Dennis the Menace: The Imp Takes on a Whole New Audience
by Bob Fisher

This article originally appeared in International Photographer Magazine in June 1993.

It is a quiet morning in the beautiful neighborhood of Anywhere, USA. The birds are chirping. The grass is green. The streets are safe, even inviting. What few clouds dot the sky are fanciful and benign. All is right with the world.

On such a day George Wilson might heave a sigh as he reaches into the hedge for his favorite newspaper, relishing the solitude of the morning.

"Mr. Wilson!" a piercing voice cries from a nearby sidewalk. Wilson's face fills with dread. His worst fears are realized. Dennis is home! And he's heading directly for the Wilson house.

Dennis The Menace is back, in an authentic portrayal of the troubleprone kid three generations of children have come to love, and identify with. And, after six months on location in Chicago, Tom Ackerman, the movie's cinematographer, should be well-acquainted with the 'world according to Dennis.'

"It is true. Trouble seems to follow Dennis. But I'm not talking about a malevolent 'bad seed' here. He's made of the same stuff of all kids his age - innocence combined with a huge dose of energy and curiosity. My son, Alex, finds it next to impossible to resist pushing a button, for example. ANY button. This doesn't mean he wants to dump a couple of hours work on the computer. It is just an impulse to satisfy the question of the moment - What does this thing do?

"Kids tend to observe the adult world in simple terms. We're the ones who are carrying the excess baggage. There are some terrific scenes between Dennis (Mason Gamble) and Wilson (Walter Matthau) based on that premise. Dennis sees things with great clarity. And the irrefutable logic that Wilson's several extra decades on the planet have long since taken from him. He's not an ogre, either. Crotchety and curmudgeonly - absolutely! But the relationship between Wilson and Dennis evolves in this movie. It's not just a smart aleck kid hassling the old geezer next door. The film was conceived as a much more interesting adventure."

When cartoonist Hank Ketchum first created Dennis he was inspired by the world he learned to see through the eyes of his own son. It is this enormously popular character that is now brought to the screen by Writer/Producer John Hughes and Director Nick Castle.

The film's story unfolds during the first days of summer vacation. It is a time of endless possibilities. Most adults might be hard-pressed to remember what it was like to fill a long summer day with events of their own choosing. No one-line schedules. No Six AM calls. No pressure of any kind.

The basic elements of Dennis' idyllic neighborhood, though considerably embellished, were found in Evanston, Illinois, with additional locations in Hinsdale and Winnetka. "The idea was to contrast the modest Mitchell house with the more imposing Wilson place," recalls Ackerman, whose Midwestern roots made him feel very much at home. "As is sometimes the case with childless couples, the Wilsons have developed rituals in which their possessions take on exaggerated importance. George, in particular, is really hung up on his stuff. Martha (Joan Plowright) is much more relaxed. Still, they're such creatures of habit that Dennis' intrusion is all the more grating on George.

"The Mitchell place, on the other hand, was to be simpler and cozier. And, once the right pair of houses was found, side by side, surrounded by the correct neighborhood, we had them reproduced on stage."

The key locations chosen for large-scale exterior shooting had mirror-image counterparts faithfully executed at the Hughes soundstage in nearby Skokie.

"We knew our schedule would take us into cold weather, not exactly ideal for a summer movie," Ackerman recounted. "Then there was the challenge of working with the children and their limited hours. Going on stage was an absolute necessity. We had complicated logistics to begin with, and with the kids turning into pumpkins every time you turned around, we needed as much control over the shooting environment as possible. As a result, there's a lot of this film that originated on the stage on Touhy Avenue - day and night, interior and exterior. There really wasn't much that eluded us there."

One of the first decisions Ackerman made was not to over-control the visual elements. "Having survived all the vagaries and punishment of location shooting, there's a temptation when you get back to the stage to lock things down. Obviously, that would be a terrible mistake. It's not that any of us look forward to the insanity of Tragic Hour, the pursuit of great light before it sours. But some great things happen when the adrenalin is pumping. You don't want to stifle that energy when you go on stage."

Recreating a credible day exterior look for Dennis The Menace was one of Ackerman's main challenges and, eventually, one of his obsessions. "We were trying to convey the pristine first few days of a child's summer vacation. Deeply imbedded in the protocol of our little world was the fact that the sky would never, ever by cloudy. Yet, shooting scene after scene in merciless sunlight was not an acceptable option. Nick and I soon determined that the key word would be 'dapple.' Dennis' neighborhood and its surroundings would always be seen, by day, in a sun-drenched mode. But when possible, action would be played in the shade, with hot sun dapple ever-present in the background.

"The task on stage was to recreate the anomalies of the original location work. Sunlight streaking across a background, or pounding through a window, really did have to be hot - almost out of control in terms of overexposure. And we tried hard to keep the color faithful. In the late afternoon scenes, I keyed with half or three-quarter CTO and maintained half CTB bouncing from large muslins rigged over the backyard sets to keep that nice contrast of cooler skylight as evening approaches.

"I wouldn't want to suggest that we were slaves to reality. One always looks for the chance to depart from the way things look, anyway. I just wanted to be sure the credibility level was not open to question, which in turn could undermine the movie. It was reassuring to work on grading the answer print with the timer at Technicolor and occasionally lose track myself of what scenes were shot on stage."

