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Notes on the Meaning of Life Pixar’s Soul features its first Black protagonist and an imaginative take on how to find one’s place in the world. By Ramin Zahed
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here are lots of reasons to appreciate and admire Soul, Pixar’s 22nd feature and the studio’s first movie with a Black protagonist in its 34-year history. Directed by Pixar’s Chief Creative Officer Pete Docter (best known for directing Monsters, Inc., Up and Inside Out) and co-directed by playwright Kemp Powers, the movie centers on a middle school music teacher (voiced by Jamie Foxx) named Joe whose soul separates from his body after an unfortunate accident. He then has to find his way back to Earth to reunite with his body before his enemy can steal Joe’s dream of performing jazz on stage. Docter began thinking about the original high-concept idea for the movie one day as he was pondering the importance of finding one’s true calling in life. “I basically have wanted to be an animator my whole life,” says the two-time Oscar-winning director during a recent interview. “While my friends were out playing soccer or going on dates, I was locked in my room making animated cartoons. I was so into animation that I found a school that was started by Walt Disney (CalArts) and when I graduated in 1990 I started at Pixar, where I helped create Toy Story and eventually I got to www.animationmagazine.net
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direct Monsters Inc., Up and Inside Out.” The director says he feels that making animated movies was something that he was born to do, but some days he also wonders whether making cartoons is what he’s supposed to be doing with his time on Earth. “In fact, some days, I wonder: if I had a choice, would I decide to be born and come alive?” He asks. “So, really, it’s that thought or struggle that became the core of our film.”
a crack at coming up with interesting ways to put souls on the big screen. “We felt we needed more humanity, like clear facial features we could recognize with expressions and attitudes, so we came back to this drawing that Pete did early on, which seemed to suggest
The Trouble with Souls Of course, Docter and his team had a major challenge with the concept of the movie: They had to figure out a fun and original way to depict souls in animation. “We did a lot of research around the world, including various religions and teachings and the fundamental idea that came up again and again was that souls were described as vaporous, non-physical and formless — similar to air,” he explains. “So, our big issue was how can we capture something non-physical … How do you draw air?” The film’s producer Dana Murray, who also produced Pixar’s Oscar-nominated short Lou and exec produced last year’s Smash and Grab, says a lot of artists at the studio began to take
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