ピクサーを築く——スティーブ・ジョブズとの仕事と創造性の育て方 | エド・キャットマル

Well, this is a result of just thinking a lot about the last many years and a lot of it reflection, but also trying to understand the nature of change and the process that you have of trying to come to an understanding or or gain insight. In the book, I talked a lot about the brain trust. The brain trust is such a mechanism. Different companies have different ways of trying to arrive at at truth and getting um insight out there. Every company says they do that. Most of them are full of … All right. They what they've got are people around them who are telling them what the leader wants to hear. and the leader thinks because they're hearing what they want to hear that they he got this really insightful group. Um, but it's not really about diving deep. It's it there's an overlay of the politics and where I am, what's my career and so forth. All of which gets in the way. In the case of the brain trust, we worked out a way for people to be honest with each other and feel comfortable about it and and we thought a lot about how to do that and what the personal dynamics are, what the psychology is that might get in the way and how we address it. But Steve had a very different approach in order to get insight and I would say that others do too. So it's just like the different ways of doing it. But he did understand what he was trying to do. He did understand at an intuitive level there's no upside in being wrong. As soon as he understood something, he would change quickly. But here's the thing that most people don't know about. And that is that Pixar was a public company for 10 years, starting in 95 when we went public until 10 years later when we were acquired by Disney. In that 10-year period, Steve fired two members of the board of directors of Pixar. The reason he fired them was that they never disagreed. And he said, "If they don't disagree with me, then they aren't bringing any value to the company." That's an unusual way of thinking. And he really believed that. Our board meetings were lively, they were loud, and they were thrilling. And you know, we we made great progress. Uh, and they were arenas of disagreement. And these were people on the rest of the people of the board had very strong opinions, did not agree. And Steve loved that. And I would say a lot of executives probably say they want that, but Steve really meant it. uh he and I disagreed a lot. We didn't argue, we disagreed and we'd we'd have uh long weekl long discussions about something and in the end about the third time I would realize he was right and about a third time a third of the time uh uh he would realize I was right. But the other third of the time uh I just did what I wanted. uh and he was fine with that because we had discussed it. The whole point is how do you get to the inside? How do you get how do you surface things? Because it's hard to get underneath things. I would say that a lot of people like to go down one layer. You one layer and you form a decision. Can't do that. You got to keep peeling away the layers to figure out what's really underneath it. And it's a shortcut to make a decision quickly based upon a little bit of information. And getting at underlying factors uh is inherently a long-term strategy and it's a difficult one and it's timely and you need different mechanisms within an organization in order to get to better insight. What are some of these mechanisms? Because Steve has famously said, and I've heard a few other people say about this, that he learned more about the art of management from you than anybody else that he ever met.

But what are these mechanisms you're saying to like get to these other levels that you used?

Well, how do you manage that? How do you avoid people not saying an idea like letting potential embarrassment stop them from sharing an idea?

No, there's like four of them.

But then so they're working together on the same thing and their very nature is they're working on the problem. When we started, we had that group that worked together. But we also had something else that I think Ander Stanton and I recognize, I think, most clearly was that we had an outside force that was a a corrective.

Okay. because our contract with was with Disney. And so the person who was in charge of Disney animation at the time was Tom Schemacher, who later moved back to Broadway to be over theatrical there. But he would come in as a person who had a vest a vested interest in our success and he would tell us what he thought and often he would disagree with what we had. So it was good to have someone come in. It's like a different perspective in case you get caught on a little loop because you're building this thing in your head. It's kind of fragile and sometimes you need somebody to say, "Well, that's not working." and jar you from that fragile thing that's in your head. He would only see it once in a while and we valued that. Bug's Life is the next film and then Toy Story 2 was as the next one. Uh uh the first one was, you know, just obviously was the first like that was getting going, but we were getting our our legs under us as we figured all of this out. We also had a group of people who were consciously trying to figure out the process. It was just everything about it, not just the movie, but how we worked with each other. Um, but as we were getting better at this and starting to rise and by this time we're a public company distributing through Disney, Disney is starting to go downhill and we are aware that uh Tom Schumacher was going to leave because he was going to New York which meant we were going to lose our outside force. Andrew Camp with the idea that this group that we had, we would call the brain trust and that as we uh elevated other people to become directors, we would bring in others or the the writers or or certain experienced people into a room as a small group to solve the problems, but the brain trust would then see somebody else's film and act as an outside forks. That was the idea. So, other directors looking at another director's film and giving feedback.

