Mike Birbiglia's Working It Out - 174. Pete Docter: The Inside Out of Pixar’s Process

Episode Date: June 23, 2025

In 2012, Mike was invited his film Sleepwalk With Me at Pixar and he’s been friends with filmmaker Pete Docter ever since. Known for his directorial feats of greatness with Monsters, Inc., Up, Soul, and Inside Out, Pete Docter is now the Chief Creative Officer at Pixar. Pete walks Mike through the Pixar “draft” process for developing a story, and reveals the ups and downs of being a Pixar director. Pete shares stories of his time spent with Steve Jobs, George Lucas, and some of the original Disney animators. Plus, advice on giving (and receiving) creative notes, and the story of Pete’s Star Wars fan film he made when he was a kid.Please Consider Donating To: International Justice Mission

My wife said, you think anybody ever asks Steve Jobs to go to lunch? I don't know. So I tried it. And so he and I had lunch a number of times, a dozen or so. And one time he told me he hopes that he'll be reincarnated as a Pixar director. So that was interesting. That is the voice of the great Pete Doctor. Holy cow. Are we in for a great episode.

I have wanted to have Pete Doctor on this show for so many years. He has directed some of my favorite films of all time at Pixar, Monsters Inc., Soul, Inside Out, Up. Up is one of my all-time favorites. He's won three Oscars. I mean, these are classic films. If you haven't seen his films, you absolutely should. He is currently the chief creative officer at Pixar,

overseeing all of the films there. He is one of the smartest people I've encountered in storytelling and filmmaking in my entire life. There is a new Pixar film in theaters now called Elio I'm really excited for and today I talk with Pete about all that we talk about story we talk about animation we talk about Steve Jobs and I think you're really gonna love it. My new special The Good Life I, I want to thank you. It's currently on Netflix. So many of you have watched it and sent me messages and emails and posted about it on social media,

and I can't thank you enough. We just did a screening at the 92nd Street Y last week. We talked to my good friend Hassan Minaj about it. The feedback has been amazing and I can't thank you enough. I have five live shows this summer. Just five live shows coming up. Supporting John Mulaney's new hour. Me, Nick Kroll, and Fred Armisen are supporting John in New Haven, Connecticut, Bethel, New York, Portland, Maine, and Halifax in August. And then in Vancouver in September. All those tickets are available on birrbiggs.com

and sign up for the mailing list to be the first to know. I love this chat with Pete Docter. I think you're gonna love this one. I really think this is an instant all-timer if you like this podcast. He's given a lot of notes on my shows over the years. I've given notes on a few of his movies at Pixar in development. We'd like talking about process and story, and I have to say,

like our conversations off the air are very similar to our conversations, like today, on the air. Enjoy my conversation with the great Pete Docter. Your movie Up was the first time where I felt like an extreme emotion in an animated movie. Like I wasn't an animated movie person before that. Oh really? And then that movie broke me. We turned you. You turned me.

Oh cool. So the idea, did you have the kernel of the idea of the house flying away? Yeah, I think if I remember, it was a long time ago, I had the kind of concept of, and this really came out of Monsters Incorporated, the first film I directed. Nobody told me, if they told you, as a director, you don't actually do anything,

you walk around and talk to people all day. Right, right, right. And that's- I describe some of them as a camp counselor. Yeah, and that was overwhelming. So I wanted, I literally would would at the end of the day, hide under my desk. I have to this day, a stack of books

about people marooned on tropical islands. So that was what I was driven by just like, I just wanna get away from everything. It was just float the house away. And then from there came all the hard work after that. Right, so the ending of Up was a dream come true for you in a fantastical way. Yeah, because-

What if I just got away? Because of course the answer is that would be awful. And what you need is community and connection with other people. Right. And that's what the movie's about. That's what the movie's about, right. Okay, yeah, so my experience of it was,

yeah, the first 10 minutes were, I think first 10 minutes is when that prologue happens. It's very emotional, really like sucker punched me in this way that I did not see coming. And then here's what I'll say about it. Oddly, I think part of it is that it's people in the animation as opposed to animals, fish, robots. And I think like, was that a choice?

Because I feel like in animation, the conventional wisdom is like, we're gonna do things that you can't do in live action film. I have wondered like, if you made a shot-by-shot remake of Up with real people, would you get away with it? I mean, for one, I think you'd be like, really, house flying, whatever? But more than that, I wonder if some of the stuff

that was sort of appealing and likable for a grouchy old man to do in an animated film would actually be like, ugh, I hate him in live action. I don't know. That's the magical casting. It's Jack Nicholson in As Good As It Gets or something. Yeah. First of all, do you think you'll make

a live action movie at some point? Probably not. Well, who knows? Yeah. Who knows? The thing, see, I'm super nervous to be on this podcast because I'm worried that you're gonna ask me a lightning round of questions.

Oh yeah. And it's gonna go down. It's gonna not be, I... I'm gonna hit you hard. What happens under pressure is that I get dumber and my wife gets smarter. And that's why it's just not fair. But that's why I'm in animation

because I can be under pressure and be like, let's think about this tomorrow. No, totally. I mean, I met you close to 15 years ago when Sleep Walk With Me went to Sundance. And then our film was invited to screen at the Steve Jobs Cinema? Yeah, it's the theater.

On your campus, which we couldn't believe. We were just like, oh my God, this is crazy. This is better than getting into Sundance. And then, but I sought you out, because I was just like, I need to meet the person who made up, because it was so astonishing to me. And then we met and we became friends.

