BRIAN FEE: Hi, welcome to the Cars 3 commentary.
I am Brian Fee, director of Cars 3.
REHER: I'm Kevin Reher, producer of Cars 3.
WARREN: I'm Andrea Warren. I'm the co-producer.
WARD: And I'm Jay Ward. I'm a creative director for the Cars franchise.
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.
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.
I always look back on that time as where I learned the most.
And the mentorship that I had under Joe Ranft
and, of course, John Lasseter, as well,
is very important to me and incredibly honoured now
to be able to be directing Cars 3 and take it to a mentorship story.
So, we actually made a point with this film to try to mimic the start of Cars 1.
But, of course, we wanted to put a twist on it.
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.
We take it to the new place that McQueen's at in his life.
He's older now. He is a seven-time Piston Cup Winner at this point.
He's done everything you expected.
The real main difference now
is that he's no longer with his mentor, Doc Hudson.
WARREN: One of the key relationships that we really tapped into for this film
was bringing Doc Hudson back.
He played a huge role in Lightning McQueen's life.
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.
WARREN: It's so powerful to hear his voice.
I think it's powerful for McQueen to remember it.
And Paul was such an amazing actor
and just embodied Hud in so many ways.
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.
And we incorporated a number of those lines
from the open mic into Cars 3.
FEE: These characters are... They're like family to me.
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.
At some point in your life, you have to
look back to the past in order to move on to the future.
WARREN: I think the point in the beginning isn't that
McQueen just wants to win more trophies
and more Piston Cup victories.
He wants to race because he loves it
and because this is like his family and his dear friends.
And just being there is such a joy.
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.
We figured that it's his passion.
That's the one thing we get when we talk to all the drivers.
They have such passion.
We want to be able to display that passion
that McQueen is so desperate to hang on to.
FEE: So, we wanted to show him racing, wanted to show him enjoying it.
But more importantly, we wanted to just show the community
and these other racers like Cal and Bobby.
We wanted to show the camaraderie
that drivers have and that just people have.
When you go to work and you just...
The best part of your day is being with the people you're with.
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.
We wanted to really get that spirit into the film.
FEE: So, one of the really important things in this scene is the song.
REHER: We were also lucky to get Dan Auerbach from the Black Keys.
FEE: Dan Auerbach has that magical combination
of mixing modern sounds with rootsy classic rock at the same time.
It just all comes together so nicely. He lives in both worlds.
And I think of McQueen that way. And this is a new movie.
We want it to feel modern.
We want it to feel like the world is progressing.
But McQueen has got a classic edge to him.
He's a classic character in our minds,
and we wanted the music to reflect that.
WARD: Saw the sheriff's radar on... FEE: Oh, the sheriff's ticket maker.
WARD: Ticket maker, yeah. FEE: I think Mater once called it.
Referred to the sheriff's ticket maker. (CHUCKLES)
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.
FEE: And the number 42 Dinoco car is Kyle Petty.
Seemed appropriate to keep it in the family with the Pettys.
Any time Mater's at a race, he's wearing a hat,
and that's an idea that actually came from John Lasseter
and is also inspired by NASCAR fans.
'Cause you walk around a NASCAR race,
you're gonna see some very creative and interesting hats.
This movie is all about generations.
WARD: Yeah, these are McQueen's,
what we would call the contemporaries.
They look like they would have looked
after the Cars first film,
so that when we meet the next-gen cars, it's really a big shift.
We want it to feel completely different.
REHER: Talk about Jackson Storm's design.
FEE: Jackson Storm is an in-house design.
We spent a lot of time trying to make sure,
when he pulls up next to McQueen, that McQueen looks old.
I don't know. We like McQueen. We like the way he looks.
We're biased, but we tend to think his design turned out good.
So we gave ourselves the added pressure of,
"Now we gotta make McQueen look old and outdated."
So, that was the design challenge with Storm.
WARD: Yeah. I think a lot of it is that Jackson just looks aggressive.
Everything about him is sharp and angular.
And Jay Shuster, our production designer,
who did the character design, called him a "weapon on wheels,"
which I think does sum him up.
He looks like a stealth fighter next to McQueen.
FEE: Even in the early stages of his design,
we were attracted to that almost shark-like nose, how it cuts down.
And we tried to keep him as low as possible.
So, he really sits low to the ground.
For animation purposes, we couldn't do this,
but we always talked about just barely being able to
slide a credit card under his body.
REHER: We were really lucky to get Armie Hammer
to be the voice of Jackson Storm,
who just really knocked it out of the park
as an aggressive, take-no-prisoners racer.
He brought this youth and a swagger
and an arrogance to Jackson Storm that totally fit the character perfectly.
FEE: A lot of what you see on the screen was just a result of the energy
that he was able to bring in the recording studio.
WARREN: One little fun detail that's in this scene when it first starts is that
the Piston Cup, as it's rising up on the stage, is...
The mechanism that's supporting it isn't working quite right.
FEE: And that came out of Animation. 'Cause even back in Cars 1,
there's a history of every little thing that's around Chick,
-nothing ever really works right. - REHER: He's clunky.
Chick Hicks, who's voiced by
Pixar's own voice talent and writer, Bob Peterson,
who makes Chick incredibly funny
and is always poking at McQueen and his legacy
and has a good time with it.
We were also lucky to get Kerry Washington as Natalie Certain,
who was a whip-smart statistician,
and her licence plate is reflective
of her birthday and New York.
And she had a great time doing the part, and we loved having her as a part
-of the Pixar casting team. - FEE: Yeah.
The goal with her was to make sure she's the smartest person in the room.
- And Kerry just nails that. - REHER: She really is. She really is.
- WARD: Especially next to Chick Hicks. -(ALL LAUGH)
RE H ER: Exactly.
WARD: We took a ton of time getting all these stats for all these cars.
I worked with Catherine Kelly on all the motion graphics for this.
And it was a ton of work for that whole graphic design team
to get every single character's specs right.
We just laboured over that. For something that goes by super quick,
but we just wanted to make sure if somebody ever froze a frame
that they could read all of it and that it made sense.
FEE: Right. And made sense to a racer or someone in the racing world.
Not just sound like some made-up mumbo jumbo.
WARD: Yeah. John's big thing is authenticity, and that's...
What we really strived for was getting the details right,
whether people notice it or not.
And we know people
tend to watch our films over and over again.
So it's like an onion, where you peel back layers of it,
and there's always something there each time you watch it.
FEE: Armie has such energy, right?
He can look you in the eye with the biggest smile on his face
and just say the most horrible thing.
Armie was a fantastic actor to work with.
Really brought a lot to the role.
We wanted Storm to feel a threat.
We wanted him to feel confident and powerful.
And that also played into his engine sound.
All of our characters have their own
very meticulously dialled-in engine sound.
And we wanted Storm's to really stick out. We wanted him to, right away,
match his visual.
We wanted it to feel like somebody
from the future, practically, had come in.
We wanted it to have its own character,
unlike anything we'd ever heard.
We were able to cobble together the sound
through some manipulation and pitch-shifting
and a lot of other throaty noises and some bass that you hear
that is very distinctly Storm's.
WARD: Every single track location,
you'll notice, there's a different sponsor.
It's a different track. It's different graphics.
We're now at the Gears and Glory 450.
It's so cool, again, that that whole graphic design team
that we had created unique graphics
for each track location, and I think they really nailed it.
FEE: Reality's starting to sink in.
Jackson Storm and these next-generation racers
came into the world, and he's been dusting it off
and not thinking twice about it.
But this is where it's really starting to sink in.
It's really starting to hit home
when his good friends... This is his community.
It's starting to affect his community and his good friend Cal retiring.
REHER: For me, after 24 years here at Pixar,
our themes of retirement hit a little close to home.
WARD: Kyle Petty's character is retiring from racing.
It took you having some time with him
face-to-face to really get that out of him.
But it really came across nicely that he really is this racer
who's leaving this career behind,
and it hits McQueen hard in that moment.
FEE: This is the first time McQueen's realising that
his world is changing as a result of these next-generation racers.
I think he's looking at Cal, and he's seeing it in himself, too.
"That's gonna be me if I can't figure things out."
FEE: So this shot right here, this is a shot that
we refer to as "Walking Through the Lion's Den."
He's literally stepping through and around.
If you'll notice, McQueen has to stop
and wait for other people to go by.
McQueen shows up to the racetrack, and everything is different.
All of his friends are gone.
REHER: And they're all next-gens that he's almost running into.
FEE: The only not next-gen was Brick there being fired.
This is our Invasion Of The Body Snatchers moment,
when McQueen realises somebody else
is wearing the sponsorship of his good friend Bobby.
Bobby's just been replaced like that, without any notice.
REHER: And the voice of it is Danny Suarez,
who's an up-and-coming NASCAR racer.
WARD: Danny Suarez is from Monterrey, Mexico.
He's the first non-US citizen to win a championship.
So, it was cool to have him. There he is, racing against McQueen.
We have four next-gen, young NASCAR drivers
doing small cameo roles in the film.
And it was cool to have them 'cause it's a diverse group.
REHER: One of the things I thought was cool, too,
was that we were committed to
diversity, and we use a loop group for the small, minor characters.
WARREN: For those of you who don't know
what a loop group is, it's a group that
we get together of actors, and we just pick up a lot of the background
characters with a big diverse group of actors and just see who resonates
for what character.
REHER: It brings a lot of fun to the film.
WARREN: Another thing you may not always pay attention to
is all the great crowds work.
And they're not really supposed to draw attention to themselves,
but if you do look at them, there's a lot of fun little things happening in them.
Becki Tower and Edwin Chang were our leads in that department,
and that whole team did such a great job.
FEE: We designed the lighting so that
it would get darker and darker and darker throughout this race.
Not just because night races look cool,
but we just wanted to feel the darkness getting on McQueen's career.
And it actually continues to even get darker and darker
throughout these shots.
Just subtly, in a way that you don't really notice.
But, hopefully, you feel.
FEE: So, at this point in the film,
what we were spending most of our energy
trying to really sell here is the idea that
McQueen knows that all of his friends are gone, right?
Racing is slipping through his fingers
and, if he cannot keep up with these guys,
it's going to be over for him at some point.
