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Lassater: Not Just Hugs by Karl Cohen
John Lasseter, founder and head of Pixar, was condemned and put on leave for his sexualized hugging. photo: courtesy Pixar
MOST PEOPLE BY NOW KNOW THAT JOHN
Lasseter “misbehaved” for years at Pixar and got away with it, but the details remained vague—no longer. A former female employee of Pixar, Cassandra Smolcic, has laid out the full and ugly picture of what was going on in a very well written article that has gone viral on the internet.
Smolcic's article, “Pixar's Sexist Boy's Club” (June 27, the blog beyourself), is a powerful account of five years working at Pixar as an artist and designer. While she has high praise for some of the men she worked with, she also shares with us some of the unpleasant things that happened to her and to other women on the staff.
It is disturbing; it is ugly; but it is also an honest recollection of being a woman working at what is considered not only the nation’s greatest animation company, but a very liberal work place, with all the amenities in Emeryville, between Oakland and Berkeley.
Unfortunately, what the public didn’t know until last November, is that, behind the happy facade, some women found that working where outrageous sexual behavior is tolerated and goes unreported and unpunished can be a horrible experience.
Two people who read Smolcic's article contacted me to note that sadly this is something they also saw happening in their career. Both prefer not to be named.
One was a production manager at a studio that made animated series for TV in the 1980s. She avoided being a target of the guys prone to hit up on the women by always wearing her riding boots and slacks to work, as she rode after work and on weekends.
“It wasn’t just my apparel that worked at [unnamed company]. I let them know that I spent my off-hours making 1000 pound animals do what I want so they should choose easier targets.”
“When [the owner] saw I could do the job well, he had me train some more women so he could promote them and pay them a fraction of what he paid the male production managers."
"But he would never address the problem that the artists wouldn't listen to the female PMs. That would have run in the face of the old-boy network. Lots of stories about that. It was so good to tell him to his face ‘I quit!’”
She also told me she loved working at Klasky/Csupo, the multimedia and animation studio in Hollywood, the producer of the first few seasons of “The Simpsons”. Many senior positions were held by women including that of the owner and the studio manager, Arlene.
Arlene didn’t put up with that kind of behavior. She would talk to the offending guy, and if he continued, she got rid of him.
"It was an atmosphere where that kind of behavior was not allowed," my informant continued. "Female power was in place. The problems there came from free-lancers from outside, not from the people I hired.” She went on to work on "Rugrats" and "Ahhhhh! Real Monsters".
“It was so wonderful," she continued. "For the first time in my career to go into a meeting and seeing that the women's ideas were listened to and we didn't have to go through the subterfuge of getting people to think a guy had come up with our good idea.”
The second person, a man, worked at Disney. “I worked with a bunch of guys who displayed shocking behavior at times," he wrote by email. "Some stories I could tell would cause your toes to curl. Sadly, their behavior was condoned."
"Anyway, the stories are getting told," he concluded, "and that's important.”
As far as it has come, evidently, the MeToo Movement still has a long road ahead.
Karl Cohen is an animator, educator and director of thce local chapter of the International Animation Society and can be reached .Posted on Jul 04, 2018 - 08:14 AM