Inside Out (2015 film)

Inside Out
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Pete Docter
Screenplay by	Pete Docter Meg LeFauve Josh Cooley
Story by	Pete Docter Ronnie del Carmen
Produced by	Jonas Rivera
Starring	Amy Poehler Phyllis Smith Bill Hader Lewis Black Mindy Kaling
Edited by	Kevin Nolting
Music by	Michael Giacchino
Production companies	Walt Disney Pictures Pixar Animation Studios
Distributed by	Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures
Release dates	May 18, 2015 (2015-05-18) (Cannes) June 19, 2015 (2015-06-19) (United States)
Running time	94 minutes
Land	Vereinigte Staaten
Sprache	Englisch
Budget	$175 million
Box office	$132.1 million

Inside Out is a 2015 American 3D computer-animated fantasy comedy-drama film produced by Pixar Animation Studios and released by Walt Disney Pictures. Directed by Pete Docter, the film is set in the mind of a young girl, Riley Anderson, where five personified emotions—Joy, Anger, Disgust, Fear, and Sadness—try to lead her through life as she moves with her family to a new city. The aforementioned emotions form the film's voice cast: Amy Poehler, Lewis Black, Mindy Kaling, Bill Hader, and Phyllis Smith. The film was co-directed by Ronnie del Carmen and produced by Jonas Rivera, with music composed by Michael Giacchino.

Docter first began developing Inside Out in 2009 after noticing changes in his daughter's personality as she grew older. The film's producers consulted numerous psychologists and researched the mind in preparation for building its story. Initial drafts were unsatisfactory, and the production was revised significantly with the realization that interpersonal relationships guide human emotions.

After premiering at the 68th Cannes Film Festival in May, Inside Out was released on June 19, 2015. It received near-universal critical acclaim, with many film critics praising its unique concept and poignant subject matter. The film grossed $91 million in its first weekend—the best opening for an original Pixar title.

Plot

The movie starts when Riley is born and the first important emotion, Joy takes control of her happiness; the other emotions—Anger, Fear, Sadness and Disgust—soon follow to help Riley through her life. They live at "Headquarters", which is Riley's conscious mind. The emotions are responsible for reacting to Riley's circumstances and forming her memories, which are housed in spheres that produce a certain color depending on the emotion of the memory. At the end of every waking period, the emotions send the memories to long-term storage. The most important memories, which are known as "core memories," power five "islands" that each reflect a different aspect of Riley's personality: Family Island, Friendship Island, Hockey Island, Honesty Island, and Goofball Island.

Each emotion also has a defined purpose in Riley's life: Joy makes sure she is happy, Fear keeps her safe, Anger keeps her life fair, and Disgust prevents her from being poisoned, both physically and socially. Sadness, however, doesn't believe she has a purpose in her mind, or that of the other emotions, and is constantly ignored as a result.

When Riley turns eleven, her family relocates from Minnesota to San Francisco after her father gets a new job. They move into an empty and messy apartment where Anger, Fear, and Disgust believe that her life will change for the worse. Although Joy tries to make the move a pleasant experience, Sadness accidentally turns a happy memory into a sad one and causes a core memory to fall out of the container in which it is housed. Aware that memories can't be changed back once turned sad, Joy keeps Sadness occupied by having her read "mind manuals" all through the day and into the night.

On Riley's first day at her new school, Joy attempts to keep Sadness from touching anything by having her stand inside a circle of chalk. But Sadness, who wants to know what it feels like to hold one of the memories, ventures outside the circle and creates a new core memory after making Riley cry in front of the class. Joy attempts to dispose of the new memory, but her struggle with Sadness leads to all the core memories being knocked out from their container. Before Joy can put them back, both she and Sadness get sucked up a memory tube along with the core memories and into the far reaches of Riley's mind.

