ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
In the new movie "Sketch," a girl's drawings come to life. Unfortunately, Amber likes to draw monsters. It's her way of dealing with the grief of losing her mother.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "SKETCH")
BIANCA BELLE: (As Amber Wyatt) This is the blood eater. It eats blood and pukes the blood back on to people.
TONY HALE: (As Taylor Wyatt) OK.
BIANCA: (As Amber Wyatt) This is the tattler. It tells this blind one where you are so it can come kill you.
SHAPIRO: Pretty soon, colorful creatures that could only come from a child's imagination are rampaging across the town. "Sketch" is fantastical and scary, and it's the debut feature from writer and director Seth Worley. Welcome to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED.
SETH WORLEY: Oh, thank you for having me, Ari. It's great to be here.
SHAPIRO: I understand the seed of this movie came from an experience you had as a kid. What happened?
WORLEY: Well, technically, it's something that - an experience my sister had as a kid, when we were both kids. My sister got in trouble for drawing a picture of her teacher getting pelted with arrows. And there was just enough blood in the picture to concern all the adults involved. And she had to see a counselor, and the counselor said, did you really want to see this happen to your teacher? And my sister said, when I drew it, I did. And I don't anymore. And the counselor said, well, then I think you did the right thing. I think drawing this...
SHAPIRO: Wow.
WORLEY: ...Was a much healthier choice than actually doing it. And I remember hearing that and thinking, what an incredibly cool thing to say to a kid. Like, this thing that you did that made all the adults in your life sweaty and nervous is actually evidence that you're a good person making healthy choices with your emotions and processing your emotions in a healthy way. And I just decided that's the kind of adult I want to be in some kid's life when I grow up. And then I grew up, and my daughter, who was in kindergarten at the time, one day just started bringing home drawings that were just inventively violent.
SHAPIRO: (Laughter).
WORLEY: Like, unprecedented amount of parent death and blood and monsters. And I'm looking at this, and I'm thinking, oh, you can believe two things at once. You can believe that art is the safest place for violence while also believing that your daughter's a serial killer and it's your fault.
SHAPIRO: (Laughter).
WORLEY: And that tension felt immediately writable to me. And it felt like a Tony Hale role to me, and that's how "Sketch" was born.
SHAPIRO: There are two kids, Amber and her older brother Jack. Tony Hale plays their father. And the scene you just described with your sister in her childhood is more or less the scene that opens the movie, when Tony Hale is called to the principal's office to talk about these extremely violent pictures that Amber has drawn.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "SKETCH")
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: (As character) We felt a phone call wouldn't convey the...
HALE: (As Taylor Wyatt) Blood?
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: (As character) Well, the seriousness.
HALE: (As Taylor Wyatt) That's a lot of blood.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: (As character) Mm-hmm.
SHAPIRO: These monsters are not, like, familiar zombies and werewolves and vampires. They are bizarre. There are things called eyeders (ph), which are eyeballs with spider legs, and they steal your stuff. Where did you come up with these creatures?
WORLEY: Well, the idea was that they would each have some sort of - be tied back to either a relationship of Amber's in the story or some point of conflict in her life. Like, some are more literal. Like, the eyeders are drawn in response to her dad taking her notebook and looking at it when he promised he wouldn't. And so she draws these monsters that take your stuff and look at it. And by your stuff, you know, as she says in the movie, it's, like, your personal - like, it can be your personal items, like your coffee and your phone, or it can be your fingernails and your eyeballs, you know, depending on the day.
SHAPIRO: (Laughter).
WORLEY: A really big game-changer was this early idea that they would be made of whatever Amber drew them with. So if she drew them with crayon, they would be made of crayon wax. If she drew them with chalk, they'd be made of chalk. And that's one that allowed this wonderful opportunity to have them leave colored streaks in their wake on anything they touched. And it also spoke to how you could destroy them. So, like, crayon wax, if you get it hot, it starts to melt. And chalk, if you hit it hard enough, it bursts into a fine powder and lingers in the air. And that created all these amazing visual opportunities that you'll come to see in the movie.
