How Pixar Plays With The Human Mind | Ed Catmull

At Pixar, well, we also say that failure is part of the process. It does happen. We don't actually use the terminology very much. Now, there are times when we have something which actually does fail. So we don't avoid it. You really fail as you say it. But the terminology of making a film is, since we know they'll have problems, is we're trying to solve the problem. That solution didn't work. Let's try this. I think you gotta have a dream.

The School of Greatness. Really?

Yeah.

Please welcome Lewis Howes. Welcome back, everyone, to the School of Greatness. Very excited about our guest today. We the inspiring Ed Catmull in the house, the co-founder of Pixar Animation and the New York Times bestselling author of Creativity, Inc. Overcoming the unseen forces that stand in the way of true inspiration. I'm so glad that you're here. Thank you so much for being on the show.

I'm really happy to be here.

We were just chatting for the last 30 minutes before this conversation, and I'm fascinated by your story, by your life, and the things that you've seen, witnessed, overcome and building a business, but also just building a beautiful life of your own. You were surrounded by some of the most brilliant creatives, leaders of industry since you were in college, and you essentially grew up with these individuals in chasing after envisioning, manifesting, creating a dream of yours to make animated films, which took you a long time. And then you've now done over 32 films since your time of starting at Pixar, I believe, and Disney 3132 films. Is that correct?

Yeah.

And it's incredible to know the influence you've had on the lives of, I'm assuming, billions of people who have consumed your stories. So I just want to acknowledge you for the incredible amount of work that you've created, the incredible amount of things that you've had to overcome in building the first animation film to, you know, building a massive company and all of the unseen forces of thousands of creative individuals coming together. The incredible magic that happens with that, but also the challenges you've had to overcome as well. So I'm so excited you're here. And we are talking about one of my favorite moments from Pixar, which was Toy Story 3 at the end, that made me so emotionally captivated, so moved to tears at the end of this movie, that I remember watching it the first time thinking, how am I crying watching a cartoon? How is this making me feel so deeply about my own life and imagining my own life? And it's just amazing what you and the entire team has been able to create. So I'm excited you're here. I'm excited for the book that has the expanded addition to it, which talks about what you learned in the last 10 years of leading Pixar and Disney animation as well. And yeah, welcome again to the show. Very excited.

Well, I'm very happy to be here. Although I also want to be careful that I don't take credit for what those other people did. Of course, But being the leader, you.

Know, being co-founder, leading the charge and casting a vision and overseeing the vision is a big responsibility.

Well, that was the fun part. Yeah. Was, okay, how do you have these rather amazing people work well together over a long period of time and it never changes? Like, today's problem is not like yesterday's problem. and it, you know, keeps changing. Right, right.

What was the biggest challenge you had in starting that first movie? Because I remember you saying it took about 14 years of time of, like, saying, when will be able to actually create this animation? I think it was 14 years from your prediction. What was the biggest challenge in waiting that long and actually putting out the first movie with Toy Story?

Well, in when I when I first started, it was like this was.

The.

Goal was to make a film. And I naively thought that it would probably take 10 years. And I very quickly, we were in a two-week or three years was disabused of that. Like, that was just wrong. But I didn't replace it with another estimate. It's like, I really didn't know. So it was. more of, okay, how do I think about the people, how we work together, and, but also what are the economics of it and what are the technical problems that need to be solved? Because initially I thought of myself as a researcher. I was thinking in terms of what are the problems that we need to solve to get there. And then while doing that, this when I was in New York Tech, it was after I left Utah. I also found that, because I was now over this group and I was kind of avoiding actually being the manager of the group, so I was trying to have it both ways. Yeah. I wanted to be the person that was solving the technical problems and I kind of liked being a leader, to be honest. So I have these theories about how to manage, but I also found that I liked figuring out these kinds of problems too. That is, the relationships between people and what made them work was really interesting. So I didn't have to give up one over the other. It's more like a time allocation. But I would say there was a phasing over time, but I stayed pretty deeply involved in technical issues probably for the next 10 or 15 years.

On the technical side.

On the technical side.

Before launching the first film.

Before launching, well, yeah, before launching the first film. Yes.

And.

Because we had this rather amazing group there. And I had a, I worked on having a culture like it was open and we published everything we did. Now at this point, because we're new in the industry, there were some people who thought we're pretty close. And I just felt like, well, we're not close at all. So some people were secretive about their breakthroughs. And I just thought, well, breakthroughs, shmakethroughs, we're years away. Yeah. So the best thing to do was to publish everything we did and completely participate in this community. And I'll have to say that a lot of my deepest friends come out of academia because we go to the same conferences. We've known each other for 50 years. But by publishing everything, we also became the place to come to. So we were bringing in the best people. And then finally Star Wars happened. And when Star Wars happened, then George Lucas was the first person in the film industry with credibility who thought that technology was going to affect the industry. like the number one. And believe me, we had tried. And to anybody else, we were utterly and completely irrelevant. It wasn't like they didn't think we could do it. It was they didn't even think about it at all. So George thought it was going to be possible. So he hired me in because we had this rather amazing group.

This is late 70s now.

This would have been, yes, late 70s, because I joined Lucasfilm in 1979. Okay. And when I left New York Tech and I'm trying to create this environment, I realized at that point that half of what I thought was actually worked really well. It became the foundation of what we built on. and half of what I thought was a complete croc. Didn't work at all, right? But the most important thing for me was that when I went to Lucasfilm, I came away with the insight that about half of what I did was right and half was wrong. I was gonna hang on to the things that were right, but I was gonna try something new. But I believed that my ratio of right to wrong would probably remain 50-50. and would probably continue to be true for the rest of my life, which I have found to be true. And it isn't as if I have a way of keeping track. I mean, it's, you know, you don't really know how to put numbers to this, but it felt like the value to me was understanding that I was right, or assuming I was wrong more than I thought I was.

You were wrong, Marty, yeah.

Yeah.

So.

At Lucasfilm now, it's a new educational opportunity. And George wanted to bring technology into film editing, to digital audio and into computer graphics. And now it's another educational opportunity because now you've got three customer groups, one of whom hated what we were doing. They didn't like the idea. So these are the video editors. George knew video editing. He's the one that wanted it. But the person they put in charge of doing it thought it was a terrible idea. So, okay, so that did not end well. Even though we did something which was way advanced or anything else in the industry, we didn't have a customer who wanted to use it. The digital audio had a guy who loved the idea and basically worked with this really well. But the third group was ILM. And ILM was neutral. Their view was, well, your resolution is too low, but if you ever get to be good enough to be used in the films, we'll use it. So now we're the driving force. Our goal is to meet their needs, to be good enough for what they were doing because they were the best in the industry. And if we could make them happy, then we would have succeeded. So we became the driving force, nobody else. That was our motivation.

Right.

And so, like those were those the kinds of lessons. And the other lesson was that as a representative of the Lucasfilm, I got to visit all these different companies, supercomputer companies, Cray, CDC, companies that most people don't either haven't heard of or don't remember. And also the emerging workstation companies. And they wanted to sell the Lucasfilm. So I can go in and talk with the leaders of the companies because they wanted to sell the Lucas film because Star Wars was sexy.

Yes.

And for lunch or for dinner, I'd meet with the engineers because they knew that I was actually a real technical person. What I found was at every one of these visits, I got two different views of a company in the same day. And I became aware that in a lot of companies there was like a class structure, not a term they would use. People would never say, well, we're first class here. There are people say, we're treated second class. Okay. But you can see this going on in companies. And I remember thinking, this can't be good. So as we continued to grow, and at some point we began to bring in artists, especially when we became Pixar, then the one thing that was clear to me is we needed to make sure that we didn't have a notion of first class and second class, that we really had to make sure right from the beginning that we gave the message of valuing everybody. Mm-. And that isn't the same thing as saying that everybody is the same. Yeah. They're not. They have different skills, different capabilities and so forth. But the notion that some people are better than others are in different class, not a good thing. So the basic principle was that you actually make the assumption that everybody can be better. Not the same, but everybody can be better. And that that is not a high risk proposition. It is worth doing. So we basically we were learning as we were going through this, and then we got to the point where George, you know, because he got divorced and his cash position was now completely different.

Than.

