Pixar has a friend in George Lucas

     Photo courtesy of Superga Cinema.

The Force was with Buzz, Woody, and Nemo yesterday as the creative geniuses known as Pixar received the first ever lifetime achievement award at the Venice Film Festival.

Pixar founder and chief creative officer John Lasseter, along with writer/directors Brad Bird, Pete Docter, Andrew Stanton, and Lee Unkrich, was given the award by none other than George Lucas.

The reason Lucas was tapped to bestow this honor and not, say, Tom Hanks?

Lasseter was once an employee at Lucasfilm, when the young graphic designer worked in The Graphics Group, which was part of Lucasfilm's nascent computer division.  Lasseter created the stained-glass-knight who came to life in 1985’s Barry Levinson-directed “Young Sherlock Holmes.”  This was the first time a computer-generated character appeared in a live-action film.

The Graphics Group became Pixar and was eventually bought by Apple co-founder Steve Jobs.  The company would go on to produce gargantuan box office hits such as “Toy Story,” “Toy Story 2,” “A Bug‘s Life,” “Monsters, Inc,” “Finding Nemo,” The Incredibles,” “Cars,” “Ratatouille,“ “WALL*E,“ and this year’s blockbuster “Up.”

Lasseter jokingly referred to the Pixar team as “a bunch of animation geeks from California” but expressed his sincere thanks to Lucas, hailing him as a “true visionary.”

Pixar, which was eventually bought by Disney, will release 3-D versions of “Toy Story” and “Toy Story 2” next month, as well as “Toy Story 3”  in 2010.