“The idea of working with Morgan, and watching him—I would’ve never done this with anyone else.” Pharrell Williams, producer, musician, designer and icon sits down for an epic conversation with filmmaker and collaborator Morgan Neville to discuss their lives, creative journey, and new biopic film “Piece By Piece.”
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00:00I don't care who you are, if you're 8 years old or 80 years old,
00:02it's never too late. It's never too late.
00:05Don't listen to these people who want to put you in a box,
00:07pun intended. Don't listen to them.
00:10Be you. You just never know when you wake up one day
00:13in a Legoland being black and tan.
00:22Go ahead on that set.
00:24You ready for an epic conversation?
00:26Oh yeah. How about you?
00:28Always.
00:29I read that when the idea for a biopic first kind of was floated to you,
00:32you were hesitant. Why was that?
00:35I wasn't hesitant. I said no.
00:37I was reluctant is the word because I didn't want to like listen to myself.
00:41I call it voicemail syndrome when like you hear yourself on a voicemail.
00:45You know, I'm a producer, right? So I'm very critical of like the way people sound.
00:50But then like the idea of working with Morgan and watching him,
00:56I would have never done this with anyone else on this planet.
00:58There's about almost 7 billion people on the planet. No chance.
01:03It was only you.
01:04The way that he architects his work, the way that his subjects are depicted,
01:08I was like, okay, I would work with him.
01:10But I definitely wanted to be in Lego.
01:12It was my toy of choice.
01:15You know, it was my parents used to get them for me all the time.
01:17And I didn't really build a lot of great things
01:19that were on the front cover of the boxes,
01:21but I built my own little abstract ideas.
01:25And so, you know, our first son, Rocket,
01:28that's what I used to always bring him back was like Lego sets
01:31from different parts of the world.
01:33When we finally decided to do this, it was like,
01:35well, we had just had our triplets.
01:38I wanted them to hear dad's story too
01:42and get it and understand it at a younger age.
01:44Also, doing it through the guise of Lego,
01:47it allowed me to have enough degrees of dissociation
01:51so that I could look at it objectively and contribute to the film.
01:54Because I felt like if I told the story,
01:57it would be a lot like the songs that I write for myself.
02:00And I wanted somebody with his, you know,
02:02technical prowess to lean in and be the architect.
02:06So when you write songs for other artists,
02:08do you feel like you are freer to put yourself into those?
02:12Or is there another layer of separation?
02:14When I write for other artists, I am the mirror for them.
02:19And I can show them the unique angles in their personalities,
02:22the unique parts of their voices that they never use,
02:26the unique aspects of their stories that they don't often tell.
02:30I'm good at that.
02:31I know if I'm good at anything, I can say that I'm really good at that.
02:34What I'm not good at is being a mirror for myself.
02:37If you ever put a mirror in front of another mirror, there's no image.
02:40That's my job, is to hold up a mirror to your life.
02:43Right. And you were fantastic with it.
02:46I mean, what was interesting as I finished the film for the first time,
02:50kind of the draft of the film,
02:51that we had always discussed you writing music for it too.
02:55And so then showing it to you and you seeing my interpretation of your story,
03:00and then you interpreting that back into the music,
03:03which went back into the film,
03:04and creating that feedback loop was really interesting.
03:07I could not have done that song without those conversations
03:11and without seeing what your vision of me was.
03:16Could not have done it.
03:17All musicians, for whatever reason, they make autobiographical music.
03:23They're telling you stories of breakups and makeups and meetings
03:30and marriages and hot nights and single nights.
03:33But to have the summation of your life is very hard to put into words,
03:39especially for a person like me,
03:41who's just never had the ability to self-reflect
03:45and have it all be succinct from my whole life.
03:49But then working with you and seeing how you saw me
03:53and the way you were choosing to tell my story like that was incredibly inspiring.
03:58But I also feel like in going through your music,
04:00there were a lot of things I was getting out of songs
04:04you had written, solo songs or N.E.R.D. songs,
04:07that you probably wrote for a totally different context,
04:10but said something to me that seemed to reflect your journey, too.
