INFORMATION (page 1 of 2)

January 14, 2024

In the middle of a raging thunderstorm, a traveling circus accidentally leaves behind some very precious cargo – a baby zebra (voiced by FRANKIE MUNIZ). The gangly little foal is rescued by horse farmer Nolan Walsh (BRUCE GREENWOOD), who takes him home to his young daughter Channing (HAYDEN PANETTIERE). Once a champion thoroughbred trainer, Walsh has given up horse training for a quiet life with Channing on their modest Kentucky farm.
The little zebra, or “Stripes,” as Channing calls him, is soon introduced to the farm’s misfit troupe of barnyard residents, led by a grumpy Shetland Pony named Tucker (voiced by DUSTIN HOFFMAN) and Franny (voiced by WHOOPI GOLDBERG), a wise old goat who keeps the family in line. The group is joined by Goose (voiced by JOE PANTOLIANO), a deranged big-city pelican who’s hiding out in the sticks until the heat dies down in Jersey. Bird-brained rooster Reggie (voiced by JEFF FOXWORTHY) keeps everyone alert with his crack-of-dawn crowing and general hysteria, and the un-aptly named bloodhound Lightning (voiced by SNOOP DOGG) keeps a lazy eye on goings-on at the farm – in between naps.
The Walsh farm borders the Dalrymple Estate, where highly skilled thoroughbreds train to compete for horse racing’s top honor, the ultra-prestigious Kentucky Open. From the first moment Stripes lays eyes on the track, he’s hooked – he knows that if he could just get the chance, he could leave all those other horses in the dust. What he doesn’t know is…he’s not exactly a horse. But with characteristic zeal, he devotes himself to training for the big time, with a little help from Tucker, who has coached a host of champion racehorses in the past.
Channing has a similar ambition – she longs to train as a jockey, but her protective father refuses to let her compete in the potentially dangerous sport. But her father can’t ignore her enthusiasm (or her stubbornness) for long, and she convinces him to come out of retirement to train her and Stripes for the Kentucky Open.
The neighboring Estate is run by the ruthless queen of the Kentucky racing circuit, the incredibly wealthy and exceptionally coldhearted Clara Dalrymple (WENDIE MALICK). Stripes constantly battles the ridicule of the Estate’s thoroughbreds-in-training, led by spoiled bully Trenton’s Pride (voiced by JOSHUA JACKSON), who taunts him relentlessly about his lack of breeding and…unusual appearance. But the Estate is home to some kinder residents, particularly Sandy (voiced by MANDY MOORE), a beautiful filly whose admiration and affection for Stripes further enrages his rival.
Stripes makes some friends down at the track as well, most notably the manic horsefly duo Buzz (voiced by STEVE HARVEY) and Scuzz (voiced by DAVID SPADE), whose love of song and dance is eclipsed only by their love of hot dogs and horse poop.
As he thrusts himself into a world of elite athletes, intense competition and enormous stakes, Stripes must prove he’s fast enough and tough enough to run with the big horses if he wants to land in the winner’s circle at the legendary Kentucky Open.
Some champions are born, not bred!