And then over the years, you've given me an extraordinary amount of notes on my shows. Uh-oh, is that a good thing? No, they're great. They're like some of the best, well, because you're friends with me and also my director, Seth Barish,

who's directed all six of my shows. And the one that's most notable, because I think it really improved the show, is on The Old Man in the Pool, we did it at the Berkeley Repertory Theater. And afterwards, you were like, that was great. And then Seth took you aside and was like, how do you really feel?

I forget what he, Seth and I have various tricks for squeezing notes out of people that are critical that they're withholding by being polite. I don't remember what he said, but you said this thing that was really smart because at the end of the show, I basically say like, you know, all we have is this moment and what I want to tell my parents is,

and then it cuts to black. Oh yeah. And you had this note, which was, you're ending with a thought and you're not ending on an action. Oh right. So we're like, okay, well, what if we landed that action in the locker room?

I go back to the YMCA, I see an old man naked, old man massaging his testicles, what about that? And then I have that thought. I think it made the show 10% better, which as you know is a lot. But the reason I bring it up is you give a lot of notes, you get a lot of notes. What's a good note look like?

And what does a bad note look like? Well, I still think a lot about Seth's advice in his book, which is don't tell people you like this or you don't like this. Tell them the way it made you feel. And so often people are like, oh, I didn't mean for you to be focused on that. Just telling people, here is my internal reaction

to what you showed me, is so clarifying. So do you lead with that? Like when you show, like you have a, Pixar has a really unique approach to workshopping things, which is you, you'll be able to explain this better, but it's like you do a rough draft, maybe, of the movie. Yeah, we call it storyboards, story reels. So when you were doing L.E.O.,

which is the movie that comes out this summer, how many drafts do you show people along the way before it's the final draft that people see in cinema? Well, okay, it depends on what you count as a draft. So we start with a treatment and then we have scripts, a bunch of versions of the scripts, and then we put everything up, almost like comic book form with our own music, dialogue, sound effects.

We did that on LAO is like 10 times. 10 times? Yeah. You show everybody at Pixar? We try to save some people so that they're raw. So they can see it for the first time and give an honest first timer opinion. Yeah, I do that with my shows too. Okay, yeah.

They're always like, okay, well, save this person. This person hasn't seen it. Yeah, yeah. And you know, it's like half the time you show it to somebody and you're like, don't say anything, I already know what's wrong. Seeing it through your eyes, I already have some ideas on what didn't work

and what I need to change. So there's that. And then there's usually the notes session afterwards, which sometimes is better than other times. I mean, you always get good stuff. Sometimes it's demoralizing. Do you, you don't seem to get demoralized though. Are you kidding me?

You just rally right back. Are you kidding me? People are laughing behind me. Get the fuck out of my studio. No, I'm completely demoralized all the time. Are you? All the time. No. That's outrageous.

That makes me feel better. Not really, but I mean, this is what happens for me is like Joe Grant was this guy I got to know. He was the head of story on Dumbo. Okay. So when I knew him, he was in his nineties. So he said, yeah, everything is brilliant until you have to tell it to somebody else.

And I'm like, that is absolutely true. I love that. Yeah, so it's building up to the screening and you're like, this is gonna kill, this is gonna get us, everyone's gonna lift us on our shoulders. They'll love us forever. And then they're like, hmm, well, I have some notes

and that's not what you wanna hear. And then for me, I end up, I usually give myself a day to just wallow in my own self-pity. Yeah. Because that's what happens anyway. Yeah. And then after that, you start to go like,

well, what if we did do that? And then you start to get excited again. Well, you know what's funny? I asked one of your collaborators on Up, Tom McCarthy, I go, Pete Dockers coming, I'm interviewing, do you have any questions? He goes, I have so many. I go, name one. He coming, I'm interviewing. Do you have any questions? He has, he goes, I have so many. I go, name one.

He goes, does he like me? Which means to me that you are mysterious, even to your close friends. That's hilarious. Do you ever have feedback where people feel like they have to read you based other than what you're saying. I'm the wrong person to ask. But the way I try to do it is here's the way it made me feel,

here's the suggestion, and then this is crucial, here's why. Because what I'm trying to solve with this is blankety blankety blank. And so if you have something like this lame suggestion that I just gave you, at least then they don't have to take my suggestion, but they know what they're trying to solve for. Can you give an example of the why?

A lot of times I'll say, hey, you know what would be funny or what would solve this problem for me is if this character got in the car and drove away. And that would tell me he doesn't care. And it doesn't mean that you have to get him literally into a car, but what I'm looking for is a sense that he doesn't care. And it doesn't mean that you have to get him literally into a car, but what I'm looking for is a sense that he doesn't care. He's just going away.

So in other words, I think you're saying like, it's the note under the note. It's like something there. That's how Seth and I always like talk about it, is like, we'll get feedback from people. And if a bunch of people give notes in a section, that section is not working. And it doesn't mean that they're,

cause a lot of people come in hot with their notes. Oh yeah? They'll go, no, what has to happen here is, is that this character, uncle has to die. You go, no, no, no, no, I don't know if the uncle has to die, but something in that area is clearly not working for you. Yeah, yeah.

And have you heard, have you probably experienced this too, where the area people poke at, sometimes the problem is actually before that. Oh, that's interesting. You know, that we haven't set it up right, or we haven't gotten to this, sometimes the problem is actually before that. Oh, that's interesting. You know, that we haven't set it up right or we haven't gotten to this, the actual thing is okay, the thing that's happening, but we haven't. I feel like maybe that's almost always true.

