Steve Jobs didn’t just leave his mark at Apple. We know that he spent part of his youth at Atari, we know that he founded Next after being fired, and we know that he also has a great legacy at Pixar studios. And as happened with Apple, Jobs’ time at Pixar was also a rollercoaster ride with the help of many people who left their corresponding mark.
One of those people at Pixar was Lawrence Levy, who agreed to work with Steve Jobs at the worst time for the co-founder of Apple and the animation studio. Everyone advised him not to, but ignoring that advice was what did the miracle.
“I want to offer you a job in my company. Do you know Pixar?
Let’s put ourselves in situation: we are in the year 1994 eight years after the dismissal of Jobs by the board of directors of Apple. At the time, Jobs was looking for someone to manage the finances of a Pixar company that was also going through tough times: the studio had yet to release any shorts, and audiences still viewed computer animation as something very rare. Disney continued to succeed with traditional two-dimensional animation, and there was no stopping that.
The proposal reached Lawrence’s ears via a phone call from Jobs, who recalled to GQ: “I want to offer you a position at my company. Do you know Pixar?” The executive also gave an interview to Libertad Digital in 2018 where he comments on when he took on the job:
“When I joined Pixar in 1994, everyone I knew thought it was a bad decision. They said it was a bankrupt company with no future and it was a mistake to work for Steve Jobs because he had no success after being fired from Apple in 1986. It was a huge risk to my career.”
Jobs and Levy got along thanks to the agreement of brutal honesty and complete independence between them.
But Levy says he’s seen good signs in that work. First, because he and Jobs They agreed to be absolutely honest with each other.. You had to openly communicate the situation, not invent anything that could later turn into a disaster. Jobs also did not impose a limit on the management of money, he had complete freedom of decision.
At that time, Pixar was preparing what would be its last letter that would decide whether the study would survive or head for bankruptcy: Toy Story. They were moving from directing shorts to feature films, which Jobs and Levy considered a good goal.
The film was a technical prodigy for its time and the story suited it, but Steve Jobs was hesitant. He saw her as too childish, and he wanted her to convince both children and adults. Therefore, marketing that would promote the film was going to be key.
Ads like the one you can see above are the ones that did the magic. Toy Story appealed not only to the little ones, but also to the rest of the ages. And that Tom Hanks and Tim Allen were the voices of the protagonists of the original version, it was clear that this was a blockbuster beyond the technical.
Behind Toy Story, Pixar It was valued at $1.5 billion.. And that was just the beginning: with the release of other films, this value quadrupled. The studio went from fearing its end to becoming one of the benchmarks of the genre. The Wall-E figurine that I found in a bazaar in I don’t know where it is still on one of my shelves.
Levy recounts all his exploits in his book ‘From Pixar to Heaven’, which can be found on Amazon for 4.74 dollars in its digital version. Years later, the executive decides to devote himself to the study of meditation and philosophy leave his film career. When he told Steve Jobs about it, the response was “I’m glad one of us can do it.”
Pictures | Harvard University, Max Cortez
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