BACKSTAGE INTERVIEW
CATEGORY: Best animated feature film of the year
INTERVIEW WITH: Lee Unkrich
FILM: "Toy Story 3"
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Q. I'm just wondering if Pixar tends to have a party almost every time there's something big that happens. I'm just wondering what's your plans for tonight or what's going to go on when you head back north?
A. To be honest, I am not planning on sleeping tonight for one. And then tomorrow sometime early afternoon, we are all going to hop on a plane back up to Pixar, and I think we are going to have a huge party back at Pixar. It's very exciting for all of us.
Q. Congratulations. Nice to see you again. It happened, you got it. TOY STORY 3, good job.
A. Thank you, thank you.
Q. So, you finally have the Oscar we were talking yesterday. You said, I don't know, you know, you told me that you weren't concerned. You said, I don't want to screw this up, and you did it. You know, what's next? What are you going to do next time?
A. I am going to take a nice vacation to be honest, because this has been this whole Oscar season has been incredibly stressful for me, so I am liking forward to taking a break. And Darla Anderson, who produced TOY STORY 3 with me, we can't wait to get started on a new movie at Pixar together, so we're going to take a little break and then get going on that, and can't wait to get back in the trenches with all the great people that I work with at Pixar.
Q. I noticed you thanked for grandmother first off.
A. I did.
Q. And I think it would be cool if you told us the story that you told the animation symposium (unintelligible).
A. Sure. Well, my grandma was always very supportive of me, and once she knew I wanted to make movies, she was always the first to say that she would see me. She would say, I am going to live to see you get an Oscar, and unfortunately, that never happened, but she's always been with me in my heart. And there's a moment in TOY STORY 3 that's very inspired by her. When I was making the first TOY STORY which I edited, she got cancer, and I rushed home to see her because it was clear she was not going to be around long. And there was a moment where I looked at her for the very last time, and I knew that that was the last time I was seeing my grandmother alive, and I took kind of a mental snapshot at that moment before I turned away and left.
And I always carry that with me now, and when we were making TOY STORY 3, there's a moment at the end of the film where Andy gets back in his car, and he kind of looks back at his toys one last time before he drives off to college, and I told this story to my animators, and Mike Arndt, my writer, everybody, and I would like to think in my heart that the moment is infused with just a deeper level of emotion because of that because I told that story.
Q. Congratulations, Lee.
A. Thank you.
Q. I wanted to ask you, do you feel that there's pressure to live up to the legacy of the TOY STORY franchise, and from the other movies that have done so well at Pixar?
A. Oh, yeah. Jeez, absolutely. When John Lasseter asked me to direct this movie, I was completely flattered, but then I wanted to throw up because I knew there was a huge, crushing responsibility that was going to be on my shoulders and I could have very easily become the guy who screwed up the TOY STORY movies. So, that fear actually ending up kind of bullying us. And I like to call it fear based filmmaking because each and every day we kind of lived in fear of messing it up and then it was up to us to make the best movie that we possibly could.
So, yeah, not only were we having to make the next Pixar film which is a huge responsibility in and of itself, but to make a third film, when third films are always terrible, right? They're never, ever good. And somehow I guess we're masochistic; we thought we could somehow pull it off. And does this mean we did? I guess, finally. Thank you.
Q. I mean, obviously getting this Oscar is a great accomplishment, but you guys are also up for Best Picture later tonight. The night is still young; who knows what will happen there? I am curious going through this whole journey, do you think the Academy is starting to change and get a little bit more accepting of animated films being worthy of this award like their live action counterparts?
A. I do. I do. I think the fact that two years running now we have had animated films that have made it and received Best Picture nominations show that the walls between live action and animation are becoming a bit more permeable. I think we have a ways to go, but I think the fact that we made it into that category twice now, we have accomplished something. And the fact that so many people around the world that even in the Academy have come up to me and said, you know, TOY STORY 3 was my favorite film of the year, that just tells me that we are doing something right. Hopefully, eventually people will just vote with their heart and if they truly think that a film moved them the most or excited them the most and it happens to be animated, that some day an animated film could win Best Picture.
Q. Hi. This is the first of bilingual animated movie that wins an Oscar because the movie highlights several in Spanish. What is your reaction to this?
A. I had never thought of it that way. I guess I guess it is the first. You know, we just thought that the whole gag of Buzz turning Spanish was really funny. It made us laugh, and you know, we tried to stay as true to it as possible and have Buzz become this Castillon, you know, lover in the film, and you know, people really enjoyed it, and wow. Yeah. I mean I have nothing really to say about it. It was a big part of the movie that people really enjoyed, and I think people in Latin America enjoyed especially and in Spain as well.
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