It didn't work. The problem was they weren't outside. They're in the building. They're all the time and they're always know what's going on. Uh so the notion of them being on the outside isn't isn't true. However, what we discovered was they had this immense capability of giving ideas to each other and helping each other, which wasn't the same thing. And it's a subtle difference to have this outside force. Instead, it was this problem solving group. So, the brain trust was a was a way of running a certain kind of meeting uh for every screening of a film or occasionally at an offsite. It wasn't that we we ran every meeting because they have different dynamics. It was a particular thing that took place after a screening and everybody learned how this worked. We had to get another outside force and the outside force was Steve Jobs because you banned him from being part of the brain trust. Correct.

Why? Because he would not be an outside force. In other words, as a he he's now on the board and he sees it uh once per screening. So, he doesn't see it very often. And now he would he would come into this meeting and uh he's he's fresh. Um he hasn't seen anything since the last one. He would usually call me the morning of. I was in my little gym, my in my home there working out and I get a call in the morning. I could count on it. And he'd say, "How's it going, Ed?" And I'd say, "Uh, I think we've got problems." Okay, nice to know. I'll see you later. I would never tell him what to think. All right, that was part of the relationship. Steve is smart enough that I could say there's a problem or that I think there's something but I was not going to tell him how to think or I might say I think it's going pretty well. Nice to know. We'll see you later today. That was it. What do you think was the purpose of that phone call? He knew because I'm in the middle of this that if if there's if there are problems in there that uh that there is a need for someone to come in and say something strongly and and but he but at that point it was it had to be from him cuz it couldn't be to him, right? Were people afraid in Pixar to share like harsh feedback or like fight with Steve?

And he couldn't do that. It wasn't that the the logic of that is that if a person with power speaks, they tend to set the tone for the rest of the discussion. So you don't want them to speak at the beginning. You want the discussion to start and then you enter the discussion, but in this case, they're entering as filmmakers with the others and it doesn't derail the discussion. Steve had such a powerful voice that it didn't matter when he spoke. He was going to have this extremely strong effect on the dynamics of the room and he understood that. So it was the reason he didn't come. I said you basically the dynamics don't work if you're in the room and that we need you for this. And he understood that and that's the way it worked and it worked great. It was an interesting phenomenon because uh Steve would would come into the meeting the the brain trust or excuse me it wasn't brain trust meeting now it's the meeting of the board of directors that's when he would see it the whole board of directors would see it in the theater with a certain with a subset of the of the company we didn't have the whole company seat all at once it was always trying to make sure there were some fresh ship or people hadn't seen it before. Um so we there'd be some audience there but really the at the end of it the board of directors would come together with the filmmakers and each would give their comments and Steve would give his comments. He was extremely articulate and uh he would give us notes and most of the directors would say at some point that Steve gave them notes and he saw things in the films that nobody else saw that they'd never heard before. However, I'm in every one of these meetings. There was nothing that Steve ever said that had not been said by some of the somebody else before in one of those meetings. Now, what's the difference?

Well, part of it is that when you know something that somebody really well, then you can also learn how to disregard what they say. Like they're saying sort of thing they might be expected to say and you you you disregard it or you don't hear it. Well, Steve, it wasn't possible to do that. He was so clear and articulate that saying the same thing would actually break through in ways that uh you wouldn't hear from the others. And there are a couple examples of them where I can't I I can't actually tell the story because of the the people involved, but people sometimes people were uh felt betrayed because their colleagues hadn't told them about the problem before. But they had, as I say, I was there and and I heard all this and they all felt like they were not being listened to. And then Steve came and all of a sudden, you know, um the the director hears that and now it's like new a new revelation even though it's been all along. That's the reality of people with strong opinions of the dynamics. And I honestly my job there while well while it's fun to give note my job was to look at the dynamics and and I will tell you that in general this worked very well. Everybody figured this out that this is how it works and it was great and they loved it and even though there were apprehension they wanted the notes and they engaged correctly with it.

