In Pixar's "Up,"one of the most poignant scenes that fans remember a decade after was when widow Carl Fredricksen leafed through his late wife Ellie's Adventure Book. Without dialogue, it conveyed the immense grief of losing the love of one's life.
That scene was inspired by the father of Filipino writer Ronnie del Carmen, who, like Carl, was in the twilight of his life and could communicate only through facial expressions.
"In my personal life I had something going on in the back of my head: my father was now in a hospice and could not speak anymore. His years of being in and out of hospitals and surgery had taken its toll. He only had his face to show us if he was feeling good or not," Del Carmen told trade publication Cartoon Brew.
"So I’d sit on his bed and tell him I was working on a movie where the hero is an old man with a head full of white hair, just like him. He also wore dark rimmed glasses," he added.
Bob Peterson, the film’s co-director and co-writer, had given him the hard task of writing a wordless sequence early on in the story's development. "This was early in the movie’s story development, so nobody knew how it was going to work," he said.
As he was writing the story, he was also spending time with his father.
Seeing the resemblance, his father's eyes would "smile" everytime he sees Carl's character drawn. "And he would attempt to speak but nothing would come," del Carmen said, revealing this very moment inspired the wordless sequence.
Before pitching it to the team, he showed it to his father first for approval.
"All the poses of his face and his eyes are the only way to say what he is thinking. Same with my dad — I tracked his eyes. His eyes told me he liked it. I used that wordless sequence to feature my father as the inspiration to tell Carl’s story where he remembers a life through pictures," he said.
"This is what we are doomed to be: to have what we are going through in life show up in what we make. No matter what we’re making. It can feature toys come to life, invisible guardians in our heads, or what have you — but at the heart of it is the story that we are living through. Our lives are in our movies. If you’re any good at this, then this will be your curse," del Carmen said.
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After two decades in Pixar where he almost won an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for Inside Out, he is now moving to Netflix. As an exclusive filmmaker for the streaming giant, his aim is make the stories of the Filipino the center of his creations from here on.
"My story starts in a group of islands, in a region that I’ve now traveled back to many times over. Each time I wish I could stay and relearn what I missed. Now I feel the pull of figuring out the beginning. The parts that I use to make movies began there," he said.
"So on this new journey I go where these stories will thrive. I carried these tales to Netflix, and when they heard my story they asked me to tell it here," he added.
Before he became a big-shot creative in Hollywood's biggest studios (before Pixar, he worked at Warner Bros. and Dreamworks), his life's story started in the city of Cavite, where he was born. He graduated from the University of Santo Tomas with a degree in Advertising.
"So this is where I’m growing and nurturing these stories that have never been told, in an arena they deserve to belong to," he shared, saying he is inspired by Netflix's diverse team of creators and storytellers. "I’m where I need to be," he said.
