Welcome to another edition of a series that I like to call Did You Know?. Inspired a little by the Nostalgia Critic's "What You Never Knew" series, this series will allow me to share with you some interesting tidbits, behind-the-scenes information, and fun facts about an animated movie or TV series. Because I like sharing new information with people.
For this edition of Did You Know?, I wanted to talk about one of PIXAR's most underrated movies - specifically, their second film, A Bug's Life.
Sandwiched in between the first two Toy Story movies, you rarely see people talk about A Bug's Life nowadays. And if they DO talk about it, it's usually to claim it's one of PIXAR's weaker movies (and that Antz is better - I haven't seen it, but from what I do know about that film, I sincerely doubt that). Personally, I've always liked it. Which is ironic, because I'm terrified of bugs. Well, real bugs, that is... animated bugs I'm okay with for the most part.
There's a lot about this film that you might not know. In fact, there's a lot of things about the film that I didn't know before I did this blog post. You probably know that the Pizza Planet Truck from Toy Story is parked outside the trailer that you see just before Flik enters the bug city. You might also know that a young Ashley Tisdale (of High School Musical fame) voices one of Dot's fellow Blueberry Scouts. And you probably already know that PIXAR came up with the idea for this movie, Monsters Inc., and WALL-E at the same lunch outing. But did you know any of THESE things?
1) The first draft of the script had Flik as a red ant creatively named Red, and instead of being a member of the colony he was one of the circus bugs. After P.T. fired them all, Red would've convinced the circus bugs to trick the ant colony into believing that they were warriors so that they could mooch off them. They decided to have Flik/Red be part of the ant colony instead because they thought it would give him more of an arc and "handcuff" him to the main conflict better. The other part about the circus bugs intentionally tricking the ant colony in order to mooch off them was likely changed so that they didn't come across as unlikeable jerks.
When creating Flik, the filmmakers wanted to make him "the biggest geek you could possibly imagine" - which apparently wasn't very hard for them to research. Bob Peterson came up with a lot of ideas for how to make Flik even more of a geek (and doesn't realize it).
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| Concept art for Flik... or, as he was originally called, Red. |
2) A Bug's Life used almost ten times the computing power that Toy Story required. It had a footage rendering server that was seven times as large as the one for Toy Story, twenty-three more animators, over sixty more shots, about two hundred and seventy more models and shaders, and one thousand and fifty-five more feet (characters' feet, that is - which makes sense, since, y'know, bugs) than Toy Story.
3) Each character is made up of many, many texture layers. The grasshoppers, for example, required around one hundred texture files each.
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| More concept art. |
4) The film was inspired by Aesop's fable The Grasshopper and the Ant (which was also adapted into a short film by Disney in 1934). Mind you, in the original fable, the grasshopper wasn't a villain.
5) They initially thought of calling the film "Bug Story", but they became concerned that if they did everyone would think that PIXAR would name ALL of their movies "[SOMETHING] Story" ("Monster Story", "Fish Story", "Superhero Story", etc.) Besides, unlike Toy Story, "Bug Story" doesn't qualify as a pun (say "Toy Story" out loud, then think about where people usually buy toys... or at least did before online shopping took over).
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| Still more concept art. |
6) This was the first PIXAR film to have the iconic PIXAR logo (with the lamp jumping on the letter "I") at the beginning.
7) A Bug's Life and Toy Story 2 were in production at the same time, so a lot of the same props appear in both movies - Buster's collar can be seen at P.T. Flea's circus (a tag on the collar reveals that it belongs to "Jenny", a reference to animator Jennifer Cha), as can a couple of the ice cube trays that Andy's mom has out at her yard sale. Also at the yard sale is a box of lighter fluid, which shows up as P.T. accidentally messes up the "scare the grasshoppers away with a giant fake bird" plan, and multiple boxes that also appear in the bug city. This video about the Easter Eggs in Toy Story 2 goes into more information.
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| Concept art by Peter de Seve. |
8) Concept art shows that Gypsy was originally going to be a bee. Her moth ruff includes 15,000 individual hairs.
