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Tavis: John Lasseter is the chief creative officer of Pixar and Disney Animation, the very successful studio behind films you might have heard of, like “Toy Story,” “A Bug’s Life,” “The Incredibles,” “Finding Nemo.” Yesterday, Pixar’s latest project “Cars” received two Oscar nominations, including one for best animated feature, with John Lasseter serving as the film’s director.

The movie features the voices of Paul Newman, Owen Wilson, and others. Here now, a scene from, as if you haven’t already seen it, “Cars.”

[Clip]

Tavis: (Laugh) Still funny. Congratulations.

John Lasseter: Thank you so much.

Tavis: You have done it again.

Lasseter: Thank you.

Tavis: What is the secret?

Lasseter: The secret is really focusing on the story and the characters. I've done animation my whole life. That’s all I want to do. And it’s not about the technology, 'cause the technology these days could be so seductive, right? It’s about entertaining the audience with great stories and great characters. And I just fall in love with these characters.

They're like friends of ours. It takes four years to make one of these movies, and by the end of it, you feel like these characters you created are like friends or family members, or fellow Pixar employees.

Tavis: I've read about this. Why ... and I think I know a little bit of the answer, because of how long it takes to do a frame. But tell me more about why it takes so long, four years, to do a film that, an animation film?

Lasseter: At Pixar, we create all of our stories from scratch. They're not based on any books or anything. So, developing the story, the characters, and the world, it really takes a long time. About two and a half years is really devoted to story. And that’s creating a storyboard and a version of the movie using storyboard drawings.

We call it the story reel. And we’ll work and rework and rework. The reason we do this is it’s kind of like editing the movie before you go into production. Because animation, it’s so expensive to produce, you cannot do coverage. You can’t do multiple takes or extra scenes. You only can do exactly what’s gonna be used. So how do you know it’s gonna be right? Well, we kind of figure that all out in advance with the story reels. And it takes a long time to do that.

Tavis: I read somewhere, back to my point, it takes, like, I read it takes 17 hours to prepare one frame?

Lasseter: Yeah. Well, the final ... and with computer animation, after you do the design, the modeling, the animation, the color, the lighting, and so on, you send it off to the computer to compute the final high resolution image. And in “Cars,” the complexity of the world was so phenomenal, because the story needed that sense of history that this little Route 66 town had, that it took on average 17 hours, or something like that.

But some of them were much longer. Like, hundreds of hours a frame, and there’s 24 frames a second, just to do the final computing.

Tavis: This story comes courtesy of what? What’s the inspiration behind the “Cars” story?

Lasseter: Well, “Cars” is a very personal story for me. First, I grew up here in Los Angeles. My dad was a parts manager at a Chevrolet dealership in Whittier, California, where I grew up. My mom was an art teacher. So this is like doing animation with cars alive is like putting the two sides of my family together. But also it’s very personal, because of what the theme that this movie is about.

It’s about a character that learns that the journey in life is a reward. And that’s something that I learned personally. Throughout the whole 1990s, I directed Pixar’s first three movies. “Toy Story,” “A Bug’s Life,” and “Toy Story Two.” Each one took a total of four years to make, and they were all overlapped, right? During this time, I had four of my five sons.

And my wife, towards the end of it, said, 'cause I was going to work before my kids were up, and I came home after they'd gone to bed, and working so hard. And she said, “Be careful. One day, you're gonna wake up and your boys will have gone off to college, and you will have missed it.” After “Toy Story Two” was done, I took the summer off.

We bought a motor home, and we traveled for two months with absolutely no agenda around the United States. And just went, and lived every day to its fullest. It changed my life. And I came back from that journey; it was the summer of 2000. I said, “I know what I want this movie to be about. I know what I want “Cars” to be about. What I just learned. That the journey in life is a reward.”

Tavis: How’d the boys enjoy the trip? We know what Dad thought of the trip. How’d they enjoy it?

