How the Grinch Stole Christmas (2000)

Hi, I'm Ron Howard, director of Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas. Welcome to this special DVD commentary. It's going to be fun to revisit this movie. Brian Grazer was dedicated to gaining the rights to this story and making a movie out of it for several years before I became involved with it. And his passion for the subject and belief in the character of the Grinch as a great movie character was certainly something that I came around to slowly but ultimately really embraced. It was also a great directorial opportunity because in expanding the story, we really had to try to create a complete world. And one of the first things that I began to do was understand the storytelling style of Theodor Geisel, the genius behind Dr. Seuss. This story was going to develop the world of The Whos in a way that the actual book, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, had not. However, The Whos were not brand new.

In that story, Dr. Seuss had used the Who's a couple of other times, particularly in Horton Hears a Who. In that story, the Who's, Horton the Elephant discovers, the Who's exist on a speck of dust. Well, that's what led to the idea that in our motion picture version, that Whoville would be a kind of a parallel universe existing inside a snowflake. Brian and I were very pleased when we settled on that concept, and it really sort of helped set the tone. for the movie and hopefully create a sense for the audience that you were really entering sort of a new dimension, a world, you know, a lot like ours, but not exactly.

When we were first staging these scenes in Whoville, we had 11 sound stages at Universal Studios to produce this movie. It was really like old Hollywood. You know, all the extras wandering around between takes in their Who costumes, you know, eating lunch. I was wandering from one stage to another because we constantly had two or three units in production, and riding around on my bicycle or scooting around on a golf cart. And I really felt like it was a throwback to those kind of pure studio pictures, the kinds that are meant to really transport the entire family. Of course, the architecture of Whoville is indicated in some of the Seuss works. Very limited in the actual book, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, but there's some clues in some other books, including Horton Hears a Who. but also the production designer Michael Corenblith made a really interesting observation early in his research. And that is that the Spanish architect Antoni Gaudí actually created works around the late 1800s, early 1900s that looked very Seussian. In fact, they predate Theodor Geisel and Seuss and his work as Dr. Seuss. And doing a little bit more research, we realized that Geisel was a fan of Gaudí's whimsical designs.

And so in terms of trying to create a real-world architectural sense of what Whoville might be like, Michael Corenblith looked to Gaudí's work.

Everything about the film had to be sort of run through the Sousa meter, and trees, clouds, clothing, every prop needed to be designed and thought through, and as I said, myself and the rest of the creative team spent a couple years in this Sousian mindset.

Hoofless! Drew! Coming up with the designs for the way the Whos ought to look was an interesting challenge for Rick Baker, who of course did the makeup designs for the Grinch and the Whos. in this movie. And, of course, I wanted actors to play the Who's. They vary in terms of their design in the books and in Geisel's biography. He's quoted as saying he wasn't ever sure whether they were animals or insects or human beings. But we certainly wanted them to be humanoids. We also were trying to create a total world that stood on its own. And Rick Baker did a great job, test after test after test, continuing to refine this.

Of course, this movie is a kind of a live-action cartoon. And in terms of developing the style and the sense of humor, we drew upon a lot of sources. Obviously, Geisel's work, but also, you know, cartoons. And I had some cartoon animators come in and do the storyboarding alongside some of the traditional Hollywood storyboard artists. And they came up with a lot of gags. There were many days when I would wander in there and we'd be going over the storyboards and the script would get funnier because of just wisecracks that the storyboard artists were throwing out or visual ideas that were being presented. Very creative, again, a kind of a throwback to old school animation.

Here's the first good look at the Grinch.

One of the real attractions for me in choosing to direct this film was going to be the opportunity to direct Jim Carrey in this particular role. Incredibly challenging trying to bring a character like the Grinch to life in a live-action and I really wouldn't have made it with any other actor. You know, in the world of comedy, there really is no question that Jim Carrey is an absolute virtuoso. And I so enjoyed the collaboration. It was exhilarating.

move, move!

