Tim McCanlies has crafted a film that crosses all boundaries, making Secondhand Lions perfect for kids, teens, adults, and really old people. It's the story of a wimpy young boy who is dropped off at his eccentric uncles' for the summer and must now fend for himself. While living with them, he discovers they are two of the wealthiest and most interesting people in the world.

While Secondhand Lions did do well in movie theatres, it's really on DVD where the film will gain its true life. Parents all over the world will be buying this movie and plopping their kids in front of it for years to come.

We had the opportunity to speak with veteran Hollywood screenwriter and director of Secondhand Lions, Tim McCanlies. He's also a big comic book fan, and that's why he wrote a draft of Iron Man and co-wrote the screenplay for the popular animated feature, The Iron Giant. He is also credited on the big budget film, Around the World in Eighty Days.

Check out the website for Secondhand Lions at http://www.secondhandlions.com.

UGO: How was doing the commentary for Secondhand Lions?

Tim McCanlies: Doing commentary on the DVD was so much different than I ever thought it would be. I thought it would be much more leisurely, just kind of lay back and be able to talk about things in depth. Instead, it was like trying to read things off of railroad cars going by at about a million miles an hour.

I had these stories that were kind of fun. But then, you know, before I would even be halfway through it, here's the next scene, and I have a good story for that one, too. It was tough, and I thought maybe I could just spend a lot of time doing it. But they pretty much want to do it at one sitting, and they're paying for studio time.

UGO: Was it nice to get the original ending on the DVD?

TM: Yeah it was, especially since it's not like anyone thought the ending didn't work. It's just that it took so long to sort of wind up the story. And, after Michael Caine, Robert Duvall, and Haley left the screen, it seemed like we were treading on thin ice because we didn't know whether the audience would transfer all their affection to an adult grown-up Walter for ten minutes. That was always a question mark in my mind. Hence, the new ending would wind up the story quicker. But I knew I'd always be able to put the original ending on the DVD.

UGO: Did you stress over it?

TM: Yeah. It's funny; I've learned so much working on this movie just by sitting in a theater with people watching it, things like pace and such. Because you write in a vacuum, and I've been a writer most of my life. This is the second film I've directed, and in my first film, we didn't test an audience. One of my earlier cuts was twenty minutes longer, and you feel attention starting to slip. I really learned a lot.

UGO: Did Robert Duvall moon anybody on set? I heard he's a big mooner.

TM: [laughs] You know, I'm trying to remember. Somehow, I've heard of him doing that, but I don't think he did on our film. We had a 14-year-old boy, so he was on good behavior.

Michael Caine is such a class act, but Bobby was really great. And actually, I'd heard some stories about how he can be a handful.

UGO: If you had to pick two older actors to do something, they seem like the easiest to get along with nowadays.

TM: Yeah, Bobby can be... Well, I was fortunate in that they're such pros and I respected them as such. When you start talking to Michael, and then he'll start telling you about, "Oh yeah, John Huston told me once on the set of The Man Who Would Be King..." and you just fall out of your chair when you realize who this guy has worked with. The same with Bobby. I mean, this guy was in To Kill a Mockingbird, for crying out loud.

UGO: To Kill a Mockingbird is your favorite book, isn't it?

TM: That book and movie. These guys have gotten such a wealth of experience that the worst thing one could do -- I was smart enough not to do this -- would be to be some young, hot-shot director. That when they walk on the set, just walk right up to 'em and go, "Okay, now what I want you to do IS," you know? They want to be able to bring what they bring to it and at least show you what they're thinking is. With these kinds of guys, what they come in with nine times out of ten is going to be better than what you could ever imagine anyway.

UGO: I've read a couple of things that Secondhand Lions could be about the early life of Bill Watterson [creator of Calvin & Hobbes].

TM: Harry Knowles sort of made that up. I don't know where that came from. But there was never really a "Watterson homage." It was just that I happened to have a lion in it and so I think maybe that's where Harry kind of tried to put two and two together. I thought that was so much better than like looking over Richard Dreyfuss' shoulder as he types in Stand By Me.

UGO: Berkeley Breathed did the cartoon artwork in the movie. Do you know him?

TM: I didn't know him at all, but I knew he was from Boston. We didn't have much money at all to do the artwork in the movie, but I wrote him the biggest butt-kissing fan letter of all time. How great his stuff was and how modern day cartoons are crud and how much it would mean to me if he could do this. So he said, "sure why not, what the heck." So he came on board and he created all of that artwork that you see in the movie. In fact, he said he had such a good time, that started him thinking about doing it again because he hadn't done it for like ten and twelve years. He says that he had such a good time doing it, that that's what actually what got him thinking about doing Opus again and here we are.

Isn't that cool?

UGO: That's really cool.

TM: The first time I ever really met him was at the premiere of the movie in Westwood.

UGO: So its true Haley was attacked by a pig?

