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Two minutes, Mr Penguin
by Owain Yolland
as featured in the August 1992 issue of Empire
Posted by raleagh on Sun, 11th November 2007 at 7:52am
This article has been viewed 141 times |
There was nothing to base the experience on," chuckles Tim Burton of his liberal use of rather a large number of small, flightless seabirds in Batman Returns. "It's not like you could say, 'Oh yes, I remember the last movie when we had those 50 penguins and what we had to do...'"
To add to Burton's troubles, the movies' usual penguin staple - the common-or-garden, and rather short, South African variety - just wasn't good enough. What he really needed was a posse of 12 tame King Penguins, each of them more than three feet tall, the only place in the world in possession of captive hand-reared Kings being Birdland, a sanctuary near Bourton-on-the-Water in the middle of the rolling Cotswolds countryside.
"I reared them from eggs collected in Antarctica in 1989," confirms Richard Hill, Birdland's energetic and, at six-five and 17 stone, huge curator. "They think I'm their mummy and behave just like children."
Richard Hill
With Hollywood's at times cavalier attitude to the animal kingdom uppermost in his mind, Hill stipulated a long list of conditions on his preliminary meeting with Burton, among them that the birds must never be placed under stress and that a vet must be in attendance at all times - conditions that were happily met, despite the numerous demonstrations on the US release by various animal rights groups against the alleged mistreatment of the birds, particularly concerning the strapping of live rocket packs on to the hapless animals. "
All these animal rights protests are a load of rubbish," barks Hill. "The penguins never had rockets firing from their backs, or exploding headsets - it was puppets that did that. There was an article in The Sun with pictures of penguins flying through the air, but they were stuffed ones. Some did wear rocket packs on their backs, but we spent a long time redesigning them so they didn't place the birds under any stress. Only one bird refused to wear his and was promptly nicknamed Michael Keaton, because he wouldn't always wear his Batman outfit."
In fact, Hill found the huge Warner Brothers machine more than happy to accommodate its waddling megastars' every passing whim...
"On the flight over, the hold of the plane was refrigerated down to 45 degrees," recalls Hill. "In Hollywood, they were given a refrigerated trailer, their own swimming pool, half-a-ton of ice each day, and they had fresh fish delivered daily straight from the docks. Even though it was 100 degrees outside, the entire set was refrigerated down to 35 degrees." Cripes.
No expense spared, eh?
"Oh, there's more," chuckles Hill.
"The birds even had a round-the-clock armed guard. On some nights in California it got quite cold. One poor chap had to sit there with a gas heater as he'd been told not to leave the birds under any circumstances."
Despite his initial concerns about the whole business of making movies, Hill was nevertheless mightily impressed by the organisation and efficiency of Burton and his cronies.
"I'd anticipated problems, frankly, but I was pleasantly surprised," says Hill, who's been running Birdland for 35 years. "There was a brilliant girl in the production office called Susan Robbins, and the birds were the most important thing in the world to her. I had only to ask for something and she'd get it done. I wanted 40 bags of kitty litter to put on the floor to absorb their droppings and within an hour it was delivered. And there were steps leading up too the tank, but King Penguins have short legs and can't climb steps. No sooner did I point it out than ramps were being built."
Indeed, Hill's birds apparently thoroughly enjoyed the whole L.A. - type experience because, since filming ended last November, most of them have mated and now have eggs - a sure sign of a contented penguin. And for Hill's part, the readies came in extremely handy. "I don't care 100 per cent for things like this really," he confesses, "but it generates quite a bit of money. It hasn't gone on a flash motor car, I'm sorry to say, but is going towards conservation on two islands we own in the Falklands, and towards a new penguin pool."
Although Hill's flightless chums are no stranger to the business of show - having featured in a Diet Coke advert with the Pointer Sisters as well as ads for Penguin Biscuits and Guinness - Batman Returns is their very first feature film. A shame, really, that the little chaps won't get to see the finished film...
"Of course they'll see the film," splutters Hill. "We've already had a request from an Oxford cinema to attend and I've offered Warner Brothers four of them for the big premiere in London. As for the others, well I suppose they'll just have to wait for the video..." |
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