Defenders of Kids’ Rites

Paul Germain and Joe Ansolabehere maybemiddle-ageddadswithbigfancyjobsinHollywood,buttheystill take recess very seriously. And the idea that some small-minded adults are out to destroy the playground ritual gets them downright animated.

“Our feeling is, you only get to be a kid once,” laments Ansolabehere, in his office on the Disney lot in Burbank. He’s talking about a political movement to cut recess by adding more days to the school year. Adds Germain: “If you think about the governor’s [California Gov. Gray Davis] State of the State address, he was going to cut summer vacation by a month!”

Germain and Ansolabehere, who prefer to be called Paul and Joe--even in their on-screen credits--are the creators and producers of “Disney’s Recess,” the popular Saturday-morning TV series on ABC. A scheme that would eliminate summer vacation once and for all is also the plot of their first animated movie, “Recess: School’s Out,” which opens nationwide today.

Set at Third Street School, the film, like the series, revolves around the antics of six fourth-graders on the playground and the adults who oppress them. There’s brainy and skinny Gretchen, whose intuitive science ability frequently gets the gang out of jams. (She’s modeled on Germain’s wife.) There’s chunky and lovable Mikey, who sings like Robert Goulet. (The voice, in fact, is Goulet’s.) There’s tough gal Spinelli and handsome, athletic Vince. And leading them all is the feisty T.J. As for the adults, there’s the good-hearted but burned-out Principal Prickly, and the ancient and flabby Miss Finster, irascible queen of the playground.

Like the series, the movie is rife with jokes about foul cafeteria food and “saggy butts.” But there’s also ample, more pointed humor for adults. “Are they dead? You know how I hate violence,” says the film’s uber-villain, Dr. Philliam Benedict (voiced by James Woods) after his henchmen set off some explosives.

Sitting in Ansolabehere’s tidy office on a rainy afternoon, the show’s creators, both 41, seem like just a couple of guys having fun. Germain’s the garrulous one with the glasses and dark beard who’s wagging his foot. Ansolabehere’s the sweet one in the burnt orange dress shirt who’s chewing on his nails.

It’s easy to see why they work so well together. Ask them something, and they typically interrupt one another or finish each other’s sentences. Or ask which “Recess” character they resemble and they both say, Gus, the timid, nerdy kid. “We’re two halves of the same mind,” quips Germain.

After meeting at UCLA film school they hooked up on Nickelodeon’s “Rugrats”--a series that Germain co-created. Following that success, in 1996, the two came to Disney to develop “Recess.” Almost immediately, the show became the most popular in ABC’s “One Saturday Morning” lineup.

Like “The Rugrats Movie” and its sequel, “Rugrats in Paris: The Movie,” “Recess: School’s Out” reflects a growing trend in children’s entertainment of turning hit half-hour TV shows into full-length features. For studios, it’s a no-brainer.

The movies, which typically cost anywhere from $10 million to $25 million to make (compared with $80 million to $100 million for original feature-length animation) can be huge moneymakers because they bring in a pre-sold audience. “Doug’s First Movie” took in more than $19 million nationwide, while “The Tigger Movie” earned more than $45 million--both were released by Disney. Warner Bros. had a huge success with the first “Pokemon” movie, which did $85.7 million in box office. The first “Rugrats” movie did just over $100 million in box office, while the sequel has taken in $75 million to date.

And they’re also quick to make. “Recess” took only a year and a half to complete, compared with four years for a typical animated feature generated by studios such as Disney or DreamWorks, mainly because the animation in these TV-to-movies cartoon features is much cruder than in original features.

Last weekend, Ansolabehere and Germain attended the film’s Hollywood premiere, their first. They’re still reeling from the excitement. “I was telling my wife, I felt like I was naked for the whole world,” confesses Germain.

When Disney executives first approached the pair about a feature film, they balked. The two had conceived of “Recess” as an ensemble show--a “Taxi” for kids revolving around little moments on the playground. Although initially slated for a video release, the idea of spinning a movie off the series seemed too complex.

Recalls Ansolabehere: “They [Disney executives] said, ‘It’s got to be big, and it’s got to take place in the summer.’ ” Their response? “Well, we’re not going to do it.”

But then they got to thinking about their childhood memories of school during the summer, of riding past on their bikes and imagining the evil lurking within.

Working with screenwriter Jonathan Greenberg, they came up with a James Bond-style plot featuring a rogue teacher who takes over the empty school, and threw in some ninjas and a giant laser gun.

“It felt like an episode of ‘The X-Files,’ ” says Germain. “I’m very conservative in my storytelling. I kept saying, ‘Do we really want to go that big?’ ” Meanwhile, the success of their TV series spurred Disney to go for a theatrical release.

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Germain and Ansolabehere’s major concern was staying true to the series. They also had strong ideas about what not to do.

“In Rugrats [the TV series], we were always clear the babies never talked in front of the adults,” says Ansolabehere. In the movie the babies do all the time. “It drove us nuts!” says Germain. (The pair was not involved in the “Rugrats” films).

Another concern was decidedly more political.

If you look closely, the evil Dr. Benedict may seem familiar, with his tirades about test scores and too few hours spent in the classroom. “I’ve got to make test scores go up. That’s why I’m turning out recess once and for all!” Dr. Benedict declares.

Benedict brings to mind the well-known cultural conservative Bill Bennett, the former secretary of Education. So is Benedict modeled on Bennett? The two producers glance at each other and grin.

“How do you want to phrase this?” asks Germain cautiously.

“I’ll answer it,” says Ansolabehere bravely, affirming that it is based on the conservative thinker, but with more dimension than the original character. “In our initial view of this, Principal Prickly represented the idealistic left and the villain was a zealot on the right.”

“It just didn’t play,” continues Germain. “In all fairness, he [Benedict] represents the whole spectrum of people jumping on that bandwagon, that we have to get these test scores up at any cost.”

“We think this is insane,” says Ansolabehere.

One of the movie’s subplots is that teachers are actually nice people who care about kids--they’re just burned out. In one scene, there’s a ‘60s flashback complete with loud clothes and peace signs, where Prickly and Benedict are young teachers.

As it happens, both of their dads taught public school, and for a time Ansolabehere planned to become a teacher too. One of their aims in “Recess” was to pay tribute to the profession.

“Teachers are idealistic,” says Ansolabehere. “It’s a hard job.”

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Movie Review

* “Recess: School’s Out” gets a passing grade. F19