Turning Red Doesn’t Follow Pixar’s Rules. Good
glamour.comBao, a Pixar short in which a woman’s bao bun lunch comes to life and grows from an adorable dumpling into a surly steamed-up teenager.
It was an allegory for motherhood. Following the film’s warm reception (it eventually won the Oscar for Best Animated Short), her Pixar colleagues asked her to pitch ideas for a feature.
She spent that summer working up three concepts—all coming-of-age stories about teenage girls that leaned heavily on her experiences growing up in a Chinese Canadian family in Toronto.Ultimately, she made Turning Red, the story of Meilin Lee, a 13-year-old Chinese-Canadian girl growing up in Toronto in the early 2000s who wakes up one day to discover that she now transforms into a magical giant red panda whenever she gets angry or upset.
It’s an allegory for puberty—and one of the most personal movies Pixar has ever made.The studio’s moviemaking process is now part of cinematic lore.
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