Monsters, Inc. Commentary

Monsters, Inc. commentary with Director Pete Docter, Co-director Lee Unkrich, Executive producer John Lasseter and Executive producer/Co-writer Andrew Stanton.

Transcript

 * PETE DOCTER: Hi, I'm Pete Docter, the director of Monsters, Incorporated. Welcome to the commentary on the DVD.
 * ANDREW STANTON: Hi, I'm Andrew Stanton, and I'm screenwriter and co-executive producer.
 * JOHN LASSETER: Hi, I'm John Lasseter. I'm executive producer.
 * LEE UNKRICH: And I'm Lee Unkrich, co-director of Monsters, Inc. And welcome.
 * LASSETER: Even though Monsters, Incorporated is Pixar's fourth film, it's origins start back even before our first film Toy Story. Toy Story was the first computer animated feature film and Pixar's first feature. And Andrew and, and Pete and I, along with Joe Ranft, developed the story of that.
 * DOCTER: So one of the things I loved working on Toy Story was how many friends came up to me and said, "Oh, I totally believed that my toys came to life when I wasn't in the room." And I was looking around for other things like that we all experienced as a kid, a sort of a shared experience. So, I knew that monsters lived in my closet and were coming out to scare me at night, so I figured a lot of other people felt that way, too. The purpose of the title sequence here is basically to set the tone of the film. Without it, we actually had an earlier version where we start right in on the kid asleep in bed, and it becomes a much more spooky, dark, kind of scary tone that we're laying down. With the title sequence, we're hoping to tell people, "This is gonna be fun. It's gonna be colorful and upbeat." Geefwee Boedoe had designed it and also animated it along with Patrick Siemer.
 * LASSETER: What we always try to look for at Pixar is a... idea, a story or subject matter that really connects with the audience, that, that the audience can realte to. We kind of call it our foundation with the audience. Something that they go, "Yeah, I know that," or, "That happened to me as a kid." But when we show it to them in a way that they've never thought of before.
 * DOCTER: Growing up, I had this idea that the way animated films were made was that one night Walt would just sit upright in bed and say...
 * (SNAPS FINGERS)
 * DOCTER: "Dumbo," and from that point on it was just a matter of what was in his brain. This is not anywhere near the truth. These films really begin with an idea, and then they change and they grow and they envolve into something stronger and better. So, in this film, we boarded and re-boarded dozens of scenes, you know, dozens of times, as is the case on all our films, but this one sequence was somewhat of an exception. We boarded it early on. Nate Stanton,