Special Report From Rhett Wickham: Honing the Range (Part Two)
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RW
Were there any surprises in the production. I don’t mean shock surprises but the good kind, the "Wow, how about that!?" sort.

FINN
You know we talked about this a lot in some other places, but we actually brought Rosanne in during the last third of production, and it was really the writing on the character that was broken. Again to give you an idea of the support we had from the studio, we had had a screening in the end of January 2002 and we were supposed to finish up…

SANFORD
We had a screening, and it was the end of 2002, and they were like getting ready to roll off animators, they were already scheduling winding down production and Tom had been there and Pam and Michael had been there and they liked it and thought "Good movie" and they sat in the room and gave us our notes and in fact Tom said "This is a really good movie. You’ve done a good job, it’s a good movie. However this movie has to be great. It’s not great yet." Tom even said "I think there are maybe two ideas-

FINN
Two BIG ideas

SANFORD
"Two big ideas that need to come out that will change this into a great movie." And he gave a couple of examples using .. uhm,.. in "Toy Story" it was the idea that Buzz…initially Buzz was a toy and knew he was a toy-

FINN
It was the plastic toy versus the wood toy - Well I’m the wood toy! Well I’m the plastic toy! Well I’m the old toy! Well I’m the new toy!

SANFORD
And then very late in production "Well what if Buzz didn’t know he was a toy? What if he was a delusional guy who thought he was a Space Ranger?" Tom said "Like that. You’ve gotta’ have an idea

SANFORD/FINN (in unison)
‘That big!’ (laughter)

FINN
That good. (laughter)

SANFORD
And that good. They actually said "Go away for…

FINN
"We’ll give you like a week to clear your schedule and discuss this with your colleagues, other directors on other movies, other producers, other story people."

SANFORD
And they halted production.

FINN
"Just think about it and then we’ll get together next week and discuss it." They..uh…you know that was kinda’ hard to hear cuz’ we really thought we were in the home stretch and what we were hearing was … in the nicest possible way what they were saying you’re not where you need to be if this movie is going to be as good as it can be. And so..okay, let’s go talk and go listen. And they gave us a bungalow on the equestrian center lot for two days and we screened the movie for a bunch of people who hadn’t seen it and … uh… I guess it was mostly story people and directors.

SANFORD
It was like..let me see if I can remember. It was Mark Dindal, Randy Fullmer, Don Hahn…

FINN
…Don Hall, Steve Anderson

SANFORD
Was Steve Anderson there?

FINN
I don’t know…

SANFORD
I remember Steve being there. Maybe he was in Florida. I know Chris and Dean couldn’t make it. They were on our list but they couldn’t make it because they were too embroiled in LILO.

FINN
Chris Williams was there.

SANFORD
Chris Williams was there, Don Long was there…it was like the cream of the story/director crop. We talked about a bunch of things that were really effective. One of the ideas that came out of it right away was the idea that Pearl’s farm was like a Wildlife Way Station, like she took in animals from other farms that couldn’t make it, and that was really important.

FINN
Uhm hum.

SANFORD
But the other thing was that they kept talking about the cows. And they said ‘You know I get Mrs. Caloway, I get Grace, but I don’t get Maggie at all.’ And then Don Hahn even said ‘Do you need three cows? Could you just have the two?’ And we said you gotta’ have Maggie! Maggie gets the idea. Maggie gets the idea to go for the..go..you know to leave the farm, Maggie gets the idea to go after Slim. Maggie gets this idea..Maggie’s the impetus. Caloway’s too fearful and Grace is too spacey.

FINN
The other thing is that three cows is a group, and this is really about groups versus loners, and that’s the sort of Western dynamic that we were turning on its ear. And two is a duo. Two is a buddy movie and it had to be a group.

SANFORD
When we explained all these things that Maggie … all these story points that Maggie served and how the other two characters couldn’t do it they said ‘Yeah, I see that Caloway couldn’t do it, and Grace couldn’t do it’ and we said ‘Yeah, Maggie does all these things’ and they said ‘Really? We don’t get that.’

FINN
‘We’re not getting it.’

SANFORD
And we’re like ‘Wow!’ Because we state it and overstate it. We’ve got a problem. So the next day we were getting ready to just spitball ideas and we’re talking with Don Hahn and Alice. Don Hahn said "Have you given any thought to recasting the character?" And we said "Wow, that’s a big idea." And what was funny was that I had screened the movie for my wife a couple of times, and she never, to her credit, she always said the same thing about Maggie "I don’t like her." "Why?" "I don’t know, I just don’t like her."

FINN
The original concept of the character was that she was the consensus builder, the Earth mother, the rock.

SANFORD
She was the oldest cow on the farm. She was the mother cow that everybody came to. What was funny was the we…Will and I had always talked independently about what kind of character we wanted and Roasanne’s name always came up. "Wasn’t Rosanne great on her show?!" Wasn’t Rosanne this, wasn’t Rosanne that.

FINN
Who makes you laugh? People were saying when the cows are playing off other characters they’re funny but they’re not funny when they’re on their own. So we talked about who makes you laugh. You know we both loved Eddie Murphy, we both loved Rosanne, we both loved Rodney Dangerfield. This holy trinity of comedians, and it never occurred to us that there was the answer.

SANFORD
It’s funny because I talked about this with my wife, and she said "Why don’t you just cast Rosanne?"

And I said "Oh, I don’t know if we can do that…" And then the next day when Don asked if we had ever thought about recasting I think I just blurted out ‘HowboutRoseanne?’ And Will like brightened up and got really excited and..

FINN
It was like the clouds parted. Rosanne Barr as a cow…the jokes just write themselves.

SANFORD
You can hear her. You can hear her.