Yeah, it seems like. What do you think's the hardest part of the movie? The beginning, the middle, and the end? Hmm. All of them. Ha ha ha ha ha. The beginning is hard because if you don't hook people in the beginning, you never get, it's not like,

I hate this character, but oh, in the middle, I decided I love them. That never happens, right? You just like, they turn it off, they move on. So you gotta get them at the beginning. In fact, Elio, we redid the beginning. We had animated the whole thing and we redid the beginning because we realized we're just not connecting with this character.

And this is something I'm curious about in your process too. Typically we think, oh, what we need is more jokes. We need more funny. That'll get them. And then what actually works, not just on Elio, but on a lot of films is empathy and vulnerability. Showing the characters deep wound or hurt

is usually the way the audience goes, oh, well, now I feel bad for them and now I'm invested in their story. Yeah, that was a big note that like six months before The Good Life came out, Ira Glass listened to a version of the show, audio from the road and he goes, he goes, it's really good.

You just need like three or four more moments where you tell the audience something that's true and not funny. And it's such a simple note, but it's hard to do that. Well, I keep coming back to your line, which is before I tell you this next part, remember you're on my side. That's really what we're trying to do.

Right, that's the whole trick of filmmaking is you're like, how do we get people on our side for a thing that's essentially compromising of that character? Well, here's the thing, like, Act One is hard because we have to set up a character that you like, but that is flawed enough that when we fix them, we're gonna be like, good, I like this character better.

So they have these awful habits or whatever, way of looking at the world, and yet somehow we have to make it likable. You have to fix them enough that it's worth watching a movie for it. Yes, true. Which is wild. And yet you don't hate them and turn it off. Okay, so to go back to the notes thing,

what's your favorite kind of note to get from someone? I loved it. Perfect. No, I mean, that's what you want, right? Yeah, yeah, of course. My favorite kind of note. But it's weirdly not. Like, it. Perfect. No, I mean, that's what you want, right? Yeah, yeah, of course. My favorite kind of nerd. But it's weirdly not. Like, it's interesting, like I read,

I'm forgetting the guy's name who wrote the book, but he was one of the co-founders of Pixar who wrote that book, Creativity Inc. Oh, Ed, yeah, Kevin. Yeah, and he has this really, I think, astute point that I feel like since I read the book, I've repeated like 100 times, which is that when people think of Pixar,

they think that there was like a formula that was created for making movies and he's like, no, no, no, the opposite. Like it's every movie is a series of problems and challenges and if it didn't have those challenges, it actually wouldn't be the movie you love. And I think that that's a great way of looking at it. Right, and that's the same as people, right?

If you didn't make these horrible mistakes in your life, you wouldn't be who you are today. Right. So, I mean, yeah, every movie, I'm laughing as you said, because we just had a post-mortem on the last movie, and we do that almost every film. On L.E.O. or the movie before that? L.E.O.

So we look at it and go like, all right, what did we do on that movie that we never wanna do again? What do we do? What do we learn? And I keep thinking in the back of my head, like, it's always gonna be broken. There's always gonna be problems. Yes.

I mean, I guess the wisdom is like, let's learn from this so we don't make that mistake. We can make new mistakes next time. But it's oddly comforting to think of it that way. Yeah. It makes you not maybe wanna hide under your desk. Yeah, I mean, I did have an idea that somewhere out there was the perfect director and that's what I wanted to become.

And then at some point you realize, no, no, no, the person who loves director A hates director B, and vice versa, someone else might hate director B and love director A because of the match, the creative match, you know, that's always a mess. Wait, so in other words, you were thinking, like, how do I become the perfect director? I wanna be the director that everybody loves,

that does great movies, that knows how to speak with people. And I don't think there's such a thing. I mean, working with actors, there's some actors who wanna talk and analyze everything. There's some are like, don't say anything, I'm just gonna do this. I wanna be instinctive, so everybody's different.

How do you, I mean, we were figuring this out today. Gary was pointing out that like in a film, it's like hundreds of thousands of frames. And it's like, how do you bring energy to that day after day after day, year after year? Where's the spark? Yeah, right. And it literally is made one frame at a time.

Yeah. A good animator can do like four seconds in a week. That's the speed at which we go. That's absurd. I know. Four seconds in a week. And you have to show, you have to wake up at seven in the morning and be like,

I'm gonna go to work today. To work on our section of the four seconds. It's absurd. And that's the animator, that's not counting the person who did all the sim, the cloth or the background, or the background characters, or the lighting, or the textures, so it's absurdly slow.

What's the part, you're talking about all the different roles, and it's something about how AI interacts with animation right now. It's like, AI could technically do half the departments. Yeah, but you know what it would look like? It would be like, look like that. It would be bizarre. Right.

But it's like, which, at some point, Yeah, it will... For sure, because even like, when they presented the idea of computer graphics at all, in the 70s, people were like, that's crazy. It can only be human beings drawing it, right? So eventually they're gonna be like, well AI, AI can do the lighting,

or AI can do the costumes, or AI can do blah blah blah. It's like, what is your thing where you're like, no no no, this part has to be human beings? Well, you know, okay, so I was thinking about this, we were watching Elio, and I was realizing, we have 150 animators, and I would say, I get myself in trouble if I try to give a percentage of them that are really brilliant.

