Insect Asides -- `Antz' Co-Director Got Some Nice Improvisation From Woody Allen

Computer animation has come a long way, even since the debut of "Toy Story" just three years ago.

"It's a very tactile medium," said Tim Johnson, who co-directed "Antz," the new DreamWorks cartoon. "I like to think it combines the best of animation and live action."

Some of the more elaborate effects, including a flood sequence that was considered impossible until recently, were completed just a couple of months ago. But Johnson claims that "Antz," which is being released five months ahead of schedule, wasn't a rush job.

"Last November, we showed what we had to Steven Spielberg (one of DreamWorks' founders), and told him we were a little early," Johnson said, in a phone interview from New York. "He said, `Well, guys, you've got a great-looking movie, even now, so put the pedal down and finish it.' "

Opening in hundreds of theaters today, "Antz" will now finish ahead of Disney's computer-animated follow-up to "Toy Story," called "A Bug's Life," which also features an ant as its hero. It's scheduled to arrive Nov. 25.

While there have been accusations that DreamWorks borrowed the idea from Disney, Johnson claims he started his first script for "Antz" in 1991, when he called it "Lights Out." After several years of rewrites, the script was presented to DreamWorks and green-lighted around the same time "Toy Story" became a hit.

"It was always the story of insects, and one who wants to be an individual, who thinks `there's gotta be something better than this,' " said Johnson. "DreamWorks was thinking of a similar idea, but they were considering live action, thinking of puppets, and it made sense to bring them together."

Johnson and his co-director, Eric Darnell, spent a lot of time looking at such futuristic classics as Terry Gilliam's "Brazil" and Fritz Lang's "Metropolis"; the latter was an inspiration "both thematically and visually."

They also watched Frank Capra's "It Happened One Night," which features a runaway heiress who hooks up with a less powerful male. In "Antz," the heiress is a princess with the voice of Sharon Stone; the male is Woody Allen, who provides the voice of the ant hero, Z. Both improvised some lines.

"In the script, we'd gone too far, making the princess so spoiled she was unlikable, but Sharon made her believable and helped to balance out the character," said Johnson. "Woody Allen would do things like changing `yes' to `absolutely' when he's asked to dance, to give it that little neurotic edge."

The script was written for "a Woody Allen type," but Jeffrey Katzenberg, another of DreamWorks' founders, knew Allen and suggested it to him. Johnson came up with a trial reel in which lines from Allen's comedy "Bananas" came out of a cartoon character.

"When we showed it to him, he asked, `How did you get me in there?' " said Johnson. "He was really intrigued with animation."

A veteran of "The Simpsons," Johnson didn't worry too much about going over the heads of children with Allen's dialogue, which recalls his creative coward in the 23-year-old "Love and Death."

"You don't know what kids laugh at," he said. "All you know is to be true to yourself and be honest, even if some lines go spinning right over a kid's head. Kids are glued to `The Simpsons' and they don't understand half the references."

Two of the funniest supporting characters, a pair of "waspy wasps" voiced by Jane Curtin and Dan Aykroyd, are in and out quicker than the sneaky Siamese cats in Disney's "Lady and the Tramp," but they make a lasting impression.

"You discover your film as you make it," said Johnson. "Only after we'd quite literally finished it, cutting together all the footage, did we realize it was one of the funnier things in the picture. Maybe we should have done more, but you could also have too much of a good thing."

Johnson is quite high on DreamWorks' other feature-length cartoon, "Prince of Egypt," which will use more traditional animation techniques to tell the story of Moses.

It's due in mid-December, when not only "Antz" and "A Bug's Life" but "A Rugrats Movie" are likely to be taking up multiplex space. He thinks there's room for them all, as long they offer something fresh.

"Filmgoers want to go somewhere new," he said. "We hope that fans of `Toy Story' will come to our film and see that there's a much broader range of `looks' in computer animation than they might have guessed."