WITH NASCAR HOT, PIXAR AND DISNEY HOPE TO CREATE A `CARS' CULTURE.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Writer

Pixar Animation Studios has brought toys, bugs, monsters, fish and superbeings to compelling and highly profitable life. The flopless outfit has been so successful that some view its recent merger with its feature film distribution partner, the venerable Walt Disney Co., as more of a takeover.

Is there nothing that the computer-savvy, Bay Area upstart can't do?

A test of that will come Friday, when Disney/Pixar's seventh full-length digital cartoon, ``Cars,'' roars into theaters.

What makes ``Cars'' different from such previous hits as ``Finding Nemo,'' ``The Incredibles'' and the ``Toy Story'' films?

Lotsa stuff. But one big thing in particular.

``Unlike any Pixar film, much less any film you've seen, `Cars' is about a world where there are no humans,'' explains the company's executive vice president and the movie's director, John Lasseter.

``We invented this world that on one level is very familiar -- it looks like any modern, NASCAR racing environment as well as old Route 66 -- but you look closely and you realize that it's a world where only cars are alive.''

Doesn't sound all that daunting, until you think about it. In most animated films (and all previous Pixar ones), anthropomorphized characters were either people, animals, organic fantasy creatures or, in the ``Toy Story'' case, humanoid objects that everyone projected personalities onto during childhood. Even the denizens of last year's non-Pixar ``Robots'' bore most of the expressive features that display human emotion.

Though aided by a voice cast that includes Owen Wilson, Paul Newman, Bonnie Hunt, Larry the Cable Guy and a field of actual NASCAR drivers led by the legendary Richard Petty, making audiences believe that cars can think and feel for themselves was an immensely painstaking task.

And it was made tougher by lifelong gearhead Lasseter, whose father managed a parts department at an L.A. Chevrolet dealership, and who insisted that every detail of every make of talking, self-motivated car in the movie look as authentic as feasibly possible.

``There are several different levels of difficulty,'' says Bob Pauley, one of the film's two production designers. ``There's design. How to make the eyes read. The mouth, the range of expression. And the whole time, trying to be true to the cars.

``We want that car to be a '51 Hudson Hornet, and if we've got to change something, we want it to be true to the spirit of the vehicle. And in the acting, you have to really have performance and break through some of the limitation that a 2,500-pound car might give you. And then there's the detail; it all has to be there.''

And one more crucial quality: restraint. Yes, those 2,500-pound machines required more life than their real-world counterparts.

But the animators had to be very careful about where those particular lines were drawn.

``We were constantly having to pull back, actually,'' says supervising animator Doug Sweetland. ``First of all, cars are heavy, made of heavy materials. And when they're all rendered with lighting reflection, the nature of the material is really obvious. It's easy to overanimate something like that, to bend it too much in a way that it doesn't resemble metal anymore -- especially with the tendency of animators to want to go crazy, it was a constant fight with that impulse.''

The voice talent, recording their tracks alone in soundbooth sessions over the several years it took to make ``Cars,'' were conversely encouraged to go as crazy as they wanted to.

``Well, they told me about this, and I said I'd love to do it,'' says redneck comedian Larry the Cable Guy, who plays the clunky old tow truck, Mater, that befriends the hot-shot race car Lightning McQueen (Wilson) when he's stranded in the bypassed desert hamlet of Radiator Springs.

``So I immediately put on 1,700 pounds. Then they told me it was a cartoon; I felt like an idiot.''

That's Larry's way of saying that Lasseter encouraged him to improvise as many jokes as he could. But it was also vital for the actors to precisely nail the emotions that would turn the cars into ... well, car-people.

Even the countrified cutup found that a serious and rewarding acting challenge.

``Mater's pretty much the heart of the movie,'' Larry notes. ``You had to be sad, you had to bring that emotion to it. And my act, y'know, is all goofy one-liners, zip-zing-bang. But in this, not every line is funny. So I really had to concentrate on showing that, because I'd never done that before. It was fun to find that other part of what I do.''

``To me, it's the ultimate acting challenge because you really have to see it in your mind's eye, and react and believe and behave as if it were there,'' says Hunt, who in her third Pixar job voices Sally the Porsche, a burned-out L.A. lawyer who sees crumbling Radiator Springs as a simple paradise.