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Alcon Entertainment presents the live action/CGI animation family motion picture Racing Stripes, directed by FREDERIK DU CHAU, starring BRUCE GREENWOOD, HAYDEN PANETTIERE, M. EMMET WALSH and WENDIE MALICK and featuring the voices of FRANKIE MUNIZ, MANDY MOORE, MICHAEL CLARKE DUNCAN, JEFF FOXWORTHY, JOSHUA JACKSON, JOE PANTOLIANO, MICHAEL ROSENBAUM, STEVE HARVEY, DAVID SPADE, SNOOP DOGG, FRED DALTON THOMPSON with DUSTIN HOFFMAN and WHOOPI GOLDBERG. The film is produced by ANDREW A. KOSOVE, BRODERICK JOHNSON, LLOYD PHILLIPS and EDWARD L. McDONNELL. STEVEN P. WEGNER serves as executive producer. The co-producers are PHILIP A. PATTERSON, KIRA DAVIS and KIRK DeMICCO. The director of photography is DAVID EGGBY, A.C.S. Edited by TOM FINAN. WOLF KROEGER serves as production designer. Screenplay by DAVID F. SCHMIDT, story by DAVID F. SCHMIDT & STEVEN P. WEGNER and KIRK DeMICCO & FREDERIK DU CHAU. The music supervisor is DEVA ANDERSON. Music composed by MARK ISHAM, with new songs by Sting and Bryan Adams.
Racing Stripes will be distributed domestically by Warner Bros. Pictures, a Warner Bros. Entertainment Company.
This film has been rated “PG” by the Motion Picture Association of America for “mild crude humor and some language.”
www. racingstripesmovie.com / AOL Keyword: Racing Stripes
OPENING THE STARTING GATES
The road to Racing Stripes began five years ago, at a racetrack where executive producer Steve Wegner and screenwriting buddy Dave Schmidt were betting on the ponies. “We thought that a racetrack environment would be a great setting for a film,” recalls Wegner. “We started out thinking that in horseracing, where bloodlines are everything, what would happen if a horse who wasn’t a thoroughbred wanted to race?”
The story was a natural for Alcon Entertainment co-presidents Andrew A. Kosove and Broderick Johnson, producers of a catalog of diverse films including Insomnia, Dude, Where’s My Car? and My Dog Skip. “As a company, we’ve never wanted to be held to one genre,” says Johnson. “It’s really about making quality films, and making them responsibly. We love comedy, we love family films, and Racing Stripes is a very funny and heartwarming story.”
Director Frederick Du Chau was quickly brought on to the project, and he and writing partner Kirk DeMicco took the story in a novel direction, raising the fish-out-of-water concept to new heights by introducing the idea of an even unlikelier contender for horseracing stardom: a zebra.
“That really jumpstarted the movie,” says Wegner. “It elevated the whole film to another level because it’s so different from the get-go. Seeing a zebra on a racetrack, racing thoroughbreds, is just such a great image. Racing Stripes is truly a sports movie, about someone fighting against all odds to be a champion.”
“No matter who you are, what age, what gender or where you’re from in the world, everyone can relate to being ‘different,’” says Du Chau, who had previously directed the animated feature film Quest for Camelot. “It’s very much a universal story.”
“I think the elements in the project that were most appealing were its ability to combine comedy with heart and drama,” adds Kosove. “There are a lot of great laughs in the movie, but it also really tugs at your heartstrings. It’s really not just a children’s movie, it’s a family movie. As soon as you tell someone you’re making a movie about a zebra who dreams of being a racehorse, they just immediately smile!”

FINDING THEIR VOICES
The film’s large interspecies ensemble necessitated that the casting process for Racing Stripes be two-tiered: the filmmakers needed actors both to voice the cast of animal characters and to play the on-screen human roles.
The first hurdle was to find the right voice for Stripes, the high-spirited young zebra who overcomes prejudice and self-doubt to chase his dream of competing shoulder-to-shoulder with some of the finest thoroughbreds on the professional racing circuit. They found their voice in talented young actor Frankie Muniz, currently the star of the hit television show Malcolm in the Middle. “Frankie was our first choice for Stripes,” says Johnson. “We had wanted to work together again after My Dog Skip, and he loved the Stripes story.”
Muniz appreciated his character’s ambition and drive in the face of incredible opposition. “All Stripes wants is to be able to train, to be number one,” says the actor. “He’s very persistent and tries very hard. He doesn’t ever give up, so there’s a great message that if you really want something, you just have to keep working to make it happen. And like My Dog Skip, it’s nice to work on a movie where everyone can go and see it and feel good at the end, no matter what their age. And to give my voice performance, then months later actually see the finished product, is just so weird and fun and exciting!”
After being accidentally abandoned and rescued from a raging thunderstorm, Stripes arrives at the Walsh farm and comes face to face with a varied and eccentric family of animal personalities. He’s met by grumpy barnyard patriarch Tucker, a Shetland Pony and former coach who’s both been there and done that – for years, Tucker trained champion thoroughbreds alongside Nolan Walsh (not that any of them ever thanked him or anything). “Tucker represents someone who is quite valuable, if not invaluable, in our society, who goes unappreciated, who goes unrecognized,” says Dustin Hoffman, who plays the somewhat jaded veteran of the track.
In Racing Stripes, Hoffman saw a chance to tackle a fresh challenge. “I’d never done voiceover work or animation,” says the two-time Academy Award winning actor, “and you always want to do something new. You know, many actors want to play Hamlet and Macbeth, and ever since I became an actor, from the very beginning I just wanted to play a Shetland pony. I can’t explain why.”

