A Conversation with Andrew Stanton

Summary

Blank Check Podcast: A Conversation with Andrew Stanton

Episode Date: August 6, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this rich, freewheeling episode, hosts Griffin Newman, David Sims, and Ben Hosley sit down with acclaimed director and writer Andrew Stanton. After weeks reviewing Stanton’s filmography on the show, they engage in a candid, entertaining conversation covering everything from Pixar’s creative processes, the evolution of animation, and early careers, to stories behind films like Toy Story, Finding Nemo, and more. The episode provides a detailed, insider’s look into the collaborative nature of Pixar, the role of the director vs. co-director, the challenge of storytelling, and the personal themes that thread through Stanton’s works.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Pixar's Unique DNA: Location, Collaboration, and 'The Brain Trust'

• [03:39–09:52]*

• Stanton describes Pixar’s location in Emeryville, away from Hollywood, as “part of the secret sauce” that keeps the employees grounded and focused on artistry rather than industry politics.
• The "they" of Pixar: Stanton corrects the misperception of Pixar as a monolithic creative entity, instead emphasizing how each film is the product of a singular director’s vision, fully supported by a collaborative structure:
  • “When you use the word 'they' for Pixar…there is no Star Chamber of people going, 'you've gotta do this.' ...We invest in that visionary filmmaker.” (08:00)
  • Cites Toy Story as a John Lasseter film, Bug's Life as his, and Toy Story 3 as Lee Unkrich’s, to illustrate individual artistic ownership.

2. The Role of Director vs. Co-Director at Pixar

• [05:27–08:29]*

• Stanton distinguishes between "director" and "co-director" at Pixar:
  • “Co-director means deputy, and you’re just there to help the director be in two places at once. ...If you do the role right, I'm pushing the vision of the director, not my own.”
  • Talks about helping on Toy Story and having Lee Unkrich join Nemo's last year and a half for support.

3. Shorts, Experimentation, and Evolving Technology

• [10:11–13:13 | 16:43–18:47]*

• Discussion on why the classic short Red’s Dream never made it in front of a feature film ("It was a downer ending and not considered the best choice for a family lead-in").
• Evolution of shorts at Pixar: fewer are made now due to the high cost and shifting contexts of theatrical releases.
• Acknowledgement that “now, if you can think of it, you can make it” thanks to technological advancements, with artistry and intent becoming the limiting factors.

4. Creative Process: Story Discovery and Collaboration

• [36:55–49:16]*

• Insights on how the emotional “well” underneath a premise is critical for sustaining creative energy over the years required for each film.
• Bug's Life described as an “intellectual exercise,” versus the emotional spark of Toy Story:
  • “It was always like trying to draw water from a stone. ...It's to our benefit to be on top of a geyser of emotion.”
• Emphasizes the continued importance of collaborative brainstorming and open ‘film school’-like environments at Pixar.

5. Storytelling Philosophy and Audience Perception

• [30:53–34:02]*

• Rejects the impulse among fans and critics to over-impose logic and reality onto Pixar’s worlds:
  • “I just want to have fun and I want to just not be distracted while I'm watching it. ...I'm already starting with a story that fish are talking, so can we not left-brain this?”
• Critique of modern trope-spotting and pattern-finding in criticism:
  • “The least interesting thing anyone wants to hear is, ‘I'm smarter than the movie.’ ...Of course, there are patterns to storytelling.” (33:03)

6. Acting, Animation, and Self-Imposed Challenges

• [25:42–30:20]*

• Stanton frames much of animation as acting, both through voice and animator performance, noting how animators are “shy actors.”
• His films often create additional challenges by focusing on characters who are notably difficult to animate or express emotion (WALL-E, EVE, the AA batteries in Toy Story 5), often stemming from his own passion for anthropomorphism rooted in childhood imagination and influence from Sesame Street and the Muppets.

7. Evolution as an Artist: Animation, Live-Action, and TV

• [19:25–20:37 | 58:29–62:02 ]*

• Stanton is “anti-animation” at this stage in terms of directing, citing the grueling time commitment (years per film) and wanting to try more varied, immediate forms of storytelling, especially live-action and TV directing.
• Finds TV liberating:
  • “I enjoy the doing. ...I love making. ...I've gone away to do TV ...and I've come back to Pixar and nobody knew I left—like, that's happened several times."
  • Describes himself as a “session player” in TV, enjoying the objectivity and camaraderie.

8. Iconic Film Moments: Process and Panic

• [54:53–64:47]*

• Describes last-minute story changes to WALL-E and the shift to him "changing everybody else and then losing his identity," as a “hard conversation” with a tired crew, but ultimately essential.
• On Toy Story 2: the breakneck speed of production (three and a half years for TS5, but only months for TS2) and how a “costume box” of ideas and total team synergy resulted in a miraculous final product.

9. Personal Themes, Collaborators, and Artistic Legacy

• [75:04–78:02]*

• Explores his personal wiring: “My dad was an engineer, my mom a frustrated actress. ...That part of the muscle goes toward abstract story-building.”
• Expresses drive to avoid repetition, pursue new storytelling challenges, and seek out emotionally meaningful projects (from Finding Nemo to the abandoned Revolver and Chairman Spaceman scripts).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

On the Myth of the 'Pixar Machine'

• Andrew Stanton [08:29]: “There's no they [at Pixar]...One of the wisdoms of growing up is realizing nobody’s flying the fucking plane.”

On Animated Acting

• Andrew Stanton [26:07]: "I have a conversation with what I call the shy actors, which are the animators...they have to be cast as appropriately as anybody.”

The Story Is in the Digging

• Andrew Stanton [56:41]: "Writing is an archaeological dig...you don’t have a say for what you find. You can only give yourself credit for digging in the right place and for how hard you’re working at digging things up.”

On Pattern-Obsessed Criticism

• David Sims [33:20]: “If you’re a critic, the last thing anyone wants to hear from you is, ‘I’m smarter than the movie.’ That’s not criticism. That’s just you talking about yourself.”

On Finding the Core of a Movie

• Andrew Stanton [49:57]: “Usually [the right story premise] evokes an involuntary response from not only yourself but the person you're pitching to...there’s gold in them hills.”

Music as Inspiration

• Andrew Stanton [70:33]: “I wrote to two pieces of music...anything Thomas Newman...He became a character in my mind. …And then I would listen to Nine Inch Nails’ 'The Fragile'…to remind me how dark the [ocean] is.”

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Timestamps for Important Segments

| Timestamp | Segment | | ------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------- | | 03:39–09:52 | Pixar’s culture/location, myth of the “Pixar machine” | | 05:27–08:29 | Director vs. Co-Director at Pixar | | 10:11–13:13 | Pixar shorts, specific to "Red's Dream", cost of shorts | | 16:43–18:47 | Evolving technology and artistic intention in animation | | 25:42–30:20 | Acting and animation, casting animators, self-imposed animation challenges | | 30:53–34:02 | Logic vs. fantasy in storytelling, critique of trope-spotting | | 36:55–49:16 | Creative process, emotional 'well', the making of Toy Story, Bug’s Life| | 54:53–64:47 | WALL-E production challenges and last-minute changes | | 58:29–62:02 | Transition to TV, creative liberation, difference from animation | | 70:33–73:35 | Music and mood while creating Finding Nemo | | 75:04–78:02 | Personal wiring, risk, and ambition as an artist | | 84:28–88:40 | Press mythmaking and correcting misconceptions |

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Additional Fun & Personal Stories

• Stanton and Griffin bond over CalArts experiences; both reflect on the winding path that led them to animation/film.
• The inside baseball of creative process at Pixar—morning dailies, "being Jiminy Cricket" for Lasseter, friendly competition among animators.
• Digression on twins—Sims’ children, Stanton’s brothers—and how family dynamics influence storytelling.
• Stanton’s music inspiration routine: alternating between Thomas Newman and Nine Inch Nails while writing Nemo.
• Improv-style solution for the iconic "news travels across the ocean" sequence in Finding Nemo [67:20], co-crafted in a single night with Bob Peterson.

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Final Reflections

• Stanton shares that it's not difficult for him to watch his films after the fact—though he needs years of distance: “They're just a yearbook. …When it's long enough, it's like opening up an old photo album.” (87:25)
• Looks forward to sharing John Carter with an appreciative audience, despite the criticism and knowing he and the team had future plans for the story.

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This episode is a must-listen for animation lovers, Pixar fans, and anyone curious about the nitty-gritty of collaborative, emotional storytelling—delivered with insight, humility, and humor befitting both its subject and the hosts.

Transcript

[Griffin Newman]

Blank check with Griffin and David. Blank check with Griffin and David. Don't know what to say or to expect.

[Andrew Stanton]

All you need to know is that

[Griffin Newman]

the name of the shadow is blank. Jack, we have no idea how to start these. We don't. There's not a. There's not a format. No, no.

[Andrew Stanton]

Not a little theme.

[Griffin Newman]

There's. We'll do the theme, but then usually I do a quote from the movie. I butcher that. That's how it starts. But we're not talking about a specific film here today.

[Ben Hosley]

You could, like, pretend laugh like you just were telling jokes or something before you got started.

[Griffin Newman]

Oh, you want it? You want to WTF it? Yeah, yeah. Ask about the traffic on the way over here.

[David Sims]

Yeah, it was the traffic.

[Andrew Stanton]

Did you take the subway? I took the R. Oh, there you go. Got here in 25.

[David Sims]

That's a workman, like, train. You know, the R. She's nobody's favorite.

[Andrew Stanton]

It was 30 seconds from my apartment and then about.

[David Sims]

It's very close.

[Andrew Stanton]

25 seconds from the dream.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[Andrew Stanton]

From the. Stop here to get in the R. Just ideal. Trundles along, though.

[David Sims]

Like, you're never on the R. Like, great. We're about to pick up speed.

[Griffin Newman]

The R just yeoman's work.

[David Sims]

It's a yeoman's work train. By.

[Griffin Newman]

By a long shot.

[David Sims]

Three boroughs, local all the way.

[Griffin Newman]

You often say that the queue is kind of default. The best train queue's a great train. Not your personal favorite?

[David Sims]

Not my personal favorite. It's a great train.

[Andrew Stanton]

Why is the queue.

[David Sims]

So is an express.

[Andrew Stanton]

Oh, yeah.

[David Sims]

Yeah. And I think that the line. It goes down in Brooklyn is very attractive. Like, it's very. It's very nice, sort of.

[Griffin Newman]

Oh, the curves of that queue.

[David Sims]

No, it's outside.

[Griffin Newman]

The outside is really nice.

[David Sims]

It's a special. If you want me to get really nerdy.

[Andrew Stanton]

There's not a lot of parts of

[David Sims]

the subway that are like the queue. Because the queue was a very, very old steam railroad. So it's just open, cut in the ground. So it's not elevated, which, you know, is cute, but, like, you gotta go

[Andrew Stanton]

up and down these stairs, you know, and it's not underground.

[David Sims]

It's really nice. The Brighton line.

[Griffin Newman]

Sims is a fan of the New York transportation.

[David Sims]

I'm a New York kid.

[Andrew Stanton]

Did you know before they put the subway system in, there was a pneumatic tube system between postal stations?

[David Sims]

Yes, yes.

[Andrew Stanton]

They inaugurated it with a live cat.

[Griffin Newman]

A live cat.

[David Sims]

To make sure the cat, like, didn't die.

[Andrew Stanton]

Yeah, exactly. I didn't know yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

The cat was like the. The laika was like the animal.

[Andrew Stanton]

Put it in a little cage, like, box and shit. Shot it down the. Wow.

[Griffin Newman]

And it made it.

[David Sims]

The other guys were like, we got her.

[Andrew Stanton]

That's what they say.

[Griffin Newman]

That's what they say.

[David Sims]

Okay. I think we should go back to pneumatic tubes.

[Andrew Stanton]

I do, too.

[David Sims]

They're fast.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[David Sims]

Okay. Griff doesn't have a take on.

[Griffin Newman]

No. I'm just thinking, does anyone still use them or.

[David Sims]

I think a lot of places still use them.

[Andrew Stanton]

When we were building the studio for Pixar in the late 90s, we did. Wired magazine was kind of au courant at the time, and they did a whole thing about how pneumatic tubes actually still exist. And Boeing uses them in, like, huge scale and advanced technology. Send engine parts, like, half a mile down their property. So we were like, let's put that in the building. And Steve was like, no, no, no, no. And then we got whittled down to, like, can we just have one loop? And that goes nowhere. And we just pay the receptionist to, like, put a envelope and into a tube and shoot the capsule and then just do it every 15 minutes.

