Witness… The Pixar Way

Written By Andrew Feldman

Toy Story was my favorite movie as a child. Makes sense, doesn’t it? My name is Andy after all, and like most middle-class children growing up in sheltered suburbia, I had many a toy, not to mention many a stuffed animals (two shelves full of ‘em) and many a board game (I was spoiled, clearly). There was even one night, maybe a year before Toy Story was released, when my mom allowed me to stay up till midnight (with her supervision, of course) to watch the toys come to life at 12AM, and we watched the three-hour film adaptation of Maverick to occupy the minutes; nothing happened once the clock struck 12, of course, and I went to bed dismayed.

The funny thing is that I didn’t think of Toy Story as my fave after first seeing it. I vividly remember a day in grade school where a substitute teacher wanted to get to know us a little bit and had us fill out a survey of sorts, and one of the questions on it was What’s Your Favorite Movie, to which I just figured, sure, why not, I’ll write Toy Story, and it became canon until 2000 when I saw X-Men and the throne then belonged to the Mutants. (Actually, truth be told, a month earlier I claimed Me, Myself & Irene was my favorite movie, but only because I was mocked by some friends for still letting Toy Story claim my top spot, so I felt peer pressured to change it quickly. Kids can be mean.)

I tell this tale to just give background to my Pixar fandom, but of course, I’m not unique in my love of the studio. Before Disney bought them and the studio got sucked into the sequel-churning black hole that is the Real Hollywood (read: $$$ and $$$ only), they were essentially piloting a new wave of creativity. Not wholly because they put computer-animated films on the map, but because they had the imaginations to back that up. Visually: astounding. Storytelling: impeccable. As I say in the introduction to “The Lost Left Sock,” they proved animation was not just for children. They were concentrated on telling stories for everyone. They still are, but like I also say in the intro, they’ve unfortunately been caught in the IP saturation machine. Alas. (I really was charmed by Elio, though, more than I expected to be.)

Pictured: me at Pixar Studios in Emeryville, CA, cir. 2023.

Luxor Jr. is clearly not amused by me saying even the mildest of negative things about its creator.

The idea of doing an “animated” episode of WiYW… came about during the middle of production of the second season, when I began to envision what other types of stories I could tell and what genres they would lampoon. When trying to come up with what a Pixar-esque tale would contain, the first (and really only) thing to come in mind was to focus on inanimate objects, a la Toy Story or Cars, which already should give credit to movies like The Brave Little Toaster. Perhaps I was unconsciously influenced by Mike O’Brien’s audio sketch, “Utensils,” which perfectly parodies a lesser type of animated film’s trailer (btw, if you get a chance, listen to all of O’Brien’s 2015 album, Tasty Radio— it’s fantastic). For a long time, all I could really think of was a story focusing on fallen autumn leaves and giving them sentience, but once I landed on the concept of socks getting lost in the laundry and where on Earth they might go, I was set.

Casting the episode may have been the easiest round of casting I’ve ever done. I knew before the script was even written that Kalia Armbruster would play her third role in the series, as we had discussed during the time of “The Noble Steed” how I was consistently having her play non-human roles, the first being a robot in “The Eurydice Rescue.” So, in commitment to the bit, she would be Mayor Wysocki. This became doubly certain once I saw her perform a flamboyant Andrew Lloyd Webber impression in an improv show, thus cementing the voice for the character.

After killing it in “The Girl on the Phone,” I wanted to get Sarah Bucher back in front of a microphone, so she took on the role of Toesphine, and for Socrates, I knew I wanted Jonathan MacDonald to deliver an old man voice, so he was given his second part after playing Blisters in S4’s “The Map Makers.”

For the first-time performers, Lin McDow was a must as they were another member of my iO Summer Intensive cohort and I had to obviously keep that trend going. Lin excels at doing voices, as they showed as the Dungeon Master for the short D&D campaign we played during our time in Chicago, but as Lefty, I wanted Lin to tap into their sincerity with just a hint of bite in order to capture the growing cynicism Lefty experiences during their time in The Land of Lost Socks. Lin nailed it.

Lin McDow, cir. 2023, doing their DM thang.

Lastly, for Archie, I knew I needed someone who sounded gentle, and who better than Kevin Boise, a former improv student of mine and mainstay on the Endgames stage. Kevin is very soft-spoken, but he is a true wild card on stage, so that underlying sense of “I don’t know what this guy’s going to do next” worked perfectly, I think, when it came to Archie and the overarching mystery of whether or not The Land of Lost Socks could be a trustworthy place.

The only really difficult part of casting came down to the cameos from past performers. This being a Pixar story, it seemed appropriate to fill in most if not all of the bit roles with familiar names, and sure enough, I sent a lot of messages to several people asking if they’d like to be involved. A number of people were unavailable or didn’t get back to me in time, unfortunately, which meant I had to step in for a couple of the roles (I was always going to cameo as Flatfoot, but I ended up having to play Righty as well). I’m sure you can suss out who made appearances by just looking at the special thanks, but just to give them their fair share of credit here, in order of appearance:

The initial recording session for “Sock” took place on February 22, 2025, with Kalia, Sarah and Jonathan present and Lin recording remotely from the Midwest. This was actually a big recording day as just before this one, a session for next week’s (last) episode went down. The second recording sesh took place a couple months later with Kevin over Zoom due to scheduling issues. People are busy, what can I say?

I’ve spoken at length about my love for foley and all the times I’ve been able to create my own for this series. In this episode, I’m particularly proud of a rather innocuous sound effect, that being the movement of the socks; I hesitate to call it walking because they don’t have feet, but it also isn’t exactly slithering. Creating these sounds could have been as simple as just sliding socks on the floor or ground, or even just rubbing them against each other… which is what I did, because why make things complicated? I put the socks on my hands, decided at what pace each sock character would move, and rubbed my hands together accordingly. But in an unnecessary effort to go the extra mile, I made sure that each character’s movement would be made by a different pair of socks. This is especially important when it comes to Toesephine’s sounds, because for those I used special socks with Sarah Bucher’s face on them that I had received as a White Elephant gift exchange my Your Fucked Up Relationship team did one holiday season. I mean, come on! No other socks would do!

The Sarah socks.

They are quite comfortable, too!

I think that’s all I have to say about the episode. No sum up necessary, and certainly nothing political present (not intentionally, anyway) to rant about. Just a solemn reminder that next week is the finale, and that will be that. I’ll save the tears for then.

(Oh, and for the record, I know Up was released AFTER Toy Story 3, but what I say in the opening makes it sound like I believe the reverse to be true. No. It’s a purposeful error in order to help my argument. Put your Um, Actually pitchforks down, please.)

—Andy

Andrew Feldman
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Witness… The Collateral Damage