Tagline: You have to believe it to see it.
Welcome to Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium, the strangest, most fantastic, most wonderful toy store in the world. It’s a tantalizing toy haven in which everything inside literally comes to life – including the store itself – and where marvels of every imaginable, possible kind, and beyond, never cease… that is, until now.
When Mr. Magorium, the store’s extraordinary 243 year-old proprietor (Dustin Hoffman), announces that he will at long last hand over the reigns of his wonder-expanding store to his unconfident young manager, Molly Mahoney (Natalie Portman), the store decides to throw an unusual tantrum. As a skeptical accountant named Henry (Jason Bateman) comes in to audit the Legos and Lincoln Logs, not to mention the Whodathoughts and Whatchamacallits, the once sparkling, color-saturated Emporium is suddenly embattled by mysterious changes.
Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium is a 2007 Canadian–American family/children’s fantasy comedy film written and directed by Zach Helm, produced by FilmColony, Mandate Pictures, Walden Media, Richard N. Gladstein and James Garavente and music composed by Alexandre Desplat and Aaron Zigman.
The film stars Dustin Hoffman as the owner of a magical toy store, and Natalie Portman as his store employee. Also starring Jason Bateman as the mutant accountant and Zach Mills as the hat collector and his store volunteer.
The film was theatrically released on November 16, 2007 by 20th Century Fox. The film grossed $69.5 million worldwide. It received a Young Artist Award nomination for Best Performance in a Feature Film – Leading Young Actor. The film was released on DVD and Blu-ray on March 4, 2008 by 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment.
Enter The Wonder Emporium
In the vividly fantastical world of “Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium,” imagination rules and just about anything you can think might be fun can happen… and does. In this enchantingly alive toy-store, balls bounce themselves, Slinkies go far beyond slinking, schools of fish fly through the air, stuffed animals hug back and good homework is instantly morphed into grand rewards – and the customers have the wide-open minds to have a blast with it.
But when two centuries of wonderment look like they’re about to grind to a sudden halt, the store does something even more incredible. It brings a young woman who doesn’t quite believe in herself and a man who claims he doesn’t believe in magic one last chance to discover one of life’s greatest gifts: the ability to be awestruck and surprised by possibility.
The Wonder Emporium of Mr. Magorium, not surprisingly, was born in the mind of a talented young writer, and now first-time director, who previously worked in a toy store himself: Zach Helm, who recently came to the fore with his screenplay for the innovative, narrative-bending comedy “Stranger Than Fiction,” starring Will Ferrell and directed by Marc Forster. While studying acting at Chicago’s DePaul University, Helm found himself spontaneously inspired by his part-time job in an especially fun-filled toy boutique, which put him in mind of the spellbinding powers of pure, imaginative play.
“The toy store I worked at was similar in its eclecticism to Magorium’s Emporium but it was much, much smaller,” recalls Helm. “Then, on one particularly slow, rainy, afternoon when nobody was coming into the store, I just started writing in my journal. That’s when I came up with the basic outline of a toy store owned by a 243-year-old man, a story that stayed in my notebook for a long, long time.”
It was years later, if only a minute in Magorium time, when Helm was in Hollywood looking for an idea to spark his first screenplay, that he returned to the concept of the Wonder Emporium. “The idea always stood out to me,” Helm says. Now, as he started to write it in earnest, he found inspiration coming at him fast and furious, from all manner of unexpected and diverse sources – from the surrealism of René Magritte, to the madcap humor of the Marx Brothers, to the work of such reality-exploring playwrights such as Samuel Beckett, Tom Stoppard and Harold Pinter, to the wild, kinetic inventiveness of Rube Goldberg devices, to the sheer joy whimsy of The Muppets.
“This movie is a cornucopia of all the things that I love and that I find exciting, thrilling and playful,” sums up Helm. Though never less than playful and light in its touch, it is also chock full of ideas about time, mortality, individuality and leaving something wonderful behind when you go.
At the heart of it all, was Helm’s dreamy vision of a toy store he calls “the most amazing, bizarre and incredible in all the world.” He goes on: “The mythology behind it was that Mr. Edward Magorium, a very unique and long-lived toy inventor, came to this country in the 19th century and built and developed this store into the place it is today. More recently, he found a loyal apprentice in Molly Mahoney, a young woman at the crossroads of adulthood, to whom he hopes he can bequeath the store because he has to depart.
