Ed Catmull || The Soul of Pixar

Way of True Inspiration. He lives in San Francisco with his wife and children. Ed so excited chat with you today. I'm really happy to be here. So many potential starting points. We have so many mutual interests and including you know, creativity is a big mutual interest we have in the creative process. But I really want to kind of get more of like the humanity out of you a little bit. To begin with, you were you were a child growing up in the fifties in Utah, Is that right? That's right.

I was born in West Virginia, but I as soon as the war was over, my father came out and got my mother from where she walk moors Virginia and moved out to Utah. Half my life there, spent half of your life there, And even as a kid, you were inspired by Disney movies, right, and that maybe you want to be a Disney animator someday. Yeah. It was the early days of television back in the fifties. There was the Disneyland called by the Wonderful World of Color.

But it was a weekly event to watch Walt Disney is as well, of course to see the movies that were produced. Do you did you watch Fantasia when you were a kid, the original one? Yeah? Yes, I watched all of them, and for me, they were very inspirational. There was also a phenomenon which I didn't discover until many years later, but I would probably say the two most impactful films on me as a child were Pinocchio

and Peter Pan. Now, the phenomenon I noticed as an adult was that I went back and watched him after not having seen him. Remember, for a long time there was no video or DVD, and they had this thing of scheduling their films every seven years for the asca release, so I hadn't seen him for a long time. Then I went back and I watched them, and I had these vivid memories of these movies, and when I saw them again as an adult, the things I remembered from the film were not in the movies. I had made

them up. And well, that's pretty cool. And that's what kids do, is there is they got something much is stimulating their imagination, and then it gets in there and it gets mixed in with the stuff that the actually saw, and that's actually the way a life is. In any case, it's a good thing. You make me want to revisit some of my favorite movies as a kid, I probably made up a lot of stuff that I think was

in it. Cool little trivia for you. My grandfather was in the original Fantasia because he was with the Philadelphia Orchestra and so he was one of the cellists with Stakowski, I believe was the conductor. Yes, that's right. Yeah, So a litt little trivia there. Now, you your first entree point into into this world was embracing the emerging field of computer graphics. But that must have been really primitive computer you know, like when you were there and like

you studied in college, is that right, computer graphics? Yeah? The order of things was that I wanted to be an artist, and I was. I was, I think, the best artist in the school. But I was nowhere near what I saw coming out of Disney, and there were no schools for animation. So when I entered college, I switched over to physics, and and Einstein was the other iconic figure to me that growing up the fifties, it

was Einstein and Walt Disney. It's like talking about iconic in terms of their look, like you know, what we thought of them, and their impact and the world and in the culture. So I studied in physics, but near the end of college there was this new field of computer science. So and I'd taken a lot of courses. I had enough courses to get two bachelor's degrees in four years. I took a lot of classes. I loved school. So I got two degrees. One was in computer science

and the other within physics. But there was something about computer science, and one of the reasons I switched to it was that I wanted to be on the frontier. And with physics, the frontier was pretty hard slog to get to, whereas in computer science it was brand new,

like we were at the frontier. At the time, but was in graduate school that I came back intending to study computer languages, potentially artificial intelligence, and my first class at the University of Utah was and computer Graphics, which is where the foundations were laid for the field. So as soon as it took that course and boom, everything fell into place, is like, oh, you can make art

with this. But we were early on. I mean, we're talking about line drawings, or in the case of things that weren't line drawing, there were polygons, and the state of the things was that every graduate student was expected to push things forward. And the task that I wanted was to make it so that I could make curved surfaces and curved patches, and they didn't know how to do it at the time. There wasn't the technology in place. Well this is exciting, but it didn't matter if it

was really crude. The way I looked at it at the time that it isn't rewriting history. It was that, oh, we're making this stuff up. That's exciting. But we had long ways to go and knew it at the time, and we knew what the barriers were, and one of the bearers being there was enough compute power in order

to make highly realistic looking images. If I should as well as wams knowledge either sure, if I went to that, if I could try and travel and go back to that, that that that that guy and I showed him like soul the movie's soul would would would you have been like like, never believed that such a thing as possible? How would it react if he could if he saw that? If that guy saw what we what you've accomplished today, Well if first of all, we've certainly gone farther than

I would have guessed at the time. So while I knew we were at the beginning of something big and that it was going to change, it's like a lot of things. The the you don't know exactly where it's going, and the way I think about it, the way I still think about it, is that there's eight An early question should be is this a significant area? Is this going to be a niche or is it going to be big? And then the other is one of the steps you take to get there, but you don't know

where there is? Yeah, so you say, well, okay, there is there. There's something important there, and there's no question about it. There was something important in terms of being able to make high quality imagery without a doubt, but in going now to set the steps to get there while solving the problems, the concept of the long term vision also alters. So if you think about it, it's like there's an interplay or an interaction between the future

and now, and you have to be comfortable. We're saying that that future is unknown and it's going to change. We don't know really what it is, but there's some place to go to, Okay, And now that we check in every once in a while on the long provision, we put most attention on how do we solve the problems of today? I love that it's just even going

back to staying in your child for a second. You did make animation using flipbooks at one point, right those and and you you did a bunch of really cool things, like in ninety seventy two you made an animated version of your left hand, which was a big deal that you did that. Right, Yes, there was uh and there was the class project. As I mentioned, the first year was to take the course in computer graphics. And in

the second quarter, you don't had a quarter system. I decided to make pick something which is really hard, which is to do this film of my life ten, which meant that I had to digitize it and make a model, get the data in there, and then write a little animation language where I moved the hand about. And there was a class project, but it was it was crude. I knew it was crude, but it wasn't even the time.

I know, we're not measuring where we are now against this big vision, we're saying are we heading in the right direction? And so picking this particularly difficult task, even though today it looks crude, was for me a great step forward. And the people in the class. Only two people in that first class wrote everything from scratch. They were also the only two people that stayed in the

field of computer graphics. Everybody else is using the packages that were provided to the students, and that was that The distinguishing point was if you threw away of the patage they gave and you wrote your own, that meant there was more passion. Fred Parker was the other person. That's so cool, and I believe that that actually it

influenced the industry. Did they make a documentary or something someday or a movie that incorporated well, one of the first movies to use computer graphics in a significant way was Future World. Incidentally, as a movie, it sucked. Just to be very clear, I don't recommend going back and seeing this because when I say the second it was

poor filmmaking in there. But they wanted to have computer graphics, so they asked for permission to use the hand piece as something that was in the film in the backgrond while they're working in their their last for these for the robots and so forth. So there was the picture of the hand rotating doing that to the background piece. That must have been cool. That must have felt good. I mean in gradual sorry, we're gon sing. In gradual school, you you set an explicit goal to make the first

computer animated feature film. This was a goal that you had, right, Yes, So so I just want to like, we'll get to the pathway and we'll get to we'll get what we'll get to toy story and beyond. But let's talk about the year I was born. In nineteen seventy nine, George Lucas approaches you and he asks you to lead a group of people to bring together computer graphics, video editing, and digital audio into the entertainment field. This was a big deal at the time. So you know, what was

that experience like to be approached to do that. You know, were you really super excited? Did you feel like you're moving towards this goal that you set yourself in grad school. Well, the interesting thing at the time was that the studios, all the studios had no interest to whatsoever in any aspect of what George was trying to do. And I talked with other studios in the past, including Disney, and what we were talking about was so irrelevant to them.

