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Andrew Stanton was the second animator at Pixar. He has been working there for 30 years. If you want to know how Pixar runs, this is your guy. He has directed movies like Finding Nemo and WALL-E, and he’s now working on Toy Story 5. He was also the executive producer of Inside Out and Ratatouille.
I had to ask him, “What have you done at Pixar to keep that quality bar so high?” It’s hit after hit, appealing to both kids and adults. How do you achieve this consistently? That’s what this episode is all about.
Transcript
00:00:34 Don’t write down to kids
00:03:50 How to get useful feedback
00:04:52 Writing WALL-E
00:11:53 Make failure feel safe
00:17:09 Pixar’s work culture
00:18:53 What makes good dialogue
00:22:02 Lessons from silent films
00:23:48 How WALL-E came to life
00:25:58 Lessons from Steve Jobs
00:28:47 Lessons from John Lasseter
00:30:47 Do all good stories already exist?
00:34:56 How to keep the audience hooked
00:38:51 What makes an ending land
00:40:40 Why wonder matters
00:42:50 The 22 Rules of Storytelling myth
00:43:23 Every story needs change
00:47:40 Just write the bad sentence
00:51:45 Inside Pixar’s Brain Trust
00:56:18 The impact of AI in animated movies
00:58:04 Andrew’s book recommendations
David (00:34-00:57)
How do you make these movies riveting for both kids and parents? That, to me, is what stands out about Pixar. I remember watching Nemo as an eight-year-old, feeling the terror of him getting lost, and crying my eyes out in the theater. I still feel that viscerally. When I watched Inside Out a few years ago, I thought, “This movie is awesome.”
Andrew (00:57-03:49)
We’ve never written for kids. We’ve simply written for ourselves, which I suppose means we’re immature. We’ve never truly left our childhood; it meant a lot to us. We’re definitely in the Peter Pan world all the time.
When you find your tribe in animation, it’s very common for people not to be ready to give up the things they enjoyed when they were young. There’s no reason to. You’ve inherited or gained all this wisdom and culture from watching more adult movies, reading more adult books, and experiencing foreign cultures. Your palate broadens, and you want to bring all of that back to the table. You don’t want to leave behind what you enjoyed.
Speaking from my own experience, I loved Sesame Street, Monty Python, Bugs Bunny, and Walt Disney. I didn’t want to give that up simply because I was growing up and enjoying Lawrence of Arabia, A Clockwork Orange, Pulp Fiction, and all the other great things coming down the pipe. I wanted to add it all to the stew.
There was a sophistication of cinema and storytelling that I didn’t understand had to be exclusive to adults. I can speak for everyone else at Pixar: we simply made what we would want to see. We just ensured we weren’t accidentally offending or excluding younger audiences.
I’ve never worried for a second about a kid understanding what we’re doing. Kids are incredibly adept at figuring out what adults are talking about because they spend their first five years with everyone physically and mentally talking over their heads, not including them. They figure it out. They are keen readers of gestures, tone, and body language; they’re much better at it than adults.
As adults, we get soft and lazy. So, I’ve never worried about the kids. They’ll figure it out if we’re truthful about our expressions, whether in performance, storylines, or music. They will understand. I’ve simply never worried about them.
I’ve worried about many adults being too slow to figure it out. It’s often the adults who struggle, it can be. We’ve had countless test screenings with families. Almost every time, a parent will say, “I think this might be too difficult, too harsh, or too dark for my kid.” Their child, sitting right there, will vehemently shake their head and respond, “No!”
David (03:50-04:03)
How do you conduct test screenings and get feedback from people at scale without having it dumbed down? So many focus groups or things made by consensus tend to be sterile and vanilla.
Andrew (04:03-04:46)
They’re not made by consensus. We simply have to endure listening to the consensus. We don’t have to act on it; that’s our choice. We gain very little from the Q&As.
Sometimes we’ll find out that nobody caught a character’s name, even if we said it three times in the movie. It helps us clarify things that aren’t clear, and we want to make them clearer. However, everyone is honest when the lights are down and the movie is playing.
You can literally see them in the dark — laughing, smiling, leaning forward. Even if the lights come up and they say, “I didn’t like it,” I believe how they reacted when the lights were down.
David (04:46-04:46)
Right.
Andrew (04:46-04:52)
“Tell me what you do, not what you say.” Exactly. That’s truly where we take our notes.
David (04:52-05:02)
How does a character like WALL-E begin in your head and then go onto the page? How do you then get from that initial concept to what we see on the movie poster?
Andrew (05:02-07:14)
WALL-E is unique. Screenwriting has a very strict format, similar to music where everyone understands measures, bars, notes, rhythm, and beats. In screenwriting, there’s a specific format for describing a visual moment versus character dialogue, much like a play with character lines and subheaders for scene locations. You quickly learn to recognize, even with a glance, when there’s a cut to another scene or when characters speak.
While the formatting is very regimented, you can play with it over time. People often read many scripts to vet projects. They tend to skim descriptions and go straight to the dialogue, which is a cheat and something you really shouldn’t do. The trick in writing a screenplay is to ensure everyone reads everything you’ve included. Sometimes, you mess around with the formatting.
I was inspired because I knew WALL-E would be predominantly dialogue-free. Even when there was dialogue, it would be sounds requiring interpretation. I always described it as a foreign film without subtitles. It emulates what you gather from the emoting and the way something sounds.
