A Conversation with Andrew Stanton

12:48Griffin Newman:Yeah, that's true. Yeah. If it was the, what's the commercial where they need the air conditioner? I'll call now. What's that one? Sears? You know, I don't remember this one. I'll show you later. I'm always, I've wanted to pitch this to Disney like they own ABC. I don't know about the ads of it, but wouldn't it be great if you could just pick a year and just watch ABC with the commercial cuts, like the actual content. Like I would watch that all the time.

13:13David Sims:A streaming service where it's just this is June 21st, 1984. Show me TGIF,

13:18Griffin Newman:1997. I want the block. I want the whole experience of just having it on. Exactly. The toy commercial. I would think that would be a very profitable thing to do.

13:30David Sims:It would be incredible. Yeah. Yes. I mean, I used to tape movies off of TV and watch them over and over again. I rediscovered them when my parents moved those VHSs. And I put it in and immediately knew every word of every commercial. Isn't that crazy? It's incredible. Now, okay. Are you a baseball fan?

13:47Griffin Newman:This is all I care about. Fair weather, but I was... You're going to hate me because I'm a Sox fan. I was born and raised. I don't care. I was just wondering because you're up in Oakland, you know, if you feel for the A's, but no, you don't really care. Many people I work with are still in mourning. Yeah. Yeah. And don't want to talk about it. Rip A's. Okay. Yeah. All right. Andrew Stanton's here in the studio with us. I'm David Sims. Are we saying your name? I'm Griffin Newman. Ben Hosley's here. Hey there.

14:10David Sims:Looking great, by the way. He's always looking great. I haven't seen you in a while, but he's looking particularly good. Right.

14:14Griffin Newman:For the listener, this is our first time seeing Griffin since the end of June or whatever. Six weeks since the Stanton series started.

14:20David Sims:Yeah. We recorded them all. I went away. I come back. We're ending it.

14:24Griffin Newman:Yes.

14:25David Sims:Mm-hmm.

14:27Griffin Newman:And Andrew's joining us. Toy Story 5 has come out. Come and went. Now it's done great. It's all about Spider-Man. It is so funny that you just made a cash billion dollars and it's like a month later. It's like Spider-Man and the Odyssey. Who cares?

14:41David Sims:You did get to be the highest grossing film of the year. So far. Yes. I mean, it's not going to be that at the end of this thing. But you got to be. For a while. It was anointed. Sure. Yeah. You got that little badge. I have nothing to complain about. It seems the movie did. Nothing to complain about.

14:57Griffin Newman:Did beyond expectation. It's great. Totally beyond expectation. Did terrific.

15:01David Sims:Highest grossing Toy Story film.

15:03Griffin Newman:Yeah. Yeah, before inflation. Yeah. Made my daughter very sad. Really? Yeah, in a way that she couldn't articulate because she's only five. Oh, well, I don't count five as movie going yet. Well, fair enough. I guess she can go. Just a dark theater can be traumatizing for a child. In my child's defense, she's a very experienced theater goer. We see lots of movies together. And usually when we exit the theater, she's just kind of like, best movie, great, loved it. Every minute was great, obviously, because we're seeing things like Super Mario or what were some animated? Goat. She loved Goat. The great sports drama Goat.

15:37Griffin Newman:Toy Story 5, she was just upset. She was like, I want mom. Like, she was just like clearly thrown by it, I think because of the friendship stuff. You know, just because it was about interpersonal kid drama. And most of the things she sees are more about interpersonal kind of like Star Fox or Mario drama, minion drama.

15:57David Sims:She's very wrapped up in the Star Fox drama.

15:59Griffin Newman:Flippy Frog. And like the emotions of... in Toy Story 5 are subtler and like are, I'm not, you know, I'm not trying to like tell you something you don't know here. He's not trying to like bill you for therapy. I'm more investigating like my, it's like my kid walks out of, you know, Star, Super Mario and it's like, I like that Luigi's scared. Like she gets that, you know, it's just a very loud emotion. Like I think Toy Story 5, she was like trying to process it all. Like what was going on with Bonnie. Hopefully they'll watch the movie again when they're older and it'll be a different form. No, it's just great.

16:28Griffin Newman:I'm saying this is, this is a compliment. She liked it. It's just, It's intense.

16:32David Sims:I said flippy frog instead of slippy toad.

16:34Griffin Newman:Andrew, here's Jesus.

16:36David Sims:I know. I just need to correct myself before I'm fired from this podcast. Here's a Redstream-related question, and then I want to get more focused on things.

16:43Griffin Newman:What's Redstream? Redstream? You cited the Pixar short. Oh, Redstream. I'm sorry. I was hearing Redstream. Yes, Redstream.

16:51David Sims:Can we get the shorts back in front of the movies?

16:53Griffin Newman:Oh, yeah, sure. The movies are a little longer, I feel like. The Pixar movies have inflated in length. There was a period of time where we had a lot more being made and just the theatrical experience was a little more for sure. And then I think between having to make things for less and being in a questionable still space of theatrical, although it's starting to feel like a good year. It's just feeling good. It may come back, but they're not cheap to make. Yeah. And they, they, they take a year and a half to make a short and that's longer than some live action movies are to take. So it's, it's, it's, it's harder and harder to justify.

17:35Griffin Newman:Wasn't the, uh, wasn't it obvious? Sorry. Wasn't it often the idea that like with the shorts, you're testing some sort of, you know, sometimes we're at a place now where it's kind of, now you can use to, I mean, the stuff we could do, like I was away for 10 years or eight years, but 10, if you count going in, like when last time I was like in production at, uh, and I thought we could do everything looks wise back then in 2014, 15. And now I just like as a kid in a candy store working on this one, I was just like, wow, we can we can do anything.

18:11David Sims:I think WALL-E still looks incredible, but it is wild. When we do this podcast, I often will go back and read the reviews from the time. And at the time, everyone went, well, they've cracked it. It's never going to look better than this. Every single thing has technically been accomplished now on this film. Yeah. Yeah. I, I, I, I'm of the belief that like about, yeah, maybe 10 years, maybe a little longer. Um, it's all still costly, just manpower wise. But, uh, you can, if you can think of it, you can make it. It's just in the eye of the beholder. Now it's, it's, it's, if you don't like the look of something, you got to blame the artist, not the paints.

18:47Griffin Newman:Was it weird though? Like coming back 10 years later or was it freeing or fun or like, cool to open up the old toy box like it was fun toy box it was fun to be in the production of it it was fun to work i love i mean i love production i love working with other artists i've always been that kid that loved putting on a show in the backyard kind of equivalent or making our movies with in with your super eight and so that's the drug what i knew i wouldn't love and was confirmed only about two years in was i don't like how long it takes uh as you you just mentioned before i'm I hope I'm not giving anything away.

19:24You're 40. I am. No, no. Time gets faster at 40. And then it gets even faster at 50. And so four years at 60 is just too long because then suddenly half a decade is practically over. And I can count on one hand how many more times I could do this. Like it's time that's made me kind of anti-animation at this point.

19:48Griffin Newman:And you don't think children should have fun or be happy too. So you're anti-animation. for that. No, I think children should have a lot of fun, but I'm not worried about being the bearer

19:58David Sims:of that. Yes, it's not your responsibility anymore. No, I'm making films for myself. The press you did, the press runs for the two movies you had this year. You talked about this a lot and how growing up you never specifically were interested in animation in a singular way. That was never the exclusive goal of what you wanted to do and how you feel like this might be your last animated film because of the time issue. This is maybe a very stupidly broad question, but how did you realize you had the capacity to do animation? Because it is the kind of thing, unlike live action directing, where it starts with needing to have some facility at doing the technical.

20:37It's easy to look back at 2020 now and go, I was jack of all trades and master of none. Like I love, I was going to be an actor. I was going to be a musician. I was going to be an artist. I could do all three of those things and none of them went great to the, to such mastery in my teens that I knew that this was calling me and I didn't, but I liked doing all of them. And I, I definitely love the arts. And, uh, I, and I went to the movies like fricking church every, it was, and you're in Massachusetts. Yeah. It's so it's like what sports are for sometimes to bond, uh, parents and the kids and the family, uh, movies were that our, our whole family would jump into the station wagon, go up what we said, up the line to the movieplex.

21:18And we didn't even think about what was that playing. We would just go see it.

