Welcome to my weekly discussion of the animated films of the Walt Disney Studio. I’m proceeding mostly chronologically. The title comes from a quote from Walt, “I never called my work an ‘art’ It’s part of show business, the business of building entertainment.”

Title: Cars

Year: 2006

Budget: $120 million

Box office: $462.2 million

Plot: The last race of the Piston Cup championship ends in a three-way tie between retiring veteran Strip “The King” Weathers, infamous runner-up Chick Hicks, and rookie Lightning McQueen. The tiebreaker race is scheduled for one week later at the Los Angeles International Speedway in California.

McQueen is desperate to win the race, since it would not only make him the first rookie to win a championship, but also allow him to leave the unglamorous sponsorship of Rusteze, a bumper ointment company, and allow him to take The King’s place as the sponsored car of the lucrative Dinoco team. Eager to start practice in California as soon as possible, he pushes his big rig, Mack, to travel all night long.

While McQueen is sleeping, Mack drifts off, and is startled by a gang of four reckless street racers, causing McQueen to fall out the back of the trailer and onto the road. McQueen wakes in the middle of traffic and speeds off the highway to find Mack, but instead finds a grumpy Peterbilt. He then decides to head back the Interstate to find Mack, but ends up lost in the run-down desert town of Radiator Springs, while inadvertently ruining the pavement of its main road.

After being arrested and impounded overnight (while guarded by a rusty, but friendly, tow truck named Mater), McQueen is ordered by the town judge, Doc Hudson, to leave town immediately. The local lawyer, Sally Carrera, requests that McQueen should instead be given community service to repave the road, to which Doc reluctantly agrees.

McQueen tries to repave the road in a single day, but turns out shoddy, and he is forced to repave the road again, which takes several days to complete.

During this time, he befriends several of the cars, and learns that Radiator Springs used to be a popular stopover along the old U.S. Route 66, but with the construction of Interstate 40 bypassing it, the town literally vanished from the map.

McQueen also discovers that Doc is the “Fabulous Hudson Hornet”, a three-time Piston Cup winner, whose racing career ended after an accident in 1954, and quickly forgotten by the sport.

 

McQueen finishes repaving the road, which has invigorated the cars to improve their town, and spends an extra day in Radiator Springs with his new friends, before Mack and the media descend on the town, led by a tip to McQueen’s location. McQueen reluctantly leaves with the media to get to California in time for the race, while Sally chastises Doc after discovering that he had tipped off the media to McQueen’s whereabouts, not wanting to be discovered by them instead.

At the Los Angeles International Speedway, McQueen’s mind is not fully set on the race due to his missing Sally and his other new friends, and so he soon falls into last place. He is surprised to discover that Doc Hudson, who is decked out in his old racing colors, has taken over as his crew chief, along with several other friends from Radiator Springs to help in the pit.

Inspired and recalling tricks he learned from Doc and his friends, McQueen quickly emerges to lead the race into the final laps. But at the last minute, Hicks, refusing to come behind Weathers again, illegally side swipes Weathers and sends him into a dangerous spin, causing him to crash. Seeing this and recalling Doc’s fate, McQueen stops just short of the finish line, allowing Hicks to win, and drives back to push Weathers over the finish line.

The crowd and media condemn Hicks’ victory, but are nonetheless impressed with McQueen’s sportsmanship. Though offered the Dinoco sponsorship deal, McQueen declines, insisting on staying with Rusteze as an appreciation of their past support.

Later, back at Radiator Springs, McQueen returns to reunite with Sally, and announces that he will be setting up his headquarters there, helping to put Radiator Springs back on the map.

Background: John Lasseter had said that the idea for Cars was born after he took a cross-country road trip with his wife and five sons in 2000. When he returned to the studio after vacation, he contacted Michael Wallis, a Route 66 historian. Wallis then led eleven Pixar animators in rented white Cadillacs on two different road trips across the route to research the film.

