Quotes & Sayings About Pixar

Internet services at Apple, Jobs's wingman in dealing with content companies. ANDREA "ANDY" CUNNINGHAM. Publicist at Regis McKenna's firm who handled Apple in the early Macintosh years. MICHAEL EISNER. Hard-driving Disney CEO who made the Pixar deal, then clashed with Jobs. LARRY ELLISON. CEO of Oracle and personal friend of Jobs. — Walter Isaacson

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

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

Pixar started as a company that sold a special computer for doing digital animation; it took a while till they got into the moviemaking business. Similarly, Starbucks originally sold only coffee beans and coffee equipment; they hadn't planned to sell coffee by the cup. — Reid Hoffman

I think Pixar has the opportunity to be the next Disney
not replace Disney
but be the next Disney. — Steve Jobs

Pixar has announced Larry the Cable Guy will be starring in Cars 3 thru 6. Howie Mandel will be playing his sidekick, Mopey the Moped. — Andy Kindler

The Pixar people continuously amaze me. They come up with something that actually looks as though it takes place in this happy, real-world. Every plot line is not just plausible, but oddly authentic. The stories are full of adventure, humor and love. The characters are written with great human dimension. I don't know how they do it but they astound me. — Tom Hanks

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 mean, frankly, I'm not speaking as a representative of Disney or Pixar, I'm speaking as just myself as a filmmaker: I don't go into anything that often thinking about a sequel. — Andrew Stanton

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

I loved DreamWorks and Pixar, and I still love kids' films. — Taron Egerton

As far as I know, the guys at Pixar are opposed to a Monsters, Inc. sequel. — John Goodman

I keep thinking about all the time away from my family this will cause, and the time away from the other family at Pixar," Jobs said. "But the only reason I want to do it is that the world will be a better place with Apple in it. — Walter Isaacson

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

Apple is a wonderful company for its customers and investors. So, too, Pixar. (NeXT, not so much ... ) But Apple is also an engine of misery for its subcontracted Chinese workers. — Eric Alterman

At Pixar, Toy Story 2 taught us this lesson - that we must always be alert to shifting dynamics, because our future depends on it - once and for all. Begun as a direct-to-video sequel, the project proved not only that it was important to everyone that we weren't tolerating second-class films but also that everything we did - everything associated with our name - needed to be good. Thinking this way was not just about morale; it was a signal to everyone at Pixar that they were part owners of the company's greatest asset - its quality. — Ed Catmull

if not anyone else - that what we'd created at Pixar could work outside of Pixar. Both the run-up to the acquisition and its execution provided the ultimate case study, and as such, it was enormously exciting to be a part of. First, I'll talk about how the merger came to pass in the first place, because I believe we did several things in the very early stages that put our partnership on a strong footing. "GET TO KNOW Bob Iger," Steve had said. So a few weeks later, I did. — Ed Catmull

at Pixar, Steve couldn't shape the culture. He wasn't the founder, and even as owner, he could not change the company to reflect his image and sensibilities. It already had a culture. It already had a leader. Its cohesive and collaborative team knew exactly what it wanted to do. — Brent Schlender

How can you say anything other than Ratatouille is Pixar's best movie? Your a chef, for Christ's sake," Sue said.
Lou smiled at Sue's accusatory tone. She needed this distraction.
Harley rolled his eyes and said, "You're letting your biases show, Sue. Up uses music better- like a character. The opening fifteen minutes is some of the best filmmaking- ever. And who doesn't love a good squirrel joke?"
"But Ratatouille brings it all back to food." Sue waved a carrot in the air to emphasize her point. "They made you want to eat food cooked by a rat! I'd eat the food; it looked magnificent. That rat cooked what he loved; what tasted good. Like I've been telling Lou, we should cook food from the heart, not just the cookbook. — Amy E. Reichert

There's a lot of imagination in Asia, and I believe that the next Google will come from there, and the next Pixar. I believe that the great new media companies will come out of Asia and surpass the big media conglomerates that exist right now in the West. — Shekhar Kapur