21:21David Sims:And you worked at an art house theater as well, right? Yeah. By the time I got old enough to be employed. Yeah. And, uh, and so all of that, I didn't want to give up. And so it's because I found out, and this is, you got to remember, so far before the internet, before knowledge of anything, you know, they have handbooks was the The only way you could find out about college is or somebody went somewhere and told you about something. And so it was my junior year of high school and my guidance counselor had to meet me to say what I'm going to do with my life. Where am I going to go? I didn't know.

21:51And he was late to the office. I sat there and I stared at this bookcase and there was this binder with a fluorescent, a hot fluorescent orange binder. And I pulled it out and it was for CalArts. And I learned, oh my God, they teach animation. I draw, which is sort of like acting. I like to act. it's all about timing and I've got good rhythm. I like music and it's ultimately on film and I love film. And I was like, suddenly I was like, I don't have to give up any of this. It was literally all in that one moment. It was all in that one. And then I became like Devil's Tower. Like I had to go. And because I had fucked off most of my high school and I was a really bad student, I didn't get in.

22:30And so I spent the next year, I got into one school. It was Hartford. Hartford Art School, which is basically a business school. And there's this one little oasis that I took and I learned and it kicked my ass foundations wise. I was probably their best student because I was trying to make a portfolio to just get the hell out. And so the next year I got into CalArts. So I have the rejection letter from one year. But then the conclusion to that story is you jump to 2003. Nemo comes out. CalArts wants to give me an award at the Red Cat Theater. My suite mate for one year was Don Cheadle. Don Cheadle is doing well.

23:01And so Don starts to presents me with the award. and I give this same speech about how I found out about CalArts. And then I say at the end of it, I said, so whoever in 1982 in the admissions department decided to make the binder fluorescent orange, thank you. And this guy in the back went, that was me. Wow. So it was very nice closure. Because he knew him pop. Full circle.

23:23Griffin Newman:Wait, Cheadle, what was he doing? Acting program. CalArts is like fame school. And I don't know if that means anything to anybody more. No, no, it means a lot. Are you aware?

23:31David Sims:I dropped out of CalArts. He dropped out of CalArts. How long did you go? I went for nine months. And what made you drop out? What made me drop out? I went for live action film directing, which I think was the wrong choice for me and school. And I also think I didn't want to be in school. Who was running the program then? Steve Anker. Sandy McKendrick was running it when I was there. Can you believe that? I mean, who was... The Sweet Smell of Success. Monty Hellman was teaching at the time. Lavender Hillmob. Lavender Hillmob. And James Benning. It was like an incredible faculty. You also didn't drive.

24:07David Sims:So getting around was quite challenging for you. That's a problem in California. Andrew, it was maybe 50 % of the reason I dropped out.

24:15Griffin Newman:Why didn't you go to school in the North? Like, why didn't you go to school over here?

24:19David Sims:Because I didn't like the idea of going to a school where I could come back home and hang out with the same people on the weekend. I know.

24:24Griffin Newman:I get that.

24:25David Sims:I grew up here and almost everyone I knew was doing that. And I was feeling very defiant about, I'm going to go somewhere different. I'm going to make a new life for myself. And I got locked onto CalArts because I thought I wanted to be animating. And I had some facility for it, but I didn't have the discipline I found, ultimately. I think I could have done experimental, but I had locked into character. And then when I felt like I'm not good enough at this, then I shifted to live action. And then when I was there, I started going, I feel like I want to act. And so it was also at a weird transitional time in my life.

25:07David Sims:But I'm very familiar with all of the places you're listing and also who the alumni are. Ed Harris, David, also went to CalArts. Pee Wee Herman. Yes, Paul Rubens. Yes. Absolutely. I know Cal Arx. Who roomed for a hot minute with David Hasselhoff. Really? Yeah. That's true. These pairings are incredible. I know. Somebody should write a book.

25:29Griffin Newman:Yes. Really? Yeah. And I know. Just like, what was it like?

25:32David Sims:My roommate was Joss Glenny Smith, who is an actor. He's a sole working actor. Great. Yeah. Should we just stick on this? No, absolutely not. Okay. But you're calling out a thing that I think isn't discussed enough, which is how much of animation is acting. yeah no i always have to explain to the actors that i'm working with that um you're half the equation you know and that i'm going to have a conversation with what i call the shy actors which are the animators not in front of the camera and but they have to be cast as appropriately as anybody you know that old adage of if you can get the script and the casting rights uh for a movie then they're halfway there uh it's kind of true also for your animators uh you know they they have the things that their strengths are and and aren't and uh and it's almost a little tougher because you have to you usually have a team so like there's not one person animating woody or one person animating jesse it's it's a group of people so uh we adopted at the very beginning of the whole studio was what Disney did, which you have dailies every morning where all the animators watch everybody's work in the middle of their project, the middle of their working on it.

26:49So that if there's notes from me about what I would think the character would or wouldn't do, everybody hears it. So they all think the same. But that's also a chance to be inspired and you and you get a little competitive. You're like, wow, look at what they did with Smarty Pants in that shot. I never knew you could do that with the handle and that you could make it look like he's you know flipping them off or something and that would inspire them to like go and so it's just a win-win and so there's this sort of it's almost like summer stock like everybody's got to learn all the roles yeah and uh but it's actors you talk to them just like actors this is your mark this is where you're coming from this is where you're going to and uh and you're not trying to get into it too much you know because you don't want to get too much into their head this is

27:33David Sims:something that I feel like is a defining aspect of your films in particular is and maybe it goes back to that kicking yourself in the ass you're at Hartford but by design giving yourself characters who are going to be incredibly difficult to animate I feel like there's a lot of self-imposed challenges of like you go to the the double-a gang in Toy Story 5 is three characters that do not lend themselves to animation. There are characters that don't have traditional limbs. You know, two of them don't, or one of them doesn't have a traditional face. Wally and Eve, certainly. You talked a lot about with Nemo not wanting to cheat.

28:11David Sims:Yeah, that's true. I never put that together. And kind of personize them more. And then I feel like sometimes in the opposite direction you have a character like Hank where the challenge is... A whole different one, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, of extremity. But that's not a thing you consciously sort of throw at yourself? Not in the... I mean, And I'm sure there's an element of challenge that I just want for anything. I think I'm a little bit more, it's more that I'm just not afraid of it. I just go with what logically makes sense to, look, and I was charmed like everybody else, at least that was around at the time that they first saw that Luxo lamp.

28:48I was like, there's so much personality in this simple lamp. Do it with this mic right now. and I felt seen because I felt like I had been anthropomorphizing everything as since I was a little kid like my bike was cold in the rain as far as I was concerned and my that leaf falling was afraid of heights when it fell like that just was how I thought I didn't like learn that and so I realized I had a tribe and these are these are my people and I also was lucked out that I was the first generation Sesame Street kids that came out in 69 I was four years old and to me the Muppets just always existed yeah I learned everything entertainment and timing wise and and and and if you go back and watch on YouTube any of the original first season like they were little adults there was nothing kidified like I always have this theory that Elmo fucked it up for everything because it started a kiddie voice and everything had to be young and everybody started thinking about the kids and I'm like nobody thought about the kids at least and it's still good and it was clever like and so like guys are a tired New Yorker Yes, they tie a nurse and they're opening up their jackets saying like, you want to buy a Q?

29:53I mean, we're talking about Shifty. It's a great character. But anyway, what I was quickly going to connect to was how much personality came of just doing an open mouth with your hand. Yeah. Just a hand puppet. Like just taking a napkin and like, so I just was raised going, I'm seeing a million subtleties of acting and reactions from just a hand puppet. But so I've never thought you couldn't do it with under extreme.

30:19David Sims:You logically just run. I just like, it's always existed. So I've never really thought about it, but I do have arguments with, or not arguments, but I have to like convince animators sometimes that I realized, Oh, they don't all think like that. They, they have to logic it out. And I'm, I'm clearly, I'm clearly more right brained than left brain because people want to go down rabbit holes about like, well, if they did this, why did they do that? And I just go, well, I'm already starting with a story that fish are talking.

