ROSS BAGDASARIAN, JR. and JANICE KARMAN on
'ALVIN AND THE CHIPMUNKS: THE SQUEAKQUEL'

Interview by Michael J. Lee, Executive Editor for RadioFree.com
March 15, 2010

Since they were created in 1958 by actor/songwriter Ross Bagdasarian, Sr, Alvin and the Chipmunks have endured as a beloved mainstay of pop culture. And even after decades of record sales and a hit Saturday morning cartoon in the '80s, the anthropomorphic trio of Alvin, Simon, and Theodore show no signs of slowing down. 50 years after their inception, the characters are as popular as ever: their 2007 foray into live action film impressively hauled in over $360 million worldwide, and their 2009 follow-up Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel, which re-introduced the Chipmunks' female counterparts, the Chipettes, and thrust the furry brothers into the unfamiliar landscape of high school, eclipsed that total by surpassing $440 million.

The 'munk franchise is poised for continued success: even as The Squeakquel hits Blu-ray and DVD, plans are underway for a third live action movie, a new album, and a possible return to television. In this exclusive interview, hands-on producers Ross Bagdasarian, Jr. and Janice Karman--who are involved with every aspect of the Chipmunks from character design and writing to marketing and merchandising--talk about this myriad of developments.

RadioFree.com: How do you feel about connecting to yet another generation of fans?

ROSS: Well, we're obviously delighted, because for us, there's a universal theme that lives on. And it's true for people here in the States, it's true for people around the world: it's about family, it's about emotion, it's about brothers getting along, not getting along, having fights, sticking up for one another and protecting each other. It's all of that.

Would you consider that the key to the Chipmunks' longevity in a world where many adaptations do not remain true to the original material?

JANICE: Absolutely. When we started the Saturday morning cartoon show, they wanted us to copy a popular Saturday morning cartoon, which was The Smurfs. And we said, "But we're not The Smurfs. We're a Father Knows Best, we're I Love Lucy..." To us, it was all about family dynamic and emotion, no matter what you put them in. You wanted to like these characters at the end, you wanted to relate to their journey. And so that's what the show has always been for us.

ROSS: Instead of just having them be talking animal movies, for us, the emotion is true. And so when Janice was writing the Squeakquel storyline, we both remembered being in a new school, how tough that was...It's hard. And so Janice wanted to start the Chipmunks out with being on top of the world, and now you're lower than a tadpole in school as the new kid. And Alvin's freakish need to be popular separates the brothers, and Theodore runs away from home. Those are all really sort of emotional points.

JANICE: Where the first movie was about them all coming together as a family, we wanted them to come apart in the second one--to be challenged as a family.

What direction could the story take in the third live action feature?

ROSS: This is really just a week [since the movie was confirmed]...

JANICE: Yeah, we just heard about it.

ROSS: Janice is just putting some ideas together. But one of the things that we really like the idea of is doing it in 3-D, because we think, again, that will add a whole other opportunity to present the characters in a different way.

JANICE: You know, you start with the [core] story. "Okay, here are the things I absolutely need in this story: Chipettes, Chipmunks, this, this, this, these songs..." And then you try to structure a story around that that fits the needs of the characters.

ROSS: And that, again, you have that emotional content to it.

Do you know if the movie will be shot in 3-D, or will it be filmed traditionally and converted?

JANICE: No, I think it's going to be filmed...

ROSS: Yeah, we think we're going to film it. But honestly, that's way too early.

JANICE: We just had this discussion, so we don't know about the amount of time that we're going to have. So it's either going to be, like you say, [shot in 3-D] or we're going to convert.

ROSS: You know, it's funny, because converting it didn't, obviously, hurt Alice in Wonderland at all. So we'd love to have that same "miserable result..." [laughs]

Do you think current 3-D glasses mute a picture's vibrancy by making everything darker? Is that a fair trade off?

ROSS: I think that it's just the way it is right now. Whether it's going to be that way two years from now when we come out, we don't know. You know, it's funny because when you look at the great, old black and white films, there was an art to their lighting, and their sense of lighting had such mood--the blacks were richer, the greys were warmer. And when we went to color, those movies, while they were bright and saturated, weren't necessarily phenomenally handling light. They just weren't as advanced. And so we're going to continue to go through those sorts of things where you're going to give up a little something to try and get something new. And for us, it's about creating an environment that people want to be in, whether that's with glasses on their heads or not... [laughs]



In one of our previous interviews, you joked about a possible nod to the look of the '80s cartoon: that Brittany would scoff at a pair of leg warmers in The Squeakquel. Was there a gag like that in the movie that I, perhaps, missed?

ROSS: No, there wasn't.

JANICE: I'll tell you why as well: one of the things is we had to completely change her outfits, because her new body would not accommodate things like leg warmers.

ROSS: You know, if you look at her leg, it's so short. Janice, in designing the different clothing and stuff, tried to see if that would work, and then [we] could toss it off. But it wouldn't even read as leg warmers. They looked almost like...Sort of...

Anklets?

JANICE: [laughs]

ROSS: Yeah. So it was a fun joke that just bit the dust.

You had also mentioned that the Chipmunks cover songs from the Nintendo Wii video game might be made available on your website at Chipmunks.com. Were those tracks ever released as downloadable content?

ROSS: No. You know, we were going to do that. We've decided not to yet. What we're probably going to do...We'll probably put an album of them out--"Tubthumping," "Blitzkrieg Bop," "It's Tricky," and a whole bunch of different stuff.

It looks like the Chipmunks.com site recently got an overhaul...

ROSS: Yeah, we changed the whole thing. You know, what we originally created like six years ago was starting to look really tired, and so we thought, "Okay, probably need to get this looking like it is done today, instead of 800 years ago." So yeah, we changed the whole thing, like, just before the movie came out.

Any plans for a new Chipmunks album, aside from the compilation of previously released material?

ROSS: Yeah. You know, we're just playing around with some ideas. I know that the record company that's putting out the album right now wants to do more records, and so we've talked about whether it'll be like six or seven songs by the Chipettes and new stuff, or whether we're going to do maybe a Christmas album for this year. We're not sure. But we're looking at doing some things like that.

At this point, could there ever be another incarnation of the Chipmunks using traditional hand-drawn animation? Maybe a direct-to-video feature or a short?

ROSS: Actually, what we would probably do is we'd make a TV show before we would do that. That'd be my guess.

JANICE: It's a tremendous amount of work, and it's also very challenging getting animators that will do that art form now, and love that art form, and getting enough of them so that it's not excruciatingly expensive as well. We'd want to do it right, and it would be very expensive to make.

ROSS: Yeah. And the other thing about it is that we're so used to, now, having the animation really be full of personality and great. It'd be hard to go back to not being able to get the personality that you're sort of spoiled about getting.

So any potential TV show is just an idea being kicked around? There's no definite timeline?

ROSS: No...Just an idea. We're just developing...Janice has already written three or four scripts for it, and we're looking at the design of the characters. So we'll see.

Once again, thank you both for your time. And thanks for perpetuating my childhood well into 2010...

JANICE: Our pleasure! Thank you, Michael.

ROSS: Thank you.