John Lasseter
John Alan Lasseter is an American film director, producer, screenwriter, and animator. He was previously the chief creative officer of Pixar Animation Studios, Walt Disney Animation Studios, and Disneytoon Studios, as well as the Principal Creative Advisor for Walt Disney Imagineering, and has served as the head of animation at Skydance Animation since 2019.
John Lasseter began his career as an animator with the Walt Disney Company. After being fired from Disney for promoting computer animation, he joined Lucasfilm, where he collaborated on the then-groundbreaking usage of CGI animation. The Graphics Group of the Computer Division of Lucasfilm was sold to Steve Jobs and became Pixar in 1986. Lasseter oversaw all of Pixar's films and associated projects. He personally directed Toy Story, A Bug's Life, Toy Story 2, Cars, and Cars 2, and executive-produced all other Pixar films through 2018. From 2006 to 2018, Lasseter also oversaw all of Walt Disney Animation Studios' films and associated projects as executive producer.
His works have grossed more than 19 billion, making him one of the most financially successful filmmakers of all time. Of the ten animated films that have grossed over US$1 billion, five of them were executive produced by Lasseter: Toy Story 3 —the first animated film to surpass $1 billion—and Frozen —the third-highest-grossing animated film of all time—as well as Zootopia, Finding Dory, and Incredibles 2. Frozen also held the title of the highest-grossing animated film of all time until 2019, and was the fifth-highest-grossing film of all time at the end of its theatrical run. He has won two Academy Awards, for Best Animated Short Film, as well as a Special Achievement Award.
In November 2017, Lasseter took a six-month sabbatical from Pixar and Disney Animation when uncomfortable interactions with employees were made public, behaviors that he apologized for and recognized as unintentional "missteps". According to various news outlets, Lasseter had a history of alleged sexual misconduct toward employees. In June 2018, it was announced that he would be leaving the company at the end of the year when his contract expired; he took on a consulting role until then. Following his departure from Disney and Pixar, Lasseter was later hired by Skydance founder and CEO David Ellison to run the animation division Skydance Animation.
Early life
John Alan Lasseter was born on January 12, 1957, in Hollywood, California. His mother, Jewell Mae, was an art teacher at Bell Gardens High School, and his father, Paul Eual Lasseter, was a parts manager at a Chevrolet dealership.Lasseter is a fraternal twin; his sister Johanna Lasseter-Curtis, who became a baker based in the Lake Tahoe area, is six minutes older.
Lasseter grew up in Whittier, California. His mother's profession contributed to his growing preoccupation with animation. He often drew cartoons during services at the Church of Christ church his family regularly attended. As a child, Lasseter would race home from school to watch Chuck Jones cartoons on television. While in high school, he read The Art of Animation by Bob Thomas. The book covered the history of Disney animation and explored the making of Disney's 1959 film Sleeping Beauty, which made Lasseter realize he wanted to do animation himself. When he saw a screening of Disney's 1963 film The Sword in the Stone at the Wardman Theater, he knew early in his youth that he wanted to become an animator. He then read Preston Blair's book about animation, and made flipbooks based on Blair's walk cycles. One of his friends had a Super 8 camera that shot single frames, which was used to shoot some of his earlier animation efforts.
Lasseter heard of a new character animation program at the California Institute of the Arts and decided to follow his dream of becoming an animator. His mother further encouraged him to take up a career in animation, and, after graduating from Whittier High School in 1975, he enrolled as the second student in the CalArts Character Animation program created by Disney animators Jack Hannah and T. Hee. Lasseter was taught by three members of Disney's Nine Old Men team of veteran animators—Eric Larson, Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston—and his classmates included future animators and directors like Brad Bird, John Musker, Henry Selick, Tim Burton, and Chris Buck. During his time there, he produced two animated shorts—Lady and the Lamp and Nitemare —which each won the student Academy Award for Animation.
While at CalArts, Lasseter first started working for the Walt Disney Company at Disneyland in Anaheim during summer breaks and got a job as a Jungle Cruise skipper, where he learned the basics of comedy and comic timing to entertain captive audiences on the ride.
Career
First years at Disney
Upon graduating in 1979, Lasseter immediately obtained a job as an animator at Walt Disney Productions mostly due to his success with his student project, Lady and the Lamp. The studio had reviewed approximately 10,000 portfolios in the late 1970s in search of talent, then selected only about 150 candidates as apprentices, of which only about 45 were kept on permanently. In the fall of 1979, Disney animator Mel Shaw told the Los Angeles Times that "John's got an instinctive feel for character and movement and shows every indication of blossoming here at our studios... In time, he'll make a fine contribution." At that same time, Lasseter worked on a sequence titled "The Emperor and the Nightingale" for a Disney project called Musicana. Musicana was never released but eventually led to the development of Fantasia 2000.However, after One Hundred and One Dalmatians, which in Lasseter's opinion was the film where Disney had reached its highest plateau, he felt that the studio had lost momentum and was often repeating itself. Between 1980 and 1981, he coincidentally came across some video tapes from one of the then new computer-graphics conferences, who showed some of the very beginnings of computer animation, primarily floating spheres and such, which he experienced as a revelation. But it was not until shortly after, when he was invited by his friends Jerry Rees and Bill Kroyer, while working on Mickey's Christmas Carol, to come and see the first light cycle sequences for an upcoming film entitled Tron, featuring state-of-the-art computer-generated imagery, that he saw the huge potential of this new technology in animation. Up to that time, the studio had used a multiplane camera to add depth to its animation. Lasseter realized that computers could be used to make films with three-dimensional backgrounds where traditionally animated characters could interact to add a new level of visually stunning depth that had not been possible before. He knew adding dimension to animation had been a longtime dream of animators, going back to Walt Disney.
