INTERVIEW

AAndrew Stanton is an American film director, screenwriter, producer and voice actor working for Pixar Animation Studios, where he is vice president in the creativity department. He is the mastermind behind Disney’s much-loved animated movies like Finding Nemo, and its sequel Finding Dory. Stanton has two Academy Awards to his name. In this chat with Guardian 20, he talks about his past work, and his recent Netflix feature, Stranger Things.

Q. What was your reaction when you saw the complete first season of

for the first

Stranger Things

time? A.

I was blown away. It was actually my son who first told me, “Dad, you have to see this show, it’s amazing.” And I don’t usually get stuff told to me so emphatically by my kids. They’re a little jaded, a little low key, and so I had to watch this one. I watched, and I bingewatched it like everybody else. I think it took me less than two or three days to go through the entire season. I was blown away by it.

Q. Were there any specific themes in the show that you identified with? A.

The thing that hit me the most about the show right away was just how it made me feel like I was the teenager; that I was in the 1980s, loving the movies. I didn’t think it was derivative. I didn’t think it was ripping anything off. I actually felt like somehow they had captured the exact sort of pure innocence and wonder that I felt watching the movies, and also what it felt like on the screen. And, it was a kind of wonder that I remember in our early days of Pixar when we were trying to make Toy Story; we were trying to capture the very same thing through a different medium and through