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ohn is one of the most creative people I've ever met," says J Mays, Ford chief designer, left, of "Cars" director John Lasseter. "He has just a masterful way of telling a story."2005 North American International Auto Show
Pixar, Ford's animated friendship works magic
New movie casts cars as stars
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"Cars" is the tale of a world populated by talking cars and trucks, where computer-animated Fords and Chevrolets and Jeeps play starring roles.
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The Pixar office of John Lasseter, left, with Ford chief designer J Mays, looks like a toy store that has outgrown its four walls. Every inch is crammed with action figures, games and model cars.
EMERYVILLE, Calif. -- The clay models were spread across a big table in a locked room. Dozens of sketches covered the walls, a panorama of landscapes and racetracks and scenes of cars speeding down open highways.
But this top-secret auto design studio was like nothing Detroit has ever seen.
These cars had eyes and lips and crooked teeth. A mustache hung over the grille of an old Mercury sedan. In one drawing, the mountains in the background looked suspiciously like the tailfins on a vintage Cadillac.
And when Ford Motor Co. design boss J Mays saw this product program, he couldn't help but laugh.
So, undoubtedly, will moviegoers in the summer of 2006 when Pixar Animation Studios releases "Cars" -- a love letter to the automobile from the fertile mind of John Lasseter, the Academy Award-winning director of "Toy Story."
It's a tale of a world populated by talking cars and trucks, where computer-animated Fords and Chevrolets and Jeeps play starring roles like the insects in "A Bug's Life" and the fish in "Finding Nemo."
But the behind-the-scenes story of "Cars" lies in the friendship that the film sparked between Lasseter, Pixar's creative director, and Mays, the head of Ford's global design team.
When Lasseter needed inside access to the auto industry, Mays opened the doors at Ford. In return, Mays was invited into the inner sanctums at Pixar during the development of "Cars."
And over the past four years, the two have found that their creative approaches to making movies and designing cars were uncannily similar.
"It's all about finding something that people can relate to and with imagining what no one has ever seen before," Lasseter said in a joint interview with Mays last month at Pixar headquarters.
Lasseter is scheduled to be in Detroit on Wednesday to address an auto design forum at the 2005 North American International Auto Show -- an appearance that Mays helped arrange.
"John is one of the most creative people I've ever met," Mays said. "He has just a masterful way of telling a story."
Fast friends
They first met in the fall of 2000, when Lasseter visited Ford during the early stages of his research effort for "Cars." Almost immediately, the animation wizard from northern California felt a kinship with the design guru from Dearborn.
"I tell a story through animation," Lasseter told Mays. "And you tell a story about bending sheet metal."
Just as great movies tap into the memories and emotions of consumers, so do the best cars, said Mays.
"If there isn't a story, there isn't a film," he said. "If there isn't a story behind it, there isn't a car either."
At first glance, they seem an odd couple -- the sophisticated auto designer who favors Italian suits and the freewheeling film director clad in faded jeans and loud Hawaiian shirts.
But at heart, both are kids who grew up in small-town America with a love of cars and the romance of the open road.
"The automobile is one of the definitive representations of who we are as Americans, the freedom to go wherever we want on our own schedule," said Lasseter, 47, whose father was the parts manager at a car dealership in Whittier, Calif.
Riding Route 66
The history of the car reflects the seminal changes in society over the decades, said Mays, a 50-year-old native of tiny Maysville, Okla.
"If you want to design an optimistic automobile, you only have to look at the cars of the 1950s," Mays said. "If you want a rebellious car, look to the '60s."
Few filmmakers grasp the sweeping themes of history and community life better than Lasseter.
Whether it's the middle-aged angst of superhero Bob Parr in "The Incredibles" or the rivalry between Buzz and Woody in "Toy Story," the characters in Pixar films resonate with audiences.
The proof is at the box office, where Pixar's six films have earned nearly $3 billion worldwide. The studio's combination of original stories and computer artistry has produced some of the most beloved animated films of all time.
He hasn't directed a film since "Toy Story 2" in 1999, but the idea for "Cars" has been percolating in Lasseter for years.
"This is a very personal story," he said. "It's about a character that discovers that the journey in life is the reward. It's about growing up."
The theme emerged during a cross-country road trip Lasseter took with his wife and five sons in the summer of 2000.
"From 1990 to 1999, I worked straight through," he said. "Things had gotten out of balance in my life."
For two months, Lasseter and his family drove from the west to the east coast, veering off the interstates into small towns and soaking up the ambience of rural America.
He became fascinated with the legendary stretch of road known as Route 66, the main artery through the heartland until the big highways were built in the 1950s.
The towns along Route 66, with their kitschy diners and wigwam-shaped motels, had faded into obscurity. Lasseter decided that one of those places, the mythical town of Radiator Springs, would become the setting for "Cars."
It's the saga of Lightning McQueen, a hot-shot animated stock-car voiced by actor Owen Wilson. En route to a big race, the cocky McQueen gets waylaid in Radiator Springs, where he finds the true meaning of friendship and family.
Details of the movie are closely guarded by Pixar, but its cast of characters includes a variety of classic cars and trucks with voices provided by Paul Newman, Bonnie Hunt and other Hollywood stars.
"The cars are alive," Lasseter said. "There're no humans in this world. We took a dive into the culture of the '50s, when you could do anything you wanted in a car."
His characters see the world through their "eyes" in the windshield -- rock formations resemble hood ornaments, clouds look like auto parts, a butte jutting up in the desert is shaped like a giant radiator.
"A gas station to a car is like a restaurant to us," Lasseter said. "The mechanic is the doctor, and the tire store is like a shoe store."
