LOS ANGELES—“We make awful mistakes—we make really bad choices. Our films look and play bad for most of the time that we’re working on them.”
It’s hard to believe those words came from Andrew Stanton, one of the creative geniuses at the Pixar Animation Studios, whose films have all been artistic successes, not to mention huge hits, at the box-office. “Wall-E,” the studio’s latest production directed by Andrew, is one of our best films of 2008.
We highly recommend “Wall-E.” Bring the entire family to see this entertaining tale, set in the distant future, about a waste-collecting robot whose lonely existence changes when a sleek search robot named Eve lands on earth. The kids will love the sight of a robot scooting around while the adults will be absorbed by the film’s theme of the consequences of a hyper consumerist culture. But everyone will enjoy the visual artistry of the Pixar folks.
We talked to Andrew last June in a conference room overlooking the airy “town plaza” of Pixar’s wood and glass-accented headquarters in Emeryville, near San Francisco, California. Later in the day, Randy Nelson, dean of Pixar University who gave us a guided tour, helped explain how the “bad choices” eventually become the great animated films that Pixar has become known for.
Man behind Macs, iPods
Randy talked about this structure as conceptualized by Pixar’s honcho, Steve Jobs, who just happens to be the man behind Macs and iPods:
“This building is, in a sense, Steve Jobs’ movie,” Randy said. “He started on this ‘movie’ about 12 years ago. One of Steve’s first questions to the architect was, ‘How do I make sure that everybody bumps into each other at least once a day?’ The apocryphal story is that Steve suggested there should be just one bathroom for a thousand people. The architects, in turn, suggested a big open space in the middle of the building, like a town square. Take all the cool resources in the building and put them right in the center and inevitably, people will come out of their offices and bump into each other.”
Randy assured us, “There are eight bathrooms.” And there are three theaters (we saw “Wall-E” in the plush main theater), a massage therapy room, fitness center, swimming pool and volleyball court, among many amenities. And there is, indeed, a Pixar University which, in the words of Randy, “offers the equivalent of an undergraduate school in art and filmmaking for all employees. Anyone at Pixar can spend up to four hours out of their 40 work hours a week in class.”
We also talked to the legendary Ben Burtt, who created the voices and sounds for all those “Star Wars” films (R2-D2, Darth Vader, Chewbacca), was the voice of E.T. and now of Wall-E, in addition to being the movie’s sound and character voice designer, mixer and supervising sound editor.
Sounds and voices
We spent a fascinating hour or so with Ben as he demonstrated the ingenious ways he used to come up with the sounds and voices in “Wall-E.” Ben said, “I started working on this film three years ago. I had just finished ‘Revenge of the Sith.’ After 29 years and 10 months working on the ‘Star Wars’ movies, I thought I was done with robots. I said, ‘No more robots.’ But within a few days, I got a call from Jim Morris, one of the producers of ‘Wall-E.’ He invited me to come over here at Pixar to listen to Andrew give a pitch for this film called ‘Wall-E.’ I asked, ‘What’s it about?’ ‘Robots,’ Jim said. So what I thought was the end of a chapter in my life became a whole new, fantastic experience for me.”
Here are excerpts of our interview with Andrew, who directed the Oscar-winning “Finding Nemo.” Of the romance between Wall-E and Eve, he quipped, “I was thinking more ‘Annie Hall’—she’s Annie Hall and he’s Woody Allen.”
What is the way of thinking at Pixar that would explain why you always make such good movies?
The only philosophy I’ve ever heard from Steve (Jobs) and John (Lasseter) is to just make a good movie. Everything else will work itself out. Don’t worry about shareholders, deadlines, the latest popular films ... That’s easy to [understand] but very hard to do because you’re dealing with humans. Everybody gets caught up in his own little agenda, you get tired, or whatever natural things happen if you’re working on something for four years.
But can you cite specific things why Pixar always succeeds?
One is that we’re not in Los Angeles. Everybody who lives next to me has different jobs. Nobody else makes movies. You are reminded when you come here every day that it’s a privilege to make a movie, a special thing.
Another ... is that we’re very good at fixing our mistakes. We make awful mistakes—we make really bad choices. Our films look and play bad for most of the time that we’re working on them. And it’s because we’re encouraged as artists to take risks. We know we’re not going to find the right answer unless we take a chance.
Artists understand that but a lot of businessmen and executives don’t. Fortunately, Pixar is run by artists. It’s like you feel safe falling off your bicycle because we’re very good at picking you up and encouraging you to try again.
I don’t think we are smarter, or have better ideas, than other people. But we don’t get scared. We don’t stop a project just because it’s not working. We [work] on a problem again and again until it fixes itself.
What was your inspiration in designing the eyes of Wall-E? His eyes are surprisingly soulful.
I was at a baseball game in 2003 when somebody handed me his binoculars. I turned the binoculars around and I missed watching a whole inning because I was making the lens sad, happy and mad. I remember doing that with my father’s binoculars as a kid. I saw a whole character there.
How did you choose “Put On Your Sunday Clothes” from “Hello, Dolly?” as a pivotal song in the film? It’s a surprising choice but it works.
I knew ... I [was risking] being asked this question for the rest of my life (laughs). It was the most bizarre idea I’ve ever had, but I loved it. I was looking for old-fashioned music against space. I wanted the future and past together. I did musical theater in high school. One of the standard plays is “Hello, Dolly!” When I was going through plays that I knew, I heard that one song, “Put on Your Sunday Clothes” which starts with “Out there …” I loved the idea of seeing stars and hearing that phrase. The more I thought about what the song is about—two guys who have never left a small town just want to go out into the big city for one night and kiss a girl. I thought, that’s Wall-E.
E-mail the columnist at rvnepales_5585@yahoo.com and read his blog, “The Nepales Report,” on http://blogs.inquirer.net/nepalesreport.
