Interview with Tim Allen, Elizabeth Mitchell,
  Michael Lembeck

The Santa Clause 2

October 10, 2002

It was a little hard to keep Tim Allen and Michael Lembeck on track during the roundtable. They walked in, sat down, and started in on their own routine. After 5 minutes or so of banter (hilarious, yes - but impossible to transcribe), they got down to business (sort of) and answered our questions. After round 1, we met with Elizabeth Mitchell, who was like the calm after the storm. She's delightful and easy to talk to. It's been eight years since the original Santa Claus movie was made and these people all talk about the sequel like a labor of love.

Question: So how was the latex?

Tim: It isn't latex; it's a high-quality styrene. I don't even know what it's made out of - foam core, mucilage.

Michael: This wonderfully great actor was in make-up 3 and a half to 4 and a half hours at least half the days of the shoot. And he's got a thousand pounds of fat pads on and...

Tim: And nobody cared.

Michael: And it got really hot in there.

Tim: You did not want to be near me after a burrito, I'll tell you that right now.

Michael: He was a living, breathing Dutch oven.

Tim: A crock-pot.

Question: Tim, there's a naughty and nice list. How many times were you on the naughty list?

Tim: I've done some terrible things to my family and at school. As the movie said, Botox Santa was the one that said, "according to the rules, pretty much every kid out there is on the naughty list". And Curtis said, "We like to cut the kids a little slack."

[Then in a perfect imitation of Curtis], "The de-Santafication process has begun!" I loved that part - I love that little kid.

Yes, I've been on the naughty list many times, but we won't go into that.

Question: You're a funny guy. What kind of pranks did you pull on the set for the kids to make them laugh?

Tim: Mostly I couldn't because I'm dressed as Santa Claus and 90% of these children were not doing a movie with me they were doing a movie with Santa Claus, so I had to be very respectful of the fact that a lot of these kids were [in awe], "uh, I'm good". A lot of poking and pulling [on the coat], "Santa, Santa." These questions - "Where do the reindeer really go at night?" "They go to reindeer houses somewhere." I made up more stuff.

So the jokes were actually to the crew, and usually it was Botox Santa. Botox Santa would go nuts, a lot, during the day because it was hot and once I got into the SS uniform, it was all over. I ran the set.

Michael: We have hours of Tim's - we'll call it the gag reel. Once he put on the Toy Santa outfit, it literally was every man for himself. No one was safe. He went after everybody and everything, but he was always careful of the kids. Because they thought this was the real Santa. It was extraordinary. On any given day between 250 and 350 kids, and when Tim hit the set, it stopped being a movie and started to be, "Oh, Santa's here, we've got to go to work." It was amazing.

Question: What was the age range for the kids?

Tim: 15 to 21.

Michael: No, the smallest group of kids was between 5½ and 7. The largest group was probably between 8 and 11.

Question: Were any of them afraid of Santa?

Michael: No. These kids would come on to this 20,000 square-foot workshop and it was a working toy factory and they all had real tasks to do. They were really making toys and painting little trains, sewing together dolls, and painting teacups. And so it was for them a kind of fantasy fulfillment. This is a steel, iron, lead, glass, real architecture, real construction; this set with a real roof on it and the lighting came from above as it would from the ice-globe. For them, it was the genuine article and their tasks kept them so involved and invested in what they were doing; it was wonderful to watch them. They were totally invested in their tasks - it made our days really wonderful.

Question: Tim, what kinds of things were you looking for in a script before you agreed to do a second one?

Tim: I just wanted it to make sense. They're making up a movie on Santa Claus, granted, but it's still got to be based on something so you can have something to relate to. They just really wanted sleighs and gifts and corporate tie-ins and merchandising - where did we go? This guy turned into Santa and had a fight with his boy, so we've got to come back to this boy, some kind of peril that he's in. Christmas has got to be in peril, and we've got to see something. I wasn't that into it for a couple of years. I was busy doing other movies. I said, "Come to me with something, but protect your franchise. Don't come up with something that's silly." And they kept coming up with something that was past silly - it was ludicrous. "It risks polluting the first one."

It was hopeless - they wouldn't let go of these conventional things that movies do. [Finally,] we got to a script that they turned over to two writers that wanted to [go with my ideas].

Michael: You really did exercise an enormous amount of integrity. They wanted to chase the dollars from the first one for a long time and his mantra was always, "I don't want to do a sequel for sequel's sake - that's just being a whore."

Tim: It's Santa Claus. You can't have him selling products. You can't have him being lecherous. This guy's a saint - he loves children, he loves giving, you've got to be really careful how you deal with this guy. It's the same with Buzz Lightyear - you can't have him doing certain things now because you created this real innocent little guy who's a lot more popular than Woody and a much better actor. He's a better man; he's a better toy - who wants a soft toy with no groin?

