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Features
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High Tech Little
Joined by director Kathryn Bigelow, Harrison Ford and Liam Neeson talk about working together in the cramped quarters of a Russian submarine during the making of K-19: The Widowmaker.
Thursday, July 18, 2002
By Sharon Knolle
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Spunky screen mouse Stuart Little is back for a new adventure in Stuart Little 2, and the sequel, like its title character, explores new territories that were impossible the first go-round. For Stuart (voiced, once again with great charm by Michael J. Fox), that means a new friend (a throaty-voiced finch, courtesy of Melanie Griffith) and a rescue mission that leads him outside the protective confines of his snug New York home. For the filmmakers, opening up Stuart's world meant overcoming the challenges of blending a mouse-centric world with real locations. "The first movie was very intentionally done as a kind of unreal, created reality and for the second movie, we had to blend that with the real Manhattan," says director Rob Minkoff, who after directing the first film chose to sign on for the sequel because he "couldn't bear the thought of putting Stuart in anyone else's hands." Since the film's budget limited what Stuart could do onscreen in the first film, Minkoff was delighted that in the sequel his tiny star "is so much more liberated," with Stuart flying his model airplane through Central Park and hitting the soccer field with big brother George (Jonathan Lipnicki)." There's a naturalism in the sequel which I don't think was present in the first movie," says Minkoff. "There was never any doubt about bringing Michael back, but we had no options in place for anyone," says producer Douglas Wick of reassembling the original cast. Even so, Wick and his producing partner (and wife) Lucy Fisher, were very pleased to get all the principals back on board.
"I didn't actually expect a sequel because the E.B. White book is a very slight thing, and I thought, 'Well that'll take probably one movie,'" says Hugh Laurie, who once again plays Mr. Little, Stuart's adopted human father. "Of course everyone was delighted that the first one did so well and I suppose whenever that happens someone says, 'Should we do it again?' "I really trust Lucy and Doug and felt they had come up with fantastic new scenes for the movie and it was worth telling," adds Mrs. Little, a.k.a. Geena Davis. Rounding out the cast is Nathan Lane, in an expanded role as the self-centered house cat Snowbell, and newcomers Griffith as Stuart's friend Margalo, James Woods as the villainous Falcon, and Steve Zahn as an alley cat pal of Snowbell's. "I guess my voice is perfect for a finch," says Griffith, who found her first voice-over work extremely challenging. "At first Rob was calling me up and saying, 'You're terrible.' He's not one to mince words. It was hard."
"Standing alone in front of that mike can be a scary place," reasons Minkoff. "Certain actors are more comfortable (doing that). Nathan Lane, for example, had no problem. He's almost a throwback to these actors who worked in radio back in the day. For Melanie, it was just a new experience. What happens is you're directing the actors out of context with each other and it's a little bit like conducting an orchestra but working with the musicians one at a time. It's all made of these different pieces done at different times, that's part of the process." Still Griffith had the rare benefit of working side by side with Fox, and the voice-over vet tried to show her the ropes. After being debilitated by Parkinson's disease, Fox has relied on such voice over roles to continue working. When asked about Fox's health, Minkoff thoughtfully says, "I think he's gotten a little bit worse. I actually didn't know he had (Parkinson's) until we were well into making the first movie. I was surprised as anyone else when he made the announcement. He'd been living with it for seven years at that point so he knew how to cover it up and how to work with it, so it was never a problem. "It was more difficult on the sequel, just in terms of how much time we could spend with Michael before he would get tired," Minkoff reveals. "Things like screaming or doing high-energy stuff would make him more symptomatic. But we got through it great and he was always a trooper, never complained."
There was never any question of bringing back the ebullient star as their leading man. "Ultimately, so much of the character, its soul, is really attributed to him. There's just something about him that's just so genuine and appealing and fun but there's a wry sense of humor there. There's an edge to Michael that this character really needed because, basically, he's a mouse," laughs Minkoff. Sony ImageWorks once again brought the mouse to life, and according to Wick, the animators were almost as protective of their baby as is Mrs. Little, "When we were creating the story for the sequel, we worked very early with all the Sony animators and we would start to say, 'Stuart's going to be in this kind of circumstance,' they'll look at you and say, 'Stuart would never do that.' So you have all these parents of Stuart that would never even allow you to bend Stuart's character for a cheap gag." Enthuses Fisher, "Thanks to Sony ImageWorks, our leading man's performance level is so human and it's such a complicated performance. For Falcon and Margalo as well, they have so much soulfulness and complication with the characters, they're not just one-dimensional expressions of 'good' and 'bad.' They're really able to give a performance and not just have the characters do gags."
Stuart's flesh-and-blood family - Davis, Laurie and Jonathan Lipnicki - admit that emoting with their imaginary family member was easier the second time out.
