Since the birth of their trademark toy in 1947, The LEGO Group has produced over 400 billion bricks. But more and more, LEGO® bricks aren’t just for kids, and some take them very seriously. Adult Fans of LEGO (AFOLs) around the globe are unashamedly declaring their love of the brick, brick artists are creating stunning and surprising creations, and Master Builders are building human scale and larger structures. LEGO bricks are being used educationally, therapeutically, and have provided a universal system for human creativity and our innate desire “to build.”
‘Beyond The Brick: A LEGO® Brickumentary’ is a feature-length, theatrical documentary covering all things that surround the LEGO® brick and the global phenomenon it has created.
Did you both use LEGOs growing up? And do you use them now?
(Interviewer’s note: Right after I asked this first question, Daniel and Kief both dug into big piles of LEGO on the table in front of them, and started snapping different designs into place as they spoke. They continued to do so for the rest of the interview.)
Kief Davidson: I actually didn’t use LEGOs when I was a kid. I kind of went right from blocks to Star Wars. So I didn’t really discover LEGOs until I had my own child. My son is just obsessed with them. That kind of energized me. And I saw how at an early age it helped so much to develop his fine motor skills–just doing this [Kief snaps a LEGO brick into place] as a little kid. It turns out that’s actually very common with children: weakness in their thumbs. And LEGO is such a great tool to build that strength.
I like that you’re both actually playing with LEGOs while we’re talking.
Daniel Junge: We didn’t get to play at all during the making of the film. When you’re making a film, which can be an all-consuming process, you don’t want to involve yourself with the subject of your film with what little spare time you have. You want a few minutes of respite. So it’s fun to finally start playing with them again. I was raised with LEGO. I was in on that first generation it really caught fire with in this country.
The film makes it clear that different people like LEGO for different reasons. Is there anything that fans of LEGO all tend to have in common?
Daniel: I think there is a common theme in what [singer-songwriter and LEGO fan] Ed Sheeran says in the film: In a way it brings back a piece of your childhood. I would venture that even the serious artists in the film all still have a childlike kind of nostalgia for the bricks. Even when they’re using it as a serious tool, there’s still something comfortable and familiar about this medium.
The film is narrated by a Jason Bateman-voiced animated LEGO figurine (or, in the language of LEGO, a “minifig”). What made you want to use written narration as oppposed to relying on interviews alone?
Daniel: When you watch my films, or Kief’s films, you’ll see that their power comes from the fact that they have strong narratives. And narratives need present-tense stories. There’s only so much lip-flap you can have in a documentary before people grow tired. And one of the challenges for us was that we wanted to make a film that families could watch. For kids to watch a film, it’s got to be super, super engaging. Which means story and visual stimulation, not just people talking.
Kief: I think our animated minifig made the film more accessible for younger kids. I sat next to two six-year-olds last night [at the April 20th premiere], and they were just fully engaged in the animation.
What makes LEGO unique, and sets it apart from any other art form or science?
Kief: It’s the infinite combinations. There’s a scene in the film where Søren [Eilers, a mathematical sciences professor at the University of Copenhagen]talks about all the different combinations of LEGO when you’re using just six different bricks. And then when it got up to ten he couldn’t count anymore. What you can do with just a handful of little bricks is pretty amazing.
Daniel: And yet it’s a system with constraints as well. In some ways, a thesis of the film is that when you have a system with constraints, like musical notes, it really enables human creativity.
As documentary filmmakers working on a low budget, do you relate to the idea that constraints can actually be helpful?
Daniel: A parallel is that at some point we had to stop making this film. We had to say enough is enough. We could’ve gone on and on and on forever, but I think having time and money constraints can be helpful for filmmakers.
Kief: And a decision was made to go to the Tribeca Film Festival. That was a hard deadline we ultimately had to make.
The film really takes us through the history of LEGO, especially during an animated segment early in the runtime. How did you start researching that history?
Daniel: How did we stop researching? That was something we really battled with. Because there’s definitely an inside-baseball element to the film, in that we’re dealing with subjects who know this system so well. But we wanted audiences who were completely green or didn’t know that much about LEGO to come to the film and have a place to jump off from.
Kief: We easily could have made a whole film just about the history. But we were so taken by some of the characters that we found that their stories wound up becoming more dominant.
How did you find your interview subjects?
Daniel: We started within the LEGO company, at the factory, in the design rooms, with the corporate executives. And we tried to get the inside story while we were researching all the outside stories. And that’s the journey of the film as well: We’re starting inside the company, and then moving beyond it, and then finding a way to weave those two worlds together.
Kief: It became a little bit more difficult when we started reaching out to the community, because there were so many great builders out there, so many great stories. Ultimately we covered three different conventions, and at the first one we found out who the top dogs of that convention were, and the more people we talked to the more we got to know. But at the end of the day, like the infinite building choices you have with LEGO, it seemed like there was an infinite number of characters that we could find as well. But luckily it all seemed to jell the further we went down the road with it.
Nathan Sawaya, a LEGO artist featured heavily in the film, contests the idea that working with a commercial product like LEGO makes an artist a sellout. As filmmakers making a film about LEGO, how would you respond to such an accusation?
Daniel: Mine and Kief’s street cred is proven. We’ve both worked in the human rights and social justice field for over a decade. So if working with something that has mainstream and pop appeal is selling out, I’m happy to do it. Because I think it really stretches us as filmmakers. Nathan works within a medium that some people might say makes him a commercial sellout, when really he deals with big ideas and aesthetically challenging things. And I’d like to think that our film does the same thing.
Kief: I personally want to challenge myself and do different genres, do different things. My prior film, and Daniel’s prior film, were both very intense social justice films. Going into something as light as this, I thought it was just going to be a cakewalk. And it was far from it.
What’s on the horizon in terms of distribution?
Daniel: We believe this film has theatrical capability, not only in North America but hopefully around the world.
Kief: And I guess if it doesn’t sell, then we definitely didn’t sell out.
Daniel: (Laughs.) Exactly. Then we’ll be back to our more profitable social justice films.
Read the interview at IndieNYC.com
David@IndieNYC.com
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