A new, illuminating, in-depth article on Lasseter during his tenure at Pixar and WDAS. A must-read.
"He Who Must Not Be Named": Can John Lasseter Ever Return to Disney?
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/featu ... ey-1105297
It's interesting how everyone who used to sing his praises at every turn now won't even utter his name in public (except for
Jodi Benson).
The acceptance speeches included thanks to many people, but one name was conspicuously omitted: John Lasseter, the absent chief creative officer of both pillars of Disney's animation empire. "He who must not be named," marvels one animation veteran who, like many, won't talk about Lasseter on the record.
He only "cares" now because Lasseter has been exposed and fears bad press and damage to his own reputation by association. He was well-aware of his behavior and complicit in his crimes. Iger is the definition of hypocrisy.
Now, with the six months of his leave drawing to a close, many animators are convinced that Lasseter will not return. Disney remains mum, but multiple sources believe that Disney chairman and CEO Bob Iger is prepared to bid Lasseter goodbye. "Bob is about keeping peace in the family," says one Disney veteran. "He's not anxious to take on defending somebody with that kind of reputation."
Insiders say Lasseter had amassed so much power that his underlings at one point told Iger they needed to check with Lasseter before carrying out Iger's instructions. Now if Lasseter returns, there is likely to be a negative reaction from some employees at Pixar and Disney who felt that Lasseter had bullied and belittled them and hogged credit for years. Finally, there is the issue of his conduct with female employees. "If John goes back, it will kill women in animation," says a former Pixar insider. "The message will be so clear: Shut up and take it."
Disney does not appear to be preparing to send that message. In February, the company held an unprecedented "day of listening" at the Disney animation unit and brought in a handful of human-resources professionals to facilitate a discussion of workplace concerns. More recently, Pixar employees learned that longtime human resources chief Lori McAdams — seen by many as one of Lasseter's chief protectors — was leaving the company. McAdams did not respond to a request for comment.
The media should be held accountable for their role in this. They were the ones who constantly praised him, went to ridiculous lengths to present him as the savior of animation, and never dared criticize him. They helped him broadcast and maintain this persona all these decades, which resulted in strengthening the influence and hold he had over the industry.
Interviews with a broad swath of animators and executives who crossed paths with Lasseter over the years suggest that as he achieved great success and power, he became increasingly imperious. At Pixar, some insiders called him "King John" and various other uncomplimentary nicknames. "He changed drastically as success and money came," says one former colleague. Another longtime Pixar executive says Lasseter's image as a Walt Disney of the digital age — as a whimsical, childlike genius with a wall-to-wall collection of toys and memorabilia in his office — concealed a darker reality. "The public didn't see that," this person says. "The happy-ass guy in the Hawaiian shirt? That was a well-crafted persona."
It turns out Katzenberg was right about him. It seems their feud was nothing other than Lasseter being an entitled, spiteful brat who wanted squash any competition.
As Toy Story was followed by a dazzling run of hits, former colleagues at Pixar say Lasseter became jealous of potential rivals and intolerant of criticism. "The only person who could give John notes was Steve Jobs," says one, referring to Pixar's majority shareholder in that early era. "There was a level of fear that permeated senior management." Another says Pixar became "this cult of the infallible genius." Lasseter had younger proteges like Pete Docter, who directed Monsters, Inc., and Andrew Stanton, who directed Finding Nemo, but those were talents he had nurtured. With others, says an executive who worked with Lasseter, "You could be 'in' one day but if you did something he didn't like, he could turn and cause a lot of damage." A former Pixar insider says Brad Bird was able to thrive on his 2004 film The Incredibles only because he had been hired by Jobs, who saw to it that Bird was able to assemble and run his own team.
I still can't believe how much Lasseter screw Glen Keane over during Rapunzel. He antagonized him to the point of heart attack and then used that as an excuse to take over his pet project. Utterly despicable. It's no surprise he treated him and Don Hahn so horribly. These two were imperative to Disney's success in the '90s and I always had a feeling Lasseter resented the Disney Renaissance.
Sources say among those whom Lasseter eventually pushed aside was legendary Disney animator Glen Keane, who drew Ariel in The Little Mermaid and the Beast in Beauty and the Beast. Back in 1983, Keane and Lasseter — then both at Disney — had collaborated on a test combining drawn animation and computer-generated images. ("In five years these tests will seem so primitive, they'll look like Steamboat Willie does today," Lasseter said presciently at the time.) When computers came to dominate the field, associates say that Keane, unlike some who made their names in hand-drawn animation, successfully navigated the transition to the new technology. He left Disney in 2012, and this year won an Oscar for his work with Kobe Bryant on the short Dear Basketball. He's now directing an animated feature for Netflix. Another casualty was Don Hahn, whose producing credits include Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King. "He was one of the most successful animation producers of all time," says a Disney veteran. "John treated him like shit." (Keane and Hahn both declined to comment.)
No surprise there.
By the mid-2000s, Jobs had become concerned about Lasseter, according to a former high-level associate. The Apple co-founder may not have been comfortable with one man wielding so much power at Pixar, but there was more. Lasseter could be "mean" and "vindictive" while drinking, this person says.
But of course no one knew, right?
