But before jumping into the interview with âWall-eâ director Andrew Stanton, hereâs
Anyway, the interview youâre about to read was done at the end of September when I got to visit the Pixar campus in
And one last thing before the interview. While I promote a lot of movies on Collider, âWall-eâ is one of those films thatâs so good that you really have to see it. I know you hear that all the timeâ¦.but this one is another level of awesome. Seriously. One of the best films this year. Go buy it tomorrow when it gets released on home videoâ¦
Look for more interviews and my recap of going to Pixar later tonight.
Question: There has to be a little bit of pressure on every director at Pixar to not be the one who screws things up.
Andrew Stanton: Well, to be fair, there is just as much pressure as you think, but thatâs way down the line on the list. Just to make these things, pretty much consumes every cell of your body. You feel like youâre pretty much just fighting to make whatever the issue of the day or week is, work. You donâtâ have time to think beyond the next week so you donât really get that wide perspective, thinking about what the other films youâve made when youâre almost near the finish line. Frankly, I work with the most intelligent, funny people that Iâve ever met in my life that I think are pretty much smarter and funnier than I am. You feel like you have to show up and hold your own every day here. Thatâs a more immediate personal pressure and it eclipses everything else on the day-to-day.
How is it, as a filmmaker, getting the DVD and Blu-ray done, coming out in the same year as the theatrical release?
Andrew Stanton: Well, it gets tougher and tougher because it seems, I donât know if itâs true, but it seems that the window between when the film comes out and the DVD is released has become so much shorter that you almost have to do all your DVD stuff in parallel before you finish the film. I donât mind the behind-the-scenes stuff and it makes sense to capitalize off people getting interviewed right fresh when theyâre in the middle of it, because itâs a journal of the moment and theyâre going to remember the details better than if you ask them later. You can actually maximize some of the work force. What I donât like is talking about it like itâs done when itâs not done. That just seems weird. I tried to push off doing the commentaries as late as I possibly could, because I just felt superstitious like Iâm not going to talk about it like itâs done or itâs any good, when the jury is still out, weâre still finishing it. Thatâs awkward. I donât like that.
The film looks fantastic. Can you talk about the contribution of Roger Deakins?
Andrew Stanton: He would, if you ever get the opportunity to interview him about it, he will always be self-effacing and say, âI was barely here. I had nothing to do with it, practically.â But I think he had way more of an impact than heâll ever realize. Weâve been working in the virtual world and most of us have never had the chance to experience physical moviemaking, in real spaces with real cameras and light. What it initially was, we heard he gave a weekend seminar, a sort of hands-on seminar of showing how he works, just the basics. We thought that would be great and we thought we would hire him to come up and do it for our crew. He came up on a weekend and it was so inspiring. I know, for him, itâs just like A, B and C, but for us, I think thatâs his gift because heâs able to take very complex problems and sort of find a simple solution for them. Itâs so deceivingly simple, these answers. Just put the light here, put the camera there. We were so inspired we asked him to stay for a couple more weeks and advise our director of photography, which is actually separated by two roles: the camera and the lighting are two different people, Daniel Feinberg and Jeremy Lasky. They basically hung out every day and any meeting that I was in with them, just to get a gist of how they work. He got it very quickly and really gave these, âWell, if it were me, this is what I would do,â kinds of things in conversation. It was really really helpful and we were at a point where we were not tying it down yet but trying to figure out what the look and the feel of the movie should be, and it was just this perfect sweet spot that he visited. It was great.
We read that Steve Jobsâ designer, Jonathan Ive, had some input.
Andrew Stanton: Well, that depends on the job because weâre so huge now, it just depends. If thereâs one thing that is universal though, we donât suffer fools lightly. We were just talking about this the other day. For as much as weâve grown, weâre not really set up to work in an apprenticeship kind of mode, where somebody has to be coddled and handled. We work really well with very pro-active people, people that you almost have to get out of their way. We pretty much expect that once whatever is your job is handed to you, within the pipeline of making the movie, you will try to plus it without anybody trying to egg you on. Nobody is going to get mad at you that you added a better idea. When we were small, everybody was like that and we all sort of just found each other and we relied on that plussing to just happen when we worked on something. So, as weâve grown, we sort of realized that is a quality that we kind of expect out of somebody who comes here. Thatâs about where it stops. Everywhere else is just unique to the job.
