| JOHN
LASSETER:
"We stress story and character at Pixar. We spend 2½ years on story
development to make sure the story is great. With live action the director will
shoot each scene from many different angles, and that produces the coverage
that goes to the editing room where they'll have a lot of choices from which to
edit the film together. Animation is far too expensive to produce coverage. We
have one chance to animate every single scene, so we need to make sure it's
right. The way we do that is, we edit the movie in advance of production by
making a version of the movie just using the storyboard drawings."
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BILLY
CRYSTAL:
"The only regret I have in this business was passing on doing the voice of
Buzz Lightyear in Toy Story. To be very honest, I don't think I was
right for it. I thought Tim Allen was that guy. Mike Wazowski is a better fit
for me."
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JOHN LASSETER:
"Having an actor in mind helps us solidify what the character is
all about. As we start to make a list of actors that we think will be good for
a role, we go to their older films, strip out just the audio and put it
underneath a picture of our character, and that's the way we audition actors.
We animated a piece of Mike to a piece of dialogue from one of Billy's earlier
movies, and we showed it to him. He just loved it."
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BILLY CRYSTAL:
"They used lines from My Giant. It was the scene where I
say, 'The size of the hero depends on the size of the giant. Without Goliath,
David is just some punk throwing rocks.' I said to John, 'I love Mike, but he
shouldn't sound like me.' I'd did a character on Saturday Night Live who
was a masochist named Willy, so I took that and edged him up, gave him some
Expresso and made him nuts. This part is like Jiminy Cricket on speed. Once I
had that it was very freeing."
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JOHN GOODMAN on
using his voice to create the character:
"At the end of a four hour session, I'd be really tired because
you've got to throw a lot of muscularity into what you're doing to make it
sound like you're moving around. It doesn't take much to make me tired anyway.
You'll read the scene once and read each line three times. Then they throw
everything out and re-write it!"
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 PETE
DOCTER:
"The character of Sully is this tough quarterback, he's the star of the
team, he goes to Monsters, Inc. and scares kids, and then as the story goes on
we find out that he has this soft, sensitive, compassionate side. The physical
sound of the voice was so important - Sully is eight feet tall and extremely
powerful - we were looking at Kodiak bears as references. John Goodman has this
wonderful quality to his voice, yet he's a teddy bear. His comic timing is
absolutely superb."
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STEVE BUSCEMI
(Randall):
"I don't see Randall as a villain, he's a monster who is a little bit more
competitive than the rest and probably insecure, so he likes to put on airs of
superiority. I just approached it like a regular character."
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JOHN RATZENBERGER
(Yeti):
"When they were drawing Hamm (the piggy bank) in Toy Story,
they were using my character from Cheers, so when they put a voice to
him they gave me a call and I said, 'Sure, I'll do it,' and I've been with them
ever since. When we were doing Toy Story 2 they told me, 'We've got a
part for you in the next one,' and that's all I needed to know. I also do their
landscaping and some car detailing!"
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