Disney Pixar Discussion

[ShyViolet]

Hope that helps! Smile

Thanks Ben!!

[Daniel]

I agree with everyone, this sounds like a terrible idea!

[ShyViolet]

I don't particularly like it either. Like I said earlier, it feels completely pointless, more for the sake of showiness than real progress.

[droosan]

Bit of trivia: Buena Vista got its name from the street which borders the west side of the Walt Disney studios in Burbank.

The street which forms their north border, Alameda, was used as part of the villain's name in Home on the Range.

I'm not aware if they've named anything after their southern or eastern border streets (Riverside and Keystone) .. but I wouldn't be surprised.

------

Also, of course, Disney's publishing division, Hyperion, is named after the street on which the original 'Mickey Mouse/Silly Symphonies' studio stood.

[ShyViolet]

Cool info!!

[Daniel]

Yeah, espicially this part;

The street which forms their north border, Alameda, was used as part of the villain's name in Home on the Range.

How cool!

[ShyViolet]

The street which forms their north border, Alameda

Really geeking out here, but wasn't Alameda also where Uhura and Chekov were trying to find the "Nuclear Vessels" or whatever, , in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home? (1986)

[droosan]

The U.S. Navy base in the city of Alameda, near San Francisco .. yes.

Same name; different place.

There's even another town named Burbank in California, in Santa Clara county (near San Jose). This one's better, though.

[ShyViolet]

Yeah....I don't know California too well....(I was there on a tour years ago)
just place names--mostly in LA. Glendale, Redwood City, Brentwood, Hollywood Hills, Bel Air, Newport Beach, etc....


Good Lord there a ton of Universities in CA though. Even more than New York State!!

Really interesting though.

[ShyViolet]

The times....they are "a-changing."


(whatever that means )


http://animationguildblog.blogspot.com/ ... anges.html


Although TAG disagrees, I think changes are still in store and more are on the way.

Disney purchasing Pixar is not an end-all and be-all to what's going on WDFA. I'm sure there is stuff happening all them time, but because of the current regime's policies, we simply don't hear about it like we did in the Eisner/Stainton days.

[Ben]

The Hollywood Reporter has printed a very good article on John Lasseter's tenure at Disney and his hopes for the future. Since I don't think many would be able to read this without a subscription, I've quoted some chunks below. A short interview with Lasseter follows.

On a warm evening this past August, hundreds of men and women filed into Hollywood's elegant El Capitan Theatre for a memorial tribute to the late Ollie Johnston, who passed away in April.

The location could not have been more appropriate: Disney's flagship movie house, restored at a cost of millions of dollars, was the perfect location to celebrate the life of one of the Nine Old Men, the pioneering animators who brought Walt Disney's classics to the screen.

Among those paying tribute was John Lasseter, chief creative officer of the Walt Disney Animation Studios and Pixar Animation Studios and also principal creative advisor for Walt Disney Imagineering. His voice trembling with emotion, he spoke of how thrilling it was getting to know Johnston when he first came to Disney in 1979.

"We weren't embraced at that time by many of the people leading (Disney)," he recalled. "The Nine Old Men were starting to step away and retire. But it was the Nine Old Men who embraced us. They wanted to teach us everything that they knew. They recognized, more than anybody else, that they were handing the torch off."

The torch has been passed. Over the past two decades, Lasseter has become not only the most prominent successor to the Nine Old Men, but arguably the most important figure in animation since Disney himself.

This year, he's a key player behind two animated films: "WALL-E," already hailed by many critics as a masterpiece, and "Bolt," debuting Nov. 21.

One comes from the ever-inventive Pixar, the other from Disney's decades-old animation unit. If Lasseter is now pivotal to both, that is no coincidence: His groundbreaking work has never ignored its debt to the past.

There are few men as inventive as Lasseter and even fewer whose creativity pays such respect to tradition. It is for this reason that The Hollywood Reporter has named him Innovator of the Year.

"He's been an extraordinary force in innovating and renewing excitement about the animated feature in this country," says film historian Charles Solomon. And, he says, he did so "at a time when it was falling into the doldrums."

I would never guess animation was in the doldrums as I drive up to the Pixar campus in Emeryville, Calif. It's a short drive from the hard streets of Oakland, but feels a world apart -- like an Ivy League campus, with its own sports facilities and heated pool.

Lasseter's L-shaped office brims with scripts, family pictures and a multitude of toys.

