Weekend Argus (Saturday Edition)
Dinosaur picture ready to clean up
Animatied tale’s radical rethink raised eyebrows in Hollywood
Pixar’s art, story and animation department. During a presentation in Toronto Sohn, who took over The Good Dinosaur from Bob Peterson, who had come up with its concept and developed it for several years, cited an in-house Pixar mantra: “Fail as fast as you can.”
Later, in a nearby hotel suite, Sohn sheds light on the evolution of the film. “We worked on everything and everything changed in terms of the character designs and the world (of the film) itself,” he says. Peterson envisioned The Good Dinosaur as an esoteric study of the reptile, inspired by the dinosaur animatronics he saw during a childhood visit to the 1964 New York World’s Fair. The dinosaurs in the film were ern. It is estimated that the changes led to almost 70 Pixar employees being laid off with the script being entirely rewritten and the film made in half the time the studio would normally take.
Yet Sohn emphasises the production stresses were necessary for it to maximise the chances of extending Pixar’s record of resonating with children (and their parents). “It is challenging. If it’s the most challenging out of the other ones (Pixar films), I don’t know. Most of the films I’ve worked on have gone through some really tough times. This one for me is challenging only because I love Bob and the changes that happened were really… it was fast but it was important because everyone’s priority, including Bob’s, was to try to make the best movie possible.”
The changes affected higher-profile names than Peterson. “Once we made Arlo a younger character, a lot of the voices changed,” says Sohn. Out went John Lithgow, Neil Patrick Harris and Judy Greer. In came Sam Elliott and Anna Paquin as well as Raymond Ochoa and Jack Bright as Arlo and Spot respectively. “Finding that more youthful feel,” says Sohn, “created a ripple action for all the characters that Arlo meets.”
How did the stars take the news? “That happened earlier than when it was released in the press. When that hit people were like, ‘ Wow that’s so late.’ But all that stuff had happened before.
“It’s a tough thing but I believe everything we had done in the pre- vious version helped us out. You have to try things that even though they may not work will lead you to another direction and learning about who those (replaced) characters were helped me to define other ways to go.”
Pixar has long prided itself on doing things differently to most Hollywood outfits. Animators zoom around the atrium of its California headquarters on scooters and Ed Catmull, Pixar president, once defined the company as aspiring to be “the antithesis of the freeagency practices that prevail in the movie industry… I believe that community matters.”
It’s a safe assumption that The Good Dinosaur’s convoluted genesis tested their community culture. Peterson is still at Pixar and has cowritten Finding Dory, the sequel to Finding Nemo. “Bob was a great mentor for me,” says Sohn. “At the same time he’s still there, still loved.”
Sohn equates the making of The Good Dinosaur with the film’s message: “Hopefully people find the themes in the film to be strong, but it goes to a simple idea of how to get through fear.”
Some Pixar directors have flown the nest to make feature films for other studios but Sohn seems content to stay there his entire career. “It’s become a family to me,” he says. “When I was growing up in New York, it was all about your skin colour and minorities were separated and segregated – the Puerto Ricans here, the Japanese there.
“At Pixar it’s like a tribe where everyone loves movies passionately. When I was at Warner Brothers years ago, when you were done with a job everyone was laid off and you had to find another gig. It was competitive and cutthroat. Pixar doesn’t work that way. They try to create a community when after your film’s done, you can hang on a little bit.”
Reaction to early footage from The Good Dinosaur suggests it might transcend its creative turbulence to supply iconic Pixar moments to rank with the balloon sequence in Up and the transfer of toys in Toy Story 3. It features on several Best Animated Feature Oscar shortlist predictions
Pixar recently unveiled its release schedule for the next five years but some industry observers saw the studio’s announcement that The Incredibles sequel is not due until 2019 and Toy Story 4 pushed back a year to June 2018 as indication that they are keen to avoid a repeat of The Good Dinosaur’s protracted trajectory.
Regardless, of the outcome Sohn insists confronting creative extinction has made him stronger. Discussing The Good Dinosaur with him made me think of Picture, New Yorker writer Lillian Ross’s classic book recounting the making of John Huston’s 1951 misfire The Red Badge of Courage. I mention this to Sohn who tells me he’s fond of it: “That book pairs great with Katherine Hepburn’s account of the making of The African Queen, which Huston directed straight afterwards.“Pixar will be hoping The Good Dinosaur’s story turns out to be the Hepburn version. – The Independent
The Good Dinosaur released on November 27.
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