[Griffin Newman]

And does it go back down to her?

[Andrew Stanton]

Yeah, exactly.

[Griffin Newman]

Okay.

[Andrew Stanton]

Can we just have that? He's like, no, no, no.

[Ben Hosley]

I was in Chicago recently and I bought weed.

[Andrew Stanton]

Weed shop, yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

Really?

[David Sims]

Isn't that cool?

[Griffin Newman]

You know what? That actually makes a lot of sense. I. I do think that's how we bring the pneumatic tube back. It makes sense to go hand in hand with the legalization of weed.

[David Sims]

Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

Those stores shouldn't be pulling a thing out of a drawer.

[Ben Hosley]

Right.

[Griffin Newman]

Or going in the back.

[Andrew Stanton]

Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

Even if it's just a guy blowing a thing through a tube from the back. That's what it should be.

[David Sims]

Pixar is in the bay. Where's Pixar?

[Andrew Stanton]

Pixar is in. Technically in Emeryville.

[David Sims]

Right.

[Andrew Stanton]

Like north of Oakland. Piece of real estate that's about a mile, maybe a quarter of a mile high and maybe a mile wide. And it connects Oakland and Berkeley. So if you go across the Bay Bridge from San Francisco, there's a right below it is a big Ikea store. And right behind that is us.

[David Sims]

Is that good? Being far away from Hollywood? Like, quote unquote, far away.

[Griffin Newman]

That's further away.

[Andrew Stanton]

That's part of the secret sauce.

[David Sims]

Yes.

[Griffin Newman]

That you guys were sort of insulated. Yeah.

[Andrew Stanton]

And it's a lot of other factors, but it also kept, and still does, keeps most of the employees grounded. Because when you leave the waiter's not trying to sell a script or run a role. You're not meeting other people in business. I mean, it's become kind of tech bro y everywhere, but there's nobody trying to make movies. So it kind of keeps you appreciative of what you get to do every day.

[Griffin Newman]

We're here with Andrew Stanton, who, and this is a fact, is the director that we have been covering for the last six weeks.

[David Sims]

That's so true.

[Griffin Newman]

Films, correct?

[David Sims]

Yeah, just six features.

[Andrew Stanton]

I should have opened with this. But explain to me, can or can I just.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah, please.

[Andrew Stanton]

Can I just say can for the rest of this episode, can I call you Flick Lover 98?

[Griffin Newman]

Absolutely.

[Andrew Stanton]

Because that.

[David Sims]

Wait, you listen to a Patreon episode that cracked me. I'm sorry.

[Griffin Newman]

I wasn't a. I was big into it. Yeah. Sorry.

[Andrew Stanton]

I was. That's. That's. You should have led with that when you met me, Griff.

[Griffin Newman]

A gentleman's character.

[Andrew Stanton]

We should establish the backstory first. I thought there were 97 lovers of Flick, but then I realized, oh, the

[David Sims]

year you made it.

[Andrew Stanton]

Right, right.

[David Sims]

It was after the film came out. 19.

[Griffin Newman]

It was the year the film came out. Yeah. Yeah, I needed that. Flick lover98. You can indeed call me. You're the one person who's allowed to call me that.

[David Sims]

You know, let's clear the air on this. You're the co director of that film.

[Andrew Stanton]

Yes.

[Griffin Newman]

Oh, that's a good question.

[David Sims]

That does mean you are not the director. Because, like, some people will sort of say, like, well, why won't you cover this film? They're a co director. And I'm like, I think that title signifies that you're not the director.

[Griffin Newman]

That means.

[David Sims]

Russ.

[Andrew Stanton]

The way to explain it is we came up with it because that's my beer. Because during Toy Story, the team that had been doing commercials together was John Lassiter, Pete Docter, and myself. And John and I just really clicked. And I was a really good Jiminy Cricket, A good conscience for him. I always say I'm the devil on his shoulder. And Joe Ramp, who, God bless him, was angel on his shoulder. But I was able to kind of always help him keep thinking in the right direction or avoid the wrong direction. And so I kind of was invisibly that role without knowing it, because we were all learning what the roles were on Toy Story. So after it was over, we said, can we make this official? And so I said, well, let's make sure it's not a. Disney only knew dual directors, I was gonna say, but we didn't knew we didn't wanna make up a title that was new. So we just said we just know what the role means. Co director means deputy, and you're just there to help the director be in two places at once. Like, if you do the role right, if somebody talks to me and say, what should we do? I'm not pushing my vision, I'm pushing the vision of the director and I'm helping keep moving along.

[David Sims]

And it's sort of a little different from like an assistant director, which is a very defined role.

[Andrew Stanton]

No assistant director is a very, very, very, very different role. And so that's unique to Pixar.

[David Sims]

It's something people get hung up on to this day. But I think because of the unique.

[Andrew Stanton]

It's all semantics. But we've always been consistent since the first movie that, like, sometimes we there. And I'm the same way. Like I found out on Nemo, I worked better having Lee Unkrich, who I'd always had as an editor, to confer with when John was busy, to have him at the ready. So he came on board, like the last year and a half.

[David Sims]

Does every Pixar project have a co direct choice? Right.

[Andrew Stanton]

There is not a stamped way it's done. And it's more like we are very individual, visionary based, like filmmaker based. And we do whatever will make that filmmaker work better. So the one beef I have that you guys fall accidentally into, it's my only beef, and it's for the greater good. When you use the word they for Pixar, it's like, you don't do that with Nolan. You don't say they. For the Universal Studios, the Monolith. There is no Star Chamber of people going, you've got to do this. And everybody wants there to be. Even internally Pixel, people want that to be with Disney, but there isn't. It's like we are. We take the. The high risk we take is we invest in that visionary filmmaker.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes.

[Andrew Stanton]

And then we will support them or kind of sometimes cast them and put a group around them so that they will succeed. Because we can't afford to fail. But we also can't afford not to follow a singular artist's vision. We learned that from the first movie. So it's. Toy Story is a John Lasseter movie, you know, so is Bug's Life. Toy Story 3. 3 is a Lee Unkrich movie. Toy Story 4 is the Josh Cool movie. There's no they. It's not like Pixar had. Nobody knew that they were going to make a two Nobody knew we were going to make a three. There isn't a great map. One of the great wisdoms of growing up and getting older is realizing nobody's flying the fucking plane. And you go, oh. And so we're just trying to make the best smart decisions we can at the time and maybe hopefully not pay for it later.

[David Sims]

You know, you're victims of your own success. I mean, the reason people including us are like, well, Pixar is because Pixar's run was so unique.

[Andrew Stanton]

So it's more like brain trust. It's treated like a sports team.

[Griffin Newman]

I know, I get it.

[David Sims]

It's a dynasty.

[Andrew Stanton]

So I know I'm fighting a losing battle, but I just the idea that, like, there is a. It is a group sport to make a movie, but that still everybody believes in live action, that there is a one person that is running that movie. Barbie's. A Greta Gerwig movie.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes.

[Andrew Stanton]

And so. So are the pic. I can't speak for any other animation studios, but I can speak for Pixar and go, that individual was the director and visionary of that film.

[Griffin Newman]

But. But also that's why, you know, we covered you. And we're not a podcast going like, let's do a 25 film series on Pixar.

[David Sims]

Well, that's true. And we did. Right. We did Ron Clements and John Musker

[Griffin Newman]

and we did Brad Bird.

[David Sims]

And we did Brad Bird.

[Andrew Stanton]

And yeah, we've done like. And oh, and I know, I know you get it right. Using the trap of the they.

[Griffin Newman]

Absolutely.

[David Sims]

Okay. But here's my big question. Why was Red's dream never in front of a movie? Like, what the hell?

[Griffin Newman]

Like, David brings this up every.

[David Sims]

Why can't Red have his.

[Andrew Stanton]

Everybody was probably, I can't speak cuz I. Why you can speak for Red. I just, I wasn't there when it was made.

[David Sims]

Okay, fair enough. Right. It's a really old one.

[Andrew Stanton]

I have a feeling it was because it was a downer ending.

[David Sims]

It is a downer ending. Still stuck in the bike shop.

[Andrew Stanton]

You still have to convince Disney, who has the money and the distribution that you. This is the great. The best choice to put as a short in front of a.

[Griffin Newman]

Because I get people amped up.

[David Sims]

They put all the classic shorts.

[Andrew Stanton]

Nobody wants to depress the audience right before you start rolling because that's your favorite.

[Griffin Newman]

Did we realize this?

[Andrew Stanton]

Look it. We loved it on its own. But as a lead in to tee up something.

[David Sims]

Yeah, sure. It was just something that I saw at a young age for some reason. It must have been on some compilation. I don't know why.

[Griffin Newman]

Tiny toys are very.

[David Sims]

That I was very taken with.

[Andrew Stanton]

Well, that just shows you were. You were destined for art house movies.

[David Sims]

Seriously. It's true. It's like the. The French sort of. Yeah, it's very much existential movie that the sparked for me.

[Andrew Stanton]

Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[David Sims]

I just. But you didn't. You didn't even work on Redstone, so

[Andrew Stanton]

I won't hound you about.

[Griffin Newman]

You were. You were the second employee. Is that correct? Or the second anime.

[Andrew Stanton]

The animation department. I was the second. The ninth employee. Second anime.

[David Sims]

So what was the first thing you worked on?

[Andrew Stanton]

I was hired with this thinking that we had no idea that there would

[David Sims]

be

[Andrew Stanton]

a future of film. We just thought this is this new thing that they were the inventors of, which is called cgi, which is like. What the heck does that mean? It means computer graphics. All I knew is it could look photorealistic. At the time we thought it did. Now our eye is so trained it looks like crap. But we were the first of maybe only two other houses that could do that. Medium for possible advertising was the only way to make an income. So they had. I got hired to animate and think up commercials. And so my first thing was a Trident commercial with a ice cube that played jazz while a mint leaf scat sang on the top.

[David Sims]

The nineties.

[Griffin Newman]

This was hoax.

[David Sims]

This was. When we did. We did have it figured out. God damn it. What happened to saxophones? The 90s happened to scatting the 90s. Everything was just like, there needs to be a saxophone in this commercial. In this. Like, you know the WB is going to launch all jazz.

[Griffin Newman]

Why is it there a blue Eminem and why isn't he voiced by John Goodman? We had it figured out. I. I now pay. If I can just grind an axe for a second. I pay for every option I get to remove ads from any streaming service. If the ads were still the ads from the 90s, I'd pay extra to get them back.

[Andrew Stanton]

Yeah, that's true.

[David Sims]

Yeah. If it was the what's the commercial? Or they need the air conditioner. I'll call now. What's that one? Sears? You know, I don't remember this one. I'll show you later.

[Andrew Stanton]

I'm always. I've wanted to pitch this to Disney. Like they own abc. I don't know about the ads of it, but wouldn't it be great if you could just pick a year and just watch ABC with the commercial cuts? Like the actual content? Like I would watch that all the time.

[Griffin Newman]

A streaming service where it's just. This is June 21st. Yes.

[David Sims]

Show me TGIF 1997. I want to write the block.

[Andrew Stanton]

The whole experience of just having it all.

[David Sims]

Exactly. The toy commercial. Yeah, sure.

[Andrew Stanton]

I would think that would be a very profitable thing to do.

[Griffin Newman]

It would be incredible. Yeah. I used. Yes. I mean, I used to tape movies off of TV and watch them over and over again. I rediscovered them when my parents moved those VHS. And I put it in and immediately knew every word of every commercial.

[Andrew Stanton]

Isn't that crazy?

[Griffin Newman]

It's incredible.

[David Sims]

Now, okay. Are you a baseball fan? This is all I care about. Fair weather.

[Andrew Stanton]

But I was. You're gonna hate me because I'm a Sox fan.

[David Sims]

That's fine.

[Ben Hosley]

I don't care.

[David Sims]

I was just wondering because you're. You're up in Oakland, you know, if you feel for the A's, but. No, you don't. You don't really.

[Andrew Stanton]

Many people I work with are still in mourning.

[David Sims]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Andrew Stanton]

And don't want to talk about it.

[David Sims]

Rip A's. Okay.

[Andrew Stanton]

Yeah.

[David Sims]

All right. Andrew Stanton's here in the studio with us. I'm David Sims, and we say Griffin Newman. Great.

[Andrew Stanton]

Cool.

[Griffin Newman]

Ben Hosley's here.

[Ben Hosley]

Hey there.

[Griffin Newman]

Looking great, by the way.

[David Sims]

Thanks.

