I'm lucky to be surrounded by incredibly talented people at Pixar, of course, and I learn a lot from them each and every day.
Lee Unkrich
After we finished 'Toy Story 2,' we talked about going right into making 'Toy Story 3,' because we had an idea that we thought had some promise. But there were a bunch of boring contractual problems going on between Disney and Pixar at the time that kept us from making the movie.
When people think of Mexican music, they most often think of mariachi, and that, of course, is one part.
I'd really love to watch David Lynch work, to be a fly on the wall.
We got together as a group to come up with the idea for 'Toy Story 3' in the same cabin where we dreamed up 'Toy Story.'
Initially, when people asked us when 'Toy Story 2' was going to come out, we'd say, 'We have no interest in sequels. We just want to do original stories.'
The question I get more than any other is, 'What does it mean to direct an animated film?' And the reality is that it's not a whole lot different from what you do in live action.
Live action movies are someone else's story. With animation, audiences can't think that. Their guards are down.
Any of us directing at Pixar, whether it's our first time or not, feel a lot of pressure to not make a bad Pixar film.
With the first 'Toy Story,' we didn't know what the hell we were doing. We'd never made a movie before, so we went down a lot of blind alleys along the way. We went through seven different writers before we finally settled into our groove.
If I went back to live-action, I'd have to do it the Pixar way. If I didn't, I'd feel like I was walking a tightrope without a net.
I didn't want to be the guy who screwed up 'Toy Story.'
We hope 'Toy Story 3' looks amazing but still retains the character design of the first film. I like to think it looks like 'Toy Story' would have looked back then had we had the skills and the technology.
I never wanted 'Toy Story 3' to feel like another sequel just grafted on. We all know that if you put 3 after your title, it typically means garbage, and we knew that going in.
When we made 'Toy Story,' we knew, even back then, that this was going to be the ugliest film we would ever produce.
For 'Toy Story 3' to be recognized by the Academy as not only one of the best animated films of the year, but also as one of the 10 best pictures of the year, is both humbling and overwhelming.
I grew up loving watching movies, and at a certain point, I started to become fascinated with making movies. Then I went to film school, and I got to dabble with different aspects of moviemaking, and I ended up settling heavily into editing - editing was what I was really adept at, had a passion for.
People loved the first two 'Toy Story' films so much, and the last thing I wanted to do was make a disappointing third film.
I saw a lot of movies that I probably shouldn't have seen. I saw 'Dog Day Afternoon' when I was in first grade - that kind of thing.
I looked long and hard at third films in series to see if there were any good ones that I could learn from. And there weren't any that hadn't just gone off the train tracks by their third film. Until, that is, I got to the third 'Lord of the Rings' film.
We try our best every time to make engaging films that we're interested in, and we just hope the rest of the world likes them.
Do you ever achieve total forgiveness after screwing up?
We know that families and kids are going to be an important part of our audience, so we've always made sure that we've picked subject matter that was appropriate for kids. But I think if you try to target a movie to kids, you're going to fail.
The only reason we made 'Toy Story 2' is that we happened to come up with a storyline that was really good. It wasn't driven by wanting to make a sequel.
When you think about it, the most important thing to a toy is to be played with by a child, and anything that keeps them from being played with gives them stress - things like getting lost, getting broken.
It's a strange business, and unfortunately, what we do in animation is a mystery, especially the directors.
I think the moment you try to make something for kids, you are making something really cruddy that even kids don't want to watch most of the time.
It's important that nobody gets mad at you for screwing up. We know screwups are an essential part of making something good.
We could make the most beautiful film in the world, but if it doesn't have a heart beating underneath it, then no one's going to be interested.
I was disappointed that 'Tangled' didn't get nominated for Best Animated Film.
It is shocking how much a day-care center is like a prison. They both have security cameras with walled exercise yards. Prisons are permanent day cares for people permanently in time-out - convicts.
If you ask any of us which movie we were making when one of our kids was born, we'll be able to tell you instantly. It's like our family lives are permanently woven into the movies.
I love Giuseppe Tornatore, the guy that did 'Cinema Paradiso.'
Every one of us at Pixar is worried that we're going to be the one to make the dud.
I know I'm going to send my three kids off to college someday. I know my parents will pass away someday. It's one thing to say, 'I'll be able to deal with that day when it comes,' and it's another thing to find yourself at that day, dealing with it.
When we were making 'Toy Story,' my grandmother was very ill, and she knew she was not going to make it. I went back to visit her, and there was a moment during that visit that I had to say goodbye, and I knew I'd never be seeing her again. I looked at her and knew that I was looking at her for the last time.
I love that people are still obsessively trying to understand and decode 'The Shining.' People want to find meaning in things that seemingly don't have meaning on the surface.
Pixar is filled with people who don't get rid of their toys.
People talk a lot about Pixar going off the rails. A lot of people are saying they aren't happy that we are making sequels. But for every one of those people, there is one that is happy because they fell in love with the worlds we created. We hope we've proved that a sequel can be every bit as enjoyable as the original.
When I was around 12 or so, I saw 'The Shining.' I just remember that being a turning point for me, where I started to think about the fact that there was a hand behind the film. That it wasn't just this magical story being told - there were actual people crafting these films, and they were works of art.
I just ended up focusing on film editing as I was getting my career started. I'm very passionate about editing and will continue to edit for the rest of my career, but it's not like that was all I did and then somehow I grew into directing a movie.
Finding a good kid actor is like finding a needle in a massive haystack.
I had worked for a lot of directors whose work I didn't respect, and as I was editing material, I was thinking about how I would have shot the scenes and what I would have done to make the scenes better. After several years of that, I got to the point that I was pretty confident I could sit in the director's chair.
I ended up being exposed to cinema that a lot of other kids wouldn't have been exposed to.
In the earliest days of Pixar, when we were making 'Toy Story' and 'A Bug's Life,' we all came together as a group.
I feel like my job as a storyteller and director is to create an experience where the audience forgets they're in a cinema and can get lost in the story. Things popping out of the screen call attention to the artifice of what you're doing, so I use 3D as more of a window into a world behind the screen.
The best way to bring people in and have them empathize with others is through storytelling.
The walls between live-action and animation are becoming really porous, and it's interesting.
One of the tricky things with animation is, because we spend four years on the movie and everything is done so methodically day by day by day, it can be a struggle to have the finished film feel spontaneous and loose and naturally occurring.
Everyone looks at our films and thinks that we are somehow able to make movie after movie that does well and is entertaining, but there's an enormous amount of work that goes on under the hood and an enormous number of mistakes that are made along the way.