9) Robert De Niro was offered the role of Hopper, but turned it down. When Kevin Spacey was offered the role, he jumped (no pun intended... y'know, 'cause it's a grasshopper) at the chance. Hopper's line "Are you saying I'm stupid? Do I look stupid to you?" was ad-libbed by Kevin.
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| Concept art for the grasshoppers. |
10) Rosemary Harris, Faith Prince, Deborah Rush, and Doris Belack all auditioned to lend their voices to the film. For which characters, I don't know.
11) P.T. Flea is John Ratzenberger's favorite of the many characters he's voiced for PIXAR because he gets a kick out of "those kinds of characters, people who just go into a rage for [no] explicable reason". P.T.'s "I'm Gonna Be Rich" song was ad-libbed by him. In addition to P.T., he also voices one of the bugs at the bar (the one that says "Hair of the dog you bit!"), a reference to his character from Cheers.
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| Concept art for P.T. Flea. |
12) P.T.'s circus train is made out of animal cracker boxes - specifically, boxes of "Casey Jr. Cookies", a reference to the circus train from Dumbo. The cookies' manufacturer, according to the box, is the "J. Grant Bakery", which references Dumbo writer Joe Grant. Also on the box is a banner reading "Since 1957", which is John Lasseter's year of birth. The box also has a recommended daily intake of eight thousand calories.
13) Tuck and Roll were inspired by a drawing that Andrew Stanton did of two bugs fighting when he was in the second grade - subconsiously, because Andrew didn't find that drawing until after they'd created the characters. The idea was that, much like how the Ringling Brothers circus had acts from all around the world, it would be funny to have performers as part of the bug circus who spoke a foreign language that nobody else could understand.
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| Concept art for Flik. I'm really glad they decided not to give him hair... |
14) When the filmmakers first started writing the "Flik tries to get Dot to pretend that a rock is a seed" scene ("But it's a rock."), they felt that it sounded "overly sincere". So they rewrote it to make it a bit more comedic and less sappy. As Jon Lasseter put it, "As soon as you start getting nice and sweet, you try to poke a hole in it and poke fun at it... we try to get sincerity through insincerity."
15) Look at this screencap of Flik in the bug city. Notice anything?
Yep - in the back is the poster for the Broadway adaptation of The Lion King! In the very same position as it was in Times Square in real life. In fact, the whole bug city is meant to look like Times Square.
That's not the only reference to The Lion King in the movie - earlier, Hopper describes the bugs' way of life as "one of those Circle of Life kind of things." That one is a bit less subtle.
16) Speaking of the bug city, all over the place on the boxes that form it are the names of the writers' kids. For example, there's "JuJu's Litter", "Hannah's Bananas", and "PJ Pop".
17) The millipedes who pull P.T.'s circus train are rarely seen in close-up shots because they were incredibly hard to animate. Part of the reason the circus bugs pull the train up to fly it away at the end is so they didn't have to animate the millipedes again.
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| Concept art for Slim. |
18) Remember that Roger "Squidward Tentacles" Bumpass-voiced mosquito Flik encounters at the bar? He shouldn't have ordered a "Bloody Mary" - in real life, the male mosquitos don't drink blood, only female ones do (the blood is used to produce the eggs). Of course, in real life ants aren't blue and purple, nor do they talk or walk around on two legs...
19) A Bug's Life is the second example of a Disney movie having a theme park attraction based on it open before the film's release (the first time was when Sleeping Beauty Castle at Disneyland opened in 1955, before Sleeping Beauty itself was released in 1959). It's Tough to Be a Bug!, the terrifying 4D show starring Flik and Hopper at Walt Disney World, opened in April of 1998, whereas A Bug's Life was released in November of that year.
20) I already mentioned the Pizza Planet Truck's appearance in the movie, but there are two more references to the restaurant from Toy Story in the movie. On top of the bar where Flik first encounters the Circus Bugs is the Pizza Planet "Mega Gulp" cup that Woody hides under.
And outside P.T.'s circus is a can of "Dr. Catmull's Old-Fashioned Root Beer", which could also be seen in Sid's room in Toy Story. This is actually a double Easter Egg - it's also a reference to Ed Catmull, co-founder of PIXAR.
