PD: It's always fun to see films that have such a different point of view, and the stamp of the person making them. I feel that with Coraline Henry Selick is a great filmmaker and has such a strong sense of design that shows up in his films. It's always fun, and I really think that's what makes for a vibrant art form is to have that. And the differences from one filmmaker to another are a positive thing to see. I love to go to movies that I would never had made, you know, because it's really fun to see what artists will do with the same basic raw materials and how differently they approach things.

Docter was skeptical at first about Toy Story 3, but huddling with his colleagues again at the house in Inverness provided the right creative mindset to continue the story organically.

BD: Toy Story 3 is coming this summer. What's it been like revisiting that?

PD: Yeah, well, as usual, I kind of approach things with a certain amount of skepticism. I feel like the first one worked. The second one, thank goodness, we were able to get Toy Story 2 in a place that everyone was very happy with. Let's just leave it alone. Then we had this off site and came up with another idea that really felt good [Woody, Buzz and the gang are inadvertently dumped at a daycare center after Andy departs for college]. And Lee Unkrich has done such a fantastic job. One of the guys who produced Up, Jonas Rivera, saw it and felt as though this was an idea we came up with along with the other two and has just been in the vault. So it really feels of a piece. It's all the characters you've gotten to know and love from the other films plus some new ones [including Ken and Mr. Pricklepants] and it's just a lot of fun and very emotional, too.

Docter sketches with Pixar artists in South America.

PD: Yeah, I think it started on the first Toy Story where a very small number of us went to this place in Inverness up in the Bay Area and rented this house for three days and we just sat with each other and talked story the whole time. And a lot of the stuff came out of that meeting. We went back there on Toy Story 2 and then again on this one. The idea of the film was born there and it just helps to get away and shake things up. You settle into a certain kind of thinking sometimes in different places, so to go back to that same place as though our brains could click back into where we were. And I think it's really important, too, to have most of the people that were involved in the first couple involved in this one, at least tangentially, though, unfortunately Joe Ranft is no longer with us. And in Lee's case, he's heavily involved as director. But the films are always a reflection of the people that make them and so it's nice to have [that continuity].

BD: And what about your involvement?

PD: Well, I was pretty busy on Up, so, as usual, we'll have these brain trust screenings where we all get together and poke at it and offer suggestions and ideas, but it's mostly Lee and his fantastic story crew that has put it together.

BD: What are you doing next? 

PD: I'm back in development on another idea. It's really early on, so it's nothing I want to talk about yet, but back to the drawing board.

BD: An original?

PD: Yeah.