TO THE PIXEL AND BEYOND
In 2007 a new documentary called The Pixar Story screened at the Mill Valley Film Festival. It covered the wild antics of the studio’s founders as they crafted a new kind of movie—a fully computer-animated picture bursting with riotous colors and textures, ultra-vivid characters, and plotlines subversively seeded with mind-expanding wisdom. During a panel discussion afterward, the interviewer asked a provocative question. “This might be crazy,” she began, “but is there any connection between the world of the counterculture and psychedelics, and Pixar?” The panelists on stage—Ed Catmull and John Lasseter, both central to Pixar’s development—fell into an uncomfortable silence. Drugs and the counterculture are edgy subjects for employees of a Disney division beloved by generations of children. Finally, Lasseter said, “Is Alvy Ray Smith in the audience?” If Smith, the bearded,…