Well, like in in in the case of let's say the the brain trust just as as an example is that in general it works pretty well. Uh every once in a while you go off the rails. to go off the rails and then you know you have to figure out why I went off the rails. What got in the way? And then usually you have to reconvene with a smaller group because the dynamics as we all know are different when you got a small group. If things are going well, you like a bigger group because you're training other people to feel comfortable in this way of working. But if the problem is really serious when you go to a small group where they're sort of past that stuff and they can focus on the problem. So occasionally it's off the rails. Usually works very well and once or twice per uh film then magic happens. By magic I mean that ego has left the room. You have these intense discussions and somebody can say something and it doesn't work and they're not thinking about my idea wasn't there. They're they're always back on the problem and you it's you know described in like in sports as flow or in areas like that as flow but it's like a group getting into that state and that's the ideal place to get. this is so important to get this all this working right that this is what our product's based upon is this group of people working well together. So paying attention to the dynamics of those rooms is the job. They're the ones that are making the movies. I'm not making the movie. I'm just trying to make sure they work well together. From the point of view of directing a company, you know, like a board of directors is how do they work together? And and sometimes board of directors are there and the the CEO just wants sort of protection from them doing it. So he wants to craft everything that goes to the board of directors. It's not the way Steve worked.

Well, it was just like we knew what the problems were. We come in, you'd have these people with with very strong opinions. Well, we had the number one attorney from uh Silicon Valley was Larry Sinci at the time.

You know, we had a a few of the critical issues of the company. Uh we were a productionon company. Uh we all of our films were marketed through Disney. So um and then there was a limited time span in our contract with Disney. So there are a number of things we have to do to figure out where the company's going, what the relationship is, how do we make it strong or where is it threatened and and uh at the time through a lot of this time um Michael Eisner was the CEO and the and and the CEO of Disney Michael Eisner did not get along well with with Steve.

The real reason for that well there were two things there. One of them was that um Michael testified before Congress about ripping because there was some testimony about it with audio. Yeah.

Copying video on under, you know, if if you got a audio on a CD or something like that and you transfer over onto your computer. So there are these it's a it's a it's a name for copying something.

Well, it's it's a congressional thing about uh the technology and how it's being used. only now Congress is is getting misinformation. But the other one was that our contract with Disney and the initial contract was to make three movies and at the time it was signed um Disney perceived that Pixar was going to produce boutique films. their word, much as they would consider a Nightmare Before Christmas, a stop motion animated film to be boutique and therefore not bring in that much money at the box office.

So, that's what they went into the first deal with thinking, you know, limited potential here, not knowing that Toy Story is going to come out, win all these awards, and be the highest grossing film of the year.

So, Steve thought Eisner gave him a bad deal. Well,

This is where he comes to you with the saying, "We're going to you guys essentially bet the company on Toy Story. You were dire financial straits. We're going to bet everything on Toy Story and the same week the Toy Story uh is going to be released in theaters, we're going to IPO."

Is that correct?

What was your response when he first came and talked to you about this idea?

Yes. And he said and Michael cannot let that happen. So, Micah will want to renegotiate the deal. Now, at this point, this is part of the change in Steve's life because he would typically shoot for the moon on a lot of things. Uh, you know, at Apple and at at and at Next and some and often overshoot, but he recognized because he's very smart. And so what he said at the time was that if we renegotiate uh then we have to come in as equal partners

Yes. So we have to go public to do it. It was very compelling and it also turns out to have been exactly what happened. So that was that was fine. And so we negotiated a new deal and the new deal was now a now five picture deal but sequels didn't count. So if we made a sequel and the idea was there would be a sequel to Toy Story why would sequels be excluded? Disney wanted to get as much as they could and that that was their way of differentiating between an original film and one that was presumably easier to make. So that was the assumption. The second is that that Disney had been selling sequels on the VHS at the time. Until that time, the only the only theatrical sequel that Disney had ever made was uh to uh Rescuers Down Under.

Did that movie do well? Cuz I've never even heard of it.

That one I'm familiar with.

Yeah. Cuz Disney originally Toy Story 2 was going to Disney wanted you to just forgo theaters and release it direct to video.

Yeah. for sequel.

Yeah.

So, the issue now came with Toy Story 3 because Toy Story 3 would be a sequel. And Steve said uh to Michael says, "Michael, we're a public company. Our investors are expecting that the we're coming to the end of the contract. If and it it is no longer it's no longer true that this is just a sort of secondass sequel that this is really a first rate theatrical film and it should count." and Michael stuck with the letter of the agreement. That's what pissed him off. It pissed off Steve. So, it was just sitting there and um the the the deal was that if we wouldn't make it, they could. So at some point a few years later they started to make their own version of it

Yeah.

