Director Peggy Holmes tells us about her relationship with physical humor and behind the scenes of this film dedicated to bad luck.
Founded in 2017 and led by John Lasseter (former Disney and Pixar Art Director, who therefore found a new home after the accusations of sexual harassment which led to his departuret), Skydance Animation is finally releasing its first feature film, Luck. A film to discover on Apple TV+ whose heroine, Sam Greenfield, is the unluckiest person in the world, and who will find himself projected into a universe where luck and bad luck are produced. Presented in work in progress at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival, the first images hinted at a fairly subtle blend of physical humor and emotion. Meeting with Peggy Holmes, director of Luck.
First: Luck relies heavily on the slap stick. Was that the only way to portray Sam’s bad luck? Peggy Holmes: From the start, we made the choice that the first act of the film would be devoted to discovering the character of Sam. And since she has no family and we refused to give her a sidekick too early in the story, we decided to give him a personality not through the dialogues, but thanks to his daily interactions with objects. We turned to these artists I watched over and over on TV when I was little: Lucille Ball Carol Burnett, Donald O’Connor, Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin… Because I was a dancer (and even a choreographer for the cinema and several music videos, editor’s note), physical comedy attracted me a lot. Matter of rhythm. It was perfect for Sam: you could just put her in her apartment or in a work environment, and from there invent lots of purely visual gags.
Luck and bad luck are like invisible forces in the film. Yes, I would even say energies. It took us a long time with the teams and John Lasseter to work out the rules of this universe, so that everything seemed logical to us. We started from zero, we invented everything! We’ve done a lot of research on luck throughout human history, how it’s represented and how obsessed humans are with it. And it quickly seemed obvious to me that the great specificity of luck is that it is random. It cannot be created or controlled, and it is invisible to us. So that’s how we chose to show it – or rather not to show it!
Luck is the very first Skydance Animation film, which means it’s also kind of statement on the values and nature of the company. Absolutely. Even if during the preliminary meetings, it was not the subject. At Skydance Animation, we want to make cinema with a strong emotional dimension. Films that take place in new worlds and aim for a global audience. But apart from that, the whole point is to imagine stories in which we put a piece of ourselves, and in which the spectators find themselves.
What does John Lasseter bring to Skydance Animation? I’m not going to teach you anything by telling you that he’s a master of storytelling. He is a wise person, with many ideas. He also has an uncanny problem-solving ability, cutting out the superfluous so you can clearly see where you need to go. And above all, John manages to persuade you that whatever happens, you will get there. It does not have a price.
Luck, by Peggy Holmes, on August 5 on Apple TV+.
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