All Things Alice: Interview With Wendy Rowland and Andy Malcolm (Part Two)

As an amateur scholar and die-hard enthusiast of everything to do with Alice in Wonderland, I have launched a Podcast that takes on Alice’s everlasting influence on pop culture. As an author that draws on Lewis Carroll’s iconic masterpiece for my Looking Glass Wars universe, I’m well acquainted with the process of dipping into Wonderland for inspiration. The journey has brought me into contact with a fantastic community of artists and creators from all walks of life—and this podcast will be the platform where we come together to answer the fascinating question: “What is it about Alice?”

For this week’s conversation it is my pleasure to have Andy Malcolm and Wendy Rowland join me. Read on to explore a sampling of our conversation and check out the series on your favorite podcasting platform to listen to the full interview.

If you like my interview with Andy and Wendy, please consider donating to their GoFundMe campaign to finish There’s Something About Alice so they can share it with the world.

All things Alice podcast with Frank Beddor talks with Wendy Rowland & Andy Malcolm part 2

I did notice that, in your documentary There’s Something About Alice, you often asked the question, “If you were a character from Alice in Wonderland, who would you be?” I think the film starts with that question, am I getting that right?

Yes, there's this wonderful guy, Anthony, who starts the film. He wasn't a planned interview, it was that first trip to England when we were on the river, and they'd stopped for a picnic. Andy saw this group under a tree and so we approached them to see if they’d answer a few questions. This guy, Anthony, was just this lovely, eccentric, older British man and it turned out to be one of our favorite interviews we did for the whole film.

He was the very first interview we did on the very first day of making the film, so we were very fortunate that way.

Wendy

Again, he begins and ends the film, he's at the end of the credits, too. Just this lovely guy who loved all things Lewis Carroll. Your typical British eccentric.

He was pitch perfect for the start of the film. I think that must have been a good omen for you that you met him under a tree, that he was your first interview, that it was spontaneous, and he answered the question. It’s a fantastic answer that people enjoy and brings you right into the film. So, I'm going to attempt the same thing and turn the tables. Wendy, if you were a character from Alice in Wonderland, who would you be? And why?

I'm sort of embarrassed to say, because it seems a bit obvious, but I think I would pick Alice. I just have a strong memory of, when I was probably seven years old, my mom gave me an Alice dress that I wore all the time. I wore it when I went to Disney World for the first time. My mom had an Alice themed birthday party for me, probably because I had the dress. I just have these memories of being dressed like Alice at Disney World and thinking it was the most amazing thing and I think she is just one of these girls that you grow up with. I don't know if I relate to her in terms of the actual story. But in terms of her imagination, it’s the most famous child's imagination and all the places that imagination took her – I love everything about it.

As a filmmaker, imagination is crucial to making anything. You must be able to imagine it before you start so I definitely understand that answer. I've asked that question quite a bit, and Alice would seem obvious, but most people don't pick Alice. It’s interesting. I love that story. I love that answer because you're not talking about having read the book, you're talking about how Alice was already in pop culture. How about you Andy?

I think I relate to the White Rabbit because I get nervous a lot and I like to be on time. I'm very conscious of time. I guess that sums it up.

the white rabbit from Disney's 2010 Alice In Wonderland movie is front and center, with an emphasis placed on his red eye and held pocket watch

I feel the same way about time. It's very hard for me to be late. I'm often early to avoid being late. If I'm driving somewhere I am the White Rabbit.

What was the criteria for choosing what went into the film out of the 50 hours of footage that you that you captured? What was the process like? Did you guys argue about what should be in? Because you were saying earlier, Wendy, that Andy wanted everything in. Andy, how did you guys negotiate that whole process?

I'm very respectful of Wendy and we're doing a coffee table book together based on the film and I love Wendy’s views and ideas because I'm so tied into it that sometimes I can't see the forest for the trees and Wendy will say, “Oh, we got to use that or we can't use that.” We never argued about anything. Whatever Wendy wanted; Wendy got.