[Griffin Newman]

In a while. But he's looking particularly good.

[David Sims]

All right. For the listener. This is our first time seeing Griffin in. Since end June series started.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[David Sims]

I mean, I saw you all.

[Griffin Newman]

I went away, I come back. We're ending it. Yes.

[David Sims]

And Andrew's joining us. Toy Story 5 has come out.

[Andrew Stanton]

Come and went. Now it's done great. All about Spider Man. Right.

[David Sims]

It is so funny that you just made a cash. Billion dollars and it's like a month later. It's like Spider man and the Odyssey.

[Griffin Newman]

You did get to be the highest grossing film of the year so far. Yes.

[Andrew Stanton]

I mean, it's. It's not gonna be that at the end of this thing, but you got to be.

[Griffin Newman]

It was anointed.

[David Sims]

Sure.

[Andrew Stanton]

Yeah.

[David Sims]

You got that little bag.

[Andrew Stanton]

Like. I have nothing to complain.

[David Sims]

It seems the movie did.

[Andrew Stanton]

To complain about.

[David Sims]

Did beyond expectations. Did terrific.

[Griffin Newman]

Highest grossing Toy Story film.

[Andrew Stanton]

Yeah. Before inflation. Yeah.

[David Sims]

Made my daughter very sad.

[Andrew Stanton]

Really?

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[David Sims]

In a way that she couldn't articulate because she's only five.

[Andrew Stanton]

Oh, well, I don't count five as movie going yet.

[David Sims]

Well, fair enough. I guess she can go.

[Andrew Stanton]

Just. Just a dark theater can be traumatizing for a child.

[David Sims]

In my child's defense, she's a very experienced theater goer. We like. We see lots of movies together. And usually when we exit the theater, she's just kind of like, best movie.

[Griffin Newman]

Great.

[David Sims]

Loved it. Every minute was great. Obviously, because we're seeing things like Super Mario or what are some animals. The great sports drama goat. Toy Story 5. She was just upset. She was like, I want Mom. Like, she was just, like, clearly thrown by it. I think because of the friendship stuff, you know, just because it was about interpersonal relationships, kid drama. And most of the things she sees are more about interpersonal. Kind of like Star Fox or Mario drama, Minion drama.

[Griffin Newman]

She's very wrapped up in the Star Fox drama Flippy Frog.

[David Sims]

And, like, the emotions in Toy Story 5 are subtler and, like, are. I'm not, you know, I'm not trying to, like, tell you something you don't know here.

[Griffin Newman]

He's not trying to, like, bill you for therapy.

[David Sims]

I'm more investigating. Like, my. It's like my kid walks out of, you know, Star Super Mario and it's like, I like that Luigi's scared. Like, she gets that. You know, it's just a very loud emotion. Like, I think Toy Story 5, she was, like, trying to process it all, like, what was going on with Bonnie.

[Andrew Stanton]

Hopefully they'll watch the movie again when they're older and it'll be different for him.

[David Sims]

No, it's great. I'm saying this is. This is a compliment. She liked it. It's just. It's just intense.

[Griffin Newman]

I said Flippy Frog instead of Slippy Toad. Andrew.

[David Sims]

Jesus.

[Griffin Newman]

I know. I just need to correct myself before I'm fired from this podcast. Here's a Red Stream related question. And then, and then I want to get more focused on things.

[David Sims]

What's Red Stream?

[Andrew Stanton]

Redstream.

[Griffin Newman]

You cited the Pixar.

[David Sims]

Oh, Red Stream. I'm sorry, I was hearing Red Stream. Yes, Redstream.

[Griffin Newman]

Can we get the shorts back in front of the movies?

[David Sims]

Oh, yeah, sure. The movies are a little longer. I feel like the Pixar movies have inflated in length.

[Andrew Stanton]

There was a period of time where we had a lot more being made and. And just the theatrical experience was a little more for sure. And then I think between having to make things for less and being in a questionable still space of theatrical. Although it's starting to feel like a good year, it's feeling good. It may come back, but that's a lot. They're not cheap to make and they take a year and a half to make a short, and that's longer than some live action movies are to take. So it's, it's, it's. It's harder and harder to justify.

[David Sims]

Wasn't the, Wasn't it obvious? Sorry, Wasn't it often the idea that like with the shorts, you're testing some sort of.

[Andrew Stanton]

Sometimes. But we're at a place now where it's high now you can used to. I mean, the stuff we could do. Like I was away for 10 years or eight years, but 10 if you count going in like when last time I was like in production at. And I thought we could do everything looks wise back then in 2014, 15 and now I just like as a kid in a candy store working on this one, I was just like, wow, we can do anything.

[Griffin Newman]

I think Wally still looks incredible. But it is while when we do this podcast, I often will go back and read the reviews from the time and at the time everyone went, well, they've cracked it. It's never going to look better than this. Every single thing has technically been accomplished now on this film.

[Andrew Stanton]

Yeah, yeah. I, I'm of the belief that like about. Yeah, maybe 10 years, maybe a little longer. It's all still costly, just manpower wise. But you can, if you can think of it, you can make it. It's just in the eye of the beholder now. It's. It's. If you don't like the look of something, you got to blame the artist, not the paints.

[David Sims]

Was it weird though, like coming back 10 years later or was it freeing or fun or like cool to open up the old toy box?

[Andrew Stanton]

Like, it was fun toy box. It was fun to be in the production of it. It was fun to work. I mean, I love production. I love working with other artists. I've always been that kid that loved putting on a show in the backyard kind of equivalent or making her movies with your Super 8. And so that's the drug. What I knew I wouldn't love and was confirmed only about two years in was I don't like how long it takes. As you just mentioned before. I'm hoping I'm not giving anything away. You're 40.

[David Sims]

I am. No, no.

[Andrew Stanton]

Time gets faster at 40 and then it gets even faster at 50. And so four years at 60 is just too long because then suddenly half a decade's practically over and I can count on one hand how many more times I could do this. It's time that's made me kind of anti animation at this point.

[Griffin Newman]

Here's a connection.

[David Sims]

And you don't think children should have be fun or have fun or be happy too.

[Andrew Stanton]

So you're anti for that? No, I think children should have a lot of Fun, but I'm not worried.

[David Sims]

Fair enough.

[Andrew Stanton]

Being the bearer of that.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes. It's not your responsibility anymore.

[Andrew Stanton]

No, I'm making films for myself.

[Griffin Newman]

The press. You did the. The press runs for the two movies you had this year. You. You talked about this a lot and how growing up, you never specifically were interested in animation in a singular way. That was never the exclusive goal of what you wanted to do and how you feel like this might be your last animated film because of the time issue. This is maybe a very stupidly broad question, but how did you realize you had the capacity to do animation? Because it is the kind of thing, unlike live action directing, where it starts with needing to have some facility at doing the technical.

[Andrew Stanton]

It's easy to look back at 2020 now and go, I was jack of all trades and master of none. Like, I was gonna be an actor, I was gonna be a musician, I was gonna be an artist. I could do all three of those things. And none of them went great. To such mastery in my teens that I knew that this was calling me and I didn't. But I liked doing all of them. And I definitely loved the arts. And I went to the movies like frickin church every it was.

[David Sims]

And you're in Massachusetts.

[Andrew Stanton]

Yeah. It's so it's like what sports are for sometimes to bond parents and the kids and the family. Movies were that our whole family would jump into the station wagon, go up what we said, up the line to the movieplex. And we didn't even think about what was that playing. We would just go see it.

[Griffin Newman]

And you worked at an art house theater as well, right?

[Andrew Stanton]

By the time I got old enough to be employed. Yeah. And so all of that, I didn't want to give up. And so it's because I found out. And you got to remember this so far, before the Internet, before knowledge of anything, they have handbooks. Was the only way you could find out about colleges or somebody went somewhere and told you about something. And so it was my junior year of high school and my guidance counselor had to meet me to say, what I'm going to do with my life. Where am I going to go? I didn't know. And he was late to the office. I sat there and I stared at this bookcase and there was this binder with a fluorescent hot, fluorescent orange binder. And I pulled it out and it was for CalArts. And I learned, oh, my God, they teach animation. I draw, which is sort of like acting. I like to act. It's all about timing. And I've got good rhythm. I like music. And it's ultimately on film. And I love film. And I was like. Suddenly I was like, I don't have to give up any of this.

[Griffin Newman]

It was literally all in that one room.

[Andrew Stanton]

It was all in that one. And then I became like Devil's Tower. Like, I had to go. And because I had fucked off most of my high school and I was really bad student, I didn't get in. And so I spent the next. I got into one school, Hartford, Hartford Art School, which is basically a business school. And there's this one little oasis that took me and I learned and it kicked my ass, foundations wise. I was probably their best student because I was trying to make a portfolio to just get the hell out. And so the next year I got into CalArts. So I have the rejection letter from one year and stuff. But then the conclusion to that story is, you jump to 2003, Nemo comes out. CalArts wants to give me an award at the Red Cat Theater. My suite mate for one year was Don Cheadle. Don Cheadle's doing well.

[Griffin Newman]

What?

[Andrew Stanton]

And so Don starts to presents me with the award and I give this same speech about how I found out about Cal Arts. And then I say at the end of it, I said, so whoever in 1982 in the admissions department decided to make the binder fluorescent orange. Thank you. And this guy in the back went, that was me.

[Griffin Newman]

Wow, nice.

[Andrew Stanton]

So it was very pop.

[Griffin Newman]

Full service Cheeto.

[David Sims]

Was he. What was he doing?

[Andrew Stanton]

CalArts is like fame school. And I don't know if that means anything.

[David Sims]

No, no, it means.

[Griffin Newman]

Are you aware I dropped out of Cal?

[David Sims]

You dropped out of college?

[Andrew Stanton]

How long did you go?

[Griffin Newman]

I went for nine months. Just what made me drop out? I went for. For liveaction film directing, which I think was the wrong choice for me and school. And I also think I didn't want to be in school.

[Andrew Stanton]

Who was running the program then?

[Griffin Newman]

Steve Anker.

[Andrew Stanton]

Sandy McKendrick was running it when I was there. Can you believe that?

[Griffin Newman]

I mean, who was Sweet Smell of Success? Monty Hellman was teaching at the Lavender Hill.

[Andrew Stanton]

Mom.

[Griffin Newman]

Lavender Hillmore, and James Benning. It was like an incredible faculty.

[Ben Hosley]

You also didn't drive.

[Andrew Stanton]

So getting around, that's a problem in California.

[Griffin Newman]

Andrew. It was maybe 50% of the reason I dropped out.

[David Sims]

I didn't go to school in the Northeast. Like, why didn't you go to, like,

[Griffin Newman]

film school over here? Like, the idea of going to a school where I could come back home and hang out with the same people on the weekend, which I know, I guess that I grew up here, and almost everyone I knew was doing that. And I was feeling very defiant about, I'm going to go somewhere different. I'm going to make a new life for myself. And I had. I got locked on the CalArts because I thought I wanted to be animating, and I had some facility for it, but I didn't have the discipline I found. Ultimately, I think I could have done experimental, but I had locked into character. And then when I felt like I'm not good enough at this, then I shifted to live action. And then when I was there, I started going, I feel like I want to act. And so it was also at a weird transitional time in my life. But I'm very familiar with all of the places you're listing and also who the alumni are. Ed Harris. David also went to CalArts.

[Andrew Stanton]

Pee Wee Herman.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes. Paul Rubens. Yes. Absolutely.

[David Sims]

And lots of it. I know.

[Andrew Stanton]

For a hot minute with David Hasselhoff.

[Griffin Newman]

Really?

[Andrew Stanton]

Yeah. That's true.

[Griffin Newman]

These pairings are incredible.

[Andrew Stanton]

I know. Somebody should write a book.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes.

[Ben Hosley]

Really? Yeah.

[David Sims]

And I know it's just like, what was it like?

[Griffin Newman]

You know, my roommate was Joss Glennie Smith, who was. Who's an actor. He's still working. Actor.

[David Sims]

Great.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[David Sims]

Should we just stick on this?

[Griffin Newman]

No, absolutely not.

[David Sims]

Okay.

[Griffin Newman]

But you're calling out a thing that I think isn't discussed enough, which is how much of animation is acting.

