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

Episode Date: October 5, 2026

(Recorded June 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 MissionText BIRBIGS to 917-444-7150 for updatesFind Mike:Website: https://birbigs.com/Instagram: https://instagram.com/birbigs/Facebook: https://facebook.com/birbigfansTikTok: https://tiktok.com/@mikebirbigliaHosted and Produced by Mike BirbigliaProducers: Peter Salomone, Joseph Birbiglia, Mabel Lewis, Gary SimonsSound Mixed by Shubh SaranSupervising Engineer: Kate BilinskiVideo Consultant: Graham WilloughbySpecial Thanks: Marissa Hurwitz, Josh Upfal, David Raphael, Nina Cwik, J. Hope Stein, OonaMusic: Jack Antonoff and Bleachers Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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 lunched 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. Hey, everybody. It's Mike Barbaglia.

This is Working It Out. That is the voice of the great Pete Doctor. We are re-airing this episode from last year, one of our favorites of all. time and one of the most unique episodes. Pete Doctor is the chief creative officer of Pixar. Of course, he directed Inside Out, Up, Soul, Monsters, Inc. Pete is an endless well of creative advice and inspiration. In fact, we just highlighted this in our chat and our recent creativity supercut that we put out for Labor Day weekend. We're re-airing this today because we love it, and we think you will too. Meanwhile, I am deep in production of my third film. It is called Old Friends,

new friends. I'm super excited. I can't wait to share it with you. You can read. There's articles about it. It's with Focus Features. It has Lucas Hedges and Dylan Galula and Geraldine Vizwanathan and Patrick Schwarzenegger. And it's just a really interesting group of actors and crew members. It's my same cinematographer, Joe Anderson from Don't Think Twice. My producer from my first movie, Jacob Jaffke, Sleepwalk with me. It's just a bunch of really fun people making like a sort of a dream project. I can't wait for you to see it. Once this all wraps up, I'll be back on the road next year with a new hour of comedy,

and I will keep you updated about that. This is a great chat today with Pete Doctor. He's given a lot of notes on my shows, and I've given a few notes on some Pixar films and development through the years. We talk about the arduous creative process of storytelling, of making films, of making animations. It is a very special chat and join my conversation with the great Pete Doctor.

Your movie up was the first time where I felt like an extreme emotion in an animated movie movie. I was an animated movie person before that. No, 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 it sometimes as a camp counselor. Yeah, and that was overwhelming. So I wanted, I literally 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 drove. by just like, I just want to get away from everything. It was just float the house away. Yeah. 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. 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. Yeah.

Okay. Yeah, so my experience of it was, yeah, the first 10 minutes were, I think first 10 minutes is when that prolog happens. Yeah. It's very, 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, robots. And I think, like, was that a choice?

Because I feel like in animation, the conventional wisdom is like, we're going to 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.

Right. That's the magic cast. It's as good as it gets or something. Yeah. Do you, 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 going to ask me a lightning round of questions. Oh, yeah. And it's going to go down. It's going to not be. I'm going to hear you hard. What happens, understand.

pressure is that I get dumber and my wife gets smarter. And that's why it's just not a 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 Sleepwalk with me went to Sundance. And then our film was invited to screen at the Steve Jobs cinema. Yeah, the theater. On your campus, which we. which we couldn't believe. We were just like, oh, my God, this is crazy.

This is better than getting into Sundance. But I sought you out because I was just like, I need to meet the person who made up, you know, 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 at 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? And he, I forget what he, Seth and I have various tricks for squeezing notes out of people that are critical that they're withholding. Right. By being polite. Yes. I don't remember what he said, but you said this thing that was really. least 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 then I have that thought. Yeah. 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. You know, just telling people, here is my internal reaction to what you show 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 LEO, 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 the 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 LEO 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 time of opinion. Yeah, I do that with my shows too.

Okay, yeah. We're always like, okay, we'll save this person. Yeah. 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 that's right. So there's that. And then there's usually the note 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 it. Get the fuck out of my studio. No, I'm completely demoralized all the time. All the time. That's outrageous.

That makes me feel better. Well, not really, but I mean, this is what happens for me is like, Joe Grant was this guy I got to know. He was ahead of story on Dumbo. Okay. So when I knew him, he was in his 90s. 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 going to kill, this is going to get us. You know, everyone's going to 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 want to 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. And then after that you start to go like, well, what if we did do that way? And then you start to get excited again. Well, you know, it's funny. I asked one of your collaborators on Up, Tom McCarthy, I go, Pete Doctor's coming. I'm interviewing. Do you have any questions?

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 tried 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. Right. 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 as 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. 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 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.

Right. And it doesn't mean that they're, you know, because a lot of people come in hot with their notes. Oh, yeah? They'll go, no, what has to happen here 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, 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 the. this, the actual thing is okay, the thing that's happening. I feel like maybe that's almost always true. Yeah, it seems like. What do you think is the hardest part of the movie?

