Friday, June 18, 2010

SUNNYSIDES: Allow me to be Wikipedia for a moment, so that I can disambiguate. Sunnyside is a wonderful book by Glen David Gould, which, as I mentioned a few threads back, is both riotously funny and occasionally heartbreaking. It takes its title from Sunnyside, the Chaplin two-reeler, which in Gould's telling is a schizophrenically ambitious and distracted piece that Chaplin finished in a rush for reasons I won't spoil, should you make the wise choice to read the book. Chaplin's film, in turn, half-accidentally appropriates the name Sunnyside from the estate where Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford first fell in love.

Toy Story 3 is out today. I hope to see it soon (Rotten Tomatoes gives it the rare 100% rating), but haven't yet. That means that all I know of the plot is what I've read in the papers. If you've been avoiding the papers, stop now, because I'm going to mention the broad outline.



In Toy Story 3, Andy, the toys' loving owner, goes off to college. The toys are shipped off to a day care, which at first seems idyllic, but then turns menacing.

The day care center's name is Sunnyside, and I don't think that's coincidental. From Lasseter on down, Pixar is filled with people who view themselves as heirs to the Hollywood canon, and they take their lineage seriously. The use of a name like Sunnyside is almost certainly a reference to old Hollywood, and it may even be a nod to the formation of United Artists (which Chaplin formed with Fairbanks, Pickford, and D.W. Griffith shortly after Sunnyside), whose founding as an artists-first independent studio predicted Pixar's later rise. Pixar's movies are filled with allusions, many throwaway, but some purposeful, like the nod to stop-motion monster auteur Ray Harryhausen in the sushi bar in Monsters Inc., or the cameo of Disney animation legends Ollie Johnston and Frank Thomas in The Incredibles just as Disney acquired Pixar as a corporate entity and Pixar effectively acquired Disney animation as a creative one.

So it's hard, really hard, not to read institutional analogies into the very plot of TS3. The Toy Story franchise, after all, is as closely associated with John Lasseter as any movie is with any artist. Lasseter made the first TS over a constant hum of skepticism from the industry and instantly (or as instantly as something can be that takes a half-decade to create) turned Pixar from a technology supplier and occasional ad contractor into a Hollywood gorilla (and technology supplier). Legend has it that Pixar made TS2, one of the most acclaimed animated films of all time, only to defend Lasseter's beloved characters from a cut-rate Disney-produced sequel (Disney owned the characters); there are some suggestions that the same kind of protectiveness explains why Pixar stuck with Disney rather than forging an alliance with Fox. Lasseter's office is famously crammed with Pixar toys, but he also maintains (or at least maintained, last time I was there) a large trophy case brimming just with counterfeit knockoffs of Woody and Buzz. Those two dolls are Lasseter's toys, not Andy's.

TS3 essentially was launched as a result of, and amid the consummation of, the Disney-Pixar merger. Lasseter is not directing it -- he's too busy running Disney Animation, Pixar, and Disney's theme parks -- but he co-wrote it and turned it over to Pixar veteran Lee Unkrich (who co-directed TS2). I know nothing of the development of TS3, but how could its creators have been thinking of anything but Lasseter's graduation to greater corporate responsibility, and the loss of his ability to play with his toys, when they wrote Andy into college? And how could the ominous Sunnyside day care be anything but a manifestation of Pixar's (read: the toys' own) fears of being trapped within Disney's soulless, creativity-deadening corporate bureaucracy? I don't know how TS3 ends -- if Andy saves the day like Lasseter did by ensuring Pixar's independence in the merger. I do find it fascinating that one can -- can, not must -- see what will certainly be one of the most popular children's movies of all time as the first corporate roman-a-clef.

19 comments:

  1. Joseph J. Finn4:12 PM

    Not having ever seen Sunnyside...now I'm wondering if Sunnydale, from the Whedonverse, is a deliberate homage (though there is a Sunyvale in CA).

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  2. isaac_spaceman4:23 PM

    Sunnydale just seems like a made-up name to me, maybe a transposition of Archie Comic's Riverdale to California (that seems to be the most likely archetype Wheedon was playing against).  Sunnyside is a common enough name to be accidental in most cases, but very little that Pixar does is accidental. 

