Letter to Pixar President Ed Catmull [pdf] (2004) | Hacker News Reader

Letter to Pixar President Ed Catmull [pdf] (2004)

alvyray.com

146 pointsdvrp62 comments

A similar thing happened to me on a smaller scale in the VFX industry. At my first job out of university, I had the idea of creating a render farm manager, pushed for it internally, wrote most of it and launched it as a product and did the first sales of it. I then left the company to start my own company. CEO then proceeded to completely erase me from history. The product became widely successful and was eventually purchased by Amazon.

Early Deadline PR features me prominently everywhere: https://web.archive.org/web/20050518071754/http://software.f...

Recent article on the "history" of Deadline where I do not exist, which is par for the course: https://www.fxguide.com/quicktakes/aws-thinkbox-deadline-a-b...

The lesson I took from this is that you can not expect other people to tell your story. They will tell their story, because telling your story is not in their interests, especially if you left their company. You yourself are responsible for telling your own story and getting it out into the world.

You have been Musk‘ed. Or Edison‘ed.

wow, sorry this happened to you Ben. sounds like you took away a good lesson from it though, if nothing else. and I had no idea you created Deadline, that's awesome!

Long time no chat! I remember you from the Alembic project (I was selling Exocortex Crate, which was based on Alembic) and also you were a supporter of Clara.io (which has become https://threekit.com) back in the day.

I've been a co-founder of 2 startups, and have been the first employee of several others. In every single case, after moving on to the next one, I had to take steps to remind people at those companies that I had a role in their founding and that erasing my name from their history wasn't acceptable.

When a co-founder leaves, I think there's a tendency to believe that an origin story where a co-founder leaves somehow reflects poorly on the company. A clean story broadcasts "stability" or "competence" or whatever. Origin stories where someone leaves bring up questions. Or at least I assume that's the thinking.

Whatever the motivation, it's insulting, and can actually be damaging to the person being erased from the story.

On one occasion a company I'd co-founded found ourselves in the awkward position of having a major partner of ours pull out of a deal we were putting together. During their due diligence they found no evidence of my involvement in a previous company, despite our claims of my involvement. It took a lawyer to compel the owners of the company I'd co-founded (and which had been sold by then), that I indeed co-founded it and still owned 10% of (though not really - those shares were converted to the equivalent value of shares in acquiring company, but you get the idea). The deal was saved, but only after a lot of tedious back and forth between legal teams of all those involved.

Part of the problem is that it's not just the company changing its origin story, but it's all the Crunchbase's reflecting that incorrect story. People use these resources as "truth," and that can be difficult or impossible to set straight.

Every startup has an origin story, and very few are "clean." I think the better origin stories are the ones that demonstrate that despite the friction all startups face, the friction wasn't enough to stop a company from becoming what it becomes.

If you're in a startup: own your truth. Show your flaws. Be authentic. When I see a "perfect" origin story, I know it's bullshit, and I won't trust you, let alone be an angel investor or advisor. I know I'm not alone in thinking that.

Have you reached out to fxguide guys? They do not seem as someone to perpetuate bullshit, but maybe I'm wrong.

Ed Catmull is and always has been a scumbag. He was implicated in and unrepentant for his role in the wage-fixing scandal for which Disney paid a $100M settlement. He almost certainly knew about and covered-up/minimized his co-founder John Lassiter's decades of sexual harassment of female employees leading to his ultimate exit.

Finally, from my several interactions with him at Disney and Pixar he was extremely dismissive of non-traditional approaches to graphics research (especially ML/AI-based approaches) and his approach to leadership was almost a complete 180 from the self-styled guru he presented himself as in Creativity Inc. Perhaps a great researcher and businessman but definitely a low-tier human.

And now Lassiter is making stuff again?! I watched Luck with my kid, thought it a bit odd and went to see who was involved, and wait what? I feel annoyed I gave even one increment to the watch count of his work.

It seems like the kids film industry is even more toxic than the normal film industry, which is impressive. Was that your experience?

definitely not more toxic. It’s the same issues though of power corruption, and male dominance.

This applies the same to the video game industry and the visual effects side of the CG industry as well.

I’d say it applies to pretty much every industry in general (feel free to sub out male dominance with whatever the majority demographic is). The difference is that they don’t have the wholesome image of “for kids” to hide it. When a lawyer is scummy, we think it’s par for the course. When an animator is scummy, it’s shocking. When it reality both should be unacceptable.

That’s not to excuse it, or appeal to whataboutism, it’s just to say it’s not worse or better. It just is because it’s a societal issue that get revealed as society moves forward.

The level of harassment female employees were expected to stay quiet about has changed. Hence why Lasetter got the boot from Pixar.

Of course, you can’t trust the Elisson family to be very moral, so they hired him as soon as they found out he was available.