He needed to sell us. So this is a year long stressful period for us. It's a very stressful period. But part of that was by this time we had reached a level of quality because we had built some hardware in order to do high quality images. that, that ILM was starting to use what we had. And so part of the deal, as we spun out, was they had the rights to use the software that we had, and they used it in the film. I think the, the first major one was the Abyss. Although we had done something earlier for them, like for Star Trek, there was that thing where you flew over the planet and turned life like.

Sure.

So we've done a couple of things for them, but I found somebody to help run the graphics group. We were never part of ILM, but they needed somebody in ILM as they started that transition to digital technology. So we were acquired by Steve Jobs. Wow.

What year was this now?

This would be 1986.

1986, Steve Jobs acquires you. And you'd known Steve before well, I.

Met him once and then he just disappeared at the time we were now starting to get sold. Now, I didn't know why he disappeared. Later, of course, I learned the reason was he was in this internal struggle, which resulted in him being removed at Apple. So this was basically a public humiliation for Steve. and it largely had to do with the way he related with people. So that's kind of the mythology around Steve. And I knew Steve when he was like this. That is, his behavior around people was not empathetic. And that kind of behaviors is frankly kind of, it's interesting and people like to tell stories about it and write about it. It's sort of like the bad boy behavior. Um, and it's unfortunate because it doesn't capture the arc of Steve's life, which is far more interesting and impactful. Instead, the focus on the outside of whether it was movies or writing about him or articles was about a period in his life. And that was a period in which he was kicked out of Apple. He started Next Computer. and next he did some brilliant things like his software choices. It turns out were fundamentally, ultimately changed not only next, but later Apple. His hardware choices were questionable and he made some poor business choices.

Sure.

And choices in which he thought these were really big wins. But I was looking at them and thinking, oh, this cannot be a good idea.

Right, right, right. But he bought you guys, he bought Pixar.

So then he bought Pixar after he got them. So we knew Steve when he was like that, but we didn't have any choice. Like we've been spending a year, this was an utter disaster. It's a long story itself, like the things he went through. But the end result was this. the Steve acquired us.

When he acquired you guys, were you excited or were you more nervous based on his personality from the past?

Well, we were excited to keep alive and keep going. So that was the excitement part.

The dream. Yes.

And Steve is like, he is for us and varied. I had a great relationship with Steve. So I think I worked for Steve longer than anybody else.

Wow.

And I never had an argument with Steve.

Never, never.

Wow, we disagreed at times, but we never had an argument. And, and what, and my style with Steve was that if I didn't agree with him, first of all, I, I knew I was self aware enough to know that I absolutely could not think as fast as he could, right? he's really smart.

You're not going to debate him. You're not going to jump in here.

Yeah. So, I mean, there are people who are, who actually can push back with him and argue with him successfully. So there's something that's not known about Steve, but he actually values people to push back on him. But I can't think that fast. So instead, he'd shoot down what I say, and then I would say, well, let me get back to that. I'd wait a week. So I think about my next sentence for a week, for a week, and then I would give it to somebody, shoot it down, let me get back to you. So this might go on for weeks in the couple of cases, it went on for months, and there'd be one of three outcomes. I'd say each one was about equally likely. One of them was we reached a point when I would say, oh, I see what you're saying. You're right. And that ends it. About a third of the time, he would say, okay, got it. You're right. End of discussion. Just like, you just buy what I said, and that was it. It just. I didn't explain it very well the first time.

Sure.

And.

And one of the reasons I would do this is I never confuse. the personal power that somebody might have or their position with what was right. So it didn't matter if somebody was a better debater or could think faster than I could, or they were in a senior position. I didn't mean they were right. So it just meant that I couldn't argue at the same rate. So I just didn't give up as long as I knew that I was right. And if I wasn't right, then I would change. So the other third of the time is we didn't reach a conclusion. So in that third, I just did what I wanted to do. And Steve was okay with it because we had discussed it. And that's how it worked.

Oh, interesting.

For all those years.

How many years did you work with him?

Well, the we, he acquired us at that time. We were then a public company. So we were public company until we were acquired by Disney. And then at Disney, the terms of it was that we had the, the equivalent of a board of directors. We're just now a group within Disney. And I had a dual report to Bob Iger and to the the head of the studio. And, but we had this steering committee. And so this steering committee was John, Steve, and me, and then Bob Iger, the chairman of the studio, and the CFO of the company. Well, so like every month to begin with, and it slowly gapped with everybody. But now this group would come in and they were like our board of directors. so that continued up until the end of his life.

How many years total kind of that range is that when you first from.

86 and I forget what year he died.

Wow. The 10 or 11, I think.

Or. Yeah, something like that. Yeah.

Okay.

So.

So 30 something years.

Yeah. Yeah.

It's amazing. What were the biggest. Three biggest lessons you learned from observing Steve Jobs, from communicating with him and from. the way he left the world?

Well.

In the case of, it's like, what are the lessons? One of them, which he understood intuitively, which was that when you're wrong, you change. Now, I mean, there's different ways of phrasing it. It's like that there's no upside in being wrong. and some people think they need to win the argument. And Steve actually understood that was never the point. It was, you want to get to the truth quickly. And, but he also understood that.

At.

An intuitive level, that because of the power of his personality, it actually could restore the process. And, and that was part of his learning as he went through this. was the recognizing, what was him recognizing that his abilities, it's like superpowers, could.

Actually.

Get in the way of finding out things. So I'll give a couple examples. One of them, which would surprise people, was that we had a board of directors because in 1995 at the end, we went public. And this is a, this is like a big public offering. We were the second largest IPO of 1995, all after Netscape.

And when did Toy Story come out?

In 95, 95. So we went public one week afterwards. Wow. So when we were doing the road trip, and part of the road trip showing the movie was, Well, actually it wasn't showing the movie. It was telling people that we had a new technology that's going to change filmmaking. So now it's a complete conference. This film is going to be a big success. Wow. But he could say to them, nobody else can do this. There isn't anything like it. It's going to change the industry. And we've got the people that changed the technology and they're doing the content. So that's what this company is. But we don't, we're not gonna go public until after the movie comes out. Because we think that we should show you how big this is.

Wow.

Before we go public.

Smart.

So that was what we did for the few months leading up to going public.

We were telling a story about the story.

Yes.

Wow.

And that we were going to prove it.

And you guys did.

And we did.

You proved it big. What was that first week like? Toy Story launches, box office, and then you go public the next week later. What was that week like?

It was surreal.

What were the numbers of the box office and then going public?

Well, interestingly enough, what I remember at the time, because our whole group at the time would go to our computer graphics conference, which was SIGGRAPH, and for the most part, it's showing the newest technology. And we believe firmly, because we made short films and they were actually Academy Award winning short films, and they're quite impactful, but they're short. And people would always pay attention on the outside to the technology. So when the film came out, the biggest question that we had and everybody was looking for it and all of the technology people were looking for it was, what are the reviewers going to pay attention to? And what we found was that almost every review, there was at most one or two sentences about the new technology. and the rest of the review was about the movie.

Wow.

And that for all of us was like, that's the win. It wasn't about the technology.

It was about being a great movie.

Yes. And if we had done that, and we got people to buy into this world and watch it and feel it, then that was the win. And everybody understood it at every level in the company. Wow. So that's what I remember with reading those things to find out whether or not we had really accomplished what we wanted to do.

It's incredible. I mean, what I'm curious about is how were you able to tap into the human mind and create emotional connections with audiences through these animations? How was this studied and executed? for the last 30 years at such a high level? And how did you do that for that first movie?

Well, I will say that for the first movie, it's one of those things where there is some luck in that group that first came in. We had always, in the history of both New York Tech and then at Lucasfilm and then at Pixar, was to say we really want to hire the very best. And so I would say, well, we want to hire people who are smarter than I am. And, and I know other people say that, but because, like, like, what does that even mean? But it means that you don't want to be threatened by the people that you hire, and they just have to have these extraordinary skills. And so when we brought, when they were building out our, our technical group. I mean, they, they were just really good. I mean, they were, they had passed me in terms of their understanding of, of the technology. And John understood that, too. So when he did his first hires, as the first person he hired was Andrew Stanton, and then the second was Pete Doctor, and then Joe Ranft came in, and then we brought in really to be an editor, except he turns out to have been like one of the best storytellers ever, actually, Lee Unkrich. So this is this amazing group of people that came together.

