When Malibu resident and producer Clark Spencer was just a kid, he was the kind of guy you might want to adopt as your best friend. “My grandparents ran a movie theater,” he recalls. “I went to the movies all the time.” As it turns out, that chapter would play a big part in his life as the award-winning producer of “Wreck-It Ralph.”
After a stint in the world of finance and Wall Street, he returned to his true passion. “I got a business background, but really didn’t love the financial world,” he says.
The entertainment bug was calling. He landed a gig in Hollywood starting at the bottom and worked his way up. “My first job was at Disney, but I would have taken a job at any studio.” It was Disney where he made a name for himself working on films like “Lilo & Stitch,” “Bolt,” “Winnie the Pooh” and now “Wreck-It Ralph,” a 3-D computer-animated action film, which is up for an Academy Award.
The movie has received critical acclaim and numerous awards, but the high point so far was winning the prestigious Producers Guild Award, which seemed like a dream come true. “Here I was starting out at the bottom and then cut to 20 years. Suddenly, I was nominated for the PGA and then to win it was really something.” The honor was one of the highlights of Spencer’s professional life. “You hear them announce your name, you go up on stage and looking out at the audience was really something,” he says. “I am looking at Steven Spielberg and Robert De Niro and they are listening to me talk about this award and what it means to me, but what I want to say is how much they have impacted my life. It was one of those moments that was a phenomenal and surreal, out-of-body experience.”
“Wreck-It Ralph” was directed by Rich Moore and features the voices of John C. Reilly and Sarah Silverman. It shares the complex, but well-told story of Ralph, an on-screen evildoer who secretly dreams of becoming a hero. “ I loved the idea behind a video game and realizing that these characters had real lives,” says Spencer. “It really seemed magical.” The film follows Ralph’s journey from game to game and his attempt to show that “just because you’re a bad guy doesn’t mean you’re a bad guy.”
Spencer says “Wreck-It Ralph” is more than animated entertainment. There is a moral to this story. “The moral is to be true to yourself. Today, there is so much pressure to be different than who you are. This is about being true to and to love who you are. The message is that no matter how different you may be, embrace it.”
Bringing the behind-the-scenes world of arcade games to life was not an easy task. “We had 190 unique characters, then we had four worlds of arcade games and all of those four worlds were almost like a movie in themselves.”
Impressive as it may be, “Wreck-It Ralph” is up against other impressive and noteworthy animated films including Tim Burton’s “Frankenweenie, “ParaNorman” and Golden Globe winner “Brave.”
We’ll see what happens on Feb. 24, but until then, Spencer has a crew of fans hoping he’ll just demolish the competition.
