John Lasseter
John Alan Lasseter (/ˈlæsətər/ LASS-ə-tər; born January 12, 1957)[5] is an American film director, producer, and animator. He has served as the Head of Animation at Skydance Animation since 2019.[6] Previously, he acted as the chief creative officer of Pixar Animation Studios, Walt Disney Animation Studios, and Disneytoon Studios, as well as the Principal Creative Advisor for Walt Disney Imagineering.[7]
John Lasseter
- Film director
- producer
- screenwriter
- animator
- voice actor
1978–present
- Walt Disney Animation Studios (1979–1983, 2006–2018)
- Lucasfilm (1983–1986)
- Pixar Animation Studios (1986–2018)
- Skydance Animation (2019–present)[1]
5[3]
Academy Award (1989, 1996)
Golden Globe Award (2007)
Inkpot Award (2009)[4]
Lasseter began his career as an animator with The Walt Disney Company. After being fired from Disney for promoting computer animation, he joined Lucasfilm, where he worked on then-groundbreaking usage of CGI animation. The Graphics Group of the Computer Division of Lucasfilm was sold to Steve Jobs and became Pixar in 1986. Lasseter oversaw all of Pixar's films and associated projects. He personally directed Toy Story (1995), A Bug's Life (1998), Toy Story 2 (1999), Cars (2006), and Cars 2 (2011), and executive-produced all other Pixar films through 2018. From 2006 to 2018, Lasseter also oversaw all of Walt Disney Animation Studios' (and its division Disneytoon Studios') films and associated projects as executive producer.
His works have grossed more than US$19 billion, making him one of the most financially successful filmmakers of all time. Of the eight animated films that have grossed over US$1 billion, five of them were executive produced by Lasseter: Toy Story 3 (2010)—the first animated film to surpass $1 billion—and Frozen (2013)—the third-highest-grossing animated film of all time—as well as Zootopia (2016), Finding Dory (2016), and Incredibles 2 (2018). Frozen also held the title of the highest-grossing animated film of all time until 2019, and was the fifth-highest-grossing film of all time at the end of its theatrical run. He has won two Academy Awards, for Best Animated Short Film (for Tin Toy), as well as a Special Achievement Award (for Toy Story).[8]
In November 2017, Lasseter took a six-month sabbatical from Pixar and Disney Animation after acknowledging what he called "missteps" in his behavior with employees.[9] According to various news outlets, Lasseter had a history of alleged sexual misconduct toward employees.[10][11] In June 2018, Disney announced that he would be leaving the company at the end of the year when his contract expired; he took on a consulting role until then.[12][13] Following his departure from Disney and Pixar, Lasseter was later hired by Skydance founder and CEO David Ellison to run the animation division Skydance Animation.[1]
Early life[edit]
John Alan Lasseter was born on January 12, 1957, in Hollywood, California.[5] His mother, Jewell Mae (née Risley; 1918–2005), was an art teacher at Bell Gardens High School, and his father, Paul Eual Lasseter (1924–2011), was a parts manager at a Chevrolet dealership.[14][15][16]
Lasseter is a fraternal twin; his sister Johanna Lasseter-Curtis, who became a baker based in the Lake Tahoe area, is six minutes older.[17][18]
Lasseter grew up in Whittier, California. His mother's profession contributed to his growing preoccupation with animation. He often drew cartoons during church services at the Church of Christ church his family attended. As a child, Lasseter would race home from school to watch Chuck Jones cartoons on television. While in high school, he read The Art of Animation by Bob Thomas. The book covered the history of Disney animation and explored the making of Disney's 1959 film Sleeping Beauty, which made Lasseter realize he wanted to do animation himself. When he saw Disney's 1963 film The Sword in the Stone, he finally made the decision that he should become an animator.[19] He then read Preston Blair's book about animation, and made flipbooks based on Blair's walk cycles. One of his friends had a Super 8 camera that shot single frames, which was used to shoot some of his earlier animation efforts.[20]
Lasseter heard of a new character animation program at the California Institute of the Arts (often abbreviated as 'CalArts') and decided to follow his dream of becoming an animator. His mother further encouraged him to take up a career in animation, and in 1975 he enrolled as the second student (Jerry Rees was the first)[21] in the CalArts Character Animation program created by Disney animators Jack Hannah and T. Hee. Lasseter was taught by three members of Disney's Nine Old Men team of veteran animators—Eric Larson, Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston—and his classmates included future animators and directors like Brad Bird, John Musker, Henry Selick, Tim Burton, and Chris Buck.[22][23][24] During his time there, he produced two animated shorts—Lady and the Lamp (1979) and Nitemare (1980)—which each won the student Academy Award for Animation.[25]
