Capone spends a day among stockcars, with CARS 3 director Brian Fee, producer Kevin Reher & co-producer Andrea Warren! Plus, a preview of the new Pixar short LOU!!!

Hey everyone. Capone in Chicago here.



Right at the tail end of March, I took a little trip to Northern California to visit the Pixar offices for an advance look at a still work-in-progress CARS 3 (due June 16), as well as a preview of the completed Pixar short LOU, which is easily one of the animations house’s most bizarre and utterly enjoyable entries to their fantastic shorts selection.

LOU’s director, Dave Mullins, and producer Dana Murray introduced the short, which finds a creative way to address bullying while also looking at the root causes of why a kid begins to bully. I know, it sounds like a laugh riot. But trust me, it’s actually quite moving and funny and creative in ways even Pixar rarely gets. After a group of online writer were shown the short, Mullins and Murray returns to walk us through the process of creating LOU (the character and the short) and how at every step of the process, ideas may be added that will require scrapping work already done. I can’t imagine working that way, but for the folks at Pixar, it seems like a normal day’s experience, so they find way to be completely devoted to the work without getting to attached to individual achievement. What they are attached to is great storytelling, and anything that betters that takes precedent.



Wanting very much to make his own short, Mullins began the process of pitching in 2005, with LOU finding its way in the mix shortly thereafter with top executives John Lasseter and Pete Docter loving the idea and contributing ideas on how to make it better. Without giving too much away, Lou is a multimedia character, made up of different materials and textures, providing an extra level of challenge to the animators. The bully character also went through many iterations, but funnily enough, his basic design was taken from a background character from INSIDE OUT (he was one of Riley’s school classmates).

Production on LOU was effectively shut down for six months during the crunch time to get THE GOOD DINOSAUR completed (apparently this is part of the home-stretch process for all Pixar features), but it was wrapped up in December 2016, and it’s a doozy.

After the LOU presentation, came our extended look at about 40 mostly finished minutes of CARS 3, introduced by director John Fee, who has worked primarily as a storyboard artist on such films as CARS, CARS 2, WALL-E, and RATATOUILLE, but CARS 3 is his first film as a director. He was joined by producer Kevin Reher and co-producer Andrea Warren.

A few things I can share with you about CARS 3. Since Lightning McQueen has been at this racing thing a while now, he’s considered old hat, which leaves room for next-gen racer Jackson Storm (voiced by Armie Hammer) to take over as champion of the circuit. To stay in the game and improve his race times, McQueen agrees to enter into a training program designed by Sterling (Nathan Fillion), whose company recently purchase Rust-Eze. There’s talk about legacy, branding, merchandizing, all of which doesn’t really interest McQueen, but he goes along because he wants a chance to train in Sterling’s massive Racing Center, where he meets his trainer Cruz Ramirez (comic actor Cristela Alonzo), a character whose appeal is clearly going to be a centerpiece to the film’s success.

Although we didn’t see much of it in the footage that was screened, all the regulars from Radiator Springs are back, along with a host of new supporting players including a group of characters known as the Legends, who are based on real life stockcar greats and voiced by the likes of Chris Cooper, Margo Martindale, Isiah Whitlock Jr., and racing legend Junior Johnson.

Other tidbits include Randy Newman returning to do the film’s score; Paul Newman’s Doc Hudson does make an appearance (more on that shortly); and there’s a really thrilling demolition derby sequence on a figure-eight track that is going to look tremendous in 3-D (as well as muddy and slightly violent, or as violent as talking-car movies can get). Another interesting thing I noticed (and keep in mind, we didn’t see the whole film yet) is that the events of CARS 2 were not mentioned either in the footage we saw or during any of the presentations or interviews I witnessed. Take that for what it’s worth.

From what we did see, CARS 3 look both unbelievably thrilling, animated with a level of detail I’ve never seen, and also is a highly emotional ride, especially for McQueen and Cruz. I’m genuinely looking forward to see the finished film.