"John views the world through an unpolluted lens," says Tim Allen, the voice of Buzz Lightyear in the "Toy Story" films. "He has a way of simplifying things."

Certainly, on the surface, that's the way he comes off. Sitting in his office, he has a rumpled but boyish quality and a wide-open face. He's wearing one of the many Hawaiian shirts that have become his uniform.

On a nearby wall, there's a shrine to Lasseter's favorite animation director, Japan's Hayao Miyazaki, with signed posters, pictures and mementos from films like his 2003 best animated feature Oscar winner "Spirited Away."

"His films are so specific," he says. "They have such heart. They're so inventive. They're always inspirational."

Heart. Inventiveness. Inspiration. These are Lasseter's own hallmarks, visible in everything from the free education available to Pixar employees to the imaginative way he works with Pixar's "Brain Trust," a group of directors who play a pivotal role on each film.

The Brain Trust is critical to Pixar's success. It gets together regularly to look at work done by other directors and comment candidly.

It's part of a strategy Lasseter calls "plusing," constantly adding input from all sources.

"It's always assumed there's a way to make it better at every stage," says Pete Docter, director of 2001's "Monsters, Inc." "John is great at saying, 'Well, what if you did this extra little gesture?' And suddenly it really sparkles and comes to life."

But it would be foolish to think this happens in some nebulous ether. Lasseter's boyish manner masks a far more driven figure.

His quest for perfection has led him to let go of actors who don't work out, as he did with one actress who was meant to play the title role of "Tinker Bell," a film in Disney's newest direct-to-DVD animated franchise, the Disney Fairies. It has also led him to part ways with filmmakers who don't share his vision -- as he did with Chris Sanders, who was originally attached to direct "Bolt."

Sanders had conceived of "Bolt" under a different title, "American Dog." It was in development at Disney when Lasseter arrived in 2006, but he and the Brain Trust were critical of what they saw. Lasseter gave Sanders notes to improve the story, but the director seemed resistant to making the changes. The project remained at Disney, but Sanders was let go.

"'Bolt' was a restart," says Ed Catmull, president of Pixar and Disney animation studios. "The roughest concept was kept, but the look was different, the characters were different."

The irony, of course, is that Lasseter has been there himself: Sitting back in his desk, he notes that in 1983, he was fired from the very Walt Disney Studios he now dominates.

Born in Whittier, Calif., on Jan. 12, 1957, Lasseter was the son of a Chevy parts manager and a high school art teacher.

It was his mother, Jewell, who truly stamped him.

"We would go to the Church of Christ all the time," he recalls. "But I don't remember a sermon, because we'd get there and she'd hand me a pad and pen, just to keep me quiet. And I'd sit there and just draw the whole time. 'It's God's way,' my mother would say."

But Lasseter was not the only one with talent. His brother, Jim, stood out, even compared with John and his twin sister, Johanna.

"He was explosive with his creativity," Lasseter remembers. "I was always very reserved. No one believes it, but I was the shy, reserved one in the family." Jim, an acclaimed interior designer, died of AIDS in 1998.

While Lasseter's grades were good, his teachers fretted that young John seemed to space out at times. And indeed, he thought something was wrong with him until he learned much later about right brain/left brain theory.

"When the creative brain takes over, the logical brain just goes to sleep," he explains. "That was what had been happening to me my entire life."

During his freshman year at Whittier High School, he stumbled upon Bob Thomas' book "The Art of Animation." "It dawned on me," he says, "(that) people actually make cartoons for a living."

Not long after, Disney's 1963 movie "The Sword in the Stone" showed up in the local discount theater. When he got into his mother's car after watching it, he told her: "I'm going to work for Walt Disney."

Around that time, Lasseter got a letter announcing a new major at the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, Calif.: character animation, to be taught by the last of the original Disney animators. The summer before entering CalArts, he worked for the program's director, mostly copying the work of classic animators for use by the students.

Lasseter thrived at CalArts, where he studied alongside classmates Brad Bird, Tim Burton and John Musker. While there, he won two Student Academy Awards -- and he remains the only two-time winner in history.

Also while at CalArts, Lasseter saw another film that would strongly impact his thinking: 1977's "Star Wars." He was there on opening weekend in a packed auditorium at the Chinese Theatre in Hollywood. "You've never seen an audience as pumped to see a movie as that," he says. "I thought to myself, 'Animation can do this (too).' So I had deep in me this fundamental belief that animation is not just for kids."

