Countdown to Up: 6 Days to Disney•Pixar’s 10th film

Monsters, Inc. is Pete Docter’s first feature film. It is wonderfully imaginative, with stunning animation and photorealistic fur. It is also touching and poignant. This film is an animated masterpiece.

-John C.

Monsters, Inc. Trivia*

• Sulley's fur has over 2,320,413 hairs

• Bill Murray was considered and tested for the role of Sulley, but the director, Pete Docter, said that when the filmmakers decided to offer it to Murray, they were unable to make contact with him and took that to mean "no"

• The last half of Chuck Jones's 1952 classic Feed the Kitty (1952) cartoon is included scene-for-scene when Sulley thinks that Boo has been thrown in the trash compactor. Each of Marc Antony's overdone reactions is echoed by Sulley against the window

• In the original draft of the script Sulley was not be a scarer but a worker. Also Mike was Randall's assistant. In another draft, Sulley was Randall's assistant

• Sulley's original name was Johnson and he had brown fur

• John Lasseter made a five minute animated student film. called "Nitemare" (1979), which features monsters appearing in a child's bedroom. The child finds out they mean no harm

• The Abominable Snowman describes the children in the Himalayan village as "Tough kids, sissy kids, kids who climb on rocks", a line taken from an old jingle for Armour hot dogs

• The restaurant that Mike and Celia are at is called the Harryhausen. This is an homage to Ray Harryhausen, the man who made the stop-motion animation monsters for films like Jason and the Argonauts

• When Sulley is about to say goodbye to Boo, Boo is trying to get him to play. She hands him a Jessie doll from Toy Story 2 (1999) as well as Nemo The Clownfish from Finding Nemo (2003). The yellow ball with the red star on the floor is the ball from the Pixar animation, Luxo Jr.

Up Trivia**

Pete Docter is the only Pixar feature film director to have never won an Oscar, although he has been nominated 4 times. This is more than likely to change, because I’m sure Up will win some Oscars.

*All trivia is courtesy of IMDb

**Trivia written by James P.