A Grand Day Out

A Grand Day Out with Wallace and Gromit, later marketed as A Grand Day Out, is a 1989 British stop-motion animated short film directed and animated by Nick Park at Aardman Animations in Bristol.

The short premiered on 4 November 1989, at the Bristol Animation Festival at the Arnolfini Gallery in Bristol. It was first broadcast 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 and 2008's A Matter of Loaf and Death.

The short was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film at the 1990 Oscars, but it lost to Creature Comforts, another stop motion animated short film made by Nick Park and Aardman Animation, released in the same year.

Plot
Wallace and Gromit go to the moon to sample cheese.

After landing on the moon, Wallace and Gromit set up a picnic and sample some of the moon’s landscape, but they find its taste unfamiliar. Looking for a different spot, they encounter a cooker. Wallace inserts a coin, but nothing happens. After he and Gromit leave, the cooker comes to life and gathers all the rubbish that Wallace and Gromit have left behind.

The cooker discovers a skiing magazine and yearns to travel to Earth and try it out. It repairs a broken piece of landscape, issues a parking ticket for the rocket, and is annoyed by an oil leak coming from the rocket. The cooker prepares to strike Wallace, but freezes. Wallace takes the cooker’s truncheon as a sovenior, inserts another coin and he and Gromit leave.

Returning to life, the cooker realises the rocket can take it to Earth and excitedly follows them. Wallace panics, thinking the cooker is angry over the pieces of moon he is taking, and he and Gromit retreat into the rocket. Unable to climb the ladder, the cooker cuts into the fuselage, but accidentally ignites some fuel. The resulting explosion allows Wallace and Gromit to lift off.

The cooker is left on the moon with two strips of metal from the rocket. It fashions the metal into skis and happily starts skiing across the lunar landscape. It waves goodbye to Wallace and Gromit as they return home.

Cast

 * Peter Sallis as Wallace, an inventor and cheese enthusiast.


 * Peter Hawkins as Gromit, Wallace's loyal, intelligent, and smart but silent dog. (uncredited)

Production
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 his acceptance greatly surprised the young animator. Park wanted Wallace to have a Lancastrian accent like himself, 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 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."

Home media
The short film was released on VHS in the 1990s by BBC Video. It was also released on DVD multiple times as part of the Wallace and Gromit in 3 Amazing Adventures DVD series. In the US, it was released on DVD in 2009 by Lionsgate VOD and HIT Entertainment. In the UK, it was released on DVD in the 2000s.

Release
The short premiered on 4 November 1989 at the Bristol Animation Festival and premiered in the US on 18 May 1990.

Awards and nominations
The film was nominated for the Academy Award for Animated Short Film, but lost to the short Creature Comforts, which was also a creation of Nick Park.

Soundtrack
The official soundtrack album to the short was released by BBC Records in the 1990s.