Best Bette
Animated Midler voices ”˜Kitty Galore’
By Stephen Schaefer | Sunday, July 25, 2010 | http://www.bostonherald.com | Movie News
Bette Midler knows from bad hair days.
The diva long known as the Divine Miss M voices the divinely mean, furiously scheming titular feline in “Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore.”
Kitty, Midler said, “is very cranky and determined to rule the world.”
No wonder – she was dropped into a vat and lost all her hair. Kitty vows revenge on all dogs and the whole human race in this sequel to 2001’s “Cats & Dogs.”
“Something happens to my hair in real life every day,” Midler mused.
“A long time ago in the theater I came to (Broadway in) ”˜Fiddler on the Roof.’ I think I was 19 and one girl was a brazen Puerto Rican girl and on the opening night her (dyed) hair fell out and she went out and didn’t blink and gave the performance of her life. She went on to opera.”
That ability to ignore a calamity and keep focused, Midler said, proved to be a lifelong inspiration.
“From that time on I never thought of a thing, I just pick up a piece and move on.”
As the voice of Kitty, Midler found another inspiration in first-time director Brad Peyton.
“It’s amazing to see the final result and that Brad could keep all these balls in the air and make one movie,” she marveled.
“I can’t understand how he did it. He was working with live actors and he was working with animals – and there is nothing harder.”
Cats, dogs, raccoons – Midler made a funny face of mock horror. “They look like they know what they’re doing – and they don’t. And then he had robots and drawn animals and I can’t tell which was real and which wasn’t.”
Peyton agreed, “You just assume the stuff you do with people you’ll do with animals. Until you realize that a dog doesn’t know what an eye line is or have a clue what his motivation is, outside of food or a squeaky toy.”
(“Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore” opens Friday.)
