A Divine Appointment

A Talk with Curious George Director Matt O'Callaghan

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— Overview
— Cast and Crew
— Photo Pages

Sometimes, it almost seems that brilliant accidents bring the right people together to work on a project, whether that project is a bridge, a play, a campaign or a film. Sometimes, it almost even seems like divine justice. Curious George is one of those projects.

When a movie studio hires a director, says Curious George director Matt O'Callaghan, it has to “look at whether the director is right for the material.” And O'Callaghan was. As a boy, he loved Curious George. He remembers running excitedly home with the Scholastic Books catalog, and pointing out to his parents the books that he liked—including those about the little monkey and the man in the yellow hat.

Even as a child he loved to draw, and then he discovered that the cartoons that he loved “were actually done by people.” He was surprised to learn that “there are people who do this for a living,” and that cartoons and movies don’t just magically appear on TV.” The die was cast, and he was lucky enough to have supportive parents.

While still in high school, he enrolled in the California Institute of the Arts, which, in the seventies, he says functioned as an animation farm system of sorts for Walt Disney Studios. He completed the two year course of instruction in traditional animation and went to work for Disney in 1981. “My career path has been devoted to children’s entertainment,” he says—and to “old-school, hand-drawn animation.”

So it was a natural fit when Universal brought the Curious George project to him for his feature-film directorial debut. The project was first brought to Imagine Entertainment, where, according to O'Callaghan, it received the personal attention and support of Ron Howard. Universal Studios then came on board, and O'Callaghan was a natural choice to helm the film. “The books were illustrated,” he says; it was logical, then, to also see that “the movie should be illustrated.

“I give a lot of credit to Universal and Ron Howard for saying ‘Let’s make this a movie, let’s stay true to the source material. We don’t have to sprinkle the movie with off-color gags or bodily functions to try to get an older audience.’”

For a life-long devotee of the classic Disney style such as O'Callaghan, the opportunity to make Curious George has been a thrill. Divine justice has been well served.

Continue:

— Overview
— Cast and Crew
— Photo Pages