February 18, 2025 • 46 mins
One of the best pieces of representation for women’s hockey came out last year. It’s Inside Out 2, the sequel to the hugely popular Pixar movie beloved by children and adults alike for helping us understand the emotions whirling around in our minds. Its main character, 13-year-old Riley, is a hockey player, which means the Packers have feelings about this film. They chat about what it meant to see a woman’s hockey team in a popular kid’s movie and then sit down with Meg LeFauvre and Kelsey Mann, the film’s co-writer and director, respectively, to discuss why they chose hockey to portray the emotional swings of adolescence. They also talk about the making of the film, reveal how Kelsey’s own childhood informed the narrative, and why the creative team had to go “into the lava” to create the movie’s most memorable moments.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Hey everyone, I'm Madison Packer, and I'm Anypacker.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
I'm a recently retired pro hockey vet.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
I was a founding member of the National Women's Hockey League,
a pillar in the PHF with the Riveters, and an
inaugural member of the PWHL Sirens.
Speaker 3 (00:16):
And I played two. That's how Madison and I met,
but I stepped away to start our family.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
Now we're married and moms to two awesome toddlers, ages
two and four.
Speaker 3 (00:26):
And this is these packspot where we talk about everything
for professional women's athletes, to sports, to raising children and
all the messiness in between.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Hey Anya, Hey pack how are you doing over there
in your makeshift studio?
Speaker 3 (00:40):
My makeshift studio is whack, But outside of that, I'm
all right. How are you doing in a nice chili home?
Since I don't like turning the heat up above sixty
five degrees?
Speaker 2 (00:51):
Shivering in my sweats.
Speaker 3 (00:53):
Shivering in my sweats should be a book that we write.
But lo and behold not the point of the conversation.
Let's get into a little hockey hot take.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
Hockey hot take.
Speaker 3 (01:10):
The hockey hot take that I have today is specifically
about the movies, inside out and inside out too. And
I think that was one of the first times that
I've ever looked on television and seen a women's hockey player,
seen a girl going through it all and like climbing
the ranks of sport, specifically within hockey, and I think
(01:33):
is an instrumental gain for women's hockey and the growth
of the sport as a whole.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
Yeah, I agree.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
I think the hot take for the day maybe just
the importance of inclusion surrounding sport and emphasis and importance
of continuing to make hockey more accessible. I wouldn't even
say necessarily keep hockey accessible because I think that there
are so many barriers to entry for the sport, right
like access to ice, cost, popularity, Like, there's just so
(02:01):
many things that make hockey already a little bit harder
for players to get into. Then you look at the
number of girls teams versus boys teams. Do girls want
to play with exclusively boys? Like, there's so many things,
and there's so much work that we can do to
create safe spaces for girls in a predominantly quote unquote
boys environment. But then just everybody to create a safer
space for everyone, fans and players included, to continue wanting
(02:24):
to grow and follow and be fans of the hockey
community because it's.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
A pretty special place.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
But I think that we both can agree that there's
room for improvement in how we welcome people into that space.
Speaker 3 (02:36):
A huge part of what we do and what we
talk about is always like changing hockey culture and getting
out of these weird cultural perspectives that make hockey feel
very exclusive, right, like, take everything away from it. It
is a game, it's beautiful, it's fun, there's camaraderie, there's
good lessons, there's time management, there's skills that help young
(02:57):
girls become better women. But I love so much that
we're starting to get to a place where we do
have those change culture conversations. We do have those images
that people can look at, whether that be the PWHL,
whether that be the national teams as they play the Olympics,
the international play that's starting to get more heavily broadcast.
And then that third layer is a cartoon that everyone
(03:22):
is obsessed with that has all these incredible messages, but
weft through it is little me is a younger version
of me. And so I think as we break those barriers,
we start to see that change culture is important, is
going to be the difference maker. And also hockey is
so amazing and it's almost been the best kept secret
(03:44):
in women's sports.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
We obviously talk a lot about the PTERWHL Professional Women's Hockey,
professional women's sports, but like the top is not actually
maybe the part that we're trying to change per se
if you will, Like the point is the grassroots right
in keeping the game access well to continue bringing fans
and players in because that's what then cultivates success at
the top. Because reality, like how many players go on
(04:07):
to play pro sports, but you want and need and
rely upon tens of hundreds of thousands of people consuming
that professional sport. And the way you do that is
you create fans, You create brand alignment, you create brand loyalty.
You want partners who want to be in the living
rooms of your fans. You need as many fans as possible.
You need to target the things that those fans are
interested in, and so we need to get more fans.
(04:30):
And usually a fan of a sport is someone who's
in some way connected, whether they play, their kids play right,
And so I think that that's you know, the broader
and bigger picture, And like it's hard, maybe you live
in an area where there's not a super close ice rink,
like if you go to Michigan, ice is two fifty
an hour for a sheet.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
In New York City it's.
Speaker 4 (04:46):
Over a thousand.
Speaker 1 (04:48):
So you need access to an ice rink to play hockey.
To play basketball, you just need a park. Or soccer
you need a field. And so I think that we
need to find more ways to be creative, whether it's
street hockey, whether it's broad clinics in tandem with the
PWHL in the NHL, just ways to get kids involved
and spark that interest in that love for the game
and their parents as well, so that these people want
(05:09):
to continue supporting and consuming the products so that the
game can continue to grow.
Speaker 3 (05:13):
I also thought the storyline of a young girl moving
from Minnesota to San Francisco and having to play hockey
to your point somewhere where it's not popular, and then
being able to do it make new friends like you're right,
You and I on a soapbox as former professional athletes
probably means a lot less by way of connection, visibility,
(05:35):
and site than a kid in a new town leveraging
something she loves where hockey is not the most important thing.
So let me get out of the movie because I'm,
like I said, I'm truly obsessed. But let me pull
myself out of it. I'm from Massachusetts. I moved to
Connecticut to play pro sports. And where the PWHL is
are all these very hockey dense communities, the Try State, Toronto, Montreal, Minnesota,
(06:01):
like you name it, that's a hockey rich community, Ottawa,
Boston area. So if you look at the takeover series
for the PTERHL this year, the PTERHL is picking up
and dropping down in satellite markets. Two things I love
about it is the idea of picking a hockey game
up and dropping it in a new market, like most
pro men's leagues do in international markets. It proves the
(06:23):
value on should we expand to these markets? Are the
fans going to show up, our media partners going to
show up? Are the players happy and excited to go
to said region? So we see games that are happening
in Seattle, Vancouver. But I love this concept that we're
going to non hockey dense communities to showcase the product
of women's hockey. I think that breaks down a lot
(06:44):
of barriers, don't you think.
Speaker 1 (06:46):
Actually, Amanda Pelke for the Boston Fleet does it all
the time with her summer camps, which I think is awesome.
Another fellow mom shout out to Venla and Levi there Newborn.
But it just starts to create opportunity for peopleeople who
may not otherwise have the opportunity to see a game,
right because.
Speaker 2 (07:04):
You can't see it if you can't see it.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
Some people don't have the luxury of being able to
buy a ticket and get on a plane or get
in the car and come to a game. Like it's
expensive to be a sports fan, and so the more
that we can create opportunities for people to make it
easier for people to be there and also create just fun,
cool like historic moments that people want to be a
part of, and then you start to draw from that.
Speaker 3 (07:23):
It's also a measure of data, Like the more that
women's sports gets out of the same data pool, the
more we can say there's broadband reach, there's brand recognition,
there's growth, there's an appetite for supporting partners. So not
to bury the lead, but later we talk to two
very important members of the inside Out team, and in
(07:44):
that conversation they explored the sports that Riley was going
to play and the fact that they kept women's hockey
as the line, the tie that bound the whole situation.
I think that helps break the barriers of what's happening
inst women's hockey as well. But why do we need
to build old walls for a community that is exclusively
meant for cheering fandom? And like, what is the reason?
Speaker 4 (08:09):
I don't know, It's the.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
Question we're all trying to answer. This is the hockey
hot take.
Speaker 3 (08:13):
Why build a wall when you could build a door?
Speaker 2 (08:15):
I know, a door seems so much more affordable.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
Speaking of doors, let's step into the door of your
brain for a second and do a little check in
who's driving your console today?
Speaker 2 (08:29):
How are we feeling?
Speaker 3 (08:31):
I always say, like, when we talk about the console
and who's driving, there should be like another emotion called
too much coffee or like jitters or something like that.
Because I'm squarely there, it's not necessarily anxiety. But I
have had too much coffee today. I haven't had a
minute to myself. I woke up, went to the office.
Work is absolutely insane. I'm fired up. That's not always
(08:54):
a good place to be, but I would I would say,
I'm like, at seventy five, I've got a high level
of stress though, Oh where are you at?
Speaker 2 (09:01):
I'm at like a eighty three. I think mostly Joy
is driving my console.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
Maybe a little anxiety, which is just like how I operate,
So maybe she's just sitting on the console, not driving.
But yeah, I've had some good conversations lately, Excited about
some stuff that we're working on that I'm working on,
been really in my groove with the kids lately.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
Harlan hasn't bitny in.
Speaker 1 (09:23):
A few days. I mean she her front to this chip,
which how did that even happen? But like she bites
To all parents out there, we know that biting is wrong,
but like, let's.
Speaker 2 (09:32):
Be honest, what do you do? You don't bite them back?
Speaker 1 (09:35):
Like you just have to like parent them through it
and explain that, like explain how it's wrong. But like
some some parents that are like, like, I get it,
kid shouldn't bity. She doesn't bite all the kids at school.
She just basically exclusively bites me and sometimes Whalen. But yeah,
we've been in a good spot.
Speaker 3 (09:49):
Let me add a warning to everybody else. Madison will
like wiggle her finger in Harlan's face and then Harlan
bites her finger. So it is a little bit of
a prompted bite.
Speaker 2 (09:59):
You cut out it in here any you said just now?
Speaker 4 (10:00):
Yeah yeah yeah, she heard me.
Speaker 2 (10:02):
Yeah yeah yeah, I heard you. So yeah, we're feeling good.
Speaker 3 (10:05):
I'm so excited today, Pack, because our interview today is
with Meg Lafov and Kelsey Mann. That's the writer and
the director of inside Out one and two and director
of inside Out two, respectively. The perspective that we are
about to drop on one of my favorite kids movies
that has come out ever, let alone recently. We are
talking to two visionaries in the space inside Out two.
(10:27):
If you haven't seen it, please go watch it. It
is outstanding and I cannot be any more clear when
I say this is a different look from both of
these folks that we haven't heard yet. And being inside
the mind of the creators of the Inside of the Mind,
which seems a little bit meta, was very fun for
both of us. So Pack, I'm excited to get to
(10:47):
our interview with Megan Kelsey Let's.
Speaker 1 (10:49):
Do it.
Speaker 4 (11:07):
Well.