There wasn't even if they're saying we shouldn't do that, it's like they weren't even didn't even want to have the discussion. It's like that was far off. How far off the radar was so because of the success of Star Wars, and because George had assembled a team of the people who were the very best at of the opti mechanics and the chemistry of film and worked out how to get motion blurred, which is critical for mixing with live action for physiological reasons. So these are the

people who were the very best in the world. So George himself is not a technologist. He just said technology is going to change filmmaking. And he got some money because Star Wars was successful. So he said he wants

to invest in R and D in these areas. And he's the only person in the industry that did that and had the ability and the credibility to pull it off, even if somebody had thought it was a possibility within one of the other studios, and I fact, I'm sure within Disney there were people who said there's potential there, but they couldn't break through. But George Lucas was a force of his own. So George basically asked me to

come in to lead these programs. Now, for me, like, holy cow, this is this is a real filmmaker, a person who really understands storytelling, and uh, that's like the best possible position one could be in. So the answer is, like when the opportunity game, Okay, I really, I really did want to give you a front row seat, you know, to also you know, to see all the emerging technologies at that time. You also had a front row seat to a lot of software companies that would turn out

to take over Silicon Valley in the coming years. Right, That must have been great experience. Yeah, there were a lot of friends. I mean, there are an other people that came out of the University of Utah. So John Warnock, who founded Adobe, came out of Utah. Alan Ka basically the founder of Objectornity in the programming. He went off to Xerox Park spent many years there, so UH when

Jim Clark, who found the Silicon Graphics was there. So there's phenomenal a group of students in this brand new field. But we remain friends so basically which we could talk with each other afterwards. So there was that connection with

the people in Sulicon Valley. But because we were with Lucasfilm and Lucas On myself had a lot of cachet and then that opened the doors to visit a lot of companies that were making workstations or supercomputers or mini computers, and as we progressed through it, so it basically it meant being involved with a lot of different kinds of people and just learning something from how it worked, what didn't work, what some of the mistakes were UH, and

what the cultural issues were. So it's like Microsoft was actually making UH animated short animated storytelling films to go on CD ROMs, and it was clear I knew these people that the artists who were working there were second class citizens because fundamentally the company made its money from

selling software, and so there was this class structure. At the same time, Disney was starting to use computer graphics, so they had a computer team there, but it was very clear that the technical people were second class and the artists were first class. Like they're flipped and so

that's an interesting phenomenon. But in both cases, the people who were first class were actually trying to be mean and put somebody down, like they had their job to do and they have their their preconceptions and what they do they didn't know, but they ended up with this

unhealthy class structure. So one of the things we did as we built worked out on Lucasfilm was to say, Okay, how do we have internally a good balanced on the technical and artistic side, whether it's imagery or sound or editing. So we worked a lot on I'm trying to get that right. Having said that, there were three times in the history of Pixar where that class structure notion kind of creeps in and it's like this insidious thing that

gets into an organization. But it was going through that process of observing what others did, figuring out how we fell into it and when we didn't fall into it. The great benefit from having a healthy balance and understanding appreciation of what other people do must have felt like

the wild West. That's her degree of the movie industry, and and all the technologies that were happening, like anything seemed possible, right, Well, I the analogy I usual at the time was being in the front of the line of an history account the will the West people kept getting killed. So okay, that's a better analogy. I prefer

that analogy. Yeah, fair enough. That is what it felt like at the time, was that, Wow, you can see all the stuff out in front of you, and they just cut the tape and you're in the front of the line. So how fasting you out and gathered eggs? Yeah? Yeah, interestingly. Yeah. One of the things that was different between this and physics was it's fifty years later and we're still in

the frontier. So you look at deep learning or what's happening with GPUs and the decreasing costs and of sensors and the size of sensors and their ability, like the thing you're still changing. It's fifteen years later, Okay, we're still off the front of the line. It's pretty amazing. It's incredible. It would be incredible to see the next fifty years. But we can talk later about future. We're still in the eighties here right now and in my head.

So nineteen eighty five, still a young man. But Steve Jobs crosses your path. He was working at Next. He wasn't like at that point he I mean, he wasn't the Steve Jobs we know right now, Steve Jobs. I mean he had he had left Apple. What was sort of what is sort of your impression of him and how was that interaction. Well, we met him initially when he was still at Apple, and I see by alan Ka, I mean he was our partner. He was an Apple at the time. He made the introduction, and then he

disappeared because of the things were going on. We didn't even know why. Just like he's off the radar. We were trying to spin out as a separate company and having a lot of difficulty. And after he left, we met with him. He tried to buy us early on, but he wanted to turn us into a computer company. And so Albury Smith was the partners, one of the co founders of Pick star, so we declined that's not

what we wanted to do. So we continued our path to trying to get funding to get bought out of Lucasfilm, and Steve formed Next, and then after he formed Next, then I ran into him at a trade show in San Francisco, and since he now got computer company going, then we started our talk for each other. So it's a difficult and stressful part of our lives because we're trying to make sure we're trying to hold our group

together to do computer graphics. But in the early days, a lot of Steve was what you saw in terms of the reputation. And the unfortunate thing is that it's kind of sexy to talk about that kind of behavior, so it tends to be the thing that predominates in books or stories or whatever, because you want the drama of it. But it doesn't represent the most important story, which is that Steve went through probably one of the best examples of the hero's journey so early on in

his career. His behaviors and the way he worked with people wasn't very good. It's the reason he didn't work out with Apple and with you, including with you. Well. The interesting was well, Steve and I disagreed. I you know, I'm not the sort that argue with somebody. I'm stubborn and I don't give up, but I don't argue. So I did have this conversation early on with Steve, this before we formed as a company and I was to be the president, and I said, okay, so what happens

when we disagree? And his answer was, well, I what I found is if somebody doesn't understand something, I just keep explaining to them until they understand it. So I'm thinking to myself, Okay, this is not a good sign. But the reality was that when he and I did disagree,

that was exactly how I worked with him. Is that is, he would do something, and he would he could think so much faster than I could that that I would say something and then he would come back with something, and then I'd end the conversation and I'd have a week to think about the next sentence, and then we'd talked about it, and i'd bring it up and he'd immediately shoot it down. And then over the period of up to two or three months, and we can kind

of reach one of three conclusions. One of them is that I would actually see that he was writing, and and I'd just say, oh, yeah, you're right. And then about a third of the time he'd say, oh you're right, I get it, and so and that was then we did it the other third of the time, like he just gave up. And he was actually fine with that. But if we didn't agree, what he did want was for somebody to know why they were doing it, have

an opinion. And I came to appreciate that with Steve was that he did not want yes people around him. And it's not the conception that people normally have of Steve, but Steve went through this building of Next and Pixar. Fundamentally, we both failed what our original charter as companies, and Steve did a number of things where he was really going for, you know, the home run on the first ball or something like that. But over time he learned lessons.

