You can see examples of what we're talking about and see a lot more of the artwork. And we have these roundtables with the story guys, so it's a real opportunity for students and kids who are aspiring filmmakers to learn about how movies are made. But there's always another part of me that just wants the movie to speak for itself. And we all like hot dogs, but do we really want to know how they're made? But in the end, we do what we do and put it all out there and hope that it's educational for people.

 BD: The movie's about change and Pixar's going through changes. What's it like?

LU: There have always been changes and it's going to be a continuing, evolving story. Change is always scary, which is what the movie's about. You often feel trepidation about the idea of any change, but, with every goodbye is a new opportunity for new experiences in life. You know, if everything remained the same, life would not be so interesting to live.

 BD: And it's painful when directors have to be replaced, which just happened [with Brenda Chapman being replaced by Mark Andrews on Brave].

 LU: Yes, and it's happened several times in our history, sometimes publicly and sometimes not, but it's always the last resort. In the end, the movies are going to outlive all of us and so we need to do whatever we can to make [them] great. Our egos can't be a part of that. We have to do what's right for the movie, and sometimes, yes, we've been in situations where we've had to make some very difficult choices, and we've all worried about it happening to ourselves. I would be lying if I didn't think there were certain times on this movie when I worried about being taken off it, so you do what you need to do.

 

BD: What are you doing next? 

LU: When I'm done with all this and get through Awards season, I'm going to start developing a new movie for Pixar and Darla [Anderson] is going to be producing again. But I'm not making any announcements about something.

 BD: What can you say about it at this point? 

 LU: I'm actually casting a really wide net and have some different ideas and I haven't locked down what it's going to be yet.

 BD: What kinds of situations or themes? 

 LU: Well, you'd love to hear and I wish I could tell you, to be honest, but, you know how it is: these movies take so long to make so we need to be sure we're choosing one that we're going to be able to be passionate about for a long time. We don't want to get half-way through production and run out of gas with something we're no longer interested in anymore. So I'm going to be working very hard to find the right thing to do next. I have a lot of different ideas and genres to work in and we'll figure that out.

Bill Desowitz is senior editor of AWN & VFXWorld.