Pixar’s Formula For Storytelling Success & Emotional Persuasion w/ Founder Ed Catmull EP 1474

The Summit of Greatness is back! Buy your tickets today – summitofgreatness.com – This episode is PART ONE of a powerful two-part interview series with Pixar Founder, Ed Catmull. Lewis and Ed dive into the strategies Pixar implements to strategically stimulate different aspects of the human mind to evoke intended emotions, with a focus on character development as a pivotal element in fostering a deep connection between the audience's minds and the story. For over twenty-five years, Pixar has dominated the world of animation, producing #1 box office hits that include iconic works such as Toy Story, Frozen, Cars, and The Incredibles. Pixar’s works have grossed more than $14 billion at the worldwide box office, and won twenty-three Academy Awards®, 10 Golden Globes Awards, and 11 Grammys, among countless other achievements. In this episode you will learn,Pixar’s insider techniques that tap into the human mind and create emotional connections with audiences. The firsthand principles and ideas discussed in "Creativity, Inc." that inspired a generationHow to strategically stimulate different aspects of the human mind in order to evoke an intended emotionHow character development plays a crucial role in Pixar films, and fosters a deep connection between the audience's minds and the storyThe magic formula revealing how Pixar masterfully balances humor, emotion, and suspense in their narratives, captivating audiences and maintaining engagement throughout the film. For more information go to www.lewishowes.com/1474For more Greatness text PODCAST to +1 (614) 350-3960Want more School of Greatness episodes like this one? Bruce Lipton on Manifestation: https://link.chtbl.com/1312-podJoe Dispenza on the Law of Attraction: https://link.chtbl.com/1312-pod Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy! Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Lewis Howes?

  Calling all conscious achievers who are seeking more community and connection. I've got an invitation for you. Join me at this year's Summit of Greatness this September 7th through 9th in my hometown of Columbus, Ohio to unleash your true greatness. This is the one time a year that I gather the greatness community together in person for a powerful transformative weekend. People come from all over the world and you can expect to hear from inspiring speakers like Inky Johnson, Josprey Singh, Vanessa Van Edwards, Jen Sincero, and many more. You'll also be able to dance your heart out to live music, get your body moving with group workouts, and connect with others at our evening socials.

• 0:44Lewis Howes?

  So if you're ready to learn, heal, and grow alongside other incredible individuals in the greatness community, then you can learn more at lewishouse.com/summit2023. Make sure to grab your ticket, invite your friends, and I'll see you there.

• 1:01Speaker 01

  At Pixar, well, we also say that failure is part of the process. It does happen. We don't actually use the terminology very much. Now, there are tons when you have something which actually does fail, so we don't avoid it. You have to, like, if something really fails, you say it. But the terminology of making a film is, since we know they all have problems, is we're trying to solve the problem. Hmm, that solution didn't work. Let's try this.

• 1:28Lewis Howes?

  Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week, we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin.

• 1:52Lewis Howes?

  Welcome back, everyone, to the School of Greatness. Very excited about our guest today. We have the inspiring Ed Catmull in the house, the co-founder of Pixar Animation and the New York Times bestselling author of Creativity, Inc.

• 2:04Lewis Howes?

  Overcoming the unseen forces that stand in the way of true inspiration. I'm so glad that you're here. Thank you so much for being on the show.

• 2:12Speaker 01

  I'm really happy to be here.

• 2:14Lewis Howes?

  Um, we were just chatting for the last 30 minutes before this conversation and I'm fascinated by your story, by your life and the things that you've seen, witnessed, overcome and building a business, but also just building a beautiful life of your own. You were surrounded by some of the most brilliant creatives, leaders of industry since you were in college and you essentially grew up with these individuals in chasing after envisioning, manifesting, creating a dream of yours to make animated films, which took you a long time. And then you've now done over 32 films since your time of starting at Pixar, I believe, and Disney, 31, 32 films.

• 2:59Lewis Howes?

  Is that correct?

• 3:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:01Lewis Howes?

  And it's incredible to know the influence you've had on the lives of, I'm assuming billions of people who have consumed your stories. So I just want to acknowledge you for the incredible amount of work that you've created, the incredible amount of things that you've had to overcome in building the first animation film to, you know, building a massive company and all of the, the unseen forces of thousands of creative individuals coming together. The incredible magic that happens with that, but also the challenges you've had to overcome as well. So I'm so excited you're here. And we were talking about one of my favorite moments from,

• 3:45Lewis Howes?

  um, Pixar, which was Toy Story three at the end, where that made me so emotionally captivated, so moved to tears at the end of this movie, that I may, I remember watching it the first time thinking, how am I crying watching a cartoon? Like, how is this making me feel so deeply about my own life and imagining my own life? And it's just amazing what you and the entire team has been able to create. So I'm excited you're here. I'm excited for the book that has the expanded addition to it, which talks about what you've learned in the last 10 years of leading Pixar and Disney animation as well. And, um, yeah, welcome again to the show. Very excited.

• 4:30Speaker 01

  Well, I'm very happy to be here. Um, although I also want to be careful that I don't take credit for what those other people did.

• 4:39Lewis Howes?

  Of course.

• 4:40Speaker 01

  So, uh.

• 4:41Lewis Howes?

  But being the leader, you know, being, being co-founder, leading the charge and, and casting a vision and overseeing the vision is a big responsibility.

• 4:50Speaker 01

  Well, that's, that was the fun part.

• 4:52Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 4:52Speaker 01

  Was, okay, how do you have these rather amazing people work well together over a long period of time? And it never changes. Like it's, today's problem is not like yesterday's problem. And it, you know, keeps changing.

• 5:08Lewis Howes?

  Right, right. What was the biggest challenge you had in starting that first movie? Because I remember you saying it took about 14 years of time of like saying, when will be able to actually create this animation? I think it was 14 years from your prediction. What was the biggest challenge in waiting that long and actually putting out the first movie with Toy Story?

• 5:30Speaker 01

  Well, in, when I, when I first started, it was like, this was the, uh, the, the goal was to make a film. And I naively thought that it would probably take 10 years. And I very quickly, uh, within two or three years, was disabused of that. Like that was just wrong, but I didn't replace it with another estimate. It's like, I really didn't know. So it was, uh, more of, okay, how do I think about the people, how we work together? And, but also what are the economics of it? And what are the technical problems that need to be solved? Because initially I thought of myself as a researcher.