The beginning, the middle, and the end? Hmm. All of them. 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 got to get them at the beginning. In fact, Elio, that's, we redid the beginning. we had animated the whole thing. And we read it 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. Right. That'll get them. And then what actually works,

not just on Elia, but on a lot of films, is empathy and vulnerability. Showing the character's deep wound or hurt is usually the way the audience goes, Oh, well, now I feel bad for him, 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. Mm-hmm. 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, the 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 going to 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 that. them enough that it's worth watching a movie for it. Yes, true. Which is wild. 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 notes. 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, Kelly. Yeah. And he has this really, I think, astute, that I feel like since I read the book, I've repeated like a hundred 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, 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. Yeah. And I think that that's like 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 Elio or the movie before? Elio. So we look at it and go like, all right,

what did we do on that movie that we never want to do again? What do we learn? And I keep thinking in the back of my head, like it's always going to be broken. There's always going to 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 want to 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, this, 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 want to 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 want to talk and analyze everything. There's some are like, don't say anything. I'm just going to do this.

Right. I want to 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. You have to wake up at seven in the morning and be like, I'm going to 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 characters, or the lighting or the textures. So it's absurdly slow. What's the part, you're talking about all the different roles?

I'm thinking about how AI interacts with animation right now. It's like, well, 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 are like, that's crazy. It can only be human beings drawing it, right? Yeah, yeah. So eventually they're going to 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, you know, the Disney's nine old men and a few others. Yeah.

So not very many. Right. But I think computers have opened... I mean, you say nine old men, they're essentially like nine guys who made all of those movies for like decades. Yeah.

Frank Thomas, Ollie Johnson. all these great animators from the days of yore i think animation computers rather 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 like one of the heavy lifts has been done by the computer and maybe there's some other tax with that like i have to understand how the system works and you know but i i almost i was wondering whether i i 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, you know, but not any specific bear or a person, you know? And I don't know if that'll change too, but AI seems like it is 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 going to be like, make film, enter. It's not going to do that, but it is being trained on everything, right?

Yeah. It's listening to everything you've ever performed and written. No, I know. And it's laughing and laughing. And it's experiencing human emotions. It probably is. You know, it's funny. 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.

Yeah. Because the reality is at every phase, sorry, not every phase, At every film I've worked on, there comes up phase where all the tricks have run out. Yeah. 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 thing that I didn't understand about animation until I read that book that was, talking about Creativity Inc. is this idea of like in the 70s that they created the idea of motion blur. Oh yeah. And then that made it like feel more like what human beings look like because drawings are essentially all in focus. Yeah. 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. Oh, 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, I can't believe I'm Black and Oz. Harryhausen. A lot of those are kind of jittery because they didn't know how to blur fast movement. Right. 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. Yeah. Which you worked on.

Right. It's crazy. Yeah, it is crazy. That was a while ago. You won the Oscar? No, we got a special Oscar. Oh, okay. I think John...

Oh, right, because it predated the animation category. 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's really cool.

So, yeah. And it felt kind of mysterious because we were all going like, I don't know how this works. Let's flittity, 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'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 going to make a feature film.

You were just going to 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 had, there was only one that had, worked on a feature really i mean john lasser who's the director he had animated on a feature he were animated on fox and the hound you guys watched that one yep um Andrew and I had only done shorts Joe ramped who is our head of story had actually worked on a story in the story department before he worked on rescuerers down under but and and uh he was also head a story on james and the giant peach and uh nightmare for

before Christmas oh wow so he had the most experienced by by by a long shot of any of any of of us. Wow. And he would just say stuff like, trust the process and be like, huh? So what does that mean? I don't know what that means. And also there kind of is no process that creates it. Yeah. 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 to 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 going to 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 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 lunched 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 going to say, you should talk to some of the Pixar directors. Yeah, yeah. And here they're, 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 would say 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 going to make you feel more insecure. If you're a private person, we're going to probe in, because the story itself is going to expose all the things you don't want to talk about in yourself.

You know, so I watch it every time. And I warn 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 going to be talking about it. So you just have to be comfortable with it. We're all going to be talking about it. It's true. I think that really drives the knife in.

We're all going to be talking about it over lunch. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah. Do you have any tips for, like, supporting someone's vision, but also being honest? Hmm. I think I'm generally guilty of being too nice of saying, no, it's great. It's great. Like you were talking about it was Seth at the beginning.

And so I think the other extreme is, giving people 8,000 disparate notes. Yeah. 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? Hmm. 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. Yeah.

They could be astronauts. They could, you know, they could swim a thousand miles if they wanted to. Certain concepts lend themselves to more pitfalls than others. Yeah. Like if you have a grouchy old man, you know, 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, you went too far.

