Creative Screenwriting magazine has this great 70-minute audio recording of an interview and Q&A panel with Pixar's Andrew Stanton. In it, he talks about his experience as an animator, what it's like working at Pixar, as well as his process in creating Finding Nemo and Wall•E.
It's a great interview to listen to if you're a Pixar fan, but especially if you're an aspiring screenwriter or animator.
Listen to it here, or download it and put it on your iPod/iPhone for on-the-go listening.
Some highlights:
- John Lasseter saved Stanton's marriage in a serendipitous hiring.
- The original Toy Story concept was a Rip Van Winkle story with the Tin Toy from Lasseter's short.
- Stanton never liked the "Circle of Life" thing from Lion King, and had animals always trying to eat each other in Finding Nemo because it's more realistic.
- He hid the fact that he wanted Hello Dolly! in Wall•E for a month because he thought people would call him crazy.
- He never saw Wall•E as a global warming/environmental message movie. He thought the idea of trash covering the planet is an implausible little kid's fairy tale vision of the future.
- Feels awful for being the poster child for "2D animation is dead" because everyone in Pixar are big fans of 2d animation.
- Prepared for directing Wall•E by watching a lot of Gus Van Sant movies.
- He just turned in the script for his adaptation of John Carter of Mars.
[via Cartoon Brew]