• 6:15Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 6:16Speaker 01

  And I was thinking in terms of what are the problems that we need to solve to get there? And then, uh, while doing that, uh, this was when I was in New York Tech, it was after I left Utah. I, uh, I also found that, um, because I was now over this group. And I was kind of avoiding actually being the manager of the group. So I was trying to have it both ways.

• 6:42Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 6:43Speaker 01

  I wanted to be the person that was solving the technical problems. And I kind of liked being a leader, to be honest. So I had these theories about how to manage.

• 6:56Speaker 01

  And but I also found that I liked figuring out these kinds of problems, too. That is, the relationships between people and what made them work was really interesting.

• 7:10Speaker 01

  So I didn't have to give up one over the other. More like a time allocation. But I would say there was a phasing over time. But I stayed pretty deeply involved in technical issues. Probably for the next 10 or 15 years. The technical side. On the technical side. Before launching the first film. Before launching, well, yeah, before launching the first film. Yes. And

• 7:38Speaker 01

  because we have this rather amazing group there.

• 7:44Speaker 01

  And I I had a I worked on having a culture like it was open and we published everything we did. Now, at this point, because we're new in the industry, there were some people who thought we're pretty close. And I just felt like, well, we're not close at all. So some people were secretive about their breakthroughs. And I just thought, well, breakthroughs should breakthroughs. We're years away. Yeah. So the best thing to do was to publish everything we did and completely participate in this community.

• 8:23Speaker 01

  And I'll have to say that a lot of my deepest friends come out of academia. Because we go to the same conferences. We've known each other for 15 years.

• 8:36Speaker 01

  But by publishing everything, we also became the place to come to. So we were bringing in the best people.

• 8:44Speaker 01

  And then finally, Star Wars happened. And when Star Wars happened, then George Lucas was the first person in the film industry with credibility. He thought that technology was going to affect the industry. Like the number one. And believe me, we had tried. And to anybody else, we were utterly and completely irrelevant. It wasn't like they didn't think we could do it. It was they didn't even think about it at all. Wow. So George thought it was going to be possible, so he hired me in because we in this rather amazing group. This is late seventies now?

• 9:28Speaker 01

  Uh, this would have been, uh, yes, late seventies. Um, because I joined Lucasfilm in nineteen seventy nine. Okay. And when I left New York Tech. Um, and I'm trying to create this environment. I realized at that point that half of what I thought was. I said, worked really well. It's it became the foundation of what we we built on. And half of what I thought was a complete crock. Didn't work at all. Right. But the most important thing for me was that when I went to Lucasfilm. Uh, I came away with the insight that about half of what I did was right and half was wrong. I was gonna hang on to the things that were right.

• 10:13Speaker 01

  But I was gonna try something new. But I believed that my ratio of right to wrong would probably remain fifty fifty. And would probably continue to be true for the rest of my life. Which I have found to be true.

• 10:30Speaker 01

  And it isn't as if I can have a way of keeping track. I mean, it's, you know, you don't really know how to put numbers to this. But it felt like the value to me was understanding that I was right. Or excuse me, I was wrong more than I thought I was. You were wrong, weren't you, Todd? Yeah. Yeah. So, um.

• 10:53Speaker 01

  At Lucasfilm now, it's a new educational opportunity.

• 10:58Speaker 01

  And George wanted to bring technology into film editing, to digital audio, and into computer graphics. And now it's another educational opportunity because now you've got three customer groups, one of whom hated what we were doing. They didn't like the idea. So these are the video editors. Now, George knew video editing. He's the one that wanted it. But the person they put in charge of doing it thought it was a terrible idea. So, okay, so that did not end well. Even though we did something which was way advanced or anything else in the industry, we didn't have a customer who wanted to use it.

• 11:43Speaker 01

  The digital audio had a guy who loved the idea and basically worked with this really well. But the third group was ILM. And ILM was neutral. Their view was, well, your resolution is too low. But if you ever get to be good enough to be used in films, we'll use it. So now we're the driving force. Our goal is to meet their needs, to be good enough for what they were doing because they were the best in the industry. And if we could make them happy, then we would have succeeded.

• 12:25Speaker 01

  So we became the driving force, nobody else. So that was our motivation. And so like those were those, the kinds of lessons. And the other lesson was that as a representative of the Lucasfilm, I got to visit all these different companies, supercomputer companies, Cray, CDC, companies that most people don't, either haven't heard of or don't remember. And also the emerging workstation companies. And they wanted to sell the Lucasfilm. So I can go in and talk with the leaders of the companies because they want to sell the Lucasfilm because Star Wars was sexy. And for lunch or for dinner, I'd meet with the engineers

• 13:10Speaker 01

  because they knew that I was actually a real technical person. And what I found was at every one of these visits, I got two different views of a company in the same day.

• 13:25Speaker 01

  And I became aware that in a lot of companies, there was like a class structure. Not a term they would use. People would never say, well, we're first class here. There are people say we're treated second class. Okay. But you can see this going on in companies. And I remember thinking, this can't be good. So as we continue to grow. And at some point, we began to bring in artists. Especially when we became Pixar. Then the one thing that was clear to me is we needed to make sure that we didn't have a notion of first class and second class.

• 14:10Speaker 01

  That we really had to make sure right from the beginning. That we gave the message of valuing everybody. And that isn't the same thing as saying that everybody is the same. Yeah. They're not. They have different skills, different capabilities and so forth. But the notion that some people are better than others are different class. Not a good thing. So the basic principle was. That you you actually make the assumption that everybody can be better. Not the same, everybody can be better. And that that is not a high risk proposition.

• 14:54Speaker 01

  It is worth doing. So we basically, we were learning as we were going through this. And then we got to the point where. George, you know, because he got divorced and. His cash position was now completely different. Then. He needed to sell us.

• 15:19Speaker 01

  So this is a year-long stressful period for us. It's a very stressful period. But part of that was by this time, we had reached a level of quality. Because we had built some hardware in order to do high-quality images. That that ILM was starting to use what we had. And so part of the deal as we spun out was they had the rights to use the software that we had. And they used it. In the film, I think the first major one was The Abyss. Although we had done something earlier for them, like for Star Trek.

• 16:00Speaker 01

  There was that thing where you flew over the planet and it turned lifelike.

• 16:05Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 16:06Speaker 01

  So we'd done a couple of things for them, but I found somebody to help run the graphics group. We were never part of ILM, but they needed somebody in ILM as they started that transition to digital technology.

