Director
Lee Unkrich was in the talks after the success of ‘Toy Story 3’ and and also for his
win at the Oscar’s. He immediately started working on a movie that focused on
the Mexican holiday, Coco. Seven years later, the movie is now releasing on
November 24
and the experience of making it was unlike any other Pixar movie before.
John
Lasseter has been the head of the Pixar/ Walt Disney Animation department for
over two decades and has been a major reason for the visionaries behind the
scenes. For Unkrich, it was the Day of the Dead holiday that really fascinated
him as an entry into telling a story.
It
would be the first time that Pixar would tell a story around a cultural
celebration. The story follows a young boy named Miguel who secretly wants to be
a famous musician, though his family has forbidden music after his
great-great-grandfather left the family to seek out fame as a musician. While
celebrating Day of the Dead, Miguel magically ends up in the Land of the Dead,
and must go on a journey to find his way back to the living while also
searching for his great-great-grandfather.
The
director admitted to the fact that making ‘Coco’ has been a learning process
from the start but they really hit their stride when they put together a group
of cultural consultants. It was the first time on any Pixar movie that
outsiders were allowed into the studio's creative process. And getting the
feedback of outsiders didn't stop there. These meetings with the consultants
and Latino community didn't lead to any major changes to the story, Unkrich
said, however they were responsible for many small tweaks that increased the
movie's connection to Mexican culture.
"We
ended up bringing in periodically big groups of all sorts of folks from the
Latino community, from artists to writers to political figures to media
executives, because we wanted to get a lot of different perspectives,"
Unkrich said. "What we quickly learned is there is no one right way to
tell a story set in the Latino community, there are a lot of different
opinions. Part of our challenge was trying to navigate all those different
opinions to figure out our path forward."
One
example is a change in how the character of Miguel's grandmother, Abuelita,
disciplines people."In her earlier conception we gave her a wooden spoon
that was tucked into her apron string and she would whip that out and kind of
hit you to express displeasure," Unkrich said. "It was at one of our
earlier screenings that a couple of our cultural consultants said, 'A spoon has
nothing to do with Latino culture, she should really pull off her chancla, her
slipper, and hit them with it.' And that was the first time we learned about la
chancla, and we embraced the idea fully. That one adjustment has proven to win
us a lot of points in the Latino community because it's something a lot of
people grew up fearing."
Lee
Unkrich wanted his this movie to be perfect and tried to leave no stone
unturned while researching and making changes in the script according to the
changes that were suggested.
Disney-Pixar's
Coco, directed by Lee Unkrich and co-directed by Adrian Molina, stars Anthony
Gonzalez, Gael García Bernal and Benjamin Bratt in a story about a boy who,
inspired by his idol, the late, great musician Ernesto de la Cruz, sets off on
an adventure of music and mystery, resulting in the most unusual family
reunion.
‘Coco’
opens in theaters on Nov. 24, 2017.
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