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John Lasseter [1957-0] American

Rank: 101
Director, Chief creative officer of Pixar

John Alan Lasseter is an American animator and film director, who is the chief creative officer of Pixar Animation Studios, Walt Disney Animation Studios, and DisneyToon Studios. He is also the Principal Creative Advisor for Walt Disney Imagineering.
Lasseter began his career as an animator with The Walt Disney Company.

Technology, Car, Computers, Family, Home, Learning, Movies, Wedding, Alone, Amazing, Art, Cool, Design, Dreams, Leadership, Positive, Sad, Teacher, Trust

Quote	Tags	Rank
The art challenges the technology, and the technology inspires the art.	Art, Technology	101
Animation is the only thing I ever wanted to do in my whole life. I have no desire for live-action or anything else.		102
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.		103
I can't tell you, as a parent, how it feels when the doctor tells you your child has diabetes. First off, you don't really know much about it. Then you discover there is no cure.		104
There was a period of time when they estimated the two biggest stars in Hollywood were Charlie Chaplin and Mickey Mouse.		105
'Cars' was about Lightning McQueen learning to slow down and to enjoy life. The journey is the reward.	Learning	106
You can achieve all the things you want to do, but it's much better to do it with loved ones around you; family and friends, people that you care about that can help you on the way and can celebrate you, and you can enjoy the journey.	Family	107
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.		108
Computers don't create computer animation any more than a pencil creates pencil animation. What creates computer animation is the artist.	Computers	109
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.	Cool, Home	110
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.	Alone	111
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.		112
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.		113
Sunday, for me, is all about being home with the family with no plans.	Family, Home	114
What I love about Goofy is the flesh on his cheeks. You can almost feel it.		115
I don't believe that an animation studio should be an executive-driven studio.		116
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.		117
I've got Disney blood running through my veins.		118
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.	Movies	119
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.'	Trust	120
I believe in research you cannot do enough research; believability comes out of what's real.		121
Today, among little girls especially, princesses and the romanticised ideal they represent - finding the man of your dreams - have a limited shelf life.	Dreams	122
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.		123
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.		124
Of all studios that should be doing 2-D animation, it should be Disney.		125
A good part of my leadership skills is crafted from learning from experiences early in my career that were not positive experiences.	Leadership, Learning, Positive	126
I'm a big fan of pantomime storytelling, being an animator.		201
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.		202
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!	Wedding	203
In overseeing both Disney and Pixar Animation, each studio has a unique culture.		204
'Cars' is a really personal story for me because, first of all, I grew up in Los Angeles - the car crazy capital.	Car	205
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.		206
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.		207
I do what I do because of Walt Disney - his films and his theme park and his characters and his joy in entertaining.		208
If you're sitting in your minivan, playing your computer animated films for your children in the back seat, is it the animation that's entertaining you as you drive and listen? No, it's the storytelling. That's why we put so much importance on story. No amount of great animation will save a bad story.	Movies	209
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.		210
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.		211
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.		212
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.		213
I've noticed with my own kids, it seems like they have so much more homework than I did.		214
Art challenges technology, but technology inspires the art.	Technology	215
True play is creativity.		216
People want to be creatively satisfied, and having fun is such an important part of that.		217
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.	Technology	218
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.		219
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.		220
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.		221
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.		222
I do what I do because of Walt Disney. Goofy. Mickey Mouse. I never forgot how their films entertained me.		223
I am, by nature, an honest person. I wear my emotions on my sleeve. There is no 'behind closed doors' with me.		224
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.		225
When you set out to really entertain adults as well as kids, your audience is basically anybody who is breathing.		226
Toys are put on this Earth to be played with by a child.		301
Short films really helped me develop as a story teller, animator, and as a director.		302
'Cars' is simply near and dear to my heart.		303
Winnie the Pooh and his friends from the Hundred Acre Wood are among the most entertaining and beloved characters ever animated by Disney.		304
I'm a car nut. My father was a parts manager at a Chevrolet dealership.	Car	305
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.		306
I'm a big Disneyland nut.		307
I've often heard people say that managing creative people is the hardest thing in the world. 'They're never happy, they drive up the cost of things, blah blah blah.' I just manage people the way I always wanted to be managed. That is, to be creatively challenged, but never to be told what to do.		308
I have motor oil running through my veins.		309
'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.		310
I never quite understood why Disney hadn't made a sincere fairy tale since 'Beauty and the Beast.'		311
I love working for a company full of geeks.		312
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.		313
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.		314
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.		315
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.	Wedding	316