Speaker 3 (11:07):
Thank you guys so much for joining us on Moms
Who Puck. We are the moms we have pucked. You
guys have since dabbled in our space, so welcome.
Speaker 5 (11:14):
Thanks for having us.
Speaker 4 (11:16):
Thank you so much. We're so excited to be here.
Speaker 3 (11:18):
Perfect I'm excited, and obviously Madison and I have two
little kids, which means everything inside out lives in our home,
from the dolls, to the movies, to one to two
to asking our kids who's driving the console right now?
I mean, we play all these fun games with our kids.
But truly, I love everything that you guys have both done,
and we are just truly so excited to dive in
(11:40):
to ask questions. I think the one question that's been
burning us is actually Madison's question. So I'll let you
take the first one pack.
Speaker 1 (11:46):
So I've played hockey for thirty years, so I know
the background of Minnesota and hockey, etc. My first, I
guess talking point question is for you Meg. When you're
writing a script, when you're writing anything, there's always a
why behind it, right, So Minnesota hockey obvious?
Speaker 2 (12:00):
But why Riley?
Speaker 1 (12:01):
Why hockey? Why did you choose that path and that outlet?
Was there anything else that you considered? Like let us
in a little bit if you don't mind, to that
creative brain and how you created that character.
Speaker 6 (12:11):
I can speak to inside out one and then I'll
let Kelsey you pick up for two in terms of
why hockey, because we did try other things too. In
the second movie where hockey came from is that when
I came on Inside Out one, they had Pete Doctor,
the incredible genius who was the director and creator of
Inside Out One. He had picked his five emotions, he
had places he wanted to go in the mind, but
(12:33):
the story wasn't working and he wanted to reboot and okay,
what's the story?
Speaker 5 (12:37):
And at that time, she was actually a figure skater.
Speaker 6 (12:40):
I remember the day in the room that we were
throwing story around. You feel like you're going in circles,
but you aren't. You're actually our going up the story mountain,
though maybe sometimes a lot of switchbacks. I remember Ronnie Delcarmen,
who was the co director and also an incredible, incredible
artist and storyteller himself, he said, you know what if
(13:02):
she was a hockey player instead? And the room just
lit up, like everybody started going, oh my gosh, that
is such a good idea, and I, as the writer,
just was like, in it, s has so much more
opportunity to really go through all of the emotions right
on the ice, meaning a figure skater. I'm not saying
(13:22):
they don't get mad. I'm not even saying they don't
get rageful, but there can't show it really right, like
they have to always be performing and presenting. Yeah, But
to have a hockey player and to allow a girl,
especially a girl character, to have all of those emotions
in her sport on the ice active present was just
(13:44):
so much more exciting as a story and for a
storyteller that we never went back, Like from that moment
it came out of his mouth, we never went back.
And Pete doctor comes from Minnesota, so he had a
lot of experience in terms of the ice. So that
was just we went now on inside out too. We
did try other things, didn't we Kelsey?
Speaker 4 (14:04):
Yeah, you know, we started this film with Riley being
a teenager now and we leaned into what goes on
in the brain at this age, and a lot of
it has to do with being self conscious. You're suddenly
comparing yourself to other people, You're feeling like you're coming
up short. And so Megan in the beginning, we're like,
(14:25):
where is the worst place possible for a teenager to be?
What situation can we put her in? And we thought, oh,
up on a stage in front of all of her peers.
It's also all about your peers at this age too.
You're so worried about how you fit in, so your
friend group is incredibly important. So we put her in
a talent show and we put her up on stage
(14:46):
and she was playing like a ukulele or something meg
in the beginning, it was something like that. She was
doing a.
Speaker 5 (14:51):
Little song and she was very talented, yes, but she was.
Speaker 4 (14:54):
Falling apart and it wasn't going well. And that's kind
of the first screening that we ever did was show Thing,
and it just didn't feel I don't know, it just
didn't feel right. It felt like it didn't really give
us what we wanted emotionally, it didn't feel like Riley.
And I remember it's like, well, what makes Riley unique?
You know? We we actually talked a lot about I
forgot about this. We actually talked a lot about the
(15:16):
movies we've been telling at Pixar, and there had been
a lot of teenage girl stories that we had already
kind of doven into, like Turning Red. Yeah, you know,
it was really important to us that we didn't just
repeat what Domie she had done on that film where
what makes her unique? You know Riley specifically, and it
was the hockey when we decided to lean into that.
(15:36):
And I mean, you guys could probably relate to this too,
like when you're a kid, when you're playing a sport
and you're joining a team. When you're a kid, you
just kind of automatically get on the team. But then
there's a point in which you're getting older, it's usually
high school, that kind of age where you suddenly have
to try out and you could get cut or you
(15:58):
could not make the team at all. And it was
happening to my kids. I remember my son was really
interested in playing golf and he tried out for the team.
He didn't make it, and it was kind of devastating.
And so we decided to put Riley through that.
Speaker 6 (16:12):
Because it is a moment where your sense of self
and who you are can move outside of yourself in
terms of that self awareness, and to allow the sport
to be how that is reflected back to her just
felt much more rich.
Speaker 3 (16:26):
I'm actually glad you said that, because that's where I
was going with every thing you were saying. So Madison
and I live in a pretty unique dichotomy as well,
we both played pro hockey, we both did all the things.
But for Madison, she was the top. She was the
top of our age class. She was on the national
team when we were growing up, Like all the things
were uniquely laid out for her. For me, it was
much more question of Okay, you're going to try out,
(16:48):
are you going to make the team?
Speaker 4 (16:50):
What does that mean?
Speaker 3 (16:50):
What is making the team even look like once you
do so, how do you fit in? How does that
work with your high school tenure? All of those things
felt real to me because the risk of not making
it was also real. And I remember when I was younger,
I was in eighth grade and they opened it up
because we didn't have enough girls playing sports at my
high school. So I am a middle schooler trying out
(17:11):
for the high school team, going through this issue where
I don't know how to see myself. I don't know
if I fit, I don't feel good enough, but I
am because I made it. And then like it was
like this push and pull so beautifully captured by your
story and the way that joy moves out of the way,
and it doesn't feel like you're enjoying this really really
(17:34):
hard process. I really loved that idea that joy is
gone and what do you do in the absence of that,
and how do you find yourself, especially when the idea
of anxiety on, we shyness and all these emotions that
quite frankly don't feel good. I love on Wei On
Wei's my favorite.
Speaker 4 (17:55):
She's my favorite.
Speaker 3 (17:57):
And I think that that was so that was so
interesting that then in that formative time, Joy is gone.
Speaker 4 (18:02):
Yeah, what made you choose that?
Speaker 3 (18:03):
Because I think that is so telling of being thirteen.
Speaker 4 (18:06):
I always pitched the story as a takeover movie because
the first film that Meg wrote, you know, it's all
kicked off because of Joy's flaw. She kind of accidentally
throws herself and sadness out of headquarters. And I was
very conscious I didn't want to repeat the last movie.
You know, a lot of sequels end up doing that.
We're like, that worked, let's just do it again, you know,
(18:27):
and kind of hit the same beats, and I'm like,
how do I do this? It makes it fresh and
kind of different than I remember thinking, Boy, they were
kind of accidentally thrown out of headquarters in the first film.
What if they were purposely sent away by somebody? What
if an emotion came in and took over and actually
locked them up and sent and sent them away. And
anxiety was that emotion. I remember making a list of
(18:50):
all the possible emotions that could show up, and I
was drawn to her pretty quickly. I just thought that's
something I could relate to, both when I was a
teenager as an adult, even in my kids. My kids
are older than yours. When I started, my daughter was
thirteen and my son was fourteen. They're now sixteen and seventeen,
so I'm right there in that kind of age, and
(19:10):
i could see it in them, you know. And a
lot of this we talked about before the pandemic and
it was already an issue, but afterwards, boy, it just
went up and everybody. But that's kind of where it
came from, is having anxiety coming in and taking over
headquarters and sending joy away. You know, you could really
feel that, especially with teenagers.
Speaker 6 (19:31):
When they called and said, you know, Kelsey Man, who
I loved and knew from working on The Good Dinosaur
with him, has this great idea of anxiety is going
to hijack take over. It's felt so real to me,
and I would say, honestly, yes, it felt real when
I was thirteen, and it still feels real today. If
I'm very honest, she can still hijack and just come
drive for a while. But Kelsey and I talked a
(19:53):
lot about in the first movie, Joy was asked to
step back to allow the other emotions for Riley to
have a full emotional human exp experience, and that they
were needed even though they quote unquote feel negative, but
they're not. And it's the same for these new emotions.
They may feel negative, but they're not. They're there to
help you. But we knew that in this movie. We
always knew that we wanted Joy to have to step forward,
and we talked a lot about when we did a
(20:15):
lot of research on anxiety and especially in ourselves in
the authentic way that we felt as kids or as
parents with children.
Speaker 5 (20:21):
Who have anxiety.
Speaker 6 (20:22):
I always love the idea that when Joy is young
in you and she just wants to play, that is
very dangerous to anxiety, because joy does make you feel vulnerable.
It opens you up, and it's a vulnerable place to
be because wh if you're truly in your state of joy,
you are not worried what other people think of you.
That self awareness kind of fuzzes a little bit, because
(20:44):
really you're just so deeply in your own experience to
anxiety that is ridiculous, Like why would you do that?
Like that's crazy. Don't you know everybody's judging you? Like
she would just start going right like, so it made
sense that she would say, you are too young of emotion,
you are too dangerous. Is not what Riley needs, and
she's not completely wrong, right. Joy did need to mature,
(21:07):
and we always loved that what Joy is maturing.
Speaker 5 (21:10):
Into is self compassion.
Speaker 6 (21:12):
You do need, of course, to still go into pure
joy and if you're very, very lucky, like the beautiful
artists at Pixar who have somehow maintained this child like joy,
I don't know how they did it, but they all
did it. It's amazing to be around them. It's infectious,
but how beautiful to have. By the end of this movie,
the mature idea of you can love yourself and find
(21:38):
joy in yourself no matter how you are, and that
you will be imperfect. That was also a very big
thing that Kelsey brought and wanted to talk about, was
imperfection and how at this age you need to be
perfect and you feel not enough and how amazing hockey
is to test that out right, because in any sport
you feel a sense of a need for perfection and
(21:59):
achievement and being better. And now you have the social
stuff of the older girls. So we talked a lot
about that too, in terms of where she is developmentally
versus these older girls and her ability to understand all
the social ramifications that are going on with the older girls.
