Celebrating the 25th Anniversary of “Osmosis Jones” with Tom Sito

Now two and a half decades after the debut of Osmosis Jones, Tom Sito revealed in a recent interview that he still hears from a very specific fanbase about the film. “For many years afterward, I’d run into doctors and biologists who say, ‘God, I love that movie!” said Sito, who co-directed the film’s animation with Piet Kroon.

And there’s good reason for such affection from the medical community; Osmosis Jones, which celebrates its 25thanniversary this summer, takes audiences on an adventure inside the human body.

Osmosis Jones is a live-action and animated film, with the former directed by Bobby and Peter Farrelly, of There’s Something About Mary fame, and Sito and Kroon helming the animation. It centers on Frank (Bill Murray), a sloppy single father and zookeeper, who we meet in the live-action scenes. Frank’s bad health habits lead him to accidentally eat a germ-ridden hard-boiled egg after it falls into a chimpanzee enclosure. Throughout the movie, Frank gets sick, and we see why as the film switches to animation and takes us inside his body, in the bustling metropolis known as the “City of Frank.”

Here, the inside of the human body is humorously and creatively brought to life, with veins serving as highways, the stomach operating as an airport for new arrivals, the bladder as an exit from the city, and a zit serving as a nightclub pulsing with music.

This edgy cityscape, as the backdrop for Osmosis Jones, was appealing to Sito, who said, “Walt Disney was raised on a farm in the Midwest, so when he made films, they’re farm-like. Brad Bird is from a coastal town, so Iron Giant was in a coastal town in New England. I’m an inner-city kid, [from Brooklyn]. I was brought up on the subways and the buses. So, I like the urban feel of the whole thing. I find that very attractive.”

In this “city,” a rule-breaking white blood cell, who is a cop named Osmosis Jones, discovers that the egg has introduced a lethal virus called Thrax, who’s looking to kill Frank.

“Ozzy” with Drix, a by-the-book, superhero-like cold pill, must band together in true cop-buddy-movie fashion, to stop Thrax. Making things difficult, Mayor Phlegmming, is more concerned with his re-election than the virus looking to destroy the “City of Frank.” As Ozzy and Drix race against time and Thrax, Osmosis Jones toggles between animation showcasing the battle inside the body and live-action showing Frank’s condition worsening.

Alongside Murray in live-action, Osmosis Jones features Elena Franklin as Frank’s daughter, Shane, Molly Shannon as her teacher, Mrs. Boyd, and Chris Elliott as Bob, Frank’s fellow zookeeper. The voices in the animated scenes are: Chris Rock as Osmosis Jones, David Hyde Pierce as Drix, Laurence Fishburne voices Thrax the virus; William Shatner as Mayor Phlegmming, Brandy Norwood as his secretary, and Ozzy’s love interest, Leah Estrogen, and Ron Howard as Tom Colonic, the Mayor’s opponent in an upcoming election.

“I was really happy with the combination of Chris Rock and David Hyde Pierce,” said Sito. “We wanted Chris to be himself, but we wanted his counterpart to be really as opposite as possible.” The filmmakers even had the two actors record together, at one point during the film’s production. “We got a lot of really good stuff out of them,” recalled Sito of the session, “because the two of them are used to improvisational humor and some really good stuff comes out of improv.”

Sito also remembered how much William Shatner added to his role as the mayor. “The great thing about Shatner was that he started in radio. People with radio experience can modulate and create characters just using their voice. So, you could say, ‘Bill, line forty-nine, can you give me that again and try it five different ways?’ And he really would give you five different ways.”

While these characters play out their roles against a fictional “City of Frank,” the artists behind Osmosis Jones worked with doctors and scientists during production to stay somewhat within the boundaries of medical realism.

Sito recalled, “Doctor Stuart Sumida, who’s a paleontologist at Cal State San Bernardino, I could call him up and ask, ‘Stuart, how high can a body temperature go before there is organ failure? He’d say, ‘It could get up to 105. You’re in bad shape if it’s any higher than 107.’ And, I’d say, ‘OK, thank you!’”

Sito’s career in animation spans over fifty years, including as an animator at Disney on such films as Aladdin (1992) and The Lion King (1994), and as a story artist at DreamWorks for Prince of Egypt (1998) and Shrek (2001). He has lectured on animation around the world, is President Emeritus of The Animation Guild Local #839 Hollywood and was a Professor at USC’s School of Cinematic Arts. Additionally, he has written several books on animation, including his latest, Drawing Life Back into Animation: A Personal Journey Through the Toon Renaissance of the 1990s.

Looking back on Osmosis Jones, which was released on August 10, 2001, he can’t believe twenty-five years have passed, and he can’t help but reflect on his early days in animation.

“When I was starting, I was assisting animator Shamus Culhane,” remembered Sito, “and he had worked on Snow White and on Gulliver’s Travels and had done some of the earliest television commercials. He had a really long career, and he was in his eighties, and I was in my twenties. He looked at me one day and said, ‘You know what the secret is? In my mind, I’m still twenty. I don’t know what the hell’s happening!’ And I said, ‘Is that what I have to look forward to?’ And he said, ‘Pretty much.’ And now I see he was right!”

Sito also adds that co-directing the animation for Osmosis Jones allows him to remember advice from another animation legend. “Something Richard Williams told me a long time ago was that sometimes what’s just as satisfying as doing a good scene yourself is creating the opportunity for other people to do the best work that they could do. I saw that in casting the animators and putting certain animators in certain places. Wendy Perdue animated Leah, and Darlie Brewster did the Mayor. They just excelled. And Duncan Marjoribanks did a lot of the villain, and Duncan, of course, had had a long career at Disney and had done a lot of beautiful sequences on the big Disney films. It’s one of the best scripts I’ve ever worked with. Who Framed Roger Rabbit was a fantastic first read, and Osmosis Jones by Mark Hyman was also a fantastic first read.”

And, twenty-five years later, Tom Sito still receives praise for the film from the medical community, and sometimes at the oddest moments, as he recalls with a laugh, “I had a ruptured gallbladder. And I remember as the doctors at Saint Joseph’s Hospital were wheeling me into the operating room, the Chief Surgeon was all masked up, and he looked down at me and said, ‘I heard you did Osmosis Jones. I love that film!’”