Dateline: 12/24/99

Stuart Little comes to life.

As a mouse in a human's world, Stuart Little had to overcome some oversize obstacles. To bring his story to the screen, director Rob Minkoff, executive producer Jason Clark, and producer Doug Wick, had some impressive challenges as well.

Stuart Little is the story of an orphaned mouse adopted by the charmingly eccentric Little Family. Mr. and Mrs. Little, played by Hugh Laurie and Geena Davis, have promised their son, George, that they will bring home a little brother from the adoption agency. What no one anticipates is exactly how little this new brother will be. During their visit to the agency, Mr. and Mrs. Little are charmed by Stuart's clever, enthusiastic manner. Against the advice of Mrs. Keeper, the head of the adoption agency, the Littles decide on an "inter-species" adoption.

George Little, portrayed by Jonathan Lipnicki, is not amused by his new rodent brother, and neither is the family cat, Snowbell, as voiced by Nathan Lane. Our hero spends the rest of the movie overcoming the prejudices and size differences of those around him.

For those who made Stuart Little, a significant problem was the absence of its star throughout the entire filming. Stuart was added after shooting was complete, using a time-consuming digital animation procedure. Doug Wick, the film's producer, compared creating Stuart to the dinosaurs of Jurassic Park. "The idea of a leading character, the protagonist in a live action movie, people have done parts of it. The biggest earlier technical thing was just the hair. Because the software on hair was just being developed, and hair is the hardest part, because it takes 10,000 strands just to breathe, have movement, to have that all be natural. And since this was a furry creature, dinosaurs are much easier to do, because they're kind of a flat, plastic-y kind of surface."

"It was a pretty complicated movie to make. It was very exciting," added Jason Clark, the executive producer. "But, I think the thing that was most unnerving was making a movie where your lead actor doesn't show up, ever. We made the entire movie not knowing who ultimately that performance would be, who that character would be. We knew the voice; we knew the thousands of drawings that had been done, too, and the hundreds of poses that had been created to give the essence of the character. We knew E.B. White's inspiration."

Geena Davis, Jonathan Lipnicki ad Hugh Laurie star as the Littles.

Members of the cast were also familiar with the original Stuart Little, written by E.B. White. Nathan Lane, who voices Snowbell, remembers, "I loved the book as a child. It was one of my favorite books. I remember Snowbell -- being very upset by the notion that Snowbell wanted to eat him. I loved being a part of something that, as a child, had a big effect on me."

Geena Davis also grew up with Stuart. "I loved the book as a kid, and I was very interested to see they were making a movie about it. I got sent the script by Doug Wick, the producer, with some drawings of how they were hoping Stuart would look, and some pictures of the sets, which were phenomenal. And he included a little note that said, 'Dear Gina, please be my mom, Love, Stuart', and I just went, 'Aw, how can I resist?'" Her familiarity with Stuart probably aided the actress with the task of acting to thin air.

Since Stuart was digitally added to the film after the actor's scenes were finished, director Rob Minkoff often had the Littles talking to empty space. "The task that the actors had in this movie was to believe in him as fully as possible'" Davis explains. "Rob said, 'the degree to which you believe in Stuart is how much the audience will believe in him.' So, I passionately threw myself into this relationship with the tabletop, and hoped that Stuart was going to show up someday and be emotional and tender and believable. So I love the movie now, I'm just, 'my son, he's so cute, he's just so cute!'"

Geena Davis was won over.

Davis' other son in Stuart Little is played by Jonathan Lipnicki, who perfected being cute in Jerry McGuire. Lipnicki didn't seem to mind having a smaller co-star, but he did add, "The hardest part was looking at thin air, you got to get used to doing funny, weird things like that."

Director Rob Minkoff, who co-directed The Lion King, not only had to get his actors to do funny weird things, but also had to convince the audience that Stuart was real. "There's many many choices that you make all along the way to try to make it seem as natural as possible because the goal is to have the audience accept the reality of this character. There is no reality to the character; it's a complete fantasy, so how are we going to get the audience to accept that? My work, basically, was trying to bring all those pieces together, whether it was the production design of the sets, or the costumes, or the actors, or the style of performance." Stuart Little was set in an idealized version New York City and Central Park, one that might have been envisioned by Rudy Giuliani himself.

However, Minkoff found it easier to build his New York in soundstages on the Sony lot. " My thought was to try to create a world that they could both fit into harmoniously. It wasn't like seeing Stuart in the real world," Minkoff reasoned. "If it was like seeing Stuart in the real world, it would have a completely different feel to it which wouldn't have supported the fantasy of it. It was sort of like, 'let's create a fairy-tale world that the humans will feel comfortable and natural in, so they are meeting halfway.'"

Jason Clark recalls his first viewing of Stuart, "We went into a theater, there were a few of us… The lights went down, and we saw this character, and it was flawless. It was a shot where Geena Davis, who plays Mrs. Little leans in and kisses Stuart goodnight. It included all of the things, environmental interaction, reaction to other actors, including touching, there was some interaction between the human characters and the mouse. When I saw that, I was floored." It seemed that all was well in Stuart's world, except for one thing: the cats.

Stuart Little meets Snowbell.

Stuart was not the only one on the set who had a hard time with a cat. "The cats, well at first I was terrified of that, because, what if the cats are pinheads?" laughed Minkoff. "Once we had shot the cats it was much easier, it was just getting the performance in the first place that was hard. My background in animation helped, because I could recognize in the cats' performance what was going on." As to the cats' motivation, "The cats were mostly interested in what they were going to eat, in the food, and you'd get the cat to look like they are doing something. And you look at what they are doing, and you say, 'Okay, that will look he's doing this'. So then you end up with these behaviors that appear to convey the story. It had to all be very specifically choreographed." People who view Stuart Little may notice that the cats are rarely in the same frame together. Minkoff added, "In fact, if you watch the film again, there's very little that happens in the same place."

As challenging as her work was with the imaginary Stuart, Davis seemed glad that she did not have to deal with the felines. "I never saw any of that stuff going on; there was a whole separate 'Cat Unit' shooting that side. Those people are really ready to blow their brains out, because the cats don't want to do anything at all, and to have so many cats doing so many complex things, they had their own challenges for sure." She did have scenes with the Little's family cat, Snowbell, so she got to see some cat action. "It was interesting to see the ways they 'trick' cats into doing things, like I saw them shoot a scene where they want Snowbell to look surprised, and I thought, 'how are they going to do that?' They had a little air hose that blew air into his face. It's so great, all of those little tricks."

Nathan Lane, who added Snowbell's scene-stealing sarcastic commentary, saw his challenge as "trying to put a personality into what is a very stoic kind of face." Lane added that he doesn't associate with cats often, "I'm allergic to cats. I have nothing against them, they just make me sneeze."

"No animal is less cooperative," said Doug Wick. "I think that one of the things we were able to do was get great cat performances." The cats, trained by Boone Narr's Animals for Hollywood, sometimes steal the show with their digitally enhanced expressions, but Stuart remains the star. Together with Mr. Jingles of The Green Mile (also trained by Boone Narr), Stuart is making 1999 the year of the mouse. Wick exclaimed, "Mice are back. Mice are in. Mice are going to get magazine covers, definitely."