At the casting sessions it was all boys and though I wasn't exactly bored I didn't need to be there, and songs constantly floating in the car keep commenting on everything neutral encased within the windshield's frame ( ... one time you were blowing young ruffians ... sung over the digital billboard on Sunset advertising the new Pixar movie) and the fear builds into a muted fury and then has no choice but to melt away into a simple and addictive sadness. — Bret Easton Ellis

In the thirteenth chapter of Creativity, Inc., Catmull talks about how the leadership teams at Disney and Pixar found solutions to the problems that arose during the merge of the two companies. They solved the problem by asking everyone who worked in the company for solutions rather than just leaving it up to the executives, which became known as Notes Day. — Top 50 Facts

I think it's the most extraordinary studio around. I would love to do my next project with Pixar. — Brad Bird

We can still do a stop motion feature for about one-third of what it costs Pixar or DreamWorks or Blue Sky to make a feature. But nobody is interested in a film that cost $50 to 60 million with the potential to do $120 million. They want to risk big money to make huge money. — Henry Selick

By this point Jobs had poured close to $50 million of his own money into Pixar - more than half of what he had pocketed when he cashed out of Apple - and he was still losing money at NeXT. He was hard-nosed about it; he forced all Pixar employees to give up their options as part of his agreement to add another round of personal funding in 1991. But he was also a romantic in his love for what artistry and technology could do together. — Walter Isaacson

What made Notes Day work? To me, it boils down to three factors. First, there was a clear and focused goal. This wasn't a free-for-all but a wide-ranging discussion (organized around topics suggested not by Human Resources or by Pixar's executives, but by the company's employees) aimed at addressing a specific reality: the need to cut our costs by 10 percent. While — Ed Catmull

That's not how most of Hollywood does it-which helps to explain why Pixar does so well. How are you changing the game in your field? What is your distinctive take on how your industry operates? Do you work as distinctively as you compete? — Bill Taylor

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

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 saw some Pixar movies like 'The Incredibles' and thought, 'This is extraordinary. These are some of the best movies I've seen.' — Michael Keaton

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

Once we can do Pixar-quality graphics rendered in real time with interactivity, I could see games costing $200 million to make, and all of a sudden you have to sell a lot of games just to break even, so I'm a little worried someone's going to do that. — Warren Spector

Actually, no, but I am close to the people who are working on Chicken Little, and I'm very close to the people over at Pixar. I mean, as far as stories are concerned, almost everything we have could be told that way. — Joe Grant

Dr. Paul Ekman, who worked in San Francisco - still does - which is where Pixar Animation Studios is, he had early in his career identified six. That felt like a nice, manageable number of guys to design and write for. It was anger, fear, sadness, disgust, joy and surprise. — Pete Docter

The man persisted. "No, no, no. It was so funny. What software did you use? - apparently in the belief that the software had built-in humor generation. — David A. Price

it seemed like every issue, big or small, that arose around this time was chalked up to the merger: "You said things wouldn't change! You're breaking your word! We don't want to lose the old Pixar!" I should say that this outcry came despite the fact that the measures we had put in place to protect Pixar's culture were working - and, in my view, were a model for how to maintain cultural integrity after a merger. — Ed Catmull

I think, in Japan, animation isn't relegated to being a genre unto itself. It's just a medium by which you can tell any number of stories, be it horror or action or adventure or drama or whatever, and we're trying to do that as well. Every film that you go see from Pixar, we're hoping is a little bit of a surprise. — Pete Docter

Earlier that year Jobs had been hoping to find a buyer for Pixar that would let him merely recoup the $50 million he had put in. By the end of the day the shares he had retained - 80% of the company - were worth more than twenty times that, an astonishing $1.2 billion. That was about five times what he'd made when Apple went public in 1980. But Jobs told John Markoff of the New York Times that the money did not mean much to him. "There's no yacht in my future," he said. "I've never done this for the money. — Walter Isaacson

