At the beginning of the 21st century, Shrek broke the stereotypes of animated films.
The story of the ugly but tender ogre, his friendship with Donkey, and his romantic relationship
with Princess Fiona broke every convention of animated feature films and fairy tales
in general.
With a different take on the script and a mood that would make children and adults instant
fans.
Far from a shallow and pristine main character, Shrek made his way as one of the most unusual
and lovable antiheroes in film history.
But the first act of antiheroism, showing that one could move on from adverse circumstances,
happened in real life during the production of this film and had producer Jeffrey Katzenberg
as the protagonist.
Get ready, because Shrek isn't only an incredible movie.
It also hides one of the craziest revenge stories that ever took place in Hollywood
behind the scenes.
Born in 1950, Jeffrey Katzenberg began his career at Paramount.
Within the same company, he was promoted through different positions, including the marketing
division and the television area.
His first great success was to bring the Star Trek series to the big screen, which managed
to increase the series popularity substantially.
From there, he showed his talent for discovering other projects for the company.
From critically acclaimed films like The Elephant Man to fun blockbusters like Raiders of the
Lost Ark.
Katzenberg's talent as a producer was highly regarded by Michael Eisner, Paramount's Chief
Operating Officer.
In 1984, Eisner was hired by Disney for the position of CEO.
Back then, the House of Mouse was going through a dark period, with movies that did not work
commercially or artistically.
To better understand this decline, especially in the area of animation, Eisner hired Katzenberg.
As the head of the Walt Disney film section, Katzenberg soon showed his ability to produce
movies with the right artistic team, high quality and box office success.
Although he didn't know anything about animated features, he soon became an expert on the
subject.
One of his first hits was Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, by Robert Zemeckis, which mixed animated
characters with real actors.
But Katzenberg's rise to fame started in 1989, with the premiere of The Little Mermaid.
The success of this film began what is now referred to as the second golden age of Disney.
Soon after, better and better animated feature films arrived: Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin
and The Lion King.
Beauty and the Beast became the first animated film to be nominated for an Oscar for Best
Picture.
While all this was happening, Katzenberg began a corporate innovation while negotiating the
green-light of A Nightmare Before Christmas, produced by Tim Burton, and the merging of
Disney and Pixar to make Toy Story.
With such a vision, Katzenberg was ready to take a decisive step within Disney.
In 1994 Frank Wells, the company's chief executive, died in a helicopter crash.
So, Michael Eisner had to designate his successor.
Everything made it seem like Kazteberg would be the chosen one, but that didn't happen.
Eisner stayed with executive Michael Ovitz, and Katzenberg did not take Eisner's decision
well at all.
That same year, he decided to resign from Disney, and also filed a lawsuit against Eisner
for issues of intellectual copyright.
Katzenberg won the lawsuit and Disney had to pay him almost three hundred million dollars.
To make matters even more ironic, Ovitz lasted just one year in office and retired amid several
scandals.
Back to Katzenberg, he was not unemployed for long: in late 1994 he joined his friend
Steven Spielberg and record magnate David Geffen to found the production company DreamWorks.
Each one would deal with a different area: Spielberg would take cinema, Geffen music
and Katzenberg the animated productions.
He was determined to show Disney that they were not the only company that could make
high-level animations.
His first bet was the 1998 feature Prince of Egypt, made with traditional animation.
It did not work well with either the audiences nor the critics.
They had better luck that same year with the company's first digital animation feature
film: Antz.
This movie already had a different approach than other Disney products, and an emphasis
on humor and more adult-oriented themes.
However, also in '98, Disney released A Bug's Life, through Pixar, which had a very similar
story, and made both films fall victim to comparisons.
Steve Jobs, who was Pixar's owner back then, swore that Katzenberg stole the idea.
He said that before Toy Story debuted, Katzenberg met with John Lasseter to discuss future projects
and asked him repeatedly about their release date planned for A Bug's Life.
After making Antz, Katzenberg started looking for a powerful, different idea.
And he found it in the mid-1990s, thanks to John H. Williams, one of DreamWorks executive
producers.