Tucker’s counterpart in the farm’s tight-knit family is a sharp-tongued but loving nanny goat named Franny, voiced by the incomparable Whoopi Goldberg. It’s Franny who first takes Stripes under her (metaphorical) wing, tempering Tucker’s gruffness with her own encouragement and affection. “She’s a pretty groovy goat,” says Goldberg. “She’s been down on the farm for quite a long time. The best way to describe Franny is, she’s a good friend – she looks out for people. And she has a love/annoyance relationship with Dustin’s character, which I kind of like. This is probably the only time people are going to let Dustin and I work together, so it might as well be as horse and goat.”
Joe Pantoliano plays Goose, a gangster pelican on the lam who’s using the farm as a temporary hideout from some of his more…unsavory associates. “He’s got mob connections, which is a little outside the box for me,” jokes Pantoliano. “Goose has a very active imagination, and he’s insecure in a lot of ways, so he tends to create his own reality so that people will fear him. He thinks he’d rather be feared than loved, but throughout the story he gets to meet these wonderful characters, and in the end he’s got a bunch of friends that really like him.”
Also a fixture on the track are poop-loving horsefly brothers Buzz and Scuzz, who prove to be helpful allies to Stripes in his race to the finish line, as well as providing a healthy dose of musical pizzazz along the way. As opposed to the film’s other animals, Buzz and Scuzz were completely computer-animated. The manic horsefly duo are played by Steve Harvey and David Spade.
Spade discusses the process he went through to discover his character’s voice. “I come into these things and I think they got me because I’m super talented. Then they’re like, ‘just do your normal, nasally, sarcastic thing. This character’s kind of a moron, so just play him like yourself,’ and I’m like, ‘Oh. That’s cool. Alright. I don’t see that as a reflection on me.’”
“The big difference between Scuzz and Buzz is that Buzz wants to bring dignity to being a horsefly,” muses Harvey, who plays the very slightly older and much more refined Buzz. “He wants to take horseflying to new heights. Scuzz is very much attracted to the dirtiness of being a horsefly. He revels in just being able to fall in a pile of poop and just lay there.”
“We are both a little like our characters,” adds Spade. “I like boogers and farts, and he’s dignified, and wears hats and nice suits.”
Also lending their vocal talents to the film are Mandy Moore as Sandy, a beautiful show jumper horse who steals Stripes’ heart; Jeff Foxworthy as pea-brained barn rooster Reggie; and Snoop Dogg as Lightning, perhaps the laziest bloodhound in Kentucky.

CASTING THE HUMANS
“We couldn’t be happier with our human cast, and it is a very difficult movie for them in some respects,” says director Frederik Du Chau. “Hayden, Bruce, Wendie and Emmet are all unbelievable actors in their own rights, and we’ve put them in a situation where they have to weave their story through scenes where animals talk, which is tough.”
Bruce Greenwood plays Nolan Walsh, a former champion thoroughbred trainer who gave it all up after losing his wife in a tragic racing accident. In the following years, he’s settled down as a farmer and concentrated on raising his daughter, Channing. They’ve always been close, but like most adolescents, as she grows older, Channing is beginning to assert her independence, which in her case means chasing a dream against Nolan’s wishes – her ambition is to be a jockey like her mother, but her protective father absolutely forbids it.
“It’s about triumph of the spirit,” says Greenwood, whose film career has included a critically acclaimed performance as President Kennedy in Thirteen Days and last summer’s hit I Robot. “It’s also a story about a little girl falling in love with an animal and nurturing him until he reaches his full potential, and finding the same in herself. So, it’s a perfect family movie, and I’ve never really been in a movie so uplifting, humorous and enthusiastic.”
“To have an actor of his caliber in this movie is a true blessing,” says Du Chau, “because if the audience doesn’t believe in our human story, then our talking animals don’t seem real either.”
Greenwood went on location early to get accustomed to working with the animals.  “The first thing you have to do is get them comfortable around you.  Food always helps.”  And no, he’s never worked with four-legged creatures before.  “I can tell you they are definitely the stars of the show, though never in any acting class did I imagine I’d be co-starring opposite a pelican.”
In casting the role of Nolan’s daughter Channing, the filmmakers needed to find a young actress who was not only talented onscreen, but would also be able to pull off the considerable physical activities the part called for. They found everything they were looking for in Hayden Panettiere, who has been acting since the advanced age of 11 months, when she began appearing in commercials. Since then, she has snagged roles in a host of films and television shows, including Raising Helen, Ally McBeal and Remember the Titans.
An accomplished rider, Panettiere believed that riding a zebra would be like riding a horse with stripes. “When I got on location I soon realized that wasn’t true! They have entirely different personalities,” she explains. “Sammy was the zebra I rode, but he wouldn’t go anywhere without his friend Arnie the mule, so we all had to ride together.”
Panettiere underwent six weeks of special riding training before filming began and practiced yoga to keep limber. She had to master the ability to ‘hold pace with the camera’ – meaning that while the filmmakers tracked her with the camera car, she would have to ride up alongside it, controlling the animal to stay at just the right speed necessary to correctly frame and successfully capture the shot.
“We brought Hayden to California, put her on a horse and she immediately pulled it off,” says Du Chau. “After one week of her horse training, we were blown away. Not only does she have a great acting career in front of her, I believe if she wanted to become a jockey tomorrow she’d probably win the Kentucky Derby. She was a real trooper – not only did she have all her acting scenes, but she also rode the zebra and horse at the same speed as all the jockeys around her. She did all her own stunts. It’s extremely dangerous work and she pulled it off.”
“I was attracted to the project because I have never worked with animals before,” says Panettiere. “I’ve always played tomboys, and with Channing it’s a mixture of sensitivity and a survival toughness. It was also a challenge for me to play a young girl who has lost her mom.”
Channing has an after-school job working at the stables of Clara Dalrymple, cold-hearted queen of the Kentucky racing circuit. Nolan once trained champion thoroughbreds for Clara, and she wants him back – he’s the best, and Clara always gets the best. But Nolan has a much different approach to the animals he works with; Clara sees her horses as lucrative possessions, not living creatures.
“For Clara, an animal is about money,” says Malick, who herself owns horses on her farm in the mountains of Los Angeles. “Racing is a very serious business, and people invest millions of dollars in stables, so Clara has a lot at stake. But this is a beautiful story about winning against incredible odds.” Besides being an animal lover, Malick was also attracted to the part because she rarely plays a role that is appropriate for kids under thirteen! “For some reason, being tall and brunette I have played a lot of ‘heavies’ in my career, which is great because you can sink your teeth into these stronger women. The nice part is that when people meet you in person, they are very pleasantly surprised!”
“The casting of Wendie Malick was very fortunate,” says Du Chau, “because Clara’s role is a tough one as she is the villain in this story. Wendie came in to the movie after we’d already been shooting for a few weeks, and in a very short time she made Clara her juicy self. She just oozes Clara!”
M. Emmet Walsh’s character Woodzie has been hanging around the track for years, placing bets and always looking for a sure thing – and when he happens to get a glimpse of Channing and Stripes tearing around the track, he’s certain that he’s found one. It’s Woodzie who first lights a fire within Channing, allowing her to believe she and Stripes can really go places.
“Woodzie is an important character in our movie,” says Du Chau, “and is the one that basically turns this entire story around; he sees the potential in Channing’s desire to ride and Stripes’ burning desire to be on the track.”
“The tone of all our actors’ performances fall so perfectly in line,” compliments Kosove. “Our human characters have so much heart, and you really get to know what they’re all about because the animals are talking through them. I believe we really achieved the seamless blend of the two worlds.”

