Michael Regilio
speaker
2,071 appearances
9 recordings
1 series
first heard Nov 2024
last heard 12 Jul
Michael Regilio’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 3 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.
Appearances
Exactly. The guy standing in the hallway was like, we need some poor schmuck to write this thing. How about you? Yeah, like, I just got to drop off this milk. I'll be right back. Yeah, so I feel like I was really lucky to be at Pixar from Ratatouille to Toy Story 3. It was Ratatouille, WALL-E, up, and then Toy Story 3, and then I worked on Inside Out while Toy Story 3 was still being finished.
I mean, it's just a great, great experience. They really had this great... collaborative culture. I was credited with writing Toy Story 3, but it was really co-writers were Andrew Stan, Leon Critch, and John Lasseter, and then about 20 other people that were all helping to get that script to where it was. So it was probably 10 people for three years working full-time on that script.
So 10 man years of labor for a 93-minute movie.
Yeah. You call it collaborative. It sounds collaborative and loving. And it also sounds absolutely brutal and unforgiving because with that many great storytellers in the room, it sounds like everybody is putting every story element under the microscope and pushing it to the best possible version, which would explain why Pixar movies are so good.
But what is it like to be a creative in that environment? It's...
My job is that it's the greatest job in the world, except for the soul crushing anxiety that comes along with it. Because I remember I had been hired to do a Toy Story three. And after like six months, I was like, Hey, I wonder what the Rotten Tomatoes score for the first Toy Story movie is. So I go look it up. It's like a hundred percent. No pressure.
And I was like, well, I wonder what the Rotten Tomatoes. Yeah. What's Rotten Tomatoes for Toy Story two. And it was a hundred percent, you know? So it's just like, okay, you got your work cut out for you. Also leading up to that, Ratatouille, Wall-E, and Up had all been nominated for Best Screenplay, and then Up had been nominated for Best Picture.
No big deal.
Well, and if you don't freaking get an Oscar nomination for your screenplay, you're like, what a loser. The last three guys got a nomination. What's your problem? This one was in the bag, pal. How did you blow this?
The pressure. The pressure.
Yeah. How do you blow it? Listen, man, it was so much anxiety and stress for like three years. I felt like, cause it was also building on the first two movies. Like, and so I felt like I was the guy, they sent the wide receiver down to the end zone and they threw this like hail Mary. And I'm sitting there in the end zone going, please don't drop this. Please don't drop this. You know, like, right.
Oh my God. The other thing was that like, we were figuring out the story as we went along. Like, it wasn't like we had this super clear idea right from the start. I mean, we had a beginning, a middle and an end, but there were tons of adjustments that that were made along the way. It's like having a story problem that you can't solve yet.
You know, the script is not working, but you don't know how to fix it. It's like having this itch that you can't scratch. It's just, it can be really, really, really, really agonizing, but also like totally exhilarating.
Like some of the best, happiest moments of my life were in those Pixar story meetings where you have like 10 smart people in a room and like the ideas are clicking along and it just like is really, really exhilarating. I feel very, very lucky I was there when I was.
So torturous but exquisite in certain moments, it sounds like.
I'm quitting the business.
They asked me, do you want to write Toy Story 4? I was like, I feel like I just put on a blindfold and ran across a freeway and I didn't get killed. And now you're going, do you want to do it again? I was like, you know what? I didn't want to time.
No, thanks. Where's the nearest target, sir? Take me there. But look, I mean, these are some of the most beloved franchises in history, Toy Story, Star Wars. I mean, I have to imagine the pressure you described is stressing me out. I didn't even have to do it.
But also you're trying to honor the history of those movies by, I imagine, offering something new and unexpected while you also take into account those audience expectations you talked about. Do you think a lot about nostalgia and honoring the past while you're pushing things forward? Is it intense to deal with the expectations of these super diehard fans?
It's funny. It's very important to have fidelity to the universe that you're setting up and to those characters, right? And I remember every once in a while when I started working on Toy Story 3, someone would say like, oh, that doesn't sound like Woody. Woody would never say that.
Showing 2001–2020 of 2,071 · page 101 of 104
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