It put in that strain between them. Now, our relationship with with the studio and with marketing was very good. So, that was between Stephen.

Oh, yeah. Yeah.

No, no, I was I was not a a fan of his. A war was now brewing between Michael Eisner and Roy Disney, who didn't like what was going on there.

Yeah.

Yeah. Me and Rob, my partner Rob have been reading the book. Why can't I think of the title?

Disney. There you go. There's a war about it. It's called Disney War. [laughter]

And it starts out.

Yeah. It starts out with Roy and something about a Ferrari. [laughter] they wanted to interview us uh and none of us would talk with the writers of the book and the and the reason was it was that we didn't know how this is going to end up but we didn't know how to skirt the relationship with the other people none of us said anything so even the parts of it which are about Pixar are the things about Pixar perceived through the Disney lens of the people who were there it wasn't bad I mean it's just was

Well, that that's a personal thing.

From from the point of view of Pixar with Disney, there isn't

Uh there isn't any war going on there. We're basically neutral in this.

Well, no. What's happening is we're just getting near the end of the contract, but we're getting close to the delivering the last film. And at at which point uh Steve would not have let Pixar um stay with Disney. Steve at this point also knew that that he had cancer. He was uh uh it was very very an emotional time once in which uh actually it's actually when he showed us the first iPhone when it was a secret and we're on this bridge between the one building and there's a bridge over that goes between another tall building next to it and and their secret lab is where they're designing it. and he told us that uh you know he didn't know how long he was going to live um and he lived several years after that but he he wanted to make sure that his family was taken care of. He wanted to see his son graduate from high school and he wanted to make sure that Pixar was in in good shape. It was very emotional at that time. Michael Eisner was still the CEO and he would not have continued with Michael Eisner. So since we were getting into the contract he started discussions with other studios um which would mean you know them doing the distribution fact is Disney is the best at marketing films and had including internationally. which started those discussions and then the war over uh Michael Eisner guy really heated up and um they they voted him out but then they went through this process of who were they going to select. Bob Iger was in that group. Steve had talked with Bob Iger in the past because at the time he was like the COO because Michael Eisner was busy fighting out this major lawsuit he was in with Disney and the board and all that and they finally made a decision

Yes. So he called Steve at his home on Sunday night and said tomorrow it's going to be announced that I'm the new CEO so this need to be confidential until that time. He said that he's been to all the the parks and he knows that all the new material is coming from Pixar. There's actually an interesting story about that where I think this might have been Bob Iger's book. Might have been in yours too where he's standing next, this is before he's CEO of Disney.

Okay. He's standing next to Michael Eisner. I think they're at Hong Kong Disney. And Michael's like, "Let's watch the parade." You know, the parade that happens at the end of every day. And all the characters are going by. And he realizes every single character that is popular in the parade was created by Pixar and not Disney animation. And that's how he knew no matter what I cannot let Pixar get away. What happened when he called Steve because he he told Steve that. But then he said that that he's been to Disney animation and they say that they've got it almost fixed essentially. They've they found what the problems are and they're about back on track.

And you didn't believe that either.

but he knew it. And he told Steve that he didn't know how to find anybody. And the only ones he knew who knew how to run animation now was Pixar. So, can we talk? And Steve says, "Yes, as soon as you're ready." So, that was their conversation. Steve was blown away because Bob Iger starts the conversation by saying, "I've got a crappy hand. Can we talk?" And for him, it's like, "That's a show of honesty." That's unusual. Usually, you don't start a negotiation by saying, "Hey, other party, you have all the leverage here."

And Bob's solution was we want to buy Pixar.

What's going on there?

