Jobs demonstrating playback of "Pirates of the Caribbean" on an iMac and iPod at the 2006 launch of Apple's online movie service.
I heard the news about the death of Steve Jobs while driving home from a preview screening of the remake of Footloose.
As sad as the news was, it also made me smile at the absurdity of the situation. I’d been spending time with a facsimile, while a genuine original was departing the Earth.
The first Footloose came out in 1984, the year Jobs and his Apple team released the first Macintosh computer, still the gold standard for innovative design. If this was all Jobs had created, we’d still have reason to applaud his vision — but he followed the Mac with the iPod, the iPhone, the iPad and many other groundbreaking products.
The Apple boss wasn’t known for modesty — he used to call his products “insanely great” — but he was fond of quoting a line attributed to Picasso: “Good artists copy, great artists steal.”
He was acknowledging that he didn’t invent the computer, or the telephone or the portable amusement device. But he did take these products into entirely new realms, where suddenly they mattered to people in ways few could have conceived.
By encouraging people to “think different,” Jobs and Apple changed how the world works and plays, many times over. In so doing he also changed the movies, both for better and for worse. The silver screen was never again the same, once Jobs turned his laser focus upon it. The comparisons between him and Walt Disney aren’t idle praise.
The point-and-click simplicity of the Macintosh and its many imitators help inspire and enable the rush of animators of the 1980s who began exploring the use of computer-generated images (CGI) in mass-market films.
One of these animators was John Lasseter, an early employee of Pixar, the company Jobs created in 1986 when he bought the computer graphics division of Lucasfilm from Star Wars creator George Lucas.
To help promote Pixar’s CGI technology, Lasseter created Luxo Jr., a comic short film starring a desk lamp that opened eyes and fluttered hearts throughout Hollywood.
It lit the path to a future where meticulous pen-and-ink drawings would no longer be needed to make animated movies. The future arrived with a bang less than a decade later, in 1995, when Lasseter, Jobs and Pixar unveiled Toy Story, the first feature film made entirely on computers.
It would be followed, to the sound of cash registers ringing and competitors scrambling, by such other Pixar successes as Finding Nemo, Monsters, Inc., two Toy Story sequels and two Cars films.
It’s impossible to overstate the impact and influence of these developments, and of Pixar’s swift rise as both the innovator and box-office leader of animated films. The Walt Disney Co., formerly the animation champ, admitted as much when it bought Pixar for $7.4 billion worth of stock in 2006, making Jobs the single biggest Disney shareholder and a member of its board of directors.
The influence of Jobs and Apple extends far beyond the cartoon frame or the financial pages.
In every way, the products of the company that Steve built now define almost everything we see at the movies. Look at the laptops used by characters in any film of the past 15 or so years, and they invariably bear the Apple logo. The ones that don’t are often used by nerds or villains, the subliminal suggestion being that they’re not cool or worthy enough to deserve an Apple product.
Many movie characters now routinely flash their iPods or iPhones, which often become part of the plot — not always to the film’s benefit. Another negative side to the ubiquity of the world that Jobs wrought is that many people think it’s okay to watch a movie on an iPod, iPhone or iPad, a serious downsizing of the power of the big screen.
If the pictures got smaller, as Norma Desmond famously lamented in Sunset Blvd., then Steve Jobs is at least partially to blame.
Yet he’s also the reason why many films get made in the first place. His Apple computers put power into the hands of many independent filmmakers, who could finally compete with the big Hollywood studios by allowing individuals to cut and edit movies in spaces often no bigger than a single desktop.
Apple technology has also been used to fight oppression. This is not a Film, co-directed by imprisoned Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi and his friend Mojtaba Mirtahmasb, was entirely shot on an iPhone.
The finished film was smuggled out of Iran, and under the noses of Iranian authorities, on thumb drives hidden inside a birthday cake. This is not a Film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival last May, and also screened at TIFF last month.
Watch for more movies to be filmed this way, especially since the newly announced iPhone 4S posts a bigger processor and better camera. Future revolutionaries may be able to forgo the thumb drives and cake, since Apple has announced an iCloud service to warehouse digital material in a virtual sky.
