Interview with Seth McFarlane: The busy guy in comedy

Before making the movie "Teddy Bear," Seth McFarland wasn't just a comedian who created Family Guy. He also created the famous animation American Dad! ), and also voiced the characters in it; the live-action sitcom The Winner and the upcoming Dad starring Seth Maclarlane's Cavalcade Of Cartoon Comedy; and the sequel to the 1980 documentary Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, Cosmos: A Space Time Odyssey.

In addition, he found time to produce a live version of "House of Spoofs," recorded a solo album (the debut album "Music is better than words" was released in September 2011), supervised "Comedy Central Roasts," hosted the Oscars, and made cameo appearances in Star Trek: Enterprise) (he appears in two episodes of the third and fourth seasons); appears on countless talk shows, especially political discussions; gives non-stop speeches; voices for Aqua Teen Hunger Force and Robot Chicken; and participates in the social justice movement (he is a strong supporter of same-sex marriage smoke). It's a miracle that such a busy person can still find time to sleep, and even write and direct himself to perform R-rated comedies like "Teddy Bear".

Equally amazing is that he doesn't look tired. When we met at the Beverly Four Seasons Hotel, he was promoting the new film A Million Ways to Die in the West (in which he directed himself as a cowardly farmer who found his courage under the influence of a mysterious visitor played by Salize Theron). As he greeted us, his childlike face was filled with a bad smile. It was clear that McFarland was serious about his comedy career. When it comes to his work, he seems to be extremely eloquent and passionate, and he is also a natural comedian who can make himself humorous and attractive.

Can you explain the name of the movie? Why is it called "a million ways to die in the West"?

McFarland (hereinafter referred to as "Mai"): The name actually represents the views of Albert in the movie. He was born in the most tragic times you can imagine, fast catching up with the Dark Ages. Then I discussed such a story with Alec Sulkin (another screenwriter of the film). We used to finish Teddy Bear while watching old movies. We watched Hang 'Em High together and started talking about how scary and frustrating it was in those days, where people had nothing to do and no entertainment, only 6 things sold in the shops, and taverns were the most dangerous places in the world, where there were a million things that could kill you. It's so lucky to be able to live in today's day. And then we start thinking, "What would it be like if any of us were born in that era?" It should be desperate. "That's the idea of the film, to let the modern man be born a hundred years in advance, and then see how he will treat the world in front of him." We see it as a "traversal drama without crossing".

You haven't tried making Westerns before. So when you had this idea, Westerns were part of the category of popular culture that you never ridiculed, right?

MM: It's because it hasn't been done that it's difficult. The clichés of Westerns are already so ingrained. Mel Brooks shot better than anyone else. The reason we wanted to make this idea into a movie was to inject more fresh blood into westerns. As soon as people hear that you're going to make a Western, they automatically compare it to Blazing Saddles, but the tone of the two films is so different. I love Sharpshooter Kid, but it's the old color Westerns that Sharpshooter Kid deliberately imitates that are closer to our movies.

There will be more foul language, meat strips, and violent scenes in comedies than "Sharpshooter Kid".

MMK: That's right.

Looking back at your childhood, you started drawing cartoon characters from the age of two, what did you draw?

MM: I can't remember them all, but my parents kept some paintings for me, most of them fred Flintstone and woody woodpecker.

Can you tell it's Savage Dad and Woody?

MMK: Believe it or not, you can see that the painting is very rough and the proportions of the figures are out of proportion.

So from a young age, animation has been a big part of your life.

MM: I've always been fascinated by it. I remember when I was 5 years old I asked my parents for a cartoon-related book because I didn't know anything about it. They helped me find a copy written by a teacher at the Rhode Island School of Design, where I went to school. A few years later, they found a Disney book by two animation designers from the Golden Age called The Illusion of Life. That's the best book I've ever seen. This thick tome, with its beautiful illustrations, details the process of animating, is crucial to my life.

At the age of nine, you drew a comic strip for a local newspaper – and got paid!

MM: Maybe it's 5 to 10 bucks. You can make a lot of money when you're nine. It's called Walter Crouton. The comic was supposed to be a news commentator's story, but I was 9 years old at the time, and I didn't have a perfect idea of the characters and the story in my head. But some people say that there is still some of my nature in the comics (laughs). After that I attended a church choir and became obsessed with the Communion. When I was a child, I always liked to see the world from the perspective of an alien, as if I had just visited Earth. I think it's the weirdest thing I've ever done. I once painted a serial of Walter's sacrament and asked, "Can I eat it with fries?" ”

You can be so sophisticated at a young age.

