THE GOOD DINOSAUR : Interview with Director Peter Sohn

A few weeks ago, WAMG was invited to the in-home global junket for Disney & Pixar’s THE GOOD DINOSAUR, which is available now on Blu-Ray, DVD, and digital download. While there, they had a band ready to play us a few songs from the film, and I sat down with director Peter Sohn to talk about the film. Check it out below!

“The Good Dinosaur” asks the question: What if the asteroid that forever changed life on Earth missed theplanet completely and giant dinosaurs never became extinct?  Pixar Animation Studios takes you on an epic journey into the world of dinosaurs where an Apatosaurus named Arlo (voice of Raymond Ochoa) makes an unlikely human friend. While traveling through a harsh and mysterious landscape, Arlo learns the power of confronting his fears and discovers what he is truly capable of.

The composers were talking about their role in conveying your vision. You were talking earlier about navigating through that without knowing the lingo. So how did you go about conveying your vision to them and what initial sound were you going for?

Peter Sohn: One of the pieces that I loved from what Michael had written was from Life of Pi. There was a real kind of…there are moments in that movie where you are just looking at a character looking at an animal stuck in a boat with a lot of silence. But the music underneath it was not overbearing, but it was also very internal. Like, it was kind of projecting what the characters were thinking about. That was something that I really was looking for in this film, because Arlo and Spot, they don’t speak the same language. And so, that was an element: could we find someone that could really project that internal kind of thought process in the music for Arlo? He was that guy. And he found all these themes that helped us out with that. That was one of the first things we started talking about.

That’s awesome. Disney and Pixar are known for how much research they put into things before they start with location. I would assume you did quite a bit with dinosaurs. What kind of preparation did you take before even getting off the ground with this?

Peter Sohn: Preparation research. It really was a lot of movie love going on. Like, I love The Black Stallion. That was a movie that was really quiet. ET. And so, I started watching these kind of boring dog movies. Even Rain Man was kind of a boring dog movie. There was that and then the great westerns, the great landscape movies like Lawrence of Arabia. That was some of the early prep work I had done before we’d even go on research trips.

Bu it would also kind of teach me what I needed for the movie. For example, the cliché of the cowboy versus the real thing was something that I didn’t realize until we went out to the research trip. But I knew I wanted to go in that world.

Yeah, you can definitely feel the spaghetti western influence on certain parts. Were there any films in particular that you looked for to that?

Peter Sohn: Shane was a huge one, Jeremiah Johnson, The Searchers, Red River, even some of the modern day ones, like Silverado had some aspects that we looked at. But then trying to make landscape or nature a character, there were a lot of other movies that kind of hit that core.

This just popped into my head. One topic that’s been really prominent as of late is cultural appropriation. I’m just curious… Is that something that you focus on? You are dealing with the cave people and landscapes and everything like that. Is that something that you focus on and think about avoiding conflict when you are making a film?

Peter Sohn:  Yeah. It’s not the first thing that you think about. But for me, I don’t want to just take a culture completely. I honor it and respect it, but also trying to make it work within the story, what the story needs are. And so, the culture of a cowboy was something that, like, when I first jumped into, I didn’t really understand until we did the research. And once we did the research, it was like, “OK. You know what? I’m literally making fun of the cowboy in that other version. I do not want to do that in terms of the culture of the people that survive in the west and live out there. Let’s honor it by finding something truthful in the way they live.”

So that was as close as we got to that type of thing. In terms of the humans, it was always kind of a made up culture, like we were trying to create our own traditions, create our own rules because of the evolutionary kind of setup that we had.

What is it about the buddy pic that speaks to you? The one that that I love about this is that Disney and Pixar are venturing out from the traditional love story, and on to subjects such as friendship.v

Peter Sohn: What’s funny about this film is that it’s slightly different from the classic buddy film. The classic buddy film was always like, “I don’t like you.” “I don’t like you!” “Well, I’m stuck with you.” “I’m stuck with you, too.” “I’m beginning to understand you.” “I’m beginning to understand you. Now we’re friends.”

This is like, “I don’t like you.” “I’m a dog.” “I still don’t like you.” “I’m just a dog living my life.” “You are teaching me everything. I’m still living my life. You have changed me. I have grown from you because of this relationship.”

So that’s something that was slightly different but something that spoke to me in terms of that kind of miscommunication. Like, again, I was talking about growing up with immigrant families, you are just trying to find ways to communicate without language. And this relationship and the way they connect was very much rooted in that.

Another thing about the classic Disney and Pixar films is a lot do have some sort of tragedy in their story. I think part of that is in order to allow your character to grow from that. How important is the tragedy to a Disney film? Did you have that in mind right away when you started writing this?

Peter Sohn: Yeah. It was there because it was in a lot of films about growing up. We tried to find a new take on it so we could still have that hole in Arlo’s life that happens when you lose someone. We did a lot of research into that type of loss and how children heal from that.

Then we started shying away from it and pulling back away from that concept. Then we met some families how had recently lost a husband or a loved one and they were like, “Please do not shy away from it. It’s such an important thing to continue to talk about with families.” There’s always a kid that still is gripping with it. So, so what if it’s an older thing. It’s a story that’s there for a reason. It made us even stronger in that concept.

What was the biggest lesson that you took from art department to director? It’s quite the leap.

Peter Sohn: You know what? Your title; that was a big deal for me, that you are a part of a family that everyone is trying to make the best film possible. Some people as the supervisors…I’m a supervisor, so I’m supposed to tell people what to do. In my years I’ve never seen that make anything positive. For me it was always like, “What can we do to make this film better, whatever problem that’s in front of us?” How do you answer that in a way that benefits the film?

I loved the nature backgrounds in this, such as the rain. All the nature elements are so vibrant and really detailed. But when you look at the design of Arlo and the T-Rex’s, it’s a little more simplified. How did you find that balance between those?

Peter Sohn: It was a tough balance. We did a lot of experiments early on where the nature was more cartoony or graphic. And it’s the danger that we needed out. All of a sudden, the world felt so safe when it was just kind of a cartoony premise. So we kept those elements of realism in it.

But also the same thing with Arlo where Arlo is more realistic. He just felt like an animal, like a cow sitting out there. And a cow has no problems. A cow can just eat grass and survive. But because this is a growth movie about survival, we needed you to feel when Arlo’s thrust out into the wilderness for the first time to be like, “[breaths heavy] I’m going to die out here!” To really feel that kid that was lost. So we pushed that graphic element to feel that youthful quality and the human quality of what a dinosaur could be.

That’s amazing. One more question. How was your first test screening? I’ve heard some brutal stories about how those go!

Peter Sohn: It’s rough. I remember hearing about this audience, and there were really great positive reactions were people were cheering at the end, but then there were questions that were harder. And that can throw you for a loop in both good ways and bad ways because you need those to just keep yourself in check just because you’ve been watching the movie over and over again so many times. So getting fresh eyes are always good.

But if taken the wrong way, it can be very destructive. For me it was always the spirit of the note, trying to understand the reasoning behind some of the notes.

What’s the strangest note you got?

Peter Sohn: “Why dinosaurs?”

[laughs] Well it’s called The Good Dinosaur…

Peter Sohn: Yeah. A dinosaur is a cool metaphor for being stuck. It’s about a kid trying to grow and move forward.

THE GOOD DINOSAUR is available on Blu-Ray, DVD, and Digital Download now