As Joy and Sadness make their way through "Long-Term Memory," a labyrinth-like place where all of Riley's past memories are stored, they run into Riley's former imaginary friend Bing-Bong, a pink, elephantine creature, who is desperate to reconnect with Riley via a memory of his song-powered imaginary rocket. After Joy explains why they're there, he explains that they can go back to Headquarters by using the Train of Thought. They miss the train because they go through a mysterious room that Bing-Bong said was a shortcut. Their next attempt involves passing through "Imagination Land", where Riley's fantasies are created. However, while there, Bing-Bong's rocket is taken away by the workers of Riley's mind and thrown into "The Abyss," a pit where obsolete memories are erased (aka "The Memory Dump"). He breaks down in tears and is comforted by Sadness as Joy watches on in confusion. Meanwhile, back at Headquarters, Anger, Disgust, and Fear attempt to take charge in the wake of Joy's absence. But Disgust accidentally instigates a confrontation with Riley's parents and causes Goofball Island to fall into the Abyss. The three soon realize that tampering with Riley's personality will cause it to slowly destroy itself with potentially disastrous results.

Joy, Sadness and Bing-Bong hatch a plan to ride the "Train of Thought" back to Headquarters and trek through the various parts of Riley's mind, unaware that Riley's life is slowly starting to crumble. She alienates both her parents and her Minnesota friends, struggles in her new surroundings and quits hockey after failing to do well in the first tryout which causes Hockey Island to disintegrate. Anger, Disgust, and Fear reason that the only way to restore Riley's personality and keep the remaining islands from falling into the Abyss is to persuade her to run away.

Later that night, as Riley sleeps, Joy, Sadness, and Bing-Bong arrive at the loading dock for the Train only to realize it will not arrive until morning. In an attempt to jumpstart the Train, the three infiltrate "Dream Productions," where Riley's dreams and nightmares are created. They then try to wake Riley up by scaring her (Fear can see because he has dream duties). However, Bing-Bong is captured and taken to the Subconscious, which keeps Riley's darkest secrets, including her biggest fears. Joy and Sadness help Bing-Bong escape and lure a memory of a monstrous clown to go to Dream Productions, which wakes Riley up and starts the Train. As Joy, Sadness, and Bing-Bong board the Train and make their way towards Headquarters, Anger enacts a "backup plan" by persuading Riley to steal her mother's credit card, which causes Honesty Island to crumble. With the Train destroyed by the debris, Joy, Sadness and Bing-Bong take refuge on Family Island, only for it to collapse when Riley boards a waiting bus to Minnesota. They then see a memory teleporter to Headquarters, but when Sadness is about to go with Joy, she sees that the Core Memories become blue. Joy leaves Sadness and Bing-Bong, but the island plunges into the Abyss with Joy and Bing-Bong still on it while Sadness escapes.

When Joy and Bing-Bong go to the Abyss, she tries to escape, but Bing-Bong says it's impossible. Joy looks at Riley's forgotten memories and breaks into tears about how she can't fix Riley now. She then sifts through Riley's core memories and locates one in which Riley missed a shot in a hockey game and cost her team the win. Upon noticing that Sadness was the one who caused both her teammates and her parents to console her, she comes to the realization that Sadness is the signal to others when Riley needs help. Joy and Bing-Bong come across Bing-Bong's Rocket and attempt to start it again (it's powered by singing). They try to make it to the top, but Bing-Bong is too heavy. On their third try, Bing-Bong jumps off and the rocket flies away. Joy gets one last look back at Bing-Bong, who asks her to take over his role in Riley's life. Bing-Bong is forgotten, and Joy promises.

Joy then finds Sadness, who has come to the conclusion that Riley is better off without her, and has flown off on a cloud. Using various tools from Imagination Land, Joy launches herself towards Sadness and grabs her before flying towards Headquarters, where Anger and Disgust work together to get them inside. Everyone then looks to Joy to save the situation, but she steps back and lets Sadness take control. Riley, now in control of her emotions, gets off the bus before it leaves the station and returns home to her parents, where she breaks down in tears after admitting she misses her old life. As her parents comfort her, Joy and Sadness create a new core memory that fully restores Riley's personality. With new expanded islands, Riley adapting to her new life and Sadness finally treated as an equal by her fellow emotions, everyone works together to help lead Riley to a happy life.

During the credits, the emotions of other people in San Francisco are shown.