[Andrew Stanton]

Yeah. No. I always have to explain to the actors that I'm working with that you're half the equation and that I'm gonna have a conversation with what I call the shy actors, which are the animators, not in front of the camera, but they have to be cast as appropriately as anybody. That old adage of if you can get the script and the casting right for a movie, then they're halfway there. It's kind of true also for your animators. They have the things that their strengths are and aren't. And it's almost a little tougher because you usually have a team. So there's not one person animating Woody or one person animating Jesse. It's a. A group of people. So we adopted at the very beginning of the whole studio was what Disney did, which you have dailies every morning where all the animators watch everybody's work in the middle of their project, the middle of their working on it. So that if there's notes from me about what I would think the character would or wouldn't do, everybody hears it. So they all think the same. But that's also a chance to be inspired. And you get a little competitive. You're like, wow, look at what they did with Smarty pants in that shot. I never knew you could do that with the handle. And that you could make it look like he's, you know, flipping them off or something. And that would inspire them to like go. And so it's just a win, win. And so there's this sort of. It's almost like summer stock. Like everybody's got to learn all the roles.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[Andrew Stanton]

And. But it's actors. You talk to them just like actors. This is your mark. This is where you're coming from. This is where you're going to. And you're not trying to get into it too much because you don't want to get too much into their head.

[Griffin Newman]

This is something that I feel is a defining aspect of your films in particular. And maybe it goes back to that kicking yourself in the ass year at Hartford. But by design, giving yourself characters who are going to be incredibly difficult to animate. I feel like there's a lot of self imposed challenges of. You go to the double A gang in Toy Story 5 is three characters that do not lend themselves to animation. They're characters that don't have traditional limbs. You know, two of them don't. One of them doesn't have a traditional face. Wally and Eve, certainly you talked a lot about with Nemo. Not wanting to cheat.

[Andrew Stanton]

Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

And kind of personize them more. And then I feel like sometimes in the opposite direction you have a character like, like Hank. Where the challenges.

[Andrew Stanton]

A whole different one. Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Of extremity. But that's not a thing you consciously sort of throw at yourself.

[Andrew Stanton]

Not, not in the. I mean, I. I'm sure there's an element of challenge that I just want for anything. I think I'm a little bit more. It's. It's more that I'm just not afraid of it. I just go with what logically makes sense to look at. I was charmed like everybody else. At least that was around at the time that they first saw that luxo lamp. I was like, there's so much personality in this simple lamp. Do it with this mic right now. And I felt seen because I felt like I had been anthropomorphizing everything as. Since I was a little kid. Like my bike was cold in the rain as far as I was concerned. And that leaf falling was afraid of heights when it fell. Like that just was how I thought I Didn't like learn that. And so I realized I had a tribe and these are my people. And I also was lucked out that I was the first generation Sesame street kids that came out in 69. I was 4 years old and to me the Muppets just always existed. I learned everything entertainment and timing wise. And if you go back and watch on YouTube any of the original first season, they were little adults. There was nothing kidified. I always have this theory that Elmo fucked it up for everything because it started doing a kiddie voice and everything had to be young. And everybody started thinking about the kids. And I'm like, nobody thought about the kids, at least entertainment wise, without him. It was clever. And like, they were tired New Yorkers. Yes, they tired and they're opening up their jackets saying, like, you want to buy a queue?

[Griffin Newman]

You know, I mean, we're talking shifty. It's a great character.

[David Sims]

Really.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[Andrew Stanton]

But anyway, what I was quickly going to connect to was how much personality came of just doing an open mouth with your hand, just a hand puppet, like just taking a napkin and like, and like. So I just was raised going, I'm seeing a million subtleties of acting and reactions from just a hand puppet. So I've never thought you couldn't do it with under extreme.

[Griffin Newman]

You logically just run.

[Andrew Stanton]

I just like, it's always existed. So I've never really thought about it. But I do have arguments with or not arguments, but I have to like convince animators sometimes that I realize, oh, they don't all think like that. They, they have to logic it out. And I'm, I'm clearly, I'm clearly more right brained than left brain because people want to go down rabbit holes about like, well, if they did this, why did they do that? And I just go, well, I'm already starting with a story that fish are talking, so can we. I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna left brain this like illness though about Pixar,

[David Sims]

that people are like, well, I want to impose reality on it. And it's like, but we're outside of

[Andrew Stanton]

reality and it makes me realize maybe they're right and I'm wrong. But I never think like that, so I'm not gonna start thinking like that. I just want to have fun and I want to just not be distracted while I'm watching it. And I feel really bad for somebody that is, and that's a curse because I, I just want to go along for the ride or any movie I'm watching. So I'm Just going like, all right, there, there. Look at one of the arguments.

[Ben Hosley]

It goes, that's just kidding me.

[David Sims]

People on the Internet, I'm always fascinated

[Andrew Stanton]

because, like, there's an Aesop's Fable of. That starts out, there once was a sausage and a bird and a mouse, and it lives in a house. And you go. And what's amazing, if you start that way, everybody goes, okay, okay, right.

[David Sims]

And. And.

[Andrew Stanton]

And you're like.

[David Sims]

And.

[Andrew Stanton]

And so, like. So it just shows you that if you made. If you made people have questions about it, then you're just telling the story badly.

[Griffin Newman]

This is the thing.

[Andrew Stanton]

It's not. The story is bad, you're just telling it badly.

[David Sims]

I think what Pixar movies sometimes do. And again, I am using Pixar monolithically here, so feel free to yell at me. But. Right. But is. It does impose some logic, which is part of the fun. Right? It's like, let's.

[Andrew Stanton]

But just enough.

[David Sims]

Let's expand out the world exactly. Like, we live in a. We're inside of a child's, you know, brain. Like, let's. What would. What could that look like? We're, you know, we're inside of the Axiom or, you know, like, whatever. Like, let's. There'll be some logic, but you need to embrace the fantasy as well.

[Andrew Stanton]

You guys can speak better to this. But I can only surmise that because the gaming world is so immersive and thorough that you will want that same truth to be on any movie you want.

[Griffin Newman]

I've been thinking about this a lot.

[David Sims]

Look, I mean, Cars is the one, I think that broke everyone's breath.

[Griffin Newman]

But. No, but I've been thinking about this a lot that I do think there is. As games became more cinematic and less their own art form entirely, they start working more of the language of films into them, and people have control and autonomy within that.

[Andrew Stanton]

Yes.

[Griffin Newman]

Nolan did this interview recently. I just saw that, the Chinese interview. It's incredible where he said, like, I think there is this problem of people feel like if they're able to recognize a trope of storytelling, that invalidates it.

[David Sims]

That's such a weird.

[Andrew Stanton]

I mean, I. That's sad.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[David Sims]

But it's so true. And it's such a sickness in sort of modern media of now that we can slow everything down and look everything a million ways and, you know, like, you know, I. I can look at YouTube at any clip I want. Yes. I can show you patterns. And then you'll be smart. You'll see the patterns. Like, I see the patterns and it's like, there's nothing interesting about you seeing the patterns. Of course there's patterns to storytelling.

[Griffin Newman]

And when you're, when you're playing the patterns, you compliment them if they work properly, because you go, that's fun. That this pattern challenged me, and I beat it.

[David Sims]

I said this on Blue sky like an idiot. You know, I'm, I made a social media post slap your hand, even though I don't really do that anymore, where I was just like, if you're a critic, the least interesting thing that any, the last thing anyone wants to hear from you is, I'm smarter than the movie. Like, that's not criticism. That's just you talking about yourself. Who cares? Like, I don't care if you're smarter than the movie. I want you to tell me what this movie means either to you or to the culture or to what you maybe perceive in the filmmaker. You know, like, that's fine. I don't care that you, you're like, well, this is. These are tropes. I know. So I'm smart, you know, like, that's not. You're not telling anyone an interesting story.

[Andrew Stanton]

That's all.

[Griffin Newman]

I agree with that.

[David Sims]

Yeah, sure.

[Griffin Newman]

Great.

[Andrew Stanton]

I guess I'll get out of here.

[Griffin Newman]

Okay. If I can put my. My flick lover 98 hat back on. Because we had, we had. You know, there was the argument of whether or not to include A Bug's Life. And a lot of it for me was just, I wanted to cover Bug's Life. Right.

[Andrew Stanton]

I mean, you could, you could almost get away with it because we. John was very gracious, and we were a team on that. Even more so. But at the end of the day, you know, I, I, it's, it was, it's his movie.

[Griffin Newman]

It was not to discredit that, but it was more that I thought it was an important step in your arc in sort of the, the journey of screenwriter.

[Andrew Stanton]

Yeah, it was a second step.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah. Because Toy Story, you sort of fall into it.

[Andrew Stanton]

I mean, Bug's Life was a chore

[David Sims]

for you or for everybody?

[Andrew Stanton]

For all of us, only in comparison to how. What's fascinating is all I remember during our Bugs life is complaining. Like, I wish I was as dumb and as eager as I was making Toy Story because we knew nothing. And so we kept saying we were like the young engineers that put a man on the moon at NASA. We just didn't know you couldn't do it. And that got us through. That was our fuel. So even though I bet you on paper it was harder to Make Toy Story than A Bug's Life. It felt funner because we were just young and, like, we're making a movie. Like, we didn't think we'd do anything more than that. And it came from such a natural inspiration, like the well of, like, what. Like, I remember us. And the story changed five different ways after this, but this didn't. It was, what if I was your favorite toy on a top of bed and suddenly a new toy got brought in for her birthday and it got thrown off? Like, just that sense. Like, you suddenly realized it evoked such feelings of empathy about jealousy and how that felt when your next sibling came in, when a new kid came on the playground, it just was so organic and natural. It was literally striking oil. And so we never had that. On A Bug's Life. It was a intellectual exercise. Like, what if we turned the ant and the grasshopper on its head? It could go a little Seven Samurai. It could go a lot of these things. But, like, just. That was an intellectual left brain. Didn't have the. Didn't invoke the emotions. And I learned. And so it was. We. We got there, but it was always like trying to draw water out of a stone. So I learned that, like, oh, it's to our benefit, especially if we're going to work on it for three to four years and you're going to get out of bed with it not working most days. You got to be ideally on top of a well, of something that is more natural, of a geyser of emotion and. Or not do it. Not do it yet. So that's why a lot of our movies sometimes take forever before we really start committing to them. It's because we haven't found that.

[David Sims]

Well, I'm not going to want to spend five years on this until I like it.

[Andrew Stanton]

Exactly.

[David Sims]

And then Toy Story 2, you guys made in like five minutes, right?

[Griffin Newman]

That was a notoriously easy.

[Andrew Stanton]

You know, the more. The more I look back at that, I realize that the perfect storm of that was they had tried so many other versions that there was about 30% of the movie that was worth keeping. Not in. Not in linear or. But like pieces.

[David Sims]

Little bits.

[Andrew Stanton]

And then the other was we literally got. Had two version. Two other versions of Toy Story. We'd thrown at, like, two other. Not. Not like whole wholesale. But there was so much in the costume box left from the first. And then the biggest factor was we got literally the band back together. We got everybody back from stem to stern that had made the first one. So we were psychic. So you just put us in. We had a costume box of leftover material. We had building blocks that made a lot of sense. But I was cleaning out my email last year. It goes all the way back to 92, but it's less and less because we weren't using it so much then. And I freaked myself out. Like, I'm talking about, it's November of 98. I'm doing post at Skywalker on Bug's Life. But I'm being asked to help do the outline for this monster movie that Pete's doing. So I'm doing that on the side by December. There's rumblings in the email that something's amiss across the street with the other production. By the holidays, John's calling me into, like, we gotta talk. By the January, we're like, we are gonna have to take it all over. By the end of February, I've written the whole thing. By March, I'm off, and I'm starting to help this thing that's now called Monsters Incorporated. And I have this idea for a fish. And I had two kids. I had two little kids. And I look under and I just go, I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't. I always put all those things in that era, but not so tightly together.

[Griffin Newman]

And just to clarify for the listener, Toy Story 2 comes out in November of that same year. You're describing, like, of 99.

[Andrew Stanton]

Yeah, right. It's made like I was writing pages on a Monday. It was delivered to story by the end of Monday. Like, top of the day, Monday, Tuesday morning at the latest. By Wednesday, Thursday, it's cut in. By Friday, it's being refined. Like, so it was just. It was insane. I don't know how we did it.

[Griffin Newman]

It is my default.

[David Sims]

It's incredible that the movie's so good. Like, it just doesn't really make sense that the movie's good.

[Andrew Stanton]

Again, it's like if you said you all had the short band, went on tour and played so and then left and do something else, and they said, come back and do exactly what you did before and just keep it going. That's why, I mean, it's not only

[Griffin Newman]

my favorite Toy Story movie, it's maybe my favorite movie. I often default to that as my answer. I answered this recently when five drunk finance bros in Madrid asked me, you like movies? What movie you like? And then proceeded to drop three beers while I answered. But a thing I've always pinpointed is that there is a feeling of mania to that movie.

