the 20th century saw a transformation of our visual experiences comparable to the blossoming of the Renaissance in the 15th century we saw many more things and we saw them differently both because they were different and because events and artists accustomed us to look with different eyes much of this altered Vision was due to technological change especially the beginning of Cinema television videos digital cameras and
the rapidity with which all were made accessible to Humanity everywhere but these visual revolutions were compounded by artists with the expression of what was going on in their own minds the interplay between the new technologies
and the new individualism created an element of visual change new experiences for our eyes were the product both of Relentless impersonal forces marching Humanity forward and of powerful creative individuals driving to rest
control of change in order to realize their personal ways of seeing things among this group none were more successful than Pablo Picasso and Walt Disney a comparison of the two is instructive both were outstanding creative individuals first and foremost each embraced novelty with shattering enthusiasm but there were essential differences if Picasso created shocking Novelties he did so in a traditional oldw World manner in an artist studio
and in the familiar capital of art Paris Disney on the other hand was of the new world a midwesterner who eagerly embraced both America's entrepreneurial everescents and the new technologies leaping ahead of popular taste he went from the Open Spaces to Hollywood Hollywood was not so much a place as a concept when he was born it didn't yet exist during his lifetime Hollywood became the global capital of the popular
Arts thanks in part to his creativity Disney made use of the new technologies throughout his creative life just as Picasso exploited the old artistic disciplines of paint pencil modeling and printing to produce the new
the influence of both Picasso and Disney continues in the 21st century powerfully and persistently raising a question which man has been and is more potent okay so that was an excerpt from the book that I'm going to talk to you about
today which is creators and it was written by Paul Johnson okay so what this book is is a collection of essays on some of History's Greatest creators people like Mark train Shakespeare Christian Dior Balenciaga Victor Hugo TS Elliott Dickens but what I want to focus on today is Paul's essay comparing Pablo bicasso and Walt Disney and so just to give you a sneak peek I'm working on what's going to wind up being an
extremely comprehensive episode on Walt Disney Disney and this initial essay was just initially I was like oh I'll just use it as part of the research and I got I looked at how many highlights and notes that I made on the essay I'm like oh this is it's the same amount of highlights and notes that I have for individual episodes and I thought it was so interesting I'm a huge fan of Paul I'll have to look up the episode numbers
I don't have in front of me but I've read five maybe five of Paul Johnson's books he actually just have passed away he's a fantastic historian and writer and I probably done episodes I did episodes on his Winston Church o biography his on Socrates his biography on Mozart he's got another great collection of essays called Heroes where he wrote about Alexander the Great Julius Caesar George Washington Abraham
Lincoln I did an episode on that so just a huge fan of his writing and his ability to synthesize all these different historical figures and so it shouldn't have been a surprise to me that I had a hard time not turning the page reading this essay and then of course I was just obsessed with taking notes and highlights so I'm going to focus on his comparison he's going to give overviews of both the life of Pablo
Picasso and Walt Disney okay so let's jump into Picasso so he's born in Spain um and it says his father was an art teacher and an artist specializing in Birds but fascinated by bull fighting Picasso's father continued to teach him until he was 14 and then his father put him uh for a limited time at one of Barcelona's excellent fine arts school and then after that Picasso sets up on his own as a Teenage artist this is the
next line this is what a an incredible writing and a description of Picasso I guess I I'll tell you up front it'll be obvious as we go through the highlights and notes today you can always tell like if you read between the lines like what an author thinks he Paul rightfully so in based on his descriptions and what he's chosen to highlight he has a strong dislike for Picasso and a strong admiration for Walt Disney after reading
this I would say I would share like his perspective as well and so the note I left on this is what a description of Picasso he was essentially self-taught self-directed self-promoted emotionally educated in the teeming brothel of his City a small but powerfully built monster of assured egoism now one of the benefits of being an autodidact is the fact that everyone else is learning in tracks right they're just regurgitating what the formal
education is telling them to do Picasso uh designs his own curriculum that obviously has both benefits um and weaknesses he lacked the benefit though also the inhibitions of full academic training he was exceptionally skillful from an early age at exploiting his many and ingenious artistic ideas he always kept a sharp eye on the market and always knew what would sell he sold his paintings from the age of nine until he
died and though his output became and remained prodigious throughout his long life he never had any difficulty in marketing when I got to that part it reminded me of one of my favorite lines in that fantastic book The omac of nval ravaan where nval says this had a huge effect on me when I discovered it the first time learn to sell learn to build if you can do both you'll be unstoppable David oovy a few weeks ago expressed
this very the same idea as Naval he called it a Kill killers and Poets though that if you can be both a killer and a poet you get rich and so then there's a few important events that happened in the early life of Pablo Picasso one he experiences intense competition this is going to lead him to develop his own style and then go to where there's less competition Picasso seems to have grasped quite early on that he would not get to the top in the
field of conventional painting in Barcelona the competition was severe and so at this point Picasso is competing directly with what Paul Johnson calls perhaps the greatest of the modern Spanish painters this guy named kasas and so Picasso is about to learn a very valuable lesson this is something that you and I see over and over again in the fact that imitation precedes creation we just start out imitating other people
