Dreamers and Deceivers (37 page)

Lasseter had titled the animated short
Tin Toy
and had chosen one of his favorite vintage toys, a wind-up, one-man-band named Tinny, to play the protagonist.

By the time Lasseter had finished going through the storyboards, Jobs could see the passion in his eyes and the excitement all over his childlike, chubby face. More important, Jobs saw graceful artistry in the simple story. He saw magic in the feelings Lasseter would convey through five dialogue-free minutes of Tinny’s trials and tribulations. And he saw—for the first time—the power of combining traditional storytelling techniques with Pixar’s pioneering technology.

Only a handful of people in the world understood that transformative potential. For seven years, the group had included John Lasseter.

Now it included Steve Jobs as well.

“Just make it great,” Jobs said to his animator. “All I ask of you, John, is to make it great.”

Hollywood, California

February 15, 1989; March 29, 1989

Ten months after Jobs told Lasseter to “make it great,”
Tin Toy
’s realistic emotions and breathtaking computer graphics earned it a nomination for Best Animated Short by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Six weeks later, it won an Academy Award.

Point Richmond, California

May 31, 1990

The phone rang in John Lasseter’s office and Jeffrey Katzenberg, the new head of Disney Motion Pictures, was on the other end. More precisely, it was Katzenberg’s secretary calling to see if Lasseter was available to talk with the studio chief.

“Hold on, just a moment.” Lasseter got up to close the door of his small office at Pixar. He peered down the hallway to see if anyone was around who could listen in on his conversation. Winning the Oscar had changed little about Pixar: Its offices still felt like a summer camp; the employees still wore tennis shoes and rode through the hallways on scooters; they still slept in their offices to meet a deadline and drew on the walls to illustrate their latest ideas; and the company was still bleeding money.

The Oscar, however, was about to change things for John Lasseter. Or at least it could have.

“Yes, I can speak to Mr. Katzenberg now,” Lasseter said. Katzenberg’s reputation as one of Hollywood’s toughest, most unpleasant bosses preceded him, but today Katzenberg was putting on the charm.

“Look, we can beat around the bush here or we can get down to business. I want you to come back to Disney. You’re a breathtakingly talented storyteller and this is where you belong.” He paused before adding, “And your salary will be quadruple what it is now.”

The line went silent as Katzenberg’s offer hung in the air. Financially, it was a tempting proposal for a man with a growing family, and it also would return him to the job he had always dreamed of as a young boy. But as he sat in his cramped Pixar office, surrounded by his vintage toys and protected by a patron who had made clear that he would keep writing checks despite the doubtful business rationale, Lasseter looked up at the ceiling and knew what he had to do.

“Jeffrey, I can go to Disney and be a director, or I can stay here and make history.”

For four years, Steve Jobs had stuck with John Lasseter. And now, John Lasseter was returning the favor.

Anaheim, California

January 16, 1991

“If I had it my way,” said Jeffrey Katzenberg, “we wouldn’t be doing this.” The already chilly atmosphere in the room at Disney Studios felt as if it had just dropped another ten degrees.

It was an odd way to begin a meeting about the movie Disney had agreed to produce with Pixar, Lasseter thought, but Katzenberg was an odd man. Balding, skinny, and nerdy, he ran Disney Animation like a dictator. His early successes with
The Little Mermaid
and
Beauty and the Beast
had caused his confidence to swell into an obnoxious arrogance.

“It’s clear that the talent here is John Lasseter,” Katzenberg continued. “And John, since you won’t come work for me, I’m going to make it work this way.”

Lasseter wondered why Katzenberg was insulting the Pixar team at his first meeting with them, but he let it go. Beggars can’t be choosers, he figured, and since Pixar was broke, that would make him the beggar. The contract between the two companies gave Disney the power to shut down production at any time, which meant that if Pixar wanted its movie to be made, it would have to put up with Jeffrey Katzenberg.

True to the rumors about his management style, Katzenberg continued. “Everybody thinks I’m a tyrant. Well, I am a tyrant. But I’m usually right.”

The message was clear, at least in Lasseter’s mind: I am the great Jeffrey Katzenberg. This is the great Walt Disney Studios. And you people don’t know what you’re doing.