He is watching his life fall away from him,
and he's just striving and red-lining, basically.
He's pushing himself into an unsustainable level.
So this whole crash is really just a symptom of the fact
that he's gotta make a change,
'cause he cannot keep doing things the way he used to.
WARREN: I think this is one of those little zones in the film where you see
the expertise of our sound team, led by Tom Myers.
They did such an incredible job with the crash,
especially when he slides across.
I just think you feel that all the way down your spine.
FEE: It's the things like that silence before those hits
-to really make those hits jump out. - WARREN: Mmm-hmm.
FEE: So, the crash represents McQueen pushing himself too far, right?
To an unsustainable level,
trying to hang on to something
that he's never gonna be able to hang on to, unless he could
wake up and do something differently.
And we really wanted that to be as dramatic as possible.
We wanted the audience to be just as shocked as McQueen.
There's something about
the vulnerability of seeing somebody who is almost like a Superman
flying through the air out of control.
We really wanted to suck the air out of the room
and try and then surprise people.
REHER: So, after the crash,
we find ourselves back in Radiator Springs with McQueen.
FEE: It's been four months later,
so he would've basically been in recovery.
FEE: So, look at this film right now.
There's some really interesting things in here, interesting to us.
We looked at a lot of old footage.
This is the closest we could come to the actual Daytona Beach track.
WARD: It's half-sand and half-paved, and they've done it exact...
Even this shot from a biplane. Think about that.
That's exactly how these guys film those races.
WARREN: I was always astounded, looking at footage from those races,
that people would actually stand right next to the track.
(STAMMERS) When I see that, I just
can't help but think of how dangerous that would've been.
WARD: I guess when we looked back at the history of NASCAR,
there was a very golden era in the early '50s,
when stock cars really started dominating.
The Hudson Hornet was really a true car
that did this for three years, just dominated NASCAR.
And that was something John loved, was the duality of this car that looked
like what McQueen called a "grandpa car,"
but turned out to be an amazingly fast car.
WARREN: You may notice that one of us knows
a little bit more about automobiles than the rest of us.
REHER: Geek. WARREN: For those of you
who don't know, Jay Ward is the Cars franchise guardian.
You name it, Jay knows about it if it's about a car.
REHER: He's a mechanic, he's an auteur, and he's brilliant.
FEE: And, of course, this is a flashback from Cars 1.
Cars 1 was Paul Newman's last movie,
so it was really cool to take dialogue
recorded in that space of Cars 1 and be able to repurpose it.
WARREN: It's so moving to hear his voice saying those lines again.
REHER: Yeah.
John always said that Paul Newman was Doc Hudson
and Doc Hudson was Paul Newman.
That's why there could never be somebody else to do it.
That he embodied that character.
FEE: Sally and McQueen,
she can say some things to him that nobody else can get away with.
She's a mix of such tenderness.
Bonnie Hunt embodies this herself.
Such tenderness, earnest, and honesty mixed with a little humorous tough love.
She'll kick you in the pants when she needs to,
but she'll smile and do it out of love,
and you really know it's coming from a good place.
WARREN: She can really reach him. She can be really honest with him.
But she can joke with him, too.
And that's part of how they connect.
FEE: Bonnie Hunt is actually a nurse.
REHER: She's an oncology nurse and goes back home to Chicago
and works the ward that she originally started in
before her career as a stand-up.
FEE: And one of the things we talked about,
when she opens the door and comes in and talks to McQueen, is,
treat him like how a nurse
is checking on somebody who's just had a bad injury.
WARD: This is great where Sally is trying to get him out.
She starts calling him Stinky.
FEE: Yeah. Bonnie Hunt improvised that line.
She was just playing around with the way she might tease McQueen
after she said the heartfelt things and after she's got what she needed
to say out of the way.
Start jabbing him a little bit. Have a little fun with it.
WARREN: She's so good at mixing joking tone with a heartfelt tone.
FEE: Yeah. She's excellent at it.
We struggled to get this scene to work
'cause McQueen has to go through quite a big change.
You have to think that the person who just crashed and thinks their life
might be practically over,
to get him recharged and energised,
to stand back up and get back out there.
It's a tall order for a very short scene,
and Sally's character was the key.
WARD: And then, of course, Mater really bringing the levity up,
-of like, "All right, let's go do it." - FEE: Yeah.
This little toe hook shooting out with the sneeze is
one of the many wonderful things
that was never in there until you give it to an animator,
and then they say, (CHUCKLES)
"What if he shoots his toe hook out when he sneezes?"
And it's, "Yes. Yes, he definitely should."
WARD: This is also your first opportunity,
I think, that we've ever shown
Radiator Springs and winter when there's snow-dusted mountains,
-which was really cool. - FEE: Yeah.
I mean, our film takes place in late winter.
It's probably mid-February right now,
and Bill Cone, production designer,
was always looking for opportunities.
If we're gonna show people
the thing they've seen over and over again,
how can we show it a little different?
And it's an opportunity to do just that with the snow.
WARREN: I think it's also a cool part of the authenticity of it, is that
trees always look lovely when they have lots of leaves on them,
but that wouldn't be authentic to the timing
of when the race season is, and it's just another little, tiny detail
of what makes it all real.
WARD: Yeah. I think that's something that
our Lighting team and Shading team
does a really amazing job, is setting that tone atmospherically, too.
FEE: Every Cars movie we've ever done,
there's always been some sort of,
at one point, desire to have a scene with a payphone,
just because the scene needed
someone to have information. I don't know.
And if it were live-action, you'd make a phone call.
And this is, I think, the first time we actually figured out
what's a payphone that doesn't make you think too much?
WARD: It's like this '80s-era-looking, New York aluminium box phone,
and yet, it's a video phone.
FEE: If it's recognisable and if it's familiar,
at least in part,
and you don't think about it, then it works.
But anybody under the age of,
I don't know, 30, won't know what a payphone even is.
FEE: So, McQueen's in primer. You can think of it as somebody that's
wearing their pyjamas, and they want to hang around the house all day
and mope. Or you can think of it as a cast.
What's a cast for a car that's been in a crash?
What if they've had bodywork done?
Interesting enough, he still has his number.
And that's not just so that we can recognise him,
but also NASCAR racecars, when they're in their primer,
they still put stickers on them to a degree,
so that when they're out doing practise laps at a track
and they're not painted up yet, they still are identifiable.
It was also important to put him in primer
not just because it makes sense.
We wanted to be able to make, visually, a little bit of a statement
about being repainted.
And if we wouldn't have put him in primer,
you probably wouldn't have noticed it.
It wouldn't have been that big of a change.
He started the movie with something
a little bit more of a modern interpretation of that,
and we wanted to take him back to a classic McQueen,
the Rust-eze logo on the hood and the lightning bolt
that turns into the flames.
WARD: Feels more like classic McQueen, in a way, is back.
FEE: And we're trying to purposely put this paint job on him now.
Later on, when his wrap actually comes off,
we'll get to that later in the film,
we wanted the classic McQueen to be what you see.
That baby-fresh skin, when the wrap comes off
and reveals him back to his identity.
WARREN: His most authentic self.
WARREN: Pushing this scene forward is this great James Bay song.
He's doing a cover of a Tom Petty song.
It really drives the scene, adds a lot of energy.
It shows that optimistic place that McQueen is at.
He's ready to try something new, and he's headed there.
And so it's that great travelling song.
REHER: We have a wonderful soundtrack with this movie.
It was great fun to attract a diverse group of people,
like Andra Day and James Bay
and Dan Auerbach, Lea DeLaria, and ZZ Ward.
I hope you enjoy it.
FEE: If you look carefully, there are...
We always look for opportunities to just have a little fun with the world
and the car-ification, as we call it.
WARD: Even going over this bridge,
if you look at that overpass of the bridge,
that's a gasket, a head gasket from an engine.
FEE: There's a car in the clouds. WARD: Yeah.
FEE: So, we tried to be subtle with it.
WARREN: There's some tyre-tracks clouds.
WARD: We call it car-ifying the world, and we've done it since the first film.
People really like finding that stuff on the second or third time
and making sure that it's subtly done.
FEE: And here's one where, if you look at this building here,
Sterling's Rust-eze Racing Center, it is a racetrack.
The road that Mack is on as he's pulling up on the...
When you go back to that down shot, you'll see that it is...
It's built as if the building itself
is the stadium and the seats, the bleachers, if you will.
And when McQueen goes inside the building,
he's actually going under the bleachers, into the back area.
WARD: And we always thought of Rust-eze Racing Center
as North Carolina, Charlotte area,
because that's the hub of NASCAR where we did a lot of our research.
FEE: Oh, yeah. Definitely.
This atrium actually has some of Pixar's own atrium in it.
If you ever walk into Pixar's building,
and you wanted to take a little of that feeling and amplify it.
We wanted to take his breath away,
that he's arrived at a place
that has everything he's gonna need to do what he needs to do.
WARREN: This is a sequence that really highlights
the work of our Lighting team,
led by Kim White and Michael Sparber.
They did such a great job with their team,
and we had a new renderer that we were able to work with
that really allowed us to show highlights,
and you see that so much here.
I think McQueen just looks stunning when he rolls into this modern facility,
and we see all the reflections on his hood.
REHER: We also brought back Rusty and Dusty to the film.
And sadly, Tom Magliozzi had passed away in the interim
between Cars and Cars 3.
We had Ray Magliozzi, and then we wanted to make sure
that we were honouring Torn.
And so, we actually went back
to the original Click and Clack on Car Talk recordings
and tried to pull words and phrases that Tom used
to make a performance for Cars 3.
FEE: As you can see, they stick out a little bit in this fantastically
rich, modern training centre.
And you've got these two rusty characters.
REHER: Back in the day, we actually asked Tom and Ray
what kind of cars would they be if they were a car.
And they came up with these two characters.
Both old Dodges.
FEE: They have such dynamics together that Tom was irreplaceable.
REHER: And Ray was really funny in the room where we were recording.
FEE: And we were fortunate enough to be able to make it work
with found dialogue from Tom.
And Ray did all the heavy-lifting story-wise.
And he improvised a lot of lines.
WARD: They both feel like they have lines in this.
You really wouldn't know that one of them was no longer present.