until we develop our own style so he sees what kasus is doing he's like oh I'll do that too Casa's superb fulllength charcoal portraits of people in Barcelona inspired Picasso at the age of 18 to do a similar series which he exhibited in his first oneman show there were 135 drawings and paintings in the show but it was not a succcess indeed it was a foolish move one of the few in Picasso's career for his portraits
invited comparison with kasas and are manifestly inferior and so Picasso is a deeply flawed individual as we're going to get to in a minute but he's definitely smart and he realized oh I need to avoid direct comparison I need to avoid competition and so it says in 1904 he effectively left Spain for good chiefly to get away from Life under casas's Shadow and from the endless disparaging comparison with him Picasso also saw that Paris
with its preoccupation with novelty and fashion was the place where he could shine and rise to the top and so there's a bunch of thoughts that came to mind when I got to this section I was really trying to think about what was taking place at this point in Picasso's life and some ideas that we could actually take with us so number one differentiate yourself don't be the best be the only and then move to the physical location
that will be best for your career most people underestimate how important this is and they won't jump at that opportunity and in some of the life stories that you and I go people are lucky enough to be born in the place that just happens to be best for what they're doing think of Enzo Ferrari but in many many cases they realize oh I'm in the wrong spot I need to get to where it's the where is the
best physical location on the planet for the work I'm doing and whatever that answer is go there and so this may be my favorite attribute my favorite thing about Picasso it's going to remind me one of my favorite quotes I read this book uh is autobiography of this guy named Les Schwab and I read it because Charlie Monger kept bringing it up in like the birkshire meetings he's like you got to read you know highly recommend reading Les Schwab's uh
autobiography and in that book Les has this great this great lie that I try to adapt to my life and he says whatever you do you must do it with gusto you must do it in volume it is a case of repeat repeat repeat well check out Picasso Picasso was perhaps the most Restless experimental and productive artist who ever lived but everything had to be done at top speed he was incapable of lavishing care time or sustained
effort on a work of art by 1900 he was turning out a pain in every morning and doing other things in the afternoon and from then until his death at age 92 he remained a master of spectacular output working on paper and canvas in stone Ceramics and metal in every possible variety of mixed media he also designed posters advertisements theater sets costumes dresses logos and almost every kind of object from ashtray to headdress
it's almost like there's something inside of this guy that just had to come out this is not in this book but one of my f i i I've tried to do I don't know if I've told you this before but I've tried to do multiple episodes on Picasso because if you go back and look at all the historical figures that Steve Jobs studied and was influenced by I've done podcasts on almost all of them I think I've have 39 or 40 separate episodes
based on Steve Jobs or the people that inspired him Picasso is the the glaring missing piece and I've read two or three biographies and I just cannot I can't find a great one so I have ACH highlights and in like past research on Picassa that I haven't included in any podcasts and so one of my favorite quotes about just the insane amount of output that Picasso had uh I have saved it says Picasso lived for a total of 33,43 days with
26075 published works that means that Picasso averaged one new piece of artwork every day of his life from age 20 until his death at age 91 he created something new every day for 70 1 years and so this insane level of productivity also created an insane level of wealth for Picasso Picasso was a millionaire by 1914 and a multi-millionaire by the end of World War I and his wealth continued to grow so that by the time of his death
he was by far the richest artist who had ever lived the extraordinary success Picasso enjoyed from quite early in his career and then in growing measure until his death is explained by a number of factors and so some of those factors is the fact that this a personal belief of mine that intelligence manifests in many different ways so you know it's not at all clear how literate uh Picasso actually was that he said uh to him that
writing a letter was more difficult and took more time and effort than him just doing a painting and so his intelligence wasn't academic it was creative but ifo's brain was not academic it was nonetheless powerful reinforcing his ability to think visually with sharp Clarity and cunning this cunning was closely linked to an overwhelming personality and a peculiar sense of moral values his ability to exploit both
men and women some of them highly intelligent and uneasily aware of what he was doing to them was by far the most remarkable thing about him so think about this a word for what they're talking about is charisma and so to Define charisma right it is a compelling attractiveness or Charm that can Inspire devotion in others on episode 309 the one I just did on Arnold trer when he was young right they said in there's a line in the book
says he had a PhD in Charisma the reason that's a fascinating story to think about is because it was written by his girlfriend of six years I think from like age 20 to 26 or 21 to 27 something like that and there's so many times in that book where she's like I don't want to do what I'm doing but I'm so drawn that if you were in his presence it was like some kind of magical force that he's just you're going to immediately
like him like him you're going to be drawn to him and you'll do whatever he wants you to do and so both Picasso and Arnold use this there there's a a lot of uh sex in both of these books uh in in this chapter or this section on Picasso it's going to go into way more detail I'm going to read but also in that book that Arnold's girlfriend wrote so they use it both to attract like sexual partners and business partners it works
in both domains and so listen to this line it says his sexual appeal meaning Picasso was mesmeric let's define mesmeric causing a person to become completely fct and and unaware of anything else around them that is the same description that Arnold's girlfriend gave about a young Arnold shinger it was undoubtedly one of his superpowers he had gifts that the vast majority of human beings would give anything to possess but apparently
