Toy Story 3’s Darla K. Anderson & Lee Unkrich
The producer and director of the perfect new film talk about Ken, Big Baby and more.
With Toy Story 3 opening today, 19th July, we bring you a few words with its creators.
Director Lee Unkrich steps up from editor of Toy Story and co-director of Toy Story 3 to the man in charge of the magic onscreen. Long-time Pixar producer Darla K. Anderson joins the third film, following her work on Cars, Monsters Inc and A Bug's Life. The pair came to London to talk about the latest adventure for Woody, Buzz and their friends, completing an utterly perfect trilogy - read a review here!
At the press conference, the pair discuss the new characters, including Ken, Big Baby and Lotso, and getting the cast back together after so many years.
On what 3D brings to the world of animation:
Darla: I think 3D is just a really fun way to watch our film, we at Pixar use a lighter method of 3d - we don't want to distance our audience emotionally, or in any way, shape or form. Instead we want to draw the audience in. So we see it more as a window into our world.
On what it means to Lee to be part of Toy Story:
Lee: I have been very lucky to have been part of all three of the Toy Story films. I remember when we were making the first film we knew it was something special, something the world hadn't seen up to that point. We certainly didn't think we were making anything that would become part of pop culture. We were hoping to make a happy movie people would want to see, and maybe we'd get to make another one. That was as grand as our ambition got. But of course, Toy Story went on to be a massive hit, and people loved it... A lot of years went by before Toy Story 3, and when John Lasseter asked me to direct the film, I was very excited but was also completely freaked out at the idea of having to take the helm of story that was so beloved to so many people around the world. I certainly didn't want to be seen as the person to be responsible for screwing it up in any way.
On working on the script:
Lee: We started this film by going away for two days in a cabin - me, Darla and John Lasseter and Andrew Stanton, just hashing out the story. We then spent the next two and half years working with Michael Arndt, the screenwriter, to flesh out the details of the story. That's pretty typical on all our films, that we spend several years really just working our way round the story.
On meeting with Mattel to discuss Ken's character:
Lee: Here's the funny thing about Ken. We approached Mattel, and told them the conceit of Ken and what we were going to do with him, and they were totally on board. The were happy for him to be in the film, and they trusted us to do right by him. In fact, because everything was on the record for the historians, we found out one of the funny things about Ken, was that for years Mattel tried to find a special feature for Ken. To try and boost sales! Because for the longest time he was priced at $4.99, and they wanted to give him some special features to bump it up. And they soon realised the fact he was $4.99 was his special feature. And to us, that was just perfect, because it fed into what we were already thinking about Ken - a really insecure guy. He's a guy who's a girl's toy, only played with by little girls. He's ostensibly an accessory for Barbie; he's no more important than her shoes, purse or handbag. We just assumed he'd be insecure and would overcompensate in many ways.
On the scary presence of Big Baby:
Lee: We did a lot of research at daycare centres, and everywhere we went we would see these baby dolls. There'd often be cribs full of five, ten naked baby dolls, with their cloth bodies covered with pen marks. They were just a hallmark of daycare, so we wanted to stay true to that. Of course, we were making a prison break film, so we wanted to have some baddies, so it seemed a logical thing to do. The thing that I love about Big Baby personally is that, yes he is scary at times, because I filmed him in a scary way, but he's an innocent. He's a very tragic character in the film, and I love that we can have a moment like that on the swing, which is frightening, in a fun way, but just moments later you feel such deep empathy for the character.
On the casting of the new characters:
Lee: We spend a lot of time - years - trying to find the right person. For a character like Lotso, say, it's important to me to find an actor who could play comedy, and be trustworthy and warm, but could also carry the darker material. I looked at some actors I knew could do the intense stuff, but I didn't think anyone would buy them as a warm grandfather type of guy. It was the most difficult character in the film to cast. It just took time, until Ned Beatty's name just ended up on the list, and the moment I saw it I thought it was perfect. He's done a lot of comedy in his career, and he's a warm, genial guy. But he's done some intense stuff as well.
On why Pixar never go for stunt casting:
Darla: We rarely do that, it's so important to us. We're geeks and purists, so it's important that whoever we cast supports the storyline, and their voices have to be so memorable and so full of colour, and imbue soul into the character.
