When Kirk DeMicco ’91, a former Thematic Option student who majored in economics and political science, read The Right Stuff, a comment by test pilot Chuck Yeager stuck in his mind.

Yeager, talking about the simians used in early space flights, said the monkeys don’t know they are sitting on top of a rocket.

That comment got DeMicco thinking. In 2001, he began writing an animated feature film about the fictional descendant of Ham the Chimp, the first hominid launched into outer space in 1961. DeMicco’s musings turned into the film Space Chimps, which opened in July, and which he not only co-wrote but also directed. The Vanguard Animation and 20th Century Fox project has big-name voices (Andy Samberg, Cheryl Hines, Jeff Daniels, Stanley Tucci) and was launched with appropriate international hoopla, including advertising on 100 million Dole bananas.

Recently DeMicco was back on campus for the first time since graduation, talking about his circuitous route to creating animated features. He had spent his junior year in Kent, England, and after graduation moved to Rome for three years, where he reported for an Italian film publication, Foreign Sales, interviewing producers, distributors and Italian filmmakers. Then it was on to New York, where he won a hard-fought position in the legendary William Morris mailroom.

To get hired, he had separate interviews with a senior agent in each of five departments – a daunting, demanding experience. Once hired, he worked his way up to the position of agent’s assistant, only to end up back in the mailroom when his agent was fired.

After he was transferred to the Los Angeles mailroom, things started happening. He sold a spec script for a thriller. The director Barry Sonnenfeld became a mentor. DeMicco began writing and producing various films and videos for the youth market, such as Quest for Camelot, Racing Stripes and Underdog.

“Writing for animation is very much beat by beat,” he says, “and you are always a bit of a producer, editor and director as you work.”

A current project is co-writing a film adaptation of Roald Dahl’s The Twits with Monty Python founder John Cleese. This is the second script he has written with Cleese. (The first was Crood Awakening, an animated comedy set in the prehistoric era that is scheduled for a 2011 release.) They work with DeMicco typing on a laptop, keeping track of scenes and characters with note cards, and Cleese making notes on a large posterboard. While throwing out ideas, “it’s always good to hear him laugh,” says DeMicco.

DeMicco, who grew up as the oldest of three in Franklin Lakes, NJ, says his immersion in storytelling began early. “My mom read to us a lot.” She also took her children to Broadway musicals. Some theatrical knowledge may have seeped into his consciousness sitting in the audience, DeMicco says, but he didn’t appreciate it at the time. “My sister went home singing and I went home screaming,” he jokes.

At USC, he remembers a comparative literature class on adapting novels to film that held his interest much more. The professor, Nancy J. Vickers, went on to become president of Bryn Mawr College.

For Space Chimps, DeMicco spent 16 months in Vancouver, overseeing a crew of 300. “There are a million decisions a day,” he says. “All 300 people were artists, each with a special skill set. It was all in one big building, so you can literally see the movie taking shape along a pipeline.”

Directing, he says, “took all of my diplomacy skills.”

– Allison Engel