Cast

The film's crew, along with the English and French voice actors, attended the film's premiere at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival: Lewis Black, Phyllis Smith, Mindy Kaling, Amy Poehler, Jonas Rivera, Marilou Berry, Pete Docter, Ronnie del Carmen, Mélanie Laurent, John Lasseter, Charlotte Le Bon, Pierre Niney, and Gilles Lellouche.

• Amy Poehler as Joy
• Phyllis Smith as Sadness
• Bill Hader as Fear
• Lewis Black as Anger
• Mindy Kaling as Disgust
• Kaitlyn Dias as Riley Anderson
• Richard Kind as Bing Bong
• Diane Lane as Riley's mother
• Kyle MacLachlan as Riley's father

Additional voices include Paula Poundstone as Forgetter Paula, Bobby Moynihan as Forgetter Bobby, Paula Pell as Dream Director and Mother's Anger, and Lori Alan as Mother's Sadness. Muppet performers Frank Oz and Dave Goelz lent their voices to Subconscious Guard Dave and Subconscious Guard Frank, respectively. Red Hot Chili Peppers band member Flea voiced Mind Worker Cop Jake. Several of the film's creators also contributed their voices, including director Pete Docter as Father's Anger, writer Josh Cooley as Jangles the Clown, and co-director Ronnie del Carmen, who provided additional voices. Regular Pixar voice actor John Ratzenberger lent his voice to Fritz. Rashida Jones, one of the writers on the upcoming Toy Story 4, voiced the emotions of Cool Girl.

Production

Development

The origins of Inside Out begin with Docter's childhood. As a child, he relocated with his family to Denmark when his father moved to study the music of Carl Nielsen. While his sisters had an easy time adjusting to the new surroundings, Docter was not as lucky, feeling as though he was being judged constantly by peers. While other kids were interested in sports, Docter sat alone drawing, a hobby that eventually led him to animation. His social anxiety eventually came to a conclusion, by his high school years.

In late 2009, Docter began noticing his pre-teen daughter, Elie, exhibiting similar shyness. "She started getting more quiet and reserved, and that, frankly, triggered a lot of my own insecurities and fears," he later remarked. He began imagining what happens in the human mind when emotions set in. The idea to depict it through animation excited Docter, who felt it the ideal form to portray "strong, opinionated, caricatured personalities." He began researching information about the mind, alongside Jonas Rivera, a producer, and Ronnie Del Carmen, a secondary director. They consulted Paul Ekman, a well-known psychologist who studies emotions, and Dacher Keltner, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley. Ekman had early in his career identified six core emotions—anger, fear, sadness, disgust, joy, and surprise. Docter found surprise and fear to be too similar, which left him with five emotions to build characters around. Keltner focused on sadness being an emotion that strengthens relationships.

The smash success of Docter's 2009 film Up encouraged those at Pixar to allow Docter to create another film with a more sophisticated story. Inside Out is the first Pixar film without input from co-founder and former Apple CEO Steve Jobs, who passed away in 2011. It also lacked extensive input from John Lasseter, who was more focused on restructuring Walt Disney Animation Studios in Los Angeles at the time of its production. Executives at Disney and Pixar were positive at the proposal of making Inside Out, but acknowledged it would be difficult to market.

Story

Docter recruited a story crew to help develop the film's plot line. Although animation as an industry had been dominated by men, half of the story crew were women, in attempt to have more diverse input. The choice to focus the film on a girl came from research that claimed that females age 11 to 17 are more attuned to expressions and emotions than others. The idea to have Riley play hockey came from Del Carmen, who noted that the sport is big in Minnesota. They tried to stray away from stereotypically "girly" interests, such as the color pink or dresses. Initial ideas for the film found the main character, Riley, falling into a deep depression. Docter later scrapped these ideas, as he felt they were inappropriate.

