A Conversation with Andrew Stanton

we have no idea how to start these we don't there's not a there's not a format no no not a theme there's we'll do the theme but then usually i do a quote from the movie i butcher that that's how it starts but we're not talking about a specific film here today you could like pretend laugh like you just were telling jokes or something before you got started oh you want it you want to wtf it yeah yeah uh ask about the traffic on the way over here yeah it was the traffic did you take the subway i took the r oh there you go got here in 25 workman like train you know the r you she's nobody's favorite it was uh 30 seconds from my apartment and then about it's very close 25 seconds from the dream yeah from the stop here to get in the r just ideal trundles along though like you're never on the r like great we're about to pick up speed the r does yeoman's work it's a yeoman's work train by by a long shot now i free burrows local all the way you often say that the q is kind of default the best train here's great train not your personal favorite not my personal favorite it's a great train why is the q that wasn't an express um yeah yeah and uh i think that the the line it goes down in brooklyn is very attractive like it's very it's very nice sort of the curves of that q no it's it's outside it's uh the outside is really nice it's um it's a special if you want me to get really nerdy there's not a lot of um uh parts of the subway that are like the cuba because the q was a very very old steam railroad so it's just open cut in the ground so it's not elevated which you know is cute but like you gotta go up and down these stairs you know and it's not underground it's really nice the brighton line sims is a fan of the um new york transportation i'm a new york kid did you know before they put the subway system in there was a pneumatic tube system between postal stations yes yes they inaugurated it with a live cat a live cat to make sure the cat like didn't die yeah exactly i didn't know yeah the cat was like the the lyca was like the animal put in a little cage like a box and shot it down the wow and i mean the other guys were like we got her that's what they say that's what they say okay i think we should go back to pneumatic tubes i do too they're fast yeah okay griff doesn't have a take no i'm just thinking does anyone still use them or i think a lot of places still use we did when we were building the studio for pixar in the late 90s uh we did wired magazine was kind of au courant at the time and they did a whole thing about how pneumatic tubes actually still exist and boeing uses them like a huge scale and advanced technology send engine parts like half a mile down their property so we were like let's put that in the building and steve was like no no no no and then we got whittled down to like can we just have one loop it just goes nowhere and we just pay the receptionist to like put a little envelope and into a tube and shoot the capsule and then just do it every 15 minutes and does it go back down to her yeah exactly okay we just have that yeah no no i was in chicago recently and i bought weed the weed shop congratulations yeah really cool you know what that actually makes a lot of sense i i do think that's how we bring the pneumatic tube back it makes sense to go hand in hand with the legalization of weed yeah those stores shouldn't be pulling a thing out of a drawer right or going in the back yeah even if it's just a guy blowing a thing through a tube from the back that's what it should be pixar is in the bay where's pixar pixar is in technically in emeryville right piece of real estate that's about a mile maybe a quarter of a mile high and maybe a mile wide and it connects oakland and berkeley so if you go across the bay bridge from san francisco there's a right below it is a big ikea store and right behind that is us is that good being far away from hollywood like quote unquote far away that's further away that's part of the secret sauce yes that you guys were sort of insulated yeah and uh and it's a lot of other factors but uh it also kept and still does keeps most of the employees grounded because when you leave the waiter's not trying to sell a script or run a role you know you're not meeting other yeah right i mean it's become kind of tech bro-y everywhere but uh but there's nobody trying to make movies uh so it kind of keeps you appreciative of what you get to do every day we're here with andrew stanton who and this is a fact is the director that we have been covering for the last six weeks that's so true films correct uh yeah just six features i should have opened with this but explain to me can can i just yeah please can i just say can for the rest of this episode can i call you flick lover 98 absolutely absolutely because that wait you listened to a patreon episode that cracked me i'm sorry i wasn't a big i was big into it yeah sorry i was that's that's that's you should have led with that when you met me a gentleman's character we should establish the backstory at first i thought there were 97 lovers of flick but then i realized oh that's the year the year you made it right right it was the year the film came out it was the year the film came out yeah yeah i needed that flick lover 98 you can indeed call me you're the one person who's allowed to call me that let's clear the air on this you're the co-director of that film yes oh that's a good question that does mean you are not the director because like some people will sort of say like well why won't you cover this film they're a co-director and i'm like i think that title like it means signifies that you're not the director exactly right the way i explain it is we came up with it because that's my beer and then that's question um because during toy story you're not the director you're not the director you're not the director you're not the director the team that had been doing commercials together was john lassiter pete doctor and myself and john and i just really clicked and like i was a really good jiminy cricket like a good conscience for him i was always saying i'm like the devil on his shoulder and joe ramps who god bless him was like angel on his shoulder but i was able to kind of always help him keep thinking in the right direction or avoid the wrong direction and so i kind of was invisibly playing the role uh without knowing it because we didn't we were all learning what the roles were on toy story so after it was over we said can we make this official and so i said well let's let's make sure it's not a disney only new dual directors i was gonna but we didn't know when we didn't we didn't want to make up a title that was new so we just said we just know what the role means co-director means deputy and you're just there to be help the director be in two places at once like if you do the role right if somebody talks to me and i'm like oh my god i'm gonna be the director and i'm not pushing my vision i'm pushing the vision of the director and i'm helping keep the movie but it's sort of a little different from like an assistant director which is a very defined no assistant director is a very very very very different role and so uh so that's unique to pixar it's just it's something people get hung up on to this day but i think because of the it's all semantics right but we've always been consistent since the first movie that like sometimes we they're and i'm the same way like i found out on nemo i worked better than them better having the anchorage who i'd always had as an editor to confer with when john was busy to have him uh at the ready so he came on board like the last year and a half does every pixar project have a co-director right it's so it's choice right it's it's lit there is not a stamped way it's done and uh it's more like we are very individual visionary based like filmmaker based and we do whatever we'll make that filmmaker work better so i the one beef i have that you guys fall accidentally into it's my only beef and it's for the greater good when you use the the word they for pixar it's like you don't do that with nolan you don't say they for the universal studios like yes there is no star chamber of people going you've got to do this and everybody wants there to be even internally pixar people want that to be with disney but there is it it's like we are we take the the high risk we take is we invest in that visionary filmmaker yes and then we will support them or kind of sometimes cast them and put a group around them so that they will succeed because we can't afford to fail but we also can't afford not to follow a singular artist's vision we learned that from the first movie so it's toy story is a john lasseter movie you know uh it's always bugs life uh toy story three is a is a lee uncridge movie uh toy story four is the josh cool movie there's no they it's not like pixar head nobody knew that they were gonna make a two nobody knew we were gonna make a three there isn't a great map there's one of the great wisdoms of growing up and getting older is realizing nobody's flying the plane and you go oh so we're just trying to make the best smart decisions we can at the time and maybe hopefully not pay for it later you know but it's you're victims of your own success i mean the reason people including us are like well pixar is because pixar's run was so unique it's treated like a sports team yeah i know it's a dynasty right so i know i'm i'm fighting a losing battle but i just the idea that like there is a it is a group sport to make a movie but that still everybody believes in live action that there is a one person that is running that movie the barbie's a greta gerward movie yes and so so are the pic i can't speak for any other animation studios but i can speak for pixar and going that individual was the director and visionary of that film but but also that's why you know we covered you and we're not a podcast going like let's do a 25 film series on pixar that's true And we did, right, we did Ron Clements and John Musker. And we did Brad Bird. Yeah. We've done, like, and Clements and Musker. Oh, and I know you get it. Right, I don't know, but we're idiots. But you fall into the trap. Using the trap of they. Absolutely. Okay, but here's my big question. Why was Red's dream never in front of a movie? Like, what the hell? David brings this up every day. Why can't Red have his moment? Everybody was probably, I can't speak, because I, why? You can speak for Red. No, I just, I wasn't there when it was made. Okay, fair enough. It's a really old one. I have a feeling it was because it was a downer ending. It is a downer ending. Interesting. It's still stuck in the bike shop. You still have to convince Disney, who has the money and the distribution, that this is the great, the best choice to put as a short in front of a movie. Because they get people amped up. They put all the classic shorts in front of movies. Nobody wants to depress the audience right before you start rolling. It's a good call. Fair point. Because that's your favorite? Did we realize this? Look it, we loved it on its own, but as a lead-in to tee up something. Yeah. For sure. It was just something that I saw at a young age for some reason. It must have been on some compilation. I don't know why. Tiny Toy Story. That I was very taken with. Well, that just shows you were destined for arthouse movies. Seriously, it's true. It's like the French sort of. Yes, it's very much. Existential movie that sparked for me. Yeah. Yeah? I just. But you didn't even work on Red Street. No. So I won't hound you about Red Street. But you were the second employee? Is that correct? Or the second animator? The animation department, I was the ninth employee, second animator. So what was the first thing you worked on? I was hired with this thinking that we had no idea that there would be a future of film. We just thought that this is this new thing that they were the inventors of, which is called CGI, which is like, what the heck does that mean? It means computer graphics. All I knew is it could look photorealistic. At the time, we thought it did. Now our eye is so trained, it looks like crap. But we were the first of maybe only two other houses that could do that medium for possible advertising. It was the only way to make an income. So they had. I got hired to animate and think up commercials. And so my first thing was a Trident commercial with a ice cube that played jazz while a mint leaf scat sang on the top of the piano. The 90s, folks. We had it figured out. We did have it figured out. God damn it. What happened to saxophones? What happened to scatting? The 90s, everything was just like, there needs to be a saxophone in this commercial, in this jazz. You know, the WB is gonna launch all jazz. Why isn't there a blue Eminem? And why isn't he voiced by John Goodman? I now pay if I can just grind an axe for a second, I pay for every option I get to remove ads from any streaming service. If the ads were still the ads from the 90s, I'd pay extra to get them back. