Today Netflix streams In Your Dreams globally. The film is the work of writer/director Alex Woo and today we’re sitting down with him to discuss bringing this magical dreamscape to life. Woo is know for his work at Pixar having worked on titles like WALL-E and with major franchises like Star Wars.
In Your Dreams is a comedy adventure about Stevie and her brother Elliot who journey into the absurd landscape of their own dreams. If the siblings can withstand a snarky stuffed giraffe, zombie breakfast foods, and the queen of nightmares, the Sandman will grant them their ultimate dream come true…the perfect family
Before we dive into the interview, watch the film’s trailer in the player below:
NB: This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
GYCO: So you’ve worked within established worlds at Pixar and on Star Wars. How different was it creating a completely original world from scratch?
ALEX WOO (AW): It was different. In many ways it’s very liberating because you don’t have to work within, a sort of pre-established canon. I think we were able to do a lot of things that we might not have been able to do. If a lot of that lore was pre-established. We were inspired by a lot of, mythology and stories that, you know, were around the Sandman, around dreams. But we were never constrained by it. So it was, a fantastic experience. It was very liberating. I recommend doing it.
GYCO: This film is so much of your baby. As well as having worked on the story you also directed. Where did the idea for In Your Dreams originate?
AW: Well, it was a combination of two things. The first inspiration was just the idea of an animated movie in the world of dreams. Dreams are this universal human experience. Everybody across time, across cultures, dreams. We still don’t know why we dream so it’s great. It’s great space for fiction and for mythology and storytelling. I was also fascinated by the dual meaning of dreams. So both literal dreams, the ones we have when we’re asleep, and then the metaphorical dreams, the ones we chase when we’re awake.
There was something really poetic about that. I knew I wanted to do something in that space. But it wasn’t enough just to have a movie that took place in the dream world. I needed to have some sort of human story. So with that I drew on you something that happened to me when I was a kid. When I was young my parents nearly split up. This movie is very much about me waking up to the fact that life is not perfect, that parents are not perfect. Families are not perfect. People are not perfect. But that that’s okay. You know, it’s that it’s that getting through sort of the messiness, the imperfection of life.
It actually gives us an opportunity to bond, and rely on those around us that we love. Actually, it strengthens the bond and strengthens those relationships. I thought that was really beautiful. It was the combination of those two ideas that, that gave birth to this, this movie. I think that’s what creativity is. It’s like the it’s two ideas that are kind of separate. They come together and then they create something new. It’s like how human babies are made.
GYCO: Dreams offer unlimited creative possibilities. Literally anything can happen. How did you balance that freedom with maintaining a coherent story for the audience to follow?
AW: It’s a great question. It was one of the biggest challenges of this movie is how do you ground it? How do you give, logic to the dreams? When dreams are so illogical? Yeah. How do you give a dream movie stakes? And so there were a couple of sort of, I would say narrative discoveries or innovations that we, sort of unlocked that allowed us to tell this story in a, in a, compelling way.
The first one was, this idea that if you can find the Sandman in the dream world, you can make your dreams come true. So that was how we connected the dream world with the real world. The things that happen in the dream world would suddenly influence what would happen in the real world. That was the first key.
The second was making sure that the, the dreams in the film were accurate or reflective of how we dream in real life. So, you know, for me, things that happened to me in my daytime experience or my daily life, my waking life usually affect my sleeping life or my dreaming life. So, you know, people, places or things I encounter during the day, they end up in my dreams at night.
That was a really important constraint that we wanted to give Stevie and Elliot. Anything that happened in the dreamworld was somehow setup in the real world. Sometimes we did very clear setup and sometimes they are a lot more subtle, but they’re all there if you look. So those two things that helped us really ground the dreams and help the audience sort of navigate and feel, that the dream experience that they’re watching on the film was resonant with them. It’s really well set.
GYCO: Nightmares bring necessary darkness to balance the dream modes. I wonder how did you define the edge without making it too scary?