“I have always loved cars. In one vein, I have Disney blood, and in the other, there’s motor oil. The notion of combining these two great passions in my life—cars and animation—was irresistible. When Joe (Ranft) and I first started talking about this film in 1998, we knew we wanted to do something with cars as characters. Around that same time, we watched a documentary called ‘Divided Highways,’ which dealt with the interstate highway and how it affected the small towns along the way. We were so moved by it and began thinking about what it must have been like in these small towns that got bypassed. That’s when we started really researching Route 66, but we still hadn’t quite figured out what the story for the film was going to be. I used to travel that highway with my family as a child when we visited our family in St. Louis.” – John Lasseter

However, in 1998 Jorgen Klubien began writing a new script called The Yellow Car, about an electric car living in a gas-guzzling world. The movie was eventually scrapped in favor of Toy Story 2. Klubien feels Lasseter wrote him out of the story of how the film got made.1It has been noted that the plot of Cars bears a striking resemblance to that of Doc Hollywood.

Animation: Unlike most anthropomorphic cars, the eyes of the cars in this film were placed on the windshield 2resembling the Tonka Talking Trucks, and the characters from Tex Avery’s One Cab’s Family short and Disney’s own Susie the Little Blue Coupe rather than within the headlights.

“Getting a full range of performance and emotion from these characters and making them still seem like cars was a tough assignment, but that’s what animation does best. You use your imagination, and you make the movements and gestures fit with the design. Our car characters may not have arms and legs, but we can lean the tires in or out to suggest hands opening up or closing in. We can use steering to point a certain direction. We also designed a special eyelid and an eyebrow for the windshield that lets us communicate an expressiveness that cars don’t have.” – Scott Clark, supervising animator

“Chrome and car paint were our two main challenges on this film. We started out by learning as much as we could. At the local body shop, we watched them paint a car, and we saw the way they mixed the paint and applied the various coats. We tried to dissect what goes into the real paint and recreated it in the computer. We figured out that we needed a base paint, which is where the color comes from, and the clearcoat, which provides the reflection. We were then able to add in things like metallic flake to give it a glittery sparkle, a pearlescent quality the might change color depending on the angle, and even a layer of pin-striping for characters like Ramone.” -Thomas Jordan, character shading supervisor

Music and Songs: The score was composed by Randy Newman, and the film contained the following songs:

• “Real Gone”- Sheryl Crow
• “Route 66”- Chuck Berry
• “Life Is a Highway”- Rascal Flatts
• “Behind the Clouds” – Brad Paisley
• “Our Town”- James Taylor
• “Sh-Boom”- The Chords
• “Route 66”- John Mayer
• “Find Yourself”- Brad Paisley

Voice Cast:

Owen Wilson as Lightning McQueen. 3The car’s design was based on a race car, described by John Lasseter in the Los Angeles Times as “A hybrid between a stock car and a more curvaceous Le Mans endurance racer.” He made his film debut in Bottle Rocket, and went on to appear in Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums, The Cable Guy, Anaconda, Armageddon, The Haunting, Shanghai Noon, Zoolander, Behind Enemy Lines, I Spy, Shanghai Knights, Starsky & Hutch, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. Around the World in 80 Days, Wedding Crashers, Meet the Parents, Night at the Museum, The Darjeeling Limited, Marley & Me, Fantastic Mr. Fox, Midnight in Paris, The Grand Budapest Hotel and Inherent Vice. Paul Newman 4 Newman died on the morning of September 26, 2008. Cars was his final film. as Doc Hudson. 5 1951 Hudson Hornet, which was the model of car that won the most races between 1951 to 1954. A crash by racer Herb Thomas in 1955 ended Thomas’s career and was the end of the Hornet in professional racing Newman won an Academy Award for his performance in the 1986 film The Color of Money. Newman’s other films include The Hustler, Hud, Harper, Cool Hand Luke, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean, The Sting, and The Verdict. Newman won several national championships as a driver in Sports Car Club of America road racing, and his race teams won several championships in open-wheel IndyCar racing. He was a co-founder of Newman’s Own, a food company from which he donated all post-tax profits and royalties to charity.