"The first time, I didn't know what he was going to look like until I saw the film," says Lipnicki, who plays Stuart's human big brother, George. "I don't have a problem with that all because I'm a childish actor and I fantasize all the time," Laurie confesses, "That's what movie acting is. I certainly think it's easier to imagine Stuart Little than it is - I've just seen Men in Black II - to imagine an alien with nine heads. At least I've seen a mouse, but those guys, you wonder, where do they look? I imagine they don't have the same emotional engagement with those aliens, but nonetheless, they have to deal with them." Laurie, a British actor best known for his work as thickheaded Bertie Wooster in the 'Wooster and Jeeves' series, says he's still not sure why he was hired for the first film. "Before the first movie, I thought (my casting) was just a typing error," he jokes. "When I arrived at the airport, I thought someone was going to go, 'Oh my God, it's the wrong guy!' I thought, why would they hire an Englishman? They do tell you, 'You're the best person for the job,' but there must be some other agenda, I just don't know what it is."
Besides the casting benefit of Laurie's height (6'2" to Davis' 6'), Wick says, "First of all, we wanted to know, 'Who's the mate of Geena?' She has so much intelligence and power that on the one hand she's an idealized mom but she's an Academy-Award-winning actress and she brings so much. So as we started to think of who her mate would be, we thought of certain comedy guys and Hugh is a very accomplished writer and he's very wry and intelligent. Not only can we have the height, but he has a wry intelligence and there's a lot of things he brings to Mr. Little that are very subtle." "I don't know if that's true," says Davis when told that Laurie was partially cast because of his height, "but the costume designers got excited and said, 'High heels!" Adds Davis, "We have the best of times, he is endlessly amusing. Our second job is to keep each other entertained the whole day because there's a lot of downtime on the set, and we're good at it. " For Davis, one of the sequel's biggest challenges was her own idea, a new baby for the Little family, played by identical twins. " Whenever I complained about it, they were like, 'It was your idea,'" she exclaims. "It was so much work to jolly (each twin) up and get her to stay with me and not want to stay with her mommy. But I was very keen that she should look like she could see Stuart but we couldn't put anything there for her to look at, to hold her attention, so I'd just go, 'Look, look, look, Molly, look at this...' and start talking as fast as I could." Davis, who is herself the proud mother of two-and-a-half -month-old daughter, says she can't wait to show the film to her once she's old enough. "I have age-appropriate films for all stages of her life," she jokes, 'This one, and then A League of Their Own when she's 14 and The Long Kiss Goodnight much later." Davis even remembers what originally drew her to the first film. "I received some sketches of what Stuart would look like and a note saying 'Please be my mommy, Love Stuart.' I was completely hooked." When asked if she's going to be as protective of her real-life daughter as of her imaginary son, Davis says, "Well, I would, if I were the mother of a mouse! He's just so small!" "I was forced to be a fan of the first movie because my daughter watched it so many times," Griffith says of her own children. "She was so happy (that I took the part). My kids love the film. And they also have merchandise, the doll, they squeeze and it talks, it's me. My almost 17-year-old says, please don't push it again! It says, "Little hi, little lo, little ho,' - the Little family greeting - and 'Just walking out the door's an adventure.' "It's a beautiful kids' story. And obviously Nathan Lane steals the show, he is so funny, and I think what he says just goes right over the kids' heads, so it works for the adults too," Griffith says in talking about the finished product. | After working with Lane on the first film, Wick and his team knew they wanted to give his character, Snowbell, a bigger part in any sequel. "Once we learned how gifted and talented Nathan was, we tried to use him better, that's why we send him on the journey with Stuart and their friendship is sort of a living thing," the producer notes. Babaloo Mandel and Lowell Ganz did some of Lane's dialogue, says Wick, but adds that "Nathan does a lot of improv, they sort of get a little bit of Snowbell's view on the world. | |
"They don't like to take the credit, but on both the movies they came in and helped M. Night Shyamalan on the first film too," says Fisher in speaking about the writer turned director who wrote the original Stuart Little movie. "Lowell and Babaloo came and I just made everything funnier." | If it's said that nothing's harder for actors than working with kids and animals, than for animators, the biggest hurdle is working with feathers and fur, all of which were present in Stuart Little 2. "It's hugely difficult," says Minkoff, whose background is in animation, having directed such films as Disney's The Lion King "We literally have a whole group of people to do feather grooming. The computer can automatically arrange the grouping of feathers, then they all need to be groomed because they don't look right. You actually have to have people manipulating them to make them all lay against each other properly. They did tremendous work figuring it out. Just watching the development of computer animation, it's just remarkable how far it's come. You can have a fully integrated character. We're all trying to achieve a level of believability that allows you to just focus on the character and the storytelling. |
"I told people on directing the first movie that I really wouldn't know how to direct Stuart Little until it was over," Minkoff recounts. "At the end of first movie, I thought, maybe I should direct the sequel because now I know how."
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