Nick Park and Jane Horrocks: how we made Chicken Run
Nick Park, co-director/producer
My sister kept pet chickens when we were kids and we’d make up these skits and cartoons where they’d always be the heroes of the story. Aged 17, on a foundation art course, I did a couple of stints at a chicken-packing factory. One day they sent me to the slaughterhouse and I saw all the live chickens hanging on a conveyor belt, held upside down by their legs – it was horrifying. In a way, chickens have always been in the back of my mind.
When [Aardman Animations cofounder] Peter Lord and I began discussing the concept of The Great Escape with chickens, the whole thing just fitted together. It was when we were at the Sundance film festival showing A Close Shave that we got a call from DreamWorks. Jeffrey Katzenberg and Steven Spielberg sent a private jet to fly us to Los Angeles for a night – they wanted to know if we had any feature film ideas. By coincidence they arranged for the meeting to take place in a famous chicken restaurant. At that point all we had were a few thoughts scribbled on a scrap of paper, but the idea of chickens plotting their grand escape went down really well. I remember Steven saying that The Great Escape was his favourite film, and he had 300 chickens on his farm.
So that was pretty much the green light for Aardman – a fairly unknown British outfit – to get things going. For a while we toyed with various ideas and storylines, but then [American screenwriter] Karey Kirkpatrick came on board and suggested introducing a romance between Ginger and the maverick cockerel, Rocky [voiced by Mel Gibson]. Karey brought a Hollywood angle to the team, which was excellent for bringing Rocky to life.
Sometimes our American colleagues would be confused by British slang. Because the film is set in Yorkshire we used some very specific phrases. We’d then get notes asking: “What is a wassock?” Sometimes we got away with saying things because they simply didn’t know what we meant.
The animators generally got through around two or three seconds a day. We’d crack open the champagne if we managed to get a minute in a week. The pie machine sequence, my favourite scene, took around three months.
There was an atmosphere of excitement on set as it was our first proper foray into feature films. There was a nervousness, too – we were determined to prove that we hadn’t sold out, despite signing with a Hollywood studio. When the film came out, the reviews were mostly good – certainly good enough to feel like we’d hit the mark, although some accused Aardman of getting in bed with Hollywood and losing its national-treasure status. It’s incredible to me that 20 years have passed since we made that film and it’s still thought of