Bonnie Hunt returns as Sally Carrera. 6 2002 996-series Porsche 911 Carrera. Larry the Cable Guy 7Real name: Daniel Lawrence Whitney as Mater. 81951 International Harvester L-170 “boom” truck with elements of a mid-1950s Chevrolet One-Ton Wrecker Tow Truck. Larry the Cable Guy has released seven comedy albums, of which three have been certified gold by the RIAA for shipments of 500,000 copies and in addition has starred in three Blue Collar Comedy Tour–related films, as well as in Larry the Cable Guy: Health Inspector, Delta Farce, and Witless Protection, and A Medea Christmas

Tony Shalhoub as Luigi. 9 1959 Fiat 500 His television work includes Antonio Scarpacci in Wings and detective Adrian Monk in Monk. 10Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Television Series Musical or Comedy, two Screen Actors Guild Awards for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Comedy Series and three Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series. His roles in films include Barton Fink, Big Night, Men in Black, The Siege, Galaxy Quest, Spy Kids, The Man Who Wasn’t There, 1408, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. He has received four Tony nominations, his first for Best Featured Actor in a Play for Conversations with My Father in 1992. His subsequent nominations included Golden Boy and Act One, before winning the 2018 Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical for his performance as Tewfiq Zakaria in The Band’s Visit. Cheech Marin returns as Ramone. 11 1959 Chevrolet Impala Lowrider.

Michael Wallis as Sheriff. 12 1949 Mercury Club Coupe He has written seventeen books, including Route 66: The Mother Road, about the historic highway U.S. Route 66. He has received the John Steinbeck Award, the Arrell Gibson Lifetime Achievement Award from the Oklahoma Center for the Book, the Will Rogers Spirit Award, and the Western Heritage Award from the National Cowboy Hall & Western Heritage Museum. He has been inducted into the Oklahoma Writers Hall of Fame, Writers Hall of Fame of America, and the Oklahoma Historians Hall of Fame, and was the first inductee into the Oklahoma Route 66 Hall of Fame. Jenifer Lewis as Flo. 13 1957 Motorama show car. She has appeared in the films Beaches, Sister Act, What’s Love Got to Do With It, Poetic Justice, The Preacher’s Wife, The Brothers, Think Like a Man, Think Like a Man Too, Baggage Claim, The Wedding Ringer, Dead Presidents, Cast Away, and Hereafter. On television, she appeared in Strong Medicine, A Different World, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Girlfriends, and most recently, Black-ish.

George Carlin 14 Carlin died on June 22, 2008 at Saint John’s Health Center in Santa Monica, California, of heart failure at age 71. His death occurred one week after his last performance at The Orleans Hotel and Casino as Fillmore. 15 1960 Volkswagon Bus. Legendary stand-up comedian known for the Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television. Film roles include Car Wash, Outrageous Fortune, Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey , The Prince of Tides, Dogma, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, Scary Movie 3, Jersey Girl , and The Aristocrats. He also appeared on the television shows Shining Time Station and Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends. 16 I had the privilege of seeing him live on stage twice. Once twenty-five years ago in 1993 at Penn State, the other on his final tour in Sarasota Paul Dooley as Sarge. 17 1941 Willys model jeep He created and was one of the head writers on The Electric Company , produced by the Children’s Television Workshop (now called Sesame Workshop) for PBS in the United States. Dooley appewred as Speed in the original Broadway production of The Odd Couple. He appeared in such films as Sixteen Candles, Popeye, Raggedy Ann and Andy: A Musical Adventure, Breaking Away, and television shows, including My So-Called Life, Dream On, Grace Under Fire, thirtysomething, Curb Your Enthusiasm, ALF (playing Whizzer Deaver) and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.

Richard Petty as Strip “The King” Weathers. 18 Richard Petty’s 1970 Plymouth Superbird. He won the NASCAR Championship seven times, winning a record 200 races during his career, winning the Daytona 500 a record seven times, and winning a record 27 races (10 of them consecutively) in the 1967 season alone. Statistically, he is the most accomplished driver in the history of NASCAR. Lynda Petty 19 She died on March 25, 2014 at her home in Level Cross, North Carolina at age 72, after a long battle with cancer. as Lynda Weathers, Strip Weathers’s wife.

Guido Quaroni as Guido. 20 custom forklift, resembling an Isetta at the front. He is a visual effects supervisor, voice actor and Head of Software R&D at Pixar Animation Studios. He was one of the developers of solidThinking, a NURBS based 3D modeling and rendering software. Michael Keaton as Chick Hicks. 21 1978–88 General Motors G-Body such as a Buick Regal or Chevrolet Monte Carlo. Early films include Night Shift, Mr. Mom, Johnny Dangerously, and Beetlejuice. He played the title character in Tim Burton’s Batman and Batman Returns. He is also known for playing Adrian Toomes/The Vulture in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, beginning with Spider-Man: Homecoming and is set to reprise his role in Spider-Man: Far From Home. He has appeared in Clean and Sober, The Dream Team, Pacific Heights, Much Ado About Nothing, My Life, The Paper, Multiplicity, Jackie Brown, Herbie: Fully Loaded, The Other Guys, Robocop, Need for Speed, Spotlight, The Founder, and Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance).  22 Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a Musical or Comedy, the Critics’ Choice Award for Best Actor and Best Actor in a Comedy, and nominations for the Screen Actors Guild Award, British Academy Film Award, and Academy Award for Best Actor.