REHER: Thank our sound editors for that.
WARD: Yeah.
FEE: Yeah, it was really important to use Tom's voice.
FEE: The Lighting team really did,
as you said, Andrea, really did nail this.
Because what we wanted to feel is McQueen is walking into a safe place.
This whole set, this set piece that he's in right now,
represents his saviour from moving on in the sport.
This has to work.
This has to be the thing that keeps him in racing.
We wanted it to feel like he's walking into a safe place,
and Sterling is there to greet him.
And Sterling loves the sport and...
Sterling doesn't collect
silly things, he collects rootsy things.
The stuff that other people would find meaningless.
We wanted McQueen to trust Sterling
and trust that this is the beginning of his future.
WARD: Sterling's really cool. This was an in-house design by Jay Shuster,
the production designer again.
And Jay Mays, who's an automotive designer
that worked at Ford for many years
that we became friends with on the first Cars.
This is one of the designs, roughly,
that he sketched that Jay really fleshed out.
Super cool. It feels like a classic '60s
European sports car, but it has a lot of modern touches to it, too.
We really like that.
REHER: John Lasseter, Chief Creative Officer of the Walt Disney Company,
said that he wants Sterling to look like
he's got a $2,000 suit on him.
WARREN: I think he does. And John also says,
"We've built a car that everybody wants to have."
FEE: Charming, of course, Nathan Fillion, the voice of Sterling,
just nailed the fact that this guy is gonna take care of McQueen.
WARD: Yeah. This is McQueen getting a wrap.
So, now we're on to our third paint job for McQueen.
- And the idea here was... - FEE: Modernising.
We want McQueen to look like one of the next-generation racers.
Later into the scene,
you'll notice more artificial light starts coming in.
More of the artificial sets
of what the training is trying to simulate.
It's not the real thing. It's a fake version of the thing.
Slowly, we start bringing in those cooler lights, starting here.
Just to represent the fact that it's not real.
So, we visited Hendrick Motorsports.
We were so impressed by the sheer technological level
of everything they're doing.
REHER: And Hendrick's makes everything proprietary for themselves.
So, they make the engines. They make the bodies.
And they have a simulator
where Ray Evernham, who took us on the tour,
he could tell what racetrack was being simulated
by just the bouncing of the car.
FEE: In this moment here, when McQueen looks up,
he's so happy to see the simulator,
'cause this is the entire reason he came.
So, he thinks he is staring at
the very thing that's gonna bring him success.
This is his future.
But the reality is, it actually is his future
from a different point of view.
He doesn't realise right now
that it's the character he's looking at, Cruz,
that represents his future. He just sees the simulator.
REHER: And here's where we meet our leading lady, Cruz Ramirez,
who is a very smart, accomplished trainer
of the next-generation racers.
Played by the wonderful Cristela Alonzo,
actress/comedian.
WARREN: I like when we meet Cruz Ramirez.
She's such a great character.
I like that we see her
training all these different up-and-coming racers
in different ways.
She cares about who they are.
I like that we see that she's great at her job,
and that she's so positive, and she wants to have fun,
and she wants to help people.
It's such a great introduction to who she is.
FEE: Comedy is a hard thing, and I think,
in a lot of ways, it's one of the hardest things to have to look for.
And Cristela had that. But what really sold us on casting Cristela
was when she started to tell her story.
Part of her standup act, she starts talking about home,
and she gets real emotional when she talks
about her mom and her upbringing.
And she gets really serious, and there's a depth to her that,
that's when we knew this is the right person. This is our Cruz.
REHER: There's an Easter egg of our next film, Coco.
The last racer is homesick.
The town he's homesick for is from Coco.
FEE: Yeah, we always put in the Easter egg for the next movie
that's gonna be coming out after.
For this one we have two.
That's Coco Easter egg reference number one.
FEE: It was important for us to have Cruz look strong.
We don't want to tip our hand
where the story's gonna go, where her arc's gonna go.
We don't want you to look at her right away and think,
"Oh, that's gotta be a fast car.
"That looks like a fast racecar." No.
'Cause that's where the story's gonna go.
We looked at a lot of muscle cars, and we also cross-pollinated
that with some more high-performance cars.
WARD: This is really funny, where she's like,
"I don't see McQueen. Where's he at?"
He's like, "He's right here." I love this part.
She's like, "I don't see anybody. I don't see McQueen.
"L just see some flabby, old, worn-out car."
And he's like, "What?"
WARD: So, this is where his whole thing gets shattered.
He was feeling really good up until right now.
FEE: All he wants to do is get on this high-tech equipment,
and the first thing she does is put him in an exercise class
and makes him, basically, do dance moves and...
WARREN: And feel old. FEE: Yes.
WARREN: The way she's treating him.
WARD: Yeah, yeah. This is not his thing.
FEE: Cristela was really an obvious choice,
when we started to think about the casting of Cruz. She's so funny.
If you line people up and you think of everyone's wearing a grey sweater,
Cristela was the one that was wearing a bright red sweater.
That's what you hear when you hear her voice.
WARD: The interesting thing, too, is, in some ways,
she represents the next-gen that McQueen resents,
and he judges a book by its cover with her,
and then later reveals she knows more than he thinks she does,
which I think is cool, too.
FEE: Yeah. So, we've got the generations thing
going through the movie with McQueen.
Doc's generation, McQueen's generation,
and then the next generation, which does include Cruz.
And we were always looking at ways
to make these generations not understand each other.
McQueen does not understand Storm.
Storm does not understand McQueen.
Same thing with Cruz.
FEE: (CHUCKLES) There's a fine line between treating someone like
they're old and treating them like they're a baby.
'Cause it's almost the same thing. (LAUGHS)
WARD: Sterling is not liking this.
FEE: He invested a lot of money in this. (CHUCKLES)
Oh, but he has a plan.
WARD: This is interesting, too. This Zen room.
WARREN". Car-maste. WARD". Car-masts.
FEE: You'll notice when those pitties, we call them,
they take the wheels off, where do the lug nuts go?
We didn't want the sound of all these lug nuts
dropping on the floor and
ruining the Zen moment of the scene, if you will.
So, we actually then took it back and had their air wrenches
-modified, so there's little catchers. - REHER: Oh, catch tray. Nice.
FEE: There's little catch trays under them that catch them.
We'll work ourselves into the corner sometimes
and have to build our way out.
REHER: This is rare, too,
that we pull the wheels off and leave them off of a car
and have them up there on a lift with just their axles exposed.
WARREN: Yeah, it's a fine line. REHER: Yeah.
FEE: Well, think of it as Cruz just trying things, right?
She's shooting in the dark here,
trying to find ways to break through to him.
WARD: This is when things start to go very wrong for McQueen.
REHER: The simulator was inspired, in part,
by our research trips that we took,
including Hendrick Motorsports.
WARD: We also drew a lot of inspiration from aircraft simulators
that they use for training pilots for big airlines.
FEE: Racers spend more time on simulators
than they actually do real tracks.
That's one of the interesting facts
from our research, that things are changing.
Things are changing in the racing world.
WARD: Yeah, this is called a full-motion platform simulator
where the vehicle can actually tilt and move in all directions,
so it actually simulates really being on a track
instead of just a rolling road.
Obviously, to put it into the Cars world,
where the character is the driver, it's interesting.
'Cause we're having the car spin its wheels
on this thing and tilt and do all that stuff.
But we also want it to feel odd for McQueen.
So that's why it pops him up in the air,
and it clamps onto his wheels,
and it feels totally out of place for him.
FEE: All he really has to do, in theory,
intellectually, is just do what he always does.
That's what Cruz is trying to tell him.
But it doesn't feel right. There's no wind.
You don't actually have the real-world...
You're not feeling the warmth
or the coldness of the asphalt from McQueen's generation.
And we got this from actual research.
I remember Darrell Waltrip telling the story of Jeff Gordon getting on
a simulator for the first time,
and Jeff couldn't do it, he said.
Kids could do it, 'cause they grew up on it, but Jeff couldn't do it.
It never felt right.
WARD: Even Dale Earnhardt always wore an open-face helmet,
'cause he said he had to feel the wind on his face
when he was racing.
For him, he just felt he needed that analogue experience of
actually moving through the wind to know how to drive.
FEE: There might be a little of Mr Toad's Wild Ride reference in here.
Just the feel.
WARD: This was a really difficult thing to put together
for motion graphics and effects, as well.
'Cause you were literally making shots in the film,
plus these graphics that have to correspond with the action.
And you've got graphics over graphics all in the moment.
And then, of course, McQueen just wrecks the whole thing.
REHER: "I have crashed."
FEE: So here we are with McQueen,
basically sitting outside the principal's office, so to speak.
That's what we're always going for.
- You'll notice the A113. - There's Millie.
Millie is the, uh...
Covers all the janitorial services at Rust-eze Racing Center.
WARD: And she's got the Buff-O-Matic, I think, is the name of her buffing.
WARREN: That has an awesome sound effect.
WARD: Even the wallpaper on the wall, you see with the wrench pattern?
I love that subtle stuff where it's like
a mid-century style, the wallpaper pattern of wrenches.
FEE: See if you can find Cinderella's carriage behind the wall
on Sterling, where he has all of his trophies.
That's one of my favourite Easter eggs.
WARD: So this is when the merchandise side hits,
and McQueen's like, "What's going on?"
"I thought this was about me breaking the simulator."
REHER: We had fun coming up with
all of these worst nightmares for McQueen's third act.
FEE: We see this with sports all the time.
Somebody does well in sports, they become a big figure,
and then they go on to be a huge brand.
And while that is great and all,
it's not why they got into it.
McQueen is definitely so passion-driven
that we really wanted to draw a line in the sand,
and that's not why he does it.
And this is where we learn with Sterling,
above all else, is a businessman.
REHER: I think I see Cinderella's carriage.
FEE: This is one of those moments that's very difficult to animate,
and I think they've done a fantastic job.
I mean, when you dial into the fact that the characters,
they can't move around too much in these kind of moments.
That's all internal, and you've got to see it in their eyes.
You've gotta see their passion just in those little micro eye flicks,
and you've got to rely on less animation in order to say more.
REHER: Our animation team, led by Bobby Podesta, did a great job.
