Q&A: EXTRAORDINARY TALES Director Raul Garcia on Working with Christopher Lee & More

Out now in select theaters and on iTunes is Extraordinary Tales, an animated film anthology adapting five Edgar Allan Poe stories and boasting a voice cast that includes late legends Sir Christopher Lee and Bela Lugosi, as well as Julian Sands, Roger Corman, and Guillermo del Toro. For our latest Q&A feature, we caught up with director Raul Garcia to discuss his film's amazing vocal lineup and much more.

Thanks for taking the time to converse with us today, Raul. Based on the trailer for Extraordinary Tales, you obviously have a real passion for the works of Edgar Allan Poe. When did you first become a fan of his fiction?

Raul Garcia: Since a very early age, I was addicted to reading comic books and I especially loved horror comics. When I was 12 or so, I read Extraordinary Tales by Edgar Allan Poe, my first "grown up" book I ever read, which set up a chain reaction in my head, making me an avid reader of anything horror, from Lovecraft to Stoker and Shelley, or Lord Dunsany...

Your animated film features an amazing voice cast, including the late, great Sir Christopher Lee. How did you get Lee involved and what was it like working with him?

Raul Garcia: The first segment I made for the movie was "The Tell-Tale Heart," which had Bela Lugosi as a narrator, so once I set the bar with him, I had to look for someone with similar stature to follow suit. Sir Christopher Lee was the logical choice for "The Fall of the House of Usher."

Working with Mr. Lee was a blessing. He was 89 years old and was pursuing a bout as a heavy metal singer, preparing a heavy metal rock opera based on the life of Charlemagne: By the Sword and the Cross. In short, his mind was not really set on doing another horror film. But after I showed him some of the artwork, he decided to join the project. It was a luxury to have Sir Lee narrating the piece and allowed me to make a robust casting that brought together the past and the present of horror and fantasy films.

Another member of the voice cast is the legendary Bela Lugosi, who passed away in 1956. How were you able to include Lugosi’s voice and what was it like to have his vocal presence in your film?

Raul Garcia: By pure chance I came across an old recording of "The Tell-Tale Heart" narrated by Bela Lugosi, and when I prepared the animatic of my film it matched perfectly with the style and the mood of the piece. After contacting Bela G. Lugosi, son of the beloved actor, to clear the rights, I realized that the recording was never made public—it was considered "lost" by the Lugosi estate. So I was very lucky to actually bring Lugosi back from the grave and share his memory with a new generation of people that perhaps never heard of his legendary performances.

Julian Sands, Roger Corman and Guillermo del Toro also lend their voices to Extraordinary Tales. What attracted them to the project and what can viewers expect from their roles in the movie?

Raul Garcia: They were the most enthusiastic people concerning the movie and I truly fulfilled my dream of bringing together people I admire in the world of fantasy and horror. I think they were attracted by the singularity of the project: all of them love Poe, and somehow Poe-horror and animation is a combination seldom seen in movies, so we all shared that bond in common. I will be forever grateful for their contribution.

Part of the challenge was that every narrator tells the story in a different way: Julian Sands created the voice performance of four different characters in an incredible "acting tour-de-force" performance, Guillermo took time from his busy schedule to try something different and bring out the actor from inside of him, and Roger Corman was the perfect cameo in such an iconic story like "The Masque of the Red Death." I even enrolled Cornelia Funke, the famous author of Reckless, Ink Heart and The Thief Lord, as the voice of Death after listening to her reading excerpts of her books to a mesmerized audience of kids.

The stories in Extraordinary Tales each come to life in their own distinct style of animation. How did you go about matching each tale to its own unique visual narrative?

Raul Garcia: One of the "rules" I set up for myself while making the film was precisely to look for a visual style unique for every one of the stories. That led me in a quest to escape from the visual standards that plague animated CGI films nowadays. It seems to me that in so many of the studio-animated films, we lost the visual singularity we used to have when 2D was the animation technique in vogue. You could always differentiate a Disney film from a Warner Brothers film or any other studio’s. So I focused heavily to search for other styles non-photorealistic or more artistic than the current choices. Then, of course, every story dictates its own style... one of the segments, "The Facts in the case of M. Valdemar," is made in the style of the ’50s EC comic books—the excesses of the story reminded me of the kind of stories you’d find in those old comic books.

You have an extensive history working in animation. Were you very hands-on with the aesthetics and visual construction of Extraordinary Tales?

Raul Garcia: Yes and no. We worked as a team of artists and Cedric Gervais, my First Assistant Director, was a genius in terms of making my vision a reality. There were a lot of technical problems we had to solve in order to come up with a style consistent throughout the whole film. Animation is a collaborative art and the success of the film is due to the work and effort of an incredible team of artists behind the scenes. I could come up with a thousand different visual ideas, but without the people of Studio 352 or any of the different artists that help to put the film together, none of this could have been possible.

This looks like a film that will both re-introduce and celebrate classic horror works and figures. When you look back at making Extraordinary Tales, what are you the most proud of?

Raul Garcia: After nine years of hard work, I am very happy to finally have been able to finish the film! But beside that technical achievement, I am amazed that we could put together a film with such an amazing cast and follow a 100% pure and independent vision. Bringing Poe back to life through an animated horror film has been incredible to me. It’s a daring film and I am very proud of it.

The music by Sergio de La Puente is an amazing accomplishment I am especially happy with. He and Javier Lopez de Guereña composed "The Tell Tale Heart" with a hypnotic sound escape which shaped the project from the very beginning. When I am in my most self-indulgent of moods I tend to say that with Sergio I found my personal John Williams-Spielberg collaboration. I owe a lot of the artistic success of the film to him and an incredible number of talented artists.

With Extraordinary Talesdue out in theaters and iTunes on October 23rd, what projects do you have on deck that you can tease for our readers, and where can they find you on social media?

Raul Garcia: I have been working on an adaptation of one of Cornelia Funke's children novellas, Young Werewolf, into an animated feature called Bitten. As usual with independent films, I am still looking for financing and a way to put together the film. I have been toying with the idea of doing something with Lovecraft, but it is still too early to say... Big financiers and investors are more than welcome to join me.... :)

I am a little behind in my social media skills, so I am only on Facebook for the moment: https://www.facebook.com/raul.garcia.10888938.

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"EXTRAORDINARY TALES is now available in theaters and on iTunes (https://itunes.apple.com/us/movie/extraordinary-tales/id1033282719). Follow the movie on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/extraordinarytales) to be kept up to date and see if it is playing in a theater near you."