Katherine Helmond as Lizzie. 231923 Ford Model T. She’s best known for her roles on Soap and Who’s the Boss? Her film roles include Time Bandits, Brazil, Overboard, and Lady in White. Joe Ranft 24 Cars was the final Pixar film worked on by Joe Ranft who died in a car accident a year before the film’s release, aged 45. returns as Red. 25 1960s style fire engine

Jeremy Piven 26 On October 30, 2017, actress Ariane Bellamar accused Piven of several instances of sexual harassment and assault. Later that month, Anastasia Taneie, who worked as an extra on Entourage, alleged that Piven “confronted her in a dark hallway and groped her breast and genitals as he forcefully pushed her against a wall”.On November 27, 2017, CBS decided not to order a full season of Wisdom of the Crowd, following weak ratings and allegations of sexual harassment involving Piven. In January 2018, BuzzFeed published an article in which three more women accused Piven of “sexual misconduct or inappropriate behavior”. as Harv. 27 In the UK, the role is voiced by Top Gear’s Jeremy Clarkson He known for his role as Ari Gold in the comedy series Entourage, for which he won a Golden Globe Award and three consecutive Emmy Awards. He also starred in the British period drama Mr Selfridge, which tells the story of the man who created the luxury English department store chain Selfridges, and portrayed Spence Kovak on Ellen DeGeneres’s sitcom Ellen. Humpy Wheeler as Tex Dinoco. 281975 Cadillac Coupe de Ville He was the former President and General Manager of Charlotte Motor Speedway.

Bob Costas as Bob Cutlass. 29 1999 Oldsmobile Aurora announcer for the Piston Cup races and friend of Darrell Cartrip. He has been on the air for NBC Sports television since the early 1980s. He was the prime-time host of 12 Olympic Games, from 1992 until 2016. On February 9, 2017, Costas announced during the Today show that he had begun the process of stepping down from his main on-air roles at NBC Sports. Darrell Waltrip as Darrell Cartrip. 30 1977 Chevy Monte Carlo He’s a motorsports analyst, author, national television broadcaster, and former racing driver. He is also a three-time NASCAR Cup Series champion (1981, 1982, 1985) and a three-time NASCAR Cup Series runner-up (1979, 1983, 1986).

Tom 31 On November 3, 2014, Tom died, aged 77, in Belmont, Massachusetts, due to complications of Alzheimer’s disease. and Ray Magliozzi as Rusty and Dusty Rust-eze. 32a 1963 Dodge and a 1967 Dodge A100 They were the co-hosts of NPR’s weekly radio show, Car Talk, where they were known as “Click and Clack, the Tappet Brothers”. Their show was honored with a Peabody Award in 1992.

Richard Kind and Edie McClurg return as as Van and Minny, 33a 2003 Ford Windstar and a 1996 Dodge Caravan. Lindsey Collins and Elissa Knight play identical twins Mia and Tia, the identical twins, 34 1992 Mazda MX-5s (“Miatas”) and Mario Andretti, Dale Earnhardt Jr., Michael Schumacher, and Jay Leno play car versions of themselves. Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, Billy Crystal, John Goodman, and Dave Foley reprise their vocal roles from previous Pixar films during an end-credits sequence featuring automobile spoofs of Toy Story, Monsters, Inc., and A Bug’s Life.

Where in the World is John Ratzenberger? : John plays Mack, McQueen’s semi. 35 1985 Mack Super-Liner

Pizza Planet Truck: It can be see in the crowd next to the Elvis car. He gets a name: Todd.

A113: The train that Lightning outruns, also Mater’s license plate.

