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\n Almost everyone who worked on it walked away from production uttering \u201cNever again.\u201d Yet it\u2019s become so beloved that even Ron Howard and Jim Carrey are considering the possibility of a sequel.
\n Video: Universal Pictures\n <\/p>\n
It is the strangest movie. When Ron Howard and Jim Carrey teamed up to make a live-action feature-film adaptation of Dr. Seuss\u2019s beloved children\u2019s book How the Grinch Stole Christmas, some might have expected a straightforwardly heartwarming family picture, but the resulting 2000 film was nothing of the sort. Howard had been a fan of the book and the 1966 half-hour animated special, but he wasn\u2019t initially interested in making another kids\u2019 fantasy. (His previous film had been the topical reality-TV satire EdTV; his next would be the Oscar-winning biopic A Beautiful Mind.) And though he was known as a blockbuster funnyman, Carrey had entered a more dramatic phase of his career with acclaimed (and Method-y) roles in The Truman Show and Man on the Moon; his next would be The Majestic.<\/p>\n
Director and star leaned into the tonal challenges inherent in the project: To translate Seuss\u2019s world into live action meant truly bizarre prosthetics and costumes, ornately angled sets, and a style of humor that mixed childlike innocence and surreal irreverence. The CGI takeover of Hollywood had begun, but the vast majority of this film was practical, including Carrey\u2019s incredible Grinch costume, somehow both cute and deeply unsettling, designed by special-effects legend Rick Baker to give the actor maximum expressiveness. The challenges faced by this project were epic. There was Dr. Seuss\u2019s widow, determined to preserve her late husband\u2019s work. There were nervous-breakdown-inducing makeup and prosthetic challenges. There was the massive cast, all decked out in single-use foam costumes that made it hard to move, hard even to go to the bathroom.<\/p>\n
Howard admits today that had he made the film several years later, he probably would have used a lot more CGI. Indeed, How the Grinch Stole Christmas is a picture that could have only existed at its particular moment in time on multiple levels. It features Carrey in peak form, combining the elasticity of his comedy with an undercurrent of self-aware brooding. The movie is hilarious, fun, disturbing, perplexing, exuberant, exhausting. Critics were not kind, but the film immediately prevailed at the box office, networks fought over its TV rights, and it eventually morphed into a seasonal streaming must-play. (It\u2019s back in theaters now for its 25th anniversary and there\u2019s a new 4K out this year, too.) Today, despite the fact that almost everyone who worked on the movie walked away from its chaotic production uttering \u201cNever again,\u201d they\u2019ve begun teasing the possibility of a sequel.<\/p>\n
Ron Howard and Brian Grazer belong to the generation of kids who first grew up with Dr. Seuss\u2019s children\u2019s classic, which was originally published in 1957. Howard also recalls that he and his children regularly watched Chuck Jones\u2019s 1966 half-hour animated version, featuring the voice of Boris Karloff. In 1998 it became known in Hollywood that Audrey Geisel, Dr. Seuss\u2019s widow, was ready to sell the feature-film rights to the book. There was an immediate rush to try and acquire them. But Geisel was highly protective of her husband\u2019s work and legacy, and she wasn\u2019t ready to give the rights to just anyone who came charging in with a pile of money.<\/p>\n
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\n Jim Carrey on the set of How the Grinch Stole Christmas.
\n Photo: Universal Pictures\n <\/p>\n
Brian Grazer (producer): The lawyer for Audrey Geisel said, \u201cWe\u2019re not going to just sell it. We\u2019re going to create an auction where you have to audition with Mrs. Geisel.\u201d<\/p>\n
I was chosen by Universal to be the representative of their studio. I took the advice of one writer who had this whole take on it. We saw Audrey Geisel, and she heard it, and I was told it didn\u2019t work for her. I begged, \u201cI need another chance to talk to her.\u201d Because I did have another taker, but it wasn\u2019t what I\u2019d presented. They said, \u201cNo, you\u2019ve had your chance.\u201d I said, \u201cWell, but Ron Howard is willing to come.\u201d That made a big difference.<\/p>\n
Ron Howard (director): The reality is that I\u2019d made two films aimed at young audiences, and they were both incredibly difficult. First was a TV movie, Through the Magic Pyramid, a time-travel story about a little kid who goes back and hangs out with young King Tut, made in 19 days on a very tight budget. And then Willow was the toughest thing I\u2019d ever made, incredibly challenging and exhausting. I was proud of it, but I wasn\u2019t really looking for another family-friendly entertainment or a fantasy of that type.<\/p>\n
Grazer: I was able to convince Ron to see Audrey Geisel. He said, \u201cI\u2019ll come, but I don\u2019t want to direct. Don\u2019t say I\u2019m the director.\u201d<\/p>\n
Howard: I was on a plane, next to my wife, Cheryl, coming out to LA. She said, \u201cThe story is all about commercialism. And if Whoville has just gotten ridiculous, maybe Cindy Lou could have an attitude about that. So in a way, it could be an affirmation story for her and a lesson for all the Whos.\u201d I thought, \u201cOh, what if that\u2019s the third act? What if we deal with this commercialism, deal with his alienation,\u201d which was a very Seussian theme.<\/p>\n
Grazer: So we pitched it, and Audrey just assumed Ron would direct.
