Pixar Producer Darla Anderson talks “Toy Story 3″

MakingOf recently went to Pixar Studios in Emeryville, CA to talk to the filmmakers of “Toy Story 3.” Producer Darla Anderson has been a member of the Pixar team for over 15 years and in addition to “Toy Story 3,” her credits include “A Bug’s Life,” “Cars,” and “Monsters, Inc.” Below is the full transcript of our round-table interview.

Q: What’s your favorite animated movie?

Darla: Oh, gosh, I cannot pick a favorite animated film because, um, god I love so many. I love all of our films, of course. I mean, when you said that, the first thing that came to my mind was “Nemo,” because I didn’t work on “Nemo,” so it’s easier for me to compliment a film that I didn’t work on. But I loved that when you’re watching “Nemo” you actually feel like you’re in the ocean and you’re free and you’re swimming with the fish and stuff like that. So, I really enjoyed that, especially. But I love all of our films, so, [pause] it’s impossible to pick your favorite children.

Q: Darla, can you tell us a little bit about your background and how you became a producer here at Pixar?

Darla: Um, sure. I, well, I fell in love with computer animation as a producer down in San Diego, and I went to, I think, NAB back in 19…[trails off, laughs] Long time ago! I fell in love with computer animation and then it was like, a lot of logo work. I had majored in art and I loved sculpture and architecture so I loved geometric, 3D stuff. And once you fall in love with computer animation, it’s not long before you discover Pixar if you’re in that, back then, tiny, tiny world. And so right away, I decided that I wanted to work at Pixar and I just brought myself to San Francisco and kept knocking on the door until they let me in. That was in 1990, I think, and they finally let me in in ’93. [laughs]

Q: Are there any special qualities required to be a producer at Pixar? You talk about being a producer and working on a number of films at the same time and each film is four years in the making, so you have to have a very long collaborative process, so is it different from producing other kinds of films?

Darla: It probably wouldn’t be for me, I think the type of people that Pixar attracts is crazy, profectionistic, driven, self-competitive people. So you’re a little bit different, in that regard. So, you know, when you get here, I’m like, “Oh this is my tribe! I love these people!” Um, so you have to have a passion, you know. For me, what drives me is getting everything up on the screen that I can get on the screen. And what I loved about computer animation, since the dawn of dinosaurs, 20 years ago, is that it was not straightforward, it was really difficult to do and I loved that challenge because you’re doing RND while you’re trying to do a great story and try to get it up on the screen. So I think, you know, a producer at Pixar has to love the thrill of the challenge, because you have to love to balance the technology with the art, with the story-telling, and you’re responsible for a budget and getting it in on time and getting it in in a graceful way and in a humane way. You have to make sure that the team is taking care of themselves, which is difficult to do because people around here are so driven. That, in a nutshell. A giant nutshell.

Q: Why do we, as an audience, need a “Toy Story 3″ and more importantly why did Pixar need to make it?

Darla: I think that people still love these characters. I think that people are very much attached to these characters. When we put out the first two films, the cool thing about it is, if you’re telling the story well, and you did a good job, pretty much everybody will feel like Buzz and Woody belong to them. It’s like Buzz and Woody are their toys, their characters, part of their lives, part of their childhood. So as such, I think that people want to hear more stories about them, hear more about where they went, what happened to them, and so that’s why I think people need the film. But we had stories that we wanted to tell with them, we wanted to revisit them. We had a story that we had been thinking about for nine, almost ten years, thinking about it for a long, long time. And, actually, there was another side story. So when we first got to that offsite, that first day, I was like “What’s going to happen today? Which story are we going to tell? I’m not sure!” So it was mind blowing when, by 10 o’clock that first day, oh we have no story! [laughs] And we went on, by the end of the second day, we had the current story that we have now. But for me, I’ve worked at Pixar all this time, and I didn’t actually work on any of the other “Toy Story” films. I worked a little, tiny bit on the first film, but not much. And that’s the reason I came to Pixar, I came to work on “Toy Story,” but they needed me to do some other stuff, they needed me to run a whole other division. And so, for me, with my career, I really wanted to be a part of this film and I wanted to make sure that it got done right. So…

Weston: Definitely did.

