Pixar Touch (eBook)

Still another film was in Pixar's pipeline during the making of A Bug's Life. Talk of a sequel to Toy Story began around a month after Toy Story opened, when Catmull, Lasseter, and Guggenheim visited Joe Roth, Katzenberg's successor as chairman of Walt Disney Studios. Roth was pleased and embraced the idea.Disney had recently begun making direct-to-video sequels to its successful feature films, and Roth wanted to handle the Toy Story sequel this way, as well. A direct-to-video sequel could be made for less money, with lesser talent. It could be priced cheaply enough to be an impulse purchase. Disney's first such production, an Aladdin spin-off in 1994 called The Return of Jafar, had been a bonanza, returning an estimated hundred million dollars in profits. With those results, all self-restraint was off, Disney would soon grace drugstore shelves with Beauty and the Beast: The Enchanted Christmas, Pocahontas II: Journey to a New World, The Lion King II: Simba's Pride, and still another Aladdin film. Everything else about the Toy Story sequel was uncertain at first: whether Tom Hanks and Tim Allen would be available and affordable, what the story's premise would be, even whether the film would be computer-animated at Pixar or cel-animated at Disney. As with A Bug's Life, Lasseter regarded the project as a chance to groom new directing talent. In early 1996, once Roth decided that Pixar would handle production of the sequel, Lasseter assigned directing duties. Stanton was immersed in A Bug's Life, Pete Docter, whom Lasseter regarded as the next in line, was already beginning development work on his own feature about monsters. For Toy Story 2, Lasseter turned to Ash Brannon, a young directing animator on Toy Story whose work he admired. Brannon, a CalArts graduate, had joined Pixar to work on Toy Story in 1993. The story originated with Lasseter pondering what a toy would find upsetting. In the world of Toy Story, a toy's greatest desire is to be played with by a child. What, Lasseter wondered, would be the opposite of that--worse, even, than being displaced by another toy? An obsessive toy-collector character had appeared in a draft of Toy Story and was later expunged. Lasseter felt that it was now an idea whose time had come. Thinking of his own tendency to shoo his sons away from the toys on his office shelves, especially a Woody doll that he prized for its Tom Hanks signature, Lasseter began talking about the notion of a toy collector who hermetically seals toys in a case where they will never be played with again. For a toy, it would be a miserable fate. Brannon then suggested the idea of a yard sale where the collector recognizes Woody as a rare artifact and distracts Andy's mom to grab him. Out of those ideas, Toy Story 2 was born. The concept of Woody as part of a collectible set came from the draft story of A Tin Toy Christmas, in which Tinny was part of a set in a toy store and became separated. The other characters in Woody's set emerged from viewings of 1950s cowboy shows for children, such as Howdy Doody and Hopalong Cassidy. 'We started looking at these canonical characters that you find in westerns,' said Guggenheim, who was producer of Toy Story 2 during the first year of development work. 'You would find a gruff old prospector. You would find other characters, like an Annie Oakley--Calamity Jane sort of character, a tough frontier girl.' The development of the cowgirl character, Jessie, was also kindled by Lasseter's life, Nancy had pressed him to include a...