DECEMBER 2014 ;e Costco Connection 37
The Costco
Connection
The Hero of Color City (Item
#948463) will be available 12/2
at all Costco locations.
arts & entertainment
In our digital editions
Click here to watch a trailer for the movie,
a public-service ad for Crayon Collection
and a shout-out from Christina Ricci.
(See page 11 for details.)
Outside the lines
The Hero of Color City draws a vivid tale
A FEW YEARS ago, Costco
member Sheila Morovati
and her young daughter
noticed that the crayons
supplied to kids to entertain them at certain restaurants were barely used and
soon disposed of. When
she learned that teachers
at struggling public schools
would annually spend an
average of $750 of their
own money to obtain necessary school supplies, an
idea clicked: Why not find
a way to get these restaurant chains to donate crayons to schools to benefit
students in need? In 2010,
Crayon Collection (crayon
collection.org) began.
In a program that
started small and has gone
national, Morovati tries to
pair restaurants with local,
high-poverty schools to
keep donations within a
community and make it
easier to obtain crayons
and save on shipping.
“Now we’re trying
more and more to push not
just restaurants but families to do this with kids at
home and get more affluent schools to do crayon
drives,” says Morovati,
who estimates that Crayon
Collection has received
several million crayon
donations since it started.
“That’s what this is:
redistribution, repurposing
and finding ways to use
things that we all have
and not have them end
up in a landfill.”—BR
Inside Crayon
Collection
Jessica Capshaw’s character, Duck, an
unfinished drawing in The Hero of Color City.
By Bryan Reesman
MANY ANIMATED FILMS come from the imaginations of creators embracing their inner child. It is
to the credit of director Frank Gladstone and writers
Jess Kedward, J.P. McCormick, Kirsty Peart and
Rich Raczelowski that The Hero of Color City seems
to have done just that: spring from the fertile mind
of a young child.
The story concerns
a group of crayons that
are the property of a
6-year-old boy named
Ben. At night they journey through their crayon
box to Color City, where
they unwind and are
rejuvenated. But one
night two of Ben’s unfinished drawings, the
mouthless King Scrawl
and his chatty flying
associate Gnat, follow
the timid crayon Yellow
(Christina Ricci) into
this magical land. The
devious duo seeks to take over the crayons’ colorful
waterfall to enrich and flesh themselves out with
color. But clogging the waterfall means draining the
crayons’ perpetual color source, so Yellow must
become brave and lead her crayon friends to stop
this calamity from happening.
The cast for the movie is impressive and
includes Jessica Capshaw, Ricci, Owen Wilson,
Craig Ferguson, Rosie Perez and Sean Astin.
Capshaw voices the role of Duck, one of three
unfinished drawings living secretly near the waterfall that seek to help Yellow and her friends try to
appease King Scrawl and Gnat. The Hero of Color
City represents the first voiceover work for Capshaw,
who boasts an impressive television résumé, including seven seasons on Grey’s Anatomy.
In terms of sculpting the vocal presence of
Duck, Capshaw says she felt lucky that Owen
Wilson, who plays Ricky the Dragon, recorded his
voice first so she could play off him.
“He has such an incredibly unique, rich and
humorous voice, and it certainly inspired me to,
especially as a first-timer, perhaps be a little more
brave or to do different things,” she says.
As with many voice
parts, Capshaw recorded
her part solo. “Typically,
in these instances, you
come in your pajamas
and then you go by your-
self,” she says. “The dia-
logue is really between
you and the creators and
the producers, as opposed
to being between you and
the other actors.”
The mother of three
children, Capshaw liked
the script when she first
read it. “I thought it was
super cute,” she says. And,
“I think it is important that there is content out
there that is still innocent, pure of heart and is just
entertainment,” Capshaw tells The Connection. “I
don’t think all of the material out there for kids, at
least for me, is entirely appropriate. It’s nice to be
able to count on something that feels innocent and
is actually geared for kids.” C
Bryan Reesman is a writer in New York.
Yellow and her
crayon compatriots
on their quest to
save Color City.
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