But when he started his "dream job" at Disney, his enthusiasm and idealism took an initial hit. After a training course, Lasseter was put to work on "The Fox and the Hound" (1981). He tried to make suggestions, but was told to keep quiet.

"It was stifling," he recalls. "They really went to great effort to squish the young talent. The creative leadership at the time was these guys who were kind of second-tier animators. I didn't want control, power -- that's what they were into. I just wanted to make the movies better. The famous saying back then was, 'What would Walt do?' Walt died in 1966! The studio had been hermetically sealed."

When Lasseter tried to go around a powerful manager to pitch a project, he was fired.

But his time at Disney wasn't wasted -- he did get to meet Johnston and Frank Thomas, another of the Nine Old Men. He learned from them, and from a book they were writing, "Disney Animation: The Illusion of Life," which became the authoritative history of early Disney animation.

"The biggest thing I learned was to make your character really feel like it's thinking," he explains. "Every moment should create the idea that it was generated by that character's own thought process."

Still, the once-brilliant student was now out of a job, with no apparent future.

"I had always dreamed of working at the Disney studio," he says. "It was just crushing."

The devastating impact of that firing seems even clearer when one considers that Lasseter didn't mention it to anyone for years, not even to his friend Catmull, whom he ran into soon after the incident at a computer graphics conference.

"I didn't tell people I got fired until just recently," Lasseter admits. "When you're young, your identity is wrapped up in this dream. To have the rug pulled out from under me was so disheartening."

Luckily, Catmull was working on some new ideas at Lucasfilm's computer graphics division, and he quickly invited Lasseter to join them for a month. He wound up staying much longer.

Lasseter had a vision of using computers in animation, but at the time they were largely relegated to creating backgrounds. Now at Lucasfilm, he and Catmull would explore computerized animation to brilliant effect, creating the very first computer-animated short, "The Adventures of Andre and Wally B."

Lasseter calls George Lucas a "visionary," but he wasn't drawn to computer animation. "Lucas wanted these tools for making films, but wasn't interested in the computer side of it," Lasseter explains. "So we started looking around (for new financing)."

Some Disney insiders wanted to buy the company, but then-studio chief Jeffrey Katzenberg nixed it. When Apple co-founder Steve Jobs found out about Lucas' group, he thought he sniffed a deal.

In 1986, Jobs bought the computer graphics unit of Lucasfilm for the fire-sale price of $5 million, injected another $5 million of capital into it, and renamed it Pixar -- a made-up, Spanish-sounding word meaning to make pictures.

As Pixar thrived, making Oscar-winning shorts that became the talk of the entertainment community, the Walt Disney Co. wasn't blind to its success. In the 1990s, Disney tried to hire Lasseter back, but he stayed where he was.

"I wasn't making much money, but I felt I was on the edge of something," he says. "We were the cutting edge of this new technology."

So after his overtures failed to woo Lasseter back to the Disney fold, Katzenberg made a deal with Pixar for Lasseter to direct the first computer-animated feature film, which turned out to be 1995's "Toy Story."

Despite Katzenberg's enthusiasm, there was considerable skepticism at the studio. "They didn't think you could get the emotion out of the computer-created characters," recalls Disney Studios chairman Dick Cook. "When something new comes out, you're always going to have a certain amount of skepticism."

Lasseter had the opportunity on "Toy Story" to be the sole author of the screenplay, and to keep all the creative decisions to himself. Instead, he put together a core group that included Andrew Stanton, Docter and the late Joe Ranft -- the beginnings of what would come to be known as the Brain Trust -- who worked as a collective on every aspect of production.

"Part of that is his temperament," says Stanton, director of "WALL-E." "(John) thrives on others. The most anxious I have seen him is when he is alone too long on a problem."

As this was Pixar's first feature-length movie, Katzenberg gave lots of notes -- above all, to make the characters edgy so they would play to adults as well as kids. But when Pixar brought the first reels to Burbank, the studio's leaders hated them because the characters were too edgy -- bordering on unlikeable. Executives ordered production halted and people fired.

But Lasseter, determined not to break up Pixar, begged for time to fix the first reel and was given two weeks.

"We said, 'Let's just make the movie we want,'" he recalls.

Two weeks later they had turned the film around, and the rest is animation history.

"Toy Story" launched a period of creativity unrivaled since Disney's golden era.

"A Bug's Life" (1998) and "Toy Story 2" (1999) proved digital animation was no fluke. They were followed by "Monsters, Inc." (2001), "Finding Nemo" (2003), "The Incredibles" (2004), "Cars" (2006), "Ratatouille" (2007) and now "WALL-E."

