With Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile now playing in theaters, I recently got so speak with directors Will Speck and Josh Gordon about helming the adaptation of the popular children's books of the same name by author Bernard Waber. During the wide-ranging conversation, they talked about why they wanted Shawn Mendes as the titular crocodile who loves singing and baths, what it’s like test screening a movie with a theater filled with kids, how making a musical means you’re making the movie well in advance of your shoot, and future projects like Distant with Anthony Ramos and Naomi Scott and how they’re making a movie musical about the classic video game The Oregon Trail with Benj Pasek and Justin Paul.

However, one of the things I found really interesting, is the way they talked about Javier Bardem and how he works on set. If you’re not aware, normally when an actor finishes a scene, they will go back to their trailer, but that’s not the case with Bardem. Gordon explained how not only does he not leave set, he’ll do anything he can to help the production:

“I think the other amazing thing with Javier was he is such an actor first before a celebrity, whatever he is, that he doesn't leave set. Literally, he would not go back to his trailer. He would sit in a chair and read through a script to the point where sometimes the crew would be like, "It's freaking me out. I can't set my shot." He would often jump up and be like, "Oh, I'll stand in." He did almost everything but carry the equipment. It was incredible.”

He went on to talk about how much he prepared for the role and wanting to do all the musical numbers without a double:

“He rehearsed for almost five months and demanded when he showed up on set to do the numbers from start to finish because he was so proud that he had worked as hard as he had. He really did not want us to ever bring on a double or to have any other part of his work not be him. So, I think you would look at it and go, oh, that's Javier Bardem, there's no way he did all of that. He really did all of it. It was incredible.”

Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile also stars Winslow Fegley, Constance Wu, Scoot McNairy, and Brett Gelman.

Watch what Will Speck and Josh Gordon had to say in the player above, or you can read our conversation below.

COLLIDER: So jumping on in, if someone has actually never seen anything that you guys have done before, what is the first thing you want them watching and why?

WILL SPECK: [That is] a really good question.

JOSH GORDON: That's a really good question. Wow. I think Will and I are strange beasts. We're very cynical, and our comedy tends to run hard in life and also in the movies we've made. Yet we also have a tremendous amount of heart and so, we're always looking for that combination, I think, in our work. I think it's defined a lot of our early stuff. I think with this movie, specifically, it's been interesting because we've now been over-indexing a little bit in the heart department, I think, which was a nice process on this one.

SPECK: But I think if we had to pick one distinctive piece of work, I think it's A Strange One, which is there's a PSA that we developed for organ donate, which we wrote about a character that was not redeemable until after his death when he realized that he was an organ donate.

GORDON: It was called The World's Biggest Asshole. I think it possessed both of those two qualities.

SPECK: It's a small piece, and it's an odd one to choose because it doesn't really stand up in terms of length, time, or scope to any of the movies we've done. But it definitely speaks directly to our sensibility, which is what Josh said, which is the darkness and a little bit of the cynicism and the humor with a twist of heart at the end, because ultimately we're softies.

Obviously people want to make movies with you. You've been able to make a career in Hollywood, which is like winning a lottery. But if you could get the financing to make anything you want, what would you make and why?

SPECK: Well, this is not just timely. Lyle was a big passion project of ours. It's a book that we've always loved together collectively, and the rights were definitely difficult to get. We found a great fracture point where they had lapsed, and we were able to come in. So, this was an actual dream come true, because we'd also wanted to make a musical forever. There's definitely lots of mountains in front of us to climb, but this specifically was something that checked a lot of boxes for us, because it was beloved for both of us as a book. And I think, again, the musical component was something really exciting to have done. But I think, what else? I think what we've been trying to do, which we've been lucky to do, is just expand out of our comfort zone.

GORDON: We just did a sci-fi film that's coming out after this with Anthony Ramos for Universal called Distant. So, we're starting to get to those projects I think that you're describing.

