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We don't make bad films

EMERYVILLE, California — "We don't make bad films," Roger Gould explained during the last leg of a morning tour at Pixar Studios. "We just keep working on them until they're good."

Gould, who worked as the creative director on the "Cars" DVD (out Tuesday), talked shop in the atrium of the studio headquarters, a veritable Emerald City built at the end of a yellow brick road of solid-gold hits. Step through the front doors of the vast steel building and the experience is roughly equivalent to going from a black-and-white Kansas to a Technicolor Munchkin Land — a place where the mundane and the fantastic exist side by side.

There are the workers bustling about their days, playing pool, grabbing a snack from the "cereal room," watching movie clips on full-size sofas. There's Flick from "A Bug's Life" staring down from a second-floor enclave — which creates the bizarre juxtaposition of worker ants busying themselves next to a cartoon worker ant. There's Dan Scanlon, the director of the short film "Mater and the Ghostlight." There are Mike and Sully from "Monsters Inc." welcoming visitors with a smile and a wave.

But pull back the curtain of Pixar's magic, and you'll see more than just smoke and mirrors. Ask any employee what makes Pixar so successful, and they'll tell you that at Pixar, "Story is king," a mantra that serves as both business model and corporate philosophy.

Mousepad $15.99 Mug $14.99 Jr. Baby Doll T-Shirt $19.99 Golf Shirt $36.99

Pull back the curtain even more and you'll probably agree with Gould — by using that mantra, Pixar has been going strong since exploding onto the scene in 1995 with "Toy Story," the first full-length computer-generated animated feature. It's a feat that would be all the more special if Pixar didn't continue to make it so ordinary and expected.

Pull back the curtain all the way and you'll ultimately come to John Lasseter, the man behind Pixar and the Wizard of Ahhs himself. Lasseter, who started as a Disney animator in the early '80s before getting unceremoniously fired, was recently named chief creative officer at Walt Disney Features Animation and principal creative advisor for Walt Disney Imagineering. He also just directed "Cars," his fourth feature film and first since 1999's "Toy Story 2."

If story is king at the Pixar kingdom, then Lasseter is its clown prince, a man who bows down before the altar of plot and not what he deems the false idol of razzle-dazzle spectacle.

"What Pixar is about is entertaining audiences. That's really what we love to do," Lasseter said. "We are geeks here and we've been involved in the technological revolutions right and left, but it's less about the technology and more about the stories and the characters and the worlds we create in the entertainment of our audiences. Pixar has pioneered computer animation. We've invented much of it, [but] in all our movies the subject matter is really chosen to fit with the technology."

Since Lasseter last directed a feature, Pixar released "Monsters Inc.," "Finding Nemo" and "The Incredibles," three movies that combined to win four Academy Awards while grossing billions worldwide.

"There is a lot of pressure, but I'll tell you the biggest pressure on our shoulders comes from ourselves 'cause we're the ones who are really driving to make each movie as good as it could be," Lasseter said of Pixar's current streak. "We make the kind of movies we like to watch. We are reasonably intelligent adults who like to go to the movies with our families, and I like to be entertained when I go to the movies with my family. So we make these movies for everybody."

"Cars" follows the adventures of race car Lightning McQueen, a hotshot hot rod built for speed who gets lost in the back roads off Route 66 on a cross-country trip to California. Stuck in the middle of nowhere, Lightning must discover that "the journey through life is the reward," Lasseter said, and not the checkered flag at the end of the race.

"It really helps when you choose a subject matter for a movie that you really love, 'cause then the research is so much fun and you hardly feel like you're working," Lasseter said of his personal inspiration for the film. "So I got to go to all of these NASCAR races, hang out with the teams and drivers. I got to take some race car driving classes and travel down Route 66 and meet all these great people. It was really fun."

Some of Hollywood's greatest talents, including Owen Wilson and Paul Newman, lent their voices to "Cars," an experience Lasseter said Tom Hanks (who voiced Woody in both "Toy Story" films) called "one of the most challenging things he did as an actor."

