John Lasseter does AM Radio, too?
John Lasseter does AM Radio, too?
Yes , indeed he does!
At least here in Northern California...
Last Sunday morning (January 28th), much to the surprise of listeners to KGO-Radio (one of several ABC/Capital Cities properties in the San Francisco Bay Area) host Marci Smothers had the pleasure of sharing Pixar (and now Disney’s, too) John Lasseter as her guest.
As one caller described it, “this was the greatest show he had heard in thirty plus years of listening to the radio.”
While the show was offered as an audio archive, it was only available for 24 hours following the broadcast. What follows here is a loosely edited transcript of the first of two hours on the air. Look for the text of second hour here soon.
“Marci Smothers: Why did you choose animation?
John Lasseter: My mother was an art teacher, for 38 years and I always grew up drawing. My parents could not get me out of bed to go to school in the morning. I was one of those lazy kids in the morning. I just could not get out of bed. But Saturday morning, when the cartoons were on, I was up at 6:30 waiting for the farm reports to get off and I would watch cartoons with a bowl of cereal, laying in front of the tv until Bowling For Dollars would come on.
Marci: Was “Toy Story” truly the big break for you?
John: “Toy Story” was a huge break-through, but before that I figured out in high school, when I read a book on the art of animation, it never dawned on me that people would actually make cartoons for a living. They would actually make money making cartoons. And I thought, “Ooh! That’s what I want to do!” Because my mom was an art teacher, when I said I wanted to make cartoons for Disney, she said “That’s a great goal to have.”
So I ended up writing to the Disney Studios. I went to the California Institute for the Arts in the first year of their character animation program that the Disney Studio founded as a training ground. Went to work for Disney as an animator and got very excited about computer animation in like 1980. I saw the potential of it and I was the first traditionally trained animator to work in the medium. I came up here to the Bay Area, worked with Lucasfilm. We did a number of short films but our goal was always to do a feature film. And so “Toy Story” became the first computer animated feature film. It took four years to make it and it came out in 1995. So it’s now over 11 years old.
Marci: Were there any toy companies that said, “No, you can’t use our toys?”
John: Yes, we had two toys we were dieing to have in “Toy Story”. Barbie and GI Joe. The two toys that I played with when I grew up were Hot Wheels and GI Joe. So I had to have GI Joe be in there. Hasbro didn’t want us to have GI Joe in there because the evil kid that lived next door, Sid, blew him up with an M-80 in the back yard. We completely understood that. It was actually Tom Hanks, in a recording session, that came up with the name Combat Carl. So we called him Combat Carl.
We really wanted to have Barbie in there and Mattel said no. So then it (“Toy Story”) came out and it was a big hit, the number one film that year. So they called us up when we were doing the sequel and they said, absolutely, yes, we have to have Barbie in the sequel. And that’s why we have that fantastic scene in “Toy Story 2” in Al’s Toy Barn where they go down the aisle and it’s all pink and there is Barbie’s having the pool party and stuff.
Marci: I understand that Tim Allen was not your first choice to play Buzz Lightyear.
John: Early in the development of “Toy Story”, which is a kind of a buddy picture about two toys, an old toy that is replaced by a new toy, we had an idea before he became the Buzz Lightyear character, that we wanted Billy Crystal. He passed on doing it. After the movie came out he said it was the worst mistake he ever made in his show business career and that he would love to do another voice for us. So up came Monsters Incorporated and we had him do Mike Wyzowski, the little one eyed green fellow. He’s become a good friend since then and a part of the Pixar family.
Marci: You’ve made movies about monsters, super heroes, fish… Why “Cars”?
John: Cars? I love cars. I was born and raised in Los Angeles, the car capital of the world. My father was a parts manager at a Chevrolet dealership. So, as I mentioned my mom was an art teacher. It was like putting the two sides of my family together. One of my favorite Disney cartoons was “Susie, the Little Blue Coupe”. It was animated by the great Disney animators and I just loved the way that they brought the car alive. I’ve always been enamored of animating the inanimate object. The first short film we did as Pixar was Luxo Junior, about the hopping desk lamp that became part of our Pixar logo.
I just always though that cars, they have personality. You see them on the road, the designs they are, the people who drive them, they all have personality. We also like to match the subject matter of our stories and our films to the medium of computer animation. So I thought, what with the enamel paint, the reflections on the windows… It would be perfect for computer animation. So that’s where the original essence of the idea came from.
Marci: How do you research these films? For “Finding Nemo”, I read that you went to the Great Barrier Reef and that the animators became licensed scuba divers so that they could do the research. What type of research did you do for “Cars”?
