Mowillems Picture books often feature devoted nonconformists, such as animal species rather than human species. Over the last two decades, he invented a pigeon that decided to drive a bus, a pig that wanted to fly, and a cookie-baking dinosaur that didn’t mind her extinction. Now one of Willems’ most gentle and adventurous creatures unleashes its restraints on television.
The brave soul is “Naked Mole Rat Change Clothes: Underground Rock Experience“Special to start streaming HBO Max On thursday. (It will air on Cartoon Network next year.) This anime comedy, a family-friendly rock opera, shows Wilbur discovering a small piece of clothing that floats from heaven like mana, that is, men’s clothing, and he. It depends on the scandal that follows the rapid evolution from the nakedness of. From the naked mole rat to the clothes-drying stand.
The TV special is not only Willems’ 2009 bestseller, but also “Naked mole rat gets dressedThere is also “The Naked Mole Rat: Rock Experience”. This is a stage musical version that debuted in 2018 and is still being performed in theaters. But in any entertainment incarnation, this strange species, where hairlessness is just one of its rare attributes, does not have to worry about competition on similar themes.
“The same is true for pigeons,” Willems, who lives in Northampton, Massachusetts, said in a telephone interview. “No one wants to make a book about dirty urban birds. That territory is yours, right? Everyone else is doing sloppy rabbits and happy bears.”
So he added, “I love ridiculous ideas that make it sublime.”
Starting as an Emmy-winning Sesame Street writer and animator, Willems, 54, is now one of the most acclaimed child writers and illustrators of his generation, and his treatises are kept in Yale. And two museum retrospectives honor his achievements. Worshipers compare him to giants like Dr. Seuss and Willems’ own idol, Charles M. Schulz. (Willems drew “Naked Mole Rat Gets Dressed” from one of Schulz’s pens, handed over by the cartoonist’s widow Jeannie Schulz.)
In a telephone interview, Amy Friedman, Head of Programming at Cartoon Network and HBO MaxKids & Family, said in Willems’s work, “You have the sweetness of Fred Rogers and the cheerfulness of Dr. Seuss.” But she added: “He doesn’t have to be someone else. He’s just Mo.”
Friedman’s team wanted to embrace that peculiar vision when they approached Willems about working with them. HBO Max is already streaming Short film Willems’s work and “Don’t let Pigeon have a story time!“The live-action sketch comedy special” Naked Mole Rat “is their first creative collaboration and one of his books is also the first hour of TV animation production inspired by it.
As Willems explained, “The Naked Mole Rat” is Trix, a one-year-old son who is crazy about Dutch immigrant cartoons and is 21-transgender. He emphasized that this is not a “coming out story” but an “acceptance story”, even if Wilbur shocks his peers by revealing his hipster desires.
“People around Wilbur, mole mice around Wilbur have to work,” Willems said. In the TV special, Plot is about how Wilbur’s best companions (they are in the band with him called Molingstone) work on Wilbur’s new identity and his own self-discovery.
And the efforts they make with peak volume and emotions. Anyone familiar with children’s television knows that rock opera is as common as the naked mole rat in a purple black tie.However Deborah Wix La PumaThe composer of “Naked Mole Rat” —the same song for the stage and TV versions — shares Willems’ enthusiasm for full-on arena-style headbanging songs.
The story is “a little destructive,” La Puma said in a telephone conversation. “It’s a bit more edgy, but it’s completely fun and energetic,” she added.
This energy meets the adaptation of television with new arrangements, background music (by composer Keith Horn), more musicians, and casts with a vocal range that “made the music more intense”. ..
Its strength is also part of humor. Jordan Fisher, A Broadway cast graduate of “Hamilton” and “Dear Evan Hansen” who speak out Wilbur, said he developed Wilbur’s speech using a family friend’s 11-year-old nimble vocal pattern. I did. It’s stupid, “Fisher said. But when this almost kelbic cartoon rat sings, he adds, it’s as if “Aerosmith is exuding.”
Willems, who wrote the lyrics for all stages and television, has young viewers in bands like Aerosmith and other musical numbers such as The Who, Hart, Pink Floyd, Jimi Hendrix, David Bowie and Queen. I admit that I don’t know the effects of. But it doesn’t bother the creator of the show.
“One of the things we talked about was,’How can this be a fun introductory book on rock for kids?’
TV specials can also serve as an interesting introductory book on art history. In one scene, Wilbur’s bandmate dragged him into a giant mole-rat-like facility, the Moreseum of Art, proving that the self-respecting naked mole rat had never been dressed. Here, Mona Lisa and Botticelli’s “The Birth of Venus“Everything is targeted at the naked mole rat and revives digitally to express their discomfort.
The idea was, “How can I convert these songs into music videos?” Animators, writers and producers known as professionals say: Warburton.. (Tom enjoys the formal title in his private life, because he said on the phone, “It sounds very official, but I’m not so official.”) For actors on stage, a visual option Although limited, the inexperienced tailor Wilbur, an anime music video, can first sing and dance with a button-down shirt facing backwards and a lilac-colored fedora upside down. ..
Warburton, who wrote the screenplay for TV with Willems and is also a special executive producer like him. Oddbot animation Create a huge computer-generated, computer-generated, three-dimensional underground colony of the naked mole rat. This is, after all, an “underground rock experience” as well as a “rock experience” and is still similar to Willems’ original drawing creatures.
“We wanted them to look like little dolls,” Warburton said. Computer-generated images often look “very smooth”, whereas the digital effects here are pretty much the same as the effects of stop-motion animation.
A longtime friend, a man, also made one scientific correction when translating the original material into television. .. They also answered a long-standing question: What is the source of that floating fashion that makes Wilbur so appetizing? (The answer is a spoiler, so there’s no clue here.)
But perhaps most importantly, it makes the project sophisticated enough, even though it was premiered as part of the project. CartoniteHBO Max and Cartoon Network preschool programming blocks.
Willems said he hopes it will inspire not only family dance parties, but also family conversations about art, music and identity. “If these specially inspired children start to change their appearance and act, I love it,” he said.
“Whatever it is,” I like to draw, “” I like to dress up, “” I like to dance, “he continued. “To be able to take whatever definition they had before,” he said, “adding one new thing, one exciting new part about who they are.” said.