The Man who saved disney
The Story Of Pixar’s John Lasseter
by Alex S. Morrison
There are thousands of actors in Hollywood. There are hundreds of celebrities, stars whose personal lives are deemed interesting enough to be covered in magazines and on entertainment-centered TV shows. There are a handful of auteurs, filmmakers whose original style and complete control give their productions a distinctive stamp. But creative visionaries who inexorably alter the way we imagine what movies can be? Those are a rare breed, coming along perhaps once in a generation.
Before Toy Story debuted on movie screens in November 1995, there was little evidence to suggest that writer/director/Pixar co-founder John Lasseter would be hailed as the second coming of Walt Disney himself. He had been unceremoniously fired from Disney’s animation studios after stepping on his superiors’ toes. And, although he’d directed two Oscar-nominated animated shorts, the then-38-year-old had never before overseen a full-length film.
But now, after 15 years, 10 Pixar films (this month’s eagerly-anticipated Toy Story 3 will be the studio’s eleventh full-length feature), 24 Academy Awards, more than $5 billion at the box office and a $7.4 billion deal that made him the chief creative officer of Walt Disney Animation Studios and the principal creative advisor of Walt Disney Imagineering, Lasseter is among the most powerful and influential figures in the world of entertainment. And he did it all by single-mindedly pursuing his passion for computer animation– a craft that he practically invented (and certainly perfected), and which ultimately revived audiences’ love for animation in general and Disney in particular.
In person, Lasseter doesn’t seem like what you’d expect from a high-powered corporate executive. He favors tennis shoes and custom-designed, loose-fitting Hawaiian shirts (often bearing beloved Pixar characters) over suits. His modest office at Disney Studios boasts enough collectible toys to populate the next two Toy Story sequels. And he’s much more likely to get excited when talking about formative creative influences such as Frank Capra, Buster Keaton and Star Wars than he is when discussing multibillion dollar deals or blockbuster box office receipts.
“I was already going to Cal Arts and knew I wanted to be an animator when, in the summer of 1977, Star Wars came out,” Lasseter says, with the giddiness of a geeky fanboy. “I saw it on opening weekend at the Chinese Theater in Hollywood, and I was just shaking with excitement by the end of it. This huge crowd of people were all on the edge of their seats, and it entertained them to a level I had never seen before. I thought, ‘This is what I want to do!’”
Taught by three of Disney’s famed “Nine Old Men”—the core animators responsible for classic films ranging from 1937’s Snow White & the Seven Dwarfs to 1977’s The Rescuers—Lasseter’s education at the California Institute of the Arts found him learning alongside a future Who’s Who in the world of family films, including John Musker (Aladdin, The Little Mermaid), Henry Selick (The Nightmare Before Christmas, Coraline) and Tim Burton (Frankenweenie, Corpse Bride). It also earned him a job at Walt Disney Feature Animation, which was a dream come true for the lifelong Mouse House fan.
“I do what I do because of Walt Disney, and the way his films entertained me as a kid. All I’ve ever wanted to do is create animation,” Lasseter says. “I grew up a half an hour away from Disneyland and worked as a ride operator on the Jungle Cruise. Disney is just one of those things that I’ve always loved and have always been a part of.”
Unfortunately, the company’s animation division was at an all-time creative low by the time Lasseter made his way into their hallowed halls. The original generation of lead animators had either retired or passed away, and Lasseter felt that developing projects such as The Fox & The Hound were “just the same old thing.” Determined to shake things up and take the art of animation to the next level, he recalls having a eureka moment when he got a glimpse of the light cycle sequence from a forthcoming Disney film called Tron, which was created using the nascent technology of computer animation.
"It totally blew me away,” he says. “It was like a little door in my mind opened up. I said, ‘This is it! This is the future!’ It was exciting, but at the time Disney was only interested in computers if they could make what they were doing cheaper and faster. They just weren’t interested."
Lasseter’s passion for using computers to craft animated backgrounds put him at odds with studio management, and he was ultimately terminated during the production of The Brave Little Toaster, Disney’s 1987 film about a group of abandoned appliances who decide to seek out their 8-year-old “master.” But the seemingly devastating career setback did nothing to dampen his enthusiasm for computer animation, and he was soon working in the Computer Graphics department at Lucasfilm. It was there, at Star Wars director George Lucas’ company, that the budding filmmaker developed his first computer-animated short, The Adventures of André & Wally B. When Lucasfilm Computer Graphics was bought by Apple impresario Steve Jobs in 1986, it was renamed Pixar, with Lasseter overseeing the company’s computer animation projects.
