In Your Dreams Director Alex Woo On Star-Studded Voice Cast, Sourcing Dream Ideas, and Easter Eggs
After years of working at Pixar and Lucasfilm, In Your Dreams marks writer and director Alex Woo’s feature directorial debut. He cited Brad Bird, Andrew Stanton, and John Lasseter as creative heroes that he learned so much from. The Netflix animated film finds Stevie and her little brother Elliot on a magical journey through dreams to ask the Sandman to grant their wish of a perfect family. Woo spoke with Pop Culture Planet’s Kristen Maldonado about the star-studded voice cast, sourcing dream ideas, and Easter eggs and references you don’t want to miss.
Stevie’s journey to save her family was inspired by a moment from Woo’s own childhood. “When I was about six or seven years old, I woke up one morning and I found my mom at the front door of our house and her bags were packed. I didn't know what was going on and she gently had to explain to me and my brother that she was going away for a little while to figure things out for our family,” he told me. “When you're a kid you just don't really understand why these things are happening.”
“Your parents and your family, it's your whole world, and so it felt like my world was sort of falling apart. I remember watching my mom get into her car and pull out of the driveway. I remember watching her leave,” Woo continued. “And all I wanted at that moment was to find a way for her to come back and for my family to stay together and to keep things the way that they were. That was sort of the impetus for […] the personal journey that Stevie goes on in this film.”
That innocent relatability is the heart beat of the film. “The theme of this movie from the get-go was always about trying to create a positive charge for the messiness of reality. Life is not perfect and that's okay. I started this movie wanting to explore this question of, ‘What do you do when your dreams don't come true?’ Because so many of the films that I grew up with told me that, ‘Hey, if you want something badly enough, if you're smart enough, if you work hard enough, if you chase after it hard enough, you can make your dreams come true.’ Sometimes life works out that way, but sometimes it doesn't. And what do you do when it doesn't? How do you find hope and how do you move forward in that kind of a situation? That's what I tried to explore and answer with this film,” explained Woo. “I think that in many ways what I found is that when life doesn't turn out the way that I want it to or the way that I dream it to, it actually ends up being better. There's something about the beauty of the messiness of life, the imperfection of life, that's so powerful and so positive.”
Woo directs a star-studded voice cast. There’s Jolie Hoang-Rappaport as Stevie, who will next be heard as Max in Stranger Things: Tales From ‘85, Elias Janssen as Elliot, Craig Robinson as the beloved Baloney Tony, and Cristin Milioti and Simu Liu as their parents. “The Venture Bros was the first show that I worked on. It was my first job in animation and she voiced some characters in that show. I just remember hearing her performances and just thinking like, ‘This is all one person? She has such range,’” said Woo about casting Milioti. “I was just always in such awe of her talent and her ability as an artist, not just as a performer, as a singer, you know, she's an incredible singer.”
Milioti and Liu don’t just bring character voices to life, but sing the original song “The Holding On and the Letting Go” for the film as well. “Because our characters, our parents in this film, they're musicians, they used to have a band together. It was really important to me that both the actors who played mom and dad could sing really well because we have them sing actually in the film an original song,” he said. “Getting her was a huge win and then getting Simu was also incredible.”
“We were so lucky that we cast him before Shang-Chi had come out. He had finished filming it already, but I think Disney had delayed it because of COVID. We cast him before the movie came out, before he became this huge international icon. He's also an incredible singer. People don't know this, but they'll find out when they watch the film. He's got a great voice. Not only is he super charming and talented and handsome, he can also sing,” laughed Woo. “It's just not fair. Some people have it all.”
Woo called “the scope” of the film the biggest challenge when creating In Your Dreams. There’s the real world, multiple dream worlds, and the nightmare version of those worlds, as well as the Sandman’s castle. “The scope of production was so large and it's a tremendous amount of work for the team to be able to build and design all these different worlds,” he shared. “So many of the dreams in the film were actually inspired directly or indirectly by either myself or Erik [Benson] or the crew. We gave everybody dream journals when we started the film. We asked everybody to write down all their dreams, at least the ones they could remember, and that acted as a huge source of inspiration and source material for us for the dreams sequences in this film.”
One of Woo’s favorite sequences to bring to life was the anime version of Stevie and Elliot. “I just think it's so fun. Sailor Moon was a huge source of inspiration,” he said. Woo spent his childhood living in Minnesota, but went to high school in Hong Kong and would return often to visit his grandparents. “I got exposed to Asian animation, particularly Japanese animation and anime, from quite a young age because of my roots in Asia. Being able to work in that influence and even that direct aesthetic style into the film was really satisfying for me. I just find that sequence is so fun and just joyful.”
Sailor Moon wasn’t the only inspiration, with plenty of references and call outs to iconic films of the past. “I was a kid of the 80s, so there are a lot of 80s films that have worked their way into my subconscious and psyche and naturally found their way into the film. Elliot is named after Elliot from ET. Stevie is named after Stevie Nicks. The Sandman song that we have in the film. Back to the Future [is] probably my all-time favorite film. That song is featured in that movie and it stays burned into my psyche. Labyrinth was a big influence for me. The sandcastle was very much inspired by Labyrinth and the maze of the Labyrinth. Miyazaki and the Ghibli movies. Like the sprites from Spirited Away are very much an inspiration for the Sandlings in our films. Bedknobs and Broomsticks was a big influence. There's so many,” shared Woo, “Little Nemo in Slumberland was also a big influence. I watched that. I both played the video game on Nintendo and watched the animated movie.”
There are also fun Easter eggs to Woo’s other projects, including a “kookoo bananas” line that is a nod to his production studio Kuku Studios. “Our company's first production was Go! Go! Cory Carson,” he teased. “If you look closely, you'll be able to find some Go! Go! Cory Carson references and stickers and cameos in the film.”
With so much rich material to explore within the world of dreams, not everything could make it into the film. “The dream world is so expansive. There's so much more left to explore. This film, in earlier versions, it was much longer. We had a lot more material that ultimately we had to cut because it didn't service this story that we were telling. But there was still so much juicy good stuff that would I think audiences would love to see and love to experience in a sequel or in a prequel. There's a lot of material there for another film. So we'll see if Netflix wants to do it,” said Woo. “I want to keep that a secret so that the audience will be surprised if we end up making another one.”
Dive into the adventure of a nighttime with In Your Dreams now on Netflix.