Andy was so relaxed. He’s the dream producer because he loves everything about Alice and the story and the characters so much, that he's always just so excited about it. Everything we would cut or anytime I'd show him something, his reaction would be, “Oh, my God, it's fantastic.” He’s very easygoing about it all too, which certainly helps. Really, we just had fun. We would try and find things that made us both laugh or find things that we were like, “Oh, my God, this is amazing and it's going to work perfectly here.” The hardest part always is cutting it down. You end up with a two-and-a-half-hour film that you love but anybody else would find deadly boring, because it just has to be more concise. I find it's always easy to get from 50 hours to two and a half hours, because it's easy to figure out what you don't want. I’m sure that happens when you're writing also, it's easy to get rid of all that extra stuff. But when you've got what you really love it's, how do you bring it into that final part that you think is really tight? We started having some screenings with other people too, which certainly helps, because sometimes just sitting in the room, you can tell when they're bored, or you can tell when something's working.

Then somebody might suggest, “Why don't you move this section here and try this there?” We were open to people's opinions. I think we worked it out pretty well.

Robin, who's our cinematographer, and who's actually married to Andy, she also would come in and watch several versions. She wasn’t in the editing room all the time so she could come in and really be like, “Yeah, that's not working. Andy, you have to wrap this up. Wendy, don’t let Andy bring anything else into the film.” So, she was good, because she was coming from bit of a distance at that point and was able to see it really clearly. She had lots of great comments and suggestions.

Robin, Andy’s wife, and Cinematographer on There’s Something About Alice a documentary featuring Frank Beddor

Being in a screening room and having other people there and the pressure of people watching it, you really do get a sense of how a film is playing. I've gone to a lot of film festivals, and we did a lot of test screenings with Something About Mary and my film Wicked. The audience tells you what they think just with their body language. The room changes. People start futzing around. They lean in. They don't lean in. I’m sure your experiences with the screenings were really helpful as well. It sounds like you had a really dynamic working relationship, and it comes through. The film's terrific.

I know that you've done a GoFundMe campaign for the purposes of financing some of the licensing challenges of clips. I'm really hoping this podcast will reach people who will contribute. Let’s try and finish this thing so we can get it out to the public. Tell me a little bit about what your thinking was. I'm assuming this has all been self-financed and now there's those expenses that sneak up on you, because everybody doesn't want to give you everything for free. What's been happening on that front?

We started this GoFundMe and it’s gone well. We have a little bit more than half of our fundraising goal. Every little bit helps, right? If somebody can give $10, $15, whatever people can afford. We always sort of joke that it's in Canadian dollars, so it's way less. $500 Canadian is like $350 US or something like that. Our goal is to both, clear some licensing, because we did use some Disney clips. We've certainly credited everybody in the film, but there's lots of stuff that we would have to pay to get the rights to if we wanted to get it on air somewhere or have it screened at film festivals. Then we also have all these hundreds of hours of interviews with really brilliant people. We have some of the most well-known Lewis Carroll scholars.

Martin Cohen, Edward Wakeling, and Mark Richards.

But you also have two hours of Ralph Steadman and American McGee. I want you to know that I'm going to kick in and I’m going to help you get over the finish line. But I also wanted to talk to you guys about your other work. Andy, you are one of the top foley artists in Hollywood, and you have worked on some really big films. I don't think people know exactly what foley artists do. It's amazing. I watched your documentary, and I found the whole thing fascinating. Can you talk a little bit about your studio and what a foley artists does?

A foley artist watches a movie and performs the sounds in sync with the with the picture. Essentially, it’s the easiest thing in the world. I've been doing it for 48 years.

Andy Malcolm on his foley stage is well lit in a dark room with a boom mic pointing towards the stage

It's not easy. I tried to explain to my daughter in the car. I made a little scratch on the hood, and I said, “Okay, so this guy that I'm talking to tomorrow, Andy, he would have to figure out how to do that without the car at his disposal.”

