“Up,” written and directed by Pete Docter, is Disney-Pixar’s latest release, coming out May 29, 2009.
Following his directorial debut on the 2001 blockbuster film “Monsters, Inc.,” Pete Docter began searching for his next project. The notion for his first feature derived from his childhood curiosities and fears about the monsters under his bed. After spending some time developing the story for “WALL•E” and a few other projects, Docter once again turned to lessons from his own life to craft the idea for “Up.” With co-director/writer Bob Peterson on board, the duo began playing with some fantastic new ideas.
“Bob and I started having some fun thinking about an ‘old man’ character like the ones we love from the George Booth cartoons and all those great Spencer Tracy and Walter Matthau type of guys who are grouchy but you still like them,” says Pete Docter, Director/Writer
“Sometimes, at the end of a tough day at work when you’re just so overwhelmed with people and the chaos of the world, I would have this fantasy of being shipwrecked on a desert island in the Pacific,” says Docter. “Bob and I began playing with that idea and started having some fun thinking about an ‘old man’ character like the ones we love from the George Booth cartoons in The New Yorker, and all those great Spencer Tracy and Walter Matthau type of guys who are grouchy but you still like them. We came up with this image of a floating house held aloft by balloons, and it just seemed to capture what we were after in terms of escaping the world. We quickly realized that the world is really about relationships, and that’s what Carl comes to discover.”
Peterson explains, “Pete was the first one to put down on paper the idea of a grouchy old man holding a bunch of happy, fun, colorful balloons. We started brainstorming because we both liked the idea of having an older character. It’s something you don’t see very often, and we think that old people have great stories to tell.”
Docter credits much of his creative influences to some real-life “old men”—animators who worked on the Disney classics. Though not one of the legendary “nine old men,” Joe Grant was part of the 1937 team that created “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” and has served as a source of inspiration to Docter, who names Grant in the film’s dedication to the “real life Carl and Ellie Fredricksens who inspired us to create our own Adventure Books.”
“I got to know Joe when he was in his 90s. He was a friend of mine—this great old wise guy,” says Docter. “Every time I would show him something we were working on he’d say, ‘What are you giving the audience to take home?’ That was his way of telling me it’s the emotion—the character-based emotions that people are going to remember.”
Docter says he finds some of that emotion in personal experiences, such as the family trips he takes annually with his wife and two children. “Every year, we take a road trip,” he says. “For about two weeks, we set out on the road and head off to National Parks and other interesting places to see this amazing country that we live in. It’s great to see the world, but spending time together as a family is equally if not more important.
“A few years ago I went to Europe with my wife and kids,” Docter continues. “We stayed in fancy hotels, ate amazing food, visited castles and had this big adventure. One night we were having hot chocolate at a small department-store cafe in Paris, nothing special, and I was laughing and joking with my kids. It was an amazing trip to a fantastic place, and what I remember most is the small stuff.”