A lot of women , including very prominent actresses, stopped working with Skydance after that.

> he was extremely dismissive of non-traditional approaches to graphics research (especially ML/AI-based approaches)

Not necessarily a poor decision.

By necessity a huge part of the rendering pipeline is augmented and assisted by ML based approaches. AI models touch >50% of the frames you see in almost every film released and that number is only growing. So yeah, a pretty damn poor decision that would have relegated pixar to the past, if anyone actually still listened to that dinosaur.

So you're talking about the rendering part, which has obviously seen tremendous improvement from AI-based techniques e.g. neural material rendering, ReSTIR etc.

Since Catmull is known for contributions computer animation research, where the application of ML hasn't exactly thrived, at least not yet, to the same extent as rendering has, I assumed you were talking about geometry processing.

The villain in Big Hero Six is likely based on him.

I met Ed (randomly ran into him) at a Buhddist meditation retreat. Hi Ed, if you're reading. He was concerned with how time seems to go much faster as we age. When I found out he was ex President of Pixar and knew Jobs, I felt intimidated and kind of acted awkward from that moment on. It wasn't about being around wealth, but being around brilliance.

Later on, I tried emailing him as he had invited me to do so about my hypothesis that the neurons that produce the perception of time start firing slower as we age so time seems to be moving faster (a lower-resolution sampling of time, like a skipping stone arcoss a pond rather than through it moving much faster) He never replied.

Then I emailed him again to congratualte him on his receiving the Turing Award, a year later, and once again no reply. I felt even more awkward for emailing him twice.

Reading this complaint from his co-founder, I surmise that Ed may not be very good at maintaining relations. A bit disturbing to hear that he omitted his co-founder from being mentioned.

Or maybe he's just an asshole: https://www.cartoonbrew.com/business/ed-catmull-on-wage-fixi...

He tarnished his reputation altogether with that in eyes of many, despite his early graphics research advancements and later business success.

Alvy Father of alpha channel Ray Smith had quite a success and recognition as well and is a well-known founding figure in CG.

When we are 3 years old, we perceive 1 year as a pretty long time, it’s a third of our life after all.

When we get older the same year is becoming a smaller and smaller fraction of our lifetime, thus the time feels to go by much quicker.

At least that was always my personal conclusion.

I like a metaphor that it's about connections, combinations and permutations. As we mature the number of opportunities, changes, permutations lowers. Perhaps those older people who dont experience life going quickly are also able to see opportunities and variablity more?

Possibly also the times when you get stuck in something and think "oh wow this is dragging on" decreases as you age. But it's not the number of times a situation happens (e.g. traffic is getting worse over time) but that reaction to it happens less. Perhaps we get more patient with time and let it pass over quicker.

Veritasium has a video about this subject:

https://youtu.be/aIx2N-viNwY

It turns out that when we're older time passes more quickly even on the scale of minutes.

> when we're older time passes more quickly even on the scale of minutes.

And understatement for anyone who has kids.

Time goes faster as we age, maybe because of lack of novelty. When most things are as you expect, they are less engaging. But we want to use our hard-won expertise; we don't want to feel stupid, ignorant or foolish; and we don't want to lose our position, prestige or mortgage.

Maybe this contributed to him leaving his career. Jobs liked the saying "stay foolish".

Intuitively this feels right. When we are young, everything is new. As we age, more experiences are repetitive, or one falls into a routine. During the pandemic every day felt the same, too, so I am even more convinced of it now.

Regarding the perception of time as we age, I recall some research which found that the perception of time on a short level is actually the same. In other words if you put a child and a senior into a room and give them an activity (or no activity) and ask them in regular intervals how much time has passed they both will estimate that similar time has passed.

Supposedly, the reason that when looking back long term an older person things that e.g. the last year passed much faster is, that they remember more years, so the one year represents a smaller fraction of their memory. This is similar with forgetting things, older people are not more forgetful (provided there is no dementia...), but they know more things that they have forgotten.

I believe we perceive time as "accelerating" because we make fewer memories (just because the brain is less flexible). The perceptual "length" of year is actually how many things we can remember happening in that year.

I may have as many memories of what happened when I was 7 than what happened when I was 27 (despite the time difference).

Evidence for this hypothesis: sit down and write down month by month everything you did in the last year (vacations, jobs, birthdays, whatever), will make the year feel fuller.

My theory is it's just about boundary pushing. When you're younger, the boundaries are closer and easier to find because you have limited experience with the world. As you get older, The boundaries appear to extend farther and farther away, and you get more comfortable staying away from them.

I say this because anecdotally, I have a few years in my twenties that seem like they flew by, because I was living a pretty boring life working in an office. But then later in my thirties I have some 3-month periods that stretch wider and longer in my memory then those entire years in my twenties, because I was out and exploring.

