"Bee Movie" Production Notes
HIVE TALKING
There’s an adage in Hollywood that has become accepted as gospel — it’s who you know. The genesis of “Bee Movie” is proof positive of this maxim although, in this particular instance, it could be stretched to “It’s not only who you know, it’s who they know … you know?”
For more than a decade, Jeffrey Katzenberg, the head of DreamWorks Animation, has been trying to lure comic icon Jerry Seinfeld, who triumphed as a stand-up comedian and co-creator and star of the acclaimed sitcom “Seinfeld,” into the world of feature animation. Seinfeld’s busy schedule — extensive on-the-road stand-up tours, a long-running television series and the duties of fatherhood — prevented him from even considering the offer. Besides, the comedian says, he had never thought of the right subject to mark his foray into animation; that is, until the day he was having dinner with Steven Spielberg and came up with the idea almost by accident.
Seinfeld was having dinner with Spielberg in the Hamptons. At one point in the evening, there was an unexpected lull in the conversation, and to fill the silence Seinfeld nervously blurted out an extemporaneous idea about making a movie about bees, which he would call “Bee Movie”— a riff on the less-than-flattering term for low-budget movies from Hollywood’s golden era.
Spielberg was immediately taken with the title and telephoned Katzenberg, his DreamWorks partner. The next morning, Katzenberg contacted Seinfeld to say that he wanted to move forward with “Bee Movie.” “And the next thing I knew, well, they had me doing it,” Seinfeld recalls. “But I really didn’t have an idea for the movie. All I had was the title. Luckily, it worked out.”
While his remark to Spielberg may have been off-the-cuff, the thought process behind it was not. Seinfeld has always been fascinated by the bee world: “I find the hive very interesting. I find their social hierarchy very interesting, their work process, their geometry. Honey is a pretty amazing product for a bug, you know? So when it came up, it seemed like something that I could have fun with, and that's the way it turned out.”
For Seinfeld, “Bee Movie” would explore the hidden lives of these somewhat misunderstood insects. The hook, however, would be the honey. Says Seinfeld: “If you want to tell a story about bees, what are you going to talk about? And I thought, the big thing that seems to be going on is that humans are stealing their honey. They work so hard to make this stuff, and we just take it without them really knowing. They think they're making it for themselves. And we just take it away from them and put in jars with labels. Here we are making money off of it while they're just slaving away. So, I thought that's what it should be about. That's the story.”
While he had spent many years working in filmed entertainment, in the world of animation Seinfeld was a relative novice. Again, it paid to have connections in high places, one of whom happened to have been behind the creation of the most successful animated franchise in film history — a trio of movies (with a fourth on the way) starring a giant green ogre named Shrek.
Once “Bee Movie” was given the go-ahead, Seinfeld received what could be described as an advanced placement course in Animation 101 from Katzenberg, who served as an advisor throughout the film’s production. As Seinfeld explains, “I didn't really know anything about how these movies are made. I had to learn the whole thing. Jeffrey taught me everything…he kind of mentored me throughout the entire process. I know how to write funny things, but I had no idea what to do with them in this kind of project. So he put me through a crash course of ‘Here's how you make one of these movies,’ and he pushed me to make it myself. So, I really give him all the credit for this movie getting made at all. The level of involvement I had in it was all because he taught me how to do it.”
“Bee Movie” was no “write and run” project for Seinfeld. His customary commitment to excellence was evident in every aspect of his first animated feature in much the same way as his comic vision had shaped every facet of his landmark television series. Throughout the four-year process Seinfeld wore three hats: writer, producer and lead actor. The result is a new type of animated comedy bearing his unmistakable comic stamp in every frame: the story of an everybee, Barry B. Benson, and his search for a life outside of the hive — a quest that lands him in the center of an interspecies lawsuit that will have long-lasting effects for both bees and humans.
“I have used the analogy of a sandbox before, but animation is like creating in a big sandbox,” he says. “It's like they say to you, ‘We are gonna give you a sandbox in which you can make anything you want. You can mold the sand into any shape, into any character — you can do it in any way, in any style, and create any universe you wish. But we're gonna give you the sand one grain at a time, and it's gonna take you four years.’ That was the little catch.”