04:16Which was crazy, because I was like, whoa.
04:18That's the thing, is you think you wrote it for somebody else,
04:22but part of you wrote it for you, too,
04:24in the same way that I make films about other people.
04:27But I feel like my story is also reflected in these stories.
04:31Of all the questions you're asking,
04:33they're questions that I want to ask, too,
04:34which is why I investigate those.
04:36It was mesmerizing to me.
04:38I would see beautiful hues of light cascading.
04:41We definitely had a lot of conversations about representing synesthesia.
04:45Howard Baker, our animation director we work with in the studio,
04:49we had a lot of talks about beats, and he came up with a bunch of ideas.
04:52And then I know we showed you a lot of the beats
04:55to represent each beat in the film,
04:56because you do have this idea in your head.
04:59So a lot of times we got notes back on color or shape
05:03for what a beat would look like in your head.
05:05We tried to interpret that into LEGO
05:08and then put it back out there.
05:09Which is crazy.
05:10What I see in my mind when I hear music,
05:12none of you can see.
05:13It's in my mind.
05:15When we make music, the product,
05:18you can't see that either.
05:19It's in the air.
05:20Morgan really thought about it
05:23in terms of how to communicate what my process is
05:28and how I see sound.
05:30But then what is the finish?
05:32What is the manifestation?
05:33What does the fruition look like?
05:35And how do you present that?
05:37It's one thing to look at the life of an artist,
05:41but I'm really interested in producers.
05:43Because a producer has to have a bigger vision of the world.
05:48Because a lot of artists end up in their own little bubble
05:51in their own career,
05:52and they don't understand things.
05:54But you have to travel between worlds,
05:57and not just creative worlds,
05:59but business worlds and everything else.
06:01So you have to have a bigger picture
06:04and even like a bigger philosophy,
06:06I think, than an artist has to have.
06:08And that I find incredibly interesting and exciting.
06:12The different directions you've been able to take your career,
06:16I mean, totally unpredictable.
06:18You're more of like the Wizard of Oz character than Dorothy.
06:22I see what you see now that you have architected it.
06:26I'm grateful for that.
06:27You know, it's improved my self-awareness immensely.
06:31The other thing that this film does,
06:33it shows you it's never too late.
06:37It's never too late to recognize something that you love
06:43as something that is meaningful to you.
06:45And you don't have to chase commercial success
06:46or financial success with whatever it is that you love.
06:50Because that's not what your love is about.
06:52Your love is about that thing.
06:54And it drives you so much
06:56that you would do it for free if you could.
06:58And you should treat it like a dream
07:00and literally just start just piece by piece.
07:03Yeah, I mean, I think one of the lessons
07:06that I get from your story
07:08is that when you start to think about things
07:10in a commercial context, that muddies the water.
07:13The more you just try and listen to yourself
07:16as purely and simply and with as little friction as possible,
07:20that's actually when the best stuff happens.
07:22The best.
07:23That's when the best happens.
07:25I mean, here we are.
07:26It's the same thing.
07:27It was just all a passion project.
07:30Well, and it didn't make a lot of sense on paper.
07:33No, in fact, the hardest thing was to describe
07:36to people what we wanted to do.
07:37Now that you see it, it's like it works so effortlessly.
07:40When we started, we had to figure out
07:44what that architecture was
07:45and how we were going to tell the story.
07:46And we did a little sample of the animation
07:49to say, is this going to work?
07:51And I just remember being so excited.
07:54Yeah, like here we are.
07:55And now we're able to say it again.
07:56Five days later.
07:56Yeah, here we are.
07:58When I say architect, I really do mean that, right?
08:00He conceptualized the framework
08:03for what this documentary is.
08:05And it's interesting, you know,
08:06being in development with real architecture
08:09and like buildings and stuff.
08:11Like now I use some of that language
08:13and he conceptualized what the framework is for this home.
08:16But this home also has like multi usages.
08:20It's not just a home, it's also a building.