And.

Now part of it was we really had established a culture where that this was the right thing to do. is you aren't bringing in, you weren't even thinking about them as, oh, okay, who's gonna be second to me? It's like, okay, who's really good? And it turns out that Andrew was, had this extraordinarily structural sense. We didn't know that, right? Right. It emerged because of the challenge. And Pete Docter had this incredible emotional horror. Well, it still does. I mean, so he went on to do up, inside out. You know, it's like getting the emotion right. It's like who he is. And Lee has this actually phenomenal filmmaking sense of, okay, we're doing this, but you really have to get all these pieces right. and then the person that was Sharon Callahan initially who was thinking about the lighting. And people aren't often aware of this, but the lighting is really important for conveying the emotions. And then the artist that we had, Ralph Eggleston, had a color palette for the movie because it turns out the basic color changed throughout the movie, and it's this subtle thing that's affecting your perceptions. Wow. So, like, this is this amazing group of people. And the interesting thing about it was that none of these people had ever made a feature film before in their life.

Oh, my goodness.

So we hadn't used computer graphics, but they also hadn't done a 2D film. Then the end of any film.

So it's unbelievable.

Everybody is a beginner. They all had to figure it out.

And you're leading them.

Yeah.

I mean, how do you know, I mean, yeah, the emotional, the emotions you're able to pull out of people, you know, in these films. through, you're a technology guy, but through the tech, through the art, through the color, through the lighting, through the sound design and the music, through the tonality of the voice actors, and bringing it all together to create a cohesive emotional story is unbelievable how you guys did this. And I continue to do it, but how did you know how to put it all together?

Well, I, I, I mean, the way I thought at the time was, how do you have a group that works together? Because I'm not a filmmaker. And I would, you know, over time we developed a way of helping people, which ended up being called the Brain Trust. But my view was, when I went to these meetings was, how do we make sure this group works together? Like, what are the things that make it work together? What takes them off the rails? so it was to work out some principles for that. And it's fun to give notes to movie, but the truth was there's only one movie in all those movies that I gave a note that I felt so strongly about that I had to push really hard to get it in there.

What was that?

It was in Monsters, Inc. What was the note? Well, the note was at one point near the end, the monster Sully has to scare this dummy, which is being videoed, that's like a training video. And you may recall that when he does this, he then looks up and he sees that the girl's right there and he scares the be Jesus out of this little girl, the one he loves. And he didn't mean to do it. But the original thing, what she saw was that she saw him on the monitor. so I looked at this and I said, you can't do this because anybody that has a child remembers there are times when they may have done something that where their child was in danger, either because of themselves or it happened to them. And when that happens, it sears into your soul and you never forget it. for as long as you live.

Wow.

And the for Sully, he needs to see that he was the cause of the thing that scared her, that it was not good enough to have her see it by the monitor.

So.

And so there's some pushback on it. And, you know, I tried to talk with Andrew, and for Anderson, no, this is actually critical to the film. And I just felt, oh, good. But that's it.

Right.

And so I can look at it, well, I did one at least.

One note in 30 movies. Yeah, yeah.

And, but with, but that wasn't my job. Yeah. They're the filmmakers. It wasn't my job. It was to say, okay, is this working well together? Why is it derailing? When does it go well? When doesn't it go well? And so, that was the whole time. And then when Jim Morris came in initially over, he came in as producer and then he was our head of production and then he was our general manager and then he became the president. It was like we're both like, you know, we're in there just looking at the process and what works, what doesn't work. Right. And you're just evolving it. Right. So over time.

I mean, it's, you, you got pretty animated during this retelling story with Monsters, Inc. What movie left you with the deepest amount of emotion when you watched it after it came out or in the process of making it? What was the movie that captivated you the most? I'm sure it's hard to say which one you liked the most, but was there a moment in a movie that really touched you in a way based on your own life experience different than the other emotional moments in movies?

Well, it was, it's a little hard to say because any emotion in a movie connects to watching the people go through this. So I don't, I can't even watch a movie in the same way that others do because I'm actually seeing what took place.

The creators, the producers, the everything.

That's right. Yeah. I mean, they're just. you know, these fellows all at the beginning have problems. It's just one thing after another. And we go through multiple steps and with giveaways of, of trying to fix the problems. And in fact, it was one of the things I was, I wanted to, like, clarify with the, the expanded edition of the book was that, you know, I, I talked a fair amount about you know, failure and how it is part of the process. But I realized that we, it doesn't actually capture what takes place because we all know that we learn from failures. And it's, in fact, failure is kind of popular to talk about nowadays about a way of learning. The reality is, is that We have two meanings to failure, which are deeply built into us. So there's one meaning, which is that we know that we've had failures and we learn from them and it's part of the process of learning. The other meaning is the one that we got in school, and that is if you fail a class, it's because you screwed up, you didn't work hard enough, or you're dumb, right? None of those are good meanings, right? All right, now you go out into business, bridges fail, relationships fail, companies fail, and in politics and business, failures are used as bludgeons with which to beat opponents. There is real and palpable fear behind failure. All right, so if we talk about failure, then it is almost possible for most people to emotionally disconnect those two concepts. And so I realized that since that's what I observed that at Pixar, well, we also say that failure is part of the process. It does happen.

Yes.

We don't actually use the terminology very much. Now, there are times when you have something which actually does fail. So we don't avoid it. You have to like it. It's something really fail as you say it. But the terminology of making a film is, since we know they all have problems, is we're trying to solve the problem. That solution didn't work. Let's try this. So the iterative process is. we're trying it. Let's try this. And as long as the team is working well together, even if they haven't solved the problem, if they're working well together, we say, okay, keep going. It's a tough problem. And, and they know that. They know we have their back. And, and the only thing that, the only real clue we have that we have to do a major change is if the crew begins to lose the confidence that a leader can actually get them there. They may like the leader. And this is not, you know, I like, I, you know, I don't like them. It's, it's more like I just don't have the confidence running yet there. And those things start to build. So we are aware of some of them because people will come and talk about some of the problems they've got. So you then start off, how do we help the person? How do we supplement them? Could we add somebody to the team to remove somebody? What are the things we can do behind the scene to help them? And if we get to the point where we can't do it, then we'll do a bigger change. And we essentially have failed. And it's tough because we picked the person to be the failure because we believe they can do it. because they're very good. So for them, it's actually a very difficult process to go through. And we've only had a couple of the, the directors who could survive this and stay with the company. And they're very valuable. And those who have stayed were actually incredible contributors, but it's emotionally hard for them to go through. Right. Um, but one of those was we, It was with Ratatouille and the man who designed it conceived the idea of a lovely man. He's really very good. In fact, the look of the film that you see came from this guy.

Wow.

But the film was stuck and they couldn't get out of it. And so at that point, due to other reasons, that were on of, you know, Brad Bird finished Mission Impossible. He did that later.

Sure.

He had actually finished the Incredibles. So we asked him to take it on. Interesting. And now when the movie is stuck.

Do you mean it's stuck in the beginning stages or it's in post-production or it's like the story needs to be adjusted? The story is stuck.

So the story is not complete yet.

That's right. So you've got the movie story, but you're like, well, We need changes here or it's not really fully emotionally connecting or the journey doesn't work.

Is that what you mean? Yes. But in the meantime, we're building the models.

We're gonna call the assets. You're building the characters, the characters, the backgrounds, the animation.

You're building it without the right story complete. That's right. Wow. So, and there are pieces of it that we think are working. So we'll start to make them. Because you can't make the whole thing at the end.

You need to start to make it. You make like one scene. You like this part? We think this one works.

We think it's gonna be alright. Maybe it's gonna work. We might be wrong. So sometimes you may throw that away. Really? That's expensive.

It's kind of like shooting a scene that you don't use. But you're got a thousand people animating something and working on... Yeah, yeah.

You mean it's a try things, you figure them out. Sure. Because what is the lighting? What's the character gonna look like? How is this going to... to work. So they're doing all this work, but you can't get too far ahead of yourself.

You don't want the story complete.

