He's bigger than me,
he's in bigger shape than me,
he's younger than me,
and he has a shaved head.
So actually, he'll probably use me
to get out of trouble
more than the opposite.
There's lots of mystery surrounding
whether this will be
Woody's last Toy Story film.
Which character in
your career have you
found it hardest
to say goodbye to?
Oh dear, that's interesting.
By the time you're finished
with any individual character,
you're really quite exhausted
and you're a bit wrung out,
like a bit of a rag.
If I could go back
and play another character
again and again and again and again,
though,
the one that I had
a great amount of fun with
was Mr. White, Mr. Amos White,
who is the manager of The Wonders
and he worked for Play-Tone Records.
He was a mercurial
and mysterious beast.
I'd like to go back and plumb
the depths of him a little bit more.
Woody's there for Andy and Bonnie
growing up, no matter what.
Did you have a Woody growing up?
I had a Major Matt Mason.
You don't know Major
Matt Mason over here.
He was an American astronaut.
He was a small-,
he was about that big,
he was a rubber figure
but he had wire inside
so he's bendable and poseable,
he had a helmet that you
could put on and off
with a visor that
could open and close,
and he cost $1.95 from Clarks
Drug Store in Red Bluff, California.
So, a scenario.
If you're at Second Hand Antique
Store, you walk in as a kid
and you see all
the Toy Story gang there,
what would you spend your
pocket money on, your $1.95?
Wow, my $1.95, I'm gonna say, would
be spent on the Green Army Men.
You know,
you get a bucket of Green Army Men,
you've got a lot of guys
in different poses.
I view that as value for your money.
Yeah, I was sad to see them go in 3.
- Yeah? Okay.
- Yeah.
A big theme in the film
is listening to your inner voice,
which Buzz takes
a little bit too literally.
Too seriously, yes.
Is there an instance in your career
where you were glad you
listened to your inner voice?
Well, you know, that's
a highfalutin question
because I think that a career,
oddly enough,
is not so much shaped by
the things you say yes to,
but by the things you say no to.
And there was a point, I guess,
when I was a little bit older
and a little bit
more financially secure
in which I realised just because
they were offering the opportunity,
the job or something,
it didn't mean I should take it.
So, somewhere along
the course of a line,
you start saying no
to things for the right reasons,
you don't relate to them,
they're not a theme
that you're interested in examining,
or they wouldn't be any fun.
Now, more than anything else,
I say no to things
because I just don't think
they're gonna be any fun.
It's like finding your inner voice
in something like Big
or, like, your child?
Well, yeah, those are-,
(laughter)
You always start on a motion picture
with this idea of what
you're gonna land on,
and oftentimes it's not what
you think it was.
There's permutations of
the other people involved
or changes in
the relationship you have
with the director or what have you.
A lot of times, you're working on
the third day of a movie
and you're thinking, 'Oh my gosh,
we've gone down this
whole other tributary here.'
'I wasn't expecting this,'
and then you just keep going.
Your brother Jim is often
used to record your voice
for action figures
and in video games.
Have you ever used him
to get out of trouble?
- My brother Jim?
- Yeah.
He looks so different from me, no.
Actually, we resemble each other
probably more than anybody
else in the family
but he's bigger than me,
he's in bigger shape than me,
he's younger than me,
and he has a shaved head.
So actually, he'll probably use me
to get out of trouble
more than the opposite.
- Yeah, it's quite different.
- Yeah.
You've perfected the voice of Woody.
Can you impersonate any
other Toy Story characters?
The only one I can handle is Bo Peep
and it's just the way
she says, 'Oh, Woody.'
That's the only thing,
I wouldn't dare touch anybody else.
If you've grown up
loving Toy Story characters,
what do you think
that says about you?
(laughter)
These films are all about
Woody and his relationships
with what are essentially his family.
I think people relate to that
because they see themselves
in these characters.
They're so clearly defined
from the very beginning
and I think they're very
universal in that sense.
Each film, you've had
the advantage of better technology,
but tried to have little
effect on the characters.
Why do you think it's
important to keep them untouched?
Yeah, I mean, we want
them to look untouched.
We want them to feel exactly
like the characters that you remember
when you're picturing in
your mind's eye
what the earlier films looked like,
but we also have this new
technology that we had to use,
and in the last nine years,
it's developed enough
that we had to go back
in and recreate the characters.
We did need to re-shade them and
rework some of their articulation,
so while they look
the way they used to,
we did have to bring
them into the new technology.
You had a special
team redesign Bo Peep.
What difference did a whole team
working on one character make?
Man, it made a massive
difference with Bo Peep.
They called themselves Team Bo
and it was made up
of story people and animators
and artists and character
designers and cloth people.
