By Gaynor Flynn
FilmInk salutes the work of creatives who have never truly received the credit that they deserve. In this installment: producer, writer and director Pete Docter, who helmed Up, Inside Out and Soul.
In the world of animation, the director is most definitely not king. Perhaps more than any other film genre, animated films are defined largely by the studios that make them, and not by the men and women who direct them. Viewers are perhaps more in tune with the “house style” of Disney, Pixar, Dreamworks and the like than they are with the names that unroll during the end credits of their animated films. With a relatively small collection of notable exceptions (Ralph Bakshi, Hiyao Miyazaki, Brad Bird and others), those that make animated films are perhaps the most unsung of Unsung Auteurs (not helped by the fact that many animated films are directed by pairs and sometimes trios of filmmakers), which meant we could have picked pretty much anyone who has ever toiled on these often extraordinary films.
So, why not Pixar mainstay Pete Docter? He certainly has his fingerprints on some of the best animated films ever made (as a writer, producer and director), and he also has an undeniable bent for melancholy, which gives his work a slight spin of its own. Sure, he’s received all manner of awards, and in the animation world, he’s nothing less than a titan, but Pete Docter still doesn’t get the kind of credit he deserves considering the cultural enormity of the work he’s created.
Over the course of his lengthy career (which began in 1988), Pete Docter has made it a habit to emotionally move film audiences. After his impressive 1988 short Winter, Docter was drawn into the fold at groundbreaking animation legends Pixar. He wrote the beloved Toy Story and Toy Story 2 for the company, but when he moved into directing in 2001 with the masterful Monsters Inc., it was obvious that Docter’s skills weren’t being maxed as a writer. The film was heralded as a watershed moment in computer animation, and it also highlighted Docter’s ability to tell emotionally engaging stories while dealing with animated characters. But while the wildly entertaining Monsters Inc. is wonderful fun with an underlying abundance of emotion, Docter really ratcheted things up with the 2009 classic Up.
Ideas of loneliness and self-isolation might be unusual starting points for an animated film, but Pixar’s Up is no standard family flick. Up tells the story of 78-year-old widower and inveterate old grouch Carl (voiced by veteran character actor Ed Asner), who embarks on the adventure of a lifetime by tying thousands of helium balloons to his house. Along the way, the old curmudgeon picks up an unexpected travelling companion in the form of eight-year-old Wilderness Explorer Scout Russell (voiced by Jordan Nagal). Together, the unlikely pair journeys to a remote part of South America on a quest to find the legendary Paradise Falls.
“The original germ of an idea was loosely based around the idea of wanting to escape from the world,” Pete Docter told FilmInk upon the film’s release. “It sprang from those moments when you just have to be alone, but when you ultimately realise that it’s our connection with others that makes life worth living. When we stumbled on the idea of floating away, we knew that we were on to something. Visually, it would be a wonderful thing to see, and of course we all love to embark on an adventure.”
Despite his experience in the animated world, Up actually represented something of a learning curve for the director. “There were plenty of filmmaking lessons,” Docter explained to FilmInk of his work on the movie, “but the biggest lesson came early on when we had trouble finding the emotional core of the film. We didn’t have something that connected with people. It wasn’t really until we came up with the whole idea of what we call the ‘married life sequence’, which shows Carl’s relationship with his wife, and his promise to go to South America like they’d always planned. The failure of him to do so then started people caring about the film. It’s one thing to learn something, but it’s another thing to really learn something.”
In the traditionally sunny world of Pixar, the grumpy Carl makes for a most surprising emotional core. He constantly grumbles, and has an amusingly short fuse. “It was a lot of fun to have someone like him in an animated movie,” Docter says. “Then we also get to ask questions about why he got like that, and the why’s and wherefores of that. The film is ultimately about somebody who’s really lost. So, the question then is: how do they find their way back? With Carl, it’s when he starts caring for the kid. That’s his road back to humanity. Having a 78-year-old character offered a chance to do something really different. We always had Frank Capra’s films in mind in terms of influence. We also wanted to make a homage to those films that we grew up loving, like Peter Pan and Alice In Wonderland. They were magical.”
