WHAT WOULD TOTO WATCH? » Up

WWTW Interview: Directors Bob Peterson and Pete Docter (‘Up’) – Part 2

cftoto — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 17:57:27 +0000

The creative team behind Pixar’s “Up” traveled to South America to research some of the critical sequences in the movie.

But inspiration also came from some less extravagant expeditions.

The team formed a Tin Pan Alley-type band and visited a few retirement homes.

“As we played, we were secretly taking mental notes and doing sketches behind our ukuleles,“ says Pete Docter, who co-directed the film along with Bob Peterson. “It was great — we got good research, and they said we were the best act to play there in months!”

Peterson adds the feelings of wanderlust from one of his own relatives helped shape the narrative.

“I had a grandfather who always wanted to go west from Ohio, but never got the chance,” Peterson says.

The older man’s home even helped contribute to the look of “Up,” now available on DVD/Blu-ray.

“I had the foresight to videotape my grandparents’ home after they had passed 20 years ago. There are the side by side chairs – one soft and one hard which absolutely paralleled who they were as people,” he says, just as it appears in the movie.

For Docter, making movies like “Up” is the culmination of a lifelong obsession with animation. But Docter wasn’t a natural artist as a child.

“You know how there are always those kids in your elementary school class that are really good at drawing?” he says. “That was NOT me. I was lousy at drawing. But as soon as I figured out I could make something look like it was moving — and thinking — I was hooked.”

Peterson offers some simple advice for young people who are similarly smitten with animation.

“First of all, just start animating! Don’t wait for someone to say it’s ok,” Peterson says.

He remembers the daily comic strip he drew for his college newspaper. It wasn’t “Peanuts,” but it did get the attention of his fellow students.

“I got to draw a lot and get a ton of feedback from readers. This was invaluable to me as a storyteller today,” Peterson says.

But the single best advice is to simply live an interesting life.

“We draw from our experiences every day in story and animation,” he says.

(Photo: Carl and Russell peer out at their new surroundings in the Pixar animated film “Up.”/Walt Disney Pictures)

‘Up’ – Pixar pixie dust fades, slightly

cftoto — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 13:32:03 +0000

Pixar’s 2008 smash “Wall*E” gave us 20 minutes of pure cinematic perfection.

Then the story kicked in, and we were left with a flawed but visually dynamic tale of a trash robot in love.

“Up,” the animation studio’s latest hit, maintains its brilliance a bit longer than its predecessor, but it, too, can’t sustain its initial blast of genius.

That means “Up” has a leg up on 90 percent of other films, but it’s still frustrating to see such an opening give way to a pedestrian resolution. Even if said resolution is still sweeter, funnier and more touching than any other animated film this year.

Such are the high expectations Pixar has set for itself. It’s a movie studio that shoots for the stars and more often than not gets pretty darn close.

“Up” follows an unlikely hero, a cranky old man named Carl (Ed Asner) whose life consists of drab daily rituals since his wife passed. When a construction project threatens to uproot him from his long-time home, he decides to uproot the building instead.

He ties a staggering amount of helium balloons to the home and up it goes, off (hopefully) to South America where he and his lovely bride always intended to visit – but ran out of time to do so.

But Carl has a stowaway, a boy named Russell (Jordan Nagai) who is trying a mite too hard to earn a Boy Scout badge for helping the elderly.

The first half hour of “Up” is perfect. Not in any qualified fashion. Just … perfect. Heartfelt. Storytelling that reminds you of how a motion picture can touch your heart in a way no other medium can match.

Once Carl’s house floats closer to earth, the film falls for predictable scenarios. We get talking dogs, a villain who makes little sense and some action sequences which could have been duplicated from other, inferior animated films.

Yet the animation is consistently gorgeous, nearly every sequence worth hitting the “pause” button to admire or simply gape at. Each Pixar film represents a technological leap from the last, and “Up” is so breathtaking it’s hard to imagine the next Pixar feature can one-up what’s been captured on film here.

The humor throughout the film doesn’t require any visual razzmatazz. It comes at the viewer in waves, a funny line here, a brilliantly executed sight gag there. And bravo for making Russell such a delightful character, a very real young boy with the same insecurities, fears and passions of any child that age.

He’s never grating, forced, or hip in any modern way.

“Up” represents another example how Pixar projects live in the rarified air of their own greatness, and how some of its films can’t measure up to the standards they set for themselves.

WWTW interview: Directors Bob Peterson and Pete Docter (‘Up’) – Part 1

cftoto — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 15:16:56 +0000

Squint hard and you might see the frazzled heroes of the “Peanuts” gang in the latest Pixar animated feature, “Up.”

So says “Up” co-director Bob Peterson, who found inspiration from Charles Schulz’s comic creations as a young illustrator.

“My cartoon strips in college strived to have the Schulzian mix of surrealism and Charlie Brown angst. A bit of that combo shows up in ‘Up,’” says Peterson during a virtual junket last week to promote the DVD/Blu-ray release of the latest Pixar smash.

“Up” charts the remarkable journey of a retired balloon salesman named Carl (voiced by Ed Asner) who flies up, up and away when he attaches a flotilla of balloons to his home.

The film’s core inspiration came from a drawing of a grumpy old man clutching a bunch of balloons in his hand. But the creative team behind “Up” needed much more than that.

Eventually, they fell upon Carl’s need to flee his reality.

“Story wise we had finally cracked Carl’s motivation for escaping life – that he had lived an amazing relationship with his wife that ended in something not quite completed,” Peterson says.

The team chose South America as the destination Carl longed to visit, a place Peterson says would “reflect and resonate with Carl’s emotional state in the film.”

Co-director Pete Docter says the creative process behind the screenplay for “Up” mirrors what a live-action production might entail.

“The focus is on character and keeping the audience engaged,” Docter says. “We have cinematographers, lighters, costume designers, etc. We use different tools to get there, but the creative process is the same.”

The decision to cast Asner as Carl came easily, but those kinds of choices are what makes a Pixar movie work.

“Good casting at Pixar is an exercise of balance,” Peterson says. Woody from the “Toy Story” features “could have been perceived as unappealing when he was jealous of Buzz if we had the wrong voice for him, but Tom Hanks brings such a natural appeal that he balanced any of Woody’s negatives.”

The same proved true for Carl, since Asner‘s “soulfulness” helped balance some of his more unpleasant tantrums.

Tomorrow: Peterson and Docter share some of the inspiration behind their animated work and offer tips for fledgling film students on how to crack a career in animation.

(Photo: The Pixar summer smash “Up” hits DVD/Blu-ray on Nov. 10)