Trivia / An American Tail: Fievel Goes West

---

• B-Team Sequel: Don Bluth was offered first crack at directing, but backed out when he and Steven Spielberg started fighting for creative control. He was also busy with Rock-A-Doodle.
• Dueling Movies: The movie season of 1991 wasn't big enough for this film and the many it was up against.
  • For one, Don Bluth was going up against a B-Team Sequel to one of his other films with his then-new feature, Rock-A-Doodle. In a bit of tragic irony, his film bombed so hard against this one that it ended up sinking his studio (though if it makes you feel better, neither Amblimation nor Bluth's new studio, Sullivan-Bluth, would survive past 1995).
  • On the other hand, both films paled in comparison to Beauty and the Beast, which was not only a box office juggernaut but officially kicked off the Disney Renaisance of the '90s. This film managed to save a little face thanks to Spielberg's name on the credits.
  • All three managed to mop the floor with Felix the Cat: The Movie, if only because it hardly had a fighting chance.
• Kids' Meal Toy: Pizza Hut sold collectible cups of Fievel, Wylie Burp, and Cat R. Waul.
• The Other Darrin:
  • Cathy Cavadini voices Tanya Mousekewitz instead of Amy Green due to the latter aging out of the role.
  • In the European French dub, Dimitri Rougeul replaced Sauvane Delanoë as Fievel.
  • In the Japanese dub, Daisuke Otomo and Maria Kawamura respectively voice Fievel and Tanya instead of Daisuke Namikawa and Kazuyo Ichimaru.
• Reality Subtext:
  • During the production, Steven Spielberg had just finished a nasty divorce with Amy Irving, voice actress of Miss Kitty. What does the film introduce Miss Kitty doing? Breaking up with Tiger.
  • By the time the sequel had come out, the general public was pretty sick of "Somewhere Out There," resulting in its only use in the film being a self-deprecating joke.
• Role Reprise: With the exception of Amy Green (Tanya) who aged out of the role, all of the original voice actors and actresses for the Mousekewitz family and several major/supporting cast members return as their respective characters.
• Sequel Gap: This film was released almost five years exactly after the first movie^note This film was released on November 22nd in 1991 while the first movie was released on November 21 1986.
• Swan Song: Fievel Goes West was Jimmy Stewart's final film appearance before his 1997 passing.
• What Could Have Been:
  • John Lithgow and Martin Short were considered for Cat R. Waul and T.R. Chula.
  • Céline Dion was originally going to sing "Dreams to Dream" and even recorded a demo for Steven Spielberg. Unfortunately, it was rejected which prompted Dion to be terminated.
  • Tanya had already been voiced by someone else, before James Horner discovered Catherine Cavadini through her demo of “Dreams to Dream”. He convinced Spielberg to have her voice Tanya, and she did, although the scenes with Tanya had already been animated to match the previous actor’s mouth movements.

---