Lasseter: They loved it. You know what’s interesting, in our lives, I never really thought about it, but my sons having their mommy and their daddy 24-seven for two months, they didn’t have to share us with a soul, was fantastic. We got so close as a family. I want to do another one of these trips. I wanna just, like, stop the world and do one of these trips.

'Cause it just, it’s real. And you get so close as a family. You see this wonderful country, and meet all these great people. And it just inspired me. And that’s what this movie’s about. Route 66, it’s about this type of world that the modern world has passed by. I just love this movie.

Tavis: Well, I'm just thinking that if a trip with the boys and the wife, for two months every summer, brings about success and two Academy nominations, that ain’t the worst idea in the world. You better get going, man. (Laugh)

Lasseter: Yeah, I know. I know, what am I doing here?

Tavis: What are you doing talking to me, man? Go get the inspiration for the next project. One of the things that I've always appreciated about Pixar properties and projects is that, and maybe I shouldn’t say this on TV, show how sentimental I am. But these aren’t just films that kids enjoy.

Lasseter: That’s right.

Tavis: I've seen “Cars,” like, 10 times on airplane rides, and I just stop what I'm doing and watch it. How do you put together an animation project that works for kids and adults?

Lasseter: We make movies-

Tavis: Some would argue that I'm an adult, but that’s another issue.

Lasseter: Right, right. But we make movies for the kind of movies we like to watch. We’re reasonably intelligent up there at Pixar. But we love movies, and we love taking our kids to the movies. And to me, there’s so often I've been to a movie for my kids that I'm bored to death. And I said, “I don't want that to happen in our movies.”

Because there's a way - and I'm very proud of all the movies that I've directed are rated G. Yet they're really intelligent stories with great characters that adults love. And we have quite a following now with young adults who don't have kids, college students. And I think that’s great. Because you can tell, I think this world needs more family films that are really smart.

It’s not just about the cynicism, or getting humor from putting somebody else down. That doesn’t happen in a Pixar film. It’s about heart. The humor comes from the personality of the characters. And I think that’s what’s so neat. My greatest reward is to sit in an audience watching the audience our movies. 'Cause it’s so fun to hear kids laugh at one thing and the parents laugh at another.

Tavis: What makes a great story? You’ve made it very clear three times now that it’s the storytelling, the storytelling, the storytelling. What makes a great story?

Lasseter: Every story has what’s called a protagonist. The main character. What we look for is a story where the main character grows. It changes, becomes a better person, right? Whether it’s a toy, a bug, a monster, or a car, right? It doesn’t matter. It’s about that. That’s where the heart of the film comes from. Then you can populate that character with personality traits that’s very funny.

You could have other characters who are really funny. But at the core, it’s gotta be about the growth of the main character, and how he changes. That’s what really touches people. And I believe the heart of the film is something that people never forget. It will stay with them forever. And they will always love the characters, and they’ll always love the film if you can really grab that. And that’s the thing we look for.

Tavis: I can only imagine, John, when you have five boys, that if you're smart, and obviously you are, you gotta use these kids for research.

Lasseter: Absolutely.

Tavis: So, what kind of research tips are you getting from the boys when you're in the middle of a project or thinking about a story idea?

Lasseter: And my beautiful wife, Nancy. 'Cause I'm a guy, and I have five sons. So, I definitely use Nancy, too, for the female point of view.

Tavis: We are praying for Nancy. That’s a lot of testosterone in that house. (Laugh)

Lasseter: And what’s great is I talked about how we create early versions of the movie called story reels. And I always bring home early versions of our movies to show my family. And I sit and I watch them watch it. And it’s really interesting, because during a film, an audience, small or big, they're 100 percent honest. If they're into the movie, they're not moving, they're totally focused.

If the movie’s not holding them or they're confused, they fidget, they whatever. And my wife will ask questions, and all like that. So I know we don't have it. I know they're confused. I know something’s not there. Also, I listen to the kids after watching it. You know when you go to the movie theater with your kids, and you drive home, and if they loved the movie, they're repeating lines from the movie.

And if it didn’t really land with them, they're just quiet. Or they're talking about something else. And I listen to my kids after the fact. And certain lines from the movie have been saved because, like, the kids love it.

