John Lasseter got fired from Disney.<\/p>\n
There are certain magazines in every shrink’s waiting room.\u00c2\u00a0 You can count on "The New Yorker" and "National Geographic".\u00c2\u00a0 And there are good odds you’ll see "The New York Review Of Books".<\/p>\n
Find yourself in therapy long enough, and you end up with subscriptions to these journals.\u00c2\u00a0 You’re sick of being unable to finish articles.\u00c2\u00a0 Arriving early, since you’re paying by the minute, you’ve always got time to start, but never to complete.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s taken me months to finish articles in "The New York Review Of Books".\u00c2\u00a0 I finally broke down and got my own subscription.<\/p>\n
I’ve gotten "The New Yorker" forever.\u00c2\u00a0 And, upon getting a good offer for "National Geographic", I got that too.\u00c2\u00a0 So all there was to read in my shrink’s office was "The New York Review Of Books", and I’ve gotten hooked.\u00c2\u00a0 The articles are usually not reviews, but exhaustive discourses on subjects as diverse as politics and pre-code films.<\/p>\n
But I wasn’t going to subscribe for $69, the price listed on the blow-in card.\u00c2\u00a0 But getting an offer for half of that, I ponied up, nevertheless fearful I was never going to have time to read the damn thing.\u00c2\u00a0 But if I can find just a few good articles a year, it’s worth it.\u00c2\u00a0 I don’t believe in needing to read every piece in a magazine.\u00c2\u00a0 Do you eat everything on your plate?\u00c2\u00a0 Forget that, my childhood training leaves me unable to leave anything…<\/p>\n
Anyway, I’m on my third issue of "The New York Review Of Books", and the article that hooked me this time was "Pixar Genius", by Christian Caryl.\u00c2\u00a0 Ostensibly a review of three Pixar books, in reality it was an exploration of "Wall-E" and Pixar genius.<\/p>\n
"The Wall Street Journal" castigated "Wall-E" for its anti-corporate views and "The New York Times" cited the lack of feminism. Proving that if you listen to your critics, you’re screwed.\u00c2\u00a0 For Pixar has a perfect record, ten out of ten.\u00c2\u00a0 In a business where supposedly no one knows anything, obviously John Lasseter and his team at Pixar know something.<\/p>\n
I like "Wall-E".\u00c2\u00a0 But I think the best movie of the twenty first century is "Finding Nemo".\u00c2\u00a0 Not the best animated movie, the best movie period.\u00c2\u00a0 You’ve got fear, joy and even an LSD trip (what else do you call that adventure in the current?)\u00c2\u00a0 And although the imagery is dazzling, it’s the story that grabbed me.\u00c2\u00a0 "Finding Nemo" may be a cartoon, but it’s positively human, mesmerizing.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s cool to blow up stuff on screen, but it doesn’t stick with you, doesn’t haunt you.\u00c2\u00a0 Pixar’s films haunt you.<\/p>\n
Deep in the article there’s a quote from Ed Catmull, one of Pixar’s founders:<\/p>\n
"Creative power in a film has to reside with the film’s creative leadership.\u00c2\u00a0 As obvious as this might seem, it’s not true of many companies in the movie industry and, I suspect, a lot of others."<\/p>\n
Corporations are run by MBAs.\u00c2\u00a0 Corporations are ruled by the numbers.\u00c2\u00a0 Chances can’t be taken, the bottom line must be protected.\u00c2\u00a0 Albums must be delivered in the fourth quarter.\u00c2\u00a0 Blow a deadline and annual revenue is screwed.<\/p>\n
During the golden age of music, the acts were in control.\u00c2\u00a0 They cut the albums in a studio of their choosing and delivered finished product.\u00c2\u00a0 Was all of it good?\u00c2\u00a0 Of course not.\u00c2\u00a0 But when artists got it right, the audience was enraptured with the adventure.\u00c2\u00a0 Rather than worrying about creating three minute singles, the Who did a whole rock opera.\u00c2\u00a0 Might seem quaint today, but it was revolutionary back then.<\/p>\n
John Lasseter lost his job at Disney back in ’86.\u00c2\u00a0 Fired by an old line animator who said there was no future in computer animation. Just like there’s no future in digital music.<\/p>\n
Lasseter slept under his desk, and a decade later delivered Pixar’s first hit, "Toy Story".<\/p>\n
The computer animation was a delicious novelty, but what made the movie successful was its three-dimensionality, not in imaging, but character.\u00c2\u00a0 Everybody wasn’t good or bad, life was complicated.<\/p>\n