He changed as a person when Pixar went public because he controlled the board. I remember he fired two people off the board because they never argued with him. They never pushed back. That's amazing. So, but he's such a powerful personality, you assume that he doesn't want to push back, And what it means is he wants and needs more powerful people around him because he appreciated the power of pushback. And and I say, even when I first met it, and he was instinctively new that there is no upside

to being wrong. So sim is that he realized that that the person actually had a point. He just switched on a dime because he was interested in the truth. He wasn't interested in being right. I mean, he wanted to be right because it was the follow from the truth, but the truth precedes being right. Yeah, it sounds like, you know, it's a complicated He didn't he had a complicated the ego, like he obviously had a healthy ego. But you know, it's all usually about these kinds of

figures is how paradoxical their traits are. He also was into mindfulness. He was also you know, like you just said, he was really like he liked to be challenged. So it wasn't it wasn't all ego. There was there were other things going on there that may be even paradoxical. Yeah, and it's uh, it may seem paradoxical. And the irony was that he was a he was zen the Buddhist and uh, the CFO took his public Lawrence Levy was it wasn't isn't to Tibetan Buddhism, and I'm heavily engage

in the terra aden Buddhism. But it was funny fact, okay, three of us, and we never talked about it with each other. We were trying to do. Yeah, it's just like we never talked about it. But uh, Steve, well, he had a powerful personality. He learned how to be mindful of it and be aware of the impact. He knew he had an impact, but part of it was paying attention to the impact. And once he could pay attention, then his mindfulness of it and the way he worked

with people change. It was pretty dramatic change. And I mean part of it too is you got married and had children and has very wise wife and this incredible children and their relationship with Pixar turning to be something

pretty amazing. His relationship with the Pixar directors was, let's say astonishing, because the directors actually have to have a trait which Steve understood, and that was if you pick an idea, you commit, you really commit, You're going to make it happen, and then at some point you realize oh this isn't working. Then even though you said I'm committed. Now you switch, you change, you make the changes. And that's the thing that might seem paradoxical, but it was.

It's actually the most productive in terms of leading a creative effort is the ability to have a bigger picture, to commit to it, and then when you see something asn't working, the change it make. It makes differences. So he really connected with the directors because that's the way they have to work. It's a really great insight. Yeah, so he, I mean he wanted ultimately, he wanted to

to make it work. You know, he didn't just want just you know, if like his social status would be improved but something didn't work, he probably would not be happy with that situation, right, Yeah, I was. You know, it's like we've been to dinner several times and obviously he's very recognizable, and it was the thing was he really didn't want that kind of attention. What he wanted was impact attention, not the attention of being like the

star or something like that. That's a great distinction, by the way. I just I love that, you know, impact attention versus eco attention. Yeah, it's an important difference it is and when Steve put all those pieces together, I don't know, like twenty five, thirty years ago, thirty years ago, I guess it with thirty years that was the people who are with him stay with him for the rest

of his life. And one of the reasons the hero, the Hero's journey, part of Steve's life didn't come out was that all these people were with him while he was alive, and so nobody was talking about the stories so many when he passed away, any movies about him or writing books. There are articles about him, but they're all based upon the preconceptions that they're the part of his life, and they don't know the change in his life because the people are with him weren't talking about him.

I wouldn't. I'm not going to sack and lie Steve while he's alive. He completely inappropriate, right right, So you look, he said, ah Ill story is missed, the real estate jobs was missed in this, in this, in this whole thing. But it was there was an arc and I love it. I think that we should, everybody, every one of us should think in terms of like, yeah, arcs, what is O R and that is part of our own creativity. How do we solve our problems? What are we doing?

Why are we doing? What are ethics and our standards? I completely agree, and also to be open to the fact that in the life is cyclical as well. We can have an arc and then go rock bottom again, you know, and then I have another arc. Yeah, so it's not necessarily one arc in our life. Yeah, right, it never it is. Yeah. Yeah, oh, I've made it. I finally take it everything out. Okay, that's actually the

bottom is not the top. That tends to be My experience is that I think that I've reached the hero in the hero's journey, and then like a global pandemic will hit and it's like, forget that idea. Yeah, for sure. So you said I want to get to the toy story years because you said on a personal level, toy story represented the fulfillment of a goal I pursued for more than two decades and I dreamed about since I

was a boy. And I think this, actually, this was this is a nice segue from the point we just made you know you because you in terms of arc, that's the perfect ending to the story, right you could if you're writing the book, you can stop right there. You dreamed of it as a kid. Yeah, you know, you made the is your goal in grad school and then you make this amazing, amazing, impactful film. Some people

say the best thing since Wizard Wizard of Oz. But yet you still, like, you know, after the release of that, you felt like something was still missing. You even started to question whether this was the the end point? Is that right? Well not quite that I getting of it. Tell me that. Okay, so we're getting close. Of course,

there's a long story. If I talked a long time about it, but we reached the point where the movie came out, and uh, and I will say the people at Pixar understood that the goal was to make a good movie. So the technical people who were doing the part that part of making the film took immense pride, as did I when the when the reviews came out of Toy Story, and almost every review had most one or two sentences about it being computer animation, and the

rest of the review was about the movie. So for the technical people, that was perceived of as the real success. And I took pride in the fact that that this wasn't turned into I was showing how technically, how good we are It's that wasn't the goal. The goal was to have a knew basically, create a new art form

and to create great stories and art from it. Now, the thing about achieving a goal is that once I had achieved the goal, actually I no longer had it, and just to make another film isn't the same thing as having the goal. Now, there are people who want to tell a story, and so they've got a goal of telling their story. But for me, personally, the question wasn't okay, what's for me? The next film couldn't be the goal? What should the goal be? And so I

had two things that I was wrestling with. Now we had just gone public, so there was plenty to do. It wasn't like I was sitting around like what am I going to do? We're now a public company, We're making other films, and I've got these two problems I'm wrestling with. One of them, by accidents, fell out of the book. So as I'm doing some rewriting is to put this back in and trying to figure out the right way to do it. But there were two things I wrestled with for a year. One of them was

what is the next goal? And when I say goal. For me, a goal is probably better described as a framework. If you if you got something really explicit, then that's not necessarily a good goal. Sometimes it is, but the question is what's the framework to operating? What's the next goal?

And by the end of the year I realized, having watched what happened to other companies, why some are successful, why some fell apart, was this was to address the question of how do we create a sustainable creative culture. That was the goal, That was the interesting problem. So as we we're making our next film, there was Its Bugs Life and then Toy Story two. Each one of them had challenges, but a big chart of part of

the challenges were the cultural creative ones. So but if you're okay, how do we do this, how do we help each other? How do we think about it technically? Where do we go? So there are a lot of things that were there, But since we'd had, with one exceptions, uh one exception, a very strong culture, then the culture itself can't help the change in the face of success and growth. Right, It's just like it's sort of build into what happens. So how do you make it sustainable?

Not how do you keep it the same is you can't repeat that first goal. You can't make the first animated film again. So it's just realizing, all right, whatever it is is going to be different, So what what does it mean to be different all the time? So that was one thing that came at the end of

the year, was that realization. The second question, which I didn't talk to anybody at the time because it was, to be honest, it's like a little embarrassing to just to talk about this what was going through my head now. I was very aware that we could only make have made this film if we had a number of people who are part of this. Some of them are well known, so George Locus's jobs, John Lassiter, beat doctor Andrew Stands. So we get people who are well known and have

been very successful. And you know, Leon Kritch was part of this original team that made this. It was really an extraordinary group. And I knew that all those people were necessary, but also there were people who aren't well known, a lot of technical people who made some very foundational changes in the field of animation and graphics, and they were necessary and integral to making this successful. And people don't know who they are. So I'm very aware that

everybody was necessary. Now having said that I'm aware of it, I still had this question everybody was necessary? But since I was the first one in this how much of this was me? But ask that question of myself? And I wrestled with it, and I recognized that other people will often ask that question. Almost nobody will admit that

they're asking their question, but I was asking it. And at the end of the year, I realize that the is it trying to answer the question is an act of separation and understand why somebody would ask it, But trying to answer it means you must separate yourself out from everybody that made it possible in order to answer it, and that's a bad place to go. So at the end of the year, it's like, oh, I shouldn't answer it. It doesn't make any sense. I did it with these people.

