Ideas don’t spring from a vacuum. They don’t turn up at your door, fully-formed, like in Three Man and a Baby. No, to cook up an idea you need the right people in the right place — a twinkle-eyed Ted Danson, a Plot Device Lady, and some moonlight. This is obvious, right?
Except, according to Ed Catmull — the founder and president of Pixar — it is anything but obvious. Writing in his book Creativity, INC. (and an abridged version here), Catmull describes how he was told the opposite from the head of an unnamed movie studio — that the idea is king, even ahead of the people who worked there. This CEO seemed to be suggesting a two-stage process: first you have the idea, and then you hire people to chip away at it.
Catmull’s response (albeit in my words): Nonsense. Where do you think those ideas come from? Besides, that first idea is merely a spark — the catalyst that gets the process started. Every Pixar movie is the product of many thousands of ideas, each built on top of that initial thought. For that, you need a lot of good people.
Once you have a spark, that’s when the work really begins. That’s when you call in Ted Danson, and Magnum P.I., and The Man From That Simpsons Song. And fellas, there’ll be some nappies to change.