And Audrey said, \u201cI really want Jack Nicholson to play the Grinch.\u201d I said, \u201cJack Nicholson is amazing, but I don\u2019t think he has the qualities of what we\u2019re looking for. The Grinch is crabby and mean, and you have to forgive him for being crabby and mean. He has to have a lot of innocence.\u201d And she said, \u201cWho would you want?\u201d I said, \u201cThe only person I would do it with is Jim Carrey, no other actor.\u201d<\/p>\n
Which I really believed. But I just kind of threw his name out. I didn\u2019t ask him. I was making Liar Liar at the time, so I was working with him. This was also around the time I was going to do A Beautiful Mind, and Jim very much wanted to do A Beautiful Mind, a movie with drama and gravitas. But I was already pursuing Russell Crowe, and I didn\u2019t want to tell him. So I\u2019d always veer back to the Grinch. I\u2019d go, \u201cNo, no, no, you\u2019re so much better for this. This would be great.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jim Carrey (The Grinch): Ron and Brian came to me and said, \u201cWould you be interested? And if so, would you meet with Audrey Geisel?\u201d I went to the Peninsula Hotel, and I met with Audrey and told her how much Dr. Seuss meant to me growing up and how important it was to pay homage to that. Suddenly, I ended up doing the Grinch for her across the table, actually doing the face. I didn\u2019t have any makeup on. I just gave her one of those, \u201cI musst find a way to stop Christmas from coming.\u201d<\/p>\n
The voice \u2014 there\u2019s a touch of Boris Karloff in there. He made such an impression on me. But mostly, the voice came from the interior. I ended up gritting my teeth to the point of cracking them. He\u2019s a character with a heart-withering sense of abandonment and alienation that has infiltrated his entire being. He resents anyone who has joy in their life. I physicalized his arrested development into this depiction of a 7-year-old who\u2019s having a tantrum stomping off to his room.<\/p>\n
Grazer: I said, \u201cRon, you have to say you\u2019re going to direct it. If you decide after we do the script that you don\u2019t want to do it, we\u2019ll figure a way out. But for now you have to be the director. I have to get it.\u201d He said \u201cyes\u201d; he would play that little game with me.<\/p>\n
Howard: My litmus test when I\u2019m on the fence about something is, \u201cWill I be upset if someone else gets to direct it?\u201d And it was a big screaming \u201cyes.\u201d Because Jim just had such an immediate sense of how to bridge that tone between comedy, pathos, and the edge and rage that the Grinch brings to the piece. That was irresistible.<\/p>\n
The original Grinch story is spare and short. In order to make it work as a feature film, Howard needed a screenplay that would populate this world, flesh out the story, and develop the characters. The film also needed to be genuinely funny and irreverent in order to appeal to both kids and adults. Audrey Geisel reportedly intervened at several points during the initial writing process because certain gags were a little too risqu\u00e9 for the family-friendly appeal of the original. But Howard and Carrey persisted in their efforts to give the film a unique, offbeat tone. This required the contributions of quite a few screenwriters and ultimately resulted in a Writers Guild arbitration that proved heartbreaking for some.<\/p>\n
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\n Ron Howard, Jim Carrey, and Jim Carrey\u2019s body wig on the set of How the Grinch Stole Christmas.
\n Photo: Universal Pictures\n <\/p>\n
Howard: So we had our initial writers, Jeffrey Price and Peter Seaman, who broke the story, and then we had Alec Berg, Jeff Schaffer, and David Mandel, who were Harvard Lampoon writers and fresh off Seinfeld. They weren\u2019t credited, but they did extensive rewrites.<\/p>\n
David Mandel (co-writer): When Seinfeld ended, we signed separate television deals, Jeff and Alec together with DreamWorks and me with Touchstone, but nobody was getting any TV on the air. Even though we had these television deals, the three of us were very in demand on comedy movies to bring a bit of what they used to call \u201cSeinfeld smart\u201d humor to the scripts.<\/p>\n
Alec Berg (co-writer): Our thing was basically the two-week rewrite where we just did comedy punch-ups. God, we worked on so many movies.<\/p>\n
Jeff Schaffer (co-writer): This was different because this was an honest-to-God rewrite. \u201cHere\u2019s a script. It\u2019s not working. We have Jim Carrey. We\u2019re close.\u201d<\/p>\n
Berg: We came in at a pretty late stage. It was fully cast. They were building sets.<\/p>\n
Mandel: We had a very funny meeting where Judd Apatow was there. Jim didn\u2019t know us, so Judd vouched for us. Then we sat with Jim and went line by line through the script. When all was said and done, we moved to the stage.<\/p>\n
Schaffer: They taped out the Grinch\u2019s cave on this empty stage. We went through and did his scenes and improvised with him and added that to the script we had already rewritten. Because Jim, pre\u2013Andy Serkis and digital dots and all that, was going to be in this suit that was super-hot with these green eye contacts that were going to cause him so much pain. He\u2019s like, \u201cI\u2019m not going to be able to improvise when I\u2019m in this suit.\u201d<\/p>\n
Carrey: Comedy is a very mechanical thing in certain respects. It has to work timing-wise. It has to tickle your fancy. It has to surprise you. A bit like being a magician, where you come in with the twist or whatever it is, and it has to be exact. If you do it well, people take for granted that it was just off the cuff. Because you\u2019re making it live in the moment.<\/p>\n
