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So this idea of moving seemed like a good way to sort of represent that metaphorically. It also is something for me personally. When I was in fifth grade - so about 11 - my folks moved us to Denmark.

Pete Docter

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Pete Docter
Age: 66
Born: 1958
Born: October 9
Animator
Executive Producer
Film Director
Film Producer
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Voice Actor
Bloomington
Minnesota
Peter Docter
Peter Hans Docter
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More quotes by Pete Docter

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I knew that there was an upcoming screening where not only were we going to show it to everybody else at the studio, we also needed to move into production... And yet I was sitting there in editorial going this is not working. I'm a failure.
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But the truth is, at some point, our films - almost every single one of them - are really bad. And it's largely hats off to John Lasseter and Ed Catmull who have set up a system whereby they're expecting it.
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The drive of the story is sort of hinted at the beginning, is Joy and Sadness and those two characters. Especially Joy starting to understand that there's more to life than being happy. And so that's based on real life observations and things that we've learned as adults.
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One of the other experts we consulted with, this guy named Dacher Keltner, he was big on sadness as community bonding - I think is the word he used.
Pete Docter
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Dr. Paul Ekman, who worked in San Francisco - still does - which is where Pixar Animation Studios is, he had early in his career identified six. That felt like a nice, manageable number of guys to design and write for. It was anger, fear, sadness, disgust, joy and surprise.
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They're expecting us to make mistakes, and they've set up a process that allows us to correct for that and do it again and iterate. So I think that's a real key to the films that we've made.
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Traditionally, animation has been dominated by men in the past. I don't know why it attracted guys.
Pete Docter
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In the end, passion and hard work beats out natural talent.
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Toy Story we found, sorta by accident, because we didnt know what we were doing, the idea of being replaced by somebody. Everybody has that fear, or encounters this jealousy at some point.
Pete Docter
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I mean, I've - these other films were flukes. I don't know what I'm doing. I should just quit. What would I miss? I'd miss my house and I'd miss going to work. But I think the thing that I realized I would miss most is probably similar to everybody, which is your friends.
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You know there's always that kid in your class — and every class has one — the kid who draws all the time and is really good? That was not me. I was a lousy draftsman. But as soon as I figured out that I could make things come alive, like using the corners of my math book to make flipbooks, I was hooked.
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It's, like, you know, if you're sad, it's a way of connecting with other people. And we - a lot of times we sort of feel embarrassed by being sad, and we go off by ourselves to hide and cry by ourselves. But, really, it's a way of re-establishing relationship.
Pete Docter
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We found some scientists think that there are basically three emotions. Others went up to 27. Others had 16. Some were in the middle. So we were kind of left with no definitive answer to our basic question - how many are there?
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And so not only did I have all new friends and all new surroundings, I didn't even understand what they were talking about, which was very difficult and kind of started me, I think, on my path to animation. It was a lot easier to draw people than to talk and interact with them.
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Well, we try to - we definitely try to have a balance. And I think things have gotten a lot better at Pixar. When we did Toy Story, that was an all hands on deck situation that really was time intensive.
Pete Docter
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My father was working on his Ph.D. on Danish choral music - the Danish choral music of Carl Nielsen - so over there to do research.
Pete Docter
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And it sort of hit me that the very subject matter of the film that I'm dealing with is the key to the most important thing in our lives, and that's our relationships. And so we had done all this research showing the job of each individual emotion, you know, fear keeps you safe. It deals with uncertainty.
Pete Docter
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When I was in middle school, I liked to make cartoons.
Pete Docter
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Sometimes suffering is a weird attraction.
Pete Docter
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The way real memories work, from what we understand, is really complex. And it's an interconnection of different things and redundancy in the brain. So the idea of a memory existing as a little snow globe - the way we represent it in the film - is actually not scientifically accurate at all.
Pete Docter