When I was a freshman in high school, I read a book about the making of Disney's 'Sleeping Beauty' called 'The Art of Animation.' It was this weird revelation for me, because I hadn't considered that people actually get paid to make cartoons.		317
When Walt Disney was making his films, he trusted his instincts and made films for himself, but they appealed to everybody, not just kids.		318
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.'	Sad	319
'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.		320
I love the work of Hayao Miyazaki. 'My Neighbor Totoro' and 'Castle in the Sky' are two of the great films that he's made that I just love.		321
Every young person gets so excited about new software packages and new technology.		322
Every Pixar film, when we start developing the story, it takes about four years to make one of our films.		323
Pixar films are not realistic. They are believable for the worlds we are creating.		324
You cannot base a whole movie on just the imagery alone. It has to be the story and the characters.		325
I realized that people make cartoons for a living. It had never dawned on me that you could do this as a career.		326
In dire economic times, movies are relatively inexpensive entertainment for the whole family.		401
There is such amazing talent at Disney. My job is 100% creative, and I am very excited to creatively lead them.	Amazing	402
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?		403
Soon I learned that the worse the puns and jokes, the funnier they could be, if you knew how to deliver them.		404
Never in the history of cinema has a medium entertained an audience. It's what you do with the medium.		405
Everything I do and everything Pixar does is based on a simple rule: Quality is the best business plan, period.		406
When I look at the success I have, it's because of my creative-thinking skills.		407
Walt Disney always said, 'For every laugh, there should be a tear.' I believe in that.		408
My mother was a high school arts teacher, so I was always surrounded by the arts.	Teacher	409
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.		410
With science, there is this culture of experimentation, and most of the time, those experiments fail.		411
Growing up, my favorite TV show was 'The Man From U.N.C.L.E.', hands down.		412
I believe once you watch a Miyazaki film, you'll get hooked.		413
At Pixar, good ideas may be cut from a film, but they are never forgotten.		414
At Pixar, we do sequels only when we come up with a great idea, and we always strive to be different than the original.		415
Pixar is not about computers, it's about people.	Computers	416
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.		417
I laugh very hard at work every day.		418
You know, going to the movies has always been recession-proof. It's fairly cheap entertainment; it's classic escapism.		419
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.		420
Take any movie with an actor you like. Turn your head and just listen to the performance. In some cases, the physical presence remains as strong when you can't see the actor, when it's just the voice.		421
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.		422
I love the Sonoma wine community. It's like Pixar - nothing competitive, only supportive. They're always rooting for you.		423
I love bringing the inanimate object to life.		424
I'm really proud of 'Cars.' 'Cars,' when it first came out, got probably the most mediocre reviews of a Pixar film.		425
I was mentored by great Disney animators at the end of their careers.		426
'Bolt' was made by Walt Disney Animation Studios, not by Pixar.		501
In an animated film you can do whatever you want, but that doesn't mean you should do everything you want.		502
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.		503
If you think something's stupid, it probably is.		504
I try to make pictures I would want to see.		505
The only thing Steve Jobs has ever asked me in all the years we've been together and have been partners, the only thing he has ever asked me is: 'Make it great.'		506
I would get so into playing as a kid that I'd lose track of time.		507
Every Pixar movie at one time was the worst motion picture ever made.		508
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.		509
For me, personally, I will always do G-rated films, which the world needs more of.		510
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!'		511
At Pixar, after every movie we have postmortum meetings where we discuss what worked and what didn't work.		512
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.		513
To me, I would much rather be part of a healthy industry than being the only player in a dead industry.		514
I think the best movie ever made was 'Dumbo.'		515
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.		516
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.		517
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.		518
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.		519
I believe God is in the details.		520
I love French auto design of the early '50s, '60s, early '70s of Citorens, Renaults, and Peugeots. They're so unique.	Design	521
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.		522
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.		523
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.		524
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.		525
I believe that, by directing, it makes me a better executive as well.		526
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.		601
The iPad changed my life!		602
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.		603
It's the nature of Hollywood that there are the people in power and the people who tell them what they want them to hear.		604
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.'		605
I've always been thinking in three dimensions, ever since I started working with computer animation in the early '80s.		606
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.		607
'Finding Nemo' was originally shot in 3D.		608
I don't really think of myself as a businessman at all. That's why I have the 'chief creative officer' role.		609
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.		610
At Pixar, we've been huge fans of any new technology that makes the viewer experience of our movies better. Blu-ray is the best yet because the picture quality, especially for our movies, is unbelievable.		611
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.		612
I'm a huge fan of Blu-rays myself.		613
Probably more than any other movie we've made here at Pixar, 'Up' was the one we were the most nervous about.		614
When you're a director, you really live whatever you do.		615

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