Yeah, so it's a tricking balance, but it's always a tricking balance. Life is a tricking balance. So in this case, the characters look beautiful, everything is gorgeous about it. It's not working. and there are a few things that are just fundamentally wrong. One of them was that originally that chef, the chef Gustave, was alive throughout the whole movie. Okay? And he kind of sold his soul. He was actually a highly rated chef, but he was making money because of advertising and you're using his name to sell products.

And so.

And he was consulting on the movie, is that right?

Or the chef that was. No, the chef in the movie.

Gotcha. The chef in the.

Was a bad guy. He was a lie. Gotcha. Because there was a consultant, I think I saw a photo over here of.

Like, a consultant showing you how to make. Oh, that's average.

That's the research we do. Gotcha.

Like, we're trying to learn what takes place. Sure. But the chef, it's based on he's alive. Well, no, no, we, we. made up a chef. Got it. Gustave. Yes. And he's this fat guy and he's kind of lost his way. And then there's this rat that wants to cook who just happens to end up being in his kitchen. Yes. And because of the passion of the rat, then it actually causes the chef to realize he went down the wrong path. So now you've got this problem. throughout a lot of the movie is, is this movie about the rat who wants to cook with that passion, or is it a redemption story for the chef who has lost his way? And then the other problem that they were wrestling with was that the rat has a family. The rat doesn't talk to humans. Right? So he's going through, he's meeting people and learning things in the restaurant, but because he can't talk, you don't know what he's thinking. And then he goes back to his family and he explains what he just went through. But you just saw this. You're watching a movie, you just saw this. So now it brings the movie to a dead halt because he's explaining to them the things that you just saw. That's not good for filmmaking. So Brad Bird enters the picture. Brad looks at it and the first thing he does after working with a good friend of his who is a good screenwriter, they kill the chef. So the chef died for some reason and but he's still on these TV programs. because he'd been teaching on whatever the channel was, and the rat's inspired by him. But because the chef is dead and Remy knows the chef is dead, then the chef is now a figment of his imagination. So what this means is that the figment of his imagination can sort of pop up and he's interacting with what he thinks thinks the chef would pinch.

Him or tell him, yes.

So it answers, it takes care of two huge problems. One of them is, we now know who the movie's about, it's about the rat that wants to cook. So problem number one is solved. And the second one was, because he cannot talk to the figment of his imagination, and it doesn't feel unnatural because it's not like he's talking to a ghost, he's actually, you know that he's, talking to himself, or if that sounds clear. So the, that means that he doesn't need to go back and explain anything to his family, so you know what he's thinking at the time. So now the pacing starts to work. Now that's the brilliance of Brad Bird is to come in and say, oh, here's what we're going to do for good storytelling. at every step of the way. And so now this film, which had these interesting elements about it, turns into something which is brilliant. And then Brad has his own take about art and what it means to critique art and its impact of it. And he puts this in the movie. If you're watching this movie thinking, well, Like, where's it going? Because Iraq can never really run a restaurant in Paris. Like, isn't it going to happen? So that's what makes it hard. So he takes this hard concept and he turns it into this thing at the end, which is profound. And then when the audience sees it, it's like, oh, I didn't see this coming. And this is beautiful. if what I remember about the movies is actually going into the audiences, because I remember we went, we had the big opening in Paris.

Wow. Cool.

And I would, we get to that moment and what I would do is I would turn around and look at the audience. That was the rewarding part.

As they're watching the final scenes or the whole movie.

No, it's that final scene. Yeah. Why look at them? and they were going like this.

Because.

They didn't see it coming.

That's incredible.

And it was. That's what it was. It was incredible. And it's like, because. So that's rewarding when something like that happened.

And was there ever a time you. You cried in your own. Watching your own Premiere?

Oh, I. I. Well, I did for.

Because of Toy Story 3.

Really? For Toy Story 3. And I did for Coco.

Oh my gosh, that's my favorite movie. Coco's, I've got a Mexican girlfriend. And so, her whole family is from Mexico and, you know, just whenever they come over to our house, it feels like I'm in Coco in America. And whenever I go to Mexico, it feels like I'm in Coco. So for me, that's one of my favorite movies about all movies. It's incredible.

Well, that was, you know, it was, Lee Unkrich, it actually created a problem because it was so good that afterwards, Lee says, where do I go from here? It was unbelievable.

But he cried in Coco.

And incidentally, he directed both of those films. Wow.

You cried in Coco.

Oh, yeah.

What part made you... Well, it was.

The thing about any good movie of this sort or the kind of movies that we try to tell is that you are trying to connect to our own personal emotions, but you're also trying to bring in something new and original. Just to be honest, there's unfortunately sort of this bias against the Mexican culture because what do people hear about on the news in terms of immigration or various things at the border? They don't represent Mexico. and they don't represent what takes place like in southern Mexico with, you know, the day of the dead. And if you say the day of the dead in America, it's like, oh, it's kind of on the day of the dead. So, but it means something entirely different there. It's like the respect for the people that came before us. That's what it's about. So, and you actually get that in the movie. So they went down into the villages in, in Southern Mexico, and they spent a lot of time getting to know the people, talking with them. We had a, a group in California. They were like Mexican advisors because we wanted to get it right. And essentially, you've got these people from North America going down into to Mexico, they're in North America too. So you have people, you know, from America going down, well, how are they gonna tell that story? So they work really hard to try to capture that. The same was true with Moana. It's like, incredible. And you actually start to get something from the culture because you don't wanna work off the biases. Right. you don't want to work out for what other people are thinking. And, and the same was true with Ratatouille. It's like, you know, we all know cooking in the home, we watched our parents cook, or we cook, we watched the cooking channel, you can see the chefs in the kitchen. But what is it like to actually be in a highly rated fancy restaurant in any place? What's the culture like? We don't know that.

So.

For Ratatouille, they went into those restaurants and got to know them, and they also were given some work. Like at the French Laundry, they actually spent time in the kitchen, and they were given jobs to do. So they were capturing that. Now what's interesting about it is that is even though we know a lot about cooking, we don't know whether or not what they're saying in the kitchen, the weather acting, is true. All right? We just don't know. But they sense that it is. If you've actually done your research and you put that in the film, then there's something that is conveying to people because you took the time to find out something in the way original. So in the case of, of Coco, it was to go down and find out how do they feel about it? What are they doing? What are they thinking? And I remember this is when the movie came out because we went down to the, the premiere. And one of the things I appreciate is that when Americans make movies about Mexico, they don't know the difference between the. The Mexican broad brimmed hat and the Spanish one. So they like to interchange them. But in Mexico, they know. So they went down there and they wanted to get those details right. And most of the audiences, they wouldn't know, but they felt like They need to have the people who would know, know that it was right.

Sure. What was a part of the movie that emotionally captivated you the most in Coco?

Well, it was, because the intent was it actually is the respect for these people that came before. Because it was real. You know, he'd learned something, he figured out something about the people that came before him, he also felt like he was able to fix some things that were wrong. But interesting, it was also emotional for me for a couple other reasons too. One was in the storytelling was that initially Lee was going to make this as Pixar's first musical. because Pixar really doesn't have musicals or DNA. Disney does and Pixar doesn't. And one of the things I want to make sure is that we didn't try to make one studio like the other. We also weren't trying to say you have to be different. So they had to evolve in their own way. So if one wants to make a musical, then they can. And at Pixar, if they want to make a musical, they can. And so Lou was going to be the first person to do that. So we got these brilliant two people who also had done something down at Disney. So I mean, they were, you know, good and close, and we worked with them before. And so they wrote the first song for his movie, which is called Remember Me.

Incredible.

And so, but as a filmmaker, he said, okay, that's thematic for the movie. So now he builds a story using this song throughout it. All right, so it's now a key element of where did it come from? Why was it written? And the notion was that if his great-grandma dies, that the last person, she's the last person who will know where the song came from.

And she's got, oh my God, she remembers it.

She got Alzheimer's. It's so emotional, actually, I know. But by playing it, and she remembers, it actually gives him life. So, wow, is seeing that and conveying that.

It's beautiful.