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. If it was the. What's the commercial where they need the air conditioner? I'll call now. What's that one? Sears? You know. I don't remember this one. I'll show you later. I'm always. I wanted to pitch this to Disney. Like, they own ABC. I don't know about the ads of it, but wouldn't it be great if you could just pick a year and just watch ABC with the commercial cuts? Like, the actual content. Like, I would watch that all the time. A streaming service where it's just, this is June 21st, 1984. Show me TGIF, 1997. Yes. I want to. Right, the block. I want the whole experience of just having it on. Exactly. The toy commercial. Yes. Sure. I would think that would be a very profitable thing to do. It would be incredible. Yeah. I used. Yes. I mean, I used to tape movies off of TV and watch them over and over again. I rediscovered them when my parents moved those VHSs. And I put it in and immediately knew every word of every commercial. Isn't that crazy? It's incredible. Now, okay. Are you a baseball fan? This is all I care about these days. I'm fair weather, but I was. You're going to hate me because I was born. You're a Sox fan? I'm a Sox fan. That's fine. I'm a Mets fan. I don't care. I was just wondering, because you're up in Oakland, you know, if you feel for the A's, but no, you don't really care. Many people I work with are still in mourning. Yeah. And don't want to talk about it. Rip A's. Okay. Yeah. All right. Andrew Stanton's here in the studio with us. I'm David Sims. Are we saying our names? I'm Griffin Newman. Great. Cool. Ben Hosley's here. Hey, there. Looking great, by the way. He's always looking great. I haven't seen you in a while, but he's looking particularly good. Right. For the listener, this is our first time seeing Griffin since the end of June or whatever. Since the Stanton series started. Yeah. We recorded them all. I went away. I come back. We're ending it. Yes. So, Andrew's joining us. Toy Story 5 has come out. Come and went. Now it's done great. It's all about Spider-Man right now. It is so funny that you just made a cash billion dollars and it's like a month later it's like Spider-Man and the Odyssey. Who cares? You did get to be the highest grossing film of the year. So far. Yes. I mean, it's not going to be that at the end of this thing. But you got to be. For a while. It was anointed. Sure. Yeah. You got that little badge. I have nothing to complain about. It seems the movie did. Nothing to complain about. It did. Beyond expectation. Totally beyond expectation. It did terrific. Highest grossing Toy Story film. Yeah. Before inflation. Yeah. Made my daughter very sad. Really? Yeah. In a way that she couldn't articulate because she's only five. I don't count five as movie going yet. Well, fair enough. I guess she can go. Just a dark theater can be traumatizing for a child. In my child's defense, she's a very experienced theater goer. We see lots of movies together and usually when we exit the theater, she's just kind of like, best movie. Great. Loved it. Every minute was great, obviously, because we're seeing things like Super Mario or what are some anime? Goat. Goat. The great sports drama, Goat. Toy Story 5. She was just upset. She was like, I want mom. She was just clearly thrown by it, I think, because of the friendship stuff. Just because it was about interpersonal kid drama. Yeah. And most of the things she sees are more about interpersonal kind of like Star Fox or Mario drama, Minion drama. Yeah. She's very wrapped up in the Star Fox drama. Flippy frog. And like the emotions in Toy Story 5 are subtler and like are, I'm not, you know, I'm not trying to like tell you something you don't know here. He's not trying to like bill you for therapy. I'm more investigating like my, it's like my kid walks out of, you know, Super Mario and it's like, I like that Luigi's scared. Like she gets that, you know, it's just a very loud emotion. Like I think Toy Story 5, she was like trying to process it all, like what was going on with Bonnie. Hopefully they'll watch the movie again when they're older and it'll be a different form. No, it's just great. This is a compliment. She liked it. It's just intense. I said flippy frog instead of slippy toad. Andrew, I know. I just need to correct myself before I'm fired from this podcast. Here's a Redstream related question. And then I want to get more focused on things. What's Redstream? Redstream? You cited the Pixar short. Oh, Redstream. I'm sorry. I was hearing Redstream. Can we get the shorts back in front of the movies? Oh, yeah, sure. The movies are a little longer, I feel like. The Pixar movies have inflated in length. There was a period of time where we had a lot more being made and just the theatrical experience was a little more for sure. And then I think between having to make things for less and being in a questionable still space of theatrical, although it's starting to feel like a good year. It may come back, but they're not cheap to make. They take a year and a half to make a short. And that's longer than some live-action movies are to take. So it's harder and harder to justify. Wasn't it obvious, sorry, wasn't it often the idea that with the shorts you're testing some sort of way to render something? Sometimes. But we're at a place now where it's kind of, now you can use to, I mean, the stuff we could do, like I was away for 10 years or 8 years, but 10 if you count going in, like when last time I was in production at a and I thought we could do everything looks wise back then in 2014-15 and now I just like as a kid in a candy store working on this one, I was just like, wow, we can we can do anything. I think WALL-E still looks incredible, but it is while when we do this podcast, I often will go back and read the reviews from the time and at the time everyone went, well, they cracked it. It's never going to look better than this. Every single thing has technically been accomplished now on this film. Yeah. Yeah. I I'm of the belief that like about, yeah, maybe 10 years, maybe a little longer. It's all still costly, just manpower wise, but you can, if you can think of it, you can make it. It's just in the eye of the beholder. Now it's, it's, if you don't like the look of something, you got to blame the artist, not the paints. Was it weird though? Like coming back 10 years later or was it freeing or fun or like cool to open up the old toy box? Like it was fun box. It was fun to be in the production of it. It was fun to work. I love, I mean, I love production. I love working with other artists. I've always been that kid that loved putting on a show in the backyard, kind of equivalent or making her movies with in with your super eight. And so that's the drug. What I knew I wouldn't love and was confirmed only about two years in was I don't like how long it takes. As you, you just mentioned before, I'm hoping I'm not giving anything away. You're 40. I am. No, no. Time gets faster at 40 and then it gets even faster at 50 and or and so four years at 60 is just too long because then suddenly half a decade is practically over and I can count on one hand how many more times I could do this. Like it's time that's made me kind of anti animation at this point. Here's the connection. And you don't think children should have be fun or have fun or be happy too. So you're anti animation for that. No, I think children should have a lot of fun. but I'm not worried about being the bearer of that. Yes, it's not your responsibility anymore. anymore. No, I'm making films for myself. The press you did, the press runs for the two movies you had this year. You talked about this a lot and how growing up, you never specifically were interested in animation in a singular way. That was never the exclusive goal of what you wanted to do and how you feel like this might be your last animated film because of the time issue. This is maybe a very stupidly broad question, but how did you realize you had the capacity to do animation? Because it is the kind of thing, unlike live action directing, where it starts with needing to have some facility at doing the technical. It's easy to look back to 2020 now and go, I was jack of all trades and master of none. I was going to be an actor. I was going to be a musician. I was going to be an artist. I could do all three of those things and none of them went great to such mastery in my teens that I knew that this was calling me. But I liked doing all of them. And I definitely loved the animation. I loved the animation. And I went to the movies like frickin' church. And you're in Massachusetts? Yeah. So it's like what sports are for sometimes to bond parents and the kids and the family. Movies were that. Our whole family would jump into the station wagon, go up what we said, up the line to the movieplex. And we didn't even think about what was that playing. We would just go see it. And you worked at an art house theater as well, right? By the time I got old enough to be employed. Yeah. And so. All of that, I didn't want to give up. And so it's because I found out. And this is. You got to remember, it's so far before the internet, before knowledge of anything. They have handbooks was the only way you could find out about colleges or somebody went somewhere and told you about something. And so it was my junior year of high school and my guidance counselor had to meet me to say what I'm going to do with my life. Where am I going to go? I didn't know. And he was late to the office. I sat there and I stared at this bookcase and there was this binder with a fluorescent, a hot fluorescent orange binder. And I was like, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. And I pulled it out and it was for CalArts. And I learned. Oh, my God. They teach animation. I draw, which is sort of like acting. I like to act. It's all about timing. And I've got good rhythm. I like music. And it's ultimately on film. And I love film. And I was like, suddenly, I was like, I don't have to give up any of this. It was literally all in that one moment. It was all in that one moment. And then I became like devil's tower. I had to go. And because I had fucked off most of my high school and I was a really bad student, I didn't get in. And so I spent the next. I got into one school. It was at Hartford. Hartford Art School, which is basically a business school. And there's this one little oasis that took me and I learned and it kicked my ass foundations wise. I was probably their best student because I was trying to make a portfolio to just get the hell out. And so the next year, I got into CalArts. So I have the rejection letter from one year and