30:47Griffin Newman:So can we, I'm not going to, I'm not going to left brain this. It's an illness though about Pixar that people are like, well, I want to impose reality on it. And it's like, but we're outside of reality. And it makes me realize maybe they're right and I'm wrong, but I never think like that. So I'm not going to start thinking like that. I just want to have fun and I want to just not be distracted while I'm watching it. And I feel really bad for somebody that is. That's a curse because I just want to go along for the ride or any movie I'm watching. so I'm just going like all right they're they're look at one of the arguments that's just what it is people on the internet I'm always fascinated because like there's an Aesop's fable of that starts out there once was a sausage and a bird and a mouse and it lives in a house and you go and it's amazing if you start that way everybody goes okay okay right and and and you're like and so it just shows you that if you made if you made people have questions about it then you're just telling the story badly.

31:39This is what I always say. It's not the story is bad. You're just telling it badly.

31:43Griffin Newman:I think what Pixar movies sometimes do, and again, I am using Pixar monolithically here, so feel free to yell at me, but right, but it does impose some logic, which is part of the fun, right? It's like, let's expand out the world. Exactly. We live in a... We're inside of a child's brain. What could that look like? We're inside of the axiom or whatever. There'll be some logic. But you need to, you know, embrace the fantasy as well. You guys can speak better to this, but I can only surmise that because the gaming world is so immersive and thorough, that you will want that same truth to be on any movie you watch.

32:23Griffin Newman:I've been thinking about this a lot. Look, I mean, Cars is the one I think that broke everyone's brain.

32:27David Sims:But no, but I've been thinking about this a lot that I do think there is as games became more cinematic and less their own art form entirely. They start working more of the language of films into them and people have control and autonomy within. Yes, yes. Nolan did this interview recently. I just saw the Chinese interview. It's fucking right where he said, like, I think there is this problem of people feel like if they're able to recognize a trope of storytelling that invalidates it. Yes. It's such a weird... I mean, that's sad.

32:58Griffin Newman:But it's so true. And it's such a sickness in sort of modern media of now that we can slow everything down and look everything a million ways. And I can look at YouTube at any clip I want. Yes, I can show you patterns. And then you'll be smart. You'll see the patterns like I see the patterns. And it's like, there's nothing interesting about you seeing the patterns. Of course, there's patterns to storytelling.

33:21David Sims:And when you're playing the patterns, you compliment them if they work properly. because you go, that's fun that this pattern challenged me and I beat it.

33:28Griffin Newman:I said this on Blue Sky like an idiot. You know, I made a social media post, even though I don't really do that anymore, where I was just like, if you're a critic, the least interesting thing that any... The last thing anyone wants to hear from you is I'm smarter than the movie. Like, that's not criticism. That's just you talking about yourself. Who cares? Like, I don't care if you're smarter than the movie. I want you to tell me what this movie means either to you or to the culture or to what you maybe perceive in the filmmaker. You know, like, that's fine. I don't care that you're like, well, these are tropes I know.

33:58Griffin Newman:So I'm smart. You're not telling anyone an interesting story. That's all. I agree with that. Yeah, sure.

34:04David Sims:Great. I guess I'll get out of here. No, it's just a thing. Okay. If I can put my Flick Lover 98 hat back on. Because we had, you know, there was the argument of whether or not to include a Bug's Life. And a lot of it for me was just I wanted to cover Bug's Life, right? I mean, you could almost get away with it because we, John was very gracious and we were a team on that. even more so. But at the end of the day, you know, it's his movie. It was not to discredit that, but it was more that I thought it was an important step in your arc in sort of the journey of screenwriter. Yeah, it was a second step.

34:43Yeah. Because it's where you sort of fall into it. I mean, Bug's Life was a chore for you or for everybody. For all of us. Only in comparison to how, what's fascinating is we, all I remember during a bug's life is complaining, like, I wish I was as dumb and as eager as I was making toy story because we knew nothing. And so we kept saying we were like the young engineers that put a man on the moon at NASA. We just didn't know you couldn't do it. And that got us through, that was our fuel. So even though I bet you on paper, it was harder to make Toy Story than A Bug's Life, it felt funner because we were just young and like, we're making a movie.

35:26Like we didn't think we'd do anything more than that. And it came from such a natural inspiration, like the well of like, what, like I remember us and the story changed five different ways after this, but this didn't. It was, what if it was your favorite toy on a top of bed and suddenly a new toy got brought in for a birthday and it got thrown off. Like just that sense, like you suddenly realized the, it evoked such feelings of, of empathy about jealousy and, and how that felt when you're, you're in your next sibling came in, when a new kid came on the playground, like it just was so organic and natural.

36:04It was like literally striking oil. And so we never had that on a bug's life. It was a intellectual exercise. Like what if we turned the ant in the grass up around its head. It could go a little seven samurai could go a lot of these things, but like just that was an intellectual left brain didn't evoke the emotions. And I learned. And so it was, we, we got there, but it was always like trying to draw water out of a stone. So I learned that like, Oh, it's to our benefit, especially if we're going to work on it for three to four years and you're going to get out of bed with it, not working most days.

36:39you got to be ideally on top of a well of something that is more natural of a geyser of emotion and or not do it not do it yet yeah so that's why a lot of our movies sometimes take forever before we really start committing to them it's because we haven't found that well i'm not going

36:55Griffin Newman:to want to spend five years on this yeah exactly and then toy story 2 you guys made in like five minutes right that was a notoriously easy one you know the more the more i look back at that i realized that the perfect storm of that was they had tried so many other versions that there was about 30 % of the movie that was worth keeping. Not in linear, but like pieces. Yeah, little bits. And then the other was we literally had two other versions of Toy Story we'd thrown out, not like wholesale, but there was so much in the costume box left from the first. And then the biggest factor was we got literally the band back together.

37:36We got everybody back from stem to stern that had made the first one. So we were psychic. So you just put us in. We had a costume box of leftover material. We had building blocks that made a lot of sense. But I looked, I was cleaning out my email last year. Like it goes all the way back to 92, but like it's less and less because we weren't using it so much then. and I was freaked myself out like I'm talking about it's November of 98 I'm doing post at Skywalker on Bugs Life but I'm being asked to help do the outline for this monster movie that Pete's doing so I'm doing that on the side by December there's rumblings in the email that something's amiss across the street or the other production by the holidays John's calling me into like we got to talk by the January.

38:30We're like, we are going to have to take it all over. By the end of February, I've written the whole thing by March. I'm off and I'm starting to help this thing that's now called monsters incorporated. And I have this idea for a fish like that. And I had two kids, I had two little kids and I look under like, and I just go, I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't. I always put all those things in that era, but not so tightly together.

39:00David Sims:And just to clarify for the listener, Toy Story 2 comes out in November of that same year you're describing. Of 99, yeah. I was writing pages on a Monday. It was delivered to story by the end of Monday, like top of the day Monday, Tuesday morning at the latest. By Wednesday, Thursday, it's cut in. By Friday, it's being refined. So it was just, it was insane. I don't know how we did it. It is my default. It's incredible that the movie is so good.

39:25Griffin Newman:Like, it just doesn't really make sense that the movie is so good. Again, it's like if you said you all have the shorthand. A band went on tour and played so hard and then left and do something else. And they said, come back and do exactly what you did before and just keep it going.

39:40David Sims:That's why. I mean, it's not only my favorite Toy Story movie. It's maybe my favorite movie. I often default to that as my answer. I answered this recently when the five drunk finance bros in Madrid asked me, you like movies? what movie you like? And then proceeded to drop three beers while I answered. But a thing I've always pinpointed is that there is a feeling of mania to that movie. Well, that's also a reflection of us because we were left. Disney said basically, go with God. Nobody was there to stop us. That's us left alone. That was the core original group. And all we cared about was cracking each other up.

40:18We cared about the film. We cared about emotion, but not ever at the expense of cracking each other up. It's like entertainment mattered greatly to us. Everything went through an entertainment filter. So even if we're doing this sad moment, and by the way, the Jesse being sad is to emulate what it's like to be empty nester. Fascinating. So that's why you don't get with it right now. Is John the empty nester at that point? Who's that drawing from? Well, there was a range of people of ages. Yeah. We had, we had people that were already grandparents, people that were not single. That was all over the map, but we were just going with the truth of the arc of life of giving up your kid and having to see them go away.