REHER: Beautiful shot, too.
FEE: Fireball Beach, which the next scene will be in, is...
Actually, the real inspiration for Fireball Beach loosely
is the Daytona time trials before they moved them to Bonneville,
when they used to just run the time trials down Daytona Beach.
WARD: Down the beach, and then Fireball Roberts was a famous racer
that we wanted to pay a small tribute to in some way.
But, yeah, they used to just do these straight-line beach racing trials,
and we imagined that
if this is the racing headquarters in Charlotte,
maybe this would be closer to the ocean,
and then they'd have a beach strip they could run near there.
So, we're definitely fudging a little bit.
FEE: The Thunder Hollow Track is actually Georgia.
We're loose in our area between Georgia and North Carolina.
Where we are at any given moment is a loose generalisation.
Yeah.
WARREN: You're not really supposed to notice them,
but, in the back of the scene,
you'll see some really beautiful matte paintings of skies and clouds.
REHER: Our matte painting team was led by Matt Webb.
WARREN: They're always back there,
but they really are these beautiful paintings that are there.
FEE: So, McQueen came to the modern training centre,
the new Rust-eze, trying to train like Storm.
He is trying to train like the young kids do.
And now, that did not work for him,
so he's going to tackle his problem by training the way he used to with Doc,
the way he used to when he was younger.
So, McQueen is chasing youth in both of these scenarios.
And later in the movie, the only way he'll start to find success
is when he stops chasing youth and realises the fact that he is getting old.
He's just gotta deal with it.
FEE: Being a director's all about making choices,
and I had to field some interesting, strange choices
my first movie. I wasn't quite aware of some of the questions
that were gonna be asked.
For instance, we go to the beach, and its water and its effects.
And effects are very time-consuming.
We want them to always look best, but we have to pick our battles.
And so, one of the questions I had to field was,
"Do I want cheap water or do I want expensive water?"
WARREN: I think what's behind the question is always...
Every team is always asking the director,
"What's most important on the screen at any given moment?"
The reason to ask that is,
they want to use the expensive water where it matters,
and they don't want to use it where it doesn't.
So, the director's always helping the crew understand
that in terms of telling the story, what's most important.
And that really guides the choices that they make.
REHER: Our Effects team was led by Jon Reisch.
So, watch the screen and watch that beach,
because that's expensive water.
FEE: See that track behind McQueen?
So, we had to trace through this scene very meticulously
and keep a history of the fact
that there's no tracks in front of him, because he hasn't run this lap yet.
Now after this lap,
there will be a track, and he's gonna run several laps,
and there's always a series of what we call history that we had to wrangle.
WARD: Yeah. There's his first set of tracks,
and now he's come back again.
FEE: That's Lewis Hamilton doing the voice of Hamilton.
WARD: Lewis Hamilton, who's a Formula 1 racing champion,
was a voice for us in Cars 2,
and we actually made a vehicle for him. We made the Lewis Hamilton car.
And for this film, he really wanted to do a voice with us again,
but it didn't make sense to have the Lewis Hamilton car come back.
It was an international racer in the last film.
And we actually found a way to give him more dialogue to do.
But it was as a voice instead of as a physical character.
And he was happy with that. And I think he did an amazing job.
REHER: Yeah.
WARD: That's a good shot of Cristela Alonzo's licence plate,
which is her initials and her birthday on her Tex Gas plate.
FEE: So this is the point and, from here on out,
from the beach scene on out... So, Cruz was training McQueen.
But, from this point on, the tables are turned.
And while he doesn't realise it and she doesn't realise it,
McQueen is now training her throughout the rest of the movie.
FEE: We had to go back after we finally figured out their arc.
As we're evolving the story
throughout the five-plus years we were making this movie,
when we finally landed on how we wanted to bring them together
and how we wanted to get to the end of the movie,
we had to go back and make sure
McQueen was training her the entire time,
because he's the one with the experience.
But neither of them could be aware of it.
WARD: The cool thing, too, is he just went from being
outside of his comfort zone,
now she's outside of her comfort zone.
It's an automatic flip where now
he's the one who's like, "Come on. Don't you know what you're doing?"
And it was her doing that just moments ago inside the racing centre.
I also like the fact that you guys put these storm clouds,
which was, in a way, nodding that a storm is coming, right?
McQueen's happy days are in peril.
FEE: He starts off the scene with all the expectations of greatness.
"This is gonna work out."
And then the fact that he's gotta babysit Cruz, so to speak,
from his point of view...
The weather is just reinforcing the fact that
this day is just getting worse and worse and worse for him.
There are "carnacles,"
as Bill Cone likes to call them, on this pier.
(FEE AND WARD CHUCKLE)
FEE: They are little... Yeah. WARD: Lug nut-shaped barnacles.
-'Cause we like to car-ify the world. - FEE: Yeah.
I don't think you can ever...
I don't think there's one frame where
they're in focus enough to actually see them, but they're there.
WARD: You can see them in the art-of book.
REHER: I love the fact you guys put bullet holes in the signs,
'cause you do drive through the South, and you'll find
people have taken shotgun practise or rifle practise
at road signs, way out in the woods.
FEE: So, on all of our films, and this one just as much, if not more,
we do a lot of research.
And one of the things we did was we went to a lot of tracks.
We saw a lot of racing, all kinds. We did some Figure 8.
Went down to Perris, California, for Figure 8 dirt.
We went to other dirt. Went to Lincoln. East Lincoln, outside of Charlotte.
I live in Petaluma, where there's a dirt track I frequented often.
And we just tried to absorb as much as possible, just the spirit.
I mean, these are...
It's a fun environment, and everyone's there just to have fun.
It's a family environment.
WARD: Yeah. It's not racing. It's more demolition derby.
It's more like theatre.
It's automotive theatre. It's just craziness.
Really funny thing on the side of Mack's trailer.
It says, "Jocko Flocko's Party Supplies."
That's actually based on a real character
in the history of NASCAR in the '50s.
A racer named Tim Flock had a pet monkey that raced in the car with him
with a miniature racing suit and helmet named Jocko Flocko.
FEE: And he was in... You said he was in the car...
WARD: Yes, he raced in the car. FEE: During the race?
WARD: Two reasons. One was, of course,
fans would want a photograph and come,
so it brought people to the races.
The other reason was, strategically, a racer would go to pass Tim Flock,
and the monkey would pop up and freak out the other cars.
And they'd back off, and he'd win the race.
REHER: Also back in the day of early stock-car racing,
everybody had to have a gimmick.
WARD: Yeah. There was a lot of carny
kind of things to it we found that were fun.
And I think part of our research trips to North Carolina
really helped inform that.
We found these characters to be so colourful.
WARD: This is the one night a week we imagine
when things change from being
traditional racing to demolition derby.
And these characters, they're all about smash-and-crash.
They're not racers. They're there to bruise.
FEE: They're football players that like to butt up against each other.
WARREN: I like that juxtaposition of,
this is an environment that's horrible to McQueen.
It's very dangerous for him.
But this other group of characters is out to just have a great time.
FEE: Uh, this is a fun fact.
We looked at hockey players when we were designing these characters.
All these photographs of hockey players smiling into the camera,
'cause they've all got broken noses and they're missing teeth.
That's some odd inspiration, but that is something we tried to capture
when we were designing the faces of these racers,
of just the constant beating they take day-in and day-out every weekend.
And, of course, when we actually went to actual Figure 8 races,
the cars look exactly the same thing.
I mean, they get pummelled every time they're in a race,
and then they just get hammered back out.
REHER: Do it again. FEE: Fresh coat of spray paint
and they're back out there.
REHER: We also get to meet Miss Fritter, the diva of demolition,
voiced by the amazing Lea DeLaria from Orange ls the New Black,
who really embraced her part.
WARD: I love the fact that they put the black gasket around her windshield
that reads like her thick black glasses. That was just perfect.
It really sums her up.
And the more you look at Miss Fritter's design,
you'll see all these crazy things.
The licence plates on the side of all her victims,
her number's spray-painted on,
old road signs have been tacked to her, including...
WARREN: The chain in her nose. WARD: Chain in her nose.
Cutting Boulevard, which is Pixar's old location.
In Point Richmond, we were on Cutting Boulevard,
and that's the sign we thought that's a double entendre of "cutting,"
which she does with her saw stop sign,
and Cutting Boulevard, where we used to be.
REHER: And a rainbow lightning bolt in her back window.
WARD: That's right.
FEE: And Brad Paisley did the music for this scene,
and it's actually score, 'cause it's not a traditional song.
Brad's done songs for all of our Cars movies,
and it's not a traditional song in any way.
He actually scored it and watched the film
and is actually just playing to all the beats that are happening.
FEE: So of all the effects, and this movie had a lot of effects,
mud was something we've never done at Pixar before.
And this scene required all kinds of viscosities of mud.
We needed dry dirt. We needed damp mud. We needed gooey, stinky mud.
And it was quite a feat.
I think the Effects team spent the most time of any effect
that they had to create from scratch.
They spent almost the entire duration of film production
finalising the look of this mud.
And they absolutely just nailed it.
But this was a real challenge for this film, to figure this out.
WARD: You notice he just caught the Pizza Planet truck rocket.
So, the Pizza Planet truck, we always like to get in our films.
And he's actually one of the crazy racers here and gets smashed.
The rocket flies off and lands in the stands,
and we played with, "Do we want to do that to Pizza Planet truck?
"Do we put him as a fan, or do we put him in the race?"
Ultimately, he ended up in the race,
and then the rocket flies off and a fan catches it,
which we thought was pretty funny.
FEE: And so this is the Fritter Time. (CHUCKLES)
This is when it really gets theatrical, right? I mean, this is... We always, um...
Animation and everybody downstream,
even in Story, we always talked about this
as Fritter's like a professional wrestler at this point.
The audience is in the palm of her hand,
and she's about to get up on the ropes
and do the body slam that ends the event.
REHER: I like how the lighting's changed to the spotlighting on her.
There's the stop sign, cutting stop sign.
FEE: So, this is something that's never been done.
If you imagine that Fritter is the queen of this event and probably never loses.
Certainly, no one's ever turned her over.
WARD: The motor home up in the stands
that just yelled something out...