stuff. But then the conclusion to that story is you jump to 2003. Nemo comes out. CalArts wants to give me an award at the Red Cat Theater. My suite mate for one year was Don Cheadle. Don Cheadle's doing well. And so Don starts to. presents me with the award. And I give this same speech about how I found out about CalArts. And then I say at the end of it, I said, so whoever in 1982 in the admissions department decided to make the binder fluorescent orange, thank you. And this guy in the back went, that was me. Wow. So it was very nice closure. Cheadle, what was he doing? CalArts is like fame school. And I don't know if that means anything. No, no, it means a lot. Are you aware? I dropped out of CalArts. He dropped out of CalArts. How long did you go? I went for nine months. And what made you drop out? What made me drop out? I went for live action film directing, which I think was the wrong choice for me and school. And I also think I didn't want to be in school. Who was running the program then? Steve Anker. Sandy McKendrick was running it when I was there. Can you believe that? Who was. The sweet smell of success. Monty Hellman was teaching at the time. Lavender Hill Mob. Lavender Hill Mob. And James Benning. It was like an incredible faculty. You also didn't drive. So getting around was quite challenging for you. That's a problem in California. Andrew, it was maybe 50% of the reason I dropped out. Why didn't you go to school in the Northeast? Like, why didn't you go to like some school over here? Because I didn't like the idea of going to a school where I could come back home and hang out with the same people on the weekend. I get that. I grew up here and almost. Everyone I knew was doing that. And I was feeling very defiant about I'm going to go somewhere different. I'm going to make a new life for myself. And I got locked on to CalArts because I thought I wanted to be animating. And I had some facility for it, but I didn't have the discipline I found, ultimately. I think I could have done experimental, but I had locked into character and then when I felt like I'm not. I'm not good enough at this, then I shifted to live action. And then when I was there, I started going, I feel like I want to act. And so it was also at a weird transitional time in my life. But I'm very familiar with all of the places you're listing and also who the alumni are. Ed Harris, David, also went to CalArts. Pee Wee Herman. Yes. Paul Rubens. Yes. Absolutely. And lots of. I know CalArts. Who roomed for a hot minute with David Hasselhoff. Really? Yeah. That's true. These pairings. These pairings are incredible. I know. Somebody should write a book. Yes. Really? Yeah. And I know. It's just like, what was it like? My roommate was Joss Glennie Smith, who is an actor. He's still a working actor. Great. Yeah. Should we just stick on this? No, absolutely not. Okay. But you're calling out a thing that I think isn't discussed enough, which is how much of animation is acting. Yeah. No, I always have to explain to the actors that I'm working with that you're half the equation, you know, and that I'm going to have a lot of fun. I'm going to have a conversation with what I call the shy actors, which are the animators not in front of the camera. And but they have to be cast as appropriately as anybody, you know, that old adage of if you can get the script and the casting rights for a movie, then you're halfway there. It's kind of true also for your animators. You know, they have the things that their strengths are and aren't. And it's almost a little tougher because. You have to you usually have a team. So like there's not one person animating Woody or one person animating Jesse. It's it's a group of people. So we adopted at the very beginning of the whole studio was what Disney did, which you have dailies every morning where all the animators watch everybody's work in the middle of their project, the middle of their working on it. So that if there's notes from me about what I would think the character would or wouldn't do. Everybody hears it, so they all think the same. And but that's also a chance to be inspired and you and you get a little competitive. You're like, wow, look at what they did with Smarty Pants in that shot. I never knew you could do that with the handle and that you could make it look like he's, you know, flipping them off or something. And that would inspire them to, like, go. And so it's just a win win. And so there's this sort of it's almost like summer stock. Like, everybody's got to learn all the roles. Yeah. And but it's actors. You talk to them just like actors. This is your mark. This is where you're coming from. This is where you're going. To and and you're not trying to get into it too much, you know, because you don't want to get too much into their head. This is something that I feel like is a defining aspect of your films in particular is and maybe it goes back to that kicking yourself in the ass. You're at Hartford. But by design, giving yourself characters who are going to be incredibly difficult to animate, I feel like there's a lot of self-imposed challenges of like you go to the AA gang in Toy Story five. It's three characters that do not lend themselves to animation. They're characters that don't have traditional limbs. You know, two of them don't or one of them doesn't have a traditional face. Wally and Eve. Certainly. You talked a lot about with Nemo not wanting to cheat. Yeah. And and kind of personalize them more. And then I feel like sometimes in the opposite direction you have a character like like Hank, where the challenge is a whole different one. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Of extremity. But that's not a thing you consciously sort of throw at yourself. Well, I'm not I'm not in the I mean, I'm sure there's an element of challenge that I just want for anything. I think I'm a little bit more it's it's more that I'm just not afraid of it. I just go with what logically makes sense to look at. I was charmed like everybody else, at least that was around at the time that they first saw that Luxo lamp. I was like, there's so much personality in this simple lamp with this mic right now. And I felt seen because I felt like I had been anthropomorphized. I was anthropomorphizing everything as since I was a little kid, like my bike was cold in the rain as far as I was concerned. And my that leaf falling was afraid of heights when it fell like that just was how I thought I didn't like learn that. And so I realized I had a tribe and these are these are my people. And I also was lucked out that I was the first generation Sesame Street kids that came out in 69. I was four years old. And to me, the Muppets just always existed. Yeah. I learned everything entertainment and timing wise. And and and if you go back and watch on YouTube, any of the original first season like they were little adults. There was nothing kiddified like I always have this theory that Elmo fucked it up for everything because it's a kiddie voice and everything had to be young and everybody started thinking about the kids. And I'm like, nobody thought about the kids, at least and it's still good. And it was clever. And like, and so guys were tired New Yorker tires and they're opening up their jackets say like, you want to buy a cue? I mean, we're talking about safety. It's a great character. Really? Yeah. But anyway, what I was quickly going to connect to was how much personality came of just doing an open mouth with your hand yeah just a hand puppet like just taking a napkin and like and like so i just was raised going i'm seeing a million subtleties of acting and reactions from just a hand puppet so i've never thought you couldn't do it with under extreme you logically just run i just like it's always existed and so i've never really thought about it but i do have arguments with or not arguments but i have to like convince animators sometimes i realize oh they don't all think like that they they have to logic it out and i'm i'm clearly i'm clearly more right-brained than left-brained because people want to go down rabbit holes about like well if they did this why did they do that and i just go well i'm already starting with a story that fish are talking so can we i'm not gonna i'm not gonna left-brain this like illness though about pixar that people are like well i want to impose reality on it it's like but we're outside of reality you it makes me realize maybe they're right and i'm wrong but like i never think like that so i'm not going to start thinking like that i just want to have fun and i want to just not be distracted while i'm watching it and i feel really bad for somebody that is that's a curse because i i just want to go along for the ride or any movie i'm watching so i'm just going like all right there look at one of the arguments that goes that's just what you're kidding people on the internet i'm always fascinated because like there's an aesop's fable of that starts out there once was a sausage and a bird and a mouse and it lives in a house and you go and it was amazing if you start that way everybody goes okay okay right and and and you're like and so like so it just shows you that if you made if you made people have questions about it then you're just telling the story badly this is what i think it's not the story is bad you're just telling it badly i think what pixar movies sometimes do and again i am using pixar monolithically here so feel free to yell at me but right but it doesn't pose some logic which is part of the fun right it's like let's but just enough let's expand out the world exactly like we live in a we're inside of a child's you know brain like let's what would what could that look like we're you know we're inside of uh the axiom or you know like whatever like let's there'll be some logic but you need to you know embrace the fantasy as well i can't i you guys can speak better this but i i can only surmise that because the gaming world is so immersive and and thorough that you will want that same truth to be on any movie you want i've been thinking about this a lot look i mean cars is the one i think that broke everyone's brain but no but i've been thinking about this a lot that i do think there is as games became more cinematic and less their own art form entirely they start working more of the language of films into them and people have control and autonomy within yes yes nolan did this interview recently i just saw the chinese interview it's fucking right where he said like i think there is this problem of people feel like if they're able to recognize a trope of storytelling that invalidates it uh yes right i mean i that's bad yeah but it's so true and it's such a sickness and sort of modern media of now that we can slow everything down and look everything a million ways and you know like you know i i can look at youtube at any clip i want yes i can show you patterns and then you'll be smart you'll see the patterns like i see the patterns and it's like there's nothing interesting about you seeing the patterns of course there's patterns to storytelling when you're playing the patterns you compliment them if they work properly because you go that's fun that this pattern challenged me and i beat it i said this on blue sky like an idiot you know i'm i made a social media post even though i don't really do that anymore where i was just like if you're a critic the least interesting thing that any the last thing anyone wants to hear from you is i'm smarter than the movie like that's not criticism that's just you talking about yourself who cares like i don't care if you're smarter than the movie i want you to tell me what this movie means either to you or to the culture or to what you maybe perceive in the filmmaker you know like that's fine i don't care that you you're like well this is these are tropes of the