• 16:20Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 16:22Speaker 01

  So we we were acquired by Steve Jobs.

• 16:27Lewis Howes?

  Wow. What year was this now?

• 16:29Speaker 01

  It's 1986.

• 16:31Lewis Howes?

  1986, Steve Jobs acquires you. And you'd known Steve before then?

• 16:36Speaker 01

  Well, I I'd met him once. And and then he just disappeared at the time we were now starting to get sold. Now, I didn't know why he disappeared. Later, of course, I learned the reason was he was in this internal struggle, which resulted in him being removed at Apple. So this was basically a public humiliation for Steve. And it largely had to do with the way he related with people. So that's kind of the mythology around Steve. And I knew Steve when he was like this, that is, his behavior around people was not empathetic.

• 17:20Speaker 01

  And that kind of behaviors is frankly, kind of it's interesting and people like to tell stories about it and write about it. It's sort of like the bad boy behavior. And it's unfortunate because it doesn't capture the arc of Steve's life, which is far more interesting and impactful. Instead, the focus on the outside of whether it was movies or writing about him or articles was about a period in his life. And that was a period in which he was kicked out of Apple. He started Next Computer. And next, he did some brilliant

• 18:03Speaker 01

  things like his software choices. It turns out were fundamentally ultimately changed, not only Next, but later Apple. His hardware choices were questionable. And he made some poor business choices.

• 18:20Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 18:22Speaker 01

  And choices in which he thought these were really big wins. But I was looking at them and thinking, oh, this cannot be a good idea.

• 18:31Lewis Howes?

  Right, right, right. But he bought you guys. He bought Pixar.

• 18:34Speaker 01

  See, then he bought Pixar after he got them. So we knew Steve when he was like that. But we didn't have any choice. Like, we'd been spending a year. This was an utter disaster. I mean, it's a long story itself, like the things he went through. But the end result was the Steve acquired us.

• 18:54Lewis Howes?

  When he acquired you guys, did you, were you excited or were you more nervous based on his personality from the past?

• 19:01Speaker 01

  Well, we were excited to keep alive and keep going. So that was the excitement part.

• 19:06Lewis Howes?

  The dream.

• 19:07Speaker 01

  Yes. And Steve is like, he is, I mean, for us, and in various, I had a great relationship with Steve. So I think I worked for Steve longer than anybody else.

• 19:19Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 19:20Speaker 01

  And I never had an argument with Steve.

• 19:22Lewis Howes?

  Never?

• 19:22Speaker 01

  Never.

• 19:23Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 19:24Speaker 01

  We disagreed at times, but we never had an argument. And, and what, and my style with Steve was that if I didn't agree with him, first of all, I, I knew, I was self-aware enough to know that I absolutely could not think as fast as he could.

• 19:46Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 19:47Speaker 01

  He's really smart.

• 19:48Lewis Howes?

  You're not gonna debate him, you're not gonna jump in here.

• 19:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, so, I mean, there are people who are, who actually can push back with him and argue with him successfully. So there's something that's not known about Steve, but he actually values people that push back on him. But I can't think that fast. So instead, he'd shoot down what I say, and then I would say, well, let me get back to that. And I'd wait a week. So I'd think about my next sentence.

• 20:15Lewis Howes?

  Right, for a week.

• 20:16Speaker 01

  For a week. And then I would give it to him and he'd shoot it down. Let me get back to you. So this might go on for weeks, in a couple of cases it went on for months. And there'd be one of three outcomes. I'd say each one was about equally likely. One of them was we reached a point when I would say, oh, I see what you're saying. You're right. And that ends it.

• 20:44Speaker 01

  About a third of the time, he would say, okay, got it. You're right. End of discussion. Just like, you just bought what I said, and that was it. It just, I didn't explain it very well the first time.

• 20:57Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 20:59Speaker 01

  And, and one of the reasons I would do this is, I never confused the personal power that somebody might have, or their position, with what was right. So it didn't matter if somebody was a better debater, or could think faster than I could, or they were in a, in a senior position. I thought, I didn't mean they were right. So it just meant that I couldn't argue at the same rate. So, uh, I just didn't give up as long as I knew that I was right. And if I wasn't right, then I would change.

• 21:36Speaker 01

  So the other third of the time is, we didn't reach a conclusion. So in that third, I just did what I wanted to do.

• 21:44Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 21:45Speaker 01

  And Steve was okay with it, because we had discussed it.

• 21:50Speaker 01

  And that's how it worked.

• 21:52Lewis Howes?

  Oh, interesting.

• 21:53Speaker 01

  For all those years.

• 21:54Lewis Howes?

  How, how many years did you work with him?

• 21:56Speaker 01

  Uh, well, the, uh, we, he acquired us at that time, we were then a public company. So we were a public company until we were acquired by Disney. And then at Disney, the terms of it was that we had the equivalent of a board of directors, but we're just now a group within Disney. Uh, and I had a dual report to, um, Bob Iger and to the, uh, uh, the head of the studio.

• 22:27Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 22:28Speaker 01

  And, um, but we had this, um, steering committee. And so this steering committee was John, Steve and me. And then Bob Iger, the chairman of the studio and the CFO of the company.

• 22:40Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 22:41Speaker 01

  So like every month to begin with, and it slowly.

• 22:44Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 22:45Speaker 01

  Gatling there. But now this group would, would come in and they were like our board of directors. So that continued up until the end of this life.

• 22:54Lewis Howes?

  How many years total in that range is that? When you first.

• 22:58Speaker 01

  From eighty six and I forget what year he got.

• 23:01Lewis Howes?

  Wow, to the ten or low, I think her.

• 23:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, something like that.

• 23:03Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. Okay. So thirty something years.

• 23:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:07Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, it's amazing. Um, what were the biggest, three biggest lessons you learned from observing Steve Jobs? From communicating with him and from the way he left the world?

• 23:22Speaker 01

  Well, um, in the, in the case of, it's like, what are the lessons? One of them, which he understood intuitively,

• 23:34Speaker 01

  uh, which was that when you're wrong, you change.

