Meet the UC Davis child star who said ‘Nemo touched the butt!’

When you think of Pixar’s Finding Nemo, there are two lines that stand out as iconic quotes. The first is Dory’s “just keep swimming,” and the second, perhaps more quotable, is “Nemo touched the butt.”

Turns out the voice behind the second quote is none other than UC Davis English major Jordan Ranft.

How the hell did this event come about?

My dad worked for Disney and he went to Cal Arts with John Lassiter, so when Pixar was pushing for Toy Story to get made, John brought my dad on to work on it and my dad started working for Pixar as head of story. In order to save money when they’re going through the recording process for voices, they’ll just bring in people from Pixar or their family members and do what are called scratch recordings which are just placeholders until they get an actual voice actor.

I was doing scratch recordings for Nemo actually and they were thinking about having me do the voice in the movie, but it was decided I was too old. Anyway, they needed a voice for a smaller role, I think one of the school kids, so I got called in for that.

What did your dad do for Pixar?

My dad was a storyboarder, so he was actually the one to storyboard the entire scene in Toy Story when all the army men come out of the bucket.

He was the voice of Heimlich, the voice of the caterpillar in Bug’s Life and the head of story on Brave Little Toaster, and he wrote the original script for The Corpse Bride and co-directed Cars right before he passed.

When Nemo  came out, did you tell everyone you knew?

It was cool when Nemo came out but I was 8, and when adults at school were coming up to tell me they saw the movie, it was actually really overwhelming. When you tell someone it’s kind of all they want to talk about. It kind of pigeonholes you in a way.

So your dad passed when you were pretty young?

My dad passed when I was 13. He was head of story on Cars and he had been working like a fucking dog for years on it, he had taken multiple trips down Route 66… he’s responsible for the character Mater, he came up with it.

Right when the movie was wrapping up, he went on a spiritual retreat with two dudes from Los Angeles and he ended up dying in a car accident on his way up.

That must have been really hard.

Yeah, it was the day before my first day of high school. After he died, they changed his title on Cars to co-director and Tim Burton dedicated Corpse Bride to him. My dad was a super humble dude, he just did it because he liked it, he wasn’t interested in fame or success or anything. I never knew he was even that big of a deal but all of a sudden Steve Jobs was speaking at his funeral and he was a topic on Jeopardy and someone wrote a book on him… it was crazy to have been a part of it, in a way… but also to know him as much more of a family dude than anything else and to hear everyone else refer to him as a legend.

Was that different than how you saw him?

I never identified him with this giant movie maker. My uncle is still head sculptor at Pixar to this day and watching the movies kind of takes something from you… it’s weird to sit down and watch something that my entire family created. In a way it’s like watching my entire history.

So how does it affect your life today?

I was thinking about doing that quote, the ‘Nemo touched the butt’ quote. For me, it’s normal. I wake up that guy every day and go to sleep that guy too. But I was thinking about it and that line, billions of people know it, I have one of the most quoted lines of my generation and that’s trippy.

When I think about that it’s kind of mind-blowing. I’m not famous but I was part of something that is.

What do you remember about the actual experience of recording?

I remember doing A Bug’s Life and I hated it. I was so little and I didn’t really understand what was going on. I remember they had to bring in jellybeans to calm me down and afterwards while we were outside the recording studio, they asked my dad if i would be interested in auditioning for a young Tarzan and I said, ‘no.’

When I was a bit older, probably about 9, and we were going to do Nemo, I remember understanding more that it was going to turn into a movie and thought that was pretty cool. But the guy who was directing it was just a family friend of ours so it was just kind of hanging out with him. I thought that I would just do the line once and it would be done and when they kept asking me to repeat it or say it differently, I actually thought their machine was broken.

I remember actually suggesting stuff. What if I say this angry, or the third or fourth time they brought me in I think I had a diva attitude. They were good folk to humor me, but I don’t think any of my creative suggestions made the cut.

Did you inherit any of your father’s creative abilities?

I think there’s a lineage of creativity in my family. After high school I discovered I really loved writing and while I was living in Boulder, I met a dude named Seth Walker who is one of the longest touring spoken word poets in the West and he ended up showing me spoken word poetry.

I started writing it and I’m still writing it today. I have this fear of going into an artistic pursuit and just being overshadowed by my dad. I’d never be able to do more than what my dad accomplished so there’s an anxiety around that.

Does that frustrate you?

Not really. One of the pipe dreams that I have is to try and get into TV writing, but I think I have too dark of a sense of humor to fully jump into kids’ movies. My dad was perfect for it because he was this big-hearted, goofy dude and he was really invested in the art of animation.

But more than anything he was a story man, he was interested in how we tell stories and the affect stories have on people and he wanted to use stories as a medium to bring happiness to people.