Getting your
Trinity Audioplayer ready...As a boy, Tom Hanks would sometimes peek out at night from the window of his family’s Oakland residence, and he’d become utterly captivated by a flashy sight of a neon billboard sign.
It served as a beacon, enticing him to venture out on his own version of the yellow brick road — in this case, the Bay Bridge — to the magical destination of San Francisco.
The two-time Oscar winner, who was born in Concord and grew up in the East Bay, associates that sign with some of his favorite Bay Area childhood memories. And his East Bay roots are coming up a lot these days as Hanks, 69, talks about starring in “Toy Story 5,” marking his return to what is arguably Emeryville-based Pixar’s most cherished film franchise.
Hanks once again stars as Woody, the helpful do-gooding cowboy who’s the leader of a group of toys that come to life when left alone and who manage to get into all kinds of mischief and adventures. Woody and action figure Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen) are the star payers of a film franchise that over 31 years has explored the special nature of childhood memories while creating more than a few of its own.
“Toy Story 5,” Pixar’s 31st feature, was directed by “Toy Story” regular Andrew Stanton of Tiburon, and co-written by Stanton and Kenna Harris of Berkeley, a new addition to the franchise. It opens June 19.
Hanks, who is also an author, screenwriter, director and producer, has enjoyed a storybook career as a successful and admired artist. But he still gets wistful when talking about his East Bay upbringing.
“Because I grew up in Oakland, the City beckoned to us from out our window,” Hanks recalls during an interview in Emeryville alongside Allen. “I remember there was a big billboard with neon fireworks — not real fireworks — for Admiral Television and as you were coming from Oakland and onto the suspension part of the Bay Bridge, (there it was) this lively vibrant billboard that was always exploding in stars.” It was a spectacle to behold and, for Hanks, it also meant that he was merely a 75-cent bus ride away from the City.
“I thought I live close to that,” Hanks added. “That’s Paris, France. That’s Baghdad By the Bay. That is a world-class city: Coit Tower, Sutro Tower, Ghirardelli Square, Golden Gate Park, Union Square and the American Conservatory Theater.
“It was Oz to me. And I didn’t go there often because I didn’t want to get used to it. It was always a special place to go.”
Hank also recalls spending a lot of time playing in the East Bay and “going all over Berkeley and Oakland like crazy.” He holds a soft spot for Joaquin Miller Park, where he was quite taken with the redwoods.
For Hanks and Allen, the “Toy Story” series, which has generated more than $3 billion in box office revenue over the years, brings back similarly warm memories. The duo collaborated for the first time on it in 1995 and continue to be in awe at how the studio comes up with clever, fresh ideas to move the story forward. But a fifth film? Both had doubts about that and admit they were wary about whether it could be pulled off since “Toy Story 4” found Woody moseying onto a new homestead.
“My initial thought was ‘how’ and ‘why,'” Hanks said. “ What are you going to say? You can’t just bang one of these out.”
When they discovered the focus would shift to speak-her-mind cowgirl Jessie (voiced with twangy pluck by Joan Cusack) while she deals with abandonment issues once Bonnie receives a Lilypad tablet (voice of Greta Lee) and then ditches her toy friends and goes overboard with screen time so she can be a part of a clique-y group of girls, they knew something special was in the works.
“Why in the world would they get back together again and it was because Bonnie was losing her sense of play to tech,” Hanks said. “As soon as I heard that, I said you guys are genius.”
He added, “The fact that it was Jessie calling up all of the friends, gathering them together because one of them needed help, was beautiful.”
Given everything going on around his adventure-seeking character Buzz Lightyear — a ready-to-go guy who’s smitten with Jessie — Allen didn’t catch all the references to tech at first, but then realized as he worked on it more and found the messages about tech and play to be good ones.
“Tom puts it best,” said Allen, who starred in the ABC sitcom “Shifting Gears” and then made a big splash on TV in the 1990s with “Home Improvement.” ‘No toy has ever hurt a child. The internet hurts a child all the time. But to get past it? Play with the horses on the shelf. The toys are there just waiting for you to engage with them. Put the device down.”
In this case, the toys and “horses on the shelf” belong to a welcome new character, the imaginative and perceptive 8-year-old girl Blaze, voiced by Mykal-Michelle Harris.