The film was first storyboarded over a period of two to three years, all the while undergoing screenings for Pixar's "Brain Trust," a small group of creative leaders at Pixar who oversee development on all movies. After multiple screenings and suggestions from other filmmakers, the picture was put into production. It was again evaluated three months into that process. Kevin Nolting, editor of the film, estimated there were seven versions of Inside Out created before it even went into production. The story team attempted to create as much contrast with characters as possible. They found Joy the most complex character to write for, as she illustrates a broad range of "happy feelings." The earliest idea present in the final film is that Joy holds onto youth too long, setting about a "social storm" for Riley. It was not until several screenings later that they came upon the concept of moving to a new place, which created an external conflict that made the story easier to write. Initially, this crisis was to be set at a Thanksgiving Day pageant, in which Riley was hoping to be cast as its lead role, the turkey. Docter later deemed this idea too "bizarre" and it was replaced.

Docter estimated it took four years of development for the film to achieve success in marrying the architecture of Riley's mind and her personal troubles. The concept of "personality islands" helped develop the film's emotional stakes, as they directly affect events inside her mind and in her life. In one draft, the characters fell into "Idea Fields," where they would "cultivate new ideas," much like a farmer would cultivate crop. The character of Bing Bong—a discarded old imaginary friend—came about in one draft of the film as part of a refugee camp inside Riley's mind. It was difficult to achieve the correct tone for the film; for example, viewers could not be distracted by Joy's nature or feel negative about the mess she helps steer Riley into. Rivera credited the casting of Amy Poehler, in addition to the idea of moving, with helping the film find the right tone.

An early version of the film focused on Joy and Fear getting lost together, as it seemed to be the most humorous choice. By July 2012, the project was set for an evaluation screening with other Pixar filmmakers. Docter gradually began to feel that the story was not working, which led to fears that he may be fired. He took a long walk at his home one Sunday, in which he began to consider himself a failure, his previous successes "flukes," and a general sense that he should resign from the film. While pondering what he would miss about Pixar, he concluded that he would miss his coworkers and friends most of all. He soon reached a breakthrough: that emotions are meant to connect people together, and that relationships are the most important things in life. He decided to replace Fear with Sadness, which he felt is crucial to renewal. He met with Rivera and Del Carmen that night to explain his change of plans, and to his surprise, they reacted positively to it. At the screening, he informed his superiors that new plans for the film were in order. Although a "scary moment," the film remained in production.

Screenwriter Michael Arndt worked for a year on the film's script, calling it "both a brilliantly creative idea but also incredibly challenging," but left the project in early 2011, adding that "knowing the Pixar process, there may not be a single word [I wrote] that remains in the final script! They’ve had writers work on it since then."

Casting

The film's voice cast of emotions, Amy Poehler, Lewis Black, Mindy Kaling, Bill Hader and Phyllis Smith, were first announced in August 2013. With the release of the film's trailer in December 2014, it was revealed that Diane Lane and Kyle MacLachlan were cast in the film as Riley's parents.

Bill Hader was cast to voice Fear, a role that he felt he "weaseled" his way into by being a "huge fan" of Pixar's filmography. Hader toured the studio over a week, and also "helped out" in the story room. He was invited to play Fear by the end of his stay there, but was also asked to contact fellow Saturday Night Live (SNL) veteran Amy Poehler, which the team viewed as perfect for the character of Joy. "They said: ‘Would you mind calling Amy? We don’t want to call her and have her think we’re some weirdo,'" he recalled. He phoned Poehler and explained the story to her, noting that her role would be the driving force in the film. While showing production artwork to Kaling, she broke down in tears, explaining that she found it wonderful the studio is tackling concepts of growing up and sadness.

Smith was chosen by Rivera while he was watching Bad Teacher and saw her in a lunch scene. He called Docter and said "I think we found our Sadness." As the movie contains several veterans of SNL, the film's team spent a week at that program for research on a live television sequence.

Animation

The film's art design is intended to reflect 1950s Broadway musicals. Docter imagined that with emotions for characters, they could "push the level of caricature both in the design and in the style of movement to degrees [they'd] never done before." To this end, they emulated animators Tex Avery and Chuck Jones. Docter informed supervising animators Shawn Krause and Victor Navone to push the graphic caricature of each character rather than sticking to the rigid behavior of each RenderMan model. This required an artist to draw over characters in the film during dailies using a Wacom Cintiq. One of the first scenes the team worked on was the dinnertime scene, in which viewers rapidly switch between the real world and Headquarters inside the family's minds.

