John Lasseter Quotes & Sayings

When you go into the theatre and the lights dim, you want to entertain people from beginning to end. You want them to be swept up in your story, on the edge of their seats, unable to wait to see what happens next, be blown away and afterwards just go, 'Wow!' — John Lasseter

Of all bugs, growing up I just loved the pill bugs. They roll up, you play with them, you wait for them to open up, and then when you touch them they roll up again. I just love that. — John Lasseter

When you really study espionage movies, or spy movies, the beginnings are really set up to have, like, an amazing bit of action, but at the moment you're watching it, you have no idea why or what it's about. — John Lasseter

Quality is the best business plan. — John Lasseter

Pixar has been compared to fine furniture makers who polish the backs of drawers - even if you don't see everything in a particular scene, you still feel that every little detail has been met. — John Lasseter

I am so proud that 'Up' is Pixar's 10th film. I think it's the funniest film that we've ever made and also one of the most beautiful. — John Lasseter

Disney Infinity gives you the ability to be creative in a way that nobody's ever seen before. — John Lasseter

At Pixar, after every movie we have postmortum meetings where we discuss what worked and what didn't work. — John Lasseter

I'm a huge fan of Blu-rays myself. — John Lasseter

Directing is one of my favourite things to do because I love telling stories and I love working with the individual artists and it's something that I really missed. — John Lasseter

Today, among little girls especially, princesses and the romanticised ideal they represent - finding the man of your dreams - have a limited shelf life. — John Lasseter

My mother was a high school arts teacher, so I was always surrounded by the arts. — John Lasseter

My brother liked sewing and sculpting and making things, and my sister sewed and painted and cooked and baked. She's a professional baker now and makes the most gorgeous sculpture-like cakes. She's the queen of wedding cakes in the Lake Tahoe area. — John Lasseter

'Bambi' is an amazing film, and when you watch it today, it's just as beautiful. It's timeless. It's just as beautiful today as it was back then. — John Lasseter

Pixar films are not realistic. They are believable for the worlds we are creating. — John Lasseter

With science, there is this culture of experimentation, and most of the time, those experiments fail. — John Lasseter

I am, by nature, an honest person. I wear my emotions on my sleeve. There is no 'behind closed doors' with me. — John Lasseter

I love working for a company full of geeks. — John Lasseter

At Pixar, we do sequels only when we come up with a great idea, and we always strive to be different than the original. — John Lasseter

I've got Disney blood running through my veins. — John Lasseter

At Pixar, 'Wall-E' was our ninth film, and they've all been successes - more than that, they've all really touched people. Everybody wonders, 'How do you do it?' Well, how do you not do it? You just work hard. — John Lasseter

I don't really think of myself as a businessman at all. That's why I have the 'chief creative officer' role. — John Lasseter

I just devoured all of his [Buster Keaton's] films because his sense of comic timing was amazing. He's the closest a human being has ever come to a cartoon character. And I was just amazed at his sense of character and timing, the humor. It's all just so ... sophisticated, even when you watch it today. — John Lasseter

Every movie has three things you have to do - you have to have a compelling story that keeps people on the edge of their seats; you have to populate that story with memorable and appealing characters; and you have to put that story and those characters in a believable world. Those three things are so vitally important. — John Lasseter

The spirit of Route 66 is in the details: every scratch on a fender, every curl of paint on a weathered billboard, every blade of grass growing up through a cracked street. — John Lasseter

The art challenges the technology, and the technology inspires the art. — John Lasseter

Sure, they were simple desk lamps with only a minimal amount of movement, but you could immediately tell that Luxo Jr. was a baby, and that the big one was his mother. In that short little film, computer animation went from a novelty to a serious tool for filmmaking. — John Lasseter

What I love about Goofy is the flesh on his cheeks. You can almost feel it. — John Lasseter

You never hear of a live-action studio that has been making so-so films looking over at a studio that's making great movies and going, 'Oh, we see the difference - we're using a different camera.' — John Lasseter

You have to do three things really well to make a successful film. You have to tell a compelling story that has a story that is unpredictable, that keeps people on the edge of their seat where they can't wait to see what happens next. You then populate that story with really memorable and appealing characters. And then, you put that story and those characters in a believable world, not realistic but believable for the story that you're telling. — John Lasseter

Pixar is not about computers, it's about people. — John Lasseter

I try to make pictures I would want to see. — John Lasseter

I never quite understood why Disney hadn't made a sincere fairy tale since 'Beauty and the Beast.' — John Lasseter