It was wonderful having Anthony Hopkins as the narrator, particularly in this opening sequence. because Hopkins has such authority and such a sense of truth, and yet here, Jim Carrey as the Grinch is creating complete chaos in this kind of cartoony manner. There's an actor I've worked with a number of times, Jim Ritz, who just got the bad breath sprayed in his face. In Apollo 13, he was the actor who put together the Scrubber, and in Splash, he was the guy running the television department at Bloomingdale's. where Daryl Hannah as Madison came in and broke all the television screens. He's a character actor. He was a writer on Happy Days and is a dear friend, Jim Ritz. Bill Irwin plays Lou Lou Who, Cindy Lou Who's dad. And, of course, Bill is a tremendous physical comedian. really considered by many to be sort of our greatest clown. He's also a fine, fine actor, both dramatic and in comedy, but he brought a lot to the film. There's Jeffrey Tambor. And there's my brother Clint.

Well, Clint cracks me up. It was great to have him in a meaty role here. He made the most of it, as he always does. He's a terrific character actor. Don Peterman was the cinematographer on this film. Don and I had worked together many times. One of the things that we decided to do was... to be very bold with the colors and also fairly aggressive with the camera work.

In trying to establish the physics of this Seussian world, where everything is kind of off-kilter and skewed and things don't just work quite the way they do in our dimension, we decided to not only tweak the sets, there are no right angles on any of these sets designed by Michael Corenblith, but also to constantly dutch the camera and have it slowly moving. I didn't want it to be disturbing to watch, but if you notice it, none of the angles ever really stay put. There's always motion, and they're always shifting, and again... countering the angles of the set, so there's never anything that looks flush or that's a right angle. Here's Bill Irwin. He worked this bit out with the ladder himself. I sent him off with some of our stunt guys, and he sorted out this routine. Very creative guy.

Max the Dog is played by Kelley. Kelley was saved from the pound to star in this movie. Roger Schumacher, wonderful animal trainer, found Kelley in the pound and he's found a number of great show business dogs at the pound and found that Kelley was just particularly gifted and receptive and she did a great job. as Max. It's kind of a cross-gender thing for her, but she seemed to go with the flow. Taylor Momsen, who plays little Cindy Lou Who, was an absolute revelation. Her parents are wonderful, and she is so grounded and has such confidence, but without any cockiness, She just seemed to thoroughly enjoy the experience every day that we were filming, and it was a pleasure. I can't underline or emphasize enough Jim Carrey's contribution to the overall tone of the movie and certainly the creation of the Grinch character. I spent one of the most exciting creative weeks of my life sitting with the writers and Jim in an office

just taking the story structure that we had worked out and developing the comedy. And he challenges everything, but he's a brilliant guy in an incredibly constructive way. And it was really fun to take the comedy to the next level. And he had such a wonderful sense of what the tone of the movie ought to be. And he was excited about making a film that families can enjoy together and still would be true to the outrageous spirit of the Grinch.

The executive producer on the film, Todd Hallowell, was also the second unit director, as he is on so many of the films that I've directed over the last 10 or 12 years. And Todd also used to be a production designer. He had an absolute field day on this movie. I don't think anybody's ever worked harder than Todd Hallowell did on every facet of the film. And I'm mentioning him at this point because this sequence, Cindy Lou Who Upside Down, in the post office with the Seussian machinery, these were sequences that Todd and I sat around and analyzed for hours and hours and hours to find the right tone and the right approach.

Great ad libs from Jim Carrey. Of course, you know, you'd get the script sort of shot and done in about four or five takes, and then you'd want to do another eight or nine, or Jim would, just to keep trying variations. And I felt like it was sort of like working with a great, great... you know, musician who couldn't move on until it exhausted sort of every improv and every riff that they could explore. And Jim is that way with his comedy, has a brilliant overall sense of the process, understands how to work with the shot design that I, as the director, have given him, and just keep enhancing the style and the comedy.

This introduces Molly Shannon, wonderful comedic actress and just a real pleasure to work with.

In a very sort of understated way, How the Grinch Stole Christmas really is a special effects movie as well. We did as much as we could live in the camera, and I did want it to be a real acting movie, a performance film, starting with Jim Carrey as the Grinch, but also with Molly Shannon, Bill Irwin, Jeffrey Tambor, and Christine Baranski, who we're introducing in the film at this point.

She's just a wonderful actress, in drama or comedy. Incredibly well trained, but just a very funny woman. The film is also very much a special effects film. I wanted to acknowledge Kevin Mack from Digital Domain, who just did an amazing job.

