Failure is the Key
Failure is the Key
An Interview with WALL-E Director Andrew Stanton
Recently I had the wonderful opportunity to sit down with legendary film maker Andrew Stanton from Pixar Animation Studios. In addition to being one Pixar's founders, Andrew has directed three of their films including WALL-E, Finding Nemo, and A Bug's Life, and written six of their feature films including all of the above plus Toy Story 1 and 2 and Monsters, Inc. While I was fascinated with the making of WALL-E, the question I wanted answered the most was "what is the secret of Pixar's success?"
I was surprised to hear Andrew's response. "We learned really early on that part of making movies is making a million mistakes, and is falling on your face, and is taking risk, and that is not something you should be trying to get out of the equation. That is something you should embrace and plan for. I don't think that we are any smarter, or any more talented, or even better than anyone else, but I think that we've gotten very good at how do you repair your mistakes. We are very good at figuring out how to pick up the pieces after we have fallen off our bike fifteen times, and how to improve and encourage each other to make the picture better. It might seem counter-intuitive to encourage people to fail, but once you are right in the middle of it, it makes complete sense to work that way."
Where as most Hollywood studios panic, fire people, pull plugs, or simply ignore, Pixar seems to nurture their projects until they come out as the polished works of art that we, as an audience, are privileged to get to see.
Wouldn't it be an interesting world if we practiced this philosophy with our children, our students, or even our workers? Encouraging failure with a dream of perfection might just make all of our lives a little better.
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