An Animated Chat With 'Up' Director Pete Docter

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..DATE:
20090526
..PGRM:
Fresh Air
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12:00-13:00 PM
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N/A
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NPR
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DAVE DAVIES, host:

This is FRESH AIR. I’m Dave Davies, senior writer for the Philadelphia
Daily News, filling in for Terry Gross. The new Pixar/Disney animated
movie “Up” is now out on DVD, just in time for the holidays. Our guest
is the film’s director and co-writer, Pete Doctor. He also directed
“Monsters, Inc.”

“Up” is about an unexpected relationship between an old man and a boy.
Carl is a 78-year-old whose beloved wife has died. Carl and his wife
dreamed of being adventurers, but they were really homebodies. He made
his living selling balloons.

Now his neighborhood is getting rebuilt around him, and the developers
want him to move to assisted living so they can tear down his house and
put up a high-rise. Carl refuses, and his way out of the problem is to
tie thousands of balloons to his house so he can fly the house to South
America, where he once dreamed of making an expedition with his wife.

But as he’s getting ready, a chubby eight-year-old boy named Russell
knocks on the door. Russell is wearing his Wilderness Explorer uniform
that has a sash covered with badges.

(Soundbite of film, “Up”)

(Soundbite of knocking)

(Soundbite of door opening)

Mr. JORDAN NAGAI (Actor): (As Russell) Good afternoon. My name is
Russell, and I am a Wilderness Explorer in Tribe 54, Wet Lodge 12. Are
you in need of any assistance today, sir?

Mr. ED ASNER (Actor): (As Carl Fredricksen) No.

Mr. NAGAI: (As Russell) I could help you cross the street.

Mr. ASNER: (As Carl) No.

Mr. NAGAI: (As Russell) I could help you cross your yard.

Mr. ASNER: (As Carl) No.

Mr. NAGAI: (As Russell) I could help you cross your porch.

Mr. ASNER: (As Carl) No.

Mr. NAGAI: (As Russell) Well, I’ve got to help you cross something.

Mr. ASNER: (As Carl) No, I’m doing fine.

(Soundbite of door closing)

DAVIES: After Carl slams the door, he cuts loose the hot-air balloons
and starts piloting his house to South America, not realizing that
Russell is still on the porch. So Russell and Carl become companions on
this fantastic adventure. Terry Gross spoke with director and co-writer
Pete Doctor about “Up” last spring.

TERRY GROSS, host:

Pete Docter, welcome to FRESH AIR.

Mr. PETE DOCTER (Director, “Up”): Thank you.

GROSS: I love the image, that a lot of our listeners might have seen in
one of the ads, of this old man walking through this exotic jungle
landscape, you know, Paradise Falls, with his house attached to a string
that he’s carrying, as if the house were a balloon, but the house is
being held aloft by all these balloons. And it’s a beautiful image
because it’s him trying to take his past with him, and at some point it
becomes too heavy.

It becomes a burden, and he has to figure out if he should let go or
not. And I thought, like I don’t know how that image came to you or if
you originally meant it to be, like, a metaphor, but it is such a
beautiful image about carrying the past and how it can sometimes become
too heavy, too much.

Mr. DOCTER: Yeah, it kind of evolved, I mean, as all things do. You
know, we started with something about balloons themselves are very
poetic and evocative to me, and more than just helium and vinyl or
whatever they’re made out of, you know, they become this almost metaphor
for life in a way.

I remember as a kid having a balloon and accidentally letting the string
go and watching it just float off and into the sky until it disappeared.
And there’s something about that, even, that feels very much like what
life is, you know, that it’s fleeting, and it’s temporal.

So something about balloons were really appealing and also the idea of
escape and floating away. And so as we developed the whole story, it
became a lot about trying to preserve the past. You know, this guy, the
whole world has changed, everything around him is different now. The
only thing he has, this feeling a connection with his wife, is his
house. So he can’t just leave that behind. He has to take it with him.

GROSS: It reminded me a little of “Fitzcarraldo.” Did you ever see
“Fitzcarraldo”?

Mr. DOCTER: Yeah.

GROSS: It’s a Werner Herzog film...

Mr. DOCTER: Sure.

GROSS: ...in which this explorer who wants to build an opera house in
the South American jungle, in order to get to where he’s going, he has
to carry his steam ship over a mountain. and the burden of that reminded
me at some point of the house being dragged through the air across...

Mr. DOCTER: Absolutely.

GROSS: Did you see the movie? Did you think about that?

Mr. DOCTER: We watched it along the way, yeah, and it was very similar
in the sort of preposterous nature of this. You know…

GROSS: Yes, right, and surreal, yeah.

Mr. DOCTER: Yeah, absolutely. Sounds like a laugh riot, doesn’t it?

GROSS: Well, it’s really funny, and I’ll tell you, you had me from the
start because very early in the film, the young version of the older man
– because it starts earlier in time, like in the ‘30s in the Prohibition
era – so he’s watching like one of those old newsreel kind of things
about this adventurer who goes to Paradise Falls, a forgotten land. And
you see like the scientists and the explorers with a protractor.

Mr. DOCTER: Oh yeah.

GROSS: And I thought oh, that’s so funny, a protractor.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. DOCTER: Well, it was high-tech back...

GROSS: High-tech. Yeah, so you had me right at the start. Did you watch
a lot of those newsreels and shorts before making your movie?

Mr. DOCTER: Absolutely, yeah. It was a lot of fun to not only try to
pick up on the film grain and – you know, we noticed that when they
would, say, be in the jungle, they’d have to develop the film
themselves, so it would have less contrast and may be a little washed
out and then versus the film they shot in New York, that would have
really striking blacks and whites. And so we tried to mimic all that in
the film, as well as even the way we recorded the music, you know,
working with Michael Giacchino.

We identified, I want heroic, I want drama, suspense.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. DOCTER: I want this. And so we just did all those like library
music, and then we did really bad music edits between them. So it’s
going along – da da da da da da - you know, so it’ll have these awkward
transitions just like, you know, the real newsreels.

