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Cover Story - Spanish Version

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Comprehension Quiz

Teacher's Guide and Worksheets

Paulie Is A Wisecracker

Parrots have entertained people for centuries by mimicking human speech. But imagine what a fun companion a parrot would be if it could talk about its ideas, crack hilarious jokes and listen to your secrets.

Such a parrot comes to life in the new movie Paulie, in theaters April 17. Paulie is a parrot whose owner, Marie, speaks with a stutter. The bird learns to carry on conversations as Marie works to improve her speech. After the two are separated, Paulie (whose voice belongs to actor Jay Mohr) begins a journey to find Marie (played by 5-year-old Hallie Kate Eisenberg, right). Along the way, he meets new friends and sees amazing sights. He even joins some rockin' parrots to become a bird in the band!

Convincing audiences that Paulie is speaking and reacting, not to mention jamming to Latin music, was a tough job for Hollywood animal trainer Boone Narr. He taught 17 blue-crown conure parrots how to be Paulie. The conures have very sharp vision and expressive eyes. "These birds were fantastic," says Narr. "They could understand more than 50 verbal commands plus hand signals." He also taught 18 red, black-and-green and orange conures to play Paulie's pals. The birds followed signals to flap their wings, fly in patterns and even get cash from a bank machine! Narr has been training movie animals for 26 years, including the mice in Mouse Hunt.

Paulie's producers weren't sure real parrots could get the job done, so they built a mechanical backup for Paulie for some scenes. But using a robot in place of the funny, waddling conures didn't really fly. "We ended up not using the animatronic parrot as much as we thought we would," says director John Roberts. "The real birds were so good."

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