'Take her to the moon for me': how Inside Outs Bing Bong

FILM
became everyone's hero
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Kat Brown
25 July 2015 8:00am

Rileys imaginary friend is Pixars secret weapon, and an instant Disney hero CONTAINS
SPOILERS

ou probably didnt think it was possible to cry more than you did in the first 10 minutes of
Pixars 2009 film Up (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/film/up/review/). I am here to hold your hand, look

into your eyes, and tell you with infinite reserves of sensitivity and compassion that you are probably
going to blow a tear duct watching Inside Out (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/film/inside-out/review/).
Pixars latest film is its most ambitious yet and close to its best (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/film/what-towatch/pixar-best-worst-ranked/). A sophisticated exploration of how the brain develops as you grow up, it

sounds like a science lesson but plays out as an exploration of what it means to be happy when
sometimes you just need to be sad.
It takes place in the mind of 11-year-old Riley, a hockey-loving kid who begins to crack under the
pressure of being her parents happy little girl when the family leaves her beloved Minnesota for
San Francisco.
The films trailers and festival appearances focused so hard on the five wacky, colourful central
emotions (led by comedians Amy Poehler and Mindy Kaling (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/film/cannesfestival/disney-pixar-ethnic-minority-characters/) as Joy and Disgust) that one character slid by almost

unnoticed. This was quite an achievement: he is bright pink, cries sweetie tears and his cart-cumrocket ship has rainbow boosters fuelled by singing. Oh, and hes called Bing Bong. These are not
factors that add up to being discreet.
Yet this was the perfect way for Pixar to quietly underplay the character that would turn out to

provide the films biggest emotional punch, because Bing Bong, Rileys imaginary friend, is above all,
forgotten.
It was a really smart move on our part, if I can pat ourselves on the back, director Pete Docter told
Entertainment Weekly (http://www.ew.com/article/2015/06/23/inside-out-bing-bong-big-secret). We wanted to
make sure he was a surprise to the audience because, as a filmmaker, I hate when you go and watch
those trailers and they give away everything. Youre like Okay, well, I guess I dont have to watch the
movie.
Pixar kept Bing Bong off promotional materials to such an extent that press seeing the first hour of
the film earlier this year expected him to turn out to be the films villain. Far from it although to
adults, his appearance might suggest otherwise.
Bing Bong looks like pop cultures worst nightmare: a worrying cross between the Cheshire Cat, a
clown and one of those terrifying pink elephants from Dumbo. One of my colleagues flat-out called
him creepy, and you can hardly disagree with that. Have you seen a childs drawing lately? They look

like the work of a deranged serial offender who may kill at any moment.
Bing Bong is the perfect depiction of the harum-scarum mind jump of a childs brain: a friendly,
vague mix of favourite things here, the colour pink, a cat, candy floss and a dolphin. We started
thinking: lets have an imaginary friend that still lives in the mind, co-director Ronnie Del Carmen
told Yahoo! Movies (https://www.yahoo.com/movies/inside-out-bing-bong-riley-pixar-disney-richard122177698057.html). And when that came up, it became obvious to us that its hard to create just one

imaginary friend, so Bing Bong should be an amalgam of many things.

Credit: Disney/Pixar/Pixar

Its a myth that its just lonely children who have imaginary friends. A 2004 study
(http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/dev/40/6/1173/) by psychologists at the University of Washington and the

University of Oregon found that 65 per cent of children had had such a pal by age seven. Eldest and
only children were more likely to have invisible friends, most of whom disappeared by the time
children started school. If you think Bing Bong is unusual, friends of the children in the study
included a squirrel, a panther, a seven-inch-tall elephant and a 100-year-old GI Joe doll.

