Ross Bagdasarian, Jr. (whose father invented The Chipmunks) and his wife Janice Karman recently met with members of the press in a roundtable interview to discuss the upcoming film Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel.

The first question considered how long the Chipmunks have been around and how large the brand has become and wondered how they keep it fun.

RB: You know, for us it's so much about the personalities of the characters and the fun thing about this movie was that Janice wanted to make sure we showed the audience a whole new side of the characters. If the first movie was about the Chipmunk family coming together with David Seville, this was about the brothers splitting up.

JK: And you've seen that. If you were raised on the Saturday morning cartoon shows in the '80s you saw the characters, but I wanted to get all of that character in one movie. As long as you're character-based you can have a great time with circumstances. Even if it's a situation you've seen before, the characters will make it different because it's their own personality that lives within that situation that makes it different. And they're fun characters. I mean Ross and I love these guys.

RB: And as I say, for us the most enjoyable part is what we can do that shows people a new side of them. They're in school. They're used to being in the limelight. All of a sudden they are lower than a tadpole when they come to school. People hate them. Bullies are chasing them around. So Alvin, wanting that sirens' song of popularity, kind of dumps his brothers for falling in with the in crowd and gets really turned into the wrong direction. He's not there for his brothers. He kind of—betrayed is maybe too strong a word—but clearly he kind of lost track of that. Poor Theodore is so "where do I fit in? Dave's not here. What's going on?" He runs away from home. Simon is now overwhelmed with taking care of all these sort of adult responsibilities. Nobody else in the family is doing any of those things. So the pressure is there.

JK: When we started in the '80s Alvin was very established. He was the rebel. And we took Theodore, who was older than Alvin and made him the baby. And we started recording the voices and doing the Saturday morning show and we got loads of fan mail for Alvin and Theodore, but we didn't get any for Simon.

RB: Sort of the classic middle child who doesn't need any parental attention.

JK: So I felt so guilty as a parent and I said "Let's figure out who he really is; how he interacts in this trio." So we did a show called "The Perfect Child" where Simon doesn't get the attention from Dave because he's always perfect.

RB: Good old Simon.

JK: Alvin gets the attention because he's the rebel. Theodore gets the attention because he's the baby. Simon just . . .

RB: "Not to worry, Dave, I've got it handled."

JK: And he started getting fan mail! All of a sudden the parental guilt—the weight came off my shoulders. He was getting an equal amount of fan mail. So kids were reacting that that was a very exciting thing for us to see.

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