Two Films Hope Pigs Will Reel in the Bacon : Movies: Hollywood offers up 'Gordy' and, coming in August, 'Babe,' a pair of porkers that producers hope can talk their way into kids' pocketbooks. And, oh yes, offer a positive message.

By DAVID KRONKE

May 25, 1995 12 AM PT

SPECIAL TO THE TIMES

Competing for your movie dollars this summer will be more than 15 actionadventures, a dozen takes on romance, three movies taken from comic books, a few thrillers located along the Internet and a couple of yarns involving mega-money heists in New York City.

And two movies about talking pigs.

Now playing is “Gordy,” a pig tale about a frisky runt who is separated from his family and, in his quest to be reunited with them, rescues a drowning boy, becomes CEO of a multinational corporation and hangs out with country singers Roy Clark and Moe Bandy.

August will see “Babe,” a whimsical fable about a tiny porker who dreams of being a sheep dog and, through his innocence and proficiency in barnyard diplomacy, brings the sundry farm species to a greater understanding of one another.

(Last year, a pig played the defendant in “The Advocate,” apparently to prove that porcine thespians could stretch to accommodate courtroom drama.)

Alas, in its opening weekend, “Gordy” failed to bring home the bacon. This prompted a rather bizarre reaction from the film’s producers: Producer Sybil Robson, who financed the film through her company Robson Entertainment, personally taped a TV spot that ran during its second weekend in release. In the commercial, Robson states, “People tell me they are outraged by the lack of wholesome G-rated movies. [Here’s one], but where are you?”

“People thought I was crazy for doing that,” Robson says. “I didn’t feel I had a choice.

“People who thought it was crazy are people who had never seen this done as part of a reaching out to America,” she continued. “Because it’s considerably outside of the dots, it’s scary to people. Any time you do something different or rattle some cages, it makes people uncomfortable. I got a very positive reaction. People thought it was bold, surprising; some were inspired by it. If we make positive movies, we can raise our standards--if people want to see a change in the kind of movies coming out, they have to know they have voting power in their back pocket.”

It’s a rather bittersweet, even sour, way to celebrate the Chinese Year of the Pig, but producer George Miller, who in 1986 bought the rights to Dick King-Smith’s book “Babe, The Gallant Pig,” says “Gordy’s” producers rushed their film into production.

“What happens is someone in one studio hears, ‘They’re going to do that picture,’ and it emboldens them to do theirs, and they get into little races,” Miller says. “ ‘Gordy’s’ producers were aware of what we were doing. We went at our pace, and they moved quickly.”

Robson notes, though, that she first got involved with her film six years ago--when it was a story “about a little pig who inherits a sausage factory.”

“But we realized that if we wanted the pig to be really smart,” she says, “he’d shut down that factory really quick, leaving us with a 20-minute movie.”

Where “Gordy” involves one pig interacting largely with humans, much of “Babe” features all manner of barnyard animals interacting with one another--pigs, dogs, ducks, sheep, cattle and horses. Miller, who directed the stunt-wild “Mad Max” trilogy, said that he declined to direct this film because of its logistics nightmares, which were eventually brought under control.

“In many ways, it reminded me of doing a ‘Mad Max’ film,” Miller says. “We had to approach it in a very militaristic, highly organized fashion. . . . I’ve met a number of animal trainers, but I never met anyone quite so masterful as Karl Lewis Miller [no relation]. He’s one of those people who understands animals at least as well as he understands people, and he was able to mix the different species and keep them working in harmony.”

Because pigs grow so quickly, both films used many in the title roles--25 for “Gordy,” 48 for “Babe.” Pigs used for the movies ranged from 3 to 8 weeks old; for “Babe,” pigs were specially raised in George Miller’s production office.

“Pigs are incredibly intelligent animals--they’re highly trainable,” Robson says. “They’re particularly smart because, unlike a dog, they won’t do a trick for a pat on the head, but they will do it for some food.

“Gordy usually hit his cues, but we had him do some rather extraordinary things. He had to rescue this drowning child by leaping heroically into the swimming pool. Gordy is about 8 weeks old, so to get an 8-week-old to do anything is miraculous. I know I wasn’t making heroic leaps into swimming pools at 8 weeks old.”

With “Babe,” producer Miller says, “Karl was interested in doing much more than getting an animal from Point A to Point B; he was also interested in the degree of performance. If you teach an animal to hit his mark just to get food, you can tell that they’re hurrying to do so. Karl had techniques to get them to linger, to react, to do much more than you would expect.”

No pearls had to be cast before the swine to get them to speak. State-of-the-art computer graphics and animatronics are employed to make Babe talk to the animals, and Gordy got jawing with a low-tech serving of Monkey Chow.

Animals, however, aren’t always so cooperative--even an older camera hog proved to be a boar, er, boor.

“He had a mind of his own,” Robson recalls of one supporting swine. “He was supposed to go down a pig chute to get on a truck, but he had another idea, and he unfortunately had a trainer attached to him by way of a rope, and he stomped off the set and wound up dragging the trainer through some nearby rosebushes.”

“We thought the most difficult would be the sheep, but they did everything we asked of them,” Miller says. “The most difficult was the horse, but that was because it was miscast. We cast it on its looks, but it was not very well-trained,” he adds, offering a cautionary tale for any casting agent considering hiring a glamorous fashion model over an experienced actress.

Given all the headaches, why bother with a pig movie?

“Very soon into it, we thought, ‘Are we mad?’ ” Miller says. “But we were sustained by the story for so long.

“Usually, halfway through, you get fatigued, and the story is no longer fresh to you,” says Miller, who took a five-year hiatus from film after getting burned out making “The Witches of Eastwick” (he returned to write and direct “Lorenzo’s Oil” in 1993). “But we never felt fatigued on this. The charming, lilting tone of the story seemed to live right through the production. A children’s film works only if you don’t talk down to kids. If you get it really right, then adults become children watching it.”

In other words, you reap what you sow.