Life is what happens when you are making other plans~ John Lennon
An eye for an eye will make the whole world blind~Gandhi
The time is always right to do what is right~ Martin Luther King Jr.


Sunday, July 7, 2019

Toy Story (1995)

I love this movie. No matter how many times I watch it, I will still laugh at everything in the movie!
Summary
-A cowboy doll named Woody feels shoved aside when his owner Andy gets a new state-of-the-art space toy for his birthday





Cast
-Tom Hanks: Woody
-Tim Allen: Buzz Lightyear
-Don Rickles: Mr. Potato Head
-Jim Varney: Slinky Dog
-Wallace Shawn: Rex
-John Ratzenberger: Hamm
-Annie Potts: Bo Peep
-John Morris: Andy
-Erik Von Detten: Sid
-Laurie Metcalf: Mrs. Davis
-R. Lee Ermey: Sergeant
-Sarah Freeman: Hannah
-Jack Angel: Sharky

Did You Know?
-The neighbor kid, Sid Phillips, was said to have been inspired by a Pixar employee with the same name who disassembled toys to create bizarre toys and creations

-Tom Hanks, who voices Woody the Cowboy, did his dialogue recording during his breaks while filming Sleepless in Seattle and A League of Their Own. He didn't record his dialogue during Philadelphia or Forrest Gump because he felt that he shouldn't do comedy between serious roles.

-The thing that attracted Tom Hanks to the role of Woody was that when he was a child, he often wondered if his toys were alive and moved around when nobody was there.

-The carpet in Sid's house has the same hexagonal design as the carpet from the Overlook Hotel in The Shining

-The toolbox on top of the milk crate trapping Woody says "Binford" on it. This is a reference to the show Home Improvement. Binford Tools are the tools he used on the show

-At the Dinoco gas station, the Pizza Planet delivery boy asks for directions to West Cutting Boulevard. In real life, West Cutting Boulevard is the street that Pixar Animation Studios is located in Richmond, California

-When Sarge and his team are spying on the kids at Andy's birthday party, the kids who show up are the same character model of Andy except for different skin tones and different haircuts, clothes and accessories

-Originally, Pizza Planet was to be called Pizza Putt, a combination pizza parlor/mini-golf course

-The name of the kid, "Andy", was inspired by Andries "Andy" Van Dam, a Brown University professor of computer science and animation. He taught most of the makers of this movie

-Filmmakers have stated that the car chase scene towards the end of the movie was partially inspired by the toy train chase scene from English Claymation cartoon Wallace & Gromit, the episode "The Wrong Trousers". They used that as inspiration and took it a step further with using a remote control car being chased by a dog

-When the toy shark comes out of the toy box, wearing Woody's hat, saying "Look, I'm Woody! Howdy! Howdy! Howdy!", this is a reference to comic strip legend Gary Larson, known best for his hilarious Far Side Gallery of comics. The comic strip in reference shows a vulture wearing cowboy clothing and saying "Hey, everyone. Look at me, I'm a cowboy! Howdy! Howdy! Howdy!"
-Buzz Lightyear's name is inspired by Buzz Aldrin, the second man to land on the moon and light year, the amount of distance a beam of light travels in one year

-The idea of Andy favoring Buzz over Woody represents the cultural phenomenon of the 1950s. Kids would love playing with Western and cowboy toys. When the Russian satellite Sputnik went up, the space race between the US and the Soviet Union began, essentially leaving kids to favor space-related toys and want to be astronauts instead. This is addressed, literally, in Toy Story 2, by the character The Prospector

-Sid's dog Scud is a Staffordshire Bull Terrier
-R. Lee Ermey, who voiced Sarge, based his character off his character Gunnery Sergeant Hartman from the film Full Metal Jacket. In real life, R. Lee Ermey was a Gunnery Sergeant in the US Marine Corps. This is why most of the films he's in have him playing a military-type role.

-Sid's name was inspired by punk rocker and Sex Pistols member Sid Vicious
-Sid's dog is named Scud. This is a reference to the biological weapons carried by ballistic missiles used by Saddam Hussein during an attack on the US during the 1991 Persian Gulf War

-Unlike the dog in the film, Staffordshire Bull Terriers are very docile and gentle. They're non-threatening and very good family dogs

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