GROSS: Just in talking about the old man, one more thing about him: like
the way he sits down in a chair, it’s like he slowly lowers himself, and
when he gets within plopping distance, he just like lets go and plops
into it. And I’ve seen so many older people have to sit that way. It’s
like you really got it.

Mr. DOCTER: That’s great you noticed that. The other thing we did is he
pulls his pants up, like he grabs right above the knee and kind of hikes
up his pants. I have no idea why older people do that, but you notice
that a lot, you know, I guess so it doesn’t get hooked on your heel or
something.

Anyway, we did look at a lot of folks, our grandparents, and we went to
an old-folks home. We kind of came in under the auspices of being a band
because I play the bass, and a couple of the guys played the ukulele.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. DOCTER: And so we were playing for these guys and secretly kind of
taking little notes for ourselves.

GROSS: Oh, that’s really funny. What do you play, what kind of music?

Mr. DOCTER: It was sort of like Tin Pan Alley-type stuff.

GROSS: Oh, that would be perfect because it’s the kind of music a lot of
people, like, in assisted-living facilities would have grown up with.

Mr. DOCTER: Yeah, they said oh, you were the greatest band we’ve had in
here for a long time. So it was great. It was a fun time.

GROSS: My guest is Pete Docter, and he directed and co-wrote the new
Pixar/Disney animated film “Up.”

You created a great creature for the movie, this exotic 13-foot bird
named Kevin.

Mr. DOCTER: Right.

GROSS: That’s because Russell names it Kevin.

Mr. DOCTER: Yeah, exactly.

GROSS: But I want you to describe the bird that you created.

Mr. DOCTER: Well, Kevin is a 13-foot-tall flightless bird, very
iridescent plumage, sort of based on a crane that I saw at a zoo. The
attraction for me was that these birds, when you see them in the zoo,
they almost have no expression. You can’t see what they’re thinking.
They give you no kind of advanced warning of are they happy or sad, or
at least to me. I’m sure bird experts can tell, but they’re really
unpredictable and quirky and funny. And I just – the animator in me was
like I want to animate that. So that’s kind of where Kevin came from was
just the joy of seeing these quirky behaviors.

GROSS: So but you gave Kevin emotion, the kind of emotion you couldn’t
read in the real bird that you based him on.

Mr. DOCTER: Right.

GROSS: So what kind of methods did you find for giving your bird
emotion?

Mr. DOCTER: Well, the cool thing was we did the same thing that I
described, where there is no facial expressions. And the Muppets do this
wonderfully, where you know, you’ll have like Fozzie, who has no facial
– other than he can open and close his mouth, the rest of it’s just
movement.

So the bird has a great deal of expression and range of attitudes, but
it’s all through movement. It’s almost like Charlie Chaplin or Buster
Keaton, which of course all animators study, and those are our roots. So
you know just through the movement and the posing, the speed at which
they move, we were able to get all this attitude.

GROSS: So did you go to South America?

Mr. DOCTER: We did. Yeah, there was a group of 10 of us, and this is the
great thing about working at Pixar. You know, “Toy Story,” we got to go
to the toy store with the company credit card.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. DOCTER: And on this one, since we set it in South America, a group
of 10 of us flew down to South America, to these amazing table-top
mountains. And we hiked up there - it took us three days just to get
there by plane, helicopter, Jeep - and then we hiked up.

We slept up there, we drew a lot, we took tons of pictures of course.
And there are fantastic, weird plants found nowhere else in the world,
these weird rock shapes that are just windswept, strange, bizarre shapes
- some of them look like people or animals. And a lot of ideas from the
film came from that trip.

GROSS: So what’s in your sketchbook that you took back from there?

Mr. DOCTER: Well there’s a lot of pictures of – myself, I’m usually
drawn to drawing people. Like I love to go to the airports and just put
on like dark glasses so nobody can tell I’m staring at them and just
draw people.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. DOCTER: It’s a lot of fun and just endless hours of entertainment,
just watching the way people do simple things, even like eat a meal or,
you know, wipe their kid’s face or whatever, just great behavior stuff.

But up there, of course – and even there I ended up drawing a lot of my
co-workers, but the reason we were there was to draw the landscape, and
I struggled as best I could to capture that.

GROSS: Now we talked a little bit about the bird that you created for
“Up.” There’s a bunch of dogs. There’s a pack of really, like, mean
dogs, and then there’s a really pleasant, companionable dog named Dug.

Mr. DOCTER: Right.

GROSS: First of all, I think it’s kind of interesting that, you know,
they go to this, like, exotic place, and usually in adventure films,
especially in the old ones before people were very kind of politically
aware of what they were doing, you know, adventurers would go to an
exotic land in Africa, and then the natives would want to cook them in a
big pot. And it was just like the most kind of insulting image of
indigenous people that you could ask for, and you made it possible to
not deal with that at all by having the villains, with the exception of
one person, be dogs.

Mr. DOCTER: Right.

GROSS: So you didn’t – and there’s a good-guy dog, too. So you didn’t
have to worry about, you know, offending anybody or...

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. DOCTER: Yeah, and of course, that is one of the staples of adventure
films, so I won’t pretend we didn’t at least discuss that. You know, we
had some ideas about that. But yeah, it just seemed, again keeping on
the sort of isolation thing, and there is something – for those of us
who have dogs as pets, I mean, I’m sure most people have the same
experiences I do is we make up dialogue for the dog.

So the dog is sitting next to the dinner table, and we make up things
that she’s talking about, which most of the time is are you going to eat
that because I could help you with that. If you need help, I am happy...

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. DOCTER: So that’s kind of where the talking dogs came from, and Bob
Peterson, who did most of the dialogue in it, and actually did the voice
of Dug, just has this great mind for thinking like a dog.

GROSS: And explain how it is that Dug can speak, the dog.

Mr. DOCTER: Yeah, the invention we came up with was this collar, which
allows the dog’s thoughts to be translated. So the dog in behavior is
acting just like a normal dog, panting or doing whatever, but you’re
hearing the dialogue from the dog’s brain.