While at CalArts, Lasseter first started working for the Walt Disney Company at Disneyland in Anaheim during summer breaks and got a job as a Jungle Cruise skipper, where he learned the basics of comedy and comic timing to entertain captive audiences on the ride.[17][26]
Career[edit]
First years at Disney[edit]
Upon graduating in 1979, Lasseter immediately obtained a job as an animator at Walt Disney Productions mostly due to his success with his student project, Lady and the Lamp.[27] The studio had reviewed approximately 10,000 portfolios in the late 1970s in search of talent, then selected only about 150 candidates as apprentices, of which only about 45 were kept on permanently.[27] In the fall of 1979, Disney animator Mel Shaw told the Los Angeles Times that "John's got an instinctive feel for character and movement and shows every indication of blossoming here at our studios ... In time, he'll make a fine contribution."[27] At that same time, Lasseter worked on a sequence titled "The Emperor and the Nightingale" (based on The Nightingale by Hans Christian Andersen) for a Disney project called Musicana. Musicana was never released but eventually led to the development of Fantasia 2000 (1999).[28]
However, after 101 Dalmatians (1961), which in Lasseter's opinion was the film where Disney had reached its highest plateau, he felt that the studio had lost momentum and was often repeating itself.[29][30] Between 1980 and 1981, he coincidentally came across some video tapes from one of the then new computer-graphics conferences, who showed some of the very beginnings of computer animation, primarily floating spheres and such, which he experienced as a revelation.[17] But it was not until shortly after, when he was invited by his friends Jerry Rees and Bill Kroyer, while working on Mickey's Christmas Carol (1983), to come and see the first light cycle sequences for an upcoming film entitled Tron (1982), featuring state-of-the-art computer-generated imagery (CGI), that he saw the huge potential of this new technology in animation. Up to that time, the studio had used a multiplane camera to add depth to its animation. Lasseter realized that computers could be used to make films with three-dimensional backgrounds where traditionally animated characters could interact to add a new level of visually stunning depth that had not been possible before. He knew adding dimension to animation had been a longtime dream of animators, going back to Walt Disney.[17]
Later, he and Glen Keane talked about how great it would be to make an animated feature where the background was computer-animated, and then showed Keane the book The Brave Little Toaster by Thomas Disch, which he thought would be a good candidate for the film. Keane agreed, but first, they decided to do a short test film to see how it worked out and chose Where the Wild Things Are, a decision based on the fact that Disney had considered producing a feature based on the works of Maurice Sendak. Satisfied with the result, Lasseter, Keane and executive Thomas L. Wilhite went on with the project, especially Lasseter who dedicated himself to it, while Keane eventually went on to work with The Great Mouse Detective (1986).[31]
Lasseter and his colleagues unknowingly stepped on some of their direct superiors' toes by circumventing them in their enthusiasm to get the Where the Wild Things Are project into motion. The project was canceled while being pitched to two of Lasseter's supervisors, animation administrator Ed Hansen, and head of Disney studios, Ron W. Miller, due to lack of perceived cost benefits for the mix of traditional and computer animation.[32] A few minutes after the meeting, Lasseter was summoned by Hansen to his office. As Lasseter recalled, Hansen told him, "Well, John, your project is now complete, so your employment with the Disney Studios is now terminated."[33]: 40 Wilhite, who was part of Disney's live-action group and therefore had no obligations to the animation studio, was able to arrange to keep Lasseter around temporarily until the Wild Things test project was complete in January 1984, but with the understanding there would be no further work for Lasseter at Disney Animation.[33]: 40 [34] The Brave Little Toaster would later become a 2D animated feature film directed by one of Lasseter's friends, Jerry Rees, and co-produced by Wilhite (who had, by then, left to start Hyperion Pictures), and some of the staff of Pixar would be involved in the film alongside Lasseter.