Director Quotes

I'm having the same problems today that I had when I first started, saying that outrageous adult animation works.

I would like to have the original ending to my Lord of the Rings instead of the one they released. In my original cut I had the victory at Helm's Deep as the final sequence.

I thought I had the rights to The Lord of the Rings. I don't know how Jackson ended up with the rights.

I miss animation very passionately. Not continuously, but every once in a while I would die to do another film.

I had the X rating on my films. Now they do as much on The Simpsons as I got an X rating for Fritz the Cat.

I draw what I feel, which is no more than doing my job.

I animated 20 years at Terry Toons. It's important to know that animators like pizza and a raise once in a while, and you've got to treat them with love.

I am not interested in slickness for the sake of slickness.

Film has to describe and show.

Disney had such a hold on the mind of America-they were Adolf Hitler. The whole country thought Disney was some sort of god and that animation was some sort of pure thing for children.

Cartooning at its best is a fine art. I'm a cartoonist who works in the medium of animation, which also allows me to paint my cartoons.

As an artist, I want to interpret my feelings - not run across the street and ask what my mother thinks.

Animation is tremendously resilient. Animation will recover, as art always recovers. There's always cycles of good art.

All the old great companies were run by guys who knew what an animator meant, and guys who knew how to draw. All the companies today are run by executives.

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.

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

When the movie was done, Number Five was crated up. Eric took him over to Germany; displayed him over there because Germans really liked this movie. It was very popular with them.

There were scenes that just for length purposes, and knowing that the attention span of kids is not great, don't make it much longer than about 90 minutes.

The personality problem is so tough when you're not able to pay people. It's bad enough when you can pay people, but, when you have people working for free, often their motivation is diminished considerably.

Technological things, that Germans and Japanese would get real excited about.

Sometimes it's literally just a feeling that you get that somebody is more interested than someone else; and they may both say they're interested, but you get a feeling.

Phillip Harrison was the production designer, though, I think he's uncredited. He's done most of my films like Blue Thunder. Lots and lots over the years.

One thing I was thinking about the other day was you can't even conceive of the kinds of things you can do in movies today. The idea that you could draw, in a computer, dinosaurs and have them running around was totally impossible.

Monofilament is what you use to go fishing. The line on your fishing rod is probably going to be black. You get to the end of the line and you tie on this clear plastic, thin thread called monofilament.

In this movie they took them up in space. They're floating around and doing zero gravity stuff. Well, they had to do it all on wires. All the wires had to be painted black against this black background. If you didn't light it properly you could see the wires. Drove them crazy!

In our story logic which we're making up, if we're saying he's alive, then like a quadriplegic who's in bed he can move his head and shoulders, but he can't move his arms. If he could just turn on that power to his legs and arms, the nerves could get through and he could walk.

I also know that in the second movie, the sequel, Eric made some huge advances with the robot suit. That just made it even better. You put the suit on and moved your arms then the robot's arms would move in sync with yours.

I would do it today because the thing that appealed to me was not necessarily the mechanics of the robot, but it was his personality and how funny and charming he was.

What's really exciting for me is communicating to other people and not just going somewhere to make a movie. That's Hollywood to me and it would mean nothing.

Sometimes a piece of music in the score isn't effective. When a score is too well finished with too many elements, sometimes it's too much.