This is how serious Pixar is about story

Amidst a little THR article on Pixar co-founder and head honcho James Lasseter, how he and his wife Nancy started their own winery 11 years ago, there’s this interest most interesting tidbit:

Everyone knows that John Lasseter, who’s set to receive a star Nov. 1 on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, built the animation giant Pixar. That he and his wife, Nancy, created the Lasseter Family Winery in the Sonoma Valley has been something of a secret — until now. Just a few years ago, the couple’s wines were given away at charity events and sold in small amounts via a mailing list. In July, the couple went pro, hiring a publicist, getting representation from distributors covering eight states and talking about their side business for the first time. But after a good 11 years of operation, the question is: Why lift the embargo now? “It’s like with John’s films; he won’t speak a word until he finds all the parts of his story,” explains Nancy. “John jokes that the winery is my movie. Now we can talk. Our wines are ready — we know the story.”

“Finds all the parts of his story… Now we can talk… we know the story.”

Think on that for a second. Doesn’t this suggest how deeply embedded into the consciousness of Pixar the importance of story is? That even when it comes to a different endeavor entirely — a winery! — their instinct is to find the story first.

Indeed can’t we extrapolate from the above quote a basic framework for the story-crafting process?

* First all the parts of the story: Prep-writing wherein we work on concept, character development, plotting, and wrangle the story.

* Now we can talk: Page-writing wherein we write those first drafts because we have enough understanding of the story we can ‘talk’ [write] about it.

* We know the story: Re-writing wherein we put the final shape on the story because now we understand it.

I wonder if we were as serious as Lasseter and Pixar, where we look for story everywhere in our life-experience, not only in our screenplays, whether that would enhance our writing?

For more of the THR article, go here.

Comment Archive