A Fish Called Wanda was the second most successful British film ever made,
winning Kevin Kline an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor and taking in $200
million worldwide at the box office. A huge hit with both audiences and
critics, it also received Oscar nominations for Best Screenplay and Best
Director, a Writer's Guild of America nomination for Best Screenplay as
well as British BAFTA Awards for John Cleese for Best Actor and Michael
Palin for Best Supporting Actor.
In referring to this reunion of Wanda talent, Kevin Kline dubs Fierce Creatures
an equal, not a sequel" to the 1988 film. His co-star and co-writer
of both films, John Cleese, had no desire to attempt to make Wanda 2. "I
thought about it very briefly," Cleese admits, "but I enjoy writing
new characters and almost every sequel made is a disappointment. At the
same time, if you've got a really good team, why not work together again?"
The idea to reunite the team was broached during the making of Wanda, but
it was when Cleese began visiting Gerald Durrell's world-renowned wildlife
preservation trust in Jersey, England that the story really began to take
shape.
"John was very inspired by Durrell's work in Jersey," adds Fierce
co-writer, British film critic lain Johnstone. "We also shared a mutual
distaste for the mindless expansion of modern media conglomerates and so
the idea came together fairly neatly about a conflict between two value
systems-without wishing to say that all people who work in zoos are good
or that all those who work in multi-media corporations are evil and should
be destroyed."
A third element of the story actually came out of a comedy playhouse script
written by Michael Palin and Terry Jones pre-Monty Python, but never commissioned.
"They had an idea for a half-hour comedy about a zoo where people were
only interested in big and frightening animals, where a keeper ended up
stretching his snake because it had to be six foot long and it was only
five foot nine inches. I never read the script but even though it was over
25 years ago, I never forgot the idea," explains Cleese.
Michael Palin was only too happy to contribute to the new film: "I'm
delighted that it's being used as we weren't going to do anything with it.
It's a nice idea and especially nowadays it has a grain of truth."
The various strands of the story slowly began to come together although
not without meticulous research by Cleese and Johnstone, friends since they
first met back in 1975 when Johnstone was commissioned by the BBC to profile
Cleese for the second series of Fawlty Towers.
But was it easy seven years later to reassemble the cast and crew, many
of whom had gone on to tremendous international success? According to producer
Michael Shamberg, who recently produced the phenomenally successful Get
Shorty, starring John Travolta, it was a piece of cake. "John's been
discussing this since we first made Wanda, and once he told everyone he
was ready to do it, they just said 'Tell me when and I'll be there,'"
recalls Shamberg.
Jamie Lee Curtis and Kevin Kline have come a long way since playing Wanda
and Otto, with Curtis having starred on the big screen opposite Mel Gibson
in Forever Young and Arnold Schwarzenegger in True Lies and on the television
series Anything But Love and in the TV-movie The Heidi Chronicles, and Kline
co-starring opposite Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio and Meg Ryan in the films
Consenting Adults and French Kiss, respectively. Yet both were only too
keen to rejoin the team.
"I wanted to come back to a place I had enjoyed. No one writes like
John and I enjoyed our collaboration so much on Wanda, I welcomed the opportunity
to continue where we had left of{" says Kline. "It would have
been hard not to come back," agrees Curtis. "We had a great experience
the first time and it was a big success for all of us professionally, financially
and personally."
The only potential problem lay with Michael Palin who was about to embark
on a nine month journey around the Pacific Rim for another exciting series
of his award winning BBC television travel programs. And in fact when principal
photography finished at the end of August 1995 and the rest of the cast
jetted off for well-earned holidays, Palin had just four days to pack his
bags and set off for Siberia.
Cleese and Johnstone were also very keen to ensure that as well as a completely
new storyline, the four lead characters themselves were different enough
from the Wanda roles to challenge the actors and entertain the audience
while still retaining the quirkiness and charm that proved to be so irresistible
the first time around.
For Kevin Kline, playing the dual roles of both father and son, Rod and
Vince McCain in Fierce Creatures was a challenge he relished: "Vince
is one of those characters that John writes brilliantly. He's a man who
lives in a separate reality and when he brings his set of values to bear
on the real world, you get a potentially comic situation. He's gotten a
hold of a lot of bad information which he has completely absorbed, and of
course he is his father's son. Rod you don't get to know too well and that's
the way he likes it."
