“One of the most meaningful moments for all of us occurred at a stop somewhere in Arizona,” continues Pauley. “We were on the side of a road close to the big highway. It was a beautiful road that wound perfectly around the environment. It turns and goes right through this gorgeous butte. As we were sitting there, a truck pulled up with an older Native American and his grandchild. He asked us ‘How do you like our land?’We told him how beautiful it was, and he told us that he was out here when they blasted the cutaway for the big highway through his ancestor’s sacred land. It was a powerful moment being there on a road that works so well with the environment and seeing the interstate that slices through it without any care or respect at all. It was amazing to hear these great stories first-hand from a person whose family had been there for generations.”
Associate producer Tom Porter recalls, “When John and his team came back from their Route 66 trip, there was a lot of talk about wanting to capture the patina of the Southwest. They wanted everything in the film to be shaded so that it had the authenticity of that old ’40s, ’50s, ’60s stuff that was faded and weathered after fifty years. John wanted the full complexity of a Southwestern town looking authentic, and then a similar set of challenges in the racing world.”
Bill Cone, the production designer who was responsible for creating the look of the film’s environments and building a five-mile stretch of road that leads in and out of the town of Radiator Springs, recalls, “I think of the style for this film as cartoon realism. You have talking cars, so you’ve already taken a step away from reality in that regard. The forms are a little whimsical. You’ll see these car shapes on the cliffs, and the clouds are stylized. I reached the conclusion that humans in a human universe would see their own forms in nature, which they often do. They name things like Indian Head Rock. So, in a car universe, they would have carbased metaphors for forms. Suddenly, you could see these cliffs that looked very much like the hoods of cars or an ornament. Great American artists like Maynard Dixon also had a big influence on us with their landscapes of the Southwest and the clouds that they painted.” Sophie Vincelette, sets supervisor for the film, was responsible for creating the film’s mountain range that pays homage to the famous Cadillacs planted in the ground along Route 66. Other mountains are shaped like wheelwells and bumpers.
In every aspect, CARS represents a new level of attention to detail for Pixar. With its crumbly bits of concrete, accumulated dust, and layers of faded advertisements painted on brick walls, Radiator Springs feels like a real place audiences could visit.
According to Vincelette, “Our challenge was to give the buildings in town the appearance of having a sense of history. We worked closely with the shading and modeling teams to give them a weathered look and to make sure that things were not always straight. There are weeds growing out of cracks in the cement on the sidewalk.”
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