“So,” Katzenberg said in conclusion, “do you think you can work with me, John?”

“I’d like to, Jeffrey,” he said. “That’s why we’re all here. We have an idea for a movie, and we’re awfully excited that Disney might be a part of it.”

Thinking briefly about how far he’d come since the last pitch he’d made to a Disney executive, Lasseter looked around the table at his small team. These people were family to Lasseter, and the characters they had created together were like their children. He was a little nervous about sharing “his children” with Katzenberg, but he also knew
he had little choice. If they were going to make a movie, it had to be with Disney.

“How would you like us to begin?” asked Lasseter.

“Well,” said Katzenberg, “why don’t you start with the title?”

Lasseter paused and smiled. That was an easy one.

“It’s called
Toy Story
.”

Anaheim, California

September 10, 1993

It was a big day for John Lasseter. He had always dreamed of making a real movie and now he was working with a real movie star: Tom Hanks, the man who would be giving voice to
Toy Story
’s main character, a cowboy named “Woody.” Hanks stood in a small studio, its walls covered in foam and a lone microphone positioned above a music stand that held the script. Lasseter and the Pixar team watched from behind thick, soundproof glass. What was supposed to be one of the most memorable days of his life was quickly turning into one of the most disappointing.

“Who said your job was to think, spring-wiener?” Hanks’s Woody said to Slinky Dog. “If it wasn’t for me, Andy wouldn’t pay attention to you at all.”

Tom Hanks, almost unrecognizable from the weight he had lost for his role as an AIDS patient in
Philadelphia
, delivered the lines like a pro. In the scene they were working on, Woody throws his fellow toys out of the bed. In a later scene, Woody’s jealousy of Buzz Lightyear, their owner Andy’s new favorite toy, grows so intense that Woody pushes Buzz out the window, before coolly remarking, “Hey, it’s a toy-eat-toy world.” And in still another instance of insult “humor,” Woody tells Mr. Potato Head, “You want to be Mr.
Mashed
Potato Head? You button your lip!”

In the sound studio with headphones over his ears and a microphone hanging in front him, Hanks did his best to make Woody charming, even when Woody was behaving badly. But, after a while, Hanks peered through the glass looking for Lasseter, the smile vanishing from his face. “This guy’s a real jerk,” Hanks said.

Lasseter grimaced as he thought back to how Woody had evolved over the last two years. He had started out as a small tin wind-up toy, then he’d become a GI Joe–style soldier, and finally he had taken on the persona of a cowboy. But Woody had evolved in other ways as well, many of which worried Lasseter. When Pixar showed the Disney team new storyboards and early footage, Katzenberg kept demanding that Lasseter make Woody more “edgy.” Katzenberg issued edict after edict, tossing much of the Pixar team’s vision for the story out the window and insisting on a Woody who was devious, resentful, bellicose, a little spooky, mildly violent, and sometimes downright cruel. At one point in Katzenberg’s version of the story, a Slinky Dog toy asks a fellow toy, “Why is the cowboy so scary?”

Katzenberg explained to Lasseter and the team that there were two reasons for his edits. First, he believed Woody had to start out as the bad guy so that he could grow and evolve as a character. And second, he wanted a movie that appealed to adults as well as children.

Lasseter found Katzenberg’s reasoning highly dubious. Woody was the main character, and if he didn’t have heart, the movie wouldn’t have heart. Walt Disney had once said that “adults are only kids grown up,” and he’d endeavored to make movies that “create a believable world of dreams that appeals to all age groups.” That’s what Lasseter wanted to do with
Toy Story
. He didn’t want to talk down to kids, but he didn’t want to talk over their heads, either. His vision was to appeal to the child in everyone—to awaken that sometimes-sleeping, yet beautiful and universal spark of innocence and idealism.

That’s not, however, how
Toy Story
was turning out. And now, as Lasseter listened to Tom Hanks record Woody’s lines, he felt horrible about it. He was embarrassed by his movie, which, in reality, was no longer
his
movie.

For the second time in his life, Disney Animation had broken John Lasseter’s heart.

Anaheim, California

November, 19, 1993

John Lasseter sat in the private screening room on the Disney lot, surrounded by his Pixar animation team and Disney’s top executives. The first half of
Toy Story
had been produced, and it was finally time for Katzenberg and his deputies to screen it.

