Animator John Lasseter making Disney a top draw

By Alex Ben Block

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - One evening last August, hundreds of people filed into Hollywood's elegant El Capitan Theater to pay tribute to the late Ollie Johnston, the last surviving member of the "Nine Old Men," the pioneering animators who brought Walt Disney's classics to the screen.

Among them was John Lasseter, chief creative officer of the Walt Disney Animation Studios and Pixar Animation Studios and also principal creative advisor for Walt Disney Imagineering. His voice trembling, Lasseter spoke of how thrilling it was getting to know Johnston when he first came to Disney in 1979.

"We weren't embraced at that time by many of the people leading (Disney)," he recalled. "The Nine Old Men were starting to step away and retire. But it was the Nine Old Men who embraced us. They wanted to teach us everything that they knew. They recognized, more than anybody else, that they were handing the torch off."

The torch has been passed. Over the past two decades, the 51-year-old Lasseter has become not only the most prominent successor to the Nine Old Men, but arguably the most important figure in animation since Disney himself.

This year, he's a key player behind two animated films: "WALL-E," already hailed by many critics as a masterpiece, and "Bolt," debuting November 21.

One comes from the ever-inventive Pixar, the other from Disney's decades-old animation unit. If Lasseter is now pivotal to both, that is no coincidence: His groundbreaking work has never ignored its debt to the past.

"He's been an extraordinary force in innovating and renewing excitement about the animated feature in this country," says film historian Charles Solomon. And, he says, he did so "at a time when it was falling into the doldrums."

BRAIN TRUST

Lasseter's L-shaped office on the Pixar campus in Emeryville, Calif., brims with scripts, family pictures and a multitude of toys.

One wall serves as a shrine to Lasseter's favorite animation director, Japan's Hayao Miyazaki, with signed posters, pictures and mementos from films like his 2003 best animated feature Oscar winner "Spirited Away."

"His films are so specific," Lasseter says. "They have such heart. They're so inventive. They're always inspirational."

Heart. Inventiveness. Inspiration. These are Lasseter's own hallmarks, visible in everything from the free education available to Pixar employees to the imaginative way he works with Pixar's "Brain Trust," a group of directors who play a pivotal role on each film.

The Brain Trust is critical to Pixar's success. It gets together regularly to look at work done by other directors and comment candidly.

It's part of a strategy Lasseter calls "plussing," constantly adding input from all sources.

"It's always assumed there's a way to make it better at every stage," says Pete Docter, director of 2001's "Monsters, Inc." "John is great at saying, 'Well, what if you did this extra little gesture?' And suddenly it really sparkles and comes to life."