Inside Out director Pete Docter talks Oscars, Pixar and being in touch with feelings

Six years ago, Pete Docter and Tom McCarthy were sharing the Oscars spotlight, having collaborated on the Academy Award-nominated original screenplay for Pixar's Up.

This year, on that same carpet, the two writer-directors will go toe to formally attired toe.

SEE ALSO: What makes Inside Out and other Pixar animated movies so special

Docter and McCarthy were both announced last Thursday as original screenplay nominees for the 88th Academy Awards – Docter for Pixar's Inside Out, which also received a best animated feature nomination, and McCarthy for Spotlight, which received six nominations, including best picture.

SEE ALSO: Film review: Pixar finds form with the mind-bending Inside Out

“I texted him [Thursday] morning,” Doctor says of McCarthy (who is also nominated for best director), about their trading congratulations. “We walked the red carpet [together] in 2010.” And this awards season, including at last weekend’s Golden Globes, they’ve had occasion to trade warm words on the carpet with their much-praised new films.

“He's such a fantastic writer,” Docter says of McCarthy (who co-wrote Spotlight with Josh Singer). “I learned so much from him. He's so economical, and focuses on the right things. Spotlight could have been pedantic.” Instead, the Pixar filmmaker says, McCarthy is expert in tone and storytelling.

The same can be said, of course, of Docter, who has garnered eight Oscars nominations in his career, winning for 2009's Up. Half those nominations have been for writing – including on 1995's Toy Story (the blockbuster film that Docter began working on shortly after graduating art school) and 2009's Wall-E. (Docter, it’s worth noting, has thus contributed to half of all of Pixar’s Oscar-nominated screenplays.)

Docter is quick to shower praise upon his Inside Out co-writers: Meg LeFauve, Josh Cooley and Ronnie del Carmen. “This was difficult subject material,” Docter says of animating a universe set inside an 11-year-old girl's mind. “Once we got in there, we wondered whether we had bitten off more than we could chew, [given] the incredible complexity of the human mind.”

One barometer of just how well the Inside Out writers created a relatable world is the degree to which the film now functions as a real-world tool. Docter, for instance, notes that some of the most gratifying response to building a film that focuses on illuminating and animating five emotions – Joy, Fear, Anger, Disgust and Sadness – has been from people who work closely with children.