It was character-based. He could make me laugh at a moment’s notice by becoming a character. Whether he was doing an impersonation of Marlon Brando, a cheeky English boy, or a hilarious country character with outrageous buck teeth, he was able to make me laugh until I’d have tears in my eyes. During his Disney days, he took an improv comedy class at the Groundlings, where he learned one of the first rules of comedy is ‘Never say no.’ This had a big impact on the way we worked together and on the way the story room operated. When you start something, you never stop the creative flow of where it’s going. You just keep saying ‘Yes.’ No matter what the idea, let it flow and see where it takes you. And it was amazing. For me, creating a story is like making your way through one of those giant mazes in ‘The Shining.’ Joe and I basically would get to the entrance of the maze and put our hands on the wall and start walking. You go down every wrong path, but eventually you get out. We would never say ‘No,’ and we would explore every path. And we would find nuggets, and characters, and discover interesting things all along the way.
“Joe was the heart of our films,” adds Lasseter. “He had the biggest heart of any person I’ve ever known. He had faith in everybody and everything. He was the biggest cheerleader around here. Every story guy would go to him, and he would always give them time. He was everyone’s mentor.”
“More than any other character that we’ve created at Pixar, I’m probably proudest of Mater,” continues Lasseter. “And part of that is because the character is pure Joe. On every film that we worked on, Joe would always zero in on something that really struck his fancy and it would always make it into the final film. With ‘Toy Story,’ it was the green army men who moved like they were the Green Berets. In ‘A Bug’s Life,’ it was the scene where the circus bugs found out that the ant colony thought they were warriors by way of a children’s elementary school play. For CARS, it was Mater driving backwards. He had this concept that Mater’s character was there to teach Lightning McQueen that you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover. When McQueen first meets this rusty tow truck, he can’t stand him. But then he discovers that Mater is pure friendship, and driving backwards is what tow trucks do best. Mater is like your faithful dog who is there to greet you when you come home no matter what kind of a day you’ve had. Joe was that kind of friend and he will always be an important part of my life.”
Ranft also had a huge impact on his CARS story team. Steve Purcell, one of the film’s story artists recalls, “One of the things that Joe was really excited about as he was winding down on CARS was creating a story community where the story artists were more tuned in to each other and better connected. He would show screenings of Pixar’s old story reels to remind us of the process that we went through to get to the finished story. His motto was ‘You have to trust the process.’ If you stalled on a story point, you’ve got to work your way through it.”
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