June 29, 2023 • 39 mins
In this episode of Katie’s Crib, Katie talks to Meg LeFauve, the Oscar-nominated screenwriter for the Pixar film Inside Out. Meg explains the process that came along with writing the film, and what she hopes the movie (and its successor) would teach about expressing emotions.
Meg digs into how she first got involved in the IO project, and how the character Sadness became the essential emotion of focus in the movie. The “The Screenwriting Life” podcast host also reflects on how she witnessed children and adult audience members react to the flick. Finally, Meg recalls how the movie influenced her own parenting styles.
Also, how did Meg’s own children respond to Inside Out, knowing that their mom wrote the movie? Push play for the answer!
Executive Producers: Sandie Bailey, Alex Alcheh, Lauren Hohman, Tyler Klang & Gabrielle Collins
Producer & Editor: Casby Bias
Associate Producer: Akiya McKnight
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to Katie's Crib, a production of Shondaland Audio in
partnership with iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
The polls of the movie, our Joy wants to keep
the core emotions away from sadness, right, so Joy, the
whole movie is keep awake, don't touch. And at the
end of the movie, because now she understands way I
created all of this because I'm trying to avoid sadness.
Riley being sad is Joy's handing the balls.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
This memory balls over to sadness.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
This little girl in the back of the theater yells no,
and I thought, oh, there needs to be a discussion
in the car.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
On the way home.
Speaker 3 (00:33):
Oh God, I hope there was.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
I did get some some things from parents that they
did have to have interesting discussions with their kids after,
but in a good way. Their kids were opening up
to them about things and because now they have language
to talk about it.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
Hello, everybody, Welcome back to Katie's Crib. I've been trying
to get today's guest on for a hot minute. Her
movie affected me. It affected me inside and out. He
he he. Do you get that Today's guest we are
having on to talk about children's feelings, emotions, internal validation,
(01:19):
and she is the brilliant brains behind the Oscar nominated
film Inside Out. She also is a producer and a director.
Her name is Meg Lava and She's brilliant. She was
also nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award in nineteen ninety
nine for producing The Baby Dance. She also produced the
two thousand and two film The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys.
(01:42):
She also wrote the script for The Good Dinosaur and
also co wrote the story. She also wrote the script
for the live action Captain Marvel movie alongside Nicole Pearlman.
And LeVaux is married to filmmaker Joe Forte, with whom
she has two sons, Aiden and Julian. Did you guys
all see Inside Out? Has there ever been a better
(02:05):
movie for adults and children to try to explain our emotions,
our brains, our deepest well, fears, joys, anger, all the things?
And I felt like the movie did such a great
job of explaining emotions to our kids, and so I
wanted to hear it from her first and bring it
all to you guys. So here we are today with
(02:27):
the one and only Meg Leveaux. Welcome to Katie's Crib.
Meg Meg it's such a pleasure to meet you.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
It's so wonderful to be here.
Speaker 1 (02:39):
Oh, thank you for coming and making the time. It's
so funny. I was just going to say thank you
for having me, but it's because I'm at the time
of this recording. I've just been coming off like a
bunch of days of doing interviews. That's funny that that
was my knee jerk reaction. I think you come to
me through Rebecca Beninatti. Is that correct? Oh, yes, that's true.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
Rebecca and my kids went to preschool together, and of
course we became best friends.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
So your children and Rebecca's children and my children all
go to the same nursery school.
Speaker 3 (03:16):
Mine are now in college.
Speaker 1 (03:17):
So while ago the movie Inside Out so deeply affected
me as an adult, the work that I'm most proud
of on this podcast is for kids and adults similar
to your film. So I have done a ton of
research with a ton of notes. Okay, if you are
(03:37):
a listener to Katie's Crib and you have not watched
Inside Out, if you're a pregnant person you don't have
kids yet, if you're a person with small kids, middle
aged kids, older kids, or if you don't have any
kids at all, do yourself a favor. Watch Inside Out
because it is for everyone.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
Humans, It's for humans.
Speaker 1 (03:56):
It's for humans. How did you get involved in the project,
How did you write the movie? I know you came
along a little bit later in the process. Correct.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
Yeah, they were a couple of screens in so they
spend years researching, and Pete doctor it's his movie, it's
his baby, and he researched for years. Emotions and I
think at one point they had twenty four and boiled
it down to the five. He brought me in because
they had their five emotions and locations, but the story.
They were really struggling to find the story and what
he wanted to say with the movie. He knew he
(04:28):
wanted to talk about his daughter and how when she
was younger, she was very outgoing and like she'd meet
people at the front door and tap dance for them
and just so joyful and happy and confident, and then
when she turned eleven, she seemed to disappear. She was
very withdrawn, and he literally had the question, what happened
to my daughter's joy? I want to go inside her
(04:49):
head and find out. But as he developed the story,
he realized what do I want to say about joy?
What do I want to say about the internal life
of any person, whatever age they are. When we were
working together, he came to the idea that it's sadness
that he really wanted to be discovered, and that sadness
connects us. It's not something to be avoided and to
(05:09):
avoid in your children. It's something that connects us. And
what's interesting about the fact that we have this connection
with preschool is I wasn't involved in all of that research,
but I came in really understanding emotional intelligence. My research
was going to that.
Speaker 1 (05:25):
Preschool social emotional learning. It's like, forget about ABC's, you're
going to learn that.
Speaker 2 (05:30):
The way you learn that is you have social emotional intelligence.
It's the base for all learning. And you know what
we used to learn at that preschool literally happens in
the movie. We used to learn that when your kid
is crying because some other kid knocked down their block
structure and your kid is furious and screaming and angry
or crying, you don't say, let's fix that, you can
(05:50):
build another block structure. Let's get back to happiness as
quickly as possible, which we all do.
Speaker 1 (05:55):
We all do it.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
The idea instead is sit down with them and reflect
back what they're feeling so they can start to learn
what that emotion is. First of all, can you identify
what's happening inside your body, which, by the way, a
lot of adults I know.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
Can't even do this one.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
What is this emotion? So you say to them, Wow,
you're really mad. Ah, yeah, I'm really mad, they might say,
and then they might start to get tears in their eyes. Oh,
I see, Oh now you're very sad. I'm really sad.
Just helping them reflect it and then letting it move
through its process. I would be mad too if somebody
knocked over my block structure. If you were doing a
(06:34):
project all morning on your computer and it crashed and
you lost the whole.
Speaker 3 (06:38):
Thing, would you be mad?
Speaker 1 (06:40):
That's right?
Speaker 2 (06:41):
Why are you assuming this child can't have an emotional life?
They worked on something. So if you look in the movie,
this happens. Bing Bong's wagon gets thrown into the dump
and forgotten, and he's crying, and Joy wants him to
move on. She wants to get going, And it's Sadness
who has the emotional intelligence to sit down and say, Wow,
(07:01):
you loved your wagon, I did, and he cries, Candy,
I did. I loved my wagon.
Speaker 1 (07:07):
It's so sad.
Speaker 3 (07:08):
It is sad.
Speaker 2 (07:09):
She just sits with him and puts her hand on
his little paw, and then he works through it and
Joy as a character gets to watch, Oh, this is
a different way of being in the world and processing
that all of Riley's memories don't need to be joyful,
and that there is value in all of our emotions.
Speaker 1 (07:29):
Ah. Everyone, I mean, come on, you really had your
finger on the pulse. In terms of educating people towards
this type of learning.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
Well, it's funny though, because people take what they take.
I had a guywalk up to me at a function
and he goes, that movie changed the way I parent.
And I was like, oh my gosh, thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (07:50):
What a compliment.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
And he goes, because now when my kids said, I go,
get joy on the controls, and I was like, yeah,
that's the opposite of the movie.
Speaker 1 (07:58):
But okay, yeah, that's the morals. But my first foray
in to work like this was I was a nanny
before I had children, for a family who had me
as the caretaker. There are some similarities similarities, they are
not everything, but When I first heard oh, when a
(08:18):
kid is crying, my jump to was always like, you're okay,
You're okay, it's okay, it's okay, okay. It was like
a word I said one thousand times. And the teacher,
similarly to your story, you know about if you were
an adult and this was happening to you, she would say,
in their world, it's not okay, they're not okay right now,
and it's okay to not be okay. Fast forward to
(08:41):
me having a five year old and a two year old.
I've now since tried getting through sadness or tantrums. I'm
lucky enough to say I've tried to get through it
fifty million different ways. And I can tell you the
quickest way out, and I know from you and your
movie and other psychologists and experts we've had on this podcast,
and the healthiest way out is to actually just sit there, reflect, narrate, listen.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
It's a way for a person to feel seen, be
you five, two or fifty two. It doesn't matter if
my sister's on the zoom and she seems to be
saying words that are I'm fine and I'm just trying
to explain something. But I can see in her face
what is happening, and that there's a lot of sadness
coming up for me to be able to say, hey,
(09:28):
are you sad? You know what, I'm just I want
to acknowledge what's happening right now and that this is
really bringing up a lot of stuff for you. And
it's okay, you don't have to talk about it, but
I just want to say, I see you, I see this.