I read a draft script Walter Hill had written for Alien in 1979. There isn’t a lot of dialogue in the first 10 or 15 minutes of that movie. When you read the script, he broke all the rules, creating these small, left-justified haikus — four or five lines at a time, or even just a single line. Nothing would extend across the entire page. To the eye, it looked like dialogue. He broke it to the rhythm he wanted you to read. The general rule is a minute per page.
David (07:14-07:15)
Yes.
Andrew (07:15-07:56)
I adopted that same approach. That way, you wouldn’t cheat or read ahead. In Walter Hill’s script, it would say, “The door opens,” then a break, then just the word “steam,” followed by another description like “Other doors opening.” This emphasized that those were moments worth savoring, rather than just getting to the point.
That’s what I wanted for WALL-E: for you to read it the way you would ultimately watch it, to match its rhythm, slow your heart rate, and experience the pace you’d see in the final movie. It was truly inspirational.
David (07:56-08:10)
When you begin working on WALL-E, what are the tenets or pillars of a script you’re writing, a movie you’re making? Is it a good theme, good characters, or a strong premise? What are you looking for?
Andrew (08:11-10:36)
I want it to be about something. I’m completely open-minded about what that ‘something’ is, but I must be initially interested in it for some reason. I let the story tell me as I try to solve and uncover it.
I was very inspired by The Art of Dramatic Writing by Lajos Egri, a book about playwriting from the 1940s. I’ve read every book on screenwriting and storytelling, and that one truly resonated. Egri has a belief about what he calls a “premise.” Others might call it a theme, but he’s very strict. He says you want a premise that dictates the story’s structure. It’s usually a sentence starting with a character, then a conflict, and finally, a conclusion.
I constantly write a sentence I believe expresses what I’m trying to say, but I don’t follow it rigidly. It’s more a litmus test, an analysis of what I think I’ve accomplished. I often have a page open—it used to be a notebook, but now it’s a page on my computer. I just keep writing sentences, thinking, “That’s not the right word, that’s not the right thing.”
I don’t sweat it. I just accept, “Okay, I don’t have it figured out yet.” I let the story be wrong or lost for a while. I’m trying to find the answer before others have to commit to what I’ve written.
Because it’s planned, think of it like architecture. At some point, they have to build this house, and I want to be ahead of the game. But I don’t get it right the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, or even sixth time. If I’m really good, I usually get it right by the seventh, eighth, or ninth attempt.
I’m constantly reviewing and analyzing my work, oscillating between two sides of a teeter-totter. On one side, I’m analyzing what I’ve done, trying to find a structure, a meaning, and any patterns I might be creating or that might already be there. Then I switch to the other side and just jam, just play, without thinking about anything, because thinking restricts me. I’m constantly jumping between these two approaches.
For Finding Nemo, the sentence I finally keyed in on after about three years was, “Fear denies a good father from being one.”
Andrew (10:37-10:49)
If I can find that within the last year and a half, it helps me hone and focus on anything I’ve executed or have left to execute, because then I know exactly what I’m saying.
David (10:49-10:51)
Fear denies a good father from being one.
Andrew (10:51-11:53)
Yes, fear was the main character, and “denies” represented the conflict. Everything was denying him from being a good father until he conquered that fear.
My initial, more imprecise understanding came from an experience I was having with my young son. I was busy on A Bug’s Life, and he was about four. I wasn’t seeing him enough. I put immense pressure on our time together during the weekends. However, I’d spend the entire time saying, “Don’t touch that! Be careful! Don’t run into the street!”
I was so overprotective that I was essentially wasting our connection time, despite being there out of pure love and desire. I realized this must be a common problem for well-intentioned parents. It’s easy to say now, and it seems so obvious, that “Fear denies a good parent from being one.” But that illustrates how challenging it is to encapsulate something with a narrative structure.
David (11:53-12:23)
I read something where you discussed your biggest regret from Nemo, reflecting on the process of making it. You mentioned a fear that the movie might be a failure.
This leads to a question: working at Pixar, an obviously legendary place, and now directing a film, how do you balance the high expectations of a Pixar movie with the creative play needed to develop a story?
Andrew (12:23-13:40)
It was essentially a startup, made up of people who were largely off the radar. We kept it safe and comfortable, always promoting an atmosphere where failure is encouraged. Each time, you’re creating a new instrument and need the safety to practice constantly, figuring out how to make it sound good. It requires a lot of experimentation.
If you’re not “falling off your bike” and trying new things all the time, something’s wrong; you’re playing it too safe, becoming your own worst enemy. Another way I phrase it, especially since we’ve become consistently successful in the eyes of the outside world, is this: I get paid to play baseball, which is awesome, but I have to win the World Series to keep doing it.
The only way I know how to win the World Series is to remember what it was like playing in my backyard, for the love of the game. It’s always a mental exercise to tell myself that outside pressures don’t exist, or that they’ve always existed, but I didn’t think about them when I was playing in my backyard, so I shouldn’t think about them now. It’s a mental headspace I’ve always maintained.
David (13:41-14:54)
I taught writing for six years, and my students’ biggest challenge was writer’s block. They struggled to translate ideas from their minds onto the page. But here’s what’s interesting: people don’t get “talker’s block.” If you simply talk out your ideas, it works.
That’s why I love Whisper Flow and use it for my writing constantly. It’s super easy: press a hotkey, talk, and suddenly your ideas appear on the page. There are no “ums,” no sloppy punctuation—just a clean draft you can work with and shape into something amazing. No longer tethered to a keyboard, I can write on the move. Most importantly, I trust it.