Speaker 3 (22:15):
Absolutely, there's nothing more maybe to your point like exposing,
then you know what, I've got goofball island in my
world's that's like squarely where I live. And when I
go down that like completely goofy silly side of myself
what would always be me like dancing in the locker
room or like joking around with my teammates or like
whatever it was. But I am at that point the
(22:38):
most susceptible to being hurt because I'm full in to
being happy. And so if you're going to criticize me
there that almost feels like the worst place to be
met with some kind of like judgment or anything. Right, Like,
that's where it becomes the most exposing that I loved
so much. As hockey players, we wear this gear right,
(22:59):
the helmet goes on on the stuff goes on, and
it looks like you have to be big, tough and scary,
and we're not.
Speaker 5 (23:07):
We're still kids, we're still little girls.
Speaker 3 (23:09):
We're still learning, we're still trying to figure that out.
And so the moment that anxiety took over and there
was that anxiety attack, and I think, like I was
bawling my eyes out because I know that feeling. I
have anxiety in my own life and I've had those
manifestations while playing. But I thought it was so beautiful
that you chose that when she was in her strongest,
(23:29):
you know self gear on in the penalty box, just
had like this bout of anger to now be really vulnerable.
So what brought you to that specific moment, because it
is quite possibly one of the most powerful things I've
ever seen in the kids movie. To help my kids understand.
Speaker 4 (23:47):
Me, Yeah, we always knew from the beginning to take
over a part of it, right, and we knew that
anxiety would really drive on the console and drive too much,
too far, like because she really loves rating and she's
trying to help her. At first, she's kind of started
out as like a villain, you know, kind of manipulating
and kind of taking over on purpose. But then we realized,
(24:08):
we really understand her motivations, what she's doing, and it's
really coming from the research. We talked to a lot
of people, a lot of experts about the emotions and
what happens in our brain and why do we have
anxiety and she's really there to protect us. Fear and
anxiety are like I always joke at their distant cousins. Yeah,
they're related to one another, right, you know. Fear is
(24:28):
the feeling you get of a known threat, like you
see a tiger in front of you, it's right there,
you feel fear. Anxiety is the fear of a perceived threat,
like what's around the corner, what's tomorrow. She's always inside
her flight mode, but she's really there to try to
help you and keep you safe. So the movie worked
really well when we started to realize, like, well, joy
(24:48):
and anxiety are really two parents just arguing over how
to best take care of their child. They're both doing
it from a place of love, but they're both doing
it wrong, you know. And anxiety side is she's going
to drive too hard. We had that idea pretty early
on that she'd be all over the console. It would
be fritzing it out, you know, and that she'd be
driving her to the point of the panic attack that
(25:10):
we put her into because she's put so much pressure
on herself. How many times we talk about that, like
the pressure, especially social pressure. And she is in that game.
I look at it, you guys, like she steps on
the ice three times in this movie. Once is at
the beginning of the movie when she's playing with her
friends and it's not the varsity team, but you know
it's on her Foghorns little league team, right. Second time
(25:33):
is when anxiety is driving and she goes out in
the ice and she has a sense of achievement is
the word that we would always use. She has to
go out there and she has to achieve, and that's
why we gave her the three goals that she had
to get and she's doing it because for social pressure.
If I don't make this team, I won't heference. You know,
I want to have a social group, you know, which
is the worst fear that you have as a teenagers
(25:55):
and not have that.
Speaker 1 (25:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (25:57):
And the third one is after the panic attack and
she comes out of it, is she lets go of
that need to achieve and she just goes out there
just really to be present and to play with a
sense of joy. It's hopefully a deeper sense of joy.
We always called it the yay chocolate kind of joy,
you know, the kid like kind of joy. It's not
(26:18):
Meg was saying it earlier. She's driving. It's a different joy.
It's a different sense. It's not as fun playful. It's
definitely joyful, but she's out there just trying to be
present in the moment, which is why she's trying to
connect to all the senses. She's just trying to play
with a sense of just being present in the moment.
Speaker 6 (26:37):
Both Joy and anxiety in this movie their behavior is
based on the fear of her not being good enough,
and Anxiety is doing it by saying, we will think
of all the ways to be better and all the
ways that we if we're not good enough, we won't do,
and she's trying to project forward to make us good
enough on the team for social reasons. And then Joyce saying,
(27:00):
as these are painful memories, let's just put them in
the back of the mind. That is a different way
of saying, maybe our kid isn't good enough, so let's
just not think about it right, which we do as parents,
and we do it to ourselves too. I just won't
think about that. And so it really was in that
anxiety attack, both joy and anxiety, having to confront as
parents they weren't fully accepting their child and in this case,
(27:25):
or ourselves, which is all just coming from a belief
system by the way, which we can get into. I'm
just fascinated by belief systems. But for me, I love
her going on the ice, But the thing that gets
me every time is when all those emotions hug that
sense of self. She is flawed, she is not good
at math, and sometimes she's a terrible friend, and sometimes
(27:45):
she's a wonderful friend, and sometimes she loses control, and
sometimes she's all those things.
Speaker 5 (27:49):
We still love her and have compassion for her, So.
Speaker 6 (27:53):
We kind of always knew this anxiety attack was coming,
but it's so powerful to end up with that self
compassionate hug.
Speaker 1 (28:10):
I have high levels of anxiety, but it wasn't until
I was, you know, in my late twenties, that I
understood what anxiety was. And I would feel that, like
when I'm getting dressed in the locker room, I would
start to like feel anxious, like performance anxiety.
Speaker 2 (28:25):
But it's interesting that it actually got worse.
Speaker 1 (28:28):
As I got older, where like I started to put
those pressures on myself right where Like when I was
a kid, I felt like I just could play and
it was care free, and it was all these things.
And I actually have a really cool and fun inside
Out to experience. So when your movie premiered, I actually
was able to attend a private screening premiere with the
NHL Foundation in New York City.
Speaker 2 (28:50):
Oh fun, cool, guys.
Speaker 1 (28:52):
It was Honestly, it was the most incredible experience of
my life. And they invited me, so they had like
three hundred something off kids. We signed autographs for a
bit with the kids, and then like the big hook
of the event was the private screening of Inside Out two.
And I had seen Inside Out one with my son.
He was a big fan, like loved it. So instead
(29:12):
of bringing Anya as my date, I brought my three
year old And it was the first time I was
ever taking him to a movie theater. So I was like,
I don't know if we made a mistake. Clear, yeah,
I remember, get me you're trying to captivate attention, yes,
but he was dead silent the whole time. And I
mean like we were in there for the long longer
than the duration of the movie, because we also I
(29:33):
had to do it thirty minute Q and A on
stage before the movie started, and he came up and
sat on my lap about ten minutes in, but then
sat the whole movie. And then we're riding home, my gosh,
and he starts talking to me about his emotions, and
I'm like, oh, my goodness. So now the way that
we refer to emotions in our house is by the
names of the emotion. I'm like, how are you feeling? Ah,
(29:54):
like joy? It resonates so deeply for our four year old,
and our daughter Harlan, who's two, isn't quite there, but
we have emotion.
Speaker 2 (30:02):
Charts all over our house, et cetera. And so my
point in saying all.
Speaker 1 (30:05):
Of that is, obviously the work that you've done in
these movies have made a huge impact on kids, but
let's talk for a minute about the impact that they've made.
Speaker 2 (30:14):
On adults as well.
Speaker 1 (30:16):
I feel like I was more dialed than at certain
points than my kids, because I'm like, oh my goodness,
where was this when I was nine, ten eleven, you
know what I mean?
Speaker 2 (30:24):
Like it was so refreshing.
Speaker 1 (30:26):
When you introduced and created the character Anxiety, I was like,
Oh my god, that's me. I thought about being thought
about being anxiety for Halloween.
Speaker 4 (30:33):
Oh that's amazing.
Speaker 1 (30:35):
Like wow, right, Well, while we think about cartoons and
animation being quote unquote for younger generations of people, it's
really not How did you know your feeling and whether
it was pressures in sports or pressure in life, et cetera.
How did emotion that resonated for you translate into your
work and into this movie. How did you do that?
(30:56):
Because it's incredible.
Speaker 4 (30:58):
One of my favorite reasons of working with me is
that she's really good at this part. She calls it
going into the lava, right, like going in You have
to be vulnerable and brave enough to go into the
hard parts of being alive and being a person and
talk about stuff that makes you a little uncomfortable, because
that's where the real juice can be a lot of
(31:20):
this came from me looking at my own life, what
I kind of went through at that age, and I
was scanning all of my photos because I have a
lot of physical photos, and I'm like, I should have
digital copies of these just so I can have you
know a version of that. And so I was going
through and I was dating them too, the ones I
could figure out the dates. And there is something that
were my birthday. And I had this photo me when
(31:42):
I was five years old and it was my birthday
and I'm sitting there in front of my cake, surrounded
by my friends and family, and I had this immense
expression of joy on my face and it kind of
stopped me in my tracks. I'm like, holy cow, I
am so happy. It's not some random day. It's my birthday,
which is a day to celebrate me and kind of
(32:05):
who I am. And then I got older and I
turned eight and it went down a little bit. I
turned eleven, it went down even more, and then thirteen
and it's gone. I'm just sitting there staring at my cage,
wishing I was anywhere, hoping someone wasn't taking my pick.
Ye oh my god, Yes, Anya, I hated being sung
(32:30):
Happy Birthday too. At that age, I loathed it. This
is the lava part. This is the part where Meg
is like, why are you feeling that? Let's really go
deep deep down. And if I go really deep down again,
it's a day to celebrate who I am. And me,
and I hated the attention. Yeah, I hated everyone looking
(32:51):
at me. I wanted it to be over. I wanted
everyone to look away from me. And if I go
really really deep down, what's really at the core of
that is, you know, am I really worth all that celebrating.
That's what I was really feeling. I think it's a
thing that a lot of people feel, especially at this age.
It's all about comparison. I've learned why, you know, I've
done so much research on the brain and what happens
(33:14):
and why we experience the things that we do. There's
a reason, you guys, that your kids are going to
push you away. They're supposed to, like, it's part of
our design, you know, because they need to go from
being taken care of to taking care of themselves. And
we're social creatures that need each other for survival, and
so that's why it's all about fitting in this deep
(33:34):
seated like survival instinct we have, and so you're comparing
yourself to others, and that's really what I was doing,
and I was feeling like I was coming up short,
that I'm not enough in all the ways possible. So
that's really where a lot of this came from is
talking about that feeling that shows up at best age
that I'm not good enough and learning to love who
(33:57):
you are both inside and out was kind of the
pitch I had from the very beginning.
Speaker 6 (34:02):
We talked a lot about that too at that age,
in terms of gosh, I want to be that girl.
I just want to be you because you're so cool,
and I remember you had a kid at school, Kelsey,
who like could play jazz or what was it the
sex of phony.
Speaker 5 (34:14):
You were like, I just need to be that guy.
We had to be.
Speaker 6 (34:17):
Very honest about how we felt at that age and
how we still feel honestly, I mean, we're still human beings,
and to be fair to we were. Also we moved
into the pandemic during this, so there was anxiety everywhere
and everyone. It was so pervasive and it was hijacking everywhere.
