Fans of the film might be surprised to find out that the key writer behind Honey, I Shrunk the Kids is best known for his work on horror films. Stuart Gordon is revered by terror buffs for his direction of H.P. Lovecraft's cult classic Re-Animator (1985). In interviews about Honey, however, he contends that even this film is a horror film! He explains, "Think about it. It's really the same story - mad scientist and experiments that go terribly wrong, with giant insects and all the elements of classic horror. The tone was a little different. Although, it was funny, when I was working on it, Disney was worried that I was going to kill all the kids [laughs], and I kept saying...'No, I don't really want to kill them, but I want the audience to think that they might die. There should be a lot of tension in that story.'" Understandably, the Mouse House had some reservations about a horror director writing a film geared towards children-but Gordon was ultimately successfully in convincing studio execs he was the man for the job. The director recalled this story years later about the giant-sized creatures in the film:
"It was funny, Disney was very worried about it when we were working on it. They kept saying, 'We want this to be more like The Absent-Minded Professor [1988] and less like The Fly [1986].' I had a big argument with them about what the ants should look like in Honey, I Shrunk the Kids. They said to me, 'What is this ant going to look like?' and I said, 'Well, it's going to look like an ant.' They said, 'Isn't that going to scare the kids?' I said, 'What do you think it should look like?' They said, 'Well, we think it should have blue eyes [and] look sort of like E.T.' I said, 'Well, E.T. scared more kids than an ant does.' Finally, it came down to, I had to take the executives to the shop that was building this giant ant puppet, and I said, 'In a way, it's good that they think it's scary when they first see it, then it turns out that it's not scary, it's nice.' And when I said that, the ant, the guy that was puppeting it, had the ant come up and he put its antennae over my shoulders and sort of nuzzled me, like a horse would nuzzle somebody. Then all of a sudden it was OK. The Disney guys got it. They were very concerned about that movie."
The oversized creatures and features are some of the most popular aspects of the film. The ants were sculpted out of latex foam core and covered in horsehair. Giant grass blades were formed from optical fibers and urethane foam. And what about those massive Cheerios? Why, textured inner tubes, floating in thickened, colored water to resemble milk. Bluescreening was a technique widely used in the film. As Moranis points out, "For most of the film, I don't really play with the kids, I'm playing either with something added in blue screen later, or something that will be matted together." The ant-riding scene is an excellent example of stop-motion animation, done by one of the best animators in the business. David Allen began his career bringing characters like Gumby, David and Goliath, and the Pillsbury Doughboy to life; while most of his work was for sci-fi or horror flicks, he also produced sequences for films like *batteries not included (1987).
Honey was director Joe Johnston's first film; a long-time Lucasfilm employee, he was an effects technician on Star Wars (1977)-as well as an uncredited Storm Trooper - and won a shared Oscar® for the effects in Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981). Johnston went on from Honey to helm films like Jumanji (1995), October Sky (1999), and most recently, Hidalgo (2004). The success of Honey, I Shrunk the Kids spawned a theatre sequel-Honey, I Blew Up the Kid (1992) as well as a direct-to-video offering Honey, We Shrank Ourselves (1997). It also inspired a popular ride attraction at both Disneyland and Disneyworld. Despite its distinctive title, the project's original name was known under a different moniker: the majestic "Teenie Weenies." It was changed in favor of a funnier title that would be more appealing to adult viewers.
Producer: Penney Finkelman Cox, Thomas G. Smith
Director: Joe Johnston
Screenplay: Stuart Gordon, Brian Yuzna, Ed Naha, Tom Schulman
Cinematography: Hiro Narita
Film Editing: Michael A. Stevenson
Art Direction: Dorree Cooper, John Iacovelli
Music: James Horner
Cast: Rick Moranis (Wayne Szalinski), Matt Frewer (Russ Thompson, Sr.), Marcia Strassman (Diane Szalinski), Kristine Sutherland (Mae Thompson), Thomas Wilson Brown (Russ Thompson, Jr.), Jared Rushton (Ronald Thompson).
C-101m. Letterboxed.
by Eleanor Quin