According to Ackerman, much of the credit for an effective 'visual' goes to the movie's greensman Phil Hurst and his assistant, John Vela. "This was Olympic, world-class greens work," says Ackerman. "Phil gave us everything we asked for. We couldn't have kept consistent with our un-compromising approach, if they hadn't been so talented. We were all obsessive about detail - depth, color, 'randomness' of foliage, movement of leaves. "Certain trees or branches became favorites - some were useful as foreground pieces, some as background, others as shadow gags. If Ted Rhodes, my key grip, and his crew were paid by the leaf, they could have retired at the end of the show! The crew was constantly arranging and rearranging entire artificial trees with foliage wired together by hand. Phil also maintained several thousand square feet of real grass, which did so well in the enclosed space that it had to be mowed regularly!

"Our stage work was typified by contrast. Often I would light a medium shot in, say, the Mitchell kitchen. The foreground action, the real meat of the shot, would be keyed with a Baby Junior double diffused through a 6 by 6 frame of grid cloth. The background as seen through the window, when all the bells, whistles, and dapple had been added, might take two thousand amps of power, if not more.

"We had two Mole-Richardson 20k's as the best and smoothest source of 'sunlight,' but lots of 10k Big-eyes, Sky Pans, Striplights, Maxi-brutes (for bounce), and a very large complement of smaller incandescent lamps, many of which might be in play during a given set up. There were moments when Larry Kennedy or Bill Ward, who shared gaffing duties, would have to warn me that our inventory was close to being maxed out."

The production crew's cooperation made the tough job much easier. "Director Nick Castle was always a steadfast ally in pursuing the look for the picture. He was very keen on what the camera could achieve, and was a great supporter of the efforts going into the lighting.

"One of Nick's aspirations was to portray Dennis' point-of-view. Not to make the camera into a kid, with forced angles and extremely wide lenses, but more to fashion a sense of the neighborhood as beautiful and hospitable. A place where kids can venture into non-spooky woods, or where playing hide-and seek after dark is a safe thing to do."

In contrast, the world of Chris Lloyd's 'Switchblade Sam' needed to be ominous. The scenes with the film's evil influence took the crew, and the audience, out of the friendly neighborhood and into a much sketchier look. "At one point in the climax Switchblade ensconces himself under a railroad bridge. Here all the lighting was motivated by a single bonfire, with a trace of blue moonlight accenting the surrounding terrain. There was a stream running alongside Sam's camp, which enabled us to skip some tasty reflective patterns from the surface of the water onto the underside of the bridge.

"Usually I keyed with pure firelight, then blended in incandescent lamps with full CTO gel. It was always a challenge to maintain the logic of where the light was coming from. The geography of the campsite was so specific that I didn't feel we could be too cavalier about the direction of the source. And as a result, a lot of the coverage was the fire playing as backlight.

"Switchblade Sam is definitely a swarthy guy, but the greasiness of his appearance actually helped in the murky conditions. Even when we worked at dark levels his face picked up the light nicely. By the way, it's to Kenny Myers' great credit that I never had to rethink lighting or recompose a shot to disguise any shortcoming in the special effects make-up. This held true even when we framed Sam so tightly his face looked like the craters of the moon.

"Like many of our sets, the railroad bridge and creek were inspired and established on location, then reproduced at Touhy. In the case of Sam's camp, we did the night establishing shots two months before continuing the coverage on stage. This meant Nick had to give a lot of thought about how this long, elaborate sequence would eventually be blocked. And I had to be careful not to light us into a corner. It was really in preparing that initial bit that the ideas of how to play the single-source campfire originated, as well as the water reflections and the general treatment of the background.

"Some of the inspiration for our night work might have come from some of the wonderful N.C. Wyeth illustrations of the 20s and 30s, especially some of his work in Last of the Mohicans," says Ackerman. "Now, in spit of or maybe because of the fact that he was painting for childrens' books, the drama of these images leaps right off the page. Long golden streams of twilight trail off to the most lustrous black shadows you've ever seen. It's a marvelous example of the artist as a storyteller, a perfect blend of the visual and narrative elements.

"I think of the photographer on a movie as an illustrator. We put our craft in the service of a screenplay.

"We're fortunate in this undertaking to have some pretty impressive resources to draw on. In this case, the Chicago crew, in addition to my key people, were of the highest quality, both in terms of skills and attitude. They still seem to be excited about making movies.

"My next film will also be shot in Chicago, and I'm already getting goose bumps thinking about observing Steve Hiller, our first assistant, on Dennis, whip out his laser pen and tape it to the dolly for super-accurate focus marks.

"I recall a night in Wilmette when he had to pull focus on a 270 degree pan shot of an entire brigade of neighbors out searching for Dennis. It was an intricate move, with the camera being conveyed by a Technocrane astride the Chapman Supernova, leading to a closeup of Margaret in her second-story bedroom window. Steve made the shot, take after take, with T2 on the Primo 35mm. All from a control console fifty feet away from the action, Yes, I'm willing to return to Chicago.

"But all good experiences and crew camaraderie are extraneous if they fail to illustrate the film. Basically, I think we have to seek the heart of the movie as single-mindedly as we shoot the setups."