The only trouble is that Molly can’t quite yet see what is phenomenal about herself. At the same time, Mr. Magorium has brought in an accountant to find out what the store is worth, only Henry’s a man of numbers and rules and adult sensibilities and he doesn’t understand what the store is all about. When everything starts to change, and the toys start to lose their magic, the question is: is it because Mr. Magorium is leaving, is it because Mahoney doesn’t believe she can take over the store, or is it because Henry has arrived – and how can the store be brought back to amazing life?”
Mandate Pictures, who had just produced Helm’s highly successful screenplay “Stranger Than Fiction,” stepped up to the plate to bring the story to the screen. They also offered Helm what he had always dreamed about: the chance to direct his own script. “They gave me a fantastic opportunity to be able to visually express everything that I was being inspired by while I was writing it,” comments Helm. “And it was nice to see it all come to life without ever having to wonder what the writer was thinking about when he wrote it!”
Meanwhile, to help put the project on the fast-track, producer Richard N. Gladstein came on board. Already a fan of “Stranger Than Fiction,” he was attracted by the screenplay’s non-stop sense of imaginative fun. “I absolutely loved how the `Magorium’ screenplay presented a whole new take on magic and the idea that you have to believe in yourself for magic to happen. I also loved the humor and the whole tone, which felt so fresh and unique. There are so many wonderful things for both kids and adults to enjoy in this story.”
Helm was especially appreciative of all that Gladstein brought to the production. “Jim and I learned so much from Richard, from getting the shooting script ready to casting to particular shots and frames,” says Helm. “Everything in this movie has been highly influenced by Richard’s depth of experience in producing films.”
Gladstein was thrilled to bring his skills to a film with such pure-hearted ambitions. Sums up Gladstein: “The wonderful tone of the screenplay was amplified even more in the making of the movie – so that it remains very funny and heartwarming and poignant, but, most importantly, real. Even the most fantastical magic in the movie feels entirely real – and what’s so lovely about that is that the Emporium becomes a place people can truly believe in.”
Meet the Manager: Molly Mahoney
The story of “Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium” has at its heart the toy store’s creative and not-quite-ready for the real world manager, Molly Mahoney. Once a musical prodigy, Molly loves the marvels and merriment of her present job but she’s frustrated by the fact that she has never finished anything she’s ever started. She has whole lot of promising beginnings, a few enticing middles, and absolutely no ends. And now that Mr. Magorium wants to leave his one-in-a-million Emporium in her hands, she fears she doesn’t quite have the heroic, not to mention magical, nature to take up his baton.
To bring Molly Mahoney to realistic life — in all her joy, charm and insecurity that hides tons of potential – in the middle of a delightful fantasy, the filmmakers knew they would need a very special actor. And they were all in complete agreement as to who the number one choice for the role would be in a perfect world where dreams come true: Natalie Portman. The Oscar-nominated actress has risen to the forefront of her generation’s leading ladies with roles that are as diverse as they are captivating, from the fantasy world of George Lucas’s “Star Wars” to the adult complexities of Mike Nichols’ screen adaptation of “Closer.”
To Zach Helm’s utter delight and amazement, Portman jumped in right away with a yes. “The very first person I ever mentioned that I would love to have play Mahoney was Natalie Portman,” muses Helm. “If I remember correctly, we sent the script to her on a Thursday and by the following Monday she said she would do it. We were ecstatic. A really big piece of our puzzle was in place.”
“Zach sent the script to me wrapped up like a present with a big red ribbon around the box,” recalls Portman. “Inside was the most beautiful letter asking me to read the script. Well, I had already read `Stranger Than Fiction’ which I really loved so I sat down and read `Mr. Magorium’ and fell in love with his writing all over again. Zach has a very specific and optimistic perspective of the world which is so lovely to see, especially in this age of cynicism. I was really moved by that and I thought Mr. Magorium’s way of looking at the world would be such a bright, uplifting thing to bring into people’s lives.”
The entire production was inspired by Portman’s commitment to the role. “Natalie became the linchpin for the entire movie,” comments James Garavente. “She so perfectly embodies that transformation between childhood and adulthood that Mahoney is experiencing and she lifted the character off the page and made her an entirely real person, which is everything we hoped for.”
Portman was able to relate to Mahoney’s one big obstacle to becoming a Magorium-like, creative impresario in her own right – a simple lack of seeing her own internal magic. “It’s one of the great and common problems in life, not having the courage in yourself to say this is my voice, this is my life, this is my creation, and being afraid to really put yourself out there with confidence and truly enter adulthood,” she remarks.
As for Mr. Magorium’s role in Mahoney’s life, Portman explains: “I think he’s both a mentor and a playmate for her. She realizes that his ability to live through his imagination is a whole way of life, a choice. In that way, he’s a model for what she would like to be – but his decision to depart sort of forces her at long last to move into that world herself.”
