Babe filming

Plot[ edit ] Babe, an orphaned piglet, is chosen for a "guess the weight" contest at a county fair. The winning farmer, Arthur Hoggett, brings him home and allows him to stay with a Border Collie named Fly, her mate Rex and their puppies, in the barn. A duck named Ferdinand, who crows as roosters are said to every morning to wake people so he will be considered useful and be spared from being eaten, persuades Babe to help him destroy the alarm clock that threatens his mission. Despite succeeding in this, they wake Duchess, the Hoggetts' cat, and in the confusion accidentally destroy the living room. At the barn meeting, Rex sternly instructs Babe to stay away from Ferdinand now a fugitive and the house. Sometime later, when Fly's puppies are put up for sale, Babe asks if he can call her "Mom".

Snap publicity photo for Babe via Universal James Cromwell doesn't care if you call him "the guy from Babe. But the year-old actor's life was completely changed by Babe, the story of a talking pig who escapes slaughter when a kindhearted farmer discovers he can herd sheep—a movie released 20 years ago this week. Not only did Babe become a blockbuster that scored Cromwell an Oscar nomination, and move his headshot to the top of central casting's "Tall, British-Seeming Americans" pile, it was also the movie that made him a vegan. The factoid is common knowledge : He'd been a somewhat casual vegetarian for years, but on the set of Babe, he had a change of heart. Somewhat less well known is the fact that he's a really hardcore vegan. He narrated Farm to Fridge , one of those vivid animal rights documentaries that plunge you into the nightmarish, blood-geysering hellscapes of the slaughterhouse floors where America's meat gets created. He was also arrested during a protest against experiments on cats.

Here are 15 things you might not know about the little piggy that could. Because pigs grow quickly, the crew utilized four dozen Large White Yorkshire piglets throughout the course of filming, shooting six at a time over a three-week period. A total of 48 pigs were filmed, though only 46 of them made it to the screen. This is the pig they used for wide shots—when there was at least 15 feet surrounding Babe all the way around, and no place for Miller to hide.

That'll do. The movie was hailed as a kids' movie that delighted viewers of all ages -- it was the rare children's film nominated for a Best Picture Oscar -- as well as an advance in effects magic that launched a wave of live-action, talking-animal flicks. It's hard to imagine that the G-rated classic came from George Miller , the same filmmaker behind the ultra-violent, hard-R " Mad Max " franchise. That's one of many things you may not know about "Babe," here are 19 more: 1.