He made the film, "Inside Out," after wondering what was going on in his daughter's mind.
At Festival de Cannes, Brut spoke to Peter Docter, filmmaker and Pixar's Chief Creative Officer, about how to stay creative.
#Cannes2023
At Festival de Cannes, Brut spoke to Peter Docter, filmmaker and Pixar's Chief Creative Officer, about how to stay creative.
#Cannes2023
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Short filmTranscript
00:00Okay, so picture this. You come into a meeting and we're like,
00:02all right, we have 15 minutes to figure out all the fun things that we're going to do in this movie. Go!
00:07Versus, oh, we're at lunch, we're just talking, we're talking about our kids and,
00:12oh, that reminds me of this story that my kid did this morning.
00:15Hey, could that go in the movie? Maybe, or at least it brings,
00:18I think the more sort of loose your brain is in those moments, the more creative ideas show up.
00:26When did you first realize, oh, I have some idea, I think I can create some stuff?
00:32Me?
00:32Yeah.
00:34Well, I came from, I was lucky, my parents were very encouraging,
00:38and so I discovered flip books, I think, was the thing that made me light up. So you know how,
00:42like, you might draw something in a corner of a page and then every one is a little different,
00:47and then when you flip through them, it looks like it's moving. That I found in,
00:51I think it was third or fourth grade, and I've been making flip books ever since.
00:56The idea of bringing something to life is just too much, too fascinating.
01:01You started at Pixar when you were 21.
01:04Yeah.
01:04And now, 30 years later, you are chief creative officer. Can you describe us this job?
01:12What do you do every day?
01:12Yeah, it's a weird job, isn't it? Yeah. Well, it's a great job because I get to work with
01:16some of the most talented people in the world, amazing filmmakers, and so really my job is to
01:22just select which people and then what projects do we want to start messing around with.
01:29What does creative means to you?
01:32Creative, that's a good question. It's an easy word to throw around,
01:35but it's a little hard to define. I think it's the unexpected
01:39combination of ideas that somehow make sense together, and it's both surprising,
01:50but also makes total sense in a perfect world. I remember Glen Keane, do you know him?
01:54No.
01:55He's the animator who drew the Beast in Beauty and the Beast, or Ariel in the original Little
02:01Mermaid. And he said, oh, a real creative idea is one that as soon as somebody says it, you're like,
02:08why didn't I think of that? So I like to think that that's great creativity. And that's not always
02:14fun, but I think the creative process is closing doors, that's part of it. It's at the beginning,
02:20it's widening, and then it's closing. I think a lot of people have this idea that either you're
02:24talented or you're not, you're just born with talent. And so geniuses like Walt Disney just,
02:29oh, Dumbo, that's in my head, and then they just make it, right? That's not really how it works.
02:34You have to practice. So if someone handed you a guitar and said, you're playing a concert,
02:39and you're like, I've never played before. Yeah, but you have amazing innate talent. Well, no,
02:44you still have to practice. You have to work the chops, you have to know how to play the chords.
02:49I think filmmaking, the creative process in general is the same, you have to practice.
02:54So the more you make stuff, and the more it's reflective of your own passions,
03:00as opposed to imagining what you think someone else might want to see,
03:04I think those are all important things. Do you feel sometimes some kind of
03:09pressure to be creative, or do you still kind of have fun?
03:14I think those are the same thing, right? Having fun, the more, okay, the more fear-driven,
03:20the more worry, that tends to shut down the creative brain. I think play is, from when we
03:27were little kids, you remember, you sit, and you have your figures, and the rest of the world
03:31disappears, and you're just in this. And I think what I get to do is like that too, where in a
03:37perfect world, I'm sitting in a room, and the rest of the world disappears, and I'm just focused
03:42on this problem, this thing that we're working on now together. The reality is sometimes there
03:48are other factors that you have to think about. So it is a business, and we have to think about
03:54schedules and budgets and things like that as well. This new movie is directly inspired by
04:00Peter's relationship with his parents. Your movie, Inside Out, was directly inspired by
04:05your daughter. Do you think that the best creation comes from our personal stories?
04:11Yeah, I think almost inevitably, no matter what you do, the process requires that you get in
04:20touch with it personally. So let's say you're a painter, or you're a designer, you're trying to
04:26come up with ideas that reflect what the main character is going through. The way I approach
04:31that, and I think most any artists that I've worked with, is not an intellectual approach. You don't
04:36say, which shape should I use, and mathematically, and it's more of just an intuition of saying,
04:42when I felt lonely, what did that feel like? And then you start drawing or painting and creating.
04:48I think it's ultimately an experience, not an analytical approach. I read the other day that
04:55you might come back to directing with maybe Inside Out 2? Oh no, no. We are doing Inside Out 2,
05:03but that's being directed by a wonderful guy named Kelsey Mann. I'm not working on that one.
05:09I hope that someday maybe I could be able to direct my own thing again, but right now I've
05:14got my hands full with this job.