Genndy Tartakovsky

Being funny is very complex. ”

For whatever reason, I think we have one type of animated movie and it's so wrong. I want to do a drama, I want to do an action, a comedy. In live-action, there are all sorts of movies. There's independent movies, big movies, action movies, funny movies, and for us we have one movie. ”

There's a lot of comic book inspiration and stuff I do that people probably won't recognize. I grew up in the '70s, so there's a lot of little things, like 'Three's Company' and 'Gilligan's Island.' Those shows were the foundation of my comedy in a way. ”

A good cartoon is always good on two or three levels: surface physical comedy, some intellectual stuff - like Warner Brothers cartoons' pop-culture jokes, gas-rationing jokes during the war - and then the overall character appeal. ”

Definitely that was a big part of my childhood: wanting to fit. As an immigrant, you talk funny, you look funny, you smell funny. I wanted to do nothing but fit in and talk English and sit with everybody else. ”

Jazz flute's funny. And I'm a big Latin music fan, Tito Puente, Tina Cruz, all that stuff. ”

You can never guess what a kid's going to find funny - besides, you know, an obvious fart joke here and there. ”

I always refer to 'Blazing Saddles' or 'Young Frankenstein' as very much the kind of humor that I like to do. ”

The funny thing is, I was not a fan of horror when I was a kid. I was scared to watch scary movies. And then along came 'Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein,' and 'Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy.' And I like those films because they made scary funny, and it was kind of ironic that I ended up doing the 'Hotel' movies. ”

Humor is the hardest thing to do. Action is so much easier, because you're just trying to establish the mood, and a pacing, and a rhythm, and an energy. Where, in humor, comedy is so subjective. ”