The School of Greatness - Pixar’s Formula For Storytelling Success & Emotional Persuasion w/ Founder Ed Catmull EP 1474

Episode Date: July 26, 2023

The Summit of Greatness is back! Buy your tickets today – summitofgreatness.com – This episode is PART ONE of a powerful two-part interview series with Pixar Founder, Ed Catmull. Lewis and Ed dive into the strategies Pixar implements to strategically stimulate different aspects of the human mind to evoke intended emotions, with a focus on character development as a pivotal element in fostering a deep connection between the audience's minds and the story. For over twenty-five years, Pixar has dominated the world of animation, producing #1 box office hits that include iconic works such as Toy Story, Frozen, Cars, and The Incredibles. Pixar’s works have grossed more than $14 billion at the worldwide box office, and won twenty-three Academy Awards®, 10 Golden Globes Awards, and 11 Grammys, among countless other achievements.In this episode you will learn,Pixar’s insider techniques that tap into the human mind and create emotional connections with audiences.The firsthand principles and ideas discussed in "Creativity, Inc." that inspired a generationHow to strategically stimulate different aspects of the human mind in order to evoke an intended emotionHow character development plays a crucial role in Pixar films, and fosters a deep connection between the audience's minds and the storyThe magic formula revealing how Pixar masterfully balances humor, emotion, and suspense in their narratives, captivating audiences and maintaining engagement throughout the film.For more information go to www.lewishowes.com/1474For more Greatness text PODCAST to [phone]Want more School of Greatness episodes like this one?Bruce Lipton on Manifestation: https://link.chtbl.com/1312-podJoe Dispenza on the Law of Attraction: https://link.chtbl.com/1312-pod

Calling all conscious achievers who are seeking more community and connection, I've got an invitation for you. Join me at this year's Summit of Greatness this September 7th through 9th in my hometown of Columbus, Ohio to unleash your true greatness. This is the one time a year that I gather the greatness community together in person for a powerful transformative weekend. People come from all over the world and you can expect to hear from inspiring speakers like Inky Johnson, Jaspreet Singh, Vanessa Van Edwards, Jen Sincero, and many more. You'll also be able to

dance your heart out to live music, get your body moving with group workouts, and connect with others at our evening socials so if you're ready to learn heal and grow alongside other incredible individuals in the greatness community then you can learn more at lewishouse.com summit 2023 make sure to grab your ticket invite your friends and i'll see you there at pixar well we also say that failure is part of the process it does happen we don't actually use the terminology very much now there are times when you have something which actually does fail so we don't avoid it you have to like if something really fails you say it but the terminology of making a film is since we know they'll have problems. We're trying to solve the problem. Hmm, that solution didn't work.

Let's try this. Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin. Welcome back everyone to the School of Greatness. Very excited about our guest today. We have the inspiring Ed Catmull in the house, the co-founder of Pixar

Animation and the New York Times bestselling author of Creativity, Inc., overcoming the unseen forces that stand in the way of true inspiration. I'm so glad that you're here. Thank you so much for being on the show. I'm really happy to be here. We were just chatting for the last 30 minutes before this conversation, and I'm fascinated by your story, by your life, and the things that you've seen, witnessed, overcome, and building a business,

but also just building a beautiful life of your own. You were surrounded by some of the most brilliant creatives, leaders of industry since you were in college. And you essentially grew up with these individuals in chasing after, envisioning, manifesting, creating a dream of yours to make animated films, which took you a long time. And then you've now done over 32 films since your time of starting at Pixar, I believe, and Disney, 31, 32 films. Is that correct? Yeah. And it's incredible to know the influence you've had on the lives of, I'm assuming, billions of people who have consumed your stories. the first animation film to, you know, building a massive company and all of the unseen forces of thousands of creative individuals coming together.

The incredible magic that happens with that, but also the challenges you've had to overcome as well. So I'm so excited you're here. And we were talking about one of my favorite moments from Pixar, which was Toy Story 3 at the end, where that made me so emotionally captivated, so moved to tears at the end of this movie, that I remember watching it the first time thinking, how am I crying watching a cartoon?

Like, how is this making me feel so deeply about my own life and imagining my own life? And it's just amazing what you and the entire team has been able to create. So I'm excited you're here. I'm excited for the book that has the expanded edition to it, which talks about what you learned in the last 10 years of leading Pixar and Disney animation as well and yeah welcome again to the show very excited well I'm very happy to be here although I also want to be careful it I don't take credit for what those other people did of course so but being the leader you know being being co-founder leading the charge and and casting a

vision and overseeing the vision is uh a big responsibility well that's that was the fun part yeah was okay how do you have these rather amazing people work well together over a long period of time and it this never changes like it's today's problem is not like yesterday's problem and it you know keeps changing right right what was the biggest challenge you had in starting that first movie because i remember you saying it took about 14 years of time of like saying when we'll be able to actually create this animation i think it was 14 years from your prediction what was the biggest challenge in waiting that long and actually putting out the first movie with toy story well in when i when i first started it was like this was the uh the goal was to make a film and i naively thought that it would probably take 10 years and i I very quickly, within two or three years,

was disabused of that. Like, that was just wrong. But I did replace it with another estimate. It's like, I really didn't know. So it was more of, okay, how do I think about the people, how we work together, but also what are the economics of it and what are the ten of the problems that need to be solved? Because initially I thought of myself as a researcher.

