Bob Peterson

The best thing Bob Peterson ever wrote is a dog who cannot finish a thought. Dug, in Up (2009), is voiced by Peterson himself, and every line he says is sincere, cheerful and interrupted by whatever has just moved at the edge of his vision. Peterson has a habit of doing this: he writes the film in the story room and then turns up in the cast as the odd one out. He is Roz in Monsters, Inc. (2001), deadpan and devoted to paperwork, and Mr Ray in Finding Nemo (2003). The supporting character is his trade, and he is good at it.

He joined Pixar in 1994 as an animator and moved into storyboarding, where Joe Ranft took him on, and by Monsters, Inc. he was story supervisor. The screenplay for Finding Nemo, written with Andrew Stanton and David Reynolds, shows what he brings to the margins: the sharks attempting reform are funny before the adults have finished recognising the joke, and each sea creature carries a worry of its own, so the journey never becomes a run of introductions. Up, which he co-wrote and co-directed with Pete Docter, is the high point. Carl and Russell's friendship develops without anyone insisting on a lesson, and the film is at its most persuasive when it lets the two of them talk.

Then he was given a film of his own. The Good Dinosaur (2015) was his idea and he directed it until August 2013, when he was taken off it because the story would not come together. His own account is the plainest anyone has offered: "Basically, we had a good first act, our second act didn't progress emotionally like we wanted it and our third act was missing in action." He stayed at Pixar and went back to writing for other people, and the same weakness shows in those films. Finding Dory (2016), whose story he wrote with Stanton, is tender and small for an hour and then decides it must be big and loud to finish; the scenes hold up and the shape lets them down. Cars 3 (2017), written with Kiel Murray and Mike Rich, takes the idea of an ageing racer seriously and is kind, handsome and dull for most of its length.

We sat through the chases in Up waiting for the next quiet exchange between Carl and Russell, because two people in a room, one of them talking too much, were worth more to us than the whole adventure around them. That is where Peterson lives. He has since written and directed two runs of shorts, Forky Asks a Question (2019–20) and Dug Days (2021–23), each built round a supporting character he voices. A few minutes at a time, one sidekick and one joke, may be the form that suits him best. There is no second act to lose.