Home of the Toys

By Cathy Booth/Richmond

Over in "Frogtown," the chief technology officer is munching on a veggie burrito, musing on the emotional motivation of Jessie the Cowgirl, Woody's new sidekick in Toy Story 2. Across the street in "Bugville," the corporate headquarters, the Oscar-winning director of TS2 is trying to keep his four sons from tearing up a rare Woody marionette, one of at least 200 toys, dolls and action figures stuffed into his tiny office. Down the hall past the "Batcave," their boss was recently spotted interviewing CFO candidates while dressed in shorts, his shoeless feet propped up on the desk. Soon a former circus juggler will be leading visitors through a sculpting class in the Annex, where they will come across the newly hired CFO on her lunch hour. She is slapping clay on a wire figure while studying a live, totally nude model.

Is this any way to run a $2 billion business?

It is if you're Pixar Animation Studios, the hottest place on the planet these days for computer animators. For 60 years, Disney owned animation, from Snow White to The Lion King. But when Toy Story 2 opens this Thanksgiving, upstart Pixar will seal its place as the new standard bearer of heart-warming stories for kids and parents. What's more, it's being done on computer and outside Hollywood.

The studio's first two computer-generated hits, 1995's Toy Story and last year's A Bug's Life, are already among the Top 5-grossing animated films of all time. Monsters, Inc., its fourth feature-length film, is set for 2001. "Pixar is about movies with heart, humor, action--and visuals like you've never seen before," says director John Lasseter, the company's resident creative genius.

Walking into the 13-year-old movie studio--crammed into a nondescript office complex outside San Francisco--is like entering a Fellini film, with wacky characters and even wackier settings: circus-striped umbrellas, fake mustache collections, kitschy dolls, TV memorabilia.

The 430 denizens who work here include a European rock star and a co-founder of the Flying Karamazov Brothers, as well as a dozen or more Ph.D.s. Job descriptions are fluid: chief technical officer Ed Catmull, one of the true pioneers of computer graphics, now heads up the story-development department. "There aren't a lot of closed doors," says TS2 co-director Ash Brannon, 29. "I can't think of another place where people feel so free." Or so involved. Everybody at Pixar is a "filmmaker," including Greg Brandeau, who runs the 1,700 computer processors known collectively as the RenderFarm.

The one guy who's oddly hesitant to call himself a filmmaker is Pixar's chairman and CEO, Steve Jobs. With Apple consuming so much time these days, he is rarely at the studio--which is just fine by employees, who both fear and respect him. The truth is that without Jobs, who bought the company from director George Lucas in 1986 and now owns nearly 65%, Pixar would simply not exist. He is credited with wangling an extraordinary fifty-fifty profit-sharing deal with Disney in 1997 for five pictures. "It's his vision. He's the real deal," says Thomas Schumacher, president of Walt Disney Feature Animation. While Lasseter and Catmull handle the moviemaking, Jobs strategizes--creating, for instance, the new 15-acre "campus" in nearby Emeryville, scheduled to open in 2000.

"It's nice to be up where the air is clear and there aren't any other studios," says Jobs, taking a gentle swipe at Hollywood. Up north they don't read the movie trades first thing in the morning; they don't gossip about A-list parties. There are no megadollar contracts--except for Lasseter's. Don't imagine for a minute, however, that Jobs is a Silicon Valley apologist. He sees the beauty--and the beast--in both places. "What Silicon Valley thinks is creative is a bunch of guys sitting around on a beat-up old couch thinking up jokes," he says. "It's also true that Hollywood thinks technology is something you buy. Pixar is the only place where both cultures exist under one roof. It's why we're so far ahead."

Boasting aside, Pixar does seem to be light-years ahead technologically. Pixar's animation software, RenderMan, created the dinosaurs in Steven Spielberg's Jurassic Park as well as the battle droids in the latest Star Wars. Jobs spends more than $5 million a year on computer R. and D., and it shows in TS2--in more realistic skin and fur, more flexible characters, more sophisticated lighting and better depth of field.

As much as the Pixarians love their technology, however, the refrain you hear over and over here is that story is king. Even that's not quite right. "We're not looking for stories," says Catmull, "but for groups of people that ignite stories."

Toy Story 2 was the ultimate in collaboration, with three directors on the final credits. Lasseter first got the idea back in 1995 after watching his four youngest boys playing with his Woody collectibles. "My sons looooove to come to Daddy's work," says Lasseter. "But Daddy has one-of-a-kind toys, old and expensive, and he gets very nervous when the bulls are playing in the china shop. I found myself freaking--and laughing at myself." He also started thinking. Toys were meant to be played with. How must they feel about being put on the shelf? Out of that insight came the central plot line of TS2.

As Dan Jeup's story-development team sketched out storyboards, the children's story slowly took on adult themes of mortality and immortality. "It deals with dying and abandonment, issues we all face," says Jeup. "Woody's choice is between his friends and immortality." Everyone had a say about plot and characters. The two female producers, Helene Plotkin and Karen Robert Jackson, insisted on a strong girl character--something lacking in the original. Joan Cusack signed on as the voice of Jessie the Cowgirl and turned the character into a showstopper--one with a lesson for Woody. "She knows what it's like to be abandoned. She's been jilted," says Jackson.

Despite the movie's three years of development, however, Pixar's creative team woke up one morning last January to a sinking realization: the story just wasn't good enough. Lasseter stepped in full time as director to help his two younger co-directors. More than half the movie had to be redone. Buster the dog was added, as was Wheezy, the damaged penguin. Tensions rose as the workload increased. The company stock was on a yo-yo ride, with merchandise income from the $358 million megahit Toy Story trickling out and home video and merchandise sales from A Bug's Life ($362 million worldwide) expected to fall below expectations.

Now with Toy Story 2 generating good buzz and A Bug's Life's profits finally pouring in, Merrill Lynch and other analysts have put Pixar back on the "accumulate" list. Lasseter and his crew will be over at Lucas' Skywalker Ranch this week, finishing up the sound and music, while everyone else at the studio--confident they have a hit on their hands--is preparing for the annual Halloween costume party. Maybe this is the way to run a $2 billion company after all.