With Lyle, obviously, you need the lead voice. How did it actually land on Shawn doing the voice, and did anyone else come close to actually landing the role?

SPECK: Our decision to make the character not speak, which was a big part of the book, was a hard one because we were really worried defensively that the studio was going to ask us to do that, because it's logical in these kind of movies to boost the main character with a comedic superstar behind it. So, once we got past that hurdle, it was, well, how do we voice him? I think what we were looking for was someone that really resembled the character and had an innocence and an openness. We thought about, well, is there a teenage singer that should do this role? I think we wanted it to be somebody on the young side, for sure. We also wanted it to be a voice that really stopped you in your tracks, and that's actually a very short list when you come down to it.

There were five names on that list. I'm sure you can imagine who they were. We actually looked at the list visually. We put it up on the wall, and we thought about it, and we were like, you know what's great about Shawn is he's an innocent. There's not a lot that you know about him in a way. Do you know what I mean? You know here and there some facts, but there's still a blank slate there. I think for us, that's what drew him to us really as a first choice, because we felt like we want it not to feel like it comes with a tremendous amount of baggage in that choice. I think once we started to talk to him, he spoke of his stage fright, his anxiety, his stepping into the power of his talent and what that struggle was about for him, and that felt very much thematically where Lyle was as a character. And so, for us, it all sort made logical sense and fell into place.

He really surprised us in a way, because we asked him to do a different style of music than he was used to. Justin and Benj, they have musical roots, and there's a lot of interpretation in that kind of text versus what you might do in a pop song, which is sometimes a little bit more about a vocal line with less interpretation. A lot of the interpretation comes in the production of a track, and Shawn was actually able to really do that in a raw and really unexpected way. So I think for us, it felt like just a great marriage of a person bringing their own sensibility to something and what we had hoped the character could emulate. So, it was a good match.

I was just surprised Chris Pratt didn't get the voice role. I'm obviously joking. No matter how much money you had, there's always going to be an obstacle with time, budget. What ended up being the biggest hurdles that you were nervous about while making the film?

GORDON: Well, I think the biggest hurdles are that musicals require a completely different way of making than any other movie. It's a bit of an art form that's gone out of Hollywood. A friend of ours who made a bunch of musicals told us that you really have to make the movie well in advance of making the movie, and most movies are not set up in that way now. You know what I mean? There's release targets that you're hitting.

We were very lucky Sony was very eager to get this made and into the theaters. And so, a lot of our hurdles had to do with time in terms of time to rehearse, time to get the songs early enough to really build these big sequences. We were able to do it, but it required a lot of overlapping. We were shooting while we would then go all night and rehearse and then come back to the stages. So, it was a tyranny of time, which a lot of movies are, but this one particularly was very hard in that department.

Obviously, Javier is very selective with the roles he takes. You've spoken about the studio didn't think you could get him, and you were able to get him. I'm just curious, what do you end up drinking the night that he says yes, because it's such great casting. I can't imagine your reaction when he actually said yes.

GORDON: We had such a strange way in which we found out, which is that we had talked to him over almost four long Zooms.

SPECK: Six, six.

GORDON: Five, six long Zooms.

SPECK: Six Zooms.

GORDON: Ultimately, he told us, "I need the weekend to decide if I'm absolutely going to do this or not." But he was nervous about, am I funny enough? Can I do the singing? He had a lot of personal [reasons]. He's very hard on himself as an actor, and he really wanted to make sure he could deliver. He was on vacation with his family. He went off to the beach, and coming out of the water was a small child holding a crocodile inflatable raft. I think he thought, well, okay, this says I have to do this movie. He grabbed the kid's raft and took a picture of it and sent it to us. So, we thought we weren't going to hear until Monday. And then, on a Sunday, we got this picture of him standing on a beach holding the raft. We were like, what does this mean? Is this yes or no? And so, we assumed it meant yes and went out and got drunk. I think I had tequila.

