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Steve Jobs ArchivePixar's Early Days - A Never-Before-Seen Interview With Steve Jobs, 1996
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CHAPTERS
Chapter summaries
Buying into Ed Catmull’s dream of a computer-animated feature
Steve Jobs explains how meeting Ed Catmull in 1985 led him to buy the computer division from Lucasfilm and commit to the goal of making a computer-animated feature film. He frames the purchase as both a financial and personal belief in that vision, culminating years later in Toy Story.
- •Steve Jobs describes meeting Ed Catmull and being shown early work at Lucasfilm’s computer division
- •He says Catmull shared a dream of making the first computer-animated feature film
- •He recounts buying into that dream “financially and spiritually”
- •He notes it took about 10 years to reach the goal with Toy Story
Why Pixar’s graphics leadership felt inevitable to him
Jobs connects Pixar to his long-standing interest in graphics from Apple products and explains what impressed him about Pixar’s technical edge. He calls Pixar a center of high-end computer graphics and emphasizes how far ahead Catmull’s team seemed.
- •He ties his interest to Apple II color graphics, Macintosh graphics, and LaserWriter output
- •He contrasts earlier 2D focus with Pixar’s advanced 3D work
- •He says Catmull’s team was ahead of anything he’d seen
- •He characterizes Pixar as a “mecca” of high-end computer graphics
Building Pixar as a studio by unifying creative, technical, and production peers
Asked about becoming a filmmaker and running the company, Jobs says Pixar is a studio but he isn’t a filmmaker, and he highlights John Lasseter as the director. He focuses on creating an environment where creative, technical, and production teams work together as peers—something he says is unusual in the industry.
- •He states he doesn’t direct films and credits John Lasseter as the director
- •He describes his role as creating the environment for great work
- •He outlines Pixar’s creative, technical, and production teams and their collaboration
- •He says Pixar spent years learning how to blend these groups as peers
Hiring the best: bridging Hollywood culture and Silicon Valley culture
Jobs argues Pixar uniquely attracts top creative talent and top computer graphics scientists, and that most studios can’t do both. He describes the challenge of merging Hollywood and Silicon Valley cultures and says Pixar intentionally took the best elements of each.
- •He says top creative people gravitate to only a few places, including Pixar
- •He says top computer graphics scientists also choose only a few places
- •He claims Pixar can hire the best from both domains
- •He describes Hollywood and Silicon Valley as culturally very different and difficult to merge
What “Sillywood” means—and why Pixar stands out
Jobs explains “Sillywood” as a label used by companies that raised investment on the idea of combining technology and Hollywood without producing successful results. He says Pixar is the only example he knows where the combination produced successful “offspring,” and he adds that it’s working well.
- •He defines “Sillywood” as a term linked to fundraising without real products
- •He describes the challenge of blending technology with Hollywood
- •He says Pixar is the only successful example he knows of that blend
- •He responds that the approach is working out “great”
The Disney partnership and strategic options after the three-picture deal
Jobs describes Pixar’s relationship with Disney as better and more enjoyable than expected, noting both sides had concerns at the start. He explains Pixar has a three-picture deal and lists the kinds of decisions they’ll consider afterward, including continuing with Disney, choosing another studio, or handling more marketing themselves while using distribution services.
- •He says Pixar and Disney approached the partnership with some fear but it turned out very successful
- •He emphasizes positive collaboration, including marketing support at Disney
- •He notes a three-picture deal and that big decisions come afterward
- •He outlines possible paths: renew with Disney, go to another studio, or do more marketing internally and “rent” distribution
Why commercials and special effects became a bad business model for Pixar
Jobs recounts how computer animation work often started as a labor of love and then became a paid model centered on commercials, logos, and special effects. He argues that work-for-hire erodes upside and margins over time, and explains Pixar exited the commercials business despite enjoying it.
- •He describes the early paid model for computer animation: commercials, flying logos, and special effects
- •He explains work-for-hire pays once and doesn’t share in downstream success
- •He says margins fell as more competitors entered the space
- •He notes Pixar left the commercials business to focus talent on work where Pixar owns a piece of what it creates
Jobs’ role as a studio head: focus, talent, strategy, and relationships
In response to comparisons with classic studio heads, Jobs emphasizes Pixar is still a small studio staying focused on building a great feature animation studio. He describes his responsibilities as understanding what to build, attracting and retaining people, setting strategy, and managing relationships like the Disney partnership.