And also that feeling of not enough. Writing a sequel
(34:38):
to Inside Out, like you start the game board entrance
is not enough, Like it's just it's heavy, you know,
I think it's a I Kelsey and I when we started,
we had each other at least in that together to
link arms and say, okay, this feels very a lot,
and it feels like it's impossible and how are we
(34:59):
ever going to do this?
Speaker 5 (35:00):
But then we just kept coming back.
Speaker 6 (35:02):
To two things I would say, which is a perfect
compliment of the movie really being brave and going into
our anxiety about it, into the feelings of not enough,
into the feelings of being unworthy, and on the other side,
going into the fun. And it does take someone maturing
for your brain to be able to do that, I think,
because when you go into fun, you're pulling your sense
(35:22):
of self and good enough back to yourself versus out
to what everybody else thinks of you.
Speaker 1 (35:29):
And I love everything that you both just said, because
my max question for you is going to be how
much human experience weighs into your work, particularly this movie
versus developmental psychology. But you both have worked on actually
three of our kids four most favorite movies, inside Out one,
Inside Out two, The Good Dinosaur, which is also phenomenal
for people.
Speaker 2 (35:47):
Who haven't checked that out. Like also all about.
Speaker 1 (35:50):
Empathy and emotion and self pressure and discovery, but you
can feel that emotion in that like care and so
obviously there was always a ton of research that goes
into your work. But I want to dig a little
more deeply into it because I think it's important.
Speaker 4 (36:06):
There's a lot of research that's on this movie. We
had a couple experts. We had Decor Keltner. He was
on the first film. He's a professor over at Berkeley,
and he's kind of our emotional expert on the first
film and on the second. I met with him the
first week, but that was on this movie and asked him, Okay,
what happens in the brain when we're teenagers? And I'll
never forget him leaning back, going, oh my goodness, Kelsey,
(36:29):
it's so much and I'm like, oh my god, God,
I got so excited about it, you know. And Lisai
to Moore was another one. She's an author and a
phlinical psychologist and a podcaster and she wasn't incredible. We
met with the two of them from the very beginning
to honestly the very end, and we have a great
opportunity with this movie, but we also if we're not careful,
(36:52):
we could do harm if we're sending the wrong message
or saying the wrong thing, or it's not being true
to actually the way it was. So Megan and I
were very concerned and it was very important us that
we got to write, but you also have to listen
to like what the story needs, and you have to
break things every once in a while. I can't say
that we broke anything in terms of like the research
(37:14):
of the brain. Maybe a little bit, you know. I
mean Dhacker would be like, so you only chose five emotions, Pete,
you know, like seriously, there's that's all you can do? Yeah, yeah,
I really yeah. And he was really great. He would
always go, well, this is typically how it is. But
I think I could buy that, you know, because you
(37:34):
have to. You have to bend it a little bit
for the story, you know. I mean Megan's talking about
like all the people that we want to impress and
want to like make sure that they loved it. I
really wanted you guys to love it because I honestly,
this is very embarrassing. I'm also from Minnesota, like Pizza
from Minnesota, and I'll be honest, neither one of us
(37:54):
know hockey at all. Like it's a it's a bit
of shame that I have being a man, and I know,
can you believe it?
Speaker 2 (38:02):
You should be embarrassed.
Speaker 4 (38:03):
Oh my goodness, you got.
Speaker 2 (38:04):
A Michigan connection too, right, I do I do. Yeah,
it's even worse. Your hole just got bigger.
Speaker 4 (38:11):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (38:11):
Kelson was very concerned about that it feel authentic from.
Speaker 4 (38:13):
The hockey point of Yeah, I mean that's screening mass.
Then you went to I really wish I could be
a part of that. I felt, I felt envy. I
felt a little envy of I want to be there.
Speaker 2 (38:22):
You know what, though it was incredible, it would the
event was.
Speaker 1 (38:26):
I think we had three or four hundred kids, all
hockey players in their jerseys.
Speaker 2 (38:31):
I can't believe you guys didn't know about it.
Speaker 4 (38:32):
I wanted when the movie was done, I wanted you
guys to enjoy it, but I also wanted you guys
to look up on the screen and see hockey represented
on the screen and for you guys to say they
got it right. That's what was my goal. And I
kept saying that. I go and I always put people
in the room who knew what they were talking about,
and I would be like, is this right? You know,
we have a lot of really great animators who play hockey,
(38:56):
so they could bring a lot of that. If if
you played hockey and you're an animator, you get assigned
a shot in which a hockey was somehow involved. I
tried to surround myself with people who are the experts,
and you listen to them, but ultimately you have to
make certain calls every once in a while where you're like, well,
I know that probably the way it's going to be done,
but I need to not do that for this specific
(39:18):
story reason. An example just popped in my head. Okay,
when Riley goes out on the ice after she's like
had the panic attack, and she's like, you know what,
I'm just gonna go out there and be present and
enjoy playing the sport that I love and I'm not
going to put the pressure on myself to achieve. We
wanted to have these beautiful shots for really being present
and show the utter beauty that hockey can be. So
(39:41):
there's a point where it's a close up on her
feet on her skates and Riley is doing this beautiful
like spin move. It's in slow motion and it's really
joy driving and she's present and enjoying the heck out
of being there. I remember hanging that out to the
animator and they were like, why is she doing? Like
(40:01):
is there another opponent coming? And she needs the spin
to get out of the way. We thought of all
these reasons, and finally I was like, you know what,
if anyone's asking why she's doing what she's doing in
this given moment, we're sunk and hopefully they're just in
the moment right there and the utter beauty. It's one
of my favorite shots. It's gorgeous. But if you really
(40:21):
think about it, there's no real sense of why she
needs to do that.
Speaker 2 (40:25):
You're like spin a rama gear.
Speaker 4 (40:27):
Yes, yeah, like why did she doing that? Exactly? But everyone,
I'll need to break things just a little bit for
the sake of this story.
Speaker 6 (40:35):
As a writer, you do all that research and then
you have to, in a way, not think about it anymore.
Like it went into your brain, you have to trust
it and then write from your heart and your gut
and just what feels real and authentic, because if you're
writing from your intellect and trying to check things off,
it'll start to feel fake. It'll start to not feel human,
(40:56):
it'll start to feel like AI I think versus kind
of the human experience, and human experience is contradictory. That
is what's the beauty of being a human is it
doesn't often make sense, and you have to allow that
to come out onto the page and that contradictoriness, because
when you do that and then you start moving into
that lava. My real goal in any writing is if
(41:18):
we can get honest enough and have enough fun. But
if we can get honest enough and authentic enough and
contradictory enough and human enough, people don't feel so alone.
Speaker 4 (41:28):
I want to give somebody props that was on the
crew who really gave a lot. Her name is Tracy Roberts,
and she wasn't even on the film. She was on
a different movie. When I said I want people around
me who know what they're talking about with hockey, and
somebody said, do you know Tracy, I said, no, you
should talk to her. She has played hockey since she
was a little kid. She's a coach. If she's not
(41:49):
at Pixar, she's on the ice somewhere. She eats, breathe
and lives it. And I brought her in and asked
her to help consult, and she gave so much to
the film from beginning to end. Her perspective was so
immensely helpful. The varsity coach in the movie we named
(42:09):
your Coach Roberts after Tracy because she just there's all
the respect and love. Yeah, I absolutely love her. She
was in animation dailies and she would always kind of
give her two cents on what felt true. I know
exactly where you should hold your stick. A lot of
animators were having the stick like stick a little bit
passed out of their hand. No, no, no, no, it's
(42:31):
got to go right to the edge in the hand.
Speaker 3 (42:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (42:33):
I know that from Tracy. I've learned a lot on
this movie and it's because of her. So, yeah, you
have to have people like that around you who know
what they're talking about. I love that.
Speaker 3 (42:43):
I love that so much because I think in everything
that you guys are saying, it's so authentic to what
I as a hockey player look at and feel and
see when I watch the movies, and I think you
guys have done so much work and thought on the
lava and I love that concept. I'm going to use
that in my life now now to give you my
perspective as a little girl that played hockey, played with boys.
(43:06):
Because I'm from Massachusetts, it wasn't at the same level yet,
and I'm thirty three years old. I looked up at
that screen and I saw me, and without getting emotional,
I saw how hard it was to be me, and
I acknowledged that, and I like it helped me heal
(43:26):
something in me as a little girl who had all
this struggle with anxiety. You don't know how validating it
is to be that little girl with no public facing
images of herself. I can't thank you enough for that.
And I think in that moment, so many of us
just took a deep breath and said, hockey's here, and
(43:46):
choosing that sport, and like choosing the vulnerability and choosing
the fact that it was a young girl and it
was going through all these things and you're right, the
hockey look like hockey.
Speaker 4 (43:55):
I was like, let's go, she's sick. That really means
a lot. I think a big part of why I
wanted to make the movie is that I really could
have used a movie like this when I was a teenager. Yeah,
we had the real chance to put something up on
a screen say ultimately, you aren't alone, you know, and
you think you are, especially when you're a teenager, is
you want to hide that as much as possible. And
(44:16):
so we had the opportunity to put something out in
the world to tell a bunch of people that, like,
you're not alone in what you're thinking and feeling.
Speaker 5 (44:23):
Yeah, and so much of that too.
Speaker 6 (44:25):
As being a parent, you know that we always want
to fix what's happening with our kids. We want to
make it better, we want to get them back to joy.
But what's so so important is to just be with
them where they are. And it's so uncomfortable as a parent.
Speaker 5 (44:38):
To be there.
Speaker 6 (44:38):
You have to regulate yourself in order to create that
space for that child, and it's so hard, but it's
such a gift because they get to know themselves and
that they can tell you something that feels embarrassing, something
that feels shameful, something that feels weird or just ugly,
or all those other things.
Speaker 1 (44:59):
Everything both just said, I don't think anyone could say
it any better. And I think that that's what makes
your work so beautiful is that you can feel that.
And the way that the work that you have put
together explains emotions to kids in a way that some
parents can't even understand is actually truly incredible. I think
that your contribution in cinema just in the world is invaluable.
(45:23):
And you're talking about, you know, a really heavy thing
and maybe a light way, but the world needs more
of it.
Speaker 5 (45:30):
Thank you guys so much for joining us on These
Packs Puck. Thank you so much for having us. Was
super fun.
Speaker 4 (45:36):
It was really an honor to be here and talk
to you guys.
Speaker 3 (45:38):
Thank you, and that's all we have today. Thank you
for listening.
Speaker 1 (45:46):
I'm on your packer and I'm Madison Packer and this
is These Packs Puck.
Speaker 4 (45:53):
These Packs Puck.
Speaker 3 (45:54):
Is a production of Iheartwomen's Sports in Deep Blue Sports
and Entertainment.
