I thought the way you handled the American character in "Chicken Run," Mel Gibson's Rocky the Rooster, fit into the mythology of Anglo-American relations fostered by movies like "The Great Escape" and "The Bridge on the River Kwai" -- these films are always partly about what Yanks give to Brits and vice versa.

Lord: Yes, that's it -- and we're allowed to be completely playful with the whole thing. I don't know what American audiences will make of it, but to us the very fact that he comes flying in there with the stars and the stripes on his back like some demented archangel and then knocks himself out -- and as soon as he wakes up everyone loves him instantly -- that in itself is ironic.

We're a bit tongue-in-cheek about that. And yet, the chickens take it totally seriously.

And of course, the American is the one who has to learn discipline and commitment -- his insouciance and individualism will only get him so far. And the resident rooster, Fowler, an old cock who's straight out of a Hollywood British Empire epic, never fails to remind Rocky of that.

Lord: Yeah, old Fowler became quite a broad caricature.

When I saw the film with a big audience of all ages, there were moments where different segments of the audience acted in different ways. For example, when the chickens are despondent and you hear a harmonica playing mournfully, those of us who are on to your ironic take on war movies start to laugh. But I overheard a few kids asking each other, "Why is everybody laughing?" I don't think it disrupted their enjoyment, but I wonder if that is ever a part of your thinking -- how you can address the issues you want and not turn off one part of the audience or the other?

Park: I think what we're relying on is that there are different layers to the film. Certain things are there if you have the eyes to see them, or the experience to know what we're talking about. But it shouldn't spoil the movie if you don't. We should still be able to grip you in the story.

Lord: Even as you were speaking I was suddenly imagining the whole cinema rocking to two different timbres of laughter -- little "eeeiee-eeeiie" from the kids and "HO-HO-HO," very adult, at different times of the film.

I noticed in an early press release that Jack Rosenthal, best known in this country for his co-writing credit on Barbra Streisand's "Yentl," worked on the film early on.

Lord: He did -- he helped Nick and I to get going -- but I don't think any of it is in the final film.

What did you need to get going?

Lord: I think we needed discipline mainly, because we had such an elaborate story, or stories. We didn't know it at the time. We just thought, "Feature film -- gosh, you can put in lots of ideas." And it would've run for three hours or something.

Which is close to what "The Great Escape" ran, actually.

Lord: Well, 80 minutes is very short, but that's what animated features seem to need to be. Nor did we lack for themes; if anything, we had too many themes. We kind of knew that in a feature you have responsibility to have important themes, great set pieces, climaxes, but we went totally mad. When [credited screenwriter] Karey Kirkpatrick came onboard he helped to focus us.

Park: I think we always had the basic theme of Ginger being the leader who wouldn't let her chickens be eaten ...

Lord: And Rocky being the outsider who comes in and messes everything up in a sense.

Park: I think what Karey saw was that we needed a story that would allow us to be ourselves, allow us to breathe and play with what we do best: the character work and the gags and that sort of thing.

Lord: I remember we had three stories entwined, and we had to take off two of them and acknowledge that one was enough for a movie.

Park: We were picking around in many genres, and we finally had to stick to the escape-movie genre, fun movies about guys up to jolly old larks, trying to get out of their school, really. Whereas we had been exploring the hierarchical system inside the prison, and the "Stalag 17" element of finding the one who would double-cross the others, and so on.

Lord: The trouble was, we looked at "The Shawshank Redemption" -- Ginger was to have been like Tim Robbins in that movie at one point, where she came in from somewhere else and made life bearable for the other chickens. And the "Stalag 17" element was suspecting one of the chickens of being a traitor. And all this was quite apart from the scene we had with the parrot.

What scene with what parrot?

Park: The Tweedys [the chicken-farm owners] in one version had a parrot. Rocky somehow got confused with the parrot, and ended up trapped in their household disguised as a parrot. And the Tweedys kept feeding him nuts.

Lord: And the real parrot was tied up in the knife drawer.

In terms of directing the actors, are you both in the room when you're guiding their vocal performances?

Lord: We had to be pragmatic about it. We started both being there -- that was the ideal -- but then, as we went along, everything got crazier and crazier, and we had to split up. It was on a random basis, like who's this busy that day and would want to do the recording session. Yes, and that was odd because we weren't experienced with actors -- we are now, but not then.

Actors are professionals; they do it the whole time. And I assume that because [of that], there is a whole way of talking to them. I'm sure that a good director knows how to bully, cajole, seduce -- you know, charm, whatever it is. We don't know how actors think, so it was difficult.

But isn't the clichi that animators actually act out their characters all the time?

Park: That's right.

Lord: But the joke is that animators are often frustrated actors, or else they're like introverted actors. They do have all the same instincts: They want to show off, but often they are inept at showing off. Like one of the guys, Dave Osmand, for example, who did a lot of the very strong, most charming stuff in the film. He'd say he was a very good actor. But he hated taking part in the acting workshops we had early on -- hated them, resented doing it. If the camera was turning, he could not tolerate it. He actually was a very good actor, but not the man for the job.

Did the professional actors respond in part to their knowledge of your work in the past and also to what you were able to show them of the visual life of this movie?

Park: It became easier when we were able to show them puppets of the characters. I thought that maybe helped to some degree. But they didn't know how those puppets were going to move. Once we got some footage shot, we made sure we showed it before the next recording session -- and that inspired them. I think they got more of a handle on what we were doing then. Because I think they had no concept of what this was, and they couldn't have, you know, because there wasn't much of it around. Especially for Mel: I mean, he was fairly familiar with our work, but the British people were more familiar with our work.

Well, the actresses who are veterans of "Ab Fab," Julie Sawalha and Jane Horrocks, effortlessly seem to get a bent tone. They're both, in different ways, one step off the ground yet full of conviction. Was it harder for Mel? I mean, he is wonderfully effective in the film.

Lord: I think so, yeah. The first session, the first day, it was a slow start. And it may have been because of something we said to him. Because we did keep saying, "We don't want exaggerated, over-the-top character performances; that's not what we want. We want believable performances."

But that was like saying, "Remember, it's not just your voice; you will have a face as well, so you don't have to do it all with the voice because the face will do the other half of it." For whatever reason, his first day was laid-back, chesty and not very energetic. But as he went along, he was great!

Park: Definitely. And he was our first choice. It's funny, we were never pressured to have a big American star. We weren't even thinking we needed one. But it became attractive that we could work with someone like that. Because we could approach him, and work with a big star, it was like, "Well, if we can, why don't we try?"

He was a heavy cigar smoker when we started. And then he gave it up. So his voice suddenly changed after the first session or two.

Lord: We had to rerecord some stuff -- for several different reasons, really, but that was one of them.

So students of the films of Mel Gibson will note that in 1999 there was a sudden change in his vocal quality! Anyhow, in the context of the film, it works for Rocky to be played by a big star.

Park: It's nice the way he was so happy to spoof himself in this movie. He had a great sense of fun.

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