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Speaker 1

00:00

So I've made something that is exclusively for enthusiasts of founders, for people that completely understand the benefit of this intense studying of the great people and the great work that came before us and how valuable that is to apply to whatever it is that we're working on. If that is you, I recommend you sign up for the Private Founders AMA feed. I have been making short episodes every week based on questions that I get from members. If you become a member, you'll be able to ask me questions directly.

Speaker 1

00:33

There is a private email address that you get access to that I read every single 1 of these emails myself. I don't have an assistant look over them. I read every single 1 myself. The questions I get from these emails I turn into short AMA episodes so that allows other members to learn from questions of other members.

Speaker 1

00:54

You can also add your name and a link to your website with your question so that other members can check out what you're working on. That feature alone is worth the investment. So far I've made 27 episodes. I'm recording the next 1 tomorrow, and I plan on making several episodes every week.

Speaker 1

01:14

If you consider yourself an enthusiast of Founders Podcast, highly recommend that you become a member. You can join by using the link that's in the show notes

Speaker 2

01:20

on your podcast player or by going to founderspodcast.com.

Speaker 1

01:26

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.

Speaker 1

01:58

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 striving to wrest 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.

Speaker 1

02:39

A comparison of the 2 is instructive. Both were outstanding creative individuals first and foremost. Each embraced novelty with shattering enthusiasm. But there were essential differences.

Speaker 1

02:53

If Picasso created shocking novelties, he did so in a traditional old-world manner, in an artist's 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 effervescence 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.

Speaker 1

03:21

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?

Speaker 1

03:56

Okay, so

Speaker 2

03:56

that was an excerpt from the book that I'm gonna talk

Speaker 1

03:58

to you about today, which is Creators and is 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 Twain, Shakespeare, Christian Dior, Balenciaga, Victor Hugo, T.S. Eliot, Dickens.

Speaker 1

04:14

But what I wanna focus on today is Paul's essay comparing Pablo Picasso and Walt Disney. And so just to give you a sneak peek,

Speaker 2

04:22

I'm working on what's going to wind up

Speaker 1

04:23

being an extremely comprehensive episode on Walt 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.

Speaker 1

04:36

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.

Speaker 2

04:43

I'll have to look up the episode numbers. I don't have them in front

Speaker 1

04:45

of me, but I've read 5, maybe 5 of Paul Johnson's books. He actually just passed away. He's a fantastic historian and writer.

Speaker 1

04:52

And I probably done episodes,

Speaker 2

04:53

I did episodes on his Winston Churchill biography, his biography on Socrates, his biography on Mozart. He's got another great collection

Speaker 1

04:59

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.

Speaker 1

05:09

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.

Speaker 1

05:25

So he's born in Spain and says his father was an art teacher and an artist specializing in birds, but fascinated by bullfighting. Picasso's father continued to teach him until he was 14 and then his father put him for a limited time at 1 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.

Speaker 1

05:46

This is what an incredible writing and a description of Picasso. I guess 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's, Paul, rightfully so, based on his descriptions and what he shows to highlight.

Speaker 1

06:03

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 brothels of his city, a small but powerfully built monster of assured egoism.

Speaker 1

06:28

Now, 1 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 designs his own curriculum that obviously has both benefits and weaknesses. He lacked the benefit, though also the inhibitions of full academic training.

Speaker 1

06:48

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 9 until he died. And though his output became and remained prodigious throughout his long life, he never had any difficulty in marketing.

Speaker 1

07:07

When I got to that

Speaker 2

07:08

part, it reminded me of 1 of my favorite lines in that fantastic book, The Almanac

Speaker 1

07:12

of Naval Ravikant, where Naval 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.

Speaker 1

07:20

David Ogilvie a few weeks ago expressed the same idea as Naval. He called it 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 happen in the early life of Pablo Picasso. 1, he experiences intense competition.

