-I think his beak might be too long.
We should get Sonny over.
Hey, Sonny.
Sonny Geras.
Have you seen any of these guys?
They're pretty cool.
SONNY GERASIMONWICZ: I can't tell if I always just wanted
to draw, or because when you're a kid, a lot of kids
start drawing.
It's one of the things you do.
And then my dad showed me some stuff he did in high school
that at times blew my mind.
It was probably the '50s or something.
It was flames before flames became this disgusting thing.
They actually were just on hot rods.
I don't know.
Maybe you get a compliment or something here and there.
As a kid, you don't know if someone's just encouraging you
to keep going and doing whatever you're doing even if
it's bad, but you're just totally like, yeah, yeah.
Then graffiti started popping up.
Do you know what I mean?
This is in West LA.
It's even hard for me to remember what I felt seeing
it, but it was just so attractive, seeing a person's
name twice.
You're like, I saw that before on a pole, and that's exactly
the same person.
I haven't even met this person, but he's been there
and now he's been there.
I don't who he-- you know what I mean?
The artwork was overwhelming.
It was like seeing a mural, but something was more geared
towards you or something.
I think it was that people did it for no other reason but
just to do it.
It wasn't, we got a grant, or we got money, or we're going
to get this, or we're going to advertise that.
It's just like all it was was just for yourself.
It was like drawing on your notebook or something.
Dude, this shit's gnarly.
This is a sketchbook, standard graffiti-like
piece book, I guess.
Somebody would have someone's book, and they borrowed it,
and it's floating in sixth period or whatever.
And I was just like, let me fucking see that book, dude.
And the pages were so completely done and
air-brushed and used markers and blending and--
Even when it was straight-up pen, you're just blown away.
You're like, I want to do that.
OK, this is probably one of the first books I had.
This is before I even had a tag.
It's half my name.
Then I got in a crew, which was AWR.
And then--
-What did AWR stand for?
SONNY GERASIMONWICZ: Stood for All Writes Reserved, but
"writes" like graffiti writing.
Or Art Work Rebels.
I think that was extremely important because you're
constantly doing more artwork now.
And you're doing color theory, and you don't even know it.
You're just like, it's graffiti.
But you don't realize all the skill you're picking up and
stuff like that.
I got this photography book that the Sex Pistols, that Bob
Gruen-- he followed the Sex Pistols for a long time.
I don't know why I was so blown away by the photos.
They were just so good.
And I just started copying every single one.
This is after graffiti, kinda.
I was totally lost.
I was like, oh shit.
What do I do know?
[INAUDIBLE]
Pretty funny.
Whatever.
This was when I got looser and better.
It's markers, colored pencil.
Here's what I did at Cal Arts.
I decided to go to Cal Arts for fine art.
And I just wasn't into that at all.
I just hated it, really.
I dropped out after two years because they wouldn't let me
transfer to graphic design.
So I went and bought a computer.
Didn't know how to use it at all.
Like a Mac.
I would lay out t-shirts.
I'll call it graphic designer for the sake of describing it,
but I was not by any means a trained graphic designer.
This one company called Art Machine in West L.A..
They did key art, which is movie posters, one sheets.
They were building their company.
And they didn't have a lot of money.
And they were taking on designers like, we're
going to train you.
And we'll pay you just not that much at the beginning.
I just feel like I got lucky.
So I learned, it's more like Photoshop and retouching.
You've seen movie posters.
They're insane.
Insanely bad most of the time.
It's advertising.
The goal is to make as much money as
possible from that film.
If its "Mission Impossible II", put Tom Cruise's head as
big as possible and a tiny-ass missile that you can see at 50
miles an hour driving by.
It has nothing to do with layout or
a cool poster anymore.
But if you don't give a shit about that stuff, it's just
like you give up.
It's fine.
You're like, it's a job.
Let's do it.
-What are some films that you worked on?
SONNY GERASIMONWICZ: I knew that was coming.
"Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo".
That was one of them.
He's sitting on a bench, and there's a building right here.
That one, particularly, has a really bad head strips.
Head strips is when you take a head from a photo and you put
it on another body, which is constantly--
They don't give a--
They're like, he's signed off on his head.
We have to use it.
So it's like this.
When I was working at the design advertising boutique,
I'd gotten those emails from Spike saying, we want to get
some sketches of "The Wild Things".
I had a friend of a friend, a friend Julian was in a band
called Liars.
And he toured with Karen.
And Karen to Spike, that was the connection.
Spike was talking to Julian about, he still wasn't quite
getting the right sketches for "The Wild Things." You know
what I mean?
He's like, I think, but I don't know, but--
Anyways, he wanted to find somebody else to draw it.
And then I got an email saying, I heard--
Julian said you might be able to have something to offer
with the characters.
The first thing that I'd sent him to get him interested,
though, were these pictures of--
I'd never think I was drawing a bear, but it would end up
looking like a big grizzly bear.
And it was kind of really just like, uhh, like [HUFF]
I don't know, maybe like they had hangovers or whatever.
Had more human emotions.
So I drew those on my own.
And that's what I sent to Spike to say, this is kind of
what I'm doing right now.
And I don't even know if I made the connection of, these
are big fuzzy animals, and those are these things.
I just sent what I want to draw at the time.
