March 13 - Joe Ranft

Image courtesy collider.com

On this day, in 1960, Joseph Henry Ranft was born in Pasadena, California. As a kid, Joe developed two great passions in his life: magic and film. By the time he was 15, he was a member of the Magic Castle Junior Group (which, as anyone who is into magic knows, is a big deal). Unlike most of the members of that group, who go on to become professional magicians, Joe felt the pull of comedic storytelling a little bit more and enrolled at CalArts to study character animation. Working alongside fellow students like John Lasseter and Brad Bird, Ranft eventually caught the eye of Disney with a student film called Good Humor. After graduating in 1980, he moved right into the Television Department at the Disney Studios (knowing full well that if it didn't work out, he always had a bit of magic in his back pocket to rely on).

Image copyright Pixar

The first five years of Joe's career weren't exactly what anyone would call auspicious. He worked on all kinds of projects, developing stories and creating storyboards to go along with them, but none of them were ever actually produced. Eventually Joe was transferred into the Feature Animation Department where he had the good fortune to apprentice under one of Walt's Nine Old Men, Eric Larson and his prospects picked up considerably. Joe spent the rest of the Eighties and early Nineties working on the stories of films like Oliver and Company, The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin and The Lion King. He was Story Supervisor on The Rescuers Down Under and Storyboard Supervisor for The Nightmare Before Christmas and James and the Giant Peach.

Image copyright Pixar

In 1991, Joe's old schoolmate, John Lasseter, asked him to join his new venture, a studio called Pixar. The move earned Joe his only Oscar nomination (for Best Original Screenplay on Toy Story). In addition to being Story Supervisor on Toy Story and A Bug's Life, he began to get more heavily into voice work (hey, Pixar was a small place at the time; everyone had to do multiple things). He'd already provided some screams in Beauty and the Beast and was Igor, Dr. Finkelstein's assistant, in The Nightmare Before Christmas, but now he actually got dialogue. Joe is the voice of Lenny the Binoculars in Toy Story, Heimlich in A Bug's Life, Wheezy in Toy Story 2, Pete "Claws" Ward in Monsters, Inc., Jacques the Shrimp in Finding Nemo, and Doggy Loggy in Chicken Little.

In the early Aughts, Joe was elevated to co-director on Cars. He provided the voices for Red and Peterbilt, but never got to see them on the big screen. Tragically, on August 16, 2005, Joe was a passenger in car that lost control, crashed through a guardrail and fell 130 feet into the Navarro River in Mendocino County, California. Joe and the car's driver were killed on impact. Both Cars and Tim Burton's Corpse Bride (which Joe had been executive producer for) were dedicated to his memory. He was posthumously made a Disney Legend in 2006 and given the Windsor McCay lifetime achievement award at the 2016 Annie Awards. He was only 45 at the time of his death and was a loss felt throughout the entire industry.