Interview with Jay Ward and Ray Evernham Cars 3 movie

CARS 3 Races Home Digitally and 4K Ultra HD™ on Oct. 24,
and on Blu-ray 4K Ultra HD™ and Blu-ray™ on Nov. ​7th

​Disclosure: Disney Pixar sponsored my travel, accommodations and activities during the press trip, however, all opinions, typos and grammatical errors are my own.

Photo credit Becky from week99er.com

Ray Evernham

He is the voice of Ray Reverham, Jackson Storm's crew chief. He has been involved with cars since ha was 15 years old and was super happy to be involved on the development of the film. If you are not a NASCAR fan, you should at least know that he was one voted the Top All-Time Crew Chief.

Did you have input for your character?

Ray Evernham: "I didn't have that kind of input.  What we did was just sit and, and talk a lot.  We talk a lot and the Pixar team asked a lot of questions and, I told a lot of actual stories of how things worked and it was amazing to see them take that and be able to uh adapt it into the, the characters. We just talked about all those things and, and they made notes, after notes, after notes and, and just kept bringing it to life. "

Have you noticed any correlation with the movies and in the increase in NASCAR fans?  

Ray Evernham: "I haven’t seen any of those numbers.  Probably someone from NASCAR may be  able to track that at some of the specific races that the CARs events that have been around.  One thing I have seen it is a lot of young people either involved in the promotion of this or asking us questions about it."

​What was it like seeing some of the stories and part of your history up on the screen?

Ray Evernham: "It’s been a, a fire hose of emotions in some ways because it’s-- you, you’ve been at the end of my career and having a young child you know I got kind of a blended family right.  There’s 24 years difference between my children and my son is on the autism spectrum at 26 year old. And I have a 2 year old and it just seems to be lucky enough to have been involved and this project that has brought them closer together and I understand a little bit more about the fact that sometimes when I watch the movies with them I learn as much myself about, about my career."

Jay Ward 

Jay Ward is the Creative Director of Cars 3. He has been with Pixar since 1998 and was involved on Cars 2 and the development of Cars Land at Disney California Adventure. He believes that Cars 3 is the return to the roots of the sequel and that everything in the Cars world is special because there are not humans in the movie. 
He was awesome during the interview, read below his answers.

Photo credit Becky from week99er.com

How Cars 3 got started

Jay Ward: "We knew after Cars 2 we wanted to tell another story and we also knew we wanted to get back to sort of more the roots of Cars 1, a McQueen story.  We also knew what people love about Pixar films is they love that emotional journey of a character and the transformation of a character. And so that was the impetus.  That was the beginning and then we thought, “Okay if we’re telling the story about McQueen he’s already a hero, he’s already great at what he does.  What do we tell?”  And we started with a comeback story.  Kind of more like a Rocky 3 kind of.  He gets knocked down by the young guy and does he get back up?  That would have been great movie, easy story to tell, but what we found along the way, what was more exciting was telling a story about mentor-ship, and telling a story about paying it forward, and telling a story about telling somebody who had limited themselves in life.  That, “No you are good enough.  You can do this.”  So that was how it started."

​You guys had lot of pressure, right, to make sure that the sequel lives up to the first one and the second one?

Jay Ward: "It’s almost kind of you know the trilogy of Cars. Kinda’ like a Race Driver comes full circle. So how much pressure were you having to make sure like this is the you. It is hard because Pixar Films are kinda’ held to a different standard you know.  We-- there are, there are studios that make animated part 2,3,4,5 and people are like, “Yeah it was alright.”. And we can’t get away with that you know.  People hold-- for good or for bad, they hold us to a really high standard.  So there’s a lot of pressure on movies. Any film can look beautiful, but not any film can tell a great story.  You have to feel a sense of wanting to connect with that character.  Luckily we had people who had this love of Cars and this connection with Cars it did add a lot of pressure, right? "

​How hard is it to find a balance in the Pixar movies that will draw in children, but the parents want to watch it too?

Jay Ward: "John’s always said that we don’t make children’s films.  We make films that work for children and adult.  If you start out by saying, “We’re gonna' make a great children’s film then that’s all you’ve made. If you make a great film, really good film it’s gonna' work for all ages.”  

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