John Alan Lasseter is an American animator, film director, screenwriter, producer and
the chief creative officer at Pixar, Walt Disney Animation Studios, and DisneyToon Studios.
He is also currently the Principal Creative Advisor for Walt Disney Imagineering.
Lasseter began his career as an animator with The Walt Disney Company. Fired from Disney
for promoting computer animation, he joined Lucasfilm, where he worked on the then-groundbreaking
use of CGI animation. The Graphics Group of the Computer Division of Lucasfilm was sold
to Steve Jobs and became Pixar in 1986. Lasseter oversees all of Pixar's films and associated
projects as executive producer. In addition, he directed Toy Story, A Bug's Life, Toy Story
2, Cars, and Cars 2. Since 2007, he also oversees all of Walt Disney Animation Studios' films
and associated projects as executive producer. He has won two Academy Awards, for Animated
Short Film, as well as a Special Achievement Award.
Early years Lasseter was born 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 actually
a fraternal twin; his sister Johanna Lasseter-Curtis 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 church services at the
Church of Christ his family 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 Disney's 1963 film The Sword in the Stone, he finally made the decision
that he should become an animator. His education began at Pepperdine University.
It was the alma mater of both his parents and his siblings. However, he heard of a new
character animation program at the California Institute of the Arts and decided to leave
Pepperdine to follow his dream of becoming an animator. His mother further encouraged
him to take up a career in animation, and 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 both 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 position as a Jungle Cruise skipper, where
he learned the basics of comedy and comic timing to entertain captive audiences on the
ride. First years at Disney
Upon graduating in 1979, Lasseter immediately obtained a job as an animator at Walt Disney
Feature Animation on the basis of his early success with Lady and the Lamp. To put that
in perspective, 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, "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."
However, Lasseter soon realized something was missing; after 101 Dalmatians, which in
his opinion was the film where Disney had reached its highest plateau, the studio had
lost momentum and was criticized for often repeating itself without adding any new ideas
or innovations. In 1980 or 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 wasn't 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 lightcycle
sequences for an upcoming film entitled Tron, featuring state-of-the-art computer generated
imagery, that he really 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 himself.
Later, he and Glen Keane talked about how great it would be to make an animated feature
where the background was computer animated, 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 project into motion. During a pitch
meeting for the film to two of them, animation administrator Ed Hansen, and head of Disney
studios, Ron W. Miller, the project was cancelled, 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 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/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 people whenever they don't have enough movies in progress
to keep them busy. Still devastated at being forced out of the only company he had ever
wanted to work for, Lasseter couldn't find the strength to tell Catmull that he had been
fired. Catmull later telephoned Smith that day and
mentioned Lasseter was not working at Disney. Smith told Catmull to put down the phone and
hire Lasseter right now. Before the day was over, Lasseter had made a deal to work freelance
with Catmull and his colleagues on a project that resulted in their first computer animated
short: The Adventures of André and Wally B. 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. 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. 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.
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. It was acquired by Steve
Jobs 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 oversees 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.
Lasseter received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in Hollywood on November 1, 2011.
It is located at 6834 Hollywood Boulevard. Lasseter was also the recipient of the Austin
Film Festival's 2011 Extraordinary Contribution to Filmmaking Award.
Lasseter is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and served nine
consecutive years on its board of governors from 2005 to 2014 when he had to relinquish
his seat due to term limits. His last position on the board was as first vice president.
Back at Disney Disney announced that it would be purchasing
Pixar on January 24, 2006, and Lasseter was named chief creative officer of both Pixar
and Walt Disney Feature Animation, the latter of which he renamed Walt Disney Animation
Studios. On January 25, 2006, Lasseter was welcomed by his new employees in Burbank with
warm applause, as they hoped that he could save the studio from which he had been fired
22 years earlier. Lasseter was also named principal creative adviser at Walt Disney
Imagineering, where he helps design attractions for Disney Parks. Since 2007, he oversees
all of Walt Disney Animation Studios' films and associated projects as executive producer.
He reports directly to Disney President and CEO Robert Iger, bypassing Disney's studio
and theme park executives. He also received green-light power on films with Roy E. Disney's
consent. In December 2006, Lasseter announced that
Disney will start producing animated shorts that will be released theatrically once more.
Lasseter said he sees this medium as an excellent way to train and discover new talent in the
company as well as a testing ground for new techniques and ideas. The shorts will be in
2D, CGI or a combination of both. Recent shorts have included Get a Horse! and Feast.
In June 2007, Catmull and Lasseter were given control of DisneyToon Studios, a division
of Walt Disney Animation Studios housed in a separate facility in Glendale. Since then,
as president and chief creative officer, respectively, they have supervised three separate studios
for Disney, each with its own production pipeline: Pixar, Disney Animation, and DisneyToon. While
Disney Animation and DisneyToon are located in the Los Angeles area, Pixar is located
over 350 miles northwest in the Bay Area, where Catmull and Lasseter both live. Since
they could not be physically present at all three studios at once, they appointed a general
manager for each studio to manage day-to-day business affairs, then established a routine
of spending at least two days per week in Southern California.
Lasseter is a close friend and admirer of Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki, and has
been executive producer on several of Miyazaki's films for their release in the United States,
also overseeing the dubbing of the films for their English language soundtrack. The gentle
forest spirit Totoro from Miyazaki's My Neighbor Totoro makes an appearance as a plush toy
in Toy Story 3. Other work
Lasseter drew the most widely known versions of the BSD Daemon, a cartoon mascot for the
BSD Unix operating system. Lasseter owns the "Marie E." steam locomotive,
a H.K. Porter 0-4-0ST saddle tank locomotive formerly owned by one of Walt Disney's "Nine
Old Men", Ollie Johnston. The locomotive has made two visits to the Pacific Coast Railroad
in Santa Margarita, CA in May 2007 and June 2010, where Lasseter ran the locomotive alongside
the original Santa Fe & Disneyland Railroad "Retlaw 1" coaches.
Personal life
Lasseter lives in Glen Ellen, California with his wife Nancy, a graduate of Carnegie Mellon
University, whom he met at a computer graphics conference. Nancy majored in computer graphics
applications, and worked for a while as a household engineer and a computer graphics
engineer at Apple Computer. They married in 1988, and have five sons, born between 1979/1980
and 1997. The Lasseters own Lasseter Family Winery in
Glen Ellen, California. On May 2, 2009, Lasseter received an honorary
doctorate from Pepperdine University. He delivered a commencement address in which he encouraged
the graduating class of more than 500 students never to let anyone tarnish their dreams.
His influences include Walt Disney, Chuck Jones, Frank Capra and Preston Sturges.
Filmography Feature films
Short films See also
List of Pixar films List of Pixar shorts
References
External links John Lasseter at the Internet Movie Database
Richard Verrier and Dawn C. Chmielewski, Fabled Film Company May Get a Reanimator, Los Angeles
Times, January 25, 2006 Fortune Magazine interview with John Lasseter
– includes biographic information KCRW's The Treatment: John Lasseter and Andrew
Stanton KCRW's The Treatment: John Lasseter