It's a way to be seen, for your life experience
to be real. And I think when we'd say to
(09:48):
our kids, no, you're fine, you're telling them that feeling
of not being fine is not real, but of course
it is. Gosh, how does that mix up your brain? Listen,
there is a moment in the movie where Mom sits
down on the sleeping bag and says to Riley, Oh,
it's been such a hard move and your dad's been
(10:09):
so busy and overwhelmed, and we're just so grateful that
you're a happy girl.
Speaker 1 (10:14):
Now.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
That was a scene that was on the chopping block
a lot because there was a concern in the notes
that Mom isn't likable. It was the hill I was
going to die on because I was like, wow, every
parent does this, and it's out of love. We're not
doing it to mess up our child. We're doing it
a out of love because we want them to be happy.
And b I'm sorry half the time because we are overwhelmed.
(10:39):
We have no emotional regulation, and we're trying to regulate
our emotions by regulating our kids' emotion I found at
that set that preschool, they're mostly teaching the parents. That's
mostly what they're doing.
Speaker 1 (10:50):
It's so much less about teaching my children than it
is about teaching myself. It's remarkable.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
It is just a zen experience of self knowledge every day.
Just can you be with yourself right now? I had
a moment where I had I was trying to plug
in my car, and I had bags of food and
one kid screaming and one kid saying, by the way,
I have this dude tomorrow at school, and there was
(11:16):
so much going on, and I went to plug in
my car and the electric current went up my arm. No,
I just went and I sat down, and my kid
went started screaming, I need dinner.
Speaker 1 (11:29):
And I lost my mind.
Speaker 3 (11:30):
Of course what's happening?
Speaker 2 (11:32):
And my body is first of all, fear that I
almost killed myself and then, honestly, the very next response
is I almost killed myself in front of my children.
There is no worse parenting that could possibly happen. Yeah,
they don't come back from that.
Speaker 3 (11:44):
They don't come back from that. You are such a
bad mom.
Speaker 2 (11:47):
Now I'm yelling because I'm so overwhelmed emotionally and I
cannot get mostly regulated. Right in front of everybody, I'm
yelling at my kids. I get them inside and I
just go in the bathroom because I've got to get
myself regulated. And my little kid comes in and he
sits on the tub in the dark with me, and
he goes, Mama, are you okay? And I said, you
know what, I have to be honest, I'm not. I'm
(12:08):
a little upset. That was really scary, but I'm going
to be okay. You know, you have to reassure me.
He's little, but it's okay. And thank you so much
for seeing me and coming to check on me. Thank
you so much. And he put his hand on my
hand and he goes, Mama, I think the universe is
trying to tell you something. And I said, what is
the universe trying to tell me? And he goes, you're
(12:30):
too busy you're just too busy, Mama. You need to
take a break sometimes. All those years of social emotional
support and it comes back to you, It comes back
to you in this emotional being who can be present
with you and who can see you.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
I feel really confident in the vocabulary I've learned in
the last five years and the work I've gotten to
do on this podcast and at the nursery school we
picked and all of that. But of course, like right
before me my period, I'm ready to fucking kill someone,
and I'm cranky and everything is wrong and no one
(13:08):
can do anything right, mostly myself. And she falls in
a puddle and she's soaking wet, and he's like, where
is my breakfast or whatever it is? I've taken it.
I remember I asked him to brush his teeth like
a thousand times, just to get out the door. And
I just said, you know what, forget it. And I
took his toothbrush and I threw it out the floor
(13:28):
and I just said, I mommy needs a time out.
I'm going to take a time out. I need to
remove myself. I'm so angry and frustrated, not at you,
but it frustrated at the situation and just how the
day is going, that I need a moment because I'm
not the best version of myself. And he always says, Mommy,
you just need to take a long breath.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
Oh I love it.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
And he's five, but I'll tell you I want to
throw in his face and I want to say I
want to take a bath, and then I go, ida, what, Yes,
I have to take a very long breath. Thank you
for reminding me.
Speaker 2 (14:06):
But they're modeling.
Speaker 3 (14:07):
Yeah, they're modeling.
Speaker 2 (14:09):
They model what we do. We can say all we
want a million times, they're going to model what we do.
And I also think it's so important and I can
see it now that my kid is a college aided
student that I can see the emotional social training he
has with his friends and with other people and with me.
He needs to know that he can freak out. He
needs to know that he can have a mildown, that
(14:29):
he can lose his social emotional regulation because he's a
human being. So he's going to So I don't think
it's bad to freak out in front of your kids
every once in a while, because you're teaching them this
is what it is to be human. As long as
you repair and that's what I keep telling myself, and
I put money in.
Speaker 1 (14:45):
The therapy jar for later.
Speaker 2 (14:46):
You lived with an actual human being who's a mother
and doing the best I can.
Speaker 1 (14:50):
Number One, we've had dan segel On rupture and repair.
Speaker 2 (14:55):
Well, if you had dan Segelon, that's like the expert
of the experts of all of this.
Speaker 3 (15:00):
Yes, he has come on.
Speaker 1 (15:01):
Of course, I feel like I completely botched the opportunity
and was like a fumbling, bumbling mess.
Speaker 3 (15:05):
But I tried. But yes, there's a lot of I.
Speaker 1 (15:10):
Think relief in parenthood when the hard moments come that
I'm not doing what. I think my parents did a
wonderful job with the knowledge they have for what they knew. Yes,
and I think it's so beneficial for me that when
I'm sad that our dog died two years ago, and
it still comes up. Sometimes my son checks in on
me and says, oh, you're you sad, and I say, yeah,
(15:31):
I'm really missing Roger. And sometimes I have a little
bit of a cry. My mom used to I saw
her cry maybe twice in my whole life when he
dada and she hid it. She would go to her
bedroom she wouldn't let me see. And so again you're
painting the picture that there's something wrong with being sad
or there's something exactly wrong with being angry when they're not.
It's part of the human experience and it's part of
(15:53):
something that makes us all connected to each other. How
did you find that.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
On the DVD extras? I think they've put it on
Disney Plus. I wish they would. But on the DVD
extras of the film, Pete doctor is in a state
and when he would get confused, he'd go our walks.
You can see him. He takes a video out while
he's walking in the woods and he's processing what's happening,
which is I have this idea, but I can't get
(16:19):
it to turn into a movie. Everybody's still saying it's
a good idea. They're not yet seeing the story the
movie yet, and I'm really you can see him processing
I think I'm gonna get fired. So what he does
is what we're talking about. He just gets emotionally intimate
with himself on camera. You can watch him do it,
and he is a genius at this. Most of us,
when we start to feel those feelings of oh my god,
(16:40):
I might get fired, we start to make excuses or
fix it, or we move away from it, or our
anxiety takes over and begins to project forward into eventually,
I'll die alone and a ditch somewhere. It catastrophizes into
the future and projects versus staying present with what's happening
right now. And Pete is a genius at this, and
you can watch him on the camera say, Okay, well,
I'm worried I'm gonna get fired. The guy has two
(17:02):
Academy Awards at this point, which is just but still,
it just tells you human beings, right. They just starts
to ask questions to stay present with the feeling. What
am I going to miss if I get fired? Well,
I'm going to miss my house because I might have
to sell it. But I'm also going to miss going to.
Speaker 1 (17:14):
Work every day.
Speaker 2 (17:15):
Why will I miss going to work every day? Well,
because we've had such good times at Pixar. We've had
so much fun. Is that the only thing I'm going
to mix. No, I'm going to miss them because of
the losses we've shared together and that we've been there
for each other. Because they lost two people from the company.
There was one of the founding members, Joe Ranff, died
in a car accident and Steve jobs they suffered through
(17:38):
and were there for each other, and he's suddenly realizing, Oh,
it's the sadness that brought us together. And it's that
connection that I will actually miss, is that we went
through this together and we were there for each other
in our sadness. That the sadness brought us together. And
that's the movie. But he was able to get there
because he just kept staying with the emotions that are
(18:02):
signaling to him something. You know, our emotions are very wise.
They're there for a reason. Pete Doctor was just a
genius and is a genius at staying with those emotions
in order to get the information that they're telling you.
Speaker 1 (18:26):
What do you hope little kids take away from the movies?
Speaker 2 (18:29):
Well, it's interesting because that was a discussion will little
kids get this movie? And they did a screening for
some employees' kids and they got it better than the adults.
They don't have all the layers of resistance that we have.
They have not built it up yet. So they're very
open to their emotions. They are living inside of them.
(18:52):
They're not judging them, they're not critiquing them and trying
to push them down. So they really did understand it,
though there was I went to when it was in
the theaters. You know, you kind of sneak around and
go to different theaters and see how the audience is
liking it. And I was in one theater and the
whole movie the polls of the movie our Joy wants
to keep the core emotions away from sadness, right, so Joy,
(19:15):
the whole movie is keep away, don't touch. And at
the end of the movie, because now she understands the
way I created all of this because I'm trying to
avoid sadness. Riley being sad here sadness. Change these core
emotions sad because you know, when you move all those
memories do have a tinge of sadness. Now, this little
girl in the theater is Joy's handing the balls the
memory balls over to sadness. This little girl in the
(19:37):
back of the theater yells no, And I thought, oh,
there needs to be a discussion in the car on
the way home.
Speaker 3 (19:44):
Oh God, I hope there was.