[Andrew Stanton]

Well, that's Also a reflection of us, because we were left. Disney said, basically, go with God and nobody was there to stop us. That's us left alone. That was the core original group. And all we cared about was cracking each other up. We cared about the film, we cared about emotion, but not ever at the expense of cracking each other up. Entertainment mattered greatly to us. Everything went through an entertainment filter. So even if we're doing this sad moment, and by the way, the Jesse being sad is to emulate what it's like to be empty. Nestor.

[David Sims]

It's fascinating.

[Andrew Stanton]

So that's why you don't get with it right now, John, is because you haven't had to be an empty nester.

[David Sims]

Like, who's that drawing from?

[Andrew Stanton]

Well, there was a range of people of ages. We had people that were already grandparents, people that were single. That was all over the map. But we were just going with the truth of the arc of life, of giving up your kid and having to see them go away.

[David Sims]

My. My kid's not going anywhere.

[Andrew Stanton]

She's going to. You just keep telling yourself, yeah, she's

[David Sims]

going to go to. Our joke in the family is like, she'll go to Megar Evers, which is like the community college down the street, basically. It's like, yeah, now she can move there.

[Griffin Newman]

She's going to go to Sims University.

[David Sims]

Yeah, exactly. Like, yeah, no, she can go to college. You can go to college. Like one neighborhood over.

[Andrew Stanton]

Matt's hilarious.

[David Sims]

Yeah. The twins, I'll just. They'll live in the basement. Right? They'll just.

[Griffin Newman]

I don't know, we gotta bring up this twin connection.

[Andrew Stanton]

Oh, what's that?

[Griffin Newman]

Because I, I brought up to you, David, having twins.

[David Sims]

I have.

[Griffin Newman]

You have twins?

[David Sims]

I have twins, yeah. I have three kids. I have an older daughter and younger sons.

[Andrew Stanton]

And how old are the sons?

[David Sims]

They just turned two.

[Andrew Stanton]

Okay. So my younger brothers are identical twins.

[David Sims]

Oh, so. And you're, you're. So what happened to me happened to your family.

[Andrew Stanton]

And what's going to happen to your daughter, I'm telling you now, is that, well, you're going to look back at photos when they're little and toddlers, your twins, and you're not going to be able to say who was who.

[David Sims]

Right.

[Andrew Stanton]

And she will.

[David Sims]

Yeah.

[Andrew Stanton]

That's fascinating.

[David Sims]

You always knew your.

[Andrew Stanton]

I can still look at photos with just the back of their heads. And I go, that's my brother. That's my brother Nathan.

[David Sims]

Wait, so what's the age difference between you? Okay, yeah, so you were. My daughter was like three and a half the other Thing that's fast.

[Andrew Stanton]

I don't know what the minutes apart. But my brothers were born 10 minutes apart, and that might as well been 10 years apart. So whenever there was a lineup of us, the pecking order was who came out first, who came out.

[David Sims]

It's crazy. My kids were born one minute apart.

[Andrew Stanton]

Wow.

[David Sims]

And yet it is. There's a C section, you know, just one, then the other. And it is nonetheless crazy that the.

[Griffin Newman]

The. The.

[David Sims]

The younger one is the baby.

[Griffin Newman]

You refer to him as the baby.

[Andrew Stanton]

Of course he's the baby, but he's

[David Sims]

the baby in every way. He's littler. He's like, you know, whatever.

[Andrew Stanton]

And they do. They. They. My brother. One brother has all the signs of the baby brother. One has all the signs of middle child. I don't understand it.

[David Sims]

It's very strange so far, but yes, one is the alpha. Yeah. Well, your parents survived, though.

[Andrew Stanton]

They barely survived.

[David Sims]

Yes. Yeah, they get barely survived. I hear that.

[Andrew Stanton]

And there was a story once where they figured out in their separate cribs how to put one to push their cribs across the room. And my mother came in, and the dresser drawers have been used like steps. And they got into the Vaseline and baby powder, and it was. It was like horrifyingly hard feather, like the combined intelligence. And that was when they were. They would speak baby talk to each other. And you could hear in the inflections that they were actually having a back and forth conversation.

[David Sims]

My kids do that. Yeah, they. Weird. It's right. They. They. They write. They babble stuff at each other. And you're like, oh, right. This is like communication like that we will never understand. It's. It's very strange having twins. Twin parents get at me.

[Andrew Stanton]

Is that in the family? In any.

[David Sims]

Not at all.

[Andrew Stanton]

On either side?

[David Sims]

No. We always joke, right? Because it's like, I should wear a T shirt. Like, not in the family. We didn't do ivf. You know what I mean? Because, like, those are the question. It's the same thing as when someone says, like, oh, I am s. And you're like, oh, I'm so sorry. So do you, like, smoke cigarettes? You know, like, people immediately are like, is it gonna happen to me? What happened to you? You know, like, they just nicely start to ask questions, like, and is it genetically like, do you guys have that? And it's the same with the twins, where people like, does it run your family? Nope, just happened.

[Griffin Newman]

We're older parent.

[David Sims]

Like, you know, it was an old. Apparently it's more common the older you get. Because your body basically just sort of starts, you know, getting rid of all the eggs. Not to be, like, biological about it, but. Yeah, that's all. I don't know. There's a part of Africa where people eat a certain yam that makes twin pregnancies incredibly common.

[Andrew Stanton]

I learned that shit up.

[David Sims]

Now I'm not.

[Andrew Stanton]

I can send it to you.

[Ben Hosley]

Wow.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah. What's the yam? How do I. How do I get some money?

[David Sims]

Twins.

[Griffin Newman]

I know. It's working out really well for you.

[David Sims]

Little. It's working out okay. They're crazy. Yes. It's parts of Africa, particularly the Yoruba people in Nigeria have a diet rich in native yams, and those have hormones called phytogestrogens, which some people stimulate multiple egg production. Anyway, we have Andrew Stitton here.

[Andrew Stanton]

We're talking twins.

[Griffin Newman]

We're talking twins.

[Andrew Stanton]

Not the movie. Not the movie.

[David Sims]

Okay. So we talked Bug's Life. We talked.

[Griffin Newman]

We were saying the.

[David Sims]

Oh, the crunches, Right?

[Griffin Newman]

A Bug's Life. You're consciously coming in as a screenwriter from the get go.

[Andrew Stanton]

I get like, yeah. I learned screenwriting by watching Joss Whedon do it. For the year and a half he worked with us, right?

[David Sims]

And he was sort of at the top of his powers.

[Andrew Stanton]

He was. He was sort of a boy genius. He was rising, right? He was still rising. But it was obvious because we had had script writers before that failed miserably. And so we were getting a lesson on what good screenwriting was. And what would be fascinating is we'd sit in a room together, the four or five of us, including Joss, and we'd spitball something and we'd play it out for ourselves. He'd nod. He'd go off into a room, play soundtrack music really loud for a while and then come back out. And you'd read these two or three pages, and the way they were written, you were just compelled to see it exactly the way we had talked about it. It wasn't. And it sucked you in. It inspired me. Like, oh, there is a way to do. I called it cinematic dictation. Like, oh, failed in English in high school. So I thought that writing was for smart people, no offense. But then I realized, oh, it's cinematic dictation.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[Andrew Stanton]

It's like, I've always seen the movie. There's just a way to do it that makes other people see it the way you want to see it. And it can be done specific scale, and if it's done poorly, you don't see it the way that they want, even though you had it in your head. So that's what I. I just became determined to be good at that. And I. And I was honest with somebody recently. I said some of it was self preservation because there was no guarantee this company was going to last and that we were going to be beyond. We were such a startup, so we didn't know how the movie was going to do at the time. And I was like, I need to learn a trade I can use somewhere else. So I thought screenwriting applies to other places beyond just learning how to computer animate. And so I just started doing it without anybody asking. Nobody was asking me to be the writer after Joss left for the last year. And by the time it was done, they weren't going to give me credit. So I went to the current script of everything and I highlight everything that I. They had kept, and it was 75% of the script was what I did. And so I convinced them and then that. Then they said, okay. So Bug's Life was like the first time they officially okayed that I could play that role.

[Griffin Newman]

And from the beginning.

[Andrew Stanton]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[David Sims]

And then.

[Griffin Newman]

Right.

[David Sims]

Because you're credited on Toy Story, you're credited on Monsters, Inc. As a writer. Right. Was that just you and Pete or. No, Daniel Gerson. Right. Okay.

[Andrew Stanton]

Isn't the legend Monsters, Inc. Sorry. Monsters was basically Daniel Gerson and let's see.

[David Sims]

Jim, Jill Colton, Jeff Pigeon, Ralph Eggleston. I'm just looking at it.

[Andrew Stanton]

There's a lot of story by. Because there's a lot of rebuilding by. And I just was part of their helping. I mean, I wasn't the founder of any of that movie.

[Griffin Newman]

Was there a moment where you were supposed to direct that idea in a different form?

[David Sims]

No.

[Griffin Newman]

Okay.

[Andrew Stanton]

They had real trouble at the beginning outlining it and getting it to have an engine. And the only thing I can really

[David Sims]

take credit for the engine is screams just like.

[Andrew Stanton]

Well, David, that's what it.

[David Sims]

That's what it really is.

[Andrew Stanton]

I came up with. I said, you need a motivation that creates greed and all the emotions that happen in the real world. And so Scream is got to. What if you put Scream in there so that it's treated like oil is in this country?

[David Sims]

What was the movie before that? Because that does feel foundational to like, well, here's why the monsters do this.

[Andrew Stanton]

You're like, right, you're smarter right now than any of us.

[David Sims]

But I am hindsight.

[Andrew Stanton]

We were all in our twenties just learning how to do it. So it was a new story. It Wasn't a buddy film. And we just had to learn how to. You know, I was. We were still reading every screenwriting book, going to McKee classes. Like, we were just. We were. You're watching us learn as you watch those first three movies.

[Griffin Newman]

I mean, a lot of what. Why I watch those movies incessantly. And also why I think people sometimes will ask, because I dropped out of CalArts. Like, where did I learn story structure stuff when I ran away from academia trying to teach me that kind of thing. And so much of it is from watching all of the DVDs that you guys put together, the talks that you guys have done, the commentary.

[Andrew Stanton]

I think we were so excited to learn.

[David Sims]

Yeah, you guys were real.

[Andrew Stanton]

We wanted to pass it on. Cause that's for a long time, for Almost the first 20 years, definitely the first 15, it just felt like we just got to continue film school. And so we just promoted that atmosphere in anything we did.

[Griffin Newman]

Maybe this is a dumb question, but you talking about the identification of the oil spring that you had from the beginning with Toy Story, that you felt like you couldn't find with A Bug's Life for a while. How do you know when you found it? Is it just from the reaction from other people? Is it within yourself? You just go, I. The story now kind of explains itself.

[Andrew Stanton]

You can definitely tell. You just feel usually evokes an involuntary response from not only yourself. But when you. When you put the peanut butter with the chocolate and you pitch just the basics to somebody else, even in its rarest golden book form, you see investment happening from the person you're pitching to. And that tends to be the proof is that there's gold in them hills.

[Griffin Newman]

Because you talked about in this recent press tour that Toy Story is one of those things where if you sit in a room for an hour, you start coming up with new ideas of what could happen in that universe. And it does feel like it's an infinitely fertile playground.

[Andrew Stanton]

It can be. One of the reasons I think I get pulled in is because they've skipped the ABCs. Like, they've gone straight to other letters in the Alphabet. And they've just made. Understandably, they're trying to be different or trying to be interesting or trying to go. They think literally going to new territory will give us new ideas. And I'm like, what was free in the beginning was just the fact that toys came to life. Just like that was like, wow. And I get to win a million things to that point. And you have to. And now we've kind of from that movie on messed up for generations. Everybody thinks toys come to life. There is no wow factor for watching a Toy Story movie. It's a given now. So the other thing that's behind that, that I have to remind them on is that the secret sauce is in the mundane. I said, if you take collectively the hours spent watching Toy Story movies, even if you put five with it now, it's about what, six hours, maybe seven. That's seven hours of a toy's life. That's one day. And they have spent. If there are toys in your life, like for five years or six years or maybe even eight in your house, that's a lot of hours in the day not accounted for. I used to, like. I remember thinking there'd be a lot of humor when we were trying to come up with the first movie of like, just the boredom of being in the room while the kid's gone and treating it like jury duty. And we had a joke of, like, if I have to read Pokey the Little Puppy one more time, I'm going to kill somebody. And, like, just. But, like, that's where the humor starts to come from, is like the mundane. And seeing it from that perspective 100%.