21) Somebody on Reddit pointed out that there's a case of foreshadowing in the movie. What is the first thing we see (after the PIXAR logo, I mean)? The sun. But then a leaf falls on the sun, revealing that we weren't looking at the sun itself, but rather its reflection in the water. It's symbolizes the movie's theme of distorted perception - the ants learn that they're capable of more than they'd originally thought.
According to John Lasseter, the first shot of the movie was very important to the filmmakers because they wanted to show the audience a world they were familiar with - the human world - and take them down to that same world from a bug's point of view. Apparently, it was the most difficult shot in the movie to do.
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| "RUN! THEY'RE HERE TO LECTURE US ABOUT WHY ANTZ IS BETTER EVEN THOUGH IT'S A BLATANT KNOCKOFF THAT JEFFREY KATZENBERG TRIED TO BRIBE JOHN LASSETER WITH!" |
22) The Queen's having a pet aphid named Aphie isn't too far a cry from real life. Actually, ants treat aphids more like livestock - they herd aphids for the sweet nectar that they produce and in turn the ants protect aphids from predators.
23) Slim's line "Boy, these folks are sure hard-up for entertainment!" is a reference to a very similar line in the 1968 film Three Amigos! (specifically, "They're really starved for entertainment around here.").
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| Concept art for Francis. |
24) After creating the character of Molt and hiring Richard Kind to do the voice, the filmmakers realized they had a plot hole - if this one grasshopper was so tremendously stupid, why would the smart, tough, ruthless Hopper keep him alive? So then they thought, "Hey, what if we made him his brother?" and thus came up with a justification for Hopper not killing Molt (not that he isn't tempted). And having Molt around kept them from making Hopper too comedic and, as a result, less intimidating.
25) Joe Ranft initially just did the scratch track (a temporary voice track for use in the animatics before the actual actor could be cast) for Heimlich. Various German actors were brought in to read for the part, but they couldn't find anybody better than Joe, so they decided to just have him do Heimlich. Joe also voices the fly who yells "BURN 'IM AGAIN!".
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| Concept art for the Circus Bugs. |
26) The very first sequence of the film to be animated was the one where the circus bugs screw up their act and set P.T. Flea on fire. The crew came up with lots of material for the circus bugs, but the film wasn't long enough to include all of it (at least without pushing Flik, the main character, to the side).
27) The Queen is based visually on Phyllis Diller, her voice actress - that crown she wears is inspired by Phyllis' hairdo and various hats.
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| Concept art for the city that Flik finds the Circus Bugs in. |
28) Thumper (the crazy attack dog-like grasshopper) is, of course, named after the cute little bunny rabbit from Bambi, who is John Lasseter's favorite Disney character. They considered casting an actor to do Thumper's voice, but in the actual movie he's "voiced" by recordings of ape noises taken at a primate research center in Texas.
29) The reason why the bar where Flik meets the circus bugs is a can? Because bugs can crawl on walls and ceilings, and the crew thought that the idea of a bar with tables on the walls and ceilings in addition to the floor was funny. In the audio commentary, they admit that the scene in the bar was the one where they put in all of their "groaners" and sight gags... apparently, they drew the line at having a fly go up to another fly and say, "Excuse me, is this stool taken?".
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| Concept art for the bar. |
30) To promote the film, Disney and PIXAR launched a "mall tour" based on the movie for a few months before its release in 1998. At various malls across the country, you could find a themed exhibit that included two live stage shows, a behind the scenes look at computer animation, and interactive games and activities. Neat, huh?
31) Finally, it's been said that life imitates art, and that saying might have more truth to it than you'd think. See, Dim was intended to be just a generic rhinoceros beetle not based on any specific species. However, in 2007 - a whopping eight years after the film's release - a new species of rhinoceros beetle (known as Megaceras briansaltini) was discovered with a horn that looked exactly like Dim's. Brett C. Ratcliffe, who discovered the bug, dubbed this "The Dim Effect".
Sources:
- The film's DVD commentary
For more fun facts about A Bug's Life, I'd recommend watching this video. Or you could watch the DVD commentary like I did.
If you know anything about A Bug's Life that I didn't mention here, feel free to mention it in the comments section below.
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