It's a cliche, but it's true: 'Never work with children and animals'. Actors know they simply steal the show.
So when a Broadway veteran like Nathan Lane agreed to star in a film called Mouse Hunt, he did so with a certain fatalism.
'I knew we would be upstaged by the mouse!' he says. 'There was no fear. It was a known quantity.' He recalls seeing a scene of the rodent returning to his 'apartment' inside the walls. 'He gets into his little sardine can bed, and then there's the close-up of him going to sleep. I thought 'that's it, it's all over, we can't compete with this'. ' Lane's role is not really as thankless as he makes it sound. He plays Ernie Smuntz who, along with his brother Lars (Lee Evans), inherits two things from their late, not-quite-lamented father, the antiquated Smuntz string factory and a dilapidated mansion. The factory is all but worthless, but the mansion turns out to be a lost architectural masterpiece, worth a fortune. But before Ernie and Lars can auction it, they have to get rid of one small problem . . . a mouse.
Unfortunately, this mouse has no intention of giving up its home. The brothers are soon locked in a battle of wits - a battle which finds them hopelessly outgunned.
It is the stuff of Bugs Bunny shorts, but Mouse Hunt has a dark edge that belies its simple premise. 'It's like a live action Warner Brothers cartoon, but as told by the Coen brothers or something,' says Lane, who calls the movie 'subversive'.
'It has a Charles Addams, much more mean-spirited quality that I like. It has enough of an edge to keep adults interested as well as kids.' The picture may belong to the mouse (actually 65 trained mice), but Lane is no small talent in his own right. Best known to film audiences from The Birdcage, his real accomplishments have come on the New York stage. He won a Tony for the 1996 revival of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, was nominated for another, the recent Guys & Dolls revival, and his work Off-Broadway has earned him an Obie award for Sustained Excellence.
'I feel like I'm still learning film and still figuring all of that out. Because I have a different kind of energy. My energy's more of a stage energy,' explains Lane. He certainly seems more New York than Hollywood: unshaven, dressed in black, always quick with a quip at his own expense, and more passionate about his work than about box-office grosses.