User:I1P3GYTR9/Cars 3 - Director Commentary

This here is a transcript of the director commentary for Cars 3, featuring Brian Fee, Kevin Reher, Andrea Warren and Jay Ward.

Cars 3 - Director Commentary

1. Champ McQueen

• BRIAN FEE: Hi, welcome to the Cars 3 commentary.
• BRIAN FEE: I am Brian Fee, director of Cars 3.
• KEVIN REHER: I'm Kevin Reher, producer of Cars 3.
• ANDREA WARREN: I'm Andrea Warren. I'm the co-producer.
• JAY WARD: And I'm Jay Ward. I'm a creative director for the Cars franchise.
• BRIAN FEE: So I actually got my start at Pixar as a story artist on Cars 1, and I also worked on Cars 2, so I spent a lot of time with John Lasseter, director of Cars 1 and Cars 2, and the Grand Poo-bah of all things Pixar Creative.
• BRIAN FEE: But my history with these characters and my history with John, and Joe Ranft, who was the story supervisor on the first film, was a, I guess, training school for me.
• BRIAN FEE: I always look back on that time as where I learned the most.
• BRIAN FEE: And the mentorship that I had under Joe Ranft and, of course, John Lasseter, as well, is very important to me and incredibly honored now to be able to be directing Cars 3 and take it to a mentorship story.
• BRIAN FEE: So, we actually made a point with this film to try to mimic the start of Cars 1.
• BRIAN FEE: But, of course, we wanted to put a twist on it.
• BRIAN FEE: So we wanted you to feel like you're watching Cars 1, and then pull the rug out, and get right into the fact that this is the third movie and things are gonna be a little different.
• BRIAN FEE: We take it to the new place that McQueen's at in his life.
• BRIAN FEE: He's older now. He is a seven-time Piston Cup Winner at this point.
• BRIAN FEE: He's done everything you expected.
• BRIAN FEE: The real main difference now is that he's no longer with his mentor, Doc Hudson.
• ANDREA WARREN: One of the key relationships that we really tapped into for this film was bringing Doc Hudson back.
• ANDREA WARREN: He played a huge role in Lightning McQueen's life.
• ANDREA WARREN: In this film, he's moving forward without that guidance and without that friendship and mentorship in his life, and how he's navigating forward without that.
• ANDREA WARREN: It's so powerful to hear his voice.
• ANDREA WARREN: I think it's powerful for McQueen to remember it.
• ANDREA WARREN: And Paul was such an amazing actor and just embodied Hud in so many ways.
• KEVIN REHER: We so respected Paul Newman and what he brought to Cars 1 that we went to the Newman's Own Foundation and asked if we could use lines from Cars recording sessions that John Lasseter had left the mic open and Mr. Newman just talking about racing and talking about the history of racing and what it meant to him.
• KEVIN REHER: And we incorporated a number of those lines from the open mic into Cars 3.
• BRIAN FEE: These characters are... They're like family to me.
• BRIAN FEE: And to be able to continue to tell their story, the story of the mentorship and the generations, and how every generation informs the next one.
• BRIAN FEE: At some point in your life, you have to look back to the past in order to move on to the future.
• ANDREA WARREN: I think the point in the beginning isn't that McQueen just wants to win more trophies and more Piston Cup victories.
• ANDREA WARREN: He wants to race because he loves it and because this is like his family and his dear friends.
• ANDREA WARREN: And just being there is such a joy.
• BRIAN FEE: So we really wanted to hit home in this sequence what it is McQueen has to lose later on, when Jackson shows up, when racing is taken away from him.
• BRIAN FEE: We figured that it's his passion.
• BRIAN FEE: That's the one thing we get when we talk to all the drivers.
• BRIAN FEE: They have such passion.
• BRIAN FEE: We want to be able to display that passion that McQueen is so desperate to hang on to.
• BRIAN FEE: So, we wanted to show him racing, wanted to show him enjoying it.
• BRIAN FEE: But more importantly, we wanted to just show the community and these other racers like Cal and Bobby.
• BRIAN FEE: We wanted to show the camaraderie that drivers have and that just people have.
• BRIAN FEE: When you go to work and you just...
• BRIAN FEE: The best part of your day is being with the people you're with.
• BRIAN FEE: We have a lot of fun at Pixar working on this movie and working with the crew, the wonderful crew, that'll be some of the best memories I'll ever have.
• BRIAN FEE: We wanted to really get that spirit into the film.
• BRIAN FEE: So, one of the really important things in this scene is the song.
• KEVIN REHER: We were also lucky to get Dan Auerbach from the Black Keys.
• BRIAN FEE: Dan Auerbach has that magical combination of mixing modern sounds with rootsy classic rock at the same time.
• BRIAN FEE: It just all comes together so nicely. He lives in both worlds.
• BRIAN FEE: And I think of McQueen that way. And this is a new movie.
• BRIAN FEE: We want it to feel modern.
• BRIAN FEE: We want it to feel like the world is progressing.
• BRIAN FEE: But McQueen has got a classic edge to him.
• BRIAN FEE: He's a classic character in our minds, and we wanted the music to reflect that.
• JAY WARD: Saw the sheriff's radar on...
• BRIAN FEE: Oh, the sheriff's ticket maker.
• JAY WARD: Ticket maker, yeah.
• BRIAN FEE: I think Mater once called it.
• BRIAN FEE: Referred to the sheriff's ticket maker. (CHUCKLES)
• JAY WARD: We looked at where NASCAR had gone all these years later, we noticed, basically, the cars were similar, but the paint jobs had gotten really bold, so Craig Foster, our graphics lead, and the whole art team really worked on giving McQueen that same classic body style, but some updated graphics, which came out really cool for this.
• BRIAN FEE: And the number 42 Dinoco car is Kyle Petty.
• BRIAN FEE: Seemed appropriate to keep it in the family with the Pettys.