I came across an article in The Hollywood Reporter by Anne Thompson that talks about the journey that Australian filmmaker George Miller took to get the new movie "Happy Feet" into theaters. It opens wide next Friday, November 17th.

Miller studied the structure and interplay of camera, character and music in classic film musicals as well as such darkly moral Disney classics as "Pinocchio" and "Dumbo" as he crafted a story that combines family dysfunction, romance, dazzling vistas, dangerous action, musical numbers and global environmental politics.

"It's a film with a lot of singing and dancing rather than a classic musical," Miller says. "You're trying to layer, weave and shape the story so that it looks self-evident, clear and simple, but that belies a complex architecture. It's a Rubik's cube. All stories worth their weight, that have impact and endure, must have more to them than meets the eye."

The article is an interesting examination of what goals they had for the movie, and how this happy penguin movie was related to a Mad Max movie that never got made.

Click the Read link below to read the full article.