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But Ed remained characteristically self-sacrificing and diplomatic. He had never cared about titles or authority or formal structures, and neither had Alvy Ray Smith. When they cofounded Pixar in 1986, neither had wanted to be called “president.”

Now, as he faced his loyal supporters, Ed joked about that episode from the venture’s early history. “We all drew straws to see who would head the company and Alvy and I lost,” he said. “I asked Pam to do it and she said no. I asked Molly”—the office’s beloved sheepdog—“and she said no.”

Then he added: “We tried to scare off Lawrence, but he’s coming anyway.”

As Steve tried to assert his power and authority, the Pixar veterans resorted to more passive forms of resistance. The executive row was a hallway near the front of the building and it had only three offices, which were occupied by Ed, Pam, and Lawrence. They wouldn’t let Steve take any of the offices. There wasn’t room, they said. When he came up for the day, they made him into a squatter, forcing him into a corner of Lawrence’s space.

Pixar’s remoteness from Steve’s home in Palo Alto still afforded a degree of insulation and protection. In the early 1990s, when the company had been kicked out of its original building by the landlord, George Lucas, who needed the space, it had moved right across the San Rafael–Richmond Bridge to Point Richmond, on the eastern edge of the bay, a few miles north of Berkeley. But the new location was just as far from Silicon Valley, and it still took Steve an hour and a half to drive there. If anything, the traffic was even more unpredictable and maddening on his new route. Once again Steve argued that they should move the company to San Francisco. The Pixar executives were shocked and dismayed by Steve’s thoughtless narcissism. They were working frantically seven days a week to meet the deadlines for Toy Story, and Steve was so insensitive that he dared propose moving the company in the middle of it all, just so it would be more convenient for him! Besides, it would have been foolish to move Pixar forty-five minutes to the south because John Lasseter lived so far to the north, in the old village of Sonoma, amid the wine country.

In Steve’s new incarnation as Pixar’s president and CEO, he insisted on holding an “executive committee” meeting once a week, with tiresome briefings that would last for hours. At first he tried to schedule it for the midday, but Ralph and John objected. They needed to work on the movie during the day! Steve was interfering with production!

Steve compromised and ran the meetings between four and seven o’clock. Then he presided over a working dinner, and then he accompanied John and the other executives into the screening room to watch and comment on the dailies. Steve would dominate the conversations, seemingly unaware that John didn’t really want or need his advice. John put up with the marathon sessions to humor Steve, but they were unnecessary and draining for him. John would awaken before sunrise and leave home before seven every morning to get to the office in time for the real dailies at eight. That’s when he watched the film clips with the other artists. They were the ones he relied on for advice and criticism, not Steve Jobs. But Steve would selfishly detain John there with him until ten or ten-thirty at night, extending John’s workday to a brutally taxing fourteen hours. John would fall asleep during the late-night screenings. When Steve finally released him, John would look so worn and bleary-eyed that Pam Kerwin worried that he would kill himself as he was driving home on the dark country roads. Eventually, John’s wife, Nancy, had to insist on a curfew for him.

• • •

STEVE’S MOOD WAS EFFUSIVE as he celebrated his fortieth birthday in February 1995. Laurene threw a surprise party for him in San Francisco at Larry Ellison’s second house. Larry still lived in his samurai-style mansion in the suburbs, but he had recently bought a pied-à-terre in the city on the same block as the Getty residence. He was one of the few new-money