Speaker 2 (19:46):
I hope you heard that kid, and she needs to
talk about some stuff. I mean, I did get some
some things from parents that they did have to have
interesting discussions with their kids. After, but in a good way.
Their kids were opening up to them about things because
now they have language to talk about it. In this business,
you Academy awards and blah blah blah. The best thing
(20:06):
that ever happened to me is how this film is
now being used to help children communicate what's happening inside
of them. I was at a wards ceremony right after
the movie came out, and a woman walked up to
me and said, your film is still helpful for my job.
I work for the City of la and I go
in the night of the trauma and I'm now able
(20:26):
to have them talk to me immediately because we can
just use your movie to talk to them and I
can get to them.
Speaker 1 (20:33):
And I was like, oh, my god, my god, you
must have been Wow.
Speaker 2 (20:39):
What an incredible thing, Pete doctor did. What an incredible thing.
Speaker 1 (20:43):
What do you hope parents take away from the movie?
And is there a difference.
Speaker 2 (20:48):
It's a great story, right, and it's for a human being,
whatever age, economic status, create class, color, It doesn't matter
like it's a human it's the human condition and we
get that by digging into ourselves. If I was an
eleven year old girl who wanted to say to her parents,
you want me to be happy, but I'm not. I
never had the courage to say it, but Riley does
have the courage to say it. And it was really
(21:10):
important to me that at the climax of the film,
when she speaks her truth to her parents, which is
you want me to be happy, but I'm not, that
then changes the parents because she allows them to be
brave and talk about their sadness, and they're able to
now let go of their I have always having to
be happy. So the film is for everybody, but it's
(21:30):
also I think it would be extra special if parents
could just, for one moment, allow their child to have
the emotions they have. I think about little girls and anger.
My friend's daughter for her birthday party in elementary school
dressed up as anger, and I was like, that's the coolest.
Speaker 1 (21:48):
Thing ever, the coolest thing ever.
Speaker 2 (21:51):
You must be a great mom because you're allowing a
female child to be angry, which I think is one
of the final frontiers femaling. If a person, a human,
a woman, cannot have anger, she can't have boundaries. Anger
is an important emotion. I'm not talking about a meltdown
or freaking out. You freak out and have those milkdowns
(22:13):
because you haven't had anything. You've been stopping the natural
process of anger. You're not there as a parent to
control them. You're there to help them, regulate them, not
get rid of them, investigate them, identify them. What is
this emotion here to tell me? I mean, by the way,
here's the irony of the story. I like, sound like
the super expert and I'm such a good parent. I'm
(22:36):
in the premiere of the movie sitting next to my son.
When Riley says at the end, you want me to
be happy, but I'm not. My kid leans over to
me and goes, well, I know what she's talking about.
Speaker 1 (22:47):
So there you go.
Speaker 2 (22:48):
I did you can You're gonna do it.
Speaker 1 (22:51):
I'm sorry, you're gonna do it. But that's why there's
also the therapy jar, you know exactly.
Speaker 3 (22:57):
It's like, we're all just doing the best we can.
It's just a race.
Speaker 1 (23:01):
My mom says the same thing about my kids eating
their vegetables. She's like, I always used to say, does
it add up at the end of the month. No,
is the ratio better? It's sort of in your life,
you know, like exactly, that's a great way to put
it and looking at what your son said to you
in the premiere. Your two children, now, what is in
college at the time. I'm not sure how old they
(23:21):
were when the movie came out. What did they love
about the movie and how did they respond to knowing
that you wrote it?
Speaker 2 (23:26):
Well, of course they're kids, so they want to see
themselves in it. So the first thing was that meat
was that something I did so adorable, because don't we
all do that. They were very proud of their mom,
and they loved the movie. And I also wrote The
Good Dinosaur with Pixar, which was even more personal for me.
I have a special need son, so a little dinosaur
who can't figure out how to do anything and how
(23:49):
this all works and how he fits. And your kids
never talked to you about that stuff, Like your.
Speaker 1 (23:54):
Kids aren't like, Mom, let's talk about the movie.
Speaker 2 (23:57):
You're just kids who are like, can I get a
bigger popcorn?
Speaker 3 (24:00):
Yeah? Right?
Speaker 1 (24:00):
Yeah, okay, yeah, sure, I know you said that a
lot of the nursery school you sent your kids to
had already done a lot of the heavy lifting in
terms of this sort of work. Did the movie further
enhance or change your parenting at all?
Speaker 2 (24:22):
So?
Speaker 1 (24:22):
It Pixar.
Speaker 2 (24:23):
When you do an animated movie, you're showing the whole
movie and board, so you know, employees come in and
watch and give you three hundred sets of notes. Right,
And we went so fast that I just puked that
out of my soul one day. And now we're suddenly
in a theater watching it on a giant screen with
all these people, and I hear Riley say basically, you
(24:46):
want me to be happy, but I'm not. And my
whole body started to shake because I had just broken
the code man, the embedded DNA code of my childhood,
and in front of all these people, I literally I
was like, I'm getting fired, Like my catatriphizing started.
Speaker 3 (25:03):
I started sweating.
Speaker 2 (25:05):
It really helped push me through that threshold and speak
my truth. And by somehow speaking your truth in such
a public way, it changed me. And by me being
able to speak my truth, I think I can therefore
allow my kids to speak their truth. Half the time,
we can't let our kids speak their truth because we're
not speaking our own. It's like all backwards, right, So
I think that's mostly how it affected me.
Speaker 1 (25:26):
So brave, I can't imagine that. It's like, why stand
up comedy is so frightening or oh yeah, like being
a singer is so frightening. I mean, I bring my
own self and my own personal experiences to a character,
but I'm still hiding like it's not me. I can
still I'm not you like writing this stuff? God, that
(25:48):
would I get sweating just even like thinking about that.
Speaker 2 (25:52):
It's funny on my podcast when I'm talking to creators
and again any creating anything, I think being a parent
as being a creator. You know, we talk about lava.
If you're really doing it, you're gonna hit some lava.
Speaker 1 (26:04):
It's gonna burn.
Speaker 2 (26:05):
Sometimes it's gonna bring up that hidden stuff that you've
been ignoring, or that unconscious soul stuff that the brain
wants to bring it up now wants you to look
at it, and it can feel like lava. I don't
know about you, but I had that experience at the preschool,
and I watch other parents have it, because when you're
trying to help learn emotional regulation, your stuff comes up.
Speaker 1 (26:28):
And there's a We had another wonderful author on I
think maybe season one, no maybe season two of this podcast.
We had this writer named Shefali Sabari who wrote The
Conscious Parent MM hmm. She's talks a lot about you
get the child to who's going to teach you the most?
And I yes, and I remember I have a huge
(26:49):
people pleasing societal norm. I was thrown right out of
left field with anything I thought parenting was the minute
my kid, at two years old, hit the shit out
of a baby on a New York City public playground
and everyone's looking at me and angry at me, and
it's my fault and I'm a bad And of course,
(27:10):
who the fuck knows that they were actually thinking lava, lava, lava,
and my son is not conflict averse and I am
conflict averse. And it's been the greatest life lessons of
my life, reteaching myself how to advocate for someone and
reteach myself, Yeah, why do I care what people think? Like,
(27:31):
it's unbelievably incredible, this journey of lava.
Speaker 2 (27:36):
It's incredible of lava. And here's the thing, as parents,
just let's be honest. Half the time, we're like, I
don't have time to deal with this lava right now.
It's gonna submerge again and send off little weird signals
and you're gonna do weird stuff and you don't even
know why you're doing it. It's up, it's walking around
your belief systems.
Speaker 3 (27:50):
That lava.
Speaker 2 (27:52):
I had a situation where I was getting on a
train and we've got luggage, we got kids, and there's
so many things, and this train's gonna leave, it's gonna
leave the station, and we have to get seats.
Speaker 3 (28:01):
Why aren't there assigned seats?
Speaker 2 (28:02):
And this guy in front of me's going so slow, literally,
and he's like asking people, can you move over? And
I'm like, we have to get a seat. The train
is leaving, and so I'm like, excuse me, can you
let us pass? And I'm clearly pissed off. And now
the guy moves and I see why he's going so slow,
because he's got his wife in front of him.
Speaker 3 (28:19):
Who's holding up two kids. Oh, I'm Karen.
Speaker 2 (28:23):
All of a sudden and literally they both turn back
and look at me, and the whole train's looking at me, like.
Speaker 1 (28:27):
Oh, how damn dare you? She's so made?
Speaker 3 (28:30):
And I sit down.
Speaker 2 (28:31):
Oh the lava's coming up now, Like I'm literally.
Speaker 1 (28:33):
Like, I was the bad person. I was the I
What am I doing?
Speaker 3 (28:37):
I was such an asshole?
Speaker 2 (28:39):
And I'm like, why was I so nervous about the
train leaving, like we're on the train.
Speaker 3 (28:43):
Hold on, just like take a breath.
Speaker 2 (28:46):
So I was like, Okay, I can just ignore this
right now and like go get a cookie, or I
can say.
Speaker 1 (28:51):
What was that about?
Speaker 2 (28:52):
And just sit in there. I was so much lava,
and I was like, there's something about being left behind.