• 23:38Speaker 01

  Now, I mean, there's different ways of phrasing and it's like that there's no upside in being wrong. And some people think they need to win the argument. And Steve actually understood that was never the point. It was, you want to get to the truth quickly. And, but he also understood that, um, at an intuitive level, that because of the power of his personality, it actually could disturb the process. And that was part of his learning as he went through this was the recognizing, what was him recognizing that his, his abilities, it's like superpowers could actually

• 24:21Speaker 01

  get in the way of finding out things. So I'll give a couple of examples. One of them, which is, which would surprise people was that we had a board of directors because in 1995, at the end, we went public. And this is a, this is like a big public conference. We were the second largest IPO of 1995, all after Netscape.

• 24:50Lewis Howes?

  And when did Toy Story come out?

• 24:52Speaker 01

  In 95.

• 24:52Lewis Howes?

  95.

• 24:53Speaker 01

  So we went public one week afterwards.

• 24:55Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 24:56Speaker 01

  So when we were doing the road trip and part of the road trip.

• 25:00Lewis Howes?

  Showing the movie.

• 25:01Speaker 01

  Was, well, actually it wasn't showing the movie. It was telling people that we had a new technology that was going to change filming. So now it's a complete conference. This film is going to be a big success.

• 25:12Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 25:13Speaker 01

  But he could say to them, nobody else can do this. There isn't anything like it. It's going to change the industry. And we've got the people that, that changed the technology and they're doing the content. That's what this company is. But we got, we're not going to go public until after the movie comes out because we think that we should show you how big this is.

• 25:40Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 25:41Speaker 01

  Before we go public.

• 25:42Lewis Howes?

  Smart.

• 25:43Speaker 01

  So that was what we did for the few months leading up to going public.

• 25:47Lewis Howes?

  You were telling a story about the story.

• 25:49Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 25:50Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 25:50Speaker 01

  And that we were going to prove it.

• 25:53Lewis Howes?

  And you guys did.

• 25:54Speaker 01

  And we did.

• 25:54Lewis Howes?

  You proved it big. So what was that first week like? Toy Story launches, box office, and then you go public the next week later. What was that week like?

• 26:04Speaker 01

  It was surreal.

• 26:07Lewis Howes?

  What were the numbers of the box office and then going public?

• 26:10Speaker 01

  Well, interestingly enough, what I remember at the time, because our whole group at the time would go to our computer graphics conference, which is Siggraph. And for the most part, it's showing the newest technology.

• 26:26Speaker 01

  And we believe firmly, because we made short films and they were actually, you know, Academy Award winning short films and they're quite impactful, but they're short. And people would always pay attention on the outside to the technology. So when the film came out, the biggest question that we had, and everybody was looking for it, and all of the technology people were looking for it, was what are the reviewers going to pay attention to? And what we found was that almost every review,

• 27:07Speaker 01

  there was at most one or two sentences about the new technology, and the rest of the review was about the movie.

• 27:16Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 27:17Speaker 01

  And that for all of us was like, that's the win. It wasn't about the technology.

• 27:24Lewis Howes?

  It was about being a great movie.

• 27:25Speaker 01

  Yes. And if we had done that, and we got people to buy into this world and watch it and feel it, then that was the win. And everybody understood it at every level in the company.

• 27:39Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 27:40Speaker 01

  And so that's what I remember was reading those things to find out whether or not we had really accomplished what we wanted to do.

• 27:49Lewis Howes?

  It's incredible. I mean, what I'm curious about is how were you able to tap into the human mind and create emotional connections with audiences through these animations? How was this studied and executed

• 28:07Lewis Howes?

  for the last 30 years at such a high level? And how did you do that for that first movie?

• 28:12Speaker 01

  Well, I will say that for the first movie, there was

• 28:19Speaker 01

  It's one of those things where there is some luck in that group that that first came in.

• 28:27Speaker 01

  We had always in the history of both at New York Tech and then at Lucasfilm and then at Pixar, was to say, we really want to hire the very best. And so I would say, well, we want to hire people who are smarter than I am. And I know other people say that, but because like, like, what does that even mean? But it means that you don't want to be threatened by the people that you hire, and they just have to have these extraordinary skills. And so when we when we were building out our our technical group, they they were just were really good. I mean, they were they had passed

• 29:07Speaker 01

  me in terms of their understanding of all the technology. And John understood that, too. So when he did his first hires, the first person he hired was Andrew Stanton. And then the second was Pete Docter. And then Joe Rant came in and then we brought in, really to be an editor, except he turns out to be like, one of the best storytellers ever is Lee Unkrich. So this is this amazing group of people that came together. And now, part of that was, we really had established a culture where

• 29:50Speaker 01

  that this was the right thing to do, is you aren't bringing in, you weren't even thinking about them as, oh, who, okay, who's going to be second to me? It's like, okay, who's really good? And it turns out that Andrew was had this extraordinarily structural sense. So we didn't know that. Right, right. It's just like, it emerged because of the challenge. And Pete Docter had this this incredible emotional core. Well, it still does. I mean, so he can, he went on to do up, inside out, you know, it's like, like, getting the emotion right, it's like who he is.

• 30:31Speaker 01

  And Lee has this actually phenomenal filmmaking sense of, okay, we're doing this, but you really have to get all these pieces right. And then the, the, the person that was Sharon Callahan initially, who was thinking about the lighting. And people aren't often aware of this, but the lighting is really important for conveying the emotions. And then the artist that we had, Ralph Eggleston, had a color palette for the movie because it turns out the basic color changed throughout the movie.

• 31:14Speaker 01

  And it's this subtle thing that's affecting your perceptions.

• 31:19Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 31:20Speaker 01

  So like, this is this amazing group of people. And the interesting thing about it was that none of these people had ever made a feature film before in their life.

• 31:31Lewis Howes?

  Oh, my goodness.

• 31:32Speaker 01

  So we hadn't used computer graphics, but they also hadn't done a 2D film. They hadn't done any film.

• 31:39Lewis Howes?

  So it's unbelievable.

• 31:42Speaker 01

  Everybody is a beginner. They all had to figure it out.

• 31:47Lewis Howes?

  And you're leading them.

• 31:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:51Lewis Howes?

  How, I mean, how do you know? I mean, yeah, the emotional, the, the emotions you're able to pull out of people, you know, in these films. Through, you're a technology guy, but through the tech, through the art, through the color, through the lighting, through the sound design and the music, through the tonality of the voice actors, and bringing it all together to create a cohesive emotional story is unbelievable how you guys do this. And I continue to do it, but how did you know how to put it all together?

