By PETER HARTLAUB, San Francisco Chronicle

SAN FRANCISCO - The last time Martin Sheen was in Tosca, in town to add narration to "Apocalypse Now," the actor was eighty-sixed from the famed bar.

"This was a very bad night for me," Sheen says as he walks into Tosca's back VIP room, staring wide-eyed at the movie posters and signed photos on the wall.

After looking through the trailers for most of the fall 2011 movies, it's hard not to feel a little cynical.

We're in a car with John Lasseter, and the filmmaker is in a professorial mood. During an hourlong commute from his home in Glen Ellen, Calif., to Pixar's campus in Emeryville, we learn at least a little about the first years of the studio, Formula One racing, the Graf Zeppelin dirigible, Brad Bird's genius and the history of computer animation.

Oh, to be a 13-year-old boy again. Preferably with a healthy allowance and an older brother who can buy tickets to R-rated movies.

As a fifth-grader, Dianna Agron traveled from her home in Texas to the Hyatt Regency hotel in San Francisco -- and stayed there for seven years. Her childhood memories include getting locked out by security because the president of the Philippines was arriving, and looking out her back window at a motivational-speaking seminar.

It was the 1990s, and Mike Rowe was living the dream.

By Rowe's own account, that dream included a very questionable work ethic -- designed so he would be on vacation about six months out of the year. The TV host says his plan was simple: to get to host television projects so poorly conceived that no amount of luck or talent could possibly save them.

Parents and grandparents yearning for the good old days, when a pair of roller skates and a copy of the Beatles' "Abbey Road" would satisfy a 12-year-old's Christmas Day wants, should accept modern-day reality.

Someone needs to file an age-discrimination lawsuit in Hollywood -- to force the studios to hire a few more young actors.

John Ratzenberger searches his memory -- he's probably been asked this question a hundred times -- but can't remember anything special about his audition or voice-over sessions for the original "Toy Story."

"It was a job," Ratzenberger says. "I believe in taking every job seriously, and doing my best work. But I didn't feel anything different. I definitely didn't know I'd be back."

Lee Unkrich's formative film experiences went far beyond "Bedknobs and Broomsticks" and "The Rescuers." The only child spent a lot of his early years with his divorced mother, watching films that would never make it past a story pitch at Walt Disney Studios.