Speaker 1

07:36

This is

Speaker 2

07:37

going to lead him to develop his

Speaker 1

07:38

own style and then go to where there's less competition. Picasso seems to have grasped quite early on

Speaker 2

07:42

that he would not get to

Speaker 1

07:43

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

Speaker 2

07:54

the modern Spanish painters, this guy named Casas. And so Picasso is about to learn a very valuable lesson. This is something that you and I see over and over again,

Speaker 1

08:01

and the fact that imitation precedes creation. We just started out imitating other people until we develop our own style. So he sees what Casas is doing.

Speaker 1

08:10

He's like, oh, I'll do that too. Casas' superb full-length charcoal portraits of people in Barcelona inspired Picasso at the age of 18 to do a similar series which he exhibited in his first one-man show. There were 135 drawings and paintings in the show but it was not a success. Indeed it was a foolish move, 1 of the few in Picasso's career for his portraits invited comparison with Casas and are manifestly inferior.

Speaker 1

08:37

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 Cossus's shadow and from the endless disparaging comparisons with him.

Speaker 1

08:56

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

Speaker 2

09:04

to mind when I got to this section, I was really trying

Speaker 1

09:06

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 1, differentiate yourself. Don't be the best, be the only.

Speaker 1

09:15

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 over, 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.

Speaker 1

09:31

But in many, many cases, they realize, oh, I'm in the wrong spot. I need to get to where it's the where's 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.

Speaker 1

09:46

It's going to remind me 1 of my favorite quotes. I read this book, this autobiography of this guy named Les Schwab, and I read it because Charlie Munger kept bringing it up in the Berkshire meetings. He's like, you got to read, you know, I highly recommend reading Les Schwab's autobiography. And in that book, Les has this great, this great line 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.

Speaker 1

10:07

It is a case of repeat repeat repeat Well, check out Picasso. Picasso was perhaps the most restless Experimental and productive artists 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 painting every morning and doing other things in the afternoon.

Speaker 1

10:29

And from then Until his death at age 92, he remained a master of spectacular output, working on paper and canvas and stone, ceramics and metal, and 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 1

Speaker 2

10:56

of my favorite, I've tried to do, I don't know if I've told you this before, but I've

Speaker 1

11:00

tried to do multiple episodes on Picasso because if you go and 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 have 39 or 40 separate episodes based on Steve Jobs or the people that inspired him. Picasso's the glaring missing piece.

Speaker 1

11:17

And I've read 2 or 3 biographies and I just cannot, I can't find a great 1. So I have a bunch of highlights in like past research on Picasso that I haven't included in any podcast. And So 1 of my favorite quotes about just the insane amount of output that Picasso had, I have saved, it says, Picasso lived for a total of 33, 403 days with 26, 075 published works. That means that Picasso averaged 1 new piece of artwork every day of his life from age 20 until his death at age 91.

Speaker 1

11:52

He created something new every day for 71 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.

Speaker 1

12:16

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 is a personal belief of mine, that intelligence manifests in many different ways. So you know, it's not at all clear how literate Picasso actually was, that he said 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.

Speaker 1

12:43

But if Picasso'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.

Speaker 1

13:12

And so to define charisma, right, it is a compelling attractiveness or charm that it can inspire devotion in others. On episode 309, the 1 I just did on Arnold Schwarzenegger when he was young, right, they said, and 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 6 years,

Speaker 2

13:36

I think from like age 20 to 26 or 21 to 27, something like that.

Speaker 1

13:39

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 gonna immediately like him, like him, you're gonna be drawn to him and you'll do whatever he wants you to do. And so both Picasso and Arnold use this, there's a lot of sex in both of these books. In this chapter, or this section on Picasso, it's gonna go into way more detail I'm gonna read, but also in that book that Arnold's girlfriend wrote.

Speaker 1

14:09

So they use it both to attract 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.

Speaker 1

14:22

Let's define mesmeric, causing a person to become completely transfixed and unaware of anything else around them. That is the same description that Arnold's girlfriend gave about a young Arnold Schwarzenegger. It was undoubtedly 1 of his superpowers. He had gifts that the vast majority of human beings would give anything to possess.

