To Pixar and Beyond: My Unlikely Journey with Steve Jobs to Make Entertainment History
£9.10£10.40 (-13%)
A Sunday Times Best Book of the Year 2017
One day in November 1994, Lawrence Levy received a phone call out of the blue from Steve Jobs, whom he’d never met, offering him a job running Pixar, a little-known company that had already lost Jobs $50 million. With Pixar’s prospects looking bleak, it was with some trepidation that Levy accepted the position. After a few weeks he discovered that the situation was even worse than he’d imagined.
Pixar’s advertising division just about broke even, its graphics software had few customers, its short films didn’t make any money and, on top of all that, Jobs was pushing to take the company public. Everything was riding on the studio’s first feature film, codenamed Toy Story, and even then it would have to be one of the most successful animated features of all time…
Full of wisdom on bringing business and creativity together, and recounting the touching story of Levy’s enduring friendship with Jobs, To Pixar and Beyond is a fascinating insider’s account of one of Hollywood’s greatest success stories.
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Additional information
| Publisher | Oneworld Publications, 1st edition (5 Oct. 2017) |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Paperback | 272 pages |
| ISBN-10 | 178607186X |
| ISBN-13 | 978-1786071866 |
| Dimensions | 12.95 x 1.91 x 19.81 cm |
by David M
A riveting story of a corporate success story
by Dave McG.
Fascinating read for anyone interested in the workings of a major film company. Apple and Steve Jobs fans might like it too.
by velocityjay
good inside and entertaining read
by Picard
While Pixar bookworms may be sceptical of another recount, this is actually a work that encompasses a lot of new and very interesting information. Who exactly would find this ‘interesting’ is of course debatable – I say this as someone who admires Pixar and has followed both them and Disney for years, as well as other fascinating success stories.
The real draw is that this is, essentially, a series of business essays that can be understood by the layman. Levy deserves a lot of credit for taking his memories, experiences, and producing not only lessons for aspiring entrepreneurs, but unique information about the early life of Pixar for dedicated fans.
And then of course there is Steve Jobs, who once again comes away as quite a controversial figure. He is best surmised by his conflicting nature; at worst, preventing staff from having any stock options, to taking as much credit as possible for any form of success, to crying when he couldn’t get what he wanted. At best, he cared deeply (eventually…) for his family, select close friends whom he would regularly take long walks with, to the overall quality of output from anything he was vested in. My views of him have remained a deeply flawed figure who was certainly not a genius, but clearly an impossibly driven individual who revelled in success.
Levy writes to you like a good friend – he is charming, always positive and has a wonderful dry sense of humour that seems to beam in the simplest of things. I have learned much from this work and while it is only short, I wouldn’t hesitate to read it again in the future as something of a story.
by Trevor Ashworth
Fascinating behind the scenes insight as to how Pixar was able to launch the first computer generated animation ‘Toy Story”.
And it’s battle to get finance, recognition and a better deal from Walt Disney
Quite engrossing!
by Philip T King
enjoyable read and authentic, offer a completely different perspective to typical entrepreneur books
by Mag Turner
My son was very pleased with this present
by Wendy Graham
Bought as a gift for my partner. He isn’t a reader normally but read this immediately and found it very interesting.