Over the last few days there have two stories that counteract each other: Ron Meyer's lament about how crappy movies generally are; and how every movie Pixar makes is a gem. It occurs to me that the difference is in large part due to the way majors like Universal make movies, and the way Pixar does. Pixar movies are precisely planned, almost engineered in their attention to detail, where everybody making a decision has a creative background. And they take their time. Of course Pixar has the advantage that they can capture their actor's performances cheaply, and before a single pixel is committed to screen, but also the converse problem of not being able to improvise and having to work with what they've got. I was looking at the imdb page for Cowboys and Aliens and note that there are 17 producer credits and 9 writing credits (although 2 are doubled) vs 3 producers (including Lasseter) and 4 writers for Toy Story 3 (3 story, 1 screenplay). A big reason, right there, why C&A was such a P.O.S.

Good points, Pliny. Pixar also has the benefit of their brain trust, the core group of creatives who are intimately involved in every project at key parts of development and pre-production. They also pick super talented screenwriters -- Joss Whedon, Dan Fogelman, Michael Arndt to name a few.

The way Pixar does things really eliminates any tinkering, either by the director or by the actors, and because they need to plan upfront wrt every image on-screen, they really need to nail the script, and you might as well get the best people you can. That core group... It's a genuine model to be followed, and if I had to fix a movie studio, I'd get it to work a little more like that. Not sure the execs would ever give up that level of control. By the way, when I use the word engineering about Pixar's process, it's not meant in a disparaging way, but is meant to describe a hard core discipline in how they go about things that's missing from a lot of movies that get made (mostly wrt actors & directors). otoh, people in the movies who work on jobs like finding locations and getting permits & schedules, or those people who handle the hundreds of extras in some movies. They genuinely amaze me with how good they are.

I like the way they nail the character arc perfectly in every film. The more I've watched and rewatched the movies the deeper I've seen into the characters. The writers are sublime in most instances, you'd miss it if you didn't know it was there but the depth makes the story whole. Can't wait for next week.

Came across this map yesterday, I keep wondering if all studios went the Pixar way (truly supporting the creative "forces of nature", vs meddling), maybe there'd be less profaning in Hollywood: http://flowingdata.com/2011/11/07/a-month-of-swearing-in-90-seconds/ One second equals 8 hours of twitter. Easy to find Hollywood. And to see the big losses in Vegas, heh. Scott, this course looks so yummy. My life an intersection of too much right now, but if even one thing can get wrapped up this week, I'll be signing up.

That's a good point, Atlanta. 12 hit movies, not one S-word or F-word. I don't even think there's a 'damn' in the mix either. Some might be tempted to dismiss that as reflective of Pixar producing 'kids movies,' but that's not true. Their films - granted some more than others - are four quadrant (young, old, male, female). But is it no swearing because of concern for kid part of that equation? Probably in part. But I think it's more reflective of aesthetic sensibilities I'll be getting into in the upcoming class.

Of course there's no cussing in Pixar movies, because they make *family* movies, as opposed to quadrant movies, although there is some genuine violence which should concern people a lot more (the homicidal old lady in Ratatouille, for instance; or a good chunk of The Incredibles). Growing up in the UK, we're less sensitive to swearing (I once heard that the only verboten word on the BBC, after the 9:00 pm watershed, is what they euphemistically like to call the Oedipal reference). In any case, it's silly, imho, to worry about specific words, when the intent is what really matters. Did anybody watch Galactica, where they just replaced the f-word with frak (a word which meant *exactly* the same thing in their universe), and went on about their business? Or has anybody seen the TV version of Repo Man, where Alex Cox replaced all the swear words with innocuous sounding replacements (including a glorious sounding *melonfarmer*), but of course *everybody* knows what they're saying. I wonder if people realize just how much foul language and how many dirty jokes there are in a Shakespeare play like Hamlet? And while there's a time and a place, sometimes a well placed f**k is just the right word for a script. The irony of it all is that people say that they're "protecting the children", when every normal 10 year old I've ever met, not only knows these words (and a few more besides), but uses them freely in normal conversation. And while I wouldn't even dream of telling anyone how to raise their children, a ten or eleven year old child's inability to use these words is, imho, a sign of an unhealthily sheltered life, unready for the Hobbesian world in which we live.

A "well placed f**k" can be a wonderful thing. Like this 1676 letter exchange between Cossacks and Ottoman Sultan: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reply_of_the_Zaporozhian_Cossacks And there's such pleasure to be had in the punch of profanity (hardest thing to give up when kid came along, some usage has crept back, selective and spare, I enjoy every instance). But its use can be divisive, and ugly (why I avoid around child), and it turns folks away, so why not cut if not related to theme. And sometimes it's just what's needed. "Thou art a turkish imp, the damned devil's brother and friend, and a secretary to Lucifer himself. What the devil kind of knight art thou that cannot slay a hedgehog with your naked ass? The devil shits, and your army eats. Thou son of a bitch wilt not ever make subjects of Christian sons; we have no fear of your army, by land and by sea we will battle with thee, fuck thy mother."