Williams' two children were fans of a picture book called Shrek!, by the writer and cartoonist
William Steig.
The plot was mostly about an ogre who liked ugly smells, scaring people, and rescuing
an ogre princess.
Steig set out to create a story with elements from fairy tales, but with humor and a message
of self-esteem for children.
It is worth adding that "Shrek" means "monster" in Yiddish, which derives from the German
word "Schreck", which means "terror" or "fear".
The book was published in 1990, and a year later Spielberg bought the rights to make
a film adaptation through his production company Amblin.
The animation was going to be traditional, with the voices of Bill Murray as Shrek and
Steve Martin as Donkey.
The project didn't work out, and in 1995 Kaztenberg bought the rights to Shrek for DreamWorks.
Kaztenberg's first intention was to make an animated feature film using the stop motion
technique, which Tim Burton had re-popularized in The Nightmare Before Christmas.
However, they decided that the budget would be too high and the use of this technique
did not fully convince everybody.
So they opted for digital animation.
The assigned directors were Andrew Adamson and Kelly Asbury.
Born in New Zealand, Adamson started his career working as a special effects technician and
was promoted to supervisor in films like Batman Forever and Batman & Robin.
Asbury came to Dreamworks after a long time working at Disney.
He worked on The Prince of Egypt for a short period of time, and then took the role of
director for the animated movie Spirit.
He was appointed as a co-director for Shrek, but was quickly replaced by Vicky Jenson.
Jenson's career was much more extensive in the field of animation, since she had been
part of classic shows like The Smurfs, He-Man and The Ren & Stimpy Show.
Her first role as a director was on The Baby Huey Show in the mid-1990s, but she never
directed a feature film before.
Although they already knew how to make the film, Kaztenberg did not forget the importance
of developing a good story and characters that connected with the audience.
When adapting Steig's story, they saw that several changes needed to be made.
The ogre in the book was too horrible and unattractive from a cinematic point of view,
which could lead to rejection from the audiences.
It was decided to give him a slightly more pleasant appearance.
Donkey, who only appears on two pages of the book, would become the companion of the protagonist.
Fiona also stayed and gained more dramatic weight.
The key character who was not in the book was Lord Farquad, the main villain.
The writers created it to kick-start the plot's conflict.
Another crucial element they added were the characters from other famous children's stories,
but to use them ironically.
Adamson, who was also a co-writer, planned to deconstruct traditional tales to build
a new one.
During the writing of the script, Katzenberg and Adamson had differences on the approach
of the film.
Adamson intended to do something very adult, with sexual jokes and music from the Guns
‘N’ Roses.
Katzenberg, on the other hand, wanted a film suitable for all audiences.
In the end his vision prevailed, with some more subtle jokes aimed at the older audiences.
The first option to voice Shrek was Nicolas Cage, who took down the role because he was
worried about the image that kids would have of him.
He did not want to be seen as an ogre, but later admitted that he was wrong.
The producers offered the role to Chris Farley, a comic rising from the Saturday Night Live
program, who was starting to venture into the big screen with movies like Tommy Boy
and Black Sheep.
Farley accepted the role and began recording his dialogues.
The animators even added some details of Farley's appearance to the character.
But the actor died tragically in December 1997 from his alcohol and drug problems.
He was 33 years old.
After some time, another comedian from Saturday Night Live who was also a close friend of
Farley appeared: Mike Myers.
He had already been the lead character on a popular film called Wayne's World and the
box office hit spy comedy Austin Powers.
Myers joined immediately because he wanted to work with Kaztenberg, and because of the
story's message about accepting oneself.
For Fiona's voice, they originally casted Janeane Garofalo, but she was later fired
for no clear reason.
She was replaced by Cameron Díaz.
Eddie Murphy was cast for the voice of Donkey.
According to the filmmakers, his broad jaw and white teeth was used as an inspiration
for the character's appearance, and his talent for improvising lines of comedic dialogue
gave the role much more freshness.
