A Grand Day Out
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TITLE “A Grand Day Out” by Nick Park*
STUDIO/SCHOOL Aardman Animations
Wallace and Gromit have run out of cheese and this provides an excellent excuse for the animated duo to take their holiday on the moon, where, as everyone knows, there is ample cheese…
A Grand Day Out with Wallace and Gromit, later marketed as A Grand Day Out, is a 1989 British stop-motion animated short film starring Wallace and Gromit. It was directed, co-written, and animated by Nick Park at the National Film and Television School in Beaconsfield and Aardman Animations in Bristol.
The adventure centers on an unlikely trip to the moon. Cheese-loving inventor Wallace (voiced by Peter Sallis) and his dog Gromit run out of cheese. As "everybody knows the moon is made of cheese", they build a rocket and fly to the Moon. They encounter a coin-operated robot. Wallace inserts a coin, but nothing happens. After he and Gromit leave, the robot comes to life and gathers the dirty plates left at the picnic spot. The robot discovers a skiing magazine and yearns to travel to Earth.
It repairs a broken piece of landscape, issues a parking ticket for the rocket, and is annoyed by an oil leak from the craft. The robot sneaks up on Wallace and prepares to strike him, but the money Wallace inserted runs out, and it freezes. Wallace takes the robot's club as a souvenir, inserts another coin, and prepares to leave with Gromit. Returning to life, the robot follows Wallace and Gromit. Wallace panics and he and Gromit retreat into the rocket. Unable to climb the ladder, the robot cuts into the fuselage with a can opener and accidentally ignites some fuel. The explosion throws it off the rocket and Wallace and Gromit lift off. The robot fashions discarded rocket fuselage into skis and skis across the lunar landscape. It waves goodbye to Wallace and Gromit as they return home.
“In the original story there were going to be a whole lot of characters. By the time I came to Aardman, I had just started doing the Moon scene and somebody told me, “It’s going to take you another nine years if you do that scene!” so I had to have a check with reality and cut that whole bit out...”
Nick Park started creating the film in 1982, as a graduation project for the National Film and Television School. In 1985, Aardman Animations took him on before he finished the piece, allowing him to work on it part-time while still being funded by the school. To make the film, Park wrote to William Harbutt's company, requesting a long ton of Plasticine. The block he received had ten colours, one of which was called "stone"; this was used for Gromit. Park wanted to voice Gromit, but he realised the voice he had in mind — that of Peter Hawkins — would have been difficult to animate. For Wallace, Park offered Peter Sallis £50 to voice the character, and the actor's acceptance greatly surprised the young animator.
Park wanted Wallace to have a Lancastrian accent like his own, but Sallis could only do a Yorkshire voice. Inspired by how Sallis drew out the word "cheese", Park chose to give Wallace large cheeks. When Park called Sallis six years later to explain he had completed his film, Sallis swore in surprise Gromit was named after grommets, because Park's brother, an electrician, often mentioned them, and Nick Park liked the sound of the word. Wallace was originally a postman named Jerry, but Park felt the name did not match well with Gromit. Park saw an overweight Labrador retriever named Wallace, who belonged to an old woman boarding a bus in Preston. Park commented it was a "funny name, a very northern name to give a dog".
According to the book The World of Wallace and Gromit, original plans were that the film would be forty minutes long, including a sequence where Wallace and Gromit would discover a fast food restaurant on the Moon. Regarding the original plot, Park said: The original story was that Wallace and Gromit were going to go to the Moon and there were going to be a whole lot of characters there. One of them was a parking meter attendant, which was the only one that remained — the robot cooker character — but there were going to be aliens and all sorts.
There was going to be a McDonald's on the Moon, and it was going to be like a spoof of Star Wars. Wallace was going to get thrown into prison and Gromit was going to have to get him out. By the time I came to Aardman, I had just started doing the Moon scene and somebody told me, "It's going to take you another nine years if you do that scene!" so I had to have a check with reality and cut that whole bit out. Somehow, I had to tie up the story on the Moon and finish the film.
The short premiered on 4 November 1989, at an animation festival at the Arnolfini Gallery in Bristol. It was first broadcasted on 24 December 1990, Christmas Eve, on Channel 4. A Grand Day Out is followed by 1993's The Wrong Trousers, 1995's A Close Shave, 2005's The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, 2008's A Matter of Loaf and Death, and many other productions. The short was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film in 1991, but it lost to Creature Comforts, another stop-motion animated short film made by Nick Park and Aardman Animations, also released in 1989.