That's a good start. A foley artist is a person who recreates sounds that can be recreated in a studio for television, for feature films, for commercials, for video games. Essentially, we watch the film, we do all the footsteps for all different characters. We do whatever they're doing, punching meat, or rattling chains, or breaking glass. It's a very physical job. It's very performance oriented because when you're doing all the footsteps for all the characters, you have to get into their headspace. You have to get into their mood. You have to figure out the size of the room they're in. It's really a job that has a few components in that the recording engineer has to be working with two, three, four mics, sometimes, making it sound real and fit in into the picture. Then there's a Pro Tools operator/editor who is putting everything into sync and labeling. There have been some films where we were up over 100 tracks, and everything has to be accounted for and the mixers have to know what goes where. There are a lot of complicated elements that go into making a foley track.

Which is why your documentary about foley, Footsteps, is so informative and so interesting, because it captures that, but we get to see it visually and how you go about it and all the different everyday items that you collect and that you use to create the sounds. Is that documentary available somewhere?

I will be seeing the director in a couple of days; I can let you know.

I'd love to know. I'd love to share it with the with the listeners. It's terrific.

It's been in a lot of film festivals and it's now playing on all Air Canada flights. I would imagine it would be available, but I will definitely let you know and if I can get permission for you to use it on your website. My favorite foley film was one that we did in 1979 and it's called Track Stars: The Unseen Heroes of Movie Sound. It’s eight minutes long and it's done split screen. You see the action happening on one side and then the two foley artists performing the actions on the other side. It’s very entertaining and back in 1979, I had a lot of energy back then.

Andy Malcolm and Terry Burke in Track Stars: The Unseen Heroes of Movie Sound a man on a treadmill generates sounds for a feature film

Let me ask you about that energy because your studio is called Footsteps Studio. The documentary is called Footsteps and footsteps are what people recognize as the most obvious foley sound. When there's footsteps, you have to recreate those. Did you ever find yourself in high heels trying to recreate those sounds?

To this day, I have more high heels and I walk better in them than my wife does. I have 500 pairs of shoes, at least.

Andy did Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland and there's a scene where Alice is running across the table and that's Andy wearing some sort of little shoes. Any person's footsteps, he can do them. It’s amazing to watch.

That was sort of make it up as you go. To this day, it's make it up as you go. Just, what's going to work for this. We do IMAX underwater films, and nobody knows what it sounds like underwater, so we just make it up. Then there's animation, which is my favorite part of foley, because you get to go off the deep end. It’s always more creative that way because you're inventing sounds for everything. Then there's drama on the other end, where you're trying to make it fit, you're trying to make it transparent. Then in the middle somewhere is comedy where you get to try and make it real, but then exaggerate and make it funny.

It just seems like the coolest job of all the jobs in in Hollywood so that's why I was so taken with the with the documentary.

No, I have to agree it is a very cool job. It's very creative. The other thing I like about it is you're on your feet all day, and you're throwing heavy bags around and smashing glass and, just one million and one things. Like we did Vikings, and we're doing swords and shields and we're ripping lungs out of human bodies. It’s just never ending.

Andy’s whole house is mic’d so that if he needs to throw a body bag down the stairs, he just has to plug a mic in on a stairway. Then they can throw, not usually a real body, but some giant thing. He can drive cars into his studio. I mean, it really is the most incredible space.

It’s fascinating. That's why they call it a foley artist because you're making it up as you go with all the items. But what is it that you do differently? Why do so many filmmakers come to you? You’ve won Emmys and you've done big movies like Dune and Blade Runner. You did that movie, I just saw, Women Talking, which was terrific, and of course, you did Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland.There's nobody else that would have done Alice in Wonderland. But why do you think they keep coming back to you?

It’s because of the team that I was talking about earlier, because we can make it transparent. A lot of places, they just record everything close up, and then leave it up to the mixers to make it work. We have a team, there's three foley artists, and everybody is experienced and really good at it.

Your imagination comes through I think, too, right? I think that Andy is just, like, didn’t you do mime at one point? So, you're coming at it from a theatrical artistic background, too. But people assume that there are just computers that have libraries full of sounds and why would you even do foley anymore? I don't think that people realize how specific every sound is, whether you're putting a glass down on a table or banging a table with your fist or using a fork against a plate, all of that stuff is done by a foley artist.

That's what my daughter said, she said, “Well, why don't you just Google it?” But Andy, you pointed out that the size of a room impacts the sound of the footsteps and anything else. There are so many levels of complication to really capturing the sound and, if it's a fantasy world, then you have to invent the whole thing.