I was thinking in terms of what are the problems that we need to solve to get there. And then while doing that, at least when I was in New York Tech, it was after I left Utah, I also found that because I was now over this group and I was kind of avoiding actually being the manager of the group, so I was trying to have it both ways.

I wanted to be the person that was solving the technical problems and I kind of like being a leader to be honest so uh i i i have these theories about how to manage and that but i also found that i liked figuring out these kinds of problems too that is the relationships between people and what made them work was really interesting. So I didn't have to give up one over the other. It's more like a time allocation. But I would say there was a phasing over time. But I stayed pretty deeply involved in technical issues probably for the next 10 or 15 years the technical side on the technical side before launching the first film before launching

well yeah before launching the first film yes and um because we have this uh rather amazing group there and I worked on having a culture like it was open and we published everything we did. Now at this point because we're new in the industry there were some people who thought we're pretty close and I just felt like well we're not close at all. I just felt like, well, we're not close at all. So some people were secretive about their breakthroughs. And I just thought, well, breakthroughs, shmakethroughs. We're years away. Yeah.

So the best thing to do was to publish everything we did and completely participate in this community. And I'll have to say that a lot of my deepest friends come out of academia because we go to the same conferences. We've known each other for 50 years. But by publishing everything, we also became the place to come to. So we were bringing in the best people.

And then finally Star Wars happened. And when Star Wars happened, then George Lucas was the first person in the film industry with credibility who thought that technology was going to affect the industry. Like the number one. And believe me, we had tried. And to anybody else we were utterly and completely irrelevant it wasn't like they didn't think we could do it it was they didn't

even think about it at all wow so george thought it was going to be possible, so he hired me in because we're in this rather amazing group. This is late 70s now? This would have been, yes, late 70s, because I joined Lucasfilm in 1979. Okay. And when I left New York Tech and trying to create this environment, I realized at that point that half of what I thought was,

actually worked really well. It became the foundation of what we built on. And half of what I thought was a complete crock. Didn't work at all. But the most important thing for me was that when I went to Lucasfilm, I came away with the insight that about half of what I did was right and half was wrong. I was going to hang on to the things that were right, but I was going to try something new. But I believed that my ratio of right to wrong would

probably remain 50-50 and would probably continue to be true for the rest of my life, which I have found to be true. And it isn't as if I have a way of keeping track. I mean, you don't really know how to put numbers to this, but it felt like the value to me was understanding that I was right, or excuse me, I was wrong more than I thought I was. You were wrong more than you thought. Yeah. So

at Lucasfilm now, it's a new educational opportunity. And George wanted to bring technology into film editing, to digital audio, and into computer graphics. And now it's another educational opportunity

because now you've got three customer groups, one of whom hated what we were doing. They didn't like the idea. So these are the video editors. Now, George knew video editing. He's the one that wanted it. But the person they put in charge of doing it thought it was a terrible idea so okay so that did not end well even though we did

something which was way advanced or anything else in the industry we didn't have a customer wanting to use it the digital audio had a guy who loved the idea and basically worked with this really well. But the third group was ILM. And ILM was neutral. Their view was, well, your resolution is too low, but if you ever get to be good enough to be used in the films, we'll use it. So now we're the driving force.

Our goal is to meet their needs, to be good enough for what they were doing because they were the best in the industry. And if we could make them happy, then we would have succeeded. So we became the driving force, nobody else. That was our motivation. And so those were the kinds of lessons.

And the other lesson was that as a representative of the Lucasfilm, I got to visit all these different companies, supercomputer companies, companies Cray CDC companies that most people don't uh either haven't heard of or don't remember and also the emerging workstation companies and they wanted to sell the Lucasfilm so I can go in and talk with the leaders of the companies because they wanted to sell the Lucasfilm because Star Wars was sexy yes and for lunch or for dinner I'd meet with the engineers because they knew that I was actually a real technical person and what I found was at every one of these visits I got two

different views of a company in the same day and I became aware that in a lot of companies, there was like a class structure, not a term they would use. People would never say, well, we're first class here. There are people who say we're treated as second class. Okay. But you can see this going on in companies. And I remember thinking, this can't be good. So as we continue to grow, and at some point we began to bring in artists, especially when we became Pixar, then the one thing that was clear to me is we needed to make sure that we didn't have a notion of first class and second class that we really had to make sure right from the beginning that we gave the message of valuing everybody and that isn't the same thing as saying that everybody is the same yeah Yeah. They're not.