AN ‘A’ TEAM FOR “BEE MOVIE”
For CG animation veteran and film director Simon J. Smith, Seinfeld’s idea of bringing together the worlds of bees and humans struck him as unconventional, to say the least. “My first thought about the script was, quite honestly, ‘This is insane. This is a mad idea,’” Smith recalls. “And I mean that in the best sense because, as you read through the story and watch the character grow, it’s quite fantastic. What was great about it was having Jerry Seinfeld's humor and point-of-view funneled through the bee character in the movie, which we've never seen before. And what’s so fantastic about that is that it’s really about us all. It's about our society and how we behave and how ridiculous we are most of the time.”
Accomplished animation director Steve Hickner found the marriage of Seinfeld and bees to be an inspired idea as well. “Jerry is the king of observational comedy,” he says. “I think his comedy is really good at taking the foibles and idiosyncrasies of people and presenting them in such a fresh way that it makes us all laugh. Jerry is definitely a part of Barry Benson, but he's a different character than you would have seen Jerry play on his show — because the nature of television is that you don’t want to finish your character arc because then the show is over. But in a movie, you need to do that. And so, Barry shows all the different sides of Jerry Seinfeld that we've never gotten to see before.”
For producer Christina Steinberg (“National Treasure”), having Seinfeld as the ‘captain of the ship’ was the gift that kept on giving. “I think there may have been a moment when Jerry thought he would just turn over the script to us and we would make the movie and he would show up at the premiere,” she says. “And then he ended up living at the studio and being involved every day for at least eight hours a day. For the animators, what Jerry brought was access to him both as one of the writers of the movie and its lead actor. He performed every line for them — doing his own stand-up in front of them twice a day. And they literally got a three-hour daily session during which they could mimic and learn from him. You started out learning about his acting and his style, and ended up absorbing his comedic timing.”
The script was produced in a style similar to the one that Seinfeld had so successfully used on the series — a completely collaborative process. That flexible group work ethic continued with Smith, Hickner, Steinberg and Seinfeld. The mutual admiration they all felt was palpable. Says Smith: “It was a great bunch of people. Steve, Christina, Jerry and myself — along with our editor Nick Fletcher — we all ended up working together in a room for three-and-a-half, four years on this movie. And it was fantastic. I had worked with Steve Hickner before on a couple of other things, and we’d always gotten on really well. He's a great guy to work with — he has a lot of energy and a lot of experience. It’s been wonderful working with him again on this project, and being joined by such an amazing group.”
Hickner echoes those sentiments. "Simon is a very talented filmmaker who leaves an indelible, smart touch on every project. He had just completed 'Shrek 4-D' for the Universal theme park, and it's pure Simon. It's an amazing 11-minute experience that's not only visceral - which you'd expect from a theme park ride - but it's also full of heart and boasts a great story. He was the ideal partner to work with on this movie."
Producer Steinberg had never worked with either director before and says, “We've obviously become quite close over the years making this, and it’s been a really great experience with them. Steve is sort of the veteran animator who has grown up at DreamWorks and is a wonderful storyteller. He knows the ins and outs of DreamWorks and is really great at helping you thread the story and the characters together and making sure they're all doing everything they're supposed to be doing. Simon is a great filmmaker. He has a great visual eye and style, plus a great sense of comedy. He’s wonderful with the animators and he loves to perform for them. He knows how to make a movie on all levels. So, it's been really a marvelous experience with the two of them. I think they’re perfect complements.”
Adds Seinfeld: “They were fantastic. Simon, Steinberg, Steve and Seinfeld, so we have a lot of ‘S’ people, and we really melded into this unit. We became like this tiny pod of people who did everything together. It was great and we got along great, and we were able to create a lot of great ideas. It's the thing I'll miss the most — this group that we’ve built.”
LOOK WHO’S TALKING
For the writer/producer/performer, having Barry as a bee out of his element provided Seinfeld with the opportunity to take a very distinct and funny look at our culture: “Barry’s a college graduate and — a little like the character in ‘The Graduate’ —he’s just not quite sure where he fits in,” Seinfeld observes.
“By a series of circumstances he ends up outside the hive, where he learns a little bit about the culture when he makes a human friend. And he gets thrown off-kilter by this, distracted and excited by the human world. So his life spins off in another direction, completely off the track of what bees are supposed to be doing.”
