ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: 15 years!
How does that sound?
PETE DOCTER: It sounds totally weird.
Credit: Pixar/Disney
It doesnt seem like that long ago that it came out!
For me personally, I think that was just maybe last year.
I thought it was going to be a disaster and it wasnt.
Pixar/Disney
That was a whole very difficult road.
So thats really weird.
What do people ask you the most?
Pixar/Disney
She was too young at the beginning.
But then it just ended up sounding like a cute kid and we really liked that.
I think Billy Crystals Mike Wazowski will likely go down in voiceover history with enough years under the belt.
Pixar/Disney
Tell me a little about the first time you saw him in the booth.
So John and I went and pitched him [forMonsters] at his office.
And I thought, Uh oh.
Pixar/Disney
And then it doesnt sound truthful, it doesnt sound real.
Of course, Billy is a comedian he can do that.
So where we ended up [with Mikes voice] was him turned up a little bit.
Pixar/Disney
Its him, Billy, slightly higher, slightly more caricatured in terms of an east coast accent.
Just workshopping, that was the first order of the day.
We would be laughing hysterically.
Pixar/Disney
And Billys like, No no no, wait wait wait.
It didnt end up in the film but it was just fun.
Hes just such an amazing mind.
He gave us so much more than just his voice.
Was John Goodman a similar story?
I feel like his performance gets lost in the shuffle.
Theres tenderness and humor there, and its really a tremendous vocal performance.
But hes the emotional heart of the thing.
Hes just such an amazingly instinctive actor.
He stepped right in and he nailed it.
But with Billy and John, the energy level would go up.
They would find entertainment in trying to crack each other up.
Yeah, Ive got wet dog and…
They just improved a lot of stuff.
They were really trying to push it.
Lets dive into some characters.
Sulley went through literally dozens of core changes, but what was the benchmark epiphany with the character?
That just seems mean and unappealing.
Hes the star quarterback, then it all came into focus.
Because until then, design after design, we really didnt know what he was about.
So thats why we ended up…hes the star quarterback.
Hes big, strong, lumbering, but still sort of lovable.
Thats why I really wanted the fur, which was a huge challenge for us at the time.
Is fur innately the most lovable texture?
Its why we even like pet rats more than spiders and snakes.
I mean, some people like those, too I dont want to say anything negative about pet snakes.
When I was coveringFinding Dory, everyone would often citeMonsters, Inc.as trailblazing in experiments with tentacles.
Can you imagine going back toMonsters, Inc.now with the technology Pixars developed in the 15 years since?
We were not physically able to render more than one monster with fur on the screen at a time.
We had to really camouflage.
If we had multiple monsters, wed have to figure out how to break it out into separate layers.
Oh, George Sanderson!
Yeah, I dont remember if there are any shots or not with the two of them.
There must be, somewhere.
Talk to me about Mikes evolution he wasnt even part of that first pitch.
Mike was not in the first draft.
So we came up with [this] random background character that Ricky Nierva had drawn.
He was one of our storyboard artists who later went into the art department.
But we kind of went back to this drawing and said, theres something about that guy.
Initially we had experimented with only giving him two appendages, and that was really cool.
But we found that…a lot of expressions count on the asymmetry of facial expressions.
And Mike only has one eye!
I like this idea that Randall was this dapper tuxedo fiend at one point.
We were thinking that he would be kind of a kiss-up to the president of the company, Waternoose.
That he is always dressing nicely and much more put-together than the slobby Sullivan.
He sees himself as the next in line.
In fact, there was a whole early draft where he was in cahoots with Waternoose.
A whole separate thing of him being layers down below working under Waternoose.
Finally, lets talk Boo.
She seemed to go through a lot of different ages and talking abilities over the development years.
Yeah, she was initially older.
But in terms of appeal, what if shes more like a kitten?
Last question: Is there a strange place youve ever seen this film in the wild?
Ive seen some really great looking horribly great looking pinatas.
So it shows up all over the place, thats for sure.
EW also asked Docter about any possibility of aMonsters, Inc. 3see what he had to say here.