Pixar Story and Droid Makers are great books about the early days of animation. Pixar was the hardware/software group for early computer graphics at ILM, but Lucas needed money and sold the group to Jobs. They then go on to make Toy Story etc. I imagine some of the history is whitewashed, and I would love to read more documents like this. Check out Ed's book Creativity Inc, which discusses how they grew the company. Ed invented math at the University of Utah for early computer graphics, and after Toy Story wanted to figure out how to run the company. Being a leader probably wasn't natural to him, so again, I would be curious about how he handled situations like this. Especially when he took over Disney animation as well, he retired somewhat abruptly. I've always been curious about why since what a fantastic career and the opportunity to lead two different animation organizations! Ed has always been interesting. Still, I tend to read this letter optimistically that Alvy would even write it. There are no words minced. Did he think Ed would listen, so he wrote it? Some other posters said it's now fixed, so maybe he did something? I can't imagine writing a letter this scathing and accomplishing something. Again, what an environment they must have had.

Also worth checking out Alvy Ray Smith's 2021 book, "A Biography of the Pixel". It is (from what I've read so far), much more in the history/theory of technology field, examining the math/technology behind resolving continuous to the discrete (waves to pixels, vectors to rasters, etc.), and the associated cultural/business/entertainment shifts.

Not to be petty, but I see that to all appearances Smith is not, having given "Catmull, Edwin" about half a page of index entries. (The cover identifies Smith as "Cofounder of Pixar. And that there are index entries for "Pixar, origin and cofounding of, cofounded by Ed Catmull and Alvy Ray Smith" as well as for "Pixar, origin and cofounding of, not cofounded by Steve Jobs".)

Interesting. Also looked at Sith's site from OP url, and he has copies of the incorporation papers. This is under the corrective history. I'm guessing there are slights on both sides. And thanks for the book recommendation, I just ordered it.

I don't know anything about this personal drama other than recognizing the name from Catmull–Clark subdivision surfaces, but one thing it sort of reminds me of is how contracts are ultimately sort of worthless.

If a person wants to try and screw you in some way, regardless of the words on a contract, they'll try and screw you.

If a person wants to do the right thing, regardless of what a contract obligates them to do, they'll go the extra mile every time.

I have contracts with my cofounders of course, but the safety I feel really comes from knowing how they function as people in their personal lives.

Looks like his name is now mentioned one time on the Pixar About Us -> Our Story page.

https://www.pixar.com/our-story-pixar

But that mention only says

> The following year, [Ed Catmull] is joined by Alvy Ray Smith, who is hired as Director of Computer Graphics Research.

So it seems like it’s still not fully crediting Alvy Ray Smith in the manner that the letter asks for.

That seemly disconnected line about Alvy Ray was added in 2021 to the web, long after Ed Catmull had left both Disney and Pixar.

Ed is a dick to anyone without a PhD and a bigger to dick to anyone with one. The problem with Ed is he always thought he was the smartest person in the room. Just ask Jim Clark. Mutual friend at Disney claims he was #metoo'd out. Pixar and its culture was a shit show for women for decades sanitized by the kid film brand. Lassiter was "just the tip" of the iceberg.

Unless you’re lucky, people get weird when real money and real fame comes around. You’d be amazed how frequently. Which is why it’s super important to figure all that stuff out and capture it on paper before you’re lucky enough to generate money or fame. But that’s no excuse for this.

One of my relatives literally stole an entire inheritance and escaped the country. It wasn't even THAT much money. Idiot.

Boy this is really apropos of Alvy's book "Biography of a Pixel" (which I loved), and Alvy does such a thorough job of documenting the contributions of so many people, flying in the face of our tendency to sweep the accomplishments of groups under the banner of one "hero" figure.

Go read the book - it expertly mixes fascinating anecdotes with technical details to achieve that rare accomplishment of keeping you totally entertained while secretly making you smarter.

An extract of founding documents mentioned in the letter: https://web.archive.org/web/20050427012806/http://alvyray.co...

Should mention the year (2004).

I knew Catmull as the co-author of the Catmull-Rom spline [1], didn't know he was a Pixar co-founder.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centripetal_Catmull%E2%80%93Ro...

I knew him from the Catmull–Clark subdivision surface

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catmull%E2%80%93Clark_subdivis...

Did not remember that he was co-founder of Pixar before reading the letter, though I’ve probably heard so before as well

I met Ed at a VERY small Pixar booth at a SIGGRAPH. This was when they were only doing animated shorts showing off of Renderman, and doing some commercials. This was before Toy Story hit.