This is obviously coming out on Blu-ray, but what about your first film, Finding Nemo? When will that and other Pixar films be coming out on Blu-ray?
Andrew Stanton: Well, I know that Nemo is slated to be one of the other films to eventually come out on Blu-ray. Iâm not sure. I know weâve done a lot of content for it so I know itâs in the pipeline. I just donât know the release date.
Can you talk about 3-D-ing your older films for re-release?
Andrew Stanton: Theyâve talked about Toy Story and Toy Story 2 being in 3-D to also sort of herald the coming of Toy Story 3 in 3-D.
Have you seen the footage of what it looks like in 3-D and what are your thoughts on the entire process?
Andrew Stanton: I have not, actually. Iâm one of the few that have not in this building. I was so busy getting Wall-E out the door that I could never take the time for the meetings that they had to look at this stuff. Iâm a little in the dark.
Whatâs your feeling though, as a director, with Pixar moving into 3-D?
Andrew Stanton: Well, I have no problem with 3-D but I donât think itâs necessarily a blanket requirement for every film. I think some films are more conducive to it than others. It demands different things of your eyes and we work very hard to control, on all the other factors of making a movie, where exactly your eye is and when. Suddenly, to slap 3-D on something, you have to control this and the depth of it and if thatâs just running amok, itâs going to frustrate filmgoers. I think that people are working very hard to make that controllable element that they can put into the process. Itâs not built into the process of making these films right now and I think once it is, weâll probably see more 3-D films that are more enjoyable to watch. Again, I chalk it up to an aesthetic choice, that Iâd like to think that a director would feel either conducive or not conducive to the subject matter.
Now that we can see Wall-E on DVD and Blu-ray and pause and review it, what scene would you recommend to our readers to see it again?
Andrew Stanton: No, but there are deleted scenes and two of them are actually finished scenes, which is actually rare for us, which means I screwed up because I really didnât see the problem until I got it all the way through the pipeline. The reason weâve worked in storyboard form for so long, and most of our deleted scenes are storyboards, is because itâs so expensive and so time-consuming to animate and finish it and you donât have time, nor do you want to spend the money to be wrong. You pitch it again and again in the drawing form, until you see that it exactly works. Then you animate it in CG. Usually, itâs a one-to-one ratio. You get it right when you animate it. Thatâs it. That means, that wasnât it, for two things that I did (Laughs). Thatâs a testament to Pixar. Weâve always claimed that if weâd make 11th hour changes, we knew it would make the film better and thatâs exactly what happened with two moments. Thatâs a real testament to my crew, who were very tired, almost at the finish line and I said, âGuys, I screwed up. There are two things thatâ¦â What I love about it is theyâre so in it for the film. Theyâre not in it for the paycheck. They really believe in the film so I knew that if I honestly explained to them why this would make the film better, that would give them the desire to keep going and it did. They all said, âOh my God, thatâs so much betterâ and they ponied up and did a miracle. They really turned it all around.
Were these changed scenes or could you tell us what these scenes are?
Obviously you can pause the Blu-ray it and it will still look amazing. Are there any single-frame things that you want to tell fans about, that you might want to be on the lookout for?
Andrew Stanton: I donât think weâve done these â not that I know of.
What about that collection of objects that Wall-E has on his shelves?
You guys are known for putting in little easter eggs to previous films.
Andrew Stanton: Yeah. Thereâs definitely⦠if you look in the truck youâll find Mike Wasowski, youâll find Buzz Lightyear, youâll find Rex. The Pizza Planet truck is in the film, very prominently in a main scene. No one ever sees it. It has its own shot, actually, and no one ever sees it, which I guess means weâre doing our job because weâre making them focus on something else.
You guys are obviously developing films years in advance, as weâve learned through the storyboard process, takes about four to five years. What films are in Wall-E that are coming up that fans donât know what the characters really are yet?
Andrew Stanton: Usually we only put an element of the very next upcoming movie. Iâll be honest with you, I canât remember if we held that tradition with Wall-E and put something from Up into Wall-E. I guess I should be better prepared. We did drop the ball on that.
I remember in the original teaser trailer for this it said that Wall-E was one of the original ideas when they were dreaming stuff up. Was this kind of the end of maybe the first generation of Pixar?
So what are you working on next?