TM: [laughs] Yeah, in that one shot with the pig gets right up in his face. Anytime you're working with animals, what happens is just off screen there's two or three handlers almost yelling at the top of their lungs. You know, "Stay! Move! Look This Way! Look That Way!" There was a handler right behind Haley, and a lot of times, you're sort of trying to use food to get them to do something. We were trying to get the pig to look Haley in the face, and at a certain point, the pig just got tired of waiting and just went like right through Haley to try to get the food [laughs].

UGO: Well, you know what directors say: in your second movie, you should always have kids and animals in it.

TM: Yeah, yeah. Bobby and Michael would always constantly groan about that "Kids, yeah look at these kids and animals. What do they always tell you about not doing that?"' and I then I would tell them "You know I came very close setting this on a boat." So count your blessings.

UGO: Is it tough to do a story like this without getting too schmaltzy?

TM: Yeah, and I tried to keep it from getting very schmaltzy. I think a lot of people just expected it to be schmaltzy. But don't think it is particularly. There's a couple times when they're saying goodbye, but it's not as if this was a "woman's picture." People aren't sitting talking about their feelings. This is about guys, and guys don't talk about those things. And yet, father-son type relationships and all that is strong stuff to deal with. There is a lot of emotion in a movie and... and it's funny. In a comedy, you're supposed to make people laugh, and in a horror film, you're supposed to make them jump. In this kind of movie, I think you're supposed to make them feel something, and yet there's some people, particularly 25-year old critics, who kind of feel somehow that that's being manipulative.

But I think that's the nature of this beast. If you look at Old Yeller or Bambi, those movies would have shattered me when I was a kid. We're just so hip and jaded now, but I was trying to write a movie not necessarily for the 15 to 25 year old hip, jaded crowd. I was trying to write something a little timeless. Whether I succeeded or not, I guess we'll know in 20 years.

UGO: Did Michael and Robert hold up their Oscars and point at Haley and laugh?

TM: [laughs] Well, it's funny. A reporter once asked Michael, "I guess you and Bobby are giving Haley a lot of like acting advice, right?" Michael thought for second and he said "Well, no. Neither Bobby nor I had an Academy Award nomination at ten."

Haley was really such a pro, and Bobby I think was especially a little leery of him. Michael and Haley were both up for the same Oscar the same year, the one that Michael Caine won.

UGO: That's funny.

TM: In fact, Michael even thanked Haley in his speech, and here we are four years later.

UGO: How did Secondhand Lions do in the theater?

TM: It did quite well. It wasn't a particularly expensive movie, so it did far better than New Line expected. It did really well from week to week. This really didn't drop off much from week to week, which really meant that it was a word-of-mouth kind of movie.

These kind of movies tend to be pretty big sellers on DVD and home video because know they buy the kids the DVDs much more so than Final Destination II or whatever. Secondhand Lions is also doing really well overseas.

UGO: What did you do for Smallville exactly?

TM: It's kind of a long story and I have a non-disclosure agreement as well, so I can't talk about it [laughs] because of settlements and things.

UGO: But is your name on the first episode for instance?

TM: No, it's not. I wrote a pilot that was very well thought of called "Bruce Wayne."

DC Comics said it was the best thing they'd ever read, you know, blah blah and so, but we got into a big-leaking contest between the feature side and the movie side, and so they wouldn't let us move forward on that.

In fact, Chris Garcia in the Austin newspaper did an article about three or four months ago where he put a lot of things together, and so I got a nasty letter from the lawyers. But basically, I had in the bible for the Bruce Wayne script a two-hour episode called "Smallville," where this kid from Smallville comes into Gotham City for a newspaper convention and hangs out with Bruce. It's sort of a tongue-in-cheek.

The Bruce Wayne script was sort of the era of Bruce Wayne nobody's ever seen. He was the teen and doesn't know what to do with his life, but he's very wealthy, sort of like JFK, Jr.

UGO: He's supposed to be traveling around Europe learning stuff, you know.

TM: This would be like two years before he really does that. He's flailing around with, "What should I do with my life?" He's got like a chip on his shoulder. He's a master of martial arts because he's got all this fury in him, but he hasn't decided that's what he's going to do yet.

The pilot was great, and David Goyer is treading on some of the same areas that I did in the pilot with his new Batman script. So that may preempt the pilot.

UGO: Oh, are you applying for any kind of credit for the movie?

TM: No, I don't think so.

UGO: Have you thought of writing any comics?

TM: Actually, I am. I am right now working out a deal with Dark Horse to do a graphic novel of something that's just a very cool idea. I had worked on it with Mike Richardson [publisher of Dark Horse Comics] as a feature film. But then we thought that it is a natural for comics. I love comics, and it's always something I really wanted to do. We were going to do that first, and then set it up as a feature based on the comic.

UGO: What's the comic?

TM: Its sort of what Young Frankenstein does with Frankenstein with Dracula. Its very tongue-in-cheek, and it's supposed to be set in Shanghai around the 1900's. The son of like Van Helsing, who thought his father was just a kook, and suddenly he's like a laughing stock.

UGO: What about mainstream?

TM: At DC I've talked about the Bruce Wayne thing. In it, he's been thrown out of every private school in Europe. And in the opening scene of the pilot, Alfred's bailing him out of a jail in London because he got into a big bar fight.

