BY NANCY MILLS
“FRANCHISE” SEEMS to be Hollywood’s
favorite word. But, paradoxically, not at
Pixar, which just happens to be the creative force behind two of the most
popular franchises in film history:
Toy Story and Cars.
“We prefer original stories,”
says Costco member Kevin
Reher, Pixar’s voice casting
director and producer of
Cars ;. “Our films come
from the heart.”
“We make the movies
we want to see,” says Cars ;
director Brian Fee. “Cars ;
happened because Pixar chief
creative officer John Lasseter
was traveling abroad. He thought, ‘Mater
[an old tow truck] has probably never left
his home before.’ He was entertained by
that idea, so the franchise went on vaca-
tion too. The film was exactly what John
wanted. It was more about having fun.”
Audiences weren’t as enthusiastic.
“We learned that people expect deeper
emotional content from Pixar films,”
Reher admits, “so when we were prepar-
ing Cars ;, we went back to Cars ;. While
we were researching, we went to races,
rode in race cars and delved into the his-
tory of stock car racing.”
“We wanted the original tone, and we
treated it more like a film than a car-
toon,” Fee adds. “What would [Lightning]
McQueen [a race car] be dealing with
that would change his life forever? It had
to go somewhere new, and there had to be
some depth.”
Cars ; is about getting older and deal-
ing with the future. Can you be in control of
your destiny? McQueen is no longer the hot
car. A new generation of racers is angling
for victory. “We looked at the aging of an
athlete,” Reher says. “When we met with
Jeff Gordon [a former professional stock
car racer], he said, ‘This is my story.’ ”
Fee can relate. “I’m ;; now and I put my
kids first, not myself,” he says. “That’s how I
looked at McQueen. While
the plot is about him
retiring, the real story
for me is that he’s
learning whether he’s
ready to be a parent.
Because we make fam-
ily films and we go home
every night to our fami-
lies, they’re our main source
of inspiration.”
Fee describes an incident
involving his preteen daughters
that influenced a key scene in Cars
;. “I wanted to show them ho w to do
a book illustration,” he says. “I sat up
one of their American Girl dolls and
started drawing. After about ;; minutes,
they got bored and ran off. A couple hours
in, I showed them what I’d been doing.
They said, ‘That’s neat!’ and ran off again.
They didn’t care.
“A week later I was in [daughter]
Lucia’s room and saw drawings on the
floor that she’d made. She had been
watching me and trying to mimic me.
That became the backbone of a scene.
McQueen always thought
Doc Hudson, a retired
racer in Cars, loved racing more than any-
thing else. But he finds out that teaching
McQueen, almost parenting him, was the
most important thing in Doc’s life. The
pride you feel as a parent helped inspire
the story.”
It’s the kind of emotional moment
Pixar films thrive on. In five years, maybe
teaching a teenager to drive will produce
enough colorful highs and lows for a Cars
; script. If not, the filmmakers could tap
into memories of their first cars. Fee’s
first was a ;;;; Oldsmobile. “I crashed it,”
he says. “My grandmother bought it for
me, and it barely ran. It was not a looker.
It smelled like a taxi.”
Reher’s first was a ;;;; Falcon convert-
ible. “The only thing that had any power
was the top,” he says. “Water kept coming in
under the back seat. When I put the brakes
on, water would come up to my ankles, and
when I put the gas on, it would recede. I
used a coffee cup to bail it out.”
Cars ; could happen—just not
anytime soon. “Cars ; came out six
years after Cars ;,” Reher says. “At
the end of ;, Lightning McQueen
says, ‘Oh, I’ll race again.’ We left it
ambiguous on purpose.” C
Nancy Mills is a Los Angeles–based
journalist who writes about ;lm and TV.
New characters join old favorites
in Cars 3. Below: Lightning
McQueen (left) faces a midlife
crisis of sorts.
Kevin Reher
Brian Fee
©2017 DISNEY/PIXAR
On their marks
THE DRIVERS BEHIND PIXAR’S CARS 3
OUR DIGITAL EDITIONS
Click here to watch a clip from Cars 3.
(See page 9 for details.)
THECOSTCO
CONNECTION
Cars 3 will be available in
all warehouses on 11/7
in Blu-ray/DVD/Digital
HD (Item #1178294).
©2017 DISNEY/PIXAR
