The Pixar Story Page #5

that could not be told any other way.

Renderman had become

the new standard in special effects,

and in 2000,

the technical team

garnered the first Oscar

ever awarded

for computer-animated software.

But the research and development

of all their technology

was costing more money

than the company was bringing in.

Steve Jobs had been losing over

a million dollars a year for five years.

It was all great stuff to do,

but none of it was a home run.

None of it really. . . It was a struggle.

Every step of the way,

it was a struggle.

We were trying to pay the bills

and just buy time.

And that strategy

really turned out not to work.

Steve was a very forgiving investor

at that time

and had a much longer term view

than your average venture capitalist

would've had

about our young company.

NARRATOR:
With the survival

of Pixar at stake,

John pitched the Disney Company

a half-hour Christmas TV special

based on their short film Tin Tot .

All the while,

Disney executives had been trying

to lure John back to the studio

to direct a feature.

John is being asked this

for a third time,

to come down

and be a director at Disney.

Or he can stay up

in Northern California

with this company

that's bordering on collapse,

because they're losing money.

He stays up here with this company

bordering on collapse, right?

John came up with the idea of doing

this story from a toy's point of view,

done in this 3-D plastic world,

and the idea was sensational.

And they'd gone from commercials

to a short film being six minutes.

They felt they could expand

the system to a 30-minute movie.

And we said, "Oh, forget about that.

Make it a full-length feature."

NARRATOR:
From John's initial pitch,

Disney offered the Pixar team

the chance to finally fulfill their dream

of creating the world's first

computer-animated feature film.

LASSETER:
I remember Bonnie Arnold,

the producer,

and Ralph Guggenheim, the producer,

came around and they said...

GUGGENHElM:
We're making a movie.

-Really?

-GUGGENHElM:
Green light.

We got green light?

ARNOLD:
We got it.

Just talked to Peter.

LASSETER:
It happened,

and it was like,

"'Oh, my God, we're actually

gonna make this movie."

And I was so excited.

There was so much

positive enthusiasm. It was great.

(LAUGHING)

-GUGGENHElM:
All right.

-ls that all right?

It was an attempt

to take the spirit of John Lasseter

and see if we could make

a full-length motion picture with it.

JOBS:
It was fantastic.

There was no better partner

to do it with than Disney.

There was a lot

we could learn from them,

vast amounts

we could learn from them.

So it was the best thing

that ever happened to the studio.

You heard?

None of us had done

a movie ourselves before,

and a large portion of us

had never worked on a movie at all.

GUGGENHElM:
Green light.

LASSETER:
Ignorance was bliss.

We did not know what we didn't know.

It's like the

Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland things,

"Hey, my uncle's got a barn!

Let's put on a show!"

-Unpack. Unpack.

-You mean I can stay?

CATMULL:
We were onto

something big

if we could just hold it together

and make it happen.

LASSETER:
We did not want to

do a musical.

We did not want to do a fairy tale.

We did not want to do

what Disney was,

from Little Mermaid

and Beauty and the Beast

and all those films. . .

They had their thing going

and we wanted to be different.

NARRATOR:
John set his sights

on one particular actor

for the voice of Woody.

They said, "Look, we just wanna

show you this thing,

"'cause it's too hard

to explain what it is."

Oh, no, no, no!

You're eating the car!

Don't eat the car! Not the car!

Oh, you stupid dog!

When I saw this loop,

it was startling, actually.

It was kind of, like, hypnotic.

"Let's see it again.

Can I see that again?"

I think we must have watched it

three or four times.

It didn't look like animation.

It looked like Plasticine come to life.

I couldn't explain it even to friends

what it was like.

I just said, "Well, it's gonna be

this whole new thing.

"They've just invented something

that is a brand new way of doing this."

(BEEPING)

Hi, pal. What you doing?

I'm Tempest from Morph!

Yeah, yeah, what's this button?

Say, you weren't thinking of flying,

were you?

You know, Andy loves toys that can fly!

Really? Well, then,

to infinity and beyond!

You know,

Andy loves toys that he can find!

LASSETER:
There was this desire

at Disney to make Tot Story edgy.

Make it edgy.

Make it, like, something for adults.

Jeffrey Katzenberg, who at the time

was chairman of the Disney Studios

and had great interest in animation

would always in a story meeting

be pushing for what he called "edge."

Which really was

code for snappy, adult,

the edge of inappropriate,

and not to feel too young.

We were working our butts off

and jumping through every hoop,

addressing every note

that was given to us. . .

And that was the first year.

NARRATOR:
By December, 1993,

John and his crew flew to Burbank

to present their completed storyboards

to Disney.

Their approval would finally

launch Pixar into production.

But what was to come

was a day they would never forget.

SCHNElDER:
Nothing of it

was working.

It wasn't funny, it wasn't emotional,

it wasn't moving.

Characters didn't quite work.

Peter Schneider sent me this video,

which was, like, two cassettes.

It was so long.

It was like two hours, and it went on

and on and on and on and on and on

and I was fast-forwarding through it

and thinking,

"Oh, my God. This'll never end."

Which led to this horrible, horrible day

when things came to a crashing halt.

That was our Black Friday.

Black Monday, Black Tuesday. . .

I forget what day of the week it was,

but it was sure black.

WOODY:
Hey, you wanna be

Mr. Mashed Potato Head?

You button your lip!

Nobody's getting replaced!

SCHUMACHER:
It resulted in

the Woody character

being one of the most repellent things

you've ever seen on screen.

I mean, you couldn't watch it.

It was smart-alecky.

It was like a brand of insult humor.

It was kind of, like, negative.

WOODY:
All right, that's enough!

You're all acting like

you've never seen a new toy before!

Get a grip, okay?

SCHUMACHER:
Jeffrey said,

"Well, why is this so terrible?"

I said, "Well, because

it's not their movie anymore.

"It's completely not the movie

that John set out to make."

LASSETER:
Disney forced us

to shut production down.

And they wanted us to lay people off,

and we refused.

(CLANGING)

We just said, "All right, screw it.

What do we want to do?

"What would be the funniest thing?"

We were also very brutally honest with

each other about what we thought.

LASSETER:
We worked day and night.

STANTON:
And we just really

went 100% with our gut.

We knew it was sort of our last chance.

We knew time was not on our side.

It was so refreshing, 'cause we were

making the movie we wanted to make.

RANFT:
We'd just sit on our knees,

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