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SPEAKER_02: Today, it's part two of Jason's conversation with Ed Catmull, president of Pixar and Disney Animation and author of Creativity, Inc. Ed talks about building a creative culture and what makes good filmmaking as we go behind the scenes of The Incredibles, Ratatouille, Up, and Inside Out, but start first with the life-changing questions that haunted him after Toy Story's massive success.

Chamath Palihapitiya: And now you, this self-admitted, square, bit of a radical underneath, computer graphics wonk

SPEAKER_06: who has developed and figured out all these techniques to make this happen. And you have a little bit of an existential crisis. Like, I wanted to make a computer animated film, and now I've made the best film of the year. Do you just, like, sit down and say, what next? And, like, why am I on the planet?

SPEAKER_09: I don't think that it's, the film is successful. John has done this extraordinary job of leadership on the creative side. And now we've gone public, so there's a lot to do. Right. But there were two big questions. The first one was, having worked on a goal for 20-some years and having achieved it, I was now left without one. Right. Right. And so, it took me a year to figure out what the new goal should be.

SPEAKER_08: But the other one, and this is the more subtle one, and I don't even know if I wrote this one down. Right. But it was, at this time, I asked the question of myself, how much of this was me? Ah. Because I knew that I had started down this, and I knew that John and Steve were critical people, and there are people you don't know about. Some of you do, like Andrew Stanton and Pete Docter, and there are people you haven't heard, like Bill Reeves and Evan Osby, and they were all part of making this happen. So, there's no delusion about their role with it. Right. But I still had the question, how much of it was me?

SPEAKER_16: Right.

SPEAKER_08: So, during this year, I had this question, too. And at the end of the year, I realized that that question is a meaningless question, and it takes you down the wrong path. And I say this because I see some people who get to this point where they have the success, they ask the question, but they never admit it, and they come up with the wrong answer.

SPEAKER_19: They want to prove that they did it.

SPEAKER_20: Right.

SPEAKER_19: So, it just goes the wrong direction. But the other one...

SPEAKER_22: A lot of people ask that question of themselves. Is it the newfound wealth and the success, they have a hard time reconciling it, and they

SPEAKER_24: just need to understand why they were propelled to this level of notoriety and success, and it just messes with your own internal sense of ego and self?

SPEAKER_09: Well, the concept of the interdependence between people is a hard concept for people to get their head around.

SPEAKER_27: Right.

SPEAKER_09: So, as an individual, you try to sort of like, you want to find hard lines around yourself, which don't really exist, but it feels like it does. So, you want to answer that question that happens to a lot of people. The other one is your support system around you. You know, it can be your friends. People will have agents or spouses or something like that. We'll say, well, it was all you. Right. They didn't give you enough credit.

SPEAKER_29: Right.

SPEAKER_09: So, you actually get a support system which says, yeah, a lot of people weren't involved, but it was you.

SPEAKER_30: Right.

SPEAKER_09: And if you go down that path, you're going down the wrong direction.

SPEAKER_19: It's the dark side. It is the dark side. Right. All right. And I've seen it happen to a lot of people.

SPEAKER_24: Yeah. It's like just pure narcissism. Like, if it wasn't for me, this would not have happened. Right. And you don't realize, like, my God, you know, like, these products, they're so collaborative. And even the companies, the companies tend to build on each other.

SPEAKER_06: Or, so, you know, if ARPANET doesn't happen, then you don't wind up at Utah. If this crazy guy at the Institute of Technology doesn't decide to fund 40 people and put you

SPEAKER_35: in charge of it, it doesn't happen. If George Lucas doesn't take a flyer, it doesn't happen. There's so many people in your story along the way who took a chance on you. You took a chance on them.

SPEAKER_19: Yeah. And you genuinely have to appreciate those links in the chain, including an appreciation that you can't even see a lot of the links that affected you.

SPEAKER_38: Oh, right. Yeah. They may be out of your, they may be in your blind spot. Yeah.

SPEAKER_19: They're in your blind spot. People are doing things that you don't see and they have affected you and you just don't know. Right.

SPEAKER_08: And you have to say, okay, there's a certain part of the world where I really don't know and I have to be aware that I don't know and will probably never know some of those things and that it's okay. Right. That's why it's not a useful question. The other question, though, for me was, like, what is next? And having watched a lot of companies succeed and then fall apart, then the realization I had was, okay, how do we keep from falling apart? It's not, can we make another film? Because we knew how to make a film.

SPEAKER_43: Yeah.

SPEAKER_08: It's how do we make the culture so it's sustainable? And what are the things that get in the way? What stops us?

SPEAKER_46: Right.

SPEAKER_08: Yeah. So, going forward there, it just, it was self-reflective. We're still making things. You're not looking at your navel all the time. Right. But say, okay, why did this work? Why doesn't it work? And what are barriers? And in thinking that through and making more mistakes, we could see where fear enters in, where aversion to making mistakes comes in. How do you think about failure? And how do you think about the way people are open or honest with each other? And we had some areas in which I think we did a really good job. They were informative for us. Like, this area, like with our brain trust, we made this work really well. And it was something that we had worked out on our, worked out for ourselves.

SPEAKER_58: The brain trust is for people who haven't read the book yet.

SPEAKER_08: Well, the brain trust is kind of an accidental thing. But that first group of people working on Toy Story had a remarkable rapport with each other.

SPEAKER_09: And they were completely candid and open with each other. They had intense discussions. But they weren't personal.

SPEAKER_24: Got it.

SPEAKER_35: So you could fight over story elements or just how the project was going. But they would be candid. You use this word candid a lot in the book. Why is this an important word? Why is this a powerful word?

SPEAKER_09: Well, I try to be careful about terminology because some things are so obvious that as soon as you say the obvious thing, you stop thinking. So you could say we should be honest with each other. Well, duh. Of course we should.

SPEAKER_67: Right.

SPEAKER_09: Okay. So, but the truth is a lot of times we aren't. And there are reasons why we aren't.

SPEAKER_69: Sure. It hurts somebody's feelings or they could pull the plug on the whole project. Anything can happen.

SPEAKER_08: Yeah. So basically the opposite of honest is dishonest. Ah. All right. So the lack of honesty is so weighted, it actually screws up the discussion.

SPEAKER_09: But if you pull it back so that it's less loaded, like candor, then it's easier to say, well, sometimes I'm not candid. And it's because, you know, I might offend somebody. I might hurt somebody.

SPEAKER_74: Yeah, I don't want to be a downer.

SPEAKER_09: Yeah. Or I'm threatened by somebody.

SPEAKER_08: Or I'm taking subtle cues that they may emanate from, like from a manager. Right. That they don't want me to say something. So I hold back. And that's a problem. Now, it's a problem. It's always a problem. And it's a problem that we still have. I don't want to give the impression, like, we figured this out because we're using the word candor. Right. It's always a problem. But you want to frame it in such a way like, there's a reason for the problem. There's a reason why people aren't candid.

SPEAKER_77: And if you think of it from their point of view, why are they afraid or what holds them back? Then you can try to address that.

SPEAKER_78: Right.

SPEAKER_08: And then it becomes aspirational. We never completely achieve it because we are human beings with strong emotions. Right. And we want the emotions. Right. It drives us. But there are consequences dealing with emotions. And that is things sometimes, and frequently, actually get screwed up. We will always have that. Our job is to address it, realize it, and see if we can remove some of those barriers.

SPEAKER_81: It's such a subtle point you make about, you know, if you use the word truthful, you

SPEAKER_24: know, and say, hey, can you just be honest with me? Can you be truthful? You're saying in a way, well, you're not being honest right now. And that's like an offensive thing to say, like, oh, you're lying. You're not being truthful. But if you say candid, it's such a great word because it just sets the context of I'm inviting you to tell me more about the current situation so we can all sort of go in a direction and solve it. And so I use this word candid after I read your book a couple years ago. And I said, hey, can we just have radical candidists in the company? Because what happens is as you become more successful, people don't want to tell you

SPEAKER_84: stuff. It's one of the great traps of being a leader, isn't it?

