But what was the part of the movie that emotionally captivated you the most in Coco?

Actually is the respect for these people that came before, and because it was real.

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, uh, some things that were wrong.

It w- it was also emotional for me for a couple other reasons, too.

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

Because Pixar really doesn't have musicals in their DNA.

Yeah, sure.

Is that universal? Is that in any scenario that if you just have smart, great people sort of working in the right environment, that they're going to get to the right idea? Or is the idea a critical component of it?

It is a blend of those.

You have to pay attention to each one of them.

So...

while we obviously try to get really smart and talented people with complementary skills at the same time, I do believe that the right environment causes a lot of people to raise up in what they're able to do.

They become better.

And the relationship between them is an example of what's true in a lot of things in life where they, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

Yeah.

Because it couldn't be to him, right? Were people afraid in Pixar to share harsh feedback or fight with Steve? No, no, not with Steve.

No, it was... actually people, they would talk back with them.

I mean, was there a little bit of fear? And it was obviously, you know, so well known that some people, a lot of people were nervous.

I mean, there are people who are nervous about me too, just because of the position.

This is a reality.

This is when you're in a position of either power or perceived power, that people react to you in a different way.

And it's critical to be aware that that phenomenon takes place.

I think in the book you say embrace that early work will always suck.

What were you gonna say?

Well, th-this is a result of just thinking a lot about the last many years as we were... a-and a lot of it's reflection, but also trying to understand the nature of change and the process that y-you have of trying to come to an understanding or, or gain insight.

In the book, I talked a lot about the brain trust.

The brain trust is such a mechanism.

Different companies have different ways of trying to arrive at, at truth and getting, um, insight out there.

Every company says they do that.

Most of them are full of shit.

My new mission is to figure out how to build a culture where this is sustained and we don't make these mistakes."

Huh.

Uh, but it, it, uh, started with that just, and for me, it's the, the love of storytelling and the curiosity and the magic of watching Disney.

And even as a kid, I knew that, you know, they're, they're playing tricks and run, run.

You watch the characters come off of the animation boards and come alive, and that, well, that's fun.

That's what, see, you know, what are they doing to make that happen? How does that work? Um, I made up a platen for, for drawing, uh, took, uh, uh, courses and did a lot of, uh, of drawing.

And around the time of high school, um, I, uh, couldn't see how to take the leap from what I wanted to where I wanted to go.

Yeah, yeah.

So, but they had these skills.

[gentle music] 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 for the last 30 years at such a high level?

Well, I, I will say that for the first movie, it's one of those things where there is some luck in that group that, that first came in.

W- we had always i- in the h- history of both at New York Tech and then at Lucasfilm and then at Pixar, was to say we really wanna hire the very best.

And so I would say, "Well, we wanna hire people who are smarter than I am." And, and I know other people say that, but because like, like what does that even mean? But it means that you don't wanna be threatened by the people that you hire, and, and they just have to have these extraordinary skills.

When we were building out our technical group, I mean, they, they were just were really good.

I mean, they were ...

They had passed me in terms of their understanding of all the technology.

Mm-hmm.