Berg: His dedication to it was unbelievable. He might\u2019ve driven some people nuts by just how obsessive he was, but for us, it was gold to be working with somebody who cared that much and was that intensely focused on getting everything right.<\/p>\n
Mandel: I remember, in the cave, he wanted to know there are 37 stairs from level one to level two, and he wants to know he\u2019s going to walk up six stairs, then he\u2019s going to turn and yell at her, then he\u2019s going to go up another three, then he\u2019s going to come back.<\/p>\n
Schaffer: We even wrote Seuss stuff. I mean, the opening narration inside the snowflake, that\u2019s all us. That\u2019s not even Seuss. We were writing Seuss stuff to connect things, because obviously the story that Dr. Seuss wrote is pretty short.<\/p>\n
Berg: It\u2019s a really tough balance, right? Because that source material is so revered, so people are like, \u201cThis is what the Grinch is, and this is not what the Grinch is.\u201d How much do you honor it, and how much do you play with it and satirize it and goof on it a little bit?<\/p>\n
Schaffer: For us, it\u2019s two things. It\u2019s embellishing all the characters, especially the Grinch, and getting all of that fun. And then, yeah, we\u2019re going to put stuff around the edge, something for the adults. We can\u2019t help ourselves. Like that Ice Storm thing<\/a>. I distinctly remember we added the key party. And then \u201cWhat if it\u2019s a cash bar?\u201d \u201cI\u2019ll just grab some popcorn shrimp.\u201d All that dialogue.<\/p>\n Mandel: His day planner, like, \u201cWhat am I supposed to do today?\u201d \u201cStare into the abyss.\u201d<\/p>\n Berg: \u201cWallow in self-pity.\u201d \u201cDinner with me. I can\u2019t cancel that again.\u201d There was also a thing where he pulled a tablecloth off a table and all the stuff stayed in place, and he started to walk away, but then came back and messed it all up. That was the joy of the movie, the tone of that character with all that self-loathing.<\/p>\n A Little Looping Story<\/p>\n \n Jim Carrey, living life as the Grinch. Schaffer: Jim\u2019s performance is so incredible, especially when you take into account the layers of makeup he\u2019s in. It was so fun watching him do it in a T-shirt and shorts, but watching it come to life was an amazing process. We learned a lot from Ron about listening to actors and just how important that was.<\/p>\n Mandel: Ron had that level of openness. \u201cBest idea wins.\u201d He allowed us to really be his collaborators, both on the front end with the script and then later in the edit room. He trusted us enough to do the looping, which was wonderful and wild.<\/p>\n Carrey: It\u2019s the most looping I\u2019ve ever done. Because of the combination of me breathing through my mouth and the wind fans that were blowing the snow around, I pretty much had to loop the entire movie.<\/p>\n Schaffer: One thing I remember at the looping very specifically was Jim had been smoking when he did the shoot and he had stopped smoking, and he was so worried that now that he had stopped smoking, his voice sounded different.<\/p>\n Mandel: He felt it wasn\u2019t deep enough the way it had been when he was a smoker. So he was trying to smoke to get his voice back where it was.<\/p>\n Carrey: That could be true. I\u2019ve lived a lot of life. Some of the details have slipped my mind.<\/p>\n Mandel: Arbitration was a very strange thing because we were originally given credit.<\/p>\n Berg: The way it works with the Writers Guild is the studio or the filmmakers propose a credit. And what they proposed, which was fair, was story by them and then screenplay by all of us.<\/p>\n Mandel: The first teaser trailer<\/a> has all our credits on it.<\/p>\n Berg: Any writer who\u2019s involved has the right to ask for arbitration. But we were told the arbitration-request period had elapsed, and these credits were now official. \u201cHoly shit, this is great. We got shared screenplay credit on this massive movie. We\u2019re so psyched.\u201d Ten days later, we are told that Seaman and Price had changed agents, and their new agent had been sent the notice of tentative credits. But the agent who represented them when the Grinch deal was done should have been notified of the tentative credits. So even though the time had elapsed, it turned out Seaman and Price had been improperly notified. And it went to arbitration, which is a real spin of the wheel. There were three people who read the different drafts; two sided with them and one sided with us.<\/p>\n Mandel: A lot of rewriters come in, and the first thing they do is change the names of the characters, so they are creating \u201cnew\u201d characters. Then they can argue in their arbitration that they created a new character. And we never did that.<\/p>\n Schaffer: I distinctly remember the tipping reader said, \u201cRewriters should never get credit.\u201d<\/p>\n Mandel: So the credit was taken away from us! Obviously, we were not happy. We are really fucking proud of that work. That Jim stuff holds up like anything today, and we wrote almost every line of that dialogue. And let\u2019s be honest, those residuals would\u2019ve really been something. Ron and Brian have always been incredible, Ron especially, about our contribution. He\u2019s gone out of his way to credit us.