John Lasseter Accused of Sexual Assault

[Disney's Divinity]

Yes, I understand. Thank you. I already apologized to UmbrellaFish for taking their comment differently than it was intended, it was only that it followed right after I responded to farerb's comment that I thought they were saying the same thing they were.

[Disney Duster]

I can understand that what Lasseter did doesn't abolish all his achievements but at the same time, I find it dangerous to even offer some praise for him as if saying that "yeah, he harassed women but he can't be all bad if he made Toy Story," almost like that absolves him. Likening him to Hitler may not be particularly apt but it's like those people who try and point out that Hitler wasn't all bad and praise him for what he supposedly did right (looking at you Candace Owens). That just makes me incredibly uncomfortable and like you said, it's not just a little praise that Menken, Musker, and Clements gave him but heaps of it. A one sentence or one word acknowledgement should be the maximum respect they give him, if even that.

I think talking about Lasseter's good and bad must be balanced. I know it's hard for Lee because he must have been very good to her. And it's probably hard for Musker and Clements since it sounds like they were close to him...? I dunno, but yes, I understand your concern. So, I dunno, I'm fine with saying what good he did as long as people don't say he's a completely good guy or that he should be worked with again.

[rodis]

Why are folks so offended by Lasseter giving notes to established directors like M&C? You're never above that. And mind you, he was their boss so why shouldn't he "give notes"?

As for the sexual accusations, he was rightfully ousted though no one should discredit his enormous talent and contribution to Pixar and Disney because of that. And if his peers choose nice words to describe his work nowadays, why shouldn't they? His artistic achievements stand apart from all the drama.

[Disney's Divinity]

We don't have a Skydance thread, so, um, this is the best thread to put this in...?

I wouldn't be surprised if Lasseter is giving the heads of the company advice on how to expand and make themselves bigger, using his experience from PIXAR and WDAS. I'm sure he's probably angry over the ouster from Disney and would like to create a rival to them in animated features.

[Sotiris]

Another testimonial from a female employee at Pixar who was harassed and mistreated.

https://medium.com/@sterling.mom2/my-ex ... 29d1abc7b6

[estefan]

I recently saw this Twitter thread from a visual development artist who pitched a project to Skydance Animation and apparently, Lasseter hasn't changed or learned anything after leaving Disney and Pixar.

I'm still thinking about the fact that John L*sseter is employed despite being "cancelled". I'm still thinking about the fact that I had to withdraw my project from Skydance because I was so uncomfortable with the idea of L*sseter having ANY say in a show about little girls.

I hope nobody has to choose between following their dreams or potentially working with a fucking creep ever again. Yes, I almost sold Botanical Academy to Skydance...but when I realized how much of a say he would have in the story? No money could make me work with that man.

I've been pretty quiet because legally I wasn't sure how much I could say. But f**k John Lasseter. F**k Skydance for hiring him. I can't wait to write this book with my fantastic agent and with the help of my peers.

Lasseter still lives in his fancy home in Santa Rosa. He is essentially in charge of Skydance. He talks over women. He completely derailed my pitch to mansplain something. The other female executive in the room said nothing. He has never felt the impact of his cancellation.

Also? There are some wonderful people working at Skydance. Including women and LGBT ppl and POC. And I want the best for THEM. Fire Lasseter.

I'm getting the sense Lasseter lacks any kind of self-awareness. I feel most human beings are capable of noticing immediately when someone is uncomfortable. And somehow, Lasseter lacks that basic ability. I'm amazed he didn't take him being forced to leave Disney as a learning experience to try and improve his behaviour and be a better person. Skydance hired him way too quickly or more accurately, they shouldn't have hired him at all. There are so many talented people in animation who can run a studio without making the employees uncomfortable.

[Sotiris]

I'm getting the sense Lasseter lacks any kind of self-awareness. I feel most human beings are capable of noticing immediately when someone is uncomfortable. And somehow, Lasseter lacks that basic ability.

I don't believe that's true. I often hear excuses about how predatory men have trouble reading social cues or understanding body language, but that's not true. They know very well when they're making others uncomfortable, but they choose to ignore it to get what they want. Then they use the indirectness of nonverbal communication as plausible deniability when they get caught. It's deliberate and calculated.

[willard]

I recently saw this Twitter thread from a visual development artist who pitched a project to Skydance Animation and apparently, Lasseter hasn't changed or learned anything after leaving Disney and Pixar.

I'm still thinking about the fact that John L*sseter is employed despite being "cancelled". I'm still thinking about the fact that I had to withdraw my project from Skydance because I was so uncomfortable with the idea of L*sseter having ANY say in a show about little girls.

