Hey everyone. Capone in Chicago here.
For reasons even he may not be able to explain fully, actor John Ratzenberger has become something of a good luck charm/mascot for a little animation studio known as Pixar, having done a voice for all 11 of their feature films, including the highly anticipated TOY STORY 3, due in June. Just hearing his voice pop up in any of the Pixar works (from Hamm the piggy bank in the TOY STORY films to Underminer in THE INCREDIBLES to the Abominable Snowman in MONSTERS INC. to PT Flea in A BUG'S LIFE to the blob-like John in WALL-E to Mack the truck in CARS to last year's UP, in which he played the construction foreman) makes you feel like you're in a good place watching these films.
But long before Pixar made its earliest shorts, Ratzenberger was a successful character actors. If you look closely, you can spot him in the first two SUPERMAN movies (playing an air traffic controller in both), THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK, MOTEL HELL, RAGTIME, GANDHI (although his voice was dubbed by Martin Sheen), and HOUSE II. But Ratzenberger is perhaps best known for his more-than-10-year stint as Cliff Claven on one of NBC's most successful series, "Cheers." Two years after "Cheer" left the air, TOY STORY hit theaters, and Ratzenberger became the voice you love to listen for in animation. Aside from the occasional TV appearance, Ratzenberger's live-action work has been fairly limited in recent years, aside from a really beautiful lead performance in the independent film THE VILLAGE BARBERSHOP in 2008 (I encourage you to check it out).
In the midst of the SXSW insanity, I got the chance to speak with Ratzenberger by phone on the eve of the Blu-ray release of TOY STORY and TOY STORY 2, which came out this week. For reasons that may have had to do with what was going on at his end of the phone call, interviewing him was a bit of an extraction process, but I think I managed to pull out a few nuggets of gold from our talk. Ratzenberger actually seems like a really sweet guy, but for whatever reason he seemed a little guarded with some of his answers. See what you think. I, for one, was extremely excited about our talk. Enjoy John Ratzenberger…
John Ratzenberger: Hello!
Capone: Hi, John. how are you?
JR: Good, how are you?
Capone: Excellent. I’ve had the great pleasure over the years of talking to many of the main creative guys at Pixar, and I think they tell the best stories of any of the filmmakers I’ve ever met. They have these great stories about the evolution of the characters and the stories. How much of that do you really get to hear?
JR: Oh yeah, I get to hear a lot of it. Sure do.
Capone: Do you remember one in particular that just kind floored you about maybe an idea that they had that didn’t quite make it all the way to the final film?
JR: Well, I’ve actually got a copy of one of those ideas framed on my wall.
Capone: Really?
JR: Yeah, it was the first renderings of MONSTERS INC. characters. These are characters that…none of them made it into the movie, but these were the first sketches.
Capone: Wow. Are they sort of ones that didn’t make it in addition to the ones that did or are these the original ideas for the ones that were going to be the main monsters?
JR: The original ideas, the very first sketches.
Capone: Wow.
JR: So I’ve got that framed on my wall at home.
Capone: That’s fantastic. How did you arrive in this obviously very enviable position at Pixar? Was it just from being hired for TOY STORY or was there something before that?
JR: No, I pray a lot. I go to church and live a good clean life. How’s that? [laughs]
Capone: That’s a great answer, but there’s got to be something more to it.
JR: Well when you find out, let me know. I don’t know. I truly don’t. I have no idea.
Capone: With Andrew Stanton [director of MONSTERS INC. and WALL-E] making JOHN CARTER OF MARS for Disney, has he said anything to you about a role in that film for you?
JR: John [Lasseter] mentioned something the other day, about putting that together, and maybe that was the one he was talking about.
Capone: It’s live action or partially live action, that’s why I was wondering if they were going to include as either a voice or an actual live character this time around.
JR: I don’t know. That’s an Andrew question. I have no idea.
Capone: Clearly you are out in front of a couple of these Blu-ray releases recently. You must have some really lasting friendships with these filmmakers beyond just being an actor that they use in every movie, is that the case?
JR: I would like to think so, yeah.
Capone: It was interesting, when I saw the first two TOY STORYs when they re-released them in 3D last year, it kind of struck me that the animation was much more sophisticated I'd remembered. Did you get to see them in 3D? I would assume.
JR: See what? TOY STORY 3?
Capone: No, the first two films when they re-issued them in 3D last year.
JR: No, I haven’t. I have copies of them, but I haven’t seen them yet.