SPEAKER_85: Absolutely. The success actually is a pressure towards conservatism.

David Friedberg: Explain. I mean, I understand it, but explain it.

SPEAKER_09: Well, okay. So you're doing something right. Like in our case, you make a move and you've got these different groups. Right. Who are making it. And we're making another movie and each movie is a risk. Who wants to be the first one to screw up? Right. Right.

SPEAKER_88: Kill the golden egg. The goose is laying the golden eggs and I'm going to crack it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_08: This process works. I'm going to stick with what works. If you've fallen flat on your face and you say, try something new, it's actually easier

SPEAKER_09: to do it if you've failed. Yeah. But if you've been successful, it's actually a little harder to try something different.

SPEAKER_90: Right.

SPEAKER_08: At the same time, if you don't try something different, you fall behind and you become stale.

SPEAKER_35: This is what happened with Disney and Pixar. You think about it, Disney's great success. You talk about the Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Lion King, Aladdin. They're musicals. They were based on these incredibly catchy songs. You know, you tap your foot to them.

SPEAKER_94: That's not what Pixar did with Toy Story. They, Disney wanted you to make it a musical, didn't they?

SPEAKER_95: Yes. They wanted it to be a musical. And actually, we love musicals. Nothing wrong with a musical. Yeah. So the issue isn't. But that would ruin Toy Story. Would ruin Toy Story. Well, that's the point.

SPEAKER_08: If it isn't musical, you actually broaden your palette. But the other one is once you discover something that works, like the musical worked, and the phrase they used was, it's the new American Broadway. Right.

SPEAKER_85: Once you do that, if you make everyone the same, you become artistically bankrupt.

SPEAKER_99: Which, some might argue, is what happened with that genre of film. It was just like, okay, we get it. Although, you know, Frozen, that was kind of a phenomenon, too.

SPEAKER_71: But it was coming back. See, here's the thing. Let's just say, we love musicals. Yeah.

SPEAKER_85: So, we came back to Disney 10 years ago. Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_08: And the first three films were critically well-reviewed, very well-reviewed. But they weren't really noticed, because Disney, at this point, wasn't known for doing well. Then we did Tangled, which is now a musical. So, it was very successful. Then Wreck-It Ralph, which was an extremely creative film. And then followed by Frozen, which kind of knocked the socks off. But Frozen was followed by Big Hero 6, followed by Zootopia, which are not musicals.

SPEAKER_85: Right. So, now it's a blend. Right. Some of the people want to do musicals. Some don't. And the philosophy we have is it's driven by what the director wants to do and what they're personally connected with. The decision's theirs.

SPEAKER_106: They say, I want to do a musical. We'll do a musical.

SPEAKER_108: Let me just take a quick moment to tell all the startups listening that Scott Walker is an amazing attorney. I know because a lot of my incubator companies and investments use Scott Walker. And we just had a discussion about law firms on our discussion, our secret discussion group. And people were talking about how much they love working with Scott Walker and the Walker Corporate Law Firm. They're a boutique law firm specializing in the representation of entrepreneurs and startups. And they encourage fixed fees. They believe billable hours reward inefficiency. And they just love to tell you this is what it's going to cost. How refreshing is that as an entrepreneur to not have that sticker shock, to not have that fear of opening up the PDF from your law firm and getting that ridiculous surprise that they went three times over. You're not going to have that happen with the Walker Corporate Law Group because they do fixed fees. And all their lawyers have a decade or two of experience. No junior associates who are getting on the job training with your startup. They do mergers and acquisitions, licensing arrangements, terms of service, privacy policies. And they just love working with startups. The founder, Scott Ed Walker, is a total mention, just a lover of startups. I've known him for a long time. He comes to all my events. And he's indefatigable in his support of founders. You can give him a call right now, 415-979-9998. 415 is San Francisco. 979-9998. 979-9998. Or email Scott at Walker Corporate Law. Scott at Walker Corporate Law dot com. Or visit Walker Corporate Law dot com. And you can follow Scott Ed Walker on the Twitter, at Scott Ed Walker. And everybody go ahead and thank at Scott Ed Walker on Twitter if you're a super fan. Because he has been, I think he's the longest running partner of the show. So thanks again to Scott Walker for representing my companies and doing a great job at it.

SPEAKER_65: I have to say, you know, my favorite film of all time is Ratatouille.

SPEAKER_06: And I don't know why that film, maybe it's because my dad owned restaurants and bars and it's got the food theme. But that Anton Ego speech, that cuts me to my core. I think that that is the greatest speech in any film ever.

SPEAKER_120: What's the origin of that? Do you know, were you there when they, that character Anton Ego? Because I felt like in a way it was like a meta commentary from either Jobs or Pixar to all the critics out there who had just been so critical of artists and creators. And it's just like, hey, I don't want to say F you, but it felt like an F you to me.

SPEAKER_35: Like, listen, critics, just remember, like, all you do is put people down and you could really actually build people up and you could actually do something worthy in the world. But what's the origin of that Anton Ego speech?

SPEAKER_09: Okay, so the origin is that we had somebody who came up with the conceit of Ratatouille. And if you look at the final film, you say it was the realization of that. But in fact, he couldn't quite pull it off.

SPEAKER_95: It's a very, obviously, a rat that cooks is a very high risk concept.

SPEAKER_62: I mean, that's a laugh out of, laugh you out of the room, fire you concept. That's right. Like, this absolutely fails the elevator test. For sure. All right.

SPEAKER_65: Would you like to see a film about a rat cooking your food? No. Thank you. Next idea.

SPEAKER_09: That's right. So I love it when we do some of those. We can't do everyone like that, but I love that when we do that.

SPEAKER_08: So we then put Brad Bird on it, who made The Incredibles. Now, Brad, first of all, he himself is incredible.

SPEAKER_127: Right.

SPEAKER_08: And so he took the conceit because he liked the conceit of the idea, but he solved the fundamental problem of the film to make it work. And he put in those things that elevated to a different level. And Brad had these very strong feelings. So this is Brad. It's not coming from John or me or from Steve. It's Brad being in an environment where we are protecting the new. We were protecting him for Incredibles when actually there were several people who did not want us to make that film.

SPEAKER_94: Really?

SPEAKER_08: Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_94: I talk to many people. They pick Incredibles as their favorite. Even over Toy Story, I've heard people say Incredibles.

SPEAKER_09: We had to fight to get that one made. Why?

SPEAKER_85: Because our deal with Disney was that if a director had made a film that made $100 million, then the choice of what the film was was Pixar's. If they hadn't, then Disney had to approve it.

SPEAKER_131: All right.

SPEAKER_85: Well, Brad's first film, Iron Giant, had not made $100 million.

SPEAKER_132: That's so amazing.

SPEAKER_09: So Disney had veto rights. But Brad, being very vocal, had said things that just upset people who were then at the leadership at Disney. Ah. So they vetoed the idea. All right. So John and I personally had to go to Michael Eisner to override the decision to let the film be made. Wow.

SPEAKER_77: So basically, we're protecting Brad. So Brad understands. On the Incredibles. On the Incredibles.

SPEAKER_140: Years later with Ratatouille, he pays homage to you protecting him with that.

SPEAKER_09: Well, to the studio. The studio is protecting him. Wow. So he gets that. And he does have a thing where people will take pot shots at it with actually understanding the effort that goes into it. Because it's easy to take pot shots. He doesn't believe that about all critics. But he does feel strongly that the artist is pouring their soul into it. And he wanted to make that statement. And how important it is to protect the new. But that's a fundamental value that we'd worked out long ago at Pixar is all of these films are so damn hard to figure out.

SPEAKER_38: It's like a riddle. They're all this incredible giant riddle.

SPEAKER_09: And every one of them is different. So complex. And your emotions in there.