innately he lacked two things that Ordinary People take for granted the ability to distinguish between truth and falsehood and the ability to distinguish between right and wrong and so when I bring up the Charisma of Arnold or Picasso Steve Jobs I mean you're going to see this very there's going to be like a a huge positive correlation between you know somebody accomplish great things and their levels of Charisma what I'm really talking about
is like it's a source of power there's this line on the book that he did on episode 305 uh the book working by Robert Caro and he says P it's a book on power essentially like his entire 50-year career has been trying to explain to you and I to all of his readers like what power is and how it actually works in the real world and he says there's a line in there that gives me chills he says power doesn't always
corrupt but what power always does is reveal it reveals the true character of the the person in possession of that power and what we see is a true revelation of Picasso it's a very ugly human being so it says this lack was one source of his power at the center of his Universe there was room only for Picasso his needs his interest his Ambitions nobody else had to be considered he boasted I do not give I take to his
harsh mind kindness generosity and consideration for feelings were all weaknesses to be taken advantage of by Master figures like himself and so he is full of ego of jealousy of Envy his ingratitude was compounded by jealousy especially of other painters which may have sprung from insecurity about the merits of his own work and a feeling that it was all a con he would periodically admit I am nothing but a clown and then it gets even worse
Picasso's attitude towards women women was terrifying he said that for him women were divided into goddesses and doormats and that his object was to turn the goddess into the doormat he told one mistress nobody leaves a man like me he would steal a friend's wife oh my goodness oh you ready for this he would steal a friend's wife then tell the man that he was honoring him by Sleeping with her he was overheard saying to
himself over and over and over I am God I am God apparently Picasso was Kanye West before Kanye West his distorted paintings of women are closely linked to the pleasure he got from hurting them this is why what I meant it's like I don't I don't need to read anymore about this guy his most beautiful and gifted mistress uh was beaten and left unconscious on the floor he would create situations in which one mistress angrily
confronted another in his presence and then both rolled on the floor biting and scratching and fighting each other uh Picasso having set up the fight would calmly go on painting and so the reason I keep giving all these details is because I think this is the main and most important part of this entire section and the point of studying history is like I want we want a more accurate representation of the world that we live in and the humans that
inhabit it in my opinion maybe many people find it hard to accept that a great writer painter or musician can be evil but the historical evidence shows again and again that evil and creative genius can exist side by side in the same person that is terrifying let me read that again I'm not done with this paragraph historical evidence shows again and again that evil and creative genius can exist side by side in the
same person it is rare indeed for for the evil side of a Creator to be all to be so all P pervasive as it was in Picasso who seems to have been without redeeming qualities of any kind in my judgment his Monumental selfishness was
inextricably linked to his achievement that is the main and most important part of this entire section he was all powerful as an originator and aesthetic entrepreneur precisely because he was so passionately devoted to what
he was doing to the exclusion of any other feeling whatever he had no sense of Duty except to himself and this gave him overwhelming self-promoting energy equally his egoism enabled him to turn away from nature and into himself with a concentration which is all inspiring this is I wrote this is my note to myself this was fascinating I read that three times and then I stopped and just thought about this because one of the
the I would argue maybe the most important what if you only took one lesson from this crazy Odyssey that you and I are on right it's like this reading hundreds of biographies and reading every single possible thing about history great entrepreneurs uh making podcasts about them uh compiling 20,000 notes and highlights on this and then rereading those over and over again if you only took one thing from this
entire thing is like the importance and superhuman powers that intense Focus can give you but on the other side of that Tak to to to far extreme right is this intense focus is inherently selfish and so therefore you can get L this is what I'm most concerned about myself is you can get lost so much in your work at the exclusion of everything else this is why you know when people say hey do you have any advice about like how to be how to
how to live a balanced life or to be a good father to be a good husband it's like yeah listen to Founders and do in the personal life you basically have to do the opposite of what most of these people do because they are so inherently selfish in I'm not like passing judgment I'm just like documenting what I see they're so inherently selfish and focused on what they're doing that that time right because time is the finite
resource has to come from somewhere else and so they decide hey it's going to come from you know I'm going to destroy marriages I mean how many of these people it's extremely common like I'm working on another uh another episode right now that's blowing my mind and the guy's un he's a genius Straight Up Genius unbelievable per like talented person and you read about it's like oh like yeah this makes sense that this
guy's been married five times I completely understand why that is so this is why I'm such a big fan of Paul Johnson because he just he his writing and his synthesis of this information where he just hits you with this idea it's just one paragraph that it gives you I have chills on my arm right now you just stop it stops in your track it's like oh my God the source is the same and then he does an even better job
of saying hey pay attention this is a cautionary tale you think you want everything right Picasso had the fame the wealth the women and he was was miserable the all powerful Machinery of the Picasso industry his stable of women
his Chateau his unlimited Fame his vast wealth the siop fancy that surrounded him none of these brought him Serenity as he aged it seems to me that his personal cruelty and the evident savagery of much of his work sprang from