Capone: When they put them out in 3D last year, it was the first time I had seen them in a while, and I had kind of thought going in that they would look dated, and they didn’t at all. That was a terrific surprise.
JR: Yeah, because also you get caught up in the story. Every Pixar movie, I think they work harder on the story than they do with the actual rendering of it, because if the story’s not there, you could have the best actors and directors in the world and the film’s not going to be any good. With Pixar, they make sure the story works before they start anything else.
Capone: How far in advance do you find out something about a character you are going to be playing in one of the films before you actually have to go in and record a voice?
JR: Oh, within seconds.
Capone: Really?
[Both Laugh]
JR: I forget. know I’m just never really conscious of that. They will call and say, “Here’s a character we want you to play,” and I say “Where and what time?” They tell me, and I show up.
Capone: And with the new film, TOY STORY 3, they are adding all of these new characters. Do they every pull in more than one of the actors at a time when you are recording the voices to have everyone riff off of each other, or do you pretty much do that by yourself?
JR: You don’t need another person there to improvise with. That’s what I do. Mostly, you are in there by yourself. The only time I wasn’t was for UP with Ed Asner, but that’s the only time I had ever been in the studio with anyone.
Capone: So he was there when you did your part?
JR: Yeah, we did it together.
Capone: It’s always kind of fun to watch Pixar defy everyone’s expectations, especially with these last couple of films. Has it been fun to watch people who aren’t part of the production team speculate about how something like WALL-E or UP, which has very unusual main characters?
JR: Can you imagine going to any other studio with UP under your arm and saying, “Well, it’s a story about an 82 year old man who floats away in a house with a Cub Scout and goes to South America”? [Laughs] You wouldn’t even get a sentence out before they would throw you out. Pixar is the only group of people with the cajones to do this. Think about it. Or a rat that wants to be a chef in a Parisian restaurant--the story of a rat in a kitchen. The challenges they give themselves are almost like they do it and say, “Okay, let’s see how tough we really are. We can do this.” Nobody else does that and their string of successes--every single movie… How many are there now, 10 or 11?
Capone: I think TOY STORY 3 would be 11, yeah.
JR: They are huge successes every single one of them. There’s not studio in the history of history that has that record, and the beauty of Pixar is they don’t even acknowledge that they're Pixar. They look at every movie that they make as though it was the very first. If there’s a secret to their success, I think that plays a big part of it. They don’t acknowledge their own success; they just keep working as hard as they did on the first one.
Capone: That’s got to be a real interesting vantage point for you. You just know, even from the glimpses you might get of a film ahead of time, you just know that it’s going to be good while the rest of us wait year after year. It seems like people are almost waiting for them to fail, which is silly. They are the wrong studio to bank on a failure, I think.
JR: [Laughs] I saw TOY STORY 3 on Saturday, and it’s as good, if not better than the first two.
Capone: I can’t wait.
JR: They just keep knocking them out of the ballpark. It’s just the way they are. But also, they have the advantage of not living in Hollywood, so their conversations at the end of the workday don’t revolve around going out to the studios or who’s in town or some awards ceremony or “What’s going on with your agent?” When you go to the dry cleaners, you talk about dry cleaning. It’s not like the dry cleaner is trying to pitch you a sitcom idea. So they are much more in touch with their audience than a Hollywood-based production would be. They live right in the middle of who their audience is.
Capone: I like the idea that they also are a self-generating studio. They don’t rely much on story ideas coming from outside their main creative team.
JR: Yeah, they don’t. They don’t take any stories from the outside.
Capone: So you saw TOY STORY 3, tell me something about it that I don’t know already, other than it’s great, which apparently I know now. [Laughs]
JR: Yes, you can take my word on that. [laughs] See I come from the school of if someone goes to see a movie, and they say “It’s great” that’s all I want to hear. If they start telling me about the movie, then I’m going to know what it’s about. I don’t want to know what it’s about, so I’m not going to tell you. [Laughs] You’re just going to have to go.
Capone: Oh I will. I think I’m committed to that. In terms of Ham, is there something fun that you get to do that you didn’t get to do before with that character?
JR: Yeah, you get to see a little bit of the dark side in Hamm. He goes a little bit to the dark side. [laughs]
Capone: Speaking of dark side, having scene THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK a million times, it fun to see you tucked away in that film.
JR: That was my first action figure.
Capone: That’s terrific. Did you also get like a baseball-card version of yourself too, like a lot of the characters did?
JR: Yeah, people from time to time send me those to autograph. I might have a couple of them lying around somewhere.