On the day after the footage presentation, we were taken to the Sonoma Raceway (about 45 minutes outside of San Francisco) where we saw more presentations about the various stages of production and a little history of NASCAR racing, while we conducted interviews with some of CARS 3’s key creatives, a couple of which I’ll share with you today (look for a couple more in early June).

First up is CARS 3 director Brian Fee. I sat down with him to find out how he got the gig and where this universe will take us next. Assuming the franchise continues, I suspect that the Cruz character will take over as a lead racer, while McQueen assumes the mentor position for the next phase of her career. It’s an idea I’m in complete favor of. Please enjoy…





Capone: Hi, sir. Good to meet you.

Brian Fee: You too.

Capone: The first thing I think about with any CARS movie is that these are sort of John Lasseter’s babies.

BF: Yes, they are.

Capone: First of all, does that put any extra pressure on you?

BF: Yes. I realize that because it’s John’s baby and he created this world that, yeah, he’s got to absolutely love it, right? And it has to past his test. Those are big shoes. I would say this franchise is the most personal to him of all of them, of the many, many things he’s got his hands in. Big shoes to fill. I never had this discussion with John exactly of why I’m directing this movie.

Capone: I was going to ask you, how did you get this gig?

BF: So I worked with him on CARS 1 and CARS 2, so he knew how I worked, I think he knew my sensibilities, he had a flavor for what was important to me. That was my first way into Pixar, working on CARS 1. I’ll be forever grateful for that experience, and these characters are like family to me. I hope he can see that. I’d like to think that’s a large part of it. So I was working in development on CARS 3 when I was working on ideas and working through the possibilities of the mentorship story. That’s when I was literally tapped on the shoulder one day and said, “John wants to see you.” “Okay. What, now?” “Yeah, he’s in his office waiting for you.” So I went into John’s office and he said, “You’re going to direct CARS 3.”

Capone: Just like that?



BF: Just like that. And Ed Catmull [president of Pixar] was sitting next to him, and Ed Catmull said, “We realize we’re not actually asking. It’s not lost on us.”

Capone: So when you are in that development stage then, before you knew you were directing, did you come up with bigger-picture ideas that you wanted to cover in this film that maybe haven’t been covered? Like the mentorship idea.

BF: That was always there, the mentorship. We were always working around this implied relationship. Doc was already passed on when CARS 2 hit. So after CARS 1, I always took away from that, McQueen and Doc’s relationship, that’s a mentorship story from then on. They’re father and son. They’re going out and practicing, and Doc is his coach now. Doc was literally his crew chief for the last race.So there’s something there. There’s a parental/child relationship there, and that was really early on.

We didn’t know quite the best way to tell the story yet, but we always knew that was the spark. That was the juice, the mentorship idea. Of course, we brought Cruz in really early into the story, but it was a different Cruz, completely different. We wanted to put McQueen in through new stage of his life where he would have loved to be able to talk to Doc, because Doc went through it. He would have loved to seek Doc’s guidance, but Doc’s not there anymore.

Capone: Except he is. Because we’ve heard the voice, and I was told by your producers that there’s stuff we haven’t heard still to come.

BF: Yup. There are scenes you’re not seen.

Capone: You use things that weren’t in the first film. That’s going to make me cry.

BF: Yeah, to the world, it’ll be all-new Paul Newman.

Capone: I think anyone who’s worked in an office or worked in some technology field is going to understand that idea that at 35, you’re an old guy in a 20-something’s universe. They’re pushing you out to pasture when you’re still in your prime. I think adults are going to get that a lot more than the kids are.



BF: Yes, I remember early on when we were circling around that particular theme, Dan Scanlon, one of the directors, told us the story of somebody he knew that used to work at Google who got let go, and got let go because they didn’t know all the programs that the younger kids knew, and she’s like, but “I invited it.” It was almost a ridiculous story of, “Yeah, they’re better than you and quite frankly they’re cheaper.” People being shown the door too early.

