RW
That’s painful!

SANFORD
And it’s very revealing. And then there are things that we got huge laughs on that never occurred to us.

We would think it was something funny/okay, but man -

FINN
Huge waves of laughter. Dave Reynolds’ chicken jokes, both chicken jokes always got big laughs.

RW
The gag where they lay eggs in response to shocking news?

FINN
No (laughing) that’s a visual. Mark Kennedy came up with that. But Dave has a line where the Goat is teasing them about how they’re all going to be eaten and the chickens say "Oh, who would eat chicken?" We thought it was cute, but every time…HUGE laughs.

SANFORD
Shirley wrote a line that Grace says

FINN
Oh yeah…"We don’t eat meat -

SANFORD
"Kind of like a professional courtesy?"

FINN
Every time, huge laughs, waves and waves of laughs. Again, we found it funny but it didn’t have us rolling in the aisles.

RW
Is part of that something that Alice pointed to, which is that Shirley knew how to write for that actress, for Rosanne?

FINN
Yes, yes. And that was something that as we went through casting we tried to do for all of the characters. With Rosanne we always came in with a ton of material to record and because she not only is a genius at stand up but she’s done sitcoms - constantly in revision. She was very, very amenable to doing different versions of a joke and very, very quick to express what didn’t work for her and if we had alternates on the line she would say ‘Well I don’t think this one’s funny, I’m not going to do that one.’ And if we couldn’t come up with one she’d improvise.

SANFORD
She was great with that. One of the things that I thought was really great about her was that she will tell you ‘that’s not funny, that’s not funny, this is really funny, let’s do this one!’ She was very frank about what works and what doesn’t, which is really refreshing.

FINN
She’d come in and we saw the script covered with coffee stains and barbeque sauce and dog eared and she’d made notes all over it…and so we knew we were in really good shape because she was really interested in the story right away, and she asked a lot of questions, which is really good. We always tried to write for her, and for everybody. It’s…it’s …always easier once you have the actors cast.

RW
And it’s she, and Judy Dench and Jennifer?

FINN
Jennifer Tilly.

RW
When did Sarah Jessica step off, was it before you came on?

FINN
No she was on for about six months, but we reconceived the character.

SANFORD
Jennifer Tilly’s name was suggested by Tom Schumacher and we thought "Okay. She’s funny, and she’s been funny in just about everything she’s ever been in."

RW
And a great voice just begging to be animated.

FINN
A terrific voice. And…she’s also, you know, you know her voice is very distinct but her characterizations are very subtle, and what’s always amazing with somebody like her and Randy Quaid that they come in months apart and just sort of pick up and just spontaneously get into these characters.

You know John was talking earlier about how smart the audiences are, and we’ve found it consistently in every preview. The set up on the farm which we thought really needed a lot of screen time, we kept on getting the note ‘get off the farm!’

SANFORD
They wanted the story to start.

FINN
The story starts when they head to town, and so we wound up … first we sort of pared stuff down, and then I think by the third time we heard it we were…like pulling stuff out, throwing stuff overboard - huge, huge chunks of screen time because the audience got it. (Laughing) There’s a terrific song that sets the farm up that k.d.lange sings called "Patch of Heaven." Carol Cook does the voice of the Pearl, the famer lady, and all the farm characters are really great and warm and wonderfully animated by James Lopez who did a terrific job. And you get that right away.

SANFORD
Yeah, it’s interesting you always hear people say - the animation folks - ‘we don’t get to spend time with characters, we like this one or that one and we really want to spend more time with them.’ Well if that’s appropriate to the story, great, but when people get everything right away, if people understand your character in ten minutes then you’d better get moving!

FINN
Get things going, get things active. That’s something that Tom was always pushing on, to get active. You know we learned to get there ultimately, and the quicker we could get there the better it was for the move.