It’s a lot about layering sound. For example, I had to do the sound of a whale being born underwater. What does that sound like? You think of the sound and “Okay, well, let's put that in. So that works so let's add something else.” An obvious one would be a horse and buggy. I actually have real horse feet. We do the feet on one track, we do the bridle on another track, a leather creaking, we've got old boxes and old creaky ladders for the wagons, and we do crunching sounds for the wheels. You're layering, you're building a sound and that's the fun.

What about Alice in Wonderland? Had you worked with Tim Burton before? What was interesting about working on that film?

Mad hatter and Alice pose at a tea party for the 2010 Alice In Wonderland from Disney

Normally we get between 10 and 15 days to do a feature film. On Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland, we had 55 days, because it was so detailed and because the animation changed every day. It was just a fun experience because, again, we had to make everything up. We ended up using ceramic and onyx and shaking it around for the soldiers marching. Alice's feet, and the little doors and the keys, all the stuff, even as simple as the cane of the dodo. It was just a great experience.

Did your love of Alice, your knowledge of Alice help you on the film? How did that affect the conversations you were able to have with the producers, the director, actors? Did that inform any choices you made?

It’s funny because we, as foley artists, know more what the directors and the mixers and everybody wants than they do, so we don't really need to get instructions from anybody. Because we have a clean slate, we can kind of get more creative. If we get notes, and it's really specific, it gets boring. We don't normally talk to the directors. I didn't actually talk to Tim Burton, unfortunately.

Well, I don't know. I mean, not talking to anybody on the crew, or the studio or the director. That might be another reason this is the best job in Hollywood.

It is a blessing, Frank. We have three studios on a 25-acre lot of land. We're way out in the country so it's very quiet out there and we don't get bothered by anybody and nobody comes to see us. People think, “Oh, you're in the movie business. You must have people coming by all the time.”

Helicopters landing and the head of Disney stepping out, “What are you doing to my Wonderland?”

Exactly. I used to work a lot in Los Angeles and you would see people on the lot all the time. Steven Spielberg over there or Will Smith over there. That was a little different. Sometimes they come into the studio. I would meet Danny DeVito and Steven Spielberg and all kinds of people when you're on the lot. But nobody knows where we are up in Uxbridge.

You seem to have your own film studio because your wife works in the business and Wendy, you're a documentary filmmaker and a producer and a director. You know what it's like to sell projects to networks and then have to deliver on all the requirements that they have.

What's your experience been? Are you primarily making documentaries? Or do you also do scripted content?

No, documentary has been my focus all along. After I graduated, I started working for the National Film Board of Canada, which is one of the birthplaces of documentary. I was very lucky to be there for a few years and then I've been freelancing. I’ve done films for mostly Canadian broadcasters, CBC and CTV and the National Film Board. So yeah, I just love documentaries. I feel like every film you do, it's like doing a PhD on something different. You really get to know everything about a topic. I've done science for a program called Nature of Things. I recently did a film called 14 and Muslim following three young kids in Canada who went from a private Islamic school to the public school system, against the backdrop of Islamophobia and Donald Trump in the US at the time. Alice in Wonderland, most recently. I explore different topics and I just love it. It’s always something different. As everybody knows, it seems there is a newfound interest in documentaries over the last few years and they've become a really popular.

a muslim woman sits in front of a computer looking tense or worried, Wendy Rowland's 14 and Muslim 2019

They're very, very, very popular. An old friend shared a story with me that I thought might make a good documentary so I might hit you up for it and get your opinion.

For sure.

But before we wrap this up, I had a last question regarding the Cheshire Cat Press. Which is your own publishing company, correct, Andy?

Correct. I do that with George Walker. We do limited edition books based on Lewis Carroll and Alice. George has been teaching Book Arts at the Ontario College of Art and Design for 38 years so he's the perfect partner to have. We do very high-quality work. We print most of the books ourselves, and we sew them. The only thing we send out for is binding and slipcases. Our latest book that we're just about finished is called Alice's Adventures in Advertising, which has advertisements from 1897 to 1996. You name it, everybody has used Alice as a theme for advertising, from Ex-Lax, to cryogenics, to cookies, to Campbell Soup.

