• NY Times, Monday, January 30, 2006 2:28 PM

What sets Pixar apart from virtually every other studio in Hollywood? It's dedicated to doing business differently, defying industry conventions. Pixar is a "tightknit community of long-term collaborators who stick together, who learn from one another and strive to improve with every production," write William C. Taylor and Polly LaBarre in The New York Times.  Unlike the free agents who populate Hollywood's idiosyncratic film-making culture, Pixarians share a common alternative culture, which they learn by attending the required courses at Pixar University.  The Times notes that the Pixar U. crest bears the inscription "Alone No Longer."  (A second inscripton on the crest reads "Time, Money, Sleep.")  Those who work for Pixar are filmmakers of a certain type, say executives there. They have banded together for the sake of their art, and they remain with the studio from one project to the next, concentrating on creating better animated movies, not short-term career advantage. In that respect, Pixar is the anti-Hollywood.  How well it operates as a unit of the giant Walt Disney Company remains to be seen.

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