REHER: That's John Hoffman, one of our great story artists.
WARD: And that was just in there for scratch, but it was so great
that they thought, "Okay. We gotta keep that."
REHER: We also went back and found out
where Lea DeLaria was in school
and incorporated that into her dialogue.
REHER: Just noticed that frame around her eyes.
- I never even noticed that before. - FEE: Yeah, that's...
REHER: Yeah, her thick black glasses. FEE: ...her glasses.
WARD: Another funny thing is Mister Drippy, the water truck,
who reveals McQueen right here.
We had to put a water truck in this sequence
because we went to go meet with Humpy Wheeler in North Carolina.
Humpy is the voice of Tex, and his name is Humpy Wheeler.
And Humpy was sitting around with us and he goes,
"If you guys do a dirt-track scene, you gotta have the water truck."
He actually did a drawing for us of a water truck and sent it to us
because he wanted to make sure we got a water truck in there.
And so Mister Drippy's, this loveable character
that has a crush on Miss Fritter
and just loves to be there, wetting down the track.
Perfect character, so thank you, Humpy, for that suggestion.
WARREN: Here we are back in McQueen's trailer.
It's interesting to see the contrast of what it looks like now
versus the first Cars film, which was all about him.
FEE: Yeah. Ramone painted up those murals
just to remind him of Radiator Springs.
WARREN: When he's on the road, he wants to think about his family.
FEE: We originally designed that Figure 8 trophy.
We originally were chasing just
a really junky-looking trophy that was made out of junk.
And it just seemed... It didn't seem right.
That is a fun event, and they take pride in it.
So we went the other route and just made a nicer trophy.
As nice as you can get with
minimal amounts of metal and lots of plastic.
WARD: Also had to redesign the inside of Mack's trailer
to fit Guido, Luigi, McQueen, Cruz...
Everybody fitting in the back of the trailer.
But they did it with the little accordion door
(CHUCKLING) for privacy between the chambers.
REHER: It was a village in that truck. FEE: Yeah.
FEE: It was really important to us to find a way
that McQueen could blow up at her.
We really wanted him to devalue her and not see her for her true light
because we needed somewhere for him to go.
Obviously, in the third act, we're gonna turn that around,
but you have to go all the way in one direction
in order to flip it and go the other way.
WARREN: And also, he has to push her to this point where she's going to reveal
this tender side of herself, this story that is a part of who she is,
but not a part that she wears on her sleeve.
It's not something obvious about her,
and he really pushes her to show him that
there's a lot more to her and there's a lot he doesn't know.
REHER: This is a wonderful moment with Cruz really speaking her truth.
And a lot of this came from Cristela's own experiences. (STAMMERS)
A young woman born in a border town of Texas with limited opportunities
and a dream of going and being something other than
what her family suggested she do.
WARD: And her mom really told her, "Dream small or not at all," right?
That's really what she was told, which is hard to believe.
And so, she actually says that in the film,
which is pretty personal, you know?
REHER: The other great moment is when she says to McQueen,
"How did you know you could be a racer?"
And when McQueen answers Cruz, we took that actually
from a story that we had heard about John Lasseter,
who was asked, at one point,
"How did you know you could make Toy Story?"
And he said, "I just never knew I couldn't."
FEE: It's that confidence difference between the two of them.
You think of McQueen as just...
McQueen just has confidence just falling out of him.
- He's never not had it. - REHER: Right.
FEE: And Cruz does not understand what that can be like,
and he doesn't understand her, although he's getting there.
Because this is the start of...
McQueen is really starting to show his vulnerability.
He's really at a point in this movie, and we're getting to that moment,
where Superman is about to admit
that he can't do the things he used to be able to do
with this call with Mater. And it's weighing on his mind.
So they have that in common,
but yet, she looks up to him as somebody
that she doesn't think she could ever be.
WARREN: Our writers Kiel Murray and Bob Peterson
really worked on the language of
how she says what she says. They did such a great job.
FEE: Yeah, like all of our scenes, that one no different,
we probably rewrote it many, many, many times
just trying to refine it and get it right.
FEE: The commercials you're hearing in the background,
we're just trying to capture that feeling of
being up in the middle of the night, and you just can't sleep,
and you got the demons.
You're restless, and you can't sleep, and you're just on the couch.
It's late night, flipping through the channels.
Nothing feels right.
WARD: Did you see the John-and-Nancy moment of them
kissing from Cars 2 as one of the commercials?
FEE: Yeah, that's our Cars 2 cameo.
And Chick was... He was important in this film, from a structural standpoint,
because who else could just dig in on McQueen, you know?
We felt like the rite of passage from Cars 1,
Chick is always gonna be there to make fun of McQueen.
And we needed that voice.
We needed that person that could say those things that Chick was gonna say.
WARD: We're also seeing that Chick won
that one championship at the end of Cars 1, and then...
FEE: Never let anyone forget.
WARD: It never happened again, right?
And then he goes on to have a commentating career.
He's not really a racer any more.
So, he's probably a little bitter that McQueen is still racing at this point.
FEE: Chick is like an '80s rocker that's still hanging on to that one hit.
WARD: Yeah. Still got that sweet moustache.
FEE: This is just one of those moments where sometimes, as a director,
you just get to do what you want to do for no other reason
than you just want to do it.
The song he's singing was a childhood favourite.
Old Disney cartoon called In the Bag.
I think the actual song is called The Humphrey Hop.
We rewrote the lyrics,
but the tune that Mater's singing
is right out of that old Disney cartoon, and it just delighted me to hear it.
WARD: It was the game warden with all the bears,
trying to get the bears to clean up the litter.
FEE: And just to play... We played it over my phone,
'cause Larry had never heard that song before.
He didn't know it, so we played it over the phone.
He's listening to the tune, and he obviously nailed it.
WARREN: I really love this scene when he calls home to Mater.
I think Mater is such a fun character. He's zany.
He's wacky. And he does silly things.
But I think underneath it all,
Mater is such a charming, wonderful, authentic, honest guy,
and I think that we see that side of him so showcased in this sequence.
FEE: This is a point where McQueen just needs a warm blanket
and a cup of hot chocolate.
He needs to forget his problems.
He just wants to call home
and just be reminded about that safe part of life.
That's why he's calling Mater.
He just wants to smile. He just wants to laugh.
And, of course, Mater never lets him down.
But he ends up showing his vulnerability,
and he didn't expect to do that.
And it is that charming side of Mater that...
I like to call it the best-friend version of Mater from Cars 1.
That scene was so wonderful.
WARREN: You can count on Mater. FEE: Yeah.
WARREN: He's always gonna be there for you.
WARD: And there he is in a photo on the right with a tyre on his head
as he's talking to him.
FEE: So it's another side of Mater that we love is, he's not dumb.
He's not a dumb guy. He's just eccentric, you know?
And he's actually rather intelligent.
You could say he's a genius in his own way.
He's just trying to cheer McQueen up.
He's just trying to help him.
In the course of all of that conversation, McQueen gets exactly what he needed.
At least he's got one more shot,
one last-ditch effort to solve his problems.
And, of course, that has to start with apologising to Cruz.
Back when he blew up at her after the Crazy Eight race,
we played it as she didn't actually do anything wrong.
He's frustrated at himself more than anything.
He's frustrated at his own shortcomings,
the situation that he's in.
And she was just the person that happened to be
standing in front of him when he blew up.
So he was wrong, and we tried to
humiliate him as much as possible when it was time for that apology.
REHER: And getting Owen to do Zumba, I have a feeling
he would say it was the hardest part that he ever had to do.
FEE: We try things when we're recording the actors.
Sometimes you just try things and see what happens.
And, "Think about like this, think about it like this."
I will say this.
When Owen was singing this part, when we were recording him,
there was a moment where he was doing an air lasso
as if he was swinging an invisible lasso in the air
while he was singing this song.
REHER: I love the really cruddy
duct tape repair on the trophy. (CHUCKLES)
The best they could do is just put some duct tape on it.
FEE: Her animation of...
- The disgust in her eyes is... - REHER: Yeah.
FEE: ...absolutely spot-on.
WARD: Yeah. I don't want to see my dad doing cool Funky Chicken moves.
Like, "Just stop. I'll come onboard. Just please don't dance any more."
WARREN: I love these shots coming into Thomasville.
I think our Sets team, led by Han Cho,
did such an incredible job on this whole series of sets
that connects to make Thomasville.
They're just so beautiful.
WARD: You're absolutely right, Andrea.
It's like when you go to North Carolina, everything is different.
The vegetation, the rocks, the colour of the sky, the colour of the dirt.
And it's like you're watching this and you're like, "I know that I'm not home.
"I'm somewhere else. I feel like I'm in that area."
And we wanted it to be hallowed ground.
We wanted it to be this place that McQueen seeks.
FEE: He's out there looking for Smokey.
He did not expect that he's going to be able to walk out onto this track.
So, we thought of this track as church for him.
We looked at a lot of ghost tracks.
We went to Occoneechee. We went to...
WARD: North Wilkesboro. FEE: North Wilkesboro. Um...
And it's very haunting to walk out onto a real track that's...
Its days are gone, and you can hear the wind blowing through the fence.
And it's like standing in the middle of the Roman Colosseum
and imagining what used to happen.
And that's eerily haunting, in a good way.
- In a good way. - WARD: Yeah. It almost talks to you.
Another thing that Han Cho and the team did, I thought was amazing,
is if you think about this track in its heyday,
it had a clay surface on top, and it's rained and washed that away,
and all that's left are the chunky pebbles.
That's exactly what happens to a dirt track
after not being used for 20 or 30 years.
It gets just like that with those big chunky pebbles.
'Cause the rain washes away the finer stuff.
They nailed it. It's unbelievable.
WARD: This is also our first time we really get to hear
Cruz open up her engine,
and one of the things I helped with was
getting the right sounds for the cars, working with Skywalker.
And I said, "Cruz can't have a big, throaty, deep V8."
She's not a true NASCAR.
She makes that point that
she showed up to race at a Piston Cup race
and didn't sound like the other cars.
So, what I had them target instead was more of a really powerful V6.
Little bit smaller, but super-powerful,
and it has a little bit more rasp
and a little bit more of a finely tuned engine to it,
that she has the potential to be just as fast as them.