Later, he and Glen Keane talked about how great it would be to make an animated feature where the background was computer-generated, and then showed Keane the book The Brave Little Toaster by Thomas Disch, which he thought would be a good candidate for the film. Keane agreed, but first, they decided to do a short test film to see how it worked out and chose Where the Wild Things Are, a decision based on the fact that Disney had considered producing a feature based on the works of Maurice Sendak. Satisfied with the result, Lasseter, Keane and executive Thomas L. Wilhite went on with the project, especially Lasseter who dedicated himself to it, while Keane eventually went on to work with The Great Mouse Detective.
Lasseter and his colleagues unknowingly stepped on some of their direct superiors' toes by circumventing them in their enthusiasm to get the Where the Wild Things Are project into motion. The project was canceled while being pitched to two of Lasseter's supervisors, animation administrator Ed Hansen, and head of Disney studios, Ron W. Miller, due to lack of perceived cost benefits for the mix of traditional and computer animation. A few minutes after the meeting, Lasseter was summoned by Hansen to his office. As Lasseter recalled, Hansen told him, "Well, John, your project is now complete, so your employment with the Disney Studios is now terminated." Wilhite, who was part of Disney's live-action group and therefore had no obligations to the animation studio, was able to arrange to keep Lasseter around temporarily until the Wild Things test project was complete in January 1984, but with the understanding there would be no further work for Lasseter at Disney Animation. The Brave Little Toaster would later become a 2D animated feature film directed by one of Lasseter's friends, Jerry Rees, and co-produced by Wilhite, and some of the staff of Pixar would be involved in the film alongside Lasseter.
Lucasfilm and Pixar
While putting together a crew for the planned feature, Lasseter had made some contacts in the computer industry, among them Alvy Ray Smith and Ed Catmull at Lucasfilm Computer Graphics Group. After being fired, and feeling glum knowing his employment with Disney was to end shortly, Lasseter visited a computer graphics conference in November 1983 at the Queen Mary in Long Beach, where he met and talked to Catmull again. Catmull inquired about The Brave Little Toaster, which Lasseter explained had been shelved. From his experience at Lucasfilm, Catmull assumed Lasseter was simply between projects since Hollywood studios have traditionally laid off employees when they lack enough productions to keep them busy. Still devastated at being forced out of the only company he had ever wanted to work for, Lasseter could not find the strength to tell Catmull that he had been fired.Catmull later telephoned Smith that day and mentioned that Lasseter was not working at Disney. Smith told Catmull to put down the phone and hire Lasseter right away. Lasseter agreed instantly to work freelance with Catmull and his colleagues and joined them for a week of December 1983 on a project that resulted in their first computer-animated short: The Adventures of André & Wally B., meant to prove it was possible to do character animation on a computer. After his work on the Where the Wild Things Are-test, Lasseter assumed hand-drawn characters in a CGI environment was the only way, but Catmull insisted it could be done, it was just that nobody had given it an attempt before. Because Catmull was not allowed to hire animators, he was given the title "Interface Designer"; "Nobody knew what that was but they didn't question it in budget meetings". Lasseter spent a lot of time at Lucasfilm in the San Francisco Bay Area in the spring of 1984, where he worked together closely with Catmull and his team of computer science researchers. Lasseter learned how to use some of their software, and in turn, he taught the computer scientists about filmmaking, animation, and art. The short turned out to be more revolutionary than Lasseter first had visualized before he came to Lucasfilm. His original idea had been to create only the backgrounds on computers, but in the final short everything was computer-animated, including the characters.
File:Ive Lasseter.jpg|thumb|Lasseter with Apple CDO Jony Ive at Macworld/iWorld in 2008
After the short CGI film was presented at SIGGRAPH in the summer of 1984, Lasseter returned to Los Angeles with the hope of directing The Brave Little Toaster at Hyperion Pictures. He soon learned that funding had fallen through and called Catmull with the bad news. Catmull called back with a job offer, and Lasseter joined Lucasfilm as a full-time employee in October 1984 and moved to the Bay Area. After that, he worked with ILM on the special effects on Young Sherlock Holmes, where he made the first fully computer-generated photorealistic animated character, a knight composed of elements from a stained glass window. This effect was the first CGI character to be scanned and painted directly onto film using a laser. Lasseter and Catmull's collaboration, which has since lasted over thirty years, would ultimately result in Toy Story, which was the first-ever computer-animated feature film. Additionally, Lasseter was involved in the creation of THX's robot mascot Tex. Tex made his first appearance in 1996 with the original theatrical release of Independence Day. Since then, Tex has appeared in some THX trailers.
Due to George Lucas's financially crippling divorce, he was forced to sell off Lucasfilm Computer Graphics, by this time renamed the Pixar Graphics Group, founded by Smith and Catmull, with Lasseter as one of the founding employees. It was spun off as a separate corporation with Apple co-founder Steve Jobs as its majority shareholder in 1986. Over the next 10 years, Pixar evolved from a computer company that did animation work on the side into an animation studio. Lasseter oversaw all of Pixar's films and associated projects as executive producer. As well as Toy Story, he also personally directed A Bug's Life, Toy Story 2, Cars, and Cars 2.
He has won two Academy Awards, for Animated Short Film, as well as a Special Achievement Award. Lasseter has been nominated on four other occasions—in the category of Animated Feature, for both Monsters, Inc. and Cars, in the Original Screenplay category for Toy Story and in the Animated Short category for Luxo, Jr. —while the short Knick Knack was selected by Terry Gilliam as one of the ten best animated films of all time. In 2008, he was honored with the Winsor McCay Award, the lifetime achievement award for animators.