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  3. Adam C.4:30 PM

    Fascinating piece, Isaac -- makes me want to see TS3 all the more. 

    One completely nitpicky correction:  "claymation monster auteur Ray Harryhausen" should more accurately read "stop-motion animation monster auteur Ray Harryhausen."  Harryhausen's stop-motion creature work relies more on models over armatures that are integrated with live footage (The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, the Sinbad films, the original Clash of the Titans), and is quite a bit different from the work of clay animation artists like Will Vinton (Adventures of Mark Twain, California Raisins), Nick Park/Aardman Studios (Wallace & Gromit) and Art Clokey (Gumby, dammit).

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  4. isaac_spaceman4:37 PM

    You're absolutely right -- inexcusable bonehead error.  Will fix. 

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  5. Joan H8:55 PM

    Brilliant, Isaac.  I've just come from seeing TS3 and I won't divulge any plot points -- I'll just say it's one of the best films I've ever seen.  It's deeply satisfying to see this trilogy come to such a conclusion. 

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  6. Just got back from TS3.  Says the boyfriend, recalling our experience at Up last year:  "I took you to a Pixar film last year, and you cried.  I took you to a Pixar film this year, and you cried.  Can we officially call this a trend?"  Yes.  Yes, we can.

    Anyway, it was a great film.  Saw it in 3D, and now want to see it in 2D to see which I like better.  I will come better prepared in terms of kleenex, however.

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  7. spacewoman2:34 AM

    Well, what did you expect?  I imagine you cried during the Jessie/Sarah MacLachlan piece during TS2 too. 

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  8. It is distinctly possible, although I did manage to watch that sequence this week without becoming a bawling mess.  I'm not sure that I'll ever be able to get through that early stretch in Up without sobbing.

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  9. calliekl2:29 PM

    Definitely bring the tissues. I will also not spoil, except to say that tissues are necessary.

    Also, don't leave before the credits start. There's stuff during the credits, but there's nothing after. I saw a bunch of people leave too early, and they missed some great stuff.

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  10. Jenn.5:28 PM

    Have y'all seen that there is a Pixar Wiki site?  Here's the link to the home page.

    I am not directly linking to the Toy Story 3 page on that site, as it does contain a plot exposition chock full of spoilers.  But reading on that page, further down below the plot exposition, there is a piece on "development" that states that Pixar merging with Disney saved Toy Story from ending up with a very different, non-Pixar third installment.

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  11. Maddy6:41 PM

    I first saw the original Toy Story at my neighbor's house, at around age four or five.  He had a Buzz Lightyear toy that I coveted, but I rarely got to play with it because he loved it so much.

    The second movie came out when I was seven.  I saw it in a packed movie theater with my grandparents, who probably laughed as much as I did.

    I saw Toy Story 3 today.  Ten plus years later, Andy is preparing to head off to college and so am I.

    Yeah, I cried.

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  12. spacewoman9:44 PM

    Oh, man, I am old.

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  13. isaac_spaceman9:44 PM

    Oh, man, I am old.

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  14. Yeah, I cried.  And I will caution parents that even though this is G-rated, the themes in the movie aren't very kid-friendly and there is one sequence in particular that seems to me likely to give children the willies.

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  15. Yep.  I was a bit stunned at the end of the movie that they managed to maintain the G-rating given that one scene that I strongly suspect you're referencing.

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  16. Stacie from St. Louis1:23 PM

    Dammit, people.  Now I have to go and see this film. 

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  17. I was surprised that my 6.5-yo didn't find that scene terrifying.  She was MUCH more moved by the sadness of the end (and, in particular, the thought of going away to college).  Would that she still felt that way when the time comes...

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  18. I would just like to add that I live in Sunnyside, Queens.

    (And yes, I also cried at TS3 and loved it.  We saw it at the Ziegfeld Friday night and before the movie started, they brought out these guys in Woody and Buzz costumes - really good ones, actually. But since it was the 9:45 pm showing, there were hardly any kids there.  Which didn't stop the adults from popping up to take pictures of themselves with Woody and Buzz.)

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  19. Adam C.9:58 AM

    And by the way, having seen it yesterday with the kids, I think Isaac's pre-viewing interpretation of the Sunnyside reference holds up very, very well.

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