He was like ‘Great, whatever you wanna do! Just go! Have fun!’

Hanks was the same, says Davis, noting that the actor/producer gave him “free reign” to essentially do what he likes with the film.

“The second and third acts were easy to write, but the first act was a tough nut to crack – because we had to establish two worlds; the ant world and the human world – so Tom helped me with that. Tom was really involved in those early discussions, but after the second draft, he was really happy and just wished us the best. He would come by and watch the animatics, as they’d develop, and give notes and comments though. He’s really great to work with; he gives you a lot of free reign. We saw a lot of the same things in the story initially, so it made it really easy.”

As wonderful as it was to be let off the leash, Davis said the film – which took four years to complete, and employed 250 artists – was the cause for a few headaches in some instances.

“There are days when I’d come home and think ‘My God, How can I do this?’”, he admits. “But on every production, there’s always something that seems impossible to do, and you wonder whether you’ll ever get it done in time. Eventually things just start coming together, and by the end of the production, everyone is just clicking.”

Such as the cast, which included such names as Meryl Streep, Nicolas Cage and Julia Roberts. It was B-movie legend Bruce Campbell – best known for his role in the Evil Dead films – that Davis surprisingly found the hardest to tie down though.

“He was busy shooting something when we really needed to record him. He had just got back from L.A, where he had been working on something, and didn’t want to turn around to do this. Anyway, he convinced me to go to Medford Oregon, where he lives, to record in his home studio. We had the best time. Medford is beautiful.

“At one point we were walking through the woods, and I remember thinking ‘wow, I’m walking through the woods with Ash!’

Four years later, the film is complete – and to boot, it is being screened in 3-D, in addition to the normal print.

“It’s interesting making both of them at the same time. There are a few ground rules that we had to remember while we were in production – like we had to remember that we were doing everything in 3-D, so we had to do scenes in 3-D space.

“There’s some cheats you can do with 2-D to make things look 3-D – for instance, having smoke in a scene – but in this case, that wouldn’t have worked. It would’ve looked flat.

The end result? “Spectacular. I just saw it for the first time myself, in Chicago, and it looks stunning.”

The Any Bully is in cinemas now.