With the success of Pixar came numerous imitators.\u00c2\u00a0 Some of them financially successful.\u00c2\u00a0 But despite being created on computers, these trifles are just that, they don’t stick to the viewer’s bones, you leave the theatre and forget them.\u00c2\u00a0 In other words, Pixar’s movies are about story.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s not the images, but the cerebral content.<\/p>\n
John Lasseter now runs Disney animation, the same way Steve Jobs, Pixar’s owner during its commercial explosion, runs Apple once again.\u00c2\u00a0 Both were exiled, they weren’t suits, they didn’t play by the anointed rules.\u00c2\u00a0 But absent these two, their respective corporations foundered.\u00c2\u00a0 Ruled by the bottom line, they lacked not only sizzle and pizzazz, but substance.<\/p>\n
An Apple devotee will buy everything by the company, despite a questionable need for such.<\/p>\n
Same deal with Pixar, once hooked you won’t miss a movie.<\/p>\n
This is the devotion the music business once specialized in.<\/p>\n
It’s gone.<\/p>\n
Because corporatists told the artists what the music had to sound like, what deals to make, how to act.\u00c2\u00a0 Occasionally it works, but the audience knows it’s phony, there’s little devotion.\u00c2\u00a0 So, an act can have a hit single and sell no albums.\u00c2\u00a0 And despite ruling the Top Forty, no one wants to see these hitmakers.\u00c2\u00a0 The problem is not the audience, the problem is the company.<\/p>\n
Technology now allows artists to do it themselves.\u00c2\u00a0 But so far, no benign benefactor has come along to pump in the money until they get it right.\u00c2\u00a0 You can get the cash you need to develop, Pixar needed millions, but you won’t be encouraged to follow your dream but to deliver…something successful, that will rain down coin.<\/p>\n
The acts that sustain deliver more than hits.\u00c2\u00a0 Their music touches us, makes us feel human, stimulates us to explore our decisions, our future path.\u00c2\u00a0 The magic is hard to codify, and even more difficult to create, so today’s companies have stopped trying.\u00c2\u00a0 Easier to have a good-looking act work with Timbaland and get a leg up.<\/p>\n
Sure, an artist considers commerciality.\u00c2\u00a0 But he doesn’t sacrifice his identity, his muse, in pursuit of money.\u00c2\u00a0 A great artist says no more than yes.\u00c2\u00a0 A great artist stands on his music, not his marketing.\u00c2\u00a0 A great artist is willing to take risks.\u00c2\u00a0 A great artist doesn’t give up when he hits roadblocks.\u00c2\u00a0 And great artists often take years to triumph.\u00c2\u00a0 Instead of placing all our hopes and dreams on the barely pubescent, better to develop talent, place one’s bets and support one’s acts.<\/p>\n
But that’s too risky.<\/p>\n
But today’s path is too risky.\u00c2\u00a0 Reinventing the wheel with every release.\u00c2\u00a0 Mariah Carey delays the release of her album when her single stiffs.\u00c2\u00a0 If you believe in your project, you don’t have to tweak it, don’t have to redo it.\u00c2\u00a0 You’re the final arbiter, not some suit at a company.<\/p>\n
I’m eagerly awaiting the next Pixar release.<\/p>\n
Used to be I waited with bated breath for the new release of musicians.<\/p>\n
Those days are through.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n
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John Lasseter got fired from Disney. There are certain magazines in every shrink’s waiting room.\u00c2\u00a0 You can count on "The New Yorker" and "National Geographic".\u00c2\u00a0 And there are good odds you’ll see "The New York Review Of Books". Find yourself in therapy long enough, and you end up with subscriptions to these journals.\u00c2\u00a0 You’re sick […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2276","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-media"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p96vPs-AI","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2276","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2276"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2276\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2277,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2276\/revisions\/2277"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2276"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2276"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2276"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}