Disney reworks fable

By TERRY LAWSON
KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
Garry Marshall says life is too short to hold grudges.
A few years back, Marshall was asked to do a voice in an animated Disney movie, whose title he can't quite remember: "Some business about Aztecs or something."
"Anyway, they fired me -- said I was too New York," says Marshall, pouring on that famous Noo Yawk gravel.
"It was like hiring Robin Williams and firing him for being funny. I said, 'Look, you hire me, you hire this voice. This is the only voice I got."'
Mark Dindal, the director of Disney's new "Chicken Little," also directed that Aztec movie, which would be released in 2000 as "The Emperor's New Groove."
"Thank goodness I wasn't the one who fired him," says Dindal. "The movie was originally called 'Kingdom of the Sun,' and it was very different from what it became. It's pretty much standard on animated films. They start with one idea, and mutate into something else."
"Chicken Little" is a perfect example, although at least the original idea for the film remains intact.
"I love folk tales," says Dindal, "and I have this thing where I imagine what might have happened to the characters in them after the story ends. You know, like who does Little Red Riding Hood marry when she grows up? The idea for 'Chicken Little' came when I was on my 40-minute commute to work many years ago. That's when I tend to let my mind roam.
The big concept
"The first idea was just farm animals, no humans, what would that community be like. Then came the idea of Chicken Little, who nobody believed when he said the sky was falling. From that came Chicken Little witnessing an alien invasion, and no one would ever believe him because they already think he's crazy with the sky-falling stuff."
From that, "Chicken Little" began to grow. Dindal imagined Chicken Little as a boy instead of a girl as in the original story. A new storyline
"Chicken Little" underwent another change when Dindal and the writers thought there could be more emotional resonance in the story of a single father who is so humiliated when his son sends the whole barnyard into a panic after he mistakes a falling acorn for a piece of the sky that he loses faith in him.
When the tiny chick with big glasses (voiced by "Scrubs" star and "Garden State" director Zach Braff) shows talent on the baseball field, his father briefly starts to trust him again. But then comes that hunk of something falling from the sky.
"It took us about 21/2 years to pretty much get back to where we started," admits Dindal. "But in the course of that, the story got stronger, more emotional, and funnier, too."
It also took on an entirely new dimension -- literally. Disney was experiencing ever decreasing returns with its traditional, hand-drawn animated films -- 2002's "Treasure Planet " and 2003's "Brother Bear" were both disappointments, while 2004's "Home On the Range" was a disastrous flop.
Parting of ways
At the same time, Disney became unwilling to agree to the terms that Pixar, the computer-generated animated studio that produced Disney's biggest hits -- "Toy Story," "Monsters Inc.," "Toy Story 2" and "Finding Nemo" -- had insisted on to continue their partnership.
So Disney decided to suspend the making of hand-drawn films and develop its own computer-generated unit, with "Chicken Little" chosen to be its exemplar.
There is, then, a lot riding on the success of "Chicken Little," which will also be shown in a 3-D version in select theaters, a la "Polar Express."
Dindal says his team had enormous fun creating a supporting cast for "Chicken Little" -- characters such as Runt of the Litter (Steve Zahn), Foxy Loxy (Amy Sedaris), Ugly Duckling (Joan Cusack) and Fish out of Water, whose head is in an oxygen chamber and is voiceless.
"I love mute characters in comedies, and I'm a real sucker for Chaplin," he says. There were also cameo roles written for recognizable voices Don Knotts and Adam West.
But the most attention was given to the relationship between Garry Marshall's Father and Chicken Little; Dindal estimates 40 actors were auditioned before it became obvious Braff was the best choice.