Andrew Stanton on ‘In the Blink of an Eye,’ ‘Toy Story 5’ and Why His Future Is in Live-Action

“In the Blink of an Eye,” now on Hulu, encompasses three separate storylines spread across the totality of human history – one thread follows a prehistoric family of cavemen attempting to survive a wild early Earth; another focuses on a pair of scientists (Daveed Diggs and Rashida Jones) as they fall in love; and a third charts an astronaut (Kate McKinnon) on a lonely quest to repopulate our species on a far-flung planet. It feels, at times, like multiple movies crammed into one compact, 94-minute package, the work of a filmmaker so happy to make a new film that he’s decided to make a few all at once.

The filmmaker in question is Andrew Stanton, the legendary Pixar vet behind “WALL•E” and “Finding Nemo,” both of which won the Best Animated Feature Oscar, who is making his return to the live-action space for the first time in more than a decade.

“It’s just like the movie – life’s what happens while you’re busy making other plans,” said Stanton about his absence. He said that he was constantly working on television series, directing episodes of “Stranger Things,” “Better Call Saul,” “For All Mankind” and “3 Body Problem” “to keep my sea legs and be able to keep on set.”

“I loved working more than not working in live-action. And I had this rough rule that I would work on a TV job and then I would spend the next couple of months trying to get a live-action feature made of something I liked. And then if nothing happened or nothing moved forward enough, I would go take another TV job,” Stanton explained.

This went on, he said, for seven or eight years. He was attached to various movies – “Revolver,” a comedy starring Maya and Ethan Hawke about a young girl in 1966 who wants to lose her virginity to George Harrison, which Stanton said he was “very serious about for many years.” “After five solid years of pushing that, I had to cry uncle and start reading other scripts,” Stanton said.

Stanton was also attached to “Chairman Spaceman” for Searchlight, based on a 2017 New Yorker story by Thomas Pierce, about a billionaire who abandons his earthly trappings to colonize the solar system. And then he read Colby Day’s “In the Blink of an Eye” script, which his agent had given to him and had featured on the 2016 edition of The Black List, where it landed in the top 10.

“They were neck-and-neck for a while. And then suddenly everything started happening right for ‘In the Blink of an Eye’ and ‘Chairman Spaceman’ flatlined, so I had to pick a lane. It’s just one of those things where you can only control so much,” Stanton said. “All you could do is have pots on the stove and see which one comes to a boil before the other one.”

Stanton has recently said that his goal is to make four things a year instead of one thing every four years. “That’s been my motto for the last decade. And I’m sticking to it,” Stanton said. “Life is getting too short with each passing year. I just want to work. I enjoy working.”

And he is working this year. In addition to “In the Blink of an Eye,” which had its grand premiere at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year, he also wrote and directed “Toy Story 5,” which is opening in June. (The just-released trailer has already amassed 12 million views on YouTube on the official Pixar channel.)

“I never planned that ‘Toy Story 5’ and ‘…Blink’ would line up so much tightly. It’s been a very busy two years. I’m happy that it’s a wonderful present to have two movies in one year. It’ll never happen again in my life,” Stanton said. “I probably need a break. This will be the year where I rest and I read, and then I’ll probably get busy very fast in 2027.”

As for what drew him to “In the Blink of an Eye,” Stanton said, “It’s exactly the kind of film I would love to go see. I’d be first in line to see it.” He said that people associate him with Pixar, “like all I do is watch animated, G-rated movies and that’s the last thing I do.” He said that he’s been going to art house cinemas since he was 12 and that ever since he’s “been on a steady diet of all types of movies.”

Stanton said that he studies every genre except for animated movies. “It’s what keeps me sane. I’m a film lover, not an animation lover. Sure, I’ve always been trying to get more depth, more complexity, more arthouse in any of the Pixar things I do. But it’s limited how far you can go before it becomes not the thing you’re promising to somebody else,” Stanton said. “WALL•E” he said, is the farthest he ever pushed it.

When it came to “In the Blink of an Eye,” Stanton said, “The minute I finished that script, I was jealous of whoever got to make it and I was impatient to see it. I’m always fighting so hard on everything else I’ve ever worked on, to feel that way about something that just dumped on my lap that way was a really good sign that like it’d be worth the trials and tribulations of trying to fight to see if this could get made”

He said that he loved how different it was and that he loved the feeling it gave him. “I loved that it wasn’t traditional three-act structure that’s a lot more complex and subtle than that,” Stanton said.

Instead of treating it like a regular movie, he looked at “In the Blink of an Eye” like an aria – “this interweaving harmony that hits to this grace note.” He was up to the challenge. Every movie that he’s made with Pixar, beginning with the very first “Toy Story” in 1995, was an uphill struggle. “The element of challenge was a huge ingredient in everything we did and after a while, about 15 or 20, years, that stopped being the case, and I just missed a challenge,” Stanton said. “I just loved the challenge of making this.”