I've always been intrigued, for example, by the way that many people use the analogy of a train to describe their companies. Massive and powerful, the train moves inexorably down the track, over mountains and across vast plains, through the densest fog and darkest night. When things go wrong, we talk of getting "derailed" and of experiencing a "train wreck." And I've heard people refer to Pixar's production group as a finely tuned locomotive that they would love the chance to drive. What interests me is the number of people who believe that they have the ability to drive the train and who think that this is the power position - that driving the train is the way to shape their companies' futures. The truth is, it's not. Driving the train doesn't set its course. The real job is laying the track. — Ed Catmull

Each one of the films get built up and strengthened and reinforced, and we're not afraid to rip stuff out and redo it until we feel it's worthy of the 'Pixar' name. — Pete Docter

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

Pixar makes movies that make sense for Pixar, and Disney makes movies that make sense for Disney, and they've each emerged in their own unique way. — John Kahrs

Well, we try to - we definitely try to have a balance. And I think things have gotten a lot better at Pixar. When we did "Toy Story," that was an all hands on deck situation that really was time intensive. — Pete Docter

I'm really proud of 'Cars.' 'Cars,' when it first came out, got probably the most mediocre reviews of a Pixar film. — John Lasseter

When I went to Pixar, I became aware of a great divide. Tech companies don't understand creativity. They don't appreciate intuitive thinking, like the ability of an A&R guy at a music label to listen to a hundred artists and have a feel for which five might be successful. And they think that creative people just sit around on couches all day and are undisciplined, because they've not seen how driven and disciplined the creative folks at places like Pixar are. On the other hand, music companies are completely clueless about technology. They think they can just go out and hire a few tech folks. But that would be like Apple trying to hire people to produce music. We'd get second-rate A&R people, just like the music companies ended up with second-rate tech people. I'm one of the few people who understands how producing technology requires intuition and creativity, and how producing something artistic takes real discipline. — Walter Isaacson

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

studios down. (He also thought, frankly, that making us the stewards of both entities would guarantee that Pixar's traditions didn't get overtaken by those of the much larger corporation, the Walt Disney Company.) — Ed Catmull

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

The saddest day in Pixar history was when some guy said 'get Larry the Cable Guy on the phone. — Andy Kindler

The way Pixar has always worked is that we think of an idea and then we make it. We don't develop lots of ideas and then pick one. — Andrew Stanton

I feel kind of fortunate that over the last 25 years I've been in almost every Disney/Pixar film. — Bob Bergen

Left to their own devices, most people don't want to fail. But Andrew Stanton isn't most people. As I've mentioned, he's known around Pixar for repeating the phrases "fail early and fail fast" and "be wrong as fast as you can." He thinks of failure like learning to ride a bike; it isn't conceivable that you would learn to do this without making mistakes - without toppling over a few times. "Get a bike that's as low to the ground as you can find, put on elbow and knee pads so you're not afraid of falling, and go," he says. If you apply this mindset to everything new you attempt, you can begin to subvert the negative connotation associated with making mistakes. Says Andrew: "You wouldn't say to somebody who is first learning to play the guitar, 'You better think really hard about where you put your fingers on the guitar neck before you strum, because you only get to strum once, and that's it. And if you get that wrong, we're going to move on.' That's no way to learn, is it? — Ed Catmull

Remember, Steve Jobs didn't promise that Apple's next product would change the world. Jobs said that he would change the world. It didn't matter if the vehicle was the Lisa, The Mac, or even Pixar Studios. Any individual endeavor might fail, but he was 100% certain he would eventually achieve his goals. — Charlie Houpert

In Hollywood, they think drawn animation doesn't work anymore, computers are the way. They forget that the reason computers are the way is that Pixar makes good movies. So everybody tries to copy Pixar. They're relying too much on the technology and not enough on the artists. — Tim Burton

When I was at Pixar, I was in my hole. I was an animator, I had my shots and I was like, "Yeah, I've gotta make this perfect!" It's a very selfish thing. — John Kahrs