41:01Griffin Newman:My, my kid's not going anywhere. She's going to, you just keep telling yourself that she's going to go to our joke in the family is like, she'll go to mega rivers or just like the community college down the street. Basically it's like, yeah, no, she can move there. She's going to go to Sims university. Yeah, exactly. She can go to college. She can go to college like one neighborhood over. That's hilarious. The twins, they'll live in the basement, right? They'll just, I don't know. Oh, we've got to bring up the twin connection. Oh, what's that?

41:27David Sims:Because I brought up to you, David, having twins. Oh, you have twins?

41:31Griffin Newman:I have twins, yeah. Do you have three kids? I have three kids. I have an older daughter and younger sons. And how old are the sons? They just turned two. Okay, so my younger brothers are identical twins. Oh, so what happened to me happen to your family. And what's going to happen to your daughter, I'm telling you now, is that you're going to look back at photos when they're little and toddlers, your twins, and you're not going to be able to say who is who. Right. And she will. Yeah, that's fascinating. You always knew your siblings. I can still look at photos with just the back of their heads, and I go, that's my brother.

42:02That's cute. That's my brother Nathan.

42:03Griffin Newman:Wait, so what's the age difference between you and yours? Five years. Okay, yeah, so you were, my daughter was like three and a half. The other thing that's fascinating, I don't know with the minutes apart, but my brothers were born ten minutes apart and that might as well been 10 years apart so whenever there was a lineup of us the pecking order was who was came out first yeah came out last it's great my kids were born one minute apart wow and yet it is there's a c-section you know just one then the other and it is nonetheless crazy that the the the younger one is the baby you refer to him as the baby of course he's the baby but maybe in every way he's littler he's like you know whatever and They do.

42:40My brother, one brother has all the signs of the baby brother. One has all the signs of middle child.

42:44Griffin Newman:I don't understand it. It's very strange so far. But yes, no, the older one is the alpha. Yeah. Well, your parents survived, though? They barely survived. Yes. Yeah. I get that. I hear that. And there was a story once where they figured out in their separate cribs how to push their cribs across the room. And my mother came in and the dresser drawers had been used like steps. and they got into the Vaseline and baby powder and it was just like tar and feather. Like the combined intelligence. And that was when they would speak baby talk to each other and you could hear in the inflections that they were actually having a back and forth conversation.

43:22My kids do that.

43:23Griffin Newman:Yeah. It's fascinating. It's weird. It's right. They babble stuff at each other and you're like, oh, right. This is like communication that we will never understand. It's very strange having twins. Twin parents get at me always. Is that in the family in any? Not at all. On either side? No. We always joke, right? Because it's like, I should wear a t-shirt. Like, not in the family. We didn't do IVF. You know what I mean? Because those are the questions. It's the same thing as when someone says, like, oh, I'm sick, right? And you're like, oh, I'm so sorry. So do you smoke a cigarette? You know, people immediately are like, is it going to happen to me?

43:55Griffin Newman:What happened to you? You know, like, they just nicely start to ask questions. Like, and is it genetically, like, do you guys have that? And it's the same with the twins. People are like, does it run in your family? Nope, just happened. we're older parents like you know it was an old apparently it's more common the older you get because your body basically just sort of starts you know getting rid of all the eggs not to be like biological about it but yeah that's all I don't know there's a part of Africa where people eat a certain yam that makes twin pregnancies incredibly common I learned that you're just making shit up now I'm not I can send it to you wow yeah what's the yam how do I get something what you want twins I don't know it's working out really well for you.

44:35Griffin Newman:It's working out okay. They're crazy. Yes. Parts of Africa, particularly the Yoruba people in Nigeria, have a diet rich in native yams and those have hormones called phytogestrogens, which some people stimulate multiple egg production. Anyway, we have interest in here. We're talking twins. We're talking twins. Not the movie. Not the movie. Okay. So we talked bug's life we talked we're saying the oh the the crunch of right right a bug's life you're consciously coming in as a screenwriter from the get-go i get like uh yeah i learned uh screenwriting by watching josh whedon do it for the year and a half he worked with us right uh and he was sort of at the top of his powers he was a 90s or whatever he was sort of a boy he was rising fast.

45:25He was still rising. But it was obvious because we had had scriptwriters before that failed miserably. And so we were getting a lesson on what good screenwriting was. And what would be fascinating is we'd sit in a room together, the four or five of us, including Joss, and we'd spitball something and we'd play it out for ourselves. He'd nod. He'd go off into a room, play soundtrack music really loud for a while and then come back out. And you'd read these two or three pages and the way they were written, you were just compelled to see it exactly the way we had talked about it. It wasn't, and it was, and it sucked you in.

46:01Like I, it inspired me like, oh, there is a way to do, I called it cinematic dictation. Like, oh, I failed in English in high school. So I thought that writing was for smart people. No offense. But, uh, uh, then I realized, oh, it's cinematic dictation. It's like, I've always seen the movie. There's just a way to do it that makes other people see it the way you want to see it. And it can be done. And if it's done poorly, you don't see it the way that they want, even though you had it in your head. So that's what I, I just became determined to be good at that. And I, and I was honest with somebody recently.

46:33I said, some of it was self-preservation because there was no guarantee this company was going to last and that we were going to be beyond, we were such a startup. So we didn't know how the movie was going to do at the time. And I was like, I need to learn a trade I can use somewhere else. So I thought screenwriting is applies to other places beyond just learning how to computer animate. And so I just started doing it without anybody asking. Nobody was asking me to be the writer after Joss left for the last year. And by the time it was done, they weren't going to give me credit. So I went to the current script of everything and I highlight everything that I, they had kept and it was 75 % of the script was what I did.

47:16And so I convinced them. And then, uh, that, then they said, okay, so Bugs Life was like the first time they officially okayed that I could play that role.

47:26David Sims:And from the beginning.

47:27Griffin Newman:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then, right. Cause you're credited on Toy Story. You're credited on Monsters, Inc. as a writer, right? that was that just you and Pete or no, Daniel Gerson, right? Okay. Isn't the legend on Monsters, on Monsters, Monsters was basically Daniel, Daniel Gersten and let's see, Jim, Jill Colton, Jeff Pidgeon, Ralph Eggleston. I'm just looking at the credits here. There's a lot of story by because there's a lot of rebuilding by. And I just was part of their helping. I mean, I didn't, I wasn't the founder of any of that movie. Was there a moment where you were supposed to direct that idea in a different form?

47:57No. Okay. They had real trouble at the beginning outlining it and getting it to have an engine. And the only thing I can really take credit for was... The engine is Screams.

48:07David Sims:Well, David, that's what it is. That's what it really is. I came up with, I said, you need a motivation that creates greed and all the emotions that happen in the real world. And so Scream has got to, what if you put Scream in there so that it's treated like oil is in this country? What was the movie before that?

48:26Griffin Newman:Because that does feel foundational to you. Here's why the monsters do this. But you're smarter right now than any of us were then. No, but I have hindsight. We were all in our 20s just learning how to do it. So it was a new story. It wasn't a buddy film. And we just had to learn how to, you know, I was we were still reading every screenwriting book, going to McKee classes like we were just we were you're watching us learn as you watch those first three movies.

48:51David Sims:I mean, a lot of why I watch those movies incessantly. And also why I think people sometimes will ask, because I dropped out of CalArts, like, where did I learn story structure stuff when I ran away from academia trying to teach me that kind of thing? And so much of it is from watching all of the DVDs that you guys put together, the talks that you guys have done, the commentaries. I think we were so excited to learn.

49:18Griffin Newman:Yeah, you guys were real sharers. We wanted to pass it on. Right. Yeah. Because that's for a long time, for like almost the first 20 years, but definitely the first 15, it just felt like we just got to continue film school. And so we just promoted that atmosphere in anything we did.

49:36David Sims:Maybe this is a dumb question, but you're talking about the identification of the oil spring that you had from the beginning with Toy Story that you felt like you couldn't find with A Bug's Life for a while. How do you know when you found it? Is it just from the reaction from other people? Is it within yourself? You just go, the story now kind of explains itself? You can definitely tell. You just feel it. It usually evokes an involuntary response from not only yourself, but when you put the peanut butter with the chocolate and you pitch just the basics to somebody else, even in its rarest golden book form, you see investment happening from the person you're picking.

50:16pitching to. And that tends to be the proof that there's gold in the hills.

