Interviewing John Lasseter

John Lasseter

Timing is everything.

At last month's D23 Expo in Anaheim, I paid a Saturday afternoon visit to the MiceChat booth in the exhibit hall. For several years, I wrote quite a bit for MiceChat and stayed pretty active on its message boards.  As I devoted more time to my own blog, I became less involved with MiceChat, but stayed close to the people who ran the site and many of its members.  I count MiceChatters among my closest friends.  OK, forget friends, these people are my chosen family and I'm very lucky to know them.

As I stood chatting with MiceAge blogger Al Lutz, Dusty Sage, who runs MiceChat, suddenly got my attention.

"We can get five minutes with John Lasseter, but we have to hurry. Can you come with me?"

Dusty needed a photographer and couldn't get a hold of his partner Norm, who usually does the camerawork. No need to twist my arm.  When you get a chance to meet with Disney/Pixar's chief creative officer, you go for it.  With my Nikon in hand, off we went.

Our friend Christi went along with us--for interview purposes, we decided she was our assistant--and later, Norm caught up with us as well. D23's Steven Clark probably raised an eyebrow when he saw this MiceChat entourage invade the interview room, but we were all allowed in and were joined by five or six bloggers from other Disney fan sites.

Lasseter came in a few minutes later, having just finished a panel discussion with his Pixar creative people, including Andrew Stanton and Pete Docter.  Lasseter was friendly, outgoing and generous with his time.  Five minutes quickly turned into 45 as we all asked him questions and talked about Pixar, Disneyland and the massive expansion of Disney California Adventure.  This wasn't an interview.  This was a friendly conversation with a guy who's as big a Disney geek as the rest of us.

When it was all over and we shook hands and said our goodbyes to Mr. Lasseter, still pinching ourselves from the opportunity, Dusty asked me if I'd write the article for MiceChat.

No need to twist my arm.

My conversation with John Lasseter:  http://micechat.com/forums/features/158750-micechat-interviews-john-lasseter.html.

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