It's powerful. And the other interesting thing about the story, which is a separate thing, was like, how did it get started? So one of the things we figured out, it's very early on in Pixar, When we started our second movie, the second one was Bugs Life, but the third one was going to be a sequel. No sequel had ever been successful, right? An animated sequel had ever been successful. So the thought was originally by Disney was this is going to be a direct video. So we start to make it, but right away it's clear that the people working on it at Pixar are very upset because to work on a sequel at a studio where we want to have the highest standard of quality means that we're working on something where the expectations is much lower. We don't want to do something where the low expectations. We want there to be, we want it to be at a high level. So Disney agreed to that. So we then started to make this film and we frankly had several problems with it because we were building on some assumptions that we got from the first film. Because at first, we had been building knowing nothing, but we drew some conclusions from it and some of the conclusions we drew from it were not correct. So we built or started the sequel based on those assumptions only to find that we were wrong. We just uncovered a bunch of things to question or challenge our original ideas.

So.

And in the process of doing that, we had to restart the movie really late in the game and remake it. It was a brutal, brutal effort. to remake this movie. I had to make it eight months starting from scratch almost. Oh, yeah, it was a nightmare. We had like a third of our people injured with RSI.

Oh, man.

And, but one of the things that came out of that was the realization that the way we were starting films is we were trying to do what other studios do, which is to have a development department looking for good scripts. And so our thought was, why are we trying to copy the model of other studios? First of all, the success rate of films of other studios isn't very high. Low. Yeah. So we said, let's do it a different way. So what we did was we're going to pick somebody who we think can direct a feature film. And then we're going to say to them, pick three ideas to develop. So now the reason we say three is instead of saying, pick an idea that you want to make into a film, well, what happens to all of us when we do something tough or in school or something like that? you start to bang your head against the wall, you get stuck. So the reason we said three was why is that if you get stuck, you can switch to a different idea. So they'd have an artist and at some point they may have a writer come in and work with them. So it's on a really small team spending a year and there's some help of the development department. We still have the development department, but they no longer They were no longer looking for scripts to turn into movies. Their job was to help support this small group. So they read scripts, but all they were looking for was good writers who could join the team. But we never made anybody else's script.

We always- Started from scratch.

Started from scratch.

Wow.

So they would then spend that year going back and forth between their three ideas. And at the end of the year, they would come in, you know, the two or three people who were now the leaders over this, and they would pitch it to the creative leadership of the company, say some of the other directors. So there may be like 10, 12 people in the room.

These three ideas.

The three ideas. And the way this works is there's a story room, , which the whole, there's a table in the middle and so essentially you can hold like 12 people in the room. And there are two long walls and there's storyboards along the wall and they would cover them up. So they put the material, the conceptual ideas for the film on the wall and then take like 20, 25 minutes, present the idea, then be in brief discussion on it. and then we go through the three films. Now the process started and they all did this even though they've been on the other side, like they've been on the creative leadership side, and then there'd be time when they'd face their ideas. And they'd all start saying the same thing. They would say, I love all three ideas equally. It doesn't matter to me which one you pick. Now, it's not true. They do like one better. And the debate when they leave the room is not, which is the best idea to make in the film? It is, which one do they really want to make? And I think we've always called it right because when we come back and they go, yes, I was hoping you'd pick that one.

Sure.

But in the case of Coco, Pete came in and he pitched an idea which is related to an idea that he pitched before he did Toy Story 3. And then when we got, when we had the ability to make Toy Story 3, he was asked to direct it and so he switched our work along with the writer he worked with, Michael Arndt, brilliant, brilliant writer. and they developed a good relationship. So they were, so, so basically Lee was pitching that idea they originally had. Then he pitched his second idea, which was to be a full on musical, that interesting concept, challenging concept. And then the two walls were up, so then we go into the other room. So he opened the door. And when we open the door, the table, the ceiling, both walls and the end wall are filled with Mexican artwork. Really? So there isn't a single word that said, and everybody knows which movie we're making.

Yeah, there's a poster bows of the first two, but this one is a whole experience.

That's right.

You walked into a Coco world.

That'S right. You walk in the cocoa world. Wow. Now, the interesting part, which this is the way it works, is the final movie actually was very little like that first thing. It didn't matter. Right. Because you start off with the concept, you're going to learn something. The whole idea of all these trips to Mexico. Yeah. Was to learn something because everything else is sort of based on. you know, kind of things you knew, right? Because you're interested. Stereotypes and so forth. So you expect it to change pretty dramatically in the process of doing it.

So when he pitched Coco and you guys went back and decided like, okay, this is the movie we're choosing of these three, was there a debate or was everyone just like, oh, we know he's the most passionate about this idea. Let's run him, let's let him run with the thing he's most passionate about.

I think in that case there probably wasn't any debate. I would say with others there is some question about, okay, which one is it? And that's probably more than normal. There'd be a little debate about it. And also not everybody goes through the process. If Andrew Stanton says he wants to make something, it's like, okay, Andrew, you can make whatever you want.

Sure. Now with the case of like something like Moana, is there ever a place where you're like, okay, we've got this big star that wants to do a movie with us, let's come up with a concept, or is it Moana, then who's the right fit for a movie like this? Where the Rock was a great fit for one of the characters, obviously. How does that process look like?

Oh, it's the story first, then you're looking for the voices that can fit. And actually, when he picked Tom Hanks, it wasn't the big star. He actually, it was actually signed up for us and he actually became a big star.

Really?

He'd done some things that were, he.

Hadn'T done Forrest Gump yet on TV or.

No, this bigger stuff took place. later.

After Toy Story, yeah.

Yeah, there was one film, I forget which one it was, I think it was Big. Big took place after we signed up with them before the film came out. Really?

After you signed up for Toy Story?

Yeah, I think that was, all I know is when we first got him, he was modestly well known, then he became really big. And also with films, you tend to get people who are a little more on the community side because they, they have that ability to convey something because films essentially have multiple layers. So you've got a visual layer, which is, works really well for younger people. And we don't try to aim too young because we're not trying to, I mean, Some of the films currently are too intense for anything fitting on the child, four or five or six or something like that. And then some of the verbal things are more sophisticated. So kids wouldn't actually know what they are. But there's two interesting phenomenon that come from this. One of them is that It's very interesting when you're looking at body language and it tells you one thing, what they're saying is something different. So we're kind of wired to recognize that what they're saying isn't matching what they're either doing or what their body is saying. That's interesting. So the good animators and directors, the storytellers actually recognize the value of doing that and the skill set that comes with it. And the other thing was, and Walt Disney understood this, was that if you have something which has got the multiple layers and sometimes only the adults would understand it, people forget, kids live in an adult world. They're used to having people talk about things and they don't know what they're talking about. Right. so one of the reasons they watch movies multiple times is they're trying to figure it out. So it becomes a learning experience.

So.

And you want it so adults can watch it and enjoy it. Because otherwise, you know, there's some animated films where you kind of shoot yourself, right? So. Okay, this may be for four-year-olds, but I'm sorry.

I can't watch it.

Yeah, yeah, I can't watch it. Or, you know, I'll have my. Child in my lap, because I want to have my clothes and bonding with him while I'm looking at a book, doing something on an iPad or whatever until the child takes over the iPad.

What would you say then are the main elements of a successful animation film? To make it really last?

And the one thing is we try not to do the same thing all the time. And it was, it's one of the things I tried to convey in the book, it was actually really hard. I still don't know if I got it entirely. And that is that when you're trying to do something new and original, and like you get something like the way this team works together, and it works. I'm just on good feeling like, okay, it all came together. You can't actually do that again. That's the hardest thing is companies want to reach some sort of stable point. Right? Right? Like we get the process right and let's say, okay, let's just get there. We finally figured it out. We know we had to make a bunch of compromises and all these things. We finally reached the balance point. without fully understanding that the balance point is this illusion that in companies, and it happens in different rates, but it always happens, is that the underlying technology is changing, different rates in different technology, but it's changing. The people who are using this process are growing older, they're getting families, you got new people coming in with new skills because they're taught in different things. The expectations of the customers are different, the expectations of the partners are different. There is nothing in this picture that is stable. So if you realize this, then you say, okay, this premise of how we get to that sweet spot is something that continues to change and we have to keep working.

Wow.

That's the fundamental principle. It's not going to be the same.

But there is a kind of an outline or a structure you like to put together for a great movie to come about, or is it always changing and evolving that kind of structure and outline?

