Photo Credit: MomStart.com
If you’ve gone and seen The Good Dinosaur (which you better have! or you better have plans to this weekend! 🙂 ) you saw the new Disney Pixar short Sanjay’s Super Team. While in Los Angeles a few weeks ago, we got to interview the director and producer of this great new short, Sanjay Patel and Nicole Grindle.
Sanjay has been an animator at Pixar for over 20 years. He’s working on films such as A Bug’s Life, Ratatouille and Toy Story 3. Despite working on some of the best Pixar movies, Sanjay is actually a very humble man – which is why he was actually very reluctant to create a film about him and his heritage. After the great John Lassiter caught wind that Sanjay was doing side projects outside of Pixar, including creating books that connected him to his culture, Mr. Lassiter asked Sanjay to create a short film. Before doing so, he talked with his father. And I love what he told Sanjay:
Sanjay: He said it was my duty to at least try. Win or lost, that doesn’t matter. That’s not part of the equation Sanjay, but it is your duty to at least try.
I loved the insight that Sanjay shared on developing Sanjay’s Super Team story:
The original concept I pitched to John was about a little boy in India that was kind of ignoring the cultural stories that were carved on the temples all around them. He had his nose buried in a Western style super hero comic and the short is about the boy appreciating his culture and then John asked,
I’m a 20-something stay-at-home mother and wife. I have an amazing husband, a beautiful daughter, two loving dogs, and a lazy cat. I wouldn’t change my life for anything! I love to read, listen to music, cook and blog!
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