UGO: Did he kick everyone's butt in the bar?

TM: Basically. Then he goes back to the jail, and they put him in the drunk tank. And later, he's the only one still standing. So he comes back to Gotham City, but he doesn't want any part of returning to Gotham City. But he has to because he's about to inherit all of Wayne Industries.

It's funny how they did Superboy, but they never really explored Bruce's early life. It was always the panel of his parents being killed and then like a panel of him in a college mixing chemicals and then the next panel is like he's in costume.

UGO: Then there's Year One, which is like when he's in his twenties.

TM: Right so this would be Year Minus Ten. I'd love to do that with DC but I've been busy they've been busy.

UGO: So are you the go-to guy for superheroes? Because I read that it's your Iron Man script that's floating around.

TM: I don't know. I wrote that for Mike De Luca, and then he left before I turned the script in. So that's never good for a project.

I was writing it as a Tom Clancy kind of thing, because this is before the first X-Men came out, and the costumed superheroes sort weren't really working.

But then of course X-Men came out, and suddenly New Line decided it needs a costumed supervillain. But by that time, I was off doing Secondhand Lions with, coincidentally, New Line. So I wasn't available, and then I think they'd gone and tried two or three other writers. Maybe they'll go back to my script; my script is pretty good I thought.

UGO: Who do you see as Iron Man?

TM: You know that's a good question. Tom Cruise has always expressed interest in it, and I think he could really pull it off.

UGO: He could definitely pull it off, but who do you really see in it? [laughs]

TM: You know, I don't know. Nic Cage has talked about it. I'm not sure about that. Tony Stark is sort of like Bruce Wayne in a way. There's a real dark side to him.

I'm not sure who could really pull it off these days. I love Jude Law but he's so blonde.

UGO: He should be a big guy too, you know, that was always the problem with the Bruce Wayne. Bruce Wayne is a huge man.

TM: I like Michael Keaton, but he was not particularly the oppressive-looking guy physically. He doesn't have to be huge because obviously the suit does so much for him. One of kind of the cool things about Iron Man is that Tony gets out of the suit and he can barely crawl because of the shrapnel by his heart. He built the suit to save his life. In my script, I had three different generations of suits, where he'd keep improving it, which was kind of cool so his abilities grew over the course of the movie.

UGO: Where'd he hurt himself? Obviously not in the Vietnam War.

TM: No, there's a bad guy, Justin Hammer. Stark was building arms and had these second thoughts about it, and so Justin Hammer tried to co-op him. When Stark wouldn't do it, this guy came in to, you know, basically get Tony's designs and tried to kill Tony in the process.

UGO: Is your script for Around the World in Eighty Days the one they're using?

TM: We don't know. The credit arbitration is still going on. When I was brought in, they just had a little bit of time to try to write a script that would attract Jackie Chan. That really made it a whole different ball game, because now it's a different main character: Jackie Chan plays Passepartout, who's the butler.

Passepartout is sort of the second banana in the books and in the previous drafts. In this scenario, Jackie Chan's pretty much the main character. And it being a Jackie Chan movie, you've got to play to his strengths. Obviously, the book didn't have Passepartout doing amazing stunts. This is typical of some of these big movies.

UGO: What was it like adapting Around the World in Eighty Days?

TM: Well, I sort through everything. Once we had Jackie Chan, I had a schedule of where'd they'd have to be and when, so they just tried to hit those dots. At that point, it was sort of like my adaptation for Iron Giant. We took the premise and ran with it. People talk about the book, Iron Giant, as this classic without having read it. But in the book, the boy Hogarth is barely in it, and the whole latter half is this big space battle between the Iron Giant and a giant bat the size of Australia on the Sun.

One of the first things [director] Brad Bird and I did when we came on was tell everybody, "The giant space bat is gone!"

UGO: Are you getting offered lots of stuff?

TM: Yeah, I'm getting sent a lot of stuff, but I generate my own material. I've got some things I want to do. Hollywood is amazing. They're really trying to find the next Lord of the Rings so they bought all these books like Lemony Snicket. But a lot of these books do not lend themselves well to movies.

I've got this fantasy thing that's really, you know, got a lot of allegory in it. So I'm going to be out pitching that in a few weeks, and hopefully we can set that up. I also want to do it as a novel as well, because I think these things tend to work well as a novel. It certainly helps sell the movie, and there's usually so much to these kinds of stories. Sometimes novels are just better than movies. The Harry Potter movies are fine, but the books are better.

The Lord of the Rings movies are about as good as any movie can be based on the books, but the books are still pretty great. There's still something, you know, better about sitting down and reading that fricking 20-pound trilogy.

UGO: What super power would you like to have?

TM: I think flight. Flying has got to be the dream.

UGO: With wings, or do you just want to be able to move yourself?

TM: Either one would be fine. Probably without wings you'd probably go faster. I would think the wings would cause drag.

Be sure to read the excellent original article.

**Many thanks to FAIR for this article.