Beyond Infin­i­ty: Lee Unkrich on the past, present and future of Pixar

When Lee Unkrich joined Pixar as a young edi­tor in 1994, the stu­dio was just start­ing out. Less than a year lat­er, a lit­tle movie called Toy Sto­ry cat­a­pult­ed the stu­dio to glob­al fame. Still push­ing the bound­aries of ani­mat­ed sto­ry­telling 24 years lat­er, their lat­est fea­ture, Coco, sees life after death take cen­tre stage. Here Unkrich reflects on mak­ing Pixar his­to­ry and get­ting over his fear of failure.

“The very first day I start­ed, they sat me down in a screen­ing room to watch the sto­ry reels for Toy Sto­ry, which had just begun ani­ma­tion. The only thing that was ani­mat­ed at that point was the green army men sequence, and I was so blown away by it – I couldn’t believe that I was going to get to work on this real­ly cool movie. All of a sud­den the lights flipped on, and John Las­seter came in with a bunch of ani­ma­tors. Nobody said a word to me. They sat down and start­ed review­ing the ani­ma­tion that was being done. I got to be a fly on the wall, see­ing the very begin­nings of the film. Lit­er­al­ly the very first shot of Woody being ani­mat­ed. At the time it was cool – and it’s still cool in ret­ro­spect that I was present for that his­tor­i­cal moment.”

“We don’t think of our films as children’s films, we just think of them as movies. We know that kids are going to be a big part of our audi­ence, so we always make sure there’s noth­ing inap­pro­pri­ate for them, but I can’t remem­ber ever hav­ing a sin­gle con­ver­sa­tion where we think about what kids would like. Kids for the most part have ter­ri­ble taste, so if we tried to tar­get enter­tain­ment to them, I think we’d end up with some­thing insipid that nobody would like. Kids are smarter than we give them cred­it for, and wis­er at times, so I think it’s okay to put sto­ries out that maybe have more mature themes, and don’t talk down to kids. I think that they con­nect with that, and respect that they’re not being spo­ken down to.”

“The idea of inno­va­tion is nev­er what dri­ves us, or why we pick cer­tain sub­ject mat­ter. It’s always in ser­vice of the sto­ry. Some movies are more chal­leng­ing than oth­ers visu­al­ly, but we have got­ten to the point where we can do just about any­thing we want. It’s not like in the begin­ning when it was a huge deal to fig­ure out how to do fur, or how to do water. Now we know how to do all that stuff, it’s more a mat­ter of how can we do it effi­cient­ly. At the end of the day, we’re try­ing to make a movie with a cer­tain bud­get and a cer­tain amount of time. We have to rein our­selves and our cre­ative appetites in.”

“Most of us were in our twen­ties when we start­ed mak­ing Toy Sto­ry – we’ve all grown up togeth­er, we’ve all got­ten mar­ried and had kids, and expe­ri­enced love and loss. We’ve lost a lot of loved ones, includ­ing peo­ple at Pixar. The old­er that you get, you tend to start reflect­ing on the past more, and think­ing about how it leads to the present moment. I think it’s some­thing that nat­u­ral­ly hap­pens, so if you start to see themes like mem­o­ry emerg­ing in what we do, it’s a reflec­tion of where we’re at in our lives now.

“My co-direc­tor on Coco, Adrien Moli­na, was 10 years old when Toy Sto­ry came out, and my assis­tant was a baby when Toy Sto­ry came out. There’s gonna come a day soon when I work with peo­ple who weren’t even born when Toy Sto­ry came out – we’re right on the cusp of that now. It makes me feel very old. Twen­ty-five years have gone by since I start­ed at Pixar, but it doesn’t feel like that. I feel like I’m the same young per­son I was then, but time has a way of march­ing on.”

“We think about it, but you can’t be con­sumed by that, because you’d nev­er get any work done, you’d just be frozen with fear. When I made Toy Sto­ry 3, I had a lot on my shoul­ders. I remem­ber feel­ing like I real­ly didn’t wan­na go down in film his­to­ry as the guy who made the crap­py sequel to two of the beloved films of all time. So there is that pres­sure. But there was a lot more pres­sure ear­ly on, when lit­er­al­ly every sin­gle film that we made was crit­i­cal­ly acclaimed and huge­ly suc­cess­ful; nobody want­ed to make the first film that did any less than that. Now we’ve made 19 movies. Some have done bet­ter than oth­ers. But at the end of the day, there’s an audi­ence for every­thing we’ve made. Whether you like a film per­son­al­ly or not, it’s some­body in the world’s favourite movie. We’re hap­py with that.”

“When we first set out to make the film, the very first idea that I pitched was very dif­fer­ent from what we end­ed up with. I was telling a sto­ry about a lit­tle Amer­i­can boy, who had an Amer­i­can father but a moth­er from Mex­i­co, she had passed away, and the father was tak­ing the boy down to Mex­i­co to meet the Mex­i­can side of his fam­i­ly and expe­ri­ence Día de Muer­tos (The Day of the Dead) in an effort to try and help his son get through the grief of los­ing his mom. That sounds real­ly heavy, and there were things about it that were too heavy, but it was also very joy­ous and cel­e­bra­to­ry, and we still went to the Land of the Dead. It was very dif­fer­ent from what we have now.

“I had an epiphany one day that we were telling a sto­ry from a very West­ern point of view. A lot of peo­ple have this pre­con­cep­tion that Día de Muer­tos is just a big par­ty and that nobody in Mex­i­co cares about death, or is afraid of death, but the real­i­ty is much more nuanced. Of course, peo­ple are affect­ed by loved ones dying, and they do mourn them, but they have a slight­ly dif­fer­ent rela­tion­ship with death, and they do find a way of turn­ing what could be sad around into a pos­i­tive cel­e­bra­tion of peo­ples’ lives. From the very begin­ning, we knew it was vital that we tell a sto­ry that was cul­tur­al­ly authen­tic and respect­ful, all that much more so because I’m not Lati­no myself, and our pro­duc­er Dar­la Anderson’s not Lati­no. We made a vow very ear­ly on that we would do every­thing we to make the right deci­sions and to sur­round our­selves with expert advice.”

Coco is released 19 Jan­u­ary. Read our review here.