The first of our articles celebrating Pixar, officially kicking off June's Obsessed With Pixar campaign. As a kid watching
Cheers my favourite character was always know-it-all barfly postman Cliff Clavin, his wise-cracking delivery usually signalled by a drawled murmur reminiscent of the sound someone might make when trying to remember their lines would always have me laughing. It was most probably this performance - and a knack for casting just the right voice to fit a role that is undoubtedly key to their film's success - that led Pixar to pick
John Ratzenberger for the role of Hamm the piggybank in their debut feature film
Toy Story.
Ratzenberger's Role #1: Hamm the Pig in Toy Story (1995)
Perhaps something that can be overlooked, specifically in the first Toy Story film that primarily riffs on a mismatched buddy movie dynamic, is how strong a supporting ensemble Pixar gathered around their lead players.
Don Rickles, Jim Varney, Wallace Shawn, Annie Potts, R. Lee Ermey, their voices all slot so beautifully into the mouths of what are - essentially - very familiar looking objects. I mean, could a Mr. Potatohead toy sound any other way now? Even better than that Pixar had made no compromises in giving each toy a neatly subverted, humourous and relatable character that made sure that their films are as appealing to adults as they are to, well, every single age group. In his initial role as Hamm, Ratzenberger made the pink bellied porcelain porcine a rather world weary character, riffing on his buddy persona from Cheers, he's still - even in miniature animated form - most guy's ideal drinking partner. It's his off-beat, technically minded reaction though to Buzz's arrival that begins to hint at what will make this character inparticular a personal favourite:
'Wow. Impressive wing-span. Very good.'
Ratzenberger's Role #2: P.T. Flea the flea in A Bug's Life (1998)
A part that Ratzenberger has cited as his favourite role (thus far) for Pixar, telling
SCI-FI Wire:
"P.T. Flea was just so unpredictable and nuts, and in real life I always get a kick out of those kinds of character, people who just go into a rage for explicable reason."
Sure enough P.T. Flea's circus is one of the comedic highlights of the film, buoyed immensely by Ratzenberger's manic performance which is somewhere between
Jerry Stiller as George Costanza's father in
Seinfeld and a family-friendly version of
Cheech Marin's barker in
From Dusk Til Dawn.
Ratzenberger's Role #3: Hamm the Pig in Toy Story 2 (1999)
This sequel is a wealth of pristine Ratzenberger quotes, with the character of Hamm clearly refined to a tee in the intervening years between this film and its predecessor. What was expanded upon by the writers was Hamm's blue-collar qualities, when the gang hijack a Pizza Planet truck Hamm's straight to the owner's manual shaking his snout and exclaiming to himself; 'I seriously doubt he's getting this kind of mileage.' Or adopting the comically linear mental trajectory of any couch potato in charge of a remote, dismayed at Rex's snail's pace channel hopping Hamm takes the reins and when his high-speed clicking goes straight past the target station and everyone implores him to go back, Hamm matter-of-factly replies:
'Too late, I'm in the 40's, gotta go around the horn!'
Ratzenberger's Role #4: Aogaeru the Assistant Manager in Spirited Away: English Version (2001)
Not a Pixar film, but part of Pixar co-founder and Disney chief creative officer
John Lasseter's championing of contemporary animation has seen him working with legendary Japanese animator
Hayao Miyazaki in executive producing and dubbing his films to help achieve a wider audience (indeed Miyazaki character Totoro crops up as a plush in
Toy Story 3). So, it was inevitable, with Lasseter key in casting the English language cast for the film that ol' Ratzenberger would end up somewhere, and it was in this Oscar winning treat that he cropped up as Aogaeru the assistant manager delivering such charming dialogue as: 'Welcome the rich man, he's hard for you to miss. His butt keeps getting bigger, so there's plenty there to kiss!'
Ratzenberger's Role #5: The Abominable Snowman in Monster's Inc. (2001)
It was by this point that, for me, Ratzenberger's appearance in a Pixar film had changed from a nice bonus into something closer to Hitchcock's cameos in his films, it was a necessity and something eagerly awaited throughout the film's running time. Here, we were kept waiting until the film's 3rd act where lovable blue monster Sulley finds himself banished to a snowy region when all of a sudden an imposing figure looms into view only to lean, grinning right into camera undoubtedly Ratzenberger. Here Pixar gave him some brilliantly off-the-wall dialogue about yellow snow and his buddy bigfoot being banished and making 'an enormous diaper out of poison ivy. Wore it on his head like a tiara. Called himself "King Itchy".'
