Pete Docter: How to Craft a Remarkable Story the Pixar Way

Peter Docter
Hi everyone. Good evening my name is Chase is candy fear. I’m the Director of Adult Learning here at TIFF and the program of in conversation with it’s my distinct pleasure to welcome you to tonight’s in conversation with Pete Docter. It is now my distinct pleasure to introduce your host for this evening. He is one of our favorites. Richard Krause is the film critic for seat CTVs Canada AM CTV News Channel and CP 24. He was the host of reel to reel Canada’s longest running television show about movies and as a frequent guest on many national Canadian radio and television shows. His syndicated Saturday afternoon radio show the Richard crow show originates on news talk 1010 in Toronto. He is author of eight books including Elvis’s King, asta Costello’s my aim is true. He also writes a weekly column for the Metro newspaper and I’m sure a lot of you remember when he was on stage with Professor Del Toro amazing event, Guillermo del Toro, please join me in welcoming our host for the evening, Richard Kress. Everybody. Thank you all for coming. We’ve got I think, what’s going to be a really exciting, cool and enlightening conversation ahead. Pete Docter is the Oscar winning director of Monsters Inc. and up and vice president creative at Pixar Animation Studios. His latest film, Disney Pixar is inside out is scheduled to release on June 19 of this year, I saw the first 56 minutes of it today. And it’s really something so you’re in for a treat. You’ll have to wait till June for that. Yeah, I don’t. But make this clear. I don’t, but you will. We’re going to cover a great deal of Pete’s career starting from working at Pixar in 1990 Straight up through to the experience of making this new film. And it is rare, I think, to have someone who is currently at the forefront. Currently, someone who’s changing the way that a certain genre or a certain kind of movie is made. And in terms of animation, Pixar does that every single day. And in terms of movies like inside out and up in Monsters Inc, Pete Docter, and friends who will be announced later, are doing that every single day working at Pixar. So it’s very exciting to have Pete Docter here this evening, we’re gonna kick things off with a Pixar sizzle reel. Just to remind you, I know everyone here has seen all the movies a dozen times, we’re gonna just let your or get you excited about all this and then we will be out to start the conversation. Enjoy please help me welcome Pete Docter.

Host
Welcome, thanks, thanks for having me. Well, listen, these people are very excited people have been at noon, people are waving people are excited to see you look at this. Cool. We’re excited to have you here. And we’re going to talk about a lot of things in the next hour or so. But I want to talk about where the love of animation comes from. I want to talk about you making your first flip book when you’re eight years old, and how an eight year old goes from watching Saturday afternoon cartoons or whatever it was going to the matinees and seeing Chuck Jones cartoons to actually going I think I can do that at home.

Peter Docter
Yeah. Well, that’s a good question. I don’t really remember.

Host
Make something up because they will believe anything you say.

Peter Docter
I did grew up watching Saturday morning cartoons that Chuck Jones we’re all always my favorite. Disney, you know, wonderful world that Disney would come on. This is in the old days before even VHS maybe there was VHS, but we didn’t have it right. And so you just pray please, please be animation, please. It’d be like, Oh, Charlie, the Lonesome Cougar. Okay. I’ll watch it anyway, you know. But I then discovered flipbooks. And I started drawing them like in the corners of my math book and stuff. And I made a big stack of them. And then my dad had a Super Eight camera. And I figured out well if I flip the flip book, and then I took it one step further and just shot one frame at a time. And so I kind of like discovered what all the old guys had known already. how animation works. It’s basically you know, creating one frame at a time and that’s kind of how I fell in love with it. And it’s the same thing I get to do today. Only we use millions of dollars worth of computer equipment instead of 39 cents for the papers

Host
in rendering farms. Yeah, I just learned about rendering firms render farm Yeah, where you send all the information to be public. That’s

Peter Docter
a big bank of all the computers that we have that render the files and, and in the old days, when we started on Toy Story, we set it up so that when a frame would finish, it would make a sound like an animal so and we named all the machines cow horse, chicken. So it sounded like a render farm and the front. It’s pretty cool.

Host
Now, what were some of the like, what were the subjects that you were looking at? When you were making these flip books? What kind of things? Were you telling stories where you’re just making things move? Or what was it about those

Peter Docter
at the very beginning? See, okay, there’s always the guy, you guys probably have this, who sits and draws and you’re just like, Wow, that’s amazing. Look at that horse or the dragon or whatever. That was not me. I wanted to be that guy. But I couldn’t draw, I struggled with drawing, I have my whole life. And people say that they think I’m good or whatever, but I struggle. And but as soon as I found movement, I was hooked. And so I figured at first it was just like making anything move. And then I realized, Wait, when I do something funny, people like that more. And so that kind of led me to storytelling, really.

Host
And it seems an odd choice to become an animator, when, as you say, you can’t draw very well. But it is perhaps more of the understanding of how motion works, and, and how it all fits together than it is the actual nuts and bolts of being able to draw a face.

Peter Docter
Well, I mean, I think out of necessity, I, I learned to draw better than I could. And then when I got to Pixar, I didn’t have to draw and I was happy to leave that and that struggle, daily struggle with noses in the wrong place. But I could still do the movement, and the gestures and the acting, which is what I really loved. Right?

Host
And Pixar, you started the day after school. There was no messing around you, you made a straight line from trainings directly into a career that you’ve had now for 2520 going on 25 years.

Peter Docter
Well, I was lucky, I was born at a good time I credit my mom for that. And everybody, yeah. Up till that time. Basically, if you are an animator, if you were lucky, you’re one of like four people who would get a job animating he-man in the Masters of the Universe or something like this, which was not really high quality stuff. When I got out of school, The Simpsons was just starting up. Disney was back. They were doing a little mermaid just starting up on that. And Pixar was hiring. So I had all this opportunity. But for whatever weird reason. And nobody knew about Pixar at this time. It basically made hardware as a company. They’ve done some of the short films. But I, you know, I kind of look back and scratch my head and say, Why did I decide to go to this computer hardware company instead of going to Disney or some of these other places? And I think the answer is the short films that John Lasseter and the other guys did. They’re just fantastic. And that’s what got me hooked.

