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

I love bringing the inanimate object to life. — John Lasseter

The hardest thing to get is true emotion. I always believe you need to earn that with the audience. You can't just tell them, 'Ok, be sad now.' — John Lasseter

This is a world that's big enough for everyone. I like that message in that comes out of John Lasseter, and it comes out Pixar, it comes out of the Apple, Google, the Ben and Jerry's thing. These are American companies that send that message around that is good, that is healthy. And everyone goes, "That's the America I always believed in before Watergate." — Eddie Izzard

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

What's fun about the story development at Pixar is it's a journey. You don't just write a script and then that's the movie you make. It's just constant evolution and being open to that and that collaboration with the voice actors and with the artists and animators at Pixar. — John Lasseter

I've always loved animation it's the reason why I do what I do for a living - the films of Walt Disney. This art form is so spectacular and beautiful. And I never quite understood the feeling amongst animation studios that audiences today only wanted to see computer animation. It's never about the medium that a film is made in, it's about the story. It's about how good the movie is. — John Lasseter

I believe God is in the details. — 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 quickly realized that this medium had a lot to offer someone like me. To do Disney-quality hand-drawn cartoons, you have to be a master of two art forms. Seriously, you have to be able to draw like a Leonardo da Vinci or a Michelangelo. But also you have to know movement and timing and control that through 24 frames a second. — 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

We make the kind of movies we like to watch. I love to laugh. I love to be amazed by how beautiful it is. But I also love to be moved to tears. There's lots of heart in our films. — 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

I realized that people make cartoons for a living. It had never dawned on me that you could do this as a career. — John Lasseter

This is what I always tell my filmmakers-you have to do tons of research, because you don't know where the inspiration is going come from. — John Lasseter

The iPad changed my life! — John Lasseter

I was born in 1957, so when I was a kid, there wasn't anything called a video game. When 'Pong' came out, it was awesome. — John Lasseter

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

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

Growing up, my favorite TV show was 'The Man From U.N.C.L.E.', hands down. — John Lasseter

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

I'm the biggest fan of animation. I love the history of animation, I know it well. — John Lasseter

I love movies that make me cry, because they're tapping into a real emotion in me, and I always think afterwards: how did they do that? — John Lasseter

I have met a lot of top chefs around the world during my travels. Each one of them has said 'Ratatouille' is their favorite movie and the only movie that truly captures what they do. — John Lasseter

When you're a director, you really live whatever you do. — 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

I believe in research. Each movie at Pixar involves research with college professors or taking trips to learn as much as we can about a particular subject matter. — John Lasseter

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

'Cars 2' is about a character learning to be himself. There's times in our lives where people always say, 'Well, you've gotta act differently. You should always be yourself.' That's the emotional core of the story. — John Lasseter

In computer animation, every detail has to be thought out, designed, modeled, shaded, placed and lit. The more you add, the more computer memory you need. — John Lasseter

I'm a big Disneyland nut. — John Lasseter

I was mentored by great Disney animators at the end of their careers. — 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

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

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

People who get into animation tend to be kids. We don't have to grow up. But also, animators are great observers, and there's this childlike wonder and interest in the world, the observation of little things that happen in life. — 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

In an animated film you can do whatever you want, but that doesn't mean you should do everything you want. — 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

There is such amazing talent at Disney. My job is 100% creative, and I am very excited to creatively lead them. — John Lasseter

Every animator is really an actor performing in slow motion, living the character a drawing at a time. — John Lasseter

'Cars' is a really personal story for me because, first of all, I grew up in Los Angeles - the car crazy capital. — John Lasseter

The magic of Disneyland, walking through the tunnel underneath the train station to Main Street, it just transports you to other places and other times. — John Lasseter

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

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

The more we all help each other, the more we all benefit. So go out there. Help others. — 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

I've noticed with my own kids, it seems like they have so much more homework than I did. — John Lasseter

When you take something that's inert, and through motion, give it life, make it appear to be alive, living, breathing thinking and having emotions, that's animation. But when you take something that's live-action, and move a part of it, that's a special effect. — John Lasseter

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

Watching John Lasseter's films, I think I can understand better than anyone that what he's doing, is going straight ahead with his vision and working really hard to get that vision into film form. And I feel that my understanding this of him is my friendship towards him. — Hayao Miyazaki

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 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

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

My father pulled into Pearl Harbor four days after the bombing, and he said, everything was still burning. He said they never told the public how bad it was. It was really bad. — John Lasseter

At Pixar, good ideas may be cut from a film, but they are never forgotten. — John Lasseter

But the truth is, at some point, our films - almost every single one of them - are really bad. And it's largely hats off to John Lasseter and Ed Catmull who have set up a system whereby they're expecting it. — Pete Docter

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

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

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

I love 3-D. I have been a big fan of 3-D for a long, long time. I took my 1988 wedding pictures in 3-D! — 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

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

For me, personally, I will always do G-rated films, which the world needs more of. — 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

The Walt Disney Animation studio is the studio that Walt Disney started himself in 1923, and it's never stopped and never closed its doors and never stopped making animation, and it keeps going as kind of the heart and soul of the company. — John Lasseter

I mean, they clearly have a process of how they go about making their movies, and John Lasseter has been instrumental in implementing that process for all three studios with the Brain Trust and the way we work and the way we break stories and how it's all creative led. There are no executives in the room. So I think all of that is embraced unilaterally. But that's the first time I've heard of that. — Klay Hall

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

Every Pixar film, when we start developing the story, it takes about four years to make one of our films. — John Lasseter

Look at the films of Walt Disney: 'Snow White' came out in February 1938, and I can't think of another film from that year that's watched as much. The same is true of 'Bambi,' 'Dumbo' ... even, frankly, 'Toy Story,' which is probably watched more than any other movie of 1995. — 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

Short films really helped me develop as a story teller, animator, and as a director. — John Lasseter

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

True play is creativity. — John Lasseter

My first jobs were at Pixar and John Lasseter just doing animation would always allow actors to do that, and then animate to that. It was an early lesson for me that, if you're lucky enough, as I've been in my career thus far, to get really incredible iconic people to do your stuff, you want them to tell your story and you want them to be on page in the important moments, and they usually are. — Dan Fogelman

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

If you've seen 'Spirited Away', 'Spirited Away' is set in a very, very Japanese sensibility. And so, to Japanese audiences, when Sen would walk up, the main character, and look at this big building with a flag on it with Japanese writing on it, everyone in Japan would know what that is. — John Lasseter

When I look at the success I have, it's because of my creative-thinking skills. — John Lasseter

Every Pixar movie at one time was the worst motion picture ever made. — John Lasseter

The specific influences on villains to me is, I love the villains who are really hyper-smart. When at the end of the movie you find out what they were about, and it makes absolutely perfect sense from their point of view. — John Lasseter

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

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

Walt Disney had always tried to get more dimension in his animation and when I saw these tapes, I thought, This is it! This is what Walt was waiting for! But when I looked around, nobody at the studio at the time was even halfway interested in it. — 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

When Lasseter got his next paycheck, it contained a small bonus. "You have to use this to buy a new car," Steve told him. "It has to be safe, and I have to approve it." John and Nancy picked out a Volvo, and Steve approved. — Brent Schlender

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

There was a period of time when they estimated the two biggest stars in Hollywood were Charlie Chaplin and Mickey Mouse. — 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'm really proud of 'Cars.' 'Cars,' when it first came out, got probably the most mediocre reviews of a Pixar film. — John Lasseter

Animation is the one type of movie that really does play for the entire audience. Our challenge is to make stories that connect for kids and adults. — John Lasseter