John Cleese describes Jamie Lee Curtis' character of Willa Weston as "the
emotional heart of the movie, the anchor of the story." Adds Curtis,
"Willa is an ambitious executive who has worked her way up the corporate
ladder without realizing where her real values lie. Then she arrives at
the zoo and she starts changing. She is the character that takes the audience
on the emotional journey of the film."
Michael Palin faced perhaps the greatest change from his role in the first
film with his new character, Adrian 'Bugsy' Malone: "With Ken (in Wanda),
I had a fairly easy time of it in that I had hardly one line of dialogue
throughout the entire movie. And so I think it tickled John that instead
of someone who stammered, he would write me a part where the character never
stops talking although no one listens. John has always had a view of me
as someone who talks a lot. During Python he wrote that I 'talked on and
on and on,' and that 'when the ground is littered with the hind legs of
donkeys, he goes home and writes up his diary."
Iain Johnston describes one of his greatest contributions to the film as
persuading John Cleese to create a character who was "less of a wimp
than Archie in Wanda!! I felt that people wanted to see John doing the things
that the public loves him for, being bossy, getting cross, playing the upright
controlling individual who is brought to his knees by events, and this is
very much how Rollo turned out."
Cleese agrees: "Rollo is slightly military and desperately trying to
get everything under control, a public school figure who starts imploding
when things go wrong. That seems to be the type of character I enjoy writing.
I think it's because authority figures when they begin to fall apart are
much funnier than insignificant figures. But he's a lot more grown up than
some of the characters I have played in the past."
The commitment of the four stars to the project was never more evident than
when, after an early preview of a rough cut of the film, it was clear that
Fierce Creatures needed work. Although audiences loved the premise and the
characters and found the film very funny, they did not find the resolution
satisfying. This was not something unfamiliar to Cleese, Shamberg and company;
they had been down a similar road before at early previews of A Fish Called
Wanda when they had to re-shoot the ending twice. With the studio's blessing
and the eager cooperation of the principals, it was decided that the Fierce
Creatures company would reassemble for additional shooting just as soon
as all four leads were available which, due to Michael Palin's BBC series
Palin 's Pacific, turned out not to be for eight months.
Meanwhile, every one had other commitments, and when the re-shoot dates
were finally agreed upon, the film's original director, Robert Young had
started another movie. Cleese and Shamberg were faced with the prospect
of finding a new director. As luck would have it, Fred Schepisi, the very
esteemed filmmaker responsible for such films as Roxanne, A Cry in the Dark
and more recently, the motion picture adaptation of John Guare's play Six
Degrees of Separation, was talking to Cleese about playing Don Quixote in
1997. Schepisi was captivated by the premise and agreed to helm the additional
scenes. He was joined by his longtime collaborators, cinematographer Ian
Baker and Academy Award®-winning composer Jerry Goldsmith, who ultimately
scored the film.
In addition to the four principals, Fierce Creatures welcomes a large cast
of respected and well-known actors, many playing the eclectic zoo keepers.
Cleese is a firm believer in what he refers to as "casting up"
meaning to cast the finest actors possible no matter the size of the role
in order to achieve a rich and diverse group of characters.
Ronnie Corbett, who plays Reggie Sea Lions, is a household name in British
television and has known John Cleese since working together in 1966 on The
Frost Report. Carey Lowell, who plays big cat keeper Cub, is perhaps best
known as the 'Bond Girl' from License to Kill, although most recently she
appeared with Nicholas Cage in Leaving Las Vegas and was seen briefly as
Tom Hanks' wife in Sleepless in Seattle. Robert Lindsay, best known for
his Tony Award-winning role in the Broadway and London stage musical Me
and My Girl, as well as the British TV series GBH and Jake 's Progress,
plays small mammal keeper Sydney Small Mammals, the rebellious leader of
the keeper group.
Sydney's assistant Pip is played by Cynthia Cleese, the daughter of John
Cleese and actress Connie Booth. Having played Archie's daughter in Wanda,
she portrays the most idealistic and sensitive of all the keepers. Richard
Ridings, who plays Hugh Primates, first worked with John Cleese in Clockwise
and then again in Erik the Viking where he played a 'Nordic psychopath.'