Host
And what were those early days, like, you know, I had this idea that is just this bubbling beehive of creativity. And is it or was it like that at the time because they weren’t? You know, at the time, they weren’t making Toy Story yet, shortly after you got there, but they weren’t doing that work yet,

Peter Docter
right? Yeah, no, they were doing we were doing short films and some commercials that just started up commercials. It was kind of like hanging out in your friend’s garage, making stuff just for fun. You know, it was about that level of like the furniture was at about that level two is not like a fancy place. And we would draw on the walls and have paintball fights and laser tag in the hallways and stuff like that. Just because it was fun and it was a rental the building was and then you know as we got going it slowly evolved in that we hired more people so on to

Host
was that kind of anything goes spirit. Did that feed the creativity that you may have felt in there? I mean, it seems like it was I don’t know Wilds the word. But it certainly you know you were you were free to experiment?

Peter Docter
I think so. There’s something that I noticed in other people that we’ve gotten a chance to I can’t believe that I’ve gotten a chance to work with people like Amy Poehler. But she has a similar thing to what was going on at Pixar, which is, let’s make this a fun thing. Right? Like any situation. When Jonas Rivera producer and I met her for the first time it was in an elevator, and she was right away goofing around with people and having fun and like, it’s almost like her brain says, How can I make this interesting, you know, and Pixar was kind of like that to where we would anytime new computers would come up, we’d be like, Ooh, how can I use I can send sounds to that other computer and make it embarrassing sounds like that guys machine. Okay, you know, so it’s all like tools to goof around with, right? And we spend a lot of time doing that.

Host
And then so you’re making commercials, short films, that sort of thing, and then someone comes up with the idea Going around for Toy Story. And you were one of the people that helped create the characters, one of the three people that helped create the main characters in Toy Story. And you’ve said that each one of you identified with a different character. So I guess the obvious question is Which character were you most identify? Where do you most identify with? And and how does that process work? Because I understand that film is by its very nature, a collaborative process. And it has to be I mean, there’s hundreds of people working on anything. But from what I understand Pixar takes that even one step further than you would on on almost any other film at everyone seems to be working together in this amorphous kind of way that that is, I think, a little bit unusual.

Peter Docter
Yeah, kind of befuddled me when we started because my vision, see, when I grew up, I always thought the way it worked is Walt Disney is sitting in bed, and he sits up and he goes Dumbo, and they just, and he goes to work. And he has the whole film in his head and the opening shot, we see a stork and he flies down. And so that was what I seriously think in the back of my head. I believe that’s how it works. So I was waiting for John to come in and tell us what are we going to do? And instead, he would come in and go, Well, what do you think, guys? And I was like, What this doesn’t have? Wow. So you know, as it turns out, of course, John’s enormously clever because instead of just his brain, which is already pretty great. He gets all these other brains. And if you steer people the right way, you get all the ideas from a great community of people. The key is, of course, steering in the right way. So it’s not like old west with with stuff going everywhere. But

Host
like your texts a record? Yeah.

Peter Docter
So that was fun.

Host
Yeah. And so that, is that. Yeah. And it still works that way. Yeah. I mean, is it? I mean, you’ve been there for 25 years? Is it? It? Does it still feel as collaborative? Does it still feel as given take, as it always has, with, you know, a shelf full of Academy Awards and and every other award imaginable? Probably tucked away in your office somewhere? You would think that normally success changes things in that sort of way.

Peter Docter
It’s changed. Yeah. And I say that to provoke just to get you to go what it’s changed. But it has an Ed Catmull is fond to saying it would be if it didn’t change, it would be dead. Right, right. So since Toy Story, we did the whole film, I think with like 120 people, right, which is maybe a third of the crew that we have now for a film. And the studio was about 150. And now it’s 1200 or something. So it’s definitely changed several times over. But that’s a good thing. In terms of what you’re asking about, yeah, it’s still very much a collaborative effort. Everybody is able to contribute. And you know, from John Lasseter to janitors, to anybody who sees the film and wants to send ideas or talk to us and all and yeah, if it’s a good idea, I’ll take it from anywhere. Well, it’s

Host
funny, because I was bragging before you came out that I saw the first hour of Yeah, film today. And it is interesting, you were saying that, you know, to get to the point where you’re ready to show it to people like me, you showed it to the HR department one day, and then you showed it to you know, bookkeeping, and you showed it to whoever is sort of in the building that isn’t doing anything for the next hour and a half come on in and have a look at this. And you know, how seriously, do you take these test audiences?

Peter Docter
We take it very seriously, because what happens is, over the course of five years, strangely, you get kind of close to it. Yeah. And so sometimes it’s hard to tell, do I like this? Am I sick of it? Where do I actually stand in this? And it’s so clarifying to see with an audience, sometimes, they don’t have to even you’re like, just don’t say anything, I know exactly what’s wrong. Having now seen it kind of through your eyes, it’s really helpful. And of course, you know, the way we generally work is, we’ll have a concept. Develop that for a while. Right aversion, door script it, we have a team of storyboard artists to kind of draw up a comic book version of this thing, we cut it on video with dialogue, music and sound effects. And we approximate what it’s going to be like to watch the film when it’s all done, even though it’s just, you know, stick figure pretty rough drawings. Usually, that whole process from concept to there is usually about a year and a half. And then thereafter, what happens is we screen it, everybody who we invited, comes up to a room and tells us what they liked what they didn’t like. And we then the creative team, kind of the core creative team goes away and says, What do you guys think? What should we do? How do we want to change this and just and then we do that whole thing all over again. And we do it about seven or eight times before the film is really ready to produce Well, I

Host
was surprised today and we’ll talk about inside out a little bit later on. But it guy don’t want to join us we’ve got so much else to do. But I was surprised today for the The hour that I saw is beautiful and seamless, and the story flows so beautifully. And then you spoke of it and said, Oh, yeah, we changed everything we changed. You know, there’s some of the characters, we changed out completely. And we and and it was surprising to me because I have this idea that, you know, it’s enormously expensive. It’s enormously time consuming all those things to make any change and a big animated thing like that. How many rendering firms? Do you have going 24 hours a day to make these changes? And, and it really,

Peter Docter
it is horribly time consuming. Yeah, it is horribly expensive soul

Host
destroying a little bit when you’ve worked on? Yeah. For months and months and months, and then it just doesn’t work. Yeah, yeah. But I

Peter Docter
think the lucky stars that we work at a company that we allow ourselves to do that we because I don’t know, none of us could be, you know, it wouldn’t come out. Well, the first time never does. It always sucks at some point. Yeah. And so the fact that we’re able to make mistakes and allow ourselves to try stuff and iterate and not have the pressure of it’s got to be perfect the first time out. Yeah, that’s the only reason our stuff is any halfway. Good. So.