While human culture is ever-changing and evolving, bee culture has remained largely uniform for about 27 million years. You’re born, you go to school, you graduate, you go to work, and then you pass on. Not so bad, as long as there are choices to make along the way.
But in the one-company hive of New Hive City, about the only choice a bee gets to make is which job to accept in the conglomerate that runs every aspect of bee society, with the end result being honey. In Barry’s case, that corporation is Honex, and it offers a roster of 3,000 different positions (e.g., heating, cooling, viscosity, stirrer, pouring, crud remover, etc.). Once a bee chooses, that’s it; his job for life. No lateral moves. No advancement. No vacation. No days off. No quitting. And for Barry, that adds up to No Way.
Without knowing it, Barry mimics humans when he hesitates between graduation (he’s an alumnus of the Class of 9:15 a.m.) and going to work at Honex. His loving parents, Martin and Janet Benson, are hoping that their son will follow in Martin’s footsteps and become a “stirrer.” However, what stirs Barry is a desire to see the world outside of New Hive City.
There’s only one way out of the hive, and that is by becoming a member of the squadron of elite, buffed brave hearts known as the “pollen jocks.” The militaristic operation is responsible for gathering nectar and pollinating flowers. It’s a real man’s job. The “pollen jocks” are the only ones allowed to leave the hive to execute this essential duty of beedom. The somewhat average-sized Barry signs on for an expedition that will ultimately change his life. “In our film, there are lots and lots of bee rules,” says Seinfeld.
“When you make an animated movie, you get to create a fake universe, so you get to make up the laws of that universe and it can really be anything you want. We came up with laws like no weird shapes, such as circles and triangles —only hexagons. Bees invented the hexagon. There were laws like no buzzing past 6:00 p.m., when people are sleeping. But in the end, the main law of the story is that even though bees have always talked, they have never spoken to humans — they get enough trouble from them as it is, thank you very much.”
Barry’s expedition with the “pollen jocks” is an eye-opener, to say the least. The human world he sees is beyond his wildest imaginings, full of fantastical shapes and colors — and so many people. After a rather frightening and wholly unpleasant experience on a tennis court, an enlightening encounter on the windshield of a truck and getting caught in the rain, Barry winds up inside the apartment of a sweet Manhattan florist named Vanessa.
“Barry meets his female friend Vanessa because she saves his life in her apartment, when her other guests attempt to kill him,” observes Seinfeld. “And he just feels that if someone saves your life, you have to thank them — you don’t just fly away. So, to thank her, he has to speak to her, even though that's breaking the law. And he decides that that's what he's going do, because it would just be too impolite to not thank someone for saving your life.”
Having always been a fan of Renée Zellweger, Seinfeld immediately thought of her for the part of Vanessa. “Renée can play dramatic things and funny things and silly things and subtle things. She has an amazing skill and talent. I had met her a couple of times and I just wanted her to play this part. She's got this great voice and, in an animated movie, the voice is everything. I've worked with hundreds and hundreds of actors over the years and sometimes you're explaining and explaining, but Renée is like this beautiful violin that can play any note.”
After some initial phone conversation, Seinfeld got a chance to discuss his movie face-to-face with Zellweger at the Central Park premiere in New York of the 2004 DreamWorks Animation hit “Shark Tale,” when he was seated right next to her. (Katzenberg may have had a little something to do with the seating arrangements.)
“So, I talked with her about it and told her about my ideas for it. And we were very fortunate that she liked it too and agreed to do it.”
Zellweger’s enthusiasm for “Bee Movie” stemmed from several factors — the opportunity to work with Seinfeld, the creative freedom inherent in the medium and the amount of laughter that was sure to be a part of the job. Zellweger comments: “The only restrictions in animation are in the imaginations of the creators. You can try things a million different ways, without really having to worry about logistics. It’s really incredible what’s possible in terms of creativity. There’s an excitement in the recording session, an appreciation for what's unfolding, because you have the luxury of not having to worry about the sun going down or anybody else waiting on you. That’s so different from live-action filming.”