50:22David Sims:Because you talked about in this recent press tour that Toy Story is one of those things where if you sit in a room for an hour, you start coming up with new ideas of what could happen in that universe. And it does feel like it's an infinitely fertile playground for story. It can be. One of the reasons I think I get pulled in is because they've skipped the ABCs. Like they've gone straight to like other letters in the alphabet and they've, and they've just made, understandably, they're trying to be different or trying to be interesting or trying to go. They think literally going to new territory will give us new ideas.

50:57And I'm like, what was free in the beginning was just the fact that toys came to life. Like just like that was like, wow. And I get to witness that. And you have to, and now we've kind of, from that movie on, messed up for generations. Everybody thinks toys come to life. Like there's that there is no wow factor for watching a story movie. It's a given now. So the other thing that's behind that, that I have to remind them on is that the secret sauce is in the mundane. I said, if you take collectively the hours spent watching Toy Story movies, even if you put five with it now, it's about what, six hours, maybe seven.

51:37That's seven hours of a toy's life. That's one day. and they have spent, if there are toys in your life, like for five years or six years or maybe even eight in your house, that's a lot of hours in the day not accounted for. I used to like, I remember thinking there'd be a lot of humor when we were trying to come up with the first movie of like just the boredom of being in the room while the kid's gone and making it, treating it like jury duty. And we had a joke of like, if I have to read Pokey the Little Puppy one more time, I'm going to kill somebody. And like, just, but like, that's where the humor starts to come from is like the mundane and seeing it from that perspective.

52:15100%.

52:16Griffin Newman:Look how disrespectful we're being right now. Yeah. I'll put them all in the ad. Like you could do a whole sequence just about being trapped in that Ziploc bag. It's why those movies make people dizzy sometimes, right? Because these are intellectually developed conscious creatures that are basically little grownups living in a child's room, kind of bored all day, right? And then one day they might be trash or they might be in a box or, you know, yeah.

52:40David Sims:The way people describe seeing Star Wars in theaters for the first time and seeing the runner go over and feeling like the world has exploded. Like my mind explosion moment was Woody starting the meeting in the first Toy Story. Yeah. There's something that just activated in me and, oh, they're acting like grownups. This isn't for me. We did a sequence early on before we had that scene where we thought we'd start with the birthday party. But because this had recently happened at Pixar. there had been two layoffs a couple of years prior. So everybody was kind of very savvy now to what layoffs felt like in the company and it was getting the ax.

53:18And so we treated, we did a scene of introducing Woody in the, Andy's bedroom with everybody going, is it me? You know, who am I going to, you know, and, and we suddenly loved like that. We were capturing something about adult life, but the metaphor of what it's like for the toys. And it made complete sense. And we were told it was too juvenile by Disney at the time. So we had to ax it and everybody knows about the black Friday and it not going well and everything like that. And that's whenever that was year, uh, you know, months of going down to what was supposed to be like adult humor or savvy humor.

53:55Yeah. And when we had to like rescue the film to save our asses and we had like two weeks to like try to resurrect it, we went back to that layoff scene and we said there's something muppety and just really, which is now we all know is Toy Story now. But we said, we think our gut was right on that mojo and we're going back and it became Woody's meeting. Plastic corrosion awareness.

54:19David Sims:I mean, all that stuff, which is just not, none of it is inappropriate. And even as a small child, I recognized there was something funny in why are the cartoon characters talking like my parents?

54:29Griffin Newman:Right, right, right. Yeah. That there, yeah, that there is a kind of clock in, clock out vibe. Should we ask, about Finding Nemo. Have you asked about the movies he's directed? I mean, geez.

54:40David Sims:We're asking a lot of general questions. But yes, Finding Nemo is a perfect movie in my opinion. Yeah, I was just downhill from after that. Not true. Yeah,

54:48Griffin Newman:you followed it up with WALL-E. What were you thinking? That, you know, piece of junk. You would have thought you would have thought I had at the time. Was that the feeling? At the previous screening. For WALL-E? There was a lot of anxiety. It got the lower marks. And like Pixar generally, right, tended to, I mean, and you'd had and that's when I had to swap. I was going to say, it's before you do the final act change. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, again, learning curve. Wait, wait, remind me. I'm sorry.

55:16David Sims:I'm sure we discussed this on the episode. Well, I'll let you explain. You directed the film Wally. It pretty much scene-wise played out similar, but it was missing two things. We kept treating Wally in the third act like he had to be the hero. And so he rescued Eve. and we thought Eve wasn't going to be alive and then he put her together at the end or no no no he still got smashed by the time he got to the Alito deck but we also didn't have him like losing his personality

55:53Griffin Newman:which is the true kind of like oh my god we knew it you could feel it but I was at a three and a half years or four years by now and I was just beat down I didn't know it just felt like I'd come tried everything and uh but it was the same guys that I'd always had in the room to like cover my ass before and so we really just stayed in the room and thought and hammered it out until we realized oh uh Wally's more like Chaplin like he changes everybody else and then you have to have the payoff of that and then losing his identity at the end it all seems obvious now but no it does the losing his identity thing it feels so obvious that um it's so it's making movies is crazy because like you telling me that wasn't always part of the movie i'm like i can't believe that well but but at the if you think about it when you start writing a movie nothing was in the movie right and so like it's just that's why i always equate writing to an archaeological dig and it's very ethereal where you just feel like you're you're saying that the story already exists out there but i really do believe that it's it's very much like the angel in the marble and da vinci or when michelangelo chipping it away and letting it fly and uh he always saw it in the cube of marble and uh and i've just seen that happen so many times at pixar where you've uncovered these bones you're just digging all the time trying to build this dinosaur that you claim is in the ground or the story.

57:27And then you don't have a say for what you find and when you find it. You can only give yourself credit for digging in the right place and for how hard you're working at digging things up. But you have to be sort of open-minded to like the answers don't come when you want them to. You just got to be ready to do something about it when they do.

57:44David Sims:I saw Rashida Jones was doing press for the invite and she cited something that you said to her, the mountain metaphor, but it was something to the extent of your job in constructing a story or finding what the story is, is exploring every possible way.

58:00Griffin Newman:When you're trying to figure out the path around the mountain, you're going to go up it, around it, down it, whatever, just move the mountain. Like sometimes you just have to restructure and let something go. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like sometimes you're like, why are we, I can't figure this. Why did we put this mountain here? Let's just go somewhere else. And it's like, right, you're a writer. You can just be like, you know what? Actually, there is a mountain. place. Right. Yeah. You can easily trick yourself into thinking like that's cheating or that you're a failure for not acquiescing to the story gods that like, oh, there was a different path that I just wasn't thinking about.

58:29David Sims:Here's a question I have for you. Your animated films have started with your idea, right? John Carter, you write, but it's an adaptation, obviously. And in the blink of an eye starts with a script from Colby Day. And there are the other live action films that you've been attached to over the years, which were almost always scripts that were out there in the ether. Have you ever tried sitting down and starting a live action script on your own? Is there a reason you feel like you're more attracted to or is that just the nature of how things... Because it's so fucking hard. ...of shaking out. Yeah.

59:00All I've known my career, mostly, is stuff that I either was a party to very from the get-go or was mine. and everything that gets criticized, everything that gets changed, everything that, you know, it's, you take it personally, even when you think you're not, you debate whether you're a failure, whether you're right. It just takes so much out of you emotionally. And once I found out you could actually, I said, wait a minute, some of my favorite directors never wrote what they worked on. And, and, uh, and I, and I realized, um, oh, I don't have to like die on this hill every time I make something.

59:43And so I started looking at things. Some of it was television, some of it was scripts and, uh, and there were a lot of scripts I tried to get made that were other people that never got picked up and just kind of did the more traditional route of like, I would love to see this film. I could totally see how this film should be made. And it was still hard, but it was so much. It it was so easy not to make it about me. It was so easy to be objective. Does TV feel particularly liberating in that sense? It is in the just that I enjoy the doing. Right. It's just the muscles. I enjoy being on set. I enjoy the making of.