I'm so afraid of not having a place and being
left behind that all my lava comes up around it.
And so I had to talk to that little man's
say you're all right, You're all right. This is all
happening in five minutes on a train, because I let
the lava just be present for a minute, because it
(29:14):
feels like it's going to burn you up into nothing,
but it's.
Speaker 1 (29:27):
You sent in an Academy conversation panel for the oscars.
Be there with them where they are. I think that's
really an easy way to put it. It's like, whatever
emotion they're at, it's just beat them where they are.
Speaker 2 (29:41):
Yeah, be with them, be with them. You have to
be present. You have to be in your own being right,
your own experience of being with them, which can be hard,
and to be with them, and that means you're going
to have to be with yourself.
Speaker 1 (30:00):
Did anyone know when we signed up for this parenting
shit that it was going to be like all about
Oh my god, my goodness. Word. It reminds me of
We had this psychologist ond named Zachary Blunkin, who's great.
He has three boys, and he was convinced. He said,
I'm pretty sure the world would be a different place
if everybody studied the rabbit listened in school. Do you
(30:20):
know this book?
Speaker 2 (30:21):
I don't know this.
Speaker 1 (30:22):
It's a book about a little boy's building a block
structure and a whole herd of pros come in and
they break it all down, and a bear comes by
and he's like, let's fuck him up and get even
with them. And then a snake comes by and says
to the little boy, let's plot revenge or you know
of something, And then another animal comes by, all different
(30:43):
emotions until a rabbit comes at the very last page
and just sits, and the boy just tells the rabbit
what happened, goes through a whole array of emotions, and
the rabbit just listens, and then the boy moves on.
Speaker 3 (31:01):
You do.
Speaker 1 (31:03):
Can you explain, also in layman's terms, what emotional intel?
Maybe I should have started with this, But whatever, You're
welcome people. I'm a great interviewer. What is emotional intelligence
and how is it different from social emotional learning or
is that the same thing.
Speaker 2 (31:17):
Yeah, I'm no expert for sure, but my understanding of
it is emotional intelligence is about you understanding your own emotions.
You can identify them, what is it that I'm feeling?
And then you can regulate that i e. Be with
it and allow it to give its information that needs
to give you so it can wash out. That alone
(31:38):
is emotional intelligence, right. Social intelligence to me is more
outside of you. Can you identify that as an emotion
on another person's face and what that person is asking
for or needing or it's a little bit more outside,
whereas the emotional intelligence to me is about it internally.
Can you regulate your emotions and know your emotions versus
(31:59):
just put them in a trunk over there?
Speaker 1 (32:03):
Oh God, one big ass trunk. Is there anything you
want to teach your children that you felt you missed
in your own upbringing when it comes to emotions and
validating them.
Speaker 2 (32:13):
Yeah, I definitely listen. Again, our parents did what they
could given what they had the tools, and there were
five kids in my family, they really approached it more
like my father, who was a Navy pilot, he kind
of approached it like the army, Like he literally would say,
this is not a democracy. It's interesting because my father
was big on the word responsibility, take responsibility, and I
(32:35):
totally understand that, and I think consequences are something that
every kid needs to learn. I'm just trying to do
this with my kid right now as a teenager and
will knock out of bed in the morning, and so
I've called his teacher and I've said he's gonna lay
for school probably for a couple of weeks, because he
has to learn the consequences of kno getting out of bed, right.
He just has to. But my dad was all about responsibility, responsibility,
and it wasn't util I as an adult that I
(32:56):
was like, the word response is in that I'm allowed
to have a response. My father only wanted one direction,
your responsibility to me again, because that's how he grew
up and that's what he was taught. Of course, how
you keep the craziness of five kids, which I'm sure
that's the track, keep the bananas that must have been bananas.
(33:18):
And as an adult, it's like no, but then I
need to have a response, and I want my kids
to be able to have a response. They're allowed to
participate there, what's happening with you? What's going on with you?
Of course not all the time, because life is what
it is, but in general, they're allowed to participate in this.
It's their life too.
Speaker 1 (33:37):
What can we expect for insight out two?
Speaker 3 (33:40):
Are you allowed to talk about this? No, of course not.
We're Pixar. We're not allowed to talk about anything.
Speaker 2 (33:46):
Well, but Amy Pohlar, Amy Polar in the announcement, let
people know there will be new emotions so that we
can say.
Speaker 1 (33:51):
Whoa wh this is so exciting. I am so very
excited and when it comes out, oh my god. We
would love nothing more but for you to come back
on and tell us. Now that'll be fun things you've
learned and.
Speaker 2 (34:06):
Yeah, there's a whole other kettle of fish, man, there's
a whole there morse at.
Speaker 1 (34:10):
The top of that excites me and also terrifies me. Okay,
so there's not much you can tease there. What advice
would you like to give your kids? Are they do
they have any birthdays coming up? How old are they
right now?
Speaker 2 (34:22):
My son is going to be twenty. I can't believe
it in July. Please, I just I can't even process it.
I'm just constantly asking him to stay with himself, because
it's easy to get all worried about what everybody else
is doing. In this poor generation, they can see what
everybody's doing around the world. Like I never knew what
anybody else was doing. I clearly God, people down the
(34:43):
hall and my dorm were doing.
Speaker 1 (34:45):
Thank god. I feel so relieved about that. It was
pressure enough when we didn't know. I can't imagine.
Speaker 2 (34:51):
I just you know, it's just like, dude, you're young,
this is time to have fun and just you don't
have to get a's. I don't care about that. That's
not what this is about. This is about experience and
making mistakes. Make the mistakes. Pixar The motto is fail
fast because they as a creative being, they want you
out on the edge. They want you pushing and what
(35:14):
else when you're twenty should you be doing? You? Should
be trying stuff? And do you like?
Speaker 3 (35:18):
It? Was that fun?
Speaker 2 (35:20):
And he's finding out experiment. It's just encouraging him and
he's good at that too.
Speaker 1 (35:26):
Yeah, I gotta say as a forty year old. I
regret that I didn't live more on the edge in
my twenties in some way, because it does feel too late.
I didn't get my nose pierced, and now I think
about it, and I should have fucking done it.
Speaker 2 (35:40):
When I was talking, why can't you get your nose piers?
Wait a minute, why can't you get your nose piers?
Speaker 1 (35:43):
I mean because I just am like uugh, Like, now
I work as an actor and now I'm gonna have
to get there early, and they even cover it up.
And if I scar because I have those that things.
Speaker 2 (35:53):
Okay, the actor thing is good, that's.
Speaker 1 (35:55):
A pass, but I should have done it, Like why
who gives a shit?
Speaker 3 (35:59):
Like just a little bit more of that.
Speaker 1 (36:01):
I was such a goodie two shoe and I was
so interested in success and working hard and being validated
for my talent. And I love Pixar's thing fail fast, baby, Like,
just live on that edge a little bit.
Speaker 3 (36:19):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (36:19):
And of course I don't mean physically, like I don't
want I'm drinking and driving in oh God, I'm talking
about emotionally creatively, he's in a film.
Speaker 3 (36:27):
Score try an outcast.
Speaker 1 (36:29):
Try stuff, Go make something that might be a piece
of shit. Who cares?
Speaker 2 (36:33):
It will be it's going to be that. Like, that's
what we say on my podcast all the time. These
people who are like I wrote a first draft and
it was bad, so I must not be a writer.
And I'm like, no, it's the opposite. That means you
are a writer and welcome because everybody's first draft suck. Like,
just experiment, have fun. There's time for this whole like
obsession with being the best in success and picked out
(36:55):
and chosen because of those social media stuff they have
going on.
Speaker 1 (36:59):
But okay, we asked this to everybody. I'm curious what
your answer is, and it can be long or short whatever.
Parenthood is.
Speaker 2 (37:09):
Long and short. There's the days it feels like so long.
Oh my god, your.
Speaker 1 (37:18):
Last night spend time. I was like, this is a
I was like this, we are on a plane of
we are in an alternate reality of Groundhog's day.
Speaker 2 (37:26):
Time stops. It's such a cliche. I used to hate
when people said this to me when I was my
kids were little. It's so short, like I can't even
believe it. But you know, ultimately, parenting is a privilege.
It is a privilege, but it's lava man there's going
to be some lava.
Speaker 1 (37:43):
Is there anything else where listeners can find you and
listen to you more.
Speaker 2 (37:48):
I have a podcast that I co host with my
friend Lauren McKenna. It's called The Screenwriting Life. Don't let
this title fool you. It's really about the life of
any manifestor any artist of any star, And honestly, I
think parents are artists are Your creation is right in
front of you. So it's just about some of it.
It's the craft of writing because it's a writing podcast,
(38:08):
but a lot of it is life stuff. So if
you want to hear more about lava and where that
term came from, you can come over to The Screenwriting Life.
Speaker 1 (38:17):
I'm listening to it immediately. I'm all about the lava.
I'm so honored to have met you, and thank you
so much for spending time here with our listeners. And
I'm so excited for Inside Out too. Thank you. What
a gift Inside Out one was for everyone who's listening.
If you want to do something for yourself and for
(38:38):
your kids this weekend to give you all a common
vocabulary of how we can best honor, process, and learn
from our emotion with that movie? Is it?
