THE STARS:
Voices of Roseanne Barr • Dame Judi Dench
• Jennifer Tilly • Cuba Gooding Jr., • Randy Quaid
DIRECTOR: Will Finn, John Sanford
 THE CONCEPT:
New Disney animated feature about three determined cows (Barr, Dench, Tilly), a karate-kicking horse (Gooding Jr.) and a collection of critters, that come together to save their mistress from losing her farm, Patch of Heaven, to the dastardly outlaw, Alameda Slim (Quaid).
|
|
ROSEANNE BARR:
“They called me up and said that Disney was making a cartoon. I had the opportunity to go and read for it, and then they’re like, ‘And it’s a cow!’ Like I was going to go, ‘No way!’ She was afraid to tell me! I went, ‘Great, ‘ so I got there and I found out that I was replacing someone – I asked who, and they wouldn’t tell me, so I have no idea. They went, ‘You don’t know her.’”
JUDI DENCH:
“I love cows, so being asked to play a cow called Mrs. Caloway with a charming hat, who could resist that? I certainly couldn’t. I’m not sure how a British cow got to Patch of Heaven, but I’m frightfully pleased she did. It just made me laugh a great deal. She has kind of that British stiff upper lip thing about her. She’s obviously very soft hearted but you don’t see that much. I enjoyed the experience of making this film because it is something I have never done before. This is a totally new thing for me.”
RANDY QUAID:
“When I first started on this movie they didn’t have a name for my character. He was bad and mean, and that’s all I knew. And during the course of the four years making the movie, the character went through some transformations, they were thinking about having him be a candidate for President in one version, a gold miner in another – so I would go in and do scenes, and come back two months later and they’d say, ‘No, we’ve changed all that.’ It’s kind of tricky to get the villain right. You’ve got to pretty much nail the villain in these kinds of shows.”
JENNIFER TILLY:
“I love westerns. Maybe with this film and The Alamo, westerns will come back in fashion. I like westerns because I like the archetypes, the bad guy, the good guy and the family values. I think we’re sort of like the bovine Thelma and Louise. You see where they have a domesticated happy life, and then they go out into the great beyond and they face all these challenges, and find their inner cow resources.”
BARR:
“It wasn’t hard working by myself, because I’m a standup comic, so it was a lot like doing standup. But I wasn’t really alone; the director was in there with me. He’d go, “Now do it like this, but make it a little sadder.’ He was a great director. All the producers and writers were there too, and they were laughing for me, so I could see if it worked or not.”
QUAID:
“It’s a performance, that’s how I look at it. You have an animator outside the booth, drawing you as you’re doing it. They have a little video camera that tapes you. So you kind of collaborate and make the character together. And I do see myself in the character. I was quite pleased with the end result.”
|
