Highlights From ‘The Jungle Book’ Conference

The Knockturnal had the opportunity to sit down with some of the cast and crew in Disney‘s latest epic adventure “The Jungle Book.” Read what director Jon Favreau and cast members Lupita Nyong’o, Neel Sethi, and Sir Ben Kingsley had to say.

Q: Can you talk about why this movie at this time? What convinced you to go for it right now?

John Favreau: Well a lot of it was the enthusiasm of Disney and specifically Alan Horn whose really connected with this film, with the story from the Kipling stories from when he was growing up and I connected very much with the animated film when I was growing up and so we had common ground of both having great affection for this property and the question became if we love it so much in the other forms why do it now and as he pointed out to me he says look, he saw Life Of Pi, he realized that the technology may have come to a point where you can actually tell this story in a different way, and maybe bring some of what existed in his imagination when he was growing up visually onto the big screen and I was very compelled with the idea of taking what can be done in visual affects now I was also very impressed with like Planet of The Apes, Avatar, Life Of Pi as well and specifically what was done in Gravity the way that they filmed the principal photography almost as though it were an element shoot for an affects piece and it became a big puzzle and after sleeping on that and thinking about it I came up with a take on it that when I came back and we discussed it, sounded really really cool and so a hundred years ago was the book, fifty years ago was the animated film and now fifty years later it’s time to update the story for our generation.

Q: For the actors I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about how John convinced you to come on board or sort of what you loved most about jumping in?

Lupita: I met with John while I was very busy with the campaign for 12 Years A Slave. At the time when I met with John, he very quietly walked me through his idea for his version of The Jungle Book and what struck me was the compassion with which he was talking about these characters; you know there was all of this state of the arts stuff he was going to do with it but at the heart of it, was this love of the story and real vision for each character that he was going to bring to life and for me, that was what got me.

Q: Neel, if you could talk about how crazy your auditions were and then sort of those first meetings you had? I understand Mr. Favreau sort of had you kind of work through things and if you can kind of talk about what that was like; starting to play around with the material?

Neel: It felt like it was too easy, like that shouldn’t have happened that easy I just auditioned once and Jon really liked me and then the first time I met Sir Ben Kingsley and Lupita I voice recorded with Sir Ben and I met you (Lupita) at D23 right? (To Lupita) at the convention and that was a lot of fun, I got to see like, my face (laughing).

Q: I’m curious for the actors to talk about surrendering themselves, their personalities and some of their physical features into the characters their voicing and the relationship that an actor now has with the kind of surreal special affects that Jon has so expertly created with his team for this film?

Sir Ben: My secret to my performance I discovered later which is odd but I had a intuitive feeling grasp of something in him and I realized much later that I actually am playing Kipling, that Bagheera is Rudyard Kipling. He’s the voice of Kipling in the story, my goodness Bagheera is Kipling. So that was although I didn’t recognize it, sometimes an actors intuition is buried and you don’t realize what your mining as a sort of energy until perhaps afterwards but I’m privileged to be the voice of Kipling a man I greatly admire and loved and when I was in the Boyscouts our troop leader, no I was in the Cubs actually which is before the Boycouts, our troop leader was called Akela.

Q: Jon, speak on the importance of casting the right actor as Mowgli?

Jon: One of the reasons we hired Neel and one of the things he neglected to share which was a big deal for us was that we put him through the paces with the stuntmen, before we hired him to see what type of athlete he was and Neel is actually great at a lot of sports so when I would direct him sometimes it was more like being a coach so sometimes in a scene if his body posture wasn’t right I would say, be more poised be a little more explosive and we weren’t getting there and I said do you play baseball? and he said yeah, and I said do you ever steal base? and he was like oh yeah, and I said pretend you’re getting ready to steal second base, so when you watch him running away from at cattle in the stampede that wonderful posture he had, he was stealing bases, I said okay go for it okay the pitcher is looking at you okay go for it! break for it! and so you get this incredible sense of focus out of him and really that’s the trick of acting. You do depending on what technique you were trained in. It’s tricking yourself into believing that whatever you’re doing is real and creating an immediate moment especially on film when you just need a moment of clarity. And when Neel’s eyes would light up, it would light up the screen.

Q: Your love for this story shows in every frame so going into it what was your biggest fear and now coming out of it and having it come to the masses what are your most proud of or most excited for people to see?

Jon: My biggest thing was not to drop the ball for the people who love this underlying property and knowing inherently I couldn’t just take the G Rated musical for children and make it photo real. I knew we were going to have to deviate in some basic inherent ways from that and could you still preserve the soul and charm and the feeling of the first one, while including aspects from the Kipling stories and changing it from a G Rated musical to a PG Rated adventure, that would have more thrills and be more exciting and scarier at times than the original but also maintain the heart the humor and the music too. This is something that belonged to the whole culture before we decided to update it and so we it’s very exciting and it’s been a very exciting couple of days as people are seeing it for the first time. And these thoughtful questions are coming through as I sit in the rooms and talk to each of you it’s all starting to get the sense to how it all came together and how we did it so I think we’re very grateful for all of you for taking the time to ask these thoughtful questions, to take the time to spread the word about it and also the sense of relief as this is all closing out and we can kind of exhale and let us know that our job is done and now it goes out to the world!