I love Siri; we go way back, having known each other for years. But sometimes I wonder if she even passed fourth-grade English, because she can’t get punctuation right. Whisper Flow, however, automatically cleans up all your mistakes, digressions, and vocal fillers without losing any substance. That’s why I love Whisper Flow. I use it daily and recommend it to every writer I know. You can try it for free at whisperflow.AI/howIwrite.
Is there a one-liner you aim for with a character, similar to how you discussed the one-liner for the story in Finding Nemo?
Andrew (14:55-15:46)
For WALL-E, it’s “irrational love defeats life’s programming.” WALL-E embodies that irrational love; that’s his character.
I often give characters “spines,” meaning a fundamental way they’re wired. It’s their core, regardless of what’s happening in their lives. Judith Weston, an acting coach, taught me this term. She gave a good example: Michael Corleone in The Godfather has a spine of pleasing his father. That never goes away, even after his father dies, continuing through the second Godfather movie.
An actor can work with that; it affects how a character might open a book or get up in the morning. It’s a character’s inherent spine. So, WALL-E’s spine was to find beauty.
David (15:47-15:59)
I had Wright Thompson, one of the greatest living sports writers, on the show. His specialty is writing profiles. I asked him, “What’s a profile?” He replied, “A profile is figuring out the central complication in any...”
Andrew (15:59-16:00)
...person’s life, which we all have.
David (16:00-16:03)
How do they go about solving it in every single thing they do?
Andrew (16:03-16:03)
Exactly.
David (16:03-16:13)
If you can get clear on that, and then have that motif—that theme—show up in all the stories, you have conflict, tension, a story, an arc, and everything comes together.
Andrew (16:14-17:08)
That’s exactly it. The trick—or the trap—is forcing one when you run out of time, or not being able to find one when you want one, or simply not liking it. With age comes a bit of patience. You learn to keep at it until you’ve struck what truly feels like the truthful profile or spine.
Screenplays are living documents. Part of the excitement is that even once you hire an actor or get animators and other artists involved, it’s still a draft. You’re tremendously informed by other people’s involvement, particularly the animators and actors. Then you start seeing your words performed, recognizing better ways it can be done. So, you do another draft and refine.
David (17:09-17:15)
It seems like there’s a real sense of meritocracy and egalitarianism in the culture of Pixar.
Andrew (17:15-18:52)
That’s true, and if you’re doing it right, it’s true for filmmaking in general: moviemaking is a team sport. Everyone has this myth of the director as a singular visionary whose ideas everyone simply heeds. There’s a modicum of truth to that.
There is a vision to be solved and figured out. As a director, I believe your job, once that vision is found, is to protect it and serve as a constant reference for everyone else about what it is. You have all the knowledge, but you’re there as a supporter, to foster it.
If you’re doing it right, every name on that crew list—whether in front of or behind the camera, virtual or live—should matter. It would be a different thing if they changed the roles, if you changed the people involved, just as you’d expect a different outcome in a game if you changed the bench. To me, it’s always been a team sport, and that’s the attraction.
That’s another big difference. I’m not a writer who sits there thinking, “This is what I want to say, and hopefully nobody will mess with it.” Instead, I approach it by saying, “This is what I think I want to say, and hopefully people will help me mess with it correctly.”
David (18:53-18:56)
What matters for good dialogue?
Andrew (18:56-19:36)
You believe it comes out of that particular character. It needs idiosyncrasies and idioms. That’s another perk of having an actor speak: the minute you hear them say a line, you can tell right away if it feels like something the character you created would say. You start learning how to take advantage of the idioms, idiosyncrasies, and quirks the actor brings to the table.
Someone once asked me how I write good dialogue. I told them, “Fear of a really good actor saying it out loud.” It’s that simple.
David (19:37-19:38)
Tom Hanks is going to...
Andrew (19:38-19:42)
...come in. It’s the fear of a good actor saying it out loud.
David (19:44-19:47)
What character did you have the most fun writing dialogue for?
Andrew (19:48-20:48)
Dory is probably the most fun because I get to be impish. I’ve always been a class clown or an instigator, so I get to tap into that wise-ass side of myself.
However, what comes easiest to me is Woody. I’m the one who found the voice we stuck with for him. It was an amalgamation of working with Tom Hanks long enough on the first film and then searching within myself. I was a new father at the time, and I have a very cynical nature, but I’m also a softy underneath. So I combined those two aspects.
Without meaning to, I kept getting called in for Toy Story 2, Toy Story 3, and especially Toy Story 4, to bring Woody’s voice back. There’s something very close to my own voice in it, I suppose, so it comes easier for me with Hanks.
David (20:48-20:52)
What was the relationship with Tom Hanks in bringing that voice to life? Describe that for me.
Andrew (20:52-21:20)
Tom has a confident, benevolent, and kind nature. I don’t know if he’d like me to say this, but you can also tell it’s a cocktail of sincerity and intention. There’s a lot he keeps close to his chest. You can spend a long time with him, feel like you’ve had an honest discussion, but still walk away not knowing much about him.
David (21:20-21:21)
Right.
Andrew (21:21-22:02)
He keeps his cards close, and I think that’s a means to protect himself. Perhaps it’s something he’s had all his life, or it developed because of his fame, or both.