- •He cautions against letting success “go to our heads” and stresses focus
- •He discusses Disney’s feature animation as central to Disney’s broader business ecosystem
- •He calls Pixar a “pure play” focused on feature animation
- •He defines his role around assembling the needed pieces, talent retention, strategy, and external relationships
A leadership model where the CEO supports rare, in-demand talent
Jobs explains he enjoys having people who are better than he is at their specialties so he can trust them and focus elsewhere. He describes an “inverted” power hierarchy where top talent can leave quickly, making it management’s job to support the people doing the frontline creative and technical work.
- •He says his “greatest joy” is working with people much better than he is in their domain
- •He notes talented people are rare and can find new jobs quickly if mistreated
- •He describes an inverted hierarchy where the CEO ends up at the bottom
- •He generalizes the principle across both Pixar’s creative work and software/technology teams
How Pixar tries to operationalize that support (environment, obstacles, teams, quality)
Pressed on how Pixar supports talent, Jobs lists practical management actions: creating a rich environment, removing obstacles, forming effective teams, choosing the right projects, and maintaining high quality standards. He gives a concrete example of rapid growth while keeping the hiring bar high.
- •He lists management tactics: environment, obstacle removal, team formation, and project selection
- •He emphasizes maintaining high quality across people, strategy, and projects
- •He describes major studio growth from roughly 175 to about 300 people in a year
- •He says Pixar hired 125 “A-plus” people and built strong recruiting, while holding back some details as competitive advantages
What Pixar learned from Disney about making animated features
Jobs contrasts live-action filmmaking—where lots of footage is shot and edited later—with animation, where cost forces planning and editing before production. He says Disney pioneered and refined techniques for this, and that working with Disney provided access to hard-to-obtain experience that Pixar then internalized and improved upon.
- •He explains why animation requires editing the film before animating it
- •He credits Disney with pioneering and refining pre-production editing techniques
- •He says Disney’s accumulated experience can’t be bought “for love or money”
- •He says Pixar learned a lot on Toy Story and then internalized the process
No contracts: adopting Silicon Valley’s retention model over Hollywood’s
Jobs describes the cultural clash between Hollywood’s contract-based “stick” and Silicon Valley’s stock-option “carrot.” He explains Pixar chose the Silicon Valley model to align goals, avoid complacency, and keep daily pressure on making Pixar a place people want to stay.
- •He contrasts Hollywood retention via contracts with Silicon Valley retention via stock options
- •He says Pixar evaluated both economically and psychologically
- •He argues contracts can encourage complacency until renewal time
- •He says Pixar’s approach requires continual effort to make the company great so people choose to stay
Why enduring stories matter more than technology’s short product cycles
Jobs reflects on how tech products often have short lifespans, while content—especially great animated stories—can renew across generations. Using Snow White as an example of long-term cultural persistence, he says Toy Story’s longevity will come from story, not computer graphics, and he frames Pixar’s mission as creating lasting stories people can enjoy and learn from.
- •He contrasts the brief life of technology products with the long life of stories
- •He describes how Snow White continued to resonate decades after release
- •He observes stories renew themselves with each generation of children
- •He says Toy Story’s staying power would come from its story (friendship), not the graphics, and that Pixar feels privileged to contribute stories to culture
What might surprise viewers next: rendering arms race vs. timeless storytelling
Jobs predicts visuals will keep getting richer as computing power rises, because Pixar’s ambitions scale with available technology. But he insists no technology can turn a bad story into a good one, calling story the core focus and something technology doesn’t change.
- •He compares rendering times from Luxo Jr. to Toy Story and notes complexity rose alongside speed
- •He says Pixar planned far more computing power for the next feature (codename “Bugs”)
- •He suggests rendering time per frame stays roughly constant as ambition increases
- •He reiterates Pixar’s mantra that story is paramount and technology can’t fix weak storytelling