Speaker 1

14:38

But apparently, innately, he lacked 2 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 gonna see this very, there's gonna be like a huge positive correlation between somebody who accomplished 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, the book Working by Robert Caro.

Speaker 1

15:10

And he says, it's a book on power, essentially. Like his entire 50 year career

Speaker 2

15:14

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

Speaker 1

15:23

and he says, power doesn't always corrupt, but what power always does is reveal. It reveals the true character of the person in possession of that power. And what we see is a true revelation of Picasso.

Speaker 1

15:35

It's a very ugly human being. So it says, this lack was 1 source of his power. At the center of his universe, there was room only for Picasso, his needs, his interests, his ambitions. Nobody else had to be considered.

Speaker 1

15:50

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.

Speaker 1

16:18

He would periodically admit, I am nothing but a clown. And then it gets even worse. Picasso's attitude towards 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.

Speaker 1

16:33

He told 1 mistress, nobody leaves a man like me. He would steal a friend's wife. Oh my goodness.

Speaker 2

16:39

Oh, you

Speaker 1

16:40

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.

Speaker 1

16:51

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 is like,

Speaker 2

17:00

I don't I don't need to read anymore about this

Speaker 1

17:02

guy His most beautiful and gifted mistress was beaten and left unconscious on the floor He would create situations in which 1 mistress Angrily confronted another in his presence and then both rolled on the floor biting and scratching and fighting each other 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. It's like 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.

Speaker 1

17:37

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.

Speaker 1

17:49

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 the evil side of a creator to be so all 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 achievements. That is the main and most important part of this entire section.

Speaker 1

18:17

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 awe-inspiring." This is, I wrote, this is my note to myself. This was fascinating.

Speaker 1

18:45

I read that 3 times and then I stopped and just thought about this because 1 of the, I would argue maybe the most important, if you only took 1 lesson from this crazy odyssey that you and I are on, right? It's like reading hundreds of biographies and reading every single possible thing about history's greatest entrepreneurs, making podcasts about them, compiling 20, 000 notes and highlights on this, and then rereading those over and over again. If you only took 1 thing from this entire thing, it's like the importance and superhuman powers that intense focus can give you. But on the other side of that, taken to 2 to 4 extreme, right?

Speaker 1

19:21

Is this intense focus is inherently selfish. And so therefore you can get lost. 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.

Speaker 1

19:31

This is why, you know, when people say, hey, do you have any advice about like how to be, 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. And I'm not like passing judgment. I'm just like documenting what I see.

Speaker 1

19:52

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 gonna come from, you

Speaker 2

20:02

know, I'm gonna destroy marriages.

Speaker 1

20:04

I mean, how many of these people, it's extremely common. Like I'm working on another episode right now that's blowing my mind. And the guy's, he's a genius, straight up genius, unbelievable, like talented person.

Speaker 1

20:18

And you read about it, it's like, oh, like, yeah, this makes sense that this guy's been married 5 times. I completely understand why that is. So this is why I'm such a big fan of Paul Johnson, because he just, his writing and his synthesis of this information where he just hits you with this idea, it's just 1 paragraph that it gives you, and I have chills on

Speaker 2

20:38

my arm right now, you just stop, it stops in your track.

Speaker 1

20:41

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?

Speaker 1

20:51

Picasso had the fame, the wealth, the women, and he was miserable. The all-powerful machinery of the Picasso industry. His stable of women, his chateau, his unlimited fame, his vast wealth, the sycophancy that surrounded him. None of these brought him serenity as he aged.

Speaker 1

21:10

It seems to me that his personal cruelty and the evidence 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.

Speaker 1

21:30

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.

Speaker 1

21:58

We have an overview. We have an idea. I think what you and I just ran through, even if you'd never read anything else or even knew who he was,

Speaker 2

22:04

like heard of Picasso before, which is very unlikely, you

Speaker 1

22:07

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 I think undoubtedly Walt Disney is 1 of the most admired entrepreneurs ever.