I wasn't trying to ever let the special effects dominate the live on-screen performances, but it was so important to create the world, and the only way to do it was using digital effects.

And lots of physical effects, like the jiggling telephone there. Allen Hall was our on-set... physical effects supervisor. And ironically enough, I worked with Allen first on Backdraft, you know, a very intense film, very dangerous, trying to literally control and work with fire. And from a tonal standpoint, this was about 180 degrees. But Allen threw himself into it with the same kind of commitment, and he and his team did some excellent work. Please, before building,

James Horner's score for this film was really a delight. He had a great time working on it. Lots of odd instruments sprinkled into fairly traditional orchestrations. But he just seemed to thoroughly enjoy the whole experience. He has such range as a composer. This is the same guy who did Braveheart and Glory and Apollo 13. And yet here, he's completely capturing the spirit of Christmas. Also wrote all the Christmas songs that the Who's sing.

Every day, we would show up, set up the cameras, I'd explain the breakdown of the scenes visually to Jim, and then I would sit back and be endlessly amazed by what he would come up with. just great ad-libs, great physical bits, all working within the context of the set and the other actors. This song is James Horner's idea. We were talking one day and I was saying, you know, one of the things that I really want to do is express this sort of thematic idea that in a strange way, that the Grinch and this little girl, Cindy Lou Who, are somewhat like-minded in their criticism of the way the Whos have gone overboard with the Christmas holiday and threatened to lose sight of the spirit of Christmas. You know, this was the important idea, going back to Dr. Seuss's statement of the theme of the story, was that it was kind of a modern fable, playfully protesting the over-commercialization of Christmas. I loved the idea that

this sweet little girl who was a point of view character in this film actually shared this criticism this sense that something was missing in the holiday that something had gone awry with only one other character in the entire story and that's the mean old Grinch who lives up there on the mountain and James said why don't you try a song it took some convincing actually it took hearing the song to believe that it was something that would work in our film and Taylor did the singing herself. It was just sort of a test run. And she sang it so sweetly and wonderfully that James said, I don't see why we should ever bring in a professional or someone with a trained voice. Let's use Taylor's voice. And I thought he was absolutely right.

The art department had so much fun designing the Grinch's cave. And one interesting fact about this, I don't necessarily like giving away all the tricks or, you know, pulling the curtain away and destroying the, you know, the illusion of a fantasy film like this, but I do have to say that a lot of the Seussian designs that you're seeing are actually made in foam. And here's what's incredible. To see these artists, it's a little bit like ice sculpting. But they'll attack a square of foam, first with a chainsaw, and then chipping away like any sculptor would. And out of it, they're creating these incredible Seussian shapes that really could not be gained any other way. But it was amazing to see these giant blocks of styrofoam turn into things like the Grinch's Cave or Whoville. And I guess it wouldn't pass any building codes. but it sure worked for the purposes of creating the world of Whoville.

Some of my favorite scenes in the movie are just Jim Carrey alone in his cave. Again, it gave Jim such a chance to improvise and play with the ideas. that it was just a pleasure to collaborate with him and come up with these moments.

Oh, wow. Jim insisted on doing this himself. He's a very physical actor. And I really tried to take advantage of that. The roaming socks, the runaway socks, another bit that came out of storyboard sessions. Everything was always being worked on, rethought and repitched right down to the moment that we would shoot or even into post-production. And it was a great opportunity that way because a fairly simple storyline, primarily one opportunity after another to just keep trying to create a memorable, unique kind of cinematic experience.

It's important to mention that Jim Carrey was absolutely miserable every moment that he had to be in the Grinch costume. And yet he loved what Rick Baker had designed and loved being the Grinch. But everything about it was literally painful for Jim. The contact lenses that he had to wear, the bodysuit, the hours and hours it took to put on the makeup. And yet he never once said, let's simplify the look. And he never once failed to develop that kind of comedic energy and apply his creativity with anything less than 100% commitment. It was really remarkable. I felt horrible for him in a lot of ways, but on the other hand, as a director, just relieved that he had this endurance. Again, one of the big challenges in this story was to develop it beyond the few pages

that Seuss's book give us. And so our idea was to do the pre-story, to kind of let the first half or so of the movie be the prequel to the book. In doing so, we had to take a lot of creative license, including creating the myth of how the Grinch came to live on the mountain. It was fun and interesting in the writing, and also I was always very proud of the way audiences responded to this particular sequence that deals with the young Grinch. because this was all new material, could only be judged on its own merit, and people responded to it very well in all the screenings that I ever went to. It always pleased me.