There isn't this line and say, well, how much of it was was me? And for me it was an important lesson that came out of this time, which are the really the depth of the connections between people and all their contributions, and that it only worked because they were all doing this together. That insight influenced the culture that you created at Pixar. You know, well, it's it was, it was. It was an interesting process to watch because you know, everybody wants to contribute. They want to feel

like what they're doing is important. M And if you've got a lot of people, then then there's a question at my contributing and making a difference, and people do want to make a difference. Another thing that they came to me was that is that when when we're doing a lot of things, there are a lot of people who don't agree. Now, they're realistic and people know that they don't all get their way, and they understand that.

But there have been many times when Samuel ook their head at the door and they'll want to say something and and and they'll make a comment, a pretty strong thing about some sort of screw up that we're making. Now, the thing about that is, except for the people have known for many years who feel comfortable, for some people, it's requires some courage to come in and say to president of the the company, like this, we've made a stupid decision, like this is really screwing. So the fact that they

would do that says something about them. They have that courage to do it. The second thing is that frequently they're just right. They see things that I don't see. And for me, that's a fundamental principle is that I only got a limited view of what I can see, and the people who are doing work we'll see things that I can't see, and I can be missing it.

The other side of that is that I sometimes know things that they don't know, not because you know, I'm not a very secreted person, but you know, you have a lot of people there. It's not everything is known. But what what I do believe is that if they have of you, that it's critical to hear what that view is. They're uh, they're adult enough to know that not every view is going to be taken, but they need to know that somebody will listen, that they appreciate

what they have. And then I've always tried to do that, Like somebody says something that I may not agree with, even if I immediately know they're missing an important piece of information, like right, oh wait, I know they're wrong, and I can explain it. It's like and and expointing that to them at the beginning is just about the worst possible thing you can do. Yeah, I have to listen. Yeah, And for a couple reasons. One of it is my my meetor reaction just might be your wont I really

need to listen because they might be right. Sometimes they're right, but there isn't much that can be done about it. But what they need is for somebody to have they're give them the respect of listening to what they say. Well, I mean, that's a really important lesson for all the sort of political fighting we're seeing right now and the cultural wars. I mean that advice is desperately needed right now.

Your book talks a lot about the blocks to creativity and the active steps we can take to protect the creative process. This is a very interesting concept for me as someone who's a creativity researcher myself and I really really like this notion of protecting the creative process. What do you need to protect it from? Well itself? Typically okay, yeah, if you. I mean, we have one group. I mean, not every group can work this way, but we have

something called the brain Trust. And the name the brain Trust originally came from Understanton and there were eight people you could identify that they were part of that original brain trust. Now it's evolved over the years based upon the needs. It's no longer a group of people, it's the way we run certain kinds of meetings. So but what made the first group powerful was they instinctively went there. And then the question was over time what worked or

didn't work. So there are a few principles for these, uh these meetings. I say, they're they're way of running a certain meeting. Then who's in the room. Who's in the room I change depending upon circumstances or availability, but the principles stay the same. So one of them is to work to remove power from the room. And this is a hard thing to do. Yeah, but and there's a good reason for why we try to do that.

But instinctively, well, the reason it worked in the first place is that all of them had such strong personalities that you could they could go to that place like that. There wasn't really the dominant player, and so we the rule was that the room itself, that group, the brain dress, could not override the director. So it's the director's choice. And uh, the uh, the reason for that is that when you're coming in with a new idea, when it doesn't matter what the project is or whether it's a

film or whatever, you're at the beginning of stages. There are always problems with it, so when you present it to colleagues, then you're presenting something to them that you know doesn't work. So inherently, you're coming in from a position of being vulnerable. And if a person is feeling very vulnerable, they also may be defensive. And if they're density defensive and they're holding off ideas, then they're actually

not helping themselves. So the reason for removing power is actually to try to address the problem of people becoming defensive and try to address the fact that for people, naturally, they're coming in feeling very defensive. So we actively say no, we want we don't want power in the room. You

can't ride the director. The director knows that, and not only that if there are because every once in a while you have a disaster scenario, and the disaster scenario you may have to make some major changes, but we don't make those changes within two weeks of that meeting, and the reason is that we don't want to overload

the meeting. If you go into meeting and you know that afterwards people get together and make a judgment and cut your project off or do something change, then it doesn't matter what you say about a moving power, you just screwed things up. So it's actively say okay, what is it that would cause people to be defensive. Another part of this is that the people in the room are here. It's filmmakers talking to filmmakers. So it isn't the lessons coming on from high and teaching people how

to do something. These are our people who know how to make films and that be treated as peers giving notes. And third principle is that of of is you need to be honest with each other about the problems that you see, and you can do that without attacking somebody. What you're doing is you're working on the problem. You're not You're not saying that somebody else is solving. You're

just trying to help. The fourth principle is actually not in the room so much is the fact that this process needs to evolve based upon the needs that we have. So there is a separate thought process and analysis about what works or what doesn't work. Now, I just came back to one thing on power. It doesn't matter if we say, oh, we're trying to keep powerut of the room. The fact is there are some people that are so experienced that by nature they have more power and people

are going to defer to that power. So the rule we've tried to have, I don't want to say we're always successful, but the rule is that the strong, the people with the strong voices need to shut the hell up the first ten to fifteen minutes. If a powerful person speaks to begin with, they accept the tone for the room, and the trick is to let the conversation start, and then a person with authority can enter a discussion, and that's a different activity than starting a discussion. Now,

in general, these meetings work very well. The principles apply either to the note sessions after we screen the movie or to two day off sites. That's when we call something a brain trust. But there are other kinds of meanings. Not everything is run exactly that the same just because of the nature of the problem, with the nature of the people. In general, this way of working works very well, as evidenced by the films that have come out of Disney and Pixar. There are times when it goes off

the rails. It goes off the rails, for you know, people do get defensive or they don't want to offend somebody else. They want to look good. They're so focused on what they want to say they're not listening. So there are human reasons are going on, and they're subtle, like nobody's going to say, all I'm really defensive or

I want to look good. Pay attention what I'm doing, because what I'm saying is like this really clever thing, like this isn't going to happen, right, So this is all under the hood kind of stoff having to do with personal emotions going on. So they do go off the rails at times, and there are some people, actually who are They screw up the dynamics of the room.

But every once in a while, I'd say at least once per film, one of these meetings will happen that are magic, And by magic I mean that Ego has left the room. So ideas will come and go without people becoming attached to them. So you may offer up something to solve the problem. It doesn't go anywhere. Nobody cares like, it doesn't land, It doesn't solve the problem. What's my reaction when Ego's left the room? It doesn't matter. You're not attached to the idea. That's the ideal state.

