Pixar Storytelling Secrets with Directors and Writers of TOY STORY 5

[upbeat music] There's a package for you.

Oh, thank you, thank you.

Hi there.

I'm Lilypad.

[ribbits] Let's play.

[gasps] Extinction, not again.

The film introduces a new character, Lilypad, a tablet device that challenges Woody and the other toys, and, and I guess their jobs in the world that they live in, in relation to Bonnie.

So can you talk a little bit about, um, I guess, why you felt technology and, and something like a tablet device was something important to sort of tackle in this chapter of Toy Story?

I had noticed somewhere pre-pandemic, so I'm gonna guess around 2017, 2018, that it was much more noticeable in public that younger and younger kids were holding devices.

And then, uh, the pandemic, I really feel like, just aggressively pressed it in that direction, and then it, and, and it's, and it's kind of cel- cemented ever since.

So I don't think it's going away.

I remember my parents, who were raised as teenagers in the fif- in the '50s, talking about the TVs coming into the house, and how much...

And it just sounded like what this is, where just it changed everything.

Everybody suddenly, all the dinners moved from the kitchen into the living room, and everybody was staring at the same screen.

And, uh, and it was gonna rot your brain.

And, uh, they were still talking about it by the time 20 years later I was watching TV, and it's never left the household.

And so I-

Mm

...

I suspected that it's on the same path, if not already there.

So that's gotta not be ha- a good thing for the toys.

Their, their literal shelf life is cut in half.

And, uh, so what does that do to them? And I didn't know.

Uh, that, I thought that was, that's half the fun of being a writer is, you know, especially with characters you already know, it's, it's kind of like coming into a new season and going, "How would they deal with this?" So that was always on the agenda when I got offered, uh, to write something.

That was, like, first on the list.