movie i don't care that you you're like well this is these are tropes of the movie i don't care that you you're like well this is these are tropes of the movie i don't i know so i'm smart you know like that's not you're not telling anyone an interesting story that's all i agree with that yeah sure great uh i guess i'll get out of here okay if i if i can put my my flick lover 98 hat back on because we had we had you know there was the argument of whether or not to include a bug's life and a lot of it for me was just i wanted to cover bug's life right i mean you could you could almost get away with it because we john was very gracious and we were a team on that even more so but at the end of the day you know i i i it's it was it's his movie my i it was not to discredit that but it was more that i thought it was an important step in your arc in sort of the the journey of screenwriter yeah it was a second step yeah because toy story you sort of fall into it i mean bug's life was a chore for you or for everybody for all of us only in comparison to how what's fascinating is all i remember during a bug's life is complaining like i wish i was as dumb and as eager as i was making toy story because we knew nothing and so we kept saying we were like the young engineers that put a man on the moon at nasa we just didn't know you couldn't do it yeah and that got us through that was our fuel so even though i bet you on paper it was harder to make toy story than a bug's life it felt funner because we were just young and like we're making a movie like we didn't think we'd be able to do it we didn't think we'd be able to do it we didn't think we'd do anything more than that and it was came from such a natural inspiration like the the well of like what like i remember us and the story changed five different ways after this but this didn't it was what if it was your favorite toy on a top of bed and suddenly a new toy got brought in for a birthday and it got thrown off like just that sense like you suddenly realized the it evoked such feelings of of empathy about jealousy and and how that felt when your your next sibling came in when a new kid came on the playground like it just was so organic and natural it was like literally striking oil and so we never had that on a bug's life it was a intellectual exercise like what if we turned the ant in the grass up around its head it could go a little seven samurai could go a lot of all these things but like just that was an intellectual left brain didn't yeah it didn't evoke the emotions yeah and i learned and so it was we we got to the point where we were like oh my god i'm gonna do this and i'm gonna do this and i'm gonna do that and we got there but it was always like trying to draw water out of a stone so i learned that like oh it's to our benefit especially if we're going to work on it for three to four years and you're going to get out of bed with it not working most days you got to be ideally on top of a well of something that is more natural of a geyser of emotion and or not to do it not do it yet yeah so that's why a lot of our movies sometimes take forever before we really start committing to them it's because we haven't found that well i'm not going to want to spend five years on yeah this until i like exactly and then toy story two you guys made in like five minutes right that was a notoriously easy you know the more the more i look back at that i realized that the perfect storm of that was they had tried so many other versions that there was about 30 percent of the movie that was worth keeping not in not in linear but like yeah little bits and then the other was we literally got had two version two other versions of toy story we'd thrown out like two other not like a whole whole but there was so much in the costume box left from the first and then the biggest factor was we got literally the band back together we got everybody back from stem to stern that had made the first one so we were psychic so you just put us in we had a costume box of leftover material we had building blocks that made a lot of sense but i looked i was cleaning out my email last year like it goes all the way back to 92 but like it's less and less because we weren't using it so much then um and i was freaked myself out like i'm talking about it's november of 98 i'm doing post at skywalker on bugs life but i'm being asked to help do the outline for this monster movie that he's doing so i'm doing that on the side by december there's rumblings in the email that something's amiss across the street or the other production by the holidays john's calling me into like we got to talk by the january we're like we are gonna have to take it all over by the end of february i've written the whole thing by march i'm off and i'm starting to help this thing that's now called monsters incorporated and i have this idea for a fish like that and i had two kids i had two little kids and i look under like and i just go i wouldn't have believed it if i hadn't i'd like i always put all those things in that era but not so tightly together and just to clarify for the listener toy story 2 comes out november of that same year you're describing like of 99 yeah it's made like we i was writing pages on a monday it was delivered to story by the end of monday like top of the day monday tuesday morning at the latest by wednesday thursday it's cut in by friday it's being refined like so it was just it was insane i don't know how we did it is my incredible that the movie is so good like it just doesn't really make sense that the movie again it's like if you said you had you all had the short man went on tour and played so hard and then left and do something else and they said come back and do exactly what you did before and just keep it going that's why i mean it's not only my favorite toy story movie it's maybe my favorite movie i often default to that as my answer i i answered this recently when the five drunk finance bros in madrid asked me you like movies what movie you like uh and then proceeded to drop three beers years while I answered. But a thing I've always pinpointed is that there is a feeling of mania to that movie? Well, that's also a reflection of us because we were left, Disney said basically go with God. Yeah. Let you, nobody was there to stop us. That's us left alone. Like that was the core original group. And all we cared about was cracking each other up. We cared about the film. We cared about emotion, but not ever at the expense of cracking each other up. So like entertainment mattered greatly to us. Everything went through an entertainment filter. So even if we're doing this sad moment, and by the way, the Jesse being sad is to emulate what it's like to be empty nester. Fascinating. So that's why you don't get with it right now. Is John the empty nester at that point? Like who's that drawing from? Well, there was a range of people of ages. Yeah. We had people that were already grandparents, people that were not single, that was all over the map. But we were just going with the truth of the arc of life. The arc of life of giving up your kid and having to see them go away. My kid's not going anywhere. She's going to. You just keep telling yourself that. Yeah, she's going to go to. Our joke in the family is like, she'll go to Medgar Evers, which is like the community college down the street, basically. It's like, yeah, no, she can move there. She's going to go to Sims University. Yeah, exactly. Like, yeah, no, she can go to college. She can go to college, like one neighborhood over, maximum. That's hilarious. The twins all just, they'll live in the basement, right? They'll just, I don't know. Oh, we got to bring up the twin connection. Oh? What's that? Because I brought up to you, David, having twins. Oh, you have twins? I have twins, yeah. Do you have three kids? I have three kids. I have an older daughter and younger sons. And how old are the sons? They just turned two. Okay, so my younger brothers are identical twins. Oh, so what happened to me happened to your family. And what's going to happen to your daughter, I'm telling you now, is that you're going to look back at photos when they're little and toddlers, your twins, and you're not going to be able to say who is who. Right. And she will. Yeah, that's fascinating. Like, you are. You always knew your siblings. I can still look at photos with just the back of their heads. And I go, that's my brother. That's my brother, Nathan. Wait, so what's the age difference between you and your. Okay, yeah. So you were. My daughter was like three and a half. The other thing that's fascinating. I don't know what the minutes apart, but my brothers were born 10 minutes apart. And that might as well have been 10 years apart. So whenever there was a lineup of us, the pecking order was who came out first, who came out last. It's crazy. My kids were born one minute apart. And yet, there's a C-section, you know, just one. One, the other. And it is nonetheless crazy that the younger one is the baby. You refer to him as the baby always. Of course he's the baby. He's the baby in every way. He's littler. He's like, you know, whatever. And they do. My brother. One brother has all the signs of the baby brother. One has all the signs of middle child. I don't understand it. It's very strange so far. But yes, no. The older one is the alpha. Yeah. Well, your parents survived, though? They barely survived. Yes. Yeah. I get that. I hear that. And there was. There was a story once where they figured out in their separate cribs how to. One, to push their cribs across the room. And my mother came in and the dresser drawers had been used like steps. And they got into the Vaseline and baby powder. And it was. This is horrifyingly plausible. It was like tar and feather. Like the combined intelligence. And that was when they. They would speak baby talk to each other. And you could hear in the inflections that they were actually having a back and forth conversation. My kids do that. Yeah. It's fascinating. It's weird. It's right. They. They. Right. They babble stuff at each other and you're like, oh, right. This is like communication like that we will never understand. It's very strange having twins. Twin parents get at me always. Is that in the family in any way? Not at all. On either side? No. We always joke, right? Because it's like, I should wear a t-shirt. Like, not in the family. We didn't do IVF. You know what I mean? Because like, those are the questions. It's the same thing as when someone says like, oh, I'm sick, right? And you're like, oh, I'm so sorry. So, do you like smoke cigarettes? You know, like people immediately are like, is it going to happen to me? What happened to you? You know, like, they just sort of nicely start to ask questions like, and is it genetically like, do you guys have that? And it's the same with the twins where people are like, does it run in your family? Nope, just happened. We're older parents. Like, you know, it was an old. Apparently, it's more common the older you get because your body basically just sort of starts, you know, getting rid of all the eggs. Not to be like, biological about it. But, yeah, that's all. I don't know. There's a part of Africa where people eat a certain yam that makes twins. Twin pregnancy is incredibly common. I learned that. You're just making shit up now. I'm not. I can send it to you. Wow. Yeah, what's the yam? How do I get something? What, twins? I don't know. It's working out really well for you. It's working out okay. They're crazy. Yes, it's. Parts of Africa, particularly the Yoruba people in Nigeria, have a diet rich in native yams and those have hormones called phytogestrogens, which some people stimulate multiple egg production. Anyway, we have interest in it in here. We have interest. We're talking twins. We're talking twins. Not the movie. Not