Ratzenberger's Role #6: Fish School in Finding Nemo (2003)
With Ratzenberger's Pixar presence firmly cemented in the minds of fans they gave the faithful a treat in their 2003's mega-blockbuster; not one, not two, but a whole school of tiny little fishies voiced by Ratzenberger in a sequence that provided key exposition and a daffy game of underwater Pictionary in a wonderuflly Pythonesque fashion.
Ratzenberger's Role #7: The Underminer in The Incredibles (2004)
Those cheeky monkeys kept us waiting for this one, it's not until the very final seconds of
Brad Bird's masterpiece that we get our taste of Ratzenberger and in some ways it's made all the sweeter for it, because, at that point, once the ground rumbles and the gigantic drilling machine emerges from the ground there's only one voice that could possibly come from the lips of hard-hat wearing evil genius the Underminer. In fact, most of the comedic value of this sequence stems more from the fact that it's John Ratzenberger than the bad puns in the Underminer's one and only villainous line:
'Behold, the Underminer! I'm always beneath you, but nothing is beneath me! I hereby declare war on peace and happiness! Soon, all will tremble before me!'
Ratzenberger's Role #8: Mack in Cars (2006)
Mack in Cars may not be the most memorable of Ratzenberger's Pixar performances but is does provide the most brilliant Ratzenberger moment in the Pixar canon thus far, when, during the end credits, Mack is in a cinema watching car-ified versions of all Pixar's films but, more to the point, beginning to notice a certain recurring performance in each of these PixCAR (geddit?) movies... it's an in-joke within an in-joke eating an in-joke and it's genius! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GpXbCT61OlE
Ratzenberger's Role #9: Mustafa in Ratatouille (2007)
Perhaps by way of an apology for undermining (ho ho) him in
The Incredibles,
Brad Bird gives John his most substantial role in a while, for the delicious comedy treat
Ratatouille. Resisting the urge to make any obvious puns on his surname, John instead plays head waiter Mustafa. A character who operates on a similarly exasperated plane to P. T. Flea, Mustafa seems to have a vein throbbing in his brain that's consistently on the verge of popping, never more so during some wonderfully farcical exchanges when trying to find out what is new in the restaurant and only going around in circles, before, being asked again 'What did you tell them?' he snaps and yells 'I TOLD THEM I WOULD ASK!'
Ratzenberger's Role #10: John in WALL-E (2008)
It was something of a worry when
WALL-E was announced that perhaps that was it for the Ratzenberger cameos, the film was alleged to be practically a 'silent movie', fortunately (for John) it turned out to be a rumour half-true and eventually Wall-E finds himself on a space station occupied by disgustingly overweight humans floating on recliners stuffing their faces and staring a tv screens in a moment of bold, unflinching satire on the path of modern life from the Pixar team. John (played by John) is at the forefront of a new era in the human race thanks to our bumbling box-shaped hero bumping his bulky frame out of his lazychair and into another portly person, Mary. The two manage to find their flabby feet and fall in love.
Ratzenberger's Role #11: Construction Foreman Tom in Up (2009)
Though a somewhat slight and inconsequential part Construction Foreman Tom is a role close to Ratzenberger in other ways, as the great man was working as a house framer in London before his acting career began to take off and also, in 1969, helped construct the stage for the Woodstock Festival; so I'm sure he was on hand with any technical advice for the animators.
Ratzenberger's Role #12: Hamm the Pig in Toy Story 3 (2010)
After an 11 year absence the gang returned and miraculously the film was every bit as good as its predecessors, with Hamm inparticular making his return to silver screens in style, arriving as the 'Evil Dr. Porkchop' in a fantasy sequence depicting one of Andy's playtimes. And things continue from there with John appearing again as Mack in
Cars 2 (2011) this summer and popping up either as the Abominable Snowman or another character in
Monster's University (2013), and we're sure there's room for him in other Pixar projects such as
Brave (2012).
Ratzenberger is such an important part of Pixar that he's even a member of their softball team as well as being the only voice actor to have appeared in ever single Pixar feature film, which, in turn, makes Ratzenberger (regarding the gross of films he's appeared in) one of the most successful actors working in Hollywood!