Speaker 1 (45:57):
It's hosted by US Madison and an You pack. Emily
Meronoff is our awesome senior producer and story editor.
Speaker 2 (46:04):
We were mixed and mastered by Mary do.
Speaker 1 (46:06):
Our executive producers are Jennifer Bassett, Jesse Katz
Speaker 4 (46:09):
And Ali Perry.
Hey everyone, I'm Madison Packer, and I'm Anypacker.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
I'm a recently retired pro hockey vet.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
I was a founding member of the National Women's Hockey League,
a pillar in the PHF with the Riveters, and an
inaugural member of the PWHL Sirens.
Speaker 3 (00:16):
And I played two. That's how Madison and I met,
but I stepped away to start our family.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
Now we're married and moms to two awesome toddlers, ages
two and four.
Speaker 3 (00:26):
And this is these packspot where we talk about everything
for professional women's athletes, to sports, to raising children and
all the messiness in between.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Hey Anya, Hey pack how are you doing over there
in your makeshift studio?
Speaker 3 (00:40):
My makeshift studio is whack, But outside of that, I'm
all right. How are you doing in a nice chili home?
Since I don't like turning the heat up above sixty
five degrees?
Speaker 2 (00:51):
Shivering in my sweats.
Speaker 3 (00:53):
Shivering in my sweats should be a book that we write.
But lo and behold not the point of the conversation.
Let's get into a little hockey hot take.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
Hockey hot take.
Speaker 3 (01:10):
The hockey hot take that I have today is specifically
about the movies, inside out and inside out too. And
I think that was one of the first times that
I've ever looked on television and seen a women's hockey player,
seen a girl going through it all and like climbing
the ranks of sport, specifically within hockey, and I think
(01:33):
is an instrumental gain for women's hockey and the growth
of the sport as a whole.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
Yeah, I agree.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
I think the hot take for the day maybe just
the importance of inclusion surrounding sport and emphasis and importance
of continuing to make hockey more accessible. I wouldn't even
say necessarily keep hockey accessible because I think that there
are so many barriers to entry for the sport, right
like access to ice, cost, popularity, Like, there's just so
(02:01):
many things that make hockey already a little bit harder
for players to get into. Then you look at the
number of girls teams versus boys teams. Do girls want
to play with exclusively boys? Like, there's so many things,
and there's so much work that we can do to
create safe spaces for girls in a predominantly quote unquote
boys environment. But then just everybody to create a safer
space for everyone, fans and players included, to continue wanting
(02:24):
to grow and follow and be fans of the hockey
community because it's.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
A pretty special place.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
But I think that we both can agree that there's
room for improvement in how we welcome people into that space.
Speaker 3 (02:36):
A huge part of what we do and what we
talk about is always like changing hockey culture and getting
out of these weird cultural perspectives that make hockey feel
very exclusive, right, like, take everything away from it. It
is a game, it's beautiful, it's fun, there's camaraderie, there's
good lessons, there's time management, there's skills that help young
(02:57):
girls become better women. But I love so much that
we're starting to get to a place where we do
have those change culture conversations. We do have those images
that people can look at, whether that be the PWHL,
whether that be the national teams as they play the Olympics,
the international play that's starting to get more heavily broadcast.
And then that third layer is a cartoon that everyone
(03:22):
is obsessed with that has all these incredible messages, but
weft through it is little me is a younger version
of me. And so I think as we break those barriers,
we start to see that change culture is important, is
going to be the difference maker. And also hockey is
so amazing and it's almost been the best kept secret
(03:44):
in women's sports.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
We obviously talk a lot about the PTERWHL Professional Women's Hockey,
professional women's sports, but like the top is not actually
maybe the part that we're trying to change per se
if you will, Like the point is the grassroots right
in keeping the game access well to continue bringing fans
and players in because that's what then cultivates success at
the top. Because reality, like how many players go on
(04:07):
to play pro sports, but you want and need and
rely upon tens of hundreds of thousands of people consuming
that professional sport. And the way you do that is
you create fans, You create brand alignment, you create brand loyalty.
You want partners who want to be in the living
rooms of your fans. You need as many fans as possible.
You need to target the things that those fans are
interested in, and so we need to get more fans.
(04:30):
And usually a fan of a sport is someone who's
in some way connected, whether they play, their kids play right,
And so I think that that's you know, the broader
and bigger picture, And like it's hard, maybe you live
in an area where there's not a super close ice rink,
like if you go to Michigan, ice is two fifty
an hour for a sheet.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
In New York City it's.
Speaker 4 (04:46):
Over a thousand.
Speaker 1 (04:48):
So you need access to an ice rink to play hockey.
To play basketball, you just need a park. Or soccer
you need a field. And so I think that we
need to find more ways to be creative, whether it's
street hockey, whether it's broad clinics in tandem with the
PWHL in the NHL, just ways to get kids involved
and spark that interest in that love for the game
and their parents as well, so that these people want
(05:09):
to continue supporting and consuming the products so that the
game can continue to grow.
Speaker 3 (05:13):
I also thought the storyline of a young girl moving
from Minnesota to San Francisco and having to play hockey
to your point somewhere where it's not popular, and then
being able to do it make new friends like you're right,
You and I on a soapbox as former professional athletes
probably means a lot less by way of connection, visibility,
(05:35):
and site than a kid in a new town leveraging
something she loves where hockey is not the most important thing.
So let me get out of the movie because I'm,
like I said, I'm truly obsessed. But let me pull
myself out of it. I'm from Massachusetts. I moved to
Connecticut to play pro sports. And where the PWHL is
are all these very hockey dense communities, the Try State, Toronto, Montreal, Minnesota,
(06:01):
like you name it, that's a hockey rich community, Ottawa,
Boston area. So if you look at the takeover series
for the PTERHL this year, the PTERHL is picking up
and dropping down in satellite markets. Two things I love
about it is the idea of picking a hockey game
up and dropping it in a new market, like most
pro men's leagues do in international markets. It proves the
(06:23):
value on should we expand to these markets? Are the
fans going to show up, our media partners going to
show up? Are the players happy and excited to go
to said region? So we see games that are happening
in Seattle, Vancouver. But I love this concept that we're
going to non hockey dense communities to showcase the product
of women's hockey. I think that breaks down a lot
(06:44):
of barriers, don't you think.
Speaker 1 (06:46):
Actually, Amanda Pelke for the Boston Fleet does it all
the time with her summer camps, which I think is awesome.
Another fellow mom shout out to Venla and Levi there Newborn.
But it just starts to create opportunity for peopleeople who
may not otherwise have the opportunity to see a game,
right because.
Speaker 2 (07:04):
You can't see it if you can't see it.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
Some people don't have the luxury of being able to
buy a ticket and get on a plane or get
in the car and come to a game. Like it's
expensive to be a sports fan, and so the more
that we can create opportunities for people to make it
easier for people to be there and also create just fun,
cool like historic moments that people want to be a
part of, and then you start to draw from that.
Speaker 3 (07:23):
It's also a measure of data, Like the more that
women's sports gets out of the same data pool, the
more we can say there's broadband reach, there's brand recognition,
there's growth, there's an appetite for supporting partners. So not
to bury the lead, but later we talk to two
very important members of the inside Out team, and in
(07:44):
that conversation they explored the sports that Riley was going
to play and the fact that they kept women's hockey
as the line, the tie that bound the whole situation.
I think that helps break the barriers of what's happening
inst women's hockey as well. But why do we need
to build old walls for a community that is exclusively
meant for cheering fandom? And like, what is the reason?
Speaker 4 (08:09):
I don't know, It's the.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
Question we're all trying to answer. This is the hockey
hot take.
Speaker 3 (08:13):
Why build a wall when you could build a door?
Speaker 2 (08:15):
I know, a door seems so much more affordable.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
Speaking of doors, let's step into the door of your
brain for a second and do a little check in
who's driving your console today?
Speaker 2 (08:29):
How are we feeling?
Speaker 3 (08:31):
I always say, like, when we talk about the console
and who's driving, there should be like another emotion called
too much coffee or like jitters or something like that.
Because I'm squarely there, it's not necessarily anxiety. But I
have had too much coffee today. I haven't had a
minute to myself. I woke up, went to the office.
Work is absolutely insane. I'm fired up. That's not always
(08:54):
a good place to be, but I would I would say,
I'm like, at seventy five, I've got a high level
of stress though, Oh where are you at?
Speaker 2 (09:01):
I'm at like a eighty three. I think mostly Joy
is driving my console.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
Maybe a little anxiety, which is just like how I operate,
So maybe she's just sitting on the console, not driving.
But yeah, I've had some good conversations lately, Excited about
some stuff that we're working on that I'm working on,
been really in my groove with the kids lately.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
Harlan hasn't bitny in.
Speaker 1 (09:23):
A few days. I mean she her front to this chip,
which how did that even happen? But like she bites
To all parents out there, we know that biting is wrong,
but like, let's.
Speaker 2 (09:32):
Be honest, what do you do? You don't bite them back?
Speaker 1 (09:35):
Like you just have to like parent them through it
and explain that, like explain how it's wrong. But like
some some parents that are like, like, I get it,
kid shouldn't bity. She doesn't bite all the kids at school.
She just basically exclusively bites me and sometimes Whalen. But yeah,
we've been in a good spot.
Speaker 3 (09:49):
Let me add a warning to everybody else. Madison will
like wiggle her finger in Harlan's face and then Harlan
bites her finger. So it is a little bit of
a prompted bite.
Speaker 2 (09:59):
You cut out it in here any you said just now?
Speaker 4 (10:00):
Yeah yeah yeah, she heard me.
Speaker 2 (10:02):
Yeah yeah yeah, I heard you. So yeah, we're feeling good.
Speaker 3 (10:05):
I'm so excited today, Pack, because our interview today is
with Meg Lafov and Kelsey Mann. That's the writer and
the director of inside Out one and two and director
of inside Out two, respectively. The perspective that we are
about to drop on one of my favorite kids movies
that has come out ever, let alone recently. We are
talking to two visionaries in the space inside Out two.
(10:27):
If you haven't seen it, please go watch it. It
is outstanding and I cannot be any more clear when
I say this is a different look from both of
these folks that we haven't heard yet. And being inside
the mind of the creators of the Inside of the Mind,
which seems a little bit meta, was very fun for
both of us. So Pack, I'm excited to get to
(10:47):
our interview with Megan Kelsey Let's.
Speaker 1 (10:49):
Do it.
Speaker 4 (11:07):
Well.
Speaker 3 (11:07):
Thank you guys so much for joining us on Moms
Who Puck. We are the moms we have pucked. You
guys have since dabbled in our space, so welcome.
Speaker 5 (11:14):
Thanks for having us.
Speaker 4 (11:16):
Thank you so much. We're so excited to be here.