SPEAKER_08: And you don't know what it is. They're near failure. And so you have to support somebody when their stuff isn't working. And that's the key concept.

SPEAKER_94: Which in a way is what Steve Jobs did with you guys. It wasn't working. He just relentlessly supported you.

SPEAKER_88: He may have been tough to deal with at times. He may have overnegotiated. But he was that way too. He was like blindly supportive.

SPEAKER_09: That's right. There's a whole system based upon I'm going to support you even when I don't know where this is going. So we always have to make a choice.

SPEAKER_08: It's like do we think they're even going to get there? Because as you know sometimes they don't get there.

SPEAKER_151: Like even finish the work. Finish the script.

SPEAKER_08: Right.

SPEAKER_35: Have the enthusiasm and the energy to actually deliver.

SPEAKER_08: So you're always taking a gamble not knowing if they're going to get there. If you take the gamble with good people they will usually get there.

SPEAKER_153: But you have no guarantees because you're taking a risk.

SPEAKER_35: Right. And it's that radical support. I think that's why that film speaks to me so much. Also that anybody can do anything.

SPEAKER_06: Even a rat can go be a star chef in Paris. The greatest restaurant city ever.

SPEAKER_157: There's another thing about that is we do research.

SPEAKER_09: And with the research we send people out to the restaurant. Michelin three star restaurants in Paris. Right. And we always do research because. It's a pretty good gig. Yeah it is. For Bugs Life it was sending a team out in the.

SPEAKER_165: In the grass. In the grass. Here's a magnifying glass.

SPEAKER_39: You got the Bugs Life.

SPEAKER_166: You go to France and go eat at some Michelin star restaurants.

SPEAKER_08: But here's what's cool about it is that while we watch cooking channel it's not the same thing as being in a high-end kitchen. Not even close. All right. And so the people are different there. So if you go into it you see things that you wouldn't normally see. You bring them back into the film. But because the audience hasn't been in a restaurant they don't know whether or not it's actually true. Right.

SPEAKER_85: But by virtue of the fact that you put in something that's true the audience senses that it's true.

SPEAKER_172: So it's like even though they can't verify the authenticity the fact that it's authentic

SPEAKER_35: actually then comes through. Yes.

SPEAKER_84: On a some like Jungian global universal truth because it's truth they feel truth.

SPEAKER_08: That's right. So we do research and John assists that with every film you've got to go out and find out something that you did not know and that affect you personally and that new thing you need to bring back and make that one of the elements of putting the film together.

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SPEAKER_38: One of the amazing things about your career and the life of Pixar is that it spans generations now.

SPEAKER_06: So I remember growing up on these films and seeing them as a young adult. And then I take my daughter to see Inside Out. And I am blown away. This is the film that every parent has been hoping would exist in the world. A film to talk to your child about emotion and that emotion's okay and that everybody

SPEAKER_35: has them and that they're complex and that they're unique. How hard was it to make that film? And was that film a critical success? Did it make a lot of money or did it just sort of fly under the radar a bit?

SPEAKER_120: Because I felt that's one of your best. I love that film.

SPEAKER_185: Well, I personally, I think it's probably our single most impactful film.

SPEAKER_186: 100%. I agree.

SPEAKER_09: So, and the others have done well. There have been all kinds of different kinds of successes. Like Ratatouille had that impact on a lot of people and did on Me Too. And, you know, like the original Toy Story and then Toy Story 3, of course, very emotional. So each one has got something. But in terms of, like, impact, that one had the most. Now, critically, it was very, very well received. And financially, it did very well. Like, it did all of them.

SPEAKER_189: It did do well, yeah.

SPEAKER_09: It wasn't a big toy seller. And we don't try to make everyone a toy seller.

SPEAKER_189: Ah.

SPEAKER_09: Right? In fact, that would be a bad idea.

SPEAKER_08: So you want, once in a while, it didn't do well in consumer products. But the fundamental has got to be make everything good. So it did very well and it had major impact and it was a good experience for the people making the film. Right. So, but here's what I think is cool about it is we just made it.

SPEAKER_77: Right. It wasn't like we used to make great films. And now we're going downhill. Well, wow.

SPEAKER_71: We just made one of the most impactful films ever 20 years later. Right.

SPEAKER_35: It's amazing how, if you just think about the history of film, you had this great moment in the 70s with, you know, Easy Rider, Five Easy Pieces, The Conversation, Three Days of

SPEAKER_06: the Condor, that whole, like, radical, you know, movement. And it kind of ended. Some people say, hey, it ended when the blockbusters, Jaws, and Star Wars came about. But the real, like, risk-taking occurring is, you know, like, in large part in some of these animated films.

SPEAKER_35: You're actually taking risks and telling stories that other people can't tell in the big movie Hollywood system.

SPEAKER_64: Yeah.

SPEAKER_09: I mean, for me, it's, because I think a lot about risk. And I think a risk of coming in three phases, and you have to know the difference, because everybody talks about risk, and you have to do it, right? But in fact, there are different phases. And the first one is, you actually have to pick a risky idea. And you have to evaluate where the risk is.

SPEAKER_08: And we will do some things which are lower commercial risk, like a sequel is a lower commercial risk.

SPEAKER_198: Of course. People are familiar with the characters. Okay. Yeah.

SPEAKER_08: And you do some of those, it generates more revenue, it's easier to market, and that actually gives you some cushion. Then you pick some which are, would fail the elevator test. Like, you wouldn't make a film, anybody else make a film, about a rat that cooks, or an old man that floats away in a house.

SPEAKER_125: Right. It's like, it doesn't matter how successful a film is, you are never going to sell a lot of toy walkers.

SPEAKER_06: No. And I have to stop you on up for a second.

SPEAKER_35: That first, what is it, 15 or 20 minutes with no dialogue? Okay. Talk about taking a risk. I mean, everybody cries their eyes out in that first 20 minutes. What, is it 20 minutes or 15 minutes?

SPEAKER_08: Okay. Here's the beautiful thing about it. The original version of that was 20 minutes.

SPEAKER_09: And when we saw it, and this actually came later in the process, when we saw it, we said, okay, this is gold.

SPEAKER_08: So that gave us the basis on which to solve the problems, which we had numerous problems later. But that was the goal. But meanwhile, they kept refining it. By the time you saw it, it was four and a half minutes long.

SPEAKER_203: That's four and a half minutes?

SPEAKER_08: It's four and a half minutes.

SPEAKER_203: It still feels like 20.

SPEAKER_08: You see, I would have said the same thing. And I was actually speaking with Pete Docter once, because this is when the book first came out. We're not together on something. And to the audience, I said, you know, that first 20 minutes was, you know, with this great thing. And Pete said, no, Ed, it was only four and a half minutes.

SPEAKER_205: Wow.

SPEAKER_08: They had polished it into a diamond.

SPEAKER_205: Exactly.

SPEAKER_08: And it was so impactful that, like, it set the stage for the movie, and it felt like

SPEAKER_85: this. You'd seen this whole life. Right.

SPEAKER_77: And part of the impact was pulling it right out into this thing was just got everything right.

SPEAKER_206: It did.

SPEAKER_06: It's just, it's so, I can, you get chills thinking about that scene. What's the favorite scene for you? I mean, God, this is a hard question to ask a person with this many kids, but it's almost like not even asking your favorite kid. It's like the favorite thing your favorite kid ever did that you're most proud of.

SPEAKER_65: But what's your favorite scene in any of these movies? Like just a moment. What comes to mind is like just the moment that you're, that just is so much, so personal to you and that you love.

SPEAKER_209: Like I had that anti-ego speech.

SPEAKER_08: Yeah. I, uh, I haven't been asked that question before. I usually get asked, what's my favorite film?

SPEAKER_211: Of course. It's the obvious one.

SPEAKER_09: And so I've got my, my.

SPEAKER_211: What's your stock answer for that?

