TV film by Hallmark Entertainment
made in the UK in 1999
Directed by
Nick Willing
Alice by
Tina Majorino
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A crowd has gathered to watch Martin Short fall. He is standing on a table at a London soundstage, a hat the size of a footstool roosting on his head. In a few minutes, he will burst into manic dance, skip among bowl-size tea cups, then belly flop off the table onto a mattress. The pratfall is the big finish to the Mad Hatter's tea party; a pivotal scene in NBC's $21 million, three-hour Alice in Wonderland. The crowd at Short's feet is one part crew needed for the shot, one part rubberneckers at what could be the scene of an interesting accident.
Short is nervous. He is no stranger to physical comedy; slapstick was his stock-in-trade on both SCTV and Saturday Night Live. But still, he's worried. Director Nick Willing, a dry-witted Brit who directed the 1997 feature "Photographing Fairies," tries to calm him.
"Now, we don't want to hurt you, that's the main thing," Willing says. Short nods, his bloated topper bobbing. But he is not reassured. He begins to recite his own obituary. "Martin Short is dead," he in-tones. "In a fluke accident, the beloved Canadian best known for his lovably weird characters... "The crew laughs. Willing smiles, "Good luck, Martin, I won't say break a leg."
The camera rolls. Strange, tinny music begins to play. Short dances to the edge, lets loose an exaggerated "Agggh!" and spills off the table. Then silence. Willing yells, "Cut!"
Seconds pass. Suddenly, Short pops up - hat intact - and glares menacingly. "You're all thinking I'm no good, aren't you?" he fake sobs. "To hell with you all! You try having limited talent and a straw hat!"
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Madness, madness. "When I saw that the tea party is 19 pages long, I thought, How will I
remember? Nothing seems to make sense," Short says during a break, his
hat gone but orange wig and blown-out-of-proportion latex nose and ears still attached. "But when you follow it closely, it does make sense. It's shifting realities. It's madness."
Of course, a retelling of Lewis Carroll's classic Alice's Adventures in Wonderland should be nothing less than  carefully choreographed lunacy. It is the story of a girl's descent (literally, through a rabbit hole) from rational Victorian England into a topsy-turvy world where babies turn into pigs, flamingos and hedgehogs are instruments of croquet, and guinea pigs fill jury boxes.
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