Question: How are you and Santa Claus alike?

Tim: I am so much more of a curmudgeon than this guy and I was a pretty risky comedian. How on earth I got into this family-movie thing, I have no idea. But I have very little in common except for some strange reason, I don't really like kids that much, but I'm really good with them. I'm mischievous, still. When I'm around kids, I'm an adult that still acts like an idiot and they respond to this. I'm much like Santa Claus in that he treats kids with kid-respect. It's on their level. It's a little scary to relate to a 6-year-old and be able to drive a car at the same time.

Question: What's your favorite scene from the movie and what should kids look for?

Tim: There are so many things I love about this - I love anything to do with that glass ball because it makes me think of the first one. I just love Botox Santa - anything to do with that guy and those soldiers, I love all that. Anything in the toyshop, anything in Santa's Village, the chase at the end on the reindeer - all that stuff is amazing. There's too much.

For me to watch, it is giving away the gifts to the adult children - the secret Santa stuff in the school. For the kid in me, when I have Bernard all tied up...

Michael: That's scene is not in the movie.

Tim: Since when?

Michael: Months. You saw the version without that scene.

Question: If you had a secret Santa, what would you have gotten?

Tim: Raquel Welch - I really asked for that over and over again after I saw '20,000 Years B.C.' - I kept asking for that. I would have settled for the poster, but I really actually wanted her bikini - I was a very, very advanced boy. There was something about that pose and that poster I wanted.

Any James Bond stuff - I never got any of that stuff. Any of the trending movie-related stuff, my mom was not a big fan of that. She thought they were junk toys, that you would only play with them for a short time and then you'd never see them again. There was a James Bond set that came in a briefcase that had the gun in it. I had the Daisy air rifle - that was the first Christmas gift that got taken away. I got it and it was gone by that next week - there were windows broken.

Michael: What gift didn't I get that I would love to have gotten? The frilly dress from Heidi.

Tim: That would have been a dreidel, right?

Michael: I got plenty of dreidels.

Tim: Rasher of bacon? Pork tenderloin?

Michael: I was pretty content. I honest-to-god don't remember what I wished for that I didn't get. My own room.

Tim: You can't wish for a room, unless you're Donald Trump's kid.

Michael: You wanted Raquel Welch, why can't I have my own room.

Question: What I noticed about the toys was everyone got a toy that was a well-known name, but when she got her toy, it was a generic baby doll. Why wasn't it a Chatty Kathy or Betsy Wetsy?

Michael: Her toy was not necessarily about what the toy was, it was about what it represented.

Tim: There wasn't a well-known doll - Baby Doll?

Michael: You've really got to read the script sometime.

Tim: Yeah I do - my favorite scene's not in it. That's why I hate directors - they take the steam right out of your whistle. Go ahead.

Michael: For her, it was much more about the context in which she got the gift. Baby Doll represented to her what Christmas represented to her, which was, her parents literally fought every single day and it was uncomfortable in the house, and they decided to have peace for one day of the year. And when they told her that day doesn't exist anymore, her life was shot - she lost faith. And the gift that she remembered the most was getting something that was called Baby Doll, but it wasn't necessarily about what the gift was, as what it represented. So it wasn't that important to give it a name that you recognize.

Question: For Michael, you've been around movies and TV your whole life. Was it a natural transition for you to finally go into directing features after directing TV for so long?

Michael It felt very comfortable. I was not daunted by it at all. The only area in which somebody, when you direct one of these, has to do it for the first time is visual effects. We have 200 visual effects in this and some of them really big, and you really have to hope that you hire smart people to guide you through them.

Question: Are you satisfied with the final result?

Michael: I loved it. It's so much about my sensibility. I love romantic comedy, I love fantasy, and this has such a strong emotional core.

Question:So what was it like being on the set with Tim every day?

Elizabeth: We're both really lucky because I've been such a chameleon my whole life, so I tend to hang back and kind of watch people whereas he's just woooh. But I don't need to stand on the tables, so it's okay. Mainly our relationship is this [Tim talking, me giggling]. Every once in awhile he'll throw in whatever it is that makes you feel great, then you giggle in high octaves. I have never laughed so much in my life. He's wonderful. He's a good man, too. It was a joy to be with him - I can't say enough.

Question:On a movie like this, there's probably a lot of improvisation?

Elizabeth: Oh yeah. You know what I equated it to. Have you ever played tennis with a great tennis player and they hit it right to you? Let's say a great tennis player who loves you or who likes you and wants you to do well. That's it - I held my racquet. I held it and he hit them right to me and they bounced off and normally got over the net again and that was it. Plenty of improv, but definitely instigated by him. He'd say something and I'd answer back - a lot of it really sweet and a lot of it made it [into the movie]. Every reaction in there that in any way touched me is something that actually happened that I didn't even know that happened because Tim made it happen. He made me laugh and he made me cry - he can do that; he can change on a dime. I know you see the laugh part, but there's something really genuine in him that comes out when he's there. I was absolutely touched by him in so many ways. But he's also really funny, unbearably funny at times. He made the set really loose.