What did he see that day that made him arrive at that conclusion? You just saw the way we worked, the interaction, the ideas that we worked on that we were working on, the style, the uh and honestly it's the way I look at any film that we're working on is when we're working on a film and you've got a a group trying to solve the problems. And as I've said many times, when you start off, these films aren't done, right? They're the beginning. They they have many problems. they suck and I'll sort

Well, if it's easy, then you essentially it's more derivative. Like, you know how to write a script. You know what the three-act structure is. you know, all these elements of storytelling and you put together all the pieces and you've got a story. Is it a great story? Is it emotional? Well, sometimes yes, sometimes no. But the statistics actually aren't terribly good. It's but it's fairly easy to come up with something which is mediocre. It's cheaper, too. If you take on hard things, then you need to spend more time trying to figure you have to trying to figure out how to be different in what you're doing. So if you take on a hard problem and you and you just keep pushing at it, then the fact that it was hard is what's going to make it different. So if you're going to make a movie about a rat that wants to cook, all right, that's not a slam dunk. Not only that is, you know, a lot of people want to keep their project secret. This is one where you could tell everybody we're going to make a movie about a rat that's going to cook. Nobody's going to copy it. But what is the measure? Cuz sometimes uh things don't go right. So, we will uh change up people. We've changed out some directors, including on Toy Story 2. Was that the first time you changed directors?

by faith, you mean the team's lo lost faith in the director.

and this is inside out.

I found one of my all-time favorite quotes when I was reading the book 0ero to1. The quote says, "The single most powerful pattern I have noticed is that successful [music] people find value in unexpected places. And they do this by thinking about business from [music] first principles instead of formulas." That is exactly what Apploven has done with their advertising platform, Axon. Axon [music] connects you with over a billion potential new customers inside mobile games. Axon allows you to capture undivided attention. Axon ads are full screen video ads that are watched for an average [music] of 35 seconds. That is retention that blows other ad platforms out of the water. You can launch [music] on Axon in minutes. You set the goal and Axon achieves it. There's no complex setup, no expertise needed, and Axon scales [music] quickly. They can put your ads in front of over a billion potential customers. Other businesses have seen immediate results, have scaled [music] to hundreds of thousands of dollars of spend per day, and increased their revenue by millions. So, you want to get started quickly before all your competitors are on Axon. And you can do that by going to axon.ai/enra. That is axon.ai/enra. When you do that switch over from uh Toy Story 2, John Lasser is put in charge of that movie if I'm not mistaken.

It was his one.

Oh, okay.

yeah,

Yeah. the opposite of what Lacier Wood is preaching in that statement.

Initially, as a kid watching that, what I'm seeing is the result. Now, as a as an adult who's

In other words, I'm I'm watching the movies and going to Disneyland as a as a kid

and you were like 9 years old or something like that watching in your living room.

Yeah.

and so she was at Disneyland on opening day. She was also there for the 50th anniversary uh uh later 50 years later. Um so the other thing of course was Disneyland itself which was extremely in influential just going there and being there and knowing that all this came from the drive of of uh of Walt and his way of thinking. Now, I've thought a lot about this since because his brother was Roy Disney and Roy Disney had a son who's Roy Disney Jr. going to later was part of the hostile takeover in which Roy Disney with the Bass brothers to the hostile takeover of Disney which led to Michael Eiser and Jeffrey Kassenberg coming into and uh and we got to know Roy Disney pretty well. But now if if I now think of in terms of technology, if I go back to to Disney, Disney understood better than anybody else at that time that that technology was invigorating the studio and he was believed it so much it also led to Disneyland. He just loved this stuff. But it's when uh well before it was blue screen matting, then it was sodium yellow sodium matting. he would use it and and adopting sound.

So like when the Xerox machine came out, they worked with Xerox and they built a room that was a Xerox camera. So I was in that room when I was in college and there's a lens in the wall with a platinum on the other side where the lights there and people could put the cells on it. Wait, Disney partnered with Xerox to build this camera?

Okay.

I was in graduate school. So 1973.

Yeah. I went in the office of uh uh Ali Johnston and Frank Thomas. They were still working at the time.

Well, no, actually it it turns out that wasn't I might have assumed that at the time, but they weren't the ones that we were talking about doing this any sort of deal with. All all that Utah wanted was I was going to go there as an exchange and they sent an animator at to Utah. They had no interest in that. Instead, they offered me a position to work on the new Space Mountain ride at Disney World. And this is a very interesting part of because I love the fact that you're missionoriented. So, you know, we should back up. I guess there's context for people that haven't read your book. You knew you wanted to be an animator. You're sitting there watching this when you're like 9 years old and you see that I think it was Donald Duck come come to live or whatever. Then you realize, oh … I'm not like I don't have the technical skills to to be an animator. You also love technology. Then you have this idea, this mission that I'm going to combine my two loves and I'm actually going to make my mission is going to make the first, you know, feature length computer animated film. Okay. But you're like obsessed with Disney, but you go to Disney, they offer you a job, but it's not it's in conflict with your mission. And you didn't I think in the book it says you didn't think twice. You turned them down immediately. Correct. It wasn't going in the right direction. Nobody in the industry thinks technology is critical. I mean, they don't they have cameras and they use certain things there, but it's more like if we can buy the product, we'll use it. We're not going to push it. The first person since Walt Disney to believe that technology was going to have an impact was George Lucas. So after Star Wars and because ILM which was the high technology at the time in terms of that optical process