They really invested a lot
of time into her,
first of all, just wanting to be true
to her materials, she's porcelain,
but also making her
this adventurous spirit
that we were shaping
her character into.
They were the ones that helped find
a way to re-craft her look
where she's repurposing the outfit
that we know her from
in the first films, and she's ripped
it, torn it, made it into a cape,
and is now living this adventurous
life and thriving out there.
I really think,
from story all the way to her look,
there's a lot of influence
from the crew and Team Bo.
The new character Forky is not
manufactured but made out of junk.
(laughter)
Is the animation different
to the other toys, was it harder?
Yeah, we wanted to
make sure that he moved
differently from everybody else.
The other characters have very
smooth movements to them
but his are very rigid,
almost like a baby deer being born
or something that can't really
get its balance yet,
so we made sure to make
his animation kind of worse.
- As clumsy as a spork is?
- Exactly, yeah.
The ventriloquist's dummies
are terrifying in the film.
How did you make them so creepy?
It wasn't very hard to do.
People are scared
of ventriloquist's dummies.
The reason they were in there
is we went and did
so much research on this film.
We went to a lot of antique stores.
Every single one of them had
a dummy in the corner
just kind of staring at you,
and I had a dummy when I was a kid
so it was like,
'We need to put him in there.'
If you were a kid and you
were at Second Chance Antique Store
and you saw all of
the Toy Story gang,
what would you spend
your pocket money on?
All of it.
(laughter)
I've done it many times.
I have a huge
toy collection so I've-,
the hard thing is convincing my wife
that it's part of the job.
It's finished now,
you've got to make a fifth.
(he sighs)
No, it was just-,
it was all about
figuring out number four
and making sure that it felt like
this is a part of Woody's arc
and a way that concludes it
in a way that's satisfying.
We learn in the film that
there was over 30 years
of Woody's life before Andy.
Do you know what he was up
to or if we'll ever see it?
Woody's never told us that.
Yeah, I've asked him before and he
really doesn't like to talk about it.
No, you know, there's this
great implied history to Woody.
He's from the 1950s,
and the point of it story-wise
is that he's had this great tenure,
he's done everything right,
and he's always been played
with and cared for
and he's thrived all these years.
But yeah,
it is a little bit of a mystery.
We're not really sure,
we just know it's been good
and he was where he needed
to be for Toy Story 1
and at a point in 4
where we could really change him.
There are more to the locations than
what we see on the screen.
What level of detail
doesn't get noticed?
The level of detail in
this film is staggering.
I still can't believe it,
there are shots where I'm blown
away by how detailed they are.
I just want to pause the movie
at times just to look at all of it.
Things you may not have noticed,
in the antique store,
there are so many-, I think there
were 10,000 items in that store,
and we hid so many Easter eggs
in that store from previous films.
Is it true there's one in
every shot in the antique store?
I think almost every shot,
yeah, you'll see something.
Do you think they'll all get spotted
or are there a few that you're like,
'Oh, no one will see them'?
- Well, I'll tell you this.
I have not seen all of them yet
and I've watched the film
a bunch of times.
Usually on this side of the screen,
when you're supposed to be
paying attention,
there's something hidden over here,
so my attention always goes back to
the film and not to the background.
But I have a ten-page document
that the sets team gave me
that has every item that they put
in there and a frame grab,
and I haven't been able
to get through the whole thing yet.
- A long document?
- It's long.
Josh told me that there are over
10,000 items in the antique store.
Why is that such
a big deal to animate?
You know, nothing in these
movies comes for free.
You can't set up
a camera and just capture something.
- Or life.
- Yeah, that's true.
Everything in that store had to be
built, designed, built, shaded, lit,
and so because there's just such
a volume of things in one space,
it's tough to render,
it's tough to set dress.
It needs to feel like
an antique store, so yeah,
the biggest technical hurdle
on the entire movie
was actually that antique store.
And it was a lot of the film.
- It is a lot of the film.
- Yes, that too.
In the carnival, the toys run free,
but in the antique store,
they're trapped.
Why did you choose the
settings for these two locations?
Well,
an antique store is all about history
and about things that are
just considered worthless sometimes,
and they're stuck there.
We would go to an antique store
for reference and look at it,
and we'd go back a year later
and the same things were still there.
It's like purgatory for toys,
in a way,
they're just kind of waiting.
And we put a carnival right
outside because it's full of life
and there's kids everywhere
and they want toys,
they're trying to win
them from these games,
so it was kind of a way to torture
the toys on the inside a little bit
where they're like,
all they want is to be with a kid,
so that you understand
where they're coming from.
They're both trapped in
different ways, though.
They're trapped trying to be won.
Yeah, they all have the same goal.
In the film,
we witness the magic of the carnival
through the eyes and size of a toy.
How did you manage
to figure out that perspective?