Speaker 3 (11:18):
Perfect I'm excited, and obviously Madison and I have two
little kids, which means everything inside out lives in our home,
from the dolls, to the movies, to one to two
to asking our kids who's driving the console right now?
I mean, we play all these fun games with our kids.
But truly, I love everything that you guys have both done,
and we are just truly so excited to dive in
(11:40):
to ask questions. I think the one question that's been
burning us is actually Madison's question. So I'll let you
take the first one pack.
Speaker 1 (11:46):
So I've played hockey for thirty years, so I know
the background of Minnesota and hockey, etc. My first, I
guess talking point question is for you Meg. When you're
writing a script, when you're writing anything, there's always a
why behind it, right, So Minnesota hockey obvious?
Speaker 2 (12:00):
But why Riley?
Speaker 1 (12:01):
Why hockey? Why did you choose that path and that outlet?
Was there anything else that you considered? Like let us
in a little bit if you don't mind, to that
creative brain and how you created that character.
Speaker 6 (12:11):
I can speak to inside out one and then I'll
let Kelsey you pick up for two in terms of
why hockey, because we did try other things too. In
the second movie where hockey came from is that when
I came on Inside Out one, they had Pete Doctor,
the incredible genius who was the director and creator of
Inside Out One. He had picked his five emotions, he
had places he wanted to go in the mind, but
(12:33):
the story wasn't working and he wanted to reboot and okay,
what's the story?
Speaker 5 (12:37):
And at that time, she was actually a figure skater.
Speaker 6 (12:40):
I remember the day in the room that we were
throwing story around. You feel like you're going in circles,
but you aren't. You're actually our going up the story mountain,
though maybe sometimes a lot of switchbacks. I remember Ronnie Delcarmen,
who was the co director and also an incredible, incredible
artist and storyteller himself, he said, you know what if
(13:02):
she was a hockey player instead? And the room just
lit up, like everybody started going, oh my gosh, that
is such a good idea, and I, as the writer,
just was like, in it, s has so much more
opportunity to really go through all of the emotions right
on the ice, meaning a figure skater. I'm not saying
(13:22):
they don't get mad. I'm not even saying they don't
get rageful, but there can't show it really right, like
they have to always be performing and presenting. Yeah, But
to have a hockey player and to allow a girl,
especially a girl character, to have all of those emotions
in her sport on the ice active present was just
(13:44):
so much more exciting as a story and for a
storyteller that we never went back, Like from that moment
it came out of his mouth, we never went back.
And Pete doctor comes from Minnesota, so he had a
lot of experience in terms of the ice. So that
was just we went now on inside out too. We
did try other things, didn't we Kelsey?
Speaker 4 (14:04):
Yeah, you know, we started this film with Riley being
a teenager now and we leaned into what goes on
in the brain at this age, and a lot of
it has to do with being self conscious. You're suddenly
comparing yourself to other people, You're feeling like you're coming
up short. And so Megan in the beginning, we're like,
(14:25):
where is the worst place possible for a teenager to be?
What situation can we put her in? And we thought, oh,
up on a stage in front of all of her peers.
It's also all about your peers at this age too.
You're so worried about how you fit in, so your
friend group is incredibly important. So we put her in
a talent show and we put her up on stage
(14:46):
and she was playing like a ukulele or something meg
in the beginning, it was something like that. She was
doing a.
Speaker 5 (14:51):
Little song and she was very talented, yes, but she was.
Speaker 4 (14:54):
Falling apart and it wasn't going well. And that's kind
of the first screening that we ever did was show Thing,
and it just didn't feel I don't know, it just
didn't feel right. It felt like it didn't really give
us what we wanted emotionally, it didn't feel like Riley.
And I remember it's like, well, what makes Riley unique?
You know? We we actually talked a lot about I
forgot about this. We actually talked a lot about the
(15:16):
movies we've been telling at Pixar, and there had been
a lot of teenage girl stories that we had already
kind of doven into, like Turning Red. Yeah, you know,
it was really important to us that we didn't just
repeat what Domie she had done on that film where
what makes her unique? You know Riley specifically, and it
was the hockey when we decided to lean into that.
(15:36):
And I mean, you guys could probably relate to this too,
like when you're a kid, when you're playing a sport
and you're joining a team. When you're a kid, you
just kind of automatically get on the team. But then
there's a point in which you're getting older, it's usually
high school, that kind of age where you suddenly have
to try out and you could get cut or you
(15:58):
could not make the team at all. And it was
happening to my kids. I remember my son was really
interested in playing golf and he tried out for the team.
He didn't make it, and it was kind of devastating.
And so we decided to put Riley through that.
Speaker 6 (16:12):
Because it is a moment where your sense of self
and who you are can move outside of yourself in
terms of that self awareness, and to allow the sport
to be how that is reflected back to her just
felt much more rich.
Speaker 3 (16:26):
I'm actually glad you said that, because that's where I
was going with every thing you were saying. So Madison
and I live in a pretty unique dichotomy as well,
we both played pro hockey, we both did all the things.
But for Madison, she was the top. She was the
top of our age class. She was on the national
team when we were growing up, Like all the things
were uniquely laid out for her. For me, it was
much more question of Okay, you're going to try out,
(16:48):
are you going to make the team?
Speaker 4 (16:50):
What does that mean?
Speaker 3 (16:50):
What is making the team even look like once you
do so, how do you fit in? How does that
work with your high school tenure? All of those things
felt real to me because the risk of not making
it was also real. And I remember when I was younger,
I was in eighth grade and they opened it up
because we didn't have enough girls playing sports at my
high school. So I am a middle schooler trying out
(17:11):
for the high school team, going through this issue where
I don't know how to see myself. I don't know
if I fit, I don't feel good enough, but I
am because I made it. And then like it was
like this push and pull so beautifully captured by your
story and the way that joy moves out of the way,
and it doesn't feel like you're enjoying this really really
(17:34):
hard process. I really loved that idea that joy is
gone and what do you do in the absence of that,
and how do you find yourself, especially when the idea
of anxiety on, we shyness and all these emotions that
quite frankly don't feel good. I love on Wei On
Wei's my favorite.
Speaker 4 (17:55):
She's my favorite.
Speaker 3 (17:57):
And I think that that was so that was so
interesting that then in that formative time, Joy is gone.
Speaker 4 (18:02):
Yeah, what made you choose that?
Speaker 3 (18:03):
Because I think that is so telling of being thirteen.
Speaker 4 (18:06):
I always pitched the story as a takeover movie because
the first film that Meg wrote, you know, it's all
kicked off because of Joy's flaw. She kind of accidentally
throws herself and sadness out of headquarters. And I was
very conscious I didn't want to repeat the last movie.
You know, a lot of sequels end up doing that.
We're like, that worked, let's just do it again, you know,
(18:27):
and kind of hit the same beats, and I'm like,
how do I do this? It makes it fresh and
kind of different than I remember thinking, Boy, they were
kind of accidentally thrown out of headquarters in the first film.
What if they were purposely sent away by somebody? What
if an emotion came in and took over and actually
locked them up and sent and sent them away. And
anxiety was that emotion. I remember making a list of
(18:50):
all the possible emotions that could show up, and I
was drawn to her pretty quickly. I just thought that's
something I could relate to, both when I was a
teenager as an adult, even in my kids. My kids
are older than yours. When I started, my daughter was
thirteen and my son was fourteen. They're now sixteen and seventeen,
so I'm right there in that kind of age, and
(19:10):
i could see it in them, you know. And a
lot of this we talked about before the pandemic and
it was already an issue, but afterwards, boy, it just
went up and everybody. But that's kind of where it
came from, is having anxiety coming in and taking over
headquarters and sending joy away. You know, you could really
feel that, especially with teenagers.
Speaker 6 (19:31):
When they called and said, you know, Kelsey Man, who
I loved and knew from working on The Good Dinosaur
with him, has this great idea of anxiety is going
to hijack take over. It's felt so real to me,
and I would say, honestly, yes, it felt real when
I was thirteen, and it still feels real today. If
I'm very honest, she can still hijack and just come
drive for a while. But Kelsey and I talked a
(19:53):
lot about in the first movie, Joy was asked to
step back to allow the other emotions for Riley to
have a full emotional human exp experience, and that they
were needed even though they quote unquote feel negative, but
they're not. And it's the same for these new emotions.
They may feel negative, but they're not. They're there to
help you. But we knew that in this movie. We
always knew that we wanted Joy to have to step forward,
and we talked a lot about when we did a
(20:15):
lot of research on anxiety and especially in ourselves in
the authentic way that we felt as kids or as
parents with children.
Speaker 5 (20:21):
Who have anxiety.
Speaker 6 (20:22):
I always love the idea that when Joy is young
in you and she just wants to play, that is
very dangerous to anxiety, because joy does make you feel vulnerable.
It opens you up, and it's a vulnerable place to
be because wh if you're truly in your state of joy,
you are not worried what other people think of you.
That self awareness kind of fuzzes a little bit, because
(20:44):
really you're just so deeply in your own experience to
anxiety that is ridiculous, Like why would you do that?
Like that's crazy. Don't you know everybody's judging you? Like
she would just start going right like, so it made
sense that she would say, you are too young of emotion,
you are too dangerous. Is not what Riley needs, and
she's not completely wrong, right. Joy did need to mature,
(21:07):
and we always loved that what Joy is maturing.
Speaker 5 (21:10):
Into is self compassion.
Speaker 6 (21:12):
You do need, of course, to still go into pure
joy and if you're very, very lucky, like the beautiful
artists at Pixar who have somehow maintained this child like joy,
I don't know how they did it, but they all
did it. It's amazing to be around them. It's infectious,
but how beautiful to have. By the end of this movie,
the mature idea of you can love yourself and find
(21:38):
joy in yourself no matter how you are, and that
you will be imperfect. That was also a very big
thing that Kelsey brought and wanted to talk about, was
imperfection and how at this age you need to be
perfect and you feel not enough and how amazing hockey
is to test that out right, because in any sport
you feel a sense of a need for perfection and
(21:59):
achievement and being better. And now you have the social
stuff of the older girls. So we talked a lot
about that too, in terms of where she is developmentally
versus these older girls and her ability to understand all
the social ramifications that are going on with the older girls.
Speaker 3 (22:15):
Absolutely, there's nothing more maybe to your point like exposing,
then you know what, I've got goofball island in my
world's that's like squarely where I live. And when I
go down that like completely goofy silly side of myself
what would always be me like dancing in the locker
room or like joking around with my teammates or like
whatever it was. But I am at that point the
(22:38):
most susceptible to being hurt because I'm full in to
being happy. And so if you're going to criticize me
there that almost feels like the worst place to be
met with some kind of like judgment or anything. Right, Like,
that's where it becomes the most exposing that I loved
so much. As hockey players, we wear this gear right,
(22:59):
the helmet goes on on the stuff goes on, and
it looks like you have to be big, tough and scary,
and we're not.