I ran with that idea, though not for the same reasons of fame or feeling wounded. Woody had an insecurity, a feeling that he wasn’t truly worthy of his station. He overcompensated by trying to be a dependable leader. So, while his intentions were the best, he was still hiding a lot underneath.
David (22:02-22:04)
What have you learned from silent films?
Andrew (22:05-22:44)
I learned that we didn’t gain much by adding dialogue, and we may have even lost something by going too far with exposition. When researching WALL-E, we had years to work on it. So, at least a couple of days a week during lunch, we would watch Chaplin and Keaton movies until we had pretty much seen them all.
The subject matters were so sophisticated, and they found ways of conveying them with very little help from title cards. It was truly inspiring. It made you brave; it made you think, “Whatever it is, we’ll figure out a way to convey it.”
David (22:44-22:49)
What does live action give you that animation doesn’t, and vice versa?
Andrew (22:50-23:48)
Spontaneity. In live action, you have to work very fast. Everyone is in front of you, like they are now with cameras. The people involved are all there, you see it right away, and you deal with it.
Animation is in slow motion. I have a meeting with the lighting people, a meeting with the props people, and a meeting with the actors. They’re all working on their individual files, and at some point, all those files come together. Maybe once a week or once every two weeks, we watch the combined result. Then we decide if something worked or didn’t work. We can keep tweaking and refining it, like a document on a word processor.
That’s a significant advantage. We can be almost at the release date and still make a fix. But we never get the fun of saying, “Look what I found! Look what happened! The sun suddenly broke!” Or “Here’s something I found at a vintage clothing store!” Or “This is something I just thought of, and we can do it right now.” There’s no spontaneity.
David (23:48-23:58)
Can you tell me about WALL-E and how you thought about bringing him to life against the background of the apocalyptic premise, and how you developed both of those?
Andrew (23:59-25:19)
The four of us who were the brain trust at the time just brainstormed a bunch of subject matters. One of them became A Bug’s Life, which was like the ant and grasshopper fable turned upside down. Pete said he wanted to do something about monsters under your bed. Then we asked, “What about a robot movie?”
Somehow, through the back and forth, we came up with a planet made of trash. It all became about futility. We thought, “What kind of robot could be alone on a planet everyone has abandoned?” A trash compactor robot, we decided. Wouldn’t that be the saddest thing, if it didn’t even know its job was futile? It could stop compressing trash, but everyone would still be gone.
The working title was “Trash Planet” for a couple of years. The genesis was always this personification of futility and loneliness. We then pondered what to do with that. Pete tried things for a while, but it never went anywhere. John and I were very convinced it should be a romance, with another robot coming from somewhere else, and they would be opposites. We both thought that was a very strong idea.
When Pete moved on to do Monsters, Inc. and shelved the “Trash Planet” idea, I picked it up after Finding Nemo because I couldn’t stop thinking about it.
David (25:20-25:22)
What makes for a good love story, a good romance?
Andrew (25:23-25:58)
Opposites always help. They create conflict and drama. We learned this profoundly with Toy Story, a buddy movie where characters with opposing agendas and beliefs created tension. They don’t have to be 100% opposite, but there needs to be some conflict or obstacle to their getting along; otherwise, there’s no drama. Visually, he was a box and she was a circle, which further added to the tension of “will they or won’t they?”
David (25:58-26:05)
I want to ask you about a few people and hear what you’ve learned from them. I’ll start with Steve Jobs.
Andrew (26:06-27:13)
Steve was the most expansive thinker I’ve ever met. Whenever you considered the potential results or possibilities of something, he was always envisioning an outcome even further, another mountain range beyond.
He had tremendous patience for the right answer, or for allowing a discussion in a meeting to unfold properly. I was always fascinated by this. You could ask him a question, and he would just sit there, often with a namaste hand, letting the room remain silent for as long as it took until he felt he had the appropriate response.
I initially thought that was impressive just from a courage standpoint, but over time, I saw the wisdom in it. He simply wanted to get to the core of the issue and avoid spending time on tangents or distractions.
David (27:13-27:16)
I saw him described as this protector of Pixar.
Andrew (27:16-27:27)
When I first got to Pixar, it took a few years before I really met him. I asked someone to describe him. He was in his thirties at the time, and I was in my twenties.
David (27:27-27:28)
Wow.
Andrew (27:28-28:46)
The person said, “If he thinks he can do your job, he’s the worst person to work for. But if he thinks he can’t do your job, he’s the greatest boss.” That turned out to be very true, as he didn’t think he could do what we did.
To be fair, he also got married and had kids right around the time Pixar began to rise with Toy Story. So, he was mellowing out and maturing on both professional and personal fronts simultaneously. We benefited greatly from that.
Even though he was back at Apple, starting it up again within about five or six years, he still spent a good eight to ten years with us, coming in a couple of days a week. I always say his “ten years in the desert” was with Pixar. He truly put all his eggs in the Pixar basket because he loved the idea of making something that lasted longer than a computer.
He once explained to John Lasseter that the best he could do was achieve a shelf life of about five years for anything he built in the computer world. However, he saw that we were potentially making the next Snow White — a movie people might watch for decades. Here we are, at Toy Story 5, and people are still watching Toy Story. He was right.
David (28:47-28:50)
John Lasseter, what did you learn from him?
Andrew (28:50-29:53)
Everything. He was as talented as anyone gives him credit for. He had a natural showmanship, like a Barnum and Bailey, though not in a boisterous way. He simply possessed an innate instinct for what an audience would like. He was a natural-born entertainer.