So that allowed us to focus on things that a real dog would focus on,
which is, you know, food and sniffing – squirrel - you know, things like
that. So...

GROSS: And the collar has adjustments so you could change the language?

Mr. DOCTER: Absolutely, very important.

GROSS: Let’s hear a clip of Dug, the dog, and listen to his voice, and
the two main characters are in this, too. And Bob Peterson, one of the
writers, is doing the voice of Dug.

(Soundbite of film, “Up”)

Mr. ED ASNER (Actor): (As Carl Fredricksen) (Shouting) We have your dog.

Mr. JORDAN NAGAI (Actor): (As Russell) Whoa.

Mr. ASNER: (As Carl) I wonder who he belongs to.

Mr. NAGAI: (As Russell) Sit, boy. Hey look, he’s trained. Shake. Uh-huh.
Speak.

Mr. BOB PETERSON (Actor): (As Dug) Hi there.

Mr. ASNER: (As Carl) Did that dog just say hi there?

Mr. PETERSON: (As Dug) Oh yes. My name is Dug. I have just met you, and
I love you. My master made me this collar. He is a good and smart
master, and he made me this collar so that I may talk – squirrel. My
master is good and smart.

Mr. ASNER: (As Carl) It’s not possible.

Mr. PETERSON: (As Dug) Oh it is because my master is smart.

Mr. NAGAI: (As Russell) Cool. What do these do, boy?

Mr. PETERSON: (As Dug) (Speaking foreign language). I use that collar.
(Speaking foreign language). I would be happy if you stop.

GROSS: That’s a clip from the new Pixar/Disney animated movie, “Up,” and
my guest, Pete Docter, co-wrote and directed the film. Pete, what are
some of your favorite talking animated animals?

Mr. DOCTER: Huh. Well I mean, of course the Bugs Bunny - and there’s a
dog named Charlie Dog that I always think of. It was a Chuck Jones
character. Let’s see, other favorite characters. Well, I mean, I tend to
drift over to the Warner Brothers characters as my favorite, just,
characters because they’re so rich and funny. As movies, I tend to drift
over to the Disney films, you know, as stories and things.

“Dumbo” is one of my favorites. It’s just a simplicity, a wonderful
simplicity to it. And as a kid, you know, I saw certain things about it,
all the fun and, you know, pink elephants on parade and flying with the
crows and things. And now looking back on it, it’s got this added
dimension to it as a parent that you know, when you have a baby and ma
in the scene with the trunks, and they can’t even see each other. They
can just kind of hold trunks. I have yet to watch that without crying,
you know.

And “Cinderella” is great, too. It’s got a great sense of pacing. I
hadn’t seen it for a while and watched it again a couple of years ago,
and it’s just got this great rhythm where you allow for moments – and we
tried to do this in this film, as well. In a way, this film was trying
to hearken back to some of those films where you set up a situation, and
instead of having to go what happens next, what happens next, move it
along, move it along, you can allow the characters to just behave and
react. And to me some of the greatest animation – Miyazaki does this,
Hayao Miyazaki in his films, these just little observations, and that’s
all they are. They don’t further the plot, but they are beautiful,
little glimpses into real life, of somehow captured and distilled and
made even more real through animation. And that’s what we’re trying to
do in this film, as well.

DAVIES: Pete Docter is the director and co-writer of the Disney/ Pixar
animated film “Up,” which is now out on DVD. We’ll hear more after a
break. This is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

DAVIES: Let’s get back to Terry’s interview, recorded in May, with Pete
Doctor, the Director and co-writer of the animated film, “Up.”

GROSS: I read that for the voice of Russell, the boy in the movie, that
you cast the brother of a kid who actually came to audition.

Mr. DOCTER: Yeah.

GROSS: The kid that you cast didn’t come to audition. He was the brother
of the kid who came to audition. How did that happen?

Mr. DOCTER: Well yeah, and hopefully that hasn’t caused a rift between
them.

GROSS: That’s what I keep wondering. Like what’s it like to be the
actual acting brother and not get the part?

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. DOCTER: I know, well…

GROSS: Yeah.

Mr. DOCTER: His brother, Jordan’s brother, Hunter, still does quite a
bit of acting on his own. So I think he’s…

GROSS: He survived, yeah, okay.

Mr. DOCTER: But yeah, we were looking for somebody - and you know, this
is always a treacherous area to walk into as you’re approaching
something like a kid because it’s so easy to be cloying and sappy and/or
just, like, bad acting, you know, and we wanted this to be authentic and
real-sounding. And when we heard this kid, he came in, and like you say,
he wasn’t even planning to audition.

His brother stepped up, and they said thank you, great, well how about
you? Jordan, why don’t you come over here? And he just – I think he
talked about Judo or something, and his voice just made me laugh. He had
this really wonderful, sweet, innocent voice. And it’s little bit like
you hear the stories of the voice of Thumper from “Bambi,” you know,
they were reading kids and the director said oh, get him out of here, he
can’t act, and the animator said no, no, keep him, you know, because
there’s something really charming and quirky and kind of indefinably
odd, and that’s exactly what we got with Jordan. He just has this really
great appeal to his stuff.

And then of course we did have to work a little bit to get some of the
acting. He covers a lot – a big range of emotions, and having never done
it before, you know, we basically did a lot of tricks where, you know,
we tried to get him to laugh, and it was just not really working. So I
picked him by the ankle, held him upside down and tickled him as he said
the line. So as he’s being tickled by the bird that’s what that is.

So yeah, it’s a tricky gig, especially here. You know, you’re in a room
that has – and we record the dialogue first, of course. So there’s no
animation to react to. You’re just in a grey room with a bunch of words
on a page, and nine times out of 10, no other actors, even.

We try to read opposite. Bob Peterson and myself would usually read
opposite, but it largely has to kind of come to life in their own heads,
the actors.

GROSS: So you cast Ed Asner as the older man. So did you have an idea of
what he would look like before you cast Ed Asner, or like which came
first in your mind?