SPEAKER_09: Okay. I have, my stock answer is, I have two answers. Okay. The first one is, it's, uh, it's like your kids, right? And so if somebody asks you, like, even if you had one, you couldn't say. Of course not.

SPEAKER_08: All right. So, uh, but the other answer is that having been involved in the making of them, I can't see them in the same way that others do. Right.

SPEAKER_213: You know what went into each one.

SPEAKER_08: That's right. So my experience of each one is really quite different. And I've got films that are sort of like, I think above or below what others might think on the outside because of knowing the people and what happened and the crisis we went through and how it was managed along the way. So I have to go back to the first stock answer.

SPEAKER_214: Gotcha.

SPEAKER_08: But in terms of a scene. Yeah. I actually haven't, if I haven't been asked, I don't know.

SPEAKER_64: I mean, I, I, they're memorable things. That speech was one of those places for me.

SPEAKER_24: Do you remember when they brought it to you? Did you read it on a piece of paper first? Or did they just bring you like a rough cut of it and say, hey, this is how it's going to end? Or was that just brought up in the brain trust?

SPEAKER_217: Well, the whole thing was done quickly.

SPEAKER_08: And Brad Bird rewrote the entire script except for one sentence. I even asked him, why didn't you change that sentence? He said, well, it worked. He was more, for him, the issue was making the film. But with that one, it's just, it's just pure Brad. And he just wrote it.

SPEAKER_09: And, you know, when you do things like that, and every once in a while, writers come up with something when they do it, it's like, wow, that really works. And that's what a good writer does.

SPEAKER_220: So like, you know, Bob Dylan talked a lot about that.

SPEAKER_24: They're like, I saw the, I watched these interviews with Bob Dylan from like the 80s or 90s. And you go on YouTube and you get like down the rabbit hole. And they were asking him about him, the songs.

SPEAKER_223: And they're like asking him about writing, blowing in the wind or whatever. And, you know, ballad of a thin man or whatever. And he's just like, yeah, you know, I don't, I don't really know. Like I just, the words just came out. Like, I don't really remember even writing them.

SPEAKER_24: It just happened. It's like really like transcendent kind of thing. Like, you know, the words just came out and he can't even, he can't believe he wrote

SPEAKER_228: them, you know?

SPEAKER_229: Well, the, the, the movies are the director. That is, it's their emotion. It's not just the director. They've got writer around them and story people.

SPEAKER_08: But it is them.

SPEAKER_231: Yeah.

SPEAKER_08: And so when they're putting that, they're putting themselves into it. And, and that's exactly what you want in the film. And a lot of people don't quite understand it because it also works to a negative. I mean, I, for instance, there's this film about Steve Jobs by Sorkin or whatever.

SPEAKER_85: It was a terrible film. But if you think about it, what it really represents is Sorkin putting into the film his view of how things work.

SPEAKER_65: And he, he's such an outsider and he knows so little that it's his own projection, right? It's like his own emotional baggage.

SPEAKER_236: Well, but this is both the good and the bad because it says what he, he, he believes, but

SPEAKER_08: that's what you want. It's so, it isn't about the story. It's what the director believes. Right.

SPEAKER_77: But in our case, that, that's what we want. So all good films have the director coming out in it. And if you think of it, okay, this is their expression rather than it's about the truth.

SPEAKER_08: And you may evaluate whether or not you care what their expression is.

SPEAKER_85: And, and, and also there may be various issues with it, but the fundamental principles is that movies tell more about the directors than they do about the subject.

SPEAKER_101: And if you know that, then you say, okay, I want a director who's got something to say to the world.

SPEAKER_06: I got something burning in them where they just got to get it out there.

SPEAKER_101: Yes.

SPEAKER_06: See, that's why I think that film is so terrible.

SPEAKER_24: And I, you know, obviously being in the tech industry, you know, I kind of really was excited to see it. And Sorkin obviously is a talented guy. He's done some talented stuff, but back to the authenticity, it rang so false to me on

SPEAKER_35: so many levels from dialogue to the people, to the, to the circumstance, to the one-sidedness of it. It was obvious that it was not authentic. He had not gone to the French three-star restaurant and hung out in the kitchen. He just didn't get it. I don't, I, when you watched it, where you're just like, this is wrong. This is just like incorrect is not the Steve I interacted with or.

SPEAKER_241: Oh, I didn't go see it.

SPEAKER_35: Oh, you didn't even go see it.

SPEAKER_241: I didn't go see it. Yeah. Because I knew the basis of it. And so I'm listening, I'm talking to people there.

SPEAKER_08: I mean, because I knew Steve. And so I, and I knew that the research hadn't been done. Yeah. So if it's portraying that it's going to be about somebody and they don't really ask, I mean, there is no research. There is no going to the French laundry.

SPEAKER_09: Right. To figure things out. Right. So, but it's not that I want to tax somebody in this process. I really don't.

SPEAKER_08: It was more just principle that the doing the research and then getting emotionally invested in it leads to a richer experience. Of course.

SPEAKER_95: And with Pete Docter, for instance, he talked with a lot of child psychiatrists.

SPEAKER_209: Oh, for inside out.

SPEAKER_95: Yeah. The research there. Oh, it's bulletproof.

SPEAKER_77: Yeah. Yeah. It was to talk with them and see what their point of view was. And I'll say one other thing.

SPEAKER_08: And that is that as the film was coming near the end, it wasn't quite working. Like there was something wrong. And this is fairly normal for our films. And we couldn't see what it was because we're lost in it. Right? Right. Yeah. You're in the belly of the whale. So we have another brain trust that's down at Disney. And we kept them very separate. We always kept the studios very separate because we want to have different personalities. Right. And merging them is actually a bad thing to do.

SPEAKER_255: Diversity strength.

SPEAKER_08: Yeah. We want diversity strength. But we can talk, share with each other once in a while. Obviously, arguing down there, we took a philosophy. We learned some things doing that to come back and forth.

SPEAKER_85: But in this case, we went and showed it to the brain trust down there. And they picked at something which unveiled a deeper problem. So the story structure remained the same. But they found what the flaw was that we couldn't see. What was it?

SPEAKER_08: Well, so here was the issue as it was there. And that is that Joy wanted to get back to headquarters because the girl needed that. Right.

SPEAKER_85: So she was trying to get back throughout the film. But in trying to get back, it actually made her appear to be selfish.

SPEAKER_08: But now if you think about yourself or somebody else, if you're angry, you'd like to be happy. If you're sad, you'd like to be happy. So everybody else wants her to be back. So she does not need to be the driving force to return because the others want it and the parents want it.

SPEAKER_85: And this is why the film became deeper. Because a lot of parents will say to their kids, where's my happy girl?

SPEAKER_264: Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_85: Right? Yeah. Without realizing that when you say, where's my happy girl, you've actually made things worse. Right. So once you say, okay, the parent now is a driving force to get the happiness back. Right. So we went back and Pete and his team removed a lot of things and changed these little adjustments. Ah. So that she was, like everybody else, was driving the force. And that represents the reality. Because as parents, we do that to kids.

SPEAKER_270: Yeah, you want them to be happy. Please be happy. Be happy. What do I have to do to make you happy? Eat ice cream.

SPEAKER_85: So when you explain that, like, okay, it doesn't work that way. Right.

SPEAKER_77: And then the child psychiatrist would say, okay, now you've got it right. And then it had the impact because not only do the kids see that there are these different emotions and that it's okay, but it's also the message to the parents. Like, oh, if they're feeling this way, I need to think about their issues and their emotions in a different way. Yeah.

SPEAKER_85: So it was impactful at both a parent and a child level.

SPEAKER_271: And that's what, for me, made it one of our most impactful films.

SPEAKER_06: I think it's the most impactful because when you think about it and you think about how parenting was done in your generation, my generation, you're a boomer, I'm a Gen Xer.

