production notes hotel transylvania - Visual Hollywood

HOTEL TRANSYLVANIA (2012)PRODUCTION NOTESJONATHANJonathan is a typical 21-year-old human, backpacking his wayacross Europe in his continuing worldwide travels. He’sconfident, full of life, talkative, curious and good-natured—notto mention amazing on a skateboard. His motto is “just rollwith it." Now, in his wandering, he’s stumbled onto a hotel fullof…monsters!? To help him blend in (and keep the monstersunaware of the security breach), Drac disguises him asJohnnystein, Frankenstein’s supposed cousin. Drac's planbackfires, however, when his daughter Mavis and ‘Johnnystein’ hit it off, and Jonathanignores his earlier promise to Drac, to run at his first opportunity. Because hey, thismonster thing is kind of cool – and he’s intrigued by a cute teenage vampire girl.“Jonathan is high on life,” says Tartakovsky. “He’s got a big personality, he’s energetic,and outgoing. When Andy Samberg did the first voice reading, it was like, boom, thereit is. It was instant humor, instant magic between him and Adam – the contrast betweenAdam’s super-articulate Dracula and Andy’s free spirit was perfect. But Andy alsobrought a sincerity to the role – he made Jonathan who he is.”“Jonathan is pretty much based on who I was in high school, and on a lot of dudes Iknew growing up in the Bay Area in California,” Samberg says. “He’s kind of abackpacker, really loves seeing the world, and super positive in the face of adversity,even maybe when he shouldn’t be.”“It was really fun to do more animation,” says Samberg, who previously voiced a role forSony Pictures Animation’s hit film Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. “The fact thatthis time I got to record with Sandler in the studio was a big plus. On other animatedmovies I've worked on the actors didn't really get to record together, but I think workingtogether helped us play off each other and gave the characters the right tone.”© 2012 Sony Pictures Animation 8