Cruising At a Pace Even Walt Didn't Reach
By CHARLES SOLOMON
1637 words
05/28/2006
The New York Times
Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company. All Rights Reserved.
IF the pre-show jitters are more than usually apparent in the bayside town Emeryville, Calif., it's because Pixar Animation Studios, the little movie factory that recently sold itself to the Walt Disney Company, stands on the verge of pushing its unbroken string of critical and box-office hits to seven. Its record is already unmatched in American animation history, even by Walt Disney himself.
''It's really scary for all of us,'' said Darla K. Anderson, producer of ''Cars,'' the film that is reaching for that record with its release on June 9. As Ms. Anderson tells it, the filmmakers behind each Pixar hit -- ''Monsters, Inc.,'' ''Finding Nemo,'' ''The Incredibles,'' et al. -- have just made things tougher for the next in line.
''After each film's opening weekend, we pass the pressure on to the next director,'' she said. ''Pete Docter did it to Andrew Stanton, Andrew did it to Brad Bird and Brad passed it to us. It's almost like we should deliberately put out something that isn't good, just to get it over with.''
This time around, the director in the hot seat is none other than John Lasseter, who already has ''A Bug's Life'' and the ''Toy Story'' movies to his credit, and, with the merger, has been designated creative leader of both Pixar and Disney Feature Animation.
That Mr. Lasseter has chosen to stake the Pixar winning streak on animated automobiles owes something to a lifelong fascination. ''I've always loved cars, and the idea of cars being alive came up during 'A Bug's Life,' '' he said in a recent telephone interview from Emeryville, several weeks after showing ''Cars'' at a charity event at the studio there.
''One of my favorite Disney cartoons is 'Susie, the Little Blue Coupe,' '' he added. But nostalgia of another sort played a part too. ''I was at exactly the right age when Hot Wheels came out,'' explained Mr. Lasseter, 49, speaking of Mattel's toy cars. ''I remember buying my first two Hot Wheels cars with my allowance, and I was hooked from then on.''
''Cars'' tells the story of Lightning McQueen (voice by Owen Wilson), an ambitious, arrogant young racing car out to win his first Piston Cup Championship, and the fame and endorsements that go with it. When he's accidentally stranded in the tiny town of Radiator Springs, he learns the importance of love, friendship and discipline from its eccentric inhabitants. His misfit teachers include Sally, a perky Porsche (Bonnie Hunt); Doc Hudson, a 1951 Hudson Hornet whose gruff demeanor conceals a surprising past (Paul Newman); and Mater (Larry the Cable Guy), a ramshackle old tow truck who's clearly not the shiniest vehicle on the lot.
To make ''Cars,'' Mr. Lasseter used a combination of design and motion to turn full-size automobiles into characters with recognizable personalities but that still feel like heavy steel-and-glass machines. Traditional squash-and-stretch animation of the characters' faces and bodies made the autos look too rubbery, and the usual way of putting a face on a machine proved equally unsatisfactory.
''The natural eyes of a car are the headlights,'' he explained. ''Moving the eyes to the windshield separates them from the front of the face; the hood becomes the nose and the mouth is down by the grille. Now the body of the car becomes the head of the character, and you can gesture with the front tires when he talks. That design gave the animators more opportunities for acting, because the movement of the chassis over the tires feels almost like a head moving in relation to the shoulders. But to make it really believable, we had to move the cars in ways that maintained their integrity. I kept telling the animators, they're going to look like real cars, so let's move them like they weigh 3,000 pounds.''
Moving the car characters and adding realistic reflections and other details posed formidable problems. '' 'Cars' was a really difficult film technically,'' said Ms. Anderson, the producer. ''It's the most complex film we've ever made.'' Even with a network of processors that ran four times faster than the ones on ''The Incredibles,'' each frame of ''Cars'' took an average of 17 hours to render.
As for the town of Radiator Springs, the quirky desert hamlet on Route 66, it provides a reminder of the less homogenized America Mr. Lasseter saw as a boy.
''For a lot of our vacations, my brother and sister and I would pile into the station wagon, and our parents would drive Route 66 from L.A.,'' he recalled. ''When they started building the Interstate, my dad would drive it for parts of our journeys and say, 'Now we can really make time.' But the Interstate was so smooth, you'd lose track of where you were. When you drove Route 66, you really felt the land. You knew where it was hilly and where it was flat. On the Interstate it was all flat.''
The melancholy images of the forgotten town balance the fast-paced racing scenes and broad comic sequences. Mr. Lasseter says his use of these moments was inspired by the films of Hayao Miyazaki, the Japanese animation director.
''In every one,'' he said, ''there are beautiful quiet scenes. The drive in our early films was to trim out all the 'dead spots,' because the executives were always saying: 'I'm going for popcorn.' 'You're losing me.' After a while I realized I wasn't going to lose the audience. The executives were used to seeing the movie, but the audience wouldn't be. They'd be with us in those moments.''
