The first principle was “Story Is King,” by which we meant that we would let nothing - not
the technology, not the merchandising possibilities - get in the way of our story. We took
pride in the fact that reviewers talked mainly about the way Toy Story made them feel and not about the computer wizardry that enabled us to get it up on the screen. We believed that this was the direct result of our always keeping story as our guiding light.

The other principle we depended on was “Trust the Process.” We liked this one because it was so reassuring: While there are inevitably difficulties and missteps in any complex creative endeavor, you can trust that “the process” will carry you through. In some ways, this was no different than any optimistic aphorism (“Hang in there, baby!”), except that because our process was so different from other movie studios, we felt that it had real power. Pixar was a place that gave artists running room, that gave directors control, that trusted its people to solve problems. I have always been wary of maxims or rules because, all too often, they turn out to be empty platitudes that impede thoughtfulness, but these two principles actually seemed to help our people.

In any given Pixar film, every line of dialogue, every beam of light or patch of shade, every sound effect is there because it contributes to the greater whole. In the end, if you do it right, people come out of the theater and say, “A movie about talking toys - what a clever idea!” But a movie is not one idea, it’s a multitude of them. And behind these ideas are people. This is true of products in general; the iPhone, for example, is not a singular idea - there is a mind-boggling depth to the hardware and software that supports it. Yet too often, we see a single object and think of it as an island that exists apart and unto itself.

Which is why we don’t give notes this way at Pixar. We have developed our own model, based on our determination to be a filmmaker-led studio. That does not mean there is no hierarchy here. It means that we try to create an environment where people want to hear each other’s notes, even when those notes are challenging, and where everyone has a vested interest in one another’s success. We give our filmmakers both freedom and responsibility. For example, we believe that the most promising stories are not assigned to filmmakers but emerge from within them. With few exceptions, our directors make movies that they have conceived of and are burning to make. Then, because we know that this passion will at some point blind them to their movie’s inevitable problems, we offer them the counsel of the Braintrust.

1. RESEARCH TRIPS

I was once in a conference room at Disney in which two directors were pitching the latest version of a film they were developing. The walls of the room were covered with large corkboards, which were filled with illustrations of what happens in each act, as well as drawings of characters and collages of inspirational artwork. To give a sense of the overall flavor of the film, the directors had posted dozens of images from well-known movies that they felt were in a similar visual and contextual vein: panoramic shots they hoped to mimic, landscapes they found inspiring, character studies that showed costumes like the ones they planned to use. While they had hoped to convey the sense of their movie idea by displaying examples from other films, every single board was based on these iconic references, with the unintended result that everything presented felt terribly derivative. In one way, this made sense - every director gets into this business because they love movies; it is inevitable that references to other movies often pop up when talking about filmmaking. (At Pixar, we joke that only one mention of Star Wars is allowed per meeting.) References to movies, both good and bad, are part of the vocabulary of talking about filmmaking. And yet if you rely too much on the references to what came before, you doom your film to being derivative.

In short, Pixar had the kind of diverse problems that any successful company has. But chief among them, to my mind, was that more and more people had begun to feel that it was either not safe or not welcome to offer differing ideas. This hesitancy was difficult to see at first, but when we paid attention, we saw many clues that people were holding back. To me, that meant one thing: We, as leaders, were allowing some faulty ideas to take hold, and that was bad for our culture.

There is nothing like a crisis, though, to bring what ails a company to the surface. And now, we had three crises brewing at once: (1) Our production costs were rising and we needed to rein them in; (2) External economic forces were putting pressure on our business; and (3) One of the central tenets of our culture - good ideas can come from anywhere, so everyone must feel empowered to speak up - was faltering. Too many of our people - and to my mind, “too many” is the same as “any” - were self-censoring. That needed to change.