I hope nobody has to choose between following their dreams or potentially working with a fucking creep ever again. Yes, I almost sold Botanical Academy to Skydance...but when I realized how much of a say he would have in the story? No money could make me work with that man.

I've been pretty quiet because legally I wasn't sure how much I could say. But f**k John Lasseter. F**k Skydance for hiring him. I can't wait to write this book with my fantastic agent and with the help of my peers.

Lasseter still lives in his fancy home in Santa Rosa. He is essentially in charge of Skydance. He talks over women. He completely derailed my pitch to mansplain something. The other female executive in the room said nothing. He has never felt the impact of his cancellation.

Also? There are some wonderful people working at Skydance. Including women and LGBT ppl and POC. And I want the best for THEM. Fire Lasseter.

I'm getting the sense Lasseter lacks any kind of self-awareness. I feel most human beings are capable of noticing immediately when someone is uncomfortable. And somehow, Lasseter lacks that basic ability. I'm amazed he didn't take him being forced to leave Disney as a learning experience to try and improve his behaviour and be a better person. Skydance hired him way too quickly or more accurately, they shouldn't have hired him at all. There are so many talented people in animation who can run a studio without making the employees uncomfortable.

He may have "learned his lesson" in regards to sexual harassment but general tyrannical behavior is different.

[Sotiris]

He may have "learned his lesson" in regards to sexual harassment but general tyrannical behavior is different.

True. He may be careful now with where he puts his hands, but he still thinks he's an infallible genius who always knows better.

[Disney's Divinity]

I don't believe that's true. I often hear excuses about how predatory men have trouble reading social cues or understanding body language, but that's not true. They know very well when they're making others uncomfortable, but they choose to ignore it to get what they want. Then they use the indirectness of nonverbal communication as plausible deniability when they get caught. It's deliberate and calculated.

The truth is they actually enjoy domineering over and taking power away from others, whether it's in a symbolic or literal sense. The truth is Skydance hired him because of $$$. He's made a great many hit films and they like the idea of making more money with his help. It's the same reason Disney hesitated for quite a while before firing him. I hope eventually the blowback to Skydance will grow until he is fired--or at least that nothing they put out with his assistance is successful (at all or to the degree they want). Still, if Emma Thompson and the initial blowback didn't stop them, I doubt anything later on will do the trick. I'm still shocked sometimes that Disney fired him.

[Rumpelstiltskin]

A little nitpicking, but Disney didn't actually fire him. They just decided not to renew his contract, which expired on January 2019. Between his sabbatical in November 2017 and his contract's expiration, he still received full payment from Disney (but had a "consulting role" in the meantime). And on January 9, 2019, he was hired by Skydance. So he was unemployed for about a week or so.

[Disney's Divinity]

Thank you for the correction, Rumpelstiltskin. For some reason I thought it was a year between him leaving Disney and joining Skydance...

[Sotiris]

Given the critiques that surrounded Lasseter’s departure from Disney, it’s noteworthy that the directors of Skydance Animation’s first two films, Luck and Spellbound, are women: Holmes and Vicky Jenson, respectively. “I can’t speak for other people, but I can say my working relationship with John feels just as it did before, in that he is a really great mentor,” says Holmes. “He’s a master storyteller and he is very generous with his ideas and his time.”

The outrage that greeted Lasseter’s hiring has quieted, at least publicly, but some in animation remain skeptical about his return. “I’m less angry now,” says Ashlyn Anstee, a director at Cartoon Network. “It’s more letting a so-called creative genius continue to take up positions and space in an industry that could begin to be filled with different people. I wish the leadership above Lasseter would take a look at what they’re valuing and what they’re willing to take a chance on.”

After Lasseter’s resignation from Disney, Ellison reached out to him through the lawyer they share, Skip Brittenham. Lasseter’s Disney departure occurred in the heat of the #MeToo movement, after egregious and specific revelations about other powerful Hollywood figures like Harvey Weinstein and Bill Cosby, and media reports about Lasseter often linked him with those men. In Lasseter’s case, there were no charges of sexual assault, nor, according to Ellison, who hired attorneys to scrutinize the claims, settlements made by Lasseter or on his behalf.

Ellison privately decided that Lasseter was not only employable, but a potentially transformative leader for his new animation company. Since then, Ellison has conceded that he mishandled the announcement of the hire and should have been more transparent to and inclusive of his employees in making the decision. The studio held town hall meetings for employees, some of which were heated during that uncertain time. “I certainly was apprehensive, as I had never met John before,” says Skydance Animation president Holly Edwards. “Once he was here and we had a chance to talk about what kind of studio we wanted Skydance Animation to be, I realized we were working toward the same thing.” Filmmakers with existing projects pitched Lasseter their ideas. “I remember him describing what he loved about the movies that we were already making,” says Jenson.