The Jobs revolution continues in Hollywood and beyond, but the question remains whether his dedication to design, quality and innovation will continue to thrive without him at the helm.
Disney animation went into a creative funk not longer after the death of founder Walt Disney in 1966, and it was not until it teamed with Pixar that its fortunes dramatically improved.
Will Apple, sans Jobs, continue to change Hollywood?
This remains to be seen, but for the moment, Apple stills reigns — as even the Footloose remake proves.
Kenny Wormald’s updated rebel dancer Ren uses an iPod jerry-rigged to car speakers to blast his opposition to people who refuse to “think different.”
Follow on Twitter: @peterhowellfilm
Apple’s influence on the movies, real and symbolic
Some would say that Apple products were seen in movies long before there was even an Apple computer.
In Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 sci-fi masterpiece 2001: A Space Odyssey, the Jupiter-bound astronauts use handheld devices to keep up with news from Earth.
The devices look a lot like the Apple iPad, which didn’t become a reality until 2010. The similarity was noticed and commented upon by no less an authority than Douglas Trumbull, who designed many of the special effects and computer graphics for 2001.
Here are a few other Apple links to the movies:
WarGames (1983): The Armageddon countdown display for the WOPR military computer threatening Matthew Broderick and the world was created using an Apple II.
2010: The Year We Make Contact (1984): Roy Scheider uses a prototype Apple IIC with LCD screen that never made it to market.
You’ve Got Mail (1998): Meg Ryan uses a PowerBook to exchange flirty emails with Tom Hanks.
Burn After Reading (2008): Brad Pitt’s gym rat character works out with an iPod strapped to his arm.
Twilight (2008): Kristen Stewart’s lovestruck Bella writes on a MacBook, which is appropriately vampire black.
17 Again (2009): Zachary Efron makes ample use of an iPhone as he struggles to figure out who he is.
It’s Complicated (2009): Alec Baldwin uses a MacBook both to naughtily broadcast his naked form to Meryl Streep and to hide his genitals from disapproving censors.
This is not a Film (2011): Imprisoned Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi and co-director Mojtaba Mirtahmash use an iPhone to shoot their entire protest film.
The Ides of March (2011): George Clooney’s presidential candidate gets a shock delivered by iPhone.
As sad as the news was, it also made me smile at the absurdity of the situation. I’d been spending time with a facsimile, while a genuine original was departing the Earth.
The first Footloose came out in 1984, the year Jobs and his Apple team released the first Macintosh computer, still the gold standard for innovative design. If this was all Jobs had created, we’d still have reason to applaud his vision — but he followed the Mac with the iPod, the iPhone, the iPad and many other groundbreaking products.
The Apple boss wasn’t known for modesty — he used to call his products “insanely great” — but he was fond of quoting a line attributed to Picasso: “Good artists copy, great artists steal.”
He was acknowledging that he didn’t invent the computer, or the telephone or the portable amusement device. But he did take these products into entirely new realms, where suddenly they mattered to people in ways few could have conceived.
By encouraging people to “think different,” Jobs and Apple changed how the world works and plays, many times over. In so doing he also changed the movies, both for better and for worse. The silver screen was never again the same, once Jobs turned his laser focus upon it. The comparisons between him and Walt Disney aren’t idle praise.
The point-and-click simplicity of the Macintosh and its many imitators help inspire and enable the rush of animators of the 1980s who began exploring the use of computer-generated images (CGI) in mass-market films.
One of these animators was John Lasseter, an early employee of Pixar, the company Jobs created in 1986 when he bought the computer graphics division of Lucasfilm from Star Wars creator George Lucas.
To help promote Pixar’s CGI technology, Lasseter created Luxo Jr., a comic short film starring a desk lamp that opened eyes and fluttered hearts throughout Hollywood.
It lit the path to a future where meticulous pen-and-ink drawings would no longer be needed to make animated movies. The future arrived with a bang less than a decade later, in 1995, when Lasseter, Jobs and Pixar unveiled Toy Story, the first feature film made entirely on computers.
It would be followed, to the sound of cash registers ringing and competitors scrambling, by such other Pixar successes as Finding Nemo, Monsters, Inc., two Toy Story sequels and two Cars films.