So, I totally believe everything I saw in the movie about a crocodile being able to sing. I believed everything. The only thing that I really was like, I don't think this is true, is seeing everyone drive around New York City without traffic. That was my one thing in the sand where I'm like, this is too far. I'm making a joke, obviously. But, you know what I mean.

SPECK: No, you're not wrong. But inversely, closing Fifth Avenue was a feat. When it happened, we were like, let's just keep the glory of it, because all everyone wants to believe is that you can move around that city easily. But it's a funny thing that you mention it, because it was definitely a stop-and-go situation. We wanted to shoot New York, because the book is set in New York City, and we didn't really want to double those streets, but that is not an easy thing to do.

That's my only objection to the film. Everything else, great. Just the lack of traffic is where I draw the line.

GORDON: We're trying to sell an idealized New York here.

SPECK: Yeah.

By the way, it totally works with the idealized New York. I'm totally teasing you guys. So, I've been a huge fan of Scoot McNairy for a long time. And he doesn't really get to do roles like this. Was that one of the reasons why you wanted to put him in the movie?

GORDON: Yeah, it's funny. We've known Scoot for well over a decade or more.

SPECK: He was a commercial ringer.

GORDON: Right. What we mean by that is we started in commercials before we did our features, and there were always these commercials that you needed to get an actor who could just make it work. There were five or six of them that they would come in, and they would just crush it. Believe it or not, Scoot was one of those guys.

SPECK: And it was in the comedy space.

GORDON: Yeah, he was very, very funny. We knew him before he became this big dramatic actor as a very funny actor. When we told the studio, they were like, "Really, Scoot? He's such a respected drama actor." We're like, "No, he's very funny."

SPECK: It was a joy to watch him get to do that. And also, he was really excited because, as a first, he got to show his kids something he actually did, because most of his stuff is on the margin.

Talk a little bit about some of the bigger debates you and the studio had. What were they over, and how did you end up solving those debates?

GORDON: This is going to sound like we're not sharing how the sausage is made or whatever. But strangely, the studio was very in sync about all the major things in the movie, and some of that comes down to just luck. Everybody agreed Javier Bardem would be the perfect person for the role. So when you get Javier Bardem, everybody's like, oh, great. Everybody agreed Pasek and Paul are the perfect composers for it. So you go, great. It's when you don't get those first choices that the rifts, the fault lines show.

I think for us, the thing we were most afraid of was that they were going to make us make the character talk, because that was going to take it tonally in a different direction where he would be a wisecracking crocodile, as Will said, driven by a comedic actor. And they got that that was important to the tone of the movie and that he only expresses himself through song. So, we were able to largely avoid, I think, all of the big contentious things for us. Wouldn't you say?

SPECK: Yeah, I think so. There was a question while we were shooting, "Can you please use "Crocodile Rock"?" It was that thing when something very clear is presented, you sometimes resist it. We were like, "Well, no, that's just too on the nose. It's too obvious." And it kept coming up from other people, oddly. The actors were like, "Oh, you know the Elton John song is "Crocodile Rock"?" We were like, "Yeah." They're like, "You should use that in the movie." We're like, all right, if you hear that enough, you should probably listen. So, we had a little snippet at the end of the movie where Shawn sings it.

GORDON: Of course, the audience loved it, and we looked at each other, and we were like, "Yeah, we'll claim credit for that."

SPECK: Yeah, exactly.

I love talking about the editing process, because that's where it all comes together. Talk a little bit about what you learned from that first test screening or early friends and family screenings that actually impacted the finished film.

SPECK: I think we learned a lot about the pace and energy that comes when you have a musical. It's a very strong flavor. An audience, once you give them a taste of that, they want more. We kept reducing our space between the musical numbers in order to do that. But the film, it's pretty close to what we shot. We only, I think, cut two scenes out of the movie, but it was in the areas where we felt like, okay, it's time to get this crocodile singing again because it's been a minute.

