It took five years of research, and some luck, to shape 'Up'
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Pete Docter, writer and director of "Up."
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A dog behaviorist, an ostrich visit, enough balloons to almost float a house to the heavens and a water-soaked, slippery trip to Angel Falls in Venezuela.
Those are the sorts of (legitimate) items that popped up on expense reports as Walt Disney and Pixar Animation Studios spent five years making "Up." The 10th Pixar film and first in 3-D, it arrives in theaters today.
"Up" is a comedy-fantasy about a 78-year-old balloon salesman and widower named Carl Fredricksen (voice of Ed Asner) who rigs thousands of balloons to his house and flies off to South America. He belatedly realizes Russell, an 8-year-old boy, has accidentally come along for the rollicking ride.
Pixar filmmakers are famous for their research, whether it's sharing their offices with caged rats or asking a superstar chef to prepare the signature dish of "Ratatouille." This time, some exotic travel was in order.
"We got to go down to South America and take a trip to these real-life tabletop mountains. It was absolutely fantastic," director-writer Pete Docter said in a recent phone call.
"It's such a weird, otherworldly place that I'm not sure we would have ever really been able to capture it, had we not visited it firsthand, so it was invaluable. It took us three days [by plane, Jeep and helicopter] just to get there and then we hiked up, slept overnight and sketched a lot and took photographs."
Later, back home in California, bunches of balloons sprouted on Pixar property.
"For a couple of months, I would see the technical guys with balloons, floating them around outside and observing different things like behavior and movement," Docter said. They tried to replicate the translucence of new balloons along with the powdery coating that comes with time.
"We tried to capture all that in the film and use that for emotional effect, as well, so that as time drags on and it looks like Carl's not going to make it, you get a shriveled kind of look."
Docter and co-director Bob Peterson started with the nifty notion of a house held aloft by balloons and then began asking themselves, "How did he get in the house and where's he going?"
Although "Up" is the first Pixar movie to be presented in Disney digital 3D, Docter says, "It's almost as though we made all of our films in 3-D but we've never projected them that way. In terms of the approach, we really kind of came at it the same way we always do, which is just focus on story, story, story," with the help of a new 3-D department.
"We tried to use 3-D in a storytelling way. Well, in this scene, Carl's very closed off and we want it to feel small and claustrophobic so let's squish space, make it very flat. And later, when he floats his house off, we want it to feel dynamic and rich and deep," says Docter, who also directed "Monsters, Inc."
Although Asner played Santa Claus in "Elf," he's more commonly known as the actor whose Lou Grant hated spunk on "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" and later ran a Los Angeles newsroom. "He just had that great sort of gruff grouchiness, but also the humor and he was just perfect."
The producers tested hundreds of children and found Russell by accident when Jordan Nagai, now 9, tagged along with his older brother, who read for the role. Someone asked, "What about you, why don't you step up here?" to Jordan, who jabbered about his judo class.
"He just had this very charming voice, a real sort of innocence to him," said Docter, who encouraged Jordan to tap into his imagination or play along to get lively line readings.
"If he was trying to struggle to get out of a chair, I would kind of hold his arms by his side and say, 'OK, as you say the line, see if you can wriggle your arms free. Ready?' Stuff like that, little sort of tricks to get what we needed."
Although "Up" is a comedy, it also strikes some serious chords with adults in the audience. Carl and his childhood sweetheart, Ellie, marry and have big plans -- for a family and an overseas adventure.
(The director's now 10-year-old daughter, Elizabeth Docter, did a temporary recording of Ellie that everyone loved so much that she ended up in the movie. Docter and his wife also have a 13-year-old son.)
In a touching and tasteful montage that some children will not grasp, Carl and Ellie realize they cannot have a baby. The money they save for their trip of a lifetime gets diverted to household emergencies.
Addressing those "big life issues" was a necessary part of telling the story, Docter says. "When we locked in on the theme of Carl learning what life is really about and redefining adventure, we then needed to show that real-life adventure -- the highs and lows of what real life is about."
At a time when movies often aim for a tween, teen or twentysomething audience, "Up" features two leads -- one 78 years old, the other seven decades younger.
The filmmakers wanted to send a message to older folks: "That no matter how, there's always an opportunity to really be a vital part of somebody else's life, even though a lot of times ... we ship them off to old folks homes."
Docter, a native of Minnesota whose father is a retired choral music director and whose mother teaches classical music appreciation, and others dedicated the film to the "real-life Carl and Ellie Fredricksens who inspired us to create our own Adventure Books."
Among that quartet is Joe Grant, an artist and writer who died in 2005 at age 96. He created such Walt Disney characters as the queen-witch in "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" and co-wrote "Dumbo."
"After working on 'Toy Story,' I got to meet him. He was head of story on 'Dumbo' back in the day, worked as second in command to Walt [Disney] in story development and he was back working at Disney again in his 90s when I got to know him."
Grant's time at Disney spanned more than six decades and Docter remembers him as a vital contributor with great ideas and a never-ending search for new solutions, approaches and artistic techniques.
Every new Pixar film brings talk about raising the bar and keeping the unblemished streak alive.
Even Docter, hired at Pixar in 1990 before "Toy Story" wowed the world, wonders how his colleagues can top themselves but they manage, even as they hope that each movie is different enough that comparisons are not inevitable.
And that each Pixar picture will bring "just a little bit of a surprise about exactly what you're going to get."
First Published May 29, 2009 12:00 am
