  From left: Chick Hicks, Lightning McQueen and The King duke it out in Cars.
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CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- They gave earplugs to press doing interviews for Disney/Pixar's Cars at Lowes Motor Speedway. But on the eve of NASCAR's Coca-Cola 600, the cars had yet to roar, and hick comic Larry The Cable Guy was it as far as noise.
Not that this monstrous place was exactly quiet. Winnebagos were setting up everywhere, in and around the pits of the 11/2-mile track, and outside the venue, where a small city now stood of vendors and barbecue and Winnies emblazoned with the faces of Dale Earnhardt Jr. and other NASCAR icons.
This is God's country, in all its chicken-fried glory. And here, Disney and Pixar -- the digital animation company that is to your kids what Walt was to you -- would consummate their recent $7-billion marriage with a premiere screening of Cars before a VIP crowd of 30,000 (less than a quarter-capacity).
"It's all about cars," producer Darla K. Anderson says matter-of-factly. "John digs 'em."
John is John Lasseter, the 49-year-old computer animator who, with his company Pixar, has utterly changed the landscape of children's animated films in a mere decade with films like Toy Story, A Bug's Life, Monsters, Inc., Finding Nemo and The Incredibles. Success, in this case, has inspired an entire industry of CGI competitors, and virtually destroyed the market for 2-D Lion King-type animation.
His company is a reflection of the man, sentimental, geekily passionate about boyish things (toys, superheros, bugs and yes, cars) that resonate everywhere. So much so that Time magazine recently characterized the Disney takeover of Pixar as "basically paying $7 billion for Lasseter's brain."
So why NASCAR for his coming-out party? "I live in Sonoma (Calif.)," says the jovial, round-faced father of five. "And Sonoma has Infineon Raceway, formerly Sears Point Raceway, one of the two road courses along with Watkins Glen on the (NASCAR/Nextel Cup) circuit. I would go to the races all the time and I just loved them -- the power, the speed and the energy. You can't describe it when you're at a race live and the green flag drops for the first time. I wanted to get that on film somehow."
And indeed, the NASCAR experience is the bread in the Cars sandwich. Set in a human-free world of talking cars (where even the insects are bugs of the VW variety) it's the story of a hotshot young NASCAR racer named Lightning McQueen (voiced by Owen Wilson) who has all the talent in the world, and seemingly all the arrogance too. As the movie begins, he's engaged in a season-take-all race that ends in a dead heat with an aged racing legend named King (Richard Petty) and a fellow talented blowhard named Chick Hicks (Michael Keaton).
The solution: A playoff race in California. Unfortunately for McQueen, his truck Mack (John Ratzenberger) loses his cargo en route, and McQueen ends up off the I-40 in the sleepy Route 66 town of Radiator Springs. There, he causes havoc, and is ordered by the judge (Paul Newman) to work off the damage.
That gives him time to smell the roses, and fall in love with an oddball assortment of townsfolk, including the town tow truck Mater (Larry The Cable Guy) -- "Tow-Mater, get it?" -- the Sheriff (Route 66 scholar Michael Wallis), a low-rider named Ramone (Cheech Marin), Italian Ferrari tire guys Luigi and Guido (Tony Shalhoub and Guido Quaroni) and a sleek ex-city slicker Porsche named Sally (Bonnie Hunt).
Though he'd been kicking around the idea for years, Lasseter says Cars came about as a result of a life-changing road trip. "I had been working non-stop in the '90s making Toy Story, A Bug's Life and Toy Story 2, each one starting as I was finishing another. During this time, I also had four of my five sons. And my wife, who's always been supportive of my career, was thinking, 'Okay, he's not going to direct any more' -- but she actually saw my career get busier (as an executive producer).
"So she said to me, 'Be careful. One day you'll wake up to see your boys have gone off to college and you will have missed it.' And she was right. So we took the summer off in 2000 and bought a used motor home. We piled the kids in it for two months, we put our feet in the Pacific and turned east. And we decided we were going to drive and put our feet in the Atlantic and turn back. That was the only plan we had.
"And it was so much fun. We thought we were going to be at each other's throats, but the opposite happened. For the first time I was enjoying every minute of every day. And it changed my life. I came back and I knew what I wanted this movie to be about -- that the journey is the reward. It's not black and white, like a slow life is better than a fast life. It's about balance."
It's not a lesson you learn at Disney in the real world. But this is Pixar, where the boss' vision is also the staff's. By accounts, what followed were two years of prep work, with artists touring NASCAR tracks, sketching races, creating dioramas, and visiting vintage Route 66 small towns, ordering the meatloaf and sketching some more. NASCAR racers like Darryl Waltrip and Jerry Nadeau came in to talk about racing. And Route 66 expert Wallis became a godfather of sorts, accompanying the Pixarites to some of his favourite roadstops.
"My first meeting, I walked into a room with 40 people sitting there, and John said 'Tell us a story about Route 66,' " Wallis recalls. "I did and he said, 'Tell us another.' Three hours later, my bladder was about to explode and I knew in my heart this would work."
"They're a group of incredibly talented and passionate nerds, and those were the guys I loved in high school," says Hunt, who doubles as a writer for Pixar.
But what does the Mouse merger mean to that culture? Interestingly, the deal makes Lasseter head of Disney animation.
"I do what I do because of the films of Walt Disney," he says. "All I ever wanted to do was create animation. And also, while I was at college (Cal Tech) being taught by great Disney animators out of retirement, I was a half hour away from Disneyland and I worked as a ride operator on the Jungle Cruise."
But Pixar "is something special, like lightning in a bottle. And we didn't want the culture being swallowed up or assimilated."
Cultural infection could go the other way. Lasseter plans to revive the 2-D animation studio Disney folded.
"I've never believed that audiences don't want to watch 2-D animation anymore," he says. "And of all places, Disney should be doing it."
Also on his list, a theme parks revamp, courtesy of his other title, chief creative officer of Imagineering. "Creativity is my game," Lasseter says, "and I plan to use it."