One thing people might not realize is that if you had to simplify our group’s strength with John at the head – which included me, Pete Docter, Joe Ranft for a while, and then Lee Unkrich, who formed what people called the “brain trust” – it was that all of us instinctively viewed everything through an entertainment filter. I feel unworthy of comparing us to The Beatles, but everyone understands this analogy: they weren’t writing pop tunes they thought would sell; they were writing pop tunes they wanted to hear themselves.
David (29:54-29:56)
If we rock out, the people rock out too.
Andrew (29:56-30:47)
They didn’t worry about it. They naturally had a gift for toe-tapping, and so did we. Individually and collectively, anything put in front of us became more entertaining.
We discovered this while making commercials, even before we started Toy Story. Nothing got through us without becoming more engaging, even if the story was still broken or needed work. We possessed an “entertainment green thumb” that was truly a superpower when we worked together with John leading.
I learned a lot from that dynamic. We also learned a tremendous amount as a group while making our first movie, Toy Story. We learned everything on that film.
David (30:47-30:53)
It’s cool to hear the analogies you use. Earlier, when we were talking about story, you used the words “uncovering” and “solving” the story.
Andrew (30:53-32:52)
I’m a big believer that a really great story already exists out there. I’ve seen it happen so many times, and it’s occurred, knock on wood, on almost everything I’ve ever written. It feels like Michelangelo said, “The statue is in the marble; I just uncover it.” I’ve experienced that firsthand so many times in the last 30 years.
My analogy is an archaeological dig. You can take credit for picking the right area to start digging, but you don’t have much say in what comes up first or when. All you can take credit for is being aggressive in your digging.
Then the executives come in and ask, “Why are we digging here? What have you found?” We say, “We’ve got a couple of bones, and it’s going to be a Tyrannosaurus Rex, we promise you.” But I only have these two bones, and I’m just drawing in lines to express the rest of it to you. You dig more and more, trying all sorts of things, and eventually you get enough bones brought up and put together.
For Pixar, the big difference from other studios is that even in the eleventh hour, we can have epiphanies of uncovering. We can go, “Wait a minute. The neck bones, the tailbone... it’s not a Tyrannosaurus Rex. It’s a Stegosaurus.”
Then you need the fortitude, the temerity, to say, “We’re going to shift. We have this much time left, very little, but we’re going to shift and fix the story to fit the dinosaur we actually uncovered rather than the dinosaur we promised.” Most places blink or shrink at that, but we’ve structured our production flow so that we can do it.
David (32:52-32:55)
What’s an example of such a significant shift?
Andrew (32:56-34:55)
I’ll use Nemo, since I haven’t in a while. The opening tragedy of the barracuda killing Mom was always in the script, but it was doled out. Naturally, it was intense and dark, so it felt like it should be a big revelation, something that finally comes and is earned by the end. I had sort of implied the courtship and the life that existed before Nemo was born, distributing those moments throughout the film.
It wasn’t until the present storyline, near the end of Act 3, when Marlin was trying to get the fish to swim down and save his son, that the tragedy was counterpointed. It was cinematic and cool, cutting to a barracuda swipe and then to the fishnet coming down. But you just didn’t like the father; he was too neurotic, too annoying, too complainy. Everyone said to recast, change, or rewrite him.
To my editor’s credit, and co-director Lee Unkrich, he said, “I think you should put all those flashbacks as one scene and make it the prologue, just letting it tell everything up front.” I couldn’t get past how dark and intense that would be to kick off the film. “I’m going to kill Bambi’s mom right at the top? Is that really...”
To be fair to them, they said, “Let’s just try it. It’s just a file. We don’t have to show this to anyone else.” I agreed, and we tried it. And, you know, that’s the way it worked. What was amazing to see was the empathy people had for the father after that. Everything people had been complaining about—all the scenes, all the lines, all the things that very smart people had compiled notes about to fix—I would have changed the wrong thing for the wrong reasons. It was a real lesson.
David (34:56-35:01)
Tell me about this quote from William Archer: “Drama is anticipation mingled with uncertainty.”
Andrew (35:02-36:53)
That’s the best definition of drama I’ve ever heard. It encapsulates exactly what you’re trying to do. Can you create a situation in every beat of your story that makes the person want to know what will happen next? I don’t mean a simple mystery, which is low-hanging fruit. How do you write what somebody says so that you’re dying to know what the next person will say back? How do you write it so that you want to know what happens after that? How do you make everything pull you a little bit more forward?
In San Francisco, we have cable cars. The key to how they work is a chain running under the street that’s moving at all times. The cable car operator uses a big clamp to latch onto that chain, which pulls them up and down the hill. When I’m helping other people with their stories or analyzing my own, I’m constantly asking, “When did we accidentally unclamp, or did we ever clamp at all?”
If you’ve done it right and truly honed the story, you’re clamped the whole time. That’s the goal of storytelling for me: keeping you so engaged, whether it’s the slowest or fastest-moving movie, that you never think about anything else, never look at anything else. Ideally, when the lights come up in the theater, you feel transported. That’s always the goal with a song, with a painting. For a script and a movie, the means to achieving that is all the ingredients working in concert to keep you clamped and moving forward.
David (36:54-37:03)
Can you elaborate on those two words in that quote—anticipation and uncertainty? How are they working together?
