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Lightning McQueen <carsmovie>

	ROUTE 66!	1189 days ago
	DIRECTOR JOHN LASSETER & THE PIXAR TEAM GET THEIR KICKS (AND INSPIRATION) ON ROUTE 66 AS THEY CREATE THEIR NEW ANIMATED FILM CARS Route 66 is the most famous road in the world. Two thousand four hundred and forty eight miles long, the highway crosses eight states and three time zones as it wends its way from Chicago right to Los Angeles and the shores of the Pacific. Opened in 1926, the Main Street of America as Route 66 soon became known, was the way west for the weary migrants of the Great Depression, the route of troop convoys during World War 2, and the ultimate road trip of the fifties, that prosperous era of gleaming gas-guzzlers, neon-lit motels and friendly mom and pop diners. Long since bypassed by the multilane freeways that now straddle America, Route 66 is these days enjoying a revival of interest among tourists from around the world and has earned the iconic, all-American status of apple pie or Elvis. Still emblematic of a restless nation’s yearning for the open road and its love affair with the motor car, Route 66 has been celebrated over the years by writers such as Jack Kerouac and John Steinbeck and famously crooned about by Nat King Cole in the hit song Get Your Kicks on Route 66. Eighty years after its birth, the veteran Route 66 has now been cast in another starring role, this time in Cars, the latest animated film from Pixar, the do-no-wrong company behind such hit movies as Toy Story, Monsters Inc, Finding Nemo and The Incredibles. Directed by John Lasseter, Cars is the tale of a hotshot animated stock car called Lightning McQueen who’s on his way to a big race when he gets stranded in the sleepy, faded town of Radiator Springs and has to learn a few valuable lessons about taking life at a more leisurely pace. Though you won’t find the fictional Radiator Springs on a map, it’s no coincidence that the town still happens to be home to a colorful collection of wise, funny and eccentric automotive characters who bear an uncanny resemblance to some real-life, human counterparts along the present-day Route 66. Nor is it by chance that Radiator Springs’ faded motels, pokey shops, and peeling paint recall the somewhat forlorn aspect of a hundred other modest little towns along present-day Route 66, all seemingly lost in the same melancholy dream of better days long since gone. John Lasseter and the crew of Cars took many trips along Route 66 during the production of the film and became fast friends with Route 66 personalities like good ol’ boy Dean Walker, who has the uncanny ability to turn his feet 180 degrees, and the ebullient Dawn Welch, chief dishwasher, chef and proprietor of the Rock Café in Stroud, Oklahoma. Dawn has more than a passing similarity to Sally, the sleek but savvy Porsche who becomes one of Lightning McQueen’s best friends in Cars. And grizzled feet turning Kansas resident Dean Walker, who talks with such a southern drawl you feel you might need an interpreter, was the inspiration for Cars’ rusty but trusty tow truck Mater, who has a special knack for reversing. At the same time as meeting some of the route’s best-known personalities, production designers Bill Cone and Bob Pauley took close to 10,000 photographs along Route 66, capturing images of abandoned motels and gas stations, multi-colored sunsets and faded advertisements on crumbling brick walls to take back to Pixar as source material for the look of the film. For good measure they even collected multiple soil samples along the way to make sure that even the dust in the film would be of the right hue. The initial idea for Cars came to John Lasseter while on a road trip with his family shortly after the release of Toy Story 2. “We meandered along so happily and it really made me think about the idea that it’s the journey that’s important in life, not the destination,” says Lasseter today. With the story of the film taking shape in his mind, it was in 2001 that the director hit the road again and took his key creative team on a nine-day trip along Route 66. Historian and Route 66 expert Michael Wallis – who also ended up lending his voice to the Sherriff of Radiator Springs -- lead a convoy of four white Cadillacs on the expedition and provided a running narrative via walky-talkies along the way. “The first day I was out on the road, I couldn't wait to call my wife and tell her, “I now know what it's like to be with 10 Michael Wallises!” the author says, “because the Pixar folks love to do what I do, which is to stop all the time. We stopped every 200 yards,” Wallis adds with a chuckle. “We stopped to move turtles off the road. We stopped to wade in the fields of wheat and sunflowers. We stopped to examine road kill up close and personal. It was wonderful!” Says production designer Bob Pauley: “Typically, we’d go into a town, and we’d hear all these wonderful stories from the locals. We’d soak it all in while getting a haircut at the barbershop, or enjoying a sno-cone, or taking the challenge to eat a 72-ounce steak, as we did at one restaurant in Texas. At the Eisler Brothers Store in Riverton, Kansas, the proprietor Scott Nelson made us a sandwich and then sung us an acapella version of Get Your Kicks on Route 66!” One fateful stopover was at the Rock Café in Stroud, Oklahoma (population: 2,500) where Lasseter and his team pulled into the parking lot, settled into the diner’s snug booths and ordered one of every item on the menu. Today sketches and doodles drawn on napkins by Lasseter and co. (including one of Buzz Lightyear: “Best to everyone at the Rock Café”) take pride of place on the walls of the establishment and proprietor Dawn Welch finds herself on the verge of the sort of unlikely celebrity that comes with inspiring your own cartoon character (and having a soft toy in stores throughout the world). “A lot of people ask me what I'm gonna do when I'm famous,” says Dawn, who’s 37 years old, has brilliant green eyes and a musical laugh. “Well, I think I'm gonna wash more dishes and cook more food. I mean, I have a shift starting right now.” Says Dawn: “The first time [the Pixar people] were here, while we cooked they asked me to pitch them stories, to tell them what it's like, what we do every day, about the tourists and the people who pass through. They just drug information out of me for three hours straight.” Lasseter and the other filmmakers returned several times afterwards and Dawn subsequently learned that she was the inspiration for one of Cars’ central characters, hotel-owner Sally. “She’s a Porsche,” says Dawn with a grin. “I keep reminding my husband of that bit. She has an