Well, the thing was, is, There is something basic about a structure of a film, but it's not a law. It's like your guiding point. And if you're going to violate it, then sometimes you should, then you should know why you're doing it. Okay? So with a movie, for instance, then a movie has a certain kind of structure. It's different from a Broadway musical, which has a break in the middle, as you know. And books have a wide variety of structures. So each one has a structure. Well, movies have kind of a structure, and they last from typically an hour and a half to nearly three hours. You just watch the movie. last night, you said, and so there's a structure. In this case, it's part one of a two-part movie because they're essentially having the structures go out over a period of time. And likewise with the series, then the series have a structure and an organization around it for creatively making that structure. So we respect that structure. Some of those things work well and some don't work well. I mean, I've seen, as you have too, there are some series that start off brilliantly. In fact, they're so brilliant that they end up lasting longer, but they didn't actually have a mechanism in place to think about how it's going to end well. It says sometimes you get to the end of the series, like I can think of two in particular that I will name, where you get to the end and it's like, that's it. Hey, like if it is disappointing and they hadn't thought it through. And I can think of somewhere they get to the end, it's like, ah, that's satisfying.

Yeah.

All right. This is well done. It was well thought out. So in the basic film, let's say, it's a two-hour film. The fundamental rule is in the first day, 15-20 minutes, you're establishing the rules of the movie. And you're also making it so that you're setting it up so that people like or care about the characters. And by the end of that first act, you need to know what the problem is. So that's kind of like the general guideline. And so we do try to think that way. You actually care about these people. You know what the problem is. And you accept the rules. The audience is very forgiving of your setting up the rules. and they don't want you to violate your rules because then it's just arbitrary. It's like, you can just mean that up at the end for convenience sake, or this incredible coincidence that takes place. People don't really like that. They can tell when they're being gamed or manipulated.

Sure.

So, but if they buy the rules, then they're okay. And I think the first time this was actually made clear to us was on our very first movie, which is Toy Story. Because we had this debate all this time because essentially the toys are talking with each other and then people come around, they all drop to the ground. So, I mean, think about it, right? That's pretty weird.

Uh huh.

Like, why does that work? And so in the end, the decision was, you know, we're just gonna do it and the audience will buy it because those are the rules of the world. and that's what happened. That basically they knew that that toys don't talk to the kids and then they just fall down. They don't talk. So that's the rules of the world. The rule of the world. So the only time they did it, but it was more to because of the little shock values, but it also didn't feel arbitrary was when Woody turned his head around to the boy and actually you know, through the voice box thing, said something to him, the boy freaked out. Okay? So all this is keeping in mind, like, what are the rules of the world? You know, how do they adhere to it? And then, and for the subsequent films to it, right? You know, those are the rules. That's what they, they stuck to.

Yeah, that's great.

So they'd like to say, and the put, the point was, okay, is the audience will accept it, but they don't want you to screw with it after that.

Right, right.

Unless you've got a darn good reason.

Right, right.

And then, then the rest of the movie is like, okay, it just gets worse and worse. It's tougher and complicated and they're trying to solve it and you're rooting for them.

And.

So, and they and that's where there's a lot of variability. It's a little along the stack. Sure. And then at the end, it's like there's a way to get through this mess. And at this point, you feel like you want to have the right resolution to the problem that was set up at the end of that first act. And so with, Toy Story 3, for instance, then the issue of course was, okay, there's finally that time in their life when Andy is really going to college, right? It's actually going to happen.

So emotional.

And so now you go through that. And so once you've actually established what it is and what the relationships are and who's who. So that's the first part. Then you're going to these other things as they're, you're finding about the other toys and this daycare center.

It's hilarious.

And, and then some things like they come back way out of the path, like the, the claw. Yeah. It's coming in. But because you don't see it coming. You like those kind of things where. you don't see it coming, but it actually is appropriate to the story and it draws way back on the first one. And it's just like, 'cause it was funny and it was, you know, it helped with the things. Everything about it just like came together. And then they get back in the end and then it's like, now he's really going to college. And so what do they care about? and are we gonna care about it?

And are we gonna get in the wrong car or whatever it was? Like, aren't they gonna get taken to the daycare or something at the end also?

Or.

Yes. Yeah. So there's a lot of.

And then he forgot the box and maybe they're not gonna go anywhere or.

Yeah, it's just like. And it's finally getting it together. And then when he actually says goodbye, it's like, okay, it's earned. It's earned. and then also for.

People.

Whose children watched the first movie and now their children who watched that movie are going to college, that that's a whole level of meaning for them. All right, so these were all things where it's not like our people are doing it to like push buttons or something like that. Okay, what means something to people? You know, people care about, they have these emotional things when their kids go off to college. And, and how do kids think about their toys? And, you know, it's like, okay, so, I mean, the thing is, I'm an adult when I see these movies, but I do remember these two very impactful movies on me when I was a kid. Really? Walt Disney's Pinocchio and Peter Pan. So in this case, I see them in the theater and they only show them in the theater like every seven years. They have this release cycle at the time. And so I hadn't seen them for many years and I saw them again as an adult. And I remember these movies very clearly and the entire story. Then when I saw them as an adult, I was watching it, I realized that the things that I remembered in the movie were not in the movie. Really? I had made them up. Wow. That the child in me had actually gone back and filled in all this stuff. And this is in my head for all these years.

Huh.

And now I go back as an adult and say, oh, that's what it did to me when I was a kid. It stimulated something in me that was very powerful. And so I can't experience that anymore, but say, okay, but I can see what it does for other people. If you knew this right, what it means for them.

I could ask you stories about all these movies and all the emotions that came from this. This is beautiful. One of the things that I love about the book, Creativity, Inc., which I want everyone to get a copy of, and the expanded edition specifically, is the innovation and the creativity that you guys created as a company. But also, you know, you you're telling me these stories now and people are watching and listening about how you captivate audience with story, emotion, the right teams, animation, the music, all these things, lighting, everything. But you also created an emotional connection in your culture at Pixar. You talk about a lot of these things in the book. And obviously in the expanded edition, you talk about how you still don't have it all figured out. You're still figuring it out and evolving and things are changing and I don't think there's a perfect company that has everything figured out, but you were able to build a culture that emotionally captivated and had people bought into the vision, to the mission, to the values, and to what they're working on consistently. How are you able to do both with the culture and the team that you had emotionally captivating them, but also emotional captivating in the movies you made to audiences around the world?

Well, the main thing was the belief that if culturally they got it right, then the other things would follow.

The team.

Yeah, the team. Getting that team right was the most important thing because, as I mentioned, I'm not actually the filmmaker. Right. Well, I had this goal of making a film. I was never trained in filmmaking and I probably know more about it just observing others, which I find fascinating. But for me, the fascinating thing was, okay, how are they affecting each other? How are they supporting each other? So like, we're in a research group, for instance. So we had different technical groups. There are people working on the films, which is really short term. What do we need to do to get this film done? There's some people who are supporting the software. There's some people that are building software in the future. They have different time horizons. Sometimes it'll take on a big long-term project, which is fairly high risk. We also have a research group. And these are people who are in our PhDs, they do some really interesting stuff, and they've got a really good leader. And then he picked his successor, Tali and the crew. And I would meet with them on a monthly basis, you know, just to catch up. But I have no idea what the rate of successful things they produced. Never checked, never asked, didn't need to. The only thing I knew was that I wanted to spend time with them and because they knew more than I did, it was just to always give the message that I valued what they did. Because I knew that the reason they were there was they wanted to make a difference for the films. So they would try different things. If they didn't work, they just stopped doing and they move on to something else. I didn't need to keep track of anything. I can count on them and what they wanted to do to make the right decision because that's who they were. It's like, that's what you really want, is you want people in there and they will figure it out because it is hard. It's always hard. It's like, I can't even answer their questions. And there are all kinds of questions, like in the production or the emotions and all that. It's like, I mean, what would it mean for them to ask me for it? If I were ever in that position, that would have meant I really screwed things up. And the thing emotionally I felt the best about the Pixar, the entire time I was there was when we would have meetings of tough problems and we would come away from the meeting and we didn't have the answers. But I felt so great because in those meetings they weren't looking at me or to Jim to say, what are you guys going to do? Or what should we do? It's like they owned the problem. It was their studio. If it's theirs, then they act in that way. Well, that's the best place you can be. It's like they own it.