Joy and Sadness (voiced by Phyllis Smith, who acted alongside Kaling in the long-running American
version of The Office) accidentally end up in Long Term Memory, and find Bing Bong, whom Riley
loved at three, but had forgotten by four. Bing Bong has spent the years since trying to find a way to
get Riley to remember him so that they can finally fly their rocket to the moon.
According to Del Carmen, Bing Bongs appearance was based on vaudeville actors who used to play
big theatres but after the invention of TV and movies, theyre out of work. His drab hat and coat are
reminiscent of the classic train-riding hobo, heightened by Bing Bongs familiarity with illegally
riding the Train of Thought that rushes through Rileys mind.
Really, the only unlikely thing about Bing Bong is the suspiciously lucid rhyming of the song that
powers his rocket carts rainbow boosters. No three-year-old can rhyme that well. Yet it speaks for
any among us who might dimly recall some sort of friend who wasnt really there.
Thats the kind of imagination we see in our kids, Del Carmen said. When you see your kids sitting
in the living room singing or talking to no one, and you ask them, Who are you talking to, honey? and
they say, Im talking to my friend. We just felt it necessary to create one for our story.
I never had a Bing Bong, but between the ages of eight and 11 my friends and I had enough imaginary
horses to fill a yard. We lovingly groomed them with the brushes we spent our pocket money on,
waiting for the day when wed get a real horse of our own (needless to say, this day never came).
Where Riley and Bing Bong would try to get to the moon in their rocket ship, we had showjumping
courses, painstakingly assembled out of garden chairs and brooms raised and lowered to different
levels depending on how ambitious our legs were feeling.
At this point I was learning to play cards, and named my favourite horse Racing Demon. He was I
was also reading a lot of Enid Blyton as black as midnight, incredibly proud, and probably I was
vague on the details a stallion. Racing Demon was keen on rearing up and snorting, but amazingly,
this was never quite enough to unseat his rider.
I spent many happy times riding Racing Demon and his friends until, like Bing Bong, he became
obsolete. I started spending my Saturdays at a real stable, and fell in love with a vast piebald
monstrosity called Harry Batiste who had a penchant for standing on my feet and leaning just
enough for the toenails to come off.

Harry B was a worthy successor to my invisible stables. He taught me how to ride and be fearless, and
to be grateful that nothing was broken if I did fall off. I loved Harry B so much that I once
unthinkingly Googled him to see if he was on Facebook. The fact that he is very likely dead, 15 years
on, is devastating.
I hadnt thought about my dream horses in years, but all of these memories came back in a burst as I
watched Bing Bong slowly fading away in the Memory Dump, the place where old memories are
discarded to make way for new ones, and where he and Joy have fallen, along with the rocket ship
that is so painfully, clearly, an ordinary cart. Beautifully, and in such a subtle way that you barely
notice until afterwards, Pixar shows Rileys brain preparing for adolescence. Bing Bong will be
followed by millions of other memories and experiences, all coloured by mixed emotions rather than
the clear-cut primary colours of childhood.
Bing Bong hatches an escape plan using the ship, but his and Joy's combined singing isnt enough to
boost both of them to safety. He realises that Joy is crucial to Rileys future well-being, whereas he
can be left behind. The following scene where Bing Bong sacrifices himself to help Joy is simply
devastating. Its no wonder they cut it down.
The version that came out for the public was about 20 to 40 seconds shorter than the scene we
recorded, because it got a little too hard-hitting, Richard Kind, the veteran TV and Pixar actor who
voices Bing Bong, told Yahoo! Movies (https://www.yahoo.com/movies/bing-bong-inside-out-richard-kind-bigscene-122791135777.html). He first recorded his lines before the film was animated.

When I saw the scene

I asked them for take after take after take because I was sobbing.
In this farewell, Pixar have made us all a cinematic core memory to match Rileys. As he makes one
final push on the cart to send Joy to safety, Bing Bong says the killer line: Take her to the moon for
me. And with that, everyone who has ever loved a invisible child, a horse, or a 100-year-old GI Joe,
weeps forever.

Who's your friend who likes to play?

Bing Bong, Bing Bong
His rocket makes you yell "Hooray!"
Bing Bong, Bing Bong

Who's the best in every way, and wants to sing this song to say
Bing Bong, Bing BONG!

Happysky
@Happysky

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8:12 AM - 16 Jul 2015
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INSIDE OUT - NEW UK TRAILER - OFFICIAL DISNEY PIXAR | HD

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