Lee: I think there's only one case where we've put the actors' names on the poster, and that was for Toy Story 2 - Tom Hanks and Tim Allen, but we've never used the actors as being part of our marketing campaign.
Darla: And when we cast Tom Hanks and Tim Allen in Toy Story, they weren't the big stars they were at the end of Toy Story.
On Toy Story 3 making grown men cry:
Lee: I'm proud grown men find the movie affecting. We all find it very interesting there's been so much talk about men crying at this film; we certainly didn't set out to make grown men cry, that wasn't our goal! We've spent a lot of time thinking about why this would happen. We didn't set out with a list of things we wanted to explore in the film, they came about organically. We also want to make a funny movie, so part of the aim is to find the balance.
On getting the cast back together after all those years:
Darla: They were thrilled to come back. They couldn't have been more excited, so it was quite easy actually! Each one of the voice cast now is an extended part of our family, like our best friends. It was a mere phone call to schedule the meeting.
Lee: Everbody came back, with the exception of Jim Varney, who unfortunately passed away after Toy Story 2, who played Slinky Dog. But we spent a long time trying to find a suitable replacement for him, and found this guy, Blake Clark, a character actor who, it turns out, was friends with Jim. So he took it upon himself to make sure he did right by the role. It felt like we were channeling Jim every time we did a recording session. When we showed the finished film to many of the actors, and when they told Blake that they thought he did Jim proud, he unexpectedly broke down sobbing. Because it was so important to him to get this right.
On the darker themes:
Darla: We stay true to the story we're trying to tell, and in the case of the toys there is a natural tension, where we think a lot of these universal things are born from. A toy is meant to be played with, and stay loyal to its owner, and there's the natural tension of the child eventually growing up. So those very universal, very human things came out of the truth we're trying to tell.
Lee: There are some ideas that were there from the first Toy Story, that is of free, unbridled play, the innocence of childhood, and we continued to embrace that over the three films.
On figuring out how to end the film: [SPOILER]
Lee: This two-day off-site we mentioned, where we went away and cooked up the movie, we emerged from that with a few fundamental things. We knew that Andy was going to be grown up and going away to college, that the toys were going to end up at daycare, and it was going to turn out to be not so much a nice place and it would be a prison break, and we knew the ending - we knew Andy was going to pass on his toys. Endings are the hardest part to come up with in a film. We've all seen perfectly enjoyable films that have had disappointing endings. We were lucky we had that ending, and we just had to work out how to navigate towards that.
On Tom Hanks and Tim Allen's enthusiasm for a third film:
Lee: I don't know that they were pushing hard to get it made, but I know that Tim was very interested in being in Toy Story 3. He would call us over the years wanting to know when it was going to happen, just because he loves playing Buzz Lightyear. When we would bump into Tom, he would ask about it as well. The were just happy when we called them and said we were good to go.
On retaining youthful enthusiasm:
Lee: We act very immaturely a lot of the time! We were in our twenties when we made Toy Story, and When we get back together we keep it pretty much the same way. our children keep us young.
Darla: There's a lot of really great new talent that's moved in, on our story team. They make us feel really old, because the first time they saw Toy Story, they were eight years old. We think we're young until that happens! We've been in the same company for 17 years, we're all still best friends with each other, so you don't realise how much time has passed until the new, young talent comes in.
On unused footage:
Lee: Animation is so expensive and time-consuming - animators spend weeks on a few seconds of animation - so we try and figure out what really needs to be in the film, and be very sure about it. Sometime a scene is too long, so we've cut over the years, but we were very lucky in Toy Story 3 in that we didn't have to cut anything. There were frames trimmed, but what we set out to make ended up being in the film.
Darla: It's very unusual. It must be the first time that's happened.
On their own favourite characters:
Lee: I would never say I like a character more than any other, but I do have a soft spot for Big Baby. He was my creation, and I love that he is a spooky, but tragic, character. I always thought of him like Lenny from Of Mice And Men.
Darla: Rex is just an innocent, and no matter what he's doing, he just sparks up the screen. So it's hard not to have a soft spot for him.
On whether actors' voices change:
Lee: People's voices haven't changed, and testament to that is that I went back and used original recordings of Tom and Tim from Toy Story, just bits of them where I need a word said in a different way, and I was able to seamlessly cut. It used to be more difficult to get actors to do these films, but now we're a name...
Darla: People want to be a part of it.
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