They have different skills, different capabilities, and so forth. But the notion that some people are better than others or in different class, not a good thing. So the basic principle was that you actually make the assumption that everybody can be better. Not the same, that everybody can be better. Not the same, but everybody can be better. And that that is not a high-risk proposition. It is worth doing. So basically we were learning as we were going through this,

and then we got to the point where George, because he got divorced and his cash position was now completely different, then he needed to sell us. So this is a year-long stressful period for us. It's a very stressful period. But part of that was by this time we had reached a level of quality because we had built some hardware in order to do high-quality images

that ILM was starting to use what we had. And so part of the deal as we spun out was they had the rights to use the software that we had, and they used it in the film. I think the first major one was The Abyss, although we had done something earlier for them, like for Star Trek, there was that thing where you flew over the planet

and it turned lifelike. Sure. So we'd done a couple of things for them, but I found somebody to help run the graphics group. We were never part of ILM, but they needed somebody in ILM as they started that transition to digital technology. Wow. So we were acquired by Steve Jobs.

Wow. What year was this now? This would be 1986. 1986, Steve Jobs acquires you. And you'd known Steve before then. Well, I met him once, and then he just disappeared at the time we were now starting to get sold. Now, I didn't know why he disappeared. Later, of course, I learned the reason was he was in this internal struggle,

which resulted in him being removed at Apple. So this was basically a public humiliation for Steve. And it largely had to do with the way he related with people. So that's kind of the mythology around Steve. And I knew Steve when he was like this. That is, his behavior around people was not empathetic. And that kind of behavior is frankly kind of interesting, and people like to tell stories about it and write about it.

It's sort of like the bad boy behavior, and it's unfortunate because it doesn't capture the arc of Steve's life, which is far more interesting and impactful. Instead, the focus on the outside, whether it was movies or writing about him or articles, was about a period in his life. And that was a period in which he was kicked out of Apple. He started Next Computer.

And next, he did some brilliant things, like his software choices, it turns out, were fundamentally, ultimately changed, not only next, but later, Apple. His hardware choices were questionable, and he made some poor business choices. Sure. And choices in which he thought these were really big wins, but I was looking at them and thinking, oh, this cannot be a good idea. Right, right, right.

But he bought you guys. He bought Pixar. Yeah, then he bought Pixar after he got them. So we knew Steve when he was like that, but we didn't have any choice. We'd been spending a year. This was another disaster. I mean, it's a long story itself like the things he went through but the end result was this the steve acquired us when he acquired you guys did you were you excited or were you

more nervous based on his personality from the past well we were excited to keep alive and keep going so that was the excitement part the dream yes and and steve is like he is uh i mean for us and very i had a great relationship with steve so i think i worked for steve longer than anybody else wow and i never had an argument with Steve. Never? Never. Wow. We disagreed at times, but we never had an argument. And my style with Steve was that if I didn't agree with him, first of all, I knew, I was self-aware enough to know that I absolutely could not think as fast as he could. He's really smart. You're not going to debate him.

You're not going to jump in yet. Yeah. So, I mean, there are people who actually can push back with him and argue with him successfully. So there's something that's not known about Steve, but he actually values people that push back on him. But I can't think that fast. So instead, he'd shoot down what I say, and then I would say, well, let me get back to that.

And I'd wait a week. So I'd think about my next sentence. Right, for a week. For a week. And then I would give it to him and he'd shoot it down. Let me get back to you. So this might go on for weeks. In a couple of cases, it went on for months. And there'd be one of three outcomes. I'd say each one was about equally likely. One of them was we reach a point when I would say, oh, I see what you're saying.

You're right. And that ends it. About a third of the time, he would say, okay, got it saying you're right and that ends it about a third of the time he would say okay got it you're right end of discussion just like you just bought what i said and that was it it just i didn't explain it very well the first time sure um and and one of the reasons i would do this is uh i never confuse the personal power that somebody might have or their position with what was right so it didn't matter if somebody was a better debater or could think faster than I could or they were in a senior position as I didn't mean they were right. So it just meant that I couldn't argue at the same rate.

So I just didn't give up as long as I knew that I was right. And if I wasn't right, then I would change. So the other third of the time is we didn't reach a conclusion. So in that third, I just did what I wanted to do and steve was okay with it because we had discussed it uh and that's how it worked oh interesting for all those years how many years did you work with him uh well the uh we he acquired us at that time. We were then a public company. So we were a public company until we were acquired by Disney. And then at Disney, the terms of it was that we had the equivalent of a board of directors. We're just now a group within Disney. And I had a dual report to Bob Iger and to the head of the studio.