Can I always get there. But if you can get there, then it's pretty phenomenal. It's phenomenal. Also, another major aspect of the creative process, or a barrier is is what well, let's say, let's just stick with A contributor to creativity is taking risks, being willing to embrace the unknown. This is another major element of your book. Can you talk a little bit how that's part of the culture it picks are well, the I mean, this is a very

complicated topic. The people have picks are like to take risks. Now, having said that, they also don't like to take risks. Yeah, I know what you mean. There's a lot of money. Well, the the uh, and we've tried to work out a balance. The first thing to note is that we want you know, roughly a third of our films that would fail the

elevator test. So you know, the whole notion behind the elevator test is that you get an idea, You get in the elevator with an executive in the company, and you are so concise and clear and compelling about the idea that you're presenting that by the time you got out the elevator that that executive is going to follow through and do something with it. Now. The only way for that to work, frankly, is that the idea is

not very original as a derivative. So we want certain of our films be the kind that you could not make a pitch that you could do that they would fail the elevator tiest. So, as an example, what's the elevator pitch that would convince somebody that you should make a movie about a rat that wants to compareis right? That fails the elevator test? Is that ratatly gratu or the movie up where with this? Okay, so we're gonna

tell a story about this old man. His wife has died, and because he's in grief, he ties a bunch of balloons to the house and floats away. But he ends up with a stowaway scout on the house. Okay, it doesn't matter how successful the movie's going to be. You were never going to sell a lot of toy walkers, all right, It just fails the elevator test. Now, if you take on a project that's basically not very doable, then you have to be creative. You have to do

something original. You've put yourself into position where I have to do something different and so about a third of our films is that they need to be that. When I say a third I want to do a sequel. If you say, okay, we want to make a sequel to the Incredibles, Okay, well, okay, that passes the elevators desk, so somebody wants that, right, or and some of the ideas when you actually said we want to do make a movie about something and say, oh, let's that's a

good idea, all right. So I don't want to overgeneralize. But the risk part says, we damn well better be making a certain percentage out of them, which are very unlikely. And so the culture is we should be taking some risks on the technical side that we from film to film that will make changes. And they got everywhere from a whole bunch of smaller technical risks that are there too.

In one case, we did this for Bray where we completely swapped down, completely swapped out the animition system that we've been using that we made every other film. And it was pretty painful, like it was blood on the floor of this one. And you know, it was very difficult because new software and you know, people that would have our side problems because they had to click buttons too many times, and and so for all the pain that went through that, there was this phenomenal meeting after

it was done. And Jim Morris is now the president of Pixar, but we met with just the users of the software, right the artists or the users, to talk about the process as we're trying to make it better the next time we take on a big project. And we were going in, you know, preparing to have our heads handed to us, and there was this surprising thing that was there. It's like, you know, this is really hard, but I'm so glad we did it. Pixer has to make sure we are We're always willing to do something

which is that hard. It's like, wow that, yeah, that was really impressive. So that was a cultural value. The other part of risk, though, is that people misperceived risk. Often if you say you're going to do something risky, like have a new process, then it's usually heard of as they the management of the film and as the producers of the film have decided to do something and I think this is a bad idea. We are so screwed.

We should not do that, all right, So that's the reaction. Now, the reality is an idea of having a new process in the film comes from the people who work on the film. So it isn't like you're going out and taking a poll in the street or have somebody who's working at McDonald's to say we make better films. We're not doing that. The ideas are coming from people who

are well intended. Now, if you say, okay, we're going to try this for this film, then what actually happens is if it doesn't work, and sometimes the new idea doesn't work, then you stop doing it. So the perceived cost is saying I do something applied to entire movie might be high if it's a mistake, but the real cost, while not zero, is still low because as soon as

you realize it doesn't work, you stop doing it. But I think that's true in general across a lot of companies, is that people get freaked out or doing something which they say is risky and they apply a cost to it which doesn't apply because you change as soon as you find other it doesn't work. I love this approach, So so you're you're very comfortable with trial and error.

I take it, yes, yeah, yeah, And you know what, what, lets let's like build even further, what what are other like for principles that you think make pisars so creative the movies are are incredible innovative. Well, there's I'll give you one example, and it doesn't necessarily apply to every field,

but certainly doesn't in ours. Is that if you think you're making a movie, and people who aren't in this, they think in terms of the final product that they see, and so the pathway to get there is not visible to the people who were going through the process of making it. M So if we go to that early part though, is what is it that leads us to

decide to make a movie? And the sort of natural thing, and a lot of studios were built this way, is that they're looking for a good idea or a good topic to make into a film, which sometimes can be it's like, okay, we make certain kinds of film. We're looking for an idea, or they're looking at scripts that are written by writers, talented writers to see what they should make. Now, that's a viable approach and companies use

that successfully. But we took a different approach, which was that we picked somebody to direct a film because we think they've got something unique in terms of their creative abilities and leadership abilities before we have any idea or before they have an idea of what the film should be.

And so the general ideas I say general because there are people I can understand or bad bird like they come up with their idea what they want to make, but it's the same principles, like okay, that they've got the passion and the ability and they're going to do that. But the more general case is we pick the person and then we give them like a year to come

up with three ideas. And the reason for three ideas is because of something that most of us experiences, like you're working on something and you feel like you're beating the head against the wall and you're stuck, and sometimes you go off and you do something else. Then the solution comes back later. So we say pick three ideas. As soon as you get stuck, switch to the other one.

So for the next year, go back and forth between the three ideas, and at the end of that year or whatever the period of time is, they then have got a rough idea of what three different stories might be. Then they gather photographs, they'll have some of the arts. Some artists produce, some drawings, they might get some images off the internet. There's a variety of things they'll try to do in order to convey what the idea is.

So now they've all been through this, and although they'll play the same kind of minding on it, because they'll start off the meeting when they're presenting, and it's about an hour and a half for the presenting of the three ideas, half hour for each idea, and they'll start off by saying that they love all three ideas equally. So that's the starting point. It's not true they don't.

And the job of the creative leadership is not to pick what they think is the best idea, is to figure out which one the director really wants to make when they've just said that they don't care which one is picked, all right, So and basically and every time it's worried because they come back and they say, oh, I was hoping you picked that one because that's what I really wanted to do. And and sometimes it's is obvious that my my favorite one was on Coco. Coco

was one that wouldn't pass the elevator tests. And the movie about Ah the Day of the Dead. It's part of the culture of Mexico. It's not an obvious that film for this country. Uh. And Lenker came up with his three ideas and the we do it differently with each one, but in his case, we have two story rooms, and story rooms are rectangular, which means one side as the ideas for a movie or film and all the artwork for it, and typically it's covered up because you

don't want the distraction of the other idea. That's one wall. So it makes the pitch. You uncover the boards, it's the idea, talk about it, there's a discussion about it, and you know in intriguing is they have a good idea and then they'll switch over to the other wall and again take it off, go through this half hour long presentation and discussion. But there's only two long walls. So in order to go to the third film, we had to move as a group into the other room.

So now we walk into the other story room. The table, both walls, and the ceiling are covered with Mexican artwork. Now without a word being said, I know which film we're making it, right, yeah? Yeah, And that's all we're looking for is like, okay, where's that passion And it's I mean there's a lot of work and a whole bunch of things you have to do. You need that

passion behind it. What are you trying to do is make the environment to let them do it, because even though they've got the passion, they don't know exactly what it is. It takes a lot of work. They've got discovered things, they have to discover things about themselves too. These are when you're telling these stories that they are also personal journeys. Yeah, when they don't operate in isolation. It's not like the one person creates the whole story.