The film seems to make most people cry – men, women, young, old. When FilmInk asked the genial Pete Docter if that was the plan, he laughed good naturedly. “Kind of,” he smiled. “It’s great to hear that. We kind of wanted that. They’re the kind of movies that stick with me. It’s having those experiences at the movies that makes it such a memorable experience, so I’m glad to hear that I made you cry.”
From the respect paid to the ageing population in Up, Docter reeled it back to tip his proverbial hat to an even more maligned age group: the adolescent. One of Pixar’s most inventive, entertaining and original films, 2015’s Inside Out ingeniously animates the warring emotions inside a pre-teen girl’s head. “I had the concept of ‘emotions’, which seemed fun, and right up the alley of what animation can do well,” Docter told The Guardian. “To me, if you look at Bugs Bunny or Donald Duck, they’re kind of like people on steroids. The personality levels are turned way up and there’s an exaggeration and caricature which I love. That was what we could do with these emotions. My daughter Elie was eleven. She was kind of a lot like that character until then. Then there were a lot more reclusive, quiet moments. I wondered what was going on inside her head.”
After the explosion of emotion that was Inside Out, Docter kept it going with 2020’s Soul. “In our story, everyone is born with a soul,” Docter told FilmInk upon the film’s release. “And those souls don’t just show up unprepared, they’re trained and given personality and interests.” According to Docter, the idea for this unique world was 23 years in the making. “It started with my son – he’s 23 now – but the instant he was born, he already had a personality. Where did that come from? I thought personality developed through your interaction with the world. And yet, it was pretty clear that we’re all born with a very unique, specific sense of who we are.”
Soul introduces Joe Gardner (voice of Jamie Foxx) as a middle-school band teacher with a passion for jazz. “Joe wants more than anything to become a professional jazz pianist,” says Docter. “So, when he’s offered a rare, once-in-a-life opportunity to play with one of the greats, Joe feels he’s reached the top of the ultimate mountain.” But one small misstep takes Joe from the streets of New York City to The Great Before – a fantastical place where new souls get their personalities, quirks and interests before they go to Earth. Unsurprisingly, Joe doesn’t feel like he belongs in this land of new souls. Determined to return to his life, he teams up with a precocious soul, 22 (voice of Tina Fey), who has never understood the appeal of the human experience. Unsurprisingly, this jewel of a film took out Best Animated Feature at The Academy Awards.
With this kind of success, does Docter ever dream of directing live action? “Not really, no,” he replied. “I’m more intrigued by the artifice of animation. I like the idea that even with characters having a discussion, the two actors may not have even been in the same room to do the recording. They were in different cities in different months, so the fact that they sound like they’re having a discussion is all part of the fun for me. I love the craft of it.”
There’s no doubt, however, that animation will always be the little brother in the film family. “That’s a reality,” Docter says matter-of-factly. “Animation did it to itself though, because the majority of films are pretty lacklustre. It’s up to us as filmmakers to show the world how incredible this medium is, and how much is possible. When there are more and more films of good quality being made, it’s great for all of us. One thing that upsets me though is when animation does things that could just be done in live action. There’s this incredible freedom that you have in animation, so filmmakers should take advantage of that. Hopefully by doing great films, we can slowly affect a little change.”
Additional reporting by Gill Pringle.
