Steve Jobs was always surrounded by great people who he pushed to be better. And one of them was John Lasseter. You don’t know who he is? A native of Los Angeles, California, always wearing Hawaiian shirts—he owns thousands of them—and a die-hard NASCAR and automotive fan in general, John Alan Lasseter is one of the most important directors in the history of animation.. Without him, there would be no Toy Story, for example.
And it’s partly thanks to Steve Jobs, who told him something that forever changed the way he saw the world. Steve Jobs had a secret room at Pixar from which he oversaw everything. And Apple’s imprint on the company is so deep that fingerprints can be found on nearly all of its films, including the recent “Inside Out 2.” We tell you what words changed John Lasseter’s life and his future career at Pixar.
The Day Steve Jobs and John Lasseter Defined Pixar
Founder of Pixar, Lasseter is credited with many of the ideas for Toy Story, A Bug’s Life, Cars and the romantic Up. In the Toy Story saga, Lasseter was director, screenwriter, model maker and even developer of the control systems. . lighting and animation. For over a decade, he was the ultimate supervisor of all Walt Disney Animation Studios films and it is estimated that his The films have grossed over $20 billion.
But it wasn’t always this way. Before launching two of the most profitable franchises of all time – Toy Story and Frozen – Lasseter was an unsure name, with lots of ideas but no clear direction. Until he met Steve Jobs.
When John Lasseter approached Steve Jobs, he was working on a short film that would serve as a technical demonstration to show off everything Pixar could do with these computers. I was the only animator and as a beginner I had nothing: He got a job at Walt Disney Productions thanks to his successful student project“The Lady and the Lamp.”
However, his anger and obsession with computer animation led to his being fired from Walt Disney.. It didn’t take him long to find a place where his obsessions would be viewed favorably: the graphics group of Lucasfilm’s computer division. Unfortunately, that apartment ended up being sold to the highest bidder: Steve Jobs. Lasseter’s fate was thus in the hands of Apple’s owner, who gave him only one direction when he began working under his wing: “Make it great.”
Something came over him. Those words inspired him. He worked compulsively for weeks. And his short film Tin Toy won the Oscar for Best Animated Short Film, the first in history to win this award, with a category inaugurated to honor such a milestone.
Do it better, do it well
Throughout his career, Lasseter recalled that Steve Jobs always taught him to aim high. As high as possible. “Quality is the best business plan”he said. But there was one phrase that was particularly close to his heart, one that Jobs repeated over and over like a mantra and that would be the yardstick by which his future success would be measured: “Just… do it right.”
Lasseter understood that average performance It doesn’t work when you’re creating something that you want to make a piece of history. From their perspective, doing things halfway is a poor approach, serving only to meet a quota, not to make a difference with something disruptive.
Lasseter told this story to Charlie Rose, and he has since mentioned it in numerous interviews. Indeed, in an article in The New York Times He answered all sorts of questions and when he talked about the future of animation, he almost repeated Jobs’ words: “If we do it really goodthat is, telling a great story with truly memorable characters and make it awesome…So these films will entertain audiences for generations.” As simple as it is illustrative.
An older version of this article was originally published on 08/12/2023.
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