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

Toy Story
, he said, but it should not be aimed only at children. “At first 
there was no drama, no real story, and no conflict,” Katzenberg recalled. He suggested that 
Lasseter watch some classic buddy movies, such as 
The Defiant Ones
and 
48 Hours
, in which two 
characters with different attitudes are thrown together and have to bond. In addition, he kept 
pushing for what he called “edge,” and that meant making Woody’s character more jealous, mean, 
and belligerent toward Buzz, the new interloper in the toy box. “It’s a toy-eat-toy world,” Woody 
says at one point, after pushing Buzz out of a window.
After many rounds of notes from Katzenberg and other Disney execs, Woody had been stripped 
of almost all charm. In one scene he throws the other toys off the bed and orders Slinky to come 
help. When Slinky hesitates, Woody barks, “Who said your job was to think, spring-wiener?” 
Slinky then asks a question that the Pixar team members would soon be asking themselves: “Why 
is the cowboy so scary?” As Tom Hanks, who had signed up to be Woody’s voice, exclaimed at 
one point, “This guy’s a real jerk!”
Cut!
Lasseter and his Pixar team had the first half of the movie ready to screen by November 1993, so 
they brought it down to Burbank to show to Katzenberg and other Disney executives. Peter 
Schneider, the head of feature animation, had never been enamored of Katzenberg’s idea of 
having outsiders make animation for Disney, and he declared it a mess and ordered that 
production be stopped. Katzenberg agreed. “Why is this so terrible?” he asked a colleague, Tom 
Schumacher. “Because it’s not their movie anymore,” Schumacher bluntly replied. He later 
explained, “They were following Katzenberg’s notes, and the project had been driven completely 
off-track.”
Lasseter realized that Schumacher was right. “I sat there and I was pretty much embarrassed 
with what was on the screen,” he recalled. “It was a story filled with the most unhappy, mean 
characters that I’ve ever seen.” He asked Disney for the chance to retreat back to Pixar and rework 
the script. Katzenberg was supportive.
Jobs did not insert himself much into the creative process. Given his proclivity to be in control, 
especially on matters of taste and design, this self-restraint was a testament to his respect for 
Lasseter and the other artists at Pixar—as well as for the ability of Lasseter and Catmull to keep 
him at bay. He did, however, help manage the relationship with Disney, and the Pixar team 
appreciated that. When Katzenberg and Schneider halted production on 
Toy Story
, Jobs kept the 
work going with his own personal funding. And he took their side against Katzenberg. “He had 
Toy Story
all messed up,” Jobs later said. “He wanted Woody to be a bad guy, and when he shut 
us down we kind of kicked him out and said, ‘This isn’t what we want,’ and did it the way we 
always wanted.”

---

The Pixar team came back with a new script three months later. The character of Woody 
morphed from being a tyrannical boss of Andy’s other toys to being their wise leader. His jealousy 
after the arrival of Buzz Lightyear was portrayed more sympathetically, and it was set to the 
strains of a Randy Newman song, “Strange Things.” The scene in which Woody pushed Buzz out 
of the window was rewritten to make Buzz’s fall the result of an accident triggered by a little trick 
Woody initiated involving a Luxo lamp. Katzenberg & Co. approved the new approach, and by 
February 1994 the film was back in production.
Katzenberg had been impressed with Jobs’s focus on keeping costs under control. “Even in the 
early budgeting process, Steve was very eager to do it as efficiently as possible,” he said. But the 
$17 million production budget was proving inadequate, especially given the major revision that 
was necessary after Katzenberg had pushed them to make Woody too edgy. So Jobs demanded 
more in order to complete the film right. “Listen, we made a deal,” Katzenberg told him. “We 
gave you business control, and you agreed to do it for the amount we offered.” Jobs was furious. 
He would call Katzenberg by phone or fly down to visit him and be, in Katzenberg’s words, “as 
wildly relentless as only Steve can be.” Jobs insisted that Disney was liable for the cost overruns 
because Katzenberg had so badly mangled the original concept that it required extra work to 
restore things. “Wait a minute!” Katzenberg shot back. “We were helping you. You got the benefit 
of our creative help, and now you want us to pay you for that.” It was a case of two control freaks 
arguing about who was doing the other a favor.
Ed Catmull, more diplomatic than Jobs, was able to reach a compromise new budget. “I had a 
much more positive view of Jeffrey than some of the folks working on the film did,” he said. But 
the incident did prompt Jobs to start plotting about how to have more leverage with Disney in the 
future. He did not like being a mere contractor; he liked being in control. That meant Pixar would 
have to bring its own funding to projects in the future, and it would need a new deal with Disney.
As the film progressed, Jobs became ever more excited about 
it. He had been talking to various companies, ranging from Hallmark to Microsoft, about 
selling Pixar, but watching Woody and Buzz come to life made him realize that he might be on the 
verge of transforming the movie industry. As scenes from the movie were finished, he watched 
them repeatedly and had friends come by his home to share his new passion. “I can’t tell you the 
number of versions of