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Does this story in any way reflect your own spiritual journey?

Broyles: Oh sure. I would have loved to ride the Polar Express. Each of the children learns some specific lesson about their own life. The train's conductor says the thing about trains is not where it's going, but deciding to get on. But there's also a hobo who's kind of the voice of doubt, the voice that says seeing is believing. But the conductor says sometimes the most important things in life are the things you can't see. So you have the conductor pointing the boy toward faith and the hobo reminding him of his doubts. And then there's Santa Claus himself.

I hope it's sort of universal-that you don't have to be of a particular denomination or even particularly be a Christian to see it as a journey of belief. It's an example of the kind of spiritual journey that everybody in one way or another goes on.

It sounds like it's different from other recent animated movies in that it's not necessarily looking to hit adults in the funny bone, but in the heart.

Broyles: True. Bob [Zemeckis] and Tom [Hanks] and I wanted to make a movie for our kids, but we also wanted to make a movie for us as adults, tapping that childlike capacity for belief in us. We showed it to two preview audiences-one to families with kids in the afternoon, and one to teenagers and adults in the evening. The evening audience liked it just as much as the afternoon audience. I think they expected some of the irony or irreverence of the Shrek movies to kind of make them chuckle. It's not without humor and wit, but it does appeal less to our funny bone than to our heart.

You took a short book and made a full-length movie out of it. How do you fill out the story without padding it, without straying too far from it, and remaining true to the original?

Broyles: Often, with children's classics, the temptation has been to jazz it up with screenwriting clichés. We knew from the beginning we didn't want to do that. We didn't want to set up this horrible Hollywood thing where like the kids had to get to the North Pole because Santa Claus had been kidnapped by terrorists and if they didn't make it there, there would be no Christmas. Or the conductor was in league with so and so to sabotage things, and they had to take over the train. We wanted to stay completely true to the simple journey of belief that is in the book.

You have quite a personal history-working in Civil Rights Movement, serving in Vietnam, and later the editor-in-chief of Newsweek. Seems like all those could add up to the ultimate cynic.

Broyles: That's a really good point, but that's the last thing I am. I have a healthy skepticism when it comes to public figures and public policy. But my own heart, I love happy endings-and there is not a drop of cynicism in The Polar Express.

I've seen and experienced some things that are truly terrible things; there's evil in the world. But the joy of having children is to remember the journey of innocence and the journey of belief. And it's not always easy. That's one of the things in this movie; they don't get there directly. They have to take detours and face some obstacles, but it's their belief that gets them there. I don't find that to be Pollyanna-ish. I think that, whatever the world gives you, you want to keep a sense of hope and belief. Or else, what's the point?

Did you have that sense of hope and belief when you were in Vietnam?

Broyes: I had to, yeah, just to get out of there.

You've compared this to Cast Away. What about Apollo 13? That spacecraft was in some ways like this train. There was reason to lose hope, but they kept believing they'd get home.

Broyles: That's a really good point. They always believed they would get back. It's interesting-all three movies are about journeys. You leave home, either in a spaceship or on a train or an airplane. You end up at some strange place, and you've got to get back. They're all that kind of odyssey model.

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