The Pixar Story Page #6

right on the floor

and draw with Sharpies on pads

and pin it all up.

And then, like, "Oh, this is great!"

We'd get all excited. "This is great."

STANTON:
And re-boarded

the whole thing.

We did it much faster, much rougher

than anybody ever thought we could.

LASSETER:
And we turned

the reels around

in two weeks or three weeks,

something like that,

unheard of amount of time.

And we showed it to Disney,

and they were all ready to completely

shut production down and call it a day.

And you know what? It was good.

It was not great, but it was good.

It showed the potential

of what Toy Stery would be.

And they said, "Okay."

Then we started production back up

and went from there.

NARRATOR:
The first scene animated

was the army men sequence.

It was an early glimpse

of what was to come.

(CHlLDREN CHATTERING)

Go, go.

Go on without me! Just go!

A good soldier

never leaves a man behind!

LEE UNKRlCH:
We were so flying

by the seat of our pants. It was nuts.

We would get all the stuff together

and we would send it off to animation

and let them animate it.

We would then get it back into editorial

and find that

nothing was cutting together at all.

It was so absolutely Stone Age,

yet at the time we were, like,

on the top of our mountain.

We thought we were being so cool

and no one was doing anything

like what we were doing.

REEVES:
I think the biggest challenge

in Tot Story

was just dealing

with the length of the film.

Full of characters, full of sets,

all sorts of stuff.

And the story drove everything.

Every frame of that story

was in my head.

Working with the art department,

working with modeling,

working with layout,

working with the animators.

I would talk about the story

and tell them

how it fit in the framework of that.

CATMULL:
And there's something

about having

the artists and the technical crew

working together that is exciting.

Even though we may do some things

that don't always necessarily

make the best sense,

the mix is exciting.

What did I tell you earlier?

No one is getting replaced.

Now, let's all be polite

and give whatever it is up there

a nice, big, Andy's room welcome!

Woody was a pendulum swing

from Woody being comfortable

with his position

to Woody being threatened

by the arrival of Buzz Lightyear.

(WOODY GULPS)

TlM ALLEN:
Lasseter called me

and said,

"Would you look at these sketches

of this character?

"We think you're the perfect guy for it."

And the only thing that sold me

was his enthusiasm.

And I said, "What a neat idea."

Had no idea visually

what this would look like.

He let me stretch it a little bit

and really make it this really kind of

a closed-head-injury type of guy.

(BEEPS)

Star Command, come in.

Do you read me?

Why don't they answer?

(GASPS) My ship!

Blast!

This'll take weeks to repair!

ALLEN:
He's full of himself,

but in a great way.

I don't think of Buzz

as really obnoxious.

Obviously, 'cause I think

he's the more popular of the toy.

(LAUGHS)

Buzz Lightyear Mission Log.

The local sheriff and I seem to be

at a huge refueling station

of some sort. . .

-HANKS (AS WOODY): You!

-According to my nava-computer. . .

Shut up, you idiot!

Sheriff, this is no time to panic!

This is the perfect time to panic!

I'm lost, Andy is gone,

and they're gonna move

from the house in two days.

And it's all your fault!

RANFT:
John.

WOMAN:
Tom.

I think the hard part for me and

probably for a lot of others was that

it was really hard to know, from those

story sketches to the finished product,

what it was gonna look like.

Which is really scary stuff.

I remember,

even halfway through the movie,

and we were seeing

most of the first half, say,

in fairly completed form in color,

I was still thinking, "I don't get

how this is gonna work at the ending,"

because there was this huge chase

through the streets

and the truck

and all of that kind of thing.

It was like they did that all in one day.

(WHOOSHING)

And suddenly, it was all in there, and

I remember saying to my wife, "I get it."

BINOCULARS:
Look, look,

it's Woody and Buzz coming up fast!

Woody!

Some of the machines had to run 24/7 ,

three months straight.

Any hiccup in there

would've been disastrous, you know?

And it was Band-Aids.

That's the funny part.

(SCREAMS)

This is the part where we blow up!

Not today!

We were blown away with it,

and we really felt strongly that

the movie was gonna be a success.

But even we didn't have a clue

how much of a success

it was gonna be.

To infinity and beyond!

NARRATOR:
Tot Story opened

nationwide

on Thanksgiving weekend in 1995,

and from a shoestring budget,

went on to earn more than

$350 million worldwide,

and paved the path to an entirely new

computer animation industry.

Kids loved it, critics loved it,

and people in the animation field

were knocked out.

DOCTER:
I remember the reviews

starting to come in and going, "Wow."

First of all, the fact that this paper

has even heard of this movie

and they care about it is stunning,

and then they gave it a good review!

They were just glowing, and wow.

The most amazing thing to me was

that it was really, really good.

It was really entertaining.

Great story, great character.

That was the part where I was saying,

"Whoa, they really pulled this off."

People began to realize

that this was a big deal,

that we, in fact, had hit our stride,

and this was what

we were destined to do.

(YOU'VE GOT A FRlEND IN ME

PLAYING)

NARRATOR:
The Academy

of Motion Pictures honored John

with a special achievement Oscar

for creating the first

computer-animated feature film.

In spite ofTot Story's success,

the original contract between Pixar

and Disney left the majority of the

profits and merchandising with Disney,

a long-term disaster for Pixar.

Financially, if one film did not do well,

we would be wiped off

the face of the earth.

We realized then

that we had to become a studio,

rather than just a production company.

And in order to do that,

we were going to need capital.

So that's when we decided

we had to go public.

It was a combination of things

that really hadn't been

accomplished before.

Creativity, technology, business.

And it was a small company

with those capabilities

going up against giants.

NARRATOR:
One week

afterTot Story's release,

Pixar became the highest

lPO of the year.

From a $1 0 million investment,

Steve raised $1 32 million.

It was a wildly successful lPO ,

we got the money in the bank.

And then, shortly thereafter,

Disney came to us and said,

"We want to extend the contract."

And Steve said, "Okay, we will extend it

if we can be fifty-fifty partners."

And they said, "Okay, we'll do that."

So he actually nailed this

right on the head.

I was in awe.

DARLA ANDERSON:
It was just

really surreal that we had gone from

riding around on scooters

past empty offices,

looking for extra office supplies,

to this meteoric success, really.

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