In 2018, Pete Docter was asked to move up from his role as a director at Pixar into the head position at the company. As founding leader John Lasseter had been put on sabbatical following serious allegations, and Disney CEO Bob Iger was looking for someone to head up the studio as it became clear that Lasseter’s absence would indeed be permanent.
Fast forward to 2021, and Docter has been making significant strides in diversifying Pixar’s output, while continuing to direct films for the studio. Docter has directed several films while at Pixar, including classics like Monsters Inc, Up, and Inside Out. His most recent job in the director’s chair was for Soul, which recently released to Disney Plus over the holiday season.
Docter is known by his colleagues as a man who has never been afraid to take creative risks, and is always looking to break new ground. For Soul, this meant creating the first Pixar movie to feature a Black protagonist. When the decision was made to base the film around the aesthetic of Jazz, it became clear to Docter that they needed a Black perspective. In order to make that perspective accurate and meaningful, he also brought on board Kemp Powers as co-director, to ensure that a more diverse film would be made by a diverse leadership team.
As part of his leadership, Docter has also attempted to redress the gender imbalance inside Pixar. Women made up a fractional portion of Pixar’s employees, and one in particular, Domee Shi, started tracking stats to show how this was reflected in their films. During the making of Cars 3, Shi tracked how many lines went to male characters vs. female characters, and discovered that over 80% of all dialogue was given to the former, to Docter’s suprise: “You’d go, ‘Holy cow. Eighty percent of these lines are males. I wasn’t aware of that. I didn’t do that intentionally.’ So just exposing these blind spots and allowing us to fix it.”
Now that Soul is finished and released, however, Docter does not have any plans to return to directing in the immediate future. As CCO, he wants to focus on the employees and the broader health of the company. He was eager to start guiding other animators and directors on the path to success, and is looking forward to making the studio more diverse and inclusive, though he didn’t rule out returning to directing someday: “Whether it’ll be enough in the long run, or if I’m going to be jonesing to get back to directing, I don’t know. We’ll have to see.”
Soul is currently available on Disney Plus.
Source: The Hollywood Reporter
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