Portman’s collaboration with Dustin Hoffman brought their relationship bursting to full-color life, sparking an authentic sense of awe and excitement in Portman that transfers onto the screen. “Dustin is much like his character in that every single second he’s using the utmost of his creative powers,” Portman observes. “To see someone squeezing that much joy and effort out of every second was pretty inspiring.”
Equally fun for Portman was working so closely with Jason Bateman as Henry, the seemingly colorless accountant faced with the ultimately impossible task of putting a price-tag on the Wonder Emporium – a place that, against all his better instincts, changes the way he feels about everything, including Mahoney. “Henry is supposed to be very straight-laced and humorless – but Jason makes that very, very funny,” laughs Portman. “He just had me cracking up non-stop. And in the end, it’s cynical Henry who truly shows Mahoney what Mr. Magorium was trying to give her.”
With such organic rapport with her fellow actors, Portman notes that one of the biggest challenges of the role was learning to play piano and to use a conductor’s baton with the virtuoso skills that Mahoney secretly possesses. “It was really challenging for me because I never played before,” she admits. “I took a few lessons when I was 8 but I don’t even know how to read music. Luckily, I had a great teacher and, even though it was a lot of hard work, it was really fun and something I hope to keep up with. As for the conducting, it’s Mahoney’s big breakthrough. When she starts to believe, the block she’s had with her music disappears and that’s when she starts conducting the store itself back to life.”
Introducing the Inimitable and Ingenious Mr. Magorium
There have been many odd, eccentric and unusual toy inventors in stories and movies through the ages, but no one quite like Edward Magorium. This self-proclaimed “toy impresario, wonder aficionado and avid shoe-wearer” might be 243 years old but, aside from his shock-white hair, he barely looks like a day over 65 – and he has just as much wildly enthusiastic, sparkling energy as when he first opened the doors of his Wonder Emporium 114 years ago, in the hopes of bringing thrills, laughter and the art of the impossible to kids of all ages. Every single minute of his life at the store has been chock-full of fantastic occurrences, yet the time has come for Mr. Magorium to take his bow and leave, if only the store will let him.
With such a vivaciously larger-than-life, yet poignantly vulnerable, character in front of them, the filmmakers poured over the different options they had in casting him. “Since the character is 243 years old, we talked about needing an actor who could play the age from his soul, from his wisdom, from his life experience,” recalls producer Richard Gladstein. “And almost collectively we all said `Then let’s get Dustin Hoffman.’” The connections were already there as Hoffman had also just finished starring in “Stranger Than Fiction,” which Zach Helm wrote, and had previously starred in Marc Forster’s “Finding Neverland,” which Gladstein produced.
“There was certainly an element of six degrees of separation when it came to Dustin,” continues Gladstein, “but he was truly our first choice for Magorium no matter what history any of us may have had with him. He is the greatest natural resource any film could possibly have. He takes everything in around him and invents a character that you never dreamed was the guy in the script. It’s an understatement to say we were all ecstatic when he agreed to play Mr. Magorium.”
Remarks James Garavente: “This character was just a figment of Zach Helm’s imagination without any real reference point in the beginning, so the really fun part was watching Dustin bring all the powers he has as an actor to finding the character.”
Adds Zach Helm: “I had such a great experience with Dustin as the writer of `Stranger Than Fiction,’ I was thrilled to get the chance to work with him again as a director. He is so dedicated, so imaginative, so willing to play and at the same time so very, very precise. He cares about every shot, every action, every word and he was determined to realize as much of this character as possible.”
Hoffman approached the role without any preconceived notions, feeling his way into Magorium’s uninhibited but not necessarily unhinged persona – blended from a mix of dignified elegance, unabashed oddity and unsinkable humor. “At the beginning of any project, I never really know what the character is going to come out like,” explains Hoffman. “I like to take in the imagination of the director, the costume designer and the hair and makeup team and then find it with their help. We all knew we wanted to stay away from the literal age of Magorium, because wearing a lot of prosthetic makeup would be distracting – so, without old age makeup and a cliché craggy old man’s voice, I had to find another way in.”
And so he did and, according to Hoffman, much of the credit for finding Mr. Magorium goes to his wife of 30 years, Lisa. Recalls Hoffman: “My lovely wife was reading the script, and she turned to me and said `Do you remember the ostrich joke?’ Of course, I did because it’s one of my favorite jokes, one of my mainstays. Then Lisa said `Have you ever looked in the mirror when you tell that joke?’ I never had, actually. So at her suggestion I stood in front of a mirror, told the joke and realized exactly what Lisa was getting at. Lo and behold, Mr. Magorium was looking back at me in that mirror.”
