Red's Dream

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Red's Dream
Red the unicycle in the lonely corner of the store
Directed by	John Lasseter
Produced by	John Lasseter
Written by	John Lasseter
Release date(s)	1987
Country	USA
Preceded by	Luxo, Jr.
Followed by	Tin Toy

Red's Dream is a short film produced by Pixar Animation Studios, released in 1987. It was directed by John Lasseter.

[edit] Plot

This short is set in the city, during a rainy night. No people or cars are present at all. We then see a neon sign which reads "Eben's Bikes", which is closed for the night. We then see inside the shop, where we find Red: a small, retired circus unicycle that sits in the corner, waiting to be sold. Above red is a sign that reads "Sale', although no one has purchased him yet. The camera zooms in on Red, and we go to the dream sequence.

The sound of rain suddenly becomes a drum roll. In the dream, Red dreams about his days in the Circus. Riding Red is a crude looking circus clown(named Lumpy),who rides into the spot light, expecting a huge applause from the unseen audience. But instead, he receives only one, measly clap. Lumpy then begins juggling three balls while riding Red, who continuously slides out from beneath Lumpy, who rides in the air as if he still had a unicycle underneath him. Lumpy accidentally drops one of the balls, but Red slides out from under him and catches it. Red begins bouncing the ball up and down on his pedal as both him and lumpy begin riding in circles, together. Suddenly, the still floating Lumpy notices Red, who continues to bounce the ball. Lumpy then looks between his legs and notices, all too late, that he is riding on nothing! He then looks to the camera, gulps, and falls down(and seemingly disappears from the proceedings). Red catches the other two balls and begins juggling them. He then balances all three balls on top of each other, and there is an uproarious applause, much to the missing Lumpy's dismay. But then, the sound of applause turns into the sound of rain. Realizing it was just a dream, the crushed Red returns to his corner and goes back to sleep. The short ends with an image of the sign for Eben's Bikes, and the screen fades to black.

[edit] Trivia

The clever juggling in the short was a gentle upsmanship poke at Triple-I's CGI short Adam Powers, the Juggler.
The bike shop "Eben's Bikes" was named for Pixar engineer and technical director of Knick Knack, Eben Ostby.
The center circus ring has the same pattern as the infamous Pixar Ball (the yellow ball with the blue stripe and a red star, that was seen in Pixar's first short film, Luxo Jr).
This was the first Pixar Short to show their first organic character, the circus clown known as Lumpy (Note that The Adventures of André and Wally B. was created under Lucasfilms, and thus does not count under Pixar per se.).
This is the only Pixar Short to have any part of it rendered on the Pixar Image Computer.
To date, this is the only Pixar short that is not attached to one of Pixar's feature films.
There is no dialogue, no people(except for Lumpy and the unseen audience), and no cars in the film.