Where do the great storytelling ideas come from?
If you’re a creator, you’ll likely shrug your shoulders and mutter a resigned “I have no idea” since inspiration seems to often strike out of nowhere, with little warning and some strange weird portal inside you for which there is no good reason or sense.
No one’s complaining, it’s an idea after all and is far more preferable than a blank paper with a blinking cursor, but as Dan Scanlon, the creative force behind Pixar’s Onward explains in one of Inside Pixar‘s short but illuminating documentaries, some of the best ideas are the result of looking at the events and moments that have shaped you and seeing if a story lies in that tangle of life experiences.
That’s pretty personal territory, of course, and one of the things that makes what amounts to an extended featurette feel so intensely personal is that it also features Dan’s mother and brother, whose interviews, along with Dan’s explanation of his family life hugely informed Onward, really help you to understand why this animated feature, released in the middle of the chaotic beginning of the pandemic, matters so much to its creator.
But, returning to the initial point, it also underscores how the task of coming with an idea often rests on who you are and what you have experienced, and that the ideas which last the distance, and which have the power to make an animated feature – as Dan points out, his life experience along does not a movie make – are the ones that often come from very real, movingly personal places.
Having seen Onward and loved it – check out my review – this documentary makes the viewing experience all the more richer, helping to amplify aspects you already notice and make them all the more affecting and vital to a film that has some fun but which also goes deep and hard into the messy and deeply emotional business of being human (or, an elf, as the case may be).
The entire Inside Pixar series is available to stream on Disney Plus.