Once he got a handle on the character, the portrait took on an increasingly vivid life of its own. “Watching Dustin’s work process was absolutely amazing,” comments Helm. “At times, he seemed to be in his own world, sort of wild and crazy and unreal. Then, on a dime, he could turn and look in your eyes and you would see all of his heart and knowledge. It was quite beautiful. And I think audiences will get the chance to see him do things in this performance they’ve never seen him do in his 40-year career. He is simply amazing.”
Hoffman returns the praise. “Zach wrote this screenplay at age 23,” says Hoffman,” which I find remarkable. For someone so young to be exploring the themes of time, mortality and legacy was just astonishing to me.”
The “Mutant”: Henry The Accountant Arrives To Value the Invaluable Emporium
As Mr. Magorium prepares to depart, he realizes he has to put the price of his emporium on the books – to that end he hires Henry the accountant to do the unthinkable and really, for Mr. Magorium, the impossible. Mr. Magorium has little concept of what an accountant is, and thus assumes that Henry must be a cross “between a counter and a mutant.” Indeed, far preferring resplendent inventions to receipts, Mr. Magorium has not a single clue as to the Emporium’s financial well being, outside of the fact that it has run quite nicely for 114 years. But for Henry, the Emporium appears to be an economic headache of infinite proportions, until he begins to befriend the store’s manager, Molly Mahoney.
This relationship was as key to the wide-ranging, comic fun of “Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium” as Silly Putty® and Radio Flyers®. “Our inspiration for the relationship between Mahoney and Henry was Hepburn and Tracey with that kind of classic back-and-forth banter, so we knew we needed a Henry with impeccable comic timing,” notes James Garavente. “But we also wanted to find someone who could really make you buy that this is a guy who just doesn’t ever see the magic in the world – a guy who really is us in a way, yet who ultimately, in spite of himself, comes to believe. That person was, without a doubt, Jason Bateman.”
Bateman recently came to the fore in the comic role of Michael Bluth, the sole source of stability in a family of out-of-control dysfunction, on one of television’s most acclaimed shows, “Arrested Development.” The role won him not only fans and accolades but also a Golden Globe Award – and this year he graces the screen in a number of highly anticipated movies.
Says Zach Helm of choosing Bateman to play Henry: “Even though Henry is a such a skeptic, you root for him because of Jason’s portrayal. He is so comfortable in the realm of playing discomfort that you totally understand Henry’s difficulty in trying to deal with the bizarre goings-on at the Emporium. Combined with his innate talents and incredible personal chemistry with the rest of the cast, I think Jason created some of the best comic pieces in the entire movie.”
Bateman recalls finding out he got the role while in typical LA traffic. “My phone rang and it was my manager and agent saying that I was going to be doing a movie in a matter of weeks with Natalie Portman and Dustin Hoffman. That’s when I hit the first car,” he jokes. “I hit the second car when they told me that the writer-director was Zach Helm. Needless to say, I drove right to my manager’s office to pick up the script. In reality I didn’t even need to read the script to say yes because the prospect of working with Natalie, Dustin and Zach was a real treat for a guy like me.” But once he got his hands on the script, Bateman was even more hooked. “The whole visual tone of the movie just floats my boat,” he says.
As for Henry, Bateman has some sympathy for the poor, logic-bound fellow who finds himself trying to straighten out 114 years of utterly anarchic bookkeeping. “Henry is a pretty uptight guy, and he’s very skeptical of any notion of magic and fantasy. He just wants to work on the books,” notes Bateman, “until things start to happen for which there’s no other explanation except magic.”
The Emporium’s Employee: Super-Skillful 9 Year-Old Eric Applebaum
While Mr. Magorium is the madcap brains behind the business and Mahoney oversees the day-to-day management of the store’s constantly creative goings-on, the Wonder Emporium also has one small but vital employee: 9 year-old Eric Applebaum, a brilliant but shy young loner who’s trying to come out of his shell.
Eric proved to be the hardest part of all to cast, sparking a nation-wide search for a little boy with these unique mix of qualities. “We probably saw close to 2,000 kids in an exhaustive coast-to-coast effort,” says James Garavente. “We needed a someone who could come off as the smartest person in the room – yet, at the same time, wasn’t bratty, impudent or even precocious; just really intelligent in the best way.”
Finally, they saw Zach Mills, who was born in Lakewood, Ohio and recently moved to Los Angeles to pursue his acting career – and the hunt came to an abrupt end. “Zach came across as an incredibly wise little boy,” continues Garavente. “He’s very smart, polite and interacts very well with adults which really worked for the character of Eric because Eric lives in a world of adults. He has a hard time engaging with other kids and that is a part of Eric’s journey that Zach captured so brilliantly.”
