Why does Minnesota keep showing up in popular animated films?
As all Pixar enthusiasts know, the inciting incident of 2015’s Inside Out is that the protagonist, Riley, has just moved with her family from Minnesota to San Francisco. At one point, she even tries to get on a bus back to her old home state.
Riley ultimately stays in California, although she’s retained her love of hockey. And in the 2024 sequel, Riley’s new hockey teammates give her the nickname “Michigan.” (Anyone who’s ever moved from Minnesota to a coastal city likely knows the feeling of others forgetting which “M” state they’re from.)
So why Minnesota? Well, Pete Docter, a Bloomington native, co-wrote and directed the first Inside Out, and he’s now Pixar’s Chief Creative Officer. And the director of Inside Out 2 is Kelsey Mann, who hails from Burnsville and was inducted in 2022 into the Burnsville High School Hall of Fame.
Now, there’s another new animated film packed with Minnesota references. And yes, its director is from Minnesota.
In Your Dreams, which landed on Netflix on November 14, is the story of a sister, a brother, and their talking stuffed giraffe sidekick, Baloney Tony, who gain the ability to visit a dream realm to make wishes that their family can stay together.
The family quite obviously lives in Minnesota: Their mother is considering taking a job in Duluth, their dad sports a Vikings shirt, one of the kids has a map of the state on her bedroom wall, and a truck carries the logo of the “Minnetonka Moving Company.”
Alex Woo, director and co-writer of In Your Dreams, was born in Minnesota and spent much of his childhood in Arden Hills. He later moved to Hong Kong, studied at NYU, made an award-winning short called Rex Steele: Nazi Smasher, and then went to work for Pixar. He’s credited on several Pixar movies, including Ratatouille, WALL-E, The Good Dinosaur, and Incredibles 2, although he did not work on either Inside Out film.
Woo left Pixar in 2016 to found a studio called Kuku Studios, under which he co-created the TV series Go! Go! Cory Carson. In Your Dreams is his feature directorial debut.
This week, we spoke with Woo about the film, his Minnesota inspirations, and what exactly it is about the state that inspires so much creativity. (Hint: It’s the cold.)
Racket: I saw the movie, and I noticed a lot of the Minnesota references. So I figured someone who made this movie must have ties to Minnesota. And I looked it up and saw that you lived in St. Paul for a time. So talk to me a little bit about that and how being from Minnesota sort of shaped this and how you put all that in there.
Alex Woo: Yeah, I mean, it's where I was born. It's where I grew up. I grew up in Arden Hills, which is like a suburban mall. And I have really fond memories of my time there. I think that scene, when Stevie and Elliot and mom and dad are in the woods, and it's like fall, and the colors are just so rich and beautiful, that was my memory of my childhood. I have so many photos of our family on walks in the woods in Minnesota during the [fall], colors are like red and orange and yellow and umber. And I just have such a soft spot for that place. And it really represents sort of an ideal time in my life. That's why I think I decided to set it there because it's a great place to grow up, and it's great for families.
So, canonically, do they live anywhere in particular? Like, I know they're talking about moving to Duluth…
Duluth obviously is Up North, and so I didn't want to have it too specific, as one town with a name. So it's somewhere around the St. Paul suburban area.
I know you worked for Pixar and worked on a lot of those movies. And there’s sort of a similar thing with Inside Out, where she moved from Minnesota, and I like to joke that the lesson of Inside Out is, you’ll get sad if you leave Minnesota. I know that came from Pete Docter, since he’s from Minnesota, too. Is there any kind of large fraternity in the animation world of people who are from Minnesota?
I don't know if it's large, but you know, it's surprising. There are a lot of people from the Midwest in Hollywood. And I think it's because, well, I can only speak from personal experience, but growing up in Minnesota, winter is like six months of the year. So you can't do a lot other than stay inside and learn. And so I spent a lot of my childhood just drawing, reading comic books, watching movies, and watching animation. And that's, I think, probably a lot of similar experience for a lot of other people, a lot of other kids, which is why they're able to foster their sort of creativity.
That's my best guess as to why there are quite a few creative people and filmmakers that come from that area of the country, it's because you're cooped up inside for months of the year, and you just can't do anything else other than be artistic and creative.
So, what else inspired this story from your background?
When I was a kid, my parents nearly split up, and it was really challenging for me and my brother. I think it was really scary. This film is very much my sort of reckoning of the idea that, like, parents aren't perfect, families aren't perfect, people aren't perfect. That's okay, and getting through the messiness of life with the people that you love is really what gives life meaning, and it's what life is about.
I also feel like in American culture, there's so much pressure on people to pursue and to achieve their dreams, which at some level is healthy. It's good to have this kind of ambition, but there can be a dark side to it. Whereas if you get tunnel vision, and you are solely focused on pursuing your dreams, you can neglect all these other aspects of your life. So I really wanted to sort of change the charge in the conversation around dreams, because I think people feel like nowadays, especially young kids, that if you don't achieve your dreams, there's something wrong with you, or you failed in life. And I just don't think that's the case, you know, so that was a big source of inspiration.
In Your Dreams is now streaming on Netflix.
