Parents don't want their children to lose that purity and innocence of childhood. We want to bottle that and hold onto that, but it's impossible.
Pete DocterAnd as I was sort of doodling, I was thinking, surprise and fear - probably fairly similar so let's just lose surprise. And that left us with five.
Pete DocterEvery time you recall a memory, you're basically making another copy of it and at that same point it is susceptible to new changes and adaptations. So, you know, if you remember from when you were, you know, in second grade and there was Christmas and you got a present from your grandfather and your mom was wearing a red dress, that may or may not all have happened.
Pete DocterIf you were feeling sad right now and you recall a sad - or, a very happy memory from the past, it will be tinged with more sadness based on your current feeling. So we felt like that was actually on solid scientific ground .
Pete DocterDr. Paul Ekman, who worked in San Francisco - still does - which is where Pixar Animation Studios is, he had early in his career identified six. That felt like a nice, manageable number of guys to design and write for. It was anger, fear, sadness, disgust, joy and surprise.
Pete DocterThe way real memories work, from what we understand, is really complex. And it's an interconnection of different things and redundancy in the brain. So the idea of a memory existing as a little snow globe - the way we represent it in the film - is actually not scientifically accurate at all.
Pete Docter