“He seemed wise and innocent at the same time,” remembers Richard Gladstein. “It seems in the case of this film, the older you are the more youthful you are and the younger you are, the wiser you are. So Dustin was the perfect one to play youthful and Zach was perfect playing the `grown up!’”
Writer-director Zach Helm was equally impressed. “As soon as we saw his audition tape I knew we had found our Eric,” recalls Helm. “There was no doubt in anyone’s mind. He is so expressive and focused. Many child actors are trained with very unreal affectations, but Zach has none of those. He is such a natural that you immediately understand everything that is going on with Eric and as soon as you see him on screen, you’re rooting for him. Plus, he’s got a great head for wearing hats!”
As for Mills, he couldn’t believe his great fortune. “What could be more fun for a kid than to be in a movie about a magical toy store?” he wonders. “I mean, everyday I would walk on set I’d see some new toy I hadn’t seen the day before. There were so many toys and books just everywhere…it was great. Everyone was so nice to me especially, Natalie and Jason, because they were both actors when they were my age so I think they were looking out for me.”
Portman was especially thrilled with her young co-star. “I thought he was amazing,” she says. “Eric is such a special character, such a pure kid with this unstoppable belief in everything and Zach really knew how to become that. He’s also a very sweet, smart kid who’s polite and kind and a great actor. He spoiled me because then other kids would come in and I’d see how hard it can be for them!”
The Toy Store of Your Wildest Dreams: The Wonder Emporium Comes To Life
Even with such a stellar human cast, one of the most amazing and alive characters in “Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium” is the Emporium itself – a fantastical realm filled from floor to ceiling with dazzling delights, spanning from the familiar to the fantastical to the mind-blowing. From the minute he imagined it inside his mischievous mind, writer-director Zach Helm knew that creating the store would be both one of the production’s biggest challenges and its greatest triumphs.
Ultimately, Helm and his creative crew would create a 7,100 square foot set unlike any they had ever experienced. Helm himself speaks of that set as an entity with a life of its own. “Mr. Magorium has a line in the script explaining how he imbued the store with the same emotions as the kids that come to play there,” explains Helm, “and that’s what we also tried to do. Honestly, if our set walls could talk about what we all went through to literally bring it to life, you would get an earful. At times it was extremely difficult to get the store to do what we wanted it to do but ultimately, our set proved that it was just as determined to deliver the magic as the rest of the cast.”
To create the kind of set that could come to life, Helm worked in close collaboration with production designer Thérèse DePrez, whose recent credits include “The Door in The Floor” and the stylish horror film “Dark Water,” in which an apartment haunts its tenants, and with set decorator Clive Thomasson (“Dark Water,” “Man of the Year”). Their team of craftsmen were responsible for designing, constructing and decorating the fantasy-filled bones of the store, then filling it with wall-to-wall super-toys.
“I had a pretty great sense of what I wanted to achieve right from the start, but Thérèse gave me ten times more than I ever imagined it could be,” comments Helms. “She brought in voluminous amounts of images and ideas to draw from and we talked back and forth about what toys reminded us of our childhoods. It was truly one of the most productive and enjoyable collaborations I’ve ever experienced.”
Yet, the collaboration almost never happened. “I had heard about the film, but was not available because I was getting married and taking some time off,” explains DePrez. “I was very disappointed because I had heard the script was amazing. Luckily, they pushed the schedule, I was available, I read the script and was totally enamored by it. It was without a doubt the best script I had read in a decade.”
Once she began exchanging creative ideas with Helm, she found they were in perfect synch. “We both agreed that the store should have a combination of realism, surrealism and nostalgia built into it. The Emporium represents the magic that happens in everyday life,” she summarizes. “One thing Zach said to me very early on was that he wanted any child who saw this movie to believe that this store existed somewhere. So it needed to be grounded in a kind of history and mythology.”
DePrez notes that a wide array of artistic and cultural inspirations shaped her design of the store, ranging from the Art Noveau architecture she saw in Brussels and Amsterdam on her honeymoon to the Victorian architecture of the `Painted Ladies’ row houses in San Francisco to the eye-popping carnival atmosphere of the original Barnum & Bailey circus. “A lot of the colors hark back to the `Greatest Show on Earth®,” notes DePrez, who also hung 20’x20′ vintage circus posters on one wall of the Emporium. “It’s a rich color palette that also gives the store a real sense of place in history.”
