These Amazing Shadows Page #4

...dreams that you dare

to dream really do come true.

You know,

all great storytelling is a form of myth.

Tap your heels together three times...

And think to yourself,

"There's no place like home."

The Wizard of Oz

is still my all-time favorite movie

probably for the wrong reasons.

I never got why Dorothy

wanted to go home.

Why would she want to go home,

when she could live

with winged monkeys and witches?

I don't know, I never understood it.

I was sobbing when she went home...

to that dreary farm.

This was a real, truly live place.

And I remember that some of it

wasn't very nice,

but most of it was beautiful.

I've always been an aficionado

of science fiction, fantasy and horror.

The truth is, speculative fiction

has always informed us about who we are.

If you go back

to Invasion of the Body Snatchers,

it was a parable about...

about McCarthyism and the Red Scare.

They have to be destroyed...

all of them!

They will be,

every one of them.

Listen, we're gonna have to search

every building, every house in town.

Men, women and children

are gonna have to be examined.

We've got some phoning to do.

Filmmakers were able to make

that film and send a message...

without having it be a message movie.

It's a malignant disease

spreading through the whole country.

Initially those films were relegated

to B-movies or even Z-movies.

They weren't given

any kind of critical acclaim.

They generally

weren't big commercial successes.

Are you crazy?!

Ya big idiot!

They're here already!

You're next!

I think I'm not

so much a fan of science fiction per se

as I am a fan of cinema that creates worlds,

that creates an entire alternate universe

that you can escape into

for a couple of hours.

The first time

that I saw 2001:
A Space Odyssey,

I was completely blown away.

It made me think about mankind,

the future of mankind even the past...

where we came from, where are we going?

And the special effects

were absolutely magnificent,

and it was a film to take seriously,

not a film that was disposable.

Open the pod bay doors, Hal.

I'm sorry, Dave.

I'm afraid I can't do that.

You could truly lose yourself

in that cinematic experience,

really opening up a way of

looking at reality completely differently.

I've always enjoyed films

that reward multiple viewings,

films that if you chose to come back

and look at them again,

you might see something else in them.

It does transport you

to an entirely different time and space,

and to me it does it so well

that I lose myself entirely.

I'm in a dream world

when I'm watching Blade Runner.

Each frame, each shot is full of

the most extraordinary detail.

It's really too much to take in

on a first viewing,

and it requires subsequent viewings to...

to sort of orient yourself in...

in the world of that film

and see all of the different layers

that went into the fulfillment

of that grand design.

I think for my generation,

there isn't a filmmaker

working in Hollywood,

certainly... who can deny

the influence of the Star Wars films.

The first experience

that I had with Star Wars was...

the summer that it came out.

We went to the Coronet theater

in San Francisco and there was a line...

the biggest line I'd ever seen

as a kid around the block.

The lights go down and I didn't really know

what to expect whatsoever.

Huge musical hit

and the Star Wars logo goes back and then

the scrolling of the text happens and...

and I began

to sort of just become mesmerized.

And then the moment that

Star Destroyer comes overhead,

that just seemed like

a forever moment.

I just kept watching

and watching and watching, thinking...

"this is the biggest spaceship

I've ever seen."

To top it all off, by the time

Darth Vader makes his appearance,

people started to boo

and started to hiss at Darth Vader,

and I just thought,

"This is... what is going on here?"

There's something more that

this movie in particular has to offer.

It simply opened up

a feeling of reality in science fiction.

The feeling of a completely

thought-through world...

that existed outside the frame.

I think when you look

at the history of movies,

I don't believe there's been as dominant

a cultural milestone in cinema

as that first Star Wars film.

Now, as opposed to being

on the outside watching,

now, I sort of feel like I'm

part of that now.

Remember,

the Force will be with you...

Always.

The world that he created

is something you had never seen before

and you just wanted to be

with those characters in that world.

I was so blown away,

but I always felt like,

I wanna do that in animation.

- Halt, who goes there?

- Don't shoot! It's ok!

Friends.

- Do you know these life forms?

- Yes! They're Andy's toys.

All right, everyone.

You're clear to come up.

I am Buzz Lightyear.

I come in peace.

Oh, I'm so glad you're not a dinosaur!

It's all I ever wanted to do, you know?

My true love was cartoons,

even when it was uncool, right?

When you're supposed to be into girls

or cars or sports or things like that,

I would run home after school

to watch Bugs Bunny cartoons

and always pray that

it would be a Chuck Jones cartoon.

Kill the wabbit?

The films that have been

the most influential on my career,

are the films of Walt Disney...

Snow White,

Pinocchio,

I can walk!

Fantasia,

["Waltz of the Flowers" playing...]

I think that Fantasia does represent

sort of the pinnacle of animation

of its time.

["Night on Bald Mountain" playing...]

...and I was actually just looking at

"Night on Bald Mountain" the other day

because there's beautiful,

beautiful fire animation.

Animating fire is not easy, and...

I don't even know

how the animators did it.

In animation, you can do anything...

and then the first time you see something

that you drew come to life,

you are addicted

because it's like magic.

When you see something

that you drew move,

that is a mind-blowing experience.

I remember when I was 12 or 13,

and I saw my first super-8 animation move

and it was like...

I wanna say it's better than sex, but

I'd never had sex when I was 12, right?

But it was just incredible.

We knew we were making

the first computer-animated feature film,

but the main focus

was the story and the characters.

Walt Disney always said for every laugh,

there should be a tear,

and it's something that is so important

to me in my filmmaking, is that heart,

'cause I believe that's something

that stays with an audience

much longer than the jokes

have gotten old,

but that heart will always stay there.

You know how you feel

when you first watched these movies

and it brings a tear to your eye.

Absolutely, animation belongs...

on any list of culturally significant works.

Animation... is art.

When one looks through the list of films

that have been selected over time,

what one is struck by most of all...

is the extraordinary diversity

of the kinds of movies.

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