One of the big moments of my life was watching 'Star Wars' on its opening weekend in Hollywood. I was watching all these people enjoy this film, and I thought: animation can do this. — John Lasseter

I always felt a little bit like a little kid that's never grown up in the world of adults. — John Lasseter

I love Japan. I love the collision of the modern and ancient worlds coming together in that place. It's so high-tech and cool. — John Lasseter

You know, going to the movies has always been recession-proof. It's fairly cheap entertainment; it's classic escapism. — John Lasseter

I love the Sonoma wine community. It's like Pixar - nothing competitive, only supportive. They're always rooting for you. — John Lasseter

I love French auto design of the early '50s, '60s, early '70s of Citorens, Renaults, and Peugeots. They're so unique. — John Lasseter

'Bolt' was made by Walt Disney Animation Studios, not by Pixar. — John Lasseter

When you can have a character that the audience likes from the beginning, but then you put them in a situation where they grow - I think that gives it a lot of heart. — John Lasseter

The way the films look will never entertain an audience alone. It has to be in the service of a good story with great characters. — John Lasseter

Art challenges technology, but technology inspires the art. — John Lasseter

Pixar has invented much of computer animation as it's known today, and I've been very lucky to be the first traditional animator to work with computer animation. — John Lasseter

A good part of my leadership skills is crafted from learning from experiences early in my career that were not positive experiences. — John Lasseter

It's so important to create in your own voice, to hold onto what makes you unique, and have faith in your vision. — John Lasseter

You make a movie to entertain audiences. That's why you make a movie. The product sales is because people love the characters, and to me, that is a testament to how our movie has become so ingrained in family's homes all around the world and that's why I make movies. — John Lasseter

'Finding Nemo' was originally shot in 3D. — John Lasseter

I think the painted backgrounds in animations are absolutely stunningly beautiful. There's something really special about this medium. I don't believe audiences have grown past it. I think what audiences love is to be entertained-thoroughly, deeply entertained, and that's what I've always set out to do. — John Lasseter

Every young person gets so excited about new software packages and new technology. — John Lasseter

I do what I do because of Walt Disney. Goofy. Mickey Mouse. I never forgot how their films entertained me. — John Lasseter

In dire economic times, movies are relatively inexpensive entertainment for the whole family. — John Lasseter

I believe that, by directing, it makes me a better executive as well. — John Lasseter

Walt Disney always said, 'For every laugh, there should be a tear.' I believe in that. — John Lasseter

Animation, for me, is a wonderful art form. I never understood why the studios wanted to stop making animation. Maybe they felt that the audiences around the world only wanted to watch computer animation. I didn't understand that, because I don't think ever in the history of cinema did the medium of a film make that film entertaining or not. What I've always felt is, what audiences like to watch are really good movies. — John Lasseter

Steve Jobs is like a brother to me and he's one of the founders of Pixar, and when the first iPad came out, I got one right away. — John Lasseter

Winnie the Pooh and his friends from the Hundred Acre Wood are among the most entertaining and beloved characters ever animated by Disney. — John Lasseter

I think that as I had children, I have five sons, and they got into video games and were the prime ages through the development of video games. It was so much fun seeing them play the games and seeing it through their eyes. — John Lasseter

Every single Pixar film, at one time or another, has been the worst movie ever put on film. But we know. We trust our process. We don't get scared and say, 'Oh, no, this film isn't working.' — John Lasseter

When I started work with LucasArts Computer Division back in 1984, I went to the Palace of Fine Arts and saw the Festival of Animation for the first time. I loved the diverse collection of animated films the festival held. — John Lasseter

I think 'Disney Infinity' is exciting. It's hard to even call it a video game, because it's so different. What excites me about this is how it's going to put more and more of what happens in the game into the hands of the user; it's up to them. You can play it to where everything's laid out for you. — John Lasseter

True play is creativity. — John Lasseter

The spy genre is something I loved.It also extends to the bad guy because I think, to me, what I love the most about the spy genre is when you have a great bad guy. What makes a great bad guy, to me, is the logic. What he's about has to make sense to me, that if I was in his shoes, yeah, right, that makes sense. — John Lasseter

I always laugh at these companies that have these rules saying, 'You're only allowed to have this or that on your desk.' It's no fun to work at a place like that. — John Lasseter