Speaker 2 (38:48):
Thank you?
Speaker 3 (38:51):
That was great.
Speaker 1 (38:53):
Yay. Thank you guys so much for listening to today's episode.
I want to hear from you. Let's chat questions, comments, concerns.
Let me know. You can always find me at Katiescrib
at shondaland dot com. Katie's Crib is a production of
(39:16):
Shondaland Audio in partnership with iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from
Shondaland Audio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Katie's Crib, a production of Shondaland Audio in
partnership with iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
The polls of the movie, our Joy wants to keep
the core emotions away from sadness, right, so Joy, the
whole movie is keep awake, don't touch. And at the
end of the movie, because now she understands way I
created all of this because I'm trying to avoid sadness.
Riley being sad is Joy's handing the balls.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
This memory balls over to sadness.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
This little girl in the back of the theater yells no,
and I thought, oh, there needs to be a discussion
in the car.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
On the way home.
Speaker 3 (00:33):
Oh God, I hope there was.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
I did get some some things from parents that they
did have to have interesting discussions with their kids after,
but in a good way. Their kids were opening up
to them about things and because now they have language
to talk about it.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
Hello, everybody, Welcome back to Katie's Crib. I've been trying
to get today's guest on for a hot minute. Her
movie affected me. It affected me inside and out. He
he he. Do you get that Today's guest we are
having on to talk about children's feelings, emotions, internal validation,
(01:19):
and she is the brilliant brains behind the Oscar nominated
film Inside Out. She also is a producer and a director.
Her name is Meg Lava and She's brilliant. She was
also nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award in nineteen ninety
nine for producing The Baby Dance. She also produced the
two thousand and two film The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys.
(01:42):
She also wrote the script for The Good Dinosaur and
also co wrote the story. She also wrote the script
for the live action Captain Marvel movie alongside Nicole Pearlman.
And LeVaux is married to filmmaker Joe Forte, with whom
she has two sons, Aiden and Julian. Did you guys
all see Inside Out? Has there ever been a better
(02:05):
movie for adults and children to try to explain our emotions,
our brains, our deepest well, fears, joys, anger, all the things?
And I felt like the movie did such a great
job of explaining emotions to our kids, and so I
wanted to hear it from her first and bring it
all to you guys. So here we are today with
(02:27):
the one and only Meg Leveaux. Welcome to Katie's Crib.
Meg Meg it's such a pleasure to meet you.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
It's so wonderful to be here.
Speaker 1 (02:39):
Oh, thank you for coming and making the time. It's
so funny. I was just going to say thank you
for having me, but it's because I'm at the time
of this recording. I've just been coming off like a
bunch of days of doing interviews. That's funny that that
was my knee jerk reaction. I think you come to
me through Rebecca Beninatti. Is that correct? Oh, yes, that's true.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
Rebecca and my kids went to preschool together, and of
course we became best friends.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
So your children and Rebecca's children and my children all
go to the same nursery school.
Speaker 3 (03:16):
Mine are now in college.
Speaker 1 (03:17):
So while ago the movie Inside Out so deeply affected
me as an adult, the work that I'm most proud
of on this podcast is for kids and adults similar
to your film. So I have done a ton of
research with a ton of notes. Okay, if you are
(03:37):
a listener to Katie's Crib and you have not watched
Inside Out, if you're a pregnant person you don't have
kids yet, if you're a person with small kids, middle
aged kids, older kids, or if you don't have any
kids at all, do yourself a favor. Watch Inside Out
because it is for everyone.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
Humans, It's for humans.
Speaker 1 (03:56):
It's for humans. How did you get involved in the project,
How did you write the movie? I know you came
along a little bit later in the process. Correct.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
Yeah, they were a couple of screens in so they
spend years researching, and Pete doctor it's his movie, it's
his baby, and he researched for years. Emotions and I
think at one point they had twenty four and boiled
it down to the five. He brought me in because
they had their five emotions and locations, but the story.
They were really struggling to find the story and what
he wanted to say with the movie. He knew he
(04:28):
wanted to talk about his daughter and how when she
was younger, she was very outgoing and like she'd meet
people at the front door and tap dance for them
and just so joyful and happy and confident, and then
when she turned eleven, she seemed to disappear. She was
very withdrawn, and he literally had the question, what happened
to my daughter's joy? I want to go inside her
(04:49):
head and find out. But as he developed the story,
he realized what do I want to say about joy?
What do I want to say about the internal life
of any person, whatever age they are. When we were
working together, he came to the idea that it's sadness
that he really wanted to be discovered, and that sadness
connects us. It's not something to be avoided and to
(05:09):
avoid in your children. It's something that connects us. And
what's interesting about the fact that we have this connection
with preschool is I wasn't involved in all of that research,
but I came in really understanding emotional intelligence. My research
was going to that.
Speaker 1 (05:25):
Preschool social emotional learning. It's like, forget about ABC's, you're
going to learn that.
Speaker 2 (05:30):
The way you learn that is you have social emotional intelligence.
It's the base for all learning. And you know what
we used to learn at that preschool literally happens in
the movie. We used to learn that when your kid
is crying because some other kid knocked down their block
structure and your kid is furious and screaming and angry
or crying, you don't say, let's fix that, you can
(05:50):
build another block structure. Let's get back to happiness as
quickly as possible, which we all do.
Speaker 1 (05:55):
We all do it.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
The idea instead is sit down with them and reflect
back what they're feeling so they can start to learn
what that emotion is. First of all, can you identify
what's happening inside your body, which, by the way, a
lot of adults I know.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
Can't even do this one.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
What is this emotion? So you say to them, Wow,
you're really mad. Ah, yeah, I'm really mad, they might say,
and then they might start to get tears in their eyes. Oh,
I see, Oh now you're very sad. I'm really sad.
Just helping them reflect it and then letting it move
through its process. I would be mad too if somebody
knocked over my block structure. If you were doing a
(06:34):
project all morning on your computer and it crashed and
you lost the whole.
Speaker 3 (06:38):
Thing, would you be mad?
Speaker 1 (06:40):
That's right?
Speaker 2 (06:41):
Why are you assuming this child can't have an emotional life?
They worked on something. So if you look in the movie,
this happens. Bing Bong's wagon gets thrown into the dump
and forgotten, and he's crying, and Joy wants him to
move on. She wants to get going, And it's Sadness
who has the emotional intelligence to sit down and say, Wow,
(07:01):
you loved your wagon, I did, and he cries, Candy,
I did. I loved my wagon.
Speaker 1 (07:07):
It's so sad.
Speaker 3 (07:08):
It is sad.
Speaker 2 (07:09):
She just sits with him and puts her hand on
his little paw, and then he works through it and
Joy as a character gets to watch, Oh, this is
a different way of being in the world and processing
that all of Riley's memories don't need to be joyful,
and that there is value in all of our emotions.
Speaker 1 (07:29):
Ah. Everyone, I mean, come on, you really had your
finger on the pulse. In terms of educating people towards
this type of learning.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
Well, it's funny though, because people take what they take.
I had a guywalk up to me at a function
and he goes, that movie changed the way I parent.
And I was like, oh my gosh, thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (07:50):
What a compliment.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
And he goes, because now when my kids said, I go,
get joy on the controls, and I was like, yeah,
that's the opposite of the movie.
Speaker 1 (07:58):
But okay, yeah, that's the morals. But my first foray
in to work like this was I was a nanny
before I had children, for a family who had me
as the caretaker. There are some similarities similarities, they are
not everything, but When I first heard oh, when a
(08:18):
kid is crying, my jump to was always like, you're okay,
You're okay, it's okay, it's okay, okay. It was like
a word I said one thousand times. And the teacher,
similarly to your story, you know about if you were
an adult and this was happening to you, she would say,
in their world, it's not okay, they're not okay right now,
and it's okay to not be okay. Fast forward to
(08:41):
me having a five year old and a two year old.
I've now since tried getting through sadness or tantrums. I'm
lucky enough to say I've tried to get through it
fifty million different ways. And I can tell you the
quickest way out, and I know from you and your
movie and other psychologists and experts we've had on this podcast,
and the healthiest way out is to actually just sit there, reflect, narrate, listen.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
It's a way for a person to feel seen, be
you five, two or fifty two. It doesn't matter if
my sister's on the zoom and she seems to be
saying words that are I'm fine and I'm just trying
to explain something. But I can see in her face
what is happening, and that there's a lot of sadness
coming up for me to be able to say, hey,
(09:28):
are you sad? You know what, I'm just I want
to acknowledge what's happening right now and that this is
really bringing up a lot of stuff for you. And
it's okay, you don't have to talk about it, but
I just want to say, I see you, I see this.
It's a way to be seen, for your life experience
to be real. And I think when we'd say to
(09:48):
our kids, no, you're fine, you're telling them that feeling
of not being fine is not real, but of course
it is. Gosh, how does that mix up your brain? Listen,
there is a moment in the movie where Mom sits
down on the sleeping bag and says to Riley, Oh,
it's been such a hard move and your dad's been
(10:09):
so busy and overwhelmed, and we're just so grateful that
you're a happy girl.