Critical Reception:

• William Arnold of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer praised it as “one of Pixar’s most imaginative and thoroughly appealing movies ever”
• Lisa Schwarzbaum of Entertainment Weekly called it “a work of American art as classic as it is modern.”
• Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film three out of four stars, saying that the movie “is great to look at and a lot of fun, but somehow lacks the extra push of the other Pixar films. Maybe that’s because there’s less at stake here, and no child-surrogate to identify with.”
• Peter Travers of Rolling Stone gave the film three and a half stars out of four, saying “Fueled with plenty of humor, action, heartfelt drama, and amazing new technical feats, Cars is a high octane delight for moviegoers of all ages.”
• Richard Corliss of Time gave the film a positive review, saying “Existing both in turbo-charged today and the gentler ’50s, straddling the realms of Pixar styling and old Disney heart, this new-model Cars is an instant classic.”
• Brian Lowry of Variety gave the film a negative review, saying “Despite representing another impressive technical achievement, it’s the least visually interesting of the computer-animation boutique’s movies, and — in an ironic twist for a story about auto racing — drifts slowly through its semi-arid midsection.”
• Robert Wilonsky of The Village Voice gave the film a positive review, saying “What ultimately redeems Cars from turning out a total lemon is its soul. Lasseter loves these animated inanimate objects as though they were kin, and it shows in every beautifully rendered frame.”
• Ella Taylor of L.A. Weekly gave the film a positive review, saying “Cars cheerfully hitches cutting-edge animation to a folksy narrative plugging friendship, community and a Luddite mistrust of high tech.”

Randy Newman and James Taylor received a Grammy Award for the song “Our Town,” which later went on to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song 36It lost to “I Need to Wake Up” from An Inconvenient Truth The film also earned an Oscar nomination for Best Animated Feature, but it lost to Happy Feet.

Sequels and Spin-offs: A sequel, titled Cars 2, was released on June 24, 2011, and a spin-off film titled Planes, produced by Disneytoon Studios, was released on August 9, 2013, which was followed by its own sequel, Planes: Fire & Rescue, released on July 18, 2014. A series of short animated films titled Cars Toons debuted in 2008 on Disney Channel and Disney XD. A second sequel, Cars 3, was released on June 16, 2017.

 

Video games: A video game of the same name was released on June 6, 2006, for Game Boy Advance, Microsoft Windows, Nintendo DS, Nintendo GameCube, PlayStation 2, PlayStation Portable and Xbox. It was also released on October 23, 2006, for Xbox 360 and November 16, 2006, for Wii.

 

Legacy: In 2012, Cars Land opened at Disney’s California Adventure. It’s a recreation of Radiator Springs, where the stores are retasked as restaurants, stores or rides.

 

• Radiator Springs Racers 37 It is the author’s humble opinion that Radiator Springs Racers is by far the best ride at the American Parks is a combination dark ride and slot car ride. Guests are driven through Ramones and Luigi’s before meeting Doc. The cars then race around the desert.
• Mater’s Junkyard Jamboree is a whip ride themed to Mater’s Junkyard.
• Luigi’s Rollickin’ Roadsters uses a trackless ride system. 38 The attraction, which officially opened March 7, 2016, replaced Luigi’s Flying Tires, the original attraction in this location.

My take: You know, some people really don’t care for this movie, well I plan to defend this film. It’s more than just about talking cars!

It’s about… okay, well first of all it’s about cars, but car culture. It’s about people like my dad who once rebuilt an engine. I think about days under the hood with my dad, learning about spark plugs, and dipsticks, and transmissions. I think about learning to change a tire. It’s also about that moment when an old classic car comes roaring down the road and it makes your head turn.

And yeah, it’s about racing too. It’s not everyone’s thing, including mine, but it’s important to a lot of people. And it’s not just about current NASCAR racing, but it’s about embracing the history of the sport.

It’s about Route 66, and how the automobile pushed us further west. It’s a world that exists as a pale shadow of its former glory.

For me it’s about watching your hometown die. Seeing what happens when the factories close down and the businesses flee. I used to take the bus from Erie to Penn State. My dad used to say that when you take the bus or the train you get to see where old milk trucks go to die, and every little town had the same dead downtown. When I mentioned this to Belle she said it was like the kitschy mid century Florida attractions that fell to ruin once Disney started to expand and Universal showed up. So for me, it’s all about when they fire up the neon lights and stroll down main street.

And toys! Of all the Disney properties, I see this franchise represented in the stores most of all. Because playing with cars is fun! Hot Wheels and Matchbox and remote control cars are just plain fun!

Next Week: We’re going to Meet the Robinsons