the movie. Okay, so we talked Bugs Life. We talked. We were saying the. Oh, the crunch of. Right. Right, yeah, yeah, yeah. A Bugs Life, you're consciously coming in as a screenwriter from the get-go. I get. Like, yeah, I learned screenwriting by watching Josh Whedon do it for the year and a half he worked with us. Right. And he was sort of at the top of his powers in the 90s or whatever. He was. Sort of a boy genius. He was rising fast. Right, right, right. He was still rising. But it was obvious because we had had scriptwriters before that failed miserably. And so we were getting a lesson on what good screenwriting was. And what would be fascinating is we'd sit in a room together, the four or five of us, including Josh, and we'd spitball something and we'd play it out for ourselves. He'd nod. He'd go off into a room, play soundtrack music really loud for a while and then come back out and you'd read these two or three pages. And the way. The way they were written, you were just compelled to see it exactly the way we had talked about it. It wasn't. And it sucked you in. Like, it inspired me. Like, oh, there's a way to do. I called it cinematic dictation. Like, oh, I failed in English in high school so I thought that writing was for smart people. No offense. But then I realized, oh, it's cinematic dictation. Yeah. It's like, I've always seen the movie. There's just a way to do it that makes other people see it the way you want to see it. And it can be done. Specific. And if it's done poorly, you don't see it the way that they want, even though you had it in your head. So that's what I. I just became determined to be good at that. And I. And I was honest with somebody recently. I said, some of it was self-preservation because there was no guarantee this company was going to last and that we were going to be beyond. We were such a startup. So we didn't know how the movie was going to do at the time. And I was like, I need to learn a trade I can use somewhere else. So I thought, screenwriting applies to other places beyond just learning how to computer animate. And so I just started doing it without anybody asking. Nobody was asking me to be the writer after Joss left for the last year. And by the time it was done, they weren't going to give me credit. So I went to the current script of everything and I highlight everything that they had kept. And it was 75% of the script was what I did. And so I convinced them. And then they said, okay, so Bug's Life was. It was like the first time they officially okayed that I could play that role. And from the beginning. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then, right. Because you're credited on Toy Story. You're credited on Monsters, Inc. as a writer, right? Was that just you and Pete? Or no, Daniel Gerson, right? Okay. Isn't the legend. On Monsters, Inc. Monsters was basically Daniel Gerson and. Let's see. Jim. Jill Colton, Jeff Pidgeon, Ralph Eggleston. I'm just looking at the credits here. There's a lot of story by. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's a lot of rebuilding by. And I just was part of their helping. I mean, I didn't. I wasn't the founder of any of that movie. Was there a moment where you were supposed to direct that idea in a different form? No. Okay. They had real trouble at the beginning outlining it and getting it to have an engine. Yes. And the only thing I can really take credit for was. The engine is Screams. Well, David. That's what I. That's what. Really? Yeah. I came up with. I said, you need a motivation that creates greed and all the emotions that happen in the real world. And so Scream is got to. What if you put Scream in there so that it's not treated like oil is in this country? What was the movie before that? Because that does feel foundational to. Well, again. Here's why the monsters do this. But you're smarter right now than any of us were then. No, but I have hindsight. We were all in our 20s just learning how to do it. So it was a new story. It wasn't a buddy film. And we just had to learn how to. You know, I was. We were still reading every screenwriting book, going to McKee classes. Like, we were just. We were. You're watching us learn as you watch those first three movies. I mean, a lot of people I think that's a lot of why I watch those movies incessantly. And also why I think people sometimes will ask because I dropped out of CalArts, like, where did I learn story structure stuff when I ran away from academia trying to teach me that kind of thing? And so much of it is from watching all of the DVDs that you guys put together, the talks that you guys have done, the commentaries. I think we were so excited to learn. Yeah, you guys were real sharers. We wanted to pass it on. Right. Yeah. Because that's for a long time for, like, almost the first 20 years, but definitely the first 15. It just felt like we just got to continue film school. And so we just promoted that atmosphere in anything we did. Maybe this is a dumb question, but you're talking about the identification of the oil spring that you had from the beginning with Toy Story that you felt like you couldn't find with A Bug's Life for a while. How do you know when you found it? Is it just from the reaction from other people? Is it within yourself? You just go, the story now kind of explains itself? You can definitely tell. You just feel it. It usually evokes an involuntary response from not only yourself, but when you put the peanut butter with the chocolate and you pitch just the basics to somebody else, even in its rarest golden book form, you see investment happening from the person you're pitching to. And that tends to be the proof that there's gold in the hills. Because you talked about in this recent press tour that Toy Story is one of those things where if you sit in a room for an hour, you start coming up with new ideas of what could happen in that universe. And it does feel like it's an infinitely fertile playground for story. One of the reasons I think I get pulled in is because they've skipped the ABCs, like they've gone straight to like other letters in the alphabet and they've just made. Understandably, they're trying. They're trying to be different or trying to be interesting or trying to go. They think literally going to new territory will give us new ideas. And I'm like, what was free in the beginning was just the fact that toys came to life. Like, just like that was like, wow. And I get to witness that. And you can do a million things with it. And you have to. And now we've kind of, from that movie on, messed up for generations. Everybody thinks toys come to life. Like, there's no wow factor for watching a Toy Story movie. It's a given now. So the other thing that's behind that. That I have to remind them on is that the secret sauce is in the mundane. I said, if you take collectively the hours spent watching Toy Story movies, even if you put five with it now, it's about what, six hours, maybe seven. That's seven hours of a toy's life. That's one day. And they have spent, if there are toys in your life, like for five years or six years or maybe even eight in your house. That's a lot of hours in the day not accounted for. Yeah. I used to like, I remember thinking there'd be a lot of humor when we were trying to come up with the first movie of like, just the boredom of being in the room while the kid's gone and making it, treating it like jury duty. And we had a joke of like, if I have to read Pokey the Little Puppy one more time, I'm going to kill somebody. And like, just, but like, that's where the humor starts to come from is like the mundane and seeing it from that perspective. 100%. Look how disrespectful we're being right now. Yeah. I'll put them all in the ad. Like you could do a whole sequence just about being trapped in that. Ziploc bag. It's why those movies make people dizzy sometimes, right? Because these are intellectually developed, conscious creatures that are basically little grownups living in a child's room, kind of bored all day, right? And then one day they might be trash or they might be in a box or, you know, yeah. The way people describe seeing Star Wars in theaters for the first time and seeing the runner go over and feeling like the world has exploded. Like my mind explosion moment was Woody starting the meeting in the first Toy Story. Yeah. There's something that just activated in me and oh, they're acting like grownups. This isn't for me. We did a sequence early on before we had all, we had that scene where we thought we'd start with the birthday party, but because this had recently happened at Pixar, there had been two layoffs a couple of years prior. So everybody was kind of very savvy now to what layoffs felt like in the company and it was getting the X. And so we treated, we did a scene of introducing Woody in the book. Yeah. And his bedroom with everybody going, is it me? You know, who am I going to, you know, and, and we suddenly loved like that. We were capturing something about adult life, but the metaphor of what it's like for the toys and it made complete sense. And we were told it was too juvenile by Disney at the time. So we had to ax it and everybody knows about the black Friday and it not going well and everything like that. And that's whenever that was your, uh, you know, months of going down to what was supposed to be like. I don't know, I don't know what you're talking about, but I don't know what you're talking about. It was like adult humor or, or, and when we had to like rescue the film and to save our asses and we had like two weeks to like try to resurrect it, we went back to that layoff scene and we said, there's something Muppety and just really, which is now we all know is toy story now, but we said that we, we think our gut was right on that mojo and we're going back and it became Woody's meeting plastic corrosion awareness. I mean all that stuff, which is just not, none of it is inappropriate. And even as a small child, I recognized there was something funny in why are the cartoon characters talking like my parents? Right. Right. Right. Yeah. Uh, that there, yeah, that there are, there is a kind of clock in clock out vibe. Should we ask about finding Nemo for some of the movies he's directed? I mean, geez, we're asking a lot of general, but yes, finding Nemo is a perfect movie in my opinion. Yeah. I was just downhill from after that. Not true. Yeah. You followed it up with Wally. What were you thinking? Oh, piece of junk. You would've thought, you would've thought I had at the time, was that the feeling, uh, at the preview screening for Wally? There was a lot of anxiety. It got the lower marks and like Pixar generally, right. Tended to, I mean, and you'd had, and that's when I had to swap. I was going to say, I did this before you do the final act change. Yeah. Yeah. And you know, again, learning curve. Wait, wait. Remind me. I'm sorry. I'm sure we discussed this on the episode. Well, I'll let you explain. Oh, sure. So it pretty much scene wise played out similar, uh, but it was missing two things. We kept treating Wally in the third act, like he had to be the hero. And so he rescued Eve and Eve wasn't going to be alive. And then, uh, he put her together at the end or no, no, no. He, he got still got smashed, uh, by the time he got to the Alito deck, but we also didn't have him. Um, like losing his personality, which is the, the true kind of like, Oh my God, like in your stomach. So we knew it, you could feel it. And so, but I was at a, I was just, you know, it was three and a half years or four years by now. And I was just beat down. I didn't know. It just felt like I'd come up, tried everything. And uh, but it was the same guys that I'd always had in the room to like cover my ass before. And so we really just stayed in the room and thought and hammered it out until we realized, Oh. Well, he's