“The Boss Baby” is the new film from DreamWorks Animation.
For 10 years, Tom McGrath was a commuter, a regular on Southwest Airlines, flying to the Bay Area from his Southern California home for his job as a writer, director and voice of “Madagascar’s” Skipper the penguin at the PDI animation studio in Redwood City. It was there that he made three “Madagascar” movies and “Megamind” (2010). But in 2015, after a string of box office disappointments, parent company DreamWorks tightened its belt and closed PDI. McGrath’s latest, “The Boss Baby,” was made at DreamWorks’ Glendale studios.
“I loved getting out of L.A. and working up here,” McGrath says during a recent visit to San Francisco with “The Boss Baby” producer Ramsey Ann Naito. “There’s just a different culture, and it felt like everyone really loved what they did. I think that’s fair to say wherever, but particularly here.
“The movie was supposed to be done here, but unfortunately we downsized. I’ve worked with a lot of these people on five different movies, so everyone from production designer, art director, through all my supervising animators, they all loved the movie so much they decided to pick up their families and move down to work on the movie. … It felt like the end of ‘It’s A Wonderful Life’ for me, because all of a sudden, people started showing up to work on ‘Boss Baby,’ and I was just so grateful that they uprooted themselves and sacrificed to work on the movie.”
“The Boss Baby” stars Alec Baldwin, lending his voice to the titular tot, really an acerbic, hard-charging top executive at Baby Corp., a perpetual infant who infiltrates a family by posing as their new bundle of joy. The parents were chosen because the pet company they work for is one of Baby Corp.’s competitors and about to launch a product that just might kill the market for kids. His presence in the house is an outrage to 7-year-old Tim (Miles Bakshi), who loved being an only child. But once he realizes this is no ordinary baby, sibling rivalry evolves into a strategic partnership.
The film is based on a board book for preschoolers by Marla Frazee, one given to McGrath among a pile of many others as he was looking for a new project. Despite the outlandish premise, the book resonated with him, bringing back memories of his own childhood.
“I’ve never seen (sibling rivalry) touched in animation,” McGrath says. “My brother’s two years older, and my sister’s five years older. ... She felt like an adult. My brother and I were so competitive.”
“My son was 7, just like Tim,” Naito adds. “When my younger one arrived, my older one was jealous, and it was heartbreaking. I still live in a world where sibling rivalry is top on the list, and this movie, for me, is a story about brothers falling in love with another, getting over this fear, (learning) that when a younger brother arrives you’re not going to be replaced, that there’s enough love for everyone.”
Miles is the grandson of animator Ralph Bakshi, of “Fritz the Cat” fame, who was the first person to hire McGrath as an animator and layout artist on 1992’s “Cool World.”
“Ralph kind of showed me the ropes of the industry at the time, of traditional animation,” McGrath says. “What to do, what not to do. He was, in a way, a father figure to me.”
“My best friend is (“Trolls” producer) Gina Shay, Miles Bakshi’s mom,” Naito adds. “I’ve known Miles since the first day he was born. I saw him probably an hour after he was born.”
After creating a realistic-looking world in “Megamind,” McGrath was eager to get back to a more colorful and stylized look of classic animation. He grew up watching Disney movies, and remembers appreciating the art of films like “Dumbo.” He also remembers Saturday morning cartoons.
“My father would get up early on Saturday, and we’d watch Bugs Bunny together,” he says. “He would laugh at certain jokes, and I would laugh at other jokes, but it was the experience of actually watching it with him that made it so fun.”