If you’re Pete Docter, you’ve had a hand in just about every film Pixar has made for the last two-plus decades. The chief creative officer at Pixar Animation Studios and Oscar-winning director of “Up,” “Inside Out,” “Soul” and “Monsters, Inc.” was the tenth employee and third animator to begin working there.
Docter discussed all of this in an extended Visionaries conversation on Monday at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival where he reflected on his origins with the studio, where they’re at now and what the key is to making good films.
After jokingly asking why everyone was there when they could be out watching movies, Docter recounted how, growing up in Minnesota, he was part of a musical family — though was more someone who took to drawing, himself. “We’ve got to bring back boredom. It’s the key to creativity,” Docter said, lambasting phones as being something that just distracts us from making good art. He recounted how he loved The Muppets as a kid and said his favorite was always Fozzie Bear as he’s an entertainer who’s also deeply insecure, something to which he could relate.
Years later, finding a way to connect with such characters is what still motivates him as a filmmaker.
“Ultimately, the thing that continues to really get me jazzed is that we’re creating these illusions that don’t exist anywhere, but you come to believe in,” Docter said. “That idea of bringing us inside of the people, I think that’s what all cinema, what all entertainment, is trying to do.”
The CCO candidly admitted that parts of his job now aren’t quite as fun as when he was first making films. However, he still loves the work of animation and filmmaking itself, referring to Pixar as going to school. “It felt like a bunch of people doing it because we loved it,” Docter reflected. Now, that’s expanded in scale, taking years of production and hundreds of people to pull them off. When Pixar was starting out, he said it was much smaller and a miracle they pulled films off at all.
“I don’t want to be lecturing at people. On the other hand, I’m not making these movies for me. I’m making the movies for you, the audience,” Docter said, elaborating that they need to know what the audience wants better in order to be good gift-givers. He discussed finding a balance between personal stories while being universal, which is something he’s also brought up before. “Sometimes people who really want to please other people end up doing a good job in this role,” Docter said, emphasizing that the work is all about the audience.
It’s all about finding that balance between creative discipline and letting things run wild, noting how “Inside Out 2” struck a chord with people because of the character of anxiety, something that proved to be more topical to our modern lives than anyone could have ever predicted. It made a killing at the box office to become the highest-grossing animated film ever.
The films that capture this and prove to be successful are ones Docter says don’t come out of nowhere and that an idea doesn’t come into the mind fully formed. Instead, it’s all about iteration and building on them over many years. “It’s less about talent at some point and more about stamina,” he said. “You can make a really good idea into something crappy and vice versa.”