Host
So, Toy Story. First one, you were one of the three writers, which character did you most identify with? I’ll go back to that one.

Peter Docter
Well, okay. So Andrew, John’s obviously directing and Andrew, I think really got a bead on on Woody. And I kind of identified more with buzz for some reason, I don’t really know why. But I just felt like I could write for him and kind of act him out and things. So yeah, that became kind of a good dynamic for

Host
the two of us. And over the course of how many years that was about four or four and a half, four and a half years. And first time you’ve worked on something of that size. First time that Pixar has stepped out and said, feature film, you know, this, look at look at what we’re doing here. What, what was going through your head during those four and a half years, because it’s all new, you’re doing you know, you’re you’re breaking new ground.

Peter Docter
So not only was it the first feature film, it was the first feature film any of us had worked on. So other than Joe ramped, who came a little bit later to the party, he had worked on some features down at Disney brave little toaster and the other one he Rescuers Down Under he was had a story on that. But other than he none of us had experience. So we were just flying by the seat of our pants, kind of saying what feels right, what instinctively have we wanted to try and, you know, we sort of made, we made a list of things of sort of cliches that we wanted to avoid. We didn’t want the our little town song and the I Want song and all these different heroes or villains that grow huge in the third act, all the things that we had seen in, in animated films that we wanted to steer clear of. But then you know, that’s all easy to say at the beginning, then you have the tough work of actually making it play, which is just doing it over and over.

Host
And was there a moment, there must have been a moment where you watched it with the HR department or somebody and you sat there and you’re like, we don’t have to change this anymore.

Peter Docter
No, no, it’s never that well, when it’s finished. When it’s funny when it’s really changing. I mean, it feels like we’re working, working working well. Okay, that’s gonna take it away. That’s when it’s done. Really? Yeah. I think if we did not have deadlines, we would seriously still be working on Toy Story one, really. Because we, we just can’t stop otherwise.

Host
Well, and one of the Joe Grant, one of the legendary Disney artists and story man, he was responsible for your story director on Fantasia. And so you’re, you’re, you know, that’s back catalogue. You’re digging deep here was one of the people that helped you out with Monsters Inc. Yeah. And so I really I find it was really interesting as I have read more, and I learned more about this, how this very cutting edge technology that you’re using, and in a lot of ways, pushing the ideas of what animated storytelling can be in up having a character die, all that sort of thing, which I mean we’ve seen before but then the first time I saw that with an audience, I had to you know, cover myself with a towel to start from getting so by the tears that were happening. I mean, it really pushed the envelope in terms of that sort of thing. But I’ve been impressed all the way along that you dig deep and and refer and pay homage to what came before

Peter Docter
well that was one of the great pleasures for me in working on Toy Story in the success of Toy Story was that I got to meet these heroes of mine like Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston. Unfortunately Milt call had passed, he was my favorite animators, just man that guy can animate. We got to meet Chuck Jones and I struck struck up a really great friendship with Joe. Joe Grant, as you mentioned, who I talked a lot about, like what was it like doing this and what were you thinking on? You know Dumbo and so on? And according to him, he was like nothing has changed. It’s the same thing we’re doing now as we were then. And one thing he always more than once would mention is what are you giving the audience to take home? Right? And that always kind of puzzled me at first. But as we talked about, I realized what he meant was, okay, there’s all the fun of bright colors and movement. But what the next day or in two months are people going to think about that is in your film. And usually that comes down to something either life truth, something that you’ve experienced in your own life, or something that is really emotional. Those are the things that really mean something to you. So on every film that I’ve worked on, you know, we’re always digging for something like that something that’s really going to matter to people

Host
do have moments in films, not of your own films, but in other films, when that sort of idea of sticky content was placed in front of you. And you’re thinking, Yeah, you know, think back to your childhood and movies that really affected you. Do you have those moments that you can tell us about?

Peter Docter
Well, I mean, I was a huge Muppets fan. And the Muppet Movie, I think, had that for me, you know, Kurt’s journey out and kind of believing in himself and all those things. Later, of course, other films that really bowled me over where a Paper Moon, the Bogdanovich film, the relationship between the two of Addie prey and you know, fantastic. There’s, there’s tons of them. But you know, the other one that just mentioned is the station agent by Tom McCarthy. The first time I saw that, I was like, wow, this is really simple, deceptively simple. And that’s something that I admire, and I wish I was better at, which is taking something and making it very, very simple. Just because I think a lot of times we packed way too much stuff into, you know, I guess that happens. After five years you keep someone else will fit

Host
in there, too. Yeah, one more thing. Yeah, yeah, the station agent with Bobby Kandivali. And Peter Dinklage first time I’d seen either of those actors, and it is a movie that stays stays with it definitely along afterwards. So Monsters Inc, you’re you’re you’re developing this, again, we’re talking lengthy four or five year turnaround on these things. When you’re first coming up with this idea. Did you think back to you know what your monsters were like, when you were a kid? That sort of thing that maybe kept you up at night or not? Or what you imagined was under the bed? And if so, what were those things?

