TORONTO (WS News) — When Pharrell Williams and Morgan Neville decided to embark on a movie about Williams’ life but animated in Lego pieces, they knew there would be culture shocks. But making “Piece by Piece” still led to some places that neither Williams, Neville or Lego could foresee.
“We did have extensive conversations about how wide a back of a bikini bottom would be on a minifig in a ‘Rump Shaker’ video,” says Neville, chuckling. “We had many discussions about things I thought I would never be talking about as a filmmaker.”
“Piece by Piece” did not come with any easy-to-assemble instructions. It’s part music biopic, part documentary, part family film. It is, like many things about Williams’ hit-making life, radiant with uplift, beats and idiosyncrasy.
“Society likes to put us in boxes, pun intended,” Williams says, speaking alongside Neville. “Here was a moment where this guy’s view of my life and the way he saw it strung together was incredibly liberating for me. While I’ve never seen myself in a box, this helps other people now to, as well.”
“Piece by Piece,” which Focus Features releases in theaters Friday, begins, like many documentaries, with the director, Neville, sitting down with a camera crew focused on their subject, Williams. But in this case, Williams — and everything else, including a bearded, bespectacled Neville — are Lego.
“What if we told my life with Legos?” Williams asks in the film. “That’ll never happen,” replies Neville.
What follows is something like a traditional documentary complete with colorful recounting of past struggles and triumphs, from his upbringing in Virginia Beach to his string of chart-topping hits, told through Williams’ voiceover and a number of talking heads. It was recorded that way in interviews, either on camera, Zoom or phone, and then animated into Lego form. Here, finally, is a chance to see Busta Rhymes as a Lego, along with many others, including Jay-Z, Snoop Dogg and Missy Elliott.
“The first meeting we had was with Lego because if they had said no, there would have been no film,” says Neville, the director of documentaries including “20 Feet From Stardom,” “Won’t You Be My Neighbor” and “Steve!” “To their credit, they not only said yes, but I think understood the kind of growth it would force them into.”
For Lego, the Danish toy company, making “Piece by Piece” was its biggest gamble since stepping into feature films with 2014’s “The Lego Movie.” Neville approached the company’s head of global entertainment, Jill Wilfert with a pitch for what would be Lego’s first foray into a documentary not about itself. Wilfert was immediately responsive.
