The Lorax Cast & Crew Comment on Dr. Seuss. Happy Birthday!

The legendary Dr. Seuss has been inspiring a love of reading in children for generations. Many of us are share fond memories of reading his books as kids. As many of you know Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax has been animated into a 3D movie that comes out in theaters today!

In honor of his birthday we want to celebrate by sharing with you what some of the actors and crew from the new Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax movie revealed to us about their Dr. Seuss memories and the new movie when I got the chance to interview them in L.A. some weeks ago.

Danny Devito on reading Dr. Seuss books with his kids:

“We started moving into the picture books with words, and that natural progression took us right to Dr. Seuss because especially when you come home at night and you’ve been working and you want to read the kids to sleep and give them that book in the bed, and you can sit there and go da-da-da-da-da-ba-ba-ba-da-da-da-boom-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-dum you know?  But, Dr. Seuss always gave you a really cool story. And so, we did all of the normal Green Eggs and Ham and the this and the that.  We also loved Horton Hears a Who and then, of course, when we got hip to The Lorax, it was really cool.”~Danny Devito (Voice of the Lorax)

“Overall, the beautiful colors and celebrating the environment and caring about the environment, which is one of my big, big, big things, and the fact of looking for trees and wanting to find trees. Dr. Seuss has a way of doing, you could get into it. I hope everybody else loves it as much as those of us involved in it.”~Betty White (Voice of Grammy Norma)

“I think probably at the end, watching everybody realize, after he knocks the wall down and see what the world has become outside of their perfect little city, and the fact that this young boy can open up the eyes of the entire town. Also when The Lorax comes back, it’s beautiful.  I almost started crying, almost, almost.”~Zac Efron (Voice of Ted)

“Dr. Seuss had a really prominent sort of section on my childhood bookshelf, which is one of those decisions that your parents had to make.  But, we-my brother and sister and I-all just were totally enthralled with Dr. Seuss.  And The Lorax in particular, for some reason, I loved this book.”~Ed Helms (Voice of the Once-ler)

“I love Dr. Seuss.  I’ve always loved Dr. Seuss.  Green Eggs and Ham, The Lorax, even Brown Shoe, I think is one of them?”~Rob Riggle (Voice of Mr. O’Hare)

Ken Duario on getting involved and on his history with Dr. Seuss books.

“Well, I actually wrote [the screenplay for] Horton Hears a Who!, which was the other animated movie. And we did that with Chris Melandandri [Producer].  And that was the first thing we did with Chris Melandandri.  That actually was my favorite book of all time, not just kids book, I’m sad to admit – my favorite book.  And actually, when we first got the job, Cinco had called me up, I was in my car, and he said, Ken, if we could adapt any book into a movie, what would you want to do?  And I said ‘not Horton?!’.  And he said, yes, Horton. I was just so excited to do that.”~Ken Duario (Screenplay/Executive Producer)

“Yes, that [The Lorax] is my favorite Dr. Seuss book since I was a little kid, and I loved it.  And we were over at Audrey Geisel’s [Dr. Seuss’ wife] house talking to her about Horton Hears a Who!, and she took us on a tour.  And in the back yard, there’s a little statue of The Lorax. And we went back there and got a picture.  I think I was posing next to it or something like that.  And I mentioned to Chris, that’s my favorite book.”~Cinco Paul (Screenplay by/Executive Producer/ Songs by)

Christopher Melandandri on the animation style of the film and staying true to Dr. Seuss.

“I think in this case, what I was always fascinated with is probably the most relevant part of your question, and as a producer really was, okay, yes, we’ve had this experience, kind of my former life on Horton [Horton Hears a Who!], but here’s this book that was a departure for Ted Geisel [Dr. Seuss], and here are characters that he draws with very simple lines, a color palette that was different from his past books, and could Chris and his team of designers and artists translate these very simple line drawings into dimensional characters and dimensional immersive worlds that wasn’t just captivating but was really true to the spirit of what was on those pages. Which I think that he’s done.  And how he did it is one of the most exciting things about being part of this process.”~Christopher Melandandri (Producer)

Don’t forget to check out the two awesome Dr. Seuss giveaways we have going on right now with The Lorax and The Cat in the Hat Knows A Lot About That.