Peter Docter
Yeah, well, let’s see. Just backing up a minute. Toy Story finished, and everybody else was moving on to Bug’s Life. And I said, Well, what if I go off and develop something, there was no real. I didn’t think I would direct it or anything. I was just going to develop an idea that I was imagining John would direct. But I thought to myself, like a lot of people after that film, Toy Story came up to me and said, You know, I thought my toys came to life too. And I was thinking, Well, I wonder if there are other things that are like that, that we all kind of know, as kids know. And monsters. I knew there were monsters in the closet in mind there the closet, not the bed. But different strokes, man. That’s right. And the basement, the basement was, and I remember the day this the day that they went from being monsters to mass murders that were a big pivotal thing, like 1415 years old.

Host
Yeah.

Peter Docter
So that was that was the the kind of source of that and then, you know, we I get to work with great folks like Jeff pigeon, Joel Colton, who just would sit weeds. What we did at that one was we got this big roll of butcher block, and I’d roll it out on the table and cut it off. And we just sit there and draw on this big table, we just talk about what what if, what if we had this guy who scares kids for living and, and we would talk and draw and I’d cut out what I wanted. And I would at the end of the day, go home and type something up and we’d start the next day with here’s the story we came up with yesterday and I pitch it to them and then they go well, but what about this and we roll another sheet out and we’d start again and so we just kind of worked that way for a couple of at least a couple months before we had anything right and keep going from

Host
there but and that film was notable for any number of reasons but I remember hearing that just to render the for alone talk an enormous amount of dough like a ridiculous amount of time because no one had really made for that looked like that before right and so is was that one of those situations where you you know are talking to the to the computer animators and just go Yeah, I went for and I want it to be really realistic, which I got to do

Peter Docter
i that except falls with please please. So yeah, no, we early on kind of put us flag in the ground and said I think we’re going to need for this and we’re also going to need this doesn’t get as much credit but we’re this kid has been taken from her bedroom. So she’s got to have like some sort of saggy like night shirt or something like that. And that we had not done if you go back and look at Toy Story. All the clothes are very form fitting because they’re articulated there. They’re not Dynamic they don’t move unless they’re keyframed to move. So between those two things that really had the technical directors sweating a little bit, and we actually, there’s a small company that had done some pioneering work that we ended up buying the it was two guys once Canadian, I forgotten. And so they developed the basis of that simulation software that we’d still use today.

Host
And Ray Harryhausen was an influence. Yeah, I knew Ray Harryhausen, you know, roomful of animation. You know who Ray I don’t need to, I don’t have to explain who Ray Harryhausen is to you. But Ray Harryhausen was was a big influence on you in terms of the monster design. I understand tell me, because I love his work. I love the idea of the stop motion animation because it feels organic, and it feels it feels like someone’s hands were really there. But the monsters were also really cool. They were that’s the Yeah, that’s the other party for sure.

Peter Docter
And of course, that’s we paid homage to him by naming the sushi restaurant afterwards, right. I’d say the other monsters in the film were part Harryhausen, a large part Muppets. In fact, we had to kind of steer away so that they didn’t look too much like some of the Muppets a little bit of what’s his name is Maurice Sendak. Yeah, we’re all these things that like, Okay, I love that. But we can’t do that, because that’s already been done. So you want to make your own kind of find your own piece of ground. You know,

Host
we’re just, we’re talking here. But there is, according to my research here took 11 to 12 hours to render a single strand of Selleys 2.3 million individual strands of hair. can that possibly be right, that adds up? We’d still be rendering

Peter Docter
Exactly. Yeah, it did take a long time. Well, you should check it out.

Host
Yeah, well, you know what, we’re just gonna put a line through it. We’re not going to go back to your kids for six and three, when you made this. And again, inside out we’ll talk about a little bit later on. But there is some personal stuff in that film. Is there anything of your kids in this film? Or is this something new looking? Yeah, in Monsters, I resist you primarily looking back.

Peter Docter
What happened was okay, I love work. You know, as soon as I got to Pixar, I would just stay there all day. And all night, my wife when we first got married, would we’d eat dinner. And then she’d come and play video games and fall asleep until I would wake her up at two in the morning when I was done animating, and we go home, and I go back to work because I just couldn’t get enough. And then we had a kid. And so monsters started at about the same time the kid did. And and as I was working on the film, I was like, This is great. And then my wife would say, he smiled for the first time. And you missed it, because you’re at work. And I was like, how do I make this go because I want to be in both places, but I can’t. And that really is what became this story, this sort of emotional backbone of monsters. A Solly, who’s a monster who loves his job, suddenly gets this kid which at first scary and weird, which is true of real kids. And then he grows to care for her more than he does the job. And so, you know, it’s that impossible struggle with no answer that I think makes for good stories.

Host
And I mean, I think it refers back to what you were talking about earlier that the stuff the sticky content is the stuff that comes from an emotional moment or an emotional epiphany or something that that may be only really known to you, but it comes through in the story somehow.

Peter Docter
Yeah. And it’s weird, as other people have noticed this too, that the more particular and specific you are in the storytelling, the more generally it applies, right? If you try to generalize, then nobody really gets anything. But if you’re very specific and personal about it, it seems to resonate more.

Host
Right. Billy Crystal is one of the things I think that made people really stand up and notice this film as well. Because of the voice work, and that sort of thing. He was approached for Buzz Lightyear, I heard and said, No. And how did you convince him to come on board for Monsters Inc.

Peter Docter
We said, Hey, Billy, would you and he said yes. He was sort of kicking himself. I think he said, I got bad advice from an agent or something. And he was kicking himself that he he had passed on Toy Story. Yeah. So I remember like, going to present to him, whoa, we have this film. And he was already kind of signed on. He told us later. So he was great. And it was a lot of fun working especially, that was really the first film that we got both of our lead actors in the studio at the same time, right?

Host
And see, I don’t ever really understand how you can record everyone separately. And still, I mean, I understand you can edit it together, you can move the dynamics. It always seems to me like the dynamics just couldn’t be there. But they are somehow make it work. But you more and more seem to be bringing actors in together in inside out. There were moments that you had more than one cast member of recording lines.

