Last month, while I was in San Francisco, I had many, many amazing adventures and opportunities. Among those opportunities, was to be able to sit down and exclusively speak to the minds behind this summer’s blockbuster, Inside Out. Not only did get to speak to some of the people who voiced the characters (more on that on a later post), but we also got to pick the brains of those behind the scenes. I am talking about Pete Docter, the director of INSIDE OUT and Jonas Rivera, the producer of INSIDE OUT. Today, I want to share with you our exclusive interview with them.
*Exclusive* Interview with Pete Docter and Jonas Rivera
#InsideOutBloggers
By the way, if you haven’t seen Inside Out yet, check out our review of the movie right here and watch this exclusive deleted clip from the movie right here. Honestly, we loved Inside Out, as a matter of fact, my kiddos are still talking about the movie and how they can now relate to their emotions. For example this past weekend, they were having a frozen lemonade as they were eating it, they turned to me and said “Look mommy, anger most be frozen inside my head because this lemonade is cold.” 🙂
For this and many other reasons, when we sat down with Pete and Jonas, the question inside all of our minds was, are we going to see a sequel for Inside Out? Pete and Jonas stated that “Never say never but we kind of lean towards we want to do something totally different. We have spent five years of our life on this film and we’re so proud of it. But what wakes us up in the morning and kind of gets us fired up is something completely new. And it was that conversation that led to Inside Out. We love inside Out and it could be a fun world and it definitely has some open endedness to the end, but I think we lean towards let’s go back and come up with something totally new. “
Since, Inside Out puts your emotions front and center, what is Pete’s and Jonas’ Inside Out emotion that resonate most with them? Pete stated “Depends on the day, because some days, fear for sure. However, most of the time, joy.” And Jonas chimed in with “I would say joy. For me, we’re generally pretty positive people. What I love about joy and this is personal, joy is someone that is always positive but she’s always looking backwards a little bit. She’s very much into her memories and I guess she’s a nostalgist and I’m a little bit that way, too.“
Emotions are a universal idea and in Inside Out, we see the emotions at work from “Headquarter”, was this the way that the filmmaker wanted to depict the inside of the brain all along? The answer is no. Originally, there was going to be a control room, like a spaceship, but the filmmakers didn’t want it to be something already seen before. There were other concepts along the production way, such as stream of consciousness and brainwashing section that didn’t make the final cut or developed into the into long-term memory and dream production areas.
Inside Out took 5 years to develop, did the filmmaker ever imaged that the movie would enable parents and children alike to be able to speak freely about their emotions? The idea was to make a funny movie, Pete said “We’ve had a couple of experiences. People talking about, how kids with autism have really been able to use this film. I was in Minnesota and they said, they laid out all the emotions and the kid will come in and pick up the ones he’s feeling as a way of expressing for the first time really, which is pretty powerful.” Such an amazing reward for the filmmakers to see how their project has impact other across the world.
However, Jonas experienced this impact first hand, he had this story to tell us. “I bought, my daughter Ava, the Inside Out socks. The socks where they have little graphic representations of the character and she combines them. And always like to know why, and her answer is, I have fear and joy today. She made a decision as she was getting dressed. It’s funny but, she’s thinking about that. I never dreamed stuff like that would happen. It’s really nice I guess its a cherry on top of the whole thing that it has done that.“
Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear, Disgust are the main characters of Inside Out, but if you know Bing Bong (Riley’s imaginary friend) steals some of the spot light from them. How did Bing Bong evolved? The answer is Bing Bong developed as the representation of childhood’s joy. Pete had this to say about Bing Bong “What Bing Bong gets to do in the film is really represent the theme of the film and that was very, very exciting.”
Speaking of characters, we asked Pete and Jonas if there were characters that didn’t make the final cut. This is what Pete had to say about that “We had Miss Scribbles, who is a drawing that Riley did a lot when she was three and she was funny.” There were other character such as Pride that didn’t make it either, Jonas had this story about those characters that didn’t make it “It was a whole bunch of characters that we tried that either one were stepping on the five that we had or were just not as clear like maybe schadenfreude. Funny for a one note bit but you know, didn’t survive you know, the storytelling process.“
Thanks to Pete Docter and Jonas Rivera for taking the time to allow us to pick their brain into what went in into the making of Inside Out. And if you are wondering if Pete and Jonas would love to see Inside Out as a ride in a theme park. The answer is YES, they would love that and are hoping for it to become a ride just like Car Land. So, hopefully, some Disney magic will make this dream a reality! Stay tuned from more from Inside Out coming soon and be sure to pre-order the Blu-Ray, DVD and Digital combo pack before it releases on November 3.
***About Inside Out***
Inside Out – Official US Trailer
Growing up can be a bumpy road, and it’s no exception for Riley, who is uprooted from her Midwest life when her father starts a new job in San Francisco. Like all of us, Riley is guided by her emotions – Joy (Amy Poehler), Fear (Bill Hader), Anger (Lewis Black), Disgust (Mindy Kaling) and Sadness (Phyllis Smith). The emotions live in Headquarters, the control center inside Riley’s mind, where they help advise her through everyday life. As Riley and her emotions struggle to adjust to a new life in San Francisco, turmoil ensues in Headquarters. Although Joy, Riley’s main and most important emotion, tries to keep things positive, the emotions conflict on how best to navigate a new city, house and school.
Disclosure: I was provided an all expense paid trip to San Francisco to attend the #GoodDinoEvent, #MilesEvent, #Waltagram, and #InsideOutBloggers events. No additional compensation was be received.