• 32:27Speaker 01

  Well, I, I mean, the way I thought at the time was, is how do you have a group that works together? Because I'm not a filmmaker. And I would, you know, over time, we developed a way of, of helping people was, which ended up being called the brain trust. But my view was,

• 32:50Speaker 01

  When I went to these meetings was, how do we make sure this group works together? Like, what are the things that make it work together? What takes them off the rails? So it was to work out some principles for that. And it's fun to give notes to movie, but the truth was, there's only one movie in all those movies that I gave a note that I felt so strongly about that I had to push really hard to get it in there. What was that? It was in Monsters, Incorporated. What was the note? Well, the note was, at one point, near the end, the monster, Sully, has to scare this dummy, which is being video, this is like a training video.

• 33:30Speaker 01

  And you may recall that when he does this, he then looks up and he sees that the girl's right there. And he scares the bejesus out of this little girl. Mm-hmm. The one he loves. And he didn't mean to do it. But the original thing, what she saw was that she saw him on the monitor. So I looked at this and I said, "You can't do this because anybody that has a child remembers their times when they may have done something that where their child was in danger, either because of themselves or it happened to them.

• 34:12Speaker 01

  And when that happens, it sears into your soul and you never forget it for as long as you live." Wow. And that for Sully, he needs to see that he was the cause of the thing that scared her. That it was not good enough to have her see it by the monitor. So, and so there's some pushback on it. And, you know, I tried to talk with Andrew and so Anderson said, "No, this is actually critical to the film." And I just felt, "Oh, good." But that's it. Right. And so I could look at it, "Well, I did one at least." One note in 30 movies, yeah, yeah. And, but with, but that wasn't my job. Yeah.

• 34:57Speaker 01

  They're the filmmakers. It wasn't my job. It was to say, "Okay, is this working well together? Why is it derailing? When does it go well? When doesn't it go well?" And so that was the whole time. And then when Jim Morris came in initially over, he came as producer and then he was our head of production. Then he was our general manager and then he became the president. Uh, it was like, we're both like, you know, we're in there just looking at the process and what works, what doesn't work.

• 35:28Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 35:28Speaker 01

  You just evolving it.

• 35:29Lewis Howes?

  Right. So for time. I mean, it's you. You got pretty animated during this, uh, retelling a story with Monsters Inc. What movie left you with the deepest amount of emotion when you watched it after it came out or in the process of making it? What was the, the movie that captivated you the most? I'm sure that's hard to say which one you like the most, but was there a moment in a movie that really touched you in a way? Based on your own life experience, different than the other emotional moments in movies?

• 36:02Speaker 01

  Well, it was, um, uh, it's a little hard to say because the, any emotion in a movie connects to watching the people go through this. So I don't, I can't even watch a movie in the same way that others do because I'm actually seeing what took place.

• 36:23Lewis Howes?

  The creators, the producers, the everything.

• 36:27Speaker 01

  That's right. I mean, they're just, you know, these films all at the beginning have problems. It's just one thing after another and we go through multiple steps and with different ways of, of trying to fix the problems. And in fact, it was one of the things I was, I, I wanted to like clarify with the, the expanded edition of the book was that,

• 36:54Speaker 01

  you know, I, I talked a fair amount about, um, you know, failure and how it's, is part of the process. But I realized that we, it doesn't actually capture what takes place because we all know that we learn from failures. And it's in fact, failure is kind of popular to talk about nowadays about a way of learning. The reality is, is that we have two meanings to failure, which are deeply built into us. So there's one meaning, which is that we know that we've had failures and we learn from them and it's part of the process of learning.

• 37:37Speaker 01

  The other meaning is the one that we got in school. And that is if you fail a class, it's because you screwed up. You didn't work hard enough. Uh, or you're dumped. Right? None of those are good meanings. Right. All right, now you you go out into business. Bridges fail. Relationships fail. Uh, companies fail. And in politics and business, failures are used as bludgeons with which to beat opponents. There is real and palpable fear behind failure.

• 38:17Speaker 01

  All right, so if we talk about failure, then it is almost possible for most people to emotionally disconnect those two concepts.

• 38:30Speaker 01

  And so I realized that this, that's what I observe. That at Pixar, while we also say that failure is part of the process, it does happen. Yes. We don't actually use the terminology very much. Now, there are times when you have something which actually does fail, so we don't avoid it. You have to like, if something really fails, you say it. But the terminology of making a film is since we know they all have problems is we're trying to solve the problem. Hmm. That solution didn't work, let's try this. So the iterative process is we're trying it, let's try this.

• 39:11Speaker 01

  And uh, as long as the team is working well together, even if they haven't solved the problem.

• 39:19Speaker 01

  If they're working well together, we say, okay. Keep going, it's a tough problem. And uh, and they know that. They know we have their back.

• 39:30Speaker 01

  And the only thing, the only real clue we have that we have to do a major change is if the crew begins to lose the confidence that a leader can actually get them there. They may like the leader, and this is not, you know, I like, I don't like them. It's more like, I just don't have the confidence we're going to get there. And those things start to build. So we are aware of some of them because people will come and talk about some of the problems they've got. So you then start off, how do we help the person? How do we supplement them? Could we add somebody to the team to remove somebody?

• 40:13Speaker 01

  What are the things we can do behind the scene to help them? And if we get to the point where we can't do it, then we'll do a bigger change. And we essentially have failed. And it's tough because we picked the person to be the failure because we believe they can do it because they're very good. So for them, it's actually a very difficult process to go through. And we've only had a couple of the directors who could survive this, to stay with the company. And they're very valuable. And those who have stayed were actually incredible contributors, but it's emotionally hard for them to go through. Right.

• 40:55Speaker 01

  But one of those was with Ratatouille. Mm hmm. And the man who designed it conceived of the idea, a lovely man. He's really very good. In fact, the look of the film that you see came from this guy. Wow. But the film was stuck and they couldn't get out of it. And so at that point, due to other reasons. That we're on of, you know, Brad Bird had finished Mission Impossible.

• 41:28Lewis Howes?

  He did that later.

• 41:29Speaker 01

  Sure. He had actually finished The Incredibles.

• 41:31Lewis Howes?

  Uh huh.

• 41:32Speaker 01

  So we asked him to take it on.

• 41:34Lewis Howes?

  Interesting.

• 41:35Speaker 01

  And.

• 41:36Lewis Howes?

  Now, when the movie is stuck, do you mean it's stuck in the beginning stages or it's in post-production or it's like the story needs to adjust? So the story's not complete yet.

• 41:44Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 41:45Lewis Howes?