1:00:18The older you get, the less you're like, I'm not here to like talk about my career or look it back. Like I've got this much time left while I'm still standing. I'm still healthy. And I love -

1:00:28David Sims:Sorry for making you look back at your career. I apologize. No, but you know what I mean? Like I love the doing. And I was like, it takes four years. And then I finally, you know, in the same building with the same people, like it can get a little maddening and you feel like time stands still. And I just love the camaraderie and the summer camp put on a show that you get on. And I love the brevity. I mean, in two months, I've gone away to do TV, which is about two to three months max. And I've come back to Pixar and nobody knew I left. like that's happened several times and I equate it to being a session player like oh I get it I'm basically somebody else's album this is how they want or you know this is how they want to play it and they they're asking me to come in as a session player and play on this one song out of their all their tracks and I thrive because I just feel so unshackled and unburdened by is it about me what does it say about me?

1:01:28What do I think? You're doing the opposite. It must be so easy. It's not even easy, but it's enjoyable. It's taking a lot of things that I thought were burdensome and making them enjoyable. Because I realized telling the joke for me is half the fun, not just having to write the joke. So a lot of times it's freeing and I get to use my muscles and I get to get outside to just work on a TV show. Try different stuff. Yeah. Are you going to do any more of that? Yeah, I'm going to be on one this fall that I can't talk about right now. Fair enough. But I wasn't looking for, but it's one of my favorite shows.

1:02:04So I was like, psyched. And so I don't know if I'll do them more, but because it's also no life for two months, three months.

1:02:14Griffin Newman:Because it's just constant for every day. Whereas animation, to be fair, it's banker's hours, nine to six, nine to five. You can be got to go to the doctors that day. You can be like, but it's for three or four years. Yeah. And not only that, there just must be a frustration. I'm like, oh, I want to fix this. Okay. Well, yeah, that's going to take a while versus like, hey, you give an actor direction and the next take they do it different or whatever. And this is mean, but they're on a hard on a day where I'm frustrated with another show. I'm going like, you kind of have no excuse not to fix this, guys.

1:02:45You have all the time in the world. So let's put a time limit on like, if you haven't gotten somewhere by the end of the month or the end of the week, like, but that's the other thing that I took back to toy, like Toy Story 5 is the fastest we've ever made a movie outside of Toy Story 2, which was under duress. Yeah. Right. How, how quick, what are we talking about? Three and a half months. Three and a half years. Three and a half months would be pretty impressive. That would be very impressive. I'd be doing it all the time. It was about three and a half years with me away for half, for six months of that to finish up Blink.

1:03:15Finish Blink, yeah. And because I learned on TV to measure time differently, like in TV, any problem, any issue, they go, you talk in the terms of minutes, days, minutes, hours, days. And if you're talking days, you know you're in trouble. So you're always talking like, can we fix it in minutes or hours? In animation, you're talking days, weeks, months. And so it's too easy to just push it down the road or take longer than you need to. So I applied the minutes, hours, days to coming back. And it was a little aggro, a little aggressive, but it was still a better place to be. People were excited that they were getting things solved and getting more times at bat and figuring things out.

1:04:01Griffin Newman:When you have to fix WALL-E, how long does that take? We have to fix, but you know what I mean. That was under duress because all our audience previews are usually set with about six months left to release which means only three months left in production And that's like your last week in regular terms. That's like you've got Friday left. So you know that you're going to change something. You have it on the books. It's almost like reshoots built in. You know there's going to be something you're going to change. Hopefully about 10 % of the movie max or less. And it's strategic where and what you do.

1:04:40And that was about a 30 % change. Yeah. Yeah. No, that was how it was. But it was a hard. It was worth it. It was worth it. It was a hard conversation to have with my crew who was ready to be done. Yeah. I feel like there's video on one of the releases. There's probably video of everything

1:04:56David Sims:I don't want to know about. Of you apologizing before the demand. We'll probably put that on the DVD. But those DVDs, it is,

1:05:03Griffin Newman:I would want, especially, obviously the two, you know, Brad Bird's two movies in the 2000s between Nemo and WALL-E, you've got Incredibles and Ratatouille. And those DVDs, he's pretty upfront about, like, I'm a pain in the ass. Like, I'm really, yeah, I'm really demanding and like, you know, And like I as a kid or as a teen, I was a teen and I was interested in movie making. I was fascinated watching them being like, this is very upfront about like, it's not just like, oh, yeah, we're all so happy to be doing this. He came up with the adage, pain is temporary, film is forever. I quote it all the time.

1:05:32Yeah, it is. It's memorable.

1:05:35Griffin Newman:Yes. But like, obviously, in Brad's movies, you see that in his movies, right? Like, it's like that that character, like, makes it across the line, you know, in terms of the stories he tells or whatever emotions he's driven by or, you know. And I feel like that's what makes the best Pixar movies the best. And that's what makes your Pixar movies good. It's like they all have your kind of, you just have a very funny sensibility. And like, I mean, that is the highest compliment. Like it's because at the end of the day, that's what comes out of us naturally. It's like I was talking on another podcast and I was saying like, I don't feel worthy equating us to the Beatles, but nobody questions that the Beatles were just making they just made like if they never got out of their basement or the or paul mccartney's family bathroom they would make hummable tunes that everybody would remember immediately like that's just what came out of them yeah they didn't change for the audience they just tapped into something that they naturally did that worked great for the rest of the world and and so when you put us together the infamous brain trust everything we did got more entertaining like we're just naturally entertainers.

1:06:46And people discredit that they treat it like costumes to put on after the fact. But we're like, if you do it right, it's essential. Like you, the joke is telling the story, is being part of the machinery and part of the entertainment and the core of it.

1:07:00David Sims:The sequence in Nemo of the story getting spread across the ocean, which leads into Nigel telling Nemo. That night. Which, this is the thing. I feel like this is one of those legendary stories in your career of how does the word get from one side of the ocean to the other? And you end up voicing like three different characters in that sequence. Well, just for the proof of concept, my co-writer was Bob Peterson, who's one of the funniest men I've ever met. And he makes me funny or brings out the funny in me that I can't seem to access fully on my own. And it's no different than being with a great improv partner.

1:07:37Like, you just throw me the challenge. You know, so we like, we were like, how do we do this? And we, it was like six o 'clock or something, five o 'clock in the afternoon. And we had to have something up on the reels the next morning. And so it was, you treat it like an improv challenge. Like, how would you make the news get across? And then, then you just were like, we can draw really fast. We're, we're our own scratch voices. So we just put mics up like this in the room and just craft it. We craft out stuff all the time that take only a few hours. We just put this real high bar challenge to like, all right, you got to solve this exact problem and you got to do it in an entertaining way.

1:08:15And we've done plenty of those where they didn't stick, but this one stuck.

1:08:19David Sims:I mean, but equating it to improv, Ben and I both come from improv backgrounds, among other things, many things we've done. But it makes sense in that sort of the game is how quickly can you identify the truth in what has now been set up in front of you, right? And that sequence is such a dynamic like speed rounding of, well, what would that type of fish be? And what would they do? And how would they do it? And what would they sound like? And the escalation of that and the build of that and the series of correct identifications that all feel right to the audience, which then leads into the most emotional moment in the movie to me, which is more effective because it's coming off of...

1:08:58David Sims:Nima realizing Marlon's coming for him. It's like 10 perfect verbal gags in a row that are all character and behavioral. That was Steve Jobs' favorite part of the movie, too. Well, because it should just be the most shoe-leathery kind of, this is just story weight, how to get from point A to point B. And instead, all of it is personal. Well, I've got to give most of the comedy props to Bob. Bob's just so funny. He could just see it spitting out. And I'm such a structuralist. Bob Peterson, right?

1:09:29Griffin Newman:Yeah. that uh i think again when we're together we're both able to like speak each other's language but we're able to like i was just you know how does this build was my probably my biggest driver even though i'm still trying to be funny bouncing off of him and he's like how to make it funnier and but he cares just as much about building but we because the emphasis on the sentence was different for us um that just showed you how strong we were chemistry wise working together And then I'm such a, I'm such a film score nut that I'm always thinking about, is there a way the music can do this? Is there a way the music can be involved?

1:10:07Is there a way? And, uh, it's one of Thomas Newman's best scores. Yeah. And I was, I wrote to two pieces of music or two composers, um, all the time for Nemo. And that was, uh, 90 % of the time or 80 % of the time was anything Thomas Newman had scored. because I just was like, and so he became a character in my mind. Any in particular though? Any jams? Shawshank, but particularly Meet Joe Black. Oh, that's a great score. I mean, it goes over the top at the end and that's why I love it. I mean, that movie's crazy. And then I would listen to Nine Inch Nails, The Fragile. Oh yeah. All right. Because I kept saying, I mean, this is, is this.

