If you’re a parent or grandparent to a little child, you’re most likely familiar with the yellow, capsule-shaped, gibberish-spouting creatures known as minions.
What you are not probably aware of is the fact that Kyle Balda, the co-director of the smash hit animated movie Minions, acquired Maltese citizenship 10 years ago and was born to a Maltese mother in Arizona, USA.
Mr Balda, who lives in Paris, spoke about his Maltese roots in an interview published in the newsletter of the Maltese Embassy to France.
His grandfather, Carmel Gatt, received the Distinguished Service Medal as a signal man and captain of the British Merchant Navy’s ship Boxal. Mr Gatt lived in Marsa, where Mr Balda’s mother Agnes Gatt was born.
After World War II, he moved the family to Detroit, where he worked for Ford motors.
I come back to Malta whenever I can. I feel so proud to be a part of it
Mr Balda is very close to his family in Malta and harbours many fond memories of the island, such as eating pastizzi and qassatat during large family gatherings. He is also very fond of his Maltese family’s accent and wished he had learnt Maltese when he was younger.
But it was a different generation back then and his family wanted him to learn American English.
“When my mother died I was 23 and I went on a pilgrimage to Malta for the first time,” he said.
“I stayed at a youth hostel in Paola and immediately dropped my bags to go exploring. You won’t believe it but, without even looking at a map, I walked directly to my mother’s church, the Trinity in Marsa. It was like I knew my way. I come back to Malta whenever I can. It’s a beautiful country and I feel so proud to be a part of it.”
His passion for films was ignited at a young age, coupled with his love for drawing. Before the age of DVD or video cassettes, a young Mr Balda would return home after watching a Disney movie and set about making a comic book as his way of remembering it and “watching” it again.
“But movies seemed so magical and there was no industry where I grew up in Tucson, Arizona, so I didn’t really think of it as a career. Then I had a very fortunate meeting with Dan Jeup who was an animator on The Little Mermaid. This changed my life because he mentored me and told me what I needed to do to take my drawing into the path of animator.
After that, he was accepted to the California Institute of the Arts, where he studied character animation. He never imagined that Minions would be so astoundingly successful. For the original Despicable Me film, where Mr Balda worked as head of layout and cinematography, the minions were initially developed to be a bunch of big, muscled henchmen.
“But it would have been very expensive to make a Lord of the Rings-style army of henchmen. And ultimately it wouldn’t have been as funny.”
Chris Renaud and Pierre Coffin, who co-directed the first film, worked with designer Eric Guillon to come up with the iconic design of the present minions.
“With Minions, which I directed together with Pierre Coffin, our main challenge was to try to differentiate Kevin, Stuart and Bob as separate characters from the tribe. So for the first time we have distinct personalities which, I think, allows people to relate to them more closely.”