MMK: It's really sophisticated. That's why I received a letter from a local pastor saying, "Don't you feel ashamed of insulting God and the people who love Him?" I replied, "How many children have you sent this letter back to?" ”

You studied film, video and animation in Rhode Island and wanted to work at Disney, but ended up going to Hanna-Barbera. Is this a choice your intellect has made?

MC: Disney was going through its second golden age, finishing The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast. I thought, "This is a nice place, I want to stay," and then The Simpsons came along. It rewrote the animation's positioning of the crowd, no longer just what children watched, turned into comedy, and the audience expanded to adults like me. It was a transformative breakthrough, and even the style of the animation was affected by it. Before The Simpsons, when an animated character fell or was beaten, they would be squeezed, stretched, or hit by a series of exaggerated processes, which did not feel real. In The Simpsons, when Homer is punched in the face, it makes you feel like someone has been punched in the face. Animation, like writing, has changed tradition. I used to think, "In college, I could do comedy and animation, but Disney movies couldn't do it," and then The Simpsons changed my original plan. Hanna Barbera watched my work from school and gave me a chance to shoot a 7-minute short, so I quickly went there.

That short film is Larry & Steve, right?

MM: Yes, it's a convergent version of that work when I was in school. Because it was for children to see, but it opened up the market for me.

A few years ago, you planned to "resurrect" Hanna Barbera's most popular animated image, the Savage Dad. What happened next?

MMK: There are many reasons. Timing is a big factor. Savage Dad is an animated classic, as if you had the keys to a prestigious antique car and you didn't want to screw up this opportunity. I just didn't find the right time to do it right. And it took me a lot of effort to fix Savage Dad without making him the second Peter Griffin(The House of Parodies character). So I shelved the plan and looked for a suitable opportunity to continue.

So you didn't give up on Savage Dad.

MM: No, I don't know if I'll give up one day.

How did you get from Larry and Steve to House of Spoofs?

MC: Ah, Fox gave me $50,000 to create an animated pilot...

so much?

MMK: Yeah. At that time, it cost millions to be an animated pilot. I had an idea that got their favor, but didn't invest in it. Mike Darnell and Leslie Collins gave me a sum of money to make a small finished product like a current Youtube video, and if it's good, they followed. It's going to be a lot easier to do this now because there's software, but at that time I was drawing by hand and doing it for 6 months.

How much influence did The Simpsons have on House of Spoofs?

MC: It has had a profound impact on the style of animation. As for the characters, Peter has a lot of jackie Gleason in him. He's a mix of Jackie Gleison and the big-voiced New England tall fat guy I grew up with.

Is Stewie based on Rex Harrison of My Fair Lady?

MC: I'm a huge fan of Rex Harrison. My love of classical music is also influenced by him. Mel Blanc and many good voice actors used to think about characters in the same way as character actors. That's how Steven was born, he originated from Rex Harrison, but became a whole new self.

What did George Lucas say about imitating the episodes of Star Wars?

MC: Lucasfilm is amazing! I'm sure there will be some changes when Disney joins, but at the time, it was full of glory. We made a lot of Star Wars jokes, and then Fox said, "If you go on, then you need to tell Lucasfilm or we'll be sued, and I'll think, "Oh my God, isn't that the end of the game?" But when we told Lucasfilm, they said, "Well, as long as you can make sure that the protagonists in Star Wars keep their original characteristics." "This is the best answer we can get. If you want to add popular elements to the animation, the original characters need to be slightly changed, otherwise it will involve intellectual property issues. We were like, "Oh my God, can they allow us to do a whole episode about Star Wars?" Then there was a positive answer. They were so nice that they thought, "Why not?" Why not let Darth Vader get into a fight on YouTube? Why not let Lego imitate Star Wars? This keeps us ahead of the times. "They were right to do that.

Knowing how heavy the taste of "House of Spoofs" is, do they still allow the script to be changed in this way?

MC: They do want to read the script, and there's a joke or two that they say, "We don't think it's good for you to change that way." ”

What did you have to delete?

MC: In the episode Returns of the Jedi, Peter's Han Solo emerges from Endor's bunker, and did you know that the Hats of the Imperial troops are particularly shovel-like? He ordered them to dig their own graves with their hats. That dialogue was in the style of Sopranos, which Lucasfilm was uncomfortable with.

How did you deal with self-censorship like the Parents Television Council?

MC: Once a week, I'm not surprised (laughs). What I don't understand is how these people wake up in the morning and start thinking, "I'm going to start the day's hate work," and then go find something to get angry. Such an unpleasant existence is really unimaginable.

Is there any inside information about the movie version of "House of Spoofs"?