  So you've got the movie story, but you're like, well, we need changes here or it's not really fully emotionally connecting or the journey doesn't work. Is that what you mean?

• 41:53Speaker 01

  Yes. But in the meantime, we're building the models. We call the asset.

• 41:58Lewis Howes?

  You're building the, the characters, the backgrounds, the animation. You're building it without the right, the story complete.

• 42:04Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 42:05Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 42:05Speaker 01

  So, and there are pieces of it that we think are working, so we'll start to make them. Because you can't make the whole thing at the end. You need to start to make it.

• 42:13Lewis Howes?

  You make like one scene. You're like, we like this part. We think this will work.

• 42:16Speaker 01

  We think it's gonna, you're right. Maybe it's gonna work. We might be wrong. So sometimes you may throw that away.

• 42:22Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 42:23Speaker 01

  That's expensive.

• 42:24Lewis Howes?

  It's kind of like shooting a scene that you don't use, but you're got a thousand people animating something and working on.

• 42:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:32Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 42:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, but it's a tri-things. You figure them out.

• 42:34Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 42:35Speaker 01

  Because what is delighting? What's the character gonna look like? How is this going to, to work? So they're doing all this work. But you can't go too, you can't get too far ahead of yourself.

• 42:46Lewis Howes?

  But on the story complete.

• 42:47Speaker 01

  Yeah. So it's, it's a, a tricky balance, but it's always a tricky balance.

• 42:52Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 42:53Speaker 01

  Life is a tricky balance. So, uh, the, uh, in this case, um, you know, the, the characters look beautiful. It's, everything is gorgeous about it. It's not working. And there are a few things that are just fundamentally wrong. One of them was that originally that chef, that the chef busto was alive throughout the whole movie.

• 43:21Speaker 01

  Okay. And he kind of sold his soul and he's actually a highly rated chef. But he was making money because of advertising or you're using his name to sell products. And so.

• 43:36Lewis Howes?

  And he was consulting on the movie, is that right? Or the the chef that was.

• 43:39Speaker 01

  No, the chef in the movie.

• 43:40Lewis Howes?

  Got you.

• 43:41Speaker 01

  The chef in the fat guy. He was alive.

• 43:43Lewis Howes?

  Got you. Cause there was a consultant, I think I saw a photo over here of like a consultant showing you how to make.

• 43:48Speaker 01

  Oh, that's separate. That's that's the research we do.

• 43:51Lewis Howes?

  Gotcha.

• 43:52Speaker 01

  We're trying to learn what takes place.

• 43:53Lewis Howes?

  But the chef it's based on, he's alive.

• 43:56Speaker 01

  Uh, well, no, no. We we made up a chef.

• 44:01Lewis Howes?

  Got it.

• 44:01Speaker 01

  Gusto.

• 44:02Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 44:02Speaker 01

  And he's this fat guy. And he's kind of lost his way. And then there's this rat that wants to cook, who just happens to end up being in his kitchen.

• 44:10Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 44:11Speaker 01

  And because of the passion of the rat. Then it actually causes the chef to realize he went down the wrong path. Uh, so now you've got this problem throughout a lot of the movie is. Is this movie about? The the rat who wants to cook with that passion? Or is it a redemption story? For the chef who has lost his way? And then. The other problem that they're wrestling with was that the rat has a family. The rat doesn't talk to humans. So he's going through, he's meeting.

• 44:55Speaker 01

  People and and learning things in the restaurant.

• 44:59Speaker 01

  But because he can't talk, you don't know what he's thinking. And then he goes back to his family. And he explains what he just went through. But you just saw this. You're watching a movie. You just saw this. So now it brings the movie to a dead halt. Because he's explaining to them the things that you just saw. It's not good filmmaking. So Brad Bird enters the picture.

• 45:24Speaker 01

  Brad looks at it and the first thing he does after working with a good friend of his who was a good screenwriter, they kill the chef. So the chef died for some reason.

• 45:38Speaker 01

  And, but he's still on these TV programs and because he'd been teaching on whatever the channel was and the rats inspired by it. But because the chef is dead and Remy knows the chef is dead, then the chef is now a figment of his imagination. So what this means is that this figment of his imagination can sort of pop up and he's interacting with what he thinks the chef is. With InCham or Talim, yes. So it answers, it takes care of two huge problems. One of them is we now know who the movie is about. It's about the rat that wants to cook. So problem number one is solved.

• 46:25Speaker 01

  And the second one was because he cannot talk to the figment of his imagination and it doesn't feel unnatural because it's not like he's talking to a ghost. He's actually, you know that he's talking to himself or if it's not clear. So the, uh, that means that he doesn't need to go back and explain anything to his family. So you know what he's thinking at the time. So now the pacing starts to work. Now that's the brilliance of Brad Bird is to come in and say, oh, here's what we're going to do for good storytelling at every step of the way.

• 47:05Speaker 01

  And so now this film, which had these interesting elements about it, turns into something which is brilliant. And then Brad has has has his own take about art and what it means to critique art, that its impact of it. And he puts this in the movie. Cause you're watching this movie thinking, well, like, where's it going? Because a rat can never really run a restaurant in Paris. Like, is it gonna happen? So that's what makes it hard. So he takes this hard concept and he turns it into this thing at the end, which is profound.

• 47:46Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 47:47Speaker 01

  And then when the audience sees it, it's like, oh, I didn't see this coming. And this is beautiful. It's what I remember about the movies is actually going into the audiences. Cause I remember we went, we had the big opening in Paris.

• 48:04Lewis Howes?

  Wow, it's cool.

• 48:05Speaker 01

  And I would, we'd get to that moment. And what I would do is I would turn around and look at the audience. And that was the rewarding part.

• 48:14Lewis Howes?

  As they're watching the final scenes or the whole movie?

• 48:16Speaker 01

  No, it's that final scene.

• 48:18Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 48:19Speaker 01

  Why, look at them and they were going like this. Cause they didn't see it coming.

• 48:25Lewis Howes?

  That's incredible.

• 48:26Speaker 01

  And it was, that's what it was. It was incredible. And it's like, because so that's rewarding was something like that happen. And uh,

• 48:35Lewis Howes?

  Was there ever a time you, you cried in your own, watching your own premiere?

• 48:40Speaker 01

  Oh, I, I, well, I did for,

• 48:43Lewis Howes?

  Because of Toy Story three?

• 48:44Speaker 01

  Really? For Toy Story three. And I did for Coco.