He saw the sketches I sent him.
Now he wants to just me do that with the script.
And they were still really tight in the beginning.
Some of them I was trying to render them out and do all
this stuff.
And then as soon as I just started doing really quick
crazy ones, they came out way better.
One thing about Spike, too, is you've been drawing it for 12
hours-- one drawing-- and you've drawn one on a napkin,
he will judge it in exactly the same amount of time.
It doesn't matter how it's rendered.
It's the idea.
And I was doing drawings.
And they're like, Maurice wants to talk
to you on the phone.
He wants to know who the fuck's drawing his drawings.
And which you're like, duh.
And you're like, fine, whatever.
I have no idea, anything about what his real
personality is like.
If he's, going to be like, well, you know, I just drew
this book as an artist, as a child, and I just hope it
helps children, and dah-dah-dah-dah-dah.
Or what.
And he gets on the phone.
Yeah, well, so what's your name?
What's your last name?
And I'm like, Sonny.
It's Gerasimonwicz.
And he's like, what is that?
He just had no idea who's drawing his characters, if it
was some person that draws greeting cards, or if it was
someone that does cartoons, animated.
No idea.
I was like, I don't draw for a living.
I've been sort of protecting it or something.
I just sold out and did movie posters for five years.
And then we talked about some other things, and somehow he
just finally loosened up.
And he was like, all right.
Well, great.
Let's talk about these drawings.
These are pretty cool.
I like these drawings.
This is just really great.
I was just like, [SIGH].
That's just the way he is.
He's so straight up about everything.
And it's so valuable.
It's amazing.
You're just like, oh my god.
I'm working on the right project.
I'm just trying to get them close to some kind of
live-action version in the movie.
Like translate it.
I'm not trying to do his drawings at all.
There's one right there.
Back when we originally went over the script with Spike and
he was describing what the movie's about and how he
wanted to do the characters, he definitely talked more
about how individual they were, and where they came
from, what their inspiration was, and what makes them up,
and how they relate to each other.
It probably took up like 90% of the whole description of
each character.
It wasn't like, does Carol have feathered pants?
Or are they scaled pants?
And you'd be like, um, I don't know.
I don't know.
I never really--
It's not really like the main concern.
After we started doing the sketches, developing the
characters and things like that, I kept moving into the
next step, which is going to the effects houses and making
the creatures and stuff like that.
My vote was with Henson, because that's what they do is
live-action puppets.
If they can get one of the most personalities out of a
green sock with two white little balls on top, bring
that to these things, we'll be good.
-What was going on with the suit for Alexander?
What wasn't working?
How that whole process changed with you
getting into the suit?
SONNY GERASIMONWICZ: How I became inside Alexander?
-Yeah.
SONNY GERASIMONWICZ: Well, the actor that was inside of
Alexander, she was really well trained.
Think theater actor, and dancer-performer type.
Catherine Keener and Peter Elliott kept describing what
type of character it was, and her performance was just not
going in that direction.
I think Keener had already started thinking about this.
She would use me as an example of the character that
Alexander was, maybe because I was negative or something all
of the time.
I don't know.
I feel like she proposed the idea or something when I
wasn't around.
And then Spike had called me and said, how are the
rehearsals, and things like that.
And I was like, ah, dude, I don't know.
He's like, what about you get in the suit?
You know, what about you?
He was cutting a million corners, in a
smart way, I believe.
I know the character already.
I designed the character.
I'm short.
He knows if I would have got in the suit, I wouldn't be
crying and getting out of it, like [BLUBBERING].
I'd stick it out even if I couldn't act.
And I was like, I think we can do it enough because the face
is going to be done in post.
And the voice is done by Paul Dano.
I wasn't the entire thing.
I was this element.
And it's like, are you serious?
Because then I'll answer the question seriously.
And he's like, yeah.
And I was like, all right, let's try it.
After that, it was like him and Keener coaching me.
If anyone is going to make it happen or help me do it,
that's going to do it.
They'd have to suit everybody up, get them all in this
special location in a warehouse to do a couple
scenes for me, two run-throughs or something.
That was insanely stressful.
Because not only have you never been on a set before
acting, ever, but let's just wrap him up in a suit so he
can't see or do anything, and tell him to run around here
and throw this dirt clod at that guy.
And then when he's like, hey, Alexander, you've got to be
standing next to him ready for that cue.
And you're like, dude, I'm fucked.
Your opinions are welcome if you're working on the film in
any department.
And, obviously, you have to have an opinion if you're
doing the drawings for the creatures.
I'd literally maybe have the suit on and the head off and,
Sonny, how does Carol look in this shot?
Or, what should we do with this?
All my jobs definitely overlapped.
Watching everybody else, the way they approached stuff,
like KK or Spike, the idea of what they're doing was way up
front more than anything else.
It's like, OK, is that effect going to help us tell the
story we're trying to tell.
It's not like, is this the best effect we
can get right now.
That's probably one of the most valuable things that I
probably learned on it was, if you have a good idea, believe
in it and push it.
Trying to figure out what someone else wants is like the
worst way to do it, as far as I'm concerned.
It comes out stiff and bad and like, I think this
is what they want.
So do your version of it.
All right.
[INAUDIBLE].
Does it look kind of like an olive-y skin?
Sick.