INSIDE THE PIXAR MIND
Life sits down with the president of the animation film studio to talk movies, audiences and future plans
The new Pixar animation Inside Out has opened in the US to a hearty reception (Bangkok has to wait until next month). The box office has been stellar — it racked up the highest opening gross in history for an original feature, i.e. not a sequel or remake — while critics have sung praises to the joyful braininess of the story. Inside Out takes place inside a girl’s head, with the main characters the five emotions (Joy, Fear, Sadness, Anger, Disgust). Their adventures, through the colourful cerebrum, becomes a story about the happiness and anxiety of adolescent life. It’s just July, but an early buzz for an Oscar’s Best Picture nomination has already been heard.
For the first time, Pixar, which is part of Disney, will have two movies coming out in the same year. In November, the studio will release The Good Dinosaur, about a lost Apatosaurus who strikes up an unlikely friendship with a human child. The film was supposed to come out last year, but Pixar did something it had never done before: it announced in 2014 that it would push back the release date in order to rework the film to its satisfaction, since they weren’t happy with what they had then.
One of the most creative minds at work in the world of animation, Pixar is a studio that has greatly shaped the way contemporary audiences perceive and admire animated films — from the first Toy Story to WALL-E, from Finding Nemo to Inside Out. Its brilliance also lies in the way it often collapses the boundaries between “kids’ cartoon” and a range of genuine adult emotion.
Life had a chance to catch up with Jim Morris, president of Pixar Animation Studios. Here he talks to us about the creative process of the company, as well as Inside Out, The Good Dinosaur and yes, Finding Dory plus a new Toy Story film.
Inside Out is a very beautiful and unexpected film, in which you have emotions as the characters. Tell us more about it.
Pete Docter [director of Inside Out] has a special sensibility. He was the director for Monsters, Inc., and has brought a similar kind of flavour to this film; it’s really unique, funny and touching. It is also a very stylised film, with humans’ five key emotions as the characters and these emotions are made of particles — they are lighted from within and glow from the inside. We’re not trying to make them realistic, but make them believable, which are two different things. You can have something that’s completely not realistic but you want to believe in that world and in the characters and that’s what we’re striving for.
On the other hand, Pixar is releasing The Good Dinosaur later, which looks like a very different film.
The Good Dinosaur is set in ancient times, in this expansive world of the past. We have created [the look] by taking geological data and using that as a basis for the world and the landscape. Yes, it’s a very different film, kind of like a-boy-and-his-dog film, but in this case the boy is a dinosaur and the dog is this feral boy. They’re enemies at first but they build a relationship during a journey to survival.
We often perceive every film coming out of your studio as “a Pixar film”. It’s a brand, but what about each director who works on each of the films? How much of their personality, style and sensibility is shown in the movies?
The process is we try to identify people that we think are good storytellers. It’s not like we come up with an idea and we assign a person to do it. It’s the opposite. If there’s somebody we’ve worked with and they have a sensibility and quality as a creative person, we’ll invite them to pitch their idea. We ask them to pitch something that is a reflection of their emotion, or something that they’ve gone through.
A very good example is Finding Nemo. The film is driven by [director] Andrew Stanton’s fear and anxiety at becoming a new father. In The Incredibles, Brad Bird tells the story of what his family is like, what his marriage is like. So the core of each film is a director’s story and we try to forge it into something that has meaning to the big audience. It’s a personal story. [As you can see] none of the films we’ve made are adaptations from books or anything like that.
What about sequels? Pixar is admired for the ability to keep coming up with original stories in the age of sequels and remakes.
We only make sequels if our filmmakers want to do it. The irony to me is that everybody thinks a sequel is kind of unclean, but then everybody goes to see it! Sequels in general get a bad name when it’s transparent that the only reason is to capitalise on the earlier film. Some of my favourite films are sequels, like The Godfather 2. It comes down to the fact that if it’s a good film, then nobody’s complaining.
Speaking of which, you’re making Finding Dory and a new Toy Story movie.
Finding Dory is due out next year and Toy Story 4 in 2017. John Lassater [creative chief of Pixar and Disney Animation] is directing that film and it’s an interesting story. We all felt that when Toy Story 3 was finished, it was a perfect trilogy. Let’s just consider that complete. Then Andrew and John came up with an idea — it has the same characters and the same world, but it’s a different story thread. It’s not a next chapter in the same story and it’s a love story, more internal and less about the toys’ interaction with the kids. Also, Brad Bird is working on The Incredibles 2.
How do you see your audience? Animated films are traditionally targeted at kids, but most Pixar films are sophisticated on the adult level, like WALL-E,
Up or Inside Out.
We certainly don’t pander to kids. Often people think that just because the idea is sophisticated, it won’t appeal to children. Both WALL-E and Inside out, the kids get it. I think we underestimate how smart the children are. [At a test screening of Inside Out] a little girl perfectly sums up the movie — she did it better than Pete Docteur! Of course there are certain things that adults get and kids don’t. But our films work on multiple levels. I’d like to say that it’s by design, but the fact is we’re just trying to make a film that we’d like to see. When you try to second guess what people are going to like and not like, you’re starting to pander. We try to avoid that.
Last year Pixar decided to postpone the release date of The Good Dinosaur even though the film had been in the making — actually 2014 was the first time in over a decade that Pixar didn’t have any film out. What was the problem with the film?
When we realised that changing the direction of The Good Dinosaur wasn’t going to fix the core problem, we stopped [the whole thing] and asked another director, Pete Sohn, to take over and to bring in a new approach. He keeps a couple of fundamental characters and turned it into something totally different. We’d been working on it for about four years at that point, so it was a very expensive and emotionally difficult. But we just felt it wasn’t good enough.
That’s the thing — having the fortitude to make those big changes and recognise that what you’re doing is not quite working. We need that courage to take a step back and make it better.
We certainly don’t pander to kids. Often people think that just because the idea is sophisticated, it won’t appeal to children