Some of the major design elements behind the visual splendor of the store include a huge, unfinished paint-by-numbers version of Belgian surrealist Renê Magritte’s classic painting “The Son of Man” (both DePrez and Helm are big fans of the surrealist’s work); the Good Work Geisel Grandleformer, the prototype machine that turns good homework into new toys; and a pair of 25 foot-high legs complete with striped pants and lace-up shoes.
Each and every touch emerged out of some childhood feeling or fantasy. “For example, I was thinking about the oddity of scale from my childhood, so that’s why I brought in the big pair of legs to act as support columns and also built the big tree in the upper library balcony,” explains DePrez.
The only constraint on DePrez was time itself. “The carpenters had just nine weeks to build and paint our two-level, 7,100 square foot set with 30-foot high ceilings,” she notes. “Luckily, we had a fantastic construction crew and my art department was spectacular. Everyone was just so committed to helping Zach realize his vision of this magical store.”
Ultimately, the real test for De Prez was the children in the cast, whose eyes, she knew, wouldn’t lie at their first sighting of it. “It was so exciting for me to watch these very small kids walk into this cavernous space… and see their eyes light up and bulge out with wonderment. It was remarkable. Even adults couldn’t help but stare in amazement, and you could almost see the nostalgia in their faces. That’s when we knew we had created a pretty special place,” she says.
Yet, naturally, the biggest draw of all in the toy store would be the toys. The exhilarating, if daunting, task of filling the Wonder Emporium with over 10,000 toys, books and Whatsamawhoosit-style gadgets – from long-lived classics to the never-before-seen – fell to Clive Thomasson and his crew of buyers, prop masters and set dressers. His search for the perfect playthings traversed the globe. “We wound up with toys from all over the world, including France, Germany and England,” says Thomasson.
The mix of items that Thomasson proffered, he notes, is beyond categorization. “It’s not Toys-R-Us nor is it an antique store. Zach had very specific ideas of what combination of toys he wanted – so you’ll see ultra-modern, 21st-century toys right next to antique European music boxes or vintage Radio Flyer wagons or a barrel of Lincoln Logs. A lot of effort went into reflecting Mr. Magorium’s personality through each and every one of the toy displays.”
One of the classic toys that gets a workout in “Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium” is the yo-yo , the world’s second oldest toy except for the doll, which has been astonishing children of all ages since the days of ancient Greece (when they were made of Terra Cotta). Since a yo-yo is nothing without a Yo-Yo Master attached to it, Zach Helm recruited one, turning to Aidan Koper, an astrophysicist, mathematician, performing contortionist, fire-eater, indie rock artist and impressively agile yo-yo pro. Aidan first came to attention on the “David Letterman Show,” when he performed a “Stupid Human Trick” — consisting of contorting his body through the frame of a tennis racket while juggling. As it happens, Natalie Portman was also guest on the same show, and later remarked to Letterman, “He can jump through a tennis racket for me any day.”
Thus it was that Aidan came to Helm’s attention – and ultimately performed on screen a series of contemporary yo-yo tricks that build to a moment of seeming anatomic impossibility as he wraps his arms entirely around his head. Using a Mini Motu Yo-Yo by Yo-Yo Jam with a Dif-E-O Konkave bearing, Aidan created a flashy routine of freestyle moves and long-sleeping string tricks that fit right into the mind-boggling atmosphere of the Wonder Emporium.
Aidan believes that kids love yo-yos in part “because they’re portable – you can put one in your pocket and whenever you’re bored, you’ve instantly got something fun.” He also notes: “In the last ten years, new technology has made yo-yos a lot more versatile and you can really do a great variety of cool tricks.” While Aidan might be a master when it comes to yo-yos, he was completely in awe of the movie stars who surrounded him on the set. “Getting a chance to see Dustin Hoffman and Natalie Portman in action was just great – not many people get that kind of chance,” he muses. Also awe-inspiring for this young man who put himself through the University of Toronto by yo-yoing, juggling, fire-eating and contorting, was the Emporium set itself. “I’d never seen anything like it and you could spend days just looking at all the toys,” he concludes.
Meanwhile, DePrez, Thomasson and their teams also created the equally whimsy-filled toy store basement and Mr. Magorium’s adjoining apartment. The basement, where the enigmatic Bellini (played with an air of fairy tale mystery by Ted Ludzig) lives, works and chronicles Mr. Magorium’s life, was a fun, easy set to build and decorate. The apartment, however, had to be constructed in such a way that Mr. Magorium’s pet zebra, “Mortimer,” felt at home as well.