They were films that transformed what anyone had imagined animation could do, picking up three best animated feature Oscars in the process.

They also transformed Pixar's financial standing.

A week after "Toy Story" opened, Jobs took the company public. In 1997, Pixar and Disney forged a new pact, splitting development costs and profits 50-50 on five feature-length films over 10 years. But after Pixar produced a few more boxoffice hits, Disney found rival bidders on the scene.

Just who would get Pixar's films when the Disney contract ran out after "Cars" in 2006 led to hostility between Jobs and then-Disney chairman Michael Eisner, jeopardizing relations between the two companies.

On Jan. 29, 2004, Jobs surprised Eisner when he announced an end to negotiations with Disney on a new contract. It was only when Robert Iger replaced Eisner that relations started to improve.

Iger moved quickly to open lines of communication and not long after sealed a deal to buy Pixar for $7.4 billion worth of Disney stock.

On May 5, 2006, the deal was closed. Not only did Jobs become the studio's biggest shareholder, but Lasseter was named to his current posts, making him one of the most powerful executives at the studio that had unceremoniously parted ways with the young animator 23 years prior.

He manages to split his week between Disney facilities in Burbank and Glendale and the Pixar Studios in Emeryville. He attends meetings on movies in development and those in progress; on projects at Imagineering for theme parks; on products for merchandising and licensing; and still manages to consult on other creative activities throughout the company. With it all, he finds time to spend with his wife and five sons, whose home is a sprawling winery in Glen Ellen, where Lasseter tends to his collection of classic cars and lays track for the arrival of the "Marie E.," Ollie Johnston's steam locomotive.

Earlier this fall, I visited him in Burbank, and on the day of my visit I found this powerhouse executive on his hands and knees on the gray carpet of a story room in the animation building. In his blue jeans and baggy shirt, Lasseter seemed more like a big kid than a corporate titan.

A costumed character of a furry white dog with a lightning bolt on his back stood above him as Lasseter pinched the plush fur around his ankle. Circled by some 15 seamstresses, executives, marketers and animators, Lasseter discussed this costumed incarnation of Bolt -- intended to make the rounds at Disneyland -- with designer Diana Kuriyama.

"We've got a great movie coming out," Lasseter told the character with genuine enthusiasm, seemingly satisfied with the costume. "You guys are going to be so popular."

His influence has already been felt at the Disney parks around the world, and soon one of his most personal movies, "Cars," will become an attraction at the California Adventure Park, where he has also worked on an upcoming "Little Mermaid" attraction and the recently opened Toy Story Midway Mania.

"John was intimately involved," says Jay Rasulo, chairman of the Disney Parks and Resorts.

But the parks are just a small part of Lasseter's work. It's still the films that consume him.

When Lasseter and Catmull took charge of Disney Animation, they eliminated most middle management and set up a system similar to Pixar's, where directors report to the top managers.

"We just trust our instincts and our artists and believe in each filmmaker and the storytelling," Lasseter notes.

Insiders praise how thoroughly he has revitalized Disney Animation. His colleagues seem in awe.

"(John) has this brilliant combination of a generalist's view and a superfocus on minutiae," says veteran animator Glen Keane, who is directing animator on the upcoming "Rapunzel" (2010). "He can go from a satellite view down to a 1-square-foot view like that," he says, snapping his fingers. "That's very rare."

For Lasseter, life is a juggling act between the executive he has become and the artist he remains.

"Working at Pixar is like being a trapeze artist, where you're looking across at the other guy to catch you," he noted. Like all great circus artists, he added, "you want to do something no one has ever done before."

[quote=""Lasseter On Disney""]The Hollywood Reporter: George Lucas' Industrial Light + Magic recently announced it was going to begin making computer-animated movies, starting with Paramount's "Rango" (2011). How do you view this new competition?

John Lasseter: I'd rather be a member of a healthy industry with a lot of studios making great films than to be the only player in a dead industry.

THR: Disney, like DreamWorks Animation, plans to do most animated movies in digital 3-D. That adds cost and complexity. Why is it worthwhile?

Lasseter: The worlds we create in computer animation are truly three-dimensional. And yet whether it's on film or video or high definition or stills, you're only looking at a two-dimensional version. With the new 3-D, you can actually see what is really in that world.

