Lee Unkrich Quotes

The best way to bring people in and have them empathize with others is through storytelling.

- Lee Unkrich

When we were making 'Toy Story,' my grandmother was very ill, and she knew she was not going to make it. I went back to visit her, and there was a moment during that visit that I had to say goodbye, and I knew I'd never be seeing her again. I looked at her and knew that I was looking at her for the last time.

- Lee Unkrich

I really personalized the pressure to make a good 'Toy Story' film. It made me physically sick at the beginning. Literally, I wanted to throw up in the morning because I was just so racked with stress.

- Lee Unkrich

It wasn't the first film to show a kind of alternate vision of suburbia, but it left an indelible impression, I think, on everybody, and all films like that will forever be measured against 'Blue Velvet.'

- Lee Unkrich

For 'Toy Story 3' to be recognized by the Academy as not only one of the best animated films of the year, but also as one of the 10 best pictures of the year, is both humbling and overwhelming.

- Lee Unkrich

It's important that nobody gets mad at you for screwing up. We know screwups are an essential part of making something good.

- Lee Unkrich

It is shocking how much a day-care center is like a prison. They both have security cameras with walled exercise yards. Prisons are permanent day cares for people permanently in time-out - convicts.

- Lee Unkrich

You can be stuck for two weeks on a problem, and then you get the right couple of people in a room, and in five minutes, you get a great answer.

- Lee Unkrich

For anyone who's had a transition in their life - heading off to college, parents sending their kids off to college, people getting out of college and heading off into the workforce. Those are major transitions.

- Lee Unkrich

Live action movies are someone else's story. With animation, audiences can't think that. Their guards are down.

- Lee Unkrich

The only reason we made 'Toy Story 2' is that we happened to come up with a storyline that was really good. It wasn't driven by wanting to make a sequel.

- Lee Unkrich

People talk a lot about Pixar going off the rails. A lot of people are saying they aren't happy that we are making sequels. But for every one of those people, there is one that is happy because they fell in love with the worlds we created. We hope we've proved that a sequel can be every bit as enjoyable as the original.

- Lee Unkrich

The question I get more than any other is, 'What does it mean to direct an animated film?' And the reality is that it's not a whole lot different from what you do in live action.

- Lee Unkrich

One of the tricky things with animation is, because we spend four years on the movie and everything is done so methodically day by day by day, it can be a struggle to have the finished film feel spontaneous and loose and naturally occurring.

- Lee Unkrich

'Coco' is shaping up to be one of the most beautiful films we've made.

- Lee Unkrich

I guess it's the fear of failure and not knowing how the films are going to do that just drives us to work really hard to make them the best they can possibly be.

- Lee Unkrich

I saw a lot of movies that I probably shouldn't have seen. I saw 'Dog Day Afternoon' when I was in first grade - that kind of thing.

- Lee Unkrich

The walls between live-action and animation are becoming really porous, and it's interesting.

- Lee Unkrich

Typically in animation, the characters exist in a kind of stasis. Look at 'The Simpsons' - they never age, the baby never grows up - or 'Peanuts' - the kids never grow up, they always stay the same age.

- Lee Unkrich

It's a strange business, and unfortunately, what we do in animation is a mystery, especially the directors.

- Lee Unkrich

I looked long and hard at third films in series to see if there were any good ones that I could learn from. And there weren't any that hadn't just gone off the train tracks by their third film. Until, that is, I got to the third 'Lord of the Rings' film.

- Lee Unkrich

I grew up loving watching movies, and at a certain point, I started to become fascinated with making movies. Then I went to film school, and I got to dabble with different aspects of moviemaking, and I ended up settling heavily into editing - editing was what I was really adept at, had a passion for.

- Lee Unkrich

Going through the Chagrin Falls school system, I always thought I was going off to art school.

- Lee Unkrich

If you look at the beginning of children's entertainment in literature, the first books that were written for kids were cautionary tales. They were books that were there to teach kids about growing up and how to live life.

- Lee Unkrich

Do you ever achieve total forgiveness after screwing up?

- Lee Unkrich

People loved the first two 'Toy Story' films so much, and the last thing I wanted to do was make a disappointing third film.

- Lee Unkrich

I ended up being exposed to cinema that a lot of other kids wouldn't have been exposed to.

- Lee Unkrich

I know I'm going to send my three kids off to college someday. I know my parents will pass away someday. It's one thing to say, 'I'll be able to deal with that day when it comes,' and it's another thing to find yourself at that day, dealing with it.

- Lee Unkrich

I feel like my job as a storyteller and director is to create an experience where the audience forgets they're in a cinema and can get lost in the story. Things popping out of the screen call attention to the artifice of what you're doing, so I use 3D as more of a window into a world behind the screen.

- Lee Unkrich

Every one of us at Pixar is worried that we're going to be the one to make the dud.

- Lee Unkrich

We all, to some degree, wish we could have some element of our childhood back again while, for kids, moving on is something they're worried about. They know it's going to happen at some point.

- Lee Unkrich

We could make the most beautiful film in the world, but if it doesn't have a heart beating underneath it, then no one's going to be interested.

- Lee Unkrich

If you ask any of us which movie we were making when one of our kids was born, we'll be able to tell you instantly. It's like our family lives are permanently woven into the movies.