We only had two test screenings. They both did very well. But the thing that's crazy is you know that we've done mostly R-rated comedies, right? So what you're normally getting is very cynical people in their twenties standing in line waiting to rip you apart or in the best-case scenario just go hysterical at any of the vignettes you do. And the thing that was hilarious is you get there, and there's just throngs of kids.

GORDON: We're like, oh, man.

SPECK: We're like, this is a whole new thing.

GORDON: What are these people going to say?

SPECK: What is the mind of a six-year-old with a popcorn the size of their head going to say about what our choices are on color palette? You know what I mean?

GORDON: Truth, it's like a truth bomb.

SPECK: Yeah, to test a movie at 11:00 in the morning with a row of juice boxes was just a brand-new experience for us. And it was bizarre. It was very strange.

GORDON: It's the moment you realize, oh, this was the audience that we're making it for.

SPECK: Yeah, exactly. A kid audience, there's no hiding. They're not being polite. They're not quiet. What normally happens in a test audience where everyone claps and laughs and then rip you apart on cards, these kids let you know in the moment if they're there or not.

I actually was happy that my theater was filled with kids yesterday because you can feel if they're enjoying it or not, because they'll start talking, or they want to go to the bathroom, or you know what I mean.

SPECK: Oh yeah, we do.

GORDON: Or your worst fear, they cry and walk out.

SPECK: Yeah.

I'm just thinking, I can't imagine what it's like for you guys, for directors watching that test screening for the first time, just knowing what it's all come down to.

GORDON: It's funny. It's really, really hard. But also over the years, it's completely invaluable. It's a weird part of the process, especially if you're making comedies or especially if we're just plugging in our computers.

SPECK: Yeah, absolutely.

GORDON: Especially if you're making comedies or especially if you're making something that requires the constant input of the audience, musicals being the same thing, you really need to feel it in front of a big audience because otherwise you're going off your own internal rhythm, which can fail you after you've seen it 40 or 50 times.

I've spoken to a lot of directors who talk about how when you've been in the editing room for six months with something, you no longer find it funny, and you want to take it out of the movie. You need to be reminded, no, the sequence worked for a reason, don't mess with it.

GORDON: Yeah. You really start to cannibalize your own babies after a couple of months.

SPECK: I'm sure you know from speaking to directors, but having been through so many test screenings over the years, especially with comedies, we have such thick skins. By now, when we were doing Lyle, again, the new twists were kids, but we've had some tough test screenings in the past, meaning in terms of your anxiety and your build-up and what's going to be funny and what's not.

GORDON: But you always come out always with a clearer sense of the movie.

SPECK: 100%.

What do you think would surprise soon-to-be fans of the film about the actual making of the movie, if anything?

GORDON: Well, I think how little we cheated with Javier Bardem, meaning he rehearsed for almost five months and demanded when he showed up on set to do the numbers from start to finish because he was so proud that he had worked as hard as he had. He really did not want us to ever bring on a double or to have any other part of his work not be him. So, I think you would look at it and go, oh, that's Javier Bardem, there's no way he did all of that. He really did all of it. It was incredible.

Well, this goes back to what I was saying. When Javier commits to a role, he commits to a role, which is why I think the studio was like, "You're never getting him."

GORDON: Yeah.

SPECK: Yeah. We were incredibly lucky, and he works incredibly hard. As Josh said, we had dance doubles and voice doubles, and we were ready to auto-tune him, and we used none of those things or people. They just sat on the sidelines waiting.

I need someone to auto-tune me on a daily basis. I'd appreciate it if you could hook me up.

SPECK: I feel the same way.

GORDON: I think the other amazing thing with Javier was he is such an actor first before a celebrity, whatever he is, that he doesn't leave set. Literally, he would not go back to his trailer. He would sit in a chair and read through a script to the point where sometimes the crew would be like, "It's freaking me out. I can't set my shot." He would often jump up and be like, "Oh, I'll stand in." He did almost everything but carry the equipment. It was incredible.

I love hearing stories like that, just people that are that professional and want to be there. There's a few other actors I've spoken to that like being on set in between. They don't want to go back to their trailer.

