Monsters, Inc. (2001)
Description: A city of monsters with no humans called Monstropolis centers around the city’s power company, Monsters, Inc. The lovable, confident, tough, furry blue behemoth-like giant monster named James P. Sullivan (better known as Sulley) and his wisecracking best friend, short, green cyclops monster Mike Wazowski, discover what happens when the real world interacts with theirs in the form of a 2-year-old baby girl dubbed “Boo,” who accidentally sneaks into the monster world with Sulley one night. And now it’s up to Sulley and Mike to send Boo back in her door before anybody finds out, especially two evil villains such as Sulley’s main rival as a scarer, chameleon-like Randall (a monster that Boo is very afraid of), who possesses the ability to change the color of his skin, and Mike and Sulley’s boss Mr. Waternoose, the chairman and chief executive officer of Monsters, Inc.
Directors: Pete Docter, David Silverman (co-director)
Writers: Pete Docter (original story by), Jill Culton (original story by)
Stars: Billy Crystal, John Goodman, Mary Gibbs
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Trivia
Mary Gibbs was so young that it proved difficult to get her to stand in the recording studio and act her lines. Instead, they simply followed her around with a microphone and cut Boo’s lines together from the things she said while she played.
It normally took 11 to 12 hours to render a single frame of Sulley because of his 2.3 million individually animated hair strands (Total number of hairs: 2,320,413).
In early drafts, the character of Boo was written to be six years old. The writers decided to make Boo younger because it would make her more dependent on Sulley.
John Goodman pushed for Steve Buscemi to voice the villain Randall.
John Goodman and Billy Crystal sometimes recorded their lines in the same room together, an unusual move for animated films, where actors more often work alone. Steve Buscemi and Frank Oz (Randall and his assistant Fungus) also recorded their lines together for the bathroom scene.
Billy Crystal was originally offered the role of Buzz Lightyear in Toy Story (1995) and he declined, which he later regretted after seeing the film itself, as it would’ve been a great opportunity for him. They would later promise Crystal a future role in a Pixar film that they would tailor to his talents. Crystal told them to “do what’s best for your movie and don’t forget me when something good comes around”. Later in the late 1990s/early 2000s, Crystal’s wife received a phone call from John Lasseter, who told him “Mr. Lasseter would like to speak to you”, allowing him to voice Mike in Monsters, Inc. (2001).
The scoreboard at the scaring contest consists of names of Pixar staff members.
About 3:26 into the movie, when the simulation is ended and the monster reaches for a knob on the control panel to review the videotape, just below and to the left of the knob is a little indicator which reads “510-752-3000”, which is Pixar’s phone number.
In the first scene, one of the toys on the boy’s bedroom shelf is the toy plane that hung from the ceiling and caused Buzz to “fly” in and as Mike and Sulley go through the scare floor, the rolling clown, from Toy Story (1995) can be seen in the background. Also, when Randall is practicing camouflaging into backgrounds of walls, one of the images given to him is the wallpaper Andy had in his room.