The Grinch Baby, of course, is a tremendous work of just sort of old-fashioned Hollywood puppetry. Nothing computer-generated about that character. sweet, adorable, and still very grinchy.

Looking at the Santa plate, the high chair, I have to remark on Merideth Boswell, who was a real inspiration on this movie. She was a set decorator. But in this case, everything had to be designed and built. And Merideth had such a wonderful sense of what this Seussian world could be like that very early on, you know, her voice is one I really came to rely upon.

Also have to talk about Rita Ryack and her costuming. She was nominated for an Academy Award. Rita and I have done a number of films together. What I didn't know about Rita is that she had been an animator at one time in her life. Her designs for these costumes are, you know, they're little treasures. They're hilarious, they're ingenious, and she just did a brilliant job costuming this film.

There's a shot that also reminds me of Gail Rowell-Ryan and the challenge that she had as the hairdresser designing, you know, all these wigs. Hair was a very, very important part of Theodor Geisel's all of his character designs feature very interesting sort of hairdos. And to try to come up with something that human beings could wear that would be odd but still somehow logical in a Seussian sort of way was a huge challenge, took many, many tries, lots of designs offered up and rejected before this remarkable array of wigs were actually developed and made. Oh, right.

Josh Ryan Evans plays the young Grinch. Terrific young actor. And he spent some time with Jim Carrey, who had already begun developing the character, of course, in rehearsals. But it was really fun on these days to see josh you know sort of uh giving us some sense of how the how the grinch got to be so grinchy uh even though early in his life he was a much more upbeat kind of a kid

All of this had to be developed from whole cloth, of course, but this became one of my favorite scenes, this moment of heartbreak. for the Grinch. One of my favorite characters also is Mary Stein here playing Miss Rue Who, the schoolteacher, who means well but, you know, can't help but sort of heighten the young Grinch's feeling of isolation and embarrassment.

Christine, in her comedy timing, is just about perfect.

So here we can begin to understand why the Grinch would choose to isolate himself up on Mount Crumpit.

Again, one of the really interesting exercises in this was, trying to sort of weave the book together with the new material that we were going to be developing to try to expand the story, and to really keep working on Seuss's original theme. In analyzing all of Theodor Geisel's children's stories, what you begin to see is that they're all fables, and one thing that he often did was work through an innocent character, in this case, Cindy Lou Who. So even though the book, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, does not use that device, We applied it to the expansion of the story to feature film length. Again, trying to stay consistent with the genius and style of Theodor Geisel, Dr. Seuss. Again, I've just got to comment on Rita Ryack's designs. These are all her ideas. The headgear. For some reason, the Whos just wanted to balance things on their head at the holiday jubilation.

It was never ceased to be, you know, really thrilling and to bring a smile to my face any time we would get the full contingent of Whos there in the main square next to the Christmas tree and do one of these wide shots. I just knew it was a once-in-a-lifetime filmmaking experience. And what was great is that the people with lots of dialogue and large parts and the folks who had small parts and some of the who's who were extras all became a kind of a family or a group and they would hang around in this one area off to the side and in between setups. And it was, I felt like it was, you know, it could have been a circus car on the road from, you know, one city to another a hundred years ago. They'd be in there playing cards, playing the banjo, reading the paper, telling jokes, juggling, standing on their hands. A lot of them were circus veterans and acrobats, some of them from Cirque du Soleil. So anytime I needed a little lift, I would wander over into what was called the Who's Holding area and just spend two or three minutes there. It had to cheer you up. The term Grinchy shall apply

Whoville was entirely built inside on a huge sound stage at Universal Studios. But the development of the atmosphere, the skies in the background and so forth, is something that we were able to really use digital technology to enhance, so it looks less theatrical and a little more like a real world, less pure fantasy. But if you check, you know, the clouds are always moving in the background, and you get the feeling of slight light changes, and we were constantly trying to give you the sense that... This was a real world, a kind of a parallel universe. People loved this scene, and they loved wearing their costumes. These were the holiday jubilation costumes. And the first day that we shifted over from the shopping look into the holiday jubilation look, People were, you know, they were like kids at the school pageant.

