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‘Pixar: The Early Days’ — Never-Before-Seen 1996 Interview With Steve Jobs
The Steve Jobs Archive:
To mark Toy Story’s 30th anniversary, we’re sharing a never-before-seen interview with Steve from November 22, 1996 — exactly one year after the film debuted in theaters.
Toy Story was the world’s first entirely computer-animated feature-length film. An instant hit with audiences and critics, it also transformed Pixar, which went public the week after its premiere. Buoyed by Toy Story ’s success, Pixar’s stock price closed at nearly double its initial offering, giving it a market valuation of approximately $1.5 billion and marking the largest IPO of 1995. The following year, Toy Story was nominated for three Academy Awards en route to winning a Special Achievement Oscar in March. In July, Pixar announced that it would close its television-commercial unit to focus primarily on feature films. By the time of the interview, the team had grown by 70 percent in less than a year; A Bug’s Life was in production; and behind the scenes, Steve was using his new leverage to renegotiate Pixar’s partnership with Disney.
Kind of a weird interview. The video quality is poor, and whoever was running the camera zoomed in and out awkwardly. It’s like ... just a VHS tape? But it’s also weird in a cool way to get a “new” Steve Jobs interview in 2025, and Jobs, as ever, is thoughtful and insightful. Well worth 23 minutes of your time.
There’s a particularly interesting bit at the end when Jobs discusses how Pixar was half a computer company (with extraordinary technology) and half a movie studio (with extraordinary filmmaking talent), but eventually they had to choose between the two industries for how to pay their employees to motivate them to remain at Pixar. The Hollywood way would be with contracts; the Silicon Valley way would be with stock options. Jobs chose the Silicon Valley path for Pixar.