[Ben Hosley]

Look how disrespectful we're being right now.

[Griffin Newman]

Gravy. Put them all back.

[Andrew Stanton]

Like, you could do a whole sequence just about being trapped in that Ziploc.

[David Sims]

It's why those movies make people dizzy sometimes. Right. Because these are intellectually developed, conscious creatures that are basically little grown ups living in a child's room, kind of bored all day. Right. And then one day they might be trash or they might be in a box or, you know.

[Andrew Stanton]

Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

The way people describe seeing Star wars in theaters for the first time and seeing the Runner go over and feeling like the world has exploded. Like my mind explosion moment was Woody starting the meeting in the first Toy Story.

[Andrew Stanton]

Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

There's something that just activated in me and, oh, they're acting like grownups. This isn't for me.

[Andrew Stanton]

We did a sequence early on, before we had that scene where we thought we'd start with the birthday party. But because this had recently happened at Pixar, there had been two layoffs a couple years prior. So everybody was kind of very savvy now to what layoffs felt like in the company and who was getting the ax. And so we treated. We did a scene of introducing Woody in Andy's bedroom with everybody going, is it me? You know, who am I going to? And we suddenly loved that we were capturing something about adult Life. But the metaphor of what it's like for the toys. And it made complete sense. And we were told it was too juvenile by Disney at the time, so we had to axe it. And everybody knows about the Black Friday and it not going well and everything like that. And that's when that was months of going down to what was supposed to be like adult humor or fight the notion of savvy humor. Yeah. And when we had to like rescue the film and to save our asses and we had like two weeks to like try to resurrect it, we went back to that layoff scene and we said there's something muppety and just really. Which is now we all know is Toy Story now, but we said we think our gut was right on that mojo and we're going back. And it became Woody's meeting.

[Griffin Newman]

Classic corrosion awareness. I mean, all that stuff, which is just not. None of it is inappropriate. And even as a small child, I recognize there was something funny in. Why are the cartoon characters talking like my parents?

[David Sims]

Right, right, right. Yeah, that there. Yeah, that there are. There is a kind of clock in, clock out vibe. Should we ask about Finding Nemo? If you ask about the movies he's directed.

[Andrew Stanton]

I mean, geez, we're asking a lot of general.

[Griffin Newman]

But yes, Finding Nemo, it's a perfect movie in my opinion.

[David Sims]

Yeah.

[Andrew Stanton]

I was just downhill from after that.

[Griffin Newman]

Not true.

[David Sims]

Yeah. You followed up with Wally. What were you thinking? That piece of junk.

[Andrew Stanton]

You would have thought I had at the time. Was that the feeling at the preview screening for Wally? There was a lot of anxiety.

[David Sims]

It got the lower marks and Pixar generally tended to. I mean, and you'd had.

[Andrew Stanton]

And that's when I had to swap.

[Griffin Newman]

I was gonna say before you do the final act change.

[Andrew Stanton]

Yeah. And you know, again, learning curve.

[David Sims]

Wait, wait, remind me. I'm sorry.

[Griffin Newman]

I'm sure we final act. Well, I'll let you explain it. You directed the film Wally.

[Andrew Stanton]

It pretty much scene wise played out similar, but it was missing two things. We kept treating Wally in the third act. Like he had to be the hero. And so he rescued Eve and Eve wasn't going to be alive and then he put her together at the end.

[David Sims]

Or.

[Andrew Stanton]

No, no, no.

[Ben Hosley]

He.

[Andrew Stanton]

He got. Still got smashed by the time he got to the lido deck. But we also didn't have him like losing his. Lose his personality, which is the.

[David Sims]

The true kind of like, oh my

[Andrew Stanton]

God, like bit in your stomach. So we knew it. You could feel it. And so. But I was at A. I was just, I was three and a half years or four years by now, and I was just beat down. I didn't know. It just felt like I'd come, tried everything, but it was the same guys that I'd always had in the room to cover my ass before. And so we really just stayed in the room and thought and hammered it out until we realized, oh, Wally's more like Chaplin. He changes everybody else and then you have to have the payoff of that. And then losing his identity at the end, it all seems obvious now.

[David Sims]

No, it does. The losing his identity thing, it feels so obvious that it's. So it's. Making movies is crazy because like you telling me that wasn't always part of the movie. I'm like, I can't believe that.

[Andrew Stanton]

Well, but, but if you think about it, when you start writing a movie, nothing was in the movie, right? And so it's just, that's why I always equate writing to an archeological dig. And it's very ethereal where you just feel like you're, you're saying that the story already exists out there. But I really do believe that it's, it's very much like the angel and the marble and Da Vinci or Michelangelo chipping it away and letting it fly. And he always saw it in the cube of marble. And I've just seen that happen so many times at Pixar where you've uncovered these bones, you're just digging all the time, trying to build this dinosaur that you claim is in the ground or the story. And then you don't have a say for what you find. And when you find it, you can only give yourself credit for digging in the right place and for how hard you're working at digging things up. But you have to be sort of open minded to like, the answers don't come when you want them to. You just gotta be ready to do something about it when they do.

[Griffin Newman]

I saw Rashida Jones was doing press for the invite and she cited something that you said to her, the mountain metaphor. But it was something to the extent of your job in constructing a story or finding what the story is, is exploring every possible way.

[David Sims]

Okay. When you're trying to figure out the path around the mountain, going to go up it, around it, down it, whatever, just move the mountain. Like sometimes you just have to restructure and let's.

[Andrew Stanton]

Oh yeah, yeah. Like sometimes you're like, why are we figuring this? Why did we put this mountain here? Let's just go somewhere else.

[David Sims]

And it's like, right, you're a writer. You can just be like, you know,

[Griffin Newman]

what the max, Right?

[Andrew Stanton]

Yeah, yeah. You can easily trick yourself into thinking like, that's cheating or that you're a failure for not acquiescing to the story gods that like, oh, there was a different path that I just wasn't thinking about.

[Griffin Newman]

Here's a question I have for you. Your animated films have started with your idea, right? John Carter, you write, but it's an adaptation, obviously, and in the blink of an eye, starts with a script from Colby Day. And there are the other live action films that you've been attached to over the years, which were almost always scripts that were out there in the ether. Have you ever tried sitting down and starting a live action script on your own? Is there a reason you feel like you're more attracted to? Or is that just the nature of

[Andrew Stanton]

how things is so fucking hard?

[Griffin Newman]

I've shaken out yet

[Andrew Stanton]

all I've known my career mostly is stuff that I either was a party to very from the get go or was mine. And everything that gets criticized, everything that gets changed, everything that you take it personally even when you think you're not. You debate whether you're a failure, whether you're right. It just takes so much out of you emotionally. And once I found out you could actually, I said, wait a minute. Some of my favorite directors never wrote what they worked on. And I realized, oh, I don't have to die on this hill every time I make something. And so I started looking at things. Some of it was television, some of it was scripts. And there were a lot of scripts I tried to get made that were other people that never got picked up and just kind of did the more traditional route of like, I would love to see this film. I could totally see how this film should be made. And it was still hard, but it was so much. It was so easy not to make it about me. It was so easy to be objective.

[Griffin Newman]

Does TV feel particularly liberating in that sense?

[Andrew Stanton]

It is in just that I enjoy the doing. I enjoy being on set. I enjoy the making of. The older you get, the less you're like, I'm not here to like, talk about my career or look at back, like, I've got this much time left while I'm still standing, I'm still healthy. And I love making you look back at your career.

[Griffin Newman]

I apologize.

[Andrew Stanton]

No, but you know what I mean, Like, I love the doing and like. And I was like, it takes four years. And then I finally, you know, in the same building with the same people. Like, it can. It can get a little maddening and you feel like time stands still. And I just love the. The camaraderie and the summer camp. Put on a show that you get on. And I love the brevity. I mean, in two months, I've gone away to do tv, which is about two to three months max, and I've come back to Pixar and nobody knew I left. Like, that's happened several times. And I equate it to being a session player. Like, oh, I get it. I'm basically somebody else's album. This is how they want. Or this is how they want to play it. And they're asking me to come in as a session player and play on this one song out of all their tracks. And I thrive because I just feel so unshackled and unburdened by. Is it about me? What does it say about me? What do I think you're doing the opposite.

[David Sims]

Right. It must be so easy.

[Andrew Stanton]

It's not even easy, but it's enjoyable. It's taking a lot of things that I thought were burdensome and making them enjoyable because I realized telling the joke for me is half the fun, not just having to write the joke. So a lot of times it's freeing. And I get to use my muscles and I get to get outside to just work on a TV show.

[Griffin Newman]

Try different stuff.

[Andrew Stanton]

Yeah.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[David Sims]

Are you going to do any more of that or are you still on?

[Andrew Stanton]

Yeah, I'm going to be on one this fall that I can't talk about right now.

[David Sims]

Fair enough.

[Andrew Stanton]

But I wasn't looking for. But it's one of my favorite shows, so I was, like, psyched. So I don't know if I'll do them more, but. Because it's. It's also no life for two months, three months.

[David Sims]

Because it's just.

[Andrew Stanton]

Yeah. Whereas animation, to be fair, it's bankers hours. Nine to six, nine to five. You can be. Gotta go to the doctors that day. You can be, you know, like. But it's for three or four years.

[David Sims]

Yeah. And it. And not only that, there just must be a frustration and like, oh, I want to fix this. Okay, well, yeah, that's gonna take a while. Versus, like, hey, you give an actor direction and the next take, they do it different or whatever.

[Andrew Stanton]

And this is mean. But they're on a hard. On a day where I'm frustrated with another show, I'm going like. Like, you kind of have no excuse not to fix this, guys. You have all the time in the World. So let's put a time limit on, like, if you haven't gotten somewhere by the end of the month or the end of the week. Like. But that's the other thing that I took back to Toy. Like, Toy Story 5 is the fastest we've ever made a movie outside of Toy Story 2, which was under duress.

[Ben Hosley]

Yeah, right.

[Andrew Stanton]

How.

[David Sims]

How quick? What are we talking about?

[Andrew Stanton]

Three and a half months? I have three and a half years.

[David Sims]

Three and a half months would be pretty impressive.

[Andrew Stanton]

I would be doing it all the time. It was about three and a half years with me. A way for half, for six months of that to finish up, finish blank.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[Andrew Stanton]

And because I learned on TV to measure time differently. Like in. In tv, any problem, any issue, they go. You talk in the terms of minutes, days, minutes, hours, days. And if you're talking days, you know you're in trouble. So you're always talking like, can we fix it in minutes and hours? In animation, you're talking days, weeks, months. And so it's too easy to just push it down the road or take longer than you need to. So I applied the minutes, days, hours, minutes, hours, days to coming back, and it was a little aggro, little aggressive, but it was still a better place to be. People were excited that they were getting things solved and getting more times at bat and figuring things out.

[David Sims]

When you have to fix Wally, how long does that take? Fix. But you know what I mean, that

[Andrew Stanton]

was under duress because our. All our audience previews are usually set with about six months left to till release, which means only three months left in production. And that's like your last week in regular terms. Or that's like you've got Friday left. So you hope, you know, that you're going to change something. You have it on the books. It's almost like reissue. It's built in. You know, there's going to be something you're going to change, hopefully about 10% of the movie, max or less. And it's strategic where and what you do. And that was about a 30% change. Yeah, no, that was how. But every. It was a hard.

[David Sims]

But it was worth it.

[Andrew Stanton]

It was worth it. It was a hard conversation to have with my crew who was ready to be done.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah, I feel like there's video on one of the.

[Andrew Stanton]

There's probably video of everything. I don't want to know about, of

[Griffin Newman]

you apologizing before the demand, where they

[Andrew Stanton]

probably put that on the DVD.

[David Sims]

But those. Yes, like, especially, obviously the two. You know, Brad Bird's two movies in the 2000s between your. Between Nemo and Wally. You've got Incredibles and ratatouille and those DVDs. He's pretty upfront about, like, I'm a pain in the ass. Like, I'm really. Yeah, I'm really demanding. And like, you know, and like, I. As a kid or as a teen. I was a teen and I was interested in moviemaking. I was fascinated watching them being like, this is very upfront about, like, it's not just like, oh, yeah, we're all so happy to be doing.

[Andrew Stanton]

He came up with the adage, pain is temporary, film is forever.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah, it. All the time.

[David Sims]

Yeah, it is. It's memorable.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes.

