We have ignition

Asmiling John Lasseter bounds into the room looking like nothing if not an outsized baby. Dressed in a Hawaiian shirt and lovingly clutching a tray of toy cars, his big ursine handshake only reinforces the notion that he’s lately arrived from National Lampoon’s Delta House.

You wonder how executives manage to take such jollity seriously - but you’d be foolish not to. The shirt, on closer inspection, is emblazoned with the logo for Cars, the loveable technocrat’s fourth film as a director. His playthings are tie-in merchandise.
Still, there’s nothing cynical about the enthusiasm Lasseter displays as he pushes his cars around the table. He visibly swells with delight as he tricks with the tiny forklift. This film, in particular, has been a labour of love for the founder of Pixar. Having successfully anthropomorphised insects (A Bug’s Life), fish (Finding Nemo) and cowboy dolls (Toy Story 1&2), the 49-year-old has been working on Cars for four years and thinking about it for considerably longer.
Cars tells the story of Lightning McQueen (voiced by Owen Wilson), a boastful race-car who winds up getting stranded on Route 66 in the sleepy little town of Radiator Springs. Unabashedly romantic in tone, Lasseter’s stunning looking new film was inspired by his obsession with motor vehicles and a two-month road trip taken with his wife Nancy and five sons.
It’s hard to imagine him fitting a similar sojourn into his current schedule. Earlier this year, Disney acquired Pixar for $7.4 billion, but the deal was less of a merger than a coronation, anointing Lasseter as the new Walt Disney. The transaction has made him the Chief Creative Officer of both companies as well as the Principal Creative Adviser at Walt Disney Imagineering, the division that designs and builds their theme parks.
There’s a neat circularity here. Lasseter is a lifelong Disney devotee. As a child he started writing letters to the House of Mouse, saying he wanted to be an animator. He later studied character animation at the California Institute of Arts alongside Brad Bird and Tim Burton. During summer breaks, he pushed a broom in Disneyland. He finally achieved his dream in 1979, when Disney took him into their animation studio.
But things did not go according to plan. By the early 80s, already interested in new fangled technologies, John pitched the idea of filming The Brave Little Toaster with computer animation. Disney responded by firing him. Bloodied but unbowed, he teamed up with Ed Catmull and Alvy Ray Smith to create Pixar and The Adventures Of Andre And Wally B, the first ever character-animation made on computer, writing the necessary software as they went along.
In 1991, with several computer animated commercials and shorts under their belt, Pixar made a $26 million deal with Disney to produce five computer animation feature films, starting with Toy Story. Before the recent acquisition however, the Pixar-Disney marriage had broken down. Although the film would make almost $500 million, Disney refused to acknowledge Toy Story 2, originally intended as a straight-to-video release, as part of the original five-picture deal.
No matter. Business was booming. Pixar’s first five features have, to date, grossed over $2.5 billion. And while Lasseter and company thrived, Disney animation went into freefall. Buying Pixar, it seems, is not Disney’s attempt to buy off potential rivals but a cap in hand gesture.
“I love Disney”, Lasseter tells me with wide-eyed earnestness. “I grew up on Dumbo and Bambi and Snow White. That’s why I wanted to be an animator in the first place. But Disney right now is not artist driven. It’s run by management. There are good talented animators there, but they’re being told what to do by people who don’t know what they’re talking about. These are people who thought Cinderella 2 was a good idea. Animators should be in charge of animating. Directors should be able to direct. Disney used to be about great stories. That has to be a priority. Nothing can happen with bad storytelling.”
Even though the Disney deal allows Pixar to remain an independent entity, with John heading up both operations, isn’t there still a danger of Pixar being assimilated into the larger corporation?
“That won’t happen,” he replies. “The whole deal is structured so Pixar will stay Pixar in every way. It’s a special culture up there. My idea is that Disney will benefit from doing things our way. They have been an executive-driven studio for a long time. I believe that stories should come from the directors. It has to come from the heart and you have to be honest when things are working and not working. That’s our plan, to take that aspect of what we’ve been developing at Pixar and bring it over to the great artists down there”.
It’s a pleasing notion if it works out. It’s impossible not to root for John Lasseter. Pixar are the cool kids of the industry. They make devilishly entertaining films. And Lasseter is so admirably passionate about what he does. I ask him why his cars have windshields for eyes (when surely everyone knows a car’s eyes are the headlights) and he goes into great and affectionate detail about a Disney cartoon from 1952 called Susie The Little Blue Coupe.
Today, having decamped to Barcelona for a promotional junket, Pixar associates such as producer Darla Anderson and animator Bill Cone repeatedly speak of Lasseter as a cool boss and a great motivator.
His face darkens only once, when a Danish journalist dismissively remarks that a film featuring Route 66 and NASCAR racing couldn’t possibly entertain Europeans. Lasseter goes silent then shrugs – “I disagree with you.”
Fair enough. But for one minute I think this amiable fellow in the Hawaiian shirt might just be the same chap who helped negotiate a $7.4 billion deal.b