08:22It's also a sanctuary, you know?
08:24So this is not just like a documentary.
08:26It has the structure and the foundation of a documentary.
08:30But it also functions as an animation,
08:33functions as a biopic, functions as a musical.
08:37We pretty much let the energy of what we were building
08:40tell us what it was going to be.
08:42I mean, that's the thing.
08:44In the beginning, I didn't know
08:46what the film was going to be.
08:47I didn't know what the architecture was going to be.
08:49My process is just to listen as hard as I can.
08:53And so we started having a lot of conversations.
08:56We were recording and then COVID hit.
09:00And I started doing a bunch of these interviews
09:03over Zoom or on telephones.
09:06And I remember in the very beginning,
09:08like mailing a Zoom recorder to Missy
09:11so she could record herself.
09:12This is like early COVID.
09:13But part of that process, again,
09:15was not trying to limit anything.
09:17It was just trying to learn.
09:19When you do that, suddenly shape starts to come out of that.
09:23I started to see how important your childhood was.
09:27And a big piece of the film is your adolescence.
09:29Really where the turns in your life were,
09:33the good and the bad,
09:34because those are all the things you're learning from.
09:37It probably was a good year before I really knew
09:40what the structure of the film was going to be.
09:42I would also double down on that
09:43and just say that I feel like in doing this with you,
09:47listening is probably one of the most prominent colors
09:53on the canvas of a documentary is listening.
09:55It's one of the most prominent colors.
09:57It's what makes a documentary incredibly vivid.
10:00Something else I loved is the,
10:03you know, animation is so much about control
10:06and documentary is about lack of control.
10:09So there are things like in the film
10:12when you're talking and the crow starts crowing
10:16and you start reacting to it.
10:17It's the kind of thing you couldn't script
10:19in a million years,
10:20but that's what happens in real life
10:22and kind of making sure those accidents
10:26found their way into the animation.
10:27Like the, also walking around in Atlantis,
10:30my first neighborhood housing projects
10:34down in Virginia Beach
10:36and the people talking in the background,
10:38like all of that was real.
10:39You know, that happened for real.
10:40Like when the film first starts,
10:42I'd be mic'd up and I went to go tell my children
10:45to quiet down and ask Helen for her help
10:47to have them quiet down so that we could record.
10:50All of that happened.
10:51Life really happened in this.
10:53You were very clever about what you put in,
10:57how you put it in.
10:59You were very intentional.
11:02I interviewed even more people than made the film
11:05because I was just listening and gathering,
11:06but certain people have a way
11:08of painting pictures with words.
11:10And the thing I did differently on this film
11:12than any other film I've done
11:14is when I would talk to somebody
11:15and they would mention an important moment or a scene,
11:18I would really push them.
11:19I'd push you to paint the scene for me.
11:22What'd it look like?
11:22What'd you say?
11:23What'd they say?
11:24All of the dialogue in the film comes from that.
11:26And certain people, like Nori is amazing
11:29because he is like a cartoon character.
11:32Holy moly, guacamole, legendary story, yeah.
11:34And is so visual and energetic.
11:37Busta Rhymes was talking about this idea
11:40of the people in your life who might steer you wrong,
11:43the should, would, or could, as you call them.
11:44And he happened to say, you know,
11:46when things don't go well,
11:47they get in a lifeboat with their life preservers on
11:50and they leave.
11:52And just that image he painted became an entire scene.
11:56The whole reason that scene exists
11:58is because of something
11:59that Busta mentioned in an interview.
12:02Part of that is just getting people to talk
12:06in a different way
12:08and really trying to get people
12:11to paint pictures with words.
12:12And so, so much of it came from that.
12:14I keep saying the word architect.
12:16He really is that.
12:20My imagination would run super wild.
12:22Dun, dun, dun, dun, dun.
12:27Drop it like it's hot.
12:28I was always a bad gangster,
12:30but you brought out a smile.
12:33Hell yeah.
12:33The Lego aspect just gives you so much room,
12:36so much liberty, cinematic liberty,
12:39and so much room to ideate
12:40against what someone is saying
12:42or what the environment is.