<\/p>\n Berg: Also the way that Writers Guild arbitration process works is that if you arbitrate for credit and you don\u2019t get credit, the Writers Guild forbids what they call compensatory credits. You can\u2019t even get a special thanks or whatever. Jim Carrey\u2019s dentist has a credit on this movie, and we don\u2019t.<\/p>\n Schaffer: I want to say something: He\u2019s a fucking great dentist.<\/p>\n Carrey: Well, somebody has to make the veneers. But, oh my God, no, those writers deserved a lot of credit, for sure.<\/p>\n Legendary makeup artist Rick Baker (who already had five Oscars and would win another for this film) was hired to create a Grinch mask and costume for Carrey. But Carrey\u2019s elastic facial expressions were a huge part of his star power. How, then, would his face be visible underneath all that makeup? The solution was an elaborate prosthetic that would prove insanely difficult to apply. It almost drove the actor crazy, which also meant that it almost drove the people working to put it on him crazy.<\/p>\n \n Jim Carrey suspended in full Grinch costume, perhaps realizing what he has brought upon himself. Carrey: I went into Rick Baker\u2019s shop. I\u2019d always revered him. He\u2019s an absolute genius. We got in the makeup chair, and I said, \u201cI want to be the Grinch from the book.\u201d We started experimenting with just painting my face. \u201cNo, I don\u2019t want to be one of the cast members of Cats. I want to be the Grinch.\u201d And, of course, Rick Baker did a masterful job.<\/p>\n Rick Baker (special makeup effects): I did some designs, and I did a sculpture knowing what the problems would be because I\u2019ve worn a lot of makeups myself. If you do a nose that\u2019s high up on the person\u2019s head, breathing through your nose is difficult. Talking with that is difficult. So I did kind of a compromised sculpture first, where I put the nose down where Jim\u2019s nose actually is, so he could breathe through the nose holes, and it was a little more like a dog.<\/p>\n Brian and Ron signed off on it, but afterward, I thought, It\u2019s not as cool as it should be. So I did a makeup on myself of what I thought the Grinch should look like, and I videotaped myself performing in it, and sent the tape to Ron and Brian.<\/p>\n Carrey: When it came down to actually designing the Grinch to look like the Grinch, they had to put the tip of my nose on the top of the bridge of the Grinch\u2019s nose. So, all of the rest of it was covered and I couldn\u2019t breathe through my nose, and they had a real problem trying to get holes in the mask that could allow me to breathe through my nose. Ultimately, I ended up mouth-breathing through the entire movie.<\/p>\n Baker: The studio said, \u201cWe\u2019re paying Jim $20 million, and we want to see him. Just paint him green.\u201d But it\u2019s not How the Green Jim Carrey Stole Christmas. It\u2019s How the Grinch Stole Christmas. He should look like a fantasy character.<\/p>\n There was a popular movie website at the time, Ain\u2019t It Cool News, and the guy who ran it was a fan of my work, and I contacted him. I said, \u201cListen, Universal wants to paint Jim Carrey green. I feel it\u2019s a major mistake. I did a test on myself of what I think it should look like. Can you somehow say that you saw this test and that Universal is making a major mistake and they don\u2019t know what the fuck they\u2019re talking about?\u201d And he did. And it was outrageous responses from everybody. \u201cWhat the hell is wrong with these people at Universal? I don\u2019t want to see green Jim Carrey. I want to see a Grinch!\u201d Blah, blah, blah. So they finally caved in.<\/p>\n It\u2019s funny because Ron called me up and he goes, \u201cThis guy somehow saw the video.\u201d And I said, \u201cWell, I only sent a copy to you and Brian. I\u2019m not sure how he saw it.\u201d I usually don\u2019t lie, but I did for the sake of the movie.<\/p>\n Howard: When we were rehearsing scenes and rewriting them, Jim was just in his T-shirt. But he was sweating like an NBA player in a workout. So you can imagine what it was like when he got that full body suit on.<\/p>\n Bill Irwin (Lou Lou Who): Jim Carrey is a very generous wacko. There is a generosity of spirit at the same time that he\u2019s a warrior comedian. He knows prisoners can\u2019t be taken, and he\u2019s got to focus on the madness of his character, his creature.<\/p>\n Howard: Jim was insistent on the look. Some things made him pretty uncomfortable, but he was determined. There was no compromise of the look that he would embrace.<\/p>\n Carrey: The suit was made of unnervingly itchy yak hair that drove me insane all day long. I had ten-inch-long fingers, so I couldn\u2019t scratch myself or touch my face or do anything. I had teeth that I had to find a way to speak around, and I had full contact lenses that covered the entire eyeball, and I could only see a tiny tunnel in front of me.<\/p>\n Howard: Some people, when they learn to scuba dive, find that they just can\u2019t wear a mask underwater. A kind of claustrophobia kicks in. And I think for Jim, the contact lenses were doing that.<\/p>\n Carrey: I\u2019d be on top of a 50-foot mountain walking around with this ridiculous costume on and hoping I don\u2019t go off the edge accidentally. At the same time, I had to give the audience a sense that, Hey, he\u2019s having fun in that thing, and we\u2019re going to have fun with him. There was a certain buoyancy that had to come with the character.<\/p>\n Baker: Jim is a tortured soul. He obsesses about things. He was very, very difficult to deal with when he was the Grinch. But it was probably part of his process. He was great in the movie. I know in the Andy Kaufman movie when he was Tony Clifton, he stayed in character. So he\u2019s kind of a Method actor.