"We always develop the characters as we are developing the story. It's really important then that we start thinking who can do the voice," Lasseter said. "We look at people who are good actors, whose voice is meshed with what we're trying to do as far as the personality of the character, but also, can they make the character their own? Can they make it seem natural?"

Lasseter found in Wilson the perfect mix of cockiness and sympathy to voice his main character.

"Lightning McQueen was pretty full of himself at the beginning of the film, but we always wanted him to be appealing," he said. "I just look at Owen, and there is just a quality to him that he is always appealing no matter what he's doing."

Although the DVD is sparse by Pixar standards — with extras including a 16-minute documentary on Lasseter's inspiration for the movie and two short films (the Academy Award-nominated "One Man Band" and "Mater and the Ghostlight") — Lasseter is pleased the film has jumped to the home-video market, where he thinks it deserves repeated viewings.

"It's exciting to finally have this one out on DVD, because our movies are dense," he said. "There is a lot in our films, and part of that, as my wife said, is not about the first time you watch a movie, it's about the 100th time a parent has to suffer through it on video. That's what our movies are about."

Walking through the central atrium, which resembles an airplane hangar, it's easy to miss a small door propped up against the back wall, next to which an employee propped a razor scooter behind a steel edifice. It's an old door, its paint cracked and peeling. At first glance, it looks woefully out of place among the company's modern marvels.

It's not until you look again that you realize you've seen the door before. Then you remember — there it is, Boo's door from "Monsters Inc." — the door Mike puts back together for Sully so he can visit the little girl any time he wants. It exists. It's real. And it's magic.

But that's Pixar. Open any door here at the studio, and you're likely to find as much magic behind the door as you do in front of it.

Go ahead, pull back the curtain.

For more on Pixar's magical studio, check out the feature "Monsters (And Superheroes), Inc."

Chub Chubs

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One Man Band (Pixar)

Memo to Pixar and Dreamworks: The Animation Duopoly is Over

Memo to Pixar and Dreamworks: The Animation Duopoly is Over

Posted on Nov 23rd, 2006 with stocks: DIS, DWA

Two years ago, if you were looking to make money in the movie business it looked like the only sure-fire hitmakers were the computer-generated animators.

The brightest beacon by far was Pixar (now owned by Disney (DIS) ), with its steady release of hit after hit after hit. Toy Story, Monsters, Inc., later the Incredibles and Cars. From very early on, it looked like this Steve Jobs company could do no wrong, and that no one else was going to be able to master this business.

Then came Shrek and Shrek 2, one of the highest grossing films of all time, and Jeffrey Katzenberg's Dreamworks Animation (DWA) became a worthy competitor in the computer animation space. To take advantage of that success, they spun off the company from Daddy Dreamworks and had a very successful IPO -- at least for a little while. I bought shares of this one (I've since sold them at a loss), as it looked to me like Pixar and Dreamworks were the only two companies that had the creative juice to build the next generation of animation hits.

Well, it's certainly starting to look like I was wrong. After a lousy year for DWA and a risky change of ownership for Pixar (will Pixar save Disney, or will Disney bureaucratize Pixar to death?), any remaining claim that these two companies own the space sounds thinner and thinner.

One need look no further than this month's box office for another indication.

What happened this month? Well, the animated penguin musical Happy Feet had a great opening weekend (including at Imax (IMAX), though that's unfortunately not enough to save that company). They even beat out the newest James Bond film.
Pixar Toy Story
And the latest release from Dreamworks Animation, Flushed Away, rode a similarly ubiquitous marketing campaign to ...blah. Running on several thousand more screens than Borat, it was clobbered and has so far pulled in less than $50 million. Very disappointing results for a film that cost $150 million to make.

Oh, and here's the important bit: Happy Feet was produced by Warner Brothers (TWX).