Over time, sources say, there were complaints to human resources at both Pixar and Disney Animation. (Disney declined to comment.) A former insider says the thinking was, "We have to do everything we can to protect John from himself and keep the truth from the public."'
It sounds to me that because he wasn't talented enough and couldn't cut it, he resented hand-animation. Despite him constantly saying how much he loved 2D animation, the way he abandoned the medium at WDAS and the way he treated 2D animators painted a different picture.
Lasseter, who by several accounts was not an especially talented draftsman, left the company in 1984. "He wasn't really in love with drawing like a lot of us were," Klubien says. Technology held more appeal. "For him, it was more about 'How can we get to do animation in this medium?'".
Another artist screwed over by Lasseter. Him taking credit for others' work and achievements was a regular thing.
In 1993 — while Toy Story was still in the works — Klubien was hired to work on Pixar's second movie, A Bug's Life. He was credited for helping develop the story and as a storyboard artist but came away feeling that he had not been credited properly as a writer on the film. [...]
Inspired by a Disney short called Susie the Little Blue Coupe, Klubien pitched Lasseter on a movie featuring talking cars. Lasseter liked the idea and told him to start drawing to flesh it out. Klubien says he worked for three months on drawings of settings and characters that appear very similar to those in the finished film. Then he pitched the project to Lasseter again but got no immediate response. He went to work on Monsters, Inc. and Toy Story 2. But then he heard that Lasseter wanted to move ahead on a cars movie. He checked in with Lasseter, who said he did want to go forward but with a different plot from the one Klubien had proposed. With that, Klubien and Ranft set to work on scripting and illustrating the main beats of the new story and, according to Klubien, created a version that had all the main elements of the finished movie. Klubien went with Lasseter as he pitched the project first to Jobs and then to a top team from Disney, including then-CEO Michael Eisner and Roy Disney. [...]
Klubien believed Lasseter had promised he could co-direct the film. Instead Lasseter named himself as the sole director. Klubien was told his consolation prize would be a story and co-writing credit, shared with Ranft and Lasseter. But Klubien says that while Lasseter gave notes, he was not involved in the day-to-day writing of the script. In meetings on the project, Klubien says, Lasseter often seemed to echo things that he or Ranft had just said — but the person taking notes included only Lasseter's words, making it appear that Lasseter had originated thoughts he was merely repeating. Klubien adds that he had observed the same tactic during the making of A Bug's Life.
Finally, Lasseter shocked Klubien by taking him off the film altogether. Klubien remained at Pixar, developing other ideas, and says he came up with several, including one called The Spirit of New Orleans that he thinks eventually may have morphed into the 2009 Disney film The Princess and the Frog. In 2003, Klubien was fired from Pixar after 10 years at the company. He says he was told that no one wanted to work with him. After that, he says, he found it difficult to get hired elsewhere, a problem that he thought was compounded because he believed his credits did not reflect all of his work at Pixar. [...]
Klubien continues: "I was the creative spark behind this franchise. It's John's genius that he got it going, that he was the master of Pixar. And if he had allowed me to be part of it all, I would've been his biggest champion. But I find it to be an abusive thing that he got rid of me to claim sole inventorship." He says Lasseter used to advise people in plain language to learn to take credit. "The thing for me is, why can't you say what it really was?" Klubien says. "You're great enough in that role. What's wrong with that? I just don't get it."
They only allowed them to attend meetings. How insulting.
A number of Pixar veterans say the company never had a welcoming environment for women. A glimpse of that became public in 2011, when Brenda Chapman, who had originated the idea for Brave and was in the middle of directing it, was pushed aside and replaced by Mark Andrews. She had been the first woman director of a Pixar feature and received a shared credit when the film was released in 2012. No other woman has ever received a directing credit on a Pixar movie, and no woman has ever been a member of the famed Pixar "Brain Trust," though some have attended meetings.
Wow, Pixar really treated women like dirt.
Another former Pixar insider says she and other women were mostly relegated to supporting roles and expected "to make it seem like the men knew what they were doing." Some women at the company came up with the term "bitchy mommy-wives" to describe the role they were expected to play.
Talk about incompetent leadership.
In recent years, this former insider says, it became harder to help Lasseter maintain his image of infallibility, such as when the release date of Pixar's The Good Dinosaur was pushed from November 2013 to May 2014 to November 2015. It was clear that the original approach was troubled, but Lasseter had not reached that conclusion on his own and no one had mustered the nerve to tell him. "He couldn't give notes or fix it," this person says. Ultimately Pixar revised the entire film in a frantic, all-hands rescue effort, scuttling most of the voice talent, including John Lithgow and Neil Patrick Harris. The final product was considered Pixar's first financial disappointment and was shut out of Oscar nominations.
Finally, someone calling out Iger and the company on their complicity and BS excuses.
At this point, some insiders believe Iger is quietly preparing to name new heads of Pixar and Disney Animation — those floated include Docter for Pixar and Rich Moore and Jennifer Lee at Disney Animation. But some veterans are angry, saying that the company allowed Lasseter to dominate — and to take credit for the work of others — for too long, only acting in the wake of the #MeToo movement.
"All of his behavior was condoned," says a longtime animator. "It wasn't just the drinking. It was his never having grown up. Some of senior management believed that was part of the secret ingredient when really the secret ingredient was a group of people."
