Pete Docter

Peter Hans Docter (born October 9, 1968) is an American film director, producer, screenwriter, and animator.

He spent about a year at the University of Minnesota studying both philosophy and making art before transferring to the California Institute of the Arts, where he won a Student Academy Award for his production "Next Door" and graduated in 1990 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts.

Although Docter had planned to work for Walt Disney Animation Studios, his best offers came from Pixar and from the producers of The Simpsons.

He did not think much of Pixar at that time, and later considered his choice to work there a strange and unusual one.

Before joining Pixar, Docter had created three non-computer animations, Next Door, Palm Springs, and Winter.

All three shorts were later preserved by the Academy Film Archive.

He was a fan of the company's early short films, but he knew nothing about them otherwise.

He started at Pixar in 1990 at the age of 21 after John Lasseter asked his former classmate the late Joe Ranft, who was one of Docter's teachers at CalArts, to recommend any students who would be a good fit for the company.

Deciding to follow his instincts and what "felt right" at the time, he accepted the job offer from then obscure Pixar and began work there the day after his college graduation as the tenth employee at the company's animation group and its third animator.

Docter instantly felt at home in the tight-knit atmosphere of the company.

He has said, "Growing up ... a lot of us felt we were the only person in the world who had this weird obsession with animation. Coming to Pixar you feel like, 'Oh! There are others!'"

Docter had been brought in with limited responsibilities, but John Lasseter quickly assigned him larger and larger roles in writing, animation, sound recording, and orchestra scoring.

He was one of the three key screenwriters behind the concept of Toy Story, and partially based the character of Buzz Lightyear on himself.

He had a mirror on his desk and made faces with it as he conceptualized the character.

Docter's fascination with character development was further influenced by a viewing of Paper Moon, he told journalist Robert K. Elder in an interview for The Film That Changed My Life.

"I like the more character-driven stuff, and Paper Moon brought that home to me in a way that I had not seen in live action, really focusing on the whole story just about characters. It was almost theatrical in the same way you might see a stage show because you're locked in a room. It's got to be about characters, and yet it was so cinematic, a film that couldn't be done in any other medium. It just kind of blew my socks off."

Docter has been an integral part of some of Pixar's most seminal works, including Toy Story, Toy Story 2, A Bug's Life and Monsters, Inc., all of which received critical acclaim and honors.

He contributed to these animated films as a co-author to the scripts, and worked with CGI stalwarts such as John Lasseter, Ronnie del Carmen, Bob Peterson, Andrew Stanton, Brad Bird, and Joe Ranft.

Docter has referred to his colleagues at Pixar as a bunch of "wild stallions".

He is also one of the five founding members of the Pixar Braintrust, which came together during the making of Toy Story (the other four being Lasseter, Stanton, Ranft and Unkrich).

Docter made his directorial debut with Monsters, Inc.—the first Pixar film not directed by Lasseter—which occurred right after the birth of his first child, Nick.

Docter has said that the abrupt move from a complete, single-minded devotion to his career to parenting drove him "upside down" and formed the inspiration for the storyline.

In 2004, he was asked by John Lasseter to direct the English translation of Howl's Moving Castle.

He commented in an October 2009 interview, "Looking back, I kind of go, what was I thinking?"

Docter then directed the 2009 film Up, released on May 29, 2009.

He has served as the chief creative officer (CCO) of Pixar Animation Studios since 2018, and is best known for directing the animated feature films Monsters, Inc. (2001), Up (2009), Inside Out (2015), and Soul (2020).

He has been nominated for nine Oscars and has won three for Best Animated Feature—for Up, Inside Out and Soul—making him the first person in history to win the category three times.

He has also been nominated for nine Annie Awards (winning six), a BAFTA Children's Film Award and a Hochi Film Award.

He has described himself as a "geeky kid from Minnesota who likes to draw cartoons".

Docter was born in Bloomington, Minnesota, the son of Rita Margaret (Kanne) and David Reinhardt Docter.

His mother's family is Danish American.

He grew up introverted and socially isolated, preferring to work alone and having to remind himself to connect with others.

He often played in the creek beside his house, pretending to be Indiana Jones and acting out scenes.

A junior-high classmate later described him as "this kid who was really tall, but who was kind of awkward, maybe getting picked on by the school bullies because his voice change at puberty was very rough."

Both his parents worked in education: his mother, Rita, taught music and his father, Dave, was a choral director at Normandale Community College.

He attended Nine Mile Elementary School, Oak Grove Junior High, and John F. Kennedy High School in Bloomington.

Unlike his two sisters, Kirsten Docter, who was the violist and a founding member of the Cavani String Quartet, and Kari Docter, a cellist with the Metropolitan Opera, Docter was not particularly interested in music, although he learned to play the double bass and played with the orchestras for the soundtracks of Monsters, Inc. and Up.

Docter taught himself cartooning, making flip books and homemade animated shorts with a family movie camera.

He later described his interest in animation as a way to "play God", making up nearly living characters.

Cartoon director Chuck Jones, producer Walt Disney, and cartoonist Jack Davis were major inspirations.