There's uh, you know, the team aspect of it, where the sum is greater than each of the individual parts. I think is an important part of this as well. You know, you have to find these teams where they're all inspired to work on this together. You have your discovered an uninspiring team that was uninspired to I've seen a couple. So it's part of the making and say, okay,

sometimes the dynamic isn't working right. I mentioned before that sometimes we have these difficult decisions that we have to make. We don't make them right around the brain trust. But we've got this, uh this the pathways like you got an idea. By definition, the idea is just the beginning, Like, it doesn't work. So what does it mean to go into a brain Trust money meeting or presentation and walk out and say, well, gee, that isn't any good? All right,

that isn't working. Well, of course it isn't working. They're just starting. So you can't judge well the film is doing based upon the state of the project. This is a hard thing for some people to get. The only real measure we have is how effective is the team working with each other and while they're going to these difficult things together. And the only reason that we pull the plug on something is if that dynamic within the team falls apart, if the director loses the confidence of

the crew, then we have to do something. And that has happened the painful and the reason the person was given the opportunity in the first place is because they're very talented. You have a very talented person, but they can't quite make that step to make to be a director. And so you get to the point and say, well, it actually isn't it working. We have to in some cases supplement, but in some cases, you know, do some adjustment of who the team is, and it's not easy

and it's very visible position. So it's difficult if we if we have to replace the director, but we have done it. That is, once you decide to make a film, that commitment means you're not committing to a person. You're committing to ultimately a couple one hundred people. We're working together and trying to do the very best they can, and you have to make sure that the dynamsure that team is healthy, that it's fun, maybe hard work, but

they have to feel good about what they're doing. Yeah, why do you think the animation form the media is so popular? What do you think the appeal of anthropomorphic characters are in animation? What's going on? What's captivating the human imagination that you know so much there? Well, in the case of animation, they are if animation of humans, you've got caricature that you can put in there that

it's difficult to do with live actors. Now, there are times when you need live actors because our connection with the human face and the human body is extremely powerful and that's the right way to tell the story. But sometimes you need the caricature to tell the story. And there are times in which the story is so powerful that you need the caricature in order to get it across. So there is a there's a rationale for why certain

things are appropriate. It's a question that the studio will ask at times, is like, okay, why is this an animated film rather than a live action film. I personally don't find that particularly useful conversations they have, but every once in a while there is a conversation. And then there are some things where like with inside that takes place inside the head. Okay, well it would be weird to do it, say with with real people. I mean,

the character allows you to do something. But the other thing to note is that there's a Communist understanding is that animated films are made for children. And even while Disney understood this is not true. And as we don't make our movies for kids, we make them for adults, to make them for ourselves, we are doing it in a way that makes them accessible to kids. But you know,

we believe in understanding. If you were if you were talking down with the movie to kids, then first of all, they know that they're being talked down to, and that I want to take a gun to the head. They want to sit and watch the particular film. You have to make something which is for them, but it's accessible. And remember that children are wired to try to figure out what's going on in the world. So the reason they'll watch any films over and over again is they're

trying to figure out how things work. And if you've made it accessible, then you've got something which they can go over and over again. But fundamentally it's got some deep or or mature things in it with the comedy and the caricature that makes it accessible to understand obviously. Yeah, so that that does a great answer about the animation part of it. But the stories you create as well

are so special and really tug at the heartstrings. I mean, most recently, Soul really brought me to tears, you know, and I related so much to my own work on transcendence and what it means to live a meaningful life. What role do you play these days in well? Interested in you know, in the creative process. It picks of these of new movies that come out, you know, what's your day to day sort of involvement of the stories. Well,

I retired a couple of years ago. So the thing about setting up for succession is that when you walk away, that you set things up, then they are otherwise who succeed you? Sup, there's a goal all along. And as they addressed the new problems, and they're if we look at what's having today that the change in the industry because of what two things. One is the pandemic hitting just as as a streaming is really taking off, changes the economics and the dynamics considerably. So there's a lot

of work to figure that out. And I was going in on a regular basis, just a mentor or check in with people because a lot of friends there and I love them so much. And then once the pandemic hit, I'm at home and the zoom doesn't work for that kind of thing. So the answer is right now, I'm not playing a le at it. But is anyone going into the studios right now or during the pandemic? Well, what they they were fairly well along on soul when

it took place, so there was a productivity hit. But as they figured things out, they got better at it. So there's certain things where they did need some some meetings to go in be in the studio. But as you would guess, there's some fairly strict rules in terms of safety and so forth, and there's more and more get inoculated, then more things will happen in the studio. So let's trying to figure that out. And like a lot of companies, it's there's a recognition that we just

ran through a forced experiment. So while Zoom and other sort of tele conference and have been available for a while with certain features and abilities, there's a question like, well, okay, how much do we want people to work at home? Is there an advantage? And you know, you don't know how far to go, what the advantages are or disadvantages are, and it's easier to imagine the disadvantages. But when the

pandemic hit, we don't have a choice. We have to run the experiment, and in the process then the tool's gotten better faster than they would have otherwise. We also found that some things were a little better if you did them remotely, just because of the nature of the information. It's like, you don't need to go waste the time going there. You know, you get on there and you talk with somebody and it is just as productive with easier use to mean less impact on the environment. There

are things like that. There are some things that work, okay, they're not as good. They work okay. There are some things where it's clear that you should be industry if you can, or at work, and there are some things where you just plan cannot do them over tell conferencing. So one of them I was. I mentioned these two day off sites. The way they were structured and the way they worked is not replicable with conferencing. It's a whole. It was a powerful way of developing the stories, and

it was gone for that year. And another example would be something that we kind of take for granted. I have a study he's about ready to graduate from high school, so his final year of high schools during the pandemic and basically the last year of high school where kids are ready to start moving on mentally. But there's something about the social element of that last year's school that

holds things together. The social element was gone, and for high school seniors around the world, like this really screws things up. And even if they can go back into school with some schools let them do. They've got these social distance things, certain restrictions on the social abilities. It's not replicable. It really screwed things up. And so I watched these seniors, not is my son, but various others around it. It's like, oh, this is actually terrible experience

for the last year. So there's that range of stuff like it just doesn't work at all, to oh it was better this way and now we're now we've got that information and at least in this country, is I think we've reached what more than fifty percent of at least you received at least one inoculation, Is that right, John? Yeah? Actually, what I'm in Marine County, I think are about eighty percent network where I'm living right now. Now, well, California is like the best in the cory in the country

right now. Yeah, so it's and so now you see things starting to open up, and it's say, California has been pretty thoughtful right from the beginning to work through this, even though it's you know, something they haven't always had to do before. So it's a god awful mess. And there a whole bunch of mistakes make along the way. But when I see the mistakes, and it comes back

to this, yeah, are you willing to take risks? A lot of people look at somebody else and say, well, they shouldn't have made that mistake, and they shouldn't have done that, so they screw it up. But none of us knew we were doing. So you try something and see what doesn't work, and some stuff isn't going to go right. You know, it's just and there's always somebody that wants to hold somebody quote accountable. First, I hate the word accountability because it has two meanings. One of

them is, this is the positive meanings. If you have responsibility, and if you're responsibility do something, then you really should deliver on it. That's the positive meaning. The negative was if you say hold accountable, that means like, oh, you just screwed up and you need to go to jail. Right, just desserts, that's right. So we use the term typically in its negative breaks, which actually diminishes the value of accountability.

