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Daily News
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To Bee or Not to Bee
That is the question people have unfortunately been asking comedian Jerry Seinfeld ever since he announced he was going to make an animated film about bees.
Thursday, May 17, 2007 at 10:00 AM
By J. Sperling Reich
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John Shearer/WireImage.com
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Takeoff
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The above headline is not the pun that first got comedian Jerry Seinfeld thinking about making a cartoon feature about the insects that are currently disappearing in large numbers around the world. Rather, it was simply the thought of a film entitled Bee Movie, thereby cheekily connoting the age-old Hollywood term 'B Movie.
“I just couldn’t stand The Swarm being the only movie about bees,” Seinfeld jokes during a promotional appearance on the Croisette in Cannes and interview session attended by FilmStew. “Bee society is like a perfected society. Human society as we know is quite flawed and quite troubled. Bees have been around much longer than we have, almost 300 million years.”
“One of the reasons it’s so perfect is because they don’t think they should be given a better job than the one they have,” adds the syndication mega-millionaire, who turned 53 at the end of April. “Every person here thinks I should really be doing something better than what I’m doing. That’s the problem with human beings. We have an inflated sense of our own self importance. Bees do not.”
“You give a bee a job and he does it until he’s dead. He doesn’t go walking around saying, ‘I can’t believe I’ve gotta do this again today.’”
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Yasky/WireImage.com
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Landing
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Joining Seinfeld on the French Riviera were co-star Chris Rock and Dreamworks Animation chief Jeffrey Katzenberg, there to shepherd a sneak preview of 20 minutes of footage from the November 2nd theatrical release. But it was Seinfeld who got the lion's share of attention as he zipped down a guidewire in his bee costume onto a seaside pier, then just as quickly zipped back to the top of the Carlton Hotel to do it all over again, uttering the battle cry, “I heard Scorsese did this last year for The Departed!” For Cannes veterans, the whole thing was the most absurdly ridiculous and wonderful thing done to promote a film since Borat donned that a neon green, one-piece bathing suit.
It was actually Dreamworks partner Steven Spielberg who figured most prominently in the pollination stage of Bee Movie, after Seinfeld – self-inflated human that he is – called up the filmmaker to see if he would direct a TV commercial. Spielberg said no, but not before inviting Seinfeld to dinner, which was just fine by the comedian. “You know, a Jewish boy growing up on Long Island, to have dinner with Steven Spielberg was like being Bar Mitzvah-ed twice,” he cracks.
Even though Seinfeld is a big star in his own right, he admits to being quite nervous when he went to the prized dinner. But it was that very nervousness that helped launch Bee Movie as a project.
“We’re sitting there at the dinner table and there is a lull in the conversation and you don’t want that, so I said, ‘You know I was thinking that it would be funny to do a movie about bees called Bee Movie,’” Seinfeld recalls. “I said this just to fill the silence. I don’t want to make the movie! I just want to get through the dinner and say, I went to dinner with Steven Spielberg! That was my goal.”
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George Pimentel/WireImage.com
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Kibbitzing with co-star and close friend Rock
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“And he gets excited,” he continues. “He called Jeffrey. . . from the table, on his cell phone! Jeffrey gets excited and the next thing I know I’m at Dreamworks. Now it’s been four years that I’m making this thing now because of a lull in the conversation. The next time there is a lull, I’m just going to be quite!”
On a serious note, Seinfeld says he has fallen in love with animation as a medium and hopes to work with Dreamworks on additional animated features. Jokes co-star Rock, who plays a mosquito in the film: “Jeffrey wanted Eddie Murphy, but he was busy with the whole comeback thing. Unfortunately, I had no work in my books, so I did it. They were going to offer it to David Chappelle, but they knew he wouldn’t show.”
Oh, and one more thing regarding the aforementioned headline to this piece. One journalist in attendance made the mistake of asking the Shakespeare leading question, with a straight face. Seinfeld’s reply? “We tried that one. We got the exact same response you just did. You know, the word ‘be’ comes up a lot in conversation, and we kept thinking about that. But we found it’s not that funny. But thank you for helping us. Anything else?”
One would think that would be enough to discourage any other aspirant stand-up journos in the crowd, but non. More press conference material was tried out. ‘Will there be a C and a D movie coming next?’ a writer asks. “Why don’t we handle the humor aspect?” Seinfeld shoots back. “But if you were there three years ago when I was looking at a blank sheet of paper, I would have been much more appreciative.”
And what would a Cannes photo opp slash press conference be without at least one patented say-what? question. ‘Did you try and do any research and live life as a bee?’ asks another reporter. “Did I live as a bee?!" Seinfeld exclaims. "What is going on in this place?!”
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