Peter Docter
You realize when This happens, how fortunate we are and how much control we have versus live action because sometimes actors spark and you get great stuff. Other times, they hesitate and falter. And you know, we’ve had experiments of, of actors reading opposite each other, and it was awful. And there was no chemistry and we had to go back and bring them all in individually and kind of create that. And really credit the editors, you know, starting with Leon crouch on Toy Story who, who create these, it’s, you know, you’ll have Tom Hanks recorded in LA, and Tim Allen recorded in New York three months later, and yet in the scene, they’re both together arguing about being stuck onto the truck, you know, and you totally believe that they’re talking to each other. And that’s good editing, good editing and just part of the magic. Yeah, work. Yeah.

Yeah. And that, you know, good direction to that the director is able to, and I’m not John. John is, and now and so. But

Host
but it’s a different directorial muscle, I would imagine, then it would be in live action, because you’re listening for something very specific, in one person’s performance at a time.

Peter Docter
Yeah. Yeah. When I first started, I thought my job was to have everything in my head, almost like a pre recorded vision of what it should be. And then I would listen and try to direct to that. And I realized, especially as they work with amazing actors, like Bill Hader, and Mindy Kaling, really, what I want to do is set the table and that let them play. Because I’m going to get better stuff, kind of like we talked at the very beginning. If you if you’re able to kind of say, Okay, this is what we’re doing right in here, but don’t define it so precisely, then there’s still a lot of experimenting and planning to do.

Host
But that’s got to be kind of scary, though the idea of going, or maybe, maybe I’m just too controlling. But the idea of going into a project, that you don’t really know exactly where it’s going to end up five years from now. And it’s going to cost a lot of money. And there’s a lot of people relying on on this particular thing to do well, that has to be nerve racking.

Peter Docter
Well, you want to know enough about where you’re going to be able to lead them, right? If you’re like, I don’t know what’s going on, then what else is either. But you know, so, for example, I guess, even in talking to animators, rather than saying, okay, he comes in, and he very quickly puts his hand on the glass, and then 15 frames later, he goes like this, I’m gonna say instead of that, because say, you know, that feeling when you come home from a long hike, and you are just drenched with sweat, and you’re so thirsty, that is what he’s feeling like as he comes in. And that way they can create, they can put in their own specifics of how that’s going to happen. You know what I mean? So you’re setting a scene, more of an emotional thing for them. And the same with lighting. Same with the live actors, you know, as much as I can kind of create the scene in their head and describe the feeling, then they’re going to fill in their own specifics and bring great ideas to it.

Host
Let’s talk about Wally. Cool. And this started from a visual. From what I understand, according to Andrew Stanton, it just the thought of this lonely robot still doing his job after hundreds of years. And do it my grammar. Yeah. And so what was the visual and what did it mean to you? You worked on the story on

Peter Docter
Wally. Yeah, I pitched that at the same time I pitched Monsters, Inc. And then again, that didn’t really John didn’t take to it. So I filed it away on the shelf. And then after monsters, I was like, Alright, I’m ready with the next one. It’s gonna be Wally at that time we called the trash planet. And it didn’t really stick again. I realized this is just not working for me. But luckily, Andrew loved it. And so he kind of took it and carry the torch. But yeah, it was really the that pure visual of panning across a Trad a planet that’s just full full of trash and then a little wall. And you’d see very neatly just the scale of the amount of time that this character had been working and working and working. And the thrill of doing something with no dialogue. Well,

Host
it was gonna say it’s a nervy project, because there’s virtually no dialogue for most of the film.

Peter Docter
You know, people have said that I’ve always scratch my head. I’m like, we did. Luxo Jr. Everybody loves Luxo Jr. There’s no dialogue at all. To me, it feels it felt like the most completely given thing in the world that we could, I had no doubt about it.

Host
But I would imagine, though, that when you don’t have the dialogue to fall back on that the character design then becomes a million times more important.

Peter Docter
There again, I think it’s almost the acting because I don’t know if you’ve ever seen like either puppets or minds where you’ll have no movement in the face. And yet still just through the movement, that timing of things, you’re able to get complete intention and what the character wants. And it’s it’s really a thrill when you see it done well. So yeah, but I mean the design is fantastic, of course and it has this amazing flexibility to get all of that know where that For that, where I struggled, and I think Andrew really succeeded. And the hard work of that was act two, because we had the setup where and we had a lot of fun developing all the stick and things that he would find and so on. But then what happens? Yeah, and that’s the hard part. What’s the story? Yeah.

Host
And again, are we talking months years?

Peter Docter
Well, let’s see, I guess in total, I would have spent maybe six months on it in two different stents before Andrew took it, and I think I don’t remember the timing, because I wasn’t on it at that point. But I think it was at least four years after that, that they finally released it.

Host
And without, I mean, I call this film nervy, I think I probably did at the time when it came out. Because it felt different to me than then a lot of other entertainment. Or animated entertainment. Certainly. And I wonder, without reducing anything to a formula? Because yeah, I don’t think you agree with me that it’s as nervous. I think it is. But because you were there, you’re on the inside looking out maybe. But without reducing anything down to a formula are there are there Pixar traits that that you can identify? And perhaps, you know, suggested? Well, Wally, you know, is more like Toy Story then then? I think it

Peter Docter
is? Well, I would say it’s, it goes back even further than that. All the short films that John did. Were songs dialogue. So you have 10 toy, Luxo reds dream, all of these are inanimate objects brought to life beautifully, just through movement. I mean, read this unicycle, I guess you guys have probably seen that. It’s just really beautifully done. And you totally know what’s going on in that character’s head and what he feels like he or she, I don’t know who it is. So, you know, I think it really that film almost goes back to in a sense even further than that, like Chaplin, and Keaton. And those kinds of things. We looked at a lot of those films along the way. And the animators did I know.