George's company that he started because he couldn't buy the technology he wanted to apply to special effects and filmmaking. Correct.

What's the experience of the person viewing this? Do you become nauseous?

Okay.

Yes. Which is going to be where you you you have a very unique uh experience because you were inspired by Walt Disney. You worked with Steve Jobs longer consecutive uh for like 26 consecutive years. I think longer than almost anybody else. But you also meet a young George Lucas. This is after the first Star Wars when you when you go to interview with them.

You're both in your early 30s.

You did something very different. They're recruiting these technologists, right? You're one of them. And they're the interview process before you get to George. The first question in the interview is who else should we be talking to? And I want to bring this up because let's say there's half a dozen other people that are going for the job just like you. You were the only one that started listing off all these names and you find out later that the rest of them were essentially threatened by competition or maybe insecure whatever the case is and they didn't they were not as free flowing with information which is something that you maintained throughout your entire career. They wanted the job a plum job.

Yeah. It was not a hot bed of computer science at the time. So um you you basically want to use the culture that your approach as a way of getting the best people together and uh that worked very well. So part of it when George was out looking is we were already doing a lot of things that he wanted uh to build this this group up. So I was hired to go to Lucas Film. Um, but that was also a point of reflection for me because I could look back on my time at uh at New York Tech and say, well, about half of my theories were right and half were a croc. So now I know

okay

and now you're kind of like maybe thrilled for a little bit, but you know, now what is my what's the point of my life? What am I going to do now?

It was a year.