SPEAKER_24: And there is a difference, I think, between how we probably were parented overall. I mean, I don't know the specifics of your childhood. But your childhood, it was like kids just, like, put them over here. Like, their emotions don't exist. My childhood is like maybe a little bit your emotions exist. Now we have this pampered generation where it's like, oh, my God, how are you feeling? How are you feeling? But people were not even cognizant that kids had any right to discuss their emotions, right? Like, the world's come so much further in just even thinking about children in that way.

SPEAKER_95: Yes. Although I, actually, my family was, I had a great family. You did, yeah. Yeah. So I wasn't burdened with that.

SPEAKER_278: Yeah.

SPEAKER_35: Wow. And so now you wind up selling to, Pixar winds up getting sold to Disney. How did that wind up going down? And how do you reconcile that now, you know, at this, you're now running Disney's animation, you're running Pixar, and you dreamed about working there, and now you're there. And they validated it by buying the company for billions of dollars, and it's like more success

SPEAKER_200: than anybody's ever had in animation since Walt Disney. Has Pixar made more money, I guess, than the Disney films have?

SPEAKER_279: In truth, I don't know.

SPEAKER_281: I don't know the answer to this.

SPEAKER_35: Interesting question. It's like, which one objectively has done more in animation? I mean, their peers.

SPEAKER_95: Well, actually, I think, in truth, if you actually take inflation-adjusted dollars, because the

SPEAKER_19: movie business was different then, I think inflation-adjusted, you know why, was the most

SPEAKER_289: really, the first one.

SPEAKER_290: Oh, that makes sense, because there were so few options for entertainment at that time. That's right. That everybody had to see it as sort of like the finale of MASH or whatever. Yeah, it became a phenomenon. It became a phenomenon.

SPEAKER_185: So, but it's, I don't, I don't know the actual answer, other than I saw that, that, I think.

SPEAKER_06: But they're definitely, on an artistic level, when you think about it, they are peers. When you think about the, the library of what Disney did and what Pixar did, I would say it's very clearly, like, people will look back on it historically and say, these are peers.

SPEAKER_185: And that's what we wanted. Yeah.

SPEAKER_08: So, because we had this great respect, and so now it's an opportunity to come in. But it was also an opportunity, in addition to our feeling of trying to make, uh, Disney animation great again. I also felt like, like, this is an incredible experience, because we've got these beliefs and theories about how to work and, uh, and how to get the fear out of an organization and get them supported.

SPEAKER_85: But in any organization, a lot of good things happen, and you don't even give credit properly, because a lot of people do things and you, and you take them for granted.

SPEAKER_08: Right. So now we're going to go to a whole new group, and I don't know any of them. Wow. So, now you apply the theories to a different group. And I believe we will learn something from this process.

SPEAKER_301: Right.

SPEAKER_85: And we, you know, I had several meetings there, but we basically could explain all the principles about how to do this in four hours.

SPEAKER_06: Really?

SPEAKER_08: Yes.

SPEAKER_06: What does it come down to at its core when you think about it?

SPEAKER_08: Well, I mean, when I say four hours, there were, there were several things having to do with, you know, explain how the brain trust works, how we think about taking risks and gambles and not being too conservative, and how we think about failures and mistakes. A very important one of the failures and mistakes, because they had, they weren't thinking about it correctly. And also the balance between the different groups. Now, when you explain these things, everybody nods their head in agreement. But it took four years to actually get it integrated into the culture. Because it's very easy to express your values and easy for people to agree to them. But to live the values is very difficult. And so it was actually going through that, a cultural transformation with the same people. So this wasn't a talent issue. It was to enable them to let their inherent talent come out. And that's the thing that just got my head around. I said, okay, this isn't about how do you make people creative, or what do you do to become creative. Right. It's the fundamental issue of how do you remove the barriers?

SPEAKER_77: Right. Like, what's in the way? Why are people behaving this way? And if you understand that, and you take it away, then they get better. They become more creative at every level. It doesn't matter what department they're in. Yeah.

SPEAKER_06: And if you think about it, if you worked at the Disney company, because of the nature of how much success they had, we talked earlier about how you just become more risk averse.

SPEAKER_24: Like, why would I take any risk? I don't want to screw up all this amazing stuff that's been built before me. And then you think about working at Pixar. Well, it's like, well, we've never had a film out. You don't have that huge legacy. But now, do you worry, like, Pixar, you've got so many amazing hits that it's harder to take risk?

SPEAKER_08: Well, John certainly takes risks. I mean, we've got things on the docket now where you say, uh, I don't know.

SPEAKER_229: What's the, uh, I don't know right now? Well, I can't tell you right now. Oh, okay. We haven't announced them yet. You haven't announced them yet.

SPEAKER_08: But, um, it's, it's, the truth is, the ones that are harder to conceive of and, and therefore are more challenging actually force you to go different places. They, they make you do something that's more original because they're so hard to solve. Interesting. And that's where you want to be. It's when you get something fresh. Right.

SPEAKER_09: So, we've had this unprecedented success in the history of motion pictures and John has trained more directors than any other director in motion picture history.

SPEAKER_325: Right. Right.

SPEAKER_08: Now what? And if you look at it and say, well, the people who are, a lot of the people at Pixar did not have our experiences that we had at the beginning, whether building Toy Story or Toy Story 2. They didn't have those.

SPEAKER_327: Yeah. They were in school.

SPEAKER_08: So, so, so our experiences is their mythology. Wow. Right. And so they can't actually fully integrate it. So our crises of today are their experiences. So you have to look at the crisis and say, it's not just we're solving the crisis, but we're actually forming the way people think about problems today.

SPEAKER_85: And we want them to own the problems. Right. And if they own the problems and the solutions and react to them in a world in which the technology

SPEAKER_08: is still dramatically changing and the distribution methods are rapidly changing, then the culture will adapt.

SPEAKER_85: That is, whatever succeeds us will be different than we've got now because it can't be the

SPEAKER_19: same. And an attempt to keep the culture the same is actually a way to kill it.

SPEAKER_337: Right. Yeah. If you don't evolve, you go away. I mean, that's just Darwin.

SPEAKER_77: And it's, the important thing here is that this challenge of how you make it safe, he's always there. That's why I said, I don't want to give people the impression like, oh, well, we figured it out. Right.

SPEAKER_08: The only thing we figured out is that it's so damn hard you have to keep figuring it out because it's not stable. It does not stay.

SPEAKER_339: Change is the constant.

SPEAKER_08: That's right.

SPEAKER_77: And all those threats and the things that make people afraid of her, they're still there.

SPEAKER_65: Has there been a dud? Has Pixar had a failure? I can't even think of it. I mean, maybe have there things that have been like a disappointment critically or box office

SPEAKER_36: wise?

SPEAKER_77: Well, yeah, I think there was one critically, but it's a little even hard to say critically because the one thing we found is that people don't measure our films against other films. You just read this in reviews. They'll say, well, compared to this other, it's not as good as Toy Story 3. And just go through that and review after review. It's like, we're our own category.

SPEAKER_274: Yeah, it is interesting.

SPEAKER_35: Like the one thing I found fascinating about the Toy Story series is it seemed like it got better each one. And it's supposed to be the opposite when you do a sequel. It's supposed to be the opposite.

David Friedberg: The sequel is supposed to go worse. And I'm like, I kind of like Toy Story 2 best. I love that film. Like with Jesse and When She Loved Me. Is that the song? That's the song. That song is just gut-wrenching.

SPEAKER_207: And that came after a meltdown.

SPEAKER_77: Did it? The first version failed. And they knew what the basic conceit of the film was supposed to be, but it wasn't working at all. So our original crew came back on to work on this film.

SPEAKER_08: And the basic premise is, which is something we can relate to. I mean, it's toys, right? Right.

SPEAKER_49: But if you could live forever, but you were without love, would you pick that over having

SPEAKER_229: love and people in your life knowing that you were going to die?

SPEAKER_351: Basically the human condition. It's the human condition.