Darla: [laughs] You know, we do it as well as we can and that’s when I can sleep at night, when you’ve put everything you could up on the screen.

Q: Are you concerned about the fact that it’s been 10 years between this and the last “Toy Story,” do you think it’s working out as well as before?

Darla: Yeah, you know, I mean it’s not the way you’re supposed to do sequels is it? [laughs] Nobody can accuse us of trying to make a lot of money off of these things! It’s kind of funny because I’ve been here so long, I’ve been here 17 years, so in my mind, again I have this very myopic view, everybody wants to see “Toy Story” right? But then I started thinking, well maybe, I don’t know, maybe they don’t! Maybe they don’t think like I do. So when we came to our first, or only, we only had one preview on this film, and they recruit a blind audience, and they know they’re coming to see an animated film, but they don’t know which one. And they get two different groups of people, one is families and one is young adults and college age kids. And before each screening, the moderator came up and he said “Hi everybody, you’re here to see ‘Toy Story 3’!” And the audience went crazy! They jumped up, there was a standing ovation and I’m like “Thank god!” You know, that they feel like I feel, like I think they should feel. And there was this huge relief that there was this response, just to the title of the film. Before seeing the movie! And they had no idea they were coming to see it. And both audiences did that, so that was a good moment because we’re in the thick of making that film and it was during some of the hardest parts of it, so that was a good charge to kind of boost us along.

Q: So, having seen that, do you think the amount of time between films was a blessing in disguise? Now you have a whole different generation who is excited for the film.

Darla: Yeah, so what we did learn at that preview was that all the college age kids very much had enormous ownership over these characters and the story line, and that was not intentional, we weren’t thinking about that as we were telling the story, we were just telling the story the best we could. But, that was revealed to us at the preview, people we raising their hands and saying “This is me, this is exactly what happened to me, Buzz and Woody are mine,” so, yeah, it kind of worked out but it was not planned. We would be geniuses if we had thought that through!

Q: Speaking to other animators, they talk about their own experiences where their parents gave away their own favorite toys, and how they can relate to the character, Andy. What about yourself? Are there any personal stories you could talk about, like, that transitioning between being a teenager turning into an adult and having to give away your toys.

Darla: Yeah, well, were it up to me, I’m one of those folks, I’m not unlike John (Lasseter) I would keep everything. I mean everything to me, I’m like “Oh, this pen, it has meaning! It was a moment where I was with the three of you and I don’t want to get rid of it!” [laughs] Were it up to me, I would have vast collections of warehouses of all my stuff, so luckily I’ve been saved just by the chaos of life. Life has a way of, you know, you run off to college and you can’t possibly keep track of all of your toys and things and it slowly drifts away. But were it up to me, I would throw nothing away, ever. To the chagrin of most of my assistants.

Q: What’s the decision on the 65 minute version that they’re releasing, that they’re sending to the colleges. It sounds awesome, but that last half hour is it, you know? That’s the conclusion of the whole thing.

Darla: Right.

Q: How do you feel about releasing just that to the community and what’s the strategy on that?

Darla: I think what we wanted to do, well, I know what we wanted to do, I mean, inn a perfect world, we’d have the whole film done. But, like I just told you, I’m about to go off to digital dailies to finish the movie up. And so, we didn’t want to show the film in its unfinished state. So those 65 minutes or so are going to be its finished state with its finished score and everything. So that’s that, and we just thought that people would get excited about seeing what we had to offer. We wanted to give them a glimpse into our world and open the door to “Toy Story 3” and we thought that if they saw any part of it that they would be excited to be part of the process. Anyway, that’s what I was thinkin’! [laughs]

Q: One of my favorite things, something I’m always wondering about is what are the rules of the toys coming to life?

Darla: Well, and this is obvious, I can’t believe you’re asking me this question! [laughs] Because everybody knows that when humans leave, toys come alive.