If you look back in time, the number of hand-drawn animators that were really brilliant was in the dozens. Like a very small number of people who could draw well enough, understood the dynamic of movement, character acting, had the right sensibilities. That's like the Disney's Nine Old Men and a few others.

So not very many. But I think computers have- When you say the Nine Old Men, it's like there are essentially like nine guys who made all of those movies for decades. Yeah, Frank Thomas, Ollie Johnson, Milt Call, all these great animators from the days of yore. I think computers have made animation more accessible,

so I don't have to be a brilliant drafts person to be an animator. I still have to have performance and timing, but one of the heavy lifts has been done by the computer and maybe there's some other tacks with that, like I have to understand how the system works and, you know, but I almost, I was wondering whether AI will continue to help us lift some of the heavy burdens

that we have to carry as an animator and maybe put the focus more on the performance. Right. Everything I've seen with AI, at least so far, it looks like you took everything, shook it up, gave me the average and sanded the edges off. You know what I mean? It feels kind of bland or like,

yeah, that's sort of what a bear looks like, but not any specific bear or a person. And I don't know if that'll change too, but AI seems like it is the least impressive blah average of things. the least impressive blah average of things. Do you, I mean, at some point, the people who are above you, they'll go like, we could do a movie for free.

We could do a Pixar style movie, except it's free. Yeah, no, there's already been pressure. There's already, I mean, I guess the way I look at it, I don't think AI is gonna be like, make film enter. It's not gonna do that, but it is being trained on everything, right? Yeah. It's listening to everything you've ever performed

and written and- No, I know. And it's- And it's laughing and laughing. And it's experiencing human emotions. It probably is. You know what's funny is there was a, you know we were doing research here the other day

on history of Pixar stuff and there was that like long thread on Twitter that went viral about how to make a Pixar story. And then I met. I didn't see that. Oh, okay, you didn't see it. I mentioned it to Seth. What's the answer, how do we do it?

No, I mentioned it to Seth and he goes, I asked Pete about it once and he goes, that wasn't us. We didn't do that. Right. Yeah, I think there is something slightly dangerous about analyzing yourself. Yeah. Because then you, and I've seen a few people do this

where they put together talks and package it for easy to understand audience and then they're kind of stuck. Because the reality is at every phase, sorry, not every phase, at every film I've worked on, there comes a phase where all the tricks have run out. I've tried everything and it still didn't work. And then you do something else and that's what solves it.

You know what I mean? It's just, I think that's an essential part of the creative process that you're discovering this thing. If you knew exactly what you wanted from the beginning, for one, I don't think it would be very good, but it wouldn't be very interesting. ["The Time of the Year"] The thing that I didn't understand about animation until I read that book that we're talking about, Creativity Inc., is this idea of like in the 70s that they created the idea of motion

blur. Oh yeah. And that made it like feel more like what human beings look like. Because drawings are essentially all in focus. And human motion is out of focus to the human eye. And so it was like this breakthrough of like, oh my God, cartoons feel like life a little bit. Yeah, and that's why it's weird when you see AI pictures

and that it puts motion blur in sometimes. Right. It's doing it. But yeah, it's early stop motion, like Willis O'Brien or some of the guys who did like King Kong, can't believe I'm blacking out, Harryhausen, Ray Harryhausen. A lot of those are kind of jittery because they didn't know how to blur fast movement. And then Pixar came along in the 90s and essentially created the first

computer created animation films, right? I mean, that's sort of the innovation. I don't know that I could credit Pixar for that. I think there were other people who were also doing early computer work, but I guess Pixar foundationally has the first feature length animated film with computer. Right. Toy Story.

Toy Story, which you worked on. Right. It's crazy. Yeah, it is crazy. That was a while ago. It's unbelievable. You won the Oscar? No, we got a special Oscar.

Oh, okay. I think John- Oh, right, because it predated the animation category. We didn't have an animation category. Right. Oh, there was a special Oscar. And we were very flattered to be nominated, this was almost more meaningful, nominated in the screenplay category. Oh, that was a special Oscar. And we were very flattered to be nominated.

This was almost more meaningful, nominated in the screenplay category. Oh, that's really cool. So, yeah. And it felt kind of mysterious because we were all going like, I don't know how this works. This is so clickety clickety, you know.

And Andrew Stanton, I remember getting email from him with I could barely make it out typos and spelling errors. And somehow along the way, he just like, I could barely make it out, typos and spelling errors, and somehow along the way, he just like, I'm figuring this out, and then he put his glasses on and figured it out. Which part of it, what do you mean? Just the writing process. During Toy Story, I watched him go from like,

I'm just a cartoonist to a writer. Oh, interesting. And he would come in with stacks of books about the process. We went to Bob McKee's story structure thing. Oh my God, so you're saying before Toy Story, you didn't think about, you weren't gonna make a feature film,

you were just gonna animate shorts. And so then you started to think about, okay, what would the structure of a feature length look like? Yeah, I mean, all of us who were involved, there was only one that had worked on a feature really. I mean, John Lasseter, who's the director, he had animated on a feature. He animated on Fox and Lasseter, who's the director, he had animated on a feature,

he animated on Fox and the Hound, you guys watched that one? Yep. Andrew and I had only done shorts. Joe Rampt, who was our head of story, had actually worked on a story in the story department before he worked on Rescuers Down Under. But, and he was also head of story

on James and the Giant Peach and Nightmare Before Christmas. So he had the most experience by a long shot of any of us. And he would just say stuff like, trust the process and be like, huh, what does that mean? I don't know what that means. And also there kind of is no process. Yeah, exactly.

