I have offspring that didn’t when I started this
time in 1991, in Studio B at the Disney Studios, with Doc the engineer. My last session for Toy Story 4 was in Studio B at Disney Studios with Doc the engineer. It was a big deal,” he reflects fondly.
He was recently at Disneyland with his wife Rita Wilson and some of his grown-up children when the legacy of Toy Story really hit him.
“They say it’s a franchise, when it’s the character you go back for, but I don’t know if I can put it in that way.
“We were at Disneyland for one of those big, every character jamboree kind of light shows, a Mickey Fantasia, that kind of thing.
“At the end of the show was this huge steamboat coming by, a paddlewheeler and every Disney character in creation is on it.
“There was Mickey and the big bad wolf and Captain Hook and Pinocchio and all of the princesses, all the way through the ages and there on the boat too was Woody and Buzz and they were doing a choreographed dance and everybody in my family was amazed – ‘Oh my, oh Dad, you’re going to be there for the rest of time’.
“And that was a moment equal to anything that has ever come at us in the course of the movies themselves.”
Indeed, taking his family on the
Toy Story journey has been as much a part of the experience as any other.
“I have offspring that didn’t exist when I started making this. I have got grandkids now,” he marvels.
Recently, he sat down to watch Toy Story 2 with one of those grandchildren.
“I had not really seen it since it came out and my granddaughter was over and she’s only three and she was seeing it for the first time.
“Her reactions were as perfect as perfect can be, she was laughing and saying, ‘Oh no, oh dear’. She actually said ‘oh dear’ at one point!
“And I thought, ‘Well this is a gold standard. I am so fortunate to have been smart enough to say sure, I will do
that.”’