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Fine interview with Pixar/Disney’s John Lasseter, who is quickly becoming a favorite of mine. “I believe in the nobility of entertaining people, and I take great, great pride that people are willing to give me two or three hours out of their busy lives.”
Pixar: where are all the women? “To date, there’s not a single Pixar film that has a female main character: The Incredibles comes the closest, but even there, both Helen Parr/Elastigirl and Violet are supporting characters, and it’s Bob Parr/Mr. Incredible that’s the hero.” Helen Parr and Dory are my favorite Pixar characters.
Steve Jobs to Apple shareholders: I have no interest in running Disney. He also said that he’ll be spending less time at Disney than he did at Pixar, which is good news for Apple.
Early review of Pixar’s Cars. The author caught the first public showing of the film in Las Vegas.
Now that Lasseter’s on the job, Disney may be bringing back their 2-D animation tradition.
An account of how Pixar came about that goes back a little further (Xerox PARC, circa 1973) than the one I linked to a few days ago.
The Pixar model of making creative products: “We’ve made the leap from an idea-centered business to a people-centered business. Instead of developing ideas, we develop people. Instead of investing in ideas, we invest in people. We’re trying to create a culture of learning, filled with lifelong learners. It’s no trick for talented people to be interesting, but it’s a gift to be interested. We want an organization filled with interested people.” Pixar University sounds *amazing*.
The new Pixar overlords at Disney Animation wasted no time in cancelling Toy Story 3. “Sequels should only be made if there is a really great story that demands it, and should be the domain of those who created the original film.” Could this be the end of Disney’s straight-to-video animated crap-o-ramas?
It’s a done deal…Disney is buying Pixar. This bums me out in a lot of different ways. The big winner? Apple Computer.
A brief history of Pixar. “Even with the animation group generating income Pixar was still a money pit. That was about to change. Disney had decided they were willing to give a computer-animated movie a shot.”
MoMA just opened their show about Pixar last week and on Friday, we went to a presentation by John Lasseter, head creative guy at the company. Interesting talk, although I’d heard some of it in various places before, most notably in this interview with him on WNYC. Two quick highlights:
At 15 minutes long, the Q&A session at the end of his talk was too short. The MoMA audience is sufficiently interesting and Lasseter was so quick on his feet and willing to share his views that 30 to 40 minutes of Q&A would have been great.
[1] For you Pixar completists and AICN folks out there, the clip showed Lightning McQueen leaving a race track on the back of a flat-bed truck, bound for a big race in California. As the truck drives across the US, you see the criss-crossing expressways of the city stretch out into the long straight freeways of the American west, the roads literally cutting into the beautiful scenery. A cover of Tom Cochran’s Life is a Highway plays as the truck drives. The world of the movie features only cars, no humans…the cars are driving themselves.
Audio interview with John Lasseter (basically creative director at Pixar) and Ron Magliozzi, who helped curate the just-opened show at MoMA on 20 years of Pixar.
MoMA is running a Pixar exhibition from December 14 to February 6, 2006. “Featuring over 500 works of original art on loan for the first time from Pixar Animation Studios, the show includes paintings, concept art, sculptures, and an array of digital installations.”
Edward Jay Epstein on why Pixar should make nice with Disney again. Bottom line: Disney owns the sequel rights to all of Pixar’s films and Pixar can’t afford to do battle against Toy Story 3 or The Incredibles 2 in future summers.
Short article about Pixar on the 10th anniversary of Toy Story. Their work process takes a cue from improv comedy by opening up possibilities with “yes, and…” rather than “no, but…” Gladwell talks about this aspect of improv at length in Blink.
Pixar’s stock drops because of smaller-than-expected sales of The Incredibles DVD.
Pixar’s profits tripled since last year. And it sounds like a Disney reconciliation might happen as well.
Terry Gross interviews The Incredibles director Brad Bird on NPR. “So, what does the director of an animated film actually do?”
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