Why Pharrell Williams’ Lego biopic doesn’t reference Blurred Lines | Global News Avenue

Piece By Piece, the new documentary about musician Pharrell Williams, is unusual in many ways, not least because it’s animated entirely in Lego.

Critics welcomed the film’s unique visual style, calling it “disarming joy” and”extremely charming” — but they also took issue with one of the film’s major omissions.

Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines,” which Williams co-wrote, was briefly heard on the soundtrack, but there was no mention of the song’s infamous plagiarism trial, which left the musician Marvin Gaye’s estate owed $5M.

Director Morgan Neville told the BBC that he originally wanted to address the controversy, but the scene ultimately undermined the story he wanted to tell.

“I did think about it. I even interviewed Robin Thicke,” he said. “As a documentary filmmaker, I’m obsessed with copyright law.

“But every time I tried to apply it to a scene about copyright law, it felt like it belonged in a different movie.”

‘Blurred Lines’ trial has huge impact on music industry after jury finds Williams and Thicke copied the sound and ‘feel’ of Marvin Gaye’s ‘Got To Give It Up’ rather than copying specific melody .

The general consensus among music lawyers and songwriters is that the verdict failed to distinguish between influence and theft.

It’s now common practice for musicians to allocate a portion of their royalties to the songs that directly inspired them.

“My view on the Blurred Lines case is that it’s one of the worst judicial decisions on creativity in history,” Neville told the BBC. “I think Farrell was right on that point, and I Think most creative people agree with him.”

Ultimately, this led him to omit the story from the documentary.

“Farrell didn’t learn a big lesson from this case. I don’t know if it really changed him in any way, and that’s what I was looking for when I was looking at the story.”

Williams has been contacted for comment.

Neville previously won an Oscar for “20 Feet from Stardom,” a documentary about the forgotten lives of backup singers on some rock hits.

His other documentary subjects include Keith Richards, Brian Wilson, Johnny Cash and producer Taylor Swift.

With Piece by Piece hitting theaters this month, Neville talks us through the film’s unexpected origins, how he convinced LEGO to come on board, and the stars who have a track record for LEGO minifigures.

In the film, you dramatize the moment when Farrell asked you to make the movie out of Lego, and your response was “Lego? seriously? “How true is that?

The main difference is that when Farrell said “The Lego Movie,” I thought, “Oh my god, yeah!”

I know it’s a crazy idea, but an exciting one. I think it took me five minutes to fully believe it.

Can you break it down for me? What’s Farrell’s pitch?

He basically said, “People have always wanted me to tell my story and I’ve never been that interested, but I love your movies and I have an idea that you could make a documentary about me and when you’re done with it , you can throw away the visuals and do it again like Lego.”

That’s almost exactly what he said to me – but beyond that, he had no idea what it meant or what his story was. So I really had to think about, what does this mean?

One thing I realized immediately was that this wasn’t just about taking a real-life documentary and making it into Lego. It takes advantage of what animation can do, which is time travel, outer space, and all kinds of things that you can’t usually do in documentaries.

How long did it take for it to go from a crazy idea to reality?

It took us about a year from our first meeting to starting production because we had to meet with LEGO and tell them about it.

How was the conversation going with LEGO?

I said, “Look, this isn’t a G-rated movie, but I know it can’t be an R-rated movie either. It has to have a little bit of an edge and it’s going to deal with issues of race and ethnicity. Other things.”

To its credit, Lego said: “These conversations have been beneficial to us.”

They know it will push them, but in a way they think is good.

But they didn’t fund it, they didn’t own it, they were just partners.

What was the moment you knew it was going to work?

Well, we had to figure out how to get people to pay for this, so we did a 90-second proof of concept.

I interviewed Ferrell and I edited a scene of him as a kid listening to Stevie Wonder on his parents’ stereo and his synesthesia kicking in. Suddenly the colors become rich and you can almost see what’s going on in his head. This gives me confidence that it will work.

I love how you think of Pharrell’s rhythms as Lego sculptures, each with its own unique shape. It really helps illustrate the abstract concept of songwriting.

You know what’s interesting about beats? In his head, Pharrell can tell you the color and shape of every beat he creates. So for every LEGO piece, we actually work with Pharrell to make sure they look like how he saw them in his head.

When you were interviewing other people working on the film—Missy Elliot, Jay-Z, Snoop Dogg—did you tell them that the film would be rendered in Lego?

We didn’t do that, partly because we filmed these interviews five years ago and we wanted to keep a low profile.

Then, a few years later, I started sending 3D renderings of their characters, like, “Here you go. This is what you look like.”

It’s a bit of a roll of the dice, but everyone is really excited about it.

Is anyone asking for a change?

Missy made a comment about her earrings, so one of the few custom (Lego) pieces we made for the film were Missy’s earrings.

LEGO characters have a limited range of facial expressions. Is this a problem?

The facial thing was my biggest concern because when you take a close-up of a Lego minifigure crying, is that going to be emotional? I have no idea.

But we had a few animators on the team who were really good at facial animation, and we gave them the most emotional scenes, which were the close-up scenes. Usually, if something goes wrong, we send them a video.

There are a lot of clips of me and Pharrell making really weird faces somewhere in the world!

The main plot of the film follows Pharrell’s rediscovery of his muse after a period of creative disorientation. Why do you focus on this aspect of his story?

There’s no doubt that this movie reflected a lot of questions I had about my own career.

To me, the story of this black nerd from the Virginia Projects, who saw the world in a different way…that made him ostracized for a long time. Then he found an outcast in Chad Hugo (Williams’ co-writer on “The Neptunes”) and they started making music.

But their rhythm was too strange for people. Neptune’s signature sound is very unorthodox. until someone gets it Everyone knew. And then you enter this hall of mirrors—where the things that make you unique become the mainstream sound. How do you stay true to yourself when this happens?

Your film coincides with the release of the Robbie Williams biopic A Better Man, in which he is played by a CGI monkey. Do you think music biopics are becoming too formulaic?

I do. There are a lot of tropes in musical films, and I think we need to do more to help people identify with the people and their characters in musical films.

I haven’t seen “Better Man” yet, but this idea is perfect because, in a way, Robbie Williams yes Performing monkey. He wants attention. He has always lived this life.

Farrell is the Wizard of Oz. “I want to be the guy behind the scenes,” he said.