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Taylor Momsen as Cindy Lou Who,
whose curiosity about the Grinch takes her up onto the grim slopes
of Mount Crumpit.
But it worked. Much as he had ‘become’ Andy Kaufman, Carrey ‘became’ The Grinch. “The minute Ron said ‘Action!’,” he says, “I lost all sense of discomfort.”
How The Grinch Stole Christmas - which takes a children’s classic onto a whole new level, becoming an event film for everyone - was shot almost entirely at Universal Studios, utilising a staggering 11 soundstages, including the 30,000-square-foot stage 12, the largest on the lot, where Whoville - the biggest set ever built at the studio - was recreated. Production designer Michael Corenblith used two million linear feet of Styrofoam (since there are no straight lines in Seuss’ world, there was little need for conventional construction methods).
And in the middle stood the Whos’ Christmas tree, focus of the entire Whobilation, anchored in the middle of the village square with all the buildings radiating out like spikes from a 45-foot-tall hub. Viewed from above, the bricks on the plaza all spiral away from the tree, suggesting a centre of the universe feel to the village. What is more, the buildings were designed so that they conveyed a sense of the history of Whoville, like villages in Europe reflect centuries of continuous habitation, says Corenblith. “The idea of what I was trying not to do,” he adds, “was build something that looked like a Santa’s village that was just dropped into place.”
“I wanted the design to be exciting and the colour combinations to make something I really hadn’t seen before,” explains Grazer. “I wanted the visual team to create an original and complex world, but one which also has a level of irreverence and sophistication that would be cool for kids.
“It’s a real world,” he concludes, in a phrase which could sum up the whole project. “It’s just not our world.”
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