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The above quote is not from this short, but from 1999's Toy Story 2. The struggle from Jessie, the cowgirl, to cope with what she feels as the abandonment from her owner was something that resonated with audience's through her heartfelt story and Randy Newman's tragically beautiful song "When She Loved Me". But the idea of portraying toys and inanimate objects outliving their "usefulness" in a sad way was something that Pixar had been exploring since their early days.
Released in 1987, Red's Dream features a lonely tricycle called Red waiting to be either sold or disposed by clearance. During a rainy night in the dark and closed shop, Red dreams of better times where it can still be part of a clown show. But the dream quickly vanishes and we're back in reality and in the clearance corner. It's great how this simple scene manages to evoke so much emotion for an inanimate object, but writer and director John Lasseter achieves this through an effective score, as well as great direction and animation (at least for the time. The clown is a bit rough, but the rest is pretty much flawless).
Lasseter has referred jokingly to this times as Pixar's "Blue Period" because "the film had a sad ending and really explored pathos." It's interesting to see how he latched onto that idea and continued to perfect it until he could give us Toy Story. That franchise has become Pixar's flagship, an icon of animated films, and a landmark in cinema. But as great as those films are, let's not forget how things started; with a red bike in the clearance corner.
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RED'S DREAM
(1987, Lasseter)
(1987, Lasseter)
"You never forget kids like Emily, or Andy, but they forget you."
The above quote is not from this short, but from 1999's Toy Story 2. The struggle from Jessie, the cowgirl, to cope with what she feels as the abandonment from her owner was something that resonated with audience's through her heartfelt story and Randy Newman's tragically beautiful song "When She Loved Me". But the idea of portraying toys and inanimate objects outliving their "usefulness" in a sad way was something that Pixar had been exploring since their early days.
Released in 1987, Red's Dream features a lonely tricycle called Red waiting to be either sold or disposed by clearance. During a rainy night in the dark and closed shop, Red dreams of better times where it can still be part of a clown show. But the dream quickly vanishes and we're back in reality and in the clearance corner. It's great how this simple scene manages to evoke so much emotion for an inanimate object, but writer and director John Lasseter achieves this through an effective score, as well as great direction and animation (at least for the time. The clown is a bit rough, but the rest is pretty much flawless).
Lasseter has referred jokingly to this times as Pixar's "Blue Period" because "the film had a sad ending and really explored pathos." It's interesting to see how he latched onto that idea and continued to perfect it until he could give us Toy Story. That franchise has become Pixar's flagship, an icon of animated films, and a landmark in cinema. But as great as those films are, let's not forget how things started; with a red bike in the clearance corner.
Grade: