February 2, 1996

     Living Large

Caption: Lilliputians surround and capture Gulliver (Ted Danson) after the Englishman is marooned on their land in "Gulliver's Travels" on NBC.

O'Toole plays the emperor of the pint-size Lilliputians, while Danson plays Gulliver, who, of course, is a giant when he washes ashore in Lilliput after a shipwreck.

But Danson says he just kept looking at O'Toole and repeating: "Don't worry, Ted, it's all right. He's only 6 inches tall, he's only 6 inches tall. ..."

The four-hour, two-part miniseries, which airs at 9 p.m. Sunday and Monday on NBC (Channel 4), is the most expensive TV program ever made on an hourly basis -- largely due to the special effects.

Gulliver might be a 280-year-old novel, but computer graphics techniques -- many of which were developed only in the last several years -- helped bring the complete version of Jonathan Swift's satire to the screen for the first time.

Gulliver's "travels" involve the journey of the fictional Dr. Lemuel Gulliver, who sees the human condition through four different perspectives: as a 6-inch being in a land of giants, as a giant in a miniature kingdom, as the only sane person in the crazy world of the subhuman Yahoos, and as the only civilized person in a world dominated by horse beings.

Previous depictions have focused only on Gulliver's adventures in Lilliput and amid the giants of Brobdingnag. After each adventure, this Gulliver returns to his London home, where he attempts to describe what he has seen and is eventually put on trial by a doctor trying to prove he's deranged.

Bringing this all to the small screen cost $28 million, according to producer Robert Halmi Sr., who previously set a record with the Scarlett mini-series, which cost $40 million. But Scarlett was eight hours of television.

The special effects often involved Danson standing in front of a bare blue screen -- over which other film is superimposed -- and imagining that he's talking to beings either much larger or much smaller than himself.

As Danson describes it, the special effects made the acting all the more difficult.

"The party's over, all your friends have gone home. And you're, you know, sitting on a sound stage with people being very technical, saying, 'No, no, no, look over here, look over there.' It's difficult. But then, when you see it put together, it's so remarkable."

Given the choice between playing big or playing small, Danson says he prefers big.

"Big, you feel very noblesse oblige. You know, you're gracious to all the other actors. Small, you get a little grumpy, a little arrogant."

A scene involving a six-inch O'Toole illustrates the technical complexities of acting in the production.

"On the first day of rehearsal, we were working on that scene where Gulliver meets Peter O'Toole as the emperor," says director Charles Sturridge. "And I said to Ted, 'Look, this is going to seem a bit silly, but stand on this ladder. Just get a sense of what it's like to see the shape of people looking at the top of their heads.'

"... After a while, Peter said, 'I get it. I get it.'

"And I thought 'Yes, OK, he's big, you're small, that sort of thing. And Peter said, 'This guy's very big, he's very important, he's very powerful. I'm very big, I'm very important, I'm very powerful. I could do business with him.' ...

"Which in fact became the basis of the way the emperor and Gulliver related," adds Sturridge. "Because they recognize in each other something which is beyond physical size."

And then there's the irony of Danson, the former Cheers star and as American as you can get, playing an English character. Why Danson?

"The crucial quality had to be that you liked this guy (Gulliver), that you cared about him, that he was sympathetic, that you wanted him to get home," says producer Duncan Kenworthy, who produced Four Weddings and a Funeral.

Mary Steenburgen, Danson's real-life wife and the wife of Gulliver in the movie, says his getting the part was a puzzle to Danson as well.

"One of the things that I realized made him a great choice was that Gulliver is really a traveler," says Steenburgen. "Gulliver, in a sense, is two eyes filled with wonder, looking at the world. And in a funny way, he (Danson) really does go through life like that, like a traveler, and somebody who really does drink in with wonder what's around him."

As Mary Gulliver, Steenburgen spends much of the movie yearning for her husband's return and fending off the advances of the evil Dr. Bates (James Fox), who is eager to declare her husband insane so he can marry her. Only in the late moments, when she defends her husband, is she allowed some drama.

Jonathan Swift was no help in the romance department. The author, she observes, was "almost misogynistic in the way he wrote the wife. ... It's almost disturbingly dismissive of women."