Peter Sohn: ​‘The process of mak­ing a Pixar film is devastating’

A novi­tiate in the rar­i­fied sta­ble of direc­tors who get to make a Pixar movie, Peter Sohn cut his teeth at the stu­dio as mak­er of the delight­ful short fea­ture, Part­ly Cloudy, which played at the top end of Pete Docter’s whim­si­cal 2009 film, Up. With The Good Dinosaur, he steps up to the plate for his fea­ture debut, telling the sto­ry of a young dino named Arlo who is sep­a­rat­ed from his fam­i­ly and has to nav­i­gate his way home.

LWLies: Is The Good Dinosaur Pixar’s answer to the clas­sic Amer­i­can western?

Sohn: It’s almost like Old Yeller. It’s not a west­ern, but it takes place in that fron­tier era. But, there’s voice work by Sam Elliott in there, and that’s a def­i­nite nod to cow­boys of a cer­tain time. The film stemmed from the evo­lu­tion of the ​“what if…” ques­tion. What if her­bi­vores evolved to become agrar­i­an farm­ers? And would car­ni­vores then become ranch­ers? There were routes and ideas where we had gun­slingers and things like that. But I’d see it and think, I’m glad we’re not doing that as it’s just a par­o­dy of a west­ern. But the world as a place which is still untamed – that aspect was inter­est­ing. We def­i­nite­ly ref­er­enced a lot of movies that show­case land­scape in a cer­tain way: works by John Ford, George Stevens, David Lean and his great cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Fred­die Young.

You’ve talked about how your pro­duc­er, Denise Ream, kept ​“out­side forces” at bay when mak­ing the movie.

Well maybe out­side forces is not the cor­rect thing to say. But it was almost refer­ring to my own fears as a film­mak­er. I could take things per­son­al­ly and she’d find ways to shake me out of it. In terms of pro­duc­tion, when we need­ed to get some­thing start­ed, she would come in and say, ​“No, no, no – give us a lit­tle bit more time before the beast comes in.”

The Beast?

Yes, the beast. The machine. Because mon­ey would be spent on things. It’s like the mon­ster that stands behind you with an aba­cus. More peo­ple come in, more mon­ey goes out. If you have a sto­ry prob­lem, the pro­duc­er judges where we’re at, and if it’s still in a tough place, she make sure we’re not wast­ing any time or resource.

Pixar movies feel like these per­fect prod­ucts where direc­tors have nev­er had to com­pro­mise. Is this a myth?

It is a myth. Every direc­tor I’ve talked to has a sequence which haunts them or some­thing they could’ve done bet­ter. I’m a big fan of Pixar, even though I work for them, but I also try to get sto­ries out of them about the old days, about the things they had to go through to get these films made. I ask them how hap­py they are with their movies, and they always say that they’re so hap­py, but… There’s always a ​‘but’. And it’s this thing, and that thing. But the process itself is dev­as­tat­ing. It’s pur­pose­ful­ly dev­as­tat­ing. You try a lot of things out, and you toss a lot of things out too. I say those words, but it requires a lot of effort to try an idea out in this medium.

Dur­ing pro­duc­tion, did you get bet­ter at guess­ing what was going to work and what wasn’t?

I can’t say I got bet­ter, but I got faster. I’m sure some of the oth­er Pixar guys got bet­ter, but for me… I was scared. I didn’t have all the con­fi­dence in the world jump­ing into this thing. But through the jour­ney, I felt stronger. There would be this con­stant bat­tle between your guts and your brains. When some­thing doesn’t work, your gut feels it, but you have to divert it to your brain to find out why. Then you’d try a new way, and your gut feels bet­ter. Always pro­tect the gut. At that point, you learn to trust your­self. I know that’s a trite thing to say, but that’s the way I was able to build confidence.

How much is each Pixar film the prod­uct of the entire company?

We would have a screen­ing and we would gath­er the guys and ask them for notes. Imme­di­ate­ly, they would talk about what was work­ing and what wasn’t work­ing. But, they would nev­er insist on changes. They stay away far enough so they can be objec­tive. There is a com­mu­nal osmo­sis that hap­pens. They give great advice and I take a lot of it. But it’s nev­er dic­tat­ed. At the same time, when I watch the movie, all I see is the peo­ple who made it.