- She just sounds different. - REHER: Geek.
FEE: And she needs to sound modern compared to McQueen.
WARD: Yes, yes.
FEE: And there's two versions of Cruz,
'cause there's this version, and there's later,
when she actually has her muffler taken off.
- Port-exhaust version. - WARD: Right.
FEE: And then when she's truly in race form,
we are chasing a larger, throatier,
more powerful version of everything you just said.
WARD: Yep, Yep-
REHER: Here's where we meet Smokey,
who is based on the famous stock-car driver and mechanic Smokey Yunick,
voiced by the amazing
Academy Award-winning actor Chris Cooper.
WARD: Yeah, so Smokey was really important
because he had to be Doc's sensei, right?
And Smokey Yunick was a famous crew chief
who actually crew chiefed Hudson Hornets. It was just perfect.
And we knew the character, but then you think, "What's the vehicle?"
Well, Hudson made pickup trucks.
I remember running to Brian and Kevin going,
"Hudson made pickup trucks." And they're like, "No, no."
I said, "No. They really did."
And so we had to have a Hudson pickup truck.
FEE: Once I even knew that existed.
- I didn't even know that existed. - WARD: Yeah.
FEE: Then it just made sense,
'cause we wanted that connection between him and Doc,
but it's subtle.
The front end of him actually looks like Doc.
'Cause the Hudson pickup truck's front end looks like a hornet almost,
and the back end is pickup bed.
WARD: What's also great about the Hudson pickup truck
is that visor on it, looks like a cap,
and Smokey Yunick always wore a hat.
So, that's just another little thing to add to his character.
And he always had dirty overalls on 'cause he was a mechanic.
And so the paint's really roughed-up on him the way
a crew chief or mechanic's overalls would be.
WARREN: This is our character Sweet Tea, played by Andra Day.
REHER: We were really lucky to be allowed to use
Bruce Springsteen's Glory Days
in this sequence, which fits perfectly
with the legends and what's going on in the scene.
WARD: Sung by Andra Day. And she's the one
who welcomes him to Thomasville
when they walk in, right? That's her voice.
WARD: Now this is really an important sequence.
We're gonna meet the legends here.
So you've got Junior Moon, which is voiced by Junior Johnson.
An 85-year-old guy
is doing the voice of himself, which... He was amazing.
In the middle, you have River Scott, based on Wendell Scott,
who was the first African-American of NASCAR.
REHER: Voiced by Isiah Whitlock, Jr.
WARD: And then on the right, you have Louise Nash,
which was based on Louise Smith, voiced by Margo Martindale.
FEE: Now the story that Louise is telling about stealing the number,
"When they said they wouldn't let me race, I stole one,"
is based on Louise Smith's actual story.
She took her husband's car and entered it in the Daytona Beach race.
'Cause she just wanted to race. She took his car without him knowing it.
She entered it. She crashed it. And then, on her way home,
she's trying to figure out what she's gonna tell her husband.
Of course, he already knows.
The photo was on all the papers. And that's how she became a racer.
WARD: All of these characters were truly historic figures
in the history of NASCAR that
had to overcome quite a bit of adversity.
And they were important to inspire McQueen and Cruz.
FEE: Well, they were swimming upstream, right?
They were the underdogs,
and McQueen is now finding himself the underdog.
And Cruz is in the same situation, right?
She can look to them, as they made it happen.
It was not easy for them, but they did it anyways.
And that's what she needs.
WARD: Now we're getting to see them back in the day.
So this is, literally, the eyewitness account of Doc, when he was still Hud.
He wasn't Doc yet till he moved to Radiator Springs.
You've got to keep that in mind. He's still Hud.
He is going up against the new rookie,
like McQueen had to go against the new rookie.
And we specifically chose this car for the rookie,
because that is a Chrysler 300 Hemi.
And when that car showed up, it reset the competition.
And older cars, like the Hudson Hornet, were very quickly outdated.
FEE: The Lighting team did a wonderful job
chasing a Technicolor look.
Because we didn't want it to look old and grainy.
We didn't want it to look sepia-tone or anything,
but we did want it to have a different look than the rest of the film,
because it is a bit of a flashback.
We want McQueen and Cruz
to almost think of it as they're hearing a tall tale.
But we want it to feel larger than life and be very rich.
WARD: Did you notice the cotter pins holding up the front of the Cotter Pin?
(CHUCKLES)
WARREN: One more little car reference. WARD: Yeah.
REHER: The final stage for crafting these films is often in editorial.
With the compressed schedule that we had on Cars 3,
Jason Hudak led a team of many editors actually
who did an amazing job in fashioning these sequences and keeping it tight.
WARREN: They packed a lot of storytelling into each moment.
WARD: So we're about to go to Smokey's garage,
which is really based on Smokey Yunick's garage,
which was called the best... We call it the Best Darn Garage in Town.
Smokey had a different name for it.
FEE: Yeah, we made the building look as much like Smokey's as we could.
We had to modify it, obviously, just to
get our characters in there and stuff.
WARREN: But based on an old photo.
FEE: So this scene is really an important scene,
and it's just planting a seed that pays off later.
The main inspiration behind it is pretty personal for me.
As I get older and I think about my relationship with my parents,
and as they get older...
And now that I have kids,
I'm more reflective on what my parents did for me,
and what they got out of it.
And for this story,
I think of Doc and McQueen as a father-son relationship
that they would have had.
FEE: And it's this idea that McQueen has only
ever thought about things from one side.
He's thought about it from a racer side.
And he knows that Doc loved racing more than anything else.
And to find out that there's one thing Doc loved more than racing,
and that was coaching McQueen or being a father figure to McQueen.
The importance of that is something we really wanted to land.
That there is life after racing, and then there's bigger things in life
than just a profession or a passion.
Doc's life was not over after racing. It changed. It went on.
It blossomed into something else that was just as rich,
if not even richer, than when he was racing.
(WARD CHUCKLES)
WARD: And you get to see the lighter side of Doc here, too.
That he was a funny guy. And Paul Newman could be, too.
He was a bit of a jokester.
FEE: And that's exactly what we were trying to get out of these moments,
was the fact that McQueen brought out this...
WARD: Lighter side. FEE: Yeah.
WARD: Yeah.
FEE: There will come a day when McQueen will retire.
Whether it's at the end of this movie or whenever.
Everyone will retire, and that doesn't mean his life is over.
And that's what we're trying to get across here with Doc,
that the best part of your life can always be
the thing that's in front of you that you haven't encountered yet.
Wanted to plant those seeds,
so that McQueen can fully take on that role
by the time we get to the end of the movie.
WARD: How about that lighting?
It looks exactly the way the lights are pooled at a dirt track.
FEE: And look at McQueen, his body, and Cruz.
They always have different layers of dirt depending on
where we are in the story, what set we're in.
Even though his paintjob has stayed the same
since he got the wrap at Sterling's Racing Shop.
We're always looking through and changing out the variant,
just to make sure we get the dust and the dirt right.
FEE: So in order for McQueen to face Storm,
he's gonna have to use Cruz's help.
She's gonna have to stand in.
She's gonna have to get out there on the stage.
She's being forced into it. She doesn't want to.
WARD: This is Cruz's moment, though, of really
belting out her loud V6 for the first time,
actually shaking things off the shelf.
We have her full warrior cry for the first time
and sound like a racer.
FEE: Well, and it surprises her. WARD: It does.
FEE: When she lets that out, she didn't even know she could do that.
REHER: Which hearkens back to the moment
with her and McQueen where she says,
-"I didn't sound like the other racers." - FEE: Right.
REHER: "I knew I wasn't as good or wouldn't be as good."
FEE: So Smokey's still feeling McQueen out.
He's gotta figure out what exactly he needs to do to train him.
But he's gonna train him the same way that Doc learned
and basically the same way that all these old legends
cut their teeth in the old days.
A very rootsy style of training.
WARREN: The opposite of the modern training facility.
REHER: One other thing that's cool for us is that
we can always put the camera where we want to,
where you wouldn't normally, in real life, be able to put the camera.
So, you get these amazing shots,
low, high, that would be pretty impossible
for a live-action camera crew to do.
WARREN: Got our tractor cows back...
FEE: Yeah. WARREN: ...from the first Cars.
FEE: So "sneak through the window,"
that's a phrase we spent a lot of time in the writing room.
We wanted Smokey to sound like a crazy old man
once McQueen and Cruz hear that one phrase.
What's that weird Smokey-ism
that seemingly doesn't mean anything when you first hear it?
But then later on, when it unlocks,
you realise there is genius behind the chaos.
WARREN: The crew chief in this shot
is voiced by Ray Evernham, who was a crew chief.
It's a fun little NASCAR nod. He was Jeff Gordon's crew chief.
WARD: I love this moment, 'cause this is when he explains draughting.
FEE: And we gave that line to Junior, who's voiced by Junior Johnson,
who is a well-known historic NASCAR racer
and mechanic and moonshine runner.
And Junior, when he came in to the recording session,
he had not seen the lines before.
So he sits down, and he reads that line. "They stole that from me."
We gave that line to him because that's true.
Junior Johnson was the first one to discover and use draughting.
So he says that line, "They stole that from me,"
and then he looks up at me, and he just...
He stops acting and he just says,
"You're darn right they stole that from me."
- And he just went on a rant. -(LAUGHING)
- WARREN: He's still outraged. -(FEE CHUCKLES)
FEE: So this is the point, from here on...
This is the point where McQueen... It starts to click,
and the stuff Smokey's saying really starts to sink in.
So, from a structural standpoint, this is where...
From here on, everything starts to work for him in the training.
He really starts to get his mojo back.
FEE: We, amongst ourselves, call this scene "The Midnight Run."
A large majority of the NASCAR racers,
when NASCAR was just getting started, were moonshine runners.
And that's how they cut their teeth.
That's how the whole stock-car racing got started.
They would soup up their cars in order to outrun the police,
and then they would race each other.
And they would often race each other during the day
and still run moonshine by night.
And they knew the woods like the back of their hand.
They could hide out there. They could turn off their lights
and still navigate the terrain.
We always knew we wanted to pay homage to that.
