Pixar's Elemental Began As A Joke About The Periodic Table Of Elements [Exclusive]

Have you heard "The Elements" by Tom Lehrer? In March of 1959, Lehrer, a musical and mathematician, hosted a concert at Harvard's Sanders Theater. For one of his numbers that evening, Lehrer, ever the intellect, sang the names of all the extant chemical elements set to the tune of "Major-General's Song" from Gilbert & Sullivan's "The Pirates of Penzance." There's antimony, arsenic, aluminum, selenium, and hydrogen, and oxygen, and nitrogen, and rhenium. It's quite exhilarating. In the 1967 revisitation of the song, Lehrer added an additional verse that included the elements as they were known by Aristotle. There's earth and air and fire and water. End of song.

This oblique reference to a novelty song from the 1950s is actually quite salient when compared to the creative arc experienced by Peter Sohn, the director of the upcoming animated feature "Elemental," due in theaters June 16, 2023. "Elemental" takes place in a city populated by anthropomorphic versions of Aristotle's four elements and explores what happens when a being made of fire (Leah Lewis) and a being made of water (Mamoudou Athie) fall in love. The air people are made of gaseous clouds and the earth people are made of both dirt and plants. It seems a lot of creativity was required to realize an elemental city.

In speaking with /Film's own B.J. Colangelo, Sohn revealed that his path into "Elemental" was the inverse of Tom Lehrer's. It seems that as a student — while sitting in chemistry class — Sohn secretly personified the elements on the periodic table and made jokes about them. This was the entry point for a world of anthropomorphized Aristotelian elements.

Peter Sohn looked up at the periodic table and, partly because of his creativity but also perhaps as a mnemonic device, saw apartments. He remembers relating his teenage whimsy to his co-workers at Pixar — opening up after a personal experience — and that led directly into the "Elemental" project. In Sohn's words:

"I used to make fun of the periodic table of elements. I used to make fun of it by adding like, 'It looks like apartment complexes to me. Copper lives next to Helium, but they're gassy, so be careful.' I used to do these jokes, but it was never a story. It was just something I did in school. But then later, years, years later, I had this event with my parents where I got to thank them for the sacrifices that they made. It was a very moving thing for me. And I came back to Pixar and I told some folks this story and they're like, 'Oh, that's your film and you got to do that. That's the next idea for you.'" 

While Helium and Copper are not characters in "Elemental," Sohn did use the "elements living in an apartment together" idea for his feature film. Indeed, he saw the various elements in one place as a strange symbol of the immigration diaspora. "[P]art of their experience," he said "was they came to a new place without any money, without knowing the language. That feels like this world of apartments with these different disparate elements." It seems that Sohn's whimsical throw-off joke he made in high school led him directly to his new film's primary character elements.

Pun intended.

Peter Sohn also said that it was producer Denise Ream who encouraged him to run with the "elements as immigrants" story. "Elemental" takes place in a city with citizens made of all four elements, implying the diverse background profile of many major U.S. cities. Ream and Sohn asked for stories of many of Pixar's own employees and suddenly, "Elemental" began to feel very personal. Sohn said:

"Denise got us getting to talk to a whole bunch of artists at Pixar from all over the world, all first-gen, second-gen, and they all started resonating with it, but then also bringing their own personal lives to it. That is almost like a little something that tells you that like, 'Oh, if it's resonating, it could have those possible connections.'"

"Elemental," then, is a movie about the immigrant experience told through a visually creative, fantastical setting. It's also a mismatched romantic comedy. It just goes to show that the silly jokes you used to make in high school — and Sohn doesn't reveal if his elements gags were well-received by his classmates — can lead to a lucrative creative career decades down the line. Sohn previously directed Pixar's "The Good Dinosaur," and was an executive producer on "Luca." Never stop making silly jokes. They are your lifeblood.

Say, if a fire woman and a water man fell in love and had a child, would the child be steam? Would an earth/air couple spawn a dust devil? The imagination boggles.