Andrew (37:03-37:49)
Those are the two things you can conjure. Imagine you and I are sitting here talking; that’s a scene. But what if there’s a persistent tapping at the window while we’re trying to talk? That adds an unknowability, some uncertainty. If the tapping gets a little louder and more insistent, it feels like it’s building. Will someone finally break and address it? That’s drama mingled with uncertainty. The power of creating drama and uncertainty is quite accessible; it’s just about your mindset.
David (37:49-38:07)
That cable car analogy is so good, because the other thing is there are so many movies where you feel like you kind of hook onto the cable, and then you’re there. But sometimes I just never get that hook, so I’m never actually invested in the story.
Andrew (38:08-38:51)
This is a lesser analogy, but I use it constantly. Keeping your interest in a movie is like the beach ball thrown into a crowd during a concert. People have to keep it up. I don’t care who’s performing; once that beach ball is thrown, you’re watching it. The minute it disappears, you’re back to just watching the concert, checking your watch, or whatever.
I’m always asking, “When did the beach ball drop?” When I watch other people’s films at Pixar, I’m constantly trying to figure that out. “Okay, it dropped there. Why did it drop? When did it first come into the concert?” I know that’s a strange analogy, but that’s how my brain works, and it’s what helps me.
David (38:51-38:57)
What makes for a good ending? There’s a line from Aristotle where he says, “It’s surprising in the moment, but inevitable in retrospect.”
Andrew (38:57-39:05)
It’s that combination: surprising and inevitable. You don’t want to see it coming, but when it happens, there’s no better answer.
David (39:05-39:06)
Of course it had to be! Exactly.
Andrew (39:06-39:39)
That’s really hard. There’s much more pressure when the story literally asks, “Who did it?”, “How did it happen?”, or “What will happen?”
However, I’m now more impressed by quiet movies that explore someone’s inner conflict. Sometimes, a pause and a sigh can be the most satisfying resolution to the journey you’ve taken with a character. It’s all about where the emphasis lies.
David (39:40-39:45)
I really notice your appreciation for simplicity.
Andrew (39:46-40:11)
At the end of the day, stories don’t interest me if they don’t incorporate the human condition to some deeper degree. Even when I worked on a story about a fish, I wanted it to have real human turmoil.
David (40:12-40:18)
Ironically, it’s sometimes easier to process that through the lens of fish than humans.
Andrew (40:18-40:39)
Sometimes, it’s an easier entry point. You’re not trying to compare it to yourself right away.
Perhaps that’s why it’s so effective. You don’t judge it as harshly, thinking, “I would never do that.” Well, you’re not a fish! I’ve always indulged in the bittersweet, even since I was little.
David (40:40-40:49)
In your TED Talk, you discussed the importance of evoking wonder. Why is that so crucial, and do you still hold it to the same degree of importance as you did back then?
Andrew (40:50-41:32)
For me, the greatest stories evoke that. They make you humble and appreciative of the power of life, of simply existing. Sometimes that wonder comes from smelling the top of a baby’s head, other times from surviving a near-fatal crash. It can come in all shapes and sizes.
I’m always appreciative of experiencing the wonder of existence through a new perspective. I think it starts with something as simple as a children’s movie about a deer in the forest, like Bambi, the first thing I ever saw.
David (41:33-41:47)
It’s wild that we can bring these characters to life and build such easy relationships with them. Another example I was thinking about recently was those Chevron with Techron commercials.
Andrew (41:47-41:48)
Oh, yeah.
David (41:48-41:50)
Remember those with the talking cars?
Andrew (41:50-41:51)
Yep.
David (41:51-41:57)
I remember watching them during San Francisco Giants games and thinking, “Oh, yes!” They would smile and frown.
Andrew (41:57-42:50)
There’s something evocative about anthropomorphized characters when done right. There’s no hard-and-fast rule, but when they hit that sweet spot, they truly invite you in.
As I mentioned in my TED Talk, there’s something about infant babies, puppies, and kittens that makes you instinctively say, “Oh!” You hear people say aloud, “Oh, they like me!” or “They’re scared!” Nobody asked them to speak for those creatures. That’s how much pull they produce in a human being.
As a greedy storyteller and filmmaker, I thought, “I want some of that juice! Can I create a movie that does that to you all the time?” That’s what started WALL-E years ago.
David (42:50-42:54)
There are these 22 rules of storytelling from Pixar, but...
Andrew (42:55-42:57)
That’s not generated by us.
David (42:57-42:58)
Those weren’t generated by you guys.
Andrew (42:58-43:22)
To my knowledge, it was created by a former Pixar employee who came up with their own set of observations and rules. I’m not saying we didn’t necessarily follow some of those principles, but there has never been a rule book or tenets that we explicitly follow, written down or otherwise.
That has become a myth. I’m here to tell you that just because something is online doesn’t mean it’s real.
David (43:23-43:27)
Tell me about the relationship between stories and change.
Andrew (43:28-44:30)
I’ll quote that book again: Lajos Egri’s The Art of Dramatic Writing says even a rock changes. It grows moss, gets damp, dries off in the sun. Nothing stays the same.
To go back to my analogy, the cable car gets disconnected, and the beach ball disappears on a fundamental level when there isn’t enough change. Change can come in so many forms. It can be an eye shift in a cinematic moment, or a simple pause. It was active, then it wasn’t.
Change is an umbrella for everything. It happens in your dreams all the time, right? Suddenly you’re here, then suddenly you’re there. One moment you’re talking to a lizard, the next you’re talking to your mom. The crazier it is, the more dreamlike it feels. We’re wired to have the next thought, the next perspective shift.
