The Second Coming of Steve Jobs - Alan Deutschman [49]
As Pixar hemorrhaged money, Steve said many times that he wanted to shut down John Lasseter’s animation group because it was an unnecessary drain on the company. It was only 5 people out of 120, but it didn’t produce profits. No one paid to see its shorts.
John wouldn’t acquiesce. For his entry in the 1988 Siggraph show, John wanted to make a short film, Tin Toy, about a little toy drummer boy marching through the toy-strewn bedroom of a rambunctious and unpredictable infant. To overcome Steve’s persistent opposition, he put together what’s known in Hollywood as a storyboard pitch. He sketched about one hundred drawings, then filmed them in sequence in a five-minute clip. As Steve watched the drawings, John described the storyline in an excited, emotional way.
John was a terrific actor, and his performance won Steve’s grudging approval.
John raced against the deadline but he couldn’t finish the film in time for Siggraph. They showed it there anyway, inserting a “To be continued” caption just as the narrative approached its climax. Still, Pixar’s entry was once again the big hit of the show. What was most astonishing about the film was its depiction of the infant. Humans were the toughest challenge for computer animation. It was one thing when the characters were toys, which are supposed to have a somewhat simplistic, plastic, artificial look, but a person’s facial expressions and body movements are extremely complex and demand a much greater sense of nuance and naturalism.
John completed Tin Toy in November 1988. It was almost too late. The calendar year was ending, and if they wanted to be eligible for the next Academy Awards, they had to get it shown in a cinema for five consecutive days. Luckily, the film’s producer, Ralph Guggenheim, was able to exploit one of his family’s connections and arrange for the run.
At the ceremony in April, Tin Toy won the Oscar for best animated short film.
For John Lasseter and Alvy Ray Smith and Ed Catmull and Ralph Guggenheim, it was a triumph. For the art and science of computer animation, it was a seminal event.
For Steve Jobs, it was the only good news of 1989.
Steve was still something of a novice in the movie business, but in his other role, as a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, he acted with the showmanship and bluster of a grand Hollywood impresario. He was the master at taking something that might be considered boring—a hunk of electronic hardware—and enveloping it in a story that made it compellingly dramatic.
He incited a media frenzy before the debut of the Next computer in October 1988. He agreed to let a Newsweek reporter witness the backstage drama of the days leading up to the big unveiling at San Francisco’s Davies Symphony Hall. Katie Hafner from Business Week also wanted an insider’s access to write a colorful fly-on-the-wall narrative, and Steve gave his approval. Then, with his characteristic chutzpah, he went ahead and offered an “exclusive” behind-the-scenes look to one of Business Week’s main rivals, Fortune.
It was as if the world’s most eligible bachelor had made dates with three highly desirable women at the same time and the same restaurant, then told the ma"tre d’ to seat them in separate rooms so he could hop between tables. And it was as if he knew that when the three women inevitably discovered his scheme, they would still vie for his affections.
At Fortune’s story meeting in New York, the magazine’s dozen editors talked excitedly about their “exclusive” and how many glossy pages they wanted to lavish on it.
The frothy conversation was interrupted by one of the senior editors.
“I really shouldn’t say this,” she began tentatively. Her husband was the managing editor of Newsweek, and she knew that Steve Jobs had promised the “exclusive” to Newsweek, which was planning to run the big story on its cover. And Newsweek would get to subscribers and newsstands a few days before the next issue of Fortune.
The revelation silenced the group. Another editor smiled knowingly and