That's cool.

Yeah.

I wanted to ask you a question about money and art. When you were building the business of Pixar and wanted to make a movie, which was really the dream of yours for a long time, were you also thinking about making money and how to build a profitable business, or was it more of just how do we make beautiful art and bring it to, to life using animation?

Well, when we were, when we started, and this actually started when I was at, at New York, too, when I was in University in Utah, so, like, the foundation, we, like, and this is really early on, or this is before there were chips or Intel microprocessors and so forth. And the basic principle was, was that things were going to change exponentially. And I did understand what that meant because we talked a lot about it. But I later became aware that most people didn't actually have a good concept of what that meant because it's not intuitive thing. I mean, they didn't send me to learn on the savannas. So, but I was sometimes surprised how many people didn't know that. So that was kind of built into an initial understanding, but also meant that you had to build as if things were going to be different in the future. Now, the implication for this was that there was going to change the costs of things. So right away, even at New York Tech and then at Lucasfilm, I was thinking about this has to be economically practical. Because if you're going to do something big in the world, then it's big because it impacts a lot of people. It only impacts a lot of people if there actually is some monetary value or economics, because a lot of people are using it. They either a lot of people are buying it or they're watching it in this case. But it always seemed obvious to me that that was fairly important. So when I got to Lucasfilm.

And.

George wanted us to bring technology into the industry. We had friends who were competing with us, and they had the same goals that we did, and we knew it. But in the case of one of them, they bought a Cray-1 supercomputer, and the Cray-1 supercomputer cost $10 million. And we just did, as one of the co-founders of Pixar, when he came out later, but we're still Lucasfilm, is Alvy Ray Smith, just did this sort of brief calculation, which was, okay, if we make certain assumptions about what we probably will need, then we will need the equivalent of 100 Cray-1 computers. not one, crazy. And since it cost $10 million each, and the cost of these 100 would need to be one-tenth the cost of just one, then the implication was that we needed to wait. But we did understand that it was going to change. So the implication was that at the rate of the changing in the chips, which is called Moore's Law at the time, based upon his observation about the rate of change, that that was probably going to take 14 or 15 years before it would be economically practical to do. So this was actually an economic decision. Nobody's going to use this if they can't afford it. And I didn't take brains to see that. It was like, duh, sure, sure. So you wait. But we also knew that we had a lot of problems to solve. And along the way, there were other things we knew we had to solve. We had to be able to make really complex images. And so one of the things we did in this chain of things to get ready was to come up with a new way of rendering really complex images. So this ultimately led to RenderMan, which is now the primary way they make images in motion pictures today with this thing we developed. But it was really saying what kind of complexity, and the state of the art at the time was 40,000 little polygons in a picture. and we said, well, okay, what are we going to need for a picture? We probably need 80 million of these polygons. So we had to think in a very different way. So the whole idea was to say, if the world is going to be of a lot more power in the future and a lot more memory, and it doesn't exist now, then how do we think about it in preparation for that time?

Sure.

But it wasn't one of those things like we're being unrealistic because we're marrying the complexity with the realism that we have to wait before you will have the impact. But this we can do. So we were trying to be smart about why we spent the resources and how that affected the other steps along the way to get there. Right. and this turned out to have been like one of the Milestone pieces. We actually, this is where he got the Oscar for, was for basically doing this very thing.

Wow.

Which had such an impact years later.

Amazing. I mean, you had incredible patience, you know, to work on something continually until you were able to actually put it out there and make what you wanted to.

Yeah, it's. I mean, I didn't even think of it as patience. I just thought of it as like, okay, let's not be smart about it. Because if you don't do anything, you don't prepare, you get left behind.

Yes.

Okay. If you go too fast, then you. You can. You fail for the wrong reasons, or you. You waste the money. All right, so. that's your, that's between the, the, the, the, the skill and cripness, right? Sure, sure, sure. This is the rock and the hard place.

Sure, sure.

The ultimate one that's like, okay, you, but where, where do you go between them? And it's not easy, but you are continually balancing and adjusting this. Right. And, and the truth is, as we develop, and we start to develop skills, we we knew we needed to bring in artists. We brought in artists and started to make short films and started to get more skills in different areas because we knew that we needed it. But we're still thinking, if this is how long it's going to take, and there is this interesting time, this is around 1991, when, because we had this really good relationship with Disney for different reasons having to do with the software that we had written for them for coloring their selves, but we had always had a good relationship with them. And we in these award-winning short films, that Peter Schneider, who was the president of Disney animation, said, we would like you to do a 3D film. Well, so he came to us and I said, you know, we're not quite ready yet. We don't think the economics support it yet. so we're going to do a, a half hour television special first. Just, I was thinking, like, the step at a time incremental. Yeah. Yeah. So, but at this point, Peter said correctly, he said, if you can do a half hour short, you can do 75 minutes. And it was like, for me, it was like, yes, you're right. We can. Wow. So that was Now you're off by a factor of three. So, okay, we can manage a factor of three. It's different than a factor of 10 or 100 or 1000. Right. So it's that calculus is, one is the time to do it right. It's the calculus you see with virtual reality or with self-driving cars. is you can say, okay, this is possible, you know, the rate of technology is going to be possible. Okay, when's it going to happen? What other things have to take place? What are your obstacles that are in the way? And if you call it wrong because you carry it away, then you can disappoint people and you find that it costs more money than you thought. And if you call it like too conservative, then somebody else does it. Okay. Right. So it's not easy, but you do have to think about it, which means that in your team of people, you need to have that group of people who can work together to figure things out. Right. Right. Well, and incidentally, Steve was very good at that. I read a book recently about the making of the iPhone and it was weird because at Bracken, it was a criticism for Steve of taking credit for things, which is bizarre because that isn't what Steve did.

What.

People missed about Steve was, he kept people in Apple, and he wanted people who disagreed with him. So when, first of all, he did something which is unusual for the head of the company, which is to say, our business model because of the laptop is going to change. So we need to prepare for a different business model. So at that point, He said to his people, okay, we're gonna move to the iPad. The people around him did not agree. So they convinced him that he should do the phone first, and then he agreed with them. Wow. All right, so they convinced him. The same people said, you should make the app store open. In this case, he didn't agree. And he he didn't make it open when he first announced it, but within a few months, they essentially saying to him, you were wrong. And he said, yes, you're correct. I was wrong. So then they opened it up.

Wow.

Okay. Now, the interesting thing was he wanted the people to push back. Now, that didn't mean one side was always going to win the argument one way or the other. But the point is they were there because he wanted those people there who were going to push back. Wow. That's powerful. And that's a confidence to say, I need people who aren't going to agree with me.

Well, speaking of powerful people with opinions in leadership, you partnered with, worked alongside some of the most inspiring leaders of our generation with Steve Jobs. George Lucas, Bob Iger, and many others. But what were the biggest lessons from each one of them that really stuck with you while working alongside or working with these individuals?

Well, in the case of George Lucas, he was the first person with credibility in the film industry who said technology is going technology is going to change film. So that was the reason that he hired me was because he believed it was going to happen. His goal was to change filmmaking. All right, so it wasn't about he's off to make a profit from it. So this is my community. I want to help it. Now, at this time, I had this belief that we should publish everything we did. So I get to Lucasfilm. and from his point of view, it's like, oh, that's a great thing to do because we want to, we want to help everybody. So, and of course his films were, you know, doing exceptionally well with the subsequent release of the next two Star Wars films. So he was completely supportive of publishing everything and participating in this broader community. So then Steve Jobs bought us, and now this surprises people, but I wanted to publish everything we did. Steve is known for being secretive. Steve never challenged my decision to publish everything. It's because Steve is smart enough to know that we were doing something different. This wasn't about the secrecy of the technology. this is all about how do you get the best people? That's what it was all about. How do you get the best people? And you get the best people by this engagement, this relationships you have with these people that are out in the world, some of them which are competitors. It doesn't matter. It's like, you know, what, how do you do that? So for Steve, it was support, but also for Steve was like, was like watching this changing his life. The change is not understood by many because they hear the stories of the early days. But what I saw was that behavior from his early days was the way he was when he was first at Pixar. And then he was learning from the things that didn't work both in it didn't work at the first version of Apple when he was there. he made some mistakes at next. He did some things that were right, he did some things that were wrong. The first version of Pixar, when they were selling hardware, didn't work. We had to do a restart.

