KCRW’s The Busi­ness hosted by Claude Brodesser-Akner is both a radio show and pod­cast deal­ing with the inner work­ings of the busi­ness of Hollywood.

Claude’s inter­views with direc­tors, screen­writ­ers, adver­tis­ing exec­u­tives and actors/actresses are often fas­ci­nat­ing, if not enlight­en­ing, espe­cially if you share an inter­est in how films are cre­ated like I do.

In his inter­view with actor/director Jon Favreau enti­tled “No Spe­cial Effects, It’s Really Direc­tor Jon Favreau”, Jon reveals his love/hate rela­tion­ship with CGI effects and why home brewed effects are still rel­e­vant and use­ful. His phi­los­o­phy is that while com­puter gen­er­ated imagery has its place (namely a tool­box of end­less pos­si­bil­ity) it can also cloud the visual aes­thetic of a movie.

While CGI has improved over the years, pro­vid­ing the back­bone for things like sci-fi vis­tas and mytho­log­i­cal crea­tures as well upping the ante on dis­as­ter sequences it’s also — in most cases — imme­di­ately rec­og­niz­able if it doesn’t blend in with live action.

Recently Favreau was cho­sen to direct the film adap­ta­tion of Iron Man, a task not to be taken lightly and even though the film itself has a much big­ger bud­get than his other films, he’s also made the deci­sion to bud­get the spe­cial effects. His rea­son­ing is two-fold; that the film’s bud­get is tar­geted at a spe­cific amount and to effec­tively blend CGI with live action with­out going overboard.

In all hon­esty, this is some­thing that I wish more direc­tors (includ­ing George Lucas) would come to terms with. Audi­ences are typ­i­cally over­whelmed with joy when a superb CGI sequence is pulled off but to echo Favreau’s thoughts, in most cases it’s eas­ily noticed and can take you out of the movie, detach­ing you from the film’s oth­er­wise engross­ing atmos­phere and aesthetic.

Yet, to play devil’s advo­cate I sup­pose it’s a tricky thing to avoid and I’d imag­ine why most direc­tors and pro­duc­ers go out on a limb blind­folded, hop­ing that what­ever is put together by their mas­ters of illu­sion comes across suc­cess­fully not only in a visual man­ner but also allow­ing var­i­ous CG ele­ments to inter­act with live action in a real­is­tic way. 

After releas­ing Find­ing Nemo — one of my all-time favorites, right up there with Toy Story — Pixar announced that they were work­ing on a film about cars. When I first heard the news I think I might’ve been read­ing an issue of Wired and sat in disbelief.

While the talk­ing ani­mal shtick has worn out its wel­come, there’s a cer­tain safety net that accom­pa­nies an ani­mated film of that nature. Espe­cially con­sid­er­ing that talk­ing ani­mals is a for­mula that has been used by sev­eral ani­ma­tion com­pa­nies (Dis­ney and Warner Broth­ers comes to mind) in the past and for the most part, if done cor­rectly, appeals to a vast audience.

While I passed up the oppor­tu­nity to see the movie in the the­ater I did man­age to rent it this past week and it’s safe to say that Cars, despite it’s main char­ac­ters being talk­ing vehi­cles, does work and only because Pixar is at the helm. I’m not entirely sure whether some­one else with this mate­r­ial would’ve been able to make it as inter­est­ing and worth watch­ing, which goes to show that Pixar could prob­a­bly make talk­ing rocks watchable.

The plot is sur­face deep, but the gen­eral out­line is that it involves a pompous NASCAR race car named Light­ning McQueen (per­fectly voiced by Owen Wil­son) who through the course of the movie hum­bles him­self thanks to a few small town denizens who teach him how to slow down in life.

There’s a life les­son here that resounds in all of us, that life is some­times too fast paced for us to real­ize that every­thing is com­ing at us at a blur. It’s been tack­led before in movies but never using a car as the pro­tag­o­nist, who is quite lit­er­ally the embod­i­ment of fast-paced life.

On the other side of the spec­trum, there’s even a deeper les­son about how we are will­ing to sac­ri­fice beauty to shave a few min­utes off our travel time. In the movie, it’s Route 66 that at one point in time flour­ished with tourists and car enthu­si­asts and now stands as reminder of what once was and will never be.

The movie itself is full of chuck­les from the sup­port­ing cast and when it’s all said and done it really does stay with you. I’m an advo­cate of slow­ing down every once in a while, tak­ing a step back, enjoy­ing the sweeter aspects of life (like love, fam­ily and rela­tion­ships) and fig­ur­ing things out instead of let­ting every­thing fall into place.

As the Racal Flatts’ song ‘Life is a High­way’ tells us, “Life’s like a road that you travel on, When there’s one day here and the next day gone.”