The Big Green (2014)

At eighteen years of age, small town boy Max Chaiet, goes to Hollywood to uncover the truth about the character Shrek who he believes the look of Shrek was stolen from his parents children's book Being Earnest, which features a big oaf of a character named Telford. In 1999, Stephen Spielberg received a copy of Being Earnest and responded with a thank you letter. At the same time, in 1999, DreamWorks was struggling with the look of Shrek, dissatisfied with William Steigs scruffy, wart-faced ogre. After hundreds of renderings a radical transformation takes place. Shrek becomes a bald, lumbering oaf, just like Telford. During Chaiet's five-year exploration, to find the truth he cleverly works his way into DreamWorks, interviewing the first creative team of Shrek 1. He meets and interviews actor Kevin Bacon about intellectual property theft and via Skype, interviews Barbara Chase Riboud about her legal battle with DreamWorks over Amistad.