more like Chaplin. Like he changes everybody else and then you have to have the payoff of that. And then losing his identity at the end, it all seems obvious now, but no, it does losing his identity thing. It feels so obvious that, um, it's so it's Mickey movies is crazy. Cause like you telling me that wasn't always part of the movie. I'm like, I can't believe that. Well, but, but if you think about it, when you start writing a movie, nothing was in the movie. Right. And so it's just, that's why I always equate. Right. Writing to an archeological dig. And that's very ethereal where you just feel like you're, you're saying that the story already exists out there, but I really do believe that it's, it's very much like the angel in the marble and DaVinci or when, uh, Michelangelo chipping it away and letting it fly. And, uh, you are, we always saw it in the cube of marble and, uh, and I've just seen that happen so many times, uh, at Pixar where. Yeah. You've uncovered these bones. You're just digging all the time, trying to build this dinosaur that you claim is in the ground or the story. And then you don't have a say for what you find and when you find it, you can only give yourself credit for digging in the right place and for how hard you're working at digging things up. But you have to be sort of open-minded to like the answers don't come when you want them to. You just gotta be ready to do something about it when they do. I saw, uh, Rashida Jones was doing press for the invite and she cited something that you said to her, uh, the, the mountain metaphor, but it was something to the extent of your, your job in constructing a story or finding what the story is, is exploring every possible way. Okay. When you're trying to figure out the path around the mountain, you're going to go up it around it, down it, whatever. Just move the mountain. Like sometimes you just have to restructure and let something go. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like sometimes you're like, why are we, I can't figure this. Why did we put this mountain here? Right. Let's just go somewhere else. And it's like, right. You're a writer. You can just be like, you know what? The mountain is a different place. Yeah. You can easily trick yourself into thinking like that's cheating or that you're a failure for not, uh, acquiescing to the story gods that like, oh, there was a different path that I just wasn't thinking about. Here's a question I have for you. Your animated films have started with your idea, right? John Carter, you write, but it's an adaptation obviously, and in the blink of an eye starts with a script from Colby Day and there are the other live action films that you've been attached to over the years, which were almost always scripts that were out there in the ether. Have you ever tried sitting down and starting a live action script on your own? Is there a reason you feel like you're more attracted to, or is that just the nature of how things? Because it's so fucking hard. I've shaken out. Yeah. I, I, all I've known my career mostly is stuff that I either was a party to very from the get go or was mine and everything that gets criticized, everything that gets changed, everything that, you know, that's it. It's. take it personally, even when you think you're not, uh, you, you debate whether you're a failure, whether you're right. It just takes so much out of you emotionally. And once I found out you could actually, I said, wait a minute, some of my favorite directors never wrote what they worked on. And, and, uh, and I, and I realized, um, oh, I don't have to like die on this hill every time I make something. And so I started looking at things. Some of it was television, some of it was scripts. And, uh, there were a lot of scripts I tried to get made that were other people that never got picked up and just kind of did the more traditional route of like, I would love to see this film. I can totally see how this film should be made. And it was still hard, but it was so much, it was so easy not to make it about me. It was so easy to be objective. Does TV feel particularly liberating in that sense? It is in the, just that I enjoy the doing. Right, it's just the muscles. I enjoy being on set. I enjoy the making of, the older you get, the less you're like, I'm not here to like talk about my career or look it back. Like I've got this much time left while I'm still standing. I'm still healthy. And I love- Sorry for making you look back at your career. I apologize. No, but you know what I mean? Like I love the doing and like, and I was like, it takes four years. And then I finally, you know, in the same building with the same people, like it can get a little maddening and you feel like time stands still. And I just love the camaraderie and the summer camp put on a show that you get on. And I love the brevity. I mean, in two months, I've gone away to do TV, which is about two to three months max. And I've come back to Pixar and nobody knew I left. Like that's happened several times. And I equate it to being a session player. Like, oh, I get it. I'm basically somebody else's album. This is how they want, or this is how they want to play it. And they're asking me to come in as a session player and play on this one song out of their, all their tracks. And I thrive because I just feel so unshackled and unburdened by, is it about me? What does it say about me? What do I think? Like I just- You're doing the opposite. It's right. It must be so easy. It's not even easy, but it's enjoyable. It's taking a lot of things that I thought were burdensome and making them enjoyable. Because I realized telling the joke for me is half the fun, not just having to write the joke. So a lot of times it's freeing and I get to use my muscles and I get to get outside to just work on a TV show. Try different stuff. Yeah. Are you going to do any more of that? Or are you trying to make a movie now? I'm going to be on one this- Fall that I can't talk about right now. Fair enough. But I wasn't looking for, but it's one of my favorite shows. So I was like, psyched. And so I don't know if I'll do more, but because it's also no life for two months, three months. Because it's just- Yeah. Whereas animation, to be fair, it's banker's hours, nine to six, nine to five. You can be, got to go to the doctors that day. You can be like, but it's for three or four years. Yeah. And not only that, there just must be a frustration and like, oh, I want to- I want to fix this. Okay. Well, that's going to take a while. Versus like, hey, you give an actor direction and the next take they do it different or whatever. And this is mean, but they're on a hard, on a day where I'm frustrated with another show, I'm going like, you kind of have no excuse not to fix this, guys. You have all the time in the world. So let's put a time limit on like, if you haven't gotten somewhere by the end of the month or the end of the week, like, but that's the other thing that I took back to toy, like Toy Story 5 is the fastest we've ever made a movie outside of- Toy Story 2, which was under duress. Yeah. Right. How quick? What are we talking about? Three and a half months. Three and a half years. Three and a half months would be pretty impressive. That would be very impressive. I'd be doing it all the time. It was about three and a half years with me away for half, for six months of that to finish up Blink. Finish Blink. Yeah. And because I learned on TV to measure time differently, like in TV, any problem, any issue, they go, you talk in the terms of minutes, days. Minutes, hours, days, and if you're talking days, you know, you're in trouble. So you're always talking like, can we fix it in minutes or in hours? In animation, you're talking days, weeks, months. And so the, it's too easy to just push it down the road or take longer than you need to. So I applied the minutes, days, hours, a minutes, hours, days to coming back. And it was a little aggro, little aggressive, but it was still a better place to be. We, people were excited that they were getting things solved and getting more times at bat and figuring things out. Yeah. When you have to fix Wally, how long does that take? We have fixed, but you know what I mean? Like when did that was under duress because our, our, all our, uh, audience previews are usually set with about six months left to, to release, which means only three months left in production. And that's like your last week in, in, in regular terms, or that's like, you, you've got Friday left. So you hope, you know, that you're going to change something. You have, you have it on the books. It's almost like. Reissue it's built in. You, you know, there's going to be something you're going to change. Hopefully about 10% of the movie max, uh, or less. And it's strategic where and what you do. Uh, and that was about a 30% change. Yeah. No, that was how it was. That was, but every, it was a hard, it was worth it. It was worth it. It was a hard conversation to have with my crew who was ready to be done. Yeah. I feel like there's video on, on probably video of everything. I don't want to know about you apologizing before the demand. Yeah. Uh, probably put that on the DVD, but those DVDs, I would want, like, especially obviously the two, uh, you know, Brad birds, two movies in the two thousands between your, between Nemo and Wally, you've got Incredibles and Ratatouille and those DVDs. He's pretty upfront about like, I'm a pain in the ass. Like I'm really, yeah, I'm really demanding. And like, you know, and like I, as a kid or as a teen, I was a teen and I was interested in moviemaking. I was fascinated watching them being like, this is very upfront about like, it's not just like, Oh yeah, we're all so happy to be doing this. It's memorable, but like, obviously in Brad's movies, you see that in his movies, right? Like it's like that, that character like makes it across the line, you know, in terms of the stories he tells or whatever emotions he's driven by or, you know, and I feel like that's what makes the best Pixar movies the best. And that's what makes your Pixar movies good is like, they all have your kind of, you just have a very funny sensibility. And like, I mean, that is the highest compliment. Like it's, it's because at the end of the day, that's what comes out of us naturally. It's, it's like, um, I was talking on another podcast and I was saying like, I don't feel worthy equating us to the Beatles, but you, nobody, nobody questions that the Beatles were just making, they just made like if they never got out of their basement or the, or. Paul McCartney's family bathroom, they would make hummable tunes that everybody would remember immediately. Like that's just what came out of them. Yeah. They didn't change for the audience. They just tapped into something that they naturally did that worked great for the rest of the world. And, and so when you put us together, the infamous brain trust, everything we did got more entertaining. Like we just naturally entertainers and people discredit that they treat, they treated it like costumes to put on after the fact, but we're like, if you do it right, it's essential. Like you, you, the joke is telling the story is being part of the machinery and part of the entertainment and the core of it. The sequence in Nemo of the story getting spread across the ocean, which leads into Nigel telling the night, which this is the thing. I feel like this is one of those legendary stories in your career of how does the word get from one side of the ocean to the other? And you end up voicing like three different characters in that sequence. Well, just for the, just for the. The, uh, proof of concept, my co-writer was Bob Peterson. He's one of the funniest men I've ever met. And he makes me funny or brings out the funny in me that I can't seem to access fully on my