Andrew Stanton reflects on his 30 years with ‘Toy Story’

Andrew Stanton has spent more than half his life with “Toy Story.” He was the lead writer on the first three, a script saviour on the fourth, and now, cowriter and co-director on “Toy Story 5.” “It wasn’t the plan,” he said in a recent interview with The Associated Press. “But it wasn’t not the plan.” Stanton has done other things than think about Woody and Buzz for the past 34 years. At Pixar, he made “A Bug’s Life” and two Oscar-winners: “Finding Nemo” and “WALL-E.” But “Toy Story” was the movie that started it all. The one he and his peers couldn’t believe they got to make. Everything that’s happened since, he said, has been gravy.

The new film, in theatres on June 12, is widely expected to be one of the summer’s biggest hits. The past two movies made more than a billion dollars and this one is likely on the same path. But while there is a business driving many of the decisions regarding the series, Stanton said they’ve also had a lot of time to think about where the story should go. It’s show business, yes, but they always try to put the “show” first.

Remember, there was an 11-year gap between “Toy Story 2” and “Toy Story 3,” and nine more years before the fourth movie. It was around 2008, when they’d finally cracked the story for three, and decided that it would be the end of their time with Andy as he went off to college, that Stanton started to think wider. “What if it went farther? What if it was a trilogy with one kid, closed that up, handed it off to another kid and started another one?” Stanton said. “That seemed really exciting to me because that’s the way life really goes with toys and mementos. They get passed down as hand-me-downs; they go from one kid to another.” One thing Stanton doesn’t love about the Toy Story movies are the numbers. Toy Story isn’t Rocky — it’s something else.

“They make it sound like old blockbuster thinking,” Stanton said. “The culture’s changed in the last 15 years. We all understand binging now. We all understand episodic stories. Not everything’s great for it, but some are and the Toy Story world is meant for that kind of lengthy thinking.”

Thus, four was the beginning of the Bonnie years. Though some of the actors were publicly saying it was the last Toy Story, as Woody went off with Bo Peep and the rest of the toys stayed with Bonnie, Stanton was pretty sure it was going to keep going. Bonnie’s arc wasn’t over yet. He just didn’t know they would come knocking on his door to figure out how. “I was skeptical at first because I didn’t know if where I would want to see it go would match with where the studio would want to see go,” he said. “I cautiously said, let me write the crappy first draft, because I always write a crappy first draft, but at least I’ll figure out myself where I’d like to see it go just as a fan, let alone somebody that’s been behind the camera with it. And if we agree on that fundamentally then can we start working on it and I’ll take the job.”

He also wanted a collaborator by his side, so Kenna Harris (“Ciao Alberto”) joined as cowriter and director. Harris was around the same age Stanton was on “Toy Story,” which, he said, felt like kismet. In Harris, he found someone who he could pass knowledge to and learn from as someone who grew up in a different era. Together, they found more commonalities than differences. “It’s really trying to find the things that are timeless, you know? Because childhood is gonna keep happening,” Stanton said.

The fifth film sees the arrival of a new thing that is taking Bonnie’s attention away from her toys: The Lilypad. Stanton kept checking with the lawyers to make sure it wasn’t copyrighted or a real thing. It wasn’t, they assured him.

Associated Press