National Post (National Edition)
A modern Disney drama
PIXAR’S LATEST FILM IS ANOTHER ANIMATED SPECTACULAR, BUT ALL IS NOT WELL BEHIND THE SCENES
With the #Metoo movement in full sail, you would think Hollywood had bigger things to worry about than a children’s picture book. Yet a recent item in the industry newsletter The Ankler suggested there have been anxious discussions at Disney about Jungle Cruise, a forthcoming hardback based on the long-running Disneyland ride, which has been caught up in the ongoing reckoning over sexual misconduct.
The issue is the skipper. He was, and may still be, an affectionate caricature of John Lasseter — the beaming, bespectacled former chief creative officer at Walt Disney and Pixar Animation Studios, and the man whose pioneering use of computer graphics (CG) led to such classics as Toy Story, Monsters, Inc and The Incredibles, the long-brewing sequel to which arrives in the UK in two weeks.
But Lasseter is also one of many figures who have had allegations of sexual misconduct levelled against them in the wake of the Weinstein scandal — and earlier this month stepped down from his post. An article in The Hollywood Reporter last November alleged that Lasseter had a reputation for “grabbing” and “kissing” female employees and “making comments about physical attributes”.
And a further piece in the industry magazine Variety this week, written by a graphic designer who worked at Pixar from 2009 to 2014, described a pervasive sexist atmosphere at the company. Cassandra Smolcic said she endured unwelcome advances from a number of men, “was groped by another male co-worker and was sidelined from projects by the unofficial boys’ club casting system.”
In response to last year’s allegations, Lasseter issued a statement citing “painful” conversations and unspecified “missteps”.
In light of all this, you might think it would be a no-brainer to replace the Jungle Cruise skipper before the book’s release next week and re-record Lasseter’s narration on the accompanying CD. And, certainly, alternative illustrations have apparently been drafted. But in a sign of the extraordinary esteem in which Lasseter is still held, the argument was made that they should press ahead regardless. At the time of writing, it is unclear which will go to print.
The grim irony of L’affaire Jungle Cruise is that Lasseter’s first role at Disney was as a tour guide on the ride itself. It was his summer job in the Seventies while he was studying character animation, with the express aim of working for Disney. (He was hired as soon as he graduated, then fired five years later after clashing with management over his enthusiasm for CG.)
On the ride, it’s the skipper’s job to welcome guests aboard the vessel, then reel through a jocular, pun-laden script as it wends its way past motorized fauna — and Lasseter’s public face at Disney always felt like a version of that. I saw him in action at various conventions and conferences, always wearing one of his signature Hawaiian shirts. He seemed less like a mogul than a funny friend who just happened to have transformed a floundering studio into the home of the two most dynamic and successful animation houses on earth.
For his long-term admirers — and I count myself as one — updating that affable heir-to-walt image with the recent revelations has been a miserable business. Because the beauty and artistry and open-hearted wonder of his work just seems mind-bogglingly incompatible with the sad and wretched uncle figure that has emerged over the last 12 months. I still vividly recall seeing his CG short Knick Knack on TV in the early Nineties, in which a snowman tries to escape from his snow globe. And then a few years later along came Toy Story, the first digitally animated feature ever — a technical milestone, sure, but it dug into questions of individuality, acceptance, and mortality, and made a powerful connection with my anxious 13-year-old self.
The first time I interviewed him, I felt a little star-struck. Face-to-face, he came across differently than on stage and there was never any sign of inappropriate behaviour. The boyish enthusiasm was always there, but it was tempered by two seemingly contradictory traits: an evangelical zeal for animation in general — and the Disney of old in particular — and that kill-your-elders tendency often found in Silicon Valley types, who want to prove to the world their new way of doing things should wipe out the rest.
Added together, that was his style of management. Having run animation at Pixar since the mid-eighties, he took over the same role at Disney in 2006 during the latter’s $7.4 billion purchase of the former — and immediately reversed many of their decisions, which he saw as being at odds with the original Walt Disney ethos. He rehired John Musker and Ron Clements, the co-directors of The Little Mermaid and Aladdin, who had left the previous year, reopened the mothballed hand-drawn department, and set them to work on The Princess and the Frog. (He may have been pro-cg, but he was never anti-freehand: the studio went on to develop tools that allowed animators working on Moana, Zootropolis and The Incredibles 2 to “draw” directly into digital environments.)
He once told me that he had signed off on Brave partly out of irritation that Disney had given up on princess tales — this was in the doldrum days of Chicken Little and Brother Bear. “They thought the world had grown too cynical for traditional fairy tales,” he said. “But I was thinking 'No! Hollywood’s grown too cynical for them! The world loves them!' "
All very astute. But this week’s Variety piece highlighted the fact that the original director of Brave, Brenda Chapman, was the first woman to direct a Lasseterproduced feature — yet was fired two years into development and replaced by a man. Chapman went on to decry how hard it is for women to prosper in the “boys’ club” of Hollywood. And only last year, the actress and writer Rashida Jones quit as a writer for Toy Story 4 because, she claimed, of a culture at Pixar “where women and people of colour do not have an equal creative voice.”
Pixar was certainly run by a tight-knit all-guy gang. It became the now legendary Brain Trust, who would work over every idea, image and joke until it shone — and whose results, both artistic and commercial, spoke for themselves. Success like that breeds a reluctance to rock the boat, and perhaps explains why Lasseter’s alleged misdeeds were overlooked.
Where will Pixar and Disney go from here? As was announced last week, Lasseter’s CCO duties will be split between the Frozen director and Wreck-it Ralph writer Jennifer Lee at Disney Animation and Monsters, Inc, Up and Inside Out creator Pete Docter at Pixar. Both are well-liked, safe picks whose work to date represents exactly where the studio sees itself headed. And Toy Story 4, which Lasseter was in the middle of directing, has been taken over by Josh Cooley, the head of story on Inside Out.
The record-breaking $182.6 million opening of The Incredibles 2 in the U.S. this month suggests the brands at stake remain gleamingly intact. And the Lasseter-era practice of balancing every creative risk at Disney and Pixar (Zootropolis and Inside Out) with a safe bet (a sequel) seems unlikely to change under the new CCOS, who’ve seen that system work in their favour.
Having beat the path to the age of Disney dominance, Lasseter now leaves under another cloud, this one apparently self-inflicted. Last time, they didn’t know how much they needed him. His legacy is that they no longer do.