<\/p>\n Grazer: We said we could do the green eyes digitally. He didn\u2019t want to do that. He wanted to have green eyes. They were like Frisbees in his eyes. He was in so much pain.<\/p>\n Carrey: It was something that I asked for that I can\u2019t blame on anyone but myself. You\u2019ve got to be careful what you ask for. You don\u2019t think about it when you see an actor do a part that is about excruciating pain or whatever. But that actor has to live in that feeling. They don\u2019t just go home and suddenly stop feeling it.<\/p>\n Howard: Jim started having panic attacks. I would see him lying down on the floor in between setups with a brown paper bag. Literally on the floor. He was miserable.<\/p>\n Carrey: The first day in makeup took eight hours. And I went into the trailer and asked Ron and Brian to come in, and I told them that I wouldn\u2019t be able to do the movie and I was quitting.<\/p>\n Howard: He was ready to give his $20 million back! I mean, he was sincere.<\/p>\n Grazer: \u201cI will give all my money back. I\u2019ll pay interest. But I quit.\u201d<\/p>\n Howard: So Brian found a guy who trained the military on enduring imprisonment and torture. Because, literally, Jim was about to leave.<\/p>\n Grazer: I said, \u201cListen, you can quit on Monday, but just spend time with this guy on the weekend.\u201d<\/p>\n Carrey: Richard Marcinko was a gentleman that trained CIA officers and special-ops people how to endure torture. He gave me a litany of things that I could do when I began to spiral. Like punch myself in the leg as hard as I can. Have a friend that I trust and punch him in the arm. Eat everything in sight. Changing patterns in the room. If there\u2019s a TV on when you start to spiral, turn it off and turn the radio on. Smoke cigarettes as much as possible. There are pictures of me as the Grinch sitting in a director\u2019s chair with a long cigarette holder. I had to have the holder, because the yak hair would catch on fire if it got too close.<\/p>\n Later on I found out that the gentleman that trained me to endure the Grinch also founded SEAL Team Six. But what really helped me through the makeup process, which they eventually pulled down to about three hours, was the Bee Gees. I listened through the makeup process to the entire Bee Gees catalogue. Their music is so joyful. I\u2019ve never met Barry Gibb, but I want to thank him.<\/p>\n Howard: We also made concessions in the production schedule. This wasn\u2019t as much mental as it was physical because it was destroying Jim\u2019s skin. Medically, it was determined he really couldn\u2019t do it five days in a row. So he would have a day off, or he\u2019d only be off-camera feeding dialogue on Wednesdays.<\/p>\n Carrey: There were a lot of things going on under that suit. It wasn\u2019t a healthy situation, but movies are that way. You do it because the end product is going to be something special. Kazu Hiro was the one that applied my makeup every day, and he did an incredible job of painting my face.<\/p>\n Baker: My poor makeup artist was on the verge of a complete mental breakdown because it was so difficult. He wanted to quit. I went into Jim\u2019s trailer, and I told him, \u201cWe\u2019ll get somebody else, and it\u2019s going to look half as good and take twice as long.\u201d And he goes, \u201cWell, you don\u2019t understand what I\u2019m going through.\u201d I said, \u201cI played King Kong in the Dino De Laurentiis King Kong. I wore hard scleral contact lenses that I put in, in the morning, and I took them off at lunch and put them back in and wore them to the end of the day. I had a suit that weighed 50 pounds made out of bear hides and six inches of foam rubber. I had a bundle of cables that came out the back of my neck and ran through the suit out my leg and had to drag around everywhere. I would bleed every day from the mechanism in the face.\u201d I said, \u201cYou\u2019ve got it easy because I made a lot of changes in the way the makeup works so they would be more comfortable for you.\u201d<\/p>\n After that, Jim became a lot better. But having said all that, what I really respected about Jim and where I think the torture really came in was the number of days. He was 92 days in makeup, something like that, which is like a record.<\/p>\n Howard: It was remarkable, because there were many times when I knew he was exhausted, but he\u2019s one of these actors, a little like Charlie Chaplin is reported to have been, who is such a perfectionist that he would want to go take after take after take. There were times when he was running on fumes, and yet it wasn\u2019t until take 20 or 22 that he felt comfortable moving on.<\/p>\n Baker: I did appreciate, even as tortured as he felt, if he didn\u2019t think he gave a performance that he wanted, he would do another take and another take. He was fantastic in the film, and I don\u2019t think anybody would\u2019ve been better. I just wish it was a little easier to deal with him.<\/p>\n Carrey: I need to find an emotional connection. As time went on, I\u2019ve learned how to not only do the comedy, but for there to be a real organic emotional connection bubbling up underneath. That informed my work in The Grinch because you really feel his transformation. There\u2019s been parts that I\u2019ve turned down because I didn\u2019t want to be in that feeling for one reason or another. But the makeup difficulties helped me in a way. It definitely put me in a solid place. The overall, arcing motivation for me was a good one. I knew that people were going to find it joyful. Kind of.