Host
Yeah, those films. I mean, I think that the you talked about Chaplin and Keaton, those films played so universally because of, you know, dialogues you can play everywhere in the world, but they also focused on really primal stuff, stuff that everyone the world over could understand love. Right? fallen down is always funny. You know, that kind of stuff. Holly Wally, right? Yeah, it is. It’s all in Gwalior. Yeah. Yeah. Now, when pics are, we talked about it seems new. But it’s been described in the interviews that I’ve read with you and some others as an old style studio still. And I mean, can you? Can you describe to me, and we’ve touched on this a little bit about it being a place where writers and directors really shaped their films, which I guess is where the old style studio idea comes from? Is that it? Well, I

Peter Docter
like to think of it. I wasn’t there, obviously. But the old Hollywood studio system. Like if you think of MGM, or Warner Brothers, these are studios that had 1000s of employees, and they were on salary. So the cameraman, whether they were working or not, was coming in every Monday and getting a paycheck. And they would work with, you know, John Ford to, you know, whoever, whoever they were working for. And Pixar is like that. So we have these amazing craftsmen and artists and that have been there for as long as you know, 20 years or however long they’ve been there. And they get better every film they learn from that. And they apply all that knowledge to the next one. So nowadays is you know, in live action, you assemble a crew scrappy, put everybody together, you make the film, and then they all scatter, and they have to look for other work. So it’s hard to even sometimes your key people, you know, most directors have a DP or whoever that they come back to. But sometimes they’re on another show. And so at Pixar, we have the benefit of all that shared learn knowledge that stays in the company,

Host
which is pretty cool. Yeah, it is pretty cool. And completely, like, possibly. That’s the only place that still happens. Yeah, you’re right. Yeah. We want to talk about I’m going to show a clip from up people in the booth. So I’m going to do that in just a sec, though. I wouldn’t. So How close was the original idea for up to Yeah, what we see here because I know, in the original idea, there was no young boy rustle wasn’t in there yet. So perhaps tell us a little bit about what the original idea was? If you can remember because it probably changed and morphed many times.

Peter Docter
Yeah. Well, it depends on how far back you go to define original. I guess. This one actually started from a story about two princes who lived in a floating city on an alien planet, believe it or not. And as we develop that, it was interesting at first, and then it went to this weird place of like, Who do I identify with here? I don’t understand. And, and and after a while, I realized, okay, we’re getting nowhere and I’ve got to get something that people can relate to. Right. So we start Everything but the essential elements of that story, which to me, the reason I was attracted to it was, I’m not an extrovert. So nobody told me that as a director, all you do is go around to talk to people all day. And so most of the time, at the end of monsters, I would want to crawl into my desk, and just kind of rock in a fetal position for a while. And so the idea of escaping of floating away, sounded really appealing. And so that’s what the floating city was. And we said, well, what if we make it a floating house? And well, it shouldn’t just be floating, it should have some sort of logic, maybe balloons. Yeah. Okay. And so we came up with this visual, and it was really intriguing. I couldn’t get it out of my head. And then we worked backwards from there to figure out why is this guy floating his house? Well, who is he? Why is he flooding? Why didn’t he just take the train or something? There must be a really good reason he’s floating his house. And where’s he going? So that then created this whole backstory of his wife, and their love for each other, and the promise that they’d made that was unfulfilled and led to that whole sequence that you were talking about, that people like and cry about, which is I always take as the greatest compliment when people tell me, I cried when I saw that.

Host
Boy, did they ever I saw. I saw late, you know, as today when I saw the the first hour of the new film, I saw about 45 minutes of up long before it was was open. You were here and showed it to us. And the response that it got, I don’t know if you remember, but the response was really electrifying people really felt like they were seeing something really special. And, yeah, it was cool. It was a cool thing to be a part of, and to see to be one of those moments to be in an audience. When you’re seeing something that you know, even though you’re only seeing a portion of it is going to be great. And and it really was quite something. And that scene was one of them. There was a lot of kind of, you know, response from people that but again, you know, I use the word nervy again a little bit. I mean, you don’t really I guess the Pixar films aren’t specifically made for kids, they are made with an audience in mind, but you don’t really think from what I understand you don’t think about kids, specifically, when you’re putting these together? Right. And, and I would suggest that was very obvious to me after seeing

Peter Docter
Yeah, up was Bob Peterson, who is writer and co director and Jonathan, I want you to make each other laugh and, and feel something. And so we wrote for ourselves, always, you know, we have we all have kids, and my kids were young at that time. And so I knew they were going to be watching it. So I didn’t want to scar them write something that they’ll relate to and be interested in. But we really are writing for ourselves and not to be selfish about it. Because I think in some ways, that’s our job, as filmmakers is first of all being an audience, right, you know, and we’re sort of a surrogate audience, until we can get a real one until we have something that we can show to a real audience. Yeah.

Host
Yeah. Any thoughts or any trepidation about making the main character sort of a curmudgeonly old man,

Peter Docter
that was one of the the key buy ins for me, Bob Peterson, and I were just saying, like, well, who’s in the house and who’s flying? And I think Bob first said, you know, I’ve always wanted to do something with a grouchy old man, like, Yeah, me too. I drawn him you know, like, growing up and stuff. There’s something funny about and I think you give him license right now, because he is an old man. He’s kind of weaker than like a healthy young young guy. So you he can be grouchy. Yeah, right. And I don’t dislike him for it. And asters

Host
the perfect Oh, yeah. Did you was he always was like, first choice, or was he? I know he

Peter Docter
chose like, recording sessions and you go, yo, again? Like, okay, this is perfect.

Host
You write with people in mind? Yeah, yeah.