“Essentially, we had to zebra-proof the apartment set,” laughs Thomasson. “As it goes, zebras can be pretty high-strung so we had a second zebra which would accompany the main zebra on set to help keep him calm. Well, the second one was a bit lax in his relaxation techniques and `Mortimer’ ended up kicking a sizable hole in the wall of the set as well as knocking over some exquisite period lamps and furniture. It’s funny looking back on it now but it wasn’t so great when it happened.”
The animals who appear in “Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium” were trained by Mike Hackenberger of the Bowenville Zoo, the oldest private zoo in Canada and home to many Hollywood celebrity animals. From the get-go, Hackenberger was excited by Zach Helm’s emphasis on using real animals engaged in very fun and not at all straight-forward behaviors. “He could have used CG for the animal scenes, but it would have looked fake,” says Hackenberger. “What was wonderful is that the filmmakers had faith that we could train real animals to fulfill the director’s vision and succeed. At first, I did have some trepidation. Usually, we are training animals to do things they do in the wild, but in this case, the story called for the animals to actually act, which is all about nuance. Ultimately, I think we accomplished some very unique training that really worked, and the animals also really enjoyed it.”
When it came to Mortimer the pet Zebra, Hackenberger had his work cut out for him. “Zebras are 600 pound, anxious, nervous animals,” he admits, “and we had to train them to stand on Mr. Magorium’s couch, knowing that most animals don’t like to walk on a surface that is squishy.” To acclimate the zebras to human furniture, Hackenberger even put a couch in their zoo enclosure months before production began. Once on the set, however, the real key he notes was simply, well, lending a helping hand to the hoofed actors. “We use all positive reinforcement techniques and it all comes down to the relationship,” he explains. “The zebras would literally lean their 600-pound bodies into us for reassurance on the set, but they did a great job and I was very proud of them.”
Hackenberger was also proud of how respectful the actors, especially Dustin Hoffman and Natalie Portman, were of his hard-working animals. “Everyone was just so accommodating and very cooperative and it was great to also have the Humane Society present monitoring everything to assure safety for both the cast and the animals.”
Also joining the menagerie mix were two ring-tailed lemurs, the beloved, striped African animals who are closely related to monkeys, including “Petey,” who portrays the creature who jumps out of the Emporium’s Big Book and lands on a customer’s head in the midst of the store’s temper tantrum.. “We considered using a monkey but lemurs are actually more gentle and benign,” Hackenberger explains. “As for the lad with the lemur riding on his head, that’s my son! Naturally, any time there was interaction between the animals and children, we needed to make sure the moment had been carefully rehearsed and practiced and there was trust going both ways between the animal and the actor.”
Zebras and lemurs were not the only animal that challenged the filmmakers. A live goose was used to chase a little girl around the circle in a game of Duck Duck Goose. Once again, the mix of species had the potential for snafus. “It was difficult to find appropriate geese because most geese are completely naïve when it comes to dealing with humans,” says Hackenberger. “We had to look for pet geese who were already imprinted to humans – and then we had to find a way to get them to do something unusual: run around in a circle playing a game!”
Hackenberger came up with a clever solution to training the geese in such unlikely actions. He taught the geese to chase after ping-pong balls, then he taped ping-pong balls to the head of the little girl who is chased by the goose! The girls who worked with the goose starting several months before production were Hackenberger’s nieces who are comfortable around animals.
Still, the mix of goose and girl didn’t always go smoothly. “The goose had to do about 24 takes. The stuffed animals on the set had it much easier than the live ones,” jokes Garavente.
Yet the myriad stuffed animals also had their work cut out for them – helped by a team of fourteen skilled puppeteers, led by brother and sister David and Ann Powell. Whether it was a bookshelf full of stuffed animals or a sad sock monkey, it was up to the Powells and their team to make them as real as any child would think of them in their mind’s eye. Says David Powell: “It was a unique experience for us as we are primarily stage puppeteers. We were presented with a big challenge because we had to re-build the stuffed animals with `puppet parts,’ devise ways of expressing their distinct characterizations through head, arm and body movements and learn the machinations and secrets of movie smoke-and-mirrors so that none of us were seen by the camera.”
Smoke-and-mirrors also played a big role in one of the biggest events at the core of the story: morphing the once rainbow-hued Emporium into a gray, depressed shadow of a store in the midst of its angry, fire-spewing temper tantrum. Explains DePrez: “The transformation of the store was a combination of practical applications including paint and lighting tricks, as well as some computer generated imagery, in part because there really was no way we could paint every toy and every inch of wall gray because it would have taken far too long.”
Yet amazingly, the film’s constant magic and charm relied only minimally on digital pyrotechnics. “Sure, we have some visual effects in the film,” says producer Richard Gladstein, “but most of the magic that happens in the store was physically done on set. The camera department, the special effects crew and the entire art department came up with so many ingenious ways to create the store and its tantrum.”
