Jobs, Pixar, Mona Simpson

Photo Credit: Melanie These

Unlikely Connections: Behind most phenomena exist at least one crazy, unexpected connection to another, seemingly unrelated, phenomenon; in other words: we’re all Kevin Bacon.

We all know Steve Jobs as the controversial founder of Apple, but what you might not know is that without Jobs, we may not have had such incredible films as Toy Story or Monsters Inc. And without Jobs’ biological sister, the Simpsons would have come up with a completely different character for Homer’s mom. What are we talking about? Let’s start from the beginning.

Steve Jobs was given away at birth

In 1954, Jobs’ birth mother, Joanne Schieble, became pregnant with Steve. Because she was an unwed mother and neither her nor Jobs’ biological father wanted to deal with the disapproval of having a child out of wedlock, Joanne went to San Francisco to give Jobs up for adoption

Jobs has a sister, Mona

Two years later, Jobs’ biological parents, by then married, gave birth to another child, Mona. After divorcing Mona’s father, her mother would remarry a man named George Simpson. Mona ultimately ended up taking her stepfather’s name, becoming Mona Simpson.

Jobs bought Pixar when no one else would

In 1986, Jobs had been fired from his own company, but only after making a substantial amount of money. Even though he had already started a new company, NeXT, (which would not end up taking off), Jobs became interested in the newly independent computer graphics company Pixar.

Pixar, a now independent company after forming under Lucasfilms, was looking for investors. Jobs, one of the first interested parties, had his funding offer rejected by George Lucas. After reaching out to 45 other investors, each of which turned down the opportunity, Lucas decided to accept Jobs’ investment. This initial investment by jobs allowed Pixar to continue to develop their computer graphics technology as well as work toward creating the first fully computer animated films.

Without the money from Jobs, who knows what the future of Pixar would have looked like. Sure, computer-animated films would have hit the mainstream eventually, but would they have done so with such grace and brilliance? Would we have Toy Story and Monsters Inc.? Would we have the same brilliant writers, like Andrew Stanton, that reinvented what it meant to tell a story through animation?

Mona Simpson marries Richard Appel, executive producer for The Simpsons, King of the Hill and Family Guy.

If you’ve watched a lot of televised adult cartoons in your life, you may recognize the name, Richard Appel. The lawyer-turned-television-writer has worked as a writer, executive producer and showrunner on the biggest primetime animated series of millennials’ lifetimes including The Simpsons, King of the Hill, and Family Guy, which, at the time of this writing, he still works on as showrunner. And if you grew up watching The Simpsons, you may have thought the name Mona Simpson was familiar. That’s because Mona Simpson is Homer’s mom, a character Appel created based on the name of his wife, and Steve Jobs’ sister, Mona Simpson.

Maybe some people are born to have their hands in many pots. Maybe some people are born to have a far-reaching influence wherever they go. Maybe all of this is simply an odd coincidence. But it’s fascinating, and the closer you look into unlikely connections in our world, the more you’ll likely uncover.

Sources:

Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson.