| rdfs:comment
| - Toy Story began its life as an extension of Pixar's short Tin Toy, which featured Tinny, a mechanical drummer who tries to find his way in a baby's play room. The original plot called for Tinny to butt heads with a ventriloquist's dummy. Ultimately, Tinny was found to be too immobile for the storyline and he was developed as a "space toy", first named Lunar Larry. His character was eventually renamed Buzz Lightyear, in honor of American Naval aviator and NASA Apollo astronaut Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin. The ventriloquist's dummy gradually evolved into a pull-string cowboy doll named Woody, in honor of Western actor Woody Strode. Woody's character was gradually made more edgy during production, at the suggestion of Jeffrey Katzenberg, head of Disney. Pixar knew this was the wrong decision, but wen
|
| abstract
| - Toy Story began its life as an extension of Pixar's short Tin Toy, which featured Tinny, a mechanical drummer who tries to find his way in a baby's play room. The original plot called for Tinny to butt heads with a ventriloquist's dummy. Ultimately, Tinny was found to be too immobile for the storyline and he was developed as a "space toy", first named Lunar Larry. His character was eventually renamed Buzz Lightyear, in honor of American Naval aviator and NASA Apollo astronaut Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin. The ventriloquist's dummy gradually evolved into a pull-string cowboy doll named Woody, in honor of Western actor Woody Strode. Woody's character was gradually made more edgy during production, at the suggestion of Jeffrey Katzenberg, head of Disney. Pixar knew this was the wrong decision, but went ahead and complied with the requested script changes. Even Tom Hanks, Woody's voice actor, expressed his disapproval with the changes to Woody's character, going as far as shouting "This guy is a jerk!" in the middle of delivering one of his lines for the story reel. On November 19, 1993, a day that was later known at Pixar as "Black Friday," Pixar screened a mock-up of the film to Disney, who had agreed to own and distribute the film. The executives' reaction was overwhelmingly negative, and further work on Toy Story was shut down until writers had written with an acceptable script. Foreshadowing would become common in later Pixar films during production meltdowns, John Lasseter and the writers worked for months on a to rewrite the script before Disney approved further work on voice and animation. The shutdown had been terrifying for Pixar, but it ultimately showed both parties to trust the storytelling talents of the Pixar writers, and let Disney handle most corporate and marketing matters. Woody's final character was redefined as the the benevolent, wise, and popular leader of Andy's toys instead of their tyrannical boss, but he maintained a lot of pride in being Andy's favorite toy. The original "support group" style discussion was replaced with a less juvenile and awkward staff meeting, to further emphasize the toys' approval of Woody's leadership and make it clear to Disney that Pixar had done much to improve his image. Buzz's character was also tweaked a little bit as well. Pixar altered his lines to make him seem more deluded and convinced that he is an actual Space Ranger. This allowed for more gags and comedic opportunities than was possible with the previous script and allowed buddy-comedy style interactions for the first time.
|
![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)