By Kylee Dawson
When Truman Hanks brought home a copy of John Nickle’s “The Ant Bully” from his Kindergarten library five years ago, he had no idea his father, Tom Hanks, would have a hand in its incarnation to the 3D screen.
“He brought it home, we read it and before we were done, we realized we had what could make a very, very delightful movie,” Hanks said, moments before a screening of the film, at The Bridge's IMAX Theatre in Culver City, Calif.
And though he gives much recognition to his son, Hanks gives most of the credit to the film’s director, John A. Davis, head of DNA Productions Inc. and co-mastermind behind the Oscar nominated, Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius.
“As a matter of fact, I took my son to see Jimmy Neutron not long after we read the book,” Hanks added, "literally, perhaps, that weekend, and the marriage was made. We just handed it over to John and said, 'What do you think?'"
The Ant Bully is about a young boy, Lucas Nickle, who, after being bullied himself, uses the ants in his front yard as scapegoats to vent his frustration. To teach him a lesson, the ants shrink Lucas, forcing him to live as one of them.
Because this is Hollywood, there are a number of considerable differences between the book and the film, right down to the main character’s age, who was 6 originally.
“I aged him up,” Davis said. “I made him 10 'cause it took four years to make the movie.”
The film incorporates the vocal talents of Meryl Streep, Julia Roberts, Nicolas Cage, Regina King, Ricardo Montalban and Bruce Campbell as ants, Paul Giamatti as the shady bug exterminator, Zach Tyler Eisen as Lucas, Cheri Oteri and Larry Miller as Lucas’ parents, and Lilly Tomlin as Lucas’ alien-obsessed grandmother.
Over the course of four years, Davis said many of the actors had to record and re-record their parts throughout production. However, Miller believes the actors had it easy.
“If it’s interesting, if it’s funny visually, if it has a voice to it, it’s not the actor," said Miller. "We do our jobs and that’s fun for us. It’s not anything else really creative. It’s from this guy, John, who has a sense visually of what he thinks is funny. And, if this movie is good, and I think it’s terrific, it’s because of him.”
“I had 250 people slaving away with me in Dallas, all contributing great ideas,” Davis said.
“Much like ants,” Miller added.
Davis also decided against using live action to prevent the human animated characters from becoming too real.
“Humans are notoriously difficult to animate in CG because the CG wants to make them look so real and the computer wants to do things that kinda look real,” Davis said. “It’s designed to do that and so you’re always expecting to make them look slightly less than real. But, sometimes if they get too real, they can get a little creepy looking, and I like to stylize them a little bit more.
“With this film, it was a little trickier too because we had ant and human and then they had to look good in their separate worlds, but then they had to look good together. And ‘cause I wanted there to be a heightened level of reality in the texture, it meant that we had to make the design a little less real. And we started marrying those two together.”
To avoid too many comparisons to its cinematic ant predecessors Antz and A Bug’s Life, Davis also decided to create a whole new culture of ants by researching aboriginal cultures and bringing out “ant qualities,” such as non-verbal communications.
“Their heart really is in their butt,” Davis said. “I didn’t know that.”
And, unlike its predecessors, The Ant Bully is presented entirely in 3D.
“I think we began making this movie with the understanding that it would be in IMAX,” Hanks said, having contributed more than his voice to The Polar Express, the first mainstream film (animated or otherwise) to be simultaneously released in a 3D IMAX format.
Though The Ant Bully does obviously target children, most adults can relate to being bullied, as a few of the actors recalled.
“I still remember her name. Her name was Deba!” said Regina King, who supplies the voice of the ant, Kreela. “Sounds like a bully. And, I remember she got after me and my friend Victoria. Victoria bit a big chunk out of her back and Deba was no longer the bully. Fourth grade. I’ll never forget.”
“I was tied to a tree and left there,” Cheri Oteri added.
At the time, she was about six and the culprits were a year older. However, she didn’t turn them in, fearing she’d make them “look bad.”
“I didn’t want them to beat me up again, so I was bullied a lot,” Oteri said. “And they did fall into drugs later.”
“I’m trying hard to become a bully now,” Miller said. “It’s always been just a crazy dream. I think like most comics, like most guys, like most writers, frankly anyone in America and in the world has been bullied by someone at some point. It might not have been very extreme or it might have been one moment of fear, but . . . I can still remember getting my shoes stepped on once and getting punched and I remember saying, 'Dad?'
“I remember that in school and these things stick with us,” Miller continued. “But, unless you’re the bully, I think everyone here has gotten pushed or punched or stepped on figuratively.”
“In fact, Nic Cage confided in me that he was terrified of John Travolta through all of 'Face Off,'" Hanks said.
The Ant Bully opens in theatres and IMAX on Friday, July 28, 2006.
