CITY MUSIC TEACHER GIVES NEW PIXAR FLICK ITS ‘SOUL’

Veteran Queens educator basis for key character

If scenes from Pixar’s “Soul” look and feel like a real New York City classroom — they should — a Queens music teacher helped school the filmmakers on the details.

Peter Archer, a band teacher for more than 30 years at Middle School 74 in Bayside, Queens, served as a consultant on the movie, which has Jamie Foxx voicing Joe Gardner, a middle-aged teacher and musician. Archer, 58, helped pinpoint everything from the aesthetic of a middle school band classroom to the emotional tug of balancing a passion for music and a love of teaching.

“The movie starts in my classroom at school … it’s a modification, but yes, it’s my room,” said Archer, an accomplished trumpet player and fulltime teacher. “The connection was there” between himself and the fictional Gardner “on so many levels,” he said.

In the new film, which began streaming on Disney Plus on Christmas Day, Foxx’s character grapples with his purpose after a brush with the afterlife. The flick is the latest from Pixar mastermind Pete Docter and is complete with the studio’s trademark blend of stunning visual detail and emotional resonance.

The collaboration with Archer started with a surprise phone call during class in 2018.

A Pixar representative told Archer that the company was working on a film about a middle school band teacher, found him through their research, and wanted his help.

“He said Pete [Docter] sent me an email and didn’t get a response,” Archer recalled. “The enthusiasm in the gentleman’s voice … was surprising to the point where I was like, ‘ Do you have the right person?’ “

But it quickly became clear to the longtime teacher that his life experiences dovetailed almost perfectly with Pixar’s new hero.

Like the fictional Gardner, Archer found himself early on at a crossroads between pursuing a career as a professional musician and dipping his toe into education.

As a recent graduate from the music program at Queens College,

Archer was dead set on work with a symphony orchestra. Instead, he was offered a part-time internship teaching band at Marie Curie Middle School in Queens — a role one of his professors told him he would excel in.

“I shied away from” teaching, Archer said. “People have this notion that people who can’t play teach … it’s a negative stigma of sorts attributed to musicians not able to find employment.”

The same dilemma is at the heart of “Soul,” where Gardner is offered a full-time teaching job at the middle school just as he gets a break in the professional music world.

And, in another parallel, Archer said his mother helped him make his career choice.

“I told her I don’t want to teach, I want to play,” Archer recalled. “She just let me talk and babble … and then said, ‘Did you ever consider why the man said you would be good at it?’ “

“That was profound,” Archer added, and helped prod him into a career that’s become a life’s calling — and one that, far from stifling his musical creativity, fed it.

“The hours of teaching allows us to have a dual profession. I’ll put on my performing cape in the evening,” Archer explained.

“The fact I was out there and performing at the same time, and the fact I could bring in the reality and make things really interesting for them [the students] ... that is so powerful,” he said.

Archer told his story to Docter

and his colleagues in phone calls and multiple trips to Pixar’s studios in Emeryville, Calif.

The creative minds behind the movie had already established much of the plot line, but Archer said the filmmakers always listened intently to his input, frequently asking him if they “got it right.”

“All Pete Docter did was write. It was this unbelievable mind. Just a brilliant mind. Even at dinner he was writing,” Archer said.

There were several specific pieces of input Archer suspects may have made it into the film — including a tidbit that the drummer in Archer’s jazz band is a former student. In the movie, a former student of Gardner’s — a drummer — is the one who gets

Peter Archer (above l. and in his Queens classroom r.) is basis for one of the main characters in Pixar’s “Soul,” in which a middle-school music teacher (main photo an above r.) is voiced by Jamie Foxx (top r.).

the teacher his big professional break.

Pixar sent a team to Archer’s school to design the classroom animation, nailing the telltale details of a New York City public school — from the look of hallway tiling to the font of the classroom number.

In an early draft of the film that Archer watched, the emotional climax — a series of flashbacks where Gardner comes to grips with the experiences that gave his life meaning even without success as a professional musician — there was no reference to teaching or students, Archer said.

“I mentioned to Pete that what I saw initially was a little concerning in that the movie starts with kids and I feel like there should

be something there at the end that the audience sees a return with the children,” Archer recalled.

Docter agreed wholeheartedly, Archer said, and the final version of the film includes several clips of Gardner’s work with students in the montage of memories.

To Archer, it felt like a significant acknowledgement that teaching can itself be a source of joy, fulfillment and purpose — a lesson he’s learned again and again in his own life.

“It was all about me initially, what I had to accomplish. I couldn’t be fulfilled unless I landed a job in a symphony orchestra,” Archer said.

“The thing that happened was these kids … the enthusiasm,” he added. “I can’t put it into words.”