SPECK: It's a weird one. Because it's amazing, but it can be uncomfortable in a weird way, I think, for-

GORDON: We're so used to just being free to do our work.

SPECK: Well, there's often that thing that happens, which is they command a lot of energy and eyes. What happens is when an actor like that is on set, everybody's tense and on their best behavior, no matter how relaxed the actor is. And then, usually, the actor leaves and everyone takes a breath and then starts to check their cell phones or have their small talk or eats with their mouth open from craft service or whatever it is. Sometimes when an actor stands on set, it's just that thing that it keeps everybody-

GORDON: What's interesting is after people got over that and got used to it, he was around listening to problems. I think he does it so that he can help people solve their problems. So he'd be like, "I can walk over to this light if you need me."

SPECK: Yeah, yeah.

GORDON: There was no sort of membrane between what he could do.

SPECK: No, no. He was one of the best ones, yeah.

GORDON: Yeah.

Again, that's a great story, and I love learning about Javier. Before we run out of time with you guys, I have some other questions. You mentioned Distant already, which is coming out next year, which is a completely different film for the two of you. What can you tease people about it?

SPECK: It was a very contained story. That's what we were excited about. It's really just one man against the elements. And then, there's a twist where he finds another survivor. It's Anthony Ramos and Naomi Scott, and they're both fantastic. I think what's fun about it is it really takes Anthony in a different direction, because it has a very dramatic core because of the set of circumstances, but there's some humor. It gives a range for this actor that you haven't seen, and he really delivers.

GORDON: He's fantastic in it. We joke it's a survival, horror, romantic comedy.

SPECK: Right. That's a lot of things at once.

I believe, and I could be wrong, it comes out early next year?

SPECK: Yeah, it's supposed to be.

GORDON: It's supposed to be January, end of January.

SPECK: End of January, beginning of February, yeah.

When do you think the marketing will start where we'll see a poster and a trailer and everything else?

GORDON: We're already starting to look at posters and trailers, so I think it's going to start gearing up soon.

SPECK: Yeah.

How much are you debating, or how much are you working with the studio in terms of how much you want to show in the marketing versus keeping those surprises under wraps? Because the thing that people don't realize is the average person goes to the movies two times a year, so a lot of the marketing is always geared towards those rare people that don't go that often. But for people that do go all the time and watch a trailer, they don't want everything ruined. It's a delicate balance.

SPECK: It's a very astute point. Something we always struggle with no matter how great the marketing department is at whatever studio we're at, which is we always believe that less is more, like you said, because we're crazy moviegoers, and that's the kind of stuff we like.

What's interesting that we've been told, and we resisted it often, especially with comedies, is that there's a recognition factor that's just true and factual where a lot of people see something, and if they like it, they like to see it again in the movie and be reminded of it from the material.

GORDON: Oddly, jokes that appear in trailers play better in the test screenings you do immediately afterwards, because the audience... We always were like, "You're ruining it. You're giving it away."

SPECK: Why are you giving this joke away?

GORDON: Yeah. And then, you'll see, wow, you can tell they recognize that joke. So, it's always a weird balance. As cinephiles ourselves, you want to have that perfect trailer that just teases without giving away the whole beginning, middle, and end of the thing.

SPECK: But we love to tease out stuff, and we rarely get to do it, as you said, correctly. On Office Christmas Party, we did a teaser trailer that was just a voiceover that we wrote for Jason Bateman to do over some images, and that was it. It did very well.

GORDON: It's still one of our favorites.

SPECK: It's still one of our favorites, but you rarely get that opportunity. Usually, it's expensive to market a movie. I'm sure you know that. And it's more expensive now than it ever has been. And so-

GORDON: There's always this urge to try to sell everything you've got in that two and a half minutes.