TRAINING STRIPES FOR THE BIG TIME
Just as in the film, from the very beginning conventional wisdom held that it was simply impossible for a zebra to take on such an enormous challenge – in this case, starring in a major motion picture. “The film’s theme is the underdog,” says Johnson, “which was mirrored somewhat in our attempt to bring it to the screen – once we started talking to producers and animal trainers, we realized that this type of filmmaking hadn’t happened before. A zebra is, after all, a wild animal. At that stage, the answer seemed to be effects and CGI. The top trainers in the world thought ‘maybe’ they could do it. We took a gamble.”
Indeed, the idea of a zebra taking a starring role was a novel one – at the most, zebras might be spotted in short commercials. But everyone involved, human and animal, rose to the challenge, with the help of accomplished head zebra trainer Steve Martin.
A zebra’s nature is rooted in their necessary fight-or-flight response – in nature, when they’re being chased by a predator, it’s this instinct that saves them. It doesn’t, however, lend itself to long-distance racetrack running. The training team had to work around those natural behaviors. “Because they do come from the wilds,” comments Martin, “they haven’t been domesticated as long as a horse. The horse has been domesticated probably for thousands of years, where these guys are still getting used to us and we’re getting used to them. We walked them a lot, and petted them a lot, so they became very conditioned to us touching and handling them all the time.”
Two zebras, named Columbia and Zo�, alternated playing Stripes as a baby. The little foals had to perform tasks such as rooster chasing, sticking their heads inside a chicken coop to surprise its inhabitants, and racing a postman’s truck. Martin was always on hand during filming, as was their minder, Andrew Berry. The foals’ attention spans were limited to 10-15 minute periods. Like most animals, however, they were very motivated by food, and Berry made a buzzing sound at meal times that eventually became how the babies found their marks.
Martin chose eight zebras to play Stripes in his “teenage” years, all with typical adolescent behavioral problems. Zebras are fairly aggressive by nature, due to their instincts for self-preservation in the wild, and it took over three months to train them to work safely and comfortably around the other animals. Zena was the zebra trained to lie down and she also pulled the plough in the field, which is a most unusual activity for a zebra. Daisy and Sammy served as the riding zebras. Sammy was the quietest and thus the safest around humans and other animals, but Panettiere still had to be very careful around him in case something frightened him. “They’re smaller in structure than most horses, and their gait is different,” says Martin. “The zebra is built more for quick bursts of speed to get away from whatever might be chasing them in the wilds, and then they’re right back to their natural walk. To get them comfortable with being ridden we would put another zebra or a horse they liked next to them.”
Zebras get up to a top speed of 28 mph, which is fairly quick – their flight instinct helps them with bursts of speed – but they’re never going to catch up with a racehorse, who can hit speeds up to 37 mph!
One of the most complex and demanding scenes to shoot was the Blue Moon Race, an illicit underground race where the horses gather after dark to show their stuff – no humans, no rules. “The complexity of that scene was extraordinary,” says horse trainer Heath Harris. “To get forty horses all working together, all lined up side by side and then have the zebra playing Stripes coming in to walk among all the other horses, having to ignore them to do the job, and then stop and pick up a point and a mark. We managed to achieve it with virtually no computer work, nearly everything is for real. It was pretty amazing to actually get the interaction of those animals.”
Production was extremely strict in terms of the zebras’ welfare. The Animal Anti-Cruelty Welfare Officer was on set all day, every day. They constantly had their temperatures checked; they were wormed, had vitamin shots and slept in comfy stables with heat lamps.