It took me a year to to wrestle that down. But before that one, there's one thing I I should comment about when I went to Lucas Film, and that was that in realizing that about half my theories were wrong, that that ratio would would probably continue at Lucasfilm and probably for the rest of my life. And uh and the reason I think this is is important is uh in fact I I said this to somebody at Disney, an executive there. I I said that ratio would continue of half right half wrong for the rest of my life. And he said no actually you have a better record than that. But but I realized no actually I don't. I do think that if I know that I'm wrong half the time that I catch it earlier. I special I spend less time on the wrong decision. So it looks like the ratio is different. But the reality is I'm just wrong half the time. And I think it's important to think that way. And that allows you to to say okay maybe this is one of those times I would and I would rather catch it sooner rather than later. And that was that be that was important for me going forward. Now moving forward when when Toy Story came out because it had been this clear focus point uh it was almost like a north star. Now in retrospect I have to say uh the real north star was is an implicit one which I didn't fully understand. We didn't talk about it and it has to do with the technology. When Toy Story came out and it was a big success. We read all these reviews. Then almost all the reviews only spent one or two sentences saying it was done on the computer and the rest were about the movie. What I loved or felt proud about was that the technical people felt like that was their big success. is that is that people weren't talking about the technology. The implicit north star was the quality of the long-term goal of making a good film. That was the real northstar. And I didn't even realize that fully at the time. It was more like we achieved the goal. And then I had to to figure out what a next goal was and and while still running the company because now we're a public company and we're working on the next film. But it isn't just like you want to go into a rinse and repeat cycle. It's like what what is it that we're doing here? In which case it's it is what is the culture that we're building that's sustainable and and is always changing and has the ability to change. During that year I also wrestled with another problem. After the movie came out, there was that thing in me which said since I started down this path a long time ago, how much of this was me? And I wrestled with that for a year. In other words, since I started on this path, you know, then it, you know, this we wouldn't have gotten on this path if I wouldn't have done this. So, how much of this our success is attributable to me? I it's a selfish question to ask. uh which is why I didn't talk to people about it because I knew it was a selfish question to ask but I couldn't help but think about it and uh and I I bring this up because some companies that are successful then the person who leads it actually believe it's all due to them. No, I think some people think he did and I I was interesting there but no he didn't. who's very we talked about this who's very clear about it like any any project you know when you when you work on something there are a lot of people around that are working on it that are helping they're all part of it so I can look at people and say they were a critical part of it and many of them are wellknown so people would know about John or Steve or uh Andrew u but they typically wouldn't know who the technical people were who absolutely critical to doing this and they were all necessary. But the important thing that that I came away with was that asking the question might have been a natural thing to ask, but trying to answer it is an act of separation. That's the problem with it. Because I'm trying to say, how am I separate from others? And really, I never was. It's like none of this would have happened without a lot of things coming together and the notion of separating or trying to figure that out is actually was wasn't good for it wasn't good for my soul. I've seen people do this. We had somebody made a short film once and u at the end left because what he said was he wanted to see if he could do it without the safety net. So he viewed the brain trust as a It's that's not a safety net. These were your colleagues trying to do things. And so what are you saying? Well, how much can I do on my own? It's not the right questions. How much can I do with others? I want to go back to George Lucas. You meet him. You're both in your early 30s at this time. Speak to like his interest in technology is not for technologies sake. He's a very practical person, I think, is the way you describe in the book. It's can this technology his his interest in this technology begins and ends with can it help me make the film that I'm trying to make. What does that mean? of film making. because you said in the book it was a really exciting place for you to work because you're in your early 30s and you're developing technology and then the world's greatest filmmakers are dropping in seeing what you guys are making. like Spielberg shows up and scorsi shows up at this time. Is that what you mean? Like he's trying to contribute to not only what he's doing but his friends and even people that he doesn't know. Part of it was he wanted the technology for film making. That's that's true. But he also wanted to share it. So the fact that we would say this is how we're doing editing or or their graphics techniques or audio was what he wanted. He was trying to affect the industry as well as build tools for himself. Why do you think he wanted to affect the industry? That's an that's interesting. It's more positive some. I remember um there's this great biography of George Lucas written by Brian J. Jones that I've read a few times and they talked about you know a lot of them when they before they did Star Wars or or Steven did Jaws they were friends. Yeah. That's right. So it's you for for George having a healthy industry is very important and he just because of his experience with others he didn't think about competition in the way that others might yeah and he and he would say that while we were working on it Thank you for reminding me that. One of my favorite parts of the book is you talking about he speaks in like a folksy manner like almost like a Yoda. He was talking about building a business too and I think applies to film making is like you know we start on this journey we're getting on this wagon you know we're going to go across the country we get to the end the composition of the team is going to be some people died along the way some people quit whatever but even then once they get to the destination there's some people that just like the journey so they jump off and that's as it should be he's talking about the composition of the company and the team constantly changing which I thought was one of the best metaphors of building a business I've ever heard too Okay. Would that have happened if George never got divorced? Would you have left? Because that's still separate from your goal of doing a computer animated movie. And what's his response? He didn't say anything at the time, but the president of the company the next day said, "George doesn't want to make an animated film. So, we were going to look to sell you." A lot of people don't know, and this is