Inside Out is the best Pixar movie since Up. And if that’s not impressive enough, with additional time for audiences to fully absorb and appreciate this touching and imaginative animated feature, which is out today nationwide, Inside Out could move up to the top of the Pixar food chain.
Given the greatness of Pixar — Finding Nemo, Wall-E, Toy Story, Up, Monster’s, Inc., The Incredibles — that’s an amazing accomplishment.
And so is Inside Out.
The film is a peak inside the developing mind of a 12-year-old girl named Riley whose personality consists of five basic emotions: Joy (voice of Amy Poehler), Sadness (voice of Phyllis Smith), Fear (voice of Bill Hader), Disgust (voice of Mindy Kaling), and Anger (voice of Lewis Black).
MOVIE REIVEW: ‘Inside Out’ an insider’s look at kids growing up
The bubbly Poehler and the mopey Smith, who played Phyllis on NBC’s The Office, are the two main emotions, as they go on a grand adventure through Riley’s mind to restore emotional order after a traumatic cross-country family move has her feeling lonely and depressed. But it’s Black, whose bright red character grows increasingly crimson the angrier he gets until flames erupt from his head, who has the best lines and the biggest laughs.
Known for the angry comic persona he tours nationwide and with his occasional blisteringly funny rants on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, Black as Anger is as brilliant voice casting as it is obvious. Watching Anger stomp around and snarl, you cannot imagine anyone else in the role.
But in a phone interview with The Blade on New Year’s Eve to promote an appearance at the Stranahan Theater only weeks later, Black said he essentially “fell into” the Inside Out role.
“I’ve been very lucky in terms of that, in terms of when I’ve done film or voiceover stuff,” he said. “This was really unbelievable. They’re just an extraordinary group.”
Years before making it big as a stand-up, Black was a playwright — he received a master of fine arts degree from the Yale school of drama in 1977 — which affords him added appreciation for the Pixar “creative process,” as he called it.
“As someone who was a writer and wrote plays, what’s amazing for me ... was you watch the entire creative process, and there’s not a lot of places where you can see that. I got the first 30 pages of the script and then I went out there and they said, ‘Well, we’re going to show you’ and then they went to take me to another step, and then the next time I came back they showed me something else.
“If I had the time and the energy, [I] could write a book — and I’m sure someone eventually will — about how they go about their act of creation because it’s really kind of extraordinary.”
When asked about the “creative freedom to improvise” lines for Anger, Black said he had such respect for Pixar and the script, he mainly stuck to the dialogue as written.
“Every so often I would say, ‘We can try this’ and they would go ‘OK.’ We were just yakking. It’s not like we were on film. … Or they would say, ‘What else would you try here?’ Or ‘Here’s six other options.’ ”
Black also appreciated what Pixar did with Anger’s design: squatty and square, like a deformed tomato, dressed all-business in a shirt and tie and dress pants, with large, glaring eyes, and a scowling mouth that opens wide to unleash fits of rage. Anger also carries a newspaper, a reflection of Black as a news junkie and political and social commentator.
“For me, I went … Wow, why didn’t think of wearing that costume when I was onstage?
“What they do in terms of where they take your voice to the character and then when you see the character what you can do with your voice, the exchange is really something,” Black added. “You also know they’re seeing something when they hear your voice. All of a sudden the other 70 percent really of acting you don’t have to do.”
Contact Kirk Baird at kbaird@theblade.com or 419-724-6734.
First Published June 19, 2015, 4:00 a.m.