And then of course Steve Jobs would pop in and do Punch Up. Yeah, exactly. No, Steve we barely saw during the making of it. I remember the first time I met him was like three months into working there. He showed up to basically let go of the hardware division. Okay. And so it was a downer moment,

but I got a peek into what they called the reality distortion field that he would create. He was like, we've got a great future. And everybody left going, hey, this is great. We just fired all my friends. So that was wild. But then he didn't really show up most of the way through. And then at the end, he was very heavily involved

in how we were gonna roll this out to the world. He had a lot of opinions about the marketing campaign and advertising and things like that. What was his take on it? Do you recall? Well, it's very classic Steve, you know, a lot of times animation and we're guilty of this too, is like just put tons of colors on it

and put all the characters in there. And he was like, you can only communicate one thing, strip it down, keep it simple, keep it elegant. He had a lot kind of pushing that direction. But I think Steve, you know, he would, we would hear stories of him at Apple and then he would come to Pixar and everyone would kind of pushing that direction. But I think Steve, you know, we would hear stories of him at Apple and then he would come to Pixar and everyone would kind of back up.

And he was pretty gentle. And I remember my wife said, "'You think anybody ever asks Steve Jobs to go to lunch?' I don't know. So I tried it. And so he and I had lunch a number of times, a dozen or so. And one time he told me he hopes that he'll be reincarnated as a Pixar director.

So that was interesting. I mean, that's outrageous. It is, but it is like a dream job. Like I really do think like, you know, if you're growing up and you're a creative kid, you think the dream job would be I'm a director at Pixar. So like, how is that true? How is it not true?

Well, I was gonna say, you should talk to some of the Pixar directors. Yeah, yeah. And hear their, especially the first time through, because what happens is, it almost feels like it's engineered to find your weak spots and pick at them. What was saying more about that?

Well, like if you have trouble making decisions, the whole process is about decisions. Oh boy, okay, that's awful. If you feel insecure, the whole process is gonna make you feel more insecure. If you're a private person, we're gonna probe in because the story itself is gonna expose all the things you don't wanna talk about yourself.

So I watch it every time, and I've warned new directors coming in, it's like, just so you know, this isn't intentional, but this process is going to expose your weak underbelly for everybody. And we're all gonna be talking about it. So you just have to be comfortable. We're all gonna be talking about it.

I think that really drives the knife in. It's true. We're all gonna be talking about over lunch. Yeah, exactly. Do you have any tips for supporting someone's vision, but also being honest? I think I'm generally guilty of being too nice, of saying, no, it's great, it's great,

like you were talking about with Seth at the beginning. And so I think the other extreme is giving people 8,000 disparate notes. So what I try to do when people ask me to assess something is first I make all the notes and then I go, well, this really, there's three things. If I really back up, there's three things. And you can't really have more than three things. Right, what's the worst reaction you've ever gotten

to someone giving notes? There was one time that, and it wasn't just me, but we gave notes and the director walked out and got in his car and drove home and said, I don't think I'm ever coming back. Did he come back? He did, yes. He did. But that was-

That's a hard day. That was a hard day. Wow. This is one of the great things about animation is it opens up the scope of what a story can be about. Do you ever find that a more daunting way to create since there are no limitations to what you're making? Yeah, I think, I mean, so often our problem

in the first draft is there's just too many ideas and you have to pare it down and just simplify, simplify. And you realize, oh, this is only an hour and a half. That seems like a long time. Right, it's like the characters could fly. They could be astronauts. They could, you know, oh, this is only an hour and a half. That seems like a long time. Right, it's like the characters could fly. They could be astronauts. They could swim a thousand miles if they wanted to. Certain concepts lend themselves

to more pitfalls than others. Like if you have a grouchy old man, I guess the thing that some people felt like, I remember Dan Gerson, who is a writer that I worked with on Monsters, he saw it and he said, the dogs flying airplanes, ooh, you lost me. That just went too far.

That's the thing. That went over the line. So, but my point was, you have a human in more or less our world, there's restrictions, right? Right. I guess the farthest we're gonna go is like the floating house with balloons.

But there are other things going into space or fantasy worlds of some sort that you're right. You can just go, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, off in any direction. Sure. And that's bad. Is one of the, like when I think about your movies, it's like the world of Inside Out, for example.

Do you have to come up with what are the rules of this parallel universe that doesn't exist, but for us it exists? Yeah. What are the rules of Inside Out? Well, we started with, I don't know if I can even answer that. It was something that evolved with the story.

And sometimes the rules would be the rules until we realized, well, that can't be the rule anymore. We have to change it. They have to be able to do this or that. And then you have to go backwards and be consistent with that. You can't just change your mind in the middle of a story. You can if you're making the story,

as long as it's consistent. But that must be crazy because there's 100 people working on the movie or more, right? Yeah, yeah. One of those movies, 300? Yeah, 300 usually. Right, so it's like, then you have to be like, hey, memo for everybody.

Actually, these characters can fly now. That is part of the director's job is to go around and like, I know last week I said this is not supposed to have a, well now it is. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, and not. That is such a hard job though, to direct a movie like that.

There's that's 300 people you have to convince of a world that does not exist all the time and changes. It's a little bit like a military structure. You have the director, then you have all these heads of each department. And if you communicate to them about certain things, they can disseminate. Disseminate, yeah.