Speaker 1 (10:14):
Now.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
That was a scene that was on the chopping block
a lot because there was a concern in the notes
that Mom isn't likable. It was the hill I was
going to die on because I was like, wow, every
parent does this, and it's out of love. We're not
doing it to mess up our child. We're doing it
a out of love because we want them to be happy.
And b I'm sorry half the time because we are overwhelmed.
(10:39):
We have no emotional regulation, and we're trying to regulate
our emotions by regulating our kids' emotion I found at
that set that preschool, they're mostly teaching the parents. That's
mostly what they're doing.
Speaker 1 (10:50):
It's so much less about teaching my children than it
is about teaching myself. It's remarkable.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
It is just a zen experience of self knowledge every day.
Just can you be with yourself right now? I had
a moment where I had I was trying to plug
in my car, and I had bags of food and
one kid screaming and one kid saying, by the way,
I have this dude tomorrow at school, and there was
(11:16):
so much going on, and I went to plug in
my car and the electric current went up my arm. No,
I just went and I sat down, and my kid
went started screaming, I need dinner.
Speaker 1 (11:29):
And I lost my mind.
Speaker 3 (11:30):
Of course what's happening?
Speaker 2 (11:32):
And my body is first of all, fear that I
almost killed myself and then, honestly, the very next response
is I almost killed myself in front of my children.
There is no worse parenting that could possibly happen. Yeah,
they don't come back from that.
Speaker 3 (11:44):
They don't come back from that. You are such a
bad mom.
Speaker 2 (11:47):
Now I'm yelling because I'm so overwhelmed emotionally and I
cannot get mostly regulated. Right in front of everybody, I'm
yelling at my kids. I get them inside and I
just go in the bathroom because I've got to get
myself regulated. And my little kid comes in and he
sits on the tub in the dark with me, and
he goes, Mama, are you okay? And I said, you
know what, I have to be honest, I'm not. I'm
(12:08):
a little upset. That was really scary, but I'm going
to be okay. You know, you have to reassure me.
He's little, but it's okay. And thank you so much
for seeing me and coming to check on me. Thank
you so much. And he put his hand on my
hand and he goes, Mama, I think the universe is
trying to tell you something. And I said, what is
the universe trying to tell me? And he goes, you're
(12:30):
too busy you're just too busy, Mama. You need to
take a break sometimes. All those years of social emotional
support and it comes back to you, It comes back
to you in this emotional being who can be present
with you and who can see you.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
I feel really confident in the vocabulary I've learned in
the last five years and the work I've gotten to
do on this podcast and at the nursery school we
picked and all of that. But of course, like right
before me my period, I'm ready to fucking kill someone,
and I'm cranky and everything is wrong and no one
(13:08):
can do anything right, mostly myself. And she falls in
a puddle and she's soaking wet, and he's like, where
is my breakfast or whatever it is? I've taken it.
I remember I asked him to brush his teeth like
a thousand times, just to get out the door. And
I just said, you know what, forget it. And I
took his toothbrush and I threw it out the floor
(13:28):
and I just said, I mommy needs a time out.
I'm going to take a time out. I need to
remove myself. I'm so angry and frustrated, not at you,
but it frustrated at the situation and just how the
day is going, that I need a moment because I'm
not the best version of myself. And he always says, Mommy,
you just need to take a long breath.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
Oh I love it.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
And he's five, but I'll tell you I want to
throw in his face and I want to say I
want to take a bath, and then I go, ida, what, Yes,
I have to take a very long breath. Thank you
for reminding me.
Speaker 2 (14:06):
But they're modeling.
Speaker 3 (14:07):
Yeah, they're modeling.
Speaker 2 (14:09):
They model what we do. We can say all we
want a million times, they're going to model what we do.
And I also think it's so important and I can
see it now that my kid is a college aided
student that I can see the emotional social training he
has with his friends and with other people and with me.
He needs to know that he can freak out. He
needs to know that he can have a mildown, that
(14:29):
he can lose his social emotional regulation because he's a
human being. So he's going to So I don't think
it's bad to freak out in front of your kids
every once in a while, because you're teaching them this
is what it is to be human. As long as
you repair and that's what I keep telling myself, and
I put money in.
Speaker 1 (14:45):
The therapy jar for later.
Speaker 2 (14:46):
You lived with an actual human being who's a mother
and doing the best I can.
Speaker 1 (14:50):
Number One, we've had dan segel On rupture and repair.
Speaker 2 (14:55):
Well, if you had dan Segelon, that's like the expert
of the experts of all of this.
Speaker 3 (15:00):
Yes, he has come on.
Speaker 1 (15:01):
Of course, I feel like I completely botched the opportunity
and was like a fumbling, bumbling mess.
Speaker 3 (15:05):
But I tried. But yes, there's a lot of I.
Speaker 1 (15:10):
Think relief in parenthood when the hard moments come that
I'm not doing what. I think my parents did a
wonderful job with the knowledge they have for what they knew. Yes,
and I think it's so beneficial for me that when
I'm sad that our dog died two years ago, and
it still comes up. Sometimes my son checks in on
me and says, oh, you're you sad, and I say, yeah,
(15:31):
I'm really missing Roger. And sometimes I have a little
bit of a cry. My mom used to I saw
her cry maybe twice in my whole life when he
dada and she hid it. She would go to her
bedroom she wouldn't let me see. And so again you're
painting the picture that there's something wrong with being sad
or there's something exactly wrong with being angry when they're not.
It's part of the human experience and it's part of
(15:53):
something that makes us all connected to each other. How
did you find that.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
On the DVD extras? I think they've put it on
Disney Plus. I wish they would. But on the DVD
extras of the film, Pete doctor is in a state
and when he would get confused, he'd go our walks.
You can see him. He takes a video out while
he's walking in the woods and he's processing what's happening,
which is I have this idea, but I can't get
(16:19):
it to turn into a movie. Everybody's still saying it's
a good idea. They're not yet seeing the story the
movie yet, and I'm really you can see him processing
I think I'm gonna get fired. So what he does
is what we're talking about. He just gets emotionally intimate
with himself on camera. You can watch him do it,
and he is a genius at this. Most of us,
when we start to feel those feelings of oh my god,
(16:40):
I might get fired, we start to make excuses or
fix it, or we move away from it, or our
anxiety takes over and begins to project forward into eventually,
I'll die alone and a ditch somewhere. It catastrophizes into
the future and projects versus staying present with what's happening
right now. And Pete is a genius at this, and
you can watch him on the camera say, Okay, well,
I'm worried I'm gonna get fired. The guy has two
(17:02):
Academy Awards at this point, which is just but still,
it just tells you human beings, right. They just starts
to ask questions to stay present with the feeling. What
am I going to miss if I get fired? Well,
I'm going to miss my house because I might have
to sell it. But I'm also going to miss going to.
Speaker 1 (17:14):
Work every day.
Speaker 2 (17:15):
Why will I miss going to work every day? Well,
because we've had such good times at Pixar. We've had
so much fun. Is that the only thing I'm going
to mix. No, I'm going to miss them because of
the losses we've shared together and that we've been there
for each other. Because they lost two people from the company.
There was one of the founding members, Joe Ranff, died
in a car accident and Steve jobs they suffered through
(17:38):
and were there for each other, and he's suddenly realizing, Oh,
it's the sadness that brought us together. And it's that
connection that I will actually miss, is that we went
through this together and we were there for each other
in our sadness. That the sadness brought us together. And
that's the movie. But he was able to get there
because he just kept staying with the emotions that are
(18:02):
signaling to him something. You know, our emotions are very wise.
They're there for a reason. Pete Doctor was just a
genius and is a genius at staying with those emotions
in order to get the information that they're telling you.
Speaker 1 (18:26):
What do you hope little kids take away from the movies?
Speaker 2 (18:29):
Well, it's interesting because that was a discussion will little
kids get this movie? And they did a screening for
some employees' kids and they got it better than the adults.
They don't have all the layers of resistance that we have.
They have not built it up yet. So they're very
open to their emotions. They are living inside of them.
(18:52):
They're not judging them, they're not critiquing them and trying
to push them down. So they really did understand it,
though there was I went to when it was in
the theaters. You know, you kind of sneak around and
go to different theaters and see how the audience is
liking it. And I was in one theater and the
whole movie the polls of the movie our Joy wants
to keep the core emotions away from sadness, right, so Joy,
(19:15):
the whole movie is keep away, don't touch. And at
the end of the movie, because now she understands the
way I created all of this because I'm trying to
avoid sadness. Riley being sad here sadness. Change these core
emotions sad because you know, when you move all those
memories do have a tinge of sadness. Now, this little
girl in the theater is Joy's handing the balls the
memory balls over to sadness. This little girl in the
(19:37):
back of the theater yells no, And I thought, oh,
there needs to be a discussion in the car on
the way home.
Speaker 3 (19:44):
Oh God, I hope there was.
Speaker 2 (19:46):
I hope you heard that kid, and she needs to
talk about some stuff. I mean, I did get some
some things from parents that they did have to have
interesting discussions with their kids. After, but in a good way.
Their kids were opening up to them about things because
now they have language to talk about it. In this business,
you Academy awards and blah blah blah. The best thing
(20:06):
that ever happened to me is how this film is
now being used to help children communicate what's happening inside
of them. I was at a wards ceremony right after
the movie came out, and a woman walked up to
me and said, your film is still helpful for my job.
