Pixar’s latest masterpieceSoulis (finally!) available on Disney+. The tale of a middle school band teacher named Joe Gardner (Jamie Foxx) who dreams of playing in his favorite jazz band but finds himself disconnected from his body on the eve of his big break and forced to make a daring attempt to reunite his soul with his body, with the help of 22 (Tina Fey), a soul that just isn’t ready to start living. It’s the latest film fromPete Docter, the high-minded conceptualist behindInside OutandUp, which means that it plays with huge ideas about the meaning of life, our own mortality, and the creative process. But, you know, for kids.
Given the enormity of the themes addressed and explored inSoul, you can imagine what a thrill it was to chat with Docter, his co-writer and co-directorKemp Powers, and producerDana Murrayafter finally seeing the film. In this wide-ranging chat, we talk about the creative processbehindSoul, the movies that influenced this one-of-a-kind film, howKenya BarrisandRyan Cooglerhelped out the production, what happened toDaveed Diggs’ character and a very different ending that they seriously considered. While not exactly spoiler-y, this is probably best enjoyedafterwatching the (very amazing) movie.
COLLIDER: We talked not that long ago and I forgot to bring this up, but you finally made a widescreen movie! I feel like I’ve been bugging you about this for years and you did it. What was the impetus for that?
PETE DOCTER: It was you. Just wanted to make sure you were happy.
I knew it. I knew it.
DOCTER: Yeah, we’ve talked about it on almost every one [of the movies]. And every time I’m like, “It feels like it could get in the way of the comedy and the intimacy,” but there was something about the scale and scope of this that we were after that felt like, “Yeah okay,it’s time.” Plus, it’s just, there were a couple of decisions like that, the music, new people, new working collaborators that were like, all right, it’s time to just stretch ourselves a little bit.
I watched the movie twice now, and this last time I watched all the way through the credits and I heard Daveed Diggs’s rap song.
DOCTER: Yeah.
And then I had a flashback, much like Ego inRatatouilleto D23 when you described his character as being Joe’s meddlesome neighbor, what happened to Daveed Diggs?
DANA MURRAY: We described him as the neighborhood nemesis. Right? But as you know, he first started with us as a cultural consultant and he came to a couple of our Brain Trust screenings, and I think we tormented him in the room. He was like, “You guys are crazy. This is nuts.” But then he was the perfect casting for Paul in the barbershop. And then from there, when we needed Cedric’s rap group to have a funny, nineties rap. We were like, “Oh my God, he’s perfect to do that as well.” So, he wore many hats throughout the film.
But was he a proper villain at one point?
KEMP POWERS: When Daveed came on it was as a consultant. When Daveed first came on as a consultant, that whole barbershop sequence didn’t exist. While he was a consultant, the story changed. And when writing the barbershop scene, it was like, I think I described the character of Paul, is like every barbershop has a guy who’s just a hater, Paul was the guy who was making negative comments about people all the time and this idea that this is a guy who’s probably been tormenting Joe, every time he comes into the barbershop. To the point of he might even be like Joe’s nemesis, but it was more in concept. We create backstories to characters in the film that don’t even have any lines. There’s a backstory to the busker who’s singing in the subway station. We really took pride in developing those characters.
Well, I wanted to ask, the barbershop scene, which is so great. Pixar is so story-focused and this movie felt beautifully tangential. Was that hard to do, was it hard to embrace the messiness of life?
DOCTER: Well, the process that we’ve made all the films by is similarly messy. So, that was pretty easy to embrace. But what’s usually harder, of course, is… Well, let me say this. The difficulty on this thing was as soon as I realized, “Oh, wait, we’re trying to explain the meaning of life.” It could be so cliché, it could be horribly complex, it could be maybe answer for one person that doesn’t apply to everybody else. I think that was the main thing we tried to search for. Is, what is the answer? And we had to allow for a certain amount of messiness because that’s what we see reflected in the life around us, I think. I think that’s where that came from.
I watchedDefending Your Lifeagain after I watchedSoul. And that seems to be an important text in Pixar in general, but certainly forSoul, can you talk about that and maybe some of your other influences going in?
DOCTER: Yeah. I mean, that’s just such a great example of humor in death, and Albert Brooks is fantastic. I also find that they did a good job in that film making… There was a lot of exposition and it’s always entertaining, and they go to the Past Life Pavilion, or they’re watching examples of his life to make a point. And so, that gave us hope in our film that we could do a similar thing where a lot of stuff that could be didactic, could be also presented with lightness and a sense of fun.
Let me think, what other movies did we look at? Oh, of course,It’s a Wonderful LifeandChristmas Carol, and those were interesting, and when we have some longer time, we can talk about how those two are these weird pairs, opposing pairs of films.
POWERS: Yeah.It’s a Wonderful Lifewas a big one for me because I hadn’t seen it in a long time and I’d forgotten how dark it was. I always remembered it as just this warm family film, and watching it again I was like, “Oh, that’s right.” It was dark. And it was really reflective of those times and like the behavior of the characters, like the part where the pharmacist almost poisons him and he gets hit in the head and makes his eardrums bleed. And I’m just going, like, “I don’t remember seeing that at first.”
MURRAY: It felt the same way when I re-watched it.
DOCTER: And of course there’sHeaven Can Wait, which is another. All the films, whenever you take on something and you get to look at all these other films that have attempted similar things, you get to see the hard stuff and then the things they did well. And the trick is you’re able to’t take the things they did well because everybody remembers those. You have to leave those. You’re just left with all the hard stuff.
Pete, there always seems to be a level of bureaucracy that impedes the development of the main character. And I find this fascinating.