An amazing luxury for the cast of “Bee Movie” — and one of many inspired departures from the customary way animated films are produced — was that Seinfeld was present at every voice recording session, often recording his dialogue along with his scene partner. Typically, voice tracks are laid down singly, with the actor alone in the recording booth. But with Seinfeld on hand at every session, a fluid creative process took hold. If a certain line was not to the writer/producer’s liking, it could be reshaped on the spot, because he was there.
“Jerry is so adept at comedy,” continues Zellweger, “that he can pinpoint the difference between something being interesting and something being hilarious: a pause, an inflection, a tone, a breath. And there’s a way that you might need to just make it smaller or make it bigger, and he always knows. He's very concise. He knows in his head where he'd like to see things go and he knows how to communicate what it is that he wants, which is rare. He never suggested anything that, when I tried it, didn’t make the scene better. You know, it was always pitch-perfect. In animation, you completely develop the character through a line delivery.”
Steinberg agrees. “It was incredible. And what was so lovely is that so many of the cast were so excited to work with Jerry, and that resulted in their being more accessible to us — the direct benefit of having Jerry there at every single session. I've never seen people so excited to get into a room and start running their lines. And they made themselves available over and over again for us. It was quite a treat.” Zellweger admits that “I looked forward to every session. Every time they called and said, ‘Hey, is there a day you could be available?,’ I just couldn't wait. It was a focused time, but there was also a lot of time to laugh, which I loved.”
The budding friendship between Barry and the florist is, for Seinfeld, the heart of the film: “Their relationship is really the core of the whole movie, because you believe that they're friends. It doesn't seem weird for some reason. As soon as you see them together and you hear them talk to one another, you just think, ‘Yeah, they seem like friends. I believe that they're friends.’ And one of the most fun things about the movie is that you don't question a bee-human friendship.”
Director Smith adds, “With someone like Renée as the voice of Vanessa — she seems to be able to convey the slightest nuance with her voice — it goes a long way toward helping us believe that this woman would be the kind of human who would enjoy a friendship with a bee. She’s bright, warm, funny, likeable and kind and you hear every note when she speaks.”
According to Hickner, “My favorite moment in the whole movie is that scene in which Vanessa and Barry exchange looks as she takes him very carefully in the glass over to the windowsill and drops him off, and that little moment where he hangs on and doesn’t want to go, and then drops onto the leaf — it’s just fabulous.”
If Barry is the free spirit, then his best friend, Adam Flayman, is just the opposite. Adam’s content to live the bee way and not challenge the system. He loves the idea of working in honey for the rest of his life, not really caring what job he takes. He just wants to be a contributing member to the hive.
Barry’s friend Adam is voiced by Jerry’s friend Matthew Broderick, who has lent his voice to other animated features. The opportunity to work with one of his close friends and record the dialogue “live” with him made the offer to play the role very appealing. “Recording ‘Bee Movie’ was very different,” he says. “You’re usually isolated in a glass booth with people telling you stuff. So it was great to have Jerry on the same side of the glass. It made it so much easier. I didn’t have to think so much about what I was saying. You can just treat it more like you’re doing a real scene, having another person to talk to, although it eventually turns into doing four versions of line five.”
The on-the-fly nature of the sessions also appealed to Broderick’s comedic sensibilities, he says. “We could try it various ways, but basically I ended up following Jerry’s lead, which made for more of a natural conversation. I’ve done other animated films where I don’t even know who the other actor in the scene is. This was a fun process. You just kept re-doing it until it worked.”
Broderick’s love of animation was also a plus. “I love watching animated films, and it’s so nice to be a part of one because I know it will be around and be something children can watch, like my kid. They last, and they’re important to children. When I was a kid I loved Bugs Bunny, you know? I grew up on that type of cartoon, which I also loved, and it's just fun to be involved in animation.”
Director Smith also found the casting of Broderick advantageous to the film, explaining, “It was amazing, the magic that we got on this movie by casting Matthew Broderick, which was just a coincidence. Matthew’s playing Barry’s best friend and he’s Jerry’s best friend. Recording them together, we got that kind of instant camaraderie that I don't think we would've had if we just had any two actors in the same room working on a scene.”