If you liked this story, check out our features on other unsung auteurs Max Baer Jr., James Clavell, Ronald F. Maxwell, Frank D. Gilroy, John Hough, Dick Richards, William Girdler, Rayland Jensen, Richard T. Heffron, Christopher Jones, Earl Owensby, James Bridges, Jeff Kanew, Robert Butler, Leigh Chapman, Joe Camp, John Patrick Shanley, William Peter Blatty, Peter Clifton, Peter R. Hunt, Shaun Grant, James B. Harris, Gerald Wilson, Patricia Birch, Buzz Kulik, Kris Kristofferson, Rick Rosenthal, Kirsten Smith & Karen McCullah, Jerrold Freeman, William Dear, Anthony Harvey, Douglas Hickox, Karen Arthur, Larry Peerce, Tony Goldwyn, Brian G. Hutton, Shelley Duvall, Robert Towne, David Giler, William D. Wittliff, Tom DeSimone, Ulu Grosbard, Denis Sanders, Daryl Duke, Jack McCoy, James William Guercio, James Goldstone, Daniel Nettheim, Goran Stolevski, Jared & Jerusha Hess, William Richert, Michael Jenkins, Robert M. Young, Robert Thom, Graeme Clifford, Frank Howson, Oliver Hermanus, Jennings Lang, Matthew Saville, Sophie Hyde, John Curran, Jesse Peretz, Anthony Hayes, Stuart Blumberg, Stewart Copeland, Harriet Frank Jr & Irving Ravetch, Angelo Pizzo, John & Joyce Corrington, Robert Dillon, Irene Kamp, Albert Maltz, Nancy Dowd, Barry Michael Cooper, Gladys Hill, Walon Green, Eleanor Bergstein, William W. Norton, Helen Childress, Bill Lancaster, Lucinda Coxon, Ernest Tidyman, Shauna Cross, Troy Kennedy Martin, Kelly Marcel, Alan Sharp, Leslie Dixon, Jeremy Podeswa, Ferd & Beverly Sebastian, Anthony Page, Julie Gavras, Ted Post, Sarah Jacobson, Anton Corbijn, Gillian Robespierre, Brandon Cronenberg, Laszlo Nemes, Ayelat Menahemi, Ivan Tors, Amanda King & Fabio Cavadini, Cathy Henkel, Colin Higgins, Paul McGuigan, Rose Bosch, Dan Gilroy, Tanya Wexler, Clio Barnard, Robert Aldrich, Maya Forbes, Steven Kastrissios, Talya Lavie, Michael Rowe, Rebecca Cremona, Stephen Hopkins, Tony Bill, Sarah Gavron, Martin Davidson, Fran Rubel Kuzui, Elliot Silverstein, Liz Garbus, Victor Fleming, Barbara Peeters, Robert Benton, Lynn Shelton, Tom Gries, Randa Haines, Leslie H. Martinson, Nancy Kelly, Paul Newman, Brett Haley, Lynne Ramsay, Vernon Zimmerman, Lisa Cholodenko, Robert Greenwald, Phyllida Lloyd, Milton Katselas, Karyn Kusama, Seijun Suzuki, Albert Pyun, Cherie Nowlan, Steve Binder, Jack Cardiff, Anne Fletcher ,Bobcat Goldthwait, Donna Deitch, Frank Pierson, Ann Turner, Jerry Schatzberg, Antonia Bird, Jack Smight, Marielle Heller, James Glickenhaus, Euzhan Palcy, Bill L. Norton, Larysa Kondracki, Mel Stuart, Nanette Burstein, George Armitage, Mary Lambert, James Foley, Lewis John Carlino, Debra Granik, Taylor Sheridan, Laurie Collyer, Jay Roach, Barbara Kopple, John D. Hancock, Sara Colangelo, Michael Lindsay-Hogg, Joyce Chopra, Mike Newell, Gina Prince-Bythewood, John Lee Hancock, Allison Anders, Daniel Petrie Sr., Katt Shea, Frank Perry, Amy Holden Jones, Stuart Rosenberg, Penelope Spheeris, Charles B. Pierce, Tamra Davis, Norman Taurog, Jennifer Lee, Paul Wendkos, Marisa Silver, John Mackenzie, Ida Lupino, John V. Soto, Martha Coolidge, Peter Hyams, Tim Hunter, Stephanie Rothman, Betty Thomas, John Flynn, Lizzie Borden, Lionel Jeffries, Lexi Alexander, Alkinos Tsilimidos, Stewart Raffill, Lamont Johnson, Maggie Greenwald and Tamara Jenkins.
