Q&A With Pete Docter

At the end of Disney•Pixar’s Up, Carl Fredricksen, the old guy with Ed Asner’s voice, awards his sidekick, Russell, with the highest honor he can bestow: the Ellie Badge. It’s just a cap from a grape-soda bottle attached to a pin, but if you don’t realize how heavy it is, you probably haven’t blubbered though the first 20 minutes of director Pete Docter’s masterpiece yet. And if you haven’t . . . what’s wrong with you? Are you dead inside? Don’t yell at me about spoiler alerts. It’s been out on DVD for months. And haven’t you heard that Up is only the second cartoon ever nominated for an Oscar for best picture? Though it didn’t win the top award, it did win the Oscar for best animated feature film—putting the admittedly shy director at center stage.

Your sisters are musicians, and you went to MacPhail in Minneapolis. You have to be the most famous non-musician alumnus since Marion Ross.
When I was 5, my mom asked, “Hey, do you want to play violin?” And I said, “Sure! Sounds fun.” Then when it came time to practice it was another thing. But it’s definitely affected the way I think about the timing and rhythm in my work. There are a lot of animators who are also musicians. Back when Walt [Disney] was around, the composer sat next to the director, and they would work things out together timing-wise.

You were kind of a geeky, withdrawn child—just like WALL-E!
Like a lot of people, it was one of those things that ends up contributing to where I am now. Being scared to talk to people and being shy, you end up doing things on your own—you become more prone to drawing or experimenting or goofing around with puppets or whatever. You still have the desire to communicate with people, but you have to find other ways to do it.

But you also based Toy Story’s Buzz Lightyear on yourself, didn’t you? Was that wish fulfillment?
[Laughs] Well, it’s really hard to say any one person did it. I contributed to it.

So does it give you any satisfaction that the bullies who picked on you as a kid will take their kids to Toy Story 3 in June?
[Laughs.] It’s true. The ultimate revenge.

One of the best things about directing a best-picture nominee is that you won’t have to give a speech—the producer accepts the award.
Right. When you’re sitting there in the theater at these award shows, at first you’re really excited and you hope you win, and then when you get there and you’re in front of all the people, I swear part of me is going, “I hope we don’t win so I don’t have to say anything.”

Do you consider rival best-pic nominee Avatar to be animation?
Yes. It’s kind of a weird hybrid. It’s different than what we do. They do what they call performance capture, using live actors to get the raw basis of the movement, and then it’s manipulated by animators. With us, we’re starting with the animators, so it’s more of a caricature of movement. We can really sweeten and distill and remove anything that’s not of the essence of what we’re after—that’s what I get excited about.

As an animation director, it’s your job to get the performances you want from the actors, right?
Absolutely. And in some sense the actors have to work even harder for us. Because you’re standing in a gray room with nothing but script pages and a microphone, and they have to create this whole world in their head.

Five Things You Didn’t Know About Pete Docter
1. He was in Orpheus in the Underworld at the Minnesota Opera with Vern Sutton. 
2. Bugs Bunny is his favorite Warner Bros. cartoon character. 
3. When his son, Nicholas, was 5 (he’s now 13), he did the commentary of Mike’s New Car, an extra on the Monsters Inc. DVD. 
4. When his daughter, Elizabeth, was 7 (she’s now 11), she did the voice of “Young Ellie” in Up. 
5. Japanese animé genius Hayao Miyazaki loved Up so much that Docter gave him a real-life Ellie Badge.