Question:You'd never really done much comedy before, right?

Elizabeth: On stage, I've done a lot. But it's very different; on stage, it's the give and take. Michael made it the same for me here; we always did our scenes from beginning to end. Anything we came up with in the scenes, we did in the close-ups, and Tim always did other things on the other side of my close-ups - I never knew what he was going to do. I'd go from being this stern person to laughing all the time, but he did that. So I had to think that's real - someone comes into your life like that and they're all of sudden full of magic and laughter and joy and they're funny - it must just turn you upside down. So that helped.

Question:Which principal did you model your principal after?

Elizabeth: Ah, yes, my opportunity. It was a combination of 5 different teachers I had, but now that I look back on it, there was nothing mean about them per se, they were just so disappointed when I didn't live up to their expectations. But every school that I graduated from, I'd get a hug from that same person. I always felt that they believed in me, I just never wanted to get on their bad side.

Can you think about being in this principal's office? You'd be destroyed - she's scary, but that's what you want. You don't want to have a principal who's trying to be all the kids' best friend. So that's how I did, but she was there on paper. That's who she was.

Question:What was your favorite day on the set?

Elizabeth: You know that day that he tells me that he's the real Santa, we had so much fun that day before he told me he was the real Santa. We giggled so much, Tim went around picking up things that were in my apartment and talking about why people put these things in their house, and for some reason he was absolutely so incredibly funny that day and we all were just so happy. We were all together in this one house and it was cold outside, it was actually snowing. It was warm inside and we all had cocoa and it was just one of those warm wonderful happy days, until it got sad. Then it was even sadder than ever, when I figured that he had to be completely mad - which I believe I would think. If the man I was seeing told me he was Santa Claus - I'd burst into tears. I'd be like, "Of course. You're so nice, you listen, and you rub my feet, so of course, you're Santa Claus." That was the sad part, but that was the most fun.

The most fun to watch was all the stuff in the toy factory. All the stuff with the tin soldiers; being around those kids. That was so much fun. I'd sit in my little chair and I'd look up and there's wonderland everywhere, but it had nothing to do with me, it was just the world they were creating. Michael never lost his temper, he never raised his voice, he never had ego. He was the most amazing director. That's why I'm here, doing 5 cities in 5 days, which sounded really silly to me. And I believe in it.

Question:Last night when we were leaving the theatre, there was a group of 12 kids singing.

Elizabeth: I was there.

Question:Did you hear them singing?

Elizabeth: Yeah. I had such a good time.

It's not the final cut. There's a scene where I actually turn into Mrs. Claus at the very end, as soon as it goes to black I come back up actually as Mrs. Claus. It comes up at the end as sort of a thank you for sticking with us. I said to Disney, "Look. You got Santa - he looks great. Then you've got this scrawny little kid next to him, so we really have to do something about this." So that was the joy of it - they did do something and I think she's adorable.

Question:Was that the first time you'd seen it with an audience?

Elizabeth: Yeah, it was neat. I enjoy the Toy Santa stuff - that always makes me happy.

Question:They clapped at the end.

Elizabeth: That was really sweet.

Question:You did 'Frequency' - that was another feel-good movie.

Elizabeth: Those are really fun. I've never chosen anything because I thought it would do well, I choose everything because I think it might make me happy to do it - I'm very selfish in the things I choose. I have to be there. I have to do it every day.

Question:What was your favorite toy when you were a kid?

Elizabeth: It was a snow-cone maker. I was 4, believe it or not, we finally figured out the timeline with my parents last night, and it was either in a snowman or a penguin. And it was in the belly, you hit the thing and it came out. I remember because I got it and tears, happy, the whole thing. I remember so well - so that's what it was.

Make-And-Bake Oven - did not get. Got it two years ago, because they were sick of hearing me talk about it.

Question:What's next for you?

Elizabeth: I have to find something. Everyone thought I was being too picky, so I let Tim and Michael read my scripts on the airplane and they agree completely with me. I got a stack of them and they're like, "Oh, no." I read aloud from one and everyone on the plane was like, "Oh my gosh - no." There's some really bad stuff. I'm not horrible - I just can't, why get up in the morning and do it, I could be home eating waffles. I think if you have a love for this business, you can't ever do anything you feel is not fun or not good or not something that means something to you. Otherwise you turn into something that you're not. I think that's why a lot of people lose their joy and they become unbearable because I don't think actors in general are unbearable, I think they childlike and quite fun. At least I hope they are.

At least Elizabeth, Tim, and Michael have all remained childlike and quite fun.