David (44:31-44:54)
My friend, Shaan Puri, once said that stories are about a five-second moment of change. When you’re thinking about telling a story, you always start by considering the fundamental change that will come from it: from being sad to happy, from being stuck to figuring something out. Everything before the story then leads up to that change. I think about that all the time.
Andrew (44:54-45:41)
I’ll be honest, I get a little nervous about this. I’m at a place in my life where I spent maybe 10 or 15 years, from my 20s into my 30s, just soaking in everything I could possibly learn. Then it got in the way, and I call that analysis paralysis.
Perhaps it’s just age and impatience, but I’ve reached a point where I don’t want to know the rules anymore. I just want to “jazz hand it,” see what happens, and dig myself out of the holes I create. Part of the fun is the discovery and the solving.
David (45:41-45:45)
When Lee Child came on the show, he said something very similar.
Andrew (45:45-45:46)
Yes.
David (45:46-45:50)
Lee Child has sold like 200 million books, right?
Andrew (45:50-45:50)
Yes.
David (45:50-46:11)
He said, “I don’t sit down with an outline. I just try to come up with a really good story and see what unfolds.” There was a really interesting back-and-forth in the YouTube comments of that episode, with people saying, “I can’t believe he doesn’t outline.”
Then someone made a good point: “This guy has read hundreds of books every year for...”
David (46:11-46:17)
...for decades. His repertoire is so deep. There’s a time when you transcend the rules.
Andrew (46:17-46:23)
...and you run the risk of following a map, if you’ve created grooves in your head.
David (46:23-46:23)
Right.
Andrew (46:24-47:39)
I don’t think there’s a right or a wrong way; it’s more a reflection of where you are in your arc of being interested in writing. I needed the first 15 years just to prove to myself I could do it, and then to do it well.
Now I realize that part of the fuel was the challenge of that initial learning. Now I need a different source of fuel for the challenge, but I don’t want to rely on the old methods. It has to come from other means, not from following a pattern.
My source of fuel now is not planning much. It’s having just enough to be inspired and then getting messy to see what happens. I can always go back to the old way; I know exactly how to set myself up. I know what books to read for inspiration, what patterns of planning, and how to use wall cards. All that stuff is ready if I want it.
But it’s more interesting now to walk into the grocery store without a recipe, start grabbing items off the shelf, and then see what I create in the kitchen. It’s a lot more fun now. Before, I would have just made a mess.
David (47:40-47:52)
When you talk about inspiration, what does that feel like? Is it an urgent need to act right now, or more like discovering a door that, if you walk through it and explore slowly, will help you uncover things?
Andrew (47:52-51:15)
iPhones have changed everything. Now I don’t have to run anywhere; I can just put it on my notepad, Google Doc, or whatever. I can keep moving forward and let the pieces fall into place.
I put a lot of weight and value on things that stick. It needs time for me to determine if something was just a fleeting interest or if I’m still thinking about it weeks, days, or even years later. The ideas that truly interest me and are ready to be developed tend to keep coming back. I just don’t want to forget them.
I have a fear of forgetting a good thought I had yesterday and never retrieving it. So, I’m very diligent about writing things down. However, I’m not afraid of letting it get lost afterward. I let the inspiration occur naturally.
This might sound boring, but I always need a deadline. It’s harder when it’s self-imposed, as opposed to agreeing to a job. But it helps me to promise someone else, “This is when I’ll have it done by.” It kicks me into gear. I’m very dutiful about promising things to other people, especially when it comes to a job. I use that to my advantage to see things through.
One of the hardest things, I think, is that term “whistling on the steps of Carnegie Hall.” Most people spend more time telling you the symphony they’re going to write than actually writing it. That’s “whistling on the steps of Carnegie Hall” – not entering, not doing the work, not having an orchestra playing it in front of an audience. I don’t want to even accidentally be whistling on the steps of Carnegie Hall.
When I’m working with or advising other people, I’ll say, “Finish the sentence.” Even if they have enough material but don’t have the whole idea, like an ending or a middle, I tell them, “Just write the sentence.” I’m usually a little harsher than that.
“Just write the sentence. I’ll tell you right now it’s going to be bad, so the pressure’s off. But you don’t get to the nice sentence until you’ve written the bad sentence. You’re just delaying getting to the nice sentence, so just write the bad sentence.”
If someone could tell you and promise you that on the tenth try you will nail it, you wouldn’t waste all that time on the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth attempts. You’d approach it with rigor and commit to looking bad at your job for a while to get to the really good stuff. To me, writing is rewriting. Staying with the same half-built sentence and saying “someday, someday” is just whistling on the steps of Carnegie Hall.
David (51:16-51:28)
Right. I want to emphasize that you’re saying writing is rewriting. The essence of writing isn’t in the first attempt; it’s in the constant rewriting, the drafts, and the revisions. That’s when it truly comes together.
Andrew (51:28-51:44)
Yes. It’s like chipping away at marble, or learning a new instrument. Every time you decide not to write, you’re not practicing with this new instrument you’re trying to build. You’ll just be less practiced.
David (51:45-51:47)
Can you tell me about the Pixar Brain Trust?
Andrew (51:47-55:32)
The Brain Trust has been mythologized over the past 30 years. Thirty years is a long time; people have died, moved away, passed on, and retired. Initially, for the first ten years, it was a specific group of names because when we started, we were one group making one movie. We weren’t large enough to do more. The group that formed itself like a garage band included John Lasseter, Joe Ranft, Pete Docter, myself, and Lee Unkrich.