TRAINING THE BARNYARD FAMILY
Animal training supervisor Karl Lewis Miller is much in demand in the movie business, having worked on films such as the Babe and Beethoven series. Lewis and his team had just nineteen weeks to get the animals ready for their close-ups. The gang needed plenty of schooling and confidence training, but there wasn’t one drop-out in the entire picture.
Tucker the Shetland Pony has a bit of a grumpy personality, so the horses playing him were called upon to do a lot of irritated head shaking and snarling, as well as some pretty advanced tricks such as pulling open a starting gate and pulling the dust cover off a trophy. Tucker was played by three Shetland ponies: Austin Powers, Mini-Me and Ben Hur. Mini-Me was a fast action pony, so he was used for scenes where Tucker had to run. As for Mini-Me, apart from acting grumpy, all he had to do most of the time was behave himself within six inches of another animals, and learn how to push over a ladder (which took three weeks of training). Austin was slow and reliable, and did a lot of the barnyard scenes where the animals were in close proximity.
Garin van Munster was the wrangler for the three goats who played Franny: Jazz, Rapper and Hip Hop, all South African natives, hand-reared in Cape Town. The goats had some prior acting experience, having previously done commercial work, but had never tackled a role involving anything so sophisticated as “hitting their mark.” It took weeks of toil with the trainers shaking paper, whistling and rustling feathers to keep the goats’ eye line.
Goose’s real name is Mr. Penelican, a talented pelican who was found at a rehabilitation center before becoming a performer at a fair in Cape Town, so he was already tame and liked people. Producer Broderick Johnson knew at first sight that they had found their bird. “That was one of the challenges we were very happy to be able to meet, because an animatronics pelican would not be nearly as good as the real thing. We saw Mr. Penelican walking with his little strut, and we thought ‘this guy is perfect! This is the Tom Cruise of pelicans!’”
The pelican was called on to shoot into the air, fly around and then hit his mark from two hundred yards away. Quite impressive, but he was helped along by his trainer, Martin Odd, who always had some fishy reward on hand.
Sandy, the beautiful blonde bombshell mare who sends Stripes head over hoofs in love, was played by a lovely Arabian named �nushka. Appropriately, she learned very quickly to look left and right to find Stripes.
For most of his scenes, the main rooster tapped to play the hair-brained Reggie had to run around like the proverbial chicken with its head cut off. Luckily, the actor had quite a libido – the trainers finally resorted to placing hens in front of him to speed him up. There were four roosters in Reggie’s role, as well as one that was responsible for crowing on demand.
It took a special dog to portray Lightning, a canine for whom lifting his head qualifies as a full aerobic workout. After a lot of auditioning, 90 lb Sniffer was cast – oddly enough, because of his energy! It turns out, getting a lazy dog to play the lazy part wouldn’t have worked because he wouldn’t have any personality.

TRAINING THE THOROUGHBREDS
A total of 90 horses were trained to perform in Racing Stripes – no small feat, even without the added challenge of mingling them with zebras. It helps if you have one of the world’s leading horse masters and trainers – Heath Harris. Harris directed the racing sequences and trained the liberty horses (horses that perform by responding to a handler’s verbal and visible commands, rather than to a rider’s seat and reins), as well as all the character horses, including Stripes’ love interest, ‘Sandy.’ The most challenging part of his job was re-training racehorses who are used to running at one speed – fast – to learn to slow down so Stripes could win his races.
Harris says the re-training program was tough because the horses’ thinking needed to be completely reversed. It took three months to teach them to run at the pace of the zebras, while still appearing to race at 37 mph per hour. Racehorses have a knee-jerk nervous reaction when they come into contact with their wilder striped cousins, and had to get used to the zebras. The horses had many complex scenes in which they had to interact with several of the barnyard denizens, hit their marks and hold their looks so that they could be successfully made to “talk” in post production.
80 racehorses in all were needed as doubles for the big race scenes. Luckily, these multi-talented equines were also able to perform as the horses at the Blue Moon races, or Harris would have needed four hundred horses to cover all the roles!
The welfare of the horses and the safety of the jockeys were always paramount, and the Animal Anti-Cruelty Welfare Officer was always onset. They had electrolyte programs, 24 wranglers and full time vets. They were constantly washed down with cool water and lived in comfortable tents.