``It's definitely as rewarding as live action for me because I love the art of storytelling,'' continues Hunt, who gushes about Pixar the way Sally idealizes the Springs. ``That's what made me want to get into show business, and at Pixar you really are there to be a collaborator in a storytelling process that has heart and soul, and on top of it has all of this technical savvy and artistry that you're so awed by. And these Pixar movies are timeless. A lot of animated pictures now have a lot of trend-is-your-friend references, pop-culture references. Pixar isn't that way.''

For one thing, Lasseter notes that the level of complexity of ``Cars'' is far beyond anything Pixar has done.

``The amount of time it took to do the final rendering of each frame was far greater than in any of our films. How many objects you see in a scene, it's just off the charts. Over 100,000 animated cars in the stands at a race.

``But one of the things we discovered during our research traveling on Route 66 is the way these little towns look,'' the director adds.

``The decay of these buildings and old neon signs and everything was the most difficult thing to do visually. Computers want to make things look clean and perfect. This was the opposite of that. It needed to have cracks in the asphalt, dust everywhere, paint peeling off of brick walls. That kind of level of detail added to the complexity of the film. But it's what makes it beautiful, it makes it believable. No one's ever seen anything quite like this.''

Hunt, for one, appreciates the beauty part.

``It's the best body I've ever had!'' she says of Sally's shiny, curvy chassis. ``But to me, it wasn't about the body of the car or the make of the car, it's what was under the hood. It was about what the heart and soul of the character was trying to say.''

If that works across the pack, Pixar should have another hit on its hands. According to (the understandably biased) production designer Pauley, that, more than anything technical, would be ``Cars''' greatest achievement.

``They look good, they look like cars,'' he says of the cartoon's characters. ``But I can tell you what they've been doing, I know their personalities.''

Bob Strauss, [phone]

bob.strauss(at)dailynews.com

`Cars' stars impressed by detailing

Pixar turned to a couple of old pros -- Richard Petty and Paul Newman -- to add some horsepower to ``Cars.''

Petty voices the film's champion car -- called, like the legendary driver, The King, which resembles the blue Number 43 Superbird Petty drove. Coming from the circuslike atmosphere of NASCAR, Petty notes the similarities and differences between the two pop-culture empires of movies and stock cars.

``It's just different worlds,'' the retired racer drawls. ``I guess we're all after the same thing, which is entertainment dollars. Maybe

Hollywood considers their game a sport, too, but definitely, we try to be a sport, even though we're in show business, y'know?''

Unimpressed by the veracity of every race car movie he's ever seen, Petty admitted that it's kind of funny this cartoon came closer than most to approximating what it's like to speed around the track at hundreds of miles per hour.

``Most of it's Hollywood; it's more like `Days of Thunder,' y'know what I mean?'' he cautions. ``Some of the race perspective shots were pretty actual, though. When the cars were running side by side, and some of the crash scenes that they had, it was pretty dadgum actual.''

Another expert witness is acting legend and champion race car driver Newman. He plays Doc Hudson, that old '51 Hornet, Radiator Springs' crusty old judge and the town's de facto leader.

`I've seen the Pixar films, and this one especially had an extraordinary challenge because it involved so many crowd scenes and was particularly well-realized,'' the 81-year-old superstar says. ``If you look at the depth of focus in some of these animated shots, it's quite extraordinary. How would you like to be responsible for the grandstand with thousands of cars sitting in it, and somehow make each one of them different? They've done a great job, technically.

``They have an extraordinary sense of detail, both in the creative and the technical end,'' Newman says of how Team Pixar does it.

``And they don't get rushed, which I think is critical. They have the luxury of control and they have the luxury of time, and that gives them a terrific advantage. That, and the gifts they have.''

-- B.S.

CAPTION(S):

5 photos, box

Photo:

(1 -- cover -- color) Star vehicle

Celebs take their turns in Pixar's `Cars'

(2 -- 3) Disney/Pixar's seventh full-length digital cartoon, ``Cars,'' features scores of brightly colored autos -- but no humans to drive them.

(4) PAUL NEWMAN

(5) RICHARD PETTY

Box:

`Cars' stars impressed by detailing (see text)