Filed under: Animation, Fandom, Newsstand

Kudos to Cinematical reader Kashif Pasta for sending this our way. On the latest episode of the Creative Screenwriting Magazine Podcast (which I didn't know existed, but now do and will totally listen more often), Up and Monster's, Inc director Pete Docter revealed the original pitch for Monsters, Inc. -- which was very different from what eventually hit the screen, and kinda reminded me of Where the Wild Things Are in a sorta-ish way. On this blog, Kashif separated the segment of the podcast where Docter reveals the original pitch (which came at about 22 minutes in), and it went something like this:"Well, my idea was that what it was about was about a 30 year old man who is like an accountant or something, he hates his job, and one day he gets a book with some drawings in it that he did when he was a kid from his mom, and he doesn't think anything of it and he puts it on the shelf and that night, monsters show up. And nobody else can see them. He thinks he's starting to go crazy, they follow him to his job, and on his dates, and all this- and it turns out these monsters are fears that he never dealt with as a kid. And each one of them represents a different kind of fear. As he conquers those fears, the guys who he slowly becomes kind of friends with- they disappear as he conquers those fears. It's this bittersweet kinda ending where they go away, and so not much of that stayed[...]it sounds better as a pitch than it did at the time- anyway. "Sounds like a pretty cool punch-in-the-gut kinda movie to me; something with real intense emotion. I like Docter in that way. I feel he likes to create these beautiful child-like movies with some pretty intense adult emotions behind them. It's part of what makes that Pixar crew so great and unique and powerful. You can listen to the audio from the Docter podcast over here