Mm

... and the way that I think about characters and like putting them onto the page, is that enough? And I think yes, that's enough.

There's been just these really more functional things around that, where it's down to the basics of like art needs to communicate, and I think the thing I'm tightening all the time is with writing or with drawing is just am I communicating the right things? And do, and if anything, am I communicating too much? Usually that's my problem is I need to kind of like reel back and just like, just communicate exactly what my team needs in order to execute this thing.

But yeah, I think it's still, it was like all my way into writing was always through my favorite feeling as an audience member.

It's like my favorite feeling is that, oh, that like [laughs] that little lean in that you do.

And-

Yeah

... that there was this version of the project I had done.

There's some fun animation in there.

And I think that the first 45 minutes, there's some really cool parallels to the first Toy Story.

Like just the fact that we get to have... a classic hero versus antagonist meetup on top of a bed.

Buzz was once the fancy technology that came into the room.

Right when the wings come out.

Exactly, it was all new, and now there's just a newer, better, even more intimidating version of that.

And I think throughout the first 45 minutes, there are some really nostalgic echoes to these first meetings amongst all these characters.

Well, you were always protective of Jessie.

say that, actually.

No, I go, I know I do suck.

Yeah, exactly.

That's probably more accurate.

I need to do better.

I mean, part of it is that we, you know, all movies go through this screening cycle process.

We basically have seven or eight times up at bat with our film and we put it all up.

What does a co-director do? It can

Like, well, the, just the entire, uh, arc of Jessie changed a bit.

Yeah, uh, which is pretty much where all the main changes happened.

The 50 Buzzes, always been in it since draft one.

Lily Pad's always been in it and looked exactly like that since draft one.

Yeah

...

it was, like, kind of...

Well, I think a big shift was kind of how much Jessie was wanting to dive into kind of her backstory versus how reluctant she was-

Talk about what makes Toy Story so special.

I mean, I feel like the thing that makes Toy Story films unique and that they allow kind of generations to always feel like there's something in there for them is the fact that these, we allow the kind of time to pass, not only in the making of them, but also for the characters.

Like they get to grow up with us, even though they stay the same age, so that they're watching the world the same way we are.

And as the world changes, that affects them.

And I think that's a really rare kind of opportunity for storytellers to be like, what are the toys dealing with now that technology has come into our world? I mean, they're like little vampires, Andrew Stanton would say.

They don't age, but the rest of us do, and the world passes by.

And so that their kind of experiences, every time we kind of check back in with them for a story, are kind of relevant, they're timely, but they also feel like these are still the same characters that we've known now for 30 years.

Jesse's story is central in this

Like, how did that play out in your process?

I think what's funny about the generations thing is that it didn't necessarily actually come up in any pointed way.

Like, a lot of what I, a lot of what makes up the bones of Toy Story is, like, a great unifier of generations.

Um, so I didn't have to necessarily come in and be like, "All right.

Now I'm going to give the fresh perspective." It was like we were so lockstep about a lot of what the movie needed, about what would be entertaining to everyone.

Um, and yeah, I mean, at first I feel like a lot of what I was doing just in the first few months was kind of getting used to, all right, what's it like to be on an Andrew Stanton film? How does Andrew like to work? How can I complement that? Um, I mentioned early on to him that I was interested in writing-directing, and that was something that we worked into the process as the movie was kind of developing further.

So it never went through one person and stayed with one person.

Yeah.

Mm.

So I had my Barbies, but they had their G.I. Joes and Legos.

And so of course there was a focus on world building.

Um, you know, as a f- it was spaceships, you know, there was no genre that, you know, these toys could ever be trapped in.

Oh.

Because I just, early on the film we, you know, we're just trying to discover, like, what is this about? It's not just a binary of, you know, tech bad, toys good.

That's not really what we want to tackle.

And then once we started getting into the specifics with parents on our film, with specialists on connection, what is tech doing for connection, what is it not doing-

Yeah.

But, um, uh, and, and pics are at large, but here's like, when are we gonna get a chance to give Jessie her, her moment, her time, her kind of resolution that I think we've all been kind of craving since 2.

So I think it's like the fact that we finally are there, it's everybody, even at the first pitch of it, was so-

Yes

...

so, who have, are teenagers now, and so I've almost only known a world where b- and were begging for phones at, you know, a younger and younger age.

And the fact that they are actually in a weird way nostalgic-For a ch-chi-- they're like, what was it like? They're kind of in an interesting phase now where they're almost wanting to go back to the flip phone.

They wanna put their, they wanna put their smartphones down.

Were there any other films that have influenced Toy Story 5 in any way? Maybe unexpected influences? Did we look at any other films?

I think that we definitely had a big Western vibe for a lot of the film.

Like, there's a scene where we meet some toys out in a shed who have been kind of forgotten in a play school shed.

And we talked a lot about saloons, like meeting the town drunk in the saloon.

Sort of a once

Yeah, and there was

paintings done like that.

But I think that, if anything, Toy Story is just such a mishmash of all of our favorite tastes and ideas and things.