One of the things that we began talking about, you know, early with... ... the screenwriters Peter S. Seaman and Jeffrey Price... ... later with the guys who came in and did the rewrite, Alec Berg, Jeff Schaffer, and David Mandel... ... with Jim, with Rick Baker, Brian Grazer and I talking about it... ... was just trying to get the tone. It really needed to be a live-action cartoon, and yet... ... you know, I also hoped that audiences would connect with these characters... ... as they would any human character. In some ways, that's a little more easily achieved with animation because there's a complete suspension of disbelief from the first moment. Here, you know, it was a real acting challenge. But Jim Carrey, of course, has this sort of wild, insane sense of humor, but also does always remain accessible and kind of connected to the human experience. He was, again, a great collaborator on this.

We all got a kick out of designing these bits. The Grinch would go to any length to try to block out the music. Deeply into self-abuse. But, you know, it's one of the Grinch's problems. He's not a well man entirely. Or Grinch, I should say. Not a well it.

The first take where we saw this full bore was jaw dropping. You know, absolutely hilarious. We'd rehearsed it. We knew the material was good. Jim had a great handle on it. But seeing it in character, in the cave, it just became a real highlight in the film.

Don't! Jim was also wonderful with Taylor. I mean, just as two actors go. Jim has a daughter. He's great with kids. And he was, you know, absolutely wonderful with her. And as a result, she could remain calm, centered and totally impassive, which was, you know, from a comedic standpoint, just what we needed.

Jim couldn't possibly scare or intimidate her. She just liked him too much.

Um,

That was actually a line that Jim thought of on the day for Taylor. So he's not only improvising for himself, but it was like having a world-class joke writer on the set with you at all times.

These scenes between Cindy Lou and the Grinch are among my favorites, and I know audiences really enjoyed them. again, didn't exist in the book whatsoever, but they're a real outgrowth of what we've developed through the first half of the story and provided a great performance opportunity for Jim and for Taylor. Look at that walk. Jim is so physical. When we were rehearsing this movie, of course, without the costumes, air-conditioned sets, Jim in a T-shirt and jeans, He would be, he's so physical, he'd be absolutely drenched in perspiration from just creating the character, even without the costume. So you can imagine what he was going through with all the padding and the yak hair, which is what the Grinch's costume is made of.

There's a little inside joke, the Grinch loving awards and feeling like that he hasn't gotten one before.

One of the trickiest things to sort out for the Grinch character was the voice. Jim experimented with lots of different accents and tones. And actually what we landed on, what I kept encouraging him, was a sort of a combination of voices, depending on his emotional state. I liked it when it varied, when it shifted with his mood. In fact, the accent is all over the place, but... That's more representative of his kind of fractured personality than anything else.

Taylor loved going down the tube. Okay. Some nice acting from Taylor here. She's really trying to reach into his very soul with her eyes there. Or she needed to go to the bathroom. I'll never really know.

Just a great combination of completely developing a character, wonderful writing... and an absolute kind of wacky truth to the character's complete neurosis.

This is Gavin Grazer, Brian Grazer's brother, who's really a funny guy, a hilarious guy. He played a couple of parts, actually. We slipped him in a few places. He was the yodeler, bandleader, a couple of things. This is, of course, an example of not only the set, but also some set extensions that were done digitally to try to create a bigger sense of the town. The set was pretty huge, but we made it even bigger. through digital set extensions.

Again, if you notice how it slipped to one side, how extreme the angle is there with the camera. At this point during the screening process, the viewing process, I don't think audiences are even particularly aware of that. But it was interesting to see how bold you could actually be with dutching the angles.

And even these are actually rotating slightly. They look fairly stable, but not entirely.

That's right.

There's my brother Clint again, working alongside Jeffrey Tambor. Jeffrey's a tremendous actor, very well trained, also a great acting teacher, as well as being one of the best character actors around. A lot of this is just old-fashioned camera tricks, wire work, physical effects done on the set, trying to get that cartoony effect.