Capone: I also love the idea of commercializing your legacy, because that is the classic sports story. It’s not sexy, necessarily, but that’s where a lot of athletes end up is doing endorsements, and yet it’s funny to see his face on all these products, because CARS is one of the most toy friendly, merchandise friendly property that Pixar has. Is that a wink at that idea?

BF: The irony is not lost on us, but it’s not a statement on it. We were really chasing a passionate athlete who could cash out at any moment and have all these riches, but that’s not what it was about. That’s never what it was about. We’re always chasing that. The irony is not lost on us. And to that point, we were very careful—those products you were talking about—that there are no toys in there, because when I see a little kid holding a Lighting McQueen, that is a compliment. All those products on the wall, they’re antagonists in that scene. They’re not things of good feelings, and I would never want someone’s toy that they love to feel like it belonged on that wall.

Capone: I’m guessing the second half of the film brightens up a little bit because the first half of that film is pretty dark. That Crazy 8 sequence is a horror film. To those two, it’s a horror movie.



BF: To those two. To everybody else, it’s a fun Saturday night [laughs].

Capone: First of all, that’s going to look amazing in 3-D. I’m already convinced.

BF: I’ve already seen it in 3-D.

Capone: Were you worried about getting too serious at some points?

BF: No, it’s like you said, you haven’t seen the whole things yet. The very beginning of the movie is nothing—dark wouldn’t even come near what the very beginning of the movie is. We needed to go where we needed to go to push him into a corner for this third installment, so it didn’t feel trivial. We don't want his problem to feel trivial. He’s at a crisis of self and he’s hanging onto who he was, and he’s going to have to decide who he’s going to be. The scenes are there to plant the seeds of relationships and to continue to back him into a corner. I’m not worried when it all comes together.

Capone: We’ve been told that story changes insert themselves into every part of the process of making these movies, forcing the animation to change. At what point do you just have to say “No more new ideas”? We just have to go full-bore, straight animation?

BF: Whenever that date is when they say “from here on out, it’s physically impossible to get it to theaters on time if you make more changes.” That’s when it’s just like “Alright, we won’t make any more changes,” because we would keep making changes up until the last minute we can, because there’s always something you can do. If it’s big, if it’s a big change that needs to happen, if we have an epiphany late in the game, we will make that change. We will make that change. If it’s a small change that makes something slightly better, we will do all those we can up until the point where we’re short on time.

Capone: Were there any actual technological achievements that you were particularly keen on making happen? People have been talking about mud, people have been talking about reflections in glass, and the new way that light is reflects in the headlights.



BF: Not technically. I’ll never know how hard it was for them to make the mud, because they won’t tell me. They just say “Yes, we can do that” then they go “Let’s figure out how to do it.” What was important for me was just always the end product. I wanted to make sure when you were plopped down in the middle of a set you could smell that air. That’s the feeling I wanted to get.

Capone: Whenever you’re introducing new characters into a known universe, everyone has to have a specific purpose. They can’t just throw them in because it’s a new movie. We talked a little bit about Cruz, but we haven’t really talked about Storm. Other than just being the young, cocky guy, is he a bad guy? I get a sense that he probably isn’t; he’s just young.

BF: Storm doesn’t think he’s a bad guy. I wouldn’t think of Storm as a villain. He doesn’t have a mustache, he doesn’t twirl it. He’s an antagonist, yeah. So is Sterling. Sterling becomes an antagonist. He’s keeping McQueen from wanting to achieve his goals. Life is probably the biggest antagonist. Time, right? If Storm or Sterling never existed, McQueen is still going to get older and realize that you can’t outrun time. So that will always be there. So Storm is just a version of that. He’s a version of here’s a young person who does it better, and it’s a little bit of, yeah, McQueen used to be a little like that guy, but I do think of Storm as someone who never had to work for anything. Throughout this movie, McQueen is going to have to work harder than he’s ever had to work.

Capone: I know you said we haven't seen how Storm introduced. I’m dying to see that, because how do you present a privileged car? Does he have rich parents? It’s funny, the training scene on the beach when Cruz keeps getting stuff. Everyone flipped out when there was a mention of a crab. I’m sure I won’t be the first one to bring this up, but everyone was like “Wait, what does a crab look like in this world?” We don't ever see it, but I was thinking “Wait, is she just making that up or is there an actual animal in this world that we haven't seen?”