But we had this steering committee. So this steering committee was John, Steve, and me, and then Bob Iger, the chairman of the studio, and the CFO of the company. Well. So like every month to begin with, it slowly sure yeah we're there but now this group would would come in and they were like our board of directors so that continued up until the end of his life how many years total time that range is that when you first from 86 and i forget

what year he got wow then tanner loud i think her yeah something like that yeah okay so 30 something years yeah yeah it's amazing um what were the biggest three biggest lessons you learned from observing steve jobs from communicating with him and from the way he left the world well um in the in the case of it's like what are the lessons one of them which he understood intuitively uh which was that when you're wrong you change now i mean there's different ways of phrasing and it's like that there's no upside in being wrong and some people think they need to win the argument and steve actually understood that was never the point it was you want to get to the truth quickly and but he also understood that um at an intuitive level that because of the power of his personality it actually disturbed the process

and uh and that was part of his learning as he went through this was the recognizing what was him recognizing that his his abilities it's like superpowers could actually uh get in the way of finding out things. So I'll give a couple examples. One of them which would surprise people was that we had a board of directors because in 1995, at the end, we went public. And this is like a big public offering. We were the second largest IPOo of 1995 only after netscape and when did toy story come out in 95 95 so we went public one week afterwards wow so when we

were doing the road trip and part of the road trip showing the movie was well actually it wasn't showing the movie it was telling people that we had a new technology that's going to change filming so now it's a complete conference this film is going to be a big success wow but he could say to them nobody else can do this there isn't anything like it it's going to change the industry and we've got the people that that that changed the technology and they're doing the content that's what this company is but we don't we're not going to go public until after the movie comes out because we think that we should show you how big this is before we go public smart so that was what we did for the few months leading up to going

public you're telling a story about the story yes wow and that we were going to prove it and you guys did and we did you proved it big so what was that first week like toy story launches box office and then you go public the next week later what was that week like uh it was surreal what were the numbers of the box office and then going public is well interestingly enough what i remember at the time because our whole group at the time would go to our computer graphics conference which is siggraph and for the most part it's showing the newest technology and we believe firmly because we made short films and they were actually you know academy award-winning short films and and they're quite impactful but they're short and people would always pay attention on the outside to the technology so when the film came out

the biggest question that we had and everybody was looking for it and all the technology people were looking for it was what are the reviewers going to pay attention to and what we found was that almost every review there was at most one or two sentences about the new technology and the rest of the review was about the movie wow and that for all of us was like that's the win it did It wasn't about the technology. It was about being a great movie. Yes. And if we had done that and we got people to buy into this world and watch it and feel it,

then that was the win. And everybody understood it at every level in the company. Wow. So that's what I remember was reading those things to find out whether or not we had really accomplished what we wanted to do. It's incredible. I mean, what I'm curious about is how were you able to tap into the human mind and create emotional connections with audiences

through these animations? How was this studied and executed for the last 30 years at such a high level? And how did you do that for that first movie? Well, I will say that for the first movie, there was, it's one of those things where there is some luck in that group that that first came in um we had always in the history of both at new york tech and then at lucasfilm and then at pixar was to say we really want to hire the very best and so i would say well we want to hire people who are smarter than i am

and um and i know other people say that but because like like what does that even mean but it means that you don't want to be threatened by the people that you hire and they just have to have these extraordinary skills and uh so when we when we were building out our our technical group I mean they they were just really good i mean they were they hadn't passed me in terms of their understanding of all the technology and john understood that too so when he did his first hires as the first person he hired was uh andrew stanton and then the second was pete doctor and then uh joe ranf came in and then we brought in really to be an editor except he turns out to be this is like one of the best storytellers ever is lee unkrich

so uh this is this amazing group of people that came together and uh now part of that was we really had established a culture where that this was the right thing to do is you aren't bringing in you weren't even thinking about them as oh okay who's going to be second to me it's like okay who's really good and it turns out that andrew was had this extraordinarily structural sense so we didn't know that right right just like it emerged because of the challenge and pete doctor had this this incredible emotional core well it still does i mean so, so he went on to do Up, Inside Out. You know, it's like getting the emotion right. It's like who he is.

And Lee has this actually phenomenal filmmaking sense of, okay, we're doing this, but you really have to get all these pieces right. And then the person that was sharon callahan initially who was uh thinking about the lighting and people aren't often aware of this but the lighting uh is really important for conveying the emotions and then the artist that we had Ralph Eggleston had a color palette for the movie because it turns out the basic color changed throughout the movie and it's this subtle thing that's affecting your perceptions wow so like this is this amazing group of people and the interesting thing about it was that

none of these people had ever made a feature film before in their life. Oh, my goodness. So, we hadn't used computer graphics, but they also hadn't done a 2D film. They hadn't done any film. It's unbelievable. Everybody is a beginner. They all had to figure it out and you're leading them yeah how i mean how do you know i mean yeah the emotional uh

the the emotions you're able to pull out of people you know in these films through you're a technology guy but through your technology guy, but through the tech, through the art, through the color, through the lighting, through the sound design and the music, through the tonality of the voice actors and bringing it all together to create a cohesive emotional story is unbelievable how you guys did this and how you continue to do it but how did you know how to put it all together well i i mean the way i thought at the time was is how do you have a group that works together because i'm not a filmmaker and i i would you know over time we developed a way of of helping people was which ended up being called the Brain Trust.

