On a recent press tour for the television show, Last Man Standing, Tim Allen (voice of Buzz Lightyear) had been briefly chatting about how emotional the ending of Toy Story 4 is. Allen noted that the ending was hard for him to get through without getting emotional — Tom Hanks (voice of Woody) recently expressed a similar tone for the ending of the film, noting it is, “a moment in history.”
In an interview on Chris Evans’ BBC Radio 2 show, Chris noted that he and Tom Hanks had a planned 10-minute interview ended up going on for over an hour. As part of the conversation about Tom’s book and typewriters, they chatted very briefly about the fourth entry to the Toy Story franchise. The full interview will be released next week on Chris’ show, but he pre-released the Toy Story 4 clip yesterday.
To hear the ending defined as historical is quite profound and has our minds racing. Is it related to the real-life passing of Don Rickles (voice of Mr. Potato Head), or Woody not being able to find Bo Peep (the early plotline), or something else entirely?
Our transcription of the chat is below, or you can listen to the discussion on Chris’ show at BBC Radio (the snippet starts at 1:46:15 — the link has been removed since the episode is no longer available).
Tom Hanks Interview Transcription:
“It was the first time we were going to be recording the end of the movie and Toy Story [4] is going to have an impactful ending. The way you record Toy Story is…you’re in a room with the team that has created it and when I went in for my last day of recording I wanted to have my back to them because usually you’re facing them so you can look right up and you can talk about it. But, I didn’t want to see them and I didn’t want them to…I wanted them to pretend they couldn’t see me. When I realized what they were going for, yeah, I realized, ‘Oh, this is a moment in history’.
Here’s the thing about those geniuses that are there at Pixar and everybody that has ever been involved with any of the toy Toy Story [films] think that they invented something there and the extraordinary truth about them all [the films]…not only has the technology, but the emotional range of those movies has become more and more deep and profound and affecting. And, it’s almost a curiosity of ‘Why it is so?’ because they’re toys, you know? [laughs] And yet, it’s the power I think of the connection that we all have as children, but also as the creators of the world that our toys inhabit. It is a very, very, very special collection of movies that have been put together that I think hits each one of us in a completely individual way. It’s like we carry all of our entire emotional lives in the memories of our own individual toys.”
I wonder why Tom didn’t want the Pixar employees to see him record some of these lines and wanted it to be presented without feedback like normal? What was it about this scene that is choking up Tim Allen and Tom Hanks? Leave a comment below or chat about it with other fans in the Pixar Post Forum thread about Toy Story 4 interviews.
Pixar Post — T.J. & Julie
