Brent Friedman

Years ago, I slow-mo / freeze framed the entire credits of Cars, typing up the name of every staff person who worked on the movie. I entered them by name and credit into Excel, with the full intent to send mail merged, personalized, hand signed thank you cards to all of them.

The reason is, at the time, Cars had been a special movie for my son & I for a couple years. It was the 1st movie we let him watch, and I loved that his first film didn't have a villain, had a happy ending, & also taught that doing the right thing was more important than winning.

I wanted to share that gratitude with everyone who was named in the credits. It took a while to get the list made and then... I kept putting off writing the note. And time passed. & one day I deleted the spreadsheet. I doubt Pixar staff would have received them had I mailed them.

& even if they did, I doubted it would have mattered much. So I gave up and moved on with life. But a part of me still regrets not sharing my gratitude to all of the artists, technicians, and staff that helped create something special for my son and I.

And now with this Twitter thing, people express their thoughts far and wide. And it isn't always a good thing. I've seen trolls taking on others who have brought some light and joy into our lives and it makes me sad. So...