1:10:48Have you ever met Trent? Yes. I told him that. I told him that on the red carpet. That's so funny. year. But, uh, I just was so afraid. My biggest fear for making that movie was that it was going to be treacly and be an afterschool special because we had to go cute for a lot of it and innocent and sweet and adorable. And I just was worried about tone and the balance being right because my, I grew up in the ocean. I grew up being scared of the ocean, but fascinated by it At the same time, I remember putting on a little diving mask and, you know, in needy shallow water and ducking my head under and then being freaked out because things started to disappear so quickly in the void and you didn't know what was behind you.

1:11:30And I and I that was the first thing I ever typed was and it's the I think it's still in the first page of the script. I just typed the void and I wanted that. that was the big bold the two big bold things at the time i remember really early on was like i want to like not do the circle of life fuck that it doesn't exist things are out of life is

1:11:52Griffin Newman:one of the most bananas it's gorgeous it's very impressive but you're like i'm sorry what the animals have a king the theory that some of them don't talk i just like things are out to get you it's a predatory world and there's a reason we're always scared about our kid crossing the street and so the ocean is the perfect you have to live in it but you can't you have to be afraid of it all the time so i said can i keep that alive throughout the movie and then the other thing was can i make the parent the main character not the kid and that seemed radical at the time it's a fair point yeah usually it's like the kid loses the parent either permanently or temporarily and has to figure something out to grow up so that's um and that happens in emo and That's why I listened to The Fragile, because it would remind me how dark the...

1:12:38And I found out from him that he wrote that album listening to La Mer. And Debussy was suicidal when he wrote La Mer by The Oceanside. And so the whole thing has this dark, dark, deep connection. But it would ground me like that 10, 20 % would just bring me back to going, don't be afraid to be scary. Don't be afraid to be tense. Don't be afraid to be unpredictable. Because that's part of the point of this movie is that you're in the real world. and the whole driving thing of this main character is fear and we have to be afraid too or else it's just theory.

1:13:11Griffin Newman:It pervades the movie, but not too much. You know, like it doesn't overwhelm it, which obviously I know with a lot of the movies you guys make, that can happen, right? Where it's like, oh, Woody's coming off a little too agitated or villainous or anxious. And same with Marlon. Marlon's too worked up. Like he's too negative. I think I said this in the episode.

1:13:35David Sims:Every time I watch Nemo and he gets lost, I go, this is impossible. Right, right.

1:13:40Griffin Newman:He'll never fucking find him. The stakes couldn't feel more insurmountable. I was still trying to solve the movie and Bob Peterson came on about a year or two in and he was like, the thing that blows my mind about this movie is you just spend the whole time going, how? Yeah. Which is the magic of a lot of this. You know, like Dory 2. just like you know and WALL-E like these movies where it's like a great distance is going to be traveled by a tiny thing and every time you're kind of like I don't know how they're going to do this and characters with impediments Toy Story obviously pretty much always is like hey the toy got taken across the street and you're like across the street the machinations of the moving truck chase in Toy Story was mine it's so good and I boarded that out roughly and then everybody came in to clean it up because we had to do it under duress and I realized then and it's only proven all the way until Toy Story 5 that that comes more readily to me is the crazy engineering of how things will all fit did you and Monsters Inc too did you have any because Monsters Inc also has the like we're somehow crossing dimensions and you know all that and there's I'm not the only person but that's just if you had to get down to what comes out of me the easiest, not easy, but easiest is how is this going to ultimately pay off?

1:15:00How can I hide it as a setup? How can it not be seen right away? Is that the right brain thing? Is that just looking from - I don't know. My dad was an engineer, chemical engineer who basically worked for a skunk's work, top secret company that had to solve things for the government when they run out of time. So I think I got that from my dad. What did your mom do? My mom was a frustrated uh actress so you like spielberg the artist and the scientist yeah he and i've actually had that comparison and uh but i realized i don't know science and math like my dad did so that part of the muscle goes towards abstract story building yeah story structure so i think that's why people would love me to stay in that lane because i'm good at it but you live long enough and you're not interested in scratching the same itch all the time.

1:15:52Like I'm also a hopeless romantic. I'm also a sci-fi nut. I'm also, uh, love drama, just good drama and in, in, in new ways of finding tension and drama. And so exploring stuff that wouldn't come readily to me, but I would love to see as a, as a, as an audience member is why I take chances, whether they hit or miss on Carter or blink is it that's making me feel as adventuresome and satisfied as I was on the first two animated

1:16:22David Sims:movies I ever got to touch is there an ultimate at least I shouldn't say ultimate is there at this moment and it's your most eager to scratch that you haven't gotten to within your films

1:16:31Griffin Newman:yeah because you've mostly worked in sci-fi when you've done live action even even in tv you've done some like you did three body and you did yeah I also argue that toy story is low-key sci-fi yeah a little bit um something i i clearly lean that way um i i try not to think too hard about it i'm i've been enjoying not having anything planned i didn't plan toy story 5 i didn't plan any of the tv shows that got offered to me and i didn't plan the scripts that suddenly i read and i was like oh i want to try and make that you know there's for a long time i was trying to get this movie made called uh revolver that was written by kate trefy yeah we that came up in our research is that that's the beatles like still should be stopping in alaska or something yeah it's a great script and uh and i got i got paul i got the beatles estate okay for four songs i got ethan and maya hawks yeah which songs uh they were pre revolver because it's all about because that alaska moment happened and they hadn't released revolver yet nobody knew that they were making that and uh um so it was like stuff from uh rubber soul and and stuff like that But I got Ethan.

1:17:41It was a kind of a paper moon relationship between father and daughter. So I got Ethan Hawke and Meinhardt attached to it. And nobody bit. This was right before and then during the pandemic. And so just the whole world just rocked. And nobody bit. Yeah. And it's still to me like such an obvious win of a movie. You never see the Beatles in it. Yeah. Right. Which is always the biggest fear. Because this really happened. And there was a, in 64, I think there was a nine point something earthquake. It's the largest earthquake ever on the North American continent or around. In Alaska, right? In Alaska.

1:18:15Griffin Newman:If you go to Alaska, they never shut up about it. There's signs everywhere. How did an earthquake happen? But there was, they were still in recovery a year later. And there was one functioning hotel that you could stay at. And the Beatles were flying to Japan to do, to do their last, nobody knew their last touring. and they got rerouted by a typhoon and had to land in Alaska. And they stayed for a night and a day in this hotel in Anchorage in 1965. And so Kate Trefice from Anchorage and her mother was there when that happened. And so she sort of elaborated because her mother had a crush on George Harrison.

1:18:53So her main heroine character is just her goal is to get into that hotel and sleep with George Harrison. And it's this beautiful coming of age story. just beautiful and i still wish i could make it and uh was it chairman spaceman what was that was something searchlight asked me to be involved in okay and so i was heavy on the uh and that was before i read blank so it was my my shot at getting something else made and so it was from an based on an article uh from uh the new yorker and uh and we worked on many iterations of the script with the author of the piece. And he's a great script writer. And it was clear what he wanted and what Searchlight wanted weren't matching.

1:19:42And to be fair, the world changed. Like to do something about a billionaire going into space was fascinating. And then it just became off-putting and then it became reality. And so it just was one of those ill-timed things. Those ill-timed things.

1:19:57Griffin Newman:now I'm seeing here in 1994 you worked on the episode Cookies Oookies, Bloookies on the TV show Two Stupid Dogs oh wow that was while I was working on Toy Story early days so I had friends now there were two stupid dogs in that show one big one long it was a friend of Pete Docter's that was working on that show and he needed some boarding done and we just wanted to help out it's always so funny with animators where like you look back in their career it's like all this great work and it's like yeah and then also just some random cartoon from the 90s that was a good show that was a funny show I remember that show

1:20:35David Sims:the Secret Squirrel segments on that rings a bell rings a bell so you were the prime audience I mean we were like seven years old or whatever you worked on the Bakshi Mighty Mouse as well right what was that experience that was a murderer's row of people on that show if you could you couldn't hire that that's pretty much your first credit yeah right out of college my friend Jim Merton who would go on to be a major director on Simpsons and Rich Moore were working on it and Rich Moore who did Ben Wreck-It Ralph yeah that's right yeah we all went to school together and so they were Ralph had this pattern of coming into Hollywood this all through the 70s into the 80s where he He would come into Hollywood off of just his Fritz the Cat fame or Lord of the Rings fame and get money enough to get something started and then burn all those bridges and then leave town once it failed and then wait for the regime change, which would happen about every five years until nobody knew who he was again, except for his credits.

