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Cindy Pearlman
NYT Syndicate
On a sunny California weekday, DeGeneres looked casually cool in black jeans, a faded jean jacket and a white-and-blue shirt. Her blonde hair was cropped short and professionally mussed, and she wore her trademark white tennis shoes with black-and-gray-striped socks.
Finding Dory may be about tropical fish, she said, but like its predecessor it's actually deeply human.
"The message is simple: Life is filled with surprises," DeGeneres said."Sometimes they're good surprises, sometimes they're bad surprises, but even the bad surprises get you ready for something else. They build another part of you.
"The point is that we're all made up of different things," she continued."Joy and love, good and bad. We're layered. That's why you have to take it all in and embrace it all. And, like Dory says, 'You just keep swimming.'"
The beloved, memory-challenged blue tang is back in Finding Dory. This time she's navigating the ocean, and an aquatic theme park, on a quest to find her long-lost parents.
It's been 13 years since Finding Nemo (2003) grossed more than $900 million worldwide, won an Academy Award as Best Animated Picture and endeared itself to a generation of young movie-goers. All of which begs the question, why did it take so long to do a sequel?
"Obviously I am responsible for every penny this film makes," DeGeneres deadpanned."Thank God I have a talk show and I could campaign for this sequel, which frankly is exactly what I've done for many years."
That was no joke. For years DeGeneres has been giving gentle hints on her daily talk show, 'Ellen: The Ellen DeGeneres Show', that Nemo, Marlin, Dory and company needed another outing. She wanted to jump back into the Pixar pool.
"The first film was iconic and it won an Oscar," she said,"so I started campaigning for a sequel, but not one about Dory. Just a sequel."
Animated movies take a long time to gestate, though, and even a daily talk show couldn't speed the process.
"It didn't happen for three, four and then five years," DeGeneres recalls."But I never gave up. I continued to talk about it on my show and say, 'There is this one movie that really, really needs a sequel.'
"Again, I'm responsible for every dollar."
Finding Nemo fans will remember that Dory (voice of DeGeneres) has pretty much no short-term memory. The new film reveals that her condition led to a devastating separation from her parents when she was still only a minnow, and she hasn't seen her parents ” Jenny (voice of Diane Keaton) and Charlie (voice of Eugene Levy) ” since then.
Since the first movie, however, Dory has been all but adopted by papa fish Marlin (voice of Albert Brooks) and Nemo (voice of Hayden Rolence).
"Dory can survive in the wild," DeGeneres said,"but, thanks to her memory loss, she believes she always needs someone next to her or she will get lost again. It's a struggle for Dory. When we meet her again, she's always apologising for herself.
"The sequel is about Dory learning how to stop apologising and be true to herself."
Along the way the intrepid trio encounter Hank (voice of Ed O'Neill), Bailey (voice of Ty Burrell) and Fluke (voice of Idris Elba). Sigourney Weaver voices herself as the narrator of an aquarium show.
DeGeneres has some acting credits, but she didn't do much research to recreate Dory.
"I didn't stare at fish for too long," she said."All I know about fish is that they need water."
She relates to Dory not as a fish, but as a person.
"I love Dory," DeGeneres said."She has optimism, perseverance, and is nonjudgmental. She doesn't hold onto anger or resentment. She thinks everything is possible, and never for a second believes anything is wrong with anyone else or herself. She just keeps swimming.
"That's a great thought for anyone in life," she added."When times get hard, you just keep swimming."
Some might consider Dory as disabled by her memory loss, but DeGeneres doesn't see it that way.
"It's not tragic," she said."What appears to be a disability is her strength. It gets to the point that she's so optimistic that others start asking, 'What would Dory do?'
"She has a different way of thinking and it's a good way of thinking, and I love that message."
Above all, Dory longs to have a family.
"I think everybody is searching for their home," DeGeneres said."Home is different for everyone. I understand what a sense of belonging is. You ask, 'Why am I who I am? Who did I come from? How did I end up where I am?'"
In her own life, DeGeneres said, she's the polar opposite of the live-in-the-moment Dory.
"I'm a natural planner," she said."Also, being a comedian, I analyse. I look around and observe. I try not to do anything irresponsible, but I also like to be spontaneous and take chances."
DeGeneres was born in Metairie, a Louisianan town near New Orleans, where her mother worked as a real-estate agent. Her parents divorced when she was 16, and eventually her mother married a salesman who relocated the family to Atlanta, Texas. She attended the University of New Orleans to major in communications, but left school after one semester to explore stand-up comedy.
By the 1980s she was touring nationally, and in 1982 she won a Showtime comedy competition and was named"funniest person in America." In 1986 she made her first appearance on 'The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson'.
By then, however, DeGeneres was already looking beyond stand-up. Her first couple of television sitcoms, 'Open House' (1989) and 'Laurie Hill' (1992), quickly tanked. In 1994, however, she headlined a 'Friends' knockoff called 'These Friends of Mine', which by its second season had been rebuilt around her and renamed 'Ellen'.
The show landed on front pages in 1997 but was cancelled the following year, and DeGeneres returned to stand-up. She tried again with another sitcom, 'The Ellen Show' (2001), but soon it too was cancelled.
In 2003, however, she finally found her niche with her daytime talk show, 'Ellen: The Ellen DeGeneres Show'. Thirteen years later it remains a steady hit and a perennial Emmy winner. DeGeneres also has hosted the Grammy Awards, the Emmy Awards and the Oscars, only the second woman to host the Oscars.
When she's not working, DeGeneres is a fierce defender of environmental causes.
"I do care about nature and the planet and protecting everything," she said."Look at the ocean. It's a beautiful world that we know very little about. There are so many answers and so many cures from the ocean.
"It's important to protect what's around us."
That's one of the messages of Finding Dory, of course, along with the importance of tolerance and understanding.
"Everyone should be seen and represented," DeGeneres said."This movie is about how we all have different traits, but that doesn't mean we can't all get along."
As if afraid that the discussion was getting too serious, the comedian veered quickly to a new subject.
"Did you cry at the end of this movie? In the middle? Just admit it," she teased."Just say you cried. It's OK to say you cried.
"I cried," DeGeneres admitted."It's very easy for me to cry. Sometimes I couldn't read the lines without crying. Of course I'd pretend to sniffle, but I would get emotional. These are human feelings, the same feelings we all have in life.
"You do get emotional and cry over a fish, but that's OK."