Q: Then my question is, when can they break those rules?

Darla: Here’s the best place the rule gets broken, as I’m sure you know, is in the first “Toy Story,” if Buzz is deluded, why does he go still? We don’t know. And the reason why is that we needed to tell the story. But what we realized was that, because that’s the one inconsistency in that film, the one time that we broke our own rule. Because it took us a long time to ask the question, because if you’re telling a good story and it’s wildly entertaining, you can break some rules here and there. So every now and then, if you do it right and you stick to the vast majority of the rules you set up for your universe and your characters, you can bend them a little bit to enhance the story: in the case of Sid or in the case of Buzz. But for the most part, we try to stay as true as you can because there’s a certain voracity, you know, you get stable when you create a set of rules for the character and for the environment, it stabilizes the viewer and helps them experience the world in a much better way. You can lose yourself in the story much better if the rules are consistent, you don’t have to think about them anymore. We all know that when we watch films, rules are all over the map or it’s inconsistent, the continuity doesn’t make sense, you start thinking about it. Then you are taken out of the emotion of the story. But we have broken our own rules a few times. Does that answer your question?

Q: Yeah, that’s just me being ridiculously nit-picky. But, yes, thank you.

Darla: [laughs] Well we make rules for everything, all of our films have lots of ludicrous premises and so you have to create a universe that has strict rules. But, like anything, like Picasso, if you’ve picked the rules and you know the rules like the back of your hand and you’re facile with them, then you can play with them. But you better know it, and we grill each other endlessly about the logic. It’s what John calls the “Logic Police.” He’s like “I’m sorry, the Logic Police have to come in right now and say that that would not happen within the rules of our universe.”

Q: Now you’re still making the movie, and you’re about to finish, is there any trepidation? Or do you have a good feeling about it?

Darla: I always have a good feeling if I’ve done the very best I can do and if the director and the team has done the very best they can do. I cannot control the critics or the folks out there. I hope they love it as much as we love it internally, but all you can do is the best you can do. I have a great feeling that we put our heart and soul and sweat and blood up on that screen, so I’m at peace with that. But then, I’m always a little bit nervous. It’s like taking your kid off to college or something, just like our movie. It’s like “Oh god, I hope it all works out.” Knock on wood.

Q: What about the hints to other films in this movie? Like “The Omen”? Who is thinking about the references to other films?

Darla: Every person in this studio is really into films, period. We show them here all the time, we all love film and nerdy, geek things. And not the least of which is Lee (Unkrich). He’s just an auteur. He’s an amazing director and he’s one of the top geeks here. And so there’s all kinds of references, consciously and unconsciously all over the place. But most of them are conscious, we touch stones to all kinds of our favorite films and weave them in, but make them original somehow. Even though we’re referencing them, it still has this original vibe to it, I think. But I’m biased. [laughs]

Q: And is it hard to love your own product? Is it easier to get to love another film?

Darla: Well, it’s easier for me to compliment another film, you know, I don’t want to say “Oh, my film is so great.” It’s easier for me to say “I love ‘Nemo’.” But it’s like a kid, you don’t want your kid to have too much of a big head. But at the same time, I fall in love with all of the films, you have to. If you’re on a film, for four years, you have to fall in love with the characters, you have to fall in love with everything you’re doing or you’re not going to make it because it’s like a marathon. It’s intense, there’s long hours, long days, lots and lots of people on your team. So, it’s easy to love it, but you don’t want to boast about it too much.

Q: How is it working as a woman in a more or less, male, geek world?

Darla: Great question! [laughs] I’ve always been a tomboy, ever since I was little, I would say “Oh, guys are my best friends” and stuff like that. So, it hasn’t been something that’s been a big deal, but at the same time, I do wish that there were more woman artists around because I think that art has to come from the truth and from true experience and I’m looking forward to having more female directors here so that we can put their stories up on the screen and have a different vibe. That being said, I never blame the guys for putting their stuff up there. But I’ve always been one of the guys, so in that regard, it’s been fine. They’re all like my brothers, we tease each other relentlessly.