TALKING THE TALK
“One of the strategic goals of this project from a creative sense,” says Kosove, “was to not have the movie feel juvenile – we took great pains not to allow the animals to go over the top to the point that their expressions become completely out of character, or they do things that are just completely unrealistic, a la pure animation.”
To blend CGI with live action in order to make the film’s animal’s “talk,” the animals are directed to execute actions such as landing on a mark, looking left or right and performing specific body language. Then, a CGI animated muzzle is laid on top of the existing animal in post production. Eyebrows or eyelids can also be manipulated to make heighten the expressiveness of the performance.
The process requires that very specific shots be captured. “We couldn’t lay down a whole master of the animals and then cut into that,” explains Du Chau, “because the animals cannot perform that many actions in a row without trainers having to step in. So, because the movie’s constructed on a shot by shot basis, it was almost frame accurate in what we had to capture on set. It was a great team effort with the director of photography and actors.”
The filmmakers had to come up with creative methods of capturing the necessary angles when shooting the racing scenes, particularly those shot from Buzz and Scuzz’s point of view as they tear back and forth between Stripes and the galloping horses. The filmmakers employed a number of camera tricks such as a ‘shovel cam,’ a very simple rig that sits on a metal bracket that is held by a competent horseman while riding. This rig enabled the camera to get in amongst the horses safely. It allowed shots to be captured a mere six inches above the race track, and panning around and twisting up in between the horses.

PUPPETS AND ANIMATRONICS
Back-up puppets were available in the event that the animals didn’t perform, but because of the stellar work of the trainers and their animal actors, very little animatronics work was required – except for scenes that could put the actors or live animals in an unsafe situation. John Cox’s Creature Workshop designed and built amazing animals that were so lifelike they would often get mistaken for the real thing on set.
The animatronics department started out by making a preliminary sculpt of each of the character animals, which had to precisely match the real thing, right down to the nostrils. Their eyes have to blink, ears prick up, jaw move up and down, and even the nostrils have breathing movements.
In order to make the animatronics move, a puppeteer was positioned behind the animal, steering the major body movements with cables. Then the smaller, subtler facial movements and talking were controlled through a computer or small handset radio control. The only exception was Goose, who was traditionally puppeteered with long rods coming out of his wings.

ABOUT THE PRODUCTION
Including pre- and post-production, it will have taken almost two years to bring Racing Stripes to the big screen, including a 14-week shoot in South Africa. Finding the appropriate shooting location proved to be one of the greatest challenges for the filmmakers, as they needed an environment that could double for lush Kentucky horse country, but it also had to be an area where they would be able to find the large number of zebras necessary for filming. South Africa was one of the rare locations that fit the bill perfectly – they found the ideal spot in the green rolling hills of the Midlands Meander in the province of KwaZulu-Natal.
The Walsh Farm was shot on the 600 acre Riverholme Farm, which was an unused horse stud farm. The farm house and Dalrymple Stables were built there. The Farm features a typical American barn and farmhouse that has gone relatively derelict since Nolan lost his spirit after the loss of his wife. Production designer Wolf Kroeger (Beyond Borders, Enemy at the Gates, Last of the Mohicans) and his team first built the farmhouse and then applied paint techniques to establish a neglected appearance, while retaining some vestiges of its former glory days.
The construction team scraped the land to make it look more like a dirt yard, erected 1.86 miles of fencing, and planted lots of grass and trees, as well as an orchard to make the stables look prosperous – no small feat considering when they arrived it was the middle of winter and the land was brown and the ground hard from ice cover. The team brought in fifty large truck loads of timber, brick, sand and cement and then manufactured their own shingles from redwood.
The big race, set at the fictional Turfway Park, was shot at the Scottsville Race Course in Pietermaritzburg, not far from the coast of Durban. Because the team couldn’t find a race track in South Africa that resembled Kentucky, they built everything from scratch. The grandstand, which had to hold one thousand spectators, involved considerable constructional engineering. It was then dressed with fronting, flags and swags. The saddling ring and winners circle structures were also kept simple to highlight Stripes’ winning moment.
The dressing in each of the barnyard animals’ stalls was kept as bare as possible so as not to take away from the character of the animals. When Stripes first arrives, all he sees is a huge barn full of looming shadows and, at a closer look, lots of saddles, harnesses, old horse tack, and old farm implements that had all collected dust from abandonment. The team sourced props throughout South Africa, from farmers, junk shops and auctions.
The Dalrymple stables reveal the opulence of the racehorses, with stables full of wood panelling and even chandeliers to suggest that the horses are pampered. They even had their own treadmills to test their stamina.