I work for the City of la and I go
in the night of the trauma and I'm now able
(20:26):
to have them talk to me immediately because we can
just use your movie to talk to them and I
can get to them.
Speaker 1 (20:33):
And I was like, oh, my god, my god, you
must have been Wow.
Speaker 2 (20:39):
What an incredible thing, Pete doctor did. What an incredible thing.
Speaker 1 (20:43):
What do you hope parents take away from the movie?
And is there a difference.
Speaker 2 (20:48):
It's a great story, right, and it's for a human being,
whatever age, economic status, create class, color, It doesn't matter
like it's a human it's the human condition and we
get that by digging into ourselves. If I was an
eleven year old girl who wanted to say to her parents,
you want me to be happy, but I'm not. I
never had the courage to say it, but Riley does
have the courage to say it. And it was really
(21:10):
important to me that at the climax of the film,
when she speaks her truth to her parents, which is
you want me to be happy, but I'm not, that
then changes the parents because she allows them to be
brave and talk about their sadness, and they're able to
now let go of their I have always having to
be happy. So the film is for everybody, but it's
(21:30):
also I think it would be extra special if parents
could just, for one moment, allow their child to have
the emotions they have. I think about little girls and anger.
My friend's daughter for her birthday party in elementary school
dressed up as anger, and I was like, that's the coolest.
Speaker 1 (21:48):
Thing ever, the coolest thing ever.
Speaker 2 (21:51):
You must be a great mom because you're allowing a
female child to be angry, which I think is one
of the final frontiers femaling. If a person, a human,
a woman, cannot have anger, she can't have boundaries. Anger
is an important emotion. I'm not talking about a meltdown
or freaking out. You freak out and have those milkdowns
(22:13):
because you haven't had anything. You've been stopping the natural
process of anger. You're not there as a parent to
control them. You're there to help them, regulate them, not
get rid of them, investigate them, identify them. What is
this emotion here to tell me? I mean, by the way,
here's the irony of the story. I like, sound like
the super expert and I'm such a good parent. I'm
(22:36):
in the premiere of the movie sitting next to my son.
When Riley says at the end, you want me to
be happy, but I'm not. My kid leans over to
me and goes, well, I know what she's talking about.
Speaker 1 (22:47):
So there you go.
Speaker 2 (22:48):
I did you can You're gonna do it.
Speaker 1 (22:51):
I'm sorry, you're gonna do it. But that's why there's
also the therapy jar, you know exactly.
Speaker 3 (22:57):
It's like, we're all just doing the best we can.
It's just a race.
Speaker 1 (23:01):
My mom says the same thing about my kids eating
their vegetables. She's like, I always used to say, does
it add up at the end of the month. No,
is the ratio better? It's sort of in your life,
you know, like exactly, that's a great way to put
it and looking at what your son said to you
in the premiere. Your two children, now, what is in
college at the time. I'm not sure how old they
(23:21):
were when the movie came out. What did they love
about the movie and how did they respond to knowing
that you wrote it?
Speaker 2 (23:26):
Well, of course they're kids, so they want to see
themselves in it. So the first thing was that meat
was that something I did so adorable, because don't we
all do that. They were very proud of their mom,
and they loved the movie. And I also wrote The
Good Dinosaur with Pixar, which was even more personal for me.
I have a special need son, so a little dinosaur
who can't figure out how to do anything and how
(23:49):
this all works and how he fits. And your kids
never talked to you about that stuff, Like your.
Speaker 1 (23:54):
Kids aren't like, Mom, let's talk about the movie.
Speaker 2 (23:57):
You're just kids who are like, can I get a
bigger popcorn?
Speaker 3 (24:00):
Yeah? Right?
Speaker 1 (24:00):
Yeah, okay, yeah, sure, I know you said that a
lot of the nursery school you sent your kids to
had already done a lot of the heavy lifting in
terms of this sort of work. Did the movie further
enhance or change your parenting at all?
Speaker 2 (24:22):
So?
Speaker 1 (24:22):
It Pixar.
Speaker 2 (24:23):
When you do an animated movie, you're showing the whole
movie and board, so you know, employees come in and
watch and give you three hundred sets of notes. Right,
And we went so fast that I just puked that
out of my soul one day. And now we're suddenly
in a theater watching it on a giant screen with
all these people, and I hear Riley say basically, you
(24:46):
want me to be happy, but I'm not. And my
whole body started to shake because I had just broken
the code man, the embedded DNA code of my childhood,
and in front of all these people, I literally I
was like, I'm getting fired, Like my catatriphizing started.
Speaker 3 (25:03):
I started sweating.
Speaker 2 (25:05):
It really helped push me through that threshold and speak
my truth. And by somehow speaking your truth in such
a public way, it changed me. And by me being
able to speak my truth, I think I can therefore
allow my kids to speak their truth. Half the time,
we can't let our kids speak their truth because we're
not speaking our own. It's like all backwards, right, So
I think that's mostly how it affected me.
Speaker 1 (25:26):
So brave, I can't imagine that. It's like, why stand
up comedy is so frightening or oh yeah, like being
a singer is so frightening. I mean, I bring my
own self and my own personal experiences to a character,
but I'm still hiding like it's not me. I can
still I'm not you like writing this stuff? God, that
(25:48):
would I get sweating just even like thinking about that.
Speaker 2 (25:52):
It's funny on my podcast when I'm talking to creators
and again any creating anything, I think being a parent
as being a creator. You know, we talk about lava.
If you're really doing it, you're gonna hit some lava.
Speaker 1 (26:04):
It's gonna burn.
Speaker 2 (26:05):
Sometimes it's gonna bring up that hidden stuff that you've
been ignoring, or that unconscious soul stuff that the brain
wants to bring it up now wants you to look
at it, and it can feel like lava. I don't
know about you, but I had that experience at the preschool,
and I watch other parents have it, because when you're
trying to help learn emotional regulation, your stuff comes up.
Speaker 1 (26:28):
And there's a We had another wonderful author on I
think maybe season one, no maybe season two of this podcast.
We had this writer named Shefali Sabari who wrote The
Conscious Parent MM hmm. She's talks a lot about you
get the child to who's going to teach you the most?
And I yes, and I remember I have a huge
(26:49):
people pleasing societal norm. I was thrown right out of
left field with anything I thought parenting was the minute
my kid, at two years old, hit the shit out
of a baby on a New York City public playground
and everyone's looking at me and angry at me, and
it's my fault and I'm a bad And of course,
(27:10):
who the fuck knows that they were actually thinking lava, lava, lava,
and my son is not conflict averse and I am
conflict averse. And it's been the greatest life lessons of
my life, reteaching myself how to advocate for someone and
reteach myself, Yeah, why do I care what people think? Like,
(27:31):
it's unbelievably incredible, this journey of lava.
Speaker 2 (27:36):
It's incredible of lava. And here's the thing, as parents,
just let's be honest. Half the time, we're like, I
don't have time to deal with this lava right now.
It's gonna submerge again and send off little weird signals
and you're gonna do weird stuff and you don't even
know why you're doing it. It's up, it's walking around
your belief systems.
Speaker 3 (27:50):
That lava.
Speaker 2 (27:52):
I had a situation where I was getting on a
train and we've got luggage, we got kids, and there's
so many things, and this train's gonna leave, it's gonna
leave the station, and we have to get seats.
Speaker 3 (28:01):
Why aren't there assigned seats?
Speaker 2 (28:02):
And this guy in front of me's going so slow, literally,
and he's like asking people, can you move over? And
I'm like, we have to get a seat. The train
is leaving, and so I'm like, excuse me, can you
let us pass? And I'm clearly pissed off. And now
the guy moves and I see why he's going so slow,
because he's got his wife in front of him.
Speaker 3 (28:19):
Who's holding up two kids. Oh, I'm Karen.
Speaker 2 (28:23):
All of a sudden and literally they both turn back
and look at me, and the whole train's looking at me, like.
Speaker 1 (28:27):
Oh, how damn dare you? She's so made?
Speaker 3 (28:30):
And I sit down.
Speaker 2 (28:31):
Oh the lava's coming up now, Like I'm literally.
Speaker 1 (28:33):
Like, I was the bad person. I was the I
What am I doing?
Speaker 3 (28:37):
I was such an asshole?
Speaker 2 (28:39):
And I'm like, why was I so nervous about the
train leaving, like we're on the train.
Speaker 3 (28:43):
Hold on, just like take a breath.
Speaker 2 (28:46):
So I was like, Okay, I can just ignore this
right now and like go get a cookie, or I
can say.
Speaker 1 (28:51):
What was that about?
Speaker 2 (28:52):
And just sit in there. I was so much lava,
and I was like, there's something about being left behind.
I'm so afraid of not having a place and being
left behind that all my lava comes up around it.
And so I had to talk to that little man's
say you're all right, You're all right. This is all
happening in five minutes on a train, because I let
the lava just be present for a minute, because it
(29:14):
feels like it's going to burn you up into nothing,
but it's.
Speaker 1 (29:27):
You sent in an Academy conversation panel for the oscars.
Be there with them where they are. I think that's
really an easy way to put it. It's like, whatever
emotion they're at, it's just beat them where they are.