John: Well, first of all, I really believe in research for any subject matter. When it was A Bugs Life, we became amateur entomologists. We learned a lot. Because I believe the more that you know about the subject of your film, the more truth you can bring to it, even though it’s an animated film. Even though these characters are cartoony and they talk and so on… To pull ideas out of the real thing will make it more true, more believable.
With Cars, I didn’t know what the story was going to be at the beginning. We just started looking, myself and my creative partner on the film, Joe Ranft, we just started looking at documentaries, read books. Two things really stood out to us. Racing and the old highway system; the Blue Line highways like Route 66. And the racing… I live in Sonoma near the Infineon Raceway. So I went down to the NASCAR race which comes there every June. And I got so taken by how dramatic and energetic seeing the race live is. So, I just thought this is fantastic!
But the thing that impressed us the most was this one documentary called “Divided Highways”. It’s about the origins of the Interstate highway system. What really impressed us is what happens to these old highway towns when the new interstate bypass them. You have to understand. The white shield highways, like highway 101 here in the Bay Area or 99 in the Central Valley, the old highways that traveled across the country, and when in came into every town, it became the main street of every town. After the war, World War II, more and more cars were hitting the road. Each town was a bottle neck. And they wanted to like race to each destination faster. So when they started building the Interstate in 1955, of course, they would bypass the towns, because that’s where all the bottle necks were.
What they didn’t realize was that many of the towns, like on Route 66, were built up to take care of the traveler. And for the sake of progress, they took the life blood away from these towns. And overnight, as the ribbon cut on these new Interstates, the town died. And it’s a very dramatic story. We traveled on Route 66 and talked to the people and they remembered those days. And on one day, they said it was so crowded with people from all over the world were visiting us, the next day you could take a nap on the road and no one would have stopped there anymore. And no one anticipated that. No one thought that people wouldn’t stop! They thought that it would bring more people to them. It was such a dramatic story, it really touched us. We thought this would be a great subject for the movie “Cars”.
At Pixar, the most important thing is the story. That is what truly entertains audiences. Even though we use the latest technology in computer animation, I always say that the technology doesn’t entertain the audiences by it’s self. It’s always about the story and the characters and that’s what we pride ourselves in. With “Cars”, we did this research, but I didn’t know how it would fit together as a story.
But I had a life changing experience. I had been working non-stop through the Nineties directing Pixar’s first three movies – “Toy Story”, “A Bugs Life” and “Toy Story 2”. During that time, I had four of my five sons. And my wife, Nancy, who is fantastic, a big supporter of me and my career, of course with the family. She started seeing how busy I was getting, I wasn’t slowing down. And she said, “Be careful. One day, you’re going to wake up and your boys will have gone off to college and you will have missed it.” And that hit me really hard.
So after “Toy Story 2”, I took the summer off, we bought a motor home, we traveled the United States with no plan, for two solid months. Just the family and enjoyed every day to it’s fullest. And I learned a lesson, about enjoying every day to it’s fullest. And I came back from that journey, and I said that’s what I want this movie to be about, what I just learned. The journey in life is the reward.
So with the research on racing and Route 66, it just sort of fell into place. Let’s have a race car, who is built from the ground up to go as fast as possible. He wouldn’t want to slow down. And have him get stuck in an old Route 66 town that the Interstate has bypassed that’s living the old slow lane life. And I thought this would be perfect. Because at first, he would be like, you know, I’m in the worst place possible. And then he would grow to recognize what he was missing in his life.
Marci: With all of the awards Pixar has won for it’s previous films, why is this year’s nomination for Best Animated Feature Film so important to you?
John: First of all, I am so excited that the Academy now has a category for Best Animated Feature Film. Prior to that, animation would only get honored through special Oscars. I did win a special Oscar for Toy Story as the first computer animated feature film. But it was kind of for that. It wasn’t for the film or for the directing of the film. What’s so exciting about this, being nominated for Best Animated Feature Film, it’s about the movie as a whole. Even thought my name is on it, it’s for everybody who made it. And I’m so excited, because also with my new role as Chief Creative Officer of Disney Animation as well as Pixar Animation – since Disney and Pixar merged last year - I may not be directing another movie for quite a while, because I’m overseeing all the other movies. So this is a nice chance.
(After a news break, John began to take calls from listeners.)
Alberta: I’m a volunteer at the California Academy of Sciences… and we have a beautiful two-story coral reef. And one day, a little boy about 3-years old, he let out a yell, “Mom! Mom! Quick, it’s Nemo!” And he saw the yellow fish in the coral reef. I really wish I could have recorded his excitement.