Mr. DOCTER: Well, we had the story, and we even designed the character.
He was finished. We had him all – I don’t think he was quite finished
being built in the computer, but the design was there. And what we did,
and we have done this on all the films, is we grab little snippets of
dialogue from other movies, and so while we’re looking at these designs,
we just listen. And some people just fit perfectly, and Ed was one of
those guys.

GROSS: Oh I see, you take their dialogue from other films and juxtapose
it with the image that you have and see if it fits.

Mr. DOCTER: Exactly.

GROSS: So what did you do with him, like “Mary Tyler Moore Show” stuff?

Mr. DOCTER: Yeah, and then we got some of his more recent films, because
you know, some time has passed since “Mary Tyler Moore.”

GROSS: Yeah, a lot.

Mr. DOCTER: But yeah, he just had this real sort of still - the
gruffness and the, you know, angularity to his voice with an underlying
sense that oh, this guy really does care, you know, which is exactly
what we needed for the film.

GROSS: Now your daughter does the voice of the young girl who becomes Ed
Asner’s wife in the movie, who becomes the man’s wife in the movie. How
did your daughter – what a shock that you would find your daughter, but
why did you give her the part?

Mr. DOCTER: Well, the way we work at Pixar is we write the script, but
then we quickly move on into story reel, which is basically like a
comic-book version of the film. And then we do our own dialogue and
music and sound effects, all in an effort to be able to basically sit in
the theater and watch the movie before we shoot it, essentially. And
that way – you know, once you get into animation, it’s horribly time-
consuming.

It’s like animators do about four seconds a week, you know, and that’s
not even including all the shaders and the lighting and the modeling and
all that. So we want to whittle out all the stuff that we have any
questions about first.

And so what we did when we got to that part - you know, the beginning of
the film takes place in the ‘30s, as they’re kids, and we knew that if
one of us tried to do the voice of a kid, people would be so distracted
by that that you wouldn’t pay attention to the scene. So we just got my
daughter to come in, and we thought well, this will work until we find a
professional actor, but enough people really loved it.

In fact, that was the first thing Ed Asner said when we showed him. He
said who does the voice of that kid? She steals the show.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. DOCTER: So that was pretty cool.

GROSS: So did you have her redo it or just use the tracks that she did?

Mr. DOCTER: No, we just used the tracks. Yeah, she was about seven and a
half at the time, and we worked with her much like we worked with
Jordan, where you know, kind of tricking her into things, or doing the
copy game, where we’d say the line, and she’d parrot it back. And we
found with both kids that, you know, physicality is a big thing. So
standing stiffly in front of a microphone is not really the best way to
get a great performance.

With Jordan a lot of times, I would say okay, now you’ve memorized the
line. Before you say this next take, run back around that chair, run
around three times, jump up and down, run back to the microphone and
then say the line, ready go.

And so you’d just get them all worked – how many times do I need? Okay.
And then he’d be much more animated and lively, having run around the
room. So that was fun.

GROSS: Yeah, that sounds…

Mr. DOCTER: It was pretty exhausting for me, too, by the end of the day.

GROSS: Pete Docter will be back in the second half of the show. He
directed and co-wrote the new animated movie “Up.” It opens Friday. I’m
Terry Gross, and this is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

This is FRESH AIR. I’m Terry Gross back with Pete Docter, the director
and co-writer of the new Disney/Pixar animated movie "Up." It opens
Friday. Docter also directed the Pixar movie "Monsters, Inc." and was
one of the writers of "Wall-E" and "Toy Story."

Now, "Up" is in 3D, and I'll confess, I hadn’t known that, but when I
went to the advance screening of it...

Mr. DOCTER: Uh-huh?

GROSS: …before interviewing you, I had kind of forgotten that it was in
3D and I didn't see it 3D.

Mr. DOCTER: Mm-hmm.

GROSS: So what did I miss? I really loved the film. I know it doesn’t
have to be in 3D to enjoy it.

Mr. DOCTER: Right.

GROSS: But what did I miss?

Mr. DOCTER: Well, I mean we tried to use 3D as just another element to
tell the story. So, for example, when Carl is alone in his house we
really tried to squash space to make him feel claustrophobic and locked
in. And then by contrast, as he floats his house off, we really tried to
push the depth and you know, make him seem free. And so it’s to us kind
of another tool like lighting, like color, cinematography, it's just
another way of furthering the emotion that we're trying to communicate
to the audience.

GROSS: So did you work on the 3D part of it?

Mr. DOCTER: I worked with - there was a separate group that we set up.
So initially, when we started the project, we had no thought of doing
3D. We were just doing, focused on story and characters. And John
Lassiter came to us, I think it was about a year and a half, two years
in, and said, hey, we'd really love to do this in 3D. So we set up a
group much like, you know, we have the art department, we have the
animation department, and now we have the 3D department, and they
followed along sequence by sequence and would use 3D in the way I
described, really trying to further the story. But I’ll confess, it was
not really in the forefront of my mind. The things I was most focused on
were just story and character. And we tried to use it a little more like
a window that you look into as opposed to - I don't know about you,
whenever I see 3D movies and stuff is going booga, booga, booga…

GROSS: Yes.

Mr. DOCTER: …in your face, I'm suddenly aware, oh, I'm sitting in the
theater wearing dopey glasses, you know? So we tried to use it much more
subtly and a little more like, you know, my father had a bunch of
stereophonic test records when I was growing up and you’d have you know,
bongos on the left channel, trombones on the right channel, and now it’s
much more integrated and subtle, and that's kind of the way we were
trying to approach the 3D on this film as well.

GROSS: The movie is dedicated in part to one of the Disney animators
from the early days. Tell us about him.

Mr. DOCTER: Yes. Joe Grant was a guy, and this was really the great
pleasure of having worked on "Toy Story" and having that be as
successful as it was, suddenly I got to meet all these old heroes of
mine that had made all the Disney films. You know Frank Thomas and Ali
Johnson, and Joe Grant was basically second only to Walt in development,
to the story development team back in the ‘40s, ‘30s and ‘40s. He was
head of story on "Dumbo," and designed the Wicked Queen in "Snow White."
He's a really, you know, amazing artist. And he was still working in his
90s, that’s when I got to know him.