• 48:47Lewis Howes?

  Oh my gosh, that's my favorite movie. Coco's a, I've got a Mexican girlfriend and so uh, her whole family is from Mexico. And you know, just whenever they come over to our house, it feels like I'm in Coco. In America. And whenever I go to Mexico, it feels like I'm in Coco. So for me, that's one of my favorite movies of all movies. It's incredible.

• 49:08Speaker 01

  Well, that was, you know, it was uh, Lee Unkrich. It actually created a problem because it was so good that afterwards, Lisa's, where, where do I go from here?

• 49:17Lewis Howes?

  It was unbelievable.

• 49:19Speaker 01

  Uh, but,

• 49:20Lewis Howes?

  You cried in Coco.

• 49:21Speaker 01

  And incidentally, he, he directed both of those films.

• 49:24Lewis Howes?

  Wow, you cried in Coco.

• 49:25Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 49:27Lewis Howes?

  What part made you?

• 49:28Speaker 01

  Well, it was um,

• 49:32Speaker 01

  The thing about any good movie of this sort, or the kind of movies that we try to tell, is that you are trying to connect to our own personal emotions, but you're also trying to bring in something new and original. Because to be honest, there's unfortunately sort of this bias against the Mexican culture, because what do people hear about on the news in terms of immigration or various things at the border? They don't represent Mexico. And they don't represent what takes place like in southern Mexico with, you know, the Day of the Dead. And if you say the Day of the Dead in America, it's like, oh, okay. On, you know, the Day of the Dead.

• 50:19Speaker 01

  So, but it means something entirely different there. It's like the respect for the people that came before us. That's what it's about. So, and you actually get that in the movie. So they went down into the villages in, in southern Mexico. And they spent a lot of time. Wow. Getting to know the people, talking with them. We had a, a group in California. They were like Mexican advisors because we wanted to get it right. Essentially, you've got these people from North America going down into, to Mexico. I mean, they're in North America too.

• 51:01Speaker 01

  So you've got people, you know, from, from America going down. Well, how are they going to tell that story? So they work really hard to try to capture that. They say it was true with, like, Moana. It's like. Another great movie. Incredible. And you, you actually try to get something from the culture. Because you don't want to work off the biases. Right. You don't want to work out of what other people are thinking. And the thing with Ratatouille, it's like, you know, we all know cooking in the home. We watched our parents cook or we cook. We watched the cooking channel. You can see the chefs in the kitchen.

• 51:39Speaker 01

  But what is it like to actually be in a highly rated fancy restaurant in any place? What's the culture like? We don't know that. So for Ratatouille, they went into those restaurants. They got to know them and they also were given some work. Like at the French Laundry, they actually spent time in the kitchen and they were given jobs to do. So they were capturing that. Now, what's interesting about it is that is even though we know a lot about cooking,

• 52:19Speaker 01

  we don't know whether or not what they're saying in the kitchen, the way they're acting is true. Right? We just don't know. But they sense that it is. If you've actually done your research and you put that in the film, then there's something that is conveyed to people because you took the time to find out something original. So in the case of Coco, it was to go down and find out how do they feel about it? What are they doing? What are they thinking? And I remember this is when the movie came out because we went down to the premiere.

• 53:03Speaker 01

  And one of the things I appreciate is that when Americans make movies about Mexico, they don't know the difference between the Mexican brimmed hat and the Spanish one. So they like to interchange them.

• 53:22Speaker 01

  But in Mexico, they know.

• 53:25Speaker 01

  So they went down there and they wanted to get those details right. And most of the audiences, they wouldn't know. But they felt like they needed to have the people who would know, know that it was right.

• 53:40Lewis Howes?

  Sure. What was, what was a part of the movie that emotionally captivated you the most in Coco?

• 53:45Speaker 01

  Well, it was, because the intent was, it actually is the respect for these people that came before. It's like, because it was real.

• 53:58Speaker 01

  You know, he'd learned something, he'd figured out something about the people that came before him. He also felt like he was, he was able to fix some, um, some things that were wrong.

• 54:12Speaker 01

  But it was, it was also emotional for me for a couple of other reasons, too.

• 54:18Speaker 01

  One is in the storytelling was that, uh, initially, Lee was going to make this as Pixar's first musical.

• 54:28Speaker 01

  Because Pixar really doesn't have musicals in their DNA. Disney does and Pixar doesn't. But, and one of the things I want to make sure is that we didn't try to make one studio like the other. We also weren't trying, trying to say you have to be different. So they had to evolve in their own ones, in their own way. So if one wants to make a musical, then they can. And at Pixar, if they want to make a musical, they can. And so Lou was going to be the first person to do that. So we got these brilliant two people who also had done something down at Disney. So I mean, they were, you know, good and close and we worked with them before.

• 55:14Speaker 01

  And so they wrote the first song for his movie, which is called Remember Me. Credible. And so, but as a filmmaker, he said, okay, that's thematic for the movie. So now he, he builds a story using this song throughout it. All right. So it's now a key element of where did it come from? Why was it written? And the notion was that, you know, if his great grandma dies, that the last person, she's the last person who will know where the song came from. And she's got.

• 55:55Lewis Howes?

  Oh, my God, she remembers it.

• 55:57Speaker 01

  And she's got Alzheimer.

• 56:01Speaker 01

  It's so emotional, actually.

• 56:02Lewis Howes?

  I know.

• 56:04Speaker 01

  Uh, but by playing it as she remembers, it actually gives him life. So wow, is seeing that and conveying that.

• 56:20Lewis Howes?

  That's beautiful.

• 56:21Speaker 01

  It's powerful.

• 56:22Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 56:23Speaker 01

  And the other interesting thing about the story, which is a separate thing was like having it started. So one of the things we figured out, this is very early on in Pixar. Uh, when we started our second movie, well, the first, the second was, was Bugs Life. But the third one was going to be a sequel. No sequel had ever been successful. Right. Uh, they animated sequels had ever been successful. So the, the thought was originally by Disney was this is going to be a direct video. So we start to make it, but right away it's clear that the people working on it at Pixar

• 57:05Speaker 01

  are very upset because to, to work on a sequel at a studio where we end up, where we want to have the highest standard of quality means that we're working on something where the expectations is much lower. We don't want to do something where there are low expectations. We want there to be, we want it to be, you know, at a high level. So Disney agreed to that.

