Monday, June 04, 2007

Freeze Frame! - Andy's Bookshelf

The Pixar folks are notorious for putting in-jokes and company references in their films. One of the earliest examples of this is a tribute mash of sorts in the original Toy Story, released in 1995. Near the beginning of the movie when Woody is speaking to all the toys, a close inspection of the bookcase behind him reveals books whose titles and authors pay homage to some of Pixar's short films and also to some of the company’s staffers of that time period.

Adventures of Andre and Wally B. refers to John Lasseter’s experimental film made at the Lucasfilm Computer Graphics Project before it was spun off to become Pixar.

Smyrl Smyrl Twist and Twirl refers to Eliot Smyrl, primarily a modeling artist whose Pixar credits include Toy Story, A Bugs Life, Finding Nemo and Cars. The author of the book is L. Money, a reference to Smyrl’s wife Laura.

Scooter Run has no immediately obvious connection other than to possible studio extracurricular activities. However, the author credit of Aupperle refers to Larry Aupperle who worked on the lighting team for Toy Story and was a technical director for Toy Story 2.

Red’s Dream, Tin Toy and Knickknack are all references to Pixar short films. The author of Tin Toy is Lasseter (as in John) while Reeves marks the spine of Red’s Dream. This represents Bill Reeves who was technical director on Red’s Dream and Tin Toy and was a supervising technical director on Toy Story.

Ant and Bee Go on Vacation is a likely reference to A Bug's Life, Pixar’s next film after Toy Story.

Two other titles on the shelf are Great Places for Children to Visit and Grimm’s Fairy Tales. Another very, very thin book appears to have the title Fluppy the Puppy. On the lower shelf are three books, Feet First, Help the Planet and one whose title begins with Pale Cowboy. . .

If anyone knows of any hidden meaning to these last few titles, please let us know.

6 comments:

Rae! said...

That is really neat.I knew they did little things like that but I never noticed before.

Anonymous said...

It might also be that one of the team was English as Ant and Bee are a well known series of children's books on this side of the Atlantic. For more details see http://www.apathyhouse.com/antnbee/

Anonymous said...

I love these and I would love to see more soon!

Anonymous said...

'Scooter Run' is a reference to when the Pixarians used to race around their old Pixar Animation Studios building with a scooter, timing themselves. :)

Anonymous said...

Smyrl has a computer software co. called Twist & Twirl Consulting

Matt said...

'Fluppy the Puppy' may be a reference to the Disney TV animated film 'Fluppy Dogs', which was originally slated to be a TV series.