And he was just one of these guys who was always looking for new ways of
expressing himself, new technique, new pencils or pens. And one thing he
talked about a lot in, when I would pitch him things, was what are you
giving the audience to take home? And at first I was like, well, what
does that mean? Taking the audience - to take home? What he was talking
about was what are you putting up on the screen that's emotionally
relatable that they will identify with and think about not only when the
movie's done, but the next day, or the next week, or the next year? And
you know, that's what we always try to do in our films - and is
definitely there in those great Disney films.

GROSS: When you started as an animator, were you given like the bottom
of the pyramid kind of jobs to do? And what are those jobs like?

Mr. DOCTER: Well, yeah. When I started this is back in the ‘80s, I was
painting the backs of cells. Of course, cells are these celluloid sheets
of plastic. They’re actually made out of acetate, but they don't use
them at all anymore. It's all computers. So the animator would draw
something on paper, it would then be inked or Xeroxed onto the cell, and
then my job was to paint the backs the right color, you know, so that
they would read against the background and not just you couldn't see
through them. So that's kind of like the bottom tier. And then I worked
my way up doing in-betweens, and this was all…

GROSS: What's an in-between?

Mr. DOCTER: In-between is sort of - an animator does the key poses.
He'll do extremes, you know, like a character reaching out for a glass
of water and then another one of him drinking. And the in-betweener has
to do all the drawings that goes between those two. You know it could be
12, 23 whatever in-betweens. And then that was all hand-drawn, and
that's kind of what I was picturing that I would end up doing. And then
I got a call towards my last year of school from John Lassiter, and
working at Pixar was great because they paired these amazing people who
knew - brilliant scientists with artists, each one ignorant in the
others work and yet both working towards the same common goal and
produced some pretty groundbreaking stuff.

GROSS: Early in the film you have to establish, since the movie is in
part about an older person's relationship to his past, you have to
establish what his past was…

Mr. DOCTER: Mm-hmm.

GROSS: …before getting into the heart of the story.

Mr. DOCTER: Right.

GROSS: And you, in just like a few minutes, establish this like
beautiful relationship with his wife. You know, they meet as children
and they both share this love of adventure and it’s a really kind of
sweet but also sad relationship. And when she dies you're so, you’re
just so sad.

(Soundbite of laughter)

GROSS: And it’s so much to squeeze into, what, three or four minutes.
Can you describe a little what went into reducing a whole backstory and
a marriage and a life into this little sequence?

Mr. DOCTER: Yeah. That was probably my, the scene and sequence I'm most
proud of, that scene. It's just - and we started much like you would
writing, say, a term paper where you go way long. You just put in all
this. We had a bunch of scenes that were little - with dialogue and just
little short little bursts of life. And then we assembled all that
together and we realized, oh, this is way too long. And so Bob Peterson
had written this great first draft of it and Ronnie del Carmen, who's
our head of story, started drawing it.

And he has this beautiful way of just kind of kissing the paper with his
pencil in wonderfully, expressive and very sort of poetic lyrical
drawings. And we got to that point and we kept and cutting and cutting.
And we took out dialogue. We took out sound effects even. And sort of
inspired a little bit by - my parents growing up took a lot of Super-8
films of us as kids. And looking at them now, they’re just these almost
more emotional experiences to watch because the sound isn’t there. You
know, all you have is the flicker of the projector. And I think you as
an audience member are sort of drawn into that and participate a little
bit more.

GROSS: Tell me more about the impact of those Super-8 movies that your
parents made of the family when you were young.

Mr. DOCTER: Yes. I mean they're just films of us standing in a hole my
dad dug to plant a tree or my mom walking around pregnant with my
sister. And you know, these are - like I have probably fleeting glimpses
in my own life, memories of that, but watching them on screen, they’re
kind of, I don't know. And there may be something about the fact that
they're projected as well, that they're just kind of shadows of a past
that - and as you watch it, it's like I say, I think because there's no
sound you're missing something. It becomes slightly more abstract and
yet almost more real. In the same way we have tapes, audiotapes of my
sisters and I talking as well, and that's almost more emotional than
videotape. When you get them both together somehow, it's almost - you
can sit back and watch it like TV. It's kind of everything's fed to you.
Whereas by taking one of the elements away you have to be more actively
participating in the experience.

GROSS: Pete Docter, thank you so much for talking with us.

Mr. DOCTER: Thank you. It was a pleasure.

DAVIES: Pete Docter, director and co-writer of the new Pixar/Disney
animated film, "Up." It’s now out on DVD. Terry’s interview with Doctor
was recorded last May. I’m Dave Davies, and this is FRESH AIR.
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A Messenger For The Marines: Steve Beck's Story

DAVE DAVIES, host:

This is FRESH AIR. I’m Dave Davies, filling in for Terry Gross.

Military families dread that knock on the door that brings the news a
loved one has been killed in action. The new film, “The Messenger” is
about the soldiers who deliver that news. Today we’ll hear from a Marine
who handled that duty. For three years, Steve Beck delivered tragic news
and helped survivors get through the terrible period that followed. He’s
now a Lieutenant Colonel, and our guest, along with journalist Jim
Sheeler. Sheeler's book, "Final Salute," is about Beck, the families he
notified and the loved ones they lost. The book’s an expansion of the
Pulitzer Prize-winning article Sheeler wrote for the Rocky Mountain
News, where he spent five years covering the impact of the Iraq war at
home. He now teaches journalism at the University of Colorado.
Lieutenant Colonel Beck is founder of the Remembering The Brave
Foundation. He was deployed, this week, to Afghanistan. Terry spoke with
them in 2008 when “Final Salute” was first published. It’s now out in
paperback. Her first question was for Lieutenant Colonel Beck.

In the three years that was your job to knock on doors and deliver the
news that someone's loved one had died in the war, did you learn what
were the best ways of breaking the news, like phrases that you could use
that would maybe soften things a little bit or convey the kind of
emotion that you, or lack of emotion you felt you needed to convey?