Jim felt that the expression of the character was so physical... ... that there was no such thing as just walking from here to there. Everything was born out of character... ... and everything was kind of this extreme, hilarious example... ... of the way this character lived his life, behaved and functioned. And, of course, he made the hands almost like a separate character. the way he used them was one of the first things that... The hand movements was one of the first things that Jim talked about when he was trying to define the character. When we were working with Rick Baker, the fingers were something that we spent a lot of time talking about because Jim had ideas about how he could really create a kind of an odd... odd postures for the character and punctuate things with the hands in ways that would be reminiscent of a cartoon.

Here's another joke that came out of the storyboard department, as I recall. There's my father, Rance Howard, playing the senior Who. He moves kind of front and center during the upcoming festivities here.

He seems to be the elder Hu who's kind of in charge of some of this. Again, this is going back to the central idea of just taking everything Christmassy and pushing it to such an extreme that it's just unbearable. I loved every Christmas of my childhood. My mom was sort of like a living Mrs. Claus. And there were Christmases where I definitely felt like the spirit had taken over in kind of an overwhelming way. There's my dad again. Another improvised line on the day.

also an improvised line,

That Jim was willing to take this character to such ridiculous extremes was really important because, you know, later, I hope I'm not giving anything away, the Grinch comes around. When he does, it's quite a transformation.

Bad memories.

Again, this is us sort of developing the myth of the Grinch and the psychology of the Grinch. Ah,

huh?

Another section that I particularly enjoyed You know, again, underlining that the who's have become maybe just a little bit too materialistic.

I always thought this was a little bit of a Jimmy Stewart moment. There was something kind of capper-esque about this whole thing. The misunderstood figure, the underestimated character... ... telling the whole town off.

Again, look at the way he holds his hand. Nothing self-conscious about this performance. That was Verne Troyer fainting. You might know him from the Austin Powers movies. Uh-oh. Somebody's... Mayhem in Whoville. It's not pretty.

It was my dad again.

There's a little cartoon physics thrown into a live-action movie.

We all had the most fun with the cars. Taxi? The taxi, the police car.

Everybody wanted to drive the cars. And I took this car home with me.

There was, of course, a life-size version of that car, and then also the one that Jim actually drove around.

I think we took this line of dialogue out. He's so desperate. He had lived a line where he said, eat my dust, which is a throwback to one of my old Roger Corman car crash comedies. But I don't think I left it in. Great little prop, that car. We had a blast with it.

Kind of a modern movie reference thrown into the mix of this movie.

From a structural standpoint, this marks sort of the end of the prequel. Soon we're going to be into the more faithful adaptation of the book, How the Grinch Stole Christmas.

So despite all of this, the Grinch couldn't destroy their spirit.

Now we're very literally adapting the book. Did my son read in the middle?

Anytime something would go wrong on this film, One of us would look skyward and say, blast you-whos. That became the, uh, that became sort of the plaintive call. All crew members.

Great matte work, great CG work there in the background, creating the whole valley.

Nothing very tricky about this. Kelley can really get up and dance. No wires. No magic. Just a happy-go-lucky dog. Computer-generated dog. We don't throw dogs.

It was really fun working out the song with Jim. and shooting it. I've never done a musical, never done anything like a musical number before. And the crew loved these days. We all did. And Jim seemed to really enjoy it as well.

It was fun doing the pre-recording as well. James Horner just couldn't believe it. And like everything else with Jim, we did this early in pre-production, but he was totally, you know, fanatically committed to exploring all the possibilities. He's got a great voice, and it was a real tip-off when I left the recording studio as to, A, how amazing he was going to be, and, B, It's just the range of this guy's imagination and ability to sort of use his instrument in extraordinary ways to create comedy.

No one's denying

Of course, I don't recall any of this being in the book. So there was an element of invention that sustained itself through the whole movie.

Yeah, that's right. Santa Claus makes it into their dimension. You betcha.

I don't know how he gets around. Not only around the whole planet, but, you know, these various parallel dimensions as well. But, you know, that's Santa for you.

Pretty good dog acting there, I have to say.

Jim was so delighted with this. He didn't tell me that he was going to go with the baseball cap. And when we rolled cameras, he kept saying, I got a surprise for you, I got a surprise for you. And it was, you know, it just cracked me up.

