GITS Q&A, Part 1: Mary Coleman (Pixar)
If you have spent any significant amount of time on this blog, you know that I am pretty well obsessed with Pixar [just do a Google search of the site and you will find dozens of posts about the company and their movies]. In terms of both commercial and critical success, Pixar stands at the top of the list all time:
* 12 movies produced, 12 #1 hits.
* 26 Academy Awards, 7 Golden Globes, and 3 Grammy Awards.
* 7 of Pixar’s 12 films are in the IMDB Top 250 Movies of all time.
* A total worldwide box office gross of $7.2B with an average of $602M per film by far the highest of any studio in the history of Hollywood.
So when Franklin mentioned to me that he knew Mary Coleman, a senior development executive at Pixar, and asked if I would like to talk with her, I jumped on that opportunity faster than you can say, “To infinity and beyond!”
Thus this week, I am excited to present to the GITS community my in-depth conversation with Mary. We covered a lot of territory related to Pixar’s approach to the story-crafting process and I think you will find what Mary has to say enormously insightful.
Today in Part 1, general background about Pixar.
SM: As I understand it, you were working in theater before you started working at Pixar.
MC: Yes, I was a director at San Francisco’s Magic Theater in the 90s. Our mission was world premieres of new plays. I loved working closely with the playwrights to develop their work — actually more than directing the plays. Pixar recruited me because they thought my experience with new plays would fit well with their story development process.
SM: Could you unpack that a little more, why they thought someone who had experience working with playwrights might be a better fit than a traditional Hollywood development exec?
MC: Because the Magic workshopped multiple drafts before going into production. We stuck with the playwright through the process, knowing that there would be rocky drafts but if you hang in there, you can get to something you’re all proud to be part of. Pixar commits to artists the same way, knowing that there are going to be drafts and screenings that fall flat, but instead of panicking and firing people we commit to the long-term development process.
Workshop is really the right word. In the theater we workshopped a new play for months. At Pixar it’s years, literally 5 years, to get the stories right.
SM: Where does that obsession with story and getting it right originate?
MC: Mainly from John [Lasseter]. He’s a natural born storyteller, the kind of person who gets everyone riveted at a dinner party with a story of something that happened to him yesterday. Pixar’s founder Ed Catmull was working at Lucas Films when he met John. John had just been fired from Disney. Ed brought him to Lucas in the guise of developing computer animation technology, testing and pushing this new software Ed and his team were creating, but Ed really wanted the artist, the storyteller, and just needed a way to get John on the team that would eventually split off to form Pixar.
One of the things I love about this place is that even though we pioneered this technology, the technology is always a tool to serve storytelling.
SM: Does the fact that Pixar is an animation company affect the way you go about approaching the storytelling process?
MC: Much less than you’d think. A good story is a good story, regardless of the medium. I suppose the main difference is when directors here pitch ideas John is paying attention to which of them really call out for animation. If he feels as if an idea might be just as good or better in live-action, he won’t choose it.
But after that, we don’t think differently about story because of animation. Really the way we think about it goes back to Aristotle. We may have invented cool new software, but when it comes to story we rely on the deep foundations of good storytelling. We look to myths, to epics, to great literature. And when we look for writers we look first and foremost for great storytellers.
SM: In that regard, weren’t you the one responsible for bringing in screenwriter Michael Arndt to write Toy Story 3?
MC: I was. We found him before Little Miss Sunshine was released. We hired him based on the strength of his script, not based on the success of the movie or the buzz around him.
SM: In a recent New Yorker article on Andrew Stanton, Michael Arndt is quoted as saying “I thought they must have some foolproof system, some big Pixar story machine, but they actually just make it up each time as they go along. Pete Docter’s [Pixar writer-director] analogy is ‘Everyone holds hands and jumps out of the airplane with the promise that they’ll build a parachute before they hit the ground.’”
MC: [laughs] So true. It’s funny because I get calls from producers down in Hollywood asking for the secret recipe. And I always say it’s really hard work, and committing to slog through the bad times. Trusting that if we stick with it and support each other we’ll get there. There’s no short cut for getting it right. We’re willing to keep going back to the drawing board, put it up, look at it, throw it all away and start over. We’re willing to do that over and over and over again. It’s not always fun — despite the images of us all riding around on scooters.
On every project, there’s a point where we think we’ll never crack it. We really despair. We think the story sucks. And that’s when everybody does the hand-holding and commits to making it better.
It’s never been easy. I’ve been here twelve years and there’s never been an easy one.
SM: I’ve read where Andrew Stanton didn’t study screenwriting. Did John study it?
MC: No, and neither did Pete. They’ve watched a lot of movies and paid attention to why they work and, more importantly, why they didn’t. Some of our directors taught themselves by reading great screenplays. And most of all there was a lot of trial and error.
Some great takeaway here:
* A focus on workshopping: Much more on this tomorrow, but Pixar is obsessive about working and reworking stories, often as long as 5 years, seeing the quality of a story as the absolute starting and end point of their creative process.
* “The deep foundations of good storytelling”: Aristotle, myths, epics, Pixar is steeped in the historical and literary roots of story.
* Story as hard work: There is no secret Pixar formula, no magical keys, rather their success is grounded in the willingness to keep pushing their stories to get better, even if they have take two steps backward to go one step forward.
But perhaps the most shocking and in its way inspirational revelation is this:
“On every project, there’s a point where we think we’ll never crack it. We really despair. We think the story sucks.”
How many times have you had this experience with your scripts? Well, take heart. Pixar has the same experience, too! I don’t know about you, but to me that is one of those quotes you print out and stick up at your desk. I mean if Pixar hits points where they think their stories suck, yet look what they can accomplish, why not me? Why not you? Why not us?
Tomorrow in Part 2, an insider’s look at the Pixar story-crafting process.
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