But my view was, when I went to these meetings, was how do we make sure this group works together? What are the things that make it work together and what takes them off the rails? So it was to work out some principles for that. And it's fun to give notes to movie but the truth was there's only one movie in all those movies that i gave a note that i felt so strongly about that i had to push really hard to get it in what was that it was in monsters incorporated what was the note well the no was at one point near the end the monster sully has to scare this dummy which is being video that's like a training video and uh you may recall that when he does this he then looks up and he sees

that the girl's right there and he scares the bejesus out of this little girl the one he loves and he didn't mean to do it but the original thing what she saw was that she saw him on the monitor so i looked at this and i said you can't do this because anybody that has a child remembers there are times when they may have done something where their child was in danger, either because of themselves or it happened to them. And when that happens, it sears into your soul and you never forget it for as long as you live. Wow. And for Sully, he needs to see

that he was the cause of the thing that scared her, that it was not good enough to heresy it by the monitor. And so there's some pushback on it, and I talked with Andrew, and for Andrew to know this is actually critical to the film. I just felt, oh,'m good but that's it right and so i can look at the well i did one at least one note of 30 movies yeah yeah and uh but with uh but that wasn't my job yeah they're the filmmakers it wasn't my job it was

to say okay is this working well together? Why isn't it derailing? When does it go well? When doesn't it go well? And so that was the whole time. And then when Jim Morris came in initially over, he came in as a producer, and then he was our head of production, and then he was our general manager, and then he became the president. It was like we're both, you know we're in there just

looking at the process and what works what doesn't work right you're just evolving it right so for time i mean it's you got pretty animated during this uh retelling a story with monsters inc what movie left you with the deepest amount of emotion when you watched it after it came out or in the process of making it what was the the movie that captivated you the most i'm sure that's hard to say which one you like the most but was there a moment in a movie that really touched you in a way based on your own life experience different than the other emotional moments in movies well it was um uh it's a little harder to say because the any emotion in a movie connects to watching the people go through this so i don't i can't even watch a movie in the same way that others do because i'm actually seeing what took place

the creators the producers the everything leading up to them. That's right. I mean, they're just, you know, these films all at the beginning have problems. It's just one thing after another, and we go through multiple steps with different ways of trying to fix the problems. In fact, it was one of the things i was i wanted to like clarify with the the expanded edition of the book was that uh you know i i talked a fair amount about

um you know failure and how it is part of the process but i realized that we it doesn't actually capture what takes place because we all know that we learn from failures and it's in fact that is kind of popular talk about nowadays about a way of learning the reality is is that we have two meanings to failure which are deeply built into us. So there's one meaning, which is that we know that we've had failures and we learn from them and it's part of the process of learning. The other meaning is the one that we got in school. And that is, if you fail a class, it it's because you screwed up you didn't work hard enough uh or you're dumb right none of those are good meanings right all right now you you go out into business bridges fail relationships fail uh companies fail and in politics and business,

failures are used as bludgeons with which to beat opponents. There is real and palpable fear behind failure. All right, so if we talk about failure, then it is almost possible for most people to emotionally disconnect those two concepts. And so I realized that that's what I observed that at Pixar, while we also say that failure is part of the process, it does happen. Yes.

We don't actually use the terminology very much now there are tons when you have something which actually does fail so we don't avoid it you have to like if something really fails you say it but the terminology of making a film is since we know they all have problems is we're trying to solve the problem hmm Hmm, that solution didn't work. Let's try this. So the iterative process is we're trying it. Let's try this.

And as long as the team is working well together, even if they haven't solved the problem, if they're working well together, we say, okay, keep going. It's a tough problem. And they know that. They know we have their back and uh and the only thing the only real clue we have that we have to do a major change is if the crew begins to lose the confidence that a leader can actually get them there. They may like the leader.

This is not, you know, I like, I don't like them. It's more like, I just don't have the confidence we're going to get there. And those things start to build. So we are aware of some of them because people will come and talk about some of the problems they've got. So you then start off, how do we help the person? of some of them because people will come and talk about some of the problems they've got. So you then start off, how do we help the person? How do we supplement them? Could we add somebody to the team to remove somebody? What are the things we can do behind the scene to help them? And if we get to the point where we can't do it, then we'll do a bigger change. And we essentially have failed. And it's tough because

we picked the person to be the failure because we believe they can do it because they're very good so for them it's actually a very difficult process to go through and we've only had a couple of the the directors who could survive this to stay with the company. And they're very valuable. And those who have stayed were actually incredible contributors. But it's emotionally hard for them to go through. Right. But one of those was with Ratatouille.