a deep unease of spirit his last years were punctuated by Family quarrels over money his widow shot herself his eldest child died of alcoholism and this is the punchline it is an appalling tale though edifying in its own way it shows painfully how even vast creative achievement and unparalleled worldly success can fail to bring happiness it shows painfully how even vast creative achievement and unparalleled worldly
success can fail to bring happiness and so now this is where we start to get into the gift of this entire essay because it's like no here's Picasso we have an overview we have an idea I think what you and I just ran through even if you had never read anything else or even knew who he was like heard of Picasso before which is you know very unlikely you have an idea of who he is and then he does this exact same thing for Walt and they start to
compare and contrast and this is why you know I think undoubtedly Walt Disney is one of the most admired entrepreneurs ever you got to put them if there's a Mount Rushmore and you know of entrepreneurs like you put them up there and I don't mean necessarily just Financial achievement although the financial achievement you know compounded decades after he died but his approach to his work and just the sheer talent that this individual possessed
it's it's incredible Walt Disney like Picasso began his working life early but he had a much harder struggle to earn a living or achieved recognition and success much of his childhood was spent on a farm in rural Missouri and he delighted all of his life in observing and drawing animals that is huge this idea of Walt Disney's I didn't I didn't and I've read three or four books on Walt Disney so far and maybe I knew it
at one point but I feel like I never maybe never maybe I knew it at one point forgot but I feel like I never made the connection until Paul helped me put this idea in my mind or it's like his entire his main inspiration was always from the very beginning from when he was a child to when he was you know on his death dying was nature and so it says he grew up on a farm delighted all of his life in observing and drawing animals their
movements and idiosyncrasies gave him great pleasure where Picasso intended to dehumanize the women he drew painted Disney anthropomorphized his animal subjects that was the essential source of his power and humor his family had little money and his father was demanding but despite this or perhaps because of it Disney always saw the family as the essential unit in society and the only source of lasting happiness
when the farm failed the Disney moved to Kansas City where his father started a newspaper dis Distributing business and made Walt work very hard at all hours by the age of 18 He was making his living as a newspaper cartoonist but Walt developed two passions first he wanted to run his own business and be his own Master he had the American entrepreneurial Spirit to an unusual degree and so I want to pause there real
quick what what's most one of the most surprising things I learned about Disney from Reading biographies in the past is that towards the end of his life he said that he was most proud of two things keeping control of his company because he's going to lose control of his first company so starting and keeping control of his second company and Disneyland so this idea where he's like I want to be my own Master he was upset like you know
all of history entrepreneurs obsessed with control by the age of 20 he had already run his own company gone Brank bankrupt and then set up again second he wanted to get into the art and craft of Animation okay so 18-year-old Disney's making his living as a newspaper cartoonist at the same time people are taking uh newspaper cartoons or cartoons of all times and they're animating them so they call animated funnies right and
the animated funnies are being animated and Drawn to run before movies in what is at the time at this point in history a very new Motion Picture industry so it's kind of like an opening act to accompany like longer movies that are regular movies like filmed with actual people right and let's get into like what Disney realized like oh there's a missing piece and I would say is a common common theme not only you'll see
it multiple times throughout Disney's career but I think in general it's like in these these life stories that you and I go over of knowing what you want to do but you don't know how to do it yet Disney always felt that animation without sound was dead and that the nature and quality of the sound were key the key to success okay but initially the sound Dimension baffled him so did a lack of capital I don't know how to make
sound I have no money even if I knew how to do it the burgeoning movie circuits would buy cartoons only in series of 10 12 or 20 believing that movie goers had to become accustomed to them so Paul makes a great point that the same belief dominates dominated television in the early 21st century where you get TV seasons right Disney lived from hand to mouth $5 was a lot of money to him at this time and he often had to borrow
cash but he was determined to keep a breast of what was a rapidly evolving technology both in animation and in moving photography at the beginning of the book there was that line all creative individuals build on the work of their predecessors okay no one creates in a vacuum we see that here in 1917 this guy named Max fler makes the first movie that combines moving photography of actors with animated cartoon characters Disney sees that so
six years later Disney uses this com combination himself and he makes this this uh Cartoon or this movie called Alice in cartoon land I would I guess movie is not the right it's like a short like I think it's like six minutes long or eight minutes long something like that so like a short film I guess um so around the same time Disney's original company the laag gr Corporation made short animation films uh animation plus
photography films and and they would also uh create advertising for Brands using uh Cartoon figures and so that is the actual company that is going to go bankrupt um so it goes bankrupt from after the bankruptcy all he has left was the camera and a print of Alice to use as a sample so what does he do ESS he just takes on free freelance work to survive before he's going to start another company he's around 22 or 23
years old when his first company goes bankrupt uh so it says he was forced to disband his team and use his camera for freelance news photography making Kansas City his base and selling his footage to all these other I'm not going to name the companies there a bunch of different names and he's selling the footage to a bunch of these companies and these companies are all located in Hollywood this is an undoubtedly low part of his life he also
