The Second Coming of Steve Jobs - Alan Deutschman [109]
For about a decade, from 1985 to 1995, he fell out of sync again. As he grew accustomed to his wealth and developed the tastes of an elitist, he lost touch with the mass culture. He had little in common with the average consumer, other than his blue jeans. Everything in his house in Palo Alto was understated, muted, and austere: a few black-and-white photos, some handmade wooden furniture in the Craftsman style, a $100,000 stereo, a Persian rug. Steve’s old friends and colleagues had trouble envisioning a bright colorful plastic iMac along with the rest of his home.
But Steve had given the world the iMac. He had once again made a machine that the masses would love and could afford. He had sold two million iMacs in only twelve months. And he had quintupled Apple’s stock price in two years.
In September 1999, Apple’s stock reached an all-time high of $73 a share, eclipsing the previous high of $68 that was set during John Sculley’s reign in 1991.
Steve Jobs had finally achieved his vindication.
The proof was in the numbers: Apple’s all-time-high stock price confirmed Steve’s power in Silicon Valley, and then the extraordinary box-office results for Pixar’s Toy Story 2 showed undeniably that he had become a Hollywood impresario of the first rank.
Toy Story 2 was an astonishment: a sequel that many critics and fans thought was even better than the beloved original. It opened in November 1999, and it opened huge. It grossed $80.8 million in its first five days, breaking the Thanksgiving weekend record that had been set the year before by Pixar with A Bug’s Life. It was the fourth-biggest opening weekend ever, surpassed only by the debuts of Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace (at $105.6 million), Jurassic Park ($90.2 million), and Independence Day ($85 million). That put Steve Jobs in the rarefied company of George Lucas and Steven Spielberg, and it wasn’t a fluke. He had delivered massive hits three times in a row. He was one of the very few movie producers who could be counted on for a huge score every year, a surefire blockbuster that would guarantee the success of the crucial summer or holiday seasons for a major studio.
Although Hollywood’s insiders hadn’t respected him after the first Toy Story, wary that he might be a one-time wonder, now his remarkable triple play forced them to recognize him as a powerful and lasting force in their clubby business. “The guy has made his bones,” in the words of a studio executive. The prince of Silicon Valley had become one of the new princes of the San Fernando Valley. He had even showed up the old prince, Jeffrey Katzenberg, whose animated features for DreamWorks were being overshadowed by Pixar’s productions. Jeffrey’s Prince of Egypt earned less in its entire U.S. run than Toy Story 2 took in during two weeks.
When Steve and Jeffrey first met a decade earlier, Jeffrey had asserted haughtily, “I own animation and nobody’s going to get it,” and he threatened to “blow the balls off” of anyone who dared to try. But Jeffrey didn’t own it anymore. Steve had seized the lead in box-office clout, critical acclaim, creative artistry, and technological wizardry.
What were Steve’s ultimate ambitions in Hollywood? He hinted enticingly about his long-term strategy when he addressed Pixar’s annual shareholders meeting in 1999. As he took the stage of the auditorium in San Francisco’s Museum of Modern Art, he faced an audience that ranged from Wall Street stock analysts to small-time investors who had brought along their young children, hoping to get a sneak preview of the characters and scenes from future Pixar films. Steve wore a black mock turtleneck but even the dark color couldn’t hide that he had a bit of a protruding tummy. His stubbly beard was graying, and his straight black hair was thinning noticeably. When he