But I never use a megaphone. all improvisation on the day by the way not the entire speech but that last rant jim was amazing he'd call me in almost every morning as he was getting his makeup on go over what we were shooting i'd talk about the way we laid it out i talked about some questions that i might have or some ideas i'd have for new lines of dialogue or and then he'd have a couple of notes that he'd collected the previous day, and we'd start pitching, and, you know, he would always come up with something that elevated the scene and made things funnier, more vivid, and more Seussian.

Again, I can't say enough about the design team, led by Michael Corenblith, but also really assisted strongly by Todd Hallowell, and then every department. People were so delighted to be making a Dr. Seuss movie, and thanks to Universal, Ron Meyer and Stacey Snyder and Mary Parent, the executives gave us the tools that we needed to really fulfill the potential and create this world.

Again, because Jim's performance is front and center, you sort of lose sight of the fact that we just saw a complete development of an absolute alien world. Every detail of that had to be manufactured, designed, and developed for the screen, whether in reality or virtual reality.

One of the things that Brian Grazer, my partner at Imagine and the producer of the film, really loved about this story, a story which he was pursuing for years before I really became involved with it, was that it was such an amazing world and that the story was told with this really powerful fantasy character, both funny, really, truly... capable of creating chaos, mayhem, and goodness as well, and making us laugh while he was doing it. And I think Jim Carrey was the perfect actor to present that character and sort of embody that power and that range. I was really glad that Brian had pursued this project, and it became a great directing opportunity for me.

All this was carefully planned, gone over hundreds of times, constantly tweaking the concepts, but every one of those sessions was always I think this was the very first day of shooting, and an immediate indication that, again, Jim was going to be hilarious in bringing this character to life. Not that anybody had any doubts.

Halt!

All of this narration is very literally taken from the book.

And the question here was, how do we honor the tradition of the story, but put a different spin on it?

This is, of course, not in the book. I mean... Connecting the themes that we've developed in the first half of the movie to, um... and Cindy Lou's concerns about commercialism, materialism, and paying it off here in this scene.

Sienna?

I don't quite know who had to put the makeup on the mouse, but someone did a fine job there.

Again, every day was kind of a movie-making challenge, but such a loopy, you know, eccentric one. that as tired as people got, I think everyone was really kind of sad when the movie finally wrapped.

joke coming out of the storyboard department.

Maniacal superimposition of the Grinch laughing... ... was the very last thing that Jim did in the Grinch makeup. It was unscripted. It was just an idea that I had. And I remember rolling the cameras and just saying... ..." I want you to laugh maniacally in a close-up before we wrap." We did two takes of it. When it was over, he exerted himself completely. It was insane, as you could see. He got a huge kick out of doing it. And then he began to physically tear the makeup off his face. And he said, I am so glad this is over. So while the crew had a lot of fun creating this Seussian world, I think for Jim, after we got that last close-up and the last day was finished, it was pretty liberating. The one thing that kept Jim going

was every other day or so he'd go to dailies. And he'd always come out of there saying, it's so worth it. I love this character and I love the way this movie looks. And, you know, I'm glad to have this chance. So he was always grateful for the opportunity to bring one of his favorite characters to the screen. And that's very much the way I felt. Again, here's a little bit of a set and a huge computer-generated world all around it.

It's another one of our mountain sets, but believe it or not, even though it was only the tip of Mount Crumpit, it was still about, oh, 20 or 30 feet high, and that was the small version. That was just the very tip that we'd built for this scene. So a Mount Crumpit was always a bit of a physical challenge to shoot, even though we were doing it on a soundstage, whether it was just the tip or in the cave area.

That scene was kind of a throwback to my old Roger Corman, Grand Theft Auto, eat my dust days. When in doubt, you know... blast through a plate glass window. Basic rule of thumb there.

I yet know

As a father of three daughters who are very powerful in their own right, I'm very proud of them. One of the things that I particularly enjoyed about directing this movie was having a lead character be the girl, Cindy Lou Who. as really the point of view character and the ultimate kind of hero of the movie in a lot of ways, was something that gave me a great deal of satisfaction. And Taylor really did a great job with it.

