LOU. Easter Eggs and Fun Facts.

If you love fun facts and Easter Eggs about films you are going to want to keep reading! While on the Cars 3 press event we had to opportunity to hear from LOU director Dave Mullins and producer Dana Murray about the process that PIXAR went through to have LOU come to life, the challenges they faced and the the process of telling this short story.

I am a numbers person and I love lists. So I put together a list of fun facts about LOU as told my Dave Mullins and Dana Murray.

I also love to know the Easter Eggs of movies. Those bits and pieces of information that not everyone knows but give extra layers to a film. I have included some of those as well for you to keep in mind as you watch LOU.

Enjoy!

LOU by the numbers

4 – Ingredients to a Pixar Film

1. Heart – the character is flawed in someway and experiences personal growth over the film
2. Entertainment -The story has to be unpredictable and funny.
3. Setting – Takes the viewers to a place they have not been before. It is exciting and new!
4. Animation- the film must be animated and animation is used to its full potential.

6 – The number of months LOU had to be shut down so the animators could work on the feature film, The Good Dinosaur.

8 – The number of years Dave Mullins pitched to Pixar before one of his ideas got the green light for production.

2005 – the year Dave Mullins started coming up with ideas for short films. He has been pitching film ideas starting in 2005.

2012 – ‘Lost and Found’ was pitched to John Lasseter. A story of a pile of toys that steals from kids and eventually learns to give them back, becoming accepted by the kids at school.

2015 – Dana Murray was brought on board as LOU’s producer.

2016 – LOU was sent to layout.

Easter Eggs

• Dave’s wife, Lisa, a stop motion animator, built the first LOU from real objects. The eyes were baseballs and could easily be manipulated to give him facial expressions and character.
• After the initial pitch, John Lasseter said that the film looked like a pain in the a*s to make and declared that it needed to be made.
• LOU had to be shut down so the animators could work on the feature film, The Good Dinosaur.

• J.J. is a cross between Scott Farkus from ‘The Christmas Story’ and John Connor’s friend from ‘Terminator 2’. But they were too tough for this story. So they styled J.J after Johan Bobo from ‘Crazy, Stupid Love’. Someone who was tough as nails but would fall apart when he was reunited with his long lost stuffed animal.
• Every piece of LOU is animated by hand. There are no computer shortcuts or simulation.
• J.J. stands for ‘Joyce Jean’. The name of Dave Mullins mom. When he showed her the film she wandered if he thought she was a bully! NO! This was a tip of the hat to her, his mom.

• J.J. is a character first found in ‘Inside Out’.
• All the school yard kids are repurposed from ‘Finding Dory’ and ‘Inside Out’.
• They wanted toys in LOU to be something that were timeless in what they meant to children. Not a toy that was specific to a certain era.
• A Combat Carl was once in LOU but was removed.
• The short LOU, was suppose to be called ‘Lost and Found’ but Lost and Found was not available for use.

• The playground in LOU is based off of the norther California elementary school of Dave’s kids.
• The post script at the end of the film is for Dave’s dad who passed away.
• LOU is the only Red thing in the film so that he would ‘pop’ against the green trees in the background. The entire set was designed around the red color so LOU would be set apart.

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