I attended a press event for Disney. All expenses paid, however all statements are my own.
Every Disney Pixar film has a great short that is shown prior to the full length feature film, The Good Dinosaur was no different. This short was different though; it’s the first Pixar short based on a true story and the first short directed by a person of Indian heritage. We had the opportunity to ask Director Sanjay Patel and Producer Nicole Grindle questions about Sanjay’s Super Team. It was so wonderful to meet them both and hear in person the story behind Sanjay’s Super Team.
Photo Credit: MomStart.com
Sanjay’s Super Team
How was the name of the short decided on we all wondered. Nicole started the answer, “No it always had to be Sanjay and he didn’t like that at first, but you know we encouraged that with the character. It was little Sanjay was always the character and then when we were looking for titles for the film we were trying all kinds of stuff. We did try the, the name Dia to represent the candle ‘cause he wanted it all to be light. We considered calling it enlightenment and her like, “Oh come on. Like you can’t call a Pixar short Enlightenment.” [LAUGHS] And finally it was John Lasseter (Chief Creative Officer of Pixar, Walt Disney Animation Studios, and DisneyToon Studios) who said, “It has to have your name on it.” And he said, “I don’t know Sanjay’s Super Heroes or something.” And because already we had the little action figure saying, “Super team.” We were like, “Yeah Sanjay’s Super Team.” And he wanted the super team to also represent him and his father. Yes, not super heroes, it’s our team. It’s about bringing people together, the super team. So that’s how it ended up that way. And he was like, “Oh I can’t believe my name’s gonna’ be on it.” Yeah now we have a little stuffy. We have a little Sanjay plush that you can get.
Sanjay tells us of the impact John Lasseter had on the short, “So much of that credit goes to John seriously.” Nicole then adds “Well and he’d been doing the work in the book. So it was matter of just saying you’ve been doing this kind of work in the books, bring this to a platform where a lot more people are gonna’ see it and appreciate it. And I think that’s what he embraced from a, generous point of view you realized that you were giving this to people from your culture and from other cultures who’ve had a similar experience. So that’s what got him out there.”
Sanjay was hesitant yet excited to share his culture for the short. “I think the books were kind of reaching a audience that maybe was more in my community and I knew that once I took the material from the book if I collaborate with Pixar– like if I was gonna’ do my book on my own terms it would be like it would just be too–Like it would fly over the heads of most of my American friends. But I knew if I could just like collaborate with Pixar we’d figure out a way to communicate to everybody and that was super important to me.”
And now how many people on Thanksgiving weekend will get to see your story?- Nicole Grindle. The look on Sanjay Patel’s face was humbled and proud.
Pixar Traditions
Nicole starts the the interview by explaining the Pixar traditions in regards to limited speaking roles during Sanjay’s Super Team.
“That is part of the tradition of the Pixar stories. We try as much as possible not to have a lot of dialogue because it is a tribute to the pure art of animation and you know visual story telling. So that is part of the tradition. There is you know– there’s some dialogue with the TV and then his father does speak at the very end. I don’t know if everybody knows that he’s actually speaking.“
Sanjay adds a personal anecdote, “Yeah there’s a small little bit of Hindu that he says during the movie at the end. Even though my dad speaks Drafy, but there wasn’t much dialogue growing up at home. As a kid just look you your parents eyes and you know exactly what the mean. Yeah okay I know my dad’s eyes.“
Photo Credit: Disney Pixar
Opening the Door to The Super Team
What is it about the three entities in the story. Who is the Super Team?
Sanjay explains, “My hope is that we open the door. We have 6 minutes to just introduce these concepts, these these cultural sort of figures and without language it’s so hard to like really capture the depth and the complexity of these figures. Vishnu stands for preservation and balance. That’s a very simple 2 minute, not even 2 minute, 2 second sort of explanation. There is much more that can be said and written about that, that philosophy and that character. Ultimately I don’t think it really matters because my job was just to open the door.” He further expands on the characters. “Durga was exciting because in the Hindu philosophy masculine and feminine energy is so important and I always knew I wanted to use Vishnu because he stands for preservation in the trinity so Shiva the force of destruction problem is that force of creation, which we didn’t definitely need in this story. We needed the force of preservation because my father was trying to preserve his culture. We felt like that would be a good mirror. Once we decided it was gonna’ be kind of a super hero team um, again, the masculine-feminine energy’s so important uh for my parents goddess worship is all the rage. They really don’t care that much about Vishnu. Durga and the mother goddesses are much more popular. The mother goddess and the aspect of the warrior goddess Durga was aspect that seemed appropriate. So we have Vishnu and we have the force of protection and power, Durga. And then we have the demi god, which was Hanuman who is part monkey and part god. He’s part of– he’s the son of the wind god. There’s so much mythology about him. All 3 deities. Mountains and mountains of information out there. The hard part is to get people interested. Other than professors you know.“
Photo Credit: Disney Pixar
Enlightenment
Nicole explains the mysticism they wanted portrayed on the screen, “We were going for something that was epic and supposed to represent enlightenment and you know what’s hard is most of the films that Pixar makes are in somehow part of the real world. We do mounds and mounds of the research about the environment that we’re in, but how do you represent enlightenment? So in a way we were cut loose to do something that was really different and we had our crew just push the limits of, of the tools that we already have. The camera work allowed us to try these really epic angles and these super wide lenses. And then with lighting we could blow things out. We did this crazy stuff with our set where we at the moment you know you’ll remember you know when he lights the candle and he’s blown back, our set just stretched out. We never do that. It was super fun to do that and then have the walls kind of dissolve.“
Sanjay also adds, “I mean you guys unplugged a really important moment right there because this is the time where we go from– so if you remember the movie starts out in a box. I grew up in an immigrant box. In an immigrant boxes you need all the riches of your culture be it of Africa, Korea all behind in the old country and you come as an immigrant into a rented apartment or whatever, whatever place you land. There’s no detail. It’s kinda’ like this room. It’s just a soulless kind of box. When the boy finally lights that lamp of knowledge enlightenment you know the thing I kept talking about was I wanted what was finite to become infinite. I wanted what was material to become immaterial, what was um essentially you know you want to sort of take the boy into this inner world and it’s so hard to sort of find reference photos for that.The temple carvings all the sort of all the spiritual art and artisans have worked to the edge of their technology to create this experience. We had our whole new sort of tool pit at Pixar to explore that. These are the sort of adjectives that I would drop at people and then as Artists we all just try to tackle it from our different sort of discipline. We also threw in some 2001 and some Captain EO, we threw in lots and lots of different influences.”
Photo Credit: MomStart.com
This short will forever be one of my favorites. There is Oscar buzz surrounding the short film already and I am so excited! Each year I watch the Academy Awards and this next year will be no different, but I’ll be cheering for Sanjay’s Super Team! The intimate story Sanjay shares with us while fantastical it’s also the same story of many first generation immigrant children and I know it will resonate with many as it did with me. You all know that I am an emotional person, during this interview the candor in Sanjay’s words as he explained the relationship between him and his father truly brought me to tears. I always love asking questions but this interview I could not. I actually cried during the short the first time we saw it. I have always been a fan of the mystics of different religions and I learned a lot about Hindu a few years back. It was wonderful to see the deities on the screen and I truly believe it will open the doors for conversation and research by all ages.