SPEAKER_77: It's incredible. And you want it so that people can connect with it. So you don't actually come out and say that ever. Right.

SPEAKER_124: You don't have to say it. Like, you're going to die. Would you rather die alone or would you rather die with love?

SPEAKER_77: So when you've got that song, what you're really saying to the audience is, here was this toy, who basically reached the position where she was rejected and thrown away. And so she had come to the conclusion that she would rather go off to this museum. Right.

SPEAKER_08: And you've got to believe that Woody, who's the protagonist, when he hears that, he has got to be tempted by that.

SPEAKER_354: Yeah.

SPEAKER_08: And unless you've got something really powerful, because if you express it the way I express

SPEAKER_85: it, like, would you choose this? And you're actually giving away the answer, right? Right. So it's not dramatic. It doesn't work unless you believe that there is an existential threat, that he has to make that choice. And when he makes it, you would know why he would for a while make the wrong choice and that you believe he would do that.

SPEAKER_356: Yeah.

SPEAKER_85: And then when he figures it out, then it's gratifying.

SPEAKER_357: So powerful.

SPEAKER_77: And that's what makes good filmmaking. Because you've got to be with that person and believe it.

SPEAKER_35: And you believe it with a animated, talking, 1950s, pull the string cowboy doll.

SPEAKER_363: Yes.

SPEAKER_35: And you say something that profound with dolls.

SPEAKER_364: Yes.

SPEAKER_35: They're amazing. What a career you've had. Do you just pinch yourself sometimes? Like, do you believe that you've had this life? I look at your life, I'm like, that seems to me like the perfect life. I mean, it wasn't easy. But holy cow, and you've still got a ways to go. But I mean, do you just pinch yourself?

SPEAKER_23: Yeah.

SPEAKER_35: Do you just pinch yourself sometimes?

David Friedberg: I can't believe you have this life.

SPEAKER_23: Well, I don't pinch myself because that would hurt.

David Friedberg: Yeah. But I mean metaphorically. Do you look at it and say, like, holy shit, I did a lot. I've got a lot done in this life.

SPEAKER_85: You know, actually, I don't usually think that way.

SPEAKER_08: So I thought, okay, what's the next framework? Because I don't even use the term goal so much because for me, a framework is more nebulous. I never know what's going to go. But I use the term of a goal of a film. But I didn't know what the film was going to be.

SPEAKER_368: Right.

SPEAKER_08: But then after that, I was like, okay, I'm thinking in terms of a framework. Like, how do you build a culture?

SPEAKER_369: Right.

SPEAKER_08: How do you turn a culture around that's got potential but it needs to be turned around?

SPEAKER_370: Right.

SPEAKER_08: And then for me, it's like, okay, how do I express it? That's why I wrote the book. How do I explain the thought process behind this?

SPEAKER_85: And then we had this event three years ago called Notes Day.

SPEAKER_371: What is that?

SPEAKER_85: Well, so Notes Day was applying the principles of our brain trust to a film. I mean, to a move, to a company. The brain trust is where a group of our best people get together and give candid feedback

SPEAKER_229: on the film in a safe environment where they solve problems. And we remove the power structure from the room. So it's a very potent process. And it's taken a while to figure out how to apply it in other places and make it work. Because the dynamics are different every place.

SPEAKER_374: Google, by the way, stole that idea.

SPEAKER_24: Now in their groups, they have a rule where people have to, the managers have to make sure that everybody in the room has spoken at least twice before the meeting ends. Which is really kind of like a nod to the, you know, flat structure of the brain trust at Pixar.

SPEAKER_77: Yeah.

SPEAKER_08: And it's, the thing is, we know that organizations have structures. We're not denying. Somebody has to make decisions. But in certain rooms, you have to remove the power structure to make it safe for the leader of the project to listen. So it isn't making it safe for everybody to talk. You actually have to, the bigger issue is, make it safe for them to listen because they don't have an existential threat in that room.

SPEAKER_356: Right.

SPEAKER_85: So then we apply it to other places and we decide to do it with the company. Only now we've got thousands of notes.

SPEAKER_08: The other question is, the thousands of notes represent issues and problems. How do you sort through them? How do you figure out?

SPEAKER_77: How do we change our culture? And this has been a long and fascinating process for us to dig down deeper into something and

SPEAKER_85: understand something better about ourselves. And I believe that's just like, it's the next process.

SPEAKER_77: How do we do that? And then beyond that, how do we make sure this culture carries that introspective process

SPEAKER_85: forward so that we keep doing something fresh and reinventing the future in ways that I can't conceive of?

SPEAKER_24: It's almost like you're building this structure to preserve this radical sort of openness that

SPEAKER_386: created your greatest success.

SPEAKER_185: Yeah. Yeah. And it's, I guess the analogy I'd make, this is like a political analogy, but if you look

SPEAKER_08: at the founding fathers of the company, they were radicals. Yeah. Okay. And they really were radicals.

SPEAKER_85: And you look today and you find that the most conservative people are the strongest admirers of the radicals and the least like them. It is bizarre. Right? Yeah. And so you have to say, okay, I don't want to do that. And so I say, I'm sort of like in the radical middle. Right. Because I believe things have to change and you have to adapt to the realities of what you've got now, which means you have to continually adapt and learn. And that continual process is a creative process. Yeah.

SPEAKER_392: Wow. I am so glad that we got to spend two hours together talking about your career. I am so impressed by you.

SPEAKER_35: I, you know, like I meet everybody, you know, I've invested in a bunch of crazy companies and I just, I read your book and it very much connected with me just to see somebody doggedly pursue their goals and to just, you know, stick to it. I mean, you are an incredibly resilient individual. And the fact that you've built so much, I am so impressed by it, honestly. And the book is tremendous. If you haven't read this book, I think this is the book that like anybody starting a business should read before they start the business. I give it away to people all the time as a gift.

SPEAKER_395: So I really appreciate you taking the time today.

SPEAKER_153: Well, thank you. I really appreciate it.

SPEAKER_84: Did I miss anything?

SPEAKER_153: Yes. I got so much more to talk about.

SPEAKER_84: All right. So we have you back for the next two hour discussion.

SPEAKER_399: We went a hundred minutes.

SPEAKER_84: My producer's like, I think Ed's got a couple of studios to run, but you're working on a major problem. Lasseter is working on something big, huh? That's what we got to take away from this.

SPEAKER_185: Lasseter is working on a lot of things.

SPEAKER_84: Multiple things.

SPEAKER_185: Oh yeah. But basically, there's nobody like him.

SPEAKER_229: The amount of stuff that's on his plate, it's not human. It's not human. No, no, he's not human.

SPEAKER_404: He's just not human.

SPEAKER_229: No, no, he's, I mean, the, the, uh, the warm heartedness, the openness, the creativity and the energy, it's like with everybody, it's like, how does he do that?

SPEAKER_147: Yeah.

SPEAKER_94: And what about VR? You think about that VR air stuff? Is that, cause you, I mean, your computer vision guy, when you started, people were putting on headsets that were hanging from the ceilings in the seventies, right?

SPEAKER_09: Yeah. Yeah. VR has been around for like 35, 40 years and people have been experimenting for a long time.

SPEAKER_08: The only thing that's changed recently is that the cards, the graphics cards that support it have gotten so fast that they've gotten rid of the lag time and, and the lag, like

SPEAKER_85: you can, if you move your head and the image doesn't follow, then it's telling your brain something's wrong.

SPEAKER_414: Yeah. You get ready to puke.

SPEAKER_08: Yeah. So, so basically, uh, uh, the, they've recently crossed that threshold. So now you look at and say, okay, what are the possibilities? Some of them are very obvious and there's no, I didn't say we're doing research at several different places within Disney. We were research centers and so forth. So all of them are having research there. But if you look at games, no brainer, no brainer, it's going to happen. All right.

SPEAKER_416: A lot of fun.

SPEAKER_77: If you look at, uh, uh, augmented reality for doing things, no brainer, no brainer.

