Working on Toy Story was kind of neat,
because for us we were trying to figure out how to take something
that we'd only done in very, very small amounts,
short films, TV commercials, and make it 7 8 minutes long.
And the story was like,
''Wait a minute here. This is a much more difficult thing than l thought.''
When we started with Disney,
they had people who had had a lot of experience making films.
They had been through it. They knew what to do.
We looked to them initially as,
''They're gonna school us. They're gonna teach us how to work.''
Here's what the first year on the film was like.
We would board a sequence,
and then Tom Schumacher and Peter Schneider
would fly up and they would give us tons of notes on the boards,
changes to make, ways to improve it, to make it better.
And then we would crank, turn around those notes,
and then we'd fly down to Disney,
pin up our boards, and they'd give us more notes,
and we'd even make changes that night.
And then at 6:00 a.m. or 7:00 a.m. the next morning,
very early mornings, we would pitch it to Jeffrey Katzenberg,
and then he would rip them all apart.
Jeffrey Katzenberg who, at the time, was chairman of the Disney Studios,
and had great interest in animation,
would always be pushing for what he called ''edge. ''
And the Woody character became wildly unappealing at one point.
SLlNKY: Woody! WOOD Y: Now what?
SLlNKY: Woody, l'm having a little difficulty...
WOOD Y: Slink, how hard can it be?
We assembled, maybe, the first half of the movie on story reels,
and then we went down to Disney to screen it.
And l tell you, l sat there,
and l was pretty much embarrassed with what was on the screen.
l had made it. l had directed everybody to do this.
But it was a story
filled with the most unhappy, mean people.
REX: Wait, no!
WOOD Y: All right, all right, all right! Save your batteries, people.
Jeffrey said, ''Why is this so terrible?'' to me in the hallway.
l said, ''Because it's not their movie anymore.
''lt's completely not the movie that John set out to make.''
Everything kind of fell apart at that point.
Disney forced us to shut production down.
And they wanted us to lay people off, and we refused.
We were getting threats that, because it didn't work well,
that we were all gonna have to go down south,
and re-board the film under their supervision.
l said, ''Just give us two weeks and we'll turn things around.''
lt was really very scary,
and l think that's where we really bonded as a group.
LASSE TER: I turned to our guys and I said,
''Let's just make the movie we want to make. ''
We worked day and night, Andrew, Pete, Joe, myself,
our story team, our editorial team.
S TAN TON: And so we just really went 1 00% with our gut.
DOC TER: Everybody's helping everybody else.
RANFT: It was like we became one mind in a way.
l just remember laughing a lot and drawing like crazy.
We were drawing for our lives.
RANFT: I remember we got this frenetic, overdrive way of working.
We learned to do the first pass so rough,
because we collectively would get
all these ideas once we saw it up, and we'd change...
-We knew what we were looking at. -We'd do Post-its.
LASSE TER: Right, right, right.
S TAN TON: We knew what we were looking at.
The other thing that was really important for me
after that Black Friday screening, was to make Woody likable.
S TAN TON: It was a real education in filmmaking for us,
that just because a character has a problem,
or he's even not a likable person,
doesn't mean that they have to be an unlikable person on the surface.
Right, 'cause our goal was to make Woody so likable,
then when he started kind of becoming a jerk,
it was like, ''Oh, Woody, don't make those choices,''
instead of, ''What a jerk. I don't care about this guy. ''
lt's not always bad, in this process, to have things not work.
When you have these crashing things that happen,
the rebuilding allows the thing to be so much better.
LASSE TER: After this experience, we learned a lot of things.
The most important thing we learned was to trust our own instinct,
and really to make the movies we wanted to make.
Okay, now this is the reel that we showed on Black Friday,
before we re-envisioned Woody's character.
lt's, you know... lt's bad. You know?
(LAUGHlNG ) lt's really bad.
lt's kind of rough to watch these days.
But, hey, for history's sake, l think it's important to see.
So, this takes place right before they go to Pizza Planet,
and all of the other toys are placing bets
as to see who Andy's gonna take, either Woody or Buzz Lightyear.
BUZZ: Woody! WOOD Y: Ah!
BUZZ: l'd just like to wish you luck. l know you'd do the same for me.
WOOD Y: Oh, yeah. Yeah, well, yeah. There you go.
(WOOD Y GRUNTS )
BUZZ: Whoa!
WOOD Y: What? What, what, what? What? What are you...
What's everybody looking at? What?
Hey, he slipped. l tried to... He... l couldn't hold on...
lt was an... He slipped!
(ALL CLAMORlNG )
REX: l don't see him. l think he fell onto the street.
HAMM: Yeah. He's as good as roadkill.
POTATO HEAD: He ain't going to Pizza now.
BO PEEP: Woody! You deliberately threw Buzz out the window!
WOOD Y: Hey, it's a toy-eat-toy world.
(ALL GASPlNG )
SERGEANT: Cowboy, where is your honor, dirt bag?
You are an absolute disgrace!
You don't deserve to wear a 1 0-gallon hat
on your pint-sized head!
Men, search and rescue! l want a med-evac team on the double!
WOOD Y: At ease, Sergeant.
SERGEANT: Hustle up! Move it! Move it! Move it! Hey!
WOOD Y: Hey, Spuds-for-brains! What do you think you're doing?
Off the bed.
(SHOUTlNG ) Hey! Off the bed!
POTATO HEAD: You gonna make us, Woody?
WOOD Y: No. He is.
Slinky! Slink. Slink... Slinky!
Get up here and do your job!
Are you deaf? l said take care of them!
SLlNKY: Uh, l'm sorry, Woody, but l have to agree with them.
l don't think what you did was right.
WOOD Y: What? Am l hearing correctly?
You don't think
l was right? Who said your job was to think, spring wiener?
SLlNKY: Well, l... l just thought...
WOOD Y: Just use this vast reserve of brain power
to consider this for a moment.
lf it wasn't for me, Andy wouldn't pay any attention to you at all!
ln fact, my stretchy friend,
you would've been hauled away to Goodwill a long time ago,
so shut your mouth and get them off the bed!
Do it now, Slink, or l'm throwing you off!
POTATO HEAD: You're gonna have to throw the two of us off!
HAMM: Make that three. REX: Count me in.
POTATO HEAD: No, Woody, you get your butt off the bed.
WOOD Y: (LAUGHlNG ) l... l don't believe this.
Are... Are you... Are you threatening me?
HAMM: Yeah, get off the bed, ranch hand, or we're throwing you off!
WOOD Y: Ha! You and what army?
SERGEANT: There he is, that dirt bag! Frag him!
Move, move, move! Take no prisoners!
Go for him! Go for the throat!
Kill, kill, kill!
SOLDlERS: One, two...
SLlNKY: Stop! Don't throw him off the bed!
WOOD Y: Yeah!
SLlNKY: Throw him out the window, like he did to Buzz!
ALL: Yeah!
WOOD Y: No! Wait! No! Come on! Hey, man!