More beautiful artwork. Kurt Williams, who was our special effects coordinator, interacted with all the effects artists, put so much of himself in the movie as well. And I remember particularly those shots, looking up, tying Mount Crumpit into Whoville as shots that we talked about, designed, and tried to get the perspective to be just right. So, you know, you believed you were there in that world. Just watch the skies change subtly from shot to shot during the course of the sequence. Some really beautiful work. And again, it took a lot of finessing, rethinking, going back, trying again, viewing the whole sequence in order to get each of these individual skies to create the dawn that was coming.

Everyone loved joining hands and singing Fahoo fores. It was embedded in all of our memories. The image of Who's hand in hand Encircling the tree, it was something that we were thrilled to recreate.

We came with our packages, boxes, our bags.

I remember directing this scene, watching Jim create this moment. and feeling, just as I feel reviewing it here today with you, pretty remarkable that he was able to take that same makeup and that he created all that sort of mayhem and kooky chaos with and give you an honest, emotional moment that's just as convincing. It's a testament to Jim's work in the film.

Beautiful shot. Really lovingly rendered by the effects department. Again, I just can't emphasize enough how delighted people were to be applying their talents to this particular subject. This was a scene that everyone was particularly proud of.

Just have to keep a little edge.

This was one of the really complex sequences in the film to execute, and it took us a long time, again, using a couple of different mountaintop sets and lots of wire work. In some instances when we were doing some of these things, Jim had to wear a wire just for safety purposes that we had to then digitally remove, because with all of his activity, he could have easily fallen off, and there was no way to put a net around and make it safe.

Hello.

Oh.

This is one of my favorite shots in the film coming up.

Again, if you've been keeping track of the skies, look how much they've changed. Here's our Seussian helicopter shot.

Of course, none of this was in the book either, but this is paying off the relationship between these two sort of unlikely kindred spirits. So in our movie version, we spent a great deal of time getting Cindy Lou and the Grinch together in the final act of the movie.

It's a real combination of some real skiing, some CG stuff, some work on the sound stage, all the tricks in the book.

This was wild, absolutely crazy, getting this sled. with this huge bag on the stage and driving it around and people diving out of the way. It was really, it was hilarious, but it was so absurd and surrealistic that it was a couple of the really strangest days filming.

We shot most of this in sequence, and so there really was a real sense of satisfaction from everyone as we came to this sequence.

The actor playing the cop is Jim Meskimen. He's been in a number of my films. He's an excellent improvisational actor, really funny. Also happens to be Marian Ross's son, the woman who played my mom on Happy Days. I've known Jim since he was a young guy, and he's an extremely talented character actor.

Again, Jim's physicality is just amazing. He invented that on the day. The script was, you know, the Grinch is delighted. But I set the camera up, and Jim's doing that jig, and, you know, it elevates everything.

My daughter, Jocelyn, Redhead.

A great song. Everyone was delighted to participate in this scene. There's my wife, Cheryl, standing next to my dad, Rance. This is a wonderful day of shooting. Everyone was just delighted and in a funny way kind of, I think, feeling their own Christmas spirit, although we were probably shooting this somewhere in March.

loved that he couldn't remember the lyrics, but he was trying to stay with it.

Nice little touch that he's not completely civilized. But after having done so many scenes with Jim alone in the cave, it was really fun to fill the place up and look at the set, which was a remarkable, huge set in a completely different light.

For just sheer creativity, Losing yourself in a visual idea and a thematic concept, I don't think I've ever been involved with anything that was more demanding or more rewarding than doing How the Grinch Stole Christmas. And I've been really, truly thrilled by the way audiences have responded to it. It's the thing that Jim Carrey and I, in those moments when things were kind of difficult, would look at each other and say, families are going to really enjoy this movie, and we hope for years to come. And I hope that turns out to be true. I was able to dedicate the movie to my mom, Jean Speegle Howard. She passed away just a couple of months before the film was released. But we still hadn't completed all the credits. And I was very proud to be able to acknowledge her. one of the most giving people. She did manage to live in the Christmas spirit pretty much year-round. And she was thrilled that I was making this movie. And I was very proud to be able to acknowledge her. Thanks for joining me for this commentary.

Making it

We'll see you next time.