Pixar's True Story

80 pointsposted 14 hours ago
by kristianp
(computerhistory.org)

19 Comments

socalgal2

5 hours ago

It's an interesting story about their IPO.

What I found interesting in the book "Creativity Inc" by their co-founder, Ed Catmull, was that Jobs effectively gave them 70 million and 3-4 years of them trying to make computers before they pivoted to animation. I'd love someone to give me 70 million :P

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creativity,_Inc.

PS: I read the book when it came out. I don't have it around to check my memory is correct about 3-4 years and 70 million. What I remeber is they were a subdivision of ILM tasked with making computers. ILM tried to sell them to HP IIRC, who was not interested. Jobs bought them to make computers, not animation.

JKCalhoun

3 hours ago

The Pixar story is also a kind of an interesting angle on either Jobs blindness or brilliance—thinking that Pixar was a software company, thinking it was a hardware company, and only belatedly coming around to the idea that it was in fact a film studio…

Keyframe

30 minutes ago

Turns out Pixar _was_ a software company which also did hardware when it was sold. There was another part of ILM that stayed with Lucas which was an VFX shop where most of creatives were. ILM also got rights to use (full source) PRMan/Renderman from it. With Pixar you also got a creative demo team with Lasseter which produced demo shorts that turned into a studio. Lasseter is mostly the story there, no matter the software Pixar did, imo.

paulryanrogers

an hour ago

Rich guy gets lucky and is retconned as brilliant is a familiar trope

hypercube33

30 minutes ago

I feel like pixar could easily have a crazy docudrama made about them that'd be better than blackberry

deeth_starr_v

27 minutes ago

I agree. If you haven’t yet, check out Halt and Catch Fire

IndySun

12 hours ago

I couldn't find the word 'Lasseter' in that post.

davvid

11 hours ago

Nor Catmull, unfortunately. FWIW, the article is centered around the financing and IPO side of the story.

MangoToupe

9 hours ago

.

seanmcdirmid

8 hours ago

Zootopia isn't a Pixar property right?

a_e_k

5 hours ago

No. It's from Walt Disney Animation Studios (WDAS).

andrehacker

10 hours ago

After the MeToo allegations, his contributions have been removed—or at least significantly downplayed—in Disney and Pixar’s accounts of Pixar’s origins.

dagmx

10 hours ago

This is demonstrably not true.

He has fairly equal representation as the other founders on their history page

https://www.pixar.com/our-story

He also is directly mentioned in the Disney+ docuseries on ILM, and was part of Catmul’s retrospective on Toy Story as recently as this year

https://youtu.be/q1Uq8b2ooVk?si=zjHSHjGHtymH-kKy

Pixar and Disney haven’t been shying away from his involvement in their history

andrehacker

9 hours ago

Hm, the fact that he was mentioned or referenced does not prove that his role was downplayed, a quick search of the interwebs shows:

- 2018 Oscars: Despite his massive influence on Coco, none of the filmmakers mentioned him by name in their acceptance speeches for Best Animated Feature.

- Film Premieres: Lasseter did not attend the 2018 premiere of Incredibles 2, a film he was heavily involved in, further signaling his detachment from official company events.

pfannkuchen

8 hours ago

With guys who are in prestigious/powerful corporate positions, I wonder if there is a fundamental issue where everybody tends to brown nose them, but female brown nosing sometimes gets misinterpreted as flirtation and interest.

And because guys in these sorts of positions actually do get an overpowered amount of real interest from women, they may have a harder time detecting inauthentic interest-alias than say a random janitor guy who a woman is being artificially nice to for some reason.

And then if the guy mistakenly thinks the woman is interested and makes a move, the woman may then in the moment feel unsure about what to do, because an abrupt rejection that contradicts their earlier outward behavior may make them feel not good, they might feel like they caused it, etc (which I think lines up with accounts I’ve read, except they don’t mention the brown nosing part of the theorized pattern).

This doesn’t excuse anything, necessarily, I just wonder if there are some complex dynamics at play. This setup we have where sexual relations are at will, subject only to consent, is not that old, so it wouldn’t be surprising if the system as-is still produces very bad outcomes at times even if the parties involved are all behaving in a non-psychopathic way.

socalgal2

5 hours ago

You might want to go read the actual accusations. One woman said Lasseter felt her up under the table at meeting(s).

onion2k

7 hours ago

The problem with your hypothesis is that 'a woman being nice to you' (brown-nosing or otherwise) is in absolutely no way whatsoever flirting. Flirting is an entirely different way of behaving.

b112

5 hours ago

Thank you for verifying how all women behave and act, as if they are all identical.

Then, using that stereotypical behaviour to chastise others.

You also presume that "brown nosing" is the same category as "being nice". It's not. Brown nosing is a non-genuine, fabricated expression.

So is the woman faking "being nice" due to brow nosing, or faking "being nice" due to sexual interest?

The parent poster was merely wondering if this is hard to discern, and even indicated that it "doesn't make it right".

Your response is part of what is wrong with such dynamics today. Knee jerk reactions to speculation is not called for.