There's a doctor in the house
Tara Brady talks to director Pete Docter about the latest Pixar mega-hit Up, which tells the story of an elderly widower who sets sail on an Amazonian adventure.
Tara Brady, 20 Oct 2009
When you think about Pixar, you tend to imagine something like Santa’s workshop. The hours are, admittedly, probably on the long side, but somewhere between the carefully constructed screenplay and the most technologically advanced visuals on the planet, some indefinable pixie dust gets thrown onto shiny new items like Wall-E and Ratatouille as they roll off the conveyer belt. How else could you explain the imprint’s extraordinary product and success rate?
In the middle of this thriving cooperative, what actually makes a Pixar director a director? The collaborative nature of computer generated animation does not fit with any notions we have about auteurship. Are they, like, the ones holding the magic powder?
“Sort of,” nods filmmaker Pete Docter. “There’s no doubt about it. It’s a very collaborative medium. At Pixar, the director is the one who comes up with the idea or finds the idea then shepherds it along through different writers and animators. So when I’m directing I’m really the only guy who has the whole movie in his head. That said, when you’re working with the kind of very talented people you have around Pixar you don’t want to tell them too precisely what’s in my head. You need to allow them space to contribute themselves. I feel that if I can communicate what is emotionally necessary, and that the actor or animator can feel it, the rest will take care of itself. That way you get all this great stuff from other people and end up taking the credit.”
Pete Docter ought to know the delineation of duties around the hip San Francisco offices by now. Mr. Docter, Buzz Lightyear’s creative alter-ego and the co-writer of Toy Story, joined the company right out of school and is currently making critics and audiences swoon with Up, his remarkable directorial follow-up to Monsters, Inc. Like that earlier film, Up’s winning marriage of commonplace characters and extraordinary fantasy is close to classic Studio Ghibli output in tone and execution.
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