took on private jobs he would film weddings and funerals he'd make 10 or $15 to film a wedding or a funeral um he often had so little money that he could only eat canned beans and so he realizes I got to get out of here I got to go to like I'm making the little money I'm making is coming from these news Studios right so it says his contracts with news Studios persuaded him that he had to establish himself and a new production
company in Hollywood so he sold his camera and with the proceeds he bought himself a ticket and he headed to Hollywood with $40 he's got $40 to his name and it was interesting I uh he traveled on the famous train California
Limited in July 23rd or excuse me July 1923 if you think about all that happens after after he moves to California it shouldn't be called California limited takes many years for this to happen should be called called California
unlimited the early 1920s full of Hope and daring were a classic period of American free enterprise and for anyone interested in the Arts Hollywood was a rapidly expanding focus of innovation he has 40 bucks he has the initiative he's like I need to go where I think is best for my career that does not mean it's going to be immediately easy this is a crazy thing like I'm about to read to you like all these companies imagine
having the chance to hire young Walt Disney like nah I'm good the early 1920s full of Hope and daring where a classic period for American free enterprise and for anyone interested in the Arts Hollywood is a rapidly expanding focus of innovation but Disney had a very hard time getting work of any description in the movie industry trudging from Studio to studio and borrowing money just to eat he had to go back to making animated
cartoons now this is incredible this is the Relentless resourcefulness of a young Walt Disney you will find stories like the one about to share with you in a lot of the biographies of filmmakers uh I'll leave the links down below George Lucas Francis Ford Copa Stephen Spielberg I've WR all their biographies done episodes on them they all have stories like this in their biographies it's why filmmakers are one of my
favorite uh people to read biographies I have actually a bunch coming very soon uh a bunch more uh he also used his Alice sample to get a series going the camera cost him $5 a day he then Drew cartoons around her so the act the actual actress right the physical person he organized a group of local children and each and paid each 50 cents a day to act skits around Alice and he trained his great Uncle Robert's dog to be part
of the fund this is what you do when you have no money you're forced to be creative forced to be resourceful each reel consisted of 900 ft of film of real children and the dog and 300 feet of animated cartoon Disney wrote the script built the sets himself his Studio was a small back room in a real estate office that he rented for $5 a month he made all of the props he needed himself he produced and directed and filmed it
himself and then he sat down and Drew the animation himself the first movie cost him $750 all in and he sold it East meaning to a New York cic Syndicate who's going to wind up screwing him later on for $1,500 this was his first real profit in his entrepreneurial career now another interesting part of this essay this is on the similarities of Disney and Picasso and the immense contribution to your collaborators only keeping the very
best people around you because they're going to influence the the quality of your work and the trajectory of your business he made a contract for a dozen movies and the first six he made entirely by himself or excuse me he had a contract for a dozen movies so he makes the first six by himself he's like all right then I need help he goes to this guy named herb ey Works he was working back with him in Kansas City so
he brings out I Works to Hollywood to help him with the animation there is a curious similarity between his work with Eyeworks and Picasso's collaboration with this I'm not going pronounce this guy's name Georges George bra in the invention of cubism nearly two decades earlier okay don't worry about the name so closely did Picasso and bra share their ideas and techniques that a few years later it was sometimes impossible
to tell which of them had produced a certain canvas or if both of them had neither painter could tell either in some cases the mystery remains to this day now why is that important because you see the same thing in Disney's career that's why I'm bringing up to you equally the precise roles of Walt and iWorks in the early successful animations can no longer be determined with certainty it is clear that the basic ideas came chiefly from Disney but
many of the most effective touches sprang out of the animation process himself and here iWorks was important now here's another comparison to Picasso that I would have never drawn this connection the same I guess trait of human nature this like insatiable desire that humans have for novelty actually is going to lead to the creation of the greatest thing that Walt like the foundational character Mickey Mouse
right so it says it's impossible to exaggerate the need for a producer like Disney to respond quickly to changes in public taste and and there in the Public's need for novelty just as Picasso and Paris went from one phase to another to ca to cater to the insatiable appetite for ideas of the art world so Disney had to adapt and change his cartooning the audiences uh were tiring of Alice and they and they needed more
characters they wanted a new character Disney invents a rabbit called Oswald and Oswald was so successful that it invited competition the problem is he doesn't have the resources to fight back with competition all he can fight back with is creativity he's got to innovate his way out of this problem it's another way to think about what's Happening Here Oswald was a success but Disney found that once his sh his shorts acquired a
reputation other Studios bigger and with more Capital would raid his staff and steal his animators by offering them more money he could frustrate this process by inventing a new character the result was a mouse and so 30 years after the where we are in the story Disney would later say I love this idea he says uh I only hope that we never lose sight of one thing that it all started with a mouse and it also started with a
terrible name for the mouse and so God bless Walt Disney's wife right he chose Disney chose the name Mortimer Mouse but his wife Lily objected and so that is when Disney picked the name Mickey and why would Walt Disney 30 years later say
I hope we never forget that it all started with a mouse another comparison to Picasso Picasso had in fact turned the bodies and faces of his women models into characters Cubist cartoon characters animated awfully Enough by