In an effort to braid together the different pieces of the movie, Stanton found ingenious ways to juxtapose and transition between the sections, oftentimes using sound or a visual cue that could be repeated throughout the timeframes. (You can really feel his animation background in these moments.) He said that many of these were written into the script, but that while they were in production, he looked to heighten and improve them.

“You would fall into the trap of your brain, because it’s so trained for structure, and it’s so trained for predetermined patterns, I knew that there was going to be things that we would discover that would make you stay focused and stay interested, that we wouldn’t know what to capitalize on, until we were cast, until we were looking at the sets, until we were shooting, until we were in post, until we had music like all these things contributed to having us making us smarter on how to juxtapose things, how to realign things, how to edit things,” Stanton said. “And to me, it made the creative process last from the first day to the last day, rather than just at the front end and the execution, and then you have post. It kept it living through the whole thing. And for me, that was just the most satisfying experience.”

Stanton was heartened by the fact that the movie was produced and released by Searchlight, the arty imprint of 20th Century (like Pixar, part of the massive Disney umbrella). Searchlight was recently responsible for gutsy fare like Bradley Cooper’s “Is This Thing On?” and Mona Fastvold’s “The Testament of Ann Lee.”

“They have a saying that if everybody likes their movies, they get worried,” Stanton said. “Because they’re niche and what they’re really good at is finding and matching the audience to that niche. That’s music to my ears. I don’t give a crap whether or not everybody else likes them. I have the movies I like, you have the movies you like, and nobody’s going to change that. And I just want to be able to make a flavor and find the people that like that flavor and that’s it. It’s nice to not have the pressure of, I’ve got to make something that everybody likes, or it’s considered a failure.”

Searchlight, in turn, got what Stanton wanted to do and allowed him to make the movie exactly as he wanted to make it, given that he stayed on time and on budget, things that his experience on television really helped him achieve. The trade-off was that the movie would always debut on Hulu, to which Stanton admits he is “not psyched, but I am also very realistic.” He said, “I’d rather have this great idea be made and seen than not.”

And at least he got his Sundance screening, on the last year the festival was in Park City. “I was pinching myself,” Stanton said.

While you can draw parallels between “In the Blink of an Eye” and other movies (things like “The Fountain” and “Cloud Atlas” spring to mind), Stanton is careful not to divulge what he was inspired by. “I’m a little superstitious,” he said. “I worry that I’m cribbing too much if I concentrate on it. I think everybody does this,” Stanton said. He said that he was watching a trailer for “Dune” and thinking, That’s a shot from “WALL•E.”  “I take that as a compliment, if that’s even unconsciously happening,” Stanton said.

We did wonder if Stanton’s prolonged time away from a live-action feature had anything to do with the lingering response to “John Carter,” his 2013 sci-fi extravaganza that wound up being one of Disney’s costliest flops. Stanton doesn’t think so.

“That’s a long time to hold a grudge about something you could just change channels for,” Stanton said. “All I know is that it’s found its audience and that mattered. I consider it a book that has been written. It’s out there. Nobody can hide it unless it’s banned. And it’ll find its audience.”

And while the response, so far, to “In the Blink of an Eye” has been decidedly mixed, keeping with Searchlight’s philosophy, there was almost universal acclaim when that “Toy Story 5” trailer dropped, setting Stanton up for one of the biggest hits of his career. He seems cautiously optimistic about the latest entry in the franchise, which he has been with since the very beginning.

“I’m relieved. I only agreed to do it if it was something that interests me. I said, ‘Let me write it first and if we agree that you like the direction I’m going, then we’re off to the races.’ And they did. And then I found a great co-writer, co-director in Kenna Harris, who brought so many other great ingredients to it,” Stanton said. “And I’m very, very happy with it.”

After “Toy Story 5,” Stanton sees his time at Pixar as “less of a full-time job.” Not that he’ll ever totally leave. “I’ll always care and if they want my opinion about something, I’ll always be happy to help and pitch in in some way or shape or form,” Stanton said. He really enjoys being on a real set and he loves to work. “As long as that doesn’t have to be sacrificed, I’ll always be there to help,” Stanton said.

Part of Stanton’s job at Pixar is to protect up-and-coming voices at the company. We recently spoke to Daniel Chong, whose “Hoppers” is now in theaters. He said Stanton fought for the movie to stay as idiosyncratic as it is, against considerable backlash from those who worried that it was too outrageous.

“We just knew that if that was us in the first 10 years, we would have, all of us at Pixar, I’m talking from Steve Jobs down, would have fought off the barbarians at the gate to make that film the way it is. It felt like true OG Pixar to us,” said Stanton. He said that chief creative officer Pete Docter, after a “learning curve,” is in “a good groove and he’s really understanding how best to support the original ideas.”

We wondered if Stanton would ever want to run Pixar in a similar capacity.

“No, never. I’m not meant to be an executive of anything. My usefulness is creative advice and as an emergency care doctor. That’s always been my superpower – helping others save the patient,” Stanton said.

Whether that’s a caveman or a couple in modern day America or a scientist on a far-flung, futuristic mission. They’re all in good hands under Stanton’s watch.

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