Audio Interview: Michael Arndt and Lee Unkrich (“Toy Story 3”)
This month, I’ll be posting an audio interview with a notable screenwriter each day. Today: Toy Story 3 screenwriter Michael Arndt and director Lee Unkrich (shared story by credit) from a recent appearance on NPR’s “Fresh Air” with Terry Gross. You can access the interview here.
A fascinating excerpt from Arndt about how much they struggled with the beginning of the movie:
It’s funny. When you first start writing these films, usually what you’re trying to do — I mean, you just sort of have a bag full of disparate ideas, and none of them quite fit together.
And so your first concern when you take this over, is you’re just trying to make everything fit together on a basic narrative level. And the scene that you just played, which we called “Growing Up” when we started writing it, was one of the hardest scenes to write because you’re meeting these characters sort of again for the first time, and you have to figure out what their expectations for the future are.
And I remember when we first started writing it, we our thought was that, well, Buzz is going to be an optimist, and he’s going to hope that they go to college with Andy, and Mr. Potato Head is going to be a pessimist, and he’s going to think they’re all going to get thrown out, and, you know, some other people think, well, maybe we’ll go to the attic. And Woody, you know, is mature enough to say, well, I don’t know what’s going to happen.
And the problem with that, the problem with that scenario or that setup, is that you end up having these endless conversations in which all the toys stand around and argue with what’s about to happen.
And I think I went back and counted all the drafts that we did of this scene. We did 60 different drafts of this scene while trying to figure out, you know, before we got to the final version.
And the big breakthrough was finally deciding okay, they all have already had this conversation before. They all have decided that they’re going to get put in the attic. This is what happens to toys. This is part of the natural lifespan of toys, is that you serve, you know, your kid, you play with your kid, and then if you do a good job, you’re going to get, you know, sort of rewarded with retirement and put in the attic.
And it’s a melancholy thing, but it’s sort of like you get your watch. You get your gold watch and the end of your service to your company. And having set that up, you know, having set up those clear and specific expectations for the future, then you can have this sort of mishap come along and disrupt those expectations for the future, and it allows the character of the other toys to decide they’re going to donate themselves to Sunnyside.
And it was really only after we had set up that sort of narrative structure that we started to realize how emotional it was and how much it played into people’s fears of obsolescence. And I do think it speaks to people’s I don’t think it’s just, you know, old people’s fears. I think everybody goes through life feeling not everybody, but certainly a lot of people go through life feeling as though the work they do, the job they do at work or at home with their kids is unappreciated or unacknowledged.
And I think feels that sense that, you know, these toys feel like they’ve given themselves over to this child Andy, 100 percent, and played with him and shared so much of his life, and now he’s going away.
And they don’t what they don’t they don’t want to go with him, necessarily, to college. What they really want is acknowledgment. And I think that’s a universal thing. I think people — a lot of people sort of go through life feeling like they work really hard, and they’re doing a good job, and they just want some sort of emotional acknowledgment.
While we’re talking about interviews, don’t forget about these:
Interviews — Video
Interviews — Written
Probably over 300 interviews there meaning a lot of great insight and wisdom into the craft — and it’s all free!
Thanks for Jeff Kirschner for the link to the “Fresh Air” interview.