contempt and even hatred right she's like the the evil version of Disney but Disney produced a mouse animated by admiration and even by love it is is it is significant that Mickey Mouse in the year of his greatest popularity which is 1933 receiv received over 800,000 fan letters the largest ever recorded in Show Business at any time in any Century think about that an animated character received more fan letters than any other
celebrity or known person in one period ever there in Lay Disney's genius he could make people especially children love his creations and so what I would summarize what he's trying to teach us about the difference between Picasso and Disney is this is love versus hate you might get temporary attention by engaging in hate and negativity but a durable beloved brand can only be rooted in one thing and that is love and to
fall in love with something takes time so there's an element of what I'm about to read you is the importance of time right because you look at what Mickey Mouse looked like when he first invented and what he looked comes to like be lovable it's like oh big difference but also Disney realized that you know he has no still has no money so I have to use speed is a competitive Advantage the earliest Mickey does not look lovable to
our eyes nearly a century later his jerkiness was technical rather than deliberate remember he's this is the very beginning of Animation uh within uh with every month that passed animation was becoming more complex and Disney to outpace his competitors Force the pace let's go he used 16 drawings to make Mickey move once about 14,400 drawings went into a 10minute cartoon short so he uses speed and he also something that Disney does this his
his entire career he has in common with a bunch of other great filmmakers is he's always jumping on the new technology of his day Warner Brothers uh released the first integrated sound picture called The Jazz Singer this I think is 1927 Disney jumped for Joy at the idea of takis there are the funny name of movies with sound sounds ridiculous to us now but at that time that's what they were called so Disney's
jumping for joy at the idea of talkis because he had always believed sound to be the true third dimension of movie cartooning Disney had no sound equipment and proceeded on a do it yourself basis which is a model of entrepreneurial improvisation yes it is amen he got a person to play a harmonica he bought uh nightclub noise maker cowbells tin pans washboards for scrubbing noises so he's just essentially trying to build this you know with very
inexpensive tools I guess is the way you would think about this right so I'm reading all that not so you memorize all that but the main idea here is like this is just an unbelievable level of resourcefulness I just heard Uh Kevin Kelly on the podcast invest like the best it's episode 334 highly recommend uh listening to that episode I think Kevin Kelly is a he's got a very unique way of just a philosophy on life I took
a bunch of notes on that uh episode but one of my favorite things that he says is like you know he's he studied the the history of creativity to a great degree and he's like listen lack of resources is actually a feature it is the benefit and for our purposes like that's why you know new smaller companies can always you know usually out compete and overtake larger companies if they remain focused because the lack of resources
that Focus forces them to become cre more creative Sam Walton talks about this even in his business the fact that Walmart starts starts out under capitalized he not part of a large company and so he said that constraints were actually his friend because it forced him to learn it forced him to become resourceful and then this accumulation of knowledge that Disney is forced to learn like that becomes an
asset he can use for his entire life and it's also I think illustrates just his he's just completely dedicated I think I have another um highlight here that comes from a different book talks about you know he never the secret to his success was he he was never doing things out to make money he was just obsessed with making the absolute best product he could I took a great deal of effort time and re-recording to get the system
working smoothly and by the time the composite print was made with fully synchronized sound the Disney Brothers had run out of cash and even had to sell their father's car but here is the end result the first sound movie using the mouse was called Steamboat Willie I think a lot of people will be familiar with what that is even you know 100 years later and it came out in 1928 it was a huge success not only because of
Disney's technical triumphs of synchronized animation but because of the enginuity of what Disney got the mouse to do in producing noises there in lay his extraordinary gift the imagination what did Napoleon tell us a few weeks ago imagination rules the world the imagination to enter into the head of a half mouse half man and devise weird and hilarious things to do as the mouse steered a boat down the river Disney had invented the sound cartoon a
combination of imaginative drawing scripting and engineering science it was and remains a wonderful example of creativity the birth of a new art form that is the startup Paradox this was not done by better funded competitors by the end of that decade Mickey Mouse was the best known figure in movies here's a little fun fact for you Mickey's voice was originally done by Disney himself and so if you study the very early parts
of Walt Disney's career and as you know he starts out with not any money not resources he accumulates resources the source of that inspiration Remains the Same it's nature this underlined Walt's emphasis on the study of nature for inspiration the studio his Studio regarded nature as the one and only true source of Disney Art animators led by Disney himself constantly watched movies of animals and live animals were brought
into the studio for study it was Disney's view that nature was a richer source of humor than human imagination what his and his team supplied was just the anthropomorphism back to the fact that Disney always embraced latest technology he regarded color as a godson almost as crucial as sound because it enormously increased realism he experimented widely with color systems before he adopted Technicolor and signed an exclusive
contract with its manufacturer he spent money free as freely and as fast as it came in there's another line uh in one of the Biograph I've read on Disney in the past where him and his brother so you know creative aspect of the business it comes from Walt's head and the finance part of the business is his brother Roy and they're having a fight about this and he has a great line where he's like fighting with his brother over