It's so dark back in there, I don't know that you'll ever see it.
But, while they are talking,
whilst McQueen and Smokey are talking,
what, in the woods?
At the beginning of that shot
where they're just walking through the woods,
before they start really tearing it up,
there is a moonshine still.
WARREN: Yeah. I think it just catches a teeny bit of light.
FEE: So, you can see McQueen's wrap is starting to come off.
He got that wrap when he was trying to be somebody he wasn't.
And now that the real McQueen is finally back,
and he's got his mojo,
and he's really starting to feel the old juices again,
we wanted to use the symbol of shedding that skin.
REHER: And these cameos of the next generation
are actual young NASCAR racers.
Bubba Wallace, Ryan Blaney, and Chase Elliott.
FEE: So, McQueen's got his confidence back now.
And so what we're chasing at this... He just needs to do it.
It's only a matter of time. Success is his for the taking.
However, you'll notice that he's not the only one training.
Cruz is... While she's there to help him and to support him,
she's doing all the training herself.
She's getting all the real experience herself.
FEE: And, on first viewing, we wanted you to feel,
when Cruz passes him, we wanted you to feel,
at the end of the day, he just didn't have it.
And we hearken back to the crash sequence
with Darrell Cartrip saying,
"McQueen is fading. McQueen is fading."
And he's seeing images of Storm, and he just can't catch him, right?
Just like the crash scene.
But the reality is, he did get better.
He did get faster.
It's just she got even faster.
And she's whooping it up.
She's having the time of her life,
but McQueen's not even paying attention to her
because he knows right now.
He knows he doesn't have it.
He's gonna go to Florida,
and he knows his racing career is probably over.
It's just a matter of walking through the steps at this point.
FEE: And here we are at the Florida International Speedway.
REHER: Our Florida racetrack was actually designed by Christian Norealis,
who did a great job of creating something
very special and unique for the third act of the film.
WARD: We were looking for making a combination of something
that a Formula 1 track would be in Miami
combined with a Daytona Beach.
FEE: Again, we just...
The old Daytona Beach track, that was so cool.
WARD: John always said, we can do whatever we want,
so why don't we just make what NASCAR wishes they could build?
REHER: If you notice in Fritter's bar
there's an Easter egg of our next film, Coco,
in the back of the bar, an image from Coco.
And our art department had a lot fun with the sponsors
on these next-generation cars.
WARREN: Yeah, they're hard to read, but a lot of them are really funny.
REHER: The volume of graphics on this film were
exponentially more than even Cars 1 or 2.
WARD: Which is hard to believe.
FEE: And most of which the average viewer won't notice,
because it's hidden in the background somewhere.
But we spent the same amount of time on the ones that are right in front of you
and also the same amount of times
on the ones that are way back there that are out of focus.
FEE: So, here we have a cameo by Jeff Gorvette.
We talked a lot with Jeff Gordon. He was a consultant on the film
and, quite honestly, inspired a lot of what McQueen's going through
as he's at this point in his career
where his retirement is coming up and biting his ankles
whether he wants to do it or not.
And so we talked a lot with Jeff about that.
And, of course, we wanted to get Jeff in the film
'cause he's been such a good friend
to all of us making this film and Pixar over the years.
REHER: I was really impressed by the car interviewing him in that scene.
- I thought that was some stellar acting. -(LAUGHTER)
FEE: Our very own Jay Ward interviewing Jeff Gordon.
(WARREN CHUCKLES)
WARD: Eagle-eyed viewers will also notice that
Storm's paintjob has changed in this last race,
because he's now a Piston Cup Champion from the previous season.
So he has that gold badge on his fender that says,
"Piston Cup Champion," and his rookie stripes are gone.
- REHER: Geek. -(LAUGHTER)
WARD: Thank you.
FEE: So here we just kept feeling like
that athlete that's gotta go out in the field.
He doesn't have a choice.
He's gotta go out in the field, and he's gotta follow through,
but he probably just wants to go home and throw up.
(WARREN CHUCKLES)
FEE: And Sterling reminding him of the bet,
reminding him of how this is gonna end.
FEE: Sound design of all these other cars...
So, while we wanted Storm to stick out more than anyone else,
all of these next-gen racers have a little of that Storm-esque sound.
We just wanted to really pull out the difference between
McQueen, a big throaty McQueen-era engine sound,
and these newer, more high-tech cars.
FEE: So, Cruz has been nothing but supportive for McQueen
throughout this whole movie.
She wants nothing but the best
and to be a good trainer and to help him out.
And we wanted to take this opportunity to have Sterling put her in her place.
Remind her of how the world sees her.
The world does not see her as a racer.
Sterling certainly does not see her as a racer and never will.
And we wanted to take this opportunity to kick her when she's down,
to poke at that Achilles' heel.
She never thought of herself as a racer.
And even though right now she almost looks like one,
to have Sterling even remind her that she's not a racer
is the kickoff of McQueen looking back through the history of the movie,
the history of their scenes together,
and connecting with who she really is.
And having McQueen have his own revelation
that he's been looking at her wrong this entire time.
She may not see herself as a racer,
but McQueen does.
That's where that mentorship, that generation...
'Cause sometimes you need people to push you out onto that stage.
Sometimes you're not ready.
I would say, most of the time, you're not ready
for things in life.
And it's really helpful to have someone to know,
they know you can do it,
even if you don't think so, to push you out there
and help you through things.
REHER: Hamilton's calling, but we're not sure how Hamilton's calling.
-(LAUGHTER) - It's movie magic.
FEE: McQueen had someone place the call.
He just said, "By the way, tell her it's..."
REHER: "Find somebody who's got..."
"Find somebody who's got Hamilton's number."
FEE: So we cut this scene,
and then we ended up cutting it again a little faster,
because we just wanted this scene...
We wanted it to move so fast,
Cruz doesn't even have time to realise what's going on.
And we wanted the audience to feel that way a little bit.
Obviously, we want clarity,
but we wanted to see how fast we could cut this scene
and keep it moving
and have the audience overwhelmed by what's going on,
just like Cruz is.
WARREN: Plus, we wanted it to be a believable timeline,
because the caution flag is out
and all the cars are coming in for pit stops,
but everybody's gonna be back out there very quickly,
and the race is gonna start back up.
So, there's not a whole lot of time.
FEE: Yeah. By NASCAR's rules,
she will not be on the lead lap any more
if she does not get out there in front of the pace car
and work her way back around to the back of the pack.
WARD: And this is a funny thing we wanted to do,
that Ramone only had a few minutes and was able to do this
really complex, beautiful spray-paint job to give her her racing livery.
That it's supposed to be quickie, and yet, it still looks amazing.
REHER: This is always one of my favourite moments,
when McQueen says,
"I’m taking my last chance to give you your first chance."
WARREN: And I love the music cue that plays here.
It's Randy Newman taking us back to that original cue
from the first film that is the triumphant, here-we-go music.
FEE: So this is Storm, again,
just like Sterling, the world does not see her for what she's capable of,
but McQueen does.
This is one of my favourite shots,
because I've always thought of this as,
this is literally pushing someone out on the stage,
and now she has stage fright,
and she does not know if she can go through with this.
WARREN: I think our camera team, led by Jeremy Lasky,
did such a fantastic job on this final race.
Right now, you're totally with Cruz and that perspective
that Brian was just talking about, of being overwhelmed
and trying to fit in in this brand-new, huge place
where everyone's looking at you and all your fears are on display.
But I think they did such a great job shooting this race
and making it feel very energetic and dynamic,
while also really focusing on the storytelling.
FEE: And so we crafted this...
It took us a while, obviously, (CHUCKLES)
because we go through a lot of evolution
when we're trying to find the right way to tell the story.
But we eventually hit on this desire
that only McQueen could speak her language.
So we tried versions
where McQueen instantly got up on the crew chief stand,
but it didn't feel right.
McQueen is, himself, pushed into the role of being a crew chief.
He doesn't choose it right away.
He doesn't think that that's his destiny.
But there's a connection between him and Cruz
where only he can actually speak her language.
Only he can break through of what she really needs.
He is her true soul mentor, if that's a thing.
I don't know if soul mentor's a thing, but he's her soul mentor.
WARD: It reflects back to,
I think, when Doc is on the crew chief stand
for McQueen in the final race,
that McQueen is finally able to unlock his greatness.
When Doc's there, it gives him a level of comfort to win.
FEE: But he doesn't even know it yet. He doesn't even realise that.
He's so focused on helping her that McQueen is not even aware of
what he looks like on the crew chief stand.
REHER: Where did the idea for the cars morphing into tractors come from?
FEE: So we reverse-engineered and went back to the story to figure out
what is it that McQueen and Cruz had on their journey
that he can bring to her and help her?
And that's why we put the tractors in the training sequence earlier,
so that we could then again use it here as a way to get through traffic.
When you're boxed in, you're getting traffic.
And we wanted to pull out Smokey's crazy "sneak through the window."
And we just thought it would be funny to see tractors go 200 miles an hour.
REHER: And you'll notice that Easter egg is gone.
WARD: Early on, we stumbled on the fact that
the crew chiefs really provide so much to the drivers.
More than the mechanical things they help with,
it's the psychological things for the driver.
The crew chief can make or break the way a driver feels.
Can get them out of a slump, can make them perform better.
Can actually help them mentally do better in the race.
And that's exactly what we see McQueen doing for Cruz.
FEE: Ray Evernham told us often,
when being Jeff Gordon's crew chief,
that part of the job is being a psychologist.
Jeff's in the middle of a race
and things are going bad, things are going good.
Ray's basic job is to keep him calm, keep the drivers focused,
so that they can do what they need to do.
And the trust that the crew chief and the drivers have
completely can make or break whether or not that car
gets in the top five or hangs out in the back of the pack.
WARREN: And mentioning Ray Evernham,
he also helped us with a lot of these little dialogue bits
of the advice that McQueen is giving Cruz
about the track being slippery,
and the little things she's gonna run into at different moments,
that great advice that he can give her,
because he's been on the track before and he knows what's out there.
FEE: In this moment, right here, we played a lot with
how bothered is Storm by...
Storm's keeping track of Cruz coming up to the thing,
but he's not really concerned.
He's not showing it, right?