I've always been thinking in three dimensions, ever since I started working with computer animation in the early '80s. — John Lasseter

I think the best movie ever made was 'Dumbo.' — John Lasseter

The interstate highway system was built to get people from point A to point B as fast as possible. And they knocked down mountains and filled valleys and made everything nice and big and flat, and they bypassed every town. — John Lasseter

One of the big technical advances that's really great looking is the water. — John Lasseter

If you can think about it, you can create it. — John Lasseter

As a filmmaker, I'm very collaborative. I don't pretend to know everything that is needed to make a movie. What I like to do is get together with a group of people, starting with developing the story and bounce around ideas. — John Lasseter

Everything I do and everything Pixar does is based on a simple rule: Quality is the best business plan, period. — John Lasseter

One of the fun things about play is making up stories ... — John Lasseter

I believe once you watch a Miyazaki film, you'll get hooked. — John Lasseter

When you make these films, they become like your children. But at a certain point, they don't belong to you anymore; they belong to the world. — John Lasseter

We use shorts at the studio extensively to develop talent. I always love to give opportunities for young story people, animators, layout people something like that to take the next step up in their career and try things out. — John Lasseter

To take full advantage of computer animation, you have to pay as much attention to the believable as you do the unbelievable. — John Lasseter

The greatest bad guys, you understand where they're coming from. They believe they're doing the right thing. Sometimes it's for greed, sometimes it's for other reasons, but they are what they call the center of good. They always believe they're doing the right thing. — John Lasseter

I'm a car nut. My father was a parts manager at a Chevrolet dealership. — John Lasseter

Nobody pays attention to the way a person's shirt folds around his shoulder when they sit down, but if that shirt folded in an unusual way, you'd notice it. — John Lasseter

I believe in the nobility of entertaining people and I take great, great pride that people are willing to give me two or three hours of their busy lives. — John Lasseter

Rotten Tomatoes is such a great website, in that it has one foot in the Internet world and one foot in the cinema world, and it keeps its grounding between them just perfectly. — John Lasseter

I loved animation and cartoons, even when it was not cool when you were in high school. I raced home to see the Bugs Bunny cartoons. — John Lasseter

Never in the history of cinema has a medium entertained an audience. It's what you do with the medium. — John Lasseter

In overseeing both Disney and Pixar Animation, each studio has a unique culture. — John Lasseter

A gem of a short film has a sense of pure joy in animation that is different from anything you see in a feature film. — John Lasseter

Fortunately for me, I'm married to an amazing woman - Nancy Lasseter - who is wise enough not to let me buy every car I want. If I was single, I would be living in a very small apartment and renting a warehouse full of cool cars. — John Lasseter

Car love is the sound of a throaty V-8 rumbling and revving, the acceleration throwing you back in the seat - especially when you get on a beautiful, winding road and the light's dappling through the trees. — John Lasseter

Pixar's short films convinced Disney that if the company could produce memorable characters within five minutes, then the confidence was there in creating a feature film with those abilities in story and character development. — John Lasseter

'Cars' was about Lightning McQueen learning to slow down and to enjoy life. The journey is the reward. — John Lasseter

There's never a wrong idea. You just keep throwing stuff out and inevitably there are elements of different things that inspire a character or environment. — John Lasseter

One of the things about animation is it's so expensive to do the animation, that you can't produce coverage. You only have one chance to make every shot. — John Lasseter

I worry about kids today not having time to build a tree house or ride a bike or go fishing. I worry that life is getting faster and faster. — John Lasseter

I'm a big fan of pantomime storytelling, being an animator. — John Lasseter

Soon I learned that the worse the puns and jokes, the funnier they could be, if you knew how to deliver them. — John Lasseter

Sunday, for me, is all about being home with the family with no plans. — John Lasseter

The closer you get to reality, the harder it is to make it look convincing to the audience. That's why I tend to make things [films] that are a little bit more caricature. — John Lasseter

To me, I would much rather be part of a healthy industry than being the only player in a dead industry. — John Lasseter

Every technology that comes into filmmaking is first a gimmick. Think about sound with 'The Jazz Singer' or the first colour or surround sound - it takes a while for filmmakers to understand how to use it. — John Lasseter

We work very hard in all of the Pixar films to not make anything in the imagery that causes people to think of something other than the story. — John Lasseter

When Walt Disney was making his films, he trusted his instincts and made films for himself, but they appealed to everybody, not just kids. — John Lasseter