John Lasseter, every mention

Disney: The Renaissance and the Empire · Acquired Aug 10, 2026 · 25 mentions

• ▶ 9:35 David Rosenthal John Lasseter.
• ▶ 10:32 David Rosenthal I mean, so there's people I mentioned, John Lasseter, Brad Bird, Tim Burton, John Musker, Brenda Chapman, all of them were hired directly by Disney and Disney Animation right out of school, and then Disney fired all of them.
• ▶ 10:51 David Rosenthal So there's this amazing story that one day, while John Lasseter is a student there in the late seventies, he and a bunch of these people
• ▶ 10:58 David Rosenthal They drive down to go spend the day at Disneyland, and, uh, John's girlfriend at the time comes along with them, and she says to them, just think, someday this park is gonna be filled with the characters that you guys are gonna create.
• ▶ 1:52:56 Ben Gilbert Let's start with John Lasseter.
• ▶ 1:53:20 Ben Gilbert He does get a job at Disney Animation, but it's unfortunately during those dark times in the early eighties, John gets obsessed with the budding field of computer animation, even though no one else in the department is, although actually…
• ▶ 1:53:40 Ben Gilbert This all comes to a head when John gets the chance for his directorial debut on the movie Brave Little Toaster,
• ▶ 1:54:13 Ben Gilbert John is immediately, and I'm not kidding, same day, let go.
• ▶ 1:54:31 Ben Gilbert So we'll put a pin in John's story for now while we introduce another co-founder of Pixar.
• ▶ 1:57:48 Ben Gilbert You got John Lassiner at Ed Catball, and they see each other at an industry conference, of all places, on the Queen Mary.
• ▶ 1:57:55 Ben Gilbert John has just been fired from Disney.
• ▶ 1:58:12 Ben Gilbert Ed begs John to see if there's any chance he could take some time and come up north to hang out at Lucasfilm Graphics and improve the storytelling in the short films that they're starting to think about.
• ▶ 1:58:23 David Rosenthal John's like, oh, let me check my calendar.
• ▶ 2:01:09 Ben Gilbert Ed and John and Alvy and the team have no interest in doing that.
• ▶ 2:01:22 Ben Gilbert He does agree to buy the company and kind of rescue it out of Lucasfilm, and he goes into business with Ed and John and the team.
• ▶ 2:05:07 Ben Gilbert John rekindles his relationship to Disney.
• ▶ 2:05:14 Ben Gilbert John is being recruited to join Disney as a director.
• ▶ 2:08:15 Ben Gilbert And I was watching old interviews, uh, with Lasseter and Jobs, and Lasseter has this quote, if it's working in our story reels, when we animate it and put color to it, it's gonna work even better.
• ▶ 2:16:10 Ben Gilbert So they start translating John Lasseter's vision into the storyboards, and they keep going to Disney for notes, which is both useful, because Pixar doesn't really know what they're doing yet, and contractually required.
• ▶ 2:35:54 David Rosenthal John and Ed will still run it, and they'll also commute down to LA two days a week, and take over and run Disney Animation.
• ▶ 2:36:02 Ben Gilbert And interestingly, Iger also said, hey, Lasseter and, and Catmull, you can also tell us you think Disney Animation is unrescuable, or that you think that you'd kill both things by splitting your time, and you can just tell us you want to…
• ▶ 2:36:22 Ben Gilbert Laster and Catmull have this, like, we couldn't possibly do that.
• ▶ 2:36:45 Ben Gilbert I mean, that's the crazy thing, is that it was John and Ed's option to look at the enemy and
• ▶ 2:46:08 Ben Gilbert And those Disney animation movies are all the top ones that they're actually watching, kids these days, are the post 2005 Catmull and Lasseter era films.
• ▶ 3:21:20 David Rosenthal John Lasseter has just been kicked out of the company, and Ed Catmull has just retired, so they need new leadership at both of the