BF: [laughs] We find our thresholds for where we can get away with something like that, and you don’t overthink it, right? We just go with it and move on. When the animators first animated that, they went ahead and put a little crab in there. There’s a little thing going, “Dink-dink-dink-dink.” And it was like “Okay, that’s too far. Now that I’m thinking about it, let’s just say it and move on.” You’ll hear hawks. It’s just all part of “If you can get away with it, you get away with it.” If it pulls someone out of the movie, that’s where we look for what is our threshold for “How does that work?” That’s pushing the limits. The crab was pushing the limits. It’s played for laughs, it’s played for a joke. We get in and out. I think we get away with it.

Capone: All I know is you had a couple dozen people in that theater who want to know where that crab went and what that crab looks like. Let’s talk specifically about Cristela, because I think that Pixar has always been great about not stunt casting its voice talent. Again, I’ve never seen so many people after the 40 minutes we saw go “Who’s voice was that?” I figured out everybody else; I couldn’t figure out her. How did you find her, and why did you let her personal story become Cruz’s story in a lot of ways?



BF: So we cast her obviously before that story nugget locked, because she’s got to come first. We were looking for comedians, because we were more interested in that character providing levity. Like you said, it’s very dramatic. We wanted their relationship, we wanted levity. We wanted “Who’s going to drive McQueen crazy?” It’s going to be comedy. It’s going to be a comedy-based character. I think it’s easier to get a comedian to act than it is to get an actor to be funny.

So we looked at comedians, and Kevin [Reher], the producer, who’s also the casting director, he found her, and we listened to her amongst some other options, and she just stuck out. She stuck out like a bright red sweater, and everything about her was appealing, and then we watched some of her comedy, and while she’s telling jokes and she’s being funny and she’s being big and when she gets nervous she gets even louder and laughs a lot, and then she starts telling a family story and she gets quiet and she goes inward and she gets real emotional on stage, and that’s when we were like “This is it. This is who she is.” We still hadn’t cracked Cruz’s character yet, and John actually asked us to lean in too. That was one of John’s wonderful mentoring moments, when he advised “Lean into why you cast her, lean into who she is, that story she tells. Lean into it.”

Capone: Thank you so much. It was great to meet you. Best of luck with this.

BF: Thank you so much.


Also on hand during this day to discuss bigger-picture ideas about CARS 3 were producer/casting director Kevin Reher, who has been Pixar’s casting director since 2003’s FINDING NEMO, and a producer on A BUG’S LIFE as well as several key Pixar short films. He was joined by co-producer Andrea Warren, who has worked in various capacities on such films as A BUG’S LIFE, CARS, MONSTERS INC., WALL-E, and BRAVE. She was also the producer of the Pixar musical short LAVA, which played before INSIDE OUT. Please enjoy…





Capone: I think it’s funny that a part of CARS 3 is this idea of commercializing your legacy. I don’t think there were many people in the room yesterday who didn’t think “This is probably your most toy-friendly film; that’s an interesting stance.”

Kevin Reher: Yeah, we were poking fun at it. Again, back in one of the versions of the movie we had, what would Lightning McQueen’s nightmare be? It would be like a McCarwash. You see Troy Akin, no not Troy Akin. Who’s the other guy? One of those football players, he looks like he walked in off the street, they filmed him, they couldn’t get him into makeup or anything and he’s selling lounge chairs. But they probably paid him a lot of money. But but the idea of a McGrill. If you saw all the merchandise in that showroom…

Capone: I was looking. The mud flaps were my favorite.

KR: Yeah, well I have a WeatherTech in the back of my car. WeatherTech is one of those companies, it’s American made, and they sell mud flaps, they sell floormats, and all that stuff.

Capone: We were told by the people that did the short we watched yesterday, LOU, that the idea of improving the story never stops injecting itself in every part of the process. At what point do you just have to say, “We can’t have any more new ideas”?