easygoing attitude. She certainly doesn’t care much about money, which is definitely how I am, ‘cos money’s never made a lot of people happy. But the biggest thing I think is that Sally is a sort of fount of wisdom and good advice – like she’s the moral center of the town. Well, you’d have to know me personally for that, but I really don’t think you’d want to throw me in front of your kids and say, you know, this is your moral lesson for today!” The Rock Café opened 66 years ago – the rock used to build it cost $5 -- and has been in operation on and off ever since (Dawn took over 13 years ago) with a menu that has changed little over the years (our recommendation: Buffalo Burgers and a side order of Fried Green Tomatoes). Back in the day, the little town of Stroud had 15 or 16 restaurants and as many gas stations along its main street, but the Rock Café is now all there is alongside a small grocery and assorted banks and insurance agencies. Barking dogs make more noise than the traffic. Even Dawn’s years at the helm of the Rock Café have seen their ups and downs. Back in 1999 Stroud was hit by a huge tornado that destroyed the town’s outlet mall and drove several of the larger businesses to shut up shop, so the townspeople clearly hope for a boost from the release of Cars’ and from Dawn’s celebrity. Dawn’s two children are particularly excited. “Since that first night that John Lasseter came here, and we all talked for hours, I have always known that this film is gonna impact Route 66 like nothing else has ever impacted Route 66,” Dawn says. “I mean, my kids watch Toy Story from here to eternity, and it’s going to be the same with Cars…. And it’s not as if we couldn’t all do with a little extra help. I mean, one of the things I told John Lasseter when I first met him, was that there were periods in the first few years here when we would be wondering, well, let's see, we really need French fries, but can we afford French fries, you know?” Crossing America in the days before Route 66 was a potentially hazardous affair. There were roads, but they weren’t always connected and they weren’t always paved: some were nothing but wooden planks. Crossing the Mojave Desert was a real risk and, as it was, it took 12 years to pave all of Route 66, not least because some towns stoutly resisted the march of progress (preferring to make money from hauling travelers’ cars out of the mud instead). These days, in theory at least, it’s possible to drive across the United States without even stopping and Route 66 has been bypassed by a system of interconnecting interstates – 55, 44, 40, 15 and 10 – that rush traffic along a seemingly endless and unvarying sea of asphalt punctuated only by lookalike gas stations and generic fast food restaurants (which, ironically enough, will probably be giving away Cars-themed toys this summer). No wonder perhaps that Route 66 is generating more interest then ever from documentary makers, historians, students and travelers the world over. “It’s a slice of Americana, a bit of romance and history and a piece of our heritage,” says historian and Pixar consultant Michael Wallis, whose book Route 66: The Mother Road has been an unexpected bestseller and is an “unabashed love letter” to the people who live along the highway. “And interest in Route 66 has grown beyond my wildest dreams. You drive any stretch of the road today and you meet tourists from the UK, from France, from throughout Scandinavia, especially Norwegians, from New Zealand, Australia, and Japan of course, from Brazil, from throughout Canada, and, of course, domestic travelers, from the United States. It’s a way of experiencing history at its best and worst. When I look at that road, I see America warts and all. And it's not just about nostalgia. These roads and communities are still very much alive, very colorful and fluid.” Talk to Wallis for just a few minutes and you get recommendations for a lot of sights to take in along Route 66: the Round Barn in Arcadia, the Regal Reptile Ranch in Texas, the Chief Yellowhorse Indian Trading Post in Arizona, and so on. And the picture he paints of different stretches of his beloved road is worthy of a postcard or at least a tourist brochure. “West of Oklahoma City,” he enthuses, “the sky starts opening up. The soil changes color. And it becomes more spacious all the way across the panhandle, and northern New Mexico and Arizona, where you have these great mesas, and the cobalt blue sky, and ribbons and ribbons of neon lights on all the motels, then, of course, the great Mojave Desert….” So should Cars inspire today’s filmgoers, Wallis is all for you coming in search of the fictional Radiator Springs. “Absolutely!” he says. “All along Route 66 you’ll recognize lots of things from the film and you’ll meet the people too. There are lots of Radiator Springs’ out there and lots of Sallies and Maters. It’s sort of like a scavenger hunt. They just need to be found.” And if, alas, your budget won’t stretch to a trip across the Atlantic, then just sit back and enjoy John Lasseter’s loving tribute to America’s favorite bit of asphalt. According to Wallis, it’s almost as good as a two-hour spin on the real thing. “I’ve taken part in lots documentaries, but Cars is better. It gets right to the heart of things. At the start of the film there’s this broad shot of the huge interstate, which might as well be an airport runway, slicing through this beautiful mesa, right through it, just tearing through it, and then you see, paralleling it, the little winding Route 66 meandering its way to Radiator Springs and it all becomes clear. I think it was Blake who said that the roads of improvement are straight roads, but the roads of genius are crooked. Route 66 is crooked.”
	posted by Lightning McQueen

5 Comments:

	Dave B said...	1189 days ago
	dats too fuckin long to read!!!!!!!!!!
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	Neeraj Sharma said...	1169 days ago
	to fuckin long it will be good anyway not
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	(The Little Emo Slut) said...	1077 days ago
	why did u write this Ligthing No one is going to read it
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	Ross said...	1040 days ago
	I read it.
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	Hannah said...	639 days ago
	Thank you i read it all and its cool if you like cars as much as i do its fun to read when i'm a bit older i am going to ride over Route 66 i think is great because over the years driving has become something to gain time not to mave a good time and i think eveyone should slow down every once and a while. Thanks!
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