Lieutenant Colonel STEVE BECK: That's a very tough question. I don't
know that I learned how to do that. I don't believe I learned how to
take away emotion of the most horrible news that can be delivered to
someone. It is wrought with emotion. What you must do is convey to them
that their loved one has fallen, their loved one has died, and that
you're there, that you have empathy for their pain and you are there to
care for them and to help guide them through what will prove to be some
of the most difficult days of their lives. And so you go with an
empathetic heart, but at the same time you go standing as strong as you
can so that you can be their oak and they can lean on you in the times
that will come, which will be some of the most difficult times for them.

GROSS: Being there to lean on is actually part of the job. How long are
you expected to remain close to a family and be there to support them?

Lt. Col. BECK: I don't think we have established a set time for that.
That really comes down to the relationship that is formed between a
family and a casualty officer or a fellow Marine. They know you're a
Marine. They know you're trying to take care of them. They know you're
there for them. If relationships form between casualty officers and
family members, they could last for years, or if they don't form in
those times of adversity that they're going through, they may dissolve
when your duty is completed and you've taken care of the family as much
as you can.

GROSS: Do the families often know what the news is going to be as soon
as they see you?

Lt. Col. BECK: I think so. It's my belief that when they see us at the
door that they know that something bad has happened, and they all know
that their loved one's serving in combat, and we just don't go make
house visits. So when--if we're standing there in front of their door, I
think they always know that something very bad has happened.

Mr. JIM SHEELER: Yeah, they're instructed in their--this is Jim--they're
instructed before their service member leaves that if their loved one is
injured they'll get a phone call. And the only way that they will know
if they've died is if they get a personal visit. And, I mean, I've
talked to mothers and wives who, you know, they'll circle the street two
or three times just kind of eyeing in front of their house looking for
that government van, looking for things that aren't right because they
know that if it's there then the worst has happened, and they try to put
it off as much as they can, put it out of their minds. But it's always
there.

GROSS: You're there in part to help the person to whom you're delivering
the news, you're there to deliver it and to help them, but when they see
you and they figure out why you're there, you're the symbol of the worst
thing that could happen. And I guess I want to know what it's like to
knock on a door knowing that you are going to initially be that symbol?

Col BECK: Well, the way I've come to terms with that, for me personally,
I know that I'm delivering the worst news that they could possibly hear,
and it's incredibly painful for me. But what drives me forward is
knowing the pain that they're going to go through cannot even possibly
be compared with the minimal pain and discomfort I'm feeling. And so I
can put mine aside quite easily knowing that the pain that I'm about to
cause with this news and my responsibility to America to take care of
that family is more important than any discomfort that I have.

GROSS: Jim, you write about how Marines always go out in pairs when
they're delivering the bad news. Why are there two Marines going to each
home?

Mr. SHEELER: Well, there's usually--the casualty systems calls officer
plus a chaplain. Nobody knows how somebody's going to react to that
news. And I think they've decided having two people there is the best
way to do it. The Marines actually do it different than the Army. In the
Army they have someone who will knock on the door, and that's pretty
much his job, is to deliver the news and the family never sees him
again, or her again. With the Marines that person that delivers the news
is the primary casualty assistance calls officer and they're there for
the rest of the whole process.

Lt. Col. BECK: Grief has many faces, and when someone's getting this
shock they respond differently. And so anger should be expected and
planned for. You know, I've felt all the different emotions that they
were feeling at the time. And I know the reality of it is that I'm not
the person they really want to lash out at, but I certainly don't mind
being that person because they need to do that. They need to do that
with someone, and it's better that it is me than--or the casualty
assistance calls officer than someone else in their family or otherwise-
-or themselves, for that matter. So taking that on is not something that
we're concerned about. But we go out together and we have a chaplain
with us as well, so I think we're--with another Marine and a chaplain I
don't think we can go wrong.

GROSS: Jim, one of the stories that you tell in your book is the story
of Katherine Cathey, who lost her husband in Iraq while she was
pregnant. And it was Colonel Beck who had to deliver the news with her
and who stuck with her during this horrible part of her life. Would you
describe the story as you understand it of how she responded when
Colonel Beck came to the door?

Mr. SHEELER: Sure. Katherine was actually taking a nap when they knocked
at the door. And her stepfather answered, and as soon as he saw the
Marines there he knew. And then he stepped back and Katherine's mother
saw them and she screamed. And then he went in to wake up Katherine, who
had heard the screaming of her mother, and she asked what had happened
and he just said, `It's not good. You need to come outside.' And as soon
as she saw Major Beck and the chaplain there she knew as well and she
started screaming. And she screamed and screamed. She ran into the other
room cradling her pregnant, you know, belly, and she just glared at the
Marines, from the way she and her parents and Major Beck describe it,
and she just went and took a bath and she sat there for a long time
before she came back out. And a lot of the families have that sort of
reaction of--sometime they refuse to let the Marines in, period. They
say `if I don't let them in, it's not going to happen.' They'll try to
delay the message. But eventually it always gets to them.

DAVIES: Marine Lieutenant Colonel Steve Beck and journalist Jim Sheeler,
recorded in 2008. Sheeler's book, "Final Salute," is now out in
paperback. We’ll hear more after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

DAVIES: Let’s get back to Terry’s interview with Lieutenant Colonel
Steve Beck and journalist Jim Sheeler, recorded in 2008. For three
years, Beck notified families their loved one had been killed in action
and helped the families through the tough period that followed.
Sheeler’s book, “Final Salute,” about Beck, the families he notified and
the loved ones they lost. One of the people Sheeler writes about is
Katherine Cathey, who learned from Colonel Beck that her husband, Jim,
was killed in Iraq. She was pregnant when she got the news.

GROSS: Her husband's casket arrived from Iraq on a commercial airline,
an American Airlines flight that landed in the Reno/Tahoe International
Airport. Colonel Beck, were the passengers on the flight aware that
there was a fallen Marine in the cargo?

