Familiar Name, Different View

Sunday, April 13, 2008

It took two years of huffing and puffing, but Lisa Henson, one of the producers of the animated comedy "Unstable Fables: 3 Pigs and a Baby," finally blew the house down.

What's it like to be a movie producer?

"It's a meticulous process," she says. "My own kids don't understand that it involves so much patience, that it may be years before they see [a finished film]."

Henson, the oldest of five children of film producer and Muppeteer Jim Henson, joined Warner Bros. in 1983 as a movie production assistant. Ten years later she was named president of Columbia Pictures -- at 33, the youngest such executive in Hollywood.

She and her brother, Brian, co-chair the Jim Henson Company, which produces family entertainment. For Lisa Henson, that means movies.

"A producer assembles all the elements of a program," she says, developing the story line and finding writers, actors and animators to make it come alive.

Old Story, New Twist

"Three Pigs and a Baby," rated PG and released on DVD last month, started with a kernel of an idea: "To take a familiar fairy tale and take a different approach," says Henson.

Most people know the story. The pigs build houses of straw, sticks and bricks. The Big Bad Wolf destroys the first two, but can't beat the bricks.

In Henson's version, the pig brothers find a wolf cub on their doorstep. They take him in and raise him as their own, not knowing that the baby, Lucky, was left by some good-for-nothing wolves. When Lucky eventually learns he is a wolf, he faces a difficult choice.

Putting this twist on a traditional story makes it feel new, Henson says.

Shaping the Characters

Having unique characters also makes the story more interesting.

"Here we have three brothers that are extremely different, and maybe they don't even get along," says Henson. One brother is very relaxed, one is uptight, and the third is super-responsible.

To voice them, "we got incredible comedians," she says, including Brad Garrett, who voiced Gusteau in "Ratatouille"; Jon Cryer of TV's "Two and a Half Men"; and Jesse McCartney, the voice of Theodore in "Alvin and the Chipmunks."

The actors worked hard. Often "they read a line six different ways," Henson says, maybe first as a whisper and then a scream, or quickly and then very slowly. Later, an editor will decide which reading fit best.

Designing the Ugly

Getting the right look for a character can be tricky.

A "design that pleases everyone may be too bland," Henson says. "We wanted the characters to look a little ugly. Not safe, not predictable, but to stand out and be unique."

The artistic team came up with a balance of ugly and cute, she says. "I think there is an ugly-cuteness to them."

After the voices are recorded, animators link them to their sketches. The result is a draft of the film called an animatic. Any changes must be made now, before the movie goes into final production. Henson says viewing the animatic is a key moment, when the film feels "real."

It's also the point where her mind starts to turn to the next big project.

-- Brenna Maloney