[David Sims]

But, like, obviously in Brad's movies, you see that in his movies, right? Like, it's like that. That character, like, makes it across the line, you know, in terms of the stories he tells or whatever emotions he's driven by or, you know, and I feel like that's what makes the best Pixar movies the best. And that's what makes your Pixar movies good, is like, they all have your kind of. You just have a very funny sensibility. And, like, I mean, that is the highest compliment.

[Andrew Stanton]

Like, it's. It's because at the end of the day, that's what comes out of us naturally. It's. It's like I was talking on another podcast and I was saying, like, I don't feel worthy equating us to the Beatles, but you. Nobody, Nobody questions that. The Beatles were just making. They just made, like, if they never got out of their basement or the. Or Paul McCartney's family bathroom, they would make hummable tunes that everybody would remember immediately. That's just what came out of them. They didn't change for the audience. They just tapped into something that they naturally did that worked great for the rest of the world. And so when you put us together, the infamous brain trust, everything we did got more entertaining. We were just naturally entertainers and people discredit that. They treated it like costumes to put on after the fact that. But we're like, if you do it right, it's essential. Like, the joke is telling. The story is being part of the machinery and part of the entertainment and

[Griffin Newman]

the core of it, the sequence in Nemo of the story getting spread across the ocean, which leads into Nigel telling night, which. This is the thing. I feel like this is one of those legendary stories in your career of how does the word get from one side of the ocean to the other? And you end up voicing, like, Three different characters in that sequence.

[Andrew Stanton]

Well, just for the proof of concept, my co writer was Bob Peterson, who's one of the funniest men I've ever met. And he makes me funny or brings out the funny in me that I can't seem to access fully on my own. And it's no different than being with a great improv partner like you. Just throw me the challenge. So we were like, how do we do this? And it was like 6 o' clock or something, 5 o' clock in the afternoon, and we had to have something up on the reels the next morning. And so it was. You treated it like an improv challenge. Like, how would you make the news get across? And then you just were like, we can draw really fast. We're our own scratch voices. So we just put mics up like this in the room and just crafted. We craft out stuff all the time that take only a few hours. We just put this real high bar challenge to, like, all right, you got to solve this exact problem, and you got to do it in an entertaining way. And we've done plenty of those where they didn't stick, but this one stuck.

[David Sims]

I mean.

[Griffin Newman]

But equating it to improv. Ben and I both come from improv backgrounds, among other things. Many things we've done. But it makes sense in that sort of the game is how quickly can you identify the truth in what has now been set up in front of you? Right. And that sequence is such a dynamic, like speed rounding of, well, what would that type of fish be and what would they do and how would they do it and what would they sound like? And the escalation of that and the build of that and the series of correct identifications that all feel right to the audience, which then leads into the most emotional moment in the movie to me, which is more effective because it's

[David Sims]

coming off of Nima realizing Marlin's coming for him. Right.

[Griffin Newman]

It's like 10 perfect verbal gags in a row that are all character and behavioral.

[Andrew Stanton]

That was Steve Jobs favorite part of the. The movie.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah, well, because it's. It should just be the most, like, shoe leathery kind of. This is. This is just story weight. How to get from point A to point B. And instead, all of it is. Is personal.

[Andrew Stanton]

Well, I gotta give most of the comedy props to Bob because Bob's just so funny.

[Ben Hosley]

He.

[Andrew Stanton]

He could Just spitting out. And I'm such a structuralist.

[David Sims]

Bob Peterson.

[Andrew Stanton]

Right. Yeah.

[David Sims]

Yeah, that.

[Andrew Stanton]

I think, again, when we're together, we're both able to like speak each other's language. But we're able to like, I was just, how does this build? Was probably my biggest driver. Even though I'm still trying to be funny bouncing off of him. And he's like, how to make it funnier? But he cares just as much about building. But because the emphasis on the sentence was different for us, that just showed you how strong we were, chemistry wise, working together. And then I'm such a film score nut that I'm always thinking about, is there a way the music can do this? Is there a way the music can be involved? Is there a way? And it's one of Thomas Newman's best scores.

[Griffin Newman]

Obviously

[Andrew Stanton]

I wrote to two pieces of music or two composers all the time for Nemo. And that was 90% of the time or 80% of the time was anything Thomas Newman had scored. Because I just was like. And so he became a character in my mind.

[David Sims]

Any in particular though? Any jams?

[Andrew Stanton]

Shawshank and. But particularly meet Joe Black.

[David Sims]

Oh, that's a great score.

[Andrew Stanton]

Score. I mean it goes over the top at the end and that's why I love it.

[David Sims]

I mean that movie's crazy.

[Andrew Stanton]

And then. And then I would listen to Nine Inch Nails the Fragile because I kept saying, I make. This is. Is this.

[David Sims]

Have you ever met Trent?

[Andrew Stanton]

Yeah, I told him that. I told him that on the red carpet at the Wally.

[David Sims]

That's so fun.

[Andrew Stanton]

But I just was so afraid. My biggest fear for making that movie was that it was gonna be treacly and be an After School Special because we had to go cute for a lot of it and innocent and sweet and adorable. And I just was worried about the tone and the balance being right because my. I grew up in the ocean. I grew up being scared of the ocean but fascinated by it at the same time. I remember putting on a little diving mask and you know, in knee deep shallow water and ducking my head under and then being freaked out because things started to disappear so quickly in the void and you didn't know what was behind you. And I all. And I. That was the first thing I ever typed was. And it's the. I think it's still on the first

[Griffin Newman]

page of the script.

[Andrew Stanton]

I just typed the Void and I wanted that. That was the big bold. The two big bold things at the time. I remember really early on was like, I want to like not do the circle of life. Fuck that. It doesn't exist. Things are out.

[David Sims]

Circle of life is one of the most banana sequences ever. It's gorgeous. It's Very impressive. But you're like, theory, what, the animals have a king.

[Griffin Newman]

The theory that some of them don't talk.

[Andrew Stanton]

I just, like, things are out to get you. It's a predatory world. And there's a reason we're always scared about our kid crossing the street. And so the ocean is the perfect. You have to live in it, but you have to be afraid of it all the time. So I said, can I keep that alive throughout the movie? And then the other thing was, can I make the parent the main character, not the kid? And that seemed radical at the time.

[David Sims]

It's a fair point.

[Andrew Stanton]

Yeah.

[David Sims]

Usually it's like the kid loses the parent, either permanently or temporarily, and has to figure something out to grow up.

[Andrew Stanton]

So that's.

[David Sims]

And that happens in Nemo. And it's.

[Andrew Stanton]

That's why I listened to the Fragile, because it would remind me how dark the. And I found out from him that he wrote that album listening to La Mercury. And Debussy was suicidal when he wrote Lemaire by the Oceanside. And so the whole thing has this dark, dark, deep connection. But it would ground me like that 10, 20% would just bring me back to going, don't be afraid to be scary. Don't be afraid to be tense. Don't be afraid to be unpredictable. Because that's part of the point of this movie, is that you're in the real world. And the whole driving thing of this main character is fear. And we have to be afraid, too, or else it's just theory.

[David Sims]

It's a. It's. It pervades the movie, but not too much, you know, like, it doesn't overwhelm it. Which obviously, I know with a lot of the movies you guys make, that can happen, right? Where it's like, oh, Woody's. Woody's coming off a little too agitated or villainous or what, you know, anxious. And same with the. Marlon Marlin's too worked up. Like, he's too negative.

[Griffin Newman]

Every time I watch Nemo and he gets lost, I go, this is impossible.

[David Sims]

Right, Right. He'll never find the stakes.

[Griffin Newman]

Couldn't feel, I remember, more insurmountable.

[Andrew Stanton]

I was still trying to solve the movie, and Bob Peterson came on about a year or two in, and he was like, the thing that blows my mind about this movie is, oh, you just spend the whole time going, how?

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[David Sims]

Which is. I mean, which is the magic of a lot of this, you know, like, Dory, too, just like, you know, and Wally, like, these movies where it's like a great distance is Going to be traveled by a tiny thing. And every time you're kind of like, I don't know how they're gonna do this.

[Griffin Newman]

And characters with Toy Story obviously pret

[David Sims]

much always is like, hey, the toy got taken across the street. And you're like, across the street.

[Andrew Stanton]

The machinations of the moving truck chase in Toy Story was mine.

[David Sims]

It's so good.

[Andrew Stanton]

And I boarded that out roughly. And then everybody came in to clean it up because we had to do it under duress. And I realized then, and it's only proven all the way till Toy Story 5, that that comes more readily to me is the crazy engineering of how things will all fit.

[David Sims]

Did you. Monsters Inc. Too. Did you have any. Because Monsters Inc. Also has the. Like, we're somehow crossing dimensions. And, you know, all that.

[Andrew Stanton]

And there's. I'm not the only person. But that's just. If you had to get down to what. What comes out of me the easiest. Not easy, but easiest is how is this going to ultimately pay off? How can I hide it as a setup? How can it, like, not be seen right away?

[Griffin Newman]

Is that the right brain thing? Is that just.

[Andrew Stanton]

I don't know. My dad was a. Yeah. Was an engineer, chemical engineer who basically worked for a skunk's work. Top secret company that could solve. Had to solve things for the government when they run out of time. So I think I got that from my dad.

[David Sims]

What did your mom do?

[Andrew Stanton]

My mom was a frustrated actress.

[David Sims]

So you're like Spielberg, the artist and the scientist.

[Andrew Stanton]

He and I have actually had that comparison. But I realized I don't know science and math like my dad did. So that part of the muscle goes towards abstract story building, story structure. So I think that's why people would love me to stay in that lane because I'm good at it. But you live long enough and you're not interested in scratching the same itch all the time. I'm also a hopeless romantic. I'm also a sci fi nut. I also love drama. Just good drama in new ways of finding tension in drama. And so exploring stuff that wouldn't come readily to me but I would love to see as a. As a. As an audience member is why I take chances, whether they hit or miss on Carter or blink. That's making me feel as adventuresome and satisfied as I was on the first two animated movies I ever got to watch.

[Griffin Newman]

Is there an ultimate? At least I shouldn't say ultimate. Is there at this moment an itch you're most eager to scratch that you haven't gotten to within your films yet.

[David Sims]

Right. Because you've mostly worked in sci fi when you've done live action even. Even in tv you've done some like you did three Body and you did.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah. I also argue that Toy Story is low key sci fi.

[David Sims]

Yeah. A little bit something.

[Andrew Stanton]

I clearly lean that way. I try not to think too hard about it. I've been enjoying not having anything planned. I didn't plan Toy Story 5. I didn't plan any of the TV shows that got offered to me and I didn't plan the scripts that suddenly I read and I was like, oh, I want to try and make that. There's. For a long time I was trying to get this movie made called Revolver that was written by Kate Trefai who.

[David Sims]

Yeah, that came up in our research. Yeah, that's the Beatles stopping in Alaska or something.

[Andrew Stanton]

Yeah, it's a great script. And I got the Beatles estate. Okay. For four songs. I got Ethan and Maya Hawke.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[Andrew Stanton]

Which songs they were pre Revolver because it's all about. Because that Alaska moment happened and they hadn't released Revolver yet. Nobody knew know that they were making that. And so it was like stuff from rubber sole and. And stuff like that and. But I got Ethan. It was a kind of a paper moon relationship between father and daughter. So I got Ethan Hawke and Meinhawk to attach to it and nobody bit.

[David Sims]

This was.

[Andrew Stanton]

This was right before. And then during the pandemic and so just the whole world just rocked and. And it's still to me like such an obvious win of a movie. You never see the Beatles in it.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah, right.

[David Sims]

Which is always.

[Andrew Stanton]

Because this really happened. There was a. In 64, I think there was a 9 point something earthquake. It's the largest earthquake ever on the North American continent or around in Alaska. Right, Alaska.

[David Sims]

If you go to Alaska, they never shut up about it. There's signs everywhere.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[Andrew Stanton]

But they were still in recovery a year later and there was one functioning hotel that you could stay at. And the Beatles were flying to Japan to do their last. Nobody knew their last touring and they got rerouted by a typhoon and had to land in Alaska. And they stayed for a night and a day in this hotel in Anchorage in 1965. And so Kate Trefei is from Anchorage and her mother was there when that happened. And so she sort of elaborated because her mother had a crush on George Harrison. So her main heroine character is just. Her goal is to get into that hotel and sleep with George Harrison. And it's this beautiful coming of age story just Beautiful. And I still wish I could make it.

[Griffin Newman]

Was it Chairman Spaceman?

