J. Miles Dale won his Oscar in 2018, as the producer of Guillermo del Toro's The Shape of Water. Now, five years later, Dale still remembers the moment that Best Picture was announced and he heard their names called. "I remember it all goes to super-slow motion," he says. "Kind of like a car crash, but the best car crash ever."
"I remember standing up on the stage thinking, 'I'm looking out at Steven Spielberg and Meryl Streep and all these people who have been my heroes.' Like, 'What the hell am I doing here? This is crazy!'" Dale shares.
Dale's date for the evening was his mother. "A few years before when I had no sniff of anything, she said, 'Bradley Cooper took his mother to the Oscars.' And I said, 'You know what, mom? When I get nominated, I'm taking you.' Then boom. I said to my wife, 'Sweetie, you and the kids can sit a few rows back, I got to take mom.'"
The next time Dale was nominated — for 2021's Nightmare Alley — it was shared with Cooper, who both starred in and produced del Toro's noir thriller. Outside of his collaborations with del Toro, Dale has also produced or executive produced such diverse offerings as Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle (2004), Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010), and Mama (2013).
His latest venture is something completely new: Dale is the creative director of Immersive Disney Animation, an innovative 360-degree experience created in partnership with Walt Disney Animation Studios and Lighthouse Immersive.
"I'm a real fan of the collective experience," explains the producer. "With movies, we like to laugh together. We like to cry together. We like to get scared together — and I miss that. For us to be able to double down on that and say, 'Not only can you do that, you can do that with more people, and you can do that and move around the room,' that was exciting. The kids start running around, and it's joyous! You can't do that in the theater, and you certainly can't do that in your den."
As far as Disney goes, The Jungle Book was absolutely formative for Dale. Below, he shares with A.frame five other films that have most inspired him through his life. "I love original voices. And that goes for everyone else on this list, and it goes to Guillermo and it goes to Edgar Wright, some of the directors that I've worked with — it feels very original."
Directed by: Carl Reiner | Written by: Joseph Stein and Carl Reiner
I'm sure I could sound a lot smarter if I said I was influenced by the New Wave filmmakers or the Italian filmmakers of the '50s or whatever, but that's not me. I was a kid of the '60s, and really, my formative movies are between the mid-'60s and early '70s. From maybe the time I was 10, I was into comedy and the thing that started it was Carl Reiner. My brother and I would watch the movie with my parents and we laughed so hard, and I remember my parents just loved watching it with us because they loved to watch us laugh as hard as we did.
I remember it galvanized my love of that kind of comedy, that was sharp and situational and at times sort of ludicrous. I love all of Carl Reiner's work, and what I came to realize is that it was the first thing that formed my impression of hearing an original voice. It felt very original, and it's just so damn funny that you can't turn off. You could literally watch it over and over and over. I just felt that I was watching a very, very talented comedic troop. If you talk to Steve Martin and you ask Steve Martin what his five favorite movies are, I guarantee you Enter Laughing would be on this list, and probably a lot of seasoned comics as well.
Written and Directed by: Brian De Palma
My dad was a professional musician, and I was really into music almost from birth. I had seen lots of traditional musicals by the time I was a teenager, all the MGM classics, but Phantom blew me away with its originality. It was the first rock opera I saw, with great, original songs. It had this sort of combination of Faust, and Dorian Gray, and Phantom of the Opera, but also some comedy, some horror, and this satire of the music industry. It was a genre-bender, and it spoke to me in terms of what a modern musical could be. I'd seen my dad working as a musician, and the desperation of an artist doing anything that they can to get it done was interesting to me — that kind of hero or anti-hero or whatever William Finley is.
When we did Scott Pilgrim, I talked to Edgar [Wright] and Jason Schwartzman, and they were freaks for Phantom. Guillermo is a freak for Phantom. And in fact, I had said to him for a long time, 'I think this is a Broadway musical.' Weirdly, at a party a while ago, I ran into Sam Pressman whose father Ed Pressman produced the movie. Now, I'm leaning on Sam, like, 'Let's do this thing as a Broadway musical, because it could be fantastic.' I saw that movie when I was 14, but I can still sing every word to every song. I don't think anyone wants to hear me sing it, but in the shower, I can pound out "Life at Last" and feel like Beef strutting across the stage.
Directed by: Mel Brooks | Written by: Mel Brooks, Norman Steinberg, Andrew Bergman, Richard Pryor & Alan Uger
Look, there's no comparison to Mel Brooks. From The Producers to Young Frankenstein to History of the World to Spaceballs. You can see a Brooks movie and you don't need to see the credits to know who made it, even if he's not in it. But Blazing Saddles, it was just how utterly outrageous it was, more than anything. I continue to quote lines from the movie to this day. Like, whenever I go visit my mom and I ring her doorbell, like I'll say, 'Candygram for Mongo!'
When you're 14, that kind of satire on racism is a little bit tricky. But this formed my lifelong belief that you can often make a stronger point with a joke than with a lecture. It makes you think about something that's much more serious than the movie — I mean, anything is much more serious than that movie — but I was really moved by it, and my friends and I couldn't stop talking about it. There's no way you could get this movie made today, by the way, and I'm not sure if that's a good thing or not, given the point that the film makes and how it makes it. I do skew towards comedy, and I do tend to enjoy things that can use that kind of humor to make a point. It's like a more sugar than medicine in a way.
Directed by: David Lean | Written by: Carl Foreman and Michael Wilson
I'd see Bridge on the River Kwai on television from time to time, and even from the age of 10, when I first saw it, I didn't get the nuances, but I was really aware of the things that it dealt with: The futility of war, the whole notion of that Japanese honor, the British class system. You start to see these things when you're a little kid, you start to question them, and you ask questions. So, a lot of morality to digest as a little kid, but it's all wrapped up in a great tense, epic war movie.
It's just the grand scale of David Lean. I mean, I could say Lawrence of Arabia too, but this was the one that really caught me. In fact, after having seen it on TV, I did go and see it at a rep house somewhere and it really blew me away. That was a trip, to see it in technicolor on the big screen. There were a bunch of other war movies that I saw as a kid — The Great Escape, Stalag 17 and Where Eagles Dare — and I really liked all of those, but this one felt like it had a little bit more to say. That was my attraction to River Kwai.
Written and Directed by: Joel and Ethan Coen
I have to say, it's really the entire Coen Brothers body of work. They are, by far, my favorite filmmakers. It started with Blood Simple, and then you get the craziness of Raising Arizona. I've probably seen The Big Lebowski 30 times. I could recite the whole movie for you. It's definitely one of my favorites. But you see one of their movies, and you don't have to ask who made it.
Fargo, it combines that darkly comic tone with the serious circumstances that I find compelling. The reality lands harder for me when it's equal parts comedy and tragedy. Anytime you can laugh and cry in the same scene is a remarkable achievement to me. And that's what I think the Coens do best. And again, I'm wired with a peculiar sense of humor, and when people ask me what I'm looking to develop, I always say, 'I'm looking for a dark comedy. I'm looking for a black comedy.' And then I'll be looking for a director to do it, which is just as hard to find. But nobody's as good as these guys. And for me, Fargo was the one that really landed for me. That's my sensibility.