SPEAKER_290: If I'm walking down the street, I could see if this is a four star restaurant or a five star, right?

SPEAKER_77: Absolutely. It's going to happen. Uh, shared experiences like over the internet, again, a no brainer.

SPEAKER_418: Like Skype 2.0, 7.0.

SPEAKER_64: All right. The other one, uh, which, uh, uh, I think is a no brainer is if a, uh, a site or a setup

SPEAKER_125: is itself a character. Like suppose you want to explore the world of avatar. Right. Or Harry Potter.

SPEAKER_420: For sure.

SPEAKER_125: All right. Or Star Wars. Dagobah. Yeah. Right. Or Millennium Falcon.

SPEAKER_85: You actually want to go explore it because the, the, the site is the character. Right. So there are a bunch of things like that. They're easy. So the narrower question is what about narrative storytelling? Yeah.

SPEAKER_08: So I looked at a bunch of this and there I'm more skeptical. Now incidentally, when I say I'm skeptical, I tell people I'm skeptical because a large number of people want to prove I'm wrong, including people at Disney and at Pixar. Sure. And I found it's a very valuable tool to say, I don't think it's going to work. And they want to prove I'm wrong.

SPEAKER_428: Look at that. You're channeling your inner Steve jobs. So you can never get this done.

SPEAKER_08: So I will express my skepticism and other people, people interpret this. I don't think it's ever going to work. This is, you know, old fuddy daddy. I actually don't mean that throughout my life. I learned this early on. They say, I think you got a problem there. And then someone will try to prove it. But, but anyway, given that preface, my skepticism, having seen some stories be told, narratively, and they're simple stories to begin with. And if you were to compare them with our short films that we developed, there is a difference. And that is the short films I've seen, I found it just a pain to know where to look.

SPEAKER_77: But narrative stories are highly crafted stories by artists who help tell the story by also deciding what you're going to see.

SPEAKER_229: This is also true of stage plays.

SPEAKER_433: Right. It's a visual medium.

SPEAKER_08: You're telling stories with images. Yes, and they are knowing that you are sitting at a certain place from a point of view, and they craft it with that point of view.

SPEAKER_77: And the question is, can they craft it so that you can wander around and control the point of view, because they're no longer controlling it, in a way that enhances the story?

SPEAKER_08: Okay, now, the answer is, there probably are some cases, just like there are with stage plays, where doing that would be an effective thing to do. But is it a general narrative storytelling form?

SPEAKER_77: And when I've watched it so far, it's the one place of all my experiences with it, which have all been positive, it's the one where my being able to look around is annoying as hell.

SPEAKER_428: Yeah, I mean, you want the director to tell you, this is what's important right now, this is what you should be looking at.

SPEAKER_24: And then the cuts and going back and forth and seeing somebody's reaction shot, like, how do you see a reaction shot if you don't know to look at the reaction?

SPEAKER_436: Yeah, exactly. And it screws up the timing. Yeah. So I found it a degradation to the experience doing that.

SPEAKER_08: Of storytelling. Yeah, but if I look at it and say, okay, you send somebody out on a new scene, and you put up one of these cameras, and your reaction, in the middle of the new scenes, like, you know, take me there, I want to watch that.

SPEAKER_24: I think that's the big one. I was an investor in a company called Riot, R-Y-O-T, that was doing stuff from Syria, like these 360-degree stuff, and when you actually saw the suffering, and you put the headset on, and you looked around, it's like, wow, wait a second. This is immersive, like, it just transcends watching something on CNN, you know, when you're.

SPEAKER_77: So I look at that and say, because that's the scene, the setting, right, it is the story.

SPEAKER_08: And it's not narrative, but it's important.

SPEAKER_77: And it also, it must be like documentaries, as an example, where there's still this craft behind it. There's no question about it. So I can imagine, it's almost like documentary-level things, where the environment or the things that are happening there are the story,

SPEAKER_229: and you want people to go through it. Maybe they back up and they look at it from a different point of view.

SPEAKER_85: But that experience is one where I'm being guided through a story because they want to tell something like, you know, immortality versus the loss of love. You know, it's just like, you know, how do you craft that kind of story, which is very subtle, and the timing and everything about it is really important in contrast with the other. And I don't want to devalue one over the other. You say, they're different. And if somebody comes through with a mechanism, then that'd be great.

SPEAKER_77: And I would love us to be the ones to do it.

SPEAKER_06: You know what I just realized also is, Disney bought Lucas, and you had your second gig or whatever it was at Lucas.

SPEAKER_35: But now you have both of the sets of IP in the same company. Is Pixar going, have they guys announced like Pixar doing like Star Wars animation?

SPEAKER_36: Is it coming full circle that you'll actually be working on Star Wars stuff again at some point?

SPEAKER_64: Oh, no. No, and we wouldn't. We wouldn't. They're different models.

SPEAKER_448: They're different models.

SPEAKER_64: Yeah. The, I mean, obviously the Disney and the Pixar model is the same model.

SPEAKER_08: Yeah. But they've got a live action studio down there, and they've got Marvel.

SPEAKER_449: Right.

SPEAKER_08: And they've got Lucasfilm, and they're all run independently. So we are all good friends with each other, and we talk, but we actually, we work in different ways. Yeah.

SPEAKER_77: So Kathy Kennedy's running Lucasfilm, and she's a great person, and their way of thinking about things and telling the stories is just different than ours. Yeah. So we talk, we communicate, we have conferences between groups to talk about how things are going to be done, so we're learning from each other. Right.

SPEAKER_271: But what makes the conference work is nobody's forced to take an MLS pipeline. Nobody's telling them what they have to do.

SPEAKER_24: Yeah. I mean, it's, when you, I was just talking, I was on CNBC, they were talking about M&A, and people were talking about who's the best at M&A, and I was like, if you look at Bob Iger,

SPEAKER_223: and, you know, just Marvel, Star Wars, Pixar, and was Bob the one who did the Pixar?

SPEAKER_08: It was Bob who did Pixar, and was very successful, and he even says this, it was that that enabled

SPEAKER_229: him to get people to agree to go with Marvel, which then led on to Star Wars.

SPEAKER_24: Star Wars became a no-brainer then. I mean, if you look at that trifecta of M&A in such a short period of time, it's going

SPEAKER_69: to go down historically as, like, somebody hitting three grand slams in one World Series or something. It's just like...

SPEAKER_459: And the trick was, he didn't try to merge them together.

SPEAKER_95: Right. That's the temptation. Oh, for the economies of scale, you know, why would I have two pipelines?

SPEAKER_462: Why would I have two finance groups? Now, why would I do this?

SPEAKER_464: Why would I have three logos? Like, the logical conclusion is, like, why don't we have different sets of characters? Can't we just have all the same characters?

SPEAKER_77: Yeah, so, basically, it was to acquire them, and then let them have and develop their own way of working. Yeah. So, each one of us has a different way of working, and that's awesome.

SPEAKER_08: It gives us much greater strength, and just Bob realizes that. Yeah. And so, he let us do it.

SPEAKER_36: Yeah, and people can have some control of their destiny, just like directors need to have control of their destiny in the films to a certain extent. They need support, but they need to be able to pursue their muse.

SPEAKER_24: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_437: Amazing. Listen, Ed Catmull's Creativity, Inc., an amazing book, an amazing listen. You can go listen to it on audible.com slash twist.

SPEAKER_316: And what a career, man. Congratulations on everything.

SPEAKER_24: It's great that you shared the story of all this struggle and hardship, and just, it's nice to see somebody pursue their dreams and, like, actually make it happen, and then

SPEAKER_35: reset, and come up with new challenges, and you're still super engaged. You go to work, you're as motivated now as you've ever been, huh?

SPEAKER_290: Very much so.

SPEAKER_474: I get that sense. Like, you're, you get, like, this youthfulness to you.