12:44You can control so much.
12:46So like the drop it like it's hot?
12:48Oh yeah.
12:49And talking about how that idea came together,
12:51that was something that I remember thinking,
12:53oh, we could actually be there.
12:55You could actually have Snoop transform into a dog.
12:58Yeah.
12:59Wanted that very badly
13:00because that happens in his first video.
13:02We had like a fundamental conversation with Lego,
13:05like, okay, if we're going to do this,
13:07we have to make some adjustments.
13:09We have to have more skin color tones.
13:12We have to have different hair textures.
13:14It was important for them to understand
13:16that there are a lot of hands
13:18and those hands look very different
13:21that are assembling these Lego pieces around the world.
13:25And the smartest thing that they could do
13:27is democratize and welcome people
13:30by meeting them at the intersection of where they are.
13:33And they got it.
13:34They knew this was a journey that he should go on.
13:37Yeah.
13:37I think they were aware of the limitations
13:40with what they had been doing.
13:41The conversations we had about hair dreadlocks
13:45was a big thing.
13:46Yeah, and braids.
13:47And about how, you know,
13:49this is another thing about Lego animation
13:51is that anything in the movie has to be buildable.
13:55And at one point we had this conversation about,
13:57I think it was Pusha's hair.
13:59Because he had braids.
14:01And they said, well, that's so narrow,
14:02it could break off and a child could choke.
14:04It has to live at least theoretically in the real world.
14:08And so I remember even talking to Lego engineers
14:13about how thick a braid had to be to be manufacturable.
14:18I did not think I'd have these conversations
14:20when I started making films.
14:21But one thing that people have said to me
14:24in watching the film,
14:25which I take as a great compliment,
14:26which is they forget they're watching an animated movie.
14:29Oh yeah, that becomes apparent in the first five minutes.
14:32Yeah, you just care about the characters.
14:34And that's what you want as a storyteller
14:36is people just to be immersed in the story
14:39and the characters.
14:39You know, it was something that I worried about.
14:43You know, Lego is a kind of a low resolution
14:47style of animation.
14:48Meaning if you look at a Lego minifig,
14:51there's no nose, there are no ears.
14:54They don't articulate very much.
14:55So this is a bigger one.
14:57There are many more pieces here.
14:58But we just had the little minifig.
14:59How's he gonna dance?
15:02How's he gonna emote?
15:03Like all these questions we were having.
15:05But along the way, it all just kept working.
15:08The crazy thing is like,
15:10and I'm gonna shut up after this.
15:11I tend to have long-winded answers.
15:13But the universe is the reason why we're here.
15:16We're all in the universe right now.
15:19It was here before us.
15:20It's gonna be here after us.
15:22I believe in the force that holds the Kuiper belt together.
15:27Earth turns around a thousand miles per hour.
15:30Our planet Earth spins around the solar system
15:3255,000 miles per hour.
15:34And I feel like if our world and Earth can hold itself
15:38in place in that special Goldilocks zone
15:42that allows us to exist,
15:44there's no reason to worry about anything.
15:46We get caught up in these things every day.
15:47We get caught up in so much stuff every day.
15:50And I know it's a lot.
15:51You're alive.
15:52You're breathing right now.
15:53You don't have to think about that.
15:55So what you should think about is what makes you happy
15:59and be who you're gonna be and go after it, man,
16:02piece by piece.
16:04That's what I really, really, really want people
16:05to take away from this man's work.
16:08I mean, I think so many of the things I got from the film
16:12were things of thinking about my own creative process.
16:15And it's really this idea of the things
16:20that make us different, make us special.
16:23Oh, yes.
16:24And just embracing that.
16:26It's so easy to forget that
16:29or for people to tell you differently.
16:32But I think that's something that I get from the film
16:35when I want other people to take away.
16:37That which makes you different
16:38is what makes you special, for sure.
16:40You're right.
16:41The universe made us, man.
16:43Every last one of us, we're different.