That's how you pronounce it, the information to people. So that makes it a little bit, I mean, we have an amazing crew of people. Do you ever punch out of a film that you conceived of that you'd put in years and years on? No, I think there were one or two that I worked on for months and months. Wally was one that I had tried to get in

to process like twice and it didn't go. And Andrew picked it up and I was like, if you can get it to go, great. Like in other words, get it to go get to work or get it into production. Yeah, exactly. And then he did? Wow.

Yeah, we had come up with some of the stuff of this robot on a planet full of trash, but he was the one that really cracked it. When you're working on like... And obviously he directed it and wrote it and everything else. I just did the very early stuff stuff which is a little bit like, as Bob McKee says, whistling on the steps of Carnegie Hall. Like it's easy to have ideas, but to actually get the thing to go and make people care.

And that's the hard part. Okay, Pixar has been sued quite often, especially the more popular films. For whatever reason, they get a lot of lawsuits. So I think it always makes me upset because A, we didn't steal anything. Even if we had, it's not the idea, it's the execution of it. It's the five years you spent figuring out

how to put that across. That's the hard work. No, I can only imagine. Because of course that stand-up comedy is a similar thing. It's the illusion of, oh, that's something I was thinking the other day. Yeah. And it's like, right, but you didn't,

you weren't able to whittle it down to seven words in a row in front of an audience. And you didn't devote your life to standing in front of a crowd and listening to the show every day afterward and all the work that... Right, that's the magic trick of stand-up comedy, and I suppose that's the magic of filmmaking as well. Yeah. Do we talk about this?

There was a great Penn and Teller. Penn wrote something, I think it was Smithsonian, he said, you will be fooled by a trick if it involves more work and effort than any sane person would be willing to invest. Yeah. And that's the same with what we do. That's right. That's such a great way of looking at it.

Right, you have to invest an extraordinary amount of time. Like when you were working on, cause you were, that's the first film from Pixar in the 90s is Toy Story. When you're working on that, did you feel like, oh, this is gonna be what takes over? No, no, I totally, well, for one, I don't know that I ever really stopped and thought,

will this be successful or not? I was just like, oh, this is fun, let's keep going. And then once it came out, I remember we had, the press would always ask, how long do you predict before real actors are replaced by computer generated ones? That was their big fear then. And is this gonna replace hand drawn?

And we said never to both. And we were sort of wrong on one. I mean, hand drawn, there's still hand drawn animation, but not at the same sort of scale and finesse that there was at Disney back in the day. It's now CG. So, but I had no idea. I guess you're asking.

What do you think could be the thing that's next after this? So it's like motion blur was in the seventies. And then it's like, essentially like films on computers in the nineties. And then it's like, essentially like films on computers in the 90s. And then it's like, what is the next thing that might happen? Well, Mike, if I knew that,

I wouldn't give it away free on your podcast. I have no idea. Do you have any hint of it? Do you think that like with, I guess what I'm thinking of is like, people always make a strong case for VR. And I'm always like, I guess what I'm thinking of is like, people always make a strong case for VR. And I'm always like, I believe you. You know, some people, you know what I mean?

Like, I believe you, but I'm not there on it. No, I know. And every time you try it, they're like, put these glasses on, and it starts getting a bruise on your nose, and then you're sweating under there, and you're like, this isn't really fun, and I can't see the person who's sitting next to me anymore, so.

Totally. I don't know. Takes away the fun of it. Yeah. But do you read like futurism writing and things like that about that kind of stuff? Yeah, I mean, the thing that seems like depressingly already happening is that when people are walking around on their phones,

they are in a virtual world already. That's right. They're walking around, so they're amongst us, but not really. And that seems like that's not going to go away because it's very tempting. It's pleasurable somehow to get texts from people and I don't know why that is. It's hitting our dopamine centers and doing something to us. But I don't know what's going to happen in terms of storytelling Yeah. Yeah. But I don't know what's gonna happen in terms of storytelling or filmmaking or stuff.

I don't know. I mean, it's such a weird cross-section of, the financial situation and technology and sociology. And I gotta believe that, so far as we can tell, people from caveman days when they could first talk were sitting around fires telling stories. That's right. I doubt that's gonna change in the next two years,

because that's a couple million years worth of... Yeah, I don't think that's changing. Worth a road. That's my case always for film. Yeah, how it is gonna manifest, I don't know, it might be on some other device. But I do think there's also something people, even though there's more streaming than ever,

there is something people crave or find reward in sharing that with other people, don't you think? Oh yeah. I mean, for you especially, you can't have a comedian with a one person audience, even when they're watching at home, you sense the audience, that's why you're there, right? No, absolutely.

And I think like live standup comedy is bigger than it's ever been right now. Maybe because people aren't going to movies as much, but they still crave the human connected. Yeah, and laughing in a group, yeah. There's certainly something to it. The thing that I was always confused by with Pixar

in relationship to Disney was when Pixar came out, I was like, it's like punk rock to what Disney I would describe as like rock and roll. And what is your relationship to both? And then when they became one or one became a subset of the other, how'd you feel about it? Yeah, okay, so when I got the call that we were going to be bought by Disney,

guess where I was? I was standing on the riverboat at Disneyland. Disneyland, sure. So it all sort of fits, and part of me was like, oh, that's exciting and troubling at the same time, because I was immediately- Were you with your kids? Yeah, they were there. I was immediately thinking, that means we and troubling at the same time. Because I was immediately- You were with your kids? Yeah, they were there.