M: It's always been in my head. But the joy with my shooting of Teddy Bear and A Million Ways to Die in the West is that they help me get out of House of Spoofs for a while. I've been doing it for ten years, and that's why I don't want to continue. But maybe at some point, the movie version will be available.

Do you have any good ideas?

MMK: Yes.

Can you reveal some?

MMK: No.

You've said you've been planning a nostalgic musical, like The Sound Of Music.

MM: There will be some elements like The Sound of Music. But the point is that in terms of making animation, what tv does, not necessarily on film. So why make a movie? Of course, we end up with an idea that can't be achieved on TV.

What is it?

MM: That's all I can tell you. But the idea is actually quite simple.

You recently had a new anime called Bordertown, can you tell us about it?

MMK: There's a lot to talk about. Set in a fictional border town in Texas, the protagonists are an American border guard and a Mexican immigrant.

So we should expect those typical disputes and PC Humor...

MMK: Yes, that's right (laughs). The idea is that if we want to pursue perfection, we should reach the heights of "All in The Family." The show set the benchmark for all sitcoms. But I think if we're going to get there, we're not going to be where we are. If "Family Portrait" were to be broadcast today, every well-known blogger who would go to hell would have to write about how racist the show is, no one would understand its content, and it would be drowned in the spam of the Internet.

To change the subject, did you have a talking teddy bear in your own childhood?

MMM: No, Teddy's source is because I've seen these lifelike characters in animation flourish in sci-fi and magic movies. Then I found that no one in comedy used these characters and techniques. Then you have an idea to put an animated character into a live-action movie and make it believable in a real-life setting. Creating a talking teddy bear is a very simple way to achieve it. I wanted to do an Apatist comedy, but there was only one animated character. But after watching it, will you feel that the teddy bear seems to be real?

A few words to sum up the fight scene: really the best.

McMahon: That's thanks to our special effects artist, Scott Rogers, and I told him, "Forget it's a teddy bear." You're designing a fight scene for Spy Movies. And then he did. He carefully designed a series of moves for us and Mark Wahlberg. Our teddy bears are different from other animated characters, and most of the time, the dubbing is done first, and then accompanied by actions and effects, so that the movements of the characters are accurate and vivid.

What's going on behind Teddy's scenes? In addition to the director, you also dubbed Teddy.

MC: I've been shooting on set, and while Mark is acting out of his play, I can do something off-camera, deal with some data or something.

So you're wearing the uniform you need to wear for special effects while directing. It's interesting!

MMK: That's right (laughs). And it allows you to improvise. Another benefit is that you don't need to match the echoes in the room when mixing. Teddy's voice and Mark's voice bounced back and forth on the same wall. So this ensures that when the audience hears Teddy speaking, they will feel that Teddy is really in this room.

How did you get Sam Jones? Was he your first choice in the first place, or did you get a rejection from Harrison Ford before?

MC: Yeah, he was the first choice from the start. Flash Gordon has become John Bennett's idol. And I hate to fictionalize a famous character in a movie, and I hate a fictional brand in a movie. If you're talking about McDonald's, then isn't that the end of it?! We wanted to find a familiar movie and its character, and The Flash was one such choice, so we approached Sam Jones.

He's very open to the cameo, isn't he?

MC: He's great.

If you could choose someone, whether alive or dead, as your "thunder buddy for life," who would you choose? Don't say it's God.

MC: Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain. He's a good candidate. I'd like to sit down and have a drink with him.

Are you sure?

MM: No, I should have made it up. I don't know who to choose. Frank Sinatra? He'd be a good "Lightning Brother."

Are the filming plans for "Teddy Bear 2" still there?

MMK: Still, we're talking about it.

So......

MM: I can't tell you yet (laughs). It's a whole new story. If you do the same movie twice, what's the point of making a series of movies? What I can say now is that this one will be more interesting than anything rumored.

Overall, you didn't actually deliberately make any of the movies. Thanks to your travel agency, you screwed up your plans and missed the AA11 flight that ended up crashing into the World Trade Center a few minutes ago. Did that incident give you a new understanding of life?

MM: I'm a boring person. I'm a rationalist. Countless people have missed countless flights, and there is at least one missed person on every flight that lands. This is not unusual. Carl Sagan used to say that people are crazy about finding meaning. We can find meaning in anything, even something that doesn't exist. Actually, I just happened to be the one who missed the flight. Statistically speaking, my probability of boarding is the same as everyone else's.

That being said, I wish your travel agency another surprise at Christmas.

MMK: Ah, okay.

This article has been published in Star Beauty Magazine, please do not reprint without permission!