November 2009 ATLANTIC MAGAZINE

Brave Thinkers

Illustration by Quickhoney

Name: Steve Jobs and John Lasseter
Job: Co-Founder and Chief Creative Officer, Pixar Animation Studio
Why they’re brave: They haven't let commercial success stifle their innovation or storytelling.
Quote: “Every single Pixar film, at one time or another, has been the worst movie ever put on film. But we know. We trust our process.”

An unusual thing happened at the Cannes Film Festival this year: the glamorous conclave of high-minded cineastes opened with a cartoon. A 3-D cartoon, in fact. The audience loved it. Up, Pixar’s 10th creation, achieved critical and commercial success with nuance and narrative originality, rather than pretense and crudity, and Jobs and Lasseter, the driving forces behind the digital-animation studio, deserve the credit. Over the past two decades, the pair has combined technological foresight with an infamously perfectionist ethos to produce well-loved movies from Toy Story to Wall-E. Now owned by Disney, Pixar is a commercial colossus. But its movies still feature characters that grapple with real problems and undergo subtle and plausible moral development; they still eschew the violence, prurience, and stupidity that has infiltrated children’s movies over the past decade. In short, Pixar has the courage to respect the intelligence of the people watching its films. Even if their feet don’t reach the theater floor.