Lt. Col. BECK: They were. What we often try to do--it doesn't always
happen, but we try to make sure, through the help and the assistance of
the airlines--we'll communicate, at least it was something that I liked
to do every opportunity that I had with a particular airline was to let
them know, to radio ahead to the pilot and ask them to ask the
passengers to remain seated while we took care of our fallen Marine. And
so my understanding is they were able to do that on this particular
flight. They did also know, in that point in the war many people
realized that when there 's a service member in a dress uniform onboard
that they may be transporting someone home. So in this particular
instance the pilot made an announcement and asked everyone to remain
seated and--just as we would like--and show their respects as we bring
our brother home.

GROSS: And, Jim, you write in your book that commercial flights aren't
used anymore in this way. Why did that change?

Mr. SHEELER: A father in California complained after learning that his
son would come home on a commercial airline. And since then Congress has
passed a measure that allows the families to choose whether they want
their sons to come home, or sons and daughters, to come home on
commercial flights or on a private, chartered aircraft, which in some
ways is better for the family and they've also instituted a rule that
those caskets are to be met by a full honor guard and given the proper
treatment.

GROSS: There's an incredibly moving photo of Katherine, who was very
pregnant at the time of her husband's death, draping herself over his
coffin. And, Jim, I know you didn't take the photographs for the book,
but did you and the photographer ever feel like it was intrusive of you
to be there observing or photographing this period of grief?

Mr. SHEELER: Well, the photo was taken by Todd Heisler, who now works
for the New York Times. When we first met Katherine, it was in her home
a few days after her husband's death. And she, like all the other family
members, just simply wanted to talk about her husband. She wanted to
tell Jim's story. And I've found this continually. It doesn't matter
anybody's politics, the family wants their son or daughter's picture on
the front page of the paper next day. They want their stories told.

And so we sat with Katherine for hours just talking and talking. And the
one thing that really struck me was she told the story of how, when they
found out she was pregnant, she took up knitting because Jim was then at
officer candidate school at that time. And she would knit and knit. And
when she found out that the baby was coming she started knitting baby
blankets and baby booties. And the night before Jim left for Iraq he
slept with that baby blanket, and he did it because he knew he wouldn't
be home in time to see the baby born. But when the baby was born he
wanted the baby to know how he smelled. And for me it really said all
that needed to be said about Jim Cathey as a person.

And we also made a connection with Katherine. After spending hours with
her during one of the worst times of her life, when we left that night
she said, `Thank you. You know, this may sound strange, but you guys
made my night.' Because we were able to take Jim's story and share it
with so many people.

And so when we got to Reno, it was basically the most difficult question
that I had to ask in the whole reporting process, was to ask Katherine
if we could come along for everything, for the entire process. By this
time we had been following Major Beck for about nine months. But we
hadn't seen everything from the inside, you know, through the family's
eyes directly. And so I asked her if we could come along for everything.
At that point I probably knew more about what was going to happen than
she did. But I told her that `if there's ever a moment that you feel
like we're getting too close or too intrusive, all you have to do is
just wave your hand and look at us funny and we're gone.' And I think by
giving her that power she realized that she didn't have to use it. It
kind of created this trust that remained throughout the entire process.

The night that she was sleeping with Jim's casket there--she decided to
sleep with Jim's casket the very last night that he was there. And at
one point just before she fell asleep, she looked up at one of the
Marines who was looking over Jim's casket and she said, `Are my
reporters still here?' And he said, `Yeah, do you want me to get rid of
them?' And she said, `No, no, I just wanted to know that they were still
here.' So we were comfortable that she was comfortable with us being
there, and that she wanted people to see what she was seeing.

GROSS: Colonel Beck, one of your jobs is to inspect the body in the
casket before the family comes in and sees the body. What are you
looking for in this final inspection?

Lt. Col. BECK: Well, warfare is very violent, it is the most violent
place and conditions that there are on earth. Things happen to people
that can devastated their bodies. And so it's important that we make
sure that nothing has happened in transit with the airlines. And it's
important that we make sure that the uniform on the Marine is perfect
and so that we can convey to the family exactly what they may see if
they desire to look at their loved one one final time. And so if we
don't inspect that Marine, we won't understand how best to convey that
information to the family so that they can make an informed decision on
what their wishes might be with respect to seeing their loved one.

GROSS: Have you found that most people want to see their loved one even
if it was a violent death, even if the body has been mutilated by the
death?

Lt. Col. BECK: No. I haven't found it one way or another, necessarily. I
think opinions vary on that.

GROSS: What did Katherine decide to do?

Lt. Col. BECK: They chose not to.

GROSS: Mm-hmm.

Jim, you've attended about a dozen Marine funerals as part of your
reporting and your research for the book. As an outsider, as a person
who's a reporter, not a Marine, what did you find most interesting or
most confusing to you about the actual Marine funeral rituals?

Mr. SHEELER: I think the most amazing things are the things that you
don't see, the things that are happening behind the scenes. Yes, there's
the very formal and very important ceremony where the Marines are
folding that flag for the last time that so many people have seen. But
at the same time, a lot of times the Marines will go to the houses, the
homes of the relatives or the family members and station themselves at
the house because they know it's been in the paper that this family is
not going to be at the house. So they want to have that covered, that
nobody's going to rob that house, that this family's going to be taken
care of. One mother just told me the Marines are everywhere right now.
You don't even know where they are. And so I've made it my job to try
and find out. And it was pretty amazing to find out that the escort who
brought that Marine home is there and will not leave the casket
unattended. And the Marines themselves will not leave that casket
anywhere where the public can get anywhere near it. There's going to be
two Marines standing at the head and the foot of their brother. And just
that dedication is pretty amazing.

Some of the Marines that I talked to will, while they're standing post
there, they'll talk to the body even if they never knew him. They'll
talk to him when they come up into the airplane and say `hello,' you
know, `you're home.' They take this very personally. And when you talk
to them about the impact, it's pretty incredible. You know, they're
trained to kill, really. I mean, they're trained to fight, and they know
how to fight as good as anybody in any branch of the service. And yet
when you talk to them about these emotions when they pick up that
casket, you know, one of them told me that you just, you don't know, you
don't understand until you pick up that casket and you feel the weight.
That's when you understand.