Speaker 5 (23:07):
We're still kids, we're still little girls.
Speaker 3 (23:09):
We're still learning, we're still trying to figure that out.
And so the moment that anxiety took over and there
was that anxiety attack, and I think, like I was
bawling my eyes out because I know that feeling. I
have anxiety in my own life and I've had those
manifestations while playing. But I thought it was so beautiful
that you chose that when she was in her strongest,
(23:29):
you know self gear on in the penalty box, just
had like this bout of anger to now be really vulnerable.
So what brought you to that specific moment, because it
is quite possibly one of the most powerful things I've
ever seen in the kids movie. To help my kids understand.
Speaker 4 (23:47):
Me, Yeah, we always knew from the beginning to take
over a part of it, right, and we knew that
anxiety would really drive on the console and drive too much,
too far, like because she really loves rating and she's
trying to help her. At first, she's kind of started
out as like a villain, you know, kind of manipulating
and kind of taking over on purpose. But then we realized,
(24:08):
we really understand her motivations, what she's doing, and it's
really coming from the research. We talked to a lot
of people, a lot of experts about the emotions and
what happens in our brain and why do we have
anxiety and she's really there to protect us. Fear and
anxiety are like I always joke at their distant cousins. Yeah,
they're related to one another, right, you know. Fear is
(24:28):
the feeling you get of a known threat, like you
see a tiger in front of you, it's right there,
you feel fear. Anxiety is the fear of a perceived threat,
like what's around the corner, what's tomorrow. She's always inside
her flight mode, but she's really there to try to
help you and keep you safe. So the movie worked
really well when we started to realize, like, well, joy
(24:48):
and anxiety are really two parents just arguing over how
to best take care of their child. They're both doing
it from a place of love, but they're both doing
it wrong, you know. And anxiety side is she's going
to drive too hard. We had that idea pretty early
on that she'd be all over the console. It would
be fritzing it out, you know, and that she'd be
driving her to the point of the panic attack that
(25:10):
we put her into because she's put so much pressure
on herself. How many times we talk about that, like
the pressure, especially social pressure. And she is in that game.
I look at it, you guys, like she steps on
the ice three times in this movie. Once is at
the beginning of the movie when she's playing with her
friends and it's not the varsity team, but you know
it's on her Foghorns little league team, right. Second time
(25:33):
is when anxiety is driving and she goes out in
the ice and she has a sense of achievement is
the word that we would always use. She has to
go out there and she has to achieve, and that's
why we gave her the three goals that she had
to get and she's doing it because for social pressure.
If I don't make this team, I won't heference. You know,
I want to have a social group, you know, which
is the worst fear that you have as a teenagers
(25:55):
and not have that.
Speaker 1 (25:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (25:57):
And the third one is after the panic attack and
she comes out of it, is she lets go of
that need to achieve and she just goes out there
just really to be present and to play with a
sense of joy. It's hopefully a deeper sense of joy.
We always called it the yay chocolate kind of joy,
you know, the kid like kind of joy. It's not
(26:18):
Meg was saying it earlier. She's driving. It's a different joy.
It's a different sense. It's not as fun playful. It's
definitely joyful, but she's out there just trying to be
present in the moment, which is why she's trying to
connect to all the senses. She's just trying to play
with a sense of just being present in the moment.
Speaker 6 (26:37):
Both Joy and anxiety in this movie their behavior is
based on the fear of her not being good enough,
and Anxiety is doing it by saying, we will think
of all the ways to be better and all the
ways that we if we're not good enough, we won't do,
and she's trying to project forward to make us good
enough on the team for social reasons. And then Joyce saying,
(27:00):
as these are painful memories, let's just put them in
the back of the mind. That is a different way
of saying, maybe our kid isn't good enough, so let's
just not think about it right, which we do as parents,
and we do it to ourselves too. I just won't
think about that. And so it really was in that
anxiety attack, both joy and anxiety, having to confront as
parents they weren't fully accepting their child and in this case,
(27:25):
or ourselves, which is all just coming from a belief
system by the way, which we can get into. I'm
just fascinated by belief systems. But for me, I love
her going on the ice, But the thing that gets
me every time is when all those emotions hug that
sense of self. She is flawed, she is not good
at math, and sometimes she's a terrible friend, and sometimes
(27:45):
she's a wonderful friend, and sometimes she loses control, and
sometimes she's all those things.
Speaker 5 (27:49):
We still love her and have compassion for her, So.
Speaker 6 (27:53):
We kind of always knew this anxiety attack was coming,
but it's so powerful to end up with that self
compassionate hug.
Speaker 1 (28:10):
I have high levels of anxiety, but it wasn't until
I was, you know, in my late twenties, that I
understood what anxiety was. And I would feel that, like
when I'm getting dressed in the locker room, I would
start to like feel anxious, like performance anxiety.
Speaker 2 (28:25):
But it's interesting that it actually got worse.
Speaker 1 (28:28):
As I got older, where like I started to put
those pressures on myself right where Like when I was
a kid, I felt like I just could play and
it was care free, and it was all these things.
And I actually have a really cool and fun inside
Out to experience. So when your movie premiered, I actually
was able to attend a private screening premiere with the
NHL Foundation in New York City.
Speaker 2 (28:50):
Oh fun, cool, guys.
Speaker 1 (28:52):
It was Honestly, it was the most incredible experience of
my life. And they invited me, so they had like
three hundred something off kids. We signed autographs for a
bit with the kids, and then like the big hook
of the event was the private screening of Inside Out two.
And I had seen Inside Out one with my son.
He was a big fan, like loved it. So instead
(29:12):
of bringing Anya as my date, I brought my three
year old And it was the first time I was
ever taking him to a movie theater. So I was like,
I don't know if we made a mistake. Clear, yeah,
I remember, get me you're trying to captivate attention, yes,
but he was dead silent the whole time. And I
mean like we were in there for the long longer
than the duration of the movie, because we also I
(29:33):
had to do it thirty minute Q and A on
stage before the movie started, and he came up and
sat on my lap about ten minutes in, but then
sat the whole movie. And then we're riding home, my gosh,
and he starts talking to me about his emotions, and
I'm like, oh, my goodness. So now the way that
we refer to emotions in our house is by the
names of the emotion. I'm like, how are you feeling? Ah,
(29:54):
like joy? It resonates so deeply for our four year old,
and our daughter Harlan, who's two, isn't quite there, but
we have emotion.
Speaker 2 (30:02):
Charts all over our house, et cetera. And so my
point in saying all.
Speaker 1 (30:05):
Of that is, obviously the work that you've done in
these movies have made a huge impact on kids, but
let's talk for a minute about the impact that they've made.
Speaker 2 (30:14):
On adults as well.
Speaker 1 (30:16):
I feel like I was more dialed than at certain
points than my kids, because I'm like, oh my goodness,
where was this when I was nine, ten eleven, you
know what I mean?
Speaker 2 (30:24):
Like it was so refreshing.
Speaker 1 (30:26):
When you introduced and created the character Anxiety, I was like,
Oh my god, that's me. I thought about being thought
about being anxiety for Halloween.
Speaker 4 (30:33):
Oh that's amazing.
Speaker 1 (30:35):
Like wow, right, Well, while we think about cartoons and
animation being quote unquote for younger generations of people, it's
really not How did you know your feeling and whether
it was pressures in sports or pressure in life, et cetera.
How did emotion that resonated for you translate into your
work and into this movie. How did you do that?
(30:56):
Because it's incredible.
Speaker 4 (30:58):
One of my favorite reasons of working with me is
that she's really good at this part. She calls it
going into the lava, right, like going in You have
to be vulnerable and brave enough to go into the
hard parts of being alive and being a person and
talk about stuff that makes you a little uncomfortable, because
that's where the real juice can be a lot of
(31:20):
this came from me looking at my own life, what
I kind of went through at that age, and I
was scanning all of my photos because I have a
lot of physical photos, and I'm like, I should have
digital copies of these just so I can have you
know a version of that. And so I was going
through and I was dating them too, the ones I
could figure out the dates. And there is something that
were my birthday. And I had this photo me when
(31:42):
I was five years old and it was my birthday
and I'm sitting there in front of my cake, surrounded
by my friends and family, and I had this immense
expression of joy on my face and it kind of
stopped me in my tracks. I'm like, holy cow, I
am so happy. It's not some random day. It's my birthday,
which is a day to celebrate me and kind of
(32:05):
who I am. And then I got older and I
turned eight and it went down a little bit. I
turned eleven, it went down even more, and then thirteen
and it's gone. I'm just sitting there staring at my cage,
wishing I was anywhere, hoping someone wasn't taking my pick.
Ye oh my god, Yes, Anya, I hated being sung
(32:30):
Happy Birthday too. At that age, I loathed it. This
is the lava part. This is the part where Meg
is like, why are you feeling that? Let's really go
deep deep down. And if I go really deep down again,
it's a day to celebrate who I am. And me,
and I hated the attention. Yeah, I hated everyone looking
(32:51):
at me. I wanted it to be over. I wanted
everyone to look away from me. And if I go
really really deep down, what's really at the core of
that is, you know, am I really worth all that celebrating.
That's what I was really feeling. I think it's a
thing that a lot of people feel, especially at this age.
It's all about comparison. I've learned why, you know, I've
done so much research on the brain and what happens
(33:14):
and why we experience the things that we do. There's
a reason, you guys, that your kids are going to
push you away. They're supposed to, like, it's part of
our design, you know, because they need to go from
being taken care of to taking care of themselves. And
we're social creatures that need each other for survival, and
so that's why it's all about fitting in this deep
(33:34):
seated like survival instinct we have, and so you're comparing
yourself to others, and that's really what I was doing,
and I was feeling like I was coming up short,
that I'm not enough in all the ways possible. So
that's really where a lot of this came from is
talking about that feeling that shows up at best age
that I'm not good enough and learning to love who
(33:57):
you are both inside and out was kind of the
pitch I had from the very beginning.
Speaker 6 (34:02):
We talked a lot about that too at that age,
in terms of gosh, I want to be that girl.
I just want to be you because you're so cool,
and I remember you had a kid at school, Kelsey,
who like could play jazz or what was it the
sex of phony.
Speaker 5 (34:14):
You were like, I just need to be that guy.
We had to be.
Speaker 6 (34:17):
Very honest about how we felt at that age and
how we still feel honestly, I mean, we're still human beings,
and to be fair to we were. Also we moved
into the pandemic during this, so there was anxiety everywhere
and everyone. It was so pervasive and it was hijacking everywhere.
And also that feeling of not enough. Writing a sequel
(34:38):
to Inside Out, like you start the game board entrance
is not enough, Like it's just it's heavy, you know,
I think it's a I Kelsey and I when we started,
we had each other at least in that together to
link arms and say, okay, this feels very a lot,
and it feels like it's impossible and how are we
(34:59):
ever going to do this?