money where he says something like I'm innovating I'll tell you what it costs when I'm finished so that's a great like to me in my mind when you read about Disney you study I was like oh that that's Disney through and through Disney always bought the best paint the best film and other materials he insisted on reanimation however timeconsuming and expensive until the results were right in the early 1930s Disney's production costs for an
8-minute movie were $113,000 and over at a time when rival Studios spent a maximum of 2500 Disney put Excellence before any other consideration Disney put Excellence before any other consideration there's a great line in this biography that I've read this line I've read multiple times and here's the quotee if you want to know the real secret of Walt's success it's that he never tried to make money he was always
trying to make something that he could have fun with or be proud of incoming cash instantly went for investment in new technology and better artists the 1930s was not totally unlike the big European Studios of the 17th Century Disney hired the best art history doesn't repeat human nature does right he's just doing the same thing that was happening what 300 years 400 years before him Disney hired the best artists
he could get and gave them tasks to the limits of their capacities the studio was a highly creative interactive Place tense and sometimes hysterical as new ideas were presented debated boosted and discarded there were arguments and animators sometimes left after disputes Disney and his Studio by trial and error and of industry and skill acquired the art of animating figures making them seem as real as humans on the stage in
essentially the same way as the Florentine painters learned to to reproduce people in Fresco or on walls what took the early Renaissance painters to this is such a great this is like the most Paul Johnson paragraph ever what took the the early Renaissance painters two centuries the Disney Studio did in a decade but then Disney's animators had the whole tradition of Western Art on which to build just as the countless
animators of today are inspired by Disney's work in the 1930s and so then we get to the point where the technology finally catches up and he's able to invent yet another new art form this is the note let me read it and then
I'll read the note that I left to myself to like to apply to my own work so it says the arrival of color the Improvement of background technique the Perfection of the soundtrack uh allowing high quality orchestra music and singing
and financial factors persuaded Disney to break out of the limitations of the funny cartoons and make a featurelength fairy tale the result was Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs the idea was Disney's of course he had been preparing for human animation for some time by holding live classes at his Studio wait for this is another life myself wait for the technology to catch up ask yourself what is possible today that I could not do a
year ago start practicing that and wait for the technology to catch up these ideas that are now accumulating Snow White comes out in 19 I think he starts working on 1934 comes out 1938 he had been thinking about some of these ideas for over 18 years up until that point he just again I know what I want to do can't figure out how to do it yet and this is the result the movie introduced numerous artistic and technical
innovations that transform the art of movie cartooning it involved over 2 million drawings and formed the largest single project in the history of draftsmanship that is insane which had begun 40,000 years before in the caves of France and Spain again that's why you got to love Paul Johnson that's a very Paul Johnson Paul Johnson might be the only person that would write a sentence like that it was a huge critical and
Commercial Success and marked the point which animation achieved maturity as an art form he was the most the most financially successful thing I think he'd ever done by a long shot up until that point but the crazy thing is I have another um I went through my readwise and was searching for uh I know Steve talked about Walt quite a bit and so I've been thinking about that and and I'm also compiling it for the research
of this other Walt Disney episode I told you I'm working out or working on you know that thing might not be ready for like another month or two I have to figure it out but um I've just been like seeping myself on this uh little by
little and what what's fascinating is like uh Steve Jobs talked about hey you know once they they figured out Pixar wasn't going to produce uh they were they were trying to sell hardware and they try to sell software to other
companies like no no we're just going to go all in on developing the first computer animated movie so Steve does this like intense uh like Research into the industry like how lucrative is is animation couldn't find anything because he says uh you can't you can't go to the the library and check out a a book called the business model of Animation because there's only one company that's ever done it well which is Disney and
they don't want anybody else to know how lucrative it was and so he's discovering as he's researching this how lucrative it is and he's like this is insane because again this is you hold on as long as possible because you have no idea what new technology will be invented in the future that unlocks value in the business that you're creating so at the time that he's doing this research people are buying a ton of
like vhss VHS tapes and DVDs and he's like wait a minute job says good storytelling can last for decades I don't think you'll be able to boot up any computer today in 20 years but Snow White has sold 28 million copies and it's a 60-year-old production he's talking about the fact that they sold when it was released on DVD or or tape I can't remember which one they sold 28 million copies of a movie that they made
60 years ago that is insane I think he put the number on it I don't I think he's like they made like a quarter billion dollars on that so it's it's just uh it's just wild I I love how all these things relate and like you know everybody's learning from each other and studying it just it it brings a big smile on my face all right let's go back to this Disney's Instinct was always to get back to Nature whereas Picasso was to get away from it the
success of Snow White financed a series of four big feature movies all of them were made by Disney between the years 1938 and 1944 so they're talking about Pinocchio Fantasia Dumbo and Bambi all of those movies wind up being massively successful and every single one of them explored natural phenomenon so let's skip ahead to when he's going to invent another unique art form during World War II Disney had brooded on the