GROSS: Colonel Beck, where were you at the funerals for the loved ones
of the people who you were working with after delivering the news?

Lt. Col. BECK: I'm the person that delivers the flag to that family. And
so I'm running the ceremony at the funeral. So I'm in charge of that
ceremony, and so that funeral--that flag is folded by the Marines, the
pallbearers there who carried him or her. And they fold that flag, as
Jim said, for the last time. The rifle detail puts three rounds, three
of the brass rounds from the rifle salute into the final fold of that
flag, and they present that flag to me to present to the family.

DAVIES: Marine Lieutenant Colonel Steve Beck and journalist Jim Sheeler,
recorded in 2008. Sheeler’s book, “Final Salute,” is now out on
paperback. We’ll hear more after a break.

(Soundbite of music)

DAVIES: Let’s get back to Terry’s 2008 interview with Lieutenant Colonel
Steve Beck and journalist Jim Sheeler. For three years, Beck’s job was
to notify families their loved one had been killed in action and helped
the families through the tough period that followed. Sheeler’s book,
“Final Salute,” is about Beck, the families he notified and the loved
ones they lost. One of the people Sheeler writes about is Katherine
Cathey, who learned from Colonel Beck that her husband, Jim, was killed
in Iraq.

GROSS: How long ago did her husband die?

Lt. Col. BECK: Gosh, four years.

GROSS: So that says something about the commitment you make to a family
after delivering the news.

Lt. Col. BECK: These families mean a great deal to me, and they all have
a very special place in my heart, and I hope I have one in theirs, and
they're a part of my family. So that's how I view them.

GROSS: You know, I'm wondering, like when you train to be a Marine
you're training to survive war and to be able to kill your enemy. When
you're dealing with families on the home front, delivering the news that
their loved one has died and then being there to support the family
through this horrible period in their lives, it's such a different set
of emotions and skills and parts of yourself that you must have to draw
on. Like, were you prepared for that? I mean, is--do you know what I'm
saying?

Lt. Col. BECK: I do.

GROSS: It's like being a Marine in war is so completely different than
having to be with somebody while they're grieving and be there for them.

Lt. Col. BECK: I completely understand. One of the things that Jim said,
and that you've just repeated was that, you know, Marines are trained
for war, they're trained to kill. That's certainly true. We're very good
at that. The counterargument is we're extremely good at saving lives and
taking care of people. The saying "no better friend, no worse enemy"
certainly holds true for all Marines. So we're as adept at protecting
lives and saving lives as we are at taking them. So. And as defenders of
this country and democracy and freedom I think that that's exactly what
you want.

GROSS: Is it fair to say--because this is the impression, one of the
impressions I took away from the book--that you both feel that Americans
have been very protected from the realities of the war in Iraq, that the
men and women fighting in Iraq and their families and loved ones have
paid a huge price, are making incredible sacrifices, but that the
majority of Americans have been protected from those sacrifices and
haven't been really called on to make sacrifices. Am I interpreting that
correctly? And if so, would you elaborate on your concerns about that?

Mr. SHEELER: I think that sacrifice is the right word. I've especially
seen it in the, you know, the homes of these wives and widows who've,
you know, the stories come out in the beginning. And, you know, the
first funeral we had in Colorado thousands of people lined the streets.
And now, unless it's a smaller town, really the turnout is relatively
small. You know, you see that name go across the TV screen and, you
know, for anybody who's had any involvement in the process, it weighs so
much heavier. I mean, that name is going to effect tens if not hundreds
of people, including the service member who just got that cell phone
call and had to go knock on that door, which could be happening right
now. And the people, there's so many people in this country that live
with that realization that that knock could be coming anytime. And yet
they go and they do their jobs and they take their kids--the kids are
trying to make it through school. I mean, I interviewed a girl who got
in trouble, sent to the principal's office for writing on the bathroom
mirror in lipstick, `What do you do when your mom's in Iraq?' You know,
there's these little scenes that are happening everywhere. And just
helping people understand that there is a war going on, I think that
there's no family out there who would be against that.

GROSS: Jim, you're a young journalist at kind of the beginning of your
career, and you've spent, you know, five years writing about fallen
soldiers and fallen Marines and their families, and you've written a lot
of other obituaries as well. One of those stories you tell is about a
Marine who had been a gravedigger at Fort Logan cemetery, a military
cemetery. And he had been promoted to a supervisory position. Now, he
had been sent to Iraq and, when he got back, suffered a terrible
depression. It sounded like he was nearly suicidal. And you write about
how the place that he seemed to feel most comfortable was working in the
cemetery. Would you talk a little bit about what he told you about that?

Mr. SHEELER: Sure. His name was Andrew Alonzo. And he's a reservist who
saw one of his really good friends die in Iraq and came back and had a
really hard time. He was actually a caretaker at the cemetery when he
was called up to go to Iraq. And so he had been burying mostly World War
II veterans, Vietnam veterans. And then he came back after Iraq and was
basically in charge of setting the headstones for the newest active
duty, especially the Marines who were coming back. And he had an
incredibly hard time with it in the beginning. But then he realized that
being that last person to take care of those guys was actually a very
cathartic thing for him, that he could make sure that they were cared
for.

And as we were standing there as one of the Marines was being buried, he
kind of stood off on the side, and after the family left I asked him
what he would have said to her. And he said he felt awkward going up and
talking to her, but if he could have talked to her he would have told
her that `it's OK, we'll take care of him now.'

GROSS: I want to thank you both very much for talking with us.

Mr. SHEELER: Well, thanks for inviting us.

Lt. Col. BECK: Thank you very much, Terry.

GROSS: Colonel Steve Beck and journalist Jim Sheeler. Sheeler's new book
is called "Final Salute."

You can download Podcasts of our interviews on our Web site,
freshair.npr.org.
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