That's the thing. That went over the line. So, you know, but my point was you have a human in more or less our world. There's restrictions, right? I guess the farthest we're going to go is like the floating house with balloons. But there are other things going into space or, you know, fantasy worlds of some sort that you're right. You can just go blah-la-l-l-l-la-la-off in any direction. 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. It's like, 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. Like, what are the rules of Inside Out? Well, I mean, 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 know, 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. in the movie or more, right? What are you working on 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. 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. 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? Mm-hmm. Wow. Yeah. We had come up with some of the stuff of, you know, this robot on a planet full of trash and uh but he was he was the one that really cracked it so when you're working on like

like we're talking about obviously he directed and wrote it and everything else i just did the very early stuff which uh you know it's a little bit like as bob and key says whistling on the steps of carnegie hall like it's easy to have ideas right but to actually get the thing to go and make people care and that's the hard part that's what they're okay Pixar's been sued quite often be 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's

you know 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. Right. 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, yes.

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? It seems effortless. There was a great, you know, Penn and Teller, Penn wrote something, and I think it was Smithsonian, and 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, because 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 going to 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 going to 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 70s, 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, 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, they're like, yeah, put these glasses on 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. 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 get, it's not going to go away because it's very tempting. It's it's pleasurable somehow to get texts from people and I don't know why that is. Well, it's hitting, yeah, it's hitting our dopamine centers and doing something to us. Yeah. Yeah. But I don't know what's going to happen in terms of storytelling or filmmaking or stuff. I don't know. I mean, it's such a weird cross-section of, you know, the financial situation and technology.

Yeah. Sociology. And I got to 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 going to change in the next two years because that's a couple million years worth of... Yeah, I don't think that's changing. That's my case always for film. Yeah.

How it is going to 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 it at home, you sense the audience. That's why you're there, right? No, absolutely. And I think live stand-up 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.

Right, being in a group 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 did 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. At Disneyland, sure. So it all sort of fits. And part of me was like, oh, that's exciting and troubling at the same time. Were you 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. That was my first thought. Not anything really business-wise. I think Steve Jobs, he knew that he was dying of cancer. Right. He wanted the place to be cared for,

and he did consider a long time the idea that could we be 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. Yeah. So tethering to Disney, you know, you're going to 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 going to need to practice. 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, 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, oof, 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. Yeah. 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. What is the thing that, you know,

because you've, I have to imagine that on these films through the years, you're sometimes working 15, 16 hour days. Mm-hmm. 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.

All right, all right. I don't know. You just feel like it has to be good. It has to be good. Right. How many, you know, Brad Bird said, pain is temporary. Film is forever. Okay, so this is the slow round.

Slow round. Who are you jealous of? I'm jealous of Bill Waterson, the guy who did Calvin and Hobbs, 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. So that seems kind of... 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 Waterson's at the top right now because he's doing exactly what he wants to be doing. Right. So I'm in this weird position of power or whatever, whatever you want to call where I am. Sure. But I think I just, somebody told me early on,

don't worry about making money, do what you love. Yeah. 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. Right. Didn't exist. I had the option to go to this lifelong, dream of working at Disney or this new upstart, which was The Simpsons and everybody 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 did 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 like 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 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 going to happen to all of us throughout our lives. And it just feels beautiful and sad.

That's sweet. Can you remember a time in your life where you were sort of an inauthentic version of yourself? Hmm. Yeah, I mean, when I started directing on Monsters, I was trying to be John Lasseter. Yeah. 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.

Yeah. 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 a 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 got to do my own thing. Did you ever have a pit stop with it where you're just like, ugh?

Like this hits 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 the beginning, the only thing a director does is go around and talk to people. So I was basically hobbled. Wow. I could not do the job.

And I think it was just weird how, like if you were around, 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 yeah um but uh 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 yeah people how do you deal with that wow um do you have a memory on a loop from your childhood that comes back oh that's a good question there's a weird okay so as many people did we may made a tribute film to Star Wars on Super 8mm.

Did you do that? No. Okay. A lot of it, have you talked to people at work? 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 a 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 that garage door kind of has been playing in the head. 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 if your childhood thing was making Star Wars, like, 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 going to, 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 Did you like 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 the specific scene, but Sitting I remember being so pissed up so my parents were both musicians Conductors my mom directed children's choir as my dad

At a college and so we were always going to concerts classical music and And it was so boring. And I remember being so pissed that I was there, and I was sort of squirming him 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. It was one that sort of like, wait, what? They send lawyers to different parts of the world. And I'm like, lawyers. And then you realize, oh, they're actually cutting down by like 70% child trafficking.

Wow. 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 because it's not done. That's going to do it for another episode of Working It Out. You watch the full video of this episode on our YouTube channel. It's at Mike Barbiglio. and subscribe, click the subscribe button because we're going to post more and more videos.

Our producers of working it out are myself along with Peter Salomon, Joseph Griglia, and Mabel Lewis, associate producer Gary Simon, sound mixed by Shib Sarin. 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, Jehob 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. 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. Catching 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's where comedian Mike Preglia 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.