As for Farquad's voice, the first choice was Alan Rickman, but the actor had to take down
the offer to play Severus Snape in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.
The film's team finally decided to cast John Lithgow, who also played villain roles in
previous films.
As it often happens in animated film productions, none of the actors saw each other during the
recording sessions.
Each one recorded their voices separately, and the directors were in charge of coordinating
the levels of intensity in the interaction's between each character.
The production included an entire team of animators who had previously worked in Antz.
Their biggest challenge was animating fire, water, the fur of characters like Donkey.
But one of the most challenging tasks was animating 3D mud.
Mud was an important part of the story, because Shrek uses it for bathing in the introduction
sequence.
In order to get a more realistic feeling and capture it on the screen, one of the animators
decided to bathe in mud for real.
Bringing the characters to life was also a difficult challenge.
Donkey's design was taken from a real-life short-haired Donkey named Perry.
His appearance from the book was substantially changed.
Lord Farquad's appearance is strikingly similar to that of Michael Eisner, reinforcing the
idea that Katzenberg wanted the film to function as a response to Disney.
Farquad is a spoiled king who lives in a perfect castle and captures all the fairy tale creatures.
There is not that much of a deep analysis needed to see some coincidences.
Designing Fiona proved to be more difficult, since she was not based on any real person
or other being.
Animation supervisor Raman Hui confessed that many different sketches were made for that
character.
Over a hundred sculptures of Princess Fiona were made before the directors chose the final
one.
Since the directors set out to make the most realistic digitally animated human character
to that date, they even hired a celebrity makeup artist as a consultant.
While post-production was wrapping up, everyone seemed to be very happy… except for Mike
Myers.
The actor recorded his dialogues in his normal Canadian accent, but then realized that the
character would sound better if he had a Scottish accent.
Myers' mother was Scottish and, as the actor recalled, she used to read him children's
books with her native accent.
According to Myers, a Scottish voice would give warmth to the character.
Re-recording all the voices cost DreamWorks another four million dollars, but everyone
was amazed by the results.
Spielberg himself wrote a letter to Myers thanking him for caring so much about the
character.
Although Katzenberg vetoed the idea of putting music from the Guns N 'Roses in the film,
songs from popular bands of that time were taken into account.
Smash Mouth's “All Star” was used in the first few minutes as a reference song while
the filmmakers were looking for other songs.
But when they did the first test screenings, everyone was fascinated by how it sounded.
The directors not only used "All Star" in the final film, but also added another Smash
Mouth song to the end credits called “I’m a Believer”.
Before the movie premiered, DreamWorks' attorneys asked to see the film to make sure all the
satirical jokes to the Disney universe were not worthy of lawsuits from the rival company.
They saw nothing that could cause serious problems and, in fact, legal problems never
arose.
Shrek's journey couldn't have started better.
In May 2001 it was selected to compete for the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival,
a very rare thing for an animated Hollywood film.
The award went to Nanni Moretti's The Son's Room, but the ogre and his friends caught
the attention of the entire film community.
Shrek was released on the 18th of May of 2001, and it became an instant hit.
With a budget of around $60 million dollars, it raised more than $484 million worldwide.
On the other hand, critics also praised the movie, highlighting its originality and irreverence.
That following year, the Hollywood Academy created the Best Animated Film category, and
Shrek was the first one to win that Oscar.
In this way, DreamWorks managed to position itself as one of the big companies in the
field of animation, along with Disney and Pixar.
After such a phenomenon, four sequels were made.
The second one shows a new character called Puss in Boots, who remained a stable member
of the film series and starred in a spinoff film released in 2011.
Antonio Banderas was cast for the voice of this friendly character.
Shrek himself became an icon of pop culture, to the point that in 2010 he received his
own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
An almost impossible achievement for an animated character, accomplished only by Mickey Mouse,
The Simpsons and Winnie the Pooh.
And after all this time, we can still think about Jeffrey Kaztenberg's revenge at the
company that laid him off.
Shrek is a very good example that a bad experience can sometimes become the engine of a creative
event that continues to amuse the audiences for years and years to come.