Yeah, I mean, the whole Toy Story-,
all the films
are about perspective and scale.
We see the world from
a toy's point of view.
For those carnivals, it was fun.
We sent our art department, the sets
department, our camera department,
to carnivals where we live,
near Pixar in California.
They took little cameras
and put them on sticks
and walked around, got on
the rides, climbed under things.
They brought toys with them
and filmed toys under rides
to get a feel for it.
I'm surprised they didn't
get arrested or hurt.
Thank goodness they didn't,
but we used all that
to really try to shoot
that in an authentic way,
what it would be to be this size.
You forget how dangerous
it is for a toy.
You can't just walk
across the carnival,
so we wanted to put that in the film.
As Bonnie faces the fear
and uncertainty of kindergarten,
she's surrounded by toys.
Why are they so
good for us emotionally?
Well,
I actually did some research on this.
What is the definition of a toy?
Why do we even have them?
And the answer is that they help
us figure out life early on.
What we're playing
are these relationships,
we're figuring out dynamics between
characters and between us,
like, how we relate to other people.
So, in the same way that Woody
is always there for his kid,
the reason is because they
are helping these kids grow up.
It doesn't matter if you're
manufactured or like Sporky.
No, it doesn't matter.
- Sporky is definitely a toy.
- He's a toy.
In the first film, being a lost
toy is the worst thing ever,
but in this one, it's celebrated.
Why has it changed
in the fourth film?
For Woody in the first film,
he freaks out
when he realises he's a lost toy,
and it's something he's been
terrified of for all of the movies.
But to have Bo Peep return in
a way that would shock him,
showing that there are lives
out there for lost toys,
I think was a big idea.
Just the idea that, you know,
I go to the playground with my kids
and you see toys just
left in the sandbox.
What would those toys be doing?
And so the idea was,
well, they've put themselves there
to get played with,
even though they don't have a kid.
So it was an idea, a way to shake
Woody and wake him up a little bit.
- Bo Peep's opened his eyes?
- Exactly.
There seems to be a
theme of identity and self-discovery.
How did this become
a focus of the film?
- Yeah.
- That's good.
- That is the focus of the film
and that was kind of
an idea early on,
the idea of Woody being in a new
situation now, it's a new kid's room.
He's not with Andy anymore,
everything's changed,
and if Bonnie's going
to play with a sheriff,
it's gonna be Sheriff Jessie.
That's just the reality of
the way kids play,
and he's having to deal
with that new discovery
and having to figure out
what does it mean
when you have to have a new purpose
or find your way in a new way
when you're facing something
you never thought
you were going to have to face?
That's a big part of the story.
You've referenced films like Raiders
of the Lost Ark and Casablanca
as inspiration for the film.
How does the story mirror
the sense of a classic adventure?
Well, we looked at those films
just to see the relationships
between, for example,
Indiana Jones and Marion.
They are equals in that film, it's
not just Indy saving her constantly.
They are both smart and they're both
just as adventurous as the other,
so I just loved those dynamics
and I wanted to take this
even a step further with Bo
and make her, like,
five steps ahead of Woody
so that when he's out
in the world with her,
she knows what's going on, she knows
the relationships he has with people.
You get the sense that
there's a real history there,
that she's been out
there for a while.
How do you think this affects
their relationship in the film?
Well, it had to be Bo Peep
that came into his life again
to have this world view
of being a lost toy.
I think if it was just
any kind of random lost toy,
Woody would just want to run back
to Bonnie as fast as he could.
So because they have
this established relationship
from the previous films
and we show early on how she left,
it could only be her,
because she's probably the only one
he would actually stop and listen to
and want to know why she's
out here and what she's doing.
More women than ever have been
writing on the story this time.
How do you think it took
it in a new direction?
I think it made it more authentic,
to be honest.
What's great at Pixar right now
is the make-up of
the story rooms are changing,
we have two directing
animators that are female,
and there's kind of just been this
organic change, shift, in the artist.
And our hope is that that
just makes a little bit more
of a truthful, nuanced film.
How much of an influence do
the voice actors actually have
on where the story goes?
Well, they have quite a bit.
We have our story, we've figured out
the story for the most part,
but their performances
and sometimes their ad-libbing
influences all those little beats
and pieces they're in.
They'll often come with ideas
that will help us.
Sometimes we'll go
to them and we'll say,
'We know the shape of this but
we can't quite figure this out,'
and we'll use their skills as
an actor to help inform it.
Yeah, Keanu Reeves, for example, came
up with the idea of him posing.
- That's right.
- We told him,
we showed him it's an action figure,
that it's a poseable action figure,
and he took that and just
started going, 'Huh! Hah! Huh!',
and just striking poses.
And we were like, 'That's fantastic,
that should be Duke Caboom,'
so that's an example of an actor
really influencing
the character a lot.
