How stories can change

(gentle music) - [Interviewer] So since we're talking about your movies, I have to talk about my favorite Carl Fredricksen. (laughing) I have a question for you, and this can just be making connections, it might not be there at all, but your student film Next Door, - [Pete] Uh huh. - [Interviewer] Do these two characters look similar? - [Pete] Yeah. - [ Interviewer] Is it me, just making the connection that they don't exist? - [Pete] Yeah, I'm kind of a one trick pony I guess. (laughing) It was the square guy that seemed like something that shaped to me when we're exploring character. It speaks a lot. So before you put all the details in, you just have these basic shapes. It's something we kind of start, on Inside Out, we started from shapes as well. Before we knew anything about the characters, we kind of chose basic block, circle, square, that kind of thing. And something about a square guy just says, I'm here, leave me alone, I'm closed in, I want things to stay the way they are. And so, that was one where we kind of started with that character really. - [Interviewer] Oh, wow. - [Pete] The character of Carl and the idea that he was going to float his house away and then the rest of the story evolved to kind of make sense of that. - [Interviewer] "Cause I think i was watching Next Door and when the character sat down, and I instantly went to Up. - [Pete] Oh, yeah. - [Interviewer] And I was like, oh man, they look similar there. - [Pete] Yeah, I mean there's a longer story to Up, which was that it started as a, kind of, Muppet like fantasy with two brothers that were princes in a floating city. Do you know this story? - [Interviewer] A little bit, please tell it. - [Pete] The idea was, that they fell out, they were arguing over who was going to be the next king, or something like that and they fall off and the city sort of floats away and now they're desperate to get back there because they're in this dissolute landscape of nothing and unless they get back, they're going to die. And along the way, they start to, reluctantly, kind of work together and they meet this strange bird that's actually kind of a hunter. And it was quirky for sure but it was kind of cool. But it was so far out there, that is was not easy to pull together. And as we teetered on the edge of just getting fired from the studio or whatever (laughing) was going to happen, I said okay, let's pull way back. What is it about this that's driving us, that's making us interested because a lot of times this is what you have to do. You get so mired in the details that you stop doing what it was that got you into it. I realized, the thing that intrigued me about it was the idea of getting away. Just escaping the world. There's plenty of days where I just feel like I have had enough, I just got to get out. And wouldn't it be nice to just be marooned on a tropical island or alone in the desert or something just by myself? During Monsters, I looked at home, I had a stack of 15 books about guys marooned on tropical islands (laughing) and I was just obsessively reading. So it was really, the idea of getting away from it all that sparked it. I realized, well this is a whole floating city that doesn't even really speak to what it is that started it so let's just have, it was Bob Peterson, who is a great collaborator and brilliant writer as well as performer. He and I just striped it back to this old guy. His house floats away with balloons. There's something kind of poetic and I'm rooting for that all ready. Why? Where's he going? Why did he do this? And then the whole story, like I say, kind of fell into place or was forced into place. - [Interviewer] So it seems like you kind of have that perspective where you want to really push your movie concepts, is that true? - [Pete] Yeah and I think that's true of everybody here. Everybody has their own kind of angle and way of doing that but I had some really great collaborators that have helped me to try to think of something different, something new that we haven't seen before. I think there's a real value in surprising the audience. What we were trying to do with Up was that, just when you feel like, okay, I see where this is going to go. Then throw something else at people. Your like, okay, he float his house off, okay, then, whoa, there's a knock at the door. Okay, I see where this is going to be a guy stuck with a little kid. Wait a minute, what? There's talking dogs? A strange, giant bird? What? So hopefully, in a good way, you're like, where is this going, okay? And hopefully it all adds up and that's the tough part. Is making it all add up 'cause you can throw stuff, weird stuff, but making it come together in some way was really the fine share of the work. (laughing) - [Interviewer] Where did the inspiration for Charles Muntz come from? - [Pete] We were looking for, kind of, a mirror character to Carl. So this guy Carl, has sat at home in a small town and never traveled beyond probably, a 30 mile radius and he feels like he totally failed because he did not ever have the adventure that he had promised his wife. So we thought, well, what's the opposite of that? This guy who has sailed around the world, in what, endurable and he's explored everything and seen wild animals and made these amazing discoveries. So it was really, kind of, a mirror character to Carl in a lot of ways. - [Interviewer] That's very great. So one thing I wanted to check, I read this on Wikipedia and of course, everything on the internet is obviously true, so it said that you partially based that character Buzz Lightyear off yourself by looking in a mirror and conceptualizing the character. Is that true? - [Pete] Well partially. I mean I didn't design it, so, I did have a hand in some early concepts but mostly it was between Bud Luckey and Bob Pauley, who designed the character but then, I was the supervising animator on the show. Which means there were 27 animators and it was my job to help them and of course listen to John Lasseter, the director of the film, but help everybody unify, so that even though 15 people are animating Buzz, - [Interviewer] Right. - [Pete] They're all somewhat consistent and looks like the main character, the same character. And one thing we did all do, was to have a mirror on our desk and you'd make expressions and study like, okay, what's going on there when I make this face and so, a lot of times, that's what I do for Buzz. I see, I remember kind of connecting more to Buzz then to Woody. (laughing) I don't know what that says about me. - [Interviewer] Its aspirational. - [Pete] Yeah, I guess. (gentle music)