Toy Story Commentary

Toy Story commentary with Director John Lasseter, Producers Ralph Guggenheim and Bonnie Arnold, Co-writer Andrew Stanton, Supervising animator Pete Docter, Art director Ralph Eggleston and Supervising technical director Bill Reeves.

Transcript

 * JOHN LASSETER: I'm John Lasseter. I co-wrote the original story and directed the film Toy Story.
 * RALPH GUGGENHEIM: I'm Ralph Guggenheim.
 * BONNIE ARNOLD: I'm Bonnie Arnold.
 * GUGGENHEIM: And Bonnie and I produced Toy Story.
 * ANDREW STANTON: And I'm Andrew Stanton. I'm one of the screenwriters and storyboard artists for the film.
 * PETE DOCTER: My name's Pete Docter. I worked on the story and was supervising animator.
 * RALPH EGGLESTON: My name's Ralph Eggleston. I was the art director on Toy Story.
 * BILL REEVES: And I'm Bill Reeves, supervising technical director on Toy Story.
 * LASSETER: And we're here to give you an audio commentary for the wonderful Toy Story.
 * Andy: Now empty that safe.
 * LASSETER: When we started this whole idea, it seemed to be very doable in the sense that, computer graphics tend to make things look kinda plastic-y anyway, so we might as well do a story about toys. And you and I, Bill, we did Tin Toy, that short film, which kind of introduced the whole notion about these toys being alive and stuff.
 * DOCTER: The first time we see Woody is a classic Western introduction.
 * LASSETER: We wanted to have it sort of a child's version of a Western movie, and as he starts playing, it gets into the sort of kid-like non-sequitur...
 * STANTON: Right.
 * LASSETER: ...sort of thing.
 * STANTON: Kid's logic. I mean, in a weird way, it's logical for the kid, but...
 * LASSETER: Right.
 * STANTON: ...that one was true...
 * DOCTER: He would have the playtime...
 * STANTON: Playtime.
 * DOCTER: ...the force field.
 * LASSETER: The force field, and then the...
 * GUGGENHEIM, DOCTER: The dinosaurs, and...
 * Andy: ...who eats force field dogs!
 * STANTON: Here's an interesting thing. So many people come up to us, and they didn't know that Molly was in the same room with Andy. It's like the crib's in there all the time.
 * LASSETER: Right.
 * STANTON: But people really, I guess we just didn't sell it enough, that, you know, Molly shares the room with. People would thought Bo Peep was Andy's toy.
 * Andy: You saved the day...
 * GUGGENHEIM: And here we have this, you know, amazing opening song by Randy Newman, who did the songs and the score.
 * LASSETER: Yeah.
 * ARNOLD: Right.
 * GUGGENHEIM: I started remember the first time we sat down and listened to Randy... Sing this song just on the piano.
 * ARNOLD: Yeah.
 * GUGGENHEIM: And, uh, we talked about the emotions, we talked about some of the feelings we wanted in the song.
 * ARNOLD: The things we likened to were Harold and Maude.
 * GUGGENHEIM: Yeah.
 * ARNOLD: And The Graduate, where songs actually told about an emotional moment in the film rather than the character singing about those things. It just made this seem more contemporary and realistic, and I think that's what John was trying to go for.
 * STANTON: Right, right.
 * Andy: Hey, cowboy.
 * STANTON: In a short amount of time, we needed to show that Andy and Woody had this lifelong bond, but we don't have the whole movie. We wanna disrupt that as soon as we can, and it was great. From the minute when we heard Randy's song, we knew this did it, this made you feel like these guys were inseparable.
 * GUGGENHEIM: I think it did even more than that. It really defined so much of the theme of the whole movie for us.
 * LASSETER: And we used this, this song at the end, during the end credits. In the beginning, it's about Andy's relationship with Woody,...
 * STANTON: Right.
 * LASSETER: ...and at the end, it's Woody's relationship with Buzz.
 * STANTON: Right.
 * GUGGENHEIM: Mmm.
 * LASSETER: When Ralph and, and your crew... You designed all these sets. I mean, really, this world is a really three-dimensional world. It's something different than cell animation. I mean, these are truly dimensional sets.
 * EGGLESTON: And the living room is the first thing I think we really got into, and ahh, there's so much detail you never really get a close look at.
 * Andy's Mom: Yeah, I think that's gonna be enough.
 * LASSETER: I remember you said that you wanted to give a sense of history to this world so that when people looked at, it looks like people have lived in these houses. Bill, you would get the... All these designs. They were more or less like blueprints, you know.
 * REEVES: Yeah. You'd get this packet of information of what they call it, which was a specification of what they... What these things, objects really look like. It was as if we had to build them out of wood...
 * LASSETER: Yeah.
 * REEVES: ...or clay, or plastic, or whatever.
 * Andy: Come on, Molly. You're getting heavy. See ya later, Woody.
 * STANTON: And now Woody comes to life for the first time.
 * DOCTER: Slow track in.
 * STANTON: "Directed by John Lasseter."
 * LASSETER: Yeah, my credit's the longest one on the movie.
 * (GUGGENHEIM LAUGHS)
 * LASSETER: It's one frame longer than yours.
 * (STANTON LAUGHS)
 * DOCTER: There's the first line that Woody should say, we went through so many revisions.
 * LASSETER: So many.
 * GUGGENHEIM: Yeah.
 * DOCTER: We have pages and pages of Woody's first line.
 * GUGGENHEIM: Just about as many pages as we have titles.
 * STANTON: There's a lot of pressure on your main character. What's the first thing he says?
 * DOCTER: He should be, have an edge, but not to edgy, 'cause you know, it's for kids too.
 * Mr. Potato Head: Ages 3 and up, it's on my box. Ages 3 and up, I'm not supposed to be babysitting...
 * LASSETER: In casting the toys, we really looked at sort of, what kind of personality we wanted them to have, and a lot of it was drawn out of the type of toy it was. Mr. Potato Head's a classic example, 'cause one of the characteristics of the toy is that it's constantly losing its parts, and we thought it would have a chip on its shoulder. Don Rickles was the first, first actor that we thought for this.
 * STANTON: The only choice.
 * LASSETER: The only choice. Yeah, he was great.
 * Woody: Uh, Sarge, have you seen Slinky?
 * LASSETER: The definitive army man is the drill sergeant in Full Metal Jacket, and so we casted him.
 * STANTON: Now Slinky is the last character to finally be cast. We actually...
 * LASSETER: Right.
 * STANTON: ...we actually remodeled him because of Jim Varney's voice.
 * LASSETER: That's right.
 * Slinky Dog: Bad news?!
 * ARNOLD: Well, I think Jim brought the hound dog sort of quality to it, but he was a person, and had that sort of kind of voice that just sort of more, I guess cartoon-y, for lack of a better word, without sort of putting on a voice.
 * LASSETER: Well, one of the things about Etch A Sketch is, in bringing these toys to life, we thought... Everybody draws on an Etch A Sketch so badly...
 * STANTON (LAUGHS): Yeah.
 * LASSETER: ...we wanted to have Etch A Sketch, if he was alive, be able to do crosshatching and absolutely...
 * DOCTER: Yeah.
 * LASSETER: ...exquisite circles.
 * STANTON: Well, he would naturally be the best at it.
 * Slinky Dog: Come on, let's go.