Perfectly Frank
By LIZ BRAUN
Toronto Sun, July 12, 2001
You'll get no b.s. from director/Muppet master Oz
NEW YORK -- It isn't easy being Frank Oz. The respected filmmaker had to successfully wrangle the egos of Robert De Niro, Marlon Brando and Ed Norton while directing a new film called The Score, and yet Oz is still best remembered for his own past ... as Miss Piggy.
Yes, Oz is the former Muppet meister responsible for such characters as Cookie Monster, Grover, Bert, Animal, Fozzie Bear and the divine Miss P. Based on how childish Marlon Brando seems to have been during the filming of The Score, Oz's background probably came in handy.
The fact that Oz has also directed Little Shop Of Horrors, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, What About Bob?, In & Out, Bowfinger and The Indian In The Cupboard is generally overlooked. Oz, now in his mid-fifties, is also an actor (Trading Places, Spies Like Us, An American Werewolf In London) and has voiced characters (Yoda) in other movies.
In person, Oz so lacks any discernible b.s. level that it's hard to believe the guy has anything at all to do with Hollywood. He says his career has been entirely hands-on.
"I started out as an actor, and I never went to film school, but the good thing was, I was privy to a lot of sets and I could go ask the DP (director of photography), the production designer, the editor, how they did their jobs. And that's how I learned, over the years. That was a great entree."
Oz did well with comedic films, but had looked forward to finally directing a drama. What he liked about The Score, says the filmmaker, "was the interaction of the characters, the pushes and pulls."
The Score is both a heist thriller and a character study. Ed Norton is a cocky young thief with a big idea, Marlon Brando is an aged fence and Robert DeNiro is a thief at the point of retirement who must be convinced to do one more risky job.
Oz explains, with some pride, that all the technical aspects of crime featured in The Score -- from safe-cracking to hacking into security systems -- are authentic.
"We really didn't know how to shoot all that stuff," says Oz, explaining that De Niro found somebody named Mick to advise on such matters. "Mick was our consultant, because he used to be of that world. Every bit of technical information is real. Before I knew Mick, I didn't know a f---ing thing about safe-cracking. At first I looked on Amazon.com." He smiles.
The Score was shot in Montreal, a city Oz loves. It shows. Montreal is Montreal in this movie, by the way, because Oz hates the whole notion of pretending one city is another for filming purposes. The city made sense for economic reasons and it suited the characters in the tale. And above all, explains the filmmaker, "I have four kids and I don't want to be away from the east coast."
Asked if he ever does his Muppet voices for his kids, Oz says no, never, ever. His children are now aged 15, 13, 10 and seven.
"If I do any character voices, those kids will start to show off and say, 'Oh, my dad does this.' And they will become the son of somebody. I don't want that. I want them to have their own individual lives. And if I'm some self-aggrandizing asshole who needs the spotlight and is so needy he has to do voices for his kids, then there's something wrong with me."
Nothing we could notice.
"Anyway," he adds, "they like the violent stuff now, like Power Rangers or something."
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