AW: It was also a challenge for the film. I think we wanted to make it scary. We didn’t want to shy away from the darkness, or the nightmares, or the intensity of nightmares. That’s part of the experience of dreaming. But we were also mindful that this is a film that we wanted everybody of all ages to watch. Grown ups and kids, even young kids. So a lot of that was modulating it. Showing certain sequences to our friends, showing it to their kids and seeing what was too scary. It was a lot of trial and error.
You eally just try and tap into your own inner child and think about when you were a kid, what movies were too scary for you? I loved being scared as a kid. There’s a really nice, sort of exciting feeling about it. But there were sort of some films that were just too much for me, and I just couldn’t even watch them. We didn’t want to do that with [In Your Dreams]. You don’t want to want it to be too scary that it would turn people away.
GYCO: Can you talk a little bit about casting the kids for the film? They are both incredible.
AW: I can talk about Jolie first. She came to us via Mary Hidalgo, who was our casting director. We probably received 500 auditions for Stevie and most of them were kid actors that sound like kid actors. They sound very performative and I really don’t like that style of acting. It works for some shows and movies. But for me it’s just not my taste. So it was relatively easy to actually filter through because a lot of those kids sounded like Disney TV actors. When I hear Jolie’s performance it really stood out to me because she is so naturalistic in her voice acting. She was this very old soul. It was an intelligence to her. It was a maturity to her. She’s a very Type-A personality and we needed Stevie to be a Type-A.
She really stood out among all the other actors that auditioned as she just seemed to fit the role. Then when I met her in person or over zoom, I was like, oh, you are definitely Steve. So that was an easy sort of, casting choice.
With Elias, he also came to us through Mary Hidalgo. When we cast him he was around 8 or 9 years old. So here’s this tiny little kid and now he looks like a K-pop star. He’s wearing chains and he’s got bleached hair. It’s just so funny and so great to see him grow up. He’s so energetic and rambunctious and just a really incredibly charismatic and carefree kind of kid. That’s what we heard in the audition. But when I met him he’s the exact opposite. He’s very demure, very quiet and very soft spoken. So I was just so impressed with his acting ability.
He could really play something different from his natural personality. He’s an incredibly professional actor. It’s so impressive for somebody so young.
GYCO: What do you hope the audience takes away from watching the film?
AW: Well, when I started this movie, it was always my intention to try and change the conversation around dreams and nightmares. I think especially in American culture, probably in the UK too, there’s so much pressure on people to achieve their dreams. I think that on some level it’s healthy. It’s great to try and pursue something and have ambition. But there can be you can go overboard and it can become this sort of like idol in your life.
It feels like sometimes it’s gotten to that point where if you don’t achieve your dreams, you’re kind of considered either a failure or a loser or it’s your fault. I just think that’s so toxic. With social media there’s such a temptation to get lost in that world and present this illusion of your life as if it’s perfect. But it’s not real. You get so caught up in it that you spend most of your time actually creating this illusion and not actually living your real life. So, in many ways, this film is sort of a comment on that. Those aspects of life and of culture and trying to push back on it.
Then with nightmares, I think sometimes they get a bad rap. I think the challenges that happen to us in our life, the metaphorical nightmares, are sometimes the things that shape us in the best way. They refine us and we learn the most from them. They also present opportunities for us to really come together.
I was in New York when September 11th happened and it was such a tragedy. It was a fearful nightmare for those in that city, for the country, for the world. But I have never seen New York with a stronger spirit of togetherness, with a stronger spirit or of love than during that time. Everybody came out of the woodwork. Everybody volunteered. Everybody was so kind and loving to each other and it was such a beautiful thing. It only came because of that tragedy. Ao there’s just something about challenges in life, you know, mistakes in life, failures in life, imperfections in life, messiness of life that really brings the best out of people.
I think nightmares are there to kind of protect us and prepare us for the unknown so I hope that’s what audiences take away from it.
GYCO: Thank you so much.
AW: Thank you.
Written and co-directed by Erik Benson and Alex Woo, In Your Dreams stars Jolie Hoang-Rappaport, Elias Janssen, Craig Robinson, Simu Liu, Cristin Milioti, Omid Djalili, Gia Carides, SungWon Cho and Zachary Noah Piser.
In Your Dreams is available to stream now globally on Netflix.