Speaker 5 (35:00):
But then we just kept coming back.
Speaker 6 (35:02):
To two things I would say, which is a perfect
compliment of the movie really being brave and going into
our anxiety about it, into the feelings of not enough,
into the feelings of being unworthy, and on the other side,
going into the fun. And it does take someone maturing
for your brain to be able to do that, I think,
because when you go into fun, you're pulling your sense
(35:22):
of self and good enough back to yourself versus out
to what everybody else thinks of you.
Speaker 1 (35:29):
And I love everything that you both just said, because
my max question for you is going to be how
much human experience weighs into your work, particularly this movie
versus developmental psychology. But you both have worked on actually
three of our kids four most favorite movies, inside Out one,
Inside Out two, The Good Dinosaur, which is also phenomenal
for people.
Speaker 2 (35:47):
Who haven't checked that out. Like also all about.
Speaker 1 (35:50):
Empathy and emotion and self pressure and discovery, but you
can feel that emotion in that like care and so
obviously there was always a ton of research that goes
into your work. But I want to dig a little
more deeply into it because I think it's important.
Speaker 4 (36:06):
There's a lot of research that's on this movie. We
had a couple experts. We had Decor Keltner. He was
on the first film. He's a professor over at Berkeley,
and he's kind of our emotional expert on the first
film and on the second. I met with him the
first week, but that was on this movie and asked him, Okay,
what happens in the brain when we're teenagers? And I'll
never forget him leaning back, going, oh my goodness, Kelsey,
(36:29):
it's so much and I'm like, oh my god, God,
I got so excited about it, you know. And Lisai
to Moore was another one. She's an author and a
phlinical psychologist and a podcaster and she wasn't incredible. We
met with the two of them from the very beginning
to honestly the very end, and we have a great
opportunity with this movie, but we also if we're not careful,
(36:52):
we could do harm if we're sending the wrong message
or saying the wrong thing, or it's not being true
to actually the way it was. So Megan and I
were very concerned and it was very important us that
we got to write, but you also have to listen
to like what the story needs, and you have to
break things every once in a while. I can't say
that we broke anything in terms of like the research
(37:14):
of the brain. Maybe a little bit, you know. I
mean Dhacker would be like, so you only chose five emotions, Pete,
you know, like seriously, there's that's all you can do? Yeah, yeah,
I really yeah. And he was really great. He would
always go, well, this is typically how it is. But
I think I could buy that, you know, because you
(37:34):
have to. You have to bend it a little bit
for the story, you know. I mean Megan's talking about
like all the people that we want to impress and
want to like make sure that they loved it. I
really wanted you guys to love it because I honestly,
this is very embarrassing. I'm also from Minnesota, like Pizza
from Minnesota, and I'll be honest, neither one of us
(37:54):
know hockey at all. Like it's a it's a bit
of shame that I have being a man, and I know,
can you believe it?
Speaker 2 (38:02):
You should be embarrassed.
Speaker 4 (38:03):
Oh my goodness, you got.
Speaker 2 (38:04):
A Michigan connection too, right, I do I do. Yeah,
it's even worse. Your hole just got bigger.
Speaker 4 (38:11):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (38:11):
Kelson was very concerned about that it feel authentic from.
Speaker 4 (38:13):
The hockey point of Yeah, I mean that's screening mass.
Then you went to I really wish I could be
a part of that. I felt, I felt envy. I
felt a little envy of I want to be there.
Speaker 2 (38:22):
You know what, though it was incredible, it would the
event was.
Speaker 1 (38:26):
I think we had three or four hundred kids, all
hockey players in their jerseys.
Speaker 2 (38:31):
I can't believe you guys didn't know about it.
Speaker 4 (38:32):
I wanted when the movie was done, I wanted you
guys to enjoy it, but I also wanted you guys
to look up on the screen and see hockey represented
on the screen and for you guys to say they
got it right. That's what was my goal. And I
kept saying that. I go and I always put people
in the room who knew what they were talking about,
and I would be like, is this right? You know,
we have a lot of really great animators who play hockey,
(38:56):
so they could bring a lot of that. If if
you played hockey and you're an animator, you get assigned
a shot in which a hockey was somehow involved. I
tried to surround myself with people who are the experts,
and you listen to them, but ultimately you have to
make certain calls every once in a while where you're like, well,
I know that probably the way it's going to be done,
but I need to not do that for this specific
(39:18):
story reason. An example just popped in my head. Okay,
when Riley goes out on the ice after she's like
had the panic attack, and she's like, you know what,
I'm just gonna go out there and be present and
enjoy playing the sport that I love and I'm not
going to put the pressure on myself to achieve. We
wanted to have these beautiful shots for really being present
and show the utter beauty that hockey can be. So
(39:41):
there's a point where it's a close up on her
feet on her skates and Riley is doing this beautiful
like spin move. It's in slow motion and it's really
joy driving and she's present and enjoying the heck out
of being there. I remember hanging that out to the
animator and they were like, why is she doing? Like
(40:01):
is there another opponent coming? And she needs the spin
to get out of the way. We thought of all
these reasons, and finally I was like, you know what,
if anyone's asking why she's doing what she's doing in
this given moment, we're sunk and hopefully they're just in
the moment right there and the utter beauty. It's one
of my favorite shots. It's gorgeous. But if you really
(40:21):
think about it, there's no real sense of why she
needs to do that.
Speaker 2 (40:25):
You're like spin a rama gear.
Speaker 4 (40:27):
Yes, yeah, like why did she doing that? Exactly? But everyone,
I'll need to break things just a little bit for
the sake of this story.
Speaker 6 (40:35):
As a writer, you do all that research and then
you have to, in a way, not think about it anymore.
Like it went into your brain, you have to trust
it and then write from your heart and your gut
and just what feels real and authentic, because if you're
writing from your intellect and trying to check things off,
it'll start to feel fake. It'll start to not feel human,
(40:56):
it'll start to feel like AI I think versus kind
of the human experience, and human experience is contradictory. That
is what's the beauty of being a human is it
doesn't often make sense, and you have to allow that
to come out onto the page and that contradictoriness, because
when you do that and then you start moving into
that lava. My real goal in any writing is if
(41:18):
we can get honest enough and have enough fun. But
if we can get honest enough and authentic enough and
contradictory enough and human enough, people don't feel so alone.
Speaker 4 (41:28):
I want to give somebody props that was on the
crew who really gave a lot. Her name is Tracy Roberts,
and she wasn't even on the film. She was on
a different movie. When I said I want people around
me who know what they're talking about with hockey, and
somebody said, do you know Tracy, I said, no, you
should talk to her. She has played hockey since she
was a little kid. She's a coach. If she's not
(41:49):
at Pixar, she's on the ice somewhere. She eats, breathe
and lives it. And I brought her in and asked
her to help consult, and she gave so much to
the film from beginning to end. Her perspective was so
immensely helpful. The varsity coach in the movie we named
(42:09):
your Coach Roberts after Tracy because she just there's all
the respect and love. Yeah, I absolutely love her. She
was in animation dailies and she would always kind of
give her two cents on what felt true. I know
exactly where you should hold your stick. A lot of
animators were having the stick like stick a little bit
passed out of their hand. No, no, no, no, it's
(42:31):
got to go right to the edge in the hand.
Speaker 3 (42:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (42:33):
I know that from Tracy. I've learned a lot on
this movie and it's because of her. So, yeah, you
have to have people like that around you who know
what they're talking about. I love that.
Speaker 3 (42:43):
I love that so much because I think in everything
that you guys are saying, it's so authentic to what
I as a hockey player look at and feel and
see when I watch the movies, and I think you
guys have done so much work and thought on the
lava and I love that concept. I'm going to use
that in my life now now to give you my
perspective as a little girl that played hockey, played with boys.
(43:06):
Because I'm from Massachusetts, it wasn't at the same level yet,
and I'm thirty three years old. I looked up at
that screen and I saw me, and without getting emotional,
I saw how hard it was to be me, and
I acknowledged that, and I like it helped me heal
(43:26):
something in me as a little girl who had all
this struggle with anxiety. You don't know how validating it
is to be that little girl with no public facing
images of herself. I can't thank you enough for that.
And I think in that moment, so many of us
just took a deep breath and said, hockey's here, and
(43:46):
choosing that sport, and like choosing the vulnerability and choosing
the fact that it was a young girl and it
was going through all these things and you're right, the
hockey look like hockey.
Speaker 4 (43:55):
I was like, let's go, she's sick. That really means
a lot. I think a big part of why I
wanted to make the movie is that I really could
have used a movie like this when I was a teenager. Yeah,
we had the real chance to put something up on
a screen say ultimately, you aren't alone, you know, and
you think you are, especially when you're a teenager, is
you want to hide that as much as possible. And
(44:16):
so we had the opportunity to put something out in
the world to tell a bunch of people that, like,
you're not alone in what you're thinking and feeling.
Speaker 5 (44:23):
Yeah, and so much of that too.
Speaker 6 (44:25):
As being a parent, you know that we always want
to fix what's happening with our kids. We want to
make it better, we want to get them back to joy.
But what's so so important is to just be with
them where they are. And it's so uncomfortable as a parent.
Speaker 5 (44:38):
To be there.
Speaker 6 (44:38):
You have to regulate yourself in order to create that
space for that child, and it's so hard, but it's
such a gift because they get to know themselves and
that they can tell you something that feels embarrassing, something
that feels shameful, something that feels weird or just ugly,
or all those other things.
Speaker 1 (44:59):
Everything both just said, I don't think anyone could say
it any better. And I think that that's what makes
your work so beautiful is that you can feel that.
And the way that the work that you have put
together explains emotions to kids in a way that some
parents can't even understand is actually truly incredible. I think
that your contribution in cinema just in the world is invaluable.
(45:23):
And you're talking about, you know, a really heavy thing
and maybe a light way, but the world needs more
of it.
Speaker 5 (45:30):
Thank you guys so much for joining us on These
Packs Puck. Thank you so much for having us. Was
super fun.
Speaker 4 (45:36):
It was really an honor to be here and talk
to you guys.
Speaker 3 (45:38):
Thank you, and that's all we have today. Thank you
for listening.
Speaker 1 (45:46):
I'm on your packer and I'm Madison Packer and this
is These Packs Puck.
Speaker 4 (45:53):
These Packs Puck.
Speaker 3 (45:54):
Is a production of Iheartwomen's Sports in Deep Blue Sports
and Entertainment.
Speaker 1 (45:57):
It's hosted by US Madison and an You pack. Emily
Meronoff is our awesome senior producer and story editor.
Speaker 2 (46:04):
We were mixed and mastered by Mary do.
Speaker 1 (46:06):
Our executive producers are Jennifer Bassett, Jesse Katz
Speaker 4 (46:09):
And Ali Perry.
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