But Ed was there with a few other people, manning the booth and selling VHS tapes of all their short films up to that time (Knick Knack being the latest). I was standing there in awe because it was Ed fricken Catmull, but my wife doesn't even remember it. Ed took my $20 and put the tape in a Pixar baggy and that was it.

My brief brush with greatness.

$20 in the late 80s/early 90s is like $50 today. That shorts demo reel to get $50 for a VHS out of me. Unless it came in a steelcase.

VHS in general were much more expensive in that era

Curious, does anyone remember how the book "Creativity, Inc" (by Ed Catmull and Amy Wallace) represent the situation? Read it years ago but don't remember.

I remember how much of an emphasis that book put on candor…

Interesting.

I read it recently for the first time. My memory might already be inaccurate, but I remember him mentioned, though nowhere near as prominent as Steve Jobs or John Lasseter and certainly not as important as this letter makes it ought to be.

I read the book recently. He's mentioned quite a bit though the book and has an extra acknowledgments area at the end with pictures and stuff.

I've read a good number of memoirs and biographies of both technical and artistic people, and I found "Creativity, Inc." to be a real snooze, except for the chapters about Steve Jobs and Catmull's own education history. It's not so much that the book is "boring" as that it's very light on non-sanitized opinions. The leadership advice Catmull offers is often of the caliber "listen to your people" or "remember to second-guess yourself when you think you're right", and then his examples almost use more name-recognition than actually interesting opinions and takes on the stories that happened. He says stuff like "we were working on <Famous Film> and it just wasn't working, so we convened a meeting with A, B, and C and eventually were able to rework the script so it worked." Yawn. Contrasted with the recollections of a guy like Feynman, it's just not a very interesting book. (Great cover design, though.)

I suspect that Catmull is a shrewd, canny, clever man with a lot of anger and criticism for people, and I didn't think his book accurately represented the depth of his opinions or feelings. I could be TOTALLY wrong about that, maybe that really is how he thinks and remembers things, but I'd be surprised.

This is how I remember the book as well: as if the grain was blurred out of the photograph if the book were a photograph. Perhaps as you, I listened to the audiobook on a binge of going though many other books as well (Masters of Doom, Steve, etc) and this wasn't as good and didn't have the detail as the others.

Pixar was a spinoff from Lucasfilm rather than an ab initio startup. Steve Jobs purchased the Computer Division from George Lucas with 40 employees and IP. I don't think founder or co-founder are the right terms here. No one ate ramen.

Don't worry Alvy, those who really know Pixar, really know you were there right from the get go.

My whole fascination for computer graphics came from a 1987 BBC documentary that included a section about Pixar, Alvy, Bill Reeves and Loren Carpenter (part of it here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-zlQ1kVK1k&t=375s)

When i finished reading Creativity Inc by Ed Catmull it left me with a strange feeling. I had not yet heared about the wage-fixing. But still something with this book was strangely off. It seemed as if it was trying to portray a shady managment in the best light possible. Much like Thiels "zero to one" it was repeating a rathing simple thing over and over trying to make it look special.

The fact that Catmull is a giant prick is a well documented fact by now, this is just additional evidence.

Shades of Walter White.

Alvy Ray Smith studied in New Mexico ...

This type of stuff is really sad. I've always heard or been of the understanding that basically anyone at the top of Pixar was a sociopath.

I'm also reminded of Arduino, where Massimo Banzi stole his own graduate student's work and erased him from all of the history and future involvement.

[2004]?

"Steve was, of course, our venture capitalist, in standard industry terminology and not a co-founder"

Ring any bells?

Steve never claimed he was a co-founder either...unlike someone else with a certain car company he bought.

I know bashing Musk is all in vogue and a pastime here on HN, but at least check the facts. Pixar was spun off from Lucasfilm in 1986 when it had been in existence for several years, with many employees. It was an established company changing the ownership. Musk joined Tesla only a few months after it was founded, before it sold any car. Claiming the founder title when it barely existed is certainly not outrageous.

According to Wikipedia Tesla was incorporated in 2003. A few months later Musk invested a large sum in the company but didn’t join the company until a year after the company was founded and started as CTO. Saying he joined a few months after the company was founded feels like a stretch.

Elon barely ever fit the definition of a VC at Tesla… If not a co-founder what should his title be?

There were disputes about the founding of Tesla early in its history, which were resolved in an out-of-court settlement.[0] By consent of all parties, Elon is considered a co-founder.

[0] https://www.cnet.com/culture/tesla-motors-founders-now-there...

That makes it sound as if he bought _the consent of all parties_.

This Wikipedia paragraph is pretty clear IMO:

> Tesla was incorporated in July 2003 by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning as Tesla Motors. The company's name is a tribute to inventor and electrical engineer Nikola Tesla. In February 2004, via a $6.5 million investment, Elon Musk became the largest shareholder of the company.

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