HOLLYWOOD -- Todd Phillips, who wrote and directed the campus sex comedy Road Trip, says his movie is "essentially Gladiator for mice."

One of the film's running jokes has Canadian comic Tom Green trying to feed a white mouse to a snake.

The snake ignores the tempting white morsel, so Green demonstrates for the snake how the mouse should be consumed.

That meant Green actually put the stunt mice into his mouth.

"Tom is a great sport," says Phillips.

"He's up for anything. I just wanted him to dangle the mouse above his mouth, but he put it all the way in.

"We shot the scene so many times that the poor mouse had to keep going back to fur and makeup. Tom kept drooling all over him."

Other mice were placed inside the snake's cage, but only after the snake had been well fed.

"We had five animal activists hovering over the snake's cage to make certain the snake didn't eat any of the stunt mice."