SHAPIRO: Tony Hale is clearly so much more than just one of the stars of this movie. He's been part of the process from the very beginning. Like, what has...
WORLEY: Yeah.
SHAPIRO: ...That dynamic, that role, that relationship been?
WORLEY: When I thought of this idea, like I said, it felt like a role for Tony. And it felt like a role a lot of people don't let Tony play very often and...
SHAPIRO: 'Cause he's known as a comic actor, and this is a man who's grieving the loss of his wife and trying to raise two kids.
WORLEY: The thing about Tony that people don't realize is, in all of his roles he's played, he's found a way to come from a grounded human place. Comedy is not the first priority for Tony. His first priority is truth and emotional, like, reality. And because of that, it enhances the content.
SHAPIRO: It's got elements of comedy and fantasy and horror, and at times it feels like a kids movie. I've been talking this film up to everybody because I really enjoyed it a lot. And...
WORLEY: Oh, wonderful.
SHAPIRO: ...When they ask what the genre is, I'm not quite sure what to tell them. What do you say?
WORLEY: You know, I've had the hardest time with it, too. When we were pitching the movie, Tony - it took Tony and I six to seven years to get it made and then a year and a half to finish it. And those years of trying to get it made were just all these false starts and - with different producers. It was a TV show at one point. And people would read it either expecting "The Babadook" and be like, why does this have so many laughs in it? Or they'd read it expecting Goosebumps and be like, why am I crying so much as I read this? And our pitch was always we want to make "Inside Out" meets "Jurassic Park."
SHAPIRO: (Laughter).
WORLEY: We want to make a - this big, thrilling, funny, like, summer blockbuster movie that is so emotionally intelligent and emotionally rich and makes you feel every emotion in the spectrum of human emotion. And this was also important that it be appealing to, like, literally every demographic that we possibly can appeal to.
SHAPIRO: Tell us about the butterfly.
WORLEY: Yeah. So in the film, Amber is trying to draw this butterfly over and over and giving up several times 'cause she can't get it right. And we come to learn later that the butterfly is a tattoo that her mother had.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "SKETCH")
HALE: (As Taylor Wyatt) She drew Ally's tattoo, that butterfly in her notebook, and she had to do it by memory. There's no reference of it in the house. I took them down the night after she died and put them in a suitcase 'cause...
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #2: (As character) Oh, yes. Sorry, I'm here.
WORLEY: And it's actually based on a tattoo that my wife has, that..
SHAPIRO: Oh.
WORLEY: She has three butterflies on her arm that represent each of our kids. And I think they're based on their birthstones. This is where I'm a terrible husband and father and I don't remember.
SHAPIRO: (Laughter).
WORLEY: But it's...
SHAPIRO: You were about to say something so moving, and you ruined it (laughter).
WORLEY: I ruined it. Yeah, I have to. That's my job here, you know? But it's based on this real tattoo that she has, that my wife has, and that we see Ally, the mom in the story, we see her have in a flashback in the beginning. And it brought this wonderful opportunity to - well, I don't want to give too many things away, but the butterfly then comes back later in the story in this really wonderful way.
SHAPIRO: Did your wife know that you had incorporated that tattoo representing your children into this movie?
WORLEY: Oh, yeah. My - so much of my family is in this movie. There's - there are three drawings that are featured pretty early in the story and then do come back later that are each - I have three kids, and each is a drawing that each did.
SHAPIRO: Oh, wow. So have your kids seen it?
WORLEY: Yes. They've seen it so many times, they're sick of it.
SHAPIRO: (Laughter).
WORLEY: And they - all three love it, though my middle one was very honest at the beginning and said it's kind of mid. But I took some of her notes, and she likes it better now.
SHAPIRO: (Laughter) Oh, tough critic.
WORLEY: I'd rather they be tough critics than suck-ups, you know?
SHAPIRO: Seth Worley. His new film is called "Sketch." Thank you so much.
WORLEY: Ari, thank you so much. This was wonderful.
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