Peter Docter
Yeah. What usually happens is at first, you kind of design the character based on I don’t know what exactly something that’s inside of you, or observations that you’ve seen in other people. And then you design the character in most, I think, all cases, on the films that I’ve worked on the characters already designed and built before their cast, right. So you know, it’s always curious to me when people say, Oh, Mike was ASCII looks just like Billy Crystal. Like, I don’t think Billy Crystal would take that as a cop. He’s one eyed green guy, but I think what happens is the animators listen, and they watch the video that we shoot of the actors and they capture these great little nuances to tie the visuals to the audio, right? And so that’s why they tend to look like the characters Yeah,

Host
because I would have thought that the the Ed Asner character looks like Ed Asner, but I guess it wasn’t really planned. I

Peter Docter
know we had designed him first and then we kind of found it as

Host
the as we just saw the dogs talk but they don’t talk is the way dogs traditionally do and films was what was the decision behind not having talking animals, or real talking in real, real talking animals

Peter Docter
that was inherited from another idea. And as Bob and I were working on this other thing, this character came out this talking dog, it was through some other reason in this original story. But at the beginning of up, we got this note for a long time, that as we show this, the film, John Lasseter, and Andrew would say, it feels like a list of things that you like, thrown together into this one movie. What they didn’t know is that earlier, we’d made a list of things that we liked, and we’ve, and that dog was in there. So it was, it was really born out of looking at we had dogs, I had a dog and Bob had a dog and we both do voices for dogs. And Bob, that’s the voice Bob did for his dog. And they’re always kind of you know, they’re a little limited in their intelligence. And so the the I have just met you, and I love you all that stuff came from from Bob goofing around. Now,

Host
you mentioned John Lasseter, I, you know, why was at Pixar A while ago, and people were telling me about the short film, the Steamboat Willie film, the new one, or the newest one nominated for an Academy Award, and how they were using Walt Disney his actual voice in it? Oh, yeah, except for one word there was they couldn’t find one word. And so they went to a sound editor, and they just sort of had him create the word using sounds that Walt made, but they formed the word and apparently lasted or watched it. Anyway. It’s great, except for any pinpointed the one word that wasn’t authentic, and the thing. And, you know, whether that’s apocryphal or not, I don’t know. But that’s what I’ve been told. What does he like to work with? Because the eye for detail, the the incredible way that he works, I think must be something.

Peter Docter
Yeah, that totally sounds like John, he has a real I think his weigh in on some of these, everybody comes at these films from a different place. And I think John’s, from what I’ve observed is through detail, like, I challenge you to find something that John doesn’t know, extreme amounts of knowledge already your shoes, oh, the I visited this factory once. And that’s the same here that the way that that the molding goes, he and he remembers everything. So he’s amazed, literally, okay, we were looking at crew jackets for Monsters University. And he said, Oh, let me let me see it. Because I used to have a way they were sort of letterman jacket style. He said, I had one when I was in 11th grade, and I studied the seamwork. And let me take a look. And he showed it like he knew everything about this jacket this, like what, who would have thought that so he really just, he is an amazing detail, just eye for detail. And then of course, amazing ability to put all that together and work with people is such a collaborative guy, you know, on the films that he directs, he just brings out the best in everybody. And everybody’s excited to work on those films. So it’s it’s he he also I can’t think of anyone else in the world who is better suited for what he does. And John John, I feel like he was doing what he does now even probably when he was 17. That is creating these worlds, collaborating with people bringing stuff together, thinking about everything from the very basic story Inklings all the way through to marketing and The Merchant of toys. He loves toys. So he’s the whole package I don’t know how to do without him.

Host
Maybe he doesn’t sleep? I don’t think he does. Maybe he doesn’t really don’t. Now you have said several times we’re move along to inside out. We want to get to that before we one at a time. And you’ve said several times that when you’re conceiving these stories that often you try and imagine what they would be like without dialogue. And is that a starting place that you came from? For Inside Out?

Peter Docter
No, no, no, inside out from the very getgo. So that was me just thinking Okay, what else can we do here? That would be fun and animation, and I don’t remember exactly my train of thought that led to emotions, emotions as characters, and what if we brought them and personified them sort of like, you know, a seven dwarfs or something like that is the analogy that Jonas came up with later that each one of these guys is a super caricatured, pushed extreme personality who understands the world through their own lens, right? And so,

Host
and only through their own lens, so anger is always angry, like there’s no downtime for anger and joy is always joyful and

Peter Docter
exactly so so that was one that even from the very beginning I kind of thought this is an ensemble comedy. This is going to be have probably a lot of dialogue, and it’s going to come A lot of the hammer is going to come out of the approach that each one of these characters bring to that and end in conflict with each other. So,

Host
and this story, again, we talked about the sticky content, we talked about a personal connection to them, you have a very personal connection to this story. And one of which is your daughter. Yeah, who was a happy go lucky 11 year old, not so much when she was 12. Yeah, and, and so, starting there, and you would also had suggested that perhaps your growing up was a little rocky in some ways as well, which I think is all

Peter Docter
I think it’s why I’m an animator, I don’t have to talk to people if I can draw right here and draw. But yeah, my daughter actually did the voice of young Ellie, the very beginning of, and she was a lot like that kid in that movie. And then yeah, when she got to be 11, she was much more quiet and changed a lot, you know? And we’re like, what’s going on inside of her head? And then I was thinking, Well, let’s find out. So we kind of used that as a setting, the kid is both a character and a setting in the film. And it’s really been one of the hardest things I’ve ever done probably the hardest, because we’re making up an entire world that doesn’t really exist.

Host
We have because it’s not inside the brain. It’s inside the mind, right? It’s a different thing. And so it’s a it sounds like splitting hairs, but it is a different thing. Yeah, we

Peter Docter
don’t have dendrites and blood vessels and stuff. We have long term memory, our dream production or subconscious, you know, places that these guys get to go and travel inside the mind, which has been a blast, abstract thought, you know, things that could only really be done in animation. So that’s been it’s been really fun. It’s been a, it’s really interesting that this will give nothing away. But I saw the first clip from this at D 23. But a year and a half ago. And it’s it’s it struck me that it was being played the clip that I signed away, it felt broad to me, I thought, Oh, this is gonna be like an all out broad, very broad comedy, that the dinner. Yeah. Yeah. And, and I just may have seen that, that that’s the basis of that first trailer.