An early graduate of the character animation program at the California Institute of the Arts, Mr. Lasseter was trained at the Disney studio by members some of the legendary Nine Old Men, Walt Disney's celebrated cadre of animators. In addition to Mr. Miyazaki, Mr. Lasseter cites lessons he learned from his mentors Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston and from the films they made for Disney, who maintained that a laugh should be balanced with a tear. Disney also believed that for an audience to be touched, the emotions had to be genuine, arising from the characters and their situations.
''Frank and Ollie always said the thing to strive to get into a film is heart, or pathos,'' Mr. Lasseter said. ''To really get the audience to feel that heart, they have to discover the emotion for themselves. You can't tell them to feel sad.''
Last August the cast and crew of ''Cars'' got their own dose of pathos when Joe Ranft, the film's co-director, was killed in a car accident. He provided the voices for Heimlich the caterpillar in ''A Bug's Life'' and Red the firetruck in ''Cars,'' and was widely respected within the animation industry as one of the best story men of his generation. ''Cars'' is dedicated to Mr. Ranft's memory, and Mr. Lasseter's usually ebullient voice softens when he talks about his friend and collaborator. He sometimes still speaks of him in the present tense:
''Joe has been by my side on every movie I've made from the very beginning. He was such a big, lovable guy that no matter what mood I was in, he could make me laugh immediately. Joe's personal humor didn't come from funny lines or quips, but the characters he would become. The brilliance of his story work in each of our films lies in the strength and individuality of the characters he developed. His heart runs all the way through this picture.''
Disney's $7.4 billion acquisition of Pixar was announced just as Mr. Lasseter was finishing ''Cars,'' triggering widespread speculation, both inside and outside the animation world, about how he will juggle his life as a director while continuing to oversee Pixar and revitalizing Disney's feature animation studio.
''I've always worn two hats at Pixar: I'm the creative head of the studio and I'm a film director,'' he said. ''I directed the first three movies at the studio, but it was important to build Pixar into a place where other directors could make their movies and I would help them.
''After 'Monsters,' 'Nemo' and 'Incredibles,' it was my turn again. Andrew Stanton, who's vice president of creative, oversaw the other projects while I was on 'Cars.' His next movie is kicking in now, so it's time for me to take the executive role. I'll be overseeing two studios -- for a while anyway. But I love directing, and hope to direct again.''
________ Cook, the chairman of Walt Disney Pictures, offered a reassuring message about Mr. Lasseter's future prospects as a filmmaker.
''I think initially John is going to have his hands full, but it's certainly our hope that once he has things going and feels comfortable, he'll direct a movie,'' Mr. Cook said. ''John's got too many great stories to tell not to direct again. When he feels the time is right, and he has the right project, he'll step back in. It's too much a part of him not to. And I think it's to everyone's advantage for him to do so.''
By CHARLES SOLOMON
1637 words
05/28/2006
The New York Times
Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company. All Rights Reserved.
IF the pre-show jitters are more than usually apparent in the bayside town Emeryville, Calif., it's because Pixar Animation Studios, the little movie factory that recently sold itself to the Walt Disney Company, stands on the verge of pushing its unbroken string of critical and box-office hits to seven. Its record is already unmatched in American animation history, even by Walt Disney himself.
''It's really scary for all of us,'' said Darla K. Anderson, producer of ''Cars,'' the film that is reaching for that record with its release on June 9. As Ms. Anderson tells it, the filmmakers behind each Pixar hit -- ''Monsters, Inc.,'' ''Finding Nemo,'' ''The Incredibles,'' et al. -- have just made things tougher for the next in line.
''After each film's opening weekend, we pass the pressure on to the next director,'' she said. ''Pete Docter did it to Andrew Stanton, Andrew did it to Brad Bird and Brad passed it to us. It's almost like we should deliberately put out something that isn't good, just to get it over with.''
This time around, the director in the hot seat is none other than John Lasseter, who already has ''A Bug's Life'' and the ''Toy Story'' movies to his credit, and, with the merger, has been designated creative leader of both Pixar and Disney Feature Animation.
That Mr. Lasseter has chosen to stake the Pixar winning streak on animated automobiles owes something to a lifelong fascination. ''I've always loved cars, and the idea of cars being alive came up during 'A Bug's Life,' '' he said in a recent telephone interview from Emeryville, several weeks after showing ''Cars'' at a charity event at the studio there.
''One of my favorite Disney cartoons is 'Susie, the Little Blue Coupe,' '' he added. But nostalgia of another sort played a part too. ''I was at exactly the right age when Hot Wheels came out,'' explained Mr. Lasseter, 49, speaking of Mattel's toy cars. ''I remember buying my first two Hot Wheels cars with my allowance, and I was hooked from then on.''
''Cars'' tells the story of Lightning McQueen (voice by Owen Wilson), an ambitious, arrogant young racing car out to win his first Piston Cup Championship, and the fame and endorsements that go with it. When he's accidentally stranded in the tiny town of Radiator Springs, he learns the importance of love, friendship and discipline from its eccentric inhabitants. His misfit teachers include Sally, a perky Porsche (Bonnie Hunt); Doc Hudson, a 1951 Hudson Hornet whose gruff demeanor conceals a surprising past (Paul Newman); and Mater (Larry the Cable Guy), a ramshackle old tow truck who's clearly not the shiniest vehicle on the lot.
