kottke.org posts about Pixar
Headline writers everywhere are rejoicing the impending release of Pixar’s new movie, Cars. As with Apple’s release of their Tiger operating system, Cars comes loaded with so many opportunities for puns and metaphors that the media just can’t help themselves. A sampling of puntacular fun so far:
With ‘Cars,’ Pixar Revs Up to Outpace Walt Disney Himself (NY Times)
NASCAR, Hollywood share the fast lane (USA Today)
‘Cars’ Voices Toot Their Horns (Zap2it.com)
A toon-up for Petty (Orlando Sentinel)
With ‘Cars’, Paul Newman stays in the race (Malaysia Star)
Newman’s need for speed (Toronto Sun)
Cars: Cruising along in Weirdsville, Cartoonland (NY Times)
Cars’ Riding on Flat Tires (OhMyNews International)
Shifting gear (The Age)
Pixar’s Cars stalls with reviewers (Guardian Unlimited)
“Cars” is one sweet ride (Hollywood Reporter)
Cars rolls along like an animated version of Doc Hollywood (Canada.com)
‘Cars’ an auto-matic hit (Tucson Citizen)
Great-looking ‘Cars’ stuck in cruise control (goTriad.com)
‘Cars’ revs up marketing campaign (Inside Bay Area)
Disney/Pixar revvs up its latest cash cow (Monterey Herald)
Finely drawn characters drive ‘Cars’ and its director (St. Paul Pioneer Press)
‘Cars’ wins the race hands down for summer’s best film (Press & Sun Bulletin)
Kickin’ the Tires (East Bay Express)
Star vehicle veers a bit (St. Petersburg Times)
Pixar’s ‘Cars’ falls a little short of winner’s circle (SouthCoastToday.com)
‘Cars’ just can’t get it out of first (Statesman Journal)
‘Cars’ will take you straight to the dump (Scripps Howard)
Running on Fumes (Village Voice)
Headlines courtesy of Google News. If the movie were getting mostly bad reviews, one could imagine headlines like “Cars a lemon”, “New Disney movie is the pits”, and “Reviewers to Pixar: Your new film is car-rappy”.
An extensive listing of all the promotional merchandise from Pixar/Disney’s Cars. Over 70 licensees will be offering themed merchandise like toy cars, cross stitch kits, books, staplers, shower curtains, sippy cups, and a boatload of Kellogg’s cereals. Holy overload.
Fine interview with Pixar/Disney’s John Lasseter, who is quickly becoming a favorite of mine. “I believe in the nobility of entertaining people, and I take great, great pride that people are willing to give me two or three hours out of their busy lives.”
Pixar: where are all the women? “To date, there’s not a single Pixar film that has a female main character: The Incredibles comes the closest, but even there, both Helen Parr/Elastigirl and Violet are supporting characters, and it’s Bob Parr/Mr. Incredible that’s the hero.” Helen Parr and Dory are my favorite Pixar characters.
Steve Jobs to Apple shareholders: I have no interest in running Disney. He also said that he’ll be spending less time at Disney than he did at Pixar, which is good news for Apple.
Early review of Pixar’s Cars. The author caught the first public showing of the film in Las Vegas.
An account of how Pixar came about that goes back a little further (Xerox PARC, circa 1973) than the one I linked to a few days ago.
The Pixar model of making creative products: “We’ve made the leap from an idea-centered business to a people-centered business. Instead of developing ideas, we develop people. Instead of investing in ideas, we invest in people. We’re trying to create a culture of learning, filled with lifelong learners. It’s no trick for talented people to be interesting, but it’s a gift to be interested. We want an organization filled with interested people.” Pixar University sounds *amazing*.
The new Pixar overlords at Disney Animation wasted no time in cancelling Toy Story 3. “Sequels should only be made if there is a really great story that demands it, and should be the domain of those who created the original film.” Could this be the end of Disney’s straight-to-video animated crap-o-ramas?
It’s a done deal…Disney is buying Pixar. This bums me out in a lot of different ways. The big winner? Apple Computer.
A brief history of Pixar. “Even with the animation group generating income Pixar was still a money pit. That was about to change. Disney had decided they were willing to give a computer-animated movie a shot.”
MoMA just opened their show about Pixar last week and on Friday, we went to a presentation by John Lasseter, head creative guy at the company. Interesting talk, although I’d heard some of it in various places before, most notably in this interview with him on WNYC. Two quick highlights:
- Lasseter showed colorscripts from Pixar’s films (which can be viewed in the exhibition). A colorscript is a storyboarding technique that Pixar developed to “visually describe the emotional content of an entire story through color and lighting”. They are compact enough that the entire story fits on a single sheet and if you’re familar enough with the films, you can follow along with the story pretty well. But mostly it’s just for illustrating the mood of the film. Very cool technique (that could certainly be adopted for web design and branding projects).
- Near the end of the talk he showed a 2-3 minute clip of Cars, prefacing it with an announcement that it had never before been shown outside of Pixar.[1] Some of the CGI wasn’t completely finished, but it was certainly enough to get the gist. When the first preview trailer for Cars was released, I was skeptical; it just didn’t look like it was going to be that good. Based on the clip Lasseter showed and some of his other comments, I’m happy to report that I was wrong to be so skeptical and am very much looking forward to its release in 2006.
At 15 minutes long, the Q&A session at the end of his talk was too short. The MoMA audience is sufficiently interesting and Lasseter was so quick on his feet and willing to share his views that 30 to 40 minutes of Q&A would have been great.
[1] For you Pixar completists and AICN folks out there, the clip showed Lightning McQueen leaving a race track on the back of a flat-bed truck, bound for a big race in California. As the truck drives across the US, you see the criss-crossing expressways of the city stretch out into the long straight freeways of the American west, the roads literally cutting into the beautiful scenery. A cover of Tom Cochran’s Life is a Highway plays as the truck drives. The world of the movie features only cars, no humans…the cars are driving themselves.
MoMA is running a Pixar exhibition from December 14 to February 6, 2006. “Featuring over 500 works of original art on loan for the first time from Pixar Animation Studios, the show includes paintings, concept art, sculptures, and an array of digital installations.”
Edward Jay Epstein on why Pixar should make nice with Disney again. Bottom line: Disney owns the sequel rights to all of Pixar’s films and Pixar can’t afford to do battle against Toy Story 3 or The Incredibles 2 in future summers.
Short article about Pixar on the 10th anniversary of Toy Story. Their work process takes a cue from improv comedy by opening up possibilities with “yes, and…” rather than “no, but…” Gladwell talks about this aspect of improv at length in Blink.
Pixar’s profits tripled since last year. And it sounds like a Disney reconciliation might happen as well.
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