Biographie

Admitted that whenever Pixar has encountered a creative problem, they look to Miyazaki's films for inspiration.

Five days after Toy Story (1995) opened in theaters, he was on a trip with his family and upon getting off a plane, he saw a little boy with a Woody doll, which was enough to convince Lasseter how successful the film was.

Decided to be an animator as a child after spending $.49 to watch Merlin l'Enchanteur (1963) in a theater.

Is a huge fan of Hayao Miyazaki, who is a close personal friend.

He was a member of the Computer Division of Lucasfilm Ltd. (which was later sold and became Pixar), where he designed and animated the computer-generated Stained Glass Knight character in the Steven Spielberg-produced film Le Secret de la pyramide (1985).

When I was in high school, I read this book called The Art of Animation by Bob Thomas. It's all about the Walt Disney studio and the making of La Belle au bois dormant (1959). I read this and it dawned on me - wait a minute, people do animation for a living?

We make the kind of movies we want to see, we love to laugh, but I also believe what Walt Disney said "For every laugh there should be a tear." 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?".

From the beginning, I kept saying it's not the technology that's going to entertain audiences, it's the story. When you go and see a really great live-action film, you don't walk out and say "That new Panavision camera was staggering, it made the film so good." The computer is a tool, and it's in the service of the story.

Andrew Stanton always said that 2-D animation became the scapegoat for bad storytelling. But you can make just as bad of a movie in 3-D.

Let me tell you a funny story. I took the family to see this film one weekend - I'll go to see almost any film that's good for the whole family. And so we're sitting there watching this film, which I won't name, and there are long stretches that are just not very entertaining. My little son - he was probably six at the time - was sitting next to me, and right in the middle of this dull section, he turns to me and says, "Dad? How many letters are in my name?" I must have laughed for five minutes. I thought, "Oh, man, this movie has lost this little boy." His mind has been wandering, trying to figure out how many letters there are in his name. So I told my wife, Nancy, what he said, and she started laughing, and then the story went down the row through my whole family, our four other sons, and we're sitting there as a family giggling and laughing. And I thought to myself, If ever a child anywhere in the world leans over to their daddy during one of my movies and asks, "How many letters are in my name?" I'll quit.