John: That’s why I make the movies. Often times, people think, yeah film makers make movies for the awards or for the take at the box office. I do it to entertain audiences. It’s every day of my career, every day we work on a movie, I think of the audience. I love stories like that.
The most memorable story like that was after “Toy Story” was first released and it was our first movie. We had taken a vacation with my family and we were changing planes in the Dallas airport. We got off the plane and (This was back in the time that families could meet people at the gate.) there was a mother with a little boy and he was holding a Woody the cowboy doll. This was about five days after the movie had come out. And the look on his face of how excited he was, holding this toy of a character that I had created, was so touching. And my sons are telling me, “Go Daddy. Tell him who your are!” I said, “No, no, no. This is not my character anymore. It is his character.” I realized that this is what we do and how it touches people. It’s so exciting to hear these kinds of stories.
Carol: I want to thank you for making “Cars” as a movie. My sons are watching it right now.
John: Oh, yeah!
Carol: It’s such a cross generational movie. My dad used to race hot rods on the salt flats…
John: Oh wow! Cool…
Carol: He loves watching that movie with the kids. He went and got out his old photo albums and started looking at the pictures and telling all the stories… It’s just been a blessing at this house.
John: That is great. It means a lot to hear that. I’m a big car geek. We did a tremendous amount of research and we went from Detroit to Charlotte, North Carolina and we went all over to learn about cars. We got so interested in all the different car sub-cultures. And one of the things I was dedicated to is making this movie so that the details were correct. So often, you see a movie about a certain subject that you love. And you see that the film makers have not done their homework. “Ah, that’s Hollywood. We can do what ever we want.” And like one thing or one line that they do wrong, and the whole movie loses credibility. I did not want that to happen for all the car lovers out there in the world for this movie. So we got the details correct, even down to the little bits of rubber that comes off the tires on NASCAR tracks. They call them marbles and they fly around as the cars drive by. We got to a tremendous level of detail.
Marie: In “Toy Story”, there was no father for Andy, and I just wondered why?
John: It’s interesting, because early in the story development, and frankly, this is based on a personal thing that happened in my life, we had it where Buzz Lightyear came at the last minute, by Federal Express to the birthday party, from the divorced dad. We had that in the story quite a bit because I had seen that happen in my life, an example just like that. But what happened as we developed it was that it established a negative relationship between this toy and the mother. And so we ended up cutting that out. We just left it as a single mom. Not that we started out with that one idea, and then we didn’t add a father later or anything like that. We always thought that Woody was actually a hand me down from Andy’s dad as one of the thoughts we’ve always had.
Marci: As you said, it’s a four-year process, so I have to imagine that a lot of revisions are happening all the time.
John: Tremendous, yes. Everyone thinks that you just start with a script and then you make the movie. It’s not like that. It’s not true. In live action, film makers will go out and shoot many different takes and many different angles of a scene. In animation, the production of it is so time consuming and therefore so expensive. We only have one chance to do every shot. Show how do we know what we’re going to do if we’re only going to have one chance? We actually edit the movie before we start production by using storyboard drawings. We make a version of the movie using the still storyboard drawings. We will work and rework and rework and rework that part of the movie before we start production.
In the story reel, it’s true. There are no excuses. The lights dim and it starts playing. If it communicates a story, moves you, makes you laugh, then we know the film will.
Marci: Do you voice the characters first or do you animate the characters first?
John: We always record the voices before we do the animation. It’s something that Walt Disney always did. In that way, you can get inspiration from the actor. We always choose our voice actors for how good of an actor they are, how good their voice matches the character we’re trying to do. We also like actors who can ad-lib and make it their own. In an art form that takes four years to make, spontaneity is not usually something that comes to the forefront of your mind. But you do get spontaneity in a recording studio.
As a director, I always want things to sound natural, like it just happened. So, I always encourage the actors. Like Bonnie Hunt, who has been in three of our movies, she plays Sally Carrera, the Porsche in “Cars”. She’s one of the greatest ad-lib comedians of our time. She adds so much to the part. As did, Owen Wilson, who plays Lightning McQueen. And Paul Newman, he really helped make that character of Doc Hudson. In fact, he was my greatest racing consultant on the movie. He helped make all the racing scenes authentic and true. And I love it!
We also always video tape the actors so the animators can see. And that’s why, even though it’s a car, you look at Doc Hudson and there’s a quality to it that the facial things make it kind of look like Paul Newman.