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ABOUT THE CAST

BRUCE GREENWOOD (Nolan Walsh) earned rave reviews for his dazzling portrayal of John F. Kennedy in the Cuban missile crisis drama Thirteen Days. Prior to that performance, his most noted film roles were star turns in Atom Egoyan’s acclaimed independent films Exotica and The Sweet Hereafter, both shot in Greenwood’s native Canada.
Greenwood established himself as a leading man with his first major television series, the much-honored St. Elsewhere, in which he played “Dr. Seth Griffin” for three seasons. In the years that followed, he worked constantly, starring in television movies and series including the short-lived but deeply revered Nowhere Man in the 1995-96 season.
Since then, he has focused on feature films, including Double Jeopardy with Tommy Lee Jones and Ashley Judd; Rules of Engagement, also with Tommy Lee Jones; his work with Egoyan, adding a third project, Ararat; and last summer’s hit I, Robot with Will Smith. Most recently he co-starred opposite Annette Bening in the award-bound Being Julia.

HAYDEN PANETTIERE (Channing Walsh) has an impressive resume of feature film, television, animation and commercial credits that have made her name synonymous with rising star.
Most recently, Hayden was seen in Raising Helen, directed by Garry Marshall. Additionally, she starred in Tiger Cruise, a dramatic story based on the true events of September 11th. Tiger Cruise debuted in August to rave reviews on The Disney Channel.
Hayden dazzled everyone in her role as a competitive ice skater in Ice Princess, due to be released in March 2005. In order to bring authenticity to her role for the film, she rigorously trained for weeks to accurately learn the art of ice skating. She stars in an inspiring independent film as a young woman caught between Earth and Heaven in The Dust Factory and recently filmed Lies My Mother Told Me, based on a true story for the Lifetime Network playing opposite Joely Richardson.
Hayden’s film, Normal, opposite Jessica Lange and Tom Wilkinson, directed by Jane Anderson for HBO, premiered at the 2003 Sundance Film Festival. In addition, Hayden surprised and delighted audiences by joining the cast of the award-winning TV series, Ally McBeal, as Ally’s fiery and precocious long-lost daughter. Her spitfire characters in both the recent film Joe Somebody, as Tim Allen’s daughter, and the riveting female lead in the much acclaimed story Remember the Titans, in which she co-starred with Denzel Washington, have established her as a unique talent. Her portrayal of a young “Jeanne,” played by Hilary Swank, in The Affair of the Necklace is a cameo performance of depth beyond her years.
Hayden’s other film credits include Message In a Bottle with Kevin Costner and Object of My Affection with Jennifer Aniston. Her television experience extends from her Hollywood Reporter’s nomination for Best Young Actress in a Daytime Series, for her portrayal of “Lizzie Spaulding” on Guiding Light; a role as an abused child on Law and Order SVU; to the miniseries, Too Rich: The Secret Life of Doris Duke, where Hayden played the distraught young Doris opposite Lauren Bacall; If You Believe, as the magical and intuitive inner-child of Ally Walker for Lifetime; as a cancer patient guest-starring on Touched by an Angel and a guest lead role as an eccentric teenager on Malcolm in the Middle.
Her voice is as recognizable as her face! She starred in the delightful animated feature, A Bug’s Life, as “Princess Dot.” Her work for A Bug’s Life Read-A-Long garnered her a Grammy Nomination for Best Spoken Word Album, as well as a nomination for The Hollywood Reporter’s Young Star Award for Best Young Voiceover Talent. She is also the voice of “Suri” in Dinosaurs.
Hayden is an Ambassador for the ICUN Wildlife Foundation. The organization helps to raise funds to support and save endangered species. Nelson Mandela and Queen Noor are fellow Ambassadors.