"Cars" includes breathtaking sequences of NASCAR races and poignant moments set at dusk in the desert. There's action, adventure and plenty of laughs in McQueen's encounters with the colorful residents of Radiator Springs.
And whether it's the roar of the engines at the track or the texture of the rust on an old tow truck, the Pixar animators strove for absolute authenticity.
"Even though they are cartoon characters come to life, the car aficionados will know that we did our homework," Lasseter said.
Respecting the craft
Much of that homework was done in the design studios and product labs at Ford.
The access was arranged in 2000 by Jacques Nasser, Ford's chief executive at the time and an acquaintance of Pixar CEO Steve Jobs. But it was Mays who took Lasseter and his team through the process of creating a car at Ford.
"We just hit it off," Mays said. "It gave both of us a chance to have a fresh perspective on how we approach creativity."
During a briefing on the new Ford F-series pickup, Lasseter was struck by the vast amount of research and number of decisions required to bring a new vehicle to market.
"To green-light the production of an automobile is a tremendous investment," he said. "The number of decisions it takes to bring a car to the showroom floor is in the neighborhood of the decisions it takes in the making of an animated film."
But he can't explain another fact of life shared by the auto and film industries.
"When you see a bad movie or a really bad car and you realize how many decisions were made, you wonder why didn't someone say, 'Wait a minute here, this is all wrong,'" Lasseter said.
While Lasseter soaked up the details of Ford's business, Mays became fascinated by how Pixar created personalities to match the individual cars in the movie.
Mays recalled his own experience as a designer at Volkswagen AG, when he shepherded the design for the New Beetle. The proportions, he said, had a human quality to them.
"Like a small child, everything was too big on the Beetle," he said. "Nothing quite fit, and it took on a child-like feeling because of it -- the too-big eyes, the bald head."
Animating cars presented a different challenge for Lasseter than working with toys, bugs or fish.
"We bring the personality out of the object as it is," he said. "I try to animate them so that they still feel like the mass of a car but without being too rubbery."
Rewarding creativity
Lasseter has joined Mays at industry events like the classic-car exhibition in Pebble Beach, Calif., and the auto-customizing trade show in Las Vegas. And they've made more than a few visits to the exotic sports car dealership near Pixar's headquarters in suburban Oakland.
For Mays, a visit to Pixar is a refreshing escape from the demands of managing a global design team of 1,400 people.
"There's just a sense of unbridled creativity there," he said. "At the end of the day, creativity is rewarded. That's not always the case in the auto industry."
There are other differences, not the least of which is the work environment.
Animators have the option of occupying a standard office cubicle or customizing their own. Instead of a row of identical cubes, they work in an industrial-sized space crammed with little log cabins, castles and tiki huts, with a laid-back pub smack in the middle.
"Kind of an uptight corporate environment," Mays said with a smile.
Lasseter's own office looks like a toy store that has outgrown its four walls. Every inch of every shelf is crammed with action figures, games and -- naturally -- rows and rows of model cars.
At one point in the interview, Lasseter grabbed a Japanese boxing toy off a table and challenged Mays to a match. Then the Pixar executive vice president/creative proceeded to "beat up" Ford's group vice president/design.
But the fun and games hardly mask Lasseter's intensity and drive.
He started as an animator at Disney fresh out of college in 1982 and has since become one of the most influential figures in the motion-picture industry.
His obsessive attention to detail is apparent when he critiques hand-drawn sketches of scenes from "Cars." So far, animators have created more than 43,000 of them.
"Sometimes there's no better way than the old way," he said. "This is the exact same process Walt Disney used."
The sound of every car in the film was recorded and replicated. The color of the peeling paint on old buildings on Route 66 was matched. Even the reflections on the animated cars will be the same as if they actually existed.
"I tell people that the eye just isn't going to notice it, but they're going to feel it," he said. "They're going to notice it if it wasn't there. It won't feel real."
For his part, Mays considers Lasseter a kindred spirit and something of an inspiration.
"I've always fancied myself as a person who thinks about the car business differently than some other designers do," he said.
Wide-eyed optimism
Much has been made in the industry recently about Mays' impending move to London, where he will take on additional duties as Ford's first-ever chief creative officer.
Speculation around Detroit centers on whether Mays needs a break from the pressures in Dearborn or is somehow being phased out of key product decisions at Ford.
Neither is true, said Ford Chairman Bill Ford Jr.
"J Mays' expanded role as chief creative officer underscores not only his own accomplishments, but also the pivotal role design plays in Ford's future," Bill Ford said.
Mays said the move overseas will broaden his perspective on design.
"Every day you drive down the streets of Detroit, you become more of a Detroiter," he said. "You lose a little of your perspective."
Hanging out with Lasseter helps rekindle his creative passion in a small way.
"Like John says, it's not about the destination. It's about the journey," Mays said. "Creative people need to remember that. I certainly need to."
Lasseter's journey, for now, is all about "Cars." The movie promises to be a celebration of four-wheeled transportation and a cinematic homage to cars of the past and the way of life they represented.
"I want to make this so cool that every kid who sees this is going to want to visit Radiator Springs," he said.
"Hopefully it'll get them out on car trips and trying to find these great places."
It's that child-like sense of wonder that Pixar has tapped into with classics such as "Toy Story" and "Finding Nemo."
And in the cutthroat, competitive arena of the international auto industry, a little wide-eyed optimism sounds pretty refreshing.
"Once the lights dim, you get swept away with watching these characters and get carried away in this world," Lasseter said. "It's a blast and they make you laugh and there's a heart, and that's so important."
If there's a message in "Cars," it's a simple one.
"I just want everybody to know," Lasseter said, "that it's our love letter to the car."
You can reach Bill Vlasic at (313) 222-2152 or bvlasic@detnews.com.
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