Marci: Let’s not forget Larry the Cable guy! He’s my favorite as Mater the tow truck.
John: … he just steals the show as Mater. He is so funny in this thing. We had this one scene where we were just ad-libbing and trying to figure out, and he was reminiscing about this car he was attracted to and how he always would bump into her to talk to her. And I said to him, “Larry, what’s a good red neck girl’s name?” He said, ”Doorreen.”
Caroline: I’d like to know if there is a collection of John’s short films available, like the Bird on the wire? All of them together that you could buy?
John: At Pixar, we’ve been making short films forever. And we are putting together, it hasn’t really been announced yet, soon, very soon, you’ll be able to have a collection of all of the Pixar short films on DVD. It hasn’t been announced yet, so I can’t really talk about it. But I’m really excited that we’re going to have one. I haven’t said exactly the details. But the one thing that I do want to say is that I love making short films because it’s a great art form. I’ve always said that for every Pixar animated feature film coming out, there will be a short film in front of it. Now, along with the two Oscar nominations for “Cars”, Pixar also has a nomination for a new animated short film. Gary Rydstrom directed this great short film called “Lifted”. And it will be coming out in front of “Ratatouille”, our summer release this year.
Marci: Didn’t Gary Rydstrom win some Oscars for you doing sound?
John: Yeah, that guy’s won more Oscars. I think seven Oscars. And now we brought him in and he’s interested in trying directing. He’s been developing some feature ideas and the first thing we had him do was develop an idea and do a short film. It’s fantastic. It’s really funny. One of the exciting things is that the Oscars have been giving out short film Academy awards for seventy-three years. A lot of people are always dieing to see these.
Marci: Me, too! I’m always frustrated on the Academy awards (telecast) you see a short clip and that’s all the average person is ever going to see of them.
John: The Academy has worked with this great group called Magnolia Pictures and they are taking all of the live action and animated short films and they are releasing them in theaters before the Academy awards. Here in the Bay Area, on February 16th, they’re showing all of the nominated live action and animated films in a theater that anybody can go see them. They’re going to show in Berkeley at the Shattuck Cinema, San Francisco at the Lumiere Theater, San Rafael at the Smith’s Rafael Film Center, and Santa Rosa at the Rialto Cinemas. It’s so exciting. I tell you that this is a great collection of short films this year.
Monica: I want to thank you as the parent of a type 1 diabetic son. His name is Sam. We’re just calling to say “Thank You” from the bottom of our hearts for all of the wonderful work that you do towards finding a cure. I wanted to find out if “Finding Nemo” was based on the experience that you had with your son and his diagnosis.
John: Thank you. What the caller is talking about is that one of my five sons, who name is Sam, was diagnosed when he was ten years old, about four years ago, with type 1 diabetes. And it just hit us so incredibly hard. “Finding Nemo” was written and directed by Andrew Stanton. It was already kind of in the works and so on… But I did executive produce it and oversaw it creatively. The meaning of what was going on in “Finding Nemo” hit me even more personally after this diagnosis. My wife Nancy and I vowed that we would do everything we can to help find a cure for this. So we work with JDRF – Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation – and their goal is to find a cure. And so we’ve helped raise money. My wife has put on five fundraisers, kind of gala previews of our movies before they come out. The one she put on for “Cars” raised $1.4 million for the research. So we’re dedicated to finding a cure.
Tom: What are the best schools for kids who want to get into animation?
John: Great question. I care deeply about this. I love my job. I tell all of my five sons is that the thing you want to do is find something that you love because you will never work a day in your life. I never have. And I love animation. It’s a great, great industry. Right now, there are so many animation studios making movies, and movies are doing well. The best school for animation, because there are lots of employment opportunities right now… my alma matter, California School for the Arts and their character animation program is fantastic. There’s a school in Florida, Ringling. The art schools here in San Francisco do a fantastic job. On our web site, Pixar dot com, there is information about that. We list a bunch of schools because we get that question a lot. My number one advice to young students is to learn the basics. Don’t worry about the technology. That will always change. Learn what to do with the technology. Design. Story telling. Film making. Animation. Learn the fundamentals. “
That’s the end of first hour. Check back another day for the the rest of this tale!
Ruminations
Friday, February 2, 2007
“Hi! My name is John and I’ll be your skipper for the next four years of this development cruise!”
John Lasseter, back at the wheel, reliving his days as a Disneyland Jungle Cruise Skipper during the
50th Anniversary kick-off on May 5, 2005.
Photo courtesy of Leo Holzer.