Capone: You were also in the first two SUPERMAN movies, right?
JR: Yeah, one and two.
Capone: Playing an air traffic controller.
JR: Yeah, one was military, and then one was civilian.
Capone: So the character retired from the military and took a civilian job.
JR: I guess, what else are you going to do?
[Both Laugh]
Capone: I think it was about two years ago saw, and I actually saw it in the theater, a movie called THE VILLAGE BARBERSHOP that you did.
JR: Yeah, I was just told that that has four and a half out of five stars on Netflix.
Capone: That’s great. It’s wonderful just to see you in a lead role and it’s a terrific performance.
JR: Thank you.
Capone: I’m curious, because I know you haven’t done a whole lot of features recently, but I’m kind of curious what made you decide to do that film?
JR: When they presented me with the script, it was a small, independent film, but I knew that character. I knew exactly who the guy was and I just wanted to do it whether it was a success or not, because I knew that character, and anyway I thought it was a nicely done piece for a first-time director too. It was a roll of the dice, but I like how it came out.
Capone: Do you have any other live-action things on the horizon?
JR: Let’s see. I just did an independent called WHAT IF…, and it’s being edited now or whatever they are doing to it. Then I’ve got my own company. I actually just bought a couple of screenplays, and we will see what happens with those.
Capone: I didn’t realize you had a production company.
JR: There’s a lot about me you don’t know. [laughs]
Capone: There are tons I’m sure.
JR: Did they tell you about my foundation, Nuts And Bolts?
Capone: Yes, that’s the one about putting tools in the hands of children.
JR: Yeah, nutsandboltsfoundation.org.
Capone: How did that came about?
JR: Well I was a carpenter before I became an actor, and doing the show that I did for five years touring America called "Made In America," we toured around and watched people make things and how they were made. Well, we are running out of those people and we are running out of those people, because everybody bought into the idea that everyone’s got to go to college, and so now that’s why it’s harder to find a brick layer or an electrician or a plumber, so as the years go by, we have six to ten years is pretty much what people have figured out before lose our skilled laborers, and we become Albania. I know you are laughing now, but it’s true.
Capone: Not at all. My dad used to tell me the same thing. As a hobby that he learned from his father, he also used to build things. He would build grandfather clocks, and his father taught him how to do that. But he always talked about the depletion of craftsmen trades and how there weren’t as many people learning those skills.
JR: Those clocks are great. And he’s right. He’s absolutely right. There’s a construction company that’s one of the biggest in the United States, it’s nationwide, and I recently had a conversation with the president and he said that within 6 to 10 years, they won't exist. So when you talk about infrastructure, these are the people that build highways and airports and they will not exist. If they don’t exist, then a lot of those companies wont exist.
Capone: That’s almost hard to believe, especially with all of this emphasis on infrastructure in the stimulus bill.
JR: Let’s just talk. When you look at who's in charge, how many toolboxes do you think they have ever opened up? None in their entire lives, so they really don’t get it. It’s not like [the late Speaker of the House] Tip O’Neill is in charge, you know? That was a guy who you could see him on Saturday mornings fixing his own lawnmower. You certainly can’t imagine the woman with his job today [Nancy Pelosi] doing that.
Capone: You've entered some dangerous territory, sir. Let me ask you one last Pixar question here. You mentioned those MONSTERS INC. drawings that you have. Have you ever seen a character that you voiced go through an evolution in terms of look?
JR: Oh, sure.
Capone: Can you give me an example of one that you were remember that stands out?
JR: No. Nobody really stands out, but I go in and they let me into the secret chamber, and it’s fun. It’s great to be part of it. It’s like being invited into the coolest sandbox in the world and they share their toys well.
Capone: So you’ve seen it where they brought you in initially and shown you what your character is going to look like, but then when you see it again later it’s fairly different?
JR: Slightly different, yeah. They’ve got to start somewhere.
Capone: Sure. I remember Andrew Stanton showing me the evolution of the human characters in WALL-E, and how they went from these blob-like creatures to something a little bit more human looking, and that just floored me to see that they took it that far initially, the character that you played.
JR: Yeah, John and Mary.
Capone: John, those are all of the questions I had for you
JR: All right, well thank you.
Capone: Thanks a lot for taking the time out.
JR: Where are you located?
Capone: I’m based in Chicago, but right now I’m in Austin, Texas, at a film festival.
JR: Oh great. Well say “Hello” to Austin and thanks for the kind words.
Capone: I will do that. Thanks a lot.
JR: See you.
-- Capone
capone@aintitcool.com
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