Benjamin franklin and albert einstein, this is the exclusive biography of steve jobs

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
TOY STORY
Buzz and Woody to the Rescue
Jeffrey Katzenberg
“It’s kind of fun to do the impossible,” Walt Disney once said. That was the type of attitude that 
appealed to Jobs. He admired Disney’s obsession with detail and design, and he felt that there was 
a natural fit between Pixar and the movie studio that Disney had founded.
The Walt Disney Company had licensed Pixar’s Computer Animation Production System, and 
that made it the largest customer for Pixar’s computers. One day Jeffrey Katzenberg, the head of 
Disney’s film division, invited Jobs down to the Burbank studios to see the technology in 
operation. As the Disney folks were showing him around, Jobs turned to Katzenberg and asked, 
“Is Disney happy with Pixar?” With great exuberance, Katzenberg answered yes. Then Jobs 
asked, “Do you think we at Pixar are happy with Disney?” Katzenberg said he assumed so. “No, 
we’re not,” Jobs said. “We want to do a film with you. That would make us happy.”
Katzenberg was willing. He admired John Lasseter’s animated shorts and had tried 
unsuccessfully to lure him back to Disney. So Katzenberg invited the Pixar team down to discuss 
partnering on a film. When Catmull, Jobs, and Lasseter got settled at the conference table, 
Katzenberg was forthright. “John, since you won’t come work for me,” he said, looking at 
Lasseter, “I’m going to make it work this way.”
Just as the Disney company shared some traits with Pixar, so Katzenberg shared some with 
Jobs. Both were charming when they wanted to be, and aggressive (or worse) when it suited their 
moods or interests. Alvy Ray Smith, on the verge of quitting Pixar, was at the meeting. 
“Katzenberg and Jobs impressed me as a lot alike,” he recalled. “Tyrants with an amazing gift of 
gab.” Katzenberg was delightfully aware of this. “Everybody thinks I’m a tyrant,” he told the 
Pixar team. “I 
am
a tyrant. But I’m usually right.” One can imagine Jobs saying the same.
As befitted two men of equal passion, the negotiations between Katzenberg and Jobs took 
months. Katzenberg insisted that Disney be given the rights to Pixar’s proprietary technology for 
making 3-D animation. Jobs refused, and he ended up winning that engagement. Jobs had his own 
demand: Pixar would have part ownership of the film and its characters, sharing control of both 
video rights and sequels. “If that’s what you want,” Katzenberg said, “we can just quit talking and 
you can leave now.” Jobs stayed, conceding that point.
Lasseter was riveted as he watched the two wiry and tightly wound principals parry and thrust. 
“Just to see Steve and Jeffrey go at it, I was in awe,” he recalled. “It was like a fencing match. 
They were both masters.” But Katzenberg went into the match with a saber, Jobs with a mere foil. 
Pixar was on the verge of bankruptcy and needed a deal with Disney far more than Disney needed 
a deal with Pixar. Plus, Disney could afford to finance the whole enterprise, and Pixar couldn’t. 
The result was a deal, struck in May 1991, by which Disney would own the picture and its 
characters outright, have creative control, and pay Pixar about 12.5% of the ticket revenues. It had 
the option (but not the obligation) to do Pixar’s next two films and the right to make (with or 
without Pixar) sequels using the characters in the film. Disney could also kill the film at any time 
with only a small penalty.
The idea that John Lasseter pitched was called “Toy Story.” It sprang from a belief, which he 
and Jobs shared, that products have an essence to them, a purpose for which they were made. If 
the object were to have feelings, these would be based on its desire to fulfill its essence. The 
purpose of a glass, for example, is to hold water; if it had 
feelings, it would be happy when full and sad when empty. The essence of a computer screen is 
to interface with a human. The essence of a unicycle is to be ridden in a circus. As for toys, their 

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purpose is to be played with by kids, and thus their existential fear is of being discarded or 
upstaged by newer toys. So a buddy movie pairing an old favorite toy with a shiny new one would 
have an essential drama to it, especially when the action revolved around the toys’ being separated 
from their kid. The original treatment began, “Everyone has had the traumatic childhood 
experience of losing a toy. Our story takes the toy’s point of view as he loses and tries to regain 
the single thing most important to him: to be played with by children. This is the reason for the 
existence of all toys. It is the emotional foundation of their existence.”
The two main characters went through many iterations before they ended up as Buzz Lightyear 
and Woody. Every couple of weeks, Lasseter and his team would put together their latest set of 
storyboards or footage to show the folks at Disney. In early screen tests, Pixar showed off its 
amazing technology by, for example, producing a scene of Woody rustling around on top of a 
dresser while the light rippling in through a Venetian blind cast shadows on his plaid shirt—an 
effect that would have been almost impossible to render by hand. Impressing Disney with the plot, 
however, was more difficult. At each presentation by Pixar, Katzenberg would tear much of it up, 
barking out his detailed comments and notes. And a cadre of clipboard-carrying flunkies was on 
hand to make sure every suggestion and whim uttered by Katzenberg received follow-up 
treatment.
Katzenberg’s big push was to add more edginess to the two main characters. It may be an 
animated movie called