Speaker 2 (29:41):
Yeah, be with them, be with them. You have to
be present. You have to be in your own being right,
your own experience of being with them, which can be hard,
and to be with them, and that means you're going
to have to be with yourself.
Speaker 1 (30:00):
Did anyone know when we signed up for this parenting
shit that it was going to be like all about
Oh my god, my goodness. Word. It reminds me of
We had this psychologist ond named Zachary Blunkin, who's great.
He has three boys, and he was convinced. He said,
I'm pretty sure the world would be a different place
if everybody studied the rabbit listened in school. Do you
(30:20):
know this book?
Speaker 2 (30:21):
I don't know this.
Speaker 1 (30:22):
It's a book about a little boy's building a block
structure and a whole herd of pros come in and
they break it all down, and a bear comes by
and he's like, let's fuck him up and get even
with them. And then a snake comes by and says
to the little boy, let's plot revenge or you know
of something, And then another animal comes by, all different
(30:43):
emotions until a rabbit comes at the very last page
and just sits, and the boy just tells the rabbit
what happened, goes through a whole array of emotions, and
the rabbit just listens, and then the boy moves on.
Speaker 3 (31:01):
You do.
Speaker 1 (31:03):
Can you explain, also in layman's terms, what emotional intel?
Maybe I should have started with this, But whatever, You're
welcome people. I'm a great interviewer. What is emotional intelligence
and how is it different from social emotional learning or
is that the same thing.
Speaker 2 (31:17):
Yeah, I'm no expert for sure, but my understanding of
it is emotional intelligence is about you understanding your own emotions.
You can identify them, what is it that I'm feeling?
And then you can regulate that i e. Be with
it and allow it to give its information that needs
to give you so it can wash out. That alone
(31:38):
is emotional intelligence, right. Social intelligence to me is more
outside of you. Can you identify that as an emotion
on another person's face and what that person is asking
for or needing or it's a little bit more outside,
whereas the emotional intelligence to me is about it internally.
Can you regulate your emotions and know your emotions versus
(31:59):
just put them in a trunk over there?
Speaker 1 (32:03):
Oh God, one big ass trunk. Is there anything you
want to teach your children that you felt you missed
in your own upbringing when it comes to emotions and
validating them.
Speaker 2 (32:13):
Yeah, I definitely listen. Again, our parents did what they
could given what they had the tools, and there were
five kids in my family, they really approached it more
like my father, who was a Navy pilot, he kind
of approached it like the army, Like he literally would say,
this is not a democracy. It's interesting because my father
was big on the word responsibility, take responsibility, and I
(32:35):
totally understand that, and I think consequences are something that
every kid needs to learn. I'm just trying to do
this with my kid right now as a teenager and
will knock out of bed in the morning, and so
I've called his teacher and I've said he's gonna lay
for school probably for a couple of weeks, because he
has to learn the consequences of kno getting out of bed, right.
He just has to. But my dad was all about responsibility, responsibility,
and it wasn't util I as an adult that I
(32:56):
was like, the word response is in that I'm allowed
to have a response. My father only wanted one direction,
your responsibility to me again, because that's how he grew
up and that's what he was taught. Of course, how
you keep the craziness of five kids, which I'm sure
that's the track, keep the bananas that must have been bananas.
(33:18):
And as an adult, it's like no, but then I
need to have a response, and I want my kids
to be able to have a response. They're allowed to
participate there, what's happening with you? What's going on with you?
Of course not all the time, because life is what
it is, but in general, they're allowed to participate in this.
It's their life too.
Speaker 1 (33:37):
What can we expect for insight out two?
Speaker 3 (33:40):
Are you allowed to talk about this? No, of course not.
We're Pixar. We're not allowed to talk about anything.
Speaker 2 (33:46):
Well, but Amy Pohlar, Amy Polar in the announcement, let
people know there will be new emotions so that we
can say.
Speaker 1 (33:51):
Whoa wh this is so exciting. I am so very
excited and when it comes out, oh my god. We
would love nothing more but for you to come back
on and tell us. Now that'll be fun things you've
learned and.
Speaker 2 (34:06):
Yeah, there's a whole other kettle of fish, man, there's
a whole there morse at.
Speaker 1 (34:10):
The top of that excites me and also terrifies me. Okay,
so there's not much you can tease there. What advice
would you like to give your kids? Are they do
they have any birthdays coming up? How old are they
right now?
Speaker 2 (34:22):
My son is going to be twenty. I can't believe
it in July. Please, I just I can't even process it.
I'm just constantly asking him to stay with himself, because
it's easy to get all worried about what everybody else
is doing. In this poor generation, they can see what
everybody's doing around the world. Like I never knew what
anybody else was doing. I clearly God, people down the
(34:43):
hall and my dorm were doing.
Speaker 1 (34:45):
Thank god. I feel so relieved about that. It was
pressure enough when we didn't know. I can't imagine.
Speaker 2 (34:51):
I just you know, it's just like, dude, you're young,
this is time to have fun and just you don't
have to get a's. I don't care about that. That's
not what this is about. This is about experience and
making mistakes. Make the mistakes. Pixar The motto is fail
fast because they as a creative being, they want you
out on the edge. They want you pushing and what
(35:14):
else when you're twenty should you be doing? You? Should
be trying stuff? And do you like?
Speaker 3 (35:18):
It? Was that fun?
Speaker 2 (35:20):
And he's finding out experiment. It's just encouraging him and
he's good at that too.
Speaker 1 (35:26):
Yeah, I gotta say as a forty year old. I
regret that I didn't live more on the edge in
my twenties in some way, because it does feel too late.
I didn't get my nose pierced, and now I think
about it, and I should have fucking done it.
Speaker 2 (35:40):
When I was talking, why can't you get your nose piers?
Wait a minute, why can't you get your nose piers?
Speaker 1 (35:43):
I mean because I just am like uugh, Like, now
I work as an actor and now I'm gonna have
to get there early, and they even cover it up.
And if I scar because I have those that things.
Speaker 2 (35:53):
Okay, the actor thing is good, that's.
Speaker 1 (35:55):
A pass, but I should have done it, Like why
who gives a shit?
Speaker 3 (35:59):
Like just a little bit more of that.
Speaker 1 (36:01):
I was such a goodie two shoe and I was
so interested in success and working hard and being validated
for my talent. And I love Pixar's thing fail fast, baby, Like,
just live on that edge a little bit.
Speaker 3 (36:19):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (36:19):
And of course I don't mean physically, like I don't
want I'm drinking and driving in oh God, I'm talking
about emotionally creatively, he's in a film.
Speaker 3 (36:27):
Score try an outcast.
Speaker 1 (36:29):
Try stuff, Go make something that might be a piece
of shit. Who cares?
Speaker 2 (36:33):
It will be it's going to be that. Like, that's
what we say on my podcast all the time. These
people who are like I wrote a first draft and
it was bad, so I must not be a writer.
And I'm like, no, it's the opposite. That means you
are a writer and welcome because everybody's first draft suck. Like,
just experiment, have fun. There's time for this whole like
obsession with being the best in success and picked out
(36:55):
and chosen because of those social media stuff they have
going on.
Speaker 1 (36:59):
But okay, we asked this to everybody. I'm curious what
your answer is, and it can be long or short whatever.
Parenthood is.
Speaker 2 (37:09):
Long and short. There's the days it feels like so long.
Oh my god, your.
Speaker 1 (37:18):
Last night spend time. I was like, this is a
I was like this, we are on a plane of
we are in an alternate reality of Groundhog's day.
Speaker 2 (37:26):
Time stops. It's such a cliche. I used to hate
when people said this to me when I was my
kids were little. It's so short, like I can't even
believe it. But you know, ultimately, parenting is a privilege.
It is a privilege, but it's lava man there's going
to be some lava.
Speaker 1 (37:43):
Is there anything else where listeners can find you and
listen to you more.
Speaker 2 (37:48):
I have a podcast that I co host with my
friend Lauren McKenna. It's called The Screenwriting Life. Don't let
this title fool you. It's really about the life of
any manifestor any artist of any star, And honestly, I
think parents are artists are Your creation is right in
front of you. So it's just about some of it.
It's the craft of writing because it's a writing podcast,
(38:08):
but a lot of it is life stuff. So if
you want to hear more about lava and where that
term came from, you can come over to The Screenwriting Life.
Speaker 1 (38:17):
I'm listening to it immediately. I'm all about the lava.
I'm so honored to have met you, and thank you
so much for spending time here with our listeners. And
I'm so excited for Inside Out too. Thank you. What
a gift Inside Out one was for everyone who's listening.
If you want to do something for yourself and for
(38:38):
your kids this weekend to give you all a common
vocabulary of how we can best honor, process, and learn
from our emotion with that movie? Is it?
Speaker 2 (38:48):
Thank you?
Speaker 3 (38:51):
That was great.
Speaker 1 (38:53):
Yay. Thank you guys so much for listening to today's episode.
I want to hear from you. Let's chat questions, comments, concerns.
Let me know. You can always find me at Katiescrib
at shondaland dot com. Katie's Crib is a production of
(39:16):
Shondaland Audio in partnership with iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from
Shondaland Audio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
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