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Portrait of Pete Docter

Pete Docter

(1968) Film Director

86 quotes in 642 categories

Pete Docter explains how Pixar tries to keep a balance between fun and hard work. He says sharing feelings like sadness can help people connect. He also describes how a story reel works like a comic book version of the film. He also believes that passion and effort can outshine natural talent.

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Pete Docter is a film director, best known for Walt Disneys Nine Old Men The Flipbooks.

Quick Facts About Pete Docter

Born: October 9, 1968
Profession: Film Director
Notable works: Walt Disneys Nine Old Men The Flipbooks

About Pete Docter

Peter Hans Docter is an American filmmaker and animator. He has served as chief creative officer (CCO) of Pixar since 2018. He has directed the company's animated films Monsters, Inc. (2001), Up (2009), Inside Out (2015), and Soul (2020). He was also a writer on Toy Story (1995) and Toy Story 2 (1999). From his nine Academy Award nominations, he is a record three-time recipient of Best Animated Feature for Up, Inside Out and Soul. Docter has also won six Annie Awards from nine nominations, two Critics' Choice Awards, a BAFTA Children's Film Award and a Hochi Film Award. He describes himself as a "geeky kid from Minnesota who likes to draw cartoons".

Quotes by Pete Docter

I love IMAX.

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I'm not actually sure if guilt is an emotion.

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Sometimes suffering is a weird attraction.

Attraction

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Yeah, to bring families together I need to go away.

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In the end, passion and hard work beats out natural talent

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I don't think it's physically possible for little kids to know what abstract thought is.

Abstract

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When I was in middle school, I liked to make cartoons.

Cartoons

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Work hard! In the end, passion and hard work beats out natural talent.

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I guess different brains work in different ways.

Brains

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There's no way for me to anticipate what people will like or not like.

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Parents don't want their children to lose that purity and innocence of childhood. We want to bottle that and hold onto that,…

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Any great movie you watch has some element of darkness or loss or some suffering in it. That's what makes the fun…

Darkness

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I love to go to the airports and just put on, like, dark glasses, so nobody can tell I'm staring at them,…

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When we did 'Toy Story,' that was an all-hands-on-deck situation that really was time-intensive.

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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…

Cinema

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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 -…

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As a director, nobody told me I'd be talking to people all day. I'm naturally reclusive - I feel myself peek out…

Day

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'Toy Story' really felt like just a bunch of guys working in their garage for fun. When it came out and people…

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People are funny -- they are able to project personality onto anything. I remember as a kid I spent a $ 5…

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I think, in Japan, animation isn't relegated to being a genre unto itself. It's just a medium by which you can tell…

Action

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Well, what we do is we have a script, of course. But for us, writing is also like storyboarding. It's drawing. And…

Cinema

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And it's about a three-month process every screening. And that way we have seven or eight chances at the film before we…

Animation

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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…

Adults

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'In-between' is sort of - an animator does the key poses. He'll do extremes, you know, like a character reaching out for…

Animation

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Yeah, we were looking for a way to represent adulthood and the passing into adulthood. And I think, for me personally and…

Adulthood

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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…

Animation

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With sadness specifically, in America you read about people medicating to avoid sadness. They don't want to experience sadness, and yet it's…

America

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Traditionally, animation has been dominated by men in the past. I don't know why it attracted guys.

Animation

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I made tons of films. I did animation for my friends' films. I animated scenes just for the fun of it. Most…

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Each one of the films get built up and strengthened and reinforced, and we're not afraid to rip stuff out and redo…

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And in part that's good but then, like any emotion - and this is something we learned from the research as well…

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It's really, always, the story and the characters that come first, and the other things are kind of dealt with in time…

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Back in the days before the Internet, there was no place to put a short film, so Mike Gribble and Spike Decker…

Cinema

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I kind of feel like... I have a slower instinct than most live-action directors, but I have more patience.

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There's something really emotional about not having any sound. That allows, I think, the audience to participate more actively and kind of…

Audience

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I don't think of 'Monsters, Inc.' as existing in the same space as Carl Frederickson from 'Up,' or whatever, you know? They…

Different universes

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I loved 'Dumbo.' I watched Bugs Bunny time and again. The Muppets were big, too. All of those, they have this real,…

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Little kids definitely have desires and jealousy. There are some emotions that don't show up at birth, but by three or four,…

Birth

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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…

Choral music

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Walt Disney wasn't making films for kids. Neither were the Muppets. A lot of the great, really cool films, they weren't making…

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Pete Docter by topic

Film (19) Animation (15) Thinking (13) People (13) Cinema (11) Time (10)