Maria Aitken, who played Archie's wife Wendy in A Fish Called Wanda, is
back as Di, the zoo's well-meaning, mild mannered PA. Australian actor Billy
Brown, who plays Rod McCain's assistant Nev, was discovered by Cleese, Young
and Johnstone when they watched the Royal Shakespeare Company at Stratford,
where they had gone to meet Derek Griffiths about the role of Gerry. Cleese
and Griffiths had worked together in TV in the '70s.
Since the casting of the animals themselves was certainly as important as
the casting of the actors, the filmmakers brought in film and television
animal expert Rona Brown, who has worked and cared for animals in films
ranging from Doctor Doolittle to Gorillas in the Mist to Mary Reilly. Creating
an entire zoo for Fierce Creatures, and filling it with exotic animals has
been her most exciting and daunting challenge to date.
Says Brown: "John liked the sound of animals with weird names such
as a capybara, but then we started going through the list and some, such
as the bandicoot, were only available in Tasmania. Eventually we came up
with a combination of animals that were accessible which he liked and which
I knew would work well together and would enjoy filming."
The final head count totaled 11 5 animals including two Siberian tigers,
a lion, a leopard, a panther, llamas, zebras, baboons, sea lions, a camel,
meerkats, lemurs, coatis, a baby ostrich, maras, wallabys, a python, a lamb,
a goat and two red-kneed tarantulas.
But for both Brown and the producers it wasn't just the availability of
the animals that had to be taken into consideration, it was their well-being.
"When I first began working with Fish Productions I sent them a huge
list of requirements for the animals expecting to have to haggle, but they
agreed to everything I asked for. They didn't compromise once. I think the
animals probably had better living conditions and food than the actors and
crew!" says Brown.
John Cleese is quick to address the importance of animal welfare: "If
you're doing a film about treating animals with respect, that's what you
have to do! So you need to have someone there who can say when the animal
is tired or bored."
Producer Michael Shamberg readily agrees: "It was fun working with
the animals and I think it will be fun for the audience watching them. But
we've made a comedy which supports animals. Our comedic points are not at
their expense, but reinforce the ideas behind conservation."
In particular, the principal animal actors are the cuddly five: the coati,
lemur, baby ostrich, baby wallaby and mara, all of which had acting doubles
(four for the lemur), as did Terry the tarantula. And Rona Brown frequently
invited the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA)
to inspect the set and the animals' quarters.
Where it proved difficult or impractical to achieve certain scenes with
real animals, animatronic experts Asylum and Animated Extras were called
in to produce animatronic animals including gorillas, a rhino, an anteater
and a coati.
Rona Brown was quite impressed with all the actors who voluntarily spent
a great deal of preparation time with their charges, particularly Robert
Lindsay whose coati was one of the most unpredictable animals to handle,
and Michael Palin who was very at home with his tarantula. It was, however,
John Cleese who she claims not only had the greatest empathy with the animals.
He even sent in his underwear so that the animals could get used to his
smell.
"It's true," admits Cleese, "I wore slightly old stuffy flannel
vests and sweated into them dutifully for several nights before handing
them over to Rona who distributed them among the coatis, lemurs and maras!
Then when they saw me coming, they thought 'Ah, I know him."'
As much of the action takes place in the fictional Marwood Zoo, a great
deal of thought was given as to whether to film at existing zoos or to build
a replica set. "I visited 30 or 40 zoos around the UK but it quickly
became apparent that it would just not be practical to attempt the bulk
of the filming in a real zoo, both geographically and for the welfare of
the animals," says production designer Roger Murray-Leach.
So it was decided to build a zoo set at Pinewood Studios where, apart from
a few days at Marwell Zoo in Southern England and the Jersey Wildlife Preservation
Trust, the majority of all zoo scenes were to be filmed. Leach continues:
"Originally it was just the sea lion pool, the theme park and the tiger
enclosure, but the zoo grew and grew."
Building a zoo presented its own problems. "With an actor you can say
please don't lean on that wall, but when you've got two 700 lb. tigers which
suddenly decide they've had enough, you've got to be confident that the
set will hold them," Leach explains.
The zoo was built with the advice of Rona Brown, animal trainer Jim Clubb
and to very rigid government guidelines. The end result Leach describes
as a "civil engineering job." Covering three acres of ground,
it is one of the largest and most ambitious sets ever created.
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