As Lasseter watched Woody in action, he was sure he was watching one of the most loathsome protagonists in cinematic history. It wasn’t long before everyone in the room agreed. The movie lacked any semblance of humor, emotion, or charm.

And, with that, it looked like
Toy Story
, and perhaps Pixar itself, were finished.

Point Richmond, California

December 1, 1994

“Please wake me up when you arrive in the morning,” Lasseter wrote on a Post-it note he put on his secretary’s desk.

It was 5
A.M.,
and he was planning to get a few hours of sleep on the couch in his office, just like he had every day since Thanksgiving. His bloodshot eyes had dark circles beneath them. He settled into the cushions and closed his eyes. Images of toy cowboys and spacemen raced through his mind.

Two and a half weeks earlier, after Disney had officially shut down production on
Toy Story,
Jobs and Lasseter had visited Katzenberg and successfully persuaded him to give Pixar one last chance. “Let us rewrite the script,” Lasseter had pleaded. “Give us three more weeks. At this point, you’ve got nothing to lose.”

The same could not be said for Pixar. If they couldn’t fix what was broken, Pixar would be facing enormous financial pressure. Even Jobs’s deep pockets may not be able to save them any longer.

Lasseter believed he had found a solution, but it meant scrapping Katzenberg’s edits and restoring Woody’s character to the Pixar team’s original vision for it. Lasseter decided to keep Woody’s early
resentment of Andy’s affections for Buzz Lightyear, but he found ways to tone down Woody’s animosity and put it into better context. He started the movie with a new sequence, which was eventually set to the song “You’ve Got a Friend in Me,” that showed the emotional bond between Woody and Andy before Buzz arrived. He removed all of Woody’s insults and domineering orders to his fellow toys, and transformed him into a wise, kindhearted platoon leader of a band of brothers.

When Buzz replaces Woody as Andy’s favorite toy, a musical montage pulls at viewers’ heartstrings as the relationship is seen from the point of view of Woody, who has lost not just his position at the top of the toy hierarchy, but his best friend Andy as well. And, although Woody is disappointed about losing his friend, he no longer resorts to violence. Instead of Woody’s pushing Buzz out a two-story window, Buzz is accidentally knocked out the window by a swinging Luxo lamp.

Lasseter felt incredible pressure to save
Toy Story
, but he also felt the joy of liberation. For years, Steve Jobs had given him unlimited creative control over movies like
Tin Toy
and
Knick Knack,
then Jeffrey Katzenberg had taken it all away. Now Lasseter had it back—and he was determined to never lose it again.

San Francisco, California

July 20, 1995

The film was being completed at a pace of about three minutes per week. One hundred and seventeen computers ran twenty-four hours a day churning out 110,000 frames that took anywhere between forty-five minutes and twenty hours to render.

During that painstakingly slow process, Jobs screened every minute of every scene—repeatedly. He loved to invite his friends over to his Woodside mansion to watch and rewatch the latest cuts. They all saw a lot of potential in the fractions of scenes they previewed, but Jobs knew that his friends didn’t see what he did. They couldn’t put it all together in their minds.

Not that Jobs cared. He had never spent much time worrying about
what other people thought, and he was used to others being blind to possibilities that struck him as obvious.

In less than ten years, Jobs had lost $50 million on Pixar. Time and again, John Lasseter had come to him asking for another check to keep the company afloat, and time and again Jobs had given it to him. Jobs had pushed and challenged the Pixar team and sometimes lost his temper with them, but he had always supported them.

It had recently become easier for Jobs to write Pixar additional checks. It wasn’t because he had more capital—he had already spent on Pixar half of the money he had earned from cashing out his Apple stock ten years ago—but because Jobs now knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that
Toy Story
would save Pixar. The last screening had even warmed Katzenberg’s ice-cold heart.

It was Jobs’s faith in
Toy Story
that eventually led to this visit to his longtime lawyer, Larry Sonsini, in San Francisco. Sonsini had been an unlikely choice to help Jobs take Apple public back in 1980, but the success of that IPO had propelled Sonsini into the top ranks of West Coast securities lawyers. Now Jobs was back with another proposal.