He keeps his cards. He knows she can't beat him.
A little insight to Storm, though.
Storm is a purpose-built racer that thinks the world is his now.
Who cares what previous generations have done?
He's very self-focused, self-centred.
And the idea that a street car like Cruz could be this fast,
that rocks his world. It absolutely terrifies him.
So these next lines coming up...
I remember when we were recording with Armie,
we did some takes where he's realising how terrified he really is
that this yellow street car could actually beat him.
WARREN: And we really leaned into the insult that he uses for her.
It's just hitting on that tender spot of her own self-confidence.
FEE: And the idea here, when McQueen talks her through,
it was never that he holds her hand.
It was just that he reminds her of the strength she has inside her.
He's given her the tools, but it's her time to do it.
She's got to be the one to do it.
FEE: McQueen does not push her over the finish line.
He just reminds her that she can do it,
but it's up to her to take those tools that the mentor gives.
It's up to you to take those tools and put them to use.
On a technical level,
our wonderful Sets team built the sets and the Art team designed it.
And we don't know what we're gonna get
when we turn all these lights on.
And we were so amazed...
We got these reflections of all these lights
on the characters for free.
Sometimes there's just some happy accidents
that just feel so right,
and they feel like they were planned,
but we'll take the credit. (CHUCKLES)
WARREN: It's the best shot in the whole movie, right here.
WARD: With the sparks flying behind her.
WARREN: It's so awesome.
REHER: Under the category of just when you think you're done,
we showed the film to one of our writers, Mike Rich,
who came back and said, "I do have one note."
And we're like, "Oh, no. One note?"
FEE: 'Cause it might be too late to do any notes.
But Mike always has wonderful notes.
And whenever he says he's got an idea, we always want to hear it.
And it was to slow down and have a moment where McQueen and Cruz,
whether there's dialogue or not,
but to have a moment where McQueen and Cruz
give each other a thank you, so to speak.
We decided to try it out and play it silently.
Just let music do the talking,
and just have that intimacy of two people from a distance
sharing an eye contact and sharing a smile,
said everything we needed it to say.
FEE: Anybody that's a NASCAR fan knows that,
when you win a race, you do burnouts, and the crowd goes crazy for it.
And this would've been Cruz's first real burnout.
FEE: And, of course, Sterling, now that he's let his true side out
and more than an historian or a race fan,
more than anything else, he's played his card
that he's a businessperson.
Now that he sees Cruz in a new light,
he's completely turned and sees the value.
I guess is like the shark that smells blood in the water,
his business sense kicks in
and figures he can make a bunch of money on it.
So, again, he's showing his true colours and what he really cares about.
FEE: So the whole movie has been moving to this point right here.
McQueen watches her.
So as he pushed her out onstage, and she had stage fright.
But this was the point in the movie
where the proud parent sits back behind stage
and watches their child or their mentee
take a bow and enjoy their accomplishments.
And this is the moment when the mentor or the parent,
depending on how you look at it, feels the pride.
I like to think, in that moment,
McQueen had more satisfaction in watching her win
than he would have had he won himself.
That was always where the movie was going to,
that feeling Doc had when Doc was training McQueen.
WARD: This is the first time we see Cruz fully as a racer,
and this was an interesting thing,
because it's her own unique paintjob as the number 51.
But she also has all the race-kit body stuff on,
and she's got next-gen wheels for the first time.
So, she's fully a next-gen racer.
WARD: Want to talk about this paintjob?
FEE: Yeah, we saved this one for last.
We tried it in different spots in the movie
while we were writing, in our writing and story phases,
but it seemed the right place to put it
was to have McQueen go full Doc Hudson right at the end.
FEE: He's gonna take a break from his career
'cause he's got something more important to do.
And it just visually seemed like the way to say that the most.
If you remember at the beginning of the movie,
McQueen told Sally,
"I don't want what happened to Doc to happen to me."
And now, at the end of the movie, we see that
that's actually the very best thing...
From a different point of view,
that's the best thing that could've happened to him.
REHER: For our end credits song,
we have ZZ Ward from Walt Disney Records,
along with Gary Clark, Jr. playing guitar,
doing the song called Ride.
FEE: And this is to hearken back to the trainings he would've had with Doc
going around the butte and all the photos coming up.
WARD: I love these photos in the credits.
FEE: If you watch these photos in chronological order,
they step through a little bit of a story
where Cruz continued to have a racing career that season.
McQueen was right with her.
That's her trailer with Mack, and that's her trophies.
Obviously, her favourite trophy has got more light on it.
And the legends came out to Radiator Springs
and had a visit.
And in photos to follow,
Radiator Springs went on a journey to see
what the racing facility looks like now that it's owned by Tex.
WARD: I like Millie cleaning up after Mater's mud.
REHER: So, enjoy the credits.
There's some fun stuff if you look at the images,
they're pretty cool and very funny.
FEE: Statue of Doc at the Thomasville Speedway
that has been cleaned up.
And we wanted to have a nice head-to-head with Cruz and Louise.
REHER: I love that one of Mater going backwards.
WARREN: Exactly. REHER: Mater going the wrong way.
WARREN: Well, he's famous for his backwards driving.
FEE: And so this was...
Remember in all the races in the first act and the third act
and in the middle when Mater was building another hat to...
On his phone call with McQueen.
We enjoyed Mater hats on this film, so this was the hat to end all hats.
REHER: And we needed an image that went as long with the big cast.
FEE: And these graphics are just little cherry-picked things.
We make so many graphics for the movie
and most of the time it goes by so fast you never get to see them.
WARD: Andrea can speak to it, but every single one of these graphics
are designed by us,
and they have to go through a massive amount of
clearance and vetting before we can even use them in the film.
WARREN: Yeah, we have to be careful that they don't come too close to
any real products or real things that are out there.
They are really fun, if you ever stop to read them.
They've put so much fun and care. There's a lot
of little jokes in them.
And if you're ever on a frame,
and you can read what's in the background,
oftentimes there's something pretty funny back there.
FEE: One of my favourite things is just the hours we spend in the editing suite
as we're constantly working on this film throughout all the process,
once the graphics start rolling in
and the editor, for any given reason, would pause on a certain frame
while he's doing something else,
and we'll just be able to sit and stare at the frame
and see things I've never even seen before.
So, this was an opportunity just to pull some of those up forward.
WARREN: So, you can actually read some of the text that's on them
'cause they're really pretty funny.
FEE: And another opportunity here is to highlight Randy's score.
Again, these are cherry-picked little moments
from Randy's wonderful score over these credits.
It was such an honour to work with Randy Newman.
REHER: Hey, Andrea. Let's give a couple shout-outs to some
of the departments we may have missed.
WARREN: One of the unsung heroes
of our process is our Rendering Department.
When we want to put the effects and the characters and the animation
and the lighting and everything together in each shot,
it's the Rendering Department that pulls it together.
That team was led by Alexander Kolliopoulos.
REHER: The GT department is the front line of getting the show set up,
a pipeline in how this movie is gonna get made
through all the various stages of production.
Led by Sudeep Rangaswamy.
FEE: One of the things you might not quite realise watching the film
is just how many characters we have.
I think we designed almost 2,000 individual characters for this film.
REHER: Our Character Modelling team, led by Michael Comet
and Junyi Ling, did an amazing job.
We did something a little different on this film.
We had a production designer for art sets
and a production designer for art characters.
Jay Shuster, who was in charge of characters,
and Bill Cone, who were in charge of sets,
they did a great job of clearly defining their roles,
but, also, each one had a very large job to do.
WARD: We had done a research trip to Charlotte,
and then Bill and Jay got in a rental Camaro
and drove to Dawsonville, Georgia.
REHER: A convertible in the winter.
WARD: And met all the people in the town,
and that really helped them inspire
the idea for Thomasville,
and the look of Thomasville was based a little bit on Dawsonville, Georgia.
REHER: So, this film had over 250 artists and craftspeople working on it.
Thank you all for the amazing work that you brought to the film.
FEE: It's such an incredible honour to have worked on this movie
and to be able to direct it and to work with this crew.
It's a lot like... We always say at Pixar,
making one of these movies is a lot like raising a child.
And then, when you release it in the world,
you send it off to college.
I see all these names go by,
and every time I read any of these names,
I have memories of sitting next to that animator,
sitting next to that lighter, sitting next to
Bill Cone or in art review.
When I see all this movie, really, I see behind the curtain,
and I see all the relationships
that I was fortunate enough to have working with...
Everyone here is just so talented.
And I learned so much from them,
so I'll always take that as one of the best memories I've ever had.
REHER: I agree with Brian that
just being a part of a team like this, of filmmakers and artists
who brought their A-games to this movie
to make it as special as it is.
WARD: I've always said, this film is probably...
I've worked on all three of them, but this one to me is special,
because I think it's probably the most emotional of the three.
I think it's just a really amazing film
that we all did put a lot of time in
to make sure it was absolutely right.
WARREN: Yeah. We had an incredible crew.
Everybody was so collaborative.
And we moved up in the line,
meaning that we had a little bit of time cut out of our schedule.
And even so, everybody just rolled up their sleeves and said,
"What do we need to do to make this movie?"
But not only that, everybody wanted to make it really great
and do everything we could to really focus on story.
And I think we ended up
with a really moving film that we're all very proud of.
FEE: So thank you everybody out there at Pixar
for doing such great work
and putting your blood and your sweat and your tears into every frame.
And thank you to listeners at home
for watching this, and I hope you learned something.
I hope you were, at least, entertained.
WARREN: Yeah, thanks for joining us. REHER: Thank you.
FEE: Thank you.
FEE: Hey, you stuck around for the very end.
Well, we've got one last thing to show,
and it's the "Mater Bumper," we like to call it.
So, the song Mater's singing was actually
written and/or improv'd,
I'm not entirely sure, by Dan Whitney, Larry the Cable Guy.
We asked him just to start singing some songs
and come up with some stuff.
He spat this one out, and it just had us all in stitches.
FEE: The technology line at the very, very end
is just something that just came out of Dan's mouth.
We only got one take of that.
He just spat it out once, and we decided to keep it.
WARREN: I love the part about going on a date with an ice cream truck.
That just seems perfect for Mater.