It’s impossible to overstate the impact and influence of these developments, and of Pixar’s swift rise as both the innovator and box-office leader of animated films. The Walt Disney Co., formerly the animation champ, admitted as much when it bought Pixar for $7.4 billion worth of stock in 2006, making Jobs the single biggest Disney shareholder and a member of its board of directors.
The influence of Jobs and Apple extends far beyond the cartoon frame or the financial pages.
In every way, the products of the company that Steve built now define almost everything we see at the movies. Look at the laptops used by characters in any film of the past 15 or so years, and they invariably bear the Apple logo. The ones that don’t are often used by nerds or villains, the subliminal suggestion being that they’re not cool or worthy enough to deserve an Apple product.
Many movie characters now routinely flash their iPods or iPhones, which often become part of the plot — not always to the film’s benefit. Another negative side to the ubiquity of the world that Jobs wrought is that many people think it’s okay to watch a movie on an iPod, iPhone or iPad, a serious downsizing of the power of the big screen.
If the pictures got smaller, as Norma Desmond famously lamented in Sunset Blvd., then Steve Jobs is at least partially to blame.
Yet he’s also the reason why many films get made in the first place. His Apple computers put power into the hands of many independent filmmakers, who could finally compete with the big Hollywood studios by allowing individuals to cut and edit movies in spaces often no bigger than a single desktop.
Apple technology has also been used to fight oppression. This is not a Film, co-directed by imprisoned Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi and his friend Mojtaba Mirtahmasb, was entirely shot on an iPhone.
The finished film was smuggled out of Iran, and under the noses of Iranian authorities, on thumb drives hidden inside a birthday cake. This is not a Film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival last May, and also screened at TIFF last month.
Watch for more movies to be filmed this way, especially since the newly announced iPhone 4S posts a bigger processor and better camera. Future revolutionaries may be able to forgo the thumb drives and cake, since Apple has announced an iCloud service to warehouse digital material in a virtual sky.
The Jobs revolution continues in Hollywood and beyond, but the question remains whether his dedication to design, quality and innovation will continue to thrive without him at the helm.
Disney animation went into a creative funk not longer after the death of founder Walt Disney in 1966, and it was not until it teamed with Pixar that its fortunes dramatically improved.
Will Apple, sans Jobs, continue to change Hollywood?
This remains to be seen, but for the moment, Apple stills reigns — as even the Footloose remake proves.
Kenny Wormald’s updated rebel dancer Ren uses an iPod jerry-rigged to car speakers to blast his opposition to people who refuse to “think different.”
Follow on Twitter: @peterhowellfilm
Apple’s influence on the movies, real and symbolic
Some would say that Apple products were seen in movies long before there was even an Apple computer.
In Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 sci-fi masterpiece 2001: A Space Odyssey, the Jupiter-bound astronauts use handheld devices to keep up with news from Earth.
The devices look a lot like the Apple iPad, which didn’t become a reality until 2010. The similarity was noticed and commented upon by no less an authority than Douglas Trumbull, who designed many of the special effects and computer graphics for 2001.
Here are a few other Apple links to the movies:
WarGames (1983): The Armageddon countdown display for the WOPR military computer threatening Matthew Broderick and the world was created using an Apple II.
2010: The Year We Make Contact (1984): Roy Scheider uses a prototype Apple IIC with LCD screen that never made it to market.
You’ve Got Mail (1998): Meg Ryan uses a PowerBook to exchange flirty emails with Tom Hanks.
Burn After Reading (2008): Brad Pitt’s gym rat character works out with an iPod strapped to his arm.
Twilight (2008): Kristen Stewart’s lovestruck Bella writes on a MacBook, which is appropriately vampire black.
17 Again (2009): Zachary Efron makes ample use of an iPhone as he struggles to figure out who he is.
It’s Complicated (2009): Alec Baldwin uses a MacBook both to naughtily broadcast his naked form to Meryl Streep and to hide his genitals from disapproving censors.
This is not a Film (2011): Imprisoned Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi and co-director Mojtaba Mirtahmash use an iPhone to shoot their entire protest film.
The Ides of March (2011): George Clooney’s presidential candidate gets a shock delivered by iPhone.
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