Wow.

And the other thing I should note is that, which, you know, I tell people that's because it's not like a secret, but I was actually President of Pixar three times, which meant that I was unmade President of Pixar twice. Wow.

Who made that decision?

Steve. Because Steve was saying, you, aren't really ready for where you are right now, so let's have you do a different role.

How did that make you feel when you were essentially demoted from- oh, like crap.

But the thing was, huh, I knew he was right.

Wow.

And then they need to learn some more. So I, you know, because I, I knew I had a, an impact on the culture and how it worked. And so that, that I kept on doing, I was still adding to what we were doing. And then we go back to the voices. Okay.

Yes.

You're, you're ready. And then we got to the point where a public company.

Now you're not ready.

Yeah. Yeah. You're not ready to meet the, the president of a. public company, because that's a different kind of animal.

Interesting.

That was not fun. Wow. But I also knew he was right. He thought he was right. So then we were public for a while, maybe a year or something like that. And then he said, okay, so you're actually, you were ready now. We've been doing this for a while, so then I was, wow. President for the third time. Now, the funny thing was, the third time he got up in front of the company and announced that I was now the President of Pixar. And everybody sort of scratched their head and said, We thought he was crazy. Because it didn't matter. Right. So it was, and I actually, and I tell this to people only because it's like, you know, sometimes it's okay. You're just trying to get to the goal. This isn't about your particular role. How do you get there? But also Steve, and this is around '91. '91 is when he got married to Lorraine, his son Reen was born. And he saw this pretty dramatic change in a short period of time over the next, I'd say, four years. And with life, Steve was completely different. He had a bonding with the directors because he understood something which is hard for people to understand or even understand about him, which is that when you're leading something, you really commit to it. You've got the passion. I'm going to make this work. And when it doesn't work, we're gonna change, right? So it's that balance of like, you commit, like he would measure that, he can see that commitment, like it's deep in people and deep in himself. And then as soon as it didn't work, okay, let's try something different. Wow. Okay. How do you do that? Sure. All right. Because you normally think a commitment means I'm gonna make it come hell or high water. this is what it means. I'm putting everything in this to make it work until I realize it doesn't work.

And I gotta change.

I gotta change. Wow. All right. So, and he made this comment once, like if he ever came back, he thought he'd have to come back as a Pixar director.

Well, let's go.

But so that was, it was watching him, and also his relationship with Lorraine because his view was, he's focusing on building the company. and that after he died, Laureen would do good things with the money, which is what she's doing. Right, right.

That's great.

So it's actually pretty impressive.

That's great. I'm sure you've got endless stories about Steve Jobs and the impact he's had on your life.

Oh, then the other thing is.

When.

We went into Lucasfilm, I'm assuming into Disney, Disney acquired this. And so basically we went through this. I did something which was, not everybody agreed with the right thing, which is not to merge Pixar and Disney Animation and to keep them as two separate studios. For me, this is like, okay, this is the ultimate test of these ideas. Can we apply them to a group where I don't know the people and have them be successful?

I remember we're actually reading that in Bob Iger's book about, you know, that deal going down where it was kind of two separate studios working together. I think in the end of his book, he talked about that.

Yeah, the thing was, it is, Bob supported me that decision because that was the first major conflict they had was one of the other leaders there was pretty adamant that it not be done. And I had my reasons why I wanted to do it. And I guess they weren't obvious. Like, you got two companies in the same business. why would you have two pipelines? Why would you have two research groups? Why would you have two marketing groups? Why would you have two finance groups? And, and for me, the answer was, well, if you've got a fast changing business, you're better off having the companies who can move quickly, but also they don't represent an existential threat with each other. So they can trade information with each other without feeling threatened by them.

So.

And so the rule was, well, they couldn't do production work for each other, all right, because that's like a bailout. Like they really had to solve the problems. But when it came to ideas, they can beg, borrow, and steal from each other, but they didn't have to. And because of that, they shared ideas. They openly shared each other. They would all each other.

That's cool.

And they self-organized into a conference to share information.

That's cool.

And all of a sudden, whoa, we've got these amazing things are happening.

Yeah, that's cool. And the biggest lesson from Bob.

Well, it was actually the, the, the biggest lesson was just he understood that, that you, you support the creative element. And if you think about it, Disney became this. for the most successful studio for several years, and they produced fewer films. So one is if you produce fewer films and there's more energy put on the quality of each one, but the other was they had, they actually had five studios. So there was Marvel, Lucasfilm, Aha, Pixar, Disney Animation and their live action group. And each one produced one to two films per year. If you're only doing one film per year, now you're putting all your attention on this. And so the quality level goes up and you produce more and you can do it in a way that you spread the ownership of the success. Wow. To me, that was brilliant.

Two final questions for you. Again, I want people to get the book Creativity Inc. the Expanded Edition. Make sure you guys grab a copy, give them to your friends, your teams. This is going to be really helpful for you in your creative endeavors, but also in being a part of an organization that is creative and is working towards a positive working culture. So make sure you guys get a few copies of this book. This is a question I ask everyone towards the end of our conversations. It's called the Three Truths. I've asked you about lessons from other people. experiences in your life and working at Pixar. I'm curious if you could imagine a hypothetical scenario that you get to live as long as you want, you get to accomplish and do all the things you want to do, but it's your last day on Earth, many years away. And for whatever reason in this hypothetical world, you've got to take all of your content with you. This book, Isn't around anymore. We don't have access to this. Hypothetically, the movies you're a part of, we don't have access to anymore. This conversation is gone. But you do get to leave behind three lessons from your life experiences to the world. And that's what we would have to remember you with these three truths. What would be those three truths for you?

Oh, I okay. I think one of them was this is what I have thought about, which was that trying to figure out what I did is an act of separation. And that fundamentally, the connection I have with other people is the connection is who I am. I'm not separate from the others. How to The second one is that it's really easy to state values, even state our goals.

And.

Those statements actually mean nothing. They have nothing to do with what we actually do. And that living our lives is what matters. the words don't.

And number three.

And number three. Number three is kind of a hard one because I think it's, because it may be related to the first one. It just has to do with all these other connections. Both, obviously, they're the close ones with, with the, you know, family and children and grandchildren and then sort of spreading out, it's like those connections and working on them and maintaining them and actually relying on other people to do the things that I'm not good at doing or remembering certain things. I guess it's related to number one, it's just like that. feeling that part of something that's bigger than I am and I can't even separate myself from it. Yeah. Hard question to answer. Yeah.

The School of Greatness, not the School of Average, you know, trying to get you to think a little. I'm excited about this book and the expanded edition. I want people to get the copy of the book. They can go online and get it. The audiobook is great as well if you guys want to listen to the audiobook. So much wisdom in here. So I'm grateful that you put this out and you added to the expanded edition. I would acknowledge you, Ed, for your generosity, for being here, for adding so much value with your stories, your wisdom, your words, and living your life in a certain way in accordance with your values all these years. and I'm grateful for everything you've created in the world. You've made a massive impact in my life, friends, family's lives with your storytelling, touched so many lives through your leadership of teams, of creating and bringing teams together to bring beautiful stories and art to the world. So I'm very grateful and I acknowledge you for your contribution to humanity. My final question, Ed, is what is your definition of greatness?

And for me, the definition of greatness is actually positive impact. It's like, and I think of this very broadly, it's like, are you a great teacher? You try to be a great teacher. If you, you know, you got, say, a service role, even like in a government or wherever you're dealing with people, how do you make them feel? Is it great? I mean, obviously when we make movies, we think, well, we want to make great movies that have an impact. But, you know, I know a lot of people now are trying to address some of the serious problems in the world. I think some really serious issues there. And what are the impacts that we can have? And I know a lot of people who want to make a great impact, and that's this incredible force. And for me, that's what greatness is. Yeah. Is wanting that, having that, allowing and encouraging it, doing it. And these are very, in a lot of cases, through the lens of art, it's magical, it's a very spiritual experience. And so I always try to preserve the magic of the music, but recognize the human that made it. So that's definitely one. Yeah. And I think that a knock-on from that is that.