THR: Before Disney acquired Pixar, there was concern that the Disney direct-to-DVD sequels of "Toy Story" and others would be inferior. Now that you're involved, Disney is still going to make direct-to-DVD movies. How is it different?

Lasseter: To make very successful and entertaining films, you need to do three things really well: You need to tell a story that keeps people on the edge of their seat; you need to populate that story with really memorable and appealing characters; and you must put that story and those characters into a believable world. My philosophy is that quality is the best business plan, and it all starts with a great story, regardless of whether it's released in theaters or goes straight to video. The sequel should be as good or better than the original. When we were making "Toy Story 2," the movies we looked at were "The Godfather: Part II" and "The Empire Strikes Back."

THR: How do you differentiate between what is theatrical and what is direct-to-DVD?

Lasseter: Right now there are two different studios at Disney. The Disney Toon Studios and the Walt Disney Animation Studios. The films that go into theaters come from Walt Disney Animation, and Disney Toon is responsible for direct-to-video. The direct-to-video production is done with a partner, an overseas animation studio. (This year's) "Tinker Bell" was animated in India at a studio in Mumbai.

THR: Is that how you lower the cost?

Lasseter: Yes, but lower cost doesn't mean they should have any worse storytelling. We've really stressed the storytelling and the character development in these. I've worked very hard with the director and writers and story people and held them to a very high standard in the art and the look of it, and they've risen to that challenge.

THR: When Michael Eisner was running Disney, it looked for a time in 2004 and 2005 as if Disney and Pixar would end their business relationship. How did that impact you?

Lasseter: I'll just go back a little bit. We made the deal with Disney to do "Toy Story" (in 1991). Peter Schneider and Tom Schumacher were the leaders of the animation studio, and Tom always gave me amazing input to make the movies better. (Disney) really is the best at marketing these films, and it was exciting to be associated with the company that owned Disneyland and the theme parks. We had done the first deal to do "Toy Story," which was a three-picture deal, but then we renegotiated after the first (picture), after Pixar went public. We renegotiated a 50-50 deal, where we put up half the money and split the revenue coming in. As time went on, Steve (Jobs) and Michael started wanting to renegotiate very early (after the first renegotiation). It was just so natural for us that we would continue this partnership. I wasn't involved in the negotiations, but the negotiations got more and more difficult.

THR: Did the strong personalities of Jobs and Eisner clash?

Lasseter: Yes, it was very frustrating. I guess it was wrapped up in the personalities of the two guys going at it. (Disney was) interested in doing a deal where they would just get the characters from us to produce their own sequels. That's where it really started getting sour. "If you want sequels," we said, "let us do them." But Michael and that group really wanted to do them themselves. When it came to a head, Steve called me and said, "We're going to announce today that we're breaking off negotiations. We're going to start looking for another partner." I love being a part of Disney. I love having our characters in the parks. Knowing they would be taking all of our characters and making sequels with them without us was really one of the worst days of my life. But we rallied together as a group. We moved forward and had meetings with other studios. But then Roy Disney was fired from the (Disney Animation) board, and he started the "Save Disney" campaign. We decided we would wait and see; we had plenty of time. We didn't need to do another deal for a little while. We were already developing "Ratatouille," the first movie beyond the Disney deal. Then they announced Bog Iger was taking over (for Eisner). Bob saw the value of being with Pixar from the beginning. I started to get to know Bob and what a great, honest guy he is. That started the whole working toward the merger of the two companies.

THR: How do you now view Roy Disney?

Lasseter: I love Roy Disney. He has exactly the right view of what Disney animation should be. He has worked with Pixar. He's always been a big, big supporter of mine. I credit him for helping bring in Michael (Eisner) and (former Disney president) Frank Wells in 1984. He helped bring Disney back to its second heyday. He's just a great guy, and he has the passion -- and he always has the right point of view.[/quote]

Original link: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/con ... 45b155160b

Some good stuff, eh?

[andrewcg]

Very interesting interview. Alot of stuff I've never heard before. Thank you for posting Ben!

[Josh]

Collider.com has posted a cool video tour of John Lasseter's office. In the videos, Lasseter talks about his involvement with Bolt and Walt Disney Animation Studios: The Archive Series - Story.

[Josh]

With Rotten Tomatoes, Lasseter shares his five favorite films. I'm a little surprised that only one animated movie, Dumbo, made the list. Still, I love that for each of his favorite movies, Lasseter also mentioned a short film.

[Ben]

Gawd, <I>how</I> long did those videos take to download!?

Still, nice to see...and I like his top five...good picks.