And this isn't the first time we've seen a big animated film come from outside the supposed Pixar/Dreamworks duopoly -- Fox's (NWS) Ice Age and Ice Age 2 were both huge hits, with Ice Age 2 the second biggest hit of the animated year so far, second only to Cars and significantly stronger than the best DWA performer of the year, Over the Hedge. And if you believe Boxofficemojo.com, Ice Age cost about half as much to produce as Cars or Flushed Away.

Now, it's possible that this is a fluke -- maybe Warner Brothers and Fox are on to something with the ice-themed films, and once the vein of polar bears, woolly mammoths and penguins is tapped they'll fall back behind the leaders.

Or that a story about sewer-dwelling rats and slugs (Flushed Away) just doesn't have the universal appeal that you might have guessed.
Flushed Away
But I think it's more likely that DWA and, to a lesser extent, Pixar are just going to have to share the marketplace. There have been no shortage of poor performing animated films this year, from Flushed Away to Barnyard to Garfield: a Tale of Two Kitties and the Ant Bully (those last two barely beat out Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth, which must really hurt) -- but it's clearly a mistake to bet that Dreamworks is going to have a hit every time out ... and there's no guarantee that Disney's Pixar will continue to be able to outperform the other big studios.

There's money in animation again, but it didn't take long for all the big studios to realize it and start to compete. Which means the risks have gone up considerably in this hit-driven business, where a year's earnings really do ride on one film for a small, focused company like Dreamworks Animation. And if you add in the fact that Dreamworks and Pixar generally produce animated films with higher budgets than the competition, the risk climbs a bit more. (As an example, Ice Age cost about $59 million to make and grossed $176 million; Cars cost $120 million to make and grossed $244 million ... so they made roughly the same amount of money, but the return on investment for Fox was much higher than for Pixar in this case).

Nine of the top ten computer-animation hits of all time are from either Pixar or Dreamworks -- five years from now, I don't imagine you'll be able to say that. I'm glad I no longer own DWA, and I think it's going to take some hard work to keep Pixar at the top of the leader board.

Full disclosure: As of this writing I do not own any of the stocks mentioned here.

Pixar

Early & Enthusiastic Reaction to Pixar's "Ratatouille"

Early & Enthusiastic Reaction to Pixar's "Ratatouille"



Scott Weinberg writes: "Apparently an AICN reader called The Chemist got to see Pixar's "Ratatouille" about eight months early -- and he loved it. Better than "The Incredibles" is what the guy's raving. Yeah, right.

Ratatouille (2007)



From AICN: "The plot seems simple, but like any Brad Bird flick, it has a ton of heart and humor. Much of the action scenes were storyboards and gray-scale, but still promised to be dazzling when complete. The humor moments were hilarious and had the audience rolling. The voice acting was fantastic, with no recognizable A-list Hollywood stars to distract you from the characters, no singing in the edit that we saw either. The music was completely forgettable as it was just filler at this point I suspect. During the movie Lasseter would scribble down notes at various points.

...
Anyway, I cant wait to see the finished movie. Personally I liked it better than The Incredibles, the rough cut we saw tonight was right up there with Finding Nemo, my personal Pixar favorite.

Still in awe,

The Chemist"

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box 360: Disney/Pixar's Cars Review


It took awhile, but finally the game based on the movie Cars has arrived on Xbox 360. Featuring enhanced graphics and exclusive content it’s certainly better than what came before it, but the $20 higher MSRP over last-gen versions and late arrival make it a tough sell.

As with most other versions of the game, Cars’ Story Mode takes place in the open-ended world of Radiator Springs. Taking place after the events in the movie, Story Mode is basically a series of individual events strung together with cut-scenes between them. Players can explore the town and Ornament Valley to their heart’s content, collecting Bolt icons for bonus points and visiting various hot spots to trigger events. The world is surprisingly large for a children’s game (although nowhere near the size of a proper sandbox title like Gun), full of various cliffs, side roads, and other landmarks to make exploration interesting for younger children.