Host
Yeah, it’s the basis of the first trailer. So they’re having dinner and the young girls, you know, having some mood swings, yeah. And her parents are using their emotions to try and figure out what’s going on. And they’re not connecting particularly well. And it’s very funny clip. But the movie isn’t exactly that the movie is very funny. But the movie, I was really struck with how deeply it gets into the idea that as children grow up, they change in big ways. And we see this in, illustrated in in her brain or in her mind, using very sort of easy to understand ideas about, you know, ideas or little balls and that kind of thing. And it lays it out for us. But there’s something that’s really beautifully deep about the the idea of this child changing in front of you. And I watched it and I thought, you know, I think this is only the kind of subtle representation of this that only a parent could really understand or have made.

Peter Docter
Well, thanks. It was a film that we started to tell from the kids point of view. And then as Ronnie del Carmen, who’s the co director on the film, realized, wait a minute, we’re telling our story as parents watching the kid and so that central relationship is what is thrown into question joy, and her kid, because all the emotions, I mean, this is something that Mindy Kailyn we were talking a couple of weeks ago, and she’s she said she, what she loved about the film is that all the emotions are there for their kid. And there’s something kind of comforting to know that you have this team of advisors, that’s working for you that are plugging away trying to make sure that you don’t get taken advantage of that you don’t get hurt that you don’t get poisoned, you know, all the everybody has their own job. And it’s it’s pretty cool.

Host
Was there a note from the collective hive mind that Pixar that you can think of particularly, that helped shape what the story is? Because, again, I know that the story changed a number of times, but there was Was there one thing that somebody in the group said that shifted the focus of what the film might have been?

Peter Docter
Well, I mean, we got so much help from John from Andrew, everybody along the way. There was a I don’t mean to make this about me, but we were kind of two and a half, three years into the project.

Host
The thing is called in conversation with Pete Docter, oh, you can make it about.

Peter Docter
We were about three years into the project. And we were at the point where we needed to get approvals and move forward and move into production. And we were coming up to a screening and I was like, something about this just isn’t working. And I, let’s see, how do I tell this without giving too much away of the story now that I’ve gotten into it? Well, I’ll say one thing that we were really playing with a lot at that time was fear because fear was a big part of my junior high library probably controlled way More than I’d care to admit. And so that was a central thread that relationship between joy and fear. And I realized in this moment of weakness that that, okay, this film’s not working, we’re gonna have to move into production. I’ve got nothing What if I, what if I just leave and go to Mexico? What if I get fired? What are the things that I’m going to miss? What are the things that really mattered to me, and it was my friends and my family. And I started thinking about why that is. And I think, yeah, these are people that I’ve been happy and had good times with, but they’re also people I’ve been mad at, and scared for, and sad width. And I realized, wait a minute, emotions are at the core of the most important thing in our entire lives. And that is the relationships that we have with each other. And that is something we’re already using in the film, if we just steer it the right way, we can make this really something deep and meaningful, I think. Right? So we’ll leave it to you to see if if we did

Host
it. Yeah. Well, the the hour that I saw has that. And I know that the How long will it be in total?

Peter Docter
It’s about 84 minutes. 85? Yeah, remember, half hour?

Host
The the Pixar, you often do research trips, for your things. And I know for up you went to Venezuela, I think it went to Argentina. This was presumably a little less Scenic. Yeah, you know, what, what sort of research did you do?

Peter Docter
Well, we did a bunch of stuff that you’d probably expect, like we talked to psychologists, neurologists did as much study on sort of the the basic build up of how the brain works as we possibly could. But then we also did weird things like the art department visited an egg farm. And I think,

Host
the inside of the mind when the like, well, the little core memories, and

Peter Docter
Yeah, cuz you’ll see we have all these memories everywhere. And they have to be sorted and catalogued in some way. So we thought, well, that’s already being done in in mass market, you know, food. So let’s go check out how they do it. And maybe we can learn some stuff. So there was, there’s all these kind of weird tangent things that always come up. But that’s part of the fun.

Host
Yeah, it is part of the fun. And the film is very rich visually, one of the things that I hadn’t noticed before, but notice today, when I saw it on the big screen, was that each of the emotions are these sort of amorphous, they have a little, they don’t feel real. They feel like you can put your hand through them. Yeah, yeah, there’s a ghostly kind of feel. Not ghostly. But there’s a there’s a different feel to them, then real world character. Yeah, we

Peter Docter
wanted to make sure that they looked like emotions, the way we feel about stuff, not just little humans, flesh and blood, so so they’re a fog with these little frontward facing discs that look like roiling atoms or something. And hopefully, the whole thing is subtle enough that you you at first, you just take them as characters. And then when you look close, you’re like, oh, wow, what’s happening there? So especially in close ups, it’s really beautiful.

Host
It’s really beautiful. Yeah, it sort of put me in the mind of Tinkerbell and sort of that old school Disney kind of,

Peter Docter
you know, yeah, joy, when she moves really fast, she kind of leaves some of her particles behind. So you get this kind of glittery effect. And

Host
there is something that that looks a little different than the real world computer animation. It when we’re in the mind, particularly joy, who tends to move a little faster than everyone else played by Amy Poehler. But her leg stretch and thinks it’s more like tech savory, it’s more like an homage to what came before it.

Peter Docter
Well, going back to, you know, my roots, I love those films, and Chuck Jones and Tex Avery especially. So it was finally getting to a place where you know, in the early days of Toy Story and stuff, we couldn’t really do that. I mean, you could for very short amounts of time, but you couldn’t sustain it for a feature. So this is finally we had developed technology that allowed us to do these great stretches and, you know, distortions and things. And if used properly in the right hands, it could be really cool. Of course the call also be used for evil. Yeah, if it’s in the wrong hands. In other words, it can, it can be really kind of off putting in the community too much. Yeah. So that means this film even more than any of the rest, I think relied on great artistry in the animation.

Host
Thank you so much for being here this evening. Thank you some Pete. Thank you so much. Really great insight into the process inside out opens June 19. Yeah. Buy your tickets now people. And yeah, and

Peter Docter
in fact, now that you mentioned inside out, you know, we brought something that you might be interested to see. Are you interested?

Unknown Speaker
We have a feel like they might we have the first what is it like 10 minutes, seven minutes of the film. So I’ll say I’ll say thank you and thank you You will get out of your hazing Thank you very much everybody