Producer Jonas Rivera recently joined the Walt Disney Family Museum for a Happily Ever After Hours conversation about his 25 years of experience at Pixar Animation Studios and how big of a role Disney played in his life. His producing credits include Up, Inside Out and Toy Story 4 and he was recently promoted to Senior Vice President of Production. Here are 10 things we learned from Jonas Rivera.
1. His dream was to work for Disney Animation.
“I loved animation, I always wanted to be an animator,” Jonas Rivera shared with the audience. “I wanted to be a part of Disney somehow, but I’m a terrible artist, I’m the first to admit it, still am.” He was a big fan of Disney Animation history and was trying to find a way to get there while studying film at San Francisco State. Looking back on his career, he doesn’t regret not getting to Burbank. “I almost found a cooler version of Disney that I didn’t even know existed.” His message to aspiring filmmakers is to not get beholden to a specific goal like working for one company.
2. A friend recommended he reach out to Pixar.
“I knew about Pixar a little bit from the commercials,” Jonas recalled about his first knowledge of the Bay Area’s computer animation test lab. “I certainly didn’t know about Toy Story.” Jonas thought computer animation looked too cold and preferred hand drawn animation, so he wasn’t really looking at Pixar as a possibility.. “But then at school I saw Luxo Jr… and I fell in love with it…. I called them and asked if they had any internships and needed any help.” He remembers the woman on the other end of the call sounding a little frenzied and asking if he could come the next day. “It was one year out almost to the day of when Toy Story came out… It was this amazing place, I called it sort of a punk rock band version of how Disney must’ve been back in the day.” His glamorous start in the animation business started with sweeping floors and being a coffee runner.
3. He got to see some of the first completed animation on Toy Story.
Jonas joined Pixar in November of 1994. “They were getting ready to show the first sequence that was all the way done through the pipeline.” Jonas found himself invited into the makeshift screening room, which he said was full of used couches and recliners the animators brought in that would’ve otherwise gone to Goodwill. It was the sequence where the Green Army Men are spying on Andy opening birthday presents and try to alert Woody about Buzz Lightyear. “That’s the first thing I saw rendered and completed with temporary music and I will never forget it for as long as I live. As a lover of Disney animation, I felt like I was seeing Fantasia or something for the first time.” He related the experience to audiences seeing Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs for the first time. “I just fell in love with it.” It’s a moment that kept running through his head recently. “I thought a lot about that moment when we were making Toy Story 4, that I was an intern seeing that for the first time and now I'm getting to bring the fourth chapter to life.”
4. Disneyland helped inspire Inside Out.
“My parents took me to Disneyland when I was 4 years old and I remember it like it was yesterday,” Jonas shared about a profound moment from his childhood. “In fact, when we were making Inside Out and we were talking about core memories, what are those memories that define who you are, and one of mine would be walking into Disneyland for the first time with my parents.” One of his prized possessions is a 1959 Disneyland souvenir map that was given to him by a neighbor. “That’s in my office at work and that’s there because I always think about that experience walking into that park as a kid… and how absolutely perfect that was. I sort of look at my job like with what I do at Pixar making these movies, wouldn’t it be cool if we’re making something that somehow makes people feel that way?” Jonas has spent his career trying to chase down that feeling of walking into Disneyland for the first time. “I think DIsneyland is one of the few things in the world that is absolutely perfect.”
5. The connection between Grumpy, the Walt Disney Family Museum, and Inside Out.
The goal for the characters in Inside Out was for them to be instantly recognizable as a personality. An “I’m Grumpy” shirt at Disneyland made them look to Walt Disney’s most cantankerous dwarf as a source of inspiration and because of the Walt Disney Family Museum’s connection to the film, Pete Docter decided they should get out of Pixar for a break, borrowing a space inside what is now the Diane Disney Miller Hall at the museum. “That’s where we sat for a number of days and just hashed out Inside Out on notecards, it was born there.” In the film, Riley’s hockey rink is where the museum sits and the museum’s address is Riley’s computer username, 122Riley.
6. Riley’s name also came from the Walt Disney Family Museum.
The setting for the adventures in Inside Out is the mind of a girl who didn’t have a name when they started writing the story. “There were a number of us in there and we’re just talking about the movie and for some reason, Ronnie Del Carmen started calling the kid Riley as a placeholder… And we took a break and we went out on the stairs and we’re looking at it and I said, ‘Look at what street we're on, we’re on Riley Lane, what does that mean? Can we make a decision? Can we name her Riley?’” It was a unanimous decision.
7. It took a long time for Up to become the film we know today.
“Up was unrecognizable… it was like a fairytale in some kingdom I don’t even remember,” Jonas Rivera shared about the experience of helping Pete Docter arrive at the final film. “If you could imagine… it’s a really bizarre movie to describe to people and really was that way before anyone had seen it. I think Disney thought we were crazy… we screened it once and there were a lot of ingredients and people were dying in the beginning and dogs were talking… I remember Ronnie Del Carmen… we were frustrated and Ronnie said, almost out of frustration to Pete, ‘What is this about? What are you saying?’” Pete Docter shared his anxieties about being the center of attention or talking in front of people and sometimes feels like he wants to float away, which is what he wanted the film to convey. That helped inform the story they would tell. “Every movie at Pixar I think has one of those moments, some personal observation, and you might not even know it when you start it.”
8. He’s watched Pixar evolve over the decades.
“It’s changed so much, it’s almost unrecognizable from the days of Cars and even from before that,” Jonas shared. “It was Monsters, Inc that had the biggest change because during production on Monsters, Inc we got up and we moved from Port Richmond and Steve Jobs built the Emeryville Campus… That’s when it really felt like a different place.” The move occurred during a 4-day Thanksgiving weekend and he imagines it must be what it felt like for the Disney animators going from the Hyperion Studio to the current lot in Burbank. “The slate of directors, the producers, there’s more people now making first-time films than probably has happened from the first three films…. I feel like there are six or seven right now that are in various stages of production that people just aren’t going to believe.” He recalled being down in LA to promote Toy Story 4 and seeing a billboard for Onward. “And I thought what a perfectly named movie it is. We’re now moving on, Pete as Chief Creative Officer.” For all the change, Pixar still has all of the same ingredients he experienced on his first day. “There still is that spirit of the original days at Pixar.”
9. Pinocchio is one of his favorite animated films.
“I think Pinocchio is the film I go back to more and more,” Jonas Rivera explained about a film he loves. “It’s just got everything. I just think about all the technology under it and yet just the pure beauty of it.” He considers it to be a benchmark in animation.
10. Soul was finished from home.
“We’re home, we’re not at Pixar,” Jonas shared about what the studio has been up to while social distancing. “We just finished Soul while working from home. People are animating and we’re doing the shot work just like this. We’re lucky because we can do so much remotely, but I really miss being in the halls and seeing all my friends there.”
Fans can see the full schedule of Walt Disney Family Museum virtual events, including the Happily Ever After Hours speaker series, at waltdisney.org/calendar.