Brave finally opens this week! I have been counting down the days since I saw a 30 minute sneak peek in San Fran last month! To round out the great interviews that I did while I was there here is a one on one with Mark Andrews, director of Brave.

Mark Andrews has been involved in several hit films including John Carter, Ratatouille, Cars, The Iron Giant and Spider-Man.

Here is a part of the interview that we did with him last month. He was witty, engaging and very passionate about his work.

MK: What made you get into animation?

Mark Andrews: “I kind of fell into animation.  I’ve been driving all my life just because I like drawing.  Self taught.  I didn’t have my first actual art lesson until I was out high school and I went into city college and I took perspective in drawing and life drawing and all that stuff”…. .  “we didn’t have computers back then to know the internet, to know everything that’s out there, to talk to anybody else.  So, through a class in city college I found at about Cal Arts down in Los Angeles which was a school started by Walt Disney.  And I said, I can actually have a career where I’m just drawing all the time?  Done. Check and that’s about as far as my inhibition went.  Everything else, doors just opened for me and I just jumped through.” 

 

 

Mark Andrews: “I never gave it a thought. I was black listed at Disney.  They wouldn’t hire me after the intern.  I went to the Disney internship after Cal Arts, after four years of Cal Arts. I got my BFA.  I was one of five who got the Disney internship.  After that, three months of the internship they would never hire me again.  Just being myself, being a rebel and now I’ve shown them.  Now, I’ve shown them. that’s right.

 

 

John Lasseter has the same story.  He got fired from Disney.  Brad Bird has the same story. You know, it’s, expectations. You know, it’s hard to swallow. You know, we call, you know, Brad has a term for it.  He says, strong coffee and a lot of people don’t like strong coffee, but, sometimes strong coffee’s exactly what you need to wake up in the morning and get going”

 

 

 

 

Mark Andrews: “It wasn’t simultaneous. [OVERLAP] Because live action is so much faster and Brave started a year before we even started to work on John Carter. It just kind of landed that way.  they moved up John Carter’s schedule.  it was supposed to come out summer of 2012 and John Carter in competition with our own movie, Brave.  So, and also the summer was crowded so they moved it into the, into the spring slot.”

 

 

Mark Andrews: “I go in full throttle. I’m not timid.  So, so I mean I’ve been, you know, being a director here at Pixar and sitting in at the branch after we see the reels each time that the movie is done here, for every movie, I mean there is a, there is a, you know, what’s wrong with it?

 

But every project gets bogged down with story, every single one.  Andrews’s Stanton was up against the line in, in Wall E. You know, Pete Doctor takes his time developing films. He’s like six to seven years after film. He, he never mix, you know.  The fastest film we ever had was Brad Bird, from start to finish was Incredibles.  Ratatouille also took forever and it got bogged down with storyboard and it just got stuck and even the Brave.

 

We can move it.  You know, something has to happen or change and we’ve had director changes here at Pixar before and this is just, you know, the thing that needed to happen to free it up to break it. So I come in.  They asked me to take over. I come in, I look at it. It’s a great story. These great characters. This character theme. This parent, child story, right?  Set in Scotland that I love.  It’s medieval that I love, right?  I’m all okay, what, how do we fix this?  So kind of coming in and being an objective eye.”

 

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Brave opens nationwide on June 22. Brave is the story of strong willed Merida and her quest to change her fate.