Video:Simon Wells, Wendy Wells, Berkeley Breathed-Mars Needs Moms

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Transcript:Simon Wells, Wendy Wells, Berkeley Breathed-Mars Needs Moms

Rebecca Murray from About.com Hollywood Movies at the World Premiere of Walt Disney Pictures' Mars Needs Moms.

Mars Needs Moms Director/Co-Writer Simon Wells and Co-Writer Wendy Wells

Simon Wells: "This is one of our hatchlings."

Is it kind of cool to have it be such a big family affair?

Simon Wells: "It is a family movie made by a movie. Yeah."

Being directed by your dad is that like, "Oh no, I have to listen to him at home and now I have to listen to him on the set?"

Meredith Wells: "Yes, that is true. You do get used to it after a while, though. I mean, seriously, it's not that different."

Bringing a story like this to life in performance capture - why did it have to be this way?

Simon Wells: "Well, you know performance capture kind of occupies a world that's slightly more realistic than a cartoony movie and it's slightly more fantasy than live action. So, a movie like this where we're off into a fantasy world. We've got kind of an red kid but he's going off into an alien world, this is the perfect thing for a motion capture."

Is it difficult to direct that type of film because you're constantly going? You don't have to reset shots?

Simon Wells: "Oh, it's exhausting, but great fun. Working with Seth [Green] and Dan [Fogler] and Mindy [Sterling] and Elisabeth [Harnois] and Joan [Cusack], they were just such troopers. They're always up and ready to go, and they were having such a good time it was infectious."

And this is the first one that you've actually co-written?

Wendy Wells: "Yes."

How was it?

Wendy Wells: "It was a lot of fun. We've written things together before so we've got all of our arguments out of the way. We've been married forever so we've learned how to argue without hurting each other's feelings."

Who has the final decision if it comes down to you both wanting different things?

Simon Wells: [Points at his wife]

What's up next for you guys?

Simon Wells: "We don't know. We're writing a bunch of stuff at the moment. We're reading scripts. We haven't decided yet but we'll see what happens."

More motion capture in the future?

Simon Wells: "If we can. I love motion capture. It's a really great way of working."

Mars Needs Moms Author Berkeley Breathed and Milo Breathed

Berkeley Breathed: "This is the real Milo.

You've seen the movie, right?

Milo Breathed: "Yeah."

How close is that character to you?

Milo Breathed: "Pretty close."

Berkeley Breathed: "You're missing some red hair though."

So it was just a simple argument at the dinner table that led to the book?

Berkeley Breathed: "On July 6th, 2006, we had a bad argument at the table about broccoli, just like in the movie. He said something not-so-nice about his mom..."

Which will never be repeated.

Milo Breathed: "That..."

Berkeley Breathed: "No, we're not going to talk about exactly what he said. It ended very badly. It was a bad night, and I wrote the book that night as a way to explain to him how moms are special. It didn't occur to me to actually turn it into a book until much later when it worked so well as a parable for him, that it might work as a book and might work as a movie. And four years later, what do you know?"

Actually now every time you're bad, does it become a book?

Milo Breathed: "Yeah."

Berkeley Breathed: "Yeah, he'll be rewarded every time he's bad. So what am I teaching my kid? This is terrible! Don't listen to anything."

So how did they do?

Berkeley Breathed: "Spectacular. Listen, when you write a book and you go through the screenplay process - which I didn't do, but I read the screenplay - and I watched Seth and Joan film the motion capture scene at the end that's so sad three times, and still by the time four years later I see the movie, I blubbered like a baby. I mean, I wrote the stupid scene. It was very, very embarrassing. I'm sitting there crying and my son turned around and said, 'That is pathetically pathetic for you to cry at your own story, dad.' But it means something's working."

Another book of yours is heading to the big screen?

Berkeley Breathed: "My other book, Flawed Dogs, is at DreamWorks being developed as a film and I'll be an executive producer."

Is that going to be another motion capture?

Berkeley Breathed: "No, that will be standard DreamWorks animation that they always do - CGI animation - and I'm sure, no doubt, 3-D these days."

Because everything has to be 3D. Are you a fan of 3D?

Berkeley Breathed: "I'm a fan of 3D when they do it right, and I have to say that this movie they do it right. I won't name them but there's movies where I couldn't understand why I had the damn glasses. I'm not going to name them. I'm in Hollywood, baby. You don't name anything. But I forgot I had the glasses on in Mars Needs Moms. I didn't see it in the big screen, the IMAX screen, and I can't wait to because normally that would annoy me, but this movie really works on an IMAX. It's a huge ride."

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