Pixar began making a name for itself quickly, earning a Best Animated Short Film Oscar nomination for 1986’s Luxo Jr., then winning the award for 1988’s Tin Toy. But it took another seven years of technological advancements before the studio unleashed Toy Story, the world’s first computer-animated feature film. Rooted in Lasseter’s lifelong love of toys (he still has his childhood Hot Wheels collection), the movie emphasized character development over whiz-bang visual effects. Pixar’s technological advancements inexorably altered the way animators made films, but Lasseter insists it’s the studio’s focus on old-fashioned, family-friendly storytelling that has made their movies such a hit with critics and audiences alike.
“Because animation is so expensive,” he explains, “we use storyboards to create a version of the movie called the story reel. We will work and re-work, and re-work, and re-work the story reel until it’s right. One of my jobs is to green-light a story reel into production, and I never let it go until everything is working great—the humor, the heart… To me, our dedication to making the story work before we make the movie is the secret of our success.”
Grossing more than $350 million and setting new standards in animation and computer-generated imagery, Toy Story was the first film in a three-picture deal between Pixar and Lasseter’s old employers at Disney, in which the former handled creation and production and the latter handled marketing and distribution. While the Lasseter-directed A Bug’s Life and Toy Story 2 went on to make a combined $844 million (not to mention millions more in merchandising), Disney’s animation arm continued to flounder, with The Emperor’s New Groove, Atlantis: The Lost Empire, Treasure Planet, Brother Bear and Home On The Range all failing to crack the $100 million mark domestically.
In the box office battle between Disney’s old school aesthetic and Pixar’s new school inventiveness, the student was quickly emerging as the master. By 2004 the seemingly synergistic relationship between the companies had broken down completely over profit distribution and story and sequel rights, with Jobs publicly declaring that Pixar was actively seeking other partners.
Finally, in 2006, Disney announced a deal that Time Magazine described as paying $7.4 billion for the contents of John Lasseter’s head. His new role at Disney allowed him unparalleled control over the flagging studio’s creative decisions, while at the same time protecting Pixar as a separate entity with its own policies (including a notorious lack of employee contracts).
“Our company caught lightning in a bottle,” Lasseter says, “and we didn’t want it to get swallowed up or assimilated. But what’s nice is that Disney is great at marketing, distribution, merchandising and theme parks, which benefits us on an international level. We’re making Disney Animation a director-driven studio like Pixar, but we’re not trying to turn Disney into Pixar.”
Lasseter has already made a huge impact on Disney’s reputation, completely retooling the critically acclaimed Bolt, strengthening the studio’s relationship with legendary Japanese anime guru Hayao Miyazaki (Spirited Away, Ponyo), and reuniting the creative team behind hits like The Little Mermaid to create last year’s Oscar-nominated The Princess & The Frog. If you ask his old Cal Arts classmate John Musker, who directed the musical adaptation of The Frog Prince, Lasseter is doing more than anyone to keep his beloved craft moving forward.
“It’s ironic that John, who pioneered digital animation and has done such incredible things with it, is actually the biggest fan of hand-drawn animation you’ll ever meet. He knows all those classic films inside and out,” Musker says, “and I think he was the only one with the clout to get this kind of movie going again. There’s something very magical and beautiful about it, and it’s because of John that Disney is back in that business.”
Like Walt Disney before him, Lasseter’s innovations continue to resonate and revolutionize the filmmaking business. And when Woody and Buzz Lightyear—the characters that made him famous—return to the big screen in Toy Story 3, it will be a warm reminder of childhood dreams fulfilled. At the age of 53, Lasseter remains a boy at heart, delighted to see his love of cartoons spreading throughout the world.
“The animation world is in one of the best places it has ever been,” he says. “Look at all the quality filmmakers that are doing animated films now: Blue Sky (Ice Age) with Chris Wedge; Dreamworks (Shrek, How To Train Your Dragon) is getting better and better; Fox and Sony are producing some great movies; Miyazaki-san in Japan… There are so many great artists out there, and the goal is to make great movies, you know? I’d much rather be part of a healthy industry than being the only player in a dead industry.”
With nearly a dozen computer-animated films among the Top 50 blockbusters of all time, and with hand-drawn animation experiencing a remarkable renaissance, you could argue that the industry on the whole has never been healthier. And with the visionary John Lasseter steering the ship at Disney and Pixar, it’s safe to say that animation’s bright future couldn’t possibly be in better hands.
«HOME |