I was immediately thinking, that means we have access to the archives. We can go look at all the drawings that all the great animators did. Yeah. That was my first thought. Not anything really business-wise. I think Steve Jobs, he knew that he was dying of cancer.

He wanted the place to be cared for. And he did consider a long time the idea that could we be at our own thing. But I guess his thought was that we'd be so sink or swim, every film would be success or failure that it just felt too dangerous, even for a guy willing to take pretty big risks. So tethering to Disney, you know,

you're gonna stay afloat. What would your biggest piece of advice be for a young teenager who wants to be an animator right now? Do it. Do it. Do it, it's easier than ever. The other thing I've said, like, no one, you would never think of handing someone

who's never played before a violin and saying, you have natural talent, you're playing on Carnegie Hall tonight. Like it takes years to practice and get better. Filmmaking is no different. It's not like some people are born with talent and some people aren't. I mean, that's true to some degree,

but you need, either way, you're gonna need to practice. So the more- What do you think is the calibration of hard work and talent that makes the best animators? I don't know, it's almost impossible to answer because I know and I can look at, okay, my mom is moving out of her house and we had looking through old stuff

and I have drawings of my own and they're like, ooh, I did not have an innate talent as a kid. It was clunky, but for whatever reason, I had the enthusiasm and I stuck with it. So I don't know what the proportion of that is, if it's just blind optimism or, I mean, obviously talent does get external reward from people, they're like, ooh, that's a good drawing.

And then you are enthusiastic and keep going. Well, what is the thing that, cause you've, I have to, I have to imagine that on these films through the years, you're sometimes working 15, 16 hour days. It's like, what's the thing when you're working on a movie two, three in the morning, that's making you go, we have to do this.

I don't know, what's the thing for you? You just feel like you have to do it. I'll come on your podcast and answer it. All right, all right. I don't know, you just feel like it has to be good. It has to be good. Right. Brad Bird said, pain is temporary, film is forever.

So. So. So. So... I'm gonna go. I'm gonna go. I'm gonna go. I'm gonna go. I'm gonna go. I'm gonna go. I'm gonna go. I'm gonna go. I'm gonna go. I'm gonna go.

I'm gonna go. I'm gonna go. I'm gonna go. I'm gonna go. I'm gonna go. I'm gonna go. I'm gonna go. I'm gonna go.

I'm gonna go. I'm gonna go. I'm gonna go. I'm gonna go. I'm gonna go. I'm gonna go. I'm gonna go. I'm gonna go.

I'm gonna go. I'm gonna go. I'm gonna go. I'm gonna go. I'm gonna go. I'm gonna go. I'm gonna go. I'm gonna go. This is a slow round. Who are you jealous of? I'm jealous of Bill Watterson, the guy who did Calvin and Hobbes, who drew that, said, I'm retiring and disappeared from society. Is that what he did? I mean, nobody really knows where he is

because he just doesn't want the public attention. Yeah. He's not doing podcasts? Well, no, he's not. That is true. because he just doesn't want the public attention. Yeah. So that seems- He's not doing podcasts. Well, no, he's not. That is true. And I think on purpose, he's just like, I get to stay home and paint.

He's hiding under his desk, but we just don't know where the desk is. What's the best piece of advice you've been given that you used? Well, Seth's. Don't just tell people how you feel about it. Tell them your experience, how you experienced it. How you experienced it, yeah.

What about in your career? Any piece of advice about your career that you used? Like, I feel like you're at the top of the mountain, of the mountain that you decided to climb up. And was there any point along the way that someone goes, hey, stick with it because of this? Well, the thing I would say is, first of all, it's a mountain that you created in your head

because there is no top. Everybody, like I could be working in my garage, maybe Bill Watterson's at the top right now because he's doing exactly what he wants to be doing. So I'm in this weird position of power or whatever, whatever you wanna call where I am. But I think I just, somebody told me early on, don't worry about making money, do what you love.

And I don't know that I would have been able to do that anyway, but even choosing to come to Pixar, nobody knew what Pixar was. I had the option to go to this lifelong dream of working at Disney or this new upstart, which was the Simpsons and everyone was talking about. Instead, I went this other way because it just felt like the right way to go.

Why though? Why exactly? It's like, why'd you do it? I just had a good feeling about it. Just had a good feeling about it. The people seemed like people that you had like something in common with. Yep, and I liked the stuff that they were doing.

What's a song that makes you cry? September Grass by James Taylor. Oh, what about it, you know? There's just something, I don't know, that seems, it's personal, but it reminds me of my wife. And it feels like a time that's passing, like this warm, rich time that is going away. And I know that's gonna happen to all of us

throughout our lives. And that just feels beautiful and sad. Sweet. Can you remember a time in your life where you were sort of an inauthentic version of yourself? Yeah, I mean, when I started directing on Monsters, I was trying to be John Lasseter. A number of people kind of inadvertently fed that by saying,

you know, when this happens to John, what he does is blank and blank, which I took as, oh, I'm crappy. Right, sure. And I need to kind of do what John's doing. I try to be big, and he's a very different personality than me. How'd you figure out to be yourself?

Well, I just wasn't very good at being him. Right. So, and I think it's- You felt like it wasn't quite working, even though the movie was really successful and worked. Well, it was along the way that that started to shape of like, oh, I have to find my own version of this. Yeah.