[Andrew Stanton]

That was something Searchlight asked me to be involved in. And so I was heavy on the. And that was before I read Blank. So it was my shot at getting something else made. And so it was based on an article from the New Yorker. And we worked on many iterations of the script with the author of the piece. And he's a great scriptwriter. And it was clear what he wanted and what Searchlight wanted weren't matching. And to be fair, the world changed. To do something about a billionaire going into space is. Was fascinating. And then it just became off putting. And then it became reality. And so it just was one of those ill timed things. Those ill timed things.

[David Sims]

Now I'm seeing here, in 1994, you worked on the episode Cookies, Ookies, Blookies. What? The TV show Two Stupid Dogs.

[Griffin Newman]

Oh.

[Andrew Stanton]

Oh, wow.

[David Sims]

Okay, that's important.

[Andrew Stanton]

That was while I was working on Toy Story, early days. So I had friends that.

[David Sims]

Now there were two stupid dogs in that show. One big, one long.

[Griffin Newman]

I had the Griffin David relationship.

[Andrew Stanton]

It was a friend of Pete Doctors that was working on that show and he needed some boarding done and we just wanted to help out.

[David Sims]

So it's always so funny with animators where, like you look back in their career, it's like all this great work and it's like.

[Ben Hosley]

Yeah.

[David Sims]

And then also just some random cartoon from the 90s. That was a funny show.

[Griffin Newman]

I remember that show. The. The Secret Squirrel segments on that rings a bell.

[Andrew Stanton]

So you were the prime audience.

[David Sims]

I mean, we were like seven years old or whatever.

[Griffin Newman]

You worked on the Bakshi Mighty Master as well.

[Andrew Stanton]

Right.

[Griffin Newman]

What was that experience?

[Andrew Stanton]

That was a murderous row of people on that show. If you could. You couldn't hire.

[David Sims]

Yeah, that's pretty much your first credit.

[Andrew Stanton]

Yeah. Right out of college, my friend Jim Murden, who would go on to be a major director on Simpsons, and Rich Moore were working on it.

[Griffin Newman]

Richmore, who did Ben Wreck It Ralph.

[Andrew Stanton]

Yeah, that's right. We all went to school together. And so they were. Ralph had this pattern of coming into Hollywood this. All through the 70s into the 80s, where he would come into Hollywood off of just his Fritz the Cat fame or Lord of the Rings fame and get money enough to get something started and then burn all its bridges and then leave town once it failed and then wait for the regime change, which would happen about every five years until nobody knew who he was again except for his credits. And then he'd come back out to California and Start over again. And we were on this iteration because he had worked on the original Mighty Mouse as a young guy.

[Griffin Newman]

Okay.

[Andrew Stanton]

And I think it was. Terry Toons was here in New York. I think, if I have it right, he worked on it in New York, wasn't it.

[Griffin Newman]

Was it in Tarrytown?

[Andrew Stanton]

Maybe. Maybe you guys are in front of the.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah, we got. We got devices.

[Andrew Stanton]

But anyway, he got the rights to it and wanted it to be remade. So John. Chris Felucci was his guy. Bruce Timm was on there. Vicki Jensen worked there.

[David Sims]

Oh, those are like.

[Andrew Stanton]

All of us became somebody in animation, but we were all nobodies then. It was crazy. It was a crazy time. We worked in an abandoned preschool in Van Nuys.

[Griffin Newman]

That's what that show feels like.

[David Sims]

It feels like it came out escape something. Yes.

[Andrew Stanton]

And the intercom system was still working. And he took Ralph. Took the principal's office. And he was this huge guy from the Bronx, I think. I don't want to. If he's Bronx or Brooklyn.

[David Sims]

Yeah, that's the vibe.

[Andrew Stanton]

He had outer borough. And he had a bit of a lisp. And he considered us 20 something. He wanted writers cheap. So this is like 86, 87. So we would have legal pads and pencils, and we'd sit in this windowless teacher's lounge that clearly had still all the smoke from cigarettes from all the previous teachers that had ever worked there in it. And he would just hit the intercom and go, guys, in my office right now. And suddenly pick up. And you'd go into his office, but he would keep pulling out his old friends that he had made in the 70s. So one day he was like, guy, this is Frank Frazetta. Like you to meet Frank Frazetta. And we're like. And this guy's chain smoking comes in, and we're like, meeting Frank Frazetta. And then this is Amos.

[David Sims]

He sells cookies.

[Andrew Stanton]

And it's like. And famous Amos comes in dressed exactly. Dressed exactly like he is on the package with the samples in a bag giving out cookies on. And it turns out he worked in post and sound when he worked on. And he was one of the sound engineers or I think for one of his movies in la. And then he was. And Ralph was saying, like, yeah, he's trying to tell me that he's gonna start the cookie business. I'm like, get out of here. You want to put money in the cookie business? I'm not gonna put money in the cookie business.

[Griffin Newman]

He was like a music manager and he made the cookies as like, Gifts to his clients, and everyone's like, sell the cookies, my guy.

[Andrew Stanton]

And he made a killing. Jim would say was every day was an interesting story. Working with.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah. Is there anything I. I want to let you go because we already have a second.

[David Sims]

We're gonna chat with you a little more in depth about John Carter, obviously.

[Andrew Stanton]

Yeah.

[David Sims]

Screening tonight. So obviously we can sort of dip into that more there.

[Griffin Newman]

But.

[David Sims]

Yeah. Anything else? You wanted to bug him because you terrified the two stupid dogs question.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah. That was really important.

[Andrew Stanton]

That was high on the list. I don't remember at all. I really don't know.

[Ben Hosley]

You.

[Griffin Newman]

You texted me after Finding Nemo, and you said you guys got things mostly correct.

[David Sims]

Oh, sure.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes. I'm wondering if there is a thing, because we were talking right before we started recording about how when you do these press tours, you have to condense stories and then you create a myth that then circulates for decades and you have to correct your own myth. Is there a thing that you have heard us say as you terrifyingly have been listening to the episodes on you.

[David Sims]

Yeah. Please don't do that.

[Griffin Newman]

That you feel like we have helped prevent.

[Andrew Stanton]

To be fair, I haven't listened to the Carter or the Blink because I can't. It's too soon.

[Griffin Newman]

Therapy.

[Andrew Stanton]

It's too soon for me to hear.

[Griffin Newman]

Yes.

[Andrew Stanton]

But I can't remember what the Nemo things were. There was. There was nothing egregious. It was just more like, oh, that's a little off.

[Griffin Newman]

It can be. Is there a myth that you wish you could correct here?

[Ben Hosley]

We're trying to get you to say something so we could fire JJ or.

[Griffin Newman]

We're really trying to find.

[David Sims]

I see. Yes.

[Griffin Newman]

He spelled your name Pandrew Stanton. Can we fire him for that?

[Andrew Stanton]

Yeah. No. P. P is silent.

[Griffin Newman]

P is silent.

[Andrew Stanton]

I would have texted you with the correction if it was that egregious.

[Griffin Newman]

No, I let J.J. know that he did a good job. He's a good.

[David Sims]

He's a good guy.

[Griffin Newman]

He's a good guy.

[David Sims]

Yeah. And you're. You're. You're very, very, very nice to bless us with your presence on this show.

[Andrew Stanton]

It's a hilarious show. I. I'm showing my age. I don't get half the references half the time.

[David Sims]

Oh, please. Anytime you want to get one of

[Griffin Newman]

the references, explain the references.

[Andrew Stanton]

But I'm impressed. I'm impressed with your film knowledge. I'm impressed with your film analysis. That means a lot.

[David Sims]

Thank you.

[Andrew Stanton]

Pressed with your running gags.

[Griffin Newman]

As I said, I mean, I truly. A lot of the Analysis comes like backwards retrofit from hearing you explain things over the years. Like a wildly disproportionate amount of it comes from the way you have kind of open sourced your sense of story specifically.

[Andrew Stanton]

Well, again, keeps coming back to, I have a sixth grade education and if I can get it, then I feel there's hope for anybody else to get it. So I kind of try to pass it on.

[Griffin Newman]

That's our podcast, but with a second grade education. Thank you for doing this.

[Andrew Stanton]

Thanks, guys.

[David Sims]

Thank you. And looking forward to tonight.

[Andrew Stanton]

I'm excited. I've never seen the film on the screen since. And are you going to do it?

[David Sims]

Are you going to tough it out?

[Ben Hosley]

Oh, yeah.

[David Sims]

All right.

[Andrew Stanton]

It's not hard for me to watch. It's not hard for me to watch any of my movies. I know why I made them and I know why I made the choices. And I don't usually regret the choices.

[David Sims]

I just. Some people are like, no, no, no, I'll never. I never watch my stuff back.

[Andrew Stanton]

Like, I'm like that about the most. Like, I can't watch Toy Story 5 again.

[Griffin Newman]

Sure.

[David Sims]

Because you just watched it like five billion times.

[Andrew Stanton]

Yeah. One of our editors assistants kept track and I had seen it 95 times.

[Ben Hosley]

Oh, my God.

[David Sims]

So, I mean, to be fair, I've seen some of your movies close to

[Andrew Stanton]

that many times because maybe it's also

[Griffin Newman]

to be fair, I've seen it 91 times.

[Andrew Stanton]

Like. Like Nemo took me seven years before I was to go watch it. Some of it's just because you just want, like, do I have even fighting chance of seeing it as a movie?

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[Andrew Stanton]

All of them are a yearbook. They're just a yearbook. Like, I remember where I was when I shot that.

[Griffin Newman]

I remember every choice.

[Andrew Stanton]

And when it's long enough of a time passing you, it becomes fond memories. It's like opening up an old photo album and you're just like, oh, yeah. And it triggers memories that you had forgotten about it. So it's very.

[David Sims]

Just great. That's just great. Yeah, that's lovely.

[Andrew Stanton]

But, like, just collecting all the photos that I'll.

[Griffin Newman]

Oh, yeah.

[Andrew Stanton]

Is. It was like I. I found stuff I forgot I had, which was exciting.

[David Sims]

Are you in touch with anyone left on that movie?

[Andrew Stanton]

Oh, yeah, I just.

[David Sims]

And she's having. So she.

[Andrew Stanton]

I gave her such kudos for Cersei.

[Griffin Newman]

Pretty incredible.

[Andrew Stanton]

Probably the highlight. Highlight of the movie. And it's a great movie and she's so happy for her. It's like. It's like a whole nother generation is learning how great she is.

[David Sims]

Absolutely.

[Andrew Stanton]

And Defoe, I haven't talked to him in a while, but he's a good New Yorker pal. And we all loved working on that movie and it was hard, but we enjoyed it till the day it came out. And then and we all had plans, which I'll talk about tonight, about what we were found the outlines for the other two and I'm like, oh, we really knew where we were going and what we were going to do. And so there's a lot of questions.

[Griffin Newman]

Not a lot.

[Andrew Stanton]

But some of the critiques about the first one are actually, because we just knew where we were going with the second one and we weren't going to give away all the marbles or do what you would normally do in a standalone film, which is a naive mistake of ours to have done.

[Griffin Newman]

But I'm excited to see it.

[David Sims]

I'm excited.

[Griffin Newman]

I'm excited to see all the stuff

[Andrew Stanton]

you dug up, especially with an appreciative crowd. I realize this may never happen again.

[Griffin Newman]

I mean, sold out.

[David Sims]

Sold out right away.

[Griffin Newman]

Right away at his second showing.

[David Sims]

Excited, right? We are doing a second showing.

[Griffin Newman]

Yeah.

[Andrew Stanton]

Sweet. Thanks, guys.

[Ben Hosley]

Thank you.

[Griffin Newman]

Thank you so much, sir.

[Ben Hosley]

Blank Check with Griffin and David is hosted by Griffin Newman and David Sims. Our executive producer is me, Ben Hosley. Our creative producer is Marie Barty Salinas, and our Associate producer is AJ McKeon. This show is mixed and edited by AJ McKeon and Alan Smithee. Research by JJ Birch. Our theme song is by Lane Montgomery and the Great American Novel with additional music by Alex Mitchell, artwork by Joe Bowen, Ollie Moss and Pat Reynolds. Our production assistant is Minick. Special thanks to David Cho, Jordan Fish and Nate Patterson for their production help. Head over to blankcheckpod.com for links to all of the real nerdy shit. Join our Patreon Blank Check special features for exclusive franchise commentaries and bonus episodes. Follow us on Social Blank checkpod. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter Checkbook on Substack. This podcast is created and produced by blankcheck Productions.