Word: toying
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...finds himself a leading force in not one but two iconic late-'90s American industries. The man who created the Mac embodies, perhaps even more fully than Microsoft's Bill Gates, the personal-computer revolution. And a decade after he bought a fledgling digital-animation studio from George Lucas, Toy Story and A Bug's Life have brought Silicon Valley and Hollywood one huge step closer to connubial bliss. Last week, with Apple's luscious new iMacs unveiled and Toy Story 2 unspooling at an exclusive TIME preview, Jobs, after years spent pacing the sidelines, was suddenly...
...Richmond, Calif., and Steve Jobs is micromanaging. He's sitting around a conference table at his Pixar Animation Studios with a gaggle of Pixar producers and Disney marketing types, poring over the color-coded, small-print, stunningly elaborate "synergy timeline" for the upcoming Toy Story 2, which Pixar made and Disney will distribute. Ah, the endless promotional arcana of a $100 million aspiring blockbuster: trailers, press junkets, gift guides, sound tracks...
...events? Can they schedule a later meeting to review the billboards? Which news-mag show should they be pushing for? Is it possible, if the movie opens big on Thanksgiving--like incredibly, unbelievably big--that Disney might delay the date when they change the Disney Store windows from a Toy Story theme to more generic Disney Christmas stuff...
...need Jobs--mostly as a public face and all-purpose corporate strategist--he delivers. The money. The marketing. The deals. He is revered for going toe-to-toe with Disney capo Michael Eisner, renegotiating the fledgling studio's five-picture deal with the Mouse Kingdom at a time when Toy Story had made Pixar the first serious threat to Disney's 60-year monopoly on big-ticket animated films...
Over in "Frogtown," the chief technology officer is munching on a veggie burrito, musing on the emotional motivation of Jessie the Cowgirl, Woody's new sidekick in Toy Story 2. Across the street in "Bugville," the corporate headquarters, the Oscar-winning director of TS2 is trying to keep his four sons from tearing up a rare Woody marionette, one of at least 200 toys, dolls and action figures stuffed into his tiny office. Down the hall past the "Batcave," their boss was recently spotted interviewing CFO candidates while dressed in shorts, his shoeless feet propped up on the desk. Soon...