Speaker 1

22:18

You got to put him 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 incredible. Walt Disney, like Picasso, began his working life early, but he had a much harder struggle to earn a living or achieve recognition and success.

Speaker 1

22:42

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, and I've read 3 or 4 books on Walt Disney so far, and maybe I

Speaker 2

22:57

knew it at 1

Speaker 1

22:57

point, but I feel like

Speaker 2

22:58

I never, maybe never, Maybe I knew it at 1 point and forgot, but I feel like

Speaker 1

23:02

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

Speaker 2

23:17

on a farm, delighted all of

Speaker 1

23:18

his life in observing and drawing animals. Their movements and idiosyncrasies gave him great pleasure. Where Picasso tended to dehumanize the women he drew or painted, Disney anthropomorphized his animal subjects.

Speaker 1

23:30

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 Disneys moved to Kansas City, where his father started a newspaper dish 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.

Speaker 1

23:57

But Walt developed 2 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

Speaker 2

24:08

I wanna pause there real quick. 1 of the most surprising things I learned about Disney from reading biographies in the past is that towards

Speaker 1

24:13

the end of his life, he said that he was most proud of 2 things, keeping control of his company, because he's gonna 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 wanna be my own master. He was upset, like all of history's greatest entrepreneurs, obsessed with control. By the age of 20, he had already run his own company gone branker bankrupt and then set up again second he wanted to get into the art and craft of animation.

Speaker 1

24:38

Okay so 18 year old Disney's making his living as a newspaper cartoonist the same time people are taking 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

Speaker 2

24:57

movies in what is at the time at this point history a very new motion picture industry So it's kind of like an opening act

Speaker 1

25:04

to a company 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.

Speaker 2

25:12

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 life stories that you and I go

Speaker 1

25:22

over, of knowing what you wanna 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 the key to success. But initially, the sound dimension baffled him.

Speaker 1

25:36

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 moviegoers had to become accustomed to them.

Speaker 1

25:52

So

Speaker 2

25:52

Paul makes a great point that the same belief dominates dominated television in

Speaker 1

25:56

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 abreast of what was a rapidly evolving technology, both in animation and in moving photography.

Speaker 1

26:15

At the beginning of the book, there was that line, all creative individuals build on the work of their predecessors. No 1 creates in a vacuum. We see that here. In 1917, this guy named Max Fleischer makes the first movie that combines moving photography of actors with animated cartoon characters.

Speaker 1

26:30

Disney sees that. So 6 years later, Disney uses this combination himself and he makes this cartoon or this movie called Alice in Cartoon Land. I guess movie's not the right word. It's like a short, I think it's like 6 minutes long or 8 minutes long, something like that.

Speaker 1

26:45

So like a short film, I guess. So around the same time, Disney's original company, the Laugh-O-Gram Corporation, made short animation films, animation plus photography films, and they would also create

Speaker 2

26:57

advertising for brands using cartoon figures.

Speaker 1

27:00

And so that is the actual company that is gonna go bankrupt. 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?

Speaker 1

27:10

So he just takes on freelance work to survive before he's gonna start another company. He's around 22

Speaker 2

27:16

or 23 years old when his first company goes bankrupt.

Speaker 1

27:20

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

Speaker 2

27:28

going to name the companies. There's a bunch of different names. And he's selling the footage to

Speaker 1

27:32

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.

Speaker 1

27:42

He would film weddings and funerals. He'd make 10 or 15

Speaker 2

27:45

dollars to film a wedding or

Speaker 1

27:46

a funeral. He often had so little money that he could only eat canned beans.

Speaker 2

27:51

And so he realizes, I gotta get out of here. I gotta go to where, like I'm making, the little money I'm making is coming from these new studios, right? So it

Speaker 1

27:59

says his contracts with new 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.