Docter: Isn’t that reflective of life too?
Yes. But you now are in a position of power where you’re an artist who is now a part of the bureaucracy at Pixar, right? I mean, were there some autobiographical elements to that withSoul?
DOCTER: I definitely am aware that I am now impeding the progress of a lot of artists, but I also think I’ve seen that reflected, at least in the way we do it. Mostly, I like to think that most of the time, even though it’s painful at the time, it ends up being a positive thing because it challenges you to push harder on things that maybe you’re settling for less.
But yeah. I mean, as Joe Ranft, used to say, “That’s why they call it showbiz. It’s part, show part biz, and you need both of them.”
I saw his cameo has one of the stickers on the wall.
DOCTER: That’s right.
Yeah. I saw that you give special thanks to Ryan Coogler and Kenya Barris, and I was wondering what their contributions were.
MURRAY: Yeah. We got to work with Kenya Barris. I think he came up and worked with us for a couple of days really early on in development. I mean, I don’t think you were on yet.
POWERS: I wasn’t there, but I believe… Wasn’t Kenya the first person to suggest Jamie Foxx?
MURRAY: Yeah, I think so. And so, he helped us early on just spitballing ideas. I mean, I don’t even think we had formed a script at that time.
DOCTER: Yeah. I think you’re right. In fact, largely just about cultural elements and kind of cliches and things that a lot of stories pitfalls fall into and thing.
POWERS: Yeah. Like Ryan Coogler, that was much later on. So we actually screened early versions of the film for him and got notes. He was one of the people we wanted to run the film by and get notes. Ryan was actually at Pixar during that time as well, working on his own stuff. So, he was in the building.
MURRAY: He’s an Oakland guy. And so he’ll sometimes use offices here to hide and write.
Do you remember what some of his suggestions were or things he contributed?
POWERS: He got some good notes. I mean, I don’t know if we want to get into the specific. We kind of walked through the entire film and had like a whole note session. And I think one of the areas was in the You Seminar, making sure that the voices of the various Jerry’s were international and represented lots of different voices. He had some specific notes about Joe, particularly in the first act, and some of the establishing scenes. But just like a typical note session.
MURRAY: Yes. He uses space here, I think, to get out of his house because he has lots of kids. So we’re just being generous with our space.
POWERS: He was working onBlack Panther.
I love that. I noticed a couple ofLucaEaster eggs there, right. For the travel for the Island and also the Vespa, right? Can you talk about some other Easter eggs that people should look out for?
DOCTER: Well, there’s a big place that they walk into. That’s called the Hall of Everything. And the idea is that as new souls, you… This happens in life that suddenly you’re like, I didn’t know, I really love playing the banjo or whatever it is. The reason for that is you’ve encountered it before in the hall of everything. And so it’s got everything, you know, this massive shot. That was our chance. I was initially… Dana, I remember I was like, I am so sick of all the inside jokes. Let’s just put them all in this one shot and be done with it. Everything, all the inside jokes in this one-shot. There’s a lot in there, but of course, we couldn’t stop. Couldn’t stop there. There’s inside jokes elsewhere too.
I remember on the last press day, somebody said that you guys were in the place ofLucafor next summer and got swapped because you were a little further along, and maybe Dana can speak to this. I mean, the movie is so ambitious, having a year less to tinker with it. How did that sort of affect things?
DOCTER: That seems like a really bad idea to us. Take a year off.
MURRAY: I got a lot more wrinkles and lost a lot of sleep. No, I remember the day it happened. It was like half really excited, because it’s like,Oh, great,we get to make our movie fasterand then half totally living in fear. And so we had to come up with a totally new plan and staff up. We didn’t have a lot of our leadership on the show. It started a sprint from there out. It was like, I think, 18 months or something out at that point.
For Kemp and Pete, that makes you just make decisions quicker. Was it sort of liberating in that sense?
POWERS: I wouldn’t say liberating, but we knew that we had to get to a place where we were comfortable living with our decisions because I think ultimately if you don’t have a plot, you’re able to just keep blowing these movies up again and again. There are so many ideas. You keep trying and trying and trying. And there’s this belief that we can always make it a little bit better. And I think that we just got to a point where we just had to make something. One of the things, for me, withSoul, is that this is my first film. I don’t have another film to compare it to. But my understanding from Pete and Dana is thatSouldidn’t get blown up anywhere near as much as a lot of other films, particularly films that Pete has done. From the early versions where I first came on board, structurally, it stayed on a pretty straight path, throughout those years. Am I wrong in that, Pete? I mean, it seems like compared to your other movies, you didn’t blow it up as much.
DOCTER: Yeah. LikeInside Out, we swapped joy and fear for joy and sadness. So, that was pretty big. And, there are even bigger ones inUpandMonstersand stuff. I would say, yeah, this had a nice, steady progression. There was a lot of change. If you look from the beginning to the end, it changed a lot, but it was a nice, steady progression of discovery.
POWERS: I mean, they were… I feel like you had an ending to the movie when I started and we changed the ending again and again. I think that was the biggest, most difficult decision in this entire film, was the end.
DOCTER: Yeah, the epiphany, like what Joe learns at the end of act two was there from the beginning. Then how that manifests changed a ton.
Do you want to talk about an alternate ending?
POWERS: The biggest thing was whether Joe lives or dies at the end.
POWERS: Yeah. We tried lots of versions with both. I mean, we did a lot of versions of Joe dying at the end and staying dead, in all kinds of different ways. Some of them were way more emotional. Some of them were funny. We did a lot of different endings.