<\/p>\n The Young Grinch<\/p>\n \n Josh Ryan Evans as the Young Grinch. Howard: Josh had great energy, was hardworking, loved it, understood it. Smart kid. I think he was 17 or so. The amount of time that he needed to be in makeup and so forth, we needed somebody who could work longer hours, so there was a practical side there. But also I wanted him to be hipper and more mature than the other kids. And maybe as a little person, he understood feeling like an outsider. He brought a lot of soul along with great comedy timing to those scenes. I was really sad that we lost him.<\/p>\n Carrey: Josh did a wonderful job, and I wasn\u2019t even aware that he had passed on for years. I had no idea. So that was sad, but boy, he\u2019s absolutely fantastic.<\/p>\n Baker: I really liked working with Josh. He had had open-heart surgery before. He had a big scar going down the middle of his chest. I really enjoyed him in the makeup. And I enjoyed sculpting and making the baby puppet Grinch.<\/p>\n \n Baby Grinch. Howard: That was a very important aspect of my concept, that we would take a look back at the Grinch and his alienation and isolation and comedically deal with it. And Josh totally understood it and had great timing. Jim worked with him a bit so he could emulate some of Jim\u2019s moves and the attitude. Those scenes were some of my favorites because we were liberating ourselves from the book and creating something I connected to. I knew it was going to surprise audiences, but I thought it spoke to the character that Seuss had created.<\/p>\n Baker: It never ended up in the film, but there was actually a teenage Grinch too. I made him a 1950s juvenile delinquent Grinch, with a pompadour hairdo and a little cigarette pack rolled up in his sleeve on his arm. But yeah, that never happened.<\/p>\n How the Grinch would look and act was just one part of the equation. The lead role opposite him would go to a 6-year old actress making her film debut. And she would be in fairly heavy makeup herself, alongside all the other characters populating Whoville. Beyond the issue of what the Whos would look like, there was the added question of how they would move.<\/p>\n \n The many makeup stations on the set of How the Grinch Stole Christmas. Taylor Momsen (Cindy Lou Who): I started doing national commercials when I was 3, and Grinch was one of the first major films that I auditioned for. I remember the phone call when I found out I was booked for the part because I was back home in St. Louis and driving with my mother. We were just giddy with excitement. I was either 5 or just turned 6. By the time the movie finally came out, I was 7.<\/p>\n Howard: When you\u2019re casting kids, first of all, girls are ahead of boys. They get it sooner. A 6-year-old girl, if they\u2019re inclined to be able to do this sort of thing, they have great imaginations and their playacting is very real, so they can connect with the ideas. And Taylor just had it. She understood it. And she was very well prepared.<\/p>\n Momsen: I couldn\u2019t really read yet when I was shooting Grinch, so someone had to read me the script, and that\u2019s how I memorized all the lines. But they read the entire script, not just Cindy\u2019s parts, so I had memorized the entire film. When I was shooting with Jim, Ron would call cut and he\u2019d go, \u201cTaylor, you\u2019re doing it again.\u201d \u201cWhat am I doing?\u201d \u201cYou\u2019re mouthing Jim\u2019s lines. It was like a whole song in my head.<\/p>\n Howard: It was a hard role. She was kind of a secret weapon. She was such a perfect straight man for the Grinch, a perfect foil. And Jim was great with her.<\/p>\n Momsen: I never knew what Jim looked like, because I never saw him outside of the makeup until the premiere, and I was too young for his films. So to me he was just Jim who looked like the Grinch.<\/p>\n Carrey: It\u2019s funny, I\u2019d never really thought about that. Because I got there super-early, before anybody else got there. She never saw me till the premiere when someone had to point me out and say, \u201cThat\u2019s Jim Carrey.\u201d<\/p>\n Momsen: And he was incredibly protective. That\u2019s what I remember. Jim was very, very protective of me on set as a person, as a kid, always looking out for me, checking in, making sure I was okay, because he was very animated, very over the top.<\/p>\n Carrey: Of course, I\u2019m jumping around her like an out-of-control monster, so I had to let her know that I\u2019m going to be doing some monstrous things, but I\u2019m not a real monster.<\/p>\n Momsen: I remember when we were shooting the scene coming down the mountain on the sled. It was this real sled that was up on a giant spring that was being controlled and moving from side to side, very aggressively. Jim is leaning over and being extravagant Jim. There was a moment where I almost fell out of the sled, and he freaked out. He called cut and started checking in on me. I was having a great time. I was laughing; I wasn\u2019t thinking about the fact that I just almost fell very high off the ground. Carrey: As soon as I met her, you could just tell right away she was just an incredibly precocious child \u2014 smart beyond her years, and her comedy timing was impeccable. A total pro. I don\u2019t think she ever went up on a line or missed a cue or anything like that.<\/p>\n Baker: When I got the call from Brian Grazer about doing a live-action feature of How the Grinch Stole Christmas, one of the first things I said was, \u201cI don\u2019t know what the hell the Whos are, and I don\u2019t know what to do with them.