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| THE CAT IN THE HAT
shrek 2
TO HERALD THE DVD RELEASE OF SHREK 2 AND THE START OF THE ANNUAL AWARDS SEASON, WE PAY TRIBUTE TO OUR FAVOURITE NEW CARTOON CHARACTER OF 2004.
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Having fitted in a glamorous side trip to the south of France for Shrek 2’s international premiere at the Cannes Film Festival, Shrek, Donkey and Princess Fiona went on to take over the world between May and July this year with all the predictable Big Green results. But, despite Donkey’s furious insistance that “the part of annoying talking animal is already taken”, the central trio were somewhat surprised to find themselves being elbowed rudely out of the limelight by a small furry interloper.
The character of Puss in Boots is based on the brave side of Zorro and the cautious (not to say cowardly) side of your average domestic cat, so it was not all that surprising that Antonio Banderas - who is the most recent screen Zorro - should have been asked to voice the role.
“We pictured him as Zorro embodied as a cat,” says one of the film’s three directors, Andrew Adamson, who also co-wrote the screenplay, “so, from that moment on, Puss in Boots was Antonio Banderas.”
It was the first time that Banderas had done animation, and he brought his usual energy to the process. “He definitely embraced his character,” chuckles Adamson’s co-director, Conrad Vernon. “He was practically climbing the walls in the recording studio. He was whipping around, hissing and spitting and marking his territory. It was amazing, because we thought we made that character over the top. But Antonio took it to the next level and made it his own, which was fantastic.”
The character, who is all set to make a comeback in Shrek 3, doesn’t start out as one of the good guys, though: Puss originally enters the movie as a paid assassin, way-laying the trio of heroes in a deep, dark wood, rapier in hand and positively exuding bravado. This is, however, quickly deflated and, following a hammily tearful plea, the cat in the hat joins up with the trio. “In the original story,” explains Adamson, “Puss in Boots is an ogre killer, so it seemed appropriate that he would go from being hired to kill Shrek to helping him win the King’s favour.”
“He’s a character I have known since I was maybe three, when he was called ‘el Gato con Botas’,” says Banderas, “but I never thought I would have a chance to play him.” And, in doing so, says the Spanish actor, he became aware that the character has a mouth a lot bigger than the rest of him. “Puss has a tremendous sense of honour and a very strong personality, but his body does not exactly correspond to how he presents himself to the world,” says Banderas. “He’s really an adorable little kitty cat - you just want to cuddle him - and that contrast makes him very appealing to everybody… except Donkey.”
And except, for a while, to the film’s animators, who found him one of the hardest characters to get on screen. In the old days of hand-drawn animation, water (and especially waterfalls) used to be the problem. With computers, fur and feathers are what make things really difficult - and Puss has both (the latter in the elaborate plumes sticking out of his hat). As a result, animating him required approximately four times as many controls as the rest of his character.
But it was worth it. He was, enthused Johnny Vaughn in Britain’s mass-market tabloid, The Sun, “one of the great comic creations of recent years… the most hilarious hit-cat in the world”.
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