Out of Juice? Recharge!

The Comedian

"The whole thing was like the moon shot," says Andrew Stanton, 32, who helped create Buzz Lightyear, the kid icon from Toy Story. He's recalling the making of that film, for which he cowrote the screenplay - an achievement that earned him a codirectorship on A Bug's Life. "We didn't know enough to realize that what we were doing couldn't be done. But now we know exactly what's up."

In a word, expectations are up. Way up. Toy Story was a breakthrough, Steve Jobs told Stanton. But what's the next blockbuster? Stanton recalls committing himself to a completely new creation: "I said, 'I guess the only thing I can promise you, Steve, is that I'm too stupid to give up.'"

It's now T-minus four months, and counting. The release of A Bug's Life is set for Thanksgiving. Stanton's every working minute is booked. Flextime is dead. His wife and two kids are near-strangers to him. After enduring a four-year marathon to make the movie, he has unleashed a mad sprint to the finish line. Running on empty? Hardly. Disney may be antsy, and parts of the film may still be a work in progress, but damn if Stanton doesn't look completely carefree.

His prescription for preventing burnout is simple: Laugh hard, twice daily. "Something is horribly wrong," he says, "if I don't crack up at least a couple of times a day." His point shouldn't be laughed off. Humor is getting more and more attention even from bottom-line management types.

According to Peter McLaughlin, author of CatchFire, "laughter and a state of fun stimulate many of the same positive physiological changes as exercise: deeper breathing, lower heart rate, decreased blood pressure, and a general feeling of relaxation." Writes McLaughlin: "Humor engenders a powerful, even somewhat miraculous sense of balance, perspective, and joy that allows you to flourish in the midst of a tough business environment."

At Pixar, the mirth can't be half-assed. "The people who work here know when someone is trying to manipulate them," says Stanton. "For example, someone organized a tug-of-war game at one of our company lunches, but I didn't play. I don't like people telling me when it's time to have fun."

Most of the time, "fun" at Pixar isn't forced - it's allowed to flow freely. Stanton no longer has as much time to goof off. But he maximizes the opportunities for levity that come his way. "Say we've got five minutes left in a production meeting and 10 more people to talk to," he explains. "Right around then, the 12-year-old in me takes over. Afterward, nobody seems to mind working hard all over again. Myself included."

The Teachers

On a Tuesday evening, Oren Jacob and Jimmy Hayward come rushing into a class on animated short films at the Academy of Art College in San Francisco. It's one of the most popular classes in the school's history, and these two Pixarians are teaching it.

On the surface, they don't seem to belong together. Hayward, 27, one of Pixar's top animators, makes almost everyone around him look a little dull. Leader of the company skateboard clan, he sports the bleached hair of a young Billy Idol. His computer-wizard sidekick, Jacob, 27, looks as wholesome as the Beaver.

But in one significant way, Jacob and Hayward are exactly alike: They teach in order to recharge. They get their kicks in other ways too: Hayward rages on a skateboard ramp in the Pixar parking lot; Jacob snowboards the black diamond slopes at Lake Tahoe. Still, teaching packs the best adrenaline rush they know of.

"When you work at something for years and years, you sometimes slip into a 'that's-my-job' rut," says Jacob, a seven-year Pixar veteran. "But when you're in front of a class of students who have infinite enthusiasm for your field, their zeal rubs off on you. I'll come into work the next day, and whatever was driving me nuts is gone."

Classes often extend past 10 p.m. and continue at a pub across the street. Hayward might blow off steam by talking about a boss who went "superneuro" on him when he made a mistake. But even as he semi-disses a supervisor, he also acknowledges that he benefits from oversight. Hearing himself say so puts into perspective some of the stress that he feels at Pixar.

Jacob started teaching four years ago, at a crisis point in his tenure at Pixar. Against his wishes, and just when Pixar was directing most of its resources to Toy Story, he was assigned to work on a television commercial for Listerine. He contemplated quitting the company, but his father talked him out of it. Later he won a Clio for his work on the Listerine "arrows" spot - one of the most sophisticated animated commercials ever made. He also got to work on Toy Story during the closing stages of its production. He credits his teaching gig with helping him not to lose his cool in the meantime.