Craig McCracken Quotes

What's most important in animation is the emotions and the ideas being portrayed. I'm a great believer of energy and emotion.

When 'Family Guy' started, we wanted to make it more like a sitcom. And there was very little music.

I'm a filmmaker, so I always think: When is the breaking point? Sometimes you've got to go beyond the breaking point, and then you catch it. When is long enough? It's one of those things you have to look at, walk away, and go home and find out what it is.

It's a director's job to tell a story and he's very well versed in telling stories with a bit of comedy in them and keeping the pace of the movie right and that's exactly what he did. He was observant of a world he didn't understand but he told a wonderful story.

I have less to do with 'The Simpsons' every season, but I stick my nose in here and there. Basically, it's just trying to keep the characters consistent and making sure the show has a soul.

George Liquor is really the richest character I have. I'm amazed there aren't 365 episodes about him on TV already.

The challenge of screenwriting is to say much in little and then take half of that little out and still preserve an effect of leisure and natural movement.

Walt Disney was a master of the human psychology. His sense of timing, sense of speed. In a sense, those cartoons are like Rorschach tests.

It's the big question of every TV show, right, where you have these two people who it's clear the world wants to put them together and everyone wants to see them together, but also when you're telling these stories you can't throw these people together immediately.

Sometimes television can just jump from one bit of plot to the next, and the words fill in the in-between.

Network television is all talk. I think there should be visuals on a show, some sense of mystery to it, connections that don't add up.

Actually, I think that 'Seinfeld' tackles the same kinds of issues as 'Six Feet Under,' just in a different way.

I had a strong vision for 'The Best Man Holiday,' so I was able to translate that to the actors and ultimately to the screen. Things can't get too heavy or too outrageously funny; it has to strike a balance. Tone is everything. If you've set the right tone, you can get away with a lot of stuff. You can get away with making people cry.

The important thing, once you get 'em laughing, is to keep 'em laughing until you're through. With a 90-minute feature, you've got to stop the laughter and then pick it up again, which is tough.

Beyond any role that I ever had, really early on as a stand-up, I would see actors decide to try it and they would bomb miserably. What I realized was that stand-up, acting and writing are all their own disciplines.

If you look at a lot of animated movies, they don't pay attention to how things move through space.

I admired shows like 'Six Feet Under.' That was an amazing show. Never boring, always inventive, smart. Loved the characters. Completely original. Those are shows that I admire.

I love the idea of animation just because it removes the actor from the character, and you can be anything. I've been devouring 'Adventure Time' and 'Archer.' I'd love to get my hands dirty on either of those shows.

You know, he would go and look at different funny books because he wanted his character to be different and make different faces. I saw a funny book in his room and it looked like the same character he was playing. It was about a duck.

Live action writers will give you a structure, but who the hell is talking about structure? Animation is closer to jazz than some kind of classical stage structure.

Sometimes, you don't realize that something is actually a sidetrack for the story, or it takes the tension out of a scene.

It really just gives you a sense of when you need to have dialogue and when you don't, and if your pictures are telling the story, you don't need to have all this talking.

You can channel a lot within a comic framework, and I think 'The Guard' had a lot going on outside of the comedy, which is satisfying.

A good opening and a good ending make for a good film provide they come close together.

Certainly it's very difficult to keep momentum going through a film which has as many characters as this does, and the piece took on a life of its own to try and shape it. That took all the time we had in editing.