Culture, wonder, and awe

- The culture here, it seems like it is one that really wants to give you an opportunity to pursue awe and wonder. How does that manifest itself every day? How does that live out here? - Yeah, it's funny you choose those words because it's nothing that we initially set out to do. I think we stumbled on it, this idea that the world is full of amazing things, and that really when you get down to it, that's on one level why you choose to expose yourself to art, whether it be music or painting or anything. It's that idea that you're shaking yourself awake. On a daily basis, it's so easy to just, for me anyway, to fall into a routine. I wake up, I know I'm going to get to work, I'm going to exercise, I'm going to dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, and now it's, oh, time for bed. It just cycles through everyday, and I think when you go to a film or exposed to some story that shakes you and says, "You're alive, pay attention!" that's, I think, the job that we have as storytellers. And usually that manifests itself in a sense of awe and wonder that you've failed to experience just by getting trapped in the cycle of every day life. The guy that I worked with on "Inside Out", this guy named Dacker Keltner, he was one of our scientific collaborators, he has an intense interest in awe. The vagus nerve, the nerve that travels to the front of your chest that sparkles when you see the Grand Canyon or something. That experience is really vital to remembering that you're alive. Anyway. - I remember seeing "Toy Story" for the first time, and it was like a mouth open, unbelievable-- I remember, I think it was Buzz's shield when it comes down and the reflection that you saw in it, and then Sully, when he first sees Sully, and the light goes through his hair. - Oh yeah. - And I'm just like, blow my mind type stuff. I feel like the aesthetic in your films have it as well as the story. - Well, that's one of the cool things about getting to work at a place that was on the forefront, and hopefully still is, of this technology because every day you come in here, and we react the same way. These amazing scientists partnered with artists, you look at the artwork that they show you, and you scrape your jaw off the floor. It's just stunning. You've never seen it before. - Do you or do you as an organization, do you ever think about how your movies impact culture or the people that watch them? - Every day. Not in a pompous way, more just like from an audience point of view. You do everything you can when you're working on a film for five years to try to hypnotize yourself into, "All right, all right, I know nothing about this. "I'm comin' in, I'm erasing my head, "and now how do I react?" I'm constantly trying to experience the stuff that I'm making from the shoes of the people I hope will see it. But not so much in terms of culture, like, "Gee, can we make a catch phrase that'll get caught "in the vernacular?" We're not thinking like that at all. - Yeah, no, I would, and I don't want to make this assumption, but I feel like a movie like "Inside Out" for example, it's just the subject matter with the emotions and all that sort of thing. I would think some of your movies would have an opportunity to maybe give people an opportunity to connect on a different level, maybe talk about emotions and that sort of thing. - Or understand a part of themselves maybe that they weren't able to before. - Yeah, that was something that, as it turned out, that a lot of people talked about. I've heard from a number of psychologists who said they used the film to talk to their patients about emotions and how all that works. I wish I could say we planned on that 'cause that would sound better, but no, it was sort of a happy accident. It was really a byproduct of choosing subject matter that felt like it had some depth to it, something to talk about, and a connection that everybody could relate to. But, I think with most really well-told stories, there is going to be something that feels like, what's the right word. Well, it's like a metaphor that allows you to understand life from a different angle. That's one of the functions of any kind of story, is just saying, "Okay, I didn't really understand this "until I heard this story, and now because of the specifics "and the way the characters reacted, "suddenly I have this deeper meaning in my head "of what this is all about."