Each emotion has a glowing, "effervescent quality" to them (particularly Joy), which was difficult to animate as it could be viewed as distracting. "The characters are created with this energy because we are trying to represent what emotions would look like. They are made up of particles that actually move. Instead of being skin and solid, it is a massive collection of energy," Docter remarked. The team worked for eight months on Joy's "sparkly" aura, but was prepared to delete it, as it would affect the movie's budget. However, Lasseter requested that it be applied for each emotion. "You could hear the core technical staff just hitting the ground, the budget falling through the roof," recalled Ralph Eggleston, the film's production designer.

Music

Michael Giacchino composed the film's score; this was his second collaboration with Docter after Up. The producers first met with Giacchino to explain the film's concept and screen it for him. In response, he composed an eight-minute suite of music, unconnected to the film, based on his emotions viewing it. Rivera found it interesting that while both Giacchino and Docter were musicians, they discussed the film in terms of story and character.

Soundtrack

Untitled

The music for the film is Michael Giacchino's fifth collaboration with Pixar as a composer. Walt Disney Records released the soundtrack on June 16, 2015.

Track listing

All music is composed by Michael Giacchino

No.	Titel	Length
1.	"Bundle of Joy"	2:48
2.	"Team Building"	2:18
3.	"Nomanisone Island/National Movers"	4:20
4.	"Overcoming Sadness"	0:51
5.	"Free Skating"	0:59
6.	"First Day of School"	2:02
7.	"Riled Up"	1:02
8.	"Goofball No Longer"	1:11
9.	"Memory Lanes"	1:22
10.	"The Forgetters"	0:50
11.	"Chasing the Pink Elephant"	1:55
12.	"Abstract Thought"	1:47
13.	"Imagination Land"	1:25
14.	"Down in the Dumps"	1:47
15.	"Dream Productions"	1:43
16.	"Dream a Little Nightmare"	1:50
17.	"The Subconscious Basement"	2:01
18.	"Escaping the Subconscious"	2:09
19.	"We Can Still Stop Her"	2:54
20.	"Tears of Joy"	2:39
21.	"Rainbow Flyer"	2:58
22.	"Chasing Down Sadness"	1:45
23.	"Joy Turns to Sadness/A Growing Personality"	7:49
24.	"The Joy of Credits"	8:18
Total length:		58:43

Release

Inside Out was first announced in August 2011 at the D23 Expo. In December 2012, Bleeding Cool reported the title of the film would be The Inside Out, while ComingSoon.net reported it would be Inside Out the following February. In April 2013, Disney/Pixar officially announced the title on Twitter as Inside Out, during CinemaCon.

Prior to its release, the film underwent a test screening for children, due to concerns from executives that it would be too complex for younger audiences—a fear quelled when the audience reacted positively to the picture. The film premiered on May 18, 2015, at the 68th Cannes Film Festival, in an out-of-competition screening. In the United States, it premiered on June 8, 2015, at the El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood, and received a wide theatrical release starting on June 19, 2015, in 2D, 3D, and select IMAX 3D theatres.

A short animated film, titled Lava, accompanies Inside Out in its theatrical release. The musical love story was directed by James Ford Murphy and produced by Andrea Warren. The story was inspired by the isolated beauty of tropical islands and the explosive allure of ocean volcanoes, and takes place over millions of years.

A short film set in the world of Inside Out, and directed by Josh Cooley, the head of story on the film, will be released on the film's Blu-ray Disc.