Mm-hmm. And the man who designed it seemed to be the idea of a lovely man. He's really very good. In fact, the look of the film that you see came from this guy. Wow. But the film was stuck,

and they couldn't get out of it. And so at that point, due to other reasons that were on, Brad Bird had finished Mission Impossible. He did that later. Sure. He had actually finished The Incredibles.

Uh-huh. So he asked him to take it on. Interesting. Now, when the movie is stuck, do you mean it's stuck in the beginning stages or it's in post-production or it's like the story needs to adjust? The story is stuck.

So the story is not complete yet. That's right so you've got the new story but you're like well we need changes here or it's not really fully emotionally connecting or the journey doesn't work is that what you mean yes but in the meantime we're building the models we're going to call the ass you're building the the characters the characters the backgrounds the animation you're building it without the right the story complete that's right. Wow.

So, and there are pieces of it that we think are working, so we'll start to make them. Because you can't make the whole thing at the end, so you need to start to make it. You make like one scene. Yeah. You're like, we like this part. We think this will work.

We think it's going to work. We think it's going to work. We might be wrong, so sometimes we throw that away. Really? That's expensive. It's kind of like shooting a scene that you don't use but you're got a thousand people animating something and working

on yeah yeah yeah i mean it's to try things you figure them out sure because what is delighting what's the character going to look like how is this going to to work so they're doing all this work but you can't go too you can't get too far out of yourself get on the story complete yeah so it's it's a tricking balance but it's always a tricky balance yeah you know life is intriguing balance so uh the um in this case um you know the characters look beautiful it's everything's gorgeous about it it's not working and there are a few things that are just fundamentally wrong one of them was that originally that chef that the chef busto was alive throughout the whole movie

okay and he kind of sold his soul he's actually a highly rated chef but he was making money because of advertising or using his name to sell products and uh so and he was consulting on the movie is that right or the the chef that was no the chef in the movie gotcha the chef in the was a bad guy he was a lot gotcha because there was a consultant i think i saw a photo over here of like a consultant showing you how to make oh that's separate that's the research we do gotcha like we're trying to learn what takes place sure but the chef it's based on he's alive uh well no no we we made up a chef got it gusto yes and he's this fat guy and he's kind of lost his way and then

there's this rat that wants to cook who just happens to end up being in his kitchen yes and because of the passion of the rat then it actually causes the chef to realize he went down the wrong path uh so now you've got this problem throughout a lot of the movie is is this movie about the the rack who wants to cook with that passion or is it a redemption story for the chef who has lost his way and then the other problem that they were wrestling with was that the rat has a family the rat doesn't talk to humans so he's going through he's meeting people and learning things in the restaurant but because he can't talk you don't know what he's thinking and then he goes back to his family and he explains what

he just went through but you just saw this you're watching a movie you just saw this so now it brings the movie to a dead halt because he's explaining to them the things that you just saw it's not good for filmmaking so brad bird enters the picture brad looks at it and the first thing he does after working with a good friend of his who was a good screenwriter they kill the chef

so the chef died for some reason and but he's still on these TV programs because he's been teaching on whatever the channel was, and the rat's inspired by it. But because the chef is dead,

and Remy knows the chef is dead, then the chef is now a figment of his imagination. So what this means is that this figment of his imagination can sort of pop up and he's interacting with what he thinks this chef is. With Incham or Talam, yes. So it takes care of two huge problems.

One of them is we now know who the movie's about. It's about the rat that wants to cook. So problem number one is solved. to cook so problem number one is solved and the second one was because he cannot talk to the figment of his imagination and it doesn't feel unnatural because it's not like he's talking to a ghost he's actually you know that he's talking to himself or if it's not it's clear so the uh that means that he doesn't need to go back and explain anything to his family so you know what he's thinking at the time.

So now the pacing starts to work. Now that's the brilliance of Brad Bird is to come in and say, oh, here's what we're going to do for good storytelling at every step of the way. And so now this film, which had these interesting elements about it, turns into something which is brilliant.

And then Brad has his own take about art and what it means to critique art, and its impact of it. And he puts this in the movie. Because you're watching this movie thinking, well, like, where's it going? Because a rat can never really run a restaurant in Paris. Like, is it going to happen?

So that's what makes it hard. So he takes this hard concept and he turns it into this thing at the end, which is profound and then when the audience sees it it's like oh i didn't see this coming and this is beautiful and for what i remember about the movies is actually going into the audiences because i remember we went we had the big opening in Paris. Wow. It's cool. And I would get to that moment,

and what I would do is I would turn around and look at the audience. That was the rewarding part. As they're watching the final scenes or the whole movie? No, it's that final scene. Yeah. I'd look at them, and they were going like this. Because they didn't see it coming.

