It’s a trick of the timing that Pete Docter is in position to become the first Pixar director to see his film win a best-picture Oscar nomination; the 41-year-old filmmaker, after all, just happens to be the guy who directed the latest in Pixar’s string of classics in the year when the Academy expanded the category from five to 10 nominees. But his film “Up,” the unexpectedly wrenching story of a cranky old man who flies his house to South America to fulfill a promise he made to his late wife, was picking up best-of-the-year buzz even before AMPAS decided to super-size the best-pic field.
Docter, who won a Student Academy Award in 1992 and has four Oscar nominations for his work on “WALL-E,” “Monsters, Inc.,” “Toy Story” and the short “Mike’s New Car,” has been part of the core at Pixar for almost 20 years. He is one of a small handful of directors – including company founder John Lasseter (“Toy Story,” “Cars”), Andrew Stanton (“Finding Nemo,” WALL-E”) and Brad Bird (“The Incredibles,” "Ratatouille") – who have made the studio the dominant force in animation over the last two decades.
Are you a baseball fan?
No.
Oh. Well, I’ll tell you my theory anyway. With the World Series about to start, I’ve decided that Pixar is the New York Yankees of the Oscar season.
(laughs)
Historically, the Yankees have been so successful that it’s not enough for them to get into the playoffs – they have to win the World Series, or the season has been a failure. And for Pixar, you’ve set the bar so high that it’s not enough to just get an Oscar nomination for best animated feature – you have to win, and this year you have to get a best-picture nomination to boot. Do you feel extra pressure, representing that company?
Well, I mean, the main job in what we do has already been done, right? We made the movie, and we were happy with it before it even hit the streets. Which seems like an airy-fairy thing to say, but it’s true. We set out to make the best films we can, and so far, our instincts have been pretty good. Anything else that happens, knock on wood, is just gravy on top.
In 2002, when Randy Newman won an Oscar for the first film you directed, “Monsters, Inc.,” he made a comment about how Pixar had made four good movies in a row, and how rare that is.
Yeah.
Seven years later, you could argue that the streak is still intact.
The truth is that every one of our movies is lousy at some point. It’s just that we allow ourselves time to fix it. And we have this co-op of directors who are all doing their own thing, but who together at certain times to analyze and assist with everyone. On “Up,” for example, about every four months we would show the film to John Lasseter and Brad Bird and Andrew Stanton, and then we’d go upstairs and talk about what was wrong with it.
