🏃Great news for slowpokes like me: Multiple studies now show that the greatest benefit to mortality from running is only about 10 minutes per day at a 10:00/mile pace.

Many people can run faster and longer, by all means, but the net mortality benefit falls off pretty drastically.

It’s reassuring that a light jog here and there can go a long way. Once that “runner’s high” feeling comes along, I’m off for a celebratory beer or sandwich 🍻

Speaking of food, today we'll discuss the incredible $4 billion Pixar lunch.

All this, and more, in just 4 minutes to read.

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Big ideas tend to start on the back of napkins, from Oprah’s media empire to Harry Potter to Shark Week. 

Even a handful of Pixar films that registered huge numbers at the box office began as ideas sketched on the back of napkins. For Pixar, perhaps the most monumental moment in company history came on napkins during a single lunch. 

It all boils down to a summer 1994 meeting when Pixar creators were wrapping up “Toy Story.” 

"'Toy Story' was almost complete and we thought, well geez, if we're going to make another movie we have to get started now,” noted writer and director Andrew Stanton, who joined Pixar in 1990 as its second animator and ninth employee.

Over lunch at Hidden City Café in Point Richmond, California — near Pixar’s main office outside of San Francisco — they sketched on napkins the characters that would be central to the films “A Bug’s Life,” “Monster’s, Inc.,” “Finding Nemo” and “Wall-E.”

Those films and their sequels have together grossed roughly $4 billion and helped Pixar become a household name. 

Pixar was anti-corporate in many ways: CEO John Lasseter announced Disney was buying the company in 2006 (a $7.4 billion acquisition) while wearing a Hawaiian shirt and jeans. Employees rode scooters and played foosball at the office long before other firms created relaxed office environments. 

 “It’s like a film school with no teachers,” Stanton told The New York Times in 2008. “Everyone actually wants you to take risks.”

On Wall-E, “We said: ‘What if humanity left and some little robot got left on and kept doing the same thing forever?’ ” Stanton said. “That was the saddest character I’d ever heard of.”

Stanton also wrote and directed a story about a fish father searching for his son, the 2003 film “Finding Nemo.” That earned $340 million in the U.S. and $865 million worldwide. 

"Well, I'm trying to dispel a little bit of it before it turns too mythical," Stanton later said of the lunch. "The truth is, there are people who worked really hard at making things like 'Monsters' and 'Nemo' really turn into the great stories they were way after those lunches."

The lunch helped Pixar become one of the biggest studios in animation history.

As of this summer, its films have earned over $15 billion at the global box office, averaging $546.9 million per film. Toy Story 3 (2010), Finding Dory (2016), Incredibles 2 (2018), and Toy Story 4 (2019) each grossed over $1 billion, among the highest-grossing films of all time.

The people at the lunch progressed into new roles, too. Lasseter directed “A Bug’s Life” and then became Disney’s chief creative officer. Doctor directed “Monsters, Inc.,” and Stanton directed “Finding Nemo” and "Wall-E.”

The Hidden City Café closed in 2012, but there’s even a brief scene in Monsters, Inc. when Sully and Mike pass by an animated version of the restaurant. 

“There was something special that happened when John, Joe, Pete, and I would get in a room,” Stanton said. “Whether it was furthering an idea or coming up with something, we just brought out the best in each other.”

It’s a great story that shows how creativity and a little space to breathe can lead to enormous business success. Pixar creators spent hours sketching ideas, developing them in meetings, and improvising.

Steve Jobs made Pixar’s headquarters an open area where everyone had to pass through, maximizing the chances that employees from different divisions would run into each other and talk about ideas. 

“I was trying to find any other beliefs like that I had as a kid,” Stanton said.

“And I knew that there were monsters hiding in my closet waiting to scare me. So we started exploring that. And I’m not sure who asked, but they said, Why? Why are there monsters waiting to scare kids? What do the monsters get out of it? That’s what sparked the whole concept.”

For Finding Nemo, Stanton remembers going to the dentist as a child, watching fish in tanks, and wondering, where did they go? Where’s home for them?

A blend of creativity and curiosity drove Pixar to enormous financial success.

In all, Toy Story brought in $245 million, Hollywood’s best film in 1995. Jobs used that success for Pixar’s IPO. Other films originated from that lunch performed quite well, too:

1998: A Bug’s Life, $363 million

2001: Monsters, Inc., $529 million

2003: Finding Nemo, $871 million

2006: Disney buys Pixar for $7.4 billion; Jobs paid just $5 million to George Lucas for the company in 1986

2008: Wall-E, $521 million

2013: Monsters University, $744 million

2016: Finding Dory, $1 billion

Dive deeper

For more, check out the Wall-E trailer that detailed the historic lunch.

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