With talent spanning the comedy and drama arenas, M. EMMET WALSH (Woodzie) has ninety-seven feature films and over one hundred-fifty television credits to his name. Walsh starred as newspaper editor Randall Evans in HBO’s comedy series, The Mind of the Married Man.
In the live-action comedy adventure Snow Dogs he stars with Cuba Gooding Jr. and James Coburn. Walsh made his feature film debut in End of the Road. Other late 1960’s films include Alice’s Restaurant, The Traveling Executioner, Cold Turkey and They Might Be Giants.
Other motion picture credits include What’s Up Doc?, Airport ’77, Straight Time, Slapshot, The Pope of Greenwich Village, Blade Runner, Missing in Action, Wildcats, The Mighty Quinn and Narrow Margin. After an appearance in Brubaker, Robert Redford brought him back to play Timothy Hutton’s swimming coach in Ordinary People and again in The Milagro Beanfield War. Walsh also featured in with Julia Roberts in My Best Friend’s Wedding, The Apothecary, Romeo and Juliet, Wild, Wild West and as ‘Dr. Bass,’ an unbilled cameo in A Time to Kill.
For his role in the Coen Brothers’ feature Blood Simple, Walsh garnered the first Independent Feature Project/West “Spirit Award” for Best Performance by an Actor. He also received critical praise for his performance in Clean and Sober.
In 1996, the Breckenridge Film Festival honored Walsh for his memorable film portrayals – Straight Time and Blood Simple were screened as representative of his contribution to the cinema. In 1998, Walsh was honored at Film Festivals in Austin and Fort Worth, Texas. Currently onstage at London’s famed National Theatre, he brilliantly inhabits every inch of Sam Shepard’s “Dodge” in Buried Child. The reviews have universally been raves.

WENDIE MALICK (Clara Dalrymple) starred as the outrageous ex-model and Blush magazine editor “Nina” in the NBC series Just Shoot Me. Nominated for an Emmy Award in 1999 and again in 2002 for her performance in the series (as well as a 1999 Golden Globe nomination), Malick also received four CableACE Awards as Best Actress in a Comedy Series for the role of socialite “Judith Tupper Stone” on Dream On. Malick appeared in the final season of Frasier as “Ronnie Lawrence.” She will next be seen in ABC’s mid-season comedy, currently titled The Untitled John Stamos Show, set to premiere in January 2005.
Malick’s feature film credits include Bathroom Boy, Manna from Heaven, On Edge, Cahoots, The American President, Trojan War, Jerome, Scrooged, Funny About Love and Bugsy. She can also be heard in the animated film The Emperor’s New Groove.
In 1999, Malick received critical acclaim for her dual roles as famous advice columnists Abigail van Buren and Ann Landers in the TV movie Take My Advice: The Ann and Abby Story. Her other television series work includes starring roles in Trauma Center and Good Company, and recurring roles in NYPD Blue, Anything But Love, Baywatch and Kate & Allie, as well as guest roles on The X-Files, Cybill, Seinfield, L.A. Law and Mad About You. She also starred in the television movies Paper Dolls, Dynasty: The Miniseries, Apollo 11, Perfect Body and North Shore Fish, in a role she originated on stage.
Malick was honored in 2001 by Women in Film as “A Woman of Vision” along with Tipper Gore and Roseanne.

Emmy award nominee and two-time Golden Globe nominee FRANKIE MUNIZ (Stripes) received rave reviews in his performance as the whip-smart “Malcolm” in the hit television series Malcolm in the Middle. In addition, he has received multiple nominations from the Television Critics Association, as well as The Hollywood Reporter Young Star Awards for Outstanding Actor in a Comedy Series. This year, he won the Nickelodeon Kid’s Choice Award for Best Male TV Actor.
Muniz has also established himself as a rising star of the big screen. After reaching box office success with the films Agent Cody Banks and Big Fat Liar, (both of which grossed over $50 million domestically), Muniz most recently starred in the sequel Agent Cody Banks 2.
Muniz has been nominated by the Teen Choice Awards in several categories over the past three years, in categories such as Best Choice Breakout Performance by an Actor for Big Fat Liar, Best Actor in a Comedy Series for Malcolm in the Middle, and Best Chemistry On-Screen Duo with Amanda Bynes.
Muniz has also appeared as Willie Morris in Warner Bros. Pictures’ acclaimed film My Dog Skip. He received the Video Software Dealers Association (VSDA) Rising Star of the Year Award and a Best Actor honor from the Giffoni Film Festival in Italy.
Muniz made his television debut in the made-for-television movie Dance with Olivia, starring Louis Gossett, Jr. He also appeared in the CBS Hallmark Hall of Fame presentation of What the Deaf Man Heard, and received a nomination for The Hollywood Reporter Young Star Awards and also a nomination for the Young Artist of Hollywood Award for Television Performance in a Movie or Miniseries.
Muniz’s voice can also be heard in the Nickelodeon cartoon entitled Fairly Odd Parents, as a guest on Fox Network’s The Simpsons, and as Rocky in the Rumpus.com’s upcoming feature-length web cartoon The Red Bison.
Muniz has also appeared in several regional theatrical productions including A Christmas Carol, The Sound of Music, The Wizard of Oz, Our Town and the critically acclaimed The Death of Papa.

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