The toy business began to drive the [Lucasfilm] empire. It’s a shame. They make three times as much on toys as they do on films. It’s natural to make decisions that protect the toy business, but that’s not the best thing for making quality films.
But I think the thing I'm proud of about the film is that there aren't many films - either independent films or mainstream Hollywood films - that are like this; it's of its own times, and it's the film Mike Nichols wanted to make.
I think my mom is the inspiration of me wanting to do film and TV and be an actor because she loved film so much. She loved, like, horror films and action films, so growing up, she loved watching all the Charles Bronson films and all the westerns.
With 'Toy Story,' which is a fantastic film but is essentially animation, you get to make all your decisions beforehand. 'Jumanji' is shot much like any other action film.
I will tell you that the ego in me would love to play the lead. I would have loved to have been Buzz Lightyear, or Woody in "Toy Story," "Toy Story 2" but they hire celebrities for that, well-known people.
I got used to being a writer. To compare it to teaching - I taught for twenty-five years; for the first two or three years it was heady. I was discovering that I could do something and do it well. Be useful to people. It was exhilarating, sort of like the first two weeks of being in love with somebody, and then it becomes like the third bite of pizza. The first bite is wonderful. The second bite is not disappointing. The third? Meh. You get used to it.
I made a commitment to myself: that I wanted to be an actress, and I wanted to do films that make a difference. Whether it makes someone laugh, or it has a moral to the story - it doesn't have to be an ethical film, but it has to move people. If it doesn't excite me, it's not worth doing - it's better to work on myself and my own life and wait until another great thing comes along.
We hope 'Toy Story 3' looks amazing but still retains the character design of the first film. I like to think it looks like 'Toy Story' would have looked back then had we had the skills and the technology.
Toy Story 1, 2, and 3, to us, are some of the greatest films ever made, and each is better than the one before it. But if you go to Toy Story 6, they all end up decomposing in a trash heap somewhere.
Most young people make films to be accepted, to be discovered, when in fact that was the last idea with the group I went to film school with. To be discovered was not our intention. Our intention was to tell our story our way, and make our own mistakes and learn from film to film.
I always loved watching films. I've always been active, pretending I was a Power Ranger or a Ninja Turtle. I remember watching 'Toy Story.' I think that was one of my first movies.
Buddha' is my third film but I chose to release 'Hate Story' first because I wanted commercial success.
It's terrifying. Women make their first film, their second film, and then it's like a nightmare, right, to make the third or fourth? I mean, it's almost like men can have three films in a row that don't do that well and keep on going.
I really personalized the pressure to make a good 'Toy Story' film. It made me physically sick at the beginning. Literally, I wanted to throw up in the morning because I was just so racked with stress.
I love Pixar films; I think they're the greatest filmmakers in the world. I love Disney films. 'Tangled,' was great. I loved 'How to Train Your Dragon,' the Dreamworks film. But it's not for me. I don't want to make a film for families; I want to make adult films.
The films that I loved growing up were the science fiction films from the late seventies and early eighties [films], which were more about the people and how they are affected by the environments that they are in. Whether they are sort of futuristic or alien of whatever they are; that was the science fiction that I loved. So that is what we tried to make, the sort of film that felt like those old films.