own. And it's no different than being with a great improv partner. Like you just throw me the challenge, you know? You know, so we like, we were like, how do we do this? And we, it was like six o'clock or something, five o'clock in the afternoon. And we had to have something up on the reels the next morning. And so it was. You treat it like an improv challenge. Like how would you make the news get across? And then, then you just were like, we can draw really fast. We're, we're our own scratch voices. So we just put mics up like this in the room and just craft it. We craft out stuff all the time that take only a few hours. We just put this real high bar challenge to like, all right, you got to solve this exact problem and you got to do it in an entertaining way. And we've done plenty of those where they didn't stick, but this one stuck. I mean, but equating it to improv, Ben and I both come from improv backgrounds. Among other things, many things we've done, but, but it makes sense in that sort of the game is how quickly can you identify the truth in what has now been set up in front of you? Right. Yeah. And that sequence is such a dynamic, like speed rounding of, well, what would that type of fish be and what would they do and how would they do it? And what would they sound like and the escalation of that and the build of that and the series of correct identifications that all feel right to the audience, which then leads into the most emotional moment in the movie to me, which is more effective because it's coming off of. Nima realizing Marlon's coming for him. Right. It's like 10 perfect verbal gags in a row that are all character and behavioral. That was Steve Jobs' favorite part of the movie. Well, cause it's, it should just be the most like shoe leathery kind of, this is, this is just story weight, how to get from point A to point B. And instead all of it is, is personal. Well, I got to give my. Most of the comedy props to Bob, because Bob's just so funny. He, he, he could just see it spitting out. And I'm such a structuralist. Bob Peterson, right? Yeah. Yeah. That, uh, I think again, when we're together, we're both able to like speak each other's language, but we're able to like, I was just, you know, how does this build was my, probably my biggest driver, even though I'm still trying to be funny, bouncing off of him. And he's like, how to make it funnier. And, but he cares just as much about building, but we, because of the, um, the emphasis on the sentence was different for him. And he was like, I'm not going to be funny. I'm going to be funny. And I was like, I'm not going to be funny. film score nut that I'm always thinking about. Is there a way the music can do this? Is there a way the music can be involved? Is there a way? And, uh, it's one of Thomas Newman's best scores. Yeah. And I was, I wrote to two pieces of music or two composers, um, all the time for Nemo. And that was, uh, 90% of the time or 80% of the time was anything Thomas Newman had scored. Cause I just was like, and so he became a character in my mind. Any in particular though, any jams Shawshank and, but particularly meet Joe black. Oh, that's a great score. I mean, it goes over the top at the end and that's why I love it. And that movie is crazy. And then, um, and then I would listen to nine inch nails, the fragile, because I kept saying, I make, this is, is this, have you ever met Trent? Yeah. I told him that I told him that on the red carpet. That's so funny. Uh, year. But, uh, I just was so afraid. My biggest fear for making that movie was that it was going to be treacly and be an afterschool special because we had to go cute for a lot of it and innocent and sweet and adorable. And I just was worried about tone and the balance being right. Because my, I grew up in the ocean. I grew up being scared of the ocean, but fascinated by it at the same time. I remember putting on a little diving mask and, you know, in needy shallow water and ducking my head under and then being freaked out because things started to disappear so quickly in the void and you didn't know what was behind you. And I, and I, that was the first thing I ever typed was, and it's the, I think it's still on the first page of the script. I just typed the void and I wanted that. That was the big, bold, the two big, bold things at the time. I remember really early on was like, I want to like not do the circle of life. Fuck that. It doesn't exist. Things are out. Circle of life is one of the most banana sequences ever. It's gorgeous. It's a very, very impressive. But you're like, I'm sorry, what? The animals have a king? The theory that some of them don't talk. I just like things are out to get you. It's a predatory world. And there's a reason we're always scared about our kid crossing the street. And so the ocean is the perfect, you have to live in it, but you can't, you have to be afraid of it the whole time. So I said, can I keep that alive throughout the movie? And then the other thing was, can I make the parent, the main character, not the kid? And that seemed radical at the time. It's a, fair point. Yeah. Usually it's like the kid loses the parent either permanently or temporarily and has to figure something out, has to grow up. So that's, um, and that happens in emo. And that's why I listened to the fragile. Cause it would remind me how dark the, and I found out from him that he wrote that album, listening to La Mer and Debussy was suicidal when he wrote La Mer by the ocean side. And so the whole thing has this dark, dark, deep connection, but it would ground me like that. That's that 10, 20% would just bring me back to going, don't be afraid. Just be scary. Don't be afraid to be tense. Don't be afraid to be unpredictable. Cause that's part of the point of this movie is that you're in the real world. And the whole driving thing of this main character is fear. And we have to be afraid to, or else it's just theory. It's a, it's, it, it pervades the movie, but not too much. You know, like it doesn't overwhelm it, which obviously I know with a lot of the movies you guys make that can happen, right? Where it's like, Oh, what he's, what he's coming off a little too, agitated or villainous or what, you know, anxious. And same with the Marlon, right? Marlon's too worked up. Like he's too negative. I think I said this in the episode, but every time I watch Nemo and he gets lost, I go, this is impossible. Right. Like he'll never fucking find him. The stakes couldn't feel more insurmountable. I was still trying to solve the movie and Bob Peterson came on about a year or two in, and he was like, the thing that blows me in mind about this movie is all you just spend the whole time going, how? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. How is this possible? Which is, I mean, which is the magic of a lot of this, you know, like Dory too. Just like, you know, and WALL-E, like these movies where it's like a great distance is going to be traveled by a tiny thing. And every time you're kind of like, I don't know how they're going to do this. And characters with impediments. Toy Story obviously pretty much always is like, Hey, the toy got taken across the street. And you're like, across the street? The, um, the machinations of the moving truck chase in Toy Story was mine. It's so good. And I boarded that. I set out roughly. And then everybody came in to clean it up because we had to do it under duress. And I realized then, and it's only proven all the way until Toy Story 5, that that comes more readily to me is the crazy engineering of how things will all fit. Did you, and Monsters, Inc. too, did you have any, because Monsters, Inc. also has the, like, we're somehow crossing dimensions and, you know, all that. And there's, I'm not the only person, but that's just, if you had to get down to where, what comes out of me the easiest. Not easy, but easiest is, how is this going to ultimately pay off? How can I hide it as a setup? How can it, like, not be seen right away? Is that the right brain thing? Is that just looking for. I don't know. My dad was a, was an engineer, chemical engineer who was basically worked for a skunk's work, top secret company that could solve, had to solve things for the government when they'd run out of time. So I think I got that from my dad. What did your mom do? My mom was a frustrated, uh, actress. So you like Spielberg? The artist and the scientist, yeah. He and I have actually had that comparison. And, uh, but I realized I don't know science and math like my dad did. So that part of the muscle goes towards abstract story building. Yeah. Story structure. So I think that's why people would love me to stay in that lane because I'm good at it. But you live long enough and you're not interested in scratching the same itch all the time. Like, I'm also a hopeless romantic. I'm also a sci-fi nut. I'm also, uh, love drama, just good drama and in, in, in new ways of finding tension and drama. And so exploring stuff that wouldn't come readily to me, but I would love to see as a, as a, as an audience member is why I take chances, whether they hit or miss on Carter or Blink. Is it, that's making me feel as adventuresome and satisfied as I was on the first two animated movies I ever got to watch. Is there an, Is there an ultimate, at least I shouldn't say ultimate, is there at this moment an itch you're most eager to scratch that you haven't gotten to within your films yet? Right. Because you've mostly worked in sci-fi when you've done live action, even in, even in TV, you've done some, like you did three body and you did, uh. Yeah. I also argue that Toy Story is low key sci-fi. Yeah. A little bit. Um. Something. I, I clearly lean that way. Um, I, I, I try not to think too hard about it. I'm, I've been enjoying not having anything planned. I didn't plan Toy Story. Five. I didn't plan any of the TV shows that got offered to me and I didn't plan the scripts that suddenly I read and I was like, oh, I want to try and make that. You know, there's for a long time, I was trying to get this movie made called, uh, revolver that was written by Kate Trefi. Uh, yeah, we, that came up in our research. That's the Beatles. Like still stopping in Alaska or something. Yeah. It's a great script. And, uh, and I got, I got Paul, I got the Beatles estate. Okay. For four songs. I got Ethan and Maya Hawks. Yeah. Which songs? Uh, they were. Uh, pre revolver because it's all about, cause that Alaska moment happened and they hadn't released revolving it. Nobody knew that they were making that. And, uh, um, so it was like stuff from, uh, rubber soul and, and, and stuff like that. And, uh, but, uh, I got Ethan, it was a kind of a paper moon relationship between father and daughter. So I got Ethan Hawk and mine Hawk to attach to it and nobody bit. This was, this was right before and then during the pandemic. And so there's the whole. The whole world just rocked and nobody bit. Yeah. And it's still to me like such an obvious win of a movie. You never see the Beatles in it. Yeah. Right. Which is always, it's all about this beer. Right. Cause this really happened. There was a, uh, in 64, I think there was a nine point something earthquake. It's the largest earthquake ever on the North American continent or around Alaska. Right. Alaska. If you go to Alaska, they never shut up about it. There's signs everywhere. But there was, they were still in recovery a year later. Yeah. And there was one functioning hotel that you could stay at and the Beatles were flying to Japan to do, to do their last, nobody knew their last touring and they got rerouted by a typhoon and had to land in Alaska. And they stayed for a night and a day in this, uh, hotel in Anchorage in 1965. And so the Kate Trefice from Anchorage and her mother was there when that happened. And so she sort of elaborated because her mother had a crush on George Harrison. So her main. Her main heroine character is just her goal is to get into that hotel and sleep with George Harrison. And it's this beautiful coming of age story, just beautiful. And I still wish I could make it. And, uh, was it chairman spaceman? What was, that was something searchlight asked me to be involved in. Okay. And so I was heavy on the, uh, and that was before I read blank. So it was my, my shot at getting something else made. And so it was from an, based on an article. Uh, from, uh, the New Yorker and, uh, and we worked on many iterations of the script with the author, uh, of, uh, of the, uh, piece and, uh, and the, he's a great script writer and it just, I, it was clear what he wanted and, and what, uh, searchlight wanted weren't matching. And to be fair, the world changed, like to, to do something about a billionaire going into space is, was fascinating. And then it just became off-putting and then it became reality. And so it just was one of those. Ill-timed things, those, those ill-timed things. Now I'm seeing here in 19. 