• 57:33Speaker 01

  So we then started to make this film and we frankly had a problems, several problems with it because we were building on some assumptions that we got from the first film. Because the first film had been built knowing nothing, but we drew some conclusions from it. And some of the conclusions we drew from it were not correct. So we built or started the sequel based on those assumptions only to find that we were wrong. We just uncovered a bunch of things to question or challenge our original ideas. So, um, uh, and in the process of doing that, we had to restart the movie really late in the game and remake it.

• 58:17Speaker 01

  It was like a brutal, brutal effort to remake this movie. We had to make it eight months, starting from scratch almost. Oh yeah, it was, it was a nightmare. And we had like a third of our people injured with RSI. Oh, man. And, uh, but one of the things that came out of that was the realization that the way we were starting films is we were trying to do what other studios do, which was to have a development department looking for good scripts. And so our, our thought was, why are we trying to copy the model of other studios? First of all, the success rate of films of the studios isn't very high. Low.

• 59:02Speaker 01

  Yeah. So we said, let's do it a different way. So what we did was we're going to pick somebody who we think can direct a feature film. They, and then we're going to say to them, pick three ideas to develop.

• 59:25Speaker 01

  So now, the reason we say three is, instead of saying, "Pick an idea that you want to make into a film." Well, what happens to all of us when you do something tougher in school or something like that? You start to bang your head against, well, you get stuck. So the reason we said three was why is that if you get stuck, you can switch to a different idea. What? So they'd have an artist, and at some point they may have a writer come in and work with them. So it's like a really small team, spending a year. And they had some help with the development department. We still had the development department, but they were no longer, they were no longer looking for scripts to turn into movies.

• 1:00:10Speaker 01

  Their job was to help support this small group. So they read scripts, but all they were looking for was good writers who could join the team. But we never made anybody else's script. We always- Started from scratch. Started from scratch. Wow. So they would then spend that year going back and forth between their three ideas. Hmm. And at the end of the year, they would come in, and the two or three people who were now the leaders over this, and they would pitch it to the creative leadership of the company, say some of the other directors. So there may be like 10, 12 people in the room. These three ideas? The three ideas.

• 1:00:53Speaker 01

  And the way this works is, there's a story room,

• 1:00:58Speaker 01

  uh, which holds, there's a table in the middle, and so essentially you can hold like 12 people in the room. And there are two long walls, and there's storyboards along the wall, and they would cover them up. So they'd put the material, the conceptual ideas for the film on the wall.

• 1:01:18Speaker 01

  And then take like twenty, twenty-five minutes, present the idea, there'd be a brief discussion on it. And then we, then we'd go through the three films. Now, the process started, and they all did this, even though they'd been on the other side, like they'd been on the, the creative leadership side, and then there'd be time when they'd pitch their ideas. Um, and they'd all start saying the same thing. They would say, I love all three ideas equally. Right. It doesn't matter to me which one you pick. Now, it's not true. Um, they do like one better.

• 1:02:00Speaker 01

  And the debate when they leave the room is not which is the best idea to make in the film. It is which one do they really want to make?

• 1:02:12Speaker 01

  And I think we've always called it right, because we'd come back and then go,

• 1:02:17Speaker 01

  I was hoping you'd pick that one. Sure, sure. But in the case of Coco,

• 1:02:23Speaker 01

  Pete came in and he pitched an idea which is related to an idea that he pitched before he did Toy Story three. And then when we got, when we had the ability to make Toy Story three, he was asked to direct it, and so he switched over, along with the writer he'd worked with.

• 1:02:42Speaker 01

  Michael Arndt, brilliant, brilliant writer.

• 1:02:46Speaker 01

  And they developed a good relationship. Um, so they were, so, so basically Lee was pitching that idea they originally had.

• 1:02:56Speaker 01

  Then he pitched his second idea, which was to be a full-on musical, that interesting concept, challenging concept.

• 1:03:05Speaker 01

  And then the two walls are up, so then we go into the other room. So we open the door, and when we open the door, um, the table, the ceiling, both walls and the end wall are filled with Mexican artwork. Really? So. There isn't a single word that's said and everybody knows which movie we're making.

• 1:03:32Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, there's, there's a poster buzz of the first two, but this one is a whole experience.

• 1:03:36Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 1:03:37Lewis Howes?

  You walked into Coco World.

• 1:03:39Speaker 01

  That's right. You walk into Coco World.

• 1:03:41Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 1:03:41Speaker 01

  Now, the interesting part, which this is the way it works is the final movie actually was very little like that first thing.

• 1:03:51Speaker 01

  It didn't matter.

• 1:03:52Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:03:53Speaker 01

  Because you, you start off with a concept and you're going to learn something. The whole idea of all these trips to Mexico.

• 1:04:00Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:01Speaker 01

  Was to learn something because everything else is sort of based on, you know, kind of things you knew.

• 1:04:06Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:04:07Speaker 01

  Because you're interested in their stereotypes and so forth. So you expected the change pretty dramatically in the process of doing it.

• 1:04:15Lewis Howes?

  So when he pitched Coco, um, and you guys went back and decided like, okay, this is the movie we're, we're choosing of these three. Was there a debate or was everyone just like, oh, we know he's the most passionate about this idea. Let's run him what, let's let him run with the thing he's most passionate about.

• 1:04:34Speaker 01

  Uh, wait, I think in that case, there were, there probably wasn't any debate. I would say with others, there is some question about, okay, which, which one is it?

• 1:04:46Speaker 01

  The, uh, but that, and that's probably more than normal. There'd be a little debate about it.

• 1:04:54Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:04:55Speaker 01

  And also not everybody goes through the process. Like if, if Andrew Stanton says he wants to make something, it's like, okay, Andrew, you can make whatever you want.

• 1:05:04Lewis Howes?

  I hope today's episode inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a rundown of today's show with all the important links. And if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me as well as ad free listening experience, make sure to subscribe to our greatness plus channel on Apple podcast. If you enjoyed this, please share it with a friend over on social media or text a friend. Leave us a review over on Apple podcast and let me know what you learned over on our social media channels at Lewis Howes. I really love hearing the feedback from you and it helps us continue to make the show better. And if you want more inspiration from our world-class guests and content to learn how to improve the quality of your life,

• 1:05:45Lewis Howes?

  then make sure to sign up for the Greatness Newsletter and get it delivered right to your inbox over at greatness.com/newsletter. And if no one has told you today, I want to remind you that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great.