\u201d In the book, they almost look like insect people. I said, \u201cWhen you start changing a human face around, it can get grotesque very quickly.\u201d I asked, \u201cWhat about Cindy Lou? Are you going to use a little girl for Cindy Lou Who? Because we can\u2019t put a little girl in a three-hour makeup.\u201d And they said, \u201cYeah, we do want to use a little kid.\u201d So, I started playing with designs.<\/p>\n Momsen: Rick actually cast my face and I went through that whole process. He has a mold of my baby face still in his house! I was just there for Halloween this year. He has every face of every person he\u2019s ever cast, and so my little face was there too.<\/p>\n Originally, they were thinking about having me in prosthetics, but I think Ron and everyone just collectively decided that that\u2019s too much to put a child through.<\/p>\n \n Taylor Momsen as Cindy Lou Who. Baker: I eventually came to the rationalization that the Whos, when they\u2019re younger, their noses haven\u2019t moved up their face like the adults\u2019 noses have. So we went with oversize teeth and long eyelashes, and we painted her nose a little red.<\/p>\n Momsen: Growing up after the film, everyone always asked me about what it was like to have a fake nose, and I didn\u2019t have one. I was going, \u201cThat\u2019s my real nose. I swear it\u2019s just blush. But thank you for making me feel self-conscious about my nose.\u201d<\/p>\n Then the teeth really pushed out my upper lip and created an odd face shape. I hated the taste of the glue that they used to put the teeth in, so I never took them out. I ate with them, I talked with them, I went to school with them. They were a part of my face until we wrapped for that evening. Howard: We had mission-control school and astronaut school for Apollo 13, and I\u2019d done a version of that for The Paper where we all hung out at the Post and the Daily News just to learn the cadences and the jobs. Same with the fire department on Backdraft. This is in a pre-digital era or 3-D-animation era. We had some CG work that we did \u2014 the sleigh zooming down the mountain, and Max the dog getting thrown around was always a CGI Max \u2014 but we couldn\u2019t do much digitally with the Whos up close. So I came across a stunt coordinator, who became the second unit director, named Charles Croughwell, famous for doubling Michael J. Fox on all the skateboard stuff in Back to the Future.<\/p>\n Charles Croughwell (stunt coordinator): Ron and I sat down for a discussion about the Whos and what they are. We said, \u201cWhy don\u2019t we look at Cirque de Soleil?\u201d I knew the Cirque guys. I said, \u201cMaybe those ones that are not on contract right now, we could get some of them as performers.\u201d There was a guy there, Terry Bartlett, who was an amazing Cirque performer, probably my best friend within that world. I said, \u201cLook, we\u2019ve got all these things that Ron wants to be able to do \u2014 walking balls, walking ladders, trampoline work.\u201d We started to incorporate that into a Who school, where everybody could go through their characters. We had an entire stage full of equipment, and anybody could come over at any time.<\/p>\n Momsen: I did go to Who school. I had to go through stunt training because I was doing my own stunts. I had to learn to fly on wires and how to fall correctly onto the pad. I fell through a trap door. I had to slide down a massive slide that you had to climb up using a rope because there was no stairs to it. The only stunt I didn\u2019t do myself was the actual shooting out of the trash can at the end.<\/p>\n Howard: I also cast Bill Irwin and asked him if he would come to Who school. He was one of the great clowns in our history, and he became central in helping build bits with the Cirque people with like wires on big unicycles.<\/p>\n Croughwell: Who school was just an absolute blast. Even if they weren\u2019t scheduled for anything, actors would come and hang out and play on the trampoline or whatever. It was a playground for them while they were getting ready for everything else.<\/p>\n Howard: And we did get sort of a style of walking and movement that we tried to utilize, and a menu of physical gags that we could put in scenes as we began to stage them.<\/p>\n Berg: There was a guy who could fold himself in half and sit in a bucket. We just kept pitching fold-yourself-in-half-and-sit-in-a-bucket jokes. But none of them made it in.<\/p>\n Howard wanted the film to have a self-consciously artificial, almost Expressionist look that would reflect Seuss\u2019s off-kilter designs. That meant entire practical sets built at funny angles, multiple soundstages, a cast of hundreds (all in extremely uncomfortable costumes), and a lead actor on the verge of losing it, resulting in a production that one cast member describes as \u201ca war of attrition.\u201d<\/p>\n \n Clint Howard and his brother. Howard: One of the things I did with this film was adopt a style I had never used and I\u2019ve never used it since. But I went back to Don Peterman, who was my cinematographer on Splash and Cocoon and also an Oscar nominee for Flashdance. He did Addams Family Values. I wanted to apply those lens choices and that aesthetic. We were shooting with 14-mm. lenses, which were wide and distorting. I had a camera on an arm that was in movement a lot, especially in the Grinch\u2019s lair, and Jim was so good about spinning and hitting the exact mark so the camera could meet him. He understood exactly what we were going for in a 14-mm., this kind of crazed close-up that would evolve at the end of the camera move.