A bumpy road to `El Dorado'

HOLLYWOOD - Rather than gold, the path to DreamWorks SKG's latest animated feature, "The Road to El Dorado," was paved with boulders. The story line changed so often during the five years of production that people close to the project renamed it: "El Dorado: The Lost City on Hold."

"El Dorado," DreamWorks' third animated feature, was something of an odyssey for the nearly 500 artists who toiled on it.

The film switched directing teams midway through the production and went through several incarnations, going from a drama to a drama-comedy mix before arriving at its final form: a buddy comedy adventure about two Spanish stowaways who unexpectedly land in Latin America at the time of the Spanish Conquest.

DreamWorks executives contend that animated features often undergo changes during production. They also maintain that the original concept for the picture - a comedy-fable about two buddies - has remained constant.

Based on the legend of El Dorado, the movie follows a couple of two-bit scoundrels (voiced by Kenneth Branagh and Kevin Kline) who stumble upon a "lost city of gold" somewhere in Latin America in the 1600s.

Though they initially intend to run away with the gold treasures they find, they come to fall in love with the people in the city. In the end, they help protect the city from Hernan Cortes, who wants to conquer it and make off with the gold.

Several sources close to the production said morale was very low during filming, mainly because the story was going in different directions. With animation, it is particularly important to have a solid plot line because the characters are drawn according to the story.

"We kept asking, `What happened here?' " said one source. "The movie went from a vision that was pretty unique to a film that was put together as we were making it."

Unlike "Prince of Egypt," "El Dorado" did not need to be strictly historically accurate, because it was based on a fable. As legend has it, El Dorado became a quest for Spanish conquistadors longing to find a fabled lost city of gold. Though its location is vague, the legend placed the site somewhere near the Amazon River, near present-day Colombia or Brazil. The Spaniards never found such a place; in fact, it is said the native Indians might have lured the Spaniards away from their villages by tantalizing them with tales of the mythical place.

Don Paul, one of the directors who took the project to its final stage along with co-director Eric "Bibo" Bergeron, said he inherited a somewhat demoralized crew. Paul and Bergeron took over production from Will Finn (now at Disney) and David Silverman about two years ago, when the story elements were starting to come together.

"It was a long (production) and so keeping any crew motivated is always tough," Paul said. "There is a lot of dialogue in this film and that added a huge amount of complexity. With an original story it's always more difficult to get it down."

For instance, Miguel (Branagh), one of the main characters, was initially a raunchy type who died and was paraded on a horse and cross so the native Indians would assume he was a god. But that narrative was thrown out and the film was put on hold until Miguel's character and that part of the story were changed.

Another problem was defining who the audience would be.

Initially there were some steamy love scenes and saucy outfits designed for Chel, the love interest voiced by Rosie Perez.

"We originally thought it would be rated PG-13 and so we skewed it to that group," said producer Bonnie Radford. "But then we thought we could not exclude the younger kids so we had to tone the romance down."

In addition to mellowing out the romantic scenes, the animators redesigned the clothing worn by Chel. The movie still carries a PG rating.

DreamWorks did extensive research on the Mayan civilization in the Yucatan. A team of designers, animators, producers and Katzenberg took trips to Mexico to the ancient Mayan cities of Tulum, Chichen Itza and Uxmal in hopes of making the film's architecture look authentic. The studio even hired John M.D. Pohl, an archeologist, as a consultant.

But what's presented in the film is a broad mixture of Aztec, Incan and Mayan cultures - all very different civilizations with particular customs and histories.

DreamWorks says the film was always a fable, and was never intended to be a documentary on Meso-American culture.

Radford said the legend of El Dorado presented a golden opportunity for DreamWorks.

"You get pulled into the mysteries of that world," said Radford. "Historical animation like this has taken the place of fairy tales."