From KCRW in Santa Monica, this is The Treatment.

Welcome to The Treatment.

My guest, director George Miller, is one of those filmmakers who I think has an instinct for filmmaking,

who thinks through the camera. A few filmmakers do, certainly Stephen Spielberg, Wongarwai,

and Miller's work stands that way as well, from the Mad Max films to the Babe movies to his

newest film, Happy Feet, which is a long way from his first short, Violence in the Cinema,

Part 1. George, thanks for being here. Great pleasure, Elvis. which is a long way from his first short violence in the cinema, part one.

George, thanks for being here.

Oh, great pleasure, Elvis.

First, tell the audience what happy feet is about.

Well, I guess it's a musical about penguins.

It follows the natural history of the emperor penguin in particular,

and as much as possible, we try to basically harness the spectacular landscapes of Antarctica

plus the spectacular life cycles of the penguins.

It basically arose out of seeing some wonderful documentaries on penguins about eight years ago.

And when I saw how extraordinary they were, in particular how the emperor penguins sing to

each other to find a mate, I thought, oh, there's a film here.

And then at the same time, the cameraman I'd been working with on the Babe films,

Andrew Lesney, who had shot Lord of the Rings, and I saw some early stuff on Gollum and what

were they doing with animation and motion capture on him. I thought, well, we can make our

penguins dance and suddenly we had a dancing penguin movie.

One of the things that seems weird to me is that people are saying you must have been inspired by March of the Penguins,

...