KR: I’ll tell you. This is my favorite example. The movie’s pretty much done, we know what it’s going to be, it’s great. We sent copies of the reels to Mike Rich [one of the screenwriters, who also wrote THE ROOKIE and SECRETARIAT] up in Portland and said “Do you want to be a part of the long-lead press day? Do you want to come down?” And he goes, “Okay great, I would love to be part of it, and I’ll watch the movie.” He calls me and says, “I have one note.” And I’m like, “Ah, okay. What’s the note?” And we sent it to our editor, and he wrote back “That guy can give a fucking good note.” So right until the very end, we added a shot that animation took care of, and it’s a lovely story point. It’s just exactly what the scene needed that wasn’t there when we thought it was done. And we told John, and he goes, “Yeah!”

Andrea Warren: Production is a puzzle, and you basically have to lock off sections and move them forward, and to the best of our abilities we try to leave them in the zone where they’re finished. But you have an audience preview, and you get notes from that, and you have to pull it back up and reconfigure it a little and then send it back along. But mostly you have to keep a rhythm going.

KR: Yeah, the movie wasn’t really funny until the Cruz character came in, and so one note in the preview was “It’s not very funny. There’s the crash, and it’s sad; it takes a while to get to the humor.” So we added some moments.



AW: Yeah, so you learn a lot and you change it. You want to make it great.

Capone: At least what we saw in the first half, the film seems darker, and a little more serious.

KR: Especially that Cruz moment. A lot of that is the music too.

Capone: Even the Crazy 8 sequence, it’s like a horror movie. Someone said something about how at first it was too chaotic. I’m like “No, that’s how it would be. That’s what it would be like for them.”

KR: And again, we kept trying to put McQueen in “What would be the worst thing that could happened to any car would be to be trapped on family night at a demolition derby with Miss Fritter the Bus of Death, with her Maleficent horns.

Capone: Were you at all concerned about going too dark and too serious?

KR: Too serious probably, we were concerned, but in terms of dark again —

AW: You want it to be balanced.

KR: Yeah, and we want it to be different. I don't think it was like “Let’s go dark.” It was more like “What’s the story we want to tell?” And if there are darker elements to it, themes of retirement, themes of relevance, themes of self limiting, all of those are pretty adult themes. We always talk about how we make the movies for adults and kids come. They watch it.

Capone: This was always the kids franchise, but I feel like some of it might terrify them a little bit.



KR: Kerry Washington just saw it today, and she was bringing her daughter. Her daughter’s like three, and I said “You know, you might do this [puts his hands over his eyes] occasionally.

AW: Yeah, maybe sit on mommy’s lap.

KR: We’ll see what happens. I think one of the things somebody brought up in this was the kids who were 8-10 years old 10 years ago are now 18 and adults, and it’ll be interesting to see if they go see the movie.

Capone: At what point did the Cruz character become so vital, you’ve found ways to address, not so much bullying, but sort of these mild forms of sexism that are built into society that you never see addressed in family films.

KR: Danica Patrick is the only NASCAR driver that’s a female. Brian goes to these Petaluma dirt track races, and when the women win the race, the audience goes crazy.

AW: I think Cruz represents that feeling of feeling out of place, and that self limiting that can happen when you look around you and you see you’re the only one or you feel like you’re the only one, and I think that takes many forms. And therefore, I think it’s a very relatable thing, but I think it’s also a very powerful thing to talk with kids about and show them and to see in her character, which is such a real thing, when you feel that it can really affect your confidence. So the question becomes, how do you build your confidence? How do you overcome that because you’re still there, you still have all this to give, and letting that hold you back is such a shame. I just get so excited about that. Because I think, you’re right, it can be sexism, it can take a lot of different forms for different people, and I hope that if people identify with that in her, they’ll also see that way out, that way to build confidence.