SPECK: And give as much information as you can have. I think there are a few anticipatory, well-known IP that you can play with, whether it be Spider-Man or Ghostbusters, where you can have just a moment, a logo, a familiar character that an audience will lean into because they are so excited at the tease. Normally, a lot of those characters that you're sitting in front of, behind you, can do that. But when you're doing something that people don't know that much about, they need to unfortunately be told a lot more. So, it's a tricky art, and it's a hard one to get right.

I heard you guys might be doing The Oregon Trail. Is that true? What's the deal with this?

GORDON: Well, this was born of wanting to work with Pasek and Paul again who did the music for this.

SPECK: And they've both been very obsessed with Oregon Trail. We were talking about what we could cook up next, because we really want to do another musical. They mentioned that, and we now have the rights to it, and we're putting it together alongside them and some other exciting people.

GORDON: For us, that's returning a little bit to our roots in comedy, marrying it with the fun of doing a big musical, and also just the ambition of taking that very seriously as well and making a big historical westward expansion epic that's also about dying from dysentery.

For people that don't realize, this is an iconic video game. Well, let's just say it's one of the earliest video games.

GORDON: Yeah. It was the only video game you were "allowed" to play in school because it was educational. So, everybody would spend their free period in, whatever, science, computer lab, basically playing this early video game.

SPECK: It's right up there with Snake and Tetris in terms of really complicated IP. I mean, it's not. It's very early sort of lo-fi.

GORDON: Role-playing type game. It always had this dark band of humor running through it, because your chances of dying from everything from dysentery to a cut to anything was... Basically, every move you ended up dying.

It does seem like it could be ripe for comedy in terms of you have this huge group going west, and then literally every five minutes someone gets a cut, and they're just dead.

GORDON: Right.

SPECK: Exactly.

GORDON: Or it was the period where you had to have nine kids, because only two of them would survive.

Where are you in the development process of the project?

SPECK: Yeah, we're putting it together right now with a writer and then looking to partner with-

GORDON: A studio.

SPECK: A studio, yeah.

So, you guys literally have the rights and are putting it together?

SPECK: Yes.

GORDON: Yes, with the partners of the original publishers.

SPECK: Yeah, we're bringing it to people.

GORDON: And we want to find a home for it where we know it'll get made in the right way. That was a little bit what we did on this project, which was really got the rights, developed, and then found our studio partner. We're finding that to be a really effective creative approach.

I can see how that would be, because that way it doesn't get stuck in development hell. It's like, okay, we have all this. Here's the budget we need. This is what we want to do. Do you want to finance it?

GORDON: Yeah. And I think they know what they're buying too, so it's good for them because they're not being duped. They know, okay, this is the movie we're going to make.

Do you envision this as a PG-13, fun movie? You could play it two different ways.

SPECK: I think there's been a discussion about R-rated. It's interesting. I think we want to find its tone to be funny and not pull any punches and be able to be darkly funny, but we also want it to be accessible enough for a big audience. So, I think we're just trying to answer that question now.

Also, I think it's great that Justin and Benj are going to do the music. Obviously, you must have had a great time working together on Lyle.

SPECK: We did. They're incredible. There's nothing shy of that. They are creating something that has been lost for a long time, which is original…

GORDON: There's a few people of which they are right up there creating popular music for movies and not just writing for Broadway and that being adapted. But they actually are creating new towering works of musical theater for the film, so that's just incredible to watch.

SPECK: Yeah.

My last thing on this, I can't imagine it's easy to get the rights to something that was created in the '70s. How does that actually work?

SPECK: Well, it's owned by a publishing company, and we had to do what we often have to do, and what we had to do for Lyle, which is to give them a sense on multiple phone calls and Zooms of what our intentions are and how exploitive we want to be and how truthful we want to be to the original material and what it's going to look and feel like.

People are very protective of their IP as they should be. These guys have so far been great partners in allowing us to take it and run with it. Also, we've made them producing partners, basically. So, the publishers are now our partners.

GORDON: And we'll be involved, make sure that it's done right.

SPECK: Yeah.

Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile is now playing in theaters.