That's incredible. And it was. That's what it was. It was incredible. And it's like, so that's rewarding when something like that happens. And...

Was there ever a time you cried in your own, watching your own premiere? Oh, I... Well, I did for Toy Story 3. Really? For Toy Story 3. And I did for Coco. toy story 3 really for toy story 3 and i did for coco oh my gosh that's my favorite movie coco's i've got a mexican girlfriend and so uh her whole

family is from mexico and you know just whenever they come over to our house it feels like i'm in coco in america and whenever i go to mexico it feels like I'm in Coco. So for me, that's one of my favorite movies of all movies. It's incredible. Well, that was, you know, it was Lee Unkrich. It actually created a problem

because it was so good that afterwards, Lee says, where do I go from here? It was unbelievable. But, You cried in Coco. And incidentally,

he directed both of those films. Wow. You cried in Coco. Oh, yeah directed both of those films wow you cried in coco oh yeah what part made you well it was um uh the thing about any good movie of this sort or the kind of movies that we try to tell is that you are trying to connect to our own personal emotions, but you're also trying to bring in something new and original. Because to be honest, there's unfortunately sort of this bias against the Mexican culture because what do people hear about on the news in terms of immigration or various things at the border? They don't represent Mexico.

And they don't represent what takes place in southern Mexico with the Day of the Dead. If you say the Day of the Dead in America, it's like, okay, on the Day of the Dead. But it means something entirely different there. It's like the respect for the people that came before us. That's what it's about. And you actually get that in the movie.

So they went down into the villages in southern Mexico, and they spent a lot of time getting to know the people, talking with them. We had a group in california they were like mexican advisors because we wanted to get it right essentially you've got these people from north america going down into to mexico i'm actually they're in north america too so you have people from America going down. Well, how are they going to tell that story? So they work really hard to try to capture that. The same was true with Moana.

It's like you go in. Another great movie. Incredible. And you actually try to get something from the culture because you don't want to work off the biases. Right. You don't want to work off of what other people are thinking. And the same was true with Ratatouille.

We all know cooking in the home. We've watched our parents cook or we cook. We watch the cooking channel. You can see the chefs in the kitchen. But what is it like to actually be in a highly rated fancy restaurant in any place? What's the culture like? We don't know that. So for Ratatouille, they went into those restaurants and got to know them.

And they also were given some work. Like at the French Laundry, they actually spent time in the kitchen and they were given jobs to do. So they were capturing that. Now what's interesting about it is that, is even though we know a lot about cooking, we don't know whether or not what they're saying in the kitchen, the way they're acting is true

all right you just don't know but they sense that it is if you've actually done your research and you put that in the film then they there's something that is conve conveyed to people because you took the time to find out something new and original. So in the case of Coco, it was to go down and find out how do they feel about it? What are they doing? What are they thinking? And I remember, this is when the movie came out because we went down to the premiere,

and one of the things I appreciate is that when Americans make movies about Mexico they don't know the difference between the Mexican brown brimmed hat and the Spanish one. So they like to interchange

them. But in Mexico they know. So they went down there and they want to get those details right and most of the audiences they wouldn't know but they felt like they need to have the people who would know know that it was right sure what was what was a part of the movie that emotionally captivated you the most in Coco? Well, it was, because the intent was, it actually is the respect for these people that came before. Because it was real.

You know, he'd learned something, he'd figured out something about the people that came before him he also felt like he was he was able to fix some some things that were wrong but interest it was also emotional for me for a couple other reasons too uh one is in the storytelling was that uh initially lee was going to make this as Pixar's first musical. Because Pixar really doesn't have musicals or DNA. Disney does, and Pixar doesn't. But one of the things I want to make sure is that we didn't try to make one studio like the other. We also weren't trying to say, you have to be different.

So they had to evolve in their own one so they're in their own way so if one wants to make a musical then they can and at pixar if they want to make a musical they can um and so lou was going to be the first person to do that so we got these brilliant two people who also had done something down at disney something they were you know good and close and we worked with them before and so they wrote the first song for his movie which is called remember me incredible and so but as a filmmaker he said okay that's thematic for the movie so now he he builds a story using this song throughout it all right so it's now a key element of where did it come from why was it written and the notion was that you know if his great-grandma dies

that the last person she's the last person who will know where the song came from and she's got oh my god she remembers it is he got all the fiber it's so emotional actually I I know. But by playing it and cheering members it actually gives him life. So wow.

