Inside Steve's Brain - Leander Kahney [39]
Pixar is run by Ed Catmull, a friendly, soft-spoken pioneer of CGI, or computer-generated imagery, who invented some of the key technologies that make computer animation possible. Since the acquisition of Pixar by Disney in January 2006, Catmull has become president of the combined Pixar and Disney Animation Studios. The storytelling heart of the company is John Lasseter, Pixar’s Academy Award-winning creative genius. A big, avuncular man who normally dresses in colorful Hawaiian shirts, Lasseter has directed four Pixar blockbusters: Toy Story 1 and 2, A Bug’s Life, and Cars. Lasseter is now the chief creative officer at Disney, where he’s charged with spreading some of Pixar’s magic around the tarnished Disney animation division.
At Apple, Jobs is a hands-on micromanager. But at Pixar, he pretty much stays away, leaving the day-to-day running in the capable hands of Catmull and Lasseter. For years, he was basically a benevolent benefactor who cut checks and negotiated deals. “If I knew in 1986 how much it was going to cost to keep Pixar going, I doubt if I would have bought the company,” Jobs complained to Fortune in September 1995.
“I refer to those guys as the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost,” jokes Brad Bird, director of Pixar’s The Incredibles. “Ed, who invented this cool medium and is the designer of the human machine that is Pixar, is the Father. John, its driving creating force, is the Son. And you-know-who is the Holy Ghost.”4
According to authors Polly LaBarre and William C. Taylor, who profiled Pixar for their book Mavericks at Work, the culture of Pixar is the opposite of that in Hollywood, which is based on hiring moviemakers under contract. In Tinseltown, studios hire the talent they need to make a movie on a freelance basis. The producer, the director, the actors, and the crew all work under contract. Everyone is a free agent, and as soon as the movie is wrapped, they move on. “The problem with the Hollywood model is that it’s generally the day you wrap production that you realize you’ve finally figured out how to work together,” Randy S. Nelson, the dean of Pixar University,5 told Taylor and LaBarre.
Pixar functions on the opposite model. At Pixar, the directors, scriptwriters, and crew are all salaried employees with big stock option grants. Pixar’s movies may have different directors, but the same core team of writers, directors, and animators work on them all as company employees.
In Hollywood, studios fund story ideas—the famous Hollywood pitch, the big concept. Instead of funding pitches and story ideas, Pixar funds the career development of its employees. As Nelson explains, “We’ve made the leap from an idea-centered business to a people-centered business. Instead of developing ideas, we develop people. Instead of investing in ideas, we invest in people.”
At the heart of the company’s “people investment” culture is Pixar University, an on-the-job training program that offers hundreds of courses in art, animation, and filmmaking. All of Pixar’s employees are encouraged to take classes in whatever they like, whether it’s relevant to their job or not. At other studios, there’s a clear distinction between the “creatives,” the “techies,” and the crew. But Pixar’s unique culture doesn’t distinguish between them—everyone who works on the movies is considered an artist. Everyone works together to tell stories, and as such, everyone is encouraged to devote at least four hours of the workweek to class. The classes are filled with people from all levels of the organization: janitors sit next to department heads. “We’re trying to create a culture of learning, filled with lifelong learners,” said Nelson.6
At Pixar, they say “art is a team sport.” It’s a mantra, oft repeated. No one can make a movie alone, and a team of good storytellers can fix a bad story, but a poor team cannot. If a script isn’t working, the whole team works together to fix it. The writers,