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John Lasseter: Telling entertaining stories to touch everyone
John Lasseter (AFP/Kevin Winter)Award-winning American animator, film director, screenwriter and producer John Lasseter is excited that cinema is still growing in Asia, especially Southeast Asia
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John Lasseter (AFP/Kevin Winter) (AFP/Kevin Winter)
John Lasseter (AFP/Kevin Winter)
Award-winning American animator, film director, screenwriter and producer John Lasseter is excited that cinema is still growing in Asia, especially Southeast Asia.
'I want to make great movies for all of the audiences in the region. It kind of breaks my heart that movie going is becoming flat, with not a lot of growth in a lot parts of the world ' but not in Southeast Asia,' Lasseter said in a recent interview in Hong Kong.
Lasseter, the chief creative officer at Pixar, Walt Disney Animation Studios and DisneyToon Studios, spent a few days in early November in the Asian financial hub for presentations and to meet with partners in Asia.
The 57-year-old California native, who has been praised for bringing Disney Animation Studios to a spectacular comeback, said that animators needed to keep pushing boundaries.
After Disney purchased Pixar and named Lasseter creative head for both animation studios in 2006, he has served as executive producer on all Walt Disney Animation Studios' features, including Bolt (2008), The Princess and the Frog (2009), Tangled (2010), Winnie the Pooh (2011), Wreck-It Ralph (2012) and Frozen (2013).
Frozen, which crossed the US$1 billion mark in March and is the No. 1 animated feature of all time, won Academy Awards as Best Animated Feature and for Best Original Song and the Golden Globes Award for Best Animated Feature Film.
Lasseter is famous for making a major milestone in computer-animated film.
He made his feature directorial debut in 1995 with Toy Story, the first feature-length computer-animated film, for which he received a Special Achievement Oscar and a nomination for best original screenplay, marking the first time an animated feature had ever been recognized in that category.
Lasseter has also executive produced all Pixar features since Monsters, Inc. (2001), including the studio's seven Academy Award-winners Finding Nemo (2003), The Incredibles (2004), Ratatouille (2007), WALL'¢E (2008), Up (2009), Toy Story 3 (2010) and Brave (2012).
Making entertaining animation has been his lifelong pursuit.
Growing up in Whittier, California; Lasseter loved the cartoons of Walt Disney and Chuck Jones.
'I love the way Disney's cartoons made me feel. I always loved watching Dumbo. Jones' characters like Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck are exceptional,' he said.
Living near Disneyland, he went once or twice a year. 'I love the place,' Lasseter said, raising his eyebrows and closing his eyes when recalling the theme park.
As his peers turned toward cars, sports and girls as they grew older; Lasseter kept his love of cartoons. When he was 13, he read The Art of Animation by Bob Thomas, which covered the history of Disney animation, and explored the making of Disney's 1959 film Sleeping Beauty.
'It dawned on me that you can make animation for a living and that's what I wanted to do,' said Lasseter, who won support to pursue a career in animation from his art teacher mother.
Upon graduating from the character animation program at the California Institute of the Arts in 1979, Lasseter landed his dream job as an animator at Walt Disney Feature Animation.
His career took a new turn after pursuing interests in computer generated imagery, which he believed would revolutionize animation. His superiors at the time disagreed with his persistence ' and subsequently fired him.
'I achieved my dream job at the dream company, but then got fired from it. For the longest time, I never told anybody I got fired,' he said.
When he returned to Disney decades later, Lasseter implemented a philosophy of putting creativity and making the best movie first.
'One way to do it is at the top. We surround ourselves with fellow filmmakers and storytellers ' a creative brain trust with no hierarchy to comments and notes. My notes are not more important the other guys. This leads to honesty in the room and healthy collaboration,' Lasseter said.
He dreams of continuing to reinvent animation as an art. 'You can't tell tell the same story Walt Disney told today. It has to be told in today's way. 'We want tell story that everyone can relate; not just for audiences in the US and Europe but also those in Asia. We want to tell story for everyone,' he said.