1:21:40And then he'd come back out to California and start over again. And we were on this iteration because he had worked on the original Mighty Mouse as a young guy. okay and i think it was tarry tunes was here in new york i think if i have it right he worked on it in new york wasn't it was it in tarrytown maybe maybe you guys are in front of the yeah we got we got devices but anyway he got the rights to it and wanted it to be remade so john chris felushi was his was his guy bruce tim was on there vicky jensen worked there oh those are yeah like all of us became somebody in animation but no but we were all nobodies then it was crazy it was a crazy time we worked in an abandoned uh preschool in van nuys that's what that show feels like yeah

1:22:27Griffin Newman:it feels like it it came out escaped something and the intercom system was still working and he took ralph took the principal's office and he was this huge guy from the bronx i think i want i don't want to if he's bronx or brooklyn yeah that's the vibe he had um out of borough and he had a bit of a a lisp and you would, he, he considered us 20 something. He wanted striders cheap. So this is like 86, 87. So we would have legal pads and pencils and we'd sit in this windowless teacher's lounge that clearly had still all the smoke from cigarettes from all the previous teachers that had ever worked there in it.

1:23:01And, uh, he, he would just hit the intercom and go, guys in my office right now. And, and suddenly pick up and you'd go into his office, but he would keep pulling out his old friends that he had made in the 70s so one day he was like guy this is frank for that i like you to meet frank for that and we're like and it's guys chain smoking comes in we're like eating frank for setta and then then they guys because this is this is amos he sells cookies and it's like and famous amos comes in dressed exactly dressed exactly like he is on the package with the samples in a in a bag he had cookies on and it turns out he worked in wow in post and sound when he worked on and he was one of the sound engineers are thinking for one of his movies in LA.

1:23:42And then he's, he was, he said, and Ralph was saying like, yeah, he's trying to tell me he's going to start the cookie business. I'm like, get out of here. And like, you want to put money in the cookie business? I'm not going to put money in the cookie business.

1:23:52David Sims:He was like a music manager and he made the cookies as like gifts to his clients. Yeah. And everyone's like, yeah, sell the cookies, my guy. And he, and he made a killing. Uh, Jim would say, uh, it was every day was an interesting story working with you. Is there anything I want to let you go because we already have a second plan We're going to chat

1:24:10Griffin Newman:with you a little more in depth about John Carter, obviously, at the screening tonight. So obviously, we can sort of dip into that more there. But yeah, anything else you wanted to bug him? Because you terrifiedly... two stupid dogs question. Yeah, that was really important. That was high on the list. It's been sitting on that. I don't remember it at all. Really? I don't know.

1:24:28David Sims:You texted me after finding me, Mo, and you said you guys got things mostly correct. Oh, sure. Yes. I'm wondering if there is a thing, because we were talking right before we started recording about how when you do these press tours, you have to condense stories and then you create a myth that then circulates for decades and you have to correct your own myth. Is there a thing that you have heard us say as you terrifyingly have been listening to the episodes on you? Yeah, please don't do that. That you feel like we have helped perpetuate? To be fair, I haven't listened to the Carter or the Blink because I can't mind.

1:24:58It's too soon. Therapy. It's too soon for me to hear. Yes, yes. but I can't remember what the Nemo things were there was nothing there was nothing egregious it was just more like oh that's a little off

1:25:10David Sims:it can be is there a myth that you wish you could correct here we're trying to get you to say something so we can fire JJ we're really trying to fire JJ oh I see yeah yes he spelled your name Pandrew Stanton can we fire him for that yeah no P P is silent P is silent I would have texted you with the correction if it was that egregious. No, I let JJ know that he did a good job. He's a good guy.

1:25:36Griffin Newman:He's a good guy. And you're very, very, very nice to bless us with your presence on this show. You're really nice. It's a hilarious show. I'm showing my age. I don't get half the references half the time. Oh, please. Anytime you want to get one of the references, you just text Griffin. Just text me and I'll explain the references. But I'm impressed. I'm impressed with your film knowledge. Thanks. I'm impressed with your film analysis. That means a lot. That's very nice. Thank you. impressed with your running gags.

1:26:00David Sims:As I said, I mean, I truly, a lot of the analysis comes like backwards retrofit from hearing you explain things over the years. Like a wildly disproportionate amount of it comes from the way you have kind of open sourced your sense of story specifically. Well, again, it keeps coming back to, I have a sixth grade education and if I can get it, then I feel there's hope for anybody else to get it. So I kind of try to pass it on. that's about it that's our podcast but with like a second grade education thank you for doing this thanks guys thank you and looking forward to tonight I'm excited I've never seen the film on the screen since and are you gonna do it are you gonna tough it out oh yeah alright it's not hard for me to watch it's not hard for me to watch any of my movies I know why I made them and I know why I made the choices and I don't usually regret the choices

1:26:53Griffin Newman:some people are like no no no I'll never I never watch my stuff back I like that about the most like I can't watch Toy Story 5 again sure because you just watched it like 5 billion times yeah I literally one of our editors assistants kept track and I had seen it 95 times oh my god so I mean to be fair I've seen some of your movies close to that many times to be fair I've seen it 91 times like Nemo took me 7 years before I was to go watch some of it's just because you just want to see it like do I have an even fighting chance of seeing it as a movie yeah like with Crash Eyes all of them are a yearbook they're just a yearbook like i remember where i was when i shot that i remember every choice and when it's long enough of a time passing you uh it becomes fond memories it's like opening up an old photo album and you're just like oh yeah and it triggers memories that you had forgotten about it so it's very just great that's just great yeah that's lovely but like just collecting all the photos that i'll oh yeah is uh it was like i i found stuff I forgot I had, which was exciting.

1:27:53Griffin Newman:Are you in touch with anyone left on that movie? Oh yeah, Samantha Morton and I just... And she's having such a year. I gave her such kudos for Cersei. Pretty incredible stuff. That's probably the highlight of the movie. And it's a great movie. And I'm so happy for her. It's like a whole other generation is learning how great she is. Absolutely. And Francis Defoe, I haven't talked to him in a while, but he's a good New Yorker pal. And we all loved working on that movie and it was hard, but it was, we enjoyed it till the day it came out. And then, and, uh, we all had plans, which I'll talk about tonight about what we were going to do.

1:28:31I found the outlines for the other two. And I'm like, Oh, we really knew what we were, where we were going and what we were going to do. And so there's any, there's a lot of, not a lot, but the critique, some of the critiques about the first one are actually because we just knew where we were going with the second one and we weren't going to give away all the marbles or do what you would normally do in a standalone film. So, which, you know, is a naive mistake of ours to have done, but...

1:28:56David Sims:I'm excited to see it. I'm excited to see it. I'm excited to see all the stuff you dug up. Especially with an appreciative crowd. I realize this may never happen again. I mean, sold out. Sold out right away. Right away. That's awesome. Second showing. People are excited. We are doing a second showing. Sweet. Thanks, guys. Thank you. Thank you so much, sir.

1:29:18Griffin Newman:Blank Check with Griffin and David is hosted by Griffin Newman and David Sims. Our executive producer is me, Ben Hosley. Our creative producer is Marie Barty Salinas. And our associate producer is AJ McKeon. This show is mixed and edited by AJ McKeon and Alan Smithy. Research by J.J. Birch. Our theme song is by Lane Montgomery and the Great American Novel. With additional music by Alex Mitchell. Artwork by Joe Bowen, Ollie Moss, and Pat Reynolds. Our production assistant is Minnick. Special thanks to David Cho, Jordan Fish, and Nate Patterson for their production help. Head over to BlankCheckPod.com for links to all of the real nerdy shit.

1:29:57Griffin Newman:Join our Patreon, Blank Check Special Features, for exclusive franchise commentaries and bonus episodes. Follow us on social at BlankCheckPod. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter, Checkbook, on Substack. This podcast is created and produced by Blank Check Productions.