I can't use his. Yeah. Because he already thought of it. It's his thing already. Right. I gotta do my own thing. Did you ever have a pit stop with it where you're just like, ugh, like this hit a wall?

Well, okay, so this is weird. In the middle of that movie, directing that film, I literally lost my voice for three months. Oh my God. I could only speak about like this to people because I went to the doctor, I had had a paralyzed vocal cord. Oh God. And as we talked about at the beginning, the had had a paralyzed vocal cord.

And as we talked about at the beginning, the only thing a director does is go around and talk to people. So I was basically hobbled. Could not do the job. And I think it was just weird how, like if you were writing a script, you'd put that in and be like, that's too obvious.

It's a little on the nose, a metaphor. Exactly. So that was part of what led you to becoming yourself. I think it is. I think it was part of figuring out what, not only my voice as a filmmaker, but like as a leader, people, how do you deal with that? Wow.

Do you have a memory on a loop from your childhood that comes back? Ooh, that's a good question. There's a weird, okay, so as many people did, we made a tribute film to Star Wars on Super 8mm. Did you do that? No. Okay, a lot of, have you talked to people at work?

Different people. There's a lot of fan films made. Yeah, of course. And there was one moment that we had, a friend of ours, she was dressed in a Darth Vader outfit and we had buckets of dry ice obtained at great expense. Oh my gosh. And we put them in the garage and the garage opened

and dry ice came out and there came Darth Vader and it was so cool. Of course it looked, you can see the bowls that are holding the water as the thing. Do you still have that footage? I think so, yeah. That's cool. But that, for whatever reason,

maybe because we're also moving my mom out of the house, that garage door kind of has been playing. Aw. We were so anxious to shoot it, I didn't even set up a tripod. I was like, all right, go! And then just filming handheld. It must be crazy for you

because George Lucas was a part of Pixar in some way, shape or form when it started, right? Yeah. I mean, that must be crazy for you because George Lucas was a part of Pixar in some way, shape or form when it started, right? Yeah. I mean, that must be crazy if your childhood thing was making Star Wars reenactments. Like what, did you ever have an interesting interaction with him? Yeah, we had to screen, so Monsters came out

at the same time as one of the newer Star Wars films that he was directing. I don't remember the names of them all now, but we had to screen, it was gonna, we wanted to put his trailer on the front of monsters. And so we screened the film for him early on. So it was me and John and George Lucas.

And I think that's about it, sitting there watching this movie that I directed. And I was like, oh, this is so weird. But he liked it. Can you think of a scene or a moment in your life that you realize in retrospect changed your life? Well, this isn't a specific scene, but sitting, I remember being so pissed off.

So my parents were both musicians, conductors. My mom directed children's choirs, my dad had a college. And so we were always going to concerts, classical music, and it was so boring. And I remember being so pissed that I was there and I was sort of squirming around and my mom said, "'Sit still!' She kind of smacked my leg.

And I was not knowing what else to do, I grabbed all the programs and just started drawing on them. And I do think between that and church, just wanting to entertain myself at times that felt boring, that's what got me into this. The final thing we do is working out for a cause. Is there a nonprofit that you like to support? We will contribute to them and then link to them

in the show notes. Ooh, yeah, International Justice Mission, IJM, is one that sort of like, wait, what? They send lawyers to different parts of the world and they're like, lawyers? And then you realize, oh, they're actually cutting down by like 70% child trafficking and like abuse of women, just because a lot of countries

are not doing anything about it. Well, that's fantastic. Well, we will contribute to them. We will link to them in the show notes. And Pete Doctor, this is, I've been talking to you about coming on this podcast for many years. One of my favorite filmmakers of all time.

It's such an honor to speak with you. Oh, thank you. It's an honor to be here. Working it out, cause it's not done. We're working it out, cause there's no... That's gonna do it for another episode of Working It Out. You can check out Pixar's new film, Elio, in theaters right now.

You can watch the full video of this episode on our YouTube channel, it's at Mike Birbiglia. And subscribe, click the subscribe button, cause we're gonna post more and more videos. Check out birbigs.com to sign up for the mailing list and be the first to know about my upcoming shows. Our producers of Working It Out are myself, along with Peter Salomo, Joseph Birbiglia, and Mabel Lewis.

Associate producer, Gary Simon. Sound mix by Shub Saren. Supervising engineer, Kate Balinski. Special thanks, as always, to my friend Jack Antonoff and Bleachers for their music. Special thanks to my wife, the poet, J Hope Stein and our daughter Una who built the original radio for it, made of pillows. Thanks most of all to you who are listening.

If you enjoy the show, and I mean it, I always read these little reviews on Apple podcasts and people say what their favorite episode is, put the stars in there. It actually really helps out. We've been doing this show for five years. 170-something episodes, and when people find the podcast, they don't really know where to start. There's so much stuff, and so it's really helpful if you go on there and you say, I like this show, and here is a good episode that'll give you a sense

of what this podcast is all about. Thanks most of all to you who are listening. Tell your friends, tell your enemies, tell the old man on your street who's flying away with a bunch of balloons. Catch him before he goes too high. Say, hey, Carl, I know you're off on this big adventure, but there's bound to be some downtime while you're flying across the sky.

Maybe listen to this podcast called Working It Out. It's where comedian Mike Bibiglia talks about the creative process with other creative professionals. You wouldn't know anything about it, but if you need help figuring out how to play a podcast, ask Russell. Thanks, everybody. We're working it out. I'll see you next time.