<\/p>\n Rita Ryack (costume designer): For me, Dr. Seuss\u2019s drawing style was so distinctive and energetic and gorgeous. Holiday cookbooks from the 1950s gave me some ideas. I have sketches of the Whos being very simple and wearing things on their heads, like plates of food and lamps.<\/p>\n Howard: Production designer Michael Corenblith came in with a book and said, \u201cI have to figure out how to take this Seussian architecture and build it so that people can actually be on the balcony, and it\u2019ll be load-bearing safe construction. Look at this Spanish architect Gaudi. These are examples of these strange cornerless shapes actually being functional.\u201d He tried to build things so that they were skewed in certain ways to create visual illusions with places for Cirque du Soleil people to gain purchase and lean in slightly strange ways and things like that.<\/p>\n Ryack: All the Whos were kind of furry, so I put them all in mohair sweaters. All of the fabrics were very soft and tactile. When Jim is walking through the town in disguise, he has his cape. That\u2019s not bedspread fabric exactly, but it\u2019s kind of like it. I liked that tufty stuff, and I thought that would move; I did want to try and get some energy into those clothes, to make them Dr. Seuss\u2013y.<\/p>\n A lot of collectors today have gotten in touch with prop master Emily Ferry and me. There are people who reproduce the costumes every Christmas and dress up in the Who costumes.<\/p>\n Baker: The Grinch has a suit of padding that gives him this pearlike shape, a big sticky-outty stomach and sticky-outty bum. It\u2019s lightweight polyurethane foam that we carve into the shapes, and that\u2019s mounted on a Lycra spandex suit. So we slip that on first. Over that is another Lycra spandex body stocking that we made that\u2019s dyed Grinch skin color. That\u2019s the hair suit, where the yak hair is tied. It\u2019s a body wig, basically. It\u2019s the way wigs are made with a little ventilating needle and each hair is tied twice into the spandex so it doesn\u2019t come undone. It\u2019s six months of work for one body suit. And then we had about 300 custom-made wigs.<\/p>\n Momsen: I was wearing six pairs of tights at the same time. We had the Who pads, which made your body that weird Who shape. Garters and socks on top of tights and pads inside your shoes to make your toes curl up, and regular underwear, bloomers over the underwear, crinoline, another layer of crinoline. To get dressed took three people and a long time. And without fail, every time I was ready, I then had to pee.<\/p>\n Croughwell: One day we were on the mountain and there\u2019s snow, which is like soap. And one of those soap bubbles got in behind one of Jim\u2019s lenses one day and was driving him nuts. I was with my daughter, who was 5 at the time, who used to play with Taylor. Jim came in, and he\u2019s just walking by us, the same old Jim that he was every day. He goes, \u201cYou might want to take her out of here. Probably not a good thing for her to hear what I\u2019m going to have to say.\u201d He just kind of had a meltdown moment there. But the fact that he stopped and said he was concerned about her tells me everything about him.<\/p>\n Carrey: On the day we wrapped, we had a little wrap party, and they put together a reel of all the times I started cursing. Just tied them all together in about a five-minute reel of me cursing a blue streak. That was hilarious.<\/p>\n Irwin: I came in one day, the regular early call, and there was somebody two chairs down who was already halfway into the elaborate three-and-a-half-hour Grinch makeup. And I thought, Oh, some stunt player is going to fly through the air or something. Turned out it was Ron. He showed up hours ahead of his call, got the makeup on, worked through a whole director\u2019s day with that fucking makeup.<\/p>\n Baker: Ron wanted to show compassion for Jim, so we made up Ron, completely suited him up in a Grinch suit, and he directed the whole day as the Grinch<\/a>.<\/p>\n Carrey: I laughed my head off when I saw him coming through the room. And I thanked him for the empathy. And then he sat in his director\u2019s chair and sweated a lot. Of course he didn\u2019t have the contact lenses that scratch your cornea, but he did his best. He\u2019s just the greatest guy in the world. Ron is somebody you want to do your best for, period.<\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/3019b16843efe852c84612f7fa4673e6a0-grinch-santa.rvertical.w570.jpg\")
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I always felt really safe with Jim. I liked being around him. At such a young age, to watch an artist who is that serious at what they\u2019re doing even while playing this very over-the-top character, it was clear to me how much he was putting into it and how much of an artist he was.<\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/a9e4ed058cb3e12c76461daa6cc52b6e20-cindy-set-grinch.rhorizontal.w700.jpg\")
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The fake eyelashes were so fun for a girl. That part stuck well into adulthood. It was glam. And the wig itself was incredibly elaborate. Doing this Christmas record I just did, Rick was so kind as to loan me the original wig. When we unboxed that at a photo shoot for the first time in 25 years, it still had the snow on it, which had a very specific scent. All the memories came flooding back.<\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/a92acb8e53c18493e3afbe27cd8dd5adb7-whos-grinch.rhorizontal.w700.jpg\")
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