I guess you could say there was trouble in Whoville. Apparently there were moments when the makers ofhad taken a little too much artistic liberty. So much that they irked Dr. Seuss' widow. In a press release from Newsweek magazine, Theodor Geisel's widow, Audrey Geisel, specifically objected to the bathroom humor and jokes about 'The Who-Steins' and a Teenage Grinch as a 'Who-Venile Delinquent' in earlier drafts fo the script. The press release provides the following excerpts from the article by Newsweek Senior Writer John Horn.

"As soon as they left Geisel, Grazer and Ross politely parted ways and Grazer called his longtime collaborator, director Ron Howard, who was in Connecticut preparing a movie version of Jack London's The Sea Wolf. Howard wasn't interested in making Grinch, but Grazer talked Howard into jumping on a plane to California to discuss it with Geisel. On the flight to Geisel's La Jolla home, Howard hatched a plot that owed as much to Stanislavsky as to Seuss: what was the Grinch's motivation?

"The 1957 book offers scant clues, except that 'his heart was two sizes too small.' That conceit can sustain a cartoon, but not a feature film. As he flew over the heartland, Howard decided Cindy Lou Who, the book's innocent child who stumbles upon a gift-raiding Grinch, would be the movie's central narrative wedge. Cindy became the anti-material girl, someone who saw the season as a time to boost spirits, not sales revenues. And the one soul needing the most cheer was this hairy recluse. He had exiled himself from Whoville, she discovered, following childhood humiliation over his appearance. By the time Howard's plane touched down, he wanted to make the movie. 'A lot of themes Seuss dealt with are very modern,' Howard says of the author, who died in 1991. 'I thought this story of disenfranchisement was interesting.' In Grazer's second meeting with her, so did Geisel.

"As long as Carrey would star, Geisel gave Howard and Grazer her approval, reserving the right to oversee the production. Universal initially resisted the rich deal for those four principals, who will split nearly 35 percent of the film's profits, yet money wasn't the sole worry. Why should the studio pay Carrey $20 million when he wasn't even recognizable under all the furry green makeup and prosthetics? 'We called Ron and said, 'Are you sure? Do we need the yellow contact lenses?'' says Stacey Snider, chairman of Universal Pictures. But Howard says a test in which Carrey wore basic green face makeup made him look like an extra from 'Cats.' To convince the studio that more was not less, Howard showed a videotape of Carrey and other actors in full Grinch makeup to his high-school daughter and her friends. Whenever it's Carrey, he instructed the teen audience, raise your hands. Even with the sound off, 'The minute he started moving, they all said, 'That's Jim'.'

"The movie sprawled over 11 sound stages, and there were nearly as many screenplay rewrites. Geisel objected to a joke about a home with neither Christmas tree nor presents ('The Who-steins!' the Grinch concludes after spying a menorah) and a stuffed trophy of the Cat in the Hat on the Grinch's wall. She also didn't like a teenage Grinch as a 'who-venile delinquent.' 'There were too many bathroom jokes,' Geisel says. 'That's not the Seuss world, not at all.'

"In the end, Geisel, Howard, Grazer and Carrey got Seuss to sound like Seuss (although Carrey's demeanor at times reminds you of Richard Nixon). The film has taken a simple two-dimensional, red and black setting and turned it into a three-dimensional fantasyland of vibrant colors, Gaudi-like buildings and an entire culture of oddly misshapen revelers. Once derided for its exorbitant cost, the film now has competitors in a panic.

"But what of the book and movie's message decrying the holiday's commercialization? 'Maybe Christmas doesn't come from a store,' Seuss wrote. 'Well,' says Geisel, who will collect 50 percent of Grinch merchandise revenues, 'there you have a paradox to end all paradoxes.'"