While both actors acknowledge the intense pressure children and their parents feel in regards to tech, giving an 8-year-old a powerful device such as the Lilypad featured in the film might not be the way to go. “I would not give a kid (that age) something that would open up the entire world to them,” Hanks said.
Creating that tech conflict required a sure but facile hand. Co-screenwriter Harris and producer Lindsey Collins say and they sought to avoid pointing fingers and branding tech as a villain.
“It felt almost too easy to kind of paint the broad swath of like, well, technology is evil in any incarnation,” said Collins, who lives in Piedmont. “It didn’t feel honest and it didn’t feel interesting and it didn’t feel true to kind of what we are really all dealing with with technology.”
Harris brought to the table a bushel of new ideas and specifically wanted to highlight Jessie — a character introduced to audiences in 1999’s “Toy Story 2,” and whom they adored since being in the second grade — and her self-doubts and sense that she was the problem for Bonnie’s lack of interest.
“I’ve been a big fan of hers and I love how messy she is and how big she is (and) how she makes different choices than Woody,” Harris said.
“I think similarly when it comes to (the) young girls’ rooms, we’re focusing on a young girl named Bonnie and a young girl named Blaze in this film, and it was really important to me to just show how fun playtime is with girls, where our imaginations are limitless because we’ve only seen one type of room (Bonnie’s).”
Another issue filmmakers wanted to thread in, but not have dominate the story, is cyberbullying and the feeling of being an outsider.
While Hanks and Allen didn’t obviously contend with cyberbullying growing up, they did run into bullies, and agree that they like how the film addresses the issue. “I had some sociopaths that I did everything to avoid because they had no sense of what is right and what is wrong,” Hanks said, “You learn where not to go sometimes. If (Pixar) had said we’re going to make a ‘Toy Story’ about cyberbullying. I’d say ‘Oh c’mon guys. That’s a little too on the nose. But if you’re making a movie about the loss of the sense of play, well then that’s what ‘Toy Story’ is all about from the get-go.”
Allen said he endured being bullied as a teen, after moving from Denver to the Midwest.
“I had bad teenage acne,” he remembers. “I was in a new school. I went from the West Coast to the Midwest. Everything about where I came from that was cool was ‘You’re a loser if you wear white socks.’ So I was constantly being judged by what I looked like. What I did. I remember (one of the guys) saying ‘(Are) you actually OK going out of the house looking like that with all that pizza look on your face?’”
Allen says that sort of bullying reaction comes about when boys get bored. Key in preventing that, he adds, is to keep them active.
Scenes of Bonnie and Blaze playing together is one of the most magical parts of “Toy Story 5,” as well as one of those Pixar sequences that will put a lump in your throat. It involves a lunchbox filled with childhood mementoes.
Which favorite items would Hanks, Allen, Harris and Collins put into a lunchbox and bury from when they were kids?
Hanks: “I would put my Major Matt Mason (toy figure) that I bought myself. I would put in the key ring for the first car I had. … I would put a notebook in it that I had scribbled notes in for a while and the pen that I used. And then I would bury it and wait for 25 years.”
Allen: “My dad was taken from me when I was 11 (he was killed by a drunk driver), but before that he sometimes would inexplicably bring me home gifts of little small British and American tanks that were called Airfix. …This tank in a little plastic container with a cardboard back, I would put that in there along with one of my dad’s medals from the war.”
Collins: “The movie ticket would be ‘E.T.’ I loved it so much and it was the first movie to make me cry. My cassette tape would be Stevie Wonder’s “Isn’t She Lovely?” I remember my dad playing that in the car all the time. …Or Madonna’s first album.”
Harris: My dad was a pilot and he would bring me home coloring books from wherever he flew. …Once he went to Japan and I would do anything to open the lunch box and see the coloring book that he gave me from Japan. … And also a gift certificate that I won at this seafood restaurant (when I was 4). It got me free hush puppies and it was like a golden ticket. It really was.”
For some of us who grew up on “Toy Story,” that lunchbox might well include toys of Woody, Buzz, Jessie and others that are part of a series that has held a special place in our hearts from generation to generation.