I've seen a lot of those ads. I would love to see a couple of images or put some images on the website when I do this interview. That's fascinating. I'd love to see that.

The previous book we did was Alice's Adventures in Guinness. As a collector, I had about 80 different Guinness advertisements from 1929 to 1965 where a beer used Alice as a mascot. It just seemed odd at the beginning that a beer would be using Alice in Wonderland to sell their product.

the interior pages of Cheshire Cat Press' Alice and Guinness book

That's the reason I'm doing this podcast, All Things Alice, because it's runs so deep into pop culture, and we don't even realize how often we are exposed to Alice in advertising and pop culture and music. There’s a reason it's the second most quoted literary work in the world. You’re really drilling down on some very specific, interesting, idiosyncratic aspects with the Guinness beer. I find that all fascinating. You're also doing a coffee table book for your documentary, correct?

Correct.

We had a small screening in Uxbridge where Andy’s studio is and somebody at the screening, a publisher, approached us about making a coffee table book. He loved the film, and he thought it would transpose nicely into being a coffee table book. It will be very similar to the film except for it's a book not a movie, but they're looking at illustrations from fashion, advertising, music, film, artists, and illustrations from Russia to Japan to Finland. We're really looking again at Alice in popular culture. The drawings and the images are so bright, and they're so imaginative and psychedelic at times that I think it's going to be a really beautiful coffee table book. That’s what we're focusing on. Our lives have become all things Alice again.

It could even be called All Things Alice. We’ll steal that.

There's Something About Alice Film Poster

Steal from the great. I had such a great time chatting with you and I'm really looking forward to getting the word out on your documentary and your GoFundMe campaign and sharing this podcast and cutting together an interview for my blog and sharing all of your creativity, the work that you've done on the coffee table book, the previous coffee table books, this documentary. For folks who are listening, step up, and let's fund this GoFundMe, and we can all work on putting together those interviews and cutting something together for bonus material that we could put on YouTube or on my website. What do you guys think about doing that?

Great idea.

That would be awesome. Our goal is really just to get things seen. We don't want stuff sitting on the cutting room floor that people would find interesting. Whether you're a researcher, a scholar, a student, or just somebody who loves Alice, I think there's so much interesting content that didn't get into the film. We would love to be able to get some of it out there.

The other thing is people often talk about, creating, “I want to make this. I want to write this book. I want to do this documentary.” You guys have done it. It’s a real thing and it's just a few bucks in between it being this real thing and being shared with the public. I'm going to make that happen, I hope, with my listeners and my readers and I’m looking forward to following up and doing more things. So, thank you guys for really a delightful hour of talking about all things Alice, it was really a pleasure.

If you haven’t already, be sure to read Part 1 of my interview with Andy Malcolm and Wendy Rowland.

If you liked my interview with Andy and Wendy, please consider donating to their GoFundMe campaign to finish There’s Something About Alice so they can share it with the world.

Should you decide to support the documentary on GoFundMe, please send your receipt as proof of donation to automaticstudio@gmail.com to claim one of the following rewards:

Over $25 earns a social media shout out from Frank
Over $50 earns a Looking Glass Wars Art Print set
Over $100 earns a Hatter M. Graphic Novel Bundle signed by me or a limited edition, hand-printed 11 x 15 inch illustration from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by renowned artist Harry Furniss, printed on Arches Velin rag paper by printmakers George Walker and Andy Malcolm (Cheshire Cat Press)
Over $150 earns an entry into a raffle for a rare signed There’s Something About Mary poster (only 2 in existence)
Over $250 earns a 1 on 1 call with Frank Beddor, Wendy Rowland, and Andy Malcolm to chat about filmmaking, publishing, and all things Alice in Wonderland
For a $500 donation you will receive a signed copy of the new, in-progress 300-page coffee table book, There’s Something About Alice, to be published in early 2024 by Firefly Books

For more information on Looking Glass Wars & Alice in Wonderland, check out the All Things Alice Blogs From Frank Beddor