LEE UNKRICH: That movie represents for us, those who have been with the studio a long time, the beginnings of the studio. John [Lasseter] and Ed [Catmull] had dreams for making feature films using computer graphics when nobody thought that was anything that could be done. It wasn't realistic. And of course, we did it with
Toy Story and we're the first to do it so that film will always remain especially special to us even though we've made a lot of different films over the years.
Toy Story is the beginning of it all, not only for Pixar, but for the whole industry.
Of course when John asked me to direct
Toy Story 3 and Darla to produce it, it was a responsibility we didn't take lightly at all. We were really, really nervous about having to make a third
Toy Story for a lot of reasons and we're both so happy to be sitting here now on the other side of it. Thank God. [laughs]
For me, I'm so happy that people love the movie as much as they do and I'm happy it's done really well but ultimately the thing I'm most relieved at is that we didn't screw it up. We didn't make a film that sullied that experience in anyway. I know that the
Toy Story films are so special to a lot of people - they hold them very dear. We had people reaching out while we were making the movie saying, "Don’t screw this up!"
When we were making
Toy Story 2, we knew we were doing that against all odds. At the time we would say, "Well, what good second movies are there?" and there weren't very many. There's the
Godfather Part II and
Empire Strikes Back.
In the case of
Toy Story 3, it felt completely masochistic of us that we would take on doing a third one.
DARLA K. ANDERSON: But we both wanted to. We've been at Pixar for so long we both wanted to be custodians of these characters and the franchise.
LEE: Right. But it was honestly that fear of screwing it up on some level that helped make it good or at least primed it for success. We came into work every single day not resting on our laurels, trying to make it be the best movie it could possibly be.