An essay in The Galaxy Is Rated G: Essays on Children’s Science Fiction Film and Television (2011, edited by R. C. Neighbors, Sandy Rankin) on the underrated animated Warner Bros. feature, The Iron Giant (1999) cites my October, 2003 interview with the film’s screenwriter, Tim McCanlies, who spoke with me from his ranch in central Texas. McCanlies also wrote Secondhand Lions with Michael Caine and Robert Duvall and Dancer, Texas, Pop. 81, which was also his feature directorial debut. It’s one of my early film interviews for Box Office Mojo, currently not indexed here, and we discussed everything from sneaking into studio offices to put his scripts on directors’ desks to his service as a Dallas, Texas, police officer and why Hollywood depicts the U.S. military as bad. I asked McCanlies, who described the theme of The Iron Giant as “Choose who you want to be,” if free will was a conscious philosophy in his work. His answer: “Yes, absolutely…there are deciding moments when we pick who we want to be and that plays out for the rest of your life.”