Tavis: Tell me how you go about the process of matching the voices with the characters. Because it seems to me, again, just as a viewer, that it’s terribly important to match the right voice, the right pitch, the right pace. That voice is so important to making that character come alive. So what’s the process for matching the right voice of the character?

Lasseter: In creating the story, we always have an idea of what the character is going to be. And so then we’ll start looking for actors whose personality and whose voice characteristic matches the kind of character we want. I also then look very much at how well this character or this actor can ad lib. Can make the part their own.

It takes four years to make our films, so spontaneity is not part of animation, typically. But it is in the recording studio. 'Cause the most important thing to me is for a character to be natural, right? When the lights dim and a Pixar movie starts, I don't want people to say, “Oh, was that Tom Hanks,” or whatever? I want them to be caught up in the movie, thinking about that character.

And so to me, of how big of a star they are, that’s not as important to me as how good of an actor they are, how their voices match, and how they can make the part their own.

Tavis: I guess the ... I'm fascinated by this. The challenge, I would think, though, is that there are certain peoples’ voices that are so known-

Lasseter: They're dead, yeah. That’s true.

Tavis: How do you?

Lasseter: You know what we do, this is an-

Tavis: I know Tom Hanks when I hear Tom Hanks.

Lasseter: Yeah. You know what we do is that we will take, as we’re casting a movie, we’ll take drawings or images of our character and then we will go and we’ll find scenes from movies of actors that we’re interested in, and take the picture away, and just put their voices behind the picture. So it’s very interesting when you take the face and the facial acting and the body acting away from certain actors and just listen to their voice against something.

Some actors, it seems to go flatter. Some actors it just jumps out at you. And that’s very important for us, to see if you can, and how it kind of matches. But always what happens is it’s a long process working with these actors, that we always record the dialogue before we do the animation. And what always happens is we get inspired by the actor.

The part changes slightly. Even sometimes the design of the character changes slightly. And it’s really interesting, 'cause Tim Allen, who played Buzz Lightyear, we first had the idea that Buzz Lightyear was kind of an over-the-top superhero that kind of knew of his own TV show and stuff. Tim came in and he performed it more like a regular guy.

Totally inspired us, and we changed the part to be more that this is a space cop. He’s totally unaware that he’s a toy. He is a space cop who crash landed on this planet. And he played it so honestly that that’s who he was. And it made the character that much better, because of course, he’s a toy, and he was totally deluded. But because of that earnest honesty that Tim Allen gave it, it really made the character fantastic.

Tavis: Let me ask you right quick before I run out of time, what’s the greatest value in recording the dialogue before you do the animation?

Lasseter: So you can be inspired by the performance, and the animators, we always videotape the actors, too. And so they get so much inspiration. Tom Hanks, in fact, in “Cars,” with Paul Newman and Owen Wilson, how much acting that we saw in their faces, it inspired the animators. And the little yellow Italian car, the Fiat Cinquecento, is voiced by Tony Shalhoub. The character’s name is Luigi.

And he acted from the top of his head to the tip of his toes, in front of a microphone for us. And we were so inspired by that. And that’s why the character gets up on his wheels all the time, and he’s just so animated. (Laugh) 'Cause that’s how Tony Shalhoub was for us.

Tavis: You know what?

Lasseter: He was fantastic.

Tavis: Hope you’ve enjoyed my four seasons on PBS, I quit. I'm going into animation. I am so turned on and so excited (laugh) by how ... just teasing, I’ll be back tomorrow night. Anyway, John, nice to have you here.

Lasseter: Thank you so much.

Tavis: And congratulations on the nominations, we’ll be watching, of course.

Lasseter: Thank you. We’re very excited, and I'm wearing the shirt just for you. My “Cars” Hawaiian shirt.

Tavis: I got your “Cars” shirt. Yeah, we’ve been seeing it.

Lasseter: You bet, baby.

Tavis: Thank you. (Laugh)

Lasseter: Thank you.