- Lee Unkrich

When I was around 12 or so, I saw 'The Shining.' I just remember that being a turning point for me, where I started to think about the fact that there was a hand behind the film. That it wasn't just this magical story being told - there were actual people crafting these films, and they were works of art.

- Lee Unkrich

After we finished 'Toy Story 2,' we talked about going right into making 'Toy Story 3,' because we had an idea that we thought had some promise. But there were a bunch of boring contractual problems going on between Disney and Pixar at the time that kept us from making the movie.

- Lee Unkrich

My favorite film is 'The Shining,' mostly because it was the film that inspired me to become a filmmaker myself.

- Lee Unkrich

Any of us directing at Pixar, whether it's our first time or not, feel a lot of pressure to not make a bad Pixar film.

- Lee Unkrich

I just ended up focusing on film editing as I was getting my career started. I'm very passionate about editing and will continue to edit for the rest of my career, but it's not like that was all I did and then somehow I grew into directing a movie.

- Lee Unkrich

We go to movies to be taken away to another place, to be dazzled, to dream, to hopefully be filled with wonder. The design of the world and the look of the film is all in service of trying to create that feeling of wonder in the audience.

- Lee Unkrich

I was disappointed that 'Tangled' didn't get nominated for Best Animated Film.

- Lee Unkrich

I did direct quite a bit when I was in school, and I directed some television afterwards.

- Lee Unkrich

I'm lucky to be surrounded by incredibly talented people at Pixar, of course, and I learn a lot from them each and every day.

- Lee Unkrich

Finding a good kid actor is like finding a needle in a massive haystack.

- Lee Unkrich

I love that people are still obsessively trying to understand and decode 'The Shining.' People want to find meaning in things that seemingly don't have meaning on the surface.

- Lee Unkrich

When you think about it, the most important thing to a toy is to be played with by a child, and anything that keeps them from being played with gives them stress - things like getting lost, getting broken.

- Lee Unkrich

I had worked for a lot of directors whose work I didn't respect, and as I was editing material, I was thinking about how I would have shot the scenes and what I would have done to make the scenes better. After several years of that, I got to the point that I was pretty confident I could sit in the director's chair.

- Lee Unkrich

Everyone looks at our films and thinks that we are somehow able to make movie after movie that does well and is entertaining, but there's an enormous amount of work that goes on under the hood and an enormous number of mistakes that are made along the way.

- Lee Unkrich

I love Giuseppe Tornatore, the guy that did 'Cinema Paradiso.'

- Lee Unkrich

If I went back to live-action, I'd have to do it the Pixar way. If I didn't, I'd feel like I was walking a tightrope without a net.

- Lee Unkrich

We know that families and kids are going to be an important part of our audience, so we've always made sure that we've picked subject matter that was appropriate for kids. But I think if you try to target a movie to kids, you're going to fail.

- Lee Unkrich

How about a good comedy? 'Raising Arizona.' Remains the funniest movie I've ever seen in my life.

- Lee Unkrich

When we made 'Toy Story,' journalists were more interested in talking about the technique because it was so new and unknown, and we just wanted to talk about the story.

- Lee Unkrich

In the earliest days of Pixar, when we were making 'Toy Story' and 'A Bug's Life,' we all came together as a group.

- Lee Unkrich

Initially, when people asked us when 'Toy Story 2' was going to come out, we'd say, 'We have no interest in sequels. We just want to do original stories.'

- Lee Unkrich

I'd really love to watch David Lynch work, to be a fly on the wall.

- Lee Unkrich

It's an incredible honor to be nominated by the Academy.

- Lee Unkrich

We try our best every time to make engaging films that we're interested in, and we just hope the rest of the world likes them.

- Lee Unkrich

I didn't want to be the guy who screwed up 'Toy Story.'

- Lee Unkrich

I never wanted 'Toy Story 3' to feel like another sequel just grafted on. We all know that if you put 3 after your title, it typically means garbage, and we knew that going in.

- Lee Unkrich

With the first 'Toy Story,' we didn't know what the hell we were doing. We'd never made a movie before, so we went down a lot of blind alleys along the way. We went through seven different writers before we finally settled into our groove.

- Lee Unkrich

When we made 'Toy Story,' we knew, even back then, that this was going to be the ugliest film we would ever produce.

- Lee Unkrich

We hope 'Toy Story 3' looks amazing but still retains the character design of the first film. I like to think it looks like 'Toy Story' would have looked back then had we had the skills and the technology.

- Lee Unkrich

We got together as a group to come up with the idea for 'Toy Story 3' in the same cabin where we dreamed up 'Toy Story.'

- Lee Unkrich

I don't like 3D movies that have things popping out of the screen. Firstly, I find it straining on my eyes, and more importantly, it distracts me from the movie.

- Lee Unkrich

If we can tell a good story with characters audiences can care about, I'd like to think that prejudices can fall aside and people can just experience the story and these characters for the human beings that they are.

- Lee Unkrich

Pixar is filled with people who don't get rid of their toys.

- Lee Unkrich

The world does not want to see a Pixar film that's not great.

- Lee Unkrich

I love movies that are funny and scary and truly emotional all in one film, and I don't feel like I see movies like that a lot.

- Lee Unkrich

When people think of Mexican music, they most often think of mariachi, and that, of course, is one part.

- Lee Unkrich