![]() ![]() “We had considered, at one stage, just canning that whole idea. ![]() So they went for something anatomically, if not politically, correct as models for the characters’ mouths. One thing the guys who were in charge of the movie weren’t sure about was the shape of Brenda and her sister’s baked goods, er, pie holes. So, what did Tiernan and Vernon’s army of artists come up with? Quite a lot, some of which didn’t make the final cut (believe me, you don’t want to know about the evil Douche’s onetime mob of rodent henchmen). It took some development investment from Megan Ellison’s Annapurna Pictures - which tends to back edgy adult fare such as “Zero Dark Thirty,” “Her” and “American Hustle” - to produce a two-minute proof-of-concept short and ultimately encourage Sony Pictures to distribute the feature. Even with the proven talent involved, live-action distributors couldn’t understand what they’d do with such a thing, and big animation players were reluctant to soil their family-friendly brands. So when Conrad pitched ‘Sausage Party,’ we were in the right time and place to politely and respectfully decline to take on more ‘Thomas’ shows and devote our life to this.” “But content-wise, yep, if you’re not into steam trains and preschool storytelling, it can get a little wearing after years of it. “I loved working on ‘Thomas & Friends,’ that’s an iconic show and that thing is, like, a billion-dollar property,” Tiernan acknowledges. Although Vancouver is Rogen and Goldberg’s hometown, it was Tiernan’s pal Vernon, who’d worked with him on Ralph Bakshi’s 1992 attempt to meld animation with grown-up live-action, “Cool World,” who contacted him with the “Sausage Party” pitch. Now one of Canada’s biggest animation operations, Nitrogen’s top account was for children’s videos about Thomas the Tank Engine and his friends. Although he later worked on some adult-themed toons elsewhere in Europe, 13 years ago Tiernan and his wife, Nicole Stinn, opened Nitrogen Studios in Vancouver. Tiernan trained with animation legend Don Bluth when the latter opened a studio in the former’s native Ireland. Well, Greg and I finally got to do it, which was a dream come true.” “Everyone I know in the animation industry has been saying, wouldn’t it be cool if all these filthy little jokes that we come up with for the characters in our family movies could actually be done. Aliens” and “Madagascar 3” and does the voices for “Shrek’s” Gingerbread Man as well as numerous other cartoons’ characters. “When you work in animation that’s all for a family audience, as an adult you desperately want to break out of that,” notes Vernon who, among many other credits, co-directed “Shrek 2,” “Monsters vs. It’s as crazy, stoney and raunchy as you’d expect from the team that came up with such live-action outrages as “Superbad,” “Pineapple Express,” “This Is the End” and the notorious “The Interview.” And it was like a godsend for its veteran animation directors, Greg Tiernan and Conrad Vernon. The brainchild of Seth Rogen, Jonah Hill and Rogen’s lifelong creative partner Evan Goldberg, the movie stars Rogen, Hill and Michael Cera as the voices of frankfurters Frank, Carl and Barry Kristen Wiig as Brenda, the bun Frank longs to slip into and as assorted talking tacos, bagels and lavash, Salma Hayek, Edward Norton and David Krumholtz, respectively. Not only do a whole bunch of walking, talking supermarket products discover to their graphic horror what the real purpose of their existence is, they go to battle with their omnivorous consumers and, yes, stage a celebratory victory orgy. “Sausage Party” touts itself as Hollywood’s first R-rated, CG cartoon feature, and there’s certainly a lot of truth in that packaging. Well, maybe because us humans may not want to be exposed to the personalities and feelings of stuff we eat? Or perhaps we’d rather not see the very relatable, if fanciful, details of how little sausages get made? So why not one about the secret life of food? We’ve seen digitally animated movies about anthropomorphic toys, cars, pets, you name it.
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