“Matthew’s a friend of mine, and he’s a very funny guy with a very dry, subtle kind of delivery, which I love,” says Seinfeld. “I hadn’t really thought much of doing movies, really. So I thought this was an opportunity where we could work together. And whatever they may say, actors really love doing these movies because you just show up in your t-shirt and you’re in and out in 45 minutes, even though there are multiple recordings.”
Every movie that has a best friend must also have an adversary. Enter the unctuous mouth-of-the-South lawyer Layton T. Montgomery — who hasn’t lost a case in 35 years of practice — as played by the all-around good ol’ boy John Goodman. “Layton’s the classic, slightly corrupt Southern lawyer who likes to talk about goading and uses words like ‘wo-man,’” laughs Seinfeld. “This is a big, heavy guy with a big suit, and not completely on the up-and-up in some of the tactics he uses to try and win the case.”
Continues Smith: “We wanted a nice, big voice for Layton. He was going to be taking over the courtroom as a stage and just trying to swamp Barry verbally in every way that he could. John Goodman seemed perfect to bring this larger-than-life character to life, to really execute Layton perfectly. We wanted to make sure that everybody knew Layton was the bad guy, right? After all, his license plate reads ‘A-L-I-B-U-Y.’ So something dodgy is going on there.” (Viewers might miss Montgomery’s first appearance onscreen — as a large pair of shoes stepping into frame and stomping a hapless beetle who unfortunately walks across the lawyer’s path.)
“To play someone like Layton T. Montgomery, even to give him a voice, is something that makes an actor’s juices flow,” enthuses Goodman. “To say that recording sessions were fun is kind of an understatement. And while he may be, well, somewhat shady, he’s just doing his job. He may not happen to like insects, but someone has to defend the human race, you know?”
While Layton may be out for blood in the courtroom, there’s another guy who’s out for it all the time, Mooseblood the mosquito (so named because of his preference for the heady drink produced by the Moose). The part, as initially scripted, was barely more than a few lines (Barry meets him on the windshield of a truck), but when Seinfeld asked superstar comedian and filmmaker Chris Rock to provide the voice, the size of the part immediately changed. “Chris and I ad-libbed most of the scenes that we did together and he made up this whole story about how hard it is for mosquitoes to get mosquito girls because they’re more interested in dragonflies and moths and always trying to trade up. They don’t want to be with a mosquito,” Seinfeld relates.
As director Hickner observes, “The interesting thing about working with Jerry and Chris Rock is that these are two of the premier comics working in the world today. And so, after we got the lines that had been written, Jerry just started throwing out lines to Chris. And once again, because Jerry and Chris are friends and they’ve known each other for years, we got that instant camaraderie between them, and they just started vamping. And a lot of that is what you see in that horn scene in the movie.” (After the two meet on the windshield, they come to rest inside the truck’s horn for a chat.)
Rock was happy to contribute to the project: “When Jerry called, I was glad to be able to work with him. He’s like, one of the eight great comedians in the world, and we’ve never really worked together on anything. The original Mooseblood was a smaller part. Luckily for me, I read with Jerry. I don't think the part would have gotten any bigger if Jerry wasn't there that day, because the fact that he was there, well, it makes you want to show off a little bit. It’s that comedic thing, like ‘Ah, a funny guy — I want to show my funny friend that I’m funny, too.’ So they definitely got more out of me with him being there than they would have gotten without him being there.”
Steinberg can attest to the power of joint recording sessions: “They just started ad-libbing, and this two-line role turned into something like a 15-line role with a repeat performance at the end of the movie because we all fell in love with his character. And it was such a great day — we all felt like we should have paid admission to sit there and watch these two guys together ad-libbing and cracking each other up for three hours.”
The laughs continued during recording sessions with “Seinfeld” alum Patrick Warburton, whom Jerry always had in mind as the beefy, ‘body-by-God-and-mind-by-Mattel’ tennis partner to Vanessa named, appropriately, Ken — who also aspires to become Vanessa’s boyfriend and just happens to be deathly allergic to bees.
Warburton found the project quite to his liking and was struck by the ‘classic Seinfeld’ feeling to the storyline: “It seems like something that I think would be appealing to Jerry because it's one of the ultimate stories about this world of exploitation. I mean, we're not really out there exploiting ants. Every now and then, we shove a few ants in an ant farm, but other than that, we could do without the ants. But bees — we've been eating their honey for years and years, and they’ve been pollinating all of our trees and plants for years and years. And what have bees seen from any of this? Absolutely nothing. And so you take that, and add to it all of our political correctness, and it's almost feasible that this could happen, that bees might sue humans for exploitation. Sounds like something that Jerry could have fun with all over the place.”
