Inside Out 2, with Pete Docter

Conversing with Mark Labberton

“All of our emotions are there for a good reason. They’re positive. They want to help. And a little anxiety is good. … All of society is saying, ‘Get rid of emotion. It's awful. It's evil.’ It's not true.”

In this episode, Mark welcomes Pete Docter, executive producer of Inside Out 2, and the Oscar-winning director of Monsters, Inc., Up, and Inside Out. Pete joined Pixar Animation Studios in 1990 at twenty-one years old as its third animator, and is now Pixar’s chief creative officer.

Mark and Pete discuss the ins and outs of Inside Out 2, including its themes about emotion, psychology, adolescence, and the discovery and acceptance of who we are. Pete reflects on the power of music to convey unconscious meaning, alongside the subtle and sophisticated animation techniques used by Pixar today. We learn about the new emotion characters (including Anxiety, Embarrassment, and Ennui), as well as those that almost made the cut. And Pete comments on the spiritual and moral dimensions that Inside Out 2 is able to explore.

About Pete Docter

Pete Docter is the Oscar-winning director of Monsters, Inc., Up, and Inside Out, and chief creative officer at Pixar Animation Studios. He most recently directed Disney and Pixar’s Oscar-winning feature film Soul with producer Dana Murray and co-director Kemp Powers, which is now streaming on Disney+.

Starting at Pixar in 1990 as the studio’s third animator, Docter collaborated on and helped develop the story and characters for Toy Story, Pixar’s first full-length animated feature film, for which he also was supervising animator. He served as a storyboard artist on A Bug’s Life and wrote initial story treatments for both Toy Story 2 and WALL•E. Aside from directing his three films, Docter also executive produced Monsters University and the Academy Award–winning Brave.

Docter’s interest in animation began at the age of eight, when he created his first flipbook. He studied character animation at California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) in Valencia, California, where he produced a variety of short films, one of which won a Student Academy Award. Those films have since been shown in animation festivals worldwide and are featured on the Pixar Short Films Collection, volume 2. Upon joining Pixar, he animated and directed several commercials, and has been nominated for eight Academy Awards, including Best Animated Feature–winners Up and Inside Out and nominee Monsters, Inc., and Best Original Screenplay for Up, Inside Out and WALL•E. In 2010, Up also was nominated for a Best Picture Oscar by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Show Notes

• Continuity and discontinuity in Inside Out 2
• Pete Docter comments on the main character/setting of Inside Out series: Riley and what’s going on inside her head.
• Some psychologists think there are 27 emotions
• Puberty and adolescence
• New emotions: Bringing Anxiety, Embarrassment, and Ennui (Boredom) into the picture
• Anxiety as the new protagonist
• Changing body and outgrowing an old sweater
• Riley’s pimple: “That was something that Kelsey Mann, the director, was big on from the beginning. He would say, we were so used to seeing characters represented in this perfect, idealized way. And yet, when we look at the mirror, we realize, ‘Hey, I don't measure up to that.’ That was kind of the message of the film from the beginning—is learning to accept yourself. You know, the flaws and all, because that's so much of our civilization is measuring ourselves against others. And especially that period in time growing up, you're suddenly socially aware, and where you fit in or don't.”
• From family to friends as the dominant group
• “All of our emotions are there for a good reason. They're positive. They want to help. And a little anxiety is good. Lisa L'Amour, who was a consultant on the film, her big thing is like, all of society is saying, ‘Get rid of emotion. It's awful. It's evil.’ It's not true.”
• Researching the psychology of emotion for the film, and experimenting with various emotions as characters
• Anxiety as subtly controlling
• Schadenfreude almost made Inside Out and Inside Out 2 as a gag.
• Anxiety is not directly related to puberty.
• “Who are we? What are the things that make us who we are? Is it just our experiences, our beliefs, our actions that we take? And all of those start to get folded into the film.”
• “For me, the creative process is all about the nitty gritty details.”
• “So really that's just what I'm trying to do is for us in that room, as we're making it: Are we engaged? Are we emotional?”
• The complexity of guilt and shame
• Learning that sincerity—the truth of the character—is the key
• Special Effects work in Inside Out 2
• The subtle and sophisticated storytelling device of Riley’s eyes.
• How digital animation works today—more like a puppet than a drawing.
• Music as an unconscious communicator
• Dr. Paul Ekman: Emotions are largely under the hood.
• Soul (2020) and the philosophy of dualism as a Greek concept
• Embodied souls—a colliding, intertwined, inseparable reality
• Understanding the instrumentality of the brain
• The amazing amount of goodness that Pixar has injected into the world
• Pete Docter on working with Amy Poehler, Tony Hale, and Maya Hawke
• “Our emotions are really on our team.”
• Fear as a dominant emotion for the era we live in
• Joy vs Sadness or Joy vs Fear
• How Pete Docter’s faith informs his approach to Inside Out
• “One other little bit of research we did that I was shocked by is that there's apparently a part of your brain that lights up especially when you watch animation.”