Seeing that and conveying that. That's beautiful. Powerful. And the other interesting thing about the story which is separate thing was like how did he get started so one of the things we figured out it's very early on in pixar uh when we started our second movie well the first the second was was bug's life but the third one was going to be a sequel no sequel had ever been

successful right uh they an animated sequel had ever been successful so the thought was originally by disney was this is going to be a direct video so we start to make it but right away it's clear that the people working on it at Pixar are very upset. Because to work on a sequel in a studio where we want to have the highest standard of quality means that we're working on something where the expectations is much lower. We don't want to do something where there are low expectations. We want it to be you know at high level so disney agreed to that so we then started to make this film and we frankly had a problems several problems with it because we were building on some assumptions that we got from the first film because the first film had been about knowing nothing but we drew some conclusions from it

and some of the conclusions we drew from it were not correct so we built we started the sequel based on those assumptions only to find that we were wrong. And we just uncovered a bunch of things to question or challenge our original ideas. So, and in the process of doing that, we had to restart the movie really late in the game and remake it. It was like a brutal, brutal effort to remake this movie. We had to make it eight months, starting from scratch almost.

Oh yeah, it was a nightmare. We had like a third of our people injured with RSI. Oh man. But one of the things that came out of that was the realization that the way we were starting films is we were trying to do what other studios do which is to have a development department looking for good scripts and so our thought was why are we trying to copy the model

of other studios first of all the success rate of films other studios isn't very high. Low. Yeah. So we said, let's do it a different way. So what we did was we're going to pick somebody who we think can direct a feature film. And then we're going to say to them, pick three ideas to develop. picked three ideas to develop. So now the reason we say three is instead of saying, picked an idea that you want to make into a film. Well, what happens to all of us when we do something tougher in school or something like that? You start to bang your head against it while you get stuck.

So the reason we said three is it while you get stuck so the reason we said three was why it is is that if you get stuck you can switch to a different idea what so they have an artist and at some point they may have a writer come in and work with them so it's like a really small team spending a year and there's some help of the development department we still have the development department but they no longer they were no longer looking for scripts to turn into movies. Their job was to help support this small group. So they read scripts, but all they were looking for was good writers who could join the team.

But we never made anybody else's script. We always started from scratch. Started from scratch. Wow. So they would then spend that year going back and forth between their three ideas. And at the end of the year, they would come in,

the two or three people who were now the leaders over this, and they would pitch it to the creative leadership of the company say some of the other directors so there may be like 10 12 people in the room these three ideas the three ideas and the way this works is there's a story room uh which holds this table in the middle and so essentially you can hold like 12 people in the room. And there are two long walls,

and there's storyboards along the wall, and they would cover them up. So they'd put the material, the conceptual ideas, for the film on the wall, and they'd take like 20, 25 minutes, present the idea, there'd be a brief discussion on it, and then we'd go through the three films. Now, the process started, and they all did this,

even though they'd been on the other side, like they'd been on the creative leadership side, and then there'd be time when they'd paste their ideas, and they'd all start saying the same thing. They would say, I love all three ideas equally right it doesn't matter to me which one you pick now it's not true um they do like one better and the debate when they leave the room is, which is the best idea to make in the film? It is, which one do they really want to make? And I think we've always called it right,

because when we come back and they go, yes! I was hoping you'd pick that one. Sure. But in the case of Coco, Pete came in and he pitched an idea which is related to an idea that he pitched before he did Toy Story 3 and then

when we had the ability to make Toy Story 3 he was asked to direct it and so he switched over along with the writer he worked with Michael Arndt, brilliant brilliant writer and they developed a good relationship

um so they were so so basically lee was pitching that idea they originally had then he pitched his second idea which was to be a full-on musical that interesting concept challenging concept and then the two walls are up so then we go into the other room so we open the door and when we open the door um the table the ceiling both walls and the end wall are filled with mexican r-word So, there isn't a single word that's said and everybody knows which movie we're making. Yeah, there's a poster bozo of the first two, but this one is a whole experience.

That's right. You walked into Coco World. That's right. You walk into Coco World. Wow. Now, the interesting part, which this is the way it works, is the final movie

actually was very little like that first thing it didn't matter right because you start off with the concept you're going to learn something the whole idea of all these trips to mexico was to learn something because everything else was based on, you know, kind of things you knew because you're interested in stereotypes and so forth. So you expect it to change pretty dramatically in the process of doing it. So when he pitched Coco, um, and you guys went back and decided like, okay, this is the movie where we're choosing of these three was there a debate or was everyone just like oh we know he's the most passionate about this idea let's run him what let's let him run with the thing he's most passionate about uh wait i think in that case

there were there probably wasn't any debate i would say with others there is some question about okay which which one is it um the uh but that and that's probably more than normal there'd be a little debate about it um right and also not everybody goes through the process like if if andrew stanton says he wants to make something it's like okay andrew you can make whatever you want. I hope today's episode inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a rundown of today's show with all the important links. And if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me

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