And so we said, we want to hold somebody accountable if they made a mistake in the terms of you know, whether it's you know, in COVID or or treatment there. But if people got the right intense intentions then and they're going to make mistakes and okay, we all learn from them. Let's custom slack. Let's not politicize something because we accept sort of the reality of what happens, and the fact that we're trying to do the right thing.

If we can pull it back to the folks on the problem rather than this being a personal or politically then then I think we can move forward. There. We love that you're not a big fan of cancel culture. I don't even know what it means. Yeah, I mean either I don't hear this term cancel culture. But what do they mean because both sides are both sides are using it being used to mean, Oh, I don't like You're saying, so I'm going to stop buying your product. Okay,

that idea has been around for a long time. I don't like your show, I'm not going to watch it. Okay, that's always been true. What in the hell is cancel culture? It doesn't make any sense. You're canceled means, yeah, you're In some cases people can get their jobs fired, I guess,

and they can be fired from their jobs. So there is an explicit meaning of it in that sense of a clearer meaning, But in other senses, yeah, it's it's more just like I don't I don't like you, and I'm not going to do it like follow you in anything you do. Yeah, so it has multiple meanings. Yeah, and that's I mean, it's it's been true before this. And there's certain things that one does environment which are fireable offenses. M But that's been true for a long time.

If anything. The problem with a lot of cases, a lot of cases is people have done things that were fireable offenses and they weren't fired. They weren't they weren't held accountable in the second, that's right. Yeah, So that's why I said the cancel culture was like one of those words that instantly was turned into a hammer without meaning. It's a weighty hammer without meaning, just as accountability is like a a hammer without wisdom applied to it. Yeah, yeah,

I hear you. I hear you. What do you see as the future of anomation? Like where at things sitting? I know you can't tell me the secret the secrets, but you know, but what can you tell me about where Pixar is heading and what you see fifty years from now what we could have in store for us. Well that means first of all, the obviously, if we're making a movie, then we don't go out and tell

people at a time what it's about. But you know, it's an industry that's pretty small and people move around for a variety of reasons, and so the notion of secrecy doesn't mean a lot as much. That's not true and everything like you're dealing with national security issues and secrecy means something different or in the case of like

Apple's Dot products and and their secret amounts. So here's the interesting thing that and most people are unaware of this and the logic behind it, because Steve has thought of as a very secretive person and he was pretty secretive, but he had a reason for it, and it was very explicit, was that if you hold things secret, especially something that's known about in the world, but the details are of important, then when you tell people about it,

it actually gives you this enormous stage in which to make presentations and give attention. And Steve was very aware of that process of how do you get people to notice? And I say this because while Steve had this intuition about how he told the story of where his products or the films are going, same time, y'aan Pixar well at Pixar, and this started at first, even before Lucasfilms. I was at New York Tech. We published everything, and the president of the school's line of that. And then

we got to Lucasfilm. We published everything at Cigarette George was fine with it. Now we spent off his Pixar. We published everything. Steve never said anything about it. We went on to Disney. Nobody at Disney said why are you publishing everything? And for the last several years Disney and Picks are published more papers than any other company in Siagram. So what was the difference. Well, in the case of of Apple, Steve had a reason for the secrets,

and he knew what the reason was. It wasn't just because the nature of being secretive or paranoid. It's like he had a reason for why he was working that way. The reason he didn't ask us about our publishing, which is basically saying we're giving away all of the secrets, is that we were playing a different game. What we were trying to do was to get the best people

in the to to come join us. I absolutely did not care about any particular technical idea because it was going to get discovered or found out by somebody another year or two anyway, So who cares what you want of as extraordinary people who think of these ideas. And Steve knew that, so Steve never said, oh, don't publish your giving away our ideas. That wasn't what we were

trying to do. And also if you take something like around a two week as an example, suppose we told people early on that we were going to make a movie about a wrath that wanted to cook. How much damage would it do to us for our competitors to know that we were making a movie about a wrath that wants to cook. Zero? It would not have mattered because it's you know, it's a story that they discover along the way, and it's that discovery and they're bringing

their personal stuff into it. You really see in terms of the look of the film, Yan Pinka is the one who conceded the idea and the one who delivered the final film was brad Bird. And that story is sick. You know you brad Birds stolen personality come out. What was the secret? There wasn't one. And in terms of how we work, if inters like the brain Trust, oh

we tell people how work, there's no secret there. What do you see is the future you know of of of Pixar and of animation and exciting and new horizons. So don't tell me secrets, because I get it, there are no secrets, But tell me what you think. What don't I know? Oh, I mean, it's the thing I don't know. Also, because the hope, of course is the culture has got the ability to adapt, and the challenge they have is that that making work for streaming is

number one. It's an opportunity because there's sort of an insatiable appetite. It's sort of like television has an satiable appetite for content. But the economics are different. Our animated films are fairly expensive to produce because all the attention

and the care that goes into them. So can we hold onto that or do we fall into the trap of saying, oh, this is about purely about the economics, and so you end up shipping off the work to be done some other place where they can make it for less money, coming out of a culture where everybody is part of making the film. So our kitchen crew, for instance, you are employed by the company and they get of the credits the end of the film because

we're all in together, all right. Well, now the world just got turned upside down in terms of the economics, and now it's distributed and and so the question is, Okay, how did they adapt to it? So it just there's like, how do I think it's gonna end up? Yeah, I don't know, I honestly don't. It's hard. It's hard to do. Yeah, where it's all going. And you see more and more of a appreciation for inclusivity of like diversity of characters. Right,

I mean, don't you see that friend continuing? Yeah, that a that's uh, that particular started some time ago because we have this awareness that picks are basically what we had were essentially initially all male directors and the people who were in the in the studio, the theater schools on the animation side were largely male, and so we represented the state of where it was about when when

we started. But we realized, well, actually we have a responsibility because our job isn't to represent the current data things that we have a social impact in the world. So what do we do to actively bring in other ethnicities and bring in women in different roles and to be very active about that process? And uh so a lot of change you know, got or was put into place.

It's definitely had an effect. Obviously you see it with Soul, but there are a couple of other films for those from a cultural point of view, a lot of attention to represent the real culture. So Leon Critch and the team working on Coco spent a lot of time in southern Mexico and villages because they didn't want to base a film based upon stereotypes. They wanted to capture the essence, which meant visiting people as well as having a lot of cultural consultants who grew up there and nothing and

experienced things that we didn't know. And likewise, Muana was the same thing for Oceana. Okay, so how do you capture the essence of a culture? So you then go back to the people they are representing, You show the film and are they happy with what they see? Or do they WinCE that's what they see? So there are a lot of elements into getting that ride, but it comes along with our own social responsibility to do something which is honest and impactful, which also means that it's

going to affect us if we're honest about it. Then it comes from the fact that say, well, I honest, I don't know. So that's why you have to have people who've got different cultures or you know, different genders, you know, as part of the making of the films, because they represent their richness and no person has got all those understanding. And it was one of the lessons for me Is I was getting near the point of retirement,

was it reach tomorrow? I felt kind of guilty because I fell into some traps, and then I realized, oh, you know, I it isn't my job to know everything. That's actually I trap itself. It's to understand deeply the people have got experiences and knowledge that I can't possibly have or cannot possibly get. And it's by trying to make an environment where that comes out that you end

up with something which is powerful and impactful. Yeah, and also include a neurodiverse people on the team as well, like people who like dyslexic people tend to be incredibly creative in their own way. You know, autistic people people call autism just the whole range, So include them in the table as well. That yeah, well there's nothing that actually It's the funny thing. It was one of the last things I did is as I was retiring, I went to every single group at Disney and picks off.