Gladstein thinks the realism of the sets helped everyone to believe this was more than a make-believe universe. “It was great for the actors because they were reacting to things that were actually happening right in front of them. I think that was important for Zach, too. He wrote all these magical things into the script and it was as if he actually rejoiced each time he saw them happening right before his eyes.”
Bringing the magic of cinematography to the creative production was Roman Osin, a director of photography who has traversed the globe in a broad diversity of projects, from the Jane Austen world of “Pride & Prejudice” to the mythic India of “The Warrior.” His work recently earned him a place on Variety’s list of “Ten Cinematographers To Watch.” Helm was thrilled to have another mind full of versatility and creative ideas on the team. “For example, there’s a scene where Mahoney opens the door on a room full of trains, turns a knob and steps through to Magorium’s house – it was a scene that most people would have done as several shots cut together, but Roman was able to do it all in one shot. He brought so much energy to the film,” says the writer-director.
Adding another stylish layer of enchantment to Mr. Magorium’s world is the work of Emmy®-nominated costume designer Christopher Hargadon, who had a blast mixing and melding influences from all eras of style in Magorium’s jaunty look. “There are hints of things Mr. Magorium collected over the centuries in his outfits,” laughs Hargadon, “but, with Dustin’s input on the character, we also wanted a real feeling of youth and freshness, along with his elegance and dignity, so the look evolved into something very spry. We also wanted him to look like somebody who would fascinate kids today. It started with a bit of a Great Gatsby feel and then moved out from there, with very light tones and lots of graphic detailing in and bold stripes. And, of course, he always has a little toy in his pocket.”
As for Natalie Portman’s Mahoney, Hargadon says he played up Portman’s “gamine quality.” “You get the sense that she’s a person who has her own natural sense of style without really ever having concentrated on it,” he explains. “Her clothing also goes through an arc along with her character, from the flat shoes and comfy layers she wears at the beginning to the more somber tones she wears when Mr Magorium departs, to the heels and dresses she wears when she begins to see her potential at the finale.”
Hargadon describes Eric Applebaum’s clothing as “typical kid,” save for his endless array of hats, for which the production went on a hat-buying frenzy. (Set designer Clive Thomasson procured an additional 400 hats of astonishing varieties for Eric’s bedroom wall.) “We had baseball caps, bucket hats, driving caps, top hats, bowlers, and some more outrageous ones, like Napoleon-style hats and a big Mad Hatter hat to the huge, 18-pound sombrero that Zach Mills loved. We’d just show the board with all the hat choices to Zach Helm and he’d choose the right one for the scene,” he describes.
Finally there’s Henry, whom Hargadon explains “is representative of the people from the outside world, who are all in very dull colors – browns, blacks, navies and grays.” He continues, “But as he evolves, Henry’s suits get lighter and he starts to show elements of color in his tie – and by the end of the movie, he’s not wearing suits at all anymore!”
Another flourish came as a sonic sense of creative fun was added to the film with a score co-composed by Alexandre Desplat – the French-born composer who has become one of the most acclaimed and sought-after in Hollywood, recently garnering an Oscar® nomination for “The Queen” and a Golden Globe for “The Painted Veil” – and Aaron Zigman, whose recent work includes the family adventure “Bridge to Terabithia” and “The Jane Austen Book Club.”
Whether it was the music, the sets, the photography or the performances, Helm admits he felt, well, like in a kid in a toy store, directing this movie and watching the world he had daydreamed of years ago come fully, indeed magically, to life. “I absolutely loved directing `Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium’ much more than I ever thought I would,” he concludes. “I always believed in this story and it gave me great joy to know that the cast and crew did as well. Ultimately, I hope the audience will find that place in their hearts where they will believe in it, too.”
Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium (2007)
Directed by: Zach Helm
Starring: Natalie Portman, Dustin Hoffman, Jason Bateman, Zach Mills, Paula Boudreau, Madalena Brancatella, Marcia Bennett, Jesse Bostick. Marcia Bennett, Steve Whitmire
Screenplay by: Zach Helm
Production Design by: Therese DePerez
Cinematography by: Roman Osin
Film Editing by: Sabrina Plisco, Özgün Müzik Alexandre Desplat
Costume Design by: Therese DePerez
Set Decoration by: Clive Thomasson
Art Direction by: Brandt Gordon
Music by: Alexandre Desplat, Aaron Zigman
MPAA Rating: G for general audience.
Distributed by: 20th Century Fox
Release Date: November 16, 2007
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