possibility of creating these worlds meaning his animated worlds not in the studio but in real life he thus produced the idea of a Disney park constructed a around a theme he recreated his this is incredible he recreated his scenery in three dimensions in the open air and invited the public to enter his first Disneyland open in 1955 so I want to pause here to tell you two things one if you're interested I'd
order this book immediately I did an entire episode there's this book called Disney's land Walt Disney and invention of the amusement park that changed uh the world I'd read the whole book listen to the podcast if you haven't it's episode 158 I think it's excellent the book is fantastic I've given that book to quite a few friends it's all about the way he thought about Disneyland but this is the other thing that came to my
mind which is like really important it's like listen we want to move fast we obviously speed is a competitive Advantage you early days of your company but you want to maintain a speed that you can last for decades why because
nobody creates their best product when they're 20 25 30 how old was Steve Jobs when the iPhone came out he' been he' been making products great fantastic products for three decades but his greatest creation came three and a half
decades into his life Disneyland was by far Walt Disney's greatest creation and he was 54 Disney was 54 when he made his greatest creation if he had lived he winds up dying I think at 66 from lung cancer he smoked constantly Smoked Cigarettes all the time if he had lived he'd been 71 when Disney World would when Disney World opened which is like the you know his he's like oh I Pro my kind of like my proof of concept was
Disneyland and he took it to like much greater scale and grandiosity in Disney World he would have been 71 I love thinking about that like go and study somebody's career when did they do their best work think about if as the as an entrepreneur and a Creator and an innovator the stuff that is in the 54y old brain of Walt Disney compared to like the 25-year old brain knowledge compounds just like everything else and just imagine if you could get
inside that brain and that experience I I I experienced this to some degree when I got to sit down um and have a 2-hour long lunch with Sam zel you know he's 81 years old time just I didn't know but you know happened a few months unfortunately before he passed away and just the way his brain was working and the stuff that was in it and the business knowledge that came out of it effortlessly the guy had been seeing
deals and thinking about entrepreneurship for six decades like me sitting across from is like we're a different species it's incredible to think about the compounded business knowledge that was in his brain luckily enough you know he tried to document as much as he could in his autobiography in speeches you know some degree uh to the podcast that's why he was I don't know if I said this publicly but uh I was
supposed to have dinner with him he W I was supposed to have dinner with him uh a few I had lunch with him and then like two months later I was supposed to have dinner with him because he literally wanted to give me more content to make an episode about what he learned so I could share it with you because he was like adamant about sharing everything he learned with future generations of entrepreneurs unfortunately wind up
getting sick and then you know a few weeks later passed away so just this idea it's like man they like that is such a fascinating idea it's if the amount of compounded experience and knowledge that that was in like a 54-year-old Disney I don't know I I I just got to this part and I really like struck and like had to sit here for a while and really think about what like it just resonated with me so when that happens I obviously share it with you
and hopefully like you find it valuable okay this revealed again going back to Disneyland you see the theme rep reappears what is his main Talent it revealed again Disney's creative genius for satisfying the human demand for popular art as entertainment and then they make the point that's not just it's not just important because it's serving and make you know serving customers making somebody else's life better right
at the time that he lived it's what that influences all the generations and all the entrepreneurs and creators that come and innovators that come after that clearly the influence of Disney on the presentation of visual images in the 20th century and beyond was immense almost past computation Disney himself trained over a thousand artists almost as many as the most successful art school in history Disney was an
entrepreneur and a highly successful one the founder of a business which in his own day employed thousands of people and which in the first decade of the 21st century survives and flourishes Disney pursued his own individual way until his death Picasso on the other hand set his faith against nature and burrowed within himself Paul's about to answer his own question that he started this who had a greater impact Disney worked within
nature stylizing it and anthropomorphizing it and surreal it and ultimately reinforcing it that is why Disney's ideas will continue to shine through while the ideas of Picasso powerful though they were for much of the 20th century will gradually fade in the end nature is the strongest force of all and that is where I'll leave it I absolutely loved I love I mean I'm a huge fan of Paul Johnson's writing in general I I'd buy this book just this
essay alone the good thing about the book I think there's 14 different essays in the book you don't have to read it chronologically he will reference past like ideas from like you know episode or episode essay 2 into like essay 14 or whatever um but you really could just pick it up and be like okay I just want to learn about Shakespeare right now let me read about that or want to learn about you know uh Dior the chapter on
Dior and Balenciaga or whatever you're interested in I think Paul Johnson's work speaks for itself it's worth you know the investment of of buying the book if you buy the book using the link and I'll include all his other books too because I think you know he writes this these fantastic like 180 200 Page biographies anyways I'll leave all the those links down below too if you buy this book or any of the other books
you'll be supporting the podcast at the same time and one more thing make sure you're already on my personal email list I sent out an email of the top 10 highlights that I do from every book and so I will leave a link down below it shows like a sample of what it looks like and then you just enter in your email and you'll get every book that I do from there on in so that is 310 books down 1,000 to go and I'll talk to you again soon