So these are like three kids of people in a group to give my farewell thoughts. At the same time, I discovered some time ago that I don't have the ability to visualize, as when I close my eyes, I can't see me just and and when I discovered this was actually surprising to me because they came up with the surfaces that we use for making that's pretty ironic. Yeah, you know, it isn't just animated films, but it's also

for special effects and all those things. The computer animated films of this surface that I did, and I didn't do it by math, and I didn't know by visualizing something was something else in my brain. So I took the test of visualization. I asked people to fill it out, and it was It was very surprising. But it turns out, frankly, there's not a lot of correlation between your ability to visualize and creativity or in your your ability to draw

imagination either. Yeah. Well, it's like one of the films nominated for an Academy Award yesterday was Blank. Len Keen was the director that took Place in the Moon, very really lovely film and Len King is one of the best hand round animators of all time, and he completely lacks the ability to visualize. So if you watch him, the way he works is he scribbles the drawings, so what's inside of his brain comes out like to embody through his interaction with the paper, and it converges on

this phenomenal work of art. And he's working side by side with people who've got these amazing visual abilities, where if they don't like one of them, he's only what. He never sees a movie more than once because once he's seen it, it's all it's in his hand. So you've got this range from this it's called hyper fantasia, and they're to having no ability whatsoever, and it's not strongly correlated with your ability to be creative or thoughtful

or insightful. That sounding, which I thought was was cool. So we can any of these misconceptions. Well, obviously somebody who as an artist has to be really good at visualizing. No they don't, that's not true. And the co founder of Pixar can have a difficulty with visualization too. That's amazing. Yeah, so I have. But if you talk, if you include in visualization, which some neurologies do, spatial ability, then are

very high have very strong spatial ability. But sure, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's like, okay, but the deeper things are manifested in different ways. Absolutely, how do we enable it? How to make it so that people feel fine about it? If you could build a dream K through twelve school based on what you know about the creativity, the creative process and the importance of including people neudiverse and other forms of diversity, like, what would the kind of such a

school look like? Have you ever thought about that? Well? Well, first of all, I think it's it's a it's a hard problem. All the rest of my family's in education. My father's a high school principal. My brothers and sisters or teachers. So I was a black sheep in the family.

Black sheep because I didn't go into into education. But I do believe in the diversity and approaches because there are so many different ways that people thinking and teaching that I don't know that the goal is to come out with the right curriculum to be spread around the country about how to teach kids. The fact is there are some teachers who are extraordinarily good. Has nothing to do with the curriculum. They just have an ability to

touch and affect people and it's individualized. It's sort of like the visualization, they do it in different ways. How do we create create an environment to allow that to happen? And frankly, the biggest impediment to it, it's just the economics, is that people in general don't want to pay for education and always bug the hell out of me over these years when I would see a funding bill for schools up for voting, and almost always the funding bills

are defeated. That there's a you know, they don't hit a majority of the people who feel like this is worth doing for the future, and so it always leaves them on the short side, not having enough. And then you've got this consequence of it is that in certain areas, and it's not true when I grew up into when I grew up there were only public schools, and the richest kid in the school and the poorest were all in the same social group. That is that and for me,

this felt very naturally. We're all this together. It's not not that everything necessarily was hormonious, everything was right, but everybody was in these together. But there wasn't a bias because this person they were special, because their family was wealthy or in this girl's case, her family was very poor. It didn't matter. But now I go to other places like here in California, where you say, well, there's high school.

Assuming the public schools have got some issues. So the kids from the families where they're are paying more let's say money, and this is those families are pulled out into the private schools to the detriment of the public schools. What do you what do you do about that? You like, if you're if you're a parent, then you want the best thing for your child, which means you're going put them typically in a private school. But as a society, that's actually not a good thing to have happened. These

are there just tough issues. So you're asking me a question where a different things. But that's is this is a it's a hard one and an important one. Yeah, they're trade offs than anything. And yeah, no it's it's a hard one. But I mean, if I could frame the question a little bit differently, and it's just like Pixar movies, it's still such a sense of wonder and all in the viewer, you know, like how can we pause simply designed schools to make the learning process more magical?

Like watching a Pixar movie, do you see what I'm saying, yeah, well, we did something at Pixar. We formed this group they and they made a series of short films about the making of our film. And it was the person at the time who was the head of Picture University at least, Cleidman, and the person was the head of the R and D for the ten Tony de Rose have this really strong passion for elementary or k th twelve education. So they produced a series and we entered into a relationship

with con Academy. It was called Pixar in a Box. So they had a series of lessons where they'd have somebody was doing the lighting or the modeling or the animation, the animation and you would actually see this and there'd be some lessons to go along with it, and some tools on the website to connect with something and using the films to get there or to hold them their attention. And it was really a pre extraordinary program they made it.

I forget. I think they did some with ILM because at this point it was part of Disney, and also they did some with WBI, but when a whole bunch of changes took place, then the program wasn't continued. So Tony and at least went out to formal company for educational purposes to produce those kinds of things, either for companies or for school So part of it is where they want the education. In part is it's a practical

or how they funded this company. They got some initial support from Learning Jobs and she's very interested, Yeah, because she's has a strong, very strong interest in an education. Actually it's very remarkable. But that's a I love that concept and I think it's it's scalable too, But how does one get the funding from the places that might do it? But is what you want is something which is relevant culturally so that people want to watch it

and follow through with the lessons. But you're using something with the lessons to introduce the technology or the art, or relationships or how you think about things or how you use tools, and it takes a certain kind of expertise to do that. The expertise he used to make them is not all that broadly spread, so the schools don't have enough expertise to make it. It was one of the things that Tony de Rowe's found early on

as he went out to give talks. As he was giving talks about the math of the movies, and he came back with the observation is that the teachers, like the math teachers, he's dying for tools like this. Where can they get them? Because they want something, so it's just like how they get it. Also, I should say that that we also did something with the Museum of the Science Museum in Boston, and so there was an

exhibit about the making of the films. And again our teamate picks our work with their team at the museum, who had this incredible relationship. They work very well together. It was very impressive, and then they produced this exhibit at the Boston Science Museum and it was an extraordinary Well well, I was still touring, but I think it's now to be back in Boston again for another couple of months. But it's been turning around the world and

so it's a success. But it took the passion of somebody to sort of push it through and then took the ability of Pixar to say go ahead, like, we'll fund you to do that. But where do you get the combination of both passion and the funding to help do something which engage children And isn't that really an important thing to do for me? The answers. Yeah, yes, I mean I just wish people invested more into education. It's a matter of priorities. There's a lot, there's a

lot of money out there. It's just it's how do we convince people that this is a priority. Yeah, you're right, yiah Ed. Thank you so much for coming on the Psychology podcasting spend so much time with me, and for the just truly pioneering work you've done for animation and the movies, and just for understanding of creativity itself. Well my pleasure. Thank you so much. Enjoyed talking with you. Thanks for listening to this episode of the Psychology Podcast.

If you'd like to react in some way to something you heard, I encourage you to join in on the discussion at the Psychology podcast dot com. That's the Psychology Podcast dot com. Thanks for being such a great supporter of the show, and tune in next time for more on the mind, brain, behavior, and creativity.