To make ''Cars,'' Mr. Lasseter used a combination of design and motion to turn full-size automobiles into characters with recognizable personalities but that still feel like heavy steel-and-glass machines. Traditional squash-and-stretch animation of the characters' faces and bodies made the autos look too rubbery, and the usual way of putting a face on a machine proved equally unsatisfactory.
''The natural eyes of a car are the headlights,'' he explained. ''Moving the eyes to the windshield separates them from the front of the face; the hood becomes the nose and the mouth is down by the grille. Now the body of the car becomes the head of the character, and you can gesture with the front tires when he talks. That design gave the animators more opportunities for acting, because the movement of the chassis over the tires feels almost like a head moving in relation to the shoulders. But to make it really believable, we had to move the cars in ways that maintained their integrity. I kept telling the animators, they're going to look like real cars, so let's move them like they weigh 3,000 pounds.''
Moving the car characters and adding realistic reflections and other details posed formidable problems. '' 'Cars' was a really difficult film technically,'' said Ms. Anderson, the producer. ''It's the most complex film we've ever made.'' Even with a network of processors that ran four times faster than the ones on ''The Incredibles,'' each frame of ''Cars'' took an average of 17 hours to render.
As for the town of Radiator Springs, the quirky desert hamlet on Route 66, it provides a reminder of the less homogenized America Mr. Lasseter saw as a boy.
''For a lot of our vacations, my brother and sister and I would pile into the station wagon, and our parents would drive Route 66 from L.A.,'' he recalled. ''When they started building the Interstate, my dad would drive it for parts of our journeys and say, 'Now we can really make time.' But the Interstate was so smooth, you'd lose track of where you were. When you drove Route 66, you really felt the land. You knew where it was hilly and where it was flat. On the Interstate it was all flat.''
The melancholy images of the forgotten town balance the fast-paced racing scenes and broad comic sequences. Mr. Lasseter says his use of these moments was inspired by the films of Hayao Miyazaki, the Japanese animation director.
''In every one,'' he said, ''there are beautiful quiet scenes. The drive in our early films was to trim out all the 'dead spots,' because the executives were always saying: 'I'm going for popcorn.' 'You're losing me.' After a while I realized I wasn't going to lose the audience. The executives were used to seeing the movie, but the audience wouldn't be. They'd be with us in those moments.''
An early graduate of the character animation program at the California Institute of the Arts, Mr. Lasseter was trained at the Disney studio by members some of the legendary Nine Old Men, Walt Disney's celebrated cadre of animators. In addition to Mr. Miyazaki, Mr. Lasseter cites lessons he learned from his mentors Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston and from the films they made for Disney, who maintained that a laugh should be balanced with a tear. Disney also believed that for an audience to be touched, the emotions had to be genuine, arising from the characters and their situations.
''Frank and Ollie always said the thing to strive to get into a film is heart, or pathos,'' Mr. Lasseter said. ''To really get the audience to feel that heart, they have to discover the emotion for themselves. You can't tell them to feel sad.''
Last August the cast and crew of ''Cars'' got their own dose of pathos when Joe Ranft, the film's co-director, was killed in a car accident. He provided the voices for Heimlich the caterpillar in ''A Bug's Life'' and Red the firetruck in ''Cars,'' and was widely respected within the animation industry as one of the best story men of his generation. ''Cars'' is dedicated to Mr. Ranft's memory, and Mr. Lasseter's usually ebullient voice softens when he talks about his friend and collaborator. He sometimes still speaks of him in the present tense:
''Joe has been by my side on every movie I've made from the very beginning. He was such a big, lovable guy that no matter what mood I was in, he could make me laugh immediately. Joe's personal humor didn't come from funny lines or quips, but the characters he would become. The brilliance of his story work in each of our films lies in the strength and individuality of the characters he developed. His heart runs all the way through this picture.''
Disney's $7.4 billion acquisition of Pixar was announced just as Mr. Lasseter was finishing ''Cars,'' triggering widespread speculation, both inside and outside the animation world, about how he will juggle his life as a director while continuing to oversee Pixar and revitalizing Disney's feature animation studio.
''I've always worn two hats at Pixar: I'm the creative head of the studio and I'm a film director,'' he said. ''I directed the first three movies at the studio, but it was important to build Pixar into a place where other directors could make their movies and I would help them.
''After 'Monsters,' 'Nemo' and 'Incredibles,' it was my turn again. Andrew Stanton, who's vice president of creative, oversaw the other projects while I was on 'Cars.' His next movie is kicking in now, so it's time for me to take the executive role. I'll be overseeing two studios -- for a while anyway. But I love directing, and hope to direct again.''
________ Cook, the chairman of Walt Disney Pictures, offered a reassuring message about Mr. Lasseter's future prospects as a filmmaker.
''I think initially John is going to have his hands full, but it's certainly our hope that once he has things going and feels comfortable, he'll direct a movie,'' Mr. Cook said. ''John's got too many great stories to tell not to direct again. When he feels the time is right, and he has the right project, he'll step back in. It's too much a part of him not to. And I think it's to everyone's advantage for him to do so.''