94, you worked on the episode Cookies, Ookies, Blookies. What? On the TV show Two Stupid Dogs. Oh. Oh, wow. Okay. That was. This is important. That was while I was working on Toy Story, early days. So, I had friends that. Now, there were two stupid dogs in that show. One big, one long. I had the Griffin-David relationship. It was a friend of Pete Docter's that was working on that show and he needed some boarding done and we just wanted to help out. It's always so funny with animators where, like, you look back in their career, it's like all this great work and then it's like, yeah, and then also just some random cartoon from the 90s. That was a funny show. I remember that show being funny. The Secret Squirrel segments on that? So, you were the prime audience. I mean, we were like seven years old or whatever. You worked on the Bakshi Mighty Mouse as well, right? Oh, yeah. What was that experience like? That was a murderer's row of people on that show. If you could. You couldn't hire that people. Yeah, that's pretty much your first credit. Yeah. Right out of college, my friend Jim Merton, who would go on to be a major director on Simpsons and Rich Moore were working on it and. Rich Moore, who did Ben, Wreck-It Ralph. Yeah, that's right. I love that. We all went to school together and so they were. Ralph had this pattern of coming into Hollywood, this all through the 70s and the 80s, where he would come into Hollywood off of just his Fritz the Cat fame or Lord of the Rings fame and get money enough to get something started and then burn all those bridges and then leave town once it failed and then wait for the regime change, which would happen about every five years until nobody knew who he was again, except for his credits, and then he'd come back out to California and start over again. And we were on this iteration because he had worked on the original Mighty Mouse as a young guy. Oh, wow. Okay. And I think it was Terry Toons was here in New York, I think. If I have it right, he worked on it in New York. Wasn't it. Was it in Tarrytown? Maybe. Maybe. You guys are in front of the laptops. Yeah, we got to devices. But anyway, he got the rights to it and wanted it to be remade. So John Chris Felucci was his guy. Bruce Timm was on there. Vicki Jensen worked there. Like, all of us became somebody in animation, but we were all nobodies then. It was crazy. It was a crazy time. We worked in an abandoned preschool in Van Nuys. That's what that show feels like. It feels like it came out of. Escaped something. And the intercom system was still working. And he took. Ralph took the principal's office and he was this huge guy from the Bronx, I think. I don't want to. If he's Bronx or Brooklyn. Yeah, that's the vibe he had. Out of Borough. And he had a bit of a lisp and you would. He considered us 20-something. He wanted writers cheap. So this is like 86, 87. So we would have legal pads and pencils and we'd sit in this windowless teacher's lounge that clearly had still all the smoke from cigarettes from all the previous teachers that had ever worked there in it. And he would just hit the intercom and go, Guy's in my office right now. And you'd suddenly pick up and you'd go into his office. But he would keep pulling out his old friends that he had made in the 70s. So one day he was like, Guy, this is Frank Frazetta. I'd like you to meet Frank Frazetta. And we're like. And this guy's chain-smoking comes in. We're like, meeting Frank Frazetta. And then they go, this is Amos. He sells cookies. And it's like. And famous Amos comes in dressed exactly. Dressed exactly like he is on. On the package. With the samples in a bag. He had cookies on. And it turns out he worked in Post and Sound when he worked on. And he was one of the sound engineers, I think for one of his movies in L.A. And then he was. And Ralph was saying like, yeah, he's trying to tell me he's going to start the cookie business. I'm like, get out of here. You want to put money in the cookie business? I'm not going to put money in the cookie business. He was like a music manager and he made the cookies as like gifts to his clients. Yeah. And everyone's like, sell the cookies, my guy. And he and he. And he made a killing. Jim would say every day was an interesting story working with him. Yeah. Is there anything. I want to let you go because we already have a second plan for you today. We're going to chat with you a little more in depth about John Carter, obviously, at the screening tonight. So obviously we can sort of dip into that more there. But yeah, anything else you wanted to bug him? Because you terrifyingly. I already asked the two stupid dogs questions. Yeah, that was really important. That was high on the list. It's been sitting on that. I don't remember it at all. Really? No, no. You texted me after Finding Nemo and you said you guys got things mostly correct. Oh, sure. Yes. I'm wondering if there is a thing, because we were talking right before we started recording about how when you do these press tours, you have to condense stories and then you create a myth that then circulates for decades and you have to correct your own myth. Is there a thing that you have heard us say as you terrifyingly have been listening to the episodes on you? Yeah, please don't do that. That you feel like we have helped perpetuate? To be fair, I haven't listened to the Carter or the Blink because I can't. It's too soon. It's too soon for me. Yes, yes. But I can't remember what the Nemo things were. There was nothing egregious. It was just more like, oh, that's a little off. It can be. Is there a myth that you wish you could correct here? We're trying to get you to say something so we can fire JJ. We're really trying to fire JJ. Oh, I see. Yeah. Yes. He spelled your name Pandrew Stanton. Can we fire him for that? Yeah. No. P is silent. P is silent. I would have texted you. I would have texted you with the correction if it was that egregious. No, I let JJ know that he did a good job. He's a good guy. He's a good guy. Yeah. And you're very, very very nice to bless us with your presence on this show. It's a hilarious show. I'm showing my age. I don't get half the references half the time. Oh, please. Anytime you want to get one of the references. Just text me and I'll explain the references. But I'm impressed. I'm impressed with your film knowledge. Thanks. I'm impressed with your film analysis. That means a lot. Thank you. Impressed with your running gags. As I said, I mean, I truly a lot of the analysis comes like backwards retrofit from hearing you explain things over the years, like a wildly disproportionate amount of it comes from the way you have kind of open sourced your sense of story specifically. Well, again, it keeps coming back to I have a sixth grade education and if I can get it, then I feel there's hope for anybody else to get it. So I kind of try to pass it on. That's about it. Not our podcast, but with like a second grade education. Thank you for doing this. Thanks, guys. Thank you. And looking forward to tonight. I'm excited. I've never seen the film on the screen since and I was going to do it. We're going to tough it out. Oh, yeah. All right. I it's not hard for me to watch. It's not hard for me to watch any of my movies. I know why I made them and I know why I made the choices and I don't usually regret the choices. I just some people are like, no, no, no. I'll never. I never watch my stuff back like that about the most. Like, I can't watch Toy Story 5 again. Sure. Because you just watch like 5 billion times. Yeah. I literally one of our editors assistants kept track and I'd seen it 95 times. Oh, my God. So, I mean, to be fair, I've seen some of your movies close to that many times because to be fair, I've seen it 91 times like like Nemo took me seven years before I was some of it's just because you just want to see it. Like, do I have even fighting chance of seeing it as a movie? Yeah. All of them are a yearbook. They're just a yearbook. Like, I remember where I was when I shot that. I remember every choice and when it's long enough of a time passing you it becomes fun memories. It's like opening up an old photo album and you're just like, oh, yeah, and it triggers memories that you had forgotten about it. So it's very just great. That's just great. Yeah, that's lovely. But like just collecting all the photos that I'll go to. Oh, yeah. It was like I found stuff I forgot I had, which was exciting. Are you in touch with anyone left on that? Oh, yeah. The more than I just and she's having so she can't I gave her such kudos for Cersei. Pretty incredible. Probably the highlight highlight of the movie. And it's a great movie. And I'm so happy for her. It's like it's like a whole another generation is learning how great she is. Absolutely. And I'm friends with Defoe. I haven't talked to him in a while, but he's a good New Yorker pal. And we all loved working on that movie. And it was hard, but it was we enjoyed it till the day it came out. And then we all had plans. Which I'll talk about tonight about what we found that outlines for the other two. Yeah. And I'm like, oh, we really knew what we were going and what we're going to do. And so there's any there's a lot of not a lot but the critique some of the critiques about the first one are actually because we just knew where we were going with the second one. And we weren't going to give away all the marbles or do what you would normally do in a standalone film. So which, you know, is a naive mistake of ours to have done. But I'm excited to see it. I'm excited to see it. I'm excited to see all the stuff you dug up. Especially with an appreciative crowd. I realize this may never happen again. I mean, sold out. Sold out right away. Right away. That's awesome. People are excited. We are doing a second showing. Yeah. Sweet. Thanks, guys. Thank you. Thank you so much, sir. Blank Check with Griffin and David is hosted by Griffin Newman and David Sims. Our executive producer is me, Ben Hosley. Our creative producer is Marie Barty Salinas. And our associate producer is AJ McKeon. This show is mixed and edited by AJ McKeon and Alan Smithy. Research by JJ Birch. Our theme song is by Lane Montgomery and the Great American Novel with additional music by Alex Mitchell. Artwork by Joe Bowen, Ollie Moss, and Pat Reynolds. Our production assistant is Minik. Special thanks to David Cho, Jordan Fish, and Nate Patterson for their production help. Head over to BlankCheckPod.com for links to all of the real nerdy shit. Join our Patreon on, blank check special features, for exclusive franchise commentaries and bonus episodes. Follow us on social at Blank Check Pod. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter, Checkbook, on Substack. This podcast is created and produced by Blank Check Productions.