KR: John told the story about his mother being an art teacher to us, and he said the kids would be drawing, and they would look over and see the other kids drawings that were better and then they would stop drawing. And Cristela’s own backstory about being born in a border town of Texas with no dreams and getting to New York and starting to do her own standup.

AW: It’s sweet, yeah. I mean like when we showed this to a preview audience, it was really sweet to hear some kid say, “I identify with Cruz. I’m a girl, I’m Latina, and to see her out there it means so much to me.” I think we can’t underestimate what it means to show examples to kids, to have that character that is inspiring. You see that in Misty Copeland as the first African-American prima ballerina. You just can’t underestimate the importance of how big that makes people feel when they see themselves in somebody who’s inspirational.

KR: It all came organically. This wasn’t like “Now we’re going to do a movie about racism.”

AW: Cristela was the right actor. She came into it, her story came into it. It’s cool.

Capone: I was going to say it seems like maybe more than usual that her story was a real basis for Cruz. I know Pixar has always been great not doing stunt casting with their voice work.

KR: Thank you. Somebody appreciates it. Thank you.

Capone: I’ve never seen more people at the same time go for their phones wondering “Who the hell was that voice?” I’ve never seen her show or stand-up. How did you find her?

KR: One of the challenges of casting, and again we didn’t say okay “We’re going to do a diverse cast.” It ended up organically becoming a diverse cast. I’m a huge fan of “Scandal,” so Kerry Washington was always on my list. For “River Scott,” we wanted to honor Wendell Scott, so we wanted an African-American actor [Isiah Whitlock Jr.] in that. But we were taking a character who was a young trainer on a journey with a 48-year-old Owen Wilson, so we didn’t want somebody who was too young or too girly. The best part about this is, we’ve never got to know about “Are Lightening and Cruz in love?” And Cristela was this gutsy, but she sounded young enough, but she didn’t sound so old that she would have been where she was. We just got really lucky.

AW: It was a tricky balance to find, and Cristela just had the right grit in her voice, the right humor, the right charm.

Capone: I love that you’re paying tribute to the roots of stockcar racing. First of all, I was thrilled to hear Margo Martindale’s voice in that scene because I think she’s the best of all time.



KR: And she’s one of the coolest people to meet.

Capone: I’ve met her. She’s tremendous. But you use a bit of Paul Newman’s voice.

KR: We went back—John kept the mic open on CARS 1. I’m not sure what part you saw, but there’s a moment where he says, “That’s not racing. Racing is 500 laps back and forth, back and forth.” All of that was just his extemporaneously talking.

Capone: The part we saw was right after the crash, when he was in the garage.

AW: That’s a flashback.

KR: Right, that actually was a real flashback from CARS 1. But we have bits and pieces that have actually been pulled from the original film—one was from a game.

AW: Because they were just talking, and we were able to use. We had to go back and get permission from the estate.

KR: We had four or five hours of him, and some of it we couldn’t use. We went to the Newman Foundation, and said “We want to respect Paul but we also would love to have him be an integral part of this movie,” and they agreed which was great.

Capone: Were you at all hesitant to go that route?

KR: We were more hesitant to try to use a sound-a-like.

Capone: That would have been worse.

KR: John’s like “You’re not using a sound-a-like for Paul Newman.”

AW: When he comes in, I mean I’m used to it now because we’ve seen it so many times, but it’s just so meaningful to hear from him, and he’s just such this amazing person.

KR: And Tom Magliozzi [the host of NPR’s “Car Talk,” who died in 2014]. We actually went back to the original “Click and Clack” shows and had an editor that worked on it mine lines and notes and words that we used in the movie.

Capone: Well best of luck with this. Great to meet you.

KR: Thank you. Take care.

AW: Yes, thanks for coming out. Nice to meet you.


That’s it for now from the CARS 3 junket, but in a little over a month, I’ll have interviews for you with some of the key technical people to discuss specific design and animation choices for the film’s new characters, the production pipeline, the artists experience at Pixar, and just how difficult it was to create realistic looking mud. Stay tuned, and keep your engines running!

-- Steve Prokopy
"Capone"
capone@aintitcool.com
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