in a couple biographies of Steve, is Steve checked out Graphics Group, I think even before you guys were up for sale, right? He was still at Apple at this time. Okay. Then I think maybe a year or two passes, whatever the time frame is, finds out it could be for sale. You guys have this enthusiastic meeting where he is just like, "You're the best in the business. I have to do this." And then he kind of ghosted what the kids would call ghosted, right? And you're like, why didn't we hear from this guy? Like we had this crazy meeting. He was super passionate. We didn't hear peep for two months. And then you find out it's because at that exact same time is when Steve got kicked out of Apple. Yeah. The the problem was when the authorized biography was written and Isacson who was a very good writer but he interviewed all these people what people didn't understand or and Isacson didn't know was that years of 91 to95 was when Steve made this major transformation as I mentioned in '91 he got married his son Reed was born we signed the contract uh with Disney Terminator 2 came out. Well, it mattered for the film industry. The film industry in in the '95 went through a major transformation. Steve went through a major transformation. Pixar went through this major transformation uh and and the whole the whole industry did. So, it was just like 91 these events happened, signed the contract, Beauty and the Beast came out, Terminator 2, Steve and and so forth. 93 Jurassic Park came out. Um, and the the the dinosaurs made with CG were so electrifying that everybody just recognized that everything the world is changing. 95 Toy Story came out, first computer graphics film, huge success and and we went public. So boom, in this in this period of time, all this stuff sort of falls into place. And now we're in a different world. At that point in the world, that's when I've got some personal questions to to answer as we transform the company from one trying to figure out how to do it at all to how to to do it in a sustainable and an ongoing creative way. The other one was we now came up with the next person with credibility in the film industry after after George Lucas to believe technology mattered. And this was Roy Disney Jr., Walt's nephew. The reason Disney entered into the contract with us was because Roy knew that what Walt did was he adopted new technology. He [snorts] was the one that pushed on getting the contract with with Pixar which started that relationship. So all these things are sort of intertwining and coming together and with each of us with a different viewpoint but trying to pull all this together to make something very different happen. when Pixar started that with the exception of John, everybody else was technical. And when I visited a lot of companies while at Lucas Film, the one thing I noticed was there was a weird sort of first class, second class. It's not a terminology that people would use um because people wouldn't say that they're first class, but sometimes we will say they felt like they're second class. But it's true in a lot of companies unless you're in that sort of pivotal rung of people who have this visible make a visible difference to the company then you can have this feeling of being secondass within the company. We were determined that we did not want this to happen to us. So as we brought in the other the animators and the artists Andrew Stanton and Pete Doctor then it was it was extremely important that they come in and that we were all peers with each other and that that's still true to this day is it isn't like the technical people there are in service of the filmmakers the filmmakers are there just to show off the technology is we're all on this to make really great movies and that culture was very strong I believe because we worked so hard to make sure there wasn't this distinction didn't mean everybody was the same even within the different fields but as a group I felt like oh I'm working with worldass people in art or in production or uh or in sound like they're all they're all world class and if you feel that way about everybody then it actually changed the dynamic within the group and It was very important for us to do this and I think we paid more attention to it. There's one of the things I don't think any of the studios understood was that real relationship about or this balance. It's too subtle. I can describe it. Everybody would nod their heads that's probably what they do. But they don't So you just remove those silos in Pixar. I don't know if I'm understanding. Yeah, it's 3 p.m., guys. Come on. Let's go. Let's go take an hour to have fun. So my understanding what you're saying is like these problems are very subtle. They're hard to notice. If left unchecked they fester. And the solutions can also be subtle. Yeah. If you get on this look what you get in front of a company meeting and say okay everybody lighten up have some fun. Okay and they'll nod okay it doesn't mean anything. They actually need genuine things. Uh, so we have we had a few people who did things which were a little too far out there that would have gotten them fired in other studios. People know that that that happens. And what you're doing is you're saying the tent is wide. A lot of things can happen there and you want them to happen. Uh, and so I didn't I don't like to have a lot of rules. If somebody violates a rule of common sense, people do once in a while. you call them on the the carpet, you tell them you can't do it, but you don't make a rule so that nobody else makes the same mistake. Uh because as soon as you make more rules and people are worried about what are all these rules, who do I have to ask for permission? So what we wanted was that people would do things without feeling they need to ask permission for everything. There was one thing, I think I mentioned this in the in the book, but um the animation group over the weekend dissembled disassembled a truck, brought it into the building. It's still there. I was just there a couple weeks ago. [laughter] So, we show up all of a sudden there's a truck in the middle of the area and like with their office like their because the everybody would custom you talk about in the book you you would encourage them to custom design their workspaces. Is this in their workspace? This truck now? So I I I would go there on occasion, but I I went there maybe was like a week ago. We went through the animation and it was it had radically changed. uh in in terms of his design, which I thought was so damn cool because they're still doing it. In other words, they're still redecorating. Like they keep remodeling everything and redecorating and making it their own spaces and uh and that's a sign of health. They they feel like Yeah. Too many rules, you know, stifle the creativity that think that's the engine of the entire company. Yeah, Ed, that's a perfect place to end. Really appreciate you welcoming me into your home and taking the time uh to have this conversation today. Really enjoyed it. Maybe we'll do this again soon. Thanks for your time. I hope you enjoyed this episode. Please remember to subscribe wherever you're listening and leave a review. And make sure you listen to my other podcast, Founders. For almost a decade, I've obsessively read over 400 biographies of history's greatest entrepreneurs, searching for ideas that you can use in your work. Most of the guests you hear on this show first found me through founders.