For Warburton, the match of Seinfeld and DreamWorks is ideal. “I'm really very impressed by the animation,” he says. “We've come to expect that higher level from DreamWorks, and I expected nothing less than what I saw. This is DreamWorks that we're talking about here. It's not just somebody out there scribbling stuff up. They’ve got animation down to a science. It's fun and it's whimsical, creative and very colorful.”
As Steinberg remembers, “Jerry was always on the floor laughing anytime Patrick said anything. So, we had to book our sessions for about four hours even if we only needed three lines from Patrick, because it would turn into such a laugh fest. There's so much good dialogue that we got from Patrick; we have a whole other movie we can make just with him.”
The producer also found herself in the unenviable position of ad hoc policewoman during the sessions: “I guess that's sort of my job. And, often, I had to wrangle everybody back, because they'd all be on the floor hysterical. But I sort of needed to make sure we got all the lines that we needed to get, and then they were allowed to have fun and play. And we usually ended up with great material that was just written on the spot.”
As the supportive, though concerned, “bee parents” Martin and Janet Benson, the filmmakers slotted Oscar® winners Barry Levinson and Kathy Bates. As Hickner explains, “They want him to work in the honey field and be a success, because the expectation is that, as a bee, when you’re out of college, that's what they do; they work in the honey field. And so, they hoped he'd be a good stirrer like his father.”
But when Barry begins to look for a life bigger than being a company man can provide, the Bensons are, at first, taken aback, though they ultimately love and support their son no matter what he chooses. As Smith tells it, “Jerry had worked with Barry Levinson before on some other projects, and he loves the sound of his voice and he knew he was a great comic. So he invited him to be the father, and that worked out tremendously well. And then, well, Kathy Bates is…Kathy Bates. I mean, she's fantastic. She can play all types of people, all types of characters, and she seemed to be the perfect match for Barry's mom.”
Seinfeld and his team filled the other roles with an amazing array of talents, all of whom share a flare for comedy. They included legendary veteran of film and theater Rip Torn as the leader of the “Top Gun” squad of “pollen jocks,” Lou Lo Duca; Emmy winner Megan Mullally as Trudy, the Honex tour guide who gives a whole new depth of meaning to the word “bubbly”; and popular comic character actor Larry Miller as Dean Buzzwell, the head of Winger University and the man in charge of the job board, where graduates select from among the 3,000 jobs available at Honex.
“One of the terrific things that I love about this movie is that you never quite know where it’s going,” says Hickner. “At the beginning, Barry goes outside the hive, and you think this is going to be a story of a bee who wants to be a ‘pollen jock.’ Then he meets this woman and you think, okay, this is going be a story about a friendship between a bee and this human. And then we have this discovery of honey, and the movie opens up in an even bigger way and becomes the story of the bees suing the human the race.”
The production was lucky to have someone like Simon Smith around, not only because he’s an accomplished animation director, but also because he’s an incredibly talented voice artist. Early in production, temporary voice tracks were recorded as “stand-in” tracks for the artists, while the film and storyline were undergoing refinement. Smith ended up providing a large number of those voices before the talents’ tracks were incorporated. “Early on, Simon had many voices in the film, somewhere around 70 percent of it!,” says Steinberg. “Simon is an unknown secret — a great, great actor and he can do an array of voices. He acted out many of the roles with the animators and we ended up having him in the movie quite a bit.” (A few of his voices remain in the finished production: the bee who provides Barry with a waiver to sign before taking off with the “pollen jocks”; the truck driver who clears his windshield of Barry, Mooseblood and the other insects with wipers and fluid; and a bee engineer conducting a parachute test). “I guess it’s the animation equivalent of Alfred Hitchcock making a cameo in his own film!” concludes Smith.
FROM MAN TO MACHINE:
TAKING “BEE MOVIE” FROM THE PAGE TO THE COMPUTER
2007 Film Entertainment Magazine / EMOL.org. All rights reserved.
Bee Movie