Right as we were doing the IPO and finishing that first film, we were told we’d have to break up and split off to make multiple movies simultaneously. We thought that was crazy, like telling The Beatles, “Now that you’ve finally figured out how to work as a group, you must make solo albums.” However, from a business perspective, they said it was the only way to survive. We argued that we would make subpar movies if we couldn’t capitalize on our collective hive mind.
So, we decided that since we were all in one building, we would treat it like doctors consulting on individual patients and continue to meet together. Instead of listing all five names, which became ridiculous on the calendar, we simply called it “the Brain Trust,” or sometimes “the BT.” It was the same group that had made Toy Story, that was making A Bug’s Life, and that rejoined to save and redo Toy Story 2. It became a go-to resource for emergencies, like a voluntary fire department, and we met regularly.
Then, one of us passed away, and we hired more directors. We met other people who made us smarter and funnier, so that group began to expand and change. Around 15 years in, it became somewhat unwieldy. It felt like a club everyone wanted to join. I felt for a long time that it lost its mojo because it used to be just five people in a room. When you’re five people, everyone is involved. The moment you have over ten people in a room, there’s an audience.
No matter who you are, you act differently in front of an audience. You know you’re on, and you know people are listening. Many can hide and never have to say anything. It creates an air of feeling judged; you’re not as safe or as brave. I felt it lost all its power.
I tried to tell other productions—because we were now making three or four movies at a time—to find their own Brain Trust. The core idea is a key group of fewer than six people. They might all be on your show, or some could be from another. This group makes you smarter and makes you feel safe enough to admit when you don’t know what you’re doing without losing credibility. They’ll tell you when something isn’t working, but they’ll do it in a way that inspires you.
My goal when advising someone is not to tell them what they’re doing wrong, but to inspire them to redo their homework. How do you constructively criticize in a way that makes them want to go back and improve their work? There’s an art to that. We’ve now moved in that direction, and people have learned how to create their own Brain Trust. So, there isn’t one named group anymore, but there’s a methodology: a safe space where you can go, “I need help. I don’t know what I’m doing. Make me smarter, inspire me to get up and do this again.”
David (55:33-55:57)
The Brain Trust is a group of fewer than six people who can inspire you when you’re feeling down. They can identify what isn’t working and provide feedback. I infer that it’s important for the Brain Trust members to be somewhat distinct from those actually making the film, which offers a more distant and objective view of what’s happening.
Andrew (55:58-56:17)
It’s a mix. You’re definitely trying to achieve objectivity, so it’s rare for all members to be internal to your specific project. However, we were all internal on Toy Story. I don’t make it a strict rule; it’s simply about what brings clarity, objectivity, and inspiration.
David (56:18-56:22)
I have to ask, how is AI going to change animation? How will it change storytelling?
Andrew (56:22-57:29)
Who knows? We’ve always had machine learning. If you truly break down what AI does, it primarily automates tasks nobody wants to do or makes jobs easier. Nobody has ever tried to eliminate the artist. We’re always trying to make it easier and more freeing for artists to be artistic. I have no interest in speaking to anything but another person.
It’s a quite scary and impressive tool. I had a line that didn’t make it into my recent movie, In the Blink of an Eye. Commentators on the news were discussing how every couple generations, humanity reinvents fire. It takes a while for them to figure out how not to burn themselves but instead warm themselves. That’s what I believe we’re seeing with AI. It can do a lot of damage, and hopefully, it will also do a lot of good.
David (57:29-57:34)
The technology is not the point; the point is telling a story.
Andrew (57:34-58:03)
I would argue that even ten years ago, you could pretty much visualize anything your brain could conceive, albeit at a cost. The current challenge is whether you can do it faster, easier, or cheaper. If you dislike what you’re seeing now, it’s because the artist has decided, for one reason or another, not to show something different. You are judging artistic choices; you can no longer blame the technology.
David (58:04-58:17)
My last question: If you were invited to teach a screenwriting class at UC Berkeley, what would be the core tenets you’d emphasize? What do people truly need to understand to achieve a high level in this field?
Andrew (58:17-59:18)
I’m often asked that. I’ve recommended The Art of Dramatic Writing.
There’s also How Not to Write a Screenplay. Its title might suggest avoiding it in a bookstore, but it’s incredibly smart and clear about screenplay formatting and how to make readers want to turn the page and keep reading. It offers simple, effective tricks that provide a great foundation.
I always recommend those two books to anyone just getting into the basics of screenwriting. Once you’re past those foundational elements, the question becomes: what do you have that’s worth telling? It boils down to content.
I’ve come to realize that the telling is just as important as the content.
David (59:18-59:19)
What do you mean?
Andrew (59:19-59:33)
How you tell something can often be the reason you enjoy it, more than the actual content itself. You can have a really good joke told poorly. I’d rather have a really bad joke told well.
David (59:33-59:46)
It was great to meet you. I’m amazed at what you’ve done with these movies. The whole town thinks it’s crazy that you’ve worked on and led so many projects.
Andrew (59:46-59:51)
It’s strange. You blink, and suddenly all this work is done.
David (59:51-59:53)
You’ve had a cool career. Congratulations.
Andrew (59:53-59:53)
Thank you, David.
David (59:53-59:54)
Great to meet you.
Andrew (59:54-59:55)
This was a pleasure.
