All Pixar movies take a long time to develop, even by Hollywood standards.
The studio spends years building their lavishly rendered stories, but even for Pixar, the
journey Coco took from idea to blockbuster was a rather lengthy one.
So what took so long, what changed, and how did we arrive at the film we now know and
love?
Day of the Dead
Co-director Lee Unkrich was fresh off the triumph of Toy Story 3 when the idea for Coco
came to him, at Walt Disney World, of all places.
According to Unkrich, he was in the middle of a boat ride at Epcot's Mexico pavilion
when he saw an image that ignited a spark of inspiration.
He recalled:
"We passed a mariachi skeleton band, and that was my trigger moment.
I started to think about the potential of telling a story set against the culture of
Mexico.
I had never seen a full story told against Dia de los Muertos."
Pixar approved the project and Unkrich started moving forward, but Coco was different from
other Pixar productions.
Unkrich said:
"When I did Toy Story 3, we settled on a few basic ideas that were going to be part of
the film.
And of course we had most of our characters already set, and the look of the world.
In this case, we had nothing.
I mean, we just had a blank piece of paper and that was it."
Public backlash
Though Coco is very heavily rooted in Mexican culture, it began as the brainchild of a white
director who had a deep desire to ensure its authenticity.
Those efforts took a turn toward PR nightmare in 2013, when Disney attempted to trademark
the phrase "Dia de los Muertos."
"Don't give me that look.
Dia de los Muertos is the one day of the year our ancestors can come visit us!"
Prominent Latinos, including cartoonist Lalo Alcaraz, saw it as a cold attempt by an American
corporation to appropriate a cornerstone of Mexican culture, and they were outspoken in
their criticism.
The backlash prompted Pixar to relax its usually rather secretive production process and hire
several Latino "cultural consultants" to work on the film, including Alcaraz, who said:
"Pixar was already on its way to making this a culturally authentic film, and we met somewhere
in the middle.
And even though I'm not very corporate, they listened to what I had to say."
The consultants provided input on every phase of the production process, from character
designs all the way through to test screenings.
Looming finality
After getting the green light to pursue his idea, Unkrich and the production team began
a thorough research process in an attempt to absorb every detail about the Day of the
Dead.
It was then that they came across the idea of "final death" — the notion that you die
in the mortal world, and die again in the afterlife when your memory in the land of
the living is finally extinguished.
According to Unkrich, this film-defining idea was initially just a small part of the story.
"At the time [we learned about it], we thought it was a poignant idea and it was something
we wanted in the movie.
But after some time we came to the realization that no, that's the idea of the movie which
needed to permeate everything in the film."
Secrets of the shrine
One of the most important moments in the film comes when Miguel retreats into a little hideaway
he's built for himself where he can secretly indulge in his true musical passions.
The tiny room functions as a miniature shrine to his musical idol Ernesto de la Cruz, featuring
photos and albums, Miguel's own battered guitar, and a small TV where Miguel can play a video
compilation he's made of key de la Cruz moments.
It's a vital scene because it reveals just how serious Miguel is about music.
The clearest inspiration for the scene may have come from co-director Adrian Molina's
own childhood dreams of being an animator.
Molina recalled watching taped reruns of The Wonderful World of Color on the Disney Channel:
"These episodes would rerun at 4 a.m., and I remember waking up every morning, sticking
in a videocassette, and crossing my fingers that it would record one of the episodes where
they would talk about how a film was animated."
Like Miguel, Molina cherished every snippet of his heroes he could scrape together, and
that made its way into the movie.
"Aye aye aye, muchacho.
I asked for a shoe shine, not your life story."
Why Coco?
If you're approaching Coco for the first time, you might spend a good bit of the film a bit
confused over the title.
Its namesake, Miguel's great-grandmother, is revealed fairly early on, but her significance
to the plot is unclear until much later, when the name takes on a great emotional weight.
But for much of the production process it was used only as a placeholder — a working
title for the filmmakers until they came up with a better one.
Unkrich revealed:
"We didn't know what we were going to call the film for a very long time.
We made lists of hundreds of different titles to try and figure out what it could be.
Coco was always just kind of a code name."
Pixar innovation
Each Pixar film presents an opportunity for a potential new first in the field of animation,
and Coco is no exception.
The numerous skeletons in the film presented several challenges, which became a problem
when animators realized their software wasn't up to the task.
When clothing was placed on the skeletons in the old program, it didn't react properly,
and would get pinched and tangled between bones.
As a result, Pixar spent three years revamping its software to accommodate the film, specifically
focusing on how their animated objects would interact.
By the time they were done, the skeletons didn't just wear clothes, they wore them tight
against their ribs — just like real walking, talking skeletons might.
"*sigh* I miss my nose."