Rob McClure Quotes

Once I'm on stage, there's just no time for a sip of water - I've always got my hands in puppets! My voice is raw by the time I finish.

That was one of the amazing things about Doctor Who. Considering it is such an enormous charabanc, a centerpiece of international TV, it feels incredibly small when you are actually involved in it. It is very intimate, very small; it feels like a few people messing about with a camera.

Jim Henson once allowed me to visit the Muppets on set and spent an entire day showing me how he and the other puppeteers performed Kermit and all the characters! After that, I was lucky enough to work with both George Lucas and Steven Spielberg on many fun animation projects and learned so much from them.

Puppet camp truly redefined my preconceptions of puppetry... I'll never forget learning that before a puppet can speak... he has to inhale. It's those details that make the characters truly come to life.

I grew up watching movies and being amazed at the animatronics you'd see in stuff like 'The Dark Crystal,' and all those kinds of movies. So, I'm always enthralled with how they can make it all work, behind the scenes, with the visual effects.

Magic in cinema is a bit like ventriloquism on the radio.

When I was eight, I bought my first puppet. It was a monkey, and I paid five cents for it. I collected some scrap wood and built myself a puppet theatre. I made 32 cents with my first show, which I thought was pretty good, and that's when I knew I would be a puppeteer when I grew up.

I love anything to do with ventriloquism and magic.

As long as you don't think about the whole big picture, producing 'Spider-Man' is a fantastic experience.

Children are so used to seeing puppets that when they see a real ventriloquist they don't understand it.

The work environment on 'Battlestar Galactica' is unbelievable, and it's something that doesn't come along very often.

The joy of puppetry is that it is very simple and low-fi, which I love.

Magic in plays and musicals, I think, is more often created because of the work of an incredible company rather than a single component.

One time, it was really funny, I was going on stage... and they were like, 'Oh, we didn't mic the puppet! Mic the puppet!' So, that's how I know that sometimes I do a very good job, because they think that the puppet is actually, like, real.

I dabbled in puppetry throughout college and even had my own traveling puppet show after I graduated.

I never thought that being a puppeteer was something someone could do as a job.

Working on movies and TV is a blast, and ILM has the most talented people in the world. But on 'Mythbusters' I've been able to go places I would never have access to otherwise.

It's what we live for, to be able to make great illusions. The thing about 'Entourage' is everything we do is realistic. We go to the real places, we shoot on location. We get the real people. It's a perfect marriage between fact and fiction.

Nobody realizes that I work 18 hours-a-day for a solid month to make that TV hour look like it's never been rehearsed!

Nobody has a perfect life. What you see on the screen is the best of the artist.

If I were to direct an episode, then there would be no one for me to blame, and that's not any fun. It's more about sitting in the back seat and trying to drive.

It’s such a floating freak show. You get a bit older and you start to see what’s going on backstage in the collective psyche of this ridiculous industry. … Nothing pleases me more than when somebody who was awe-inspired to be working with me realizes I’m just another schmuck that they’re bored of hanging out with on a set. I love that moment. I like it when that persistent illusion is smashed.

I am not a ventriloquist.

I grew up being educated by Sesame Street and gained a sense of humor from The Muppet Show. I'd give my right foot to be able to do a scene or two with the Muppets.

Every episode [in a TV series] is a challenge, and what's challenging in most episodes is the monster. You're always a heartbeat from the monster looking ridiculous. You really have to work so hard to make them not look like ridiculous when they turn up on the set.