Luck was well underway when Lasseter arrived at Skydance in 2019, and the studio had already sunk millions into it. The final budget is more than $140 million, according to a studio source, but less than that of a typical Disney or Pixar animated movie, which usually exceeds $200 million. Lasseter recruited Holmes, an Emmy winner whose credits include Disneytoon’s Secret of the Wings and The Pirate Fairy, to work on a series at Skydance, but within eight months of her arrival, he replaced Carloni and installed Holmes as the new director of Luck, which underwent a dramatic story change, including adding new characters and the idea of the protagonist’s search for a forever family.

“He’s been fantastic to help educate Skydance, which came out of huge action pictures,” says Jenson, the director of DreamWorks Animation’s Shrek, who joined the studio before Lasseter arrived. “Animation is more iterative and more layered.” For such a high-level executive, Lasseter has a hands-on style. “He loves to roll up his sleeves and get into the nitty-gritty of things,” says Edwards. “Those were some of his happiest moments, when he could really get into the details of the sequences and shape them.”

Some former Skydance Animation employees say Lasseter’s working style is too controlling, however — that he insists on approving minor details and creates a bottleneck in the workflow. He prefers to have scripts read to him, former employees say, and sometimes falls asleep during those readings, only to later criticize the story for plot holes he missed while asleep. “He couldn’t remember what happened in the last meeting,” says one former Skydance Animation employee. “Things would change on a whim based on what he thought he remembered.” A representative from the studio spoke to several people who were on the alleged Zoom meetings, and those people say they never witnessed Lasseter falling asleep. One employee says that after 18-hour days while crashing a deadline for a movie, “all of us would zone out.”

Ex-employees also complained that Lasseter’s son, short-film director Bennett Lasseter, brought on as a consultant on the TV show The Search for WondLa, was giving notes on scripts. The studio’s deal with Apple includes two seasons of WondLa, the only TV series Skydance Animation has announced, which is based on the children’s book series by Tony DiTerlizzi. Its original showrunner, Lauren Montgomery, left the project and has been replaced by Bobs Gannaway, another of Lasseter’s Disney-era colleagues.

Source: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movie ... 235186710/

[Disney's Divinity]

Ah, yes... No sexual assault. Because sexual harassment is such a little thing......

but within eight months of her arrival, he replaced Carloni and installed Holmes as the new director of Luck, which underwent a dramatic story change, including adding new characters and the idea of the protagonist’s search for a forever family.

Some former Skydance Animation employees say Lasseter’s working style is too controlling, however — that he insists on approving minor details and creates a bottleneck in the workflow. He prefers to have scripts read to him, former employees say, and sometimes falls asleep during those readings, only to later criticize the story for plot holes he missed while asleep.

Its original showrunner, Lauren Montgomery, left the project and has been replaced by Bobs Gannaway, another of Lasseter’s Disney-era colleagues.

Shocker.

Oh, God @ the nepotism stuff--I didn't even know he was married, much less had an adult child at this point. Thank God he was out at Disney before that started happening there. Whew!

[Sotiris]

Ah, yes... No sexual assault. Because sexual harassment is such a little thing......

Lasseter has been accused of sexual assault too. Specifically, forcibly kissing and groping women. Just because no charges were filed or no settlements were reached, doesn't mean they didn't happen.

[PatrickvD]

The part about Lasseter falling asleep during meetings made me laugh out loud. He’s such a has been now.

[Rumpelstiltskin]

Not everybody hates John: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/wKblxaZXuiw

[Patricier21]

Not everybody hates John: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/wKblxaZXuiw

You’re right he is, and always truly will be my favourite Director of all time. Even with all of this, the way that he handled all of this Only further cements what a true leader and inspiration he truly is, for that is what truly defines someone: not necessarily what they do or what happens to them, but how they truly react to it. And with people having said That he’s gotten better, and what’s been said that he’s been doing, then Again that Only Further defines who he truly is

[Disney's Divinity]

Lasseter has been accused of sexual assault too. Specifically, forcibly kissing and groping women. Just because no charges were filed or no settlements were reached, doesn't mean they didn't happen.

Yes, you're right, thank you for the correction. He can go on to be King of the Landfills if he wants, I'm just grateful he's no longer at Disney. It's taken time, but they're slowly but surely branching out from his formula that poisoned WDAS. Aside from Frozen, which I think shined because of the Lopezes and Jennifer Lee in spite of him, and TP&TF, which had more influence from M&C than Moana did, I'd say Encanto alone is better than anything else made while he was there. I'd say the same about Raya, too, though it was largely lost in the midst of the pandemic.