There's something ironic about Ron Howard directing Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas.
Not because he seems necessarily wrong as the director of the only live-action, big-screen version of the beloved children's author's work since 1953's The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T. After all, many still consider Howard the eternal kid -- the actor they grew up watching on The Andy Griffith Show and Happy Days, even if he is a 46-year-old father of four now. Even Grinch star Jim Carrey calls the once and eternal Opie a big kid, so getting in touch with Seuss's childlike genius would seem a given.
The irony has nothing to do either with Howard's ability to bring Seuss's fantasy world to screen life or to handle a estimated $120-million holiday spectacular. Since the age of 23, when Richie Cunningham helmed his first movie, a Roger Corman cheapie called Grand Theft Auto, Howard has brought in logistical challenges and big-star vehicles alike, Apollo 13, Backdraft, Cocoon, Far and Away, Parenthood, Splash, Ransom and Willow among them.
The thing is, despite having been a potentially dysfunctional child star and even that low-life form called producer (he co-owns, with Brian Grazer, Imagine, one of Hollywood's biggest and most successful independent outfits), Howard is one of the nicest guys in town. Making a movie about the meanest green thing who's ever ruined a Yule would appear to be a temperamental stretch of some proportion.
"The great thing about Seuss in general, and this story in particular, is that it's mean," says Howard, relaxing in chinos and a lime-green polo shirt in a motorhome on the Universal Studios lot. "There's an irreverence; the Grinch is antisocial, he's a rebel, he's an outsider. He's all those things that represent cool, and yet it's very safe because you know he's headed for an epiphany."
The remark is telling. If there's one quality Howard's work and personality emanates, it's reassurance. That partially accounts for how he and Grazer, after a failed initial try, convinced Audrey Geisel to give them a crack at her husband's 1957 classic. Having guarded Theodor Seuss Geisel's works since his death in 1991, she entertained several film proposals before agreeing to Howard's pitch.
"I think that Audrey Geisel appreciated that I didn't want to put the whole idea on its head, I just wanted to further develop it," Howard says.
But that development, he admits, proved the most difficult of his filmmaking career.
First, a feature-length story had to be worked out. The thin yet illustration-heavy book was enough for one act, and it was all used in Chuck Jones's half-hour television cartoon. But feature films require three acts. What Howard and writers Jeffrey Price and Peter S. Seaman ( Who Framed Roger Rabbit?) came up with was an initial hour that explained why the Grinch hated Christmas before getting down to the nasty business of pilfering Whoville's favourite holiday.
But while story was important, creating every element of Seuss's fantastical world effectively was vital -- and a gargantuan endeavour. Nothing in Whoville or the Grinch's cave looks like anything in the real world, so it all had to be built. Some 600 special-effects shots worth of Whoville and all of its surrounding, snowcapped mountains had to be computer-generated, while the live-action sets spilled across 11 soundstages. More than 400 costumes, 225 makeup designs, 8,200 ornaments, 52,000 Christmas lights, over 300 props and some two million linear feet of styrofoam for sets went into the production.
"It was an incredible visual challenge to try to figure out, first of all, what the Seussian tone really is," Howard says. "If you look at the illustrations, they're very simple and kind of Impressionistic. And we were always looking for the joke in the prop or the outfit; we wanted people to be able to go to the movie and just laugh."
Which is also where the pricey star came in. Carrey spent more two to three hours each morning having Oscar-winning makeup artist Rick Baker's latex appliances glued onto him until his famous face was unrecognizable. It was agony and it looks breathtaking on film -- but it almost didn't happen.
Universal executives were paying top dollar for the famous Canadian funnyman, and they wanted to see their investment up on the screen.
"They never really said 'We want to see Jim Carrey!' "It was more, 'Is there enough of him in there?' " Howard gently corrects. "So, they had that general concern, but by the time we were shooting they were very satisfied with it."
As for Carrey, satisfaction was not an option under all of that miserably uncomfortable green goop. Howard, to be able to empathize with what his star was enduring, even had himself encased in the Grinch makeup for one day of shooting.
"It's a little bit like wearing a full wet suit, including flippers, the mask and the hood, up on deck," Howard says.
"Jim got to be really good at it -- but on the last day of shooting, when Jim was done, the first thing he said was, 'Ain't gonna be no reshoots!' "
Like most who've been in the movie business for any length of time, the combustible Carrey appreciates Howard's unique displays of kindness.
"Ron is just the sweetest guy you would ever want to meet, a gentleman," Carrey says.
Howard says that he was able to maintain that demeanour throughout the most arduous shoot of his career. Typically, however, he gives the credit to others.
"People just gave everything they had because they liked being involved in this project," he says. "It's sort of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to do this kind of fantasy film that deals with a beloved story. So everyone wanted to try to get it right and, at least, give it everything they had."
But Howard also is uncomfortably aware that the movie goes to market lugging bursting bagfuls of bottom-line concerns. A lot of recent entertainment news stories have been pointing out how much Universal has riding on the holiday blockbuster. Meanwhile, Howard has never made a movie as expensive as Grinch and, though he's considered one of the industry's more reliable hitmakers, he's had a higher percentage of box-office duds (including his last outing, Ed TV) than such A-list friends as Steven Spielberg and George Lucas.
"This is new territory for me," Howard acknowledges. "Steven and George are accustomed to this, but I'm not, and there's a part of me that's on pins and needles about it. But it is big, big business, so there you go."
As Howard well knows, having started acting professionally at the age of 18 months. But facile as he was at the job, acting never really did it for Howard. "I don't have a performer's personality," he says. Directing, he finds, is a different story.
His next directing effort, A Beautiful Mind, is about a Nobel-winning mathematician's psychological struggles and stars Russell Crowe. It will be yet another creative departure for Howard who, unlike most filmmakers at his level, has never really exhibited discernable thematic or stylistic consistencies in his work.
"I like variety; that's what I work for," notes the non-auteur. But that's not the same thing as saying that he makes impersonal movies.
"My mom passed away a few months ago and she lo-o-oved Christmas," says Howard, who dedicated the Grinch to her. "There was an intensity to it that was really hilarious and entertaining, but I also understood what the holiday meant to her. It was about taking the time to extend yourself, to create an event, do it up right and make it special. She was really committed to that."