SPEAKER_293: Like, you just, you did all the stuff since the 70s. Yeah, I'm hiding the fact that I'm an old man.

SPEAKER_398: No, but it's like, you've been doing this stuff since the 70s, and you seem as enthusiastic or more enthusiastic than ever.

SPEAKER_08: Well, I, I, actually, I am enthusiastic, but I want to correct you one thing. I'm not a baby boomer.

SPEAKER_289: You're not a baby boomer, were you?

SPEAKER_08: I was born before the war was over.

SPEAKER_475: Oh.

SPEAKER_289: I'm a war baby.

SPEAKER_475: You're a war baby. Yeah.

SPEAKER_328: What do they call you, then? They don't use a term. They didn't start using terms until they got to, to baby boomers.

SPEAKER_229: And then they finally got to the point where the terms are abused, like, millennials and so forth, whatever the hell that means.

Chamath Palihapitiya: Did your parents see, are they still alive, or did they see Toy Story?

SPEAKER_229: Actually, no, my mother died when she was 63, and my father just died a few months ago.

SPEAKER_482: Oh. So, but your dad got to see all this? Yeah. It must have been mind-blowing for him to see Toy Story.

SPEAKER_229: That was amazing, because I thought about it. So, in his lifetime, he went through the Depression, the war, the post-war period of the 50s, the

SPEAKER_08: 60s, the computer revolution, television. Wow. Seismic changes. And then writing his life story and his parents' life story. You know, and so he sees this amazing thing.

SPEAKER_486: And I'm going to say, well, actually, he saw bigger changes throughout his lifetime than I did in mine.

SPEAKER_33: Yeah, when you think about it, the two wars, the Depression, incredible.

SPEAKER_487: Yeah. Wild. He must have been so proud of you, huh?

SPEAKER_489: Oh, yeah. He was a good father.

SPEAKER_487: Yeah. Wow. I mean, that's got to be mind-blowing. And your grandfather, his father, was a farmer.

SPEAKER_229: He was a dirt farmer in Idaho.

SPEAKER_487: I remember reading that in the book, and I was like, wow, the dirt farmer's grandson is

SPEAKER_24: racking up the Academy Awards and making all this incredible stuff. Like, America's pretty cool.

SPEAKER_273: Yeah. It's still where the opportunity is.

SPEAKER_35: It's even as effed up as it is at this time. We're sitting here in 2016 with this, like, election 90 days away. It just seems surreal how insane it is in the world right now.

SPEAKER_77: Oh, yeah. And it's phenomenal because I talk about the fact that there are various things which are

SPEAKER_08: kind of hard to believe and so forth. And we're actually at one of those moments in our time when it's surreal in a way that we couldn't have predicted it.

SPEAKER_35: But it feels like we're living in some dystopian fiction novel that you would put down because you're like, oh, this is too ridiculous.

SPEAKER_65: Too ridiculous.

SPEAKER_08: Yeah. Most of life is like that. It's too ridiculous to believe. You can't even use it as a metaphor. It's so ridiculous.

SPEAKER_77: But on the other hand, if you look at it, and this is what's interesting to me, is that part of the weirdness of it is a manifestation of something deeper that is going wrong.

SPEAKER_229: And you feel like, okay, is there anybody that can rise about it and address that?

SPEAKER_498: What is the deeper thing that's wrong?

SPEAKER_229: Well, if you look at it between Donald Trump and Bernie as an example, then they're on both

SPEAKER_08: sides, but there's a group underneath that which says that we were screwed by a bunch of people several years ago.

SPEAKER_503: Right.

SPEAKER_08: And they were.

SPEAKER_229: Sure. Right? So there's the reality of that. So there's expression of that anger, even though the expression in the case of Trump would make no sense whatsoever. It'd be disastrous, which we can all see. Right. But it's an expression of something. All right? Some discontent. This is our question. It's like, okay, if you see these expressions, then what lies beneath it?

SPEAKER_508: Right. Who's addressing that?

SPEAKER_229: If you look at the technological revolution, then you say, okay, because I know we lived through this. We had this revolution of computers, and there was a next step. And the next step was to go to manufacturing. I could see it, and it was starting. Right. Okay, this was back in the end of the 70s, and then it got aborted. It got aborted because it was cheaper for companies to send the work overseas than to go through this revolution.

SPEAKER_511: Right.

SPEAKER_229: All right? So, and I watch these people. They're now all retired and rich and so forth, and they removed the infrastructure.

SPEAKER_20: Right.

SPEAKER_229: All right, so it wasn't a matter of bringing the manufacturing back. We lost the damn infrastructure. Right. So, that takes years to rebuild an infrastructure.

SPEAKER_515: Right.

SPEAKER_229: At the same time, the technology finally did start to do stuff, which does impact the manufacturing.

SPEAKER_515: Yeah.

SPEAKER_77: So, who is it that thinks about, regardless of whether it's technological impact or global impact, who thinks about what our society is, what it comes to for those people?

SPEAKER_44: Right.

SPEAKER_229: And I'm not actually hearing those discussions, and we're not going to hear it in this election because the nature of the election is so bizarre.

SPEAKER_34: Yeah. So, polarized and bizarre.

SPEAKER_229: Yeah. So, the thing that's most important to us can't even be discussed.

SPEAKER_516: And it can't be discussed candidly.

SPEAKER_77: Yeah. And so, it's what we go through writ large, but it doesn't scale well. But that's what you want to say. There are underlying things. Are there just smarter ways of doing it? And I return to what happened when our country got scared over Sputnik. Right. There was a singular event, so it's easier. But they had this response, was to make people smarter.

SPEAKER_518: Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_77: And it was one of the best responses, and probably the least understood response. Right. In the history of our development. Right. And I feel like that's what you want now, is to say, there is the intelligence here. There is the smarts to solve the problem.

SPEAKER_63: What do we do, and what does the government do, to unleash the creative forces of this country?

SPEAKER_521: And, you know, we've done it before.

SPEAKER_35: Manhattan Project, and DARPA, ARPA, all this stuff. We've had these great moments where we actually cherished the intellectuals. We cherished innovation.

SPEAKER_24: And now it's almost like we're anti, some group of people are anti-science or just anti-intellectuals. But, yeah, something's got to change. It really feels like we're living in some weird time. I didn't live through the 60s, but there was this tumultuous time during the 60s, too, right, where it felt a little out of control?

SPEAKER_229: Oh, yeah. That was a great time for me.

SPEAKER_49: But, right, it's our version today of the Luddites, right?

SPEAKER_229: It's people afraid, not knowing what to do, and it gets in the way of unleashing the potential of people.

SPEAKER_08: And when we do it right, we know, and you're involved in this, right? You know there are people that are so passionate and driven that they could solve a lot of these things, and we've got major crises coming up with the climate.

SPEAKER_229: Like, we all know that, and yet we know people who are so passionate about the environment or farming. Like, these aren't even technical things. Like, how do you unleash that? How do you make that happen? And if you do it right, you've got some civilization-changing potential. If you don't do it right, you've got civilization-destroying potential.

SPEAKER_24: Yeah, and you know what? We haven't found any other civilizations that have made it past this point, which leads me to, you know, some to believe, not necessarily me, but that there is the distinct possibility that you get to a certain point as a species, and you just flame yourself out. It's like self-inflicted. I hope that's not what we're going to do.

SPEAKER_361: Yeah, and that's the whole point, is to say, okay, bad stuff does happen.

SPEAKER_229: It's happened throughout history. Can you understand that and get underneath it before it gets ahead of you? Yeah.

SPEAKER_316: All right, listen, Ed, thanks so much for coming. An incredible conversation and an incredible career. Creativity, Inc., the bestseller, obviously, but if you haven't read it, go read it. Go listen to it. It's amazing. It's literally one of my favorite books I've ever read, so it gets my highest recommendation.

SPEAKER_538: Thanks so much, Ed. It's been a great conversation. Thank you. We'll see you all next time on This Week in Star Wars. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.