In praise of Fil-Am codirector

SCENE from “Inside Out”

LOS ANGELES—“Ronnie (del Carmen) was invaluable,” said “Inside Out” director Pete Docter of his codirector, a University of Santo Tomas alumnus. We were backstage with Pete and producer Jonas Rivera at Caesars Palace’s The Colosseum after an advance screening of Pixar’s latest gem.

“Ronnie is such a talent,” added Pete, who wrote several of Pixar’s most acclaimed films (“Wall-E” and “Up”). Pete also directed the latter which has the honor of being the first animated film to open the Cannes Film Festival. “Inside Out,” which boldly imagines the workings of five basic emotions in a young girl’s mind, screened to unanimous praise at Cannes, too.

Critics hailed “Inside Out’s” depiction of emotions, as voiced by Amy Poehler (Joy), Mindy Kaling (Disgust), Bill Hader (Fear), Phyllis Smith (Sadness) and Lewis Black (Anger).

“Ronnie has an amazing ability to visualize things,” said one of Pixar’s first employees. “We were making a world that doesn’t exist. I’d be saying ambiguous words. Ronnie would just draw and go, ‘Like this?’ Before I could even finish my sentence, he has made it (the idea) much more specific.

“One of Ronnie’s major strengths is [evoking] emotion. He was especially a huge contributor to the big emotional scenes, like the memory dump. He (story) ‘boarded’ that. He made a lot of really amazing contributions.”

Jonas, who also produced “Up,” agreed. “Ronnie would do these little drawings as we would talk. As we were pitching the beginning of ‘Inside Out’… I took pictures on my iPhone as I was watching him draw.”

Big concept

Explained the California native who worked his way up from intern to producer, “You’re talking and pitching and Ronnie brings the cinema to it somehow. He is the one who shows you how it looks as a motion picture. That’s huge, obviously, as you’re wrestling with a big concept that we all agree is fun, exciting and has potential. Ronnie can just show you and you see through his work the first time how it’s going to look like as a motion picture.

“Ronnie would just do little drawings. It was a table scrap. He might have even thrown it away. I retrieved it. It was a drawing of Joy and Sadness hugging. He just wrote, ‘Embrace Sadness.’ That’s the whole movie.”

“Right in that sketch,” Pete interjected.

DIRECTOR Pete Docter (left) and producer Jonas Rivera photo by RUBEN V. NEPALES

First Filipino

Jonas stressed about the Cavite native who is the first Filipino to codirect a Pixar film, “Ronnie just has this super power to do that which is tremendously important as the directors split up and try to answer eight million questions on every single shot, frame and pixel in the movie. Ronnie was like the caretaker of the tone of the movie, in a way.”

Ronnie, who is featured in my Anvil book, “My Filipino Connection: The Philippines in Hollywood,” is one of the Filipinos working at Pixar who call themselves “Pixnoys.” He is credited as Ronaldo del Carmen in the movie.

While “Inside Out” works on two levels, as Pixar films do—it entertains the kids while it also amuses the adults on a different plane—this is probably the animation studio’s most “mature,” complex opus.

Jonas pointed out, “We didn’t necessarily set out to say, let’s make a movie that’s more intellectual or esoteric. But we do—we feel this way about all the movies that we’ve made. We want both. We want our cake and eat it, too. We want it to be fun and a film worthy of the Pixar and Disney movie labels.”

Elie, Pete’s daughter, inspired his story. He wondered what was going on inside Elie’s head when she transformed from an outgoing kid to a quiet one at 11 years old. Asked if Elie, whose full name is Elizabeth, has seen the film and how she reacted, Pete laughed as he imitated a teen’s laid-back attitude: “She watched it and said, ‘Uh, good movie, dad.’”

“She’s now 16,” volunteered the Minnesota-born dad of two children. “She hosted this big show, a bird-calling contest. It was great to see her go from an extroverted, flamboyant little kid to a quieter one to back to being assured, speaking to crowds. It’s been an amazing journey.”

Pete confirmed with a grin that the dad character was indeed based by an animator named Daniel on him. “Daniel started that but then we needed the mustache. I’ve never had a mustache.”

Jonas quipped, “We’re trying to get Pete to grow a mustache but he won’t.”

On how they zeroed in on five emotions, Pete replied, “We did a lot of research, like we do with all the films we’ve worked on. In this case, we talked to a psychologist and a neurologist. The interesting thing was, depending on who you talk to, you get different answers about how many emotions there are and which ones they are.

“Some guy said there were three emotions; another one said 27. But we ended up collaborating with Paul

Ekman, who lives in San Francisco. In his early research, he was able to prove, by measuring sweat, heat, heart rate and things, that there are six emotions. We have five in the film. In trying to think of characters, it felt like surprise would be pretty close to fear so that’s why we ended up with only five emotions.”

Jonas, who has three kids, remarked, “There are so many different sub-emotions, but for clarity, humor and to simplify this vast topic, five felt right at the end of the day.”

“That might be a question for our wives,” cracked Pete when asked how he and Jonas keep the inner child in them, especially as animation talents. “Can we call them? The job requires that we go back to things that we felt, experiences that we had as kids. And being around Pixar, it’s a place of scooters and games everywhere.

“We have an amazing cast. Amy Poehler, Mindy Kaling and all these actors—they have that (child-like quality) as well. It’s this sense of play that I think is necessary for acting in general and specifically, in comedy. The first time we met, Amy was like, how can I have fun with this, what can I do with these tape recorders, can I use this sheet for something?”

For his part, Jonas said, “Like a kid—that’s the cornerstone of our business. What I believe is with working with John Lasseter, Pete and all my colleagues at Pixar—it’s real. It’s not hard to channel our [inner] kid because we really do see the world that way. We’re optimists. We’re appreciators. And we’re not perfect at all.

“All I’m after is that feeling I had when I was a kid and I went to Disneyland for the first time, like that feeling when Walt Disney would come on Sunday nights on TV. Just that. I can’t even put my finger on it. It was about anticipation.

“(“Wall-E”director) Andrew Stanton calls it a sense of wonder. Somehow, everyone at Pixar has that one thing in common. We get to come to these places, to CinemaCon and the film festivals, dress up and leave. But we really just do it all for the love of that feeling. That we get to maybe bottle that and share it with the world—that sounds corny—I don’t mean it to, but it is really how we feel.”

What’s next at Pixar? “We have more going on at work right now than ever,” answered Pete, who wrote “Toy Story 4,” currently in pre-production. “There are six projects happening. I’m really excited because we have a number of new voices, new directors coming up—that is going to be really fun.”

(E-mail the columnist at [email protected]. Follow him at https://twitter.com/nepalesruben.)