Reception

Box office

Inside Out opened across 3,946 theaters in the United States and Canada, of which 3,100 showed the film in 3D. Predictions for the opening weekend in North America are being continously revised upwards, starting from $60 million to as high as $90 million. It grossed $3.7 million from its early Thursday-night showings, a record for a Pixar film, breaking the record previously held by Monsters University ($2.6 million) in 2013, and $34.2 million on its opening day, which is the second-largest opening day for a Pixar film behind only Toy Story 3 ($41.1 million). It earned an estimated $91 million in its opening weekend finishing at second place at the box office behind the second weekend gross of Jurassic World which earned $102 million. Although it is Pixar's first film not to debut at No. 1, yet, its opening weekend gross is still the biggest for a Pixar original film (breaking Monsters University's record), the studio's second-biggest of all time (behind Toy Story 3) and the top opening for any original film, live-action or otherwise, that isn't based on sourced material, eclipsing the $77 million debut of Avatar. Reasons for the film's successful opening has been attributed to its Cannes premiere, CinemaCon press screening, its 98% Rotten Tomatoes score, good word-of-mouth, Father's Day weekend and a successful Tuesday night Fathom screening. Also, 91% of all schools were off the weekend it was released in.

Outside North America, the film earned an estimated $41 million in its opening weekend from 37 countries, which is 42% of its total international release. Mexico led the highest opening with $8.8 million, followed by Russia and the CIS ($7.7 million), France ($5.2 million), Australia ($3.6 million), Argentina ($3.3 million) and Brazil ($3.1 million).

Critical response

Inside Out received near-universal critical acclaim. The review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a rating of 98%, based on 184 reviews, with a rating average of 8.9/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Inventive, gorgeously animated, and powerfully moving, Inside Out is another outstanding addition to the Pixar library of modern animated classics." On Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating, the film has a score of 93 out of 100, based on 44 critics, indicating "universal acclaim". In CinemaScore polls, cinema audiences gave Inside Out an average score of "A" on an A+ to F scale.

Prior to its release, there was concern among the general public that Pixar films were dwindling in quality, with an over-reliance on sequels. Likewise, DreamWorks Animation was beginning to flounder in the early 2010s as several films performed poorly at the box office, leading to speculation that the "genre" of computer animation was "in a funk". Inside Out has been called a return to form by numerous film critics.

Following an advance screening at CinemaCon on April 22, 2015, the film was well received by audiences. Praise was aimed for its smart storyline, although some wondered whether the concept was too complicated for young audiences and to attract family crowds. After premiering at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival, the film attracted near-universal acclaim from film critics. Peter Debruge of Variety was effusive, calling it the studio's "greatest idea" and "a stunningly original concept that [...] promises to forever change the way people think about the way people think." The Chicago Tribune's Michael Phillips called it the studio's best since Up (also directed by Docter), a "consistently inventive and a heartening corrective to recent, stockholder-driven inferiorities." Todd McCarthy of The Hollywood Reporter deemed it an "audacious concept" that stands among the most "conceptually trippy films" for family audiences. "With its quite literally cerebral bent, I think Inside Out might have some trouble fully connecting with younger kids, but grown-ups are likely to shed more than a few tears," remarked Richard Lawson of Vanity Fair. The Guardian's Peter Bradshaw felt it "buoyant and sweet-natured", though slightly inferior to Pixar's best.

As the film went into wide release, it continued to attract acclaim. A. O. Scott of The New York Times deemed the film "an absolute delight", reserving particular praise for its "defense of sorrow, an argument for the necessity of melancholy dressed in the bright colors of entertainment." The Washington Post's Ann Hornaday considered it "that rare movie that transcends its role as pure entertainment to become something genuinely cathartic, even therapeutic, giving children a symbolic language with which to manage their unruliest emotions." Richard Roeper of the Chicago Sun-Times found it "bold, gorgeous, sweet, funny, [and] sometimes heartbreakingly sad," deeming it one of the best films of the year. Entertainment Weekly's Chris Nashawathy extolled it as "transcendent and touching [...] so smart and psychologically clever." Time's Mary Pols felt it a "nearly hallucinogenic, entirely beautiful" work that "defies the conventions of family movies." Christopher Orr of The Atlantic urged readers to view the picture, calling it "Pixar once again at the top of its game, telling the kind of thoughtful, moving meta-story it's hard to imagine being produced anywhere else."

See also

• Herman's Head, a 1990s television series with a similar premise.

External links

• Official website at Disney
• Official website at Pixar
• Inside Out at IMDb
• Template:Bcdb title
• Inside Out at Rotten Tomatoes
• Inside Out at Metacritic
• Inside Out at Box Office Mojo