In 1995, when Steve Jobs was trying to convince us that we should go public, one of his key arguments was that we would eventually make a film that failed at the box office, and we needed to be prepared, financially, for that day. Going public would give us the capital to fund our own projects and, thus, to have more say about where we were headed, but it would also give us a buffer that could sustain us through failure. Steve's feeling was that Pixar's survival could not depend solely on the performance of each and every movie. The underlying logic of his reasoning shook me: We were going to screw up, it was inevitable. And we didn't know when or how. We had to prepare, then, for an unknown problem - a hidden problem. From that day on, I resolved to bring as many hidden problems as possible to light, a process that would require what might seem like an uncommon commitment to self-assessment. — Ed Catmull

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

When Pixar calls and says, 'Hey, you wanna be in a Pixar movie?' you don't do a lot of contemplating! — Larry The Cable Guy

At Pixar, I don't have to compromise at all. When I look at the finished "Toy Story 3," I don't sit and constantly think, oh, the actor was having a bad day, or oh, it rained and we couldn't use that set. The story that I wanted to tell is what is on screen, and I haven't had to compromise it one iota. — Lee Unkrich

First, it created an electronic suggestion box where Pixar people could submit discussion topics they thought would help us become more innovative and more efficient. Immediately, topic ideas began flooding in, along with suggestions about how to run Notes Day itself. — Ed Catmull

People will turn their noses up at a sequel or that type of thing, but Pixar really works hard - if they're making a sequel - to make a sequel an original movie, to make it an original story. — Dan Scanlon

Pixar is seen by a lot of folks as an overnight success, but if you really look closely, most overnight successes took a long time. — Steve Jobs

I love all the Pixar movies, and I like 'Happy Feet Two.' 'Cause it has a lot of babies. — Quvenzhane Wallis

The way we work at Pixar is we write the script, but then we quickly move on into story reel, which is basically like a comic-book version of the film. And then we do our own dialogue and music and sound effects, all in an effort to be able to basically sit in the theater and watch the movie before we shoot it, essentially. — Pete Docter

Working at Pixar you learn the really honest, hard way of making a great movie, which is to surround yourself with people who are much smarter than you, much more talented than you, and incite constructive criticism; you'll get a much better movie out of it. — Andrew Stanton

The first 'Monsters, Inc.' represents starting at Pixar for me, I have a special place in my heart for it. So to be able to tell a story with those ideas is an honor. — Dan Scanlon

The thing that drives me and my colleagues at both Apple and Pixar is that you see something very compelling to you, and you don't quite know how to get to it, but you know, sometimes intuitively, it's within your grasp. And it's worth putting in years of your life to make it come into existence. — Steve Jobs

Now that had worked very successfully at Pixar, and he ended up adding one at Walt Disney Animation and one at DTS. So, I'm part of that Brain Trust where I sit in on all things creative for the whole studio, but especially in the Planes area. — Klay Hall

I felt a particular attachment, naturally, to the Superman character and really dug deep, but at the same time, I am a passionate fan, be it Star Wars, be it the entire Marvel catalog, be it the DC catalog, or the original thinking at Pixar. I'm a fan first, so I'm always curious to see the way people express themselves and how it's being done. — Joseph McGinty Nichol

I would say that Pixar is doing for animation what Chaplin did for film, infusing it with heart and characters that you care about and stories that you lose yourself in. They are similar revolutionaries and changing a medium. — Rob McClure

I don't want to fail, of course. But even though I didn't know how bad things really were, I still had a lot to think about before I said yes. I had to consider the implications for Pixar, for my family, for my reputation. I decided that I didn't really care, because this is what I want to do. If I try my best and fail, well, I've tried my best. — Steve Jobs

I don't think at Pixar we'd ever make something that was too scary for general audiences. — Dan Scanlon

Oh yeah, I'm still employed at Pixar and I love it here. — Brad Bird

Working at Pixar has been like my graduate school for screenwriting. — Michael Arndt

