It's not just for petrolheads...
John Lasseter is the driving force behind many of Pixar's biggest successes. He helped change the landscape of animated movies when he directed Toy Story (1995) and since then has helped the company to consistently set new standards in filmmaking. A vice-president of the studio and producer of many of its films, John is due to begin work on Toy Story 3 soon. Cars, his latest feature, is another slick piece of work that enabled him to indulge a childhood passion for motor vehicles.
Was this movie born out of your obsession with cars?
This movie is a very personal story for me. I grew up in Los Angeles and my father was a parts manager for a Chevrolet dealership. I grew up going to the dealership to look at all the new cars, and I got my love of them from that. I also live in Senoma, California, which is a wine region, but we have a racetrack there too, so I've really developed a love of racing.
But my wife Nancy reminded me to make sure I made this movie for her, my nieces, and everybody else in the world who doesn't like racing. The movie's about story and characters, it's not just designed for petrolheads.
Paul Newman straddles the world of acting and racing. How difficult was he to attract given that he'd never done anything like this before?
We were nervous about asking him because he's such a great actor, but we also knew how passionate he is about race cars. He was actually quite intrigued about the project because of the model of car he was going to be - a 1951 Hudson Hornet. Most people who know anything about this car know it's legendary. It was really way ahead of its time and dominated stock car racing. It was the fastest car of its day and a remarkable piece of machinery, so Paul was very excited about that.
Paul was also very passionate about getting the racing right. He really appreciated the dedication I had to making sure the details were correct. So I gave him a racing consultant credit as well.
How do you help actors adjust to the very different discipline of voice artistry?
We'll work with an actor over a period of about two-and-a-half years. We'll cast them early to do a session, which is about four hours long. We don't really go longer than that because it takes a lot out of them. Tom Hanks always said that doing the voice of Woody in Toy Story was the hardest job he's ever had. Actors are normally used to doing about a page of the script a day on a movie set. We do an actor's entire performance in a four-hour period. We try to do it in chronological order so we get the emotional arcs right, but we always withhold screaming or anything like that because we don't want to blow an actor's voice out. If an actor doesn't leave a Pixar session with his voice really raspy then we haven't done our jobs.
The end credits thank every roadside diner on Route 66. Did you feel the need to travel the road and have that experience?
I fell in love with these people on Route 66 and this way of life so much. I remember that one place was the home of the ugly crust pie and another, called The Texan, had a deal where if you could eat a 72-oz steak in less than an hour, you got it for free. It's a gimmick, but that's one of the charms of Route 66. Before the interstate there was no national chain of restaurants or gas stations. It was all very regional. Now it seems with the Internet and aeroplane travel everything has become homogenised. You can have the same experience on one side of the world as you can on the other.
How did you get Formula 1 driver Michael Schumacher to do a voice?
I love racing of all types and Formula 1 is just spectacular. The cars are beautiful. I recently went to my first Formula 1 race in Spain and it was everything I hoped it would be. I really wanted to get voices for the smaller parts, or "drive-on parts", from international racing drivers, so my dream was to get Michael Schumacher. Fortunately Ferrari was tremendously helpful to us, and they were the ones who connected us with him. We recorded him last year at the Canadian Grand Prix in Montreal.
Pixar is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year. What are you most proud of?
Pixar is a very special place. We're not in Hollywood, we're up in Northern California. It's a beautiful building, but more importantly it's a group of people who are incredibly talented, very smart, and very honest with each other. Up in Northern California, everything is not about the entertainment industry, so we like to think we live more regular lives. I think that makes us more attuned with our regular audience.
I'm also very proud of the way that our films entertain audiences. That's what excites me about what I do. Just sitting in an audience watching them watch the movie is something I enjoy doing. We're very proud of the collection of characters that kind of live beyond the boundaries of their movies. Like Buzz and Woody, new generations start to like them.
The new merger of Disney and Pixar has been structured so that Pixar will always stay independent and will always stay what it is. That was very, very important for Steve Jobs, Ed Catmull, and myself. We will always continue making Pixar films at Pixar.
Cars opens in UK cinemas on Friday 28th July 2006.
