Judd Apatow Quotes

What makes an audience watch something and care about the characters is the emotional life of the characters.

One of the things that separates a good genre movie from a bad genre movie, I always think, ironically, is when you care about the people. The dime a dozen ones are where you don't have any awareness of the character.

I am a firm believer that a good plot makes for a fun enough read, but it's not what binds us. If we don't care about the characters, we won't care - not in a lasting way - about what's happening to them.

In 'The Prophet' I really fell in love with those characters, there was an emotional connection there that I don't think I've had in a while. It made me think it would be nice to stick with the characters for a little bit and see what happens.

If you have great characters, then your reader becomes emotionally invested in those people.

You can't make the audience fall in love with a character you don't like.

As a writer, you have to realize that people want to like the characters, so you have to be careful to keep them involved.

I have to have a character worth caring about. I tend not to start writing books about people I don't have a lot of sympathy for because I'm just going to be with them too long.

I think it is important that you care about the characters, and you are not just waiting for the next action sequence but have a vested interested in what happens to them.

I do feel more towards certain characters who have depth and intelligence.

In the end, drama is successful if you care about the people.

I don't agree with the idea that my characters are unlikeable.

You need the audience to become invested in the characters and in order to become invested, they need to identify with the characters... and that's why the characters need to be real.

People seem to need a likable protagonist more than ever.

A lot of entertainment, and especially in a half-hour format, can be all jokes, all the time. And some of those jokes can be really, really funny, but what I respond to, as a viewers, is identification or caring about the characters.

My characters are always utterly sympathetic to me, if that makes any sense.

If I can get the audience to connect with the characters emotionally - and they love who they are, they love the larger-than-life situation that they're in, but most of all get the audience invested in the characters - then I always feel like I can sort of put them in the most outrageous circumstances, and the audience is okay to go with that.

You have to have somebody to root for. I truly believe that's how you ground a movie. You ground them in the characters.

Smart writers really take their time in investing in backstories and characters. As a viewer, you have to invest in them and love them before you can chip away at what's going on more on a deeper level with secondary characters.

All my characters have been relatable.

You have to be involved and relate to the characters in order to make a film that is true emotionally.

In most films - especially in regards to the protagonist - really from the get-go they set up some scenario that endears that character to the audience. Or imbues him with some nobility or heroism or something.

All fiction is about people, unless it's about rabbits pretending to be people. It's all essentially characters in action, which means characters moving through time and changes taking place, and that's what we call 'the plot'.

There's no rule that we have to like the characters movies are about.

There are characters that become more popular as we fall in love with them.