Pixar is the first studio that is a movie star. — Roger Ebert

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

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

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

Had the rights to make all the sequels and exploit the characters. I made a presentation that said, here's the 15% of Pixar that Disney does not already own. So that's — Walter Isaacson

The very first thing I saw at this year's Telluride Film Festival was sheer bliss. "Lava," a musical romance from Pixar Animation, was one of the shorts that traditionally precede almost every festival screening; the director was James Ford Murphy. The story, spanning millions of years in 7 minutes, starts with a lonely Hawaiian volcano who, crooning to ukulele accompaniment, yearns for "someone to lava. — Anonymous

If you have a kid and you try irony out on them, they don't get it at 7, 8 years old. You can't really hide the Internet from kids. It worries me some particularly because I've done Disney and Pixar stuff. — Randy Newman

I had never touched a computer in my life before I came to Pixar. — Andrew Stanton

What makes Disney movies and Pixar movies always so good, hey take time and they're constantly honing, and tweaking, and rejiggering things, and taking influences from every cog, including myself, that can help. Any place where there can be inspiration. They make every moment very layered and very rich. — Sarah Silverman

There's always room out there for the hand-drawn image. I personally like the imperfection of hand drawing as opposed to the slick look of computer animation. But you can do good stuff either way. The Pixar movies are amazing in what they do, but there's plenty of independent animators who are doing really amazing things as well. — Matt Groening

Story telling is joke telling. — Andrew Stanton

The silliness-much of which is clearly intentional-is blended with some genuine grandeur. The Pixar touch is evident in the precision of the visual detail and in the wit and energy of Michael Giacchino's score, but the quality control that has been exercised over this project also has a curiously undermining effect. The movie eagerly sells itself as semitrashy, almost-campy fun, but it is so lavish and fussy that you can't help thinking that it wants to be taken seriously, and therefore you laugh at, rather than with, its mock sublimity. — A.O. Scott

But the world of Despicable Me is such a cartoony world. It is much more Looney Tunes than I would say the Pixar world or those movies. We can get away with a little more, although I know some people responded negatively to the Iron Maiden beat in the first movie where it looks like Edith. — Cinco Paul

I like doing everything. That's why I came to Pixar, as opposed to Disney or any other studio - it's small. At the time I started, I was, like, the 10th person in the animation group, and we all had to do everything. That's the way I like it, keeping it fresh. — Pete Docter

The thing about working at Pixar is that everyone around you is smarter and funnier and cleverer than you and they all think the same about everyone else. It's a nice problem to have. — Andrew Stanton

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

To tell you the truth, I hadn't seen any Pixar until I went to see 'Wall-E,' and I watched it and I was shocked to see how adult it was, with the setting in our lives, both present and future, and how they dealt with it ... And then quite relieved to find that the one I was working on, 'Up,' how adult it was. — Ed Asner

Most Pixar films are better than most live action films. — Wesley Morris

What makes Pixar special is that we acknowledge we will always have problems, many of them hidden from our view; that we work hard to uncover these problems, even if doing so means making ourselves uncomfortable; and that, when we come across a problem, we marshal all of our energies to solve it. This, more than any elaborate party or turreted workstation, is why I love coming to work in the morning. It is what motivates me and gives me a definite sense of mission. — Ed Catmull

One of the head guys at Disney categorically said to me, 'We don't want to make children's films any more. We want to make films that are going to appeal to all quadrants.' Hence you have films like 'Shrek' and all the Pixar stuff, which is designed to suit everybody. — Gurinder Chadha

Why would I ever want to run Disney? Wouldn't it make more sense just to sell them Pixar and retire? — Steve Jobs

If I knew in 1986 how much it was going to cost to keep Pixar going, I doubt if I would have bought the company. — Steve Jobs

Anything that has to do with Disney and Pixar, I am on board with. That is where my heart and family are. So when they call, I jump. — Jodi Benson

It's hard dealing with day to day disappointments and feeling like you can't find success. Especially when your best friend is Pixar. — Dane Cook