Yes, the first job I had at the studio was Snow White. I don't like the term particularly, but I got stuck with the human characters. They just didn't have that many people who could draw humans.
I don't know if likeable, pleasant characters have enough conflict for me to want to do them. I admire those people, but I've never been that kind of screen presence who can do nothing. I need to do something.
With Charlie Brown, it was about loneliness and isolation. I always thought that the thing about Charlie Brown and those characters was the absence of the parents. Half the strip was about who wasn't there. The parents were never in the picture.
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.
I'd never really considered doing young-adult novels, but one of the things that a friend pointed out to me is that I've actually had a teenage character in almost every adult novel that I've written.
The Roots of Violence: Wealth without work, Pleasure without conscience, Knowledge without character, Commerce without morality, Science without humanity, Worship without sacrifice, Politics without principles." ( , 22 October 1925)
My instinct is to absolutely recoil when talking about writing in a mechanistic way. Nothing could be dumber than writing a film or TV script based on prescriptions, on other peoples' ideas of what character should be.
I don't think there is just one Louis Vuitton woman. That is why, for the fall/winter 2011 show, I loved the idea of lots of different characters - a wife, a mistress, a girlfriend - stepping out of the row of hotel elevators.
It seems like there's a lot of people who just do not understand satire. They think it's weird. There's people who just don't understand you portray something or just explore a character, it means you're condoning it, saying this is the way to live.
All the Disney lead male characters always have this kind of John Davidson kind of look to them. They all look like the same guy, and all the females look like the same, and I think the guys are just way too big.
The characters in my novels are my own unrealised possibilities. That is why I am equally fond of them all and equally horrified by them. Each one has crossed a border that I myself have circumvented.
I've never fooled anyone. I've let people fool themselves. They didn't bother to find out who and what I was. Instead they would invent a character for me. I wouldn't argue with them. They were obviously loving somebody I wasn't.
Favoring 'resolution' the way we do, it is hard for us men to write great love stories. Why?, because we want to tell too much. We aren’t satisfied unless at the end of the story the characters are lying there, panting.
If I'm really considering doing film from now on then that is the smart thing to do, or you can go either way. You can just do the same character over and over again and make a different comedy like over and over again.
You know honestly I think there's a Dracula, a Wolf Man, and a Frankenstein's Monster in all of us. They are sides of our own character so that's why I think we can relate to them in terms of a 'I know how that feels' kind of thing.
There's a lot of actors I think that appear so much more together as the characters they portray as opposed to the actual people, so I know I've said this before: Hollywood's not a place where you're rewarded for growing up.
This little hobbit saves the world. The wizard kills the dragon and saves the town. So many people connect to that character; it doesn't matter if it's an elf or a hobbit or a dwarf. It doesn't matter. They're human in their heart and soul.
I think TV is all about caring, and if you don't care about a character in a drama or a person when they get voted out of a reality show, it's bad TV. I wouldn't care if you dropped a bomb on the 'Big Brother' house.
I'm troubled by how much I like Rowan Williams. I think it reveals character flaws in myself that I'd rather not think about. The softly spoken soon-to-be-former Archbishop of Canterbury is my secret crush, my weird pash, and my guilty pleasure.
Of all the stars whom I worked with, I think Steve knew better what worked for him on the screen than any other. He had such a sense of what he could register, and that helped a lot in terms of shaping the character and the script.
By practicing the virtues we cultivate the soil from which healthy emotions sprout; by letting go of our character defects we drain the swamp in which diseased emotions breed. – p. 52