Speaker 1

28:13

And it was interesting. Uh, He traveled on the famous train, California Limited, in July 23rd, or excuse me, July 1923.

Speaker 2

28:22

And if you think about all that happens after he moves to California, it shouldn't be called California Limited. It takes many years for this to happen. Should be called California Unlimited.

Speaker 1

28:30

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.

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He has the initiative.

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He's like, I need to go where I think is best for

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my career. That does not mean it's going to be immediately easy. This is a crazy thing.

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28:48

I'm about to read to you. Like, all these companies, imagine having the chance to hire a young Walt Disney. Like, nah, I'm good. The early 1920s, full of hope and daring, were

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28:58

a classic period for American free enterprise and for anyone interested in

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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.

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Now, this is incredible. This is the relentless resourcefulness of a young Walt Disney. You will find stories like the 1 I'm about to share with you in a lot of the biographies of filmmakers. I'll leave the links down below.

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George Lucas, Francis Ford Coppola, Steven Spielberg. I've read all

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their biographies, done episodes on them. They all have stories like this in their biographies. It's why filmmakers are 1 of my favorite people to read biographies.

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I have actually a bunch coming very soon, a bunch more. He also used his Alice sample to get

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a series going. The camera cost him $5 a day. He then drew cartoons around her.

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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 fun. This is what you

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do when you have no money. You're forced to

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be creative, forced to be resourceful. Each reel consisted of 900 feet of film of real children and the dog and 300 feet of animated cartoon. Disney wrote the script, built the sets himself.

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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.

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The first movie cost him $750 all in, and he sold it East, meaning to New York's 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 quality of your work and the trajectory of your business. He made a contract for a dozen movies in the first 6 he made entirely by himself.

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31:09

Or excuse me, he had a contract for a dozen movies. So he makes the first 6 by himself. He's like, all right, then I need help. He goes to this guy named Irb, he Iwerks, he was working back with him in Kansas City, so he brings out Iwerks to Hollywood to help him with the animation.

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There is a curious similarity between his work with Iwerks and Picasso's collaboration with this, I'm not gonna pronounce this guy's name, George S., George Braque, in the invention of cubism nearly 2 decades earlier. Okay, don't worry about the name. So closely did Picasso and Braque 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.

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In some cases, the mystery remains to this day. Now, why is that important? Because you see the same thing

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in Disney's career. That's what I'm bringing up to you.

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Equally, the precise roles of Walt and Iwerks 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 I works was important.

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32:13

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, 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 there in the public's need for novelty. Just as Picasso in Paris went from 1 phase to another to cater to the insatiable appetite for ideas of the art world, so Disney had to adapt and change his cartooning.

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32:45

The audiences 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.

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All he can fight back with is creativity. He's gotta 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 shorts acquired a reputation, other studios, bigger and with more capital, would raid his staff and steal his animators by offering them more money.

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33:19

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, I only hope that we never lose sight of 1 thing, that it all started with a mouse.

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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.

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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 caricatures, cubist cartoon characters animated awfully enough by contempt and even hatred.

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Right? So he's like the evil version of Disney. But Disney produced a mouse animated by admiration and even by love. It is significant that Mickey Mouse, in the year of his greatest popularity, which is 1933, received over 800, 000 fan letters, the largest ever recorded in show business at any time in any century.

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Think about that. An animated character received more fan letters than any other celebrity or known person in 1 period ever. There in lay Disney's genius. He could make people, especially children, love his creations.

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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 1 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 to

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you is the importance of time, right? Because you look at what Mickey Mouse looked like when he first invented

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it and when he comes to like be lovable, it's like, oh, big difference. But also Disney realized that, you know, he still has no money. So I have to use speed as a competitive advantage.

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The earliest Mickey does not look lovable to our eyes nearly a century later. His jerkiness was technical rather than deliberate. Remember, this is the very beginning of animation. With every month that passed, animation was becoming more complex, and Disney, to outpace his competitors, forced the pace.