mobile technology was going to evolve
(the iPhone was still two years away), so
what I was imagining was an iTunes plat-
form for television, “iTV,” as I described
it. Steve was silent for a while, and then
nally said, “I’m going to come back to
you on this. I’m working on something I
want to show you.”
A few weeks later, he ew down to Bur-
bank. “You can’t tell anyone about this,”
he said. “But what you’re talking about
with television shows—that’s exactly
what we’ve been imagining.” He slowly
withdrew a device from his pocket. “This
is our new video iPod,” he said. It had a
screen the size of a couple of postage
stamps, but he was talking about it like
it was an IMAX theater. “This is going to
allow people to watch video on our iPods,
not just listen to music,” he said. “If we
bring this product to market, will you
put your television shows on it?” I said
yes right away.
Steve responded to boldness. Among
his many frustrations was a feeling that
it was often too dicult to get anything
done with Disney. Every agreement
needed to be vetted and analyzed to
within an inch of its life, and that’s not
how he worked. I wanted him to under-
stand that I didn’t work that way, either,
that I was empowered to make a call, and
that I was eager to gure out this future
together, and to do so quickly.
That October, ve months after that
rst conversation (and two weeks after I
ocially became CEO), Steve and I stood
onstage together at the Apple launch and
announced that ive Disney shows—
including two of the most popular on TV,
Desperate Housewives and Lost—would
now be available for download on iTunes,
and for consumption on the new iPod.
The ease and the speed with which
we got the deal done, combined with
the fact that it showed an admiration for
Apple and its products, blew Steve’s mind.
He told me he’d never met anyone in the
entertainment business who was willing
to try something that might disrupt his
own company’s business model.
Those months spent talking with Steve
began—slowly, tentatively—to open up
into discussions of a possible new Pixar
deal. Steve had softened, but only a little.
He was willing to talk, but his version of any
new agreement was still very one-sided in
Pixar’s favor. The reality was, Steve had
all of the leverage in the world. He never
seemed worried about walking away.
It was around this time that I had a
radical idea: Disney should buy Pixar.
In my rst board meeting as CEO, I
explained that it was imperative for me
to gure out how to turn Disney Anima-
tion around. Throughout the late ’80s
and early ’90s, the division had pro-
duced hit after hit: The Little Mermaid,
Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and The
Lion King. But then, amidst a number of
high-prole management conicts, the
unit began to falter. The next several
years would be dotted by a slew of expen-
sive failures: Hercules, Atlantis, Treasure
Planet, Fantasia 2000, Brother Bear,
Home on the Range, and Chicken Little.
Others—The Hunchback of Notre Dame,
Mulan, Tarzan, and Lilo & Stitch—were
modest successes, but none came close
to the creative or commercial successes
of the prior decade.I saw three possible paths forward.
The rst was to stick with current man-
agement. The second was to identify
new talent, but I’d scoured the anima-
tion and moviemaking world looking for
people who could do the job at the level
we needed, and I’d come up empty. Or,
we could buy Pixar, which would bring
John Lasseter and Ed Catmull—Pixar’s
visionary leaders, along with Steve
Jobs—into Disney. The board was some-
what incredulous when I raised this idea
at the very beginning of my tenure as
CEO, but they were intrigued enough to
allow me to explore it, perhaps because
it seemed so far-fetched.
About a week and a half before our
announcement about the video iPod, I
summoned the courage to call Steve and
say, “I have another crazy idea. Can I come
see you in a day or two to discuss it?” I
didn’t yet fully appreciate just how much
Steve liked radical ideas. “Tell me now,”
he said. I thought Steve would likely say no
immediately. He might also be oended
at what he perceived as the arrogance of
the idea. Even if he told me where I could
shove it, though, I’d be left exactly where
I already was. I had nothing to lose.
“I’ve been thinking about our respective
futures,” I said. “What do you think about
the idea of Disney buying Pixar?” I waited
for him to hang up or to erupt in laughter.
The quiet before his response seemed
endless. Instead, he said, “You know,
that’s not the craziest idea in the world.”A
couple of weeks later,
Steve and I met in Apple’s
boardroom in Cuperti-
no, California. It was a
long room, with a table
nearly as long down the middle. One
wall was glass, looking out over the
entrance to Apple’s campus, and the
other featured a whiteboard, probably
25 feet long. Steve said he loved white-
board exercises, where an entire vision—
all the thoughts and designs and
calculations—could be drawn out, at the
whim of whoever held the felt pen.
Not unexpectedly, Steve was the
holder of the pen, and I sensed he was
quite used to assuming that role. He
stood with marker in hand and scrawled
pros on one side and cons on the other. I
was too nervous to launch in, so I ceded
the rst serve to him. “Okay,” he said.
“Well, I’ve got some cons.” He wrote
the irst with gusto: “Disney’s cultureSteve had
all of the
LEVERAGE
IN THE
WORLD.
He never
SEEMED
WORRIED
about
WALKING
AWAY.
NOVEMBER 2019 VANITY FAIR 133