The Pixar Story Page #4

George Lucas' interest

was growing thin.

I think it was very esoteric

and it was very hard

to make a business out of that.

So once we had the EditDroid

and we had all the things we needed,

then I decided that I didn't want

to run a company that sold software.

And John and Ed were dead set

on making animated films,

and their dream

was to make an animated feature.

And I said, "Great, but, you know,

to do this on a grand scale,

"it's gonna take at least, you know,

$30 , $40 million investment,

"which we don't have."

(LAUGHS)

NARRATOR:
To keep the team

together,

Ed and Alvy gained Lucas' support

to spin off the division

and call it "Pixar."

Over the next year

they struggled to find the one investor

who could foresee their potential.

An unexpected visitor to Lucasfilm

was Steve Jobs.

Steve was 21 when he

co-founded Apple Computer,

revolutionizing the concept

of user-friendly

personal computing with

the Apple ll and the Macintosh.

By the age of 30,

he had become a multimillionaire,

selling his innovative computers

all over the world.

I was still at Apple at the time.

I was turned onto it by a guy

named Alan Kay, who I worked with.

And, so Alan and I hopped in a car

and rode up to Lucasfilm.

KAY:
So on the limousine ride up there,

I explained to Steve

what these guys were,

what their history was,

what the potential was.

Then a very good thing happened.

JCBS:
That was the first time I met Ed,

and he shared with me his dream

to make the world's first

computer-animated film.

And l, in the end,

ended up buying into that dream,

both spiritually and financially.

NARRATOR:
Steve Jobs took a chance

and invested $1 0 million

to launch Pixar.

The stuff that Ed and his team

were doing was at the very high end,

and I could see that it was way beyond

what anyone else was doing.

CATMULL:
We had the fortune

to have Steve Jobs,

who believes in passion and vision.

He was responding to this passion.

It was really exciting when Steve

was the one that bought our group.

I remember Ed came to me,

and he says,

"Let's do a little animated film,

something that says who we are."

I wanted something

simple and geometric,

and I was sitting there at the desk

kind of thinking.

And I just kept staring at this lamp,

and it was sort of like

a classic Luxo lamp.

I just started moving it around

like it was alive.

I love bringing

inanimate objects to life,

in maintaining

the integrity of the object,

and pull personality and movement

and physics out of that.

(SQUEAKING)

NARRATCR:
In 1987 , Luxo Jr .

became the first three-dimensional

computer-animated film

nominated for an Academy Award.

CATMULL:
Luxo is the one

that changed everything.

It was a pure little story.

And once we hit it with that,

then it became

a new goal for everybody.

(SQUEAKS)

(AlR ESCAPES)

JOBS:
It was the combination

of the new medium

and John really bringing

a character to life

that made people say, "Oh my God."

You know, and the smart ones say,

"Look at this potential here."

NARRATOR:
A hopping Luxo lamp

would become a symbol

of Pixar's optimism and determination.

The image I remember most

is John Lasseter

sitting there in that graphics lab

with deadlines approaching,

struggling with the machine.

Just one man, one machine,

trying to produce this animation.

LASSETER:
Early in Pixar,

when we were sitting in a hallway,

sharing one computer,

me and Eben and Bill and Ed,

we'd sit there

and just kind of be sharing time,

and I would always

take the midnight shift.

Got most of my animation done

on all the short films

from about 10:
30 at night

until 4:
00 or 5:00 in the morning.

This evening I am animating a scene

from the dream sequence.

This is a rough level of detail.

MAN:
How come your car

has the best parking spot?

'Cause it hasn't moved

in about three days.

(MAN CHUCKLES)

I've been sleeping here.

He'd leave me a note on my desk.

"D.W. , wake me up when you come in,"

and I would go to his common.

Of course, the door would be closed.

I'd have to bang on the door,

and John'd be asleep.

He used to bring in a mattress

or a futon or something

and sleep under his desk.

And then he would get up

and start animating again.

And he did that for weeks.

NARRATCR:
Their next short,

Red's Dream,

was the story of a lonely unicycle

longing to perform in the circus.

OSTBY:
We could show him

what was easy for us to do

and what was hard for us to do,

and he'd also push us.

We'd say, "Well, you know, John,

it's kind of hard for us to do a human."

Then first thing you'd know,

he'd be thinking about

human stuff he'd wanna do

and he'd encourage us to try to do it.

NARRATOR:
Tin Tot , about a wind-up

toy tormented by a baby,

brought children's toys to life

through the computer.

(BABY BABBLES)

And in 1989,

Bill Reeves and John Lasseter

took home their first Oscars

for Best Animated Short Subject,

and the first ever awarded

to a computer-animated film.

With each subsequent short film,

John got more ambitious

and the team got more experience

and the software got better.

NARRATOR:
In 1990, Pixar applied

their knowledge of animated shorts

to make commercials.

The new venture soon required

bringing in new animators.

John hired

two recent CalArts graduates.

PETE DOCTER:
It was literally the day

after I graduated I showed up.

John sat down and showed me

the way the animation software worked.

It was pretty slow.

There was a lot of kind of

noodling and futzing around,

but I loved that stuff.

I didn't care what it was.

I said, "Commercials? Fine.

"I'll do, you know, soap bars,

soda cans, whatever. I don't care."

TRlDENT NARRATOR: Introducing

new Freshmint Gum!

The freshest mints.

The coolest cool.

For as simple as it was,

it was probably the hardest

learning experience I ever had,

because it was archaic.

I knew nothing about the computer.

I had never touched one,

never word-processed,

never even really looked at one

before I came up there.

So I'm a testament

that anybody can learn the computer.

(LAUGHS)

NARRATCR:
At the same time,

Pixar began a collaboration

with the new leadership

at the Walt Disney Studios

headed by Michael Eisner,

Frank Wells,

Jeffrey Katzenberg and Roy Disney.

In a renewed effert to bridge

hand-drawn animation with computers,

Pixar invented CAPS,

a digital ink-and-paint system

which brought new technical advances

to 2-D animation.

The techniques gained critical notice

in Disney's Beauty and the Beast.

PETER SCHNElDER:
Roy Disney was

a great champion of this.

He spent a lot of money

building the CAPS system,

and it was just the basis

of what was to come

in terms of the 3-D animation process.

It was the engine

that drove everything else forward.

NARRATCR:
Pixar's software,

Renderman,

was also getting industry acclaim

for the creation

of photo-realistic special effects

that allowed Hollywood filmmakers

to tell stories

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