75 quotes found
"Love is a self-manifested notion depending on how lonely you are - so if you're really attracted to someone, and you're really lonely, I think you can fall in love in an instant. It's all about where you're at."
"Mike: I'm Mike Chapman from homestarrunner.com! People are all the time asking me "Mike, how do you do those stupid voices for your dumb animal characters?" and I say "I'm Mike! Matt does the voices!" Let's go!"
"Matt: Having no plan and low expectations always makes the future look brighter."
"Matt: ... Expectations, keep 'em down. Ankle level."
"An odd outlook on life is the beginning of good comedic writing."
"We're all broken. We're all messed up pigs. When we can accept that, we're ready to become the new creations God intended us to be. And that's when the fun starts!"
"The messages our kids receive from teachers, coaches--and even, with the best intentions, from us — can push them toward pride or despair...toward self-righteousness or self-hatred."
"The most important thing is not the work I can do for God. The most important thing is to make God the most important thing."
"When we retell a Bible story at Big Idea we will go through the Bible story very carefully. We'll figure out the key plot points, they key themes and we'll set those aside as, you know, sacred, cannot be messed with. And then, we'll mess with everything else. We'll just have lots and lots of goofy fun with everything else to make the story fresh even to grown-ups."
"It is pretty clear in the Bible story that the whale swallowing Jonah wasn't meant as a punishment from God, it was God saving him from drowning. So it was actually provision to give him a second chance. The whale itself was the start of Jonah's second chance."
"The ending of the film seems so bizarre. It is actually probably the most literal retelling of the story of Jonah from the Bible that you've ever bumped into."
"I'll very often just start humming my way through a scene. Say, OK the tempo should be about like this, it should pause here, it should pick up here. And very often I'll make up a little melody just to do that. About half of the little melodies in the score for Jonah are those little melodies that I made up just to use to kind of pace a scene and then we got kind of attached to them."
"This is where we store our bicycles. A lot of people ride their bikes to work here. And, of course, there has to be a robot to protect them and make sure they don't get stolen like R2D2 in episode two where he did a very bad job in protecting Princess Amidala from those worm things. But this robot is significantly more effective as a theft-deterrent system than R2D2 was in that film. That's why the bikes are here."
"As you can see, we're about to visit our lower level which is--for the most part--full of "Mens" and "Infants"."
"That's right! You're watching the DVD! So, the coolness of what the bowing man is doing is self-evident to you!"
"Say you've been to MGM (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer) Disney Studios in Orlando, you'll know that there's an animation studio where you actually walk out of the back door of the animation studio and you're in a theme park. Now you say, hey, that's pretty cool. Could any animation studio have a sort of situation like that that is any cooler? And you think not. Well, you're wrong, I'd say, because here at Big Idea when we walk out our back door, We have the Timework button, we push the button, we open the door[...] and, we're in a mall. Disney has nothing on this. You can be animating one moment, buying candy by the pound the next, or taking a ride on a little train, or going to the food court."
"And for two years, we had this sign up saying we will finish this movie and we changed it to 'did' finish the movie."
"Thanks for coming! And, I have to make another movie, now."
"VeggieTales is something that, on paper, makes no sense at all. It is a series of children’s videos where limbless, talking vegetables act out Bible stories. Try raising money with that pitch."
"Telling the complete story of VeggieTales would require much more time than we have before us tonight. Since this is Yale, I decided to craft a shorter version of the story, using very large words. Remembering though that I was kicked out of Bible College before I’d had a chance to learn many very large words, I concluded that my only remaining option was to tell the story simply, using simple words, and chance the consequences."
"In truth, I sat down in 1992 to make a kids’ show that I would want to watch with my kids. That would work for me. That would have sincerity in it, but not too much. That would mix what I loved about Monty Python and David Letterman with what I hungered for from Thomas Aquinas and Mother Theresa."
"Fairly early in life, I noticed my brain was weird. By that I mean that I noticed it had a way of looking at normal things from a slightly twisted angle--just twisted enough that it often made me chuckle."
"I never swore as a kid. Honestly. Never. I never smoked a cigarette and I never tasted alcohol until I got to Bible College."
"Why does God want us to let go of our dreams? Because anything you are unwilling to let go of is an idol, and you are in sin."
"I am growing increasingly convinced that if every one of these kids burning with passion to write that hit Christian song or make that hit Christian movie or start that hit Christian ministry to change the world would instead focus their passion on walking with God on a daily basis, the world would change."
"The impact God has planned for us doesn't occur when we're pursuing impact. It occurs when we're pursuing God."
"Have you ever been tempted to start your own business- First read this cautionary tale, especially if you think your ideas come from God."
"I expected Vischer’s story to be interesting, but I wasn’t ready for a thriller. The book begins with Vischer relating his childhood in a light and fun manner, but by the middle of the book when he was pouring out gritty details from his heart, I kept stopping myself from flipping to later chapters to see how exactly this story would end up."
"People do what they do by choice, so I don’t really know it’s a matter of people being comfortable in front of the camera. I think it’s a matter of doing the work that’s available to you and then striving in it. If you realized how hard it is to get a job in the entertainment industry, and you were working prolifically in voice over and you can work doing on camera stuff here and there, it has nothing to do with being worried about how you look on camera. It’s about the work and you do the work that is available to you. These actors are that good that they’re able to do the voiceover stuff. It’s hard. A lot of people think that it’s easy to just go and talk in front of a microphone and that’s not the case. You’re not just talking, you’re acting. You’re acting in front of a microphone as opposed to a camera. It’s a lot more specific of a technique than most people think. It’s not, “Oh, do a silly voice!” Try doing a silly voice for four hours, then take a lunch break, and then do another silly voice for four hours. It’s not easy, especially because it’s about the acting. So I think that mindset is a little off."
"It’s something very few actors really get to experience. When you’re a character actor or voiceover guy, it’s job to job. You’re like a migrant worker, almost. The longevity [of “SpongeBob”] is an unbelievable statistical anomaly. It’s like, I didn’t buy that many lottery tickets and I won the lottery. It’s a totally random, harmonic convergence of people you met and your agent getting you an audition. Actors have so little control over their own lives; it’s nice to have something you’re not in control of that’s actually positive. There was a point when “SpongeBob” was cancelled after the first few seasons and the first movie. We went to a wrap party that I thought was the season wrap party but was the series wrap party. Nobody knew. So I already feel like I dodged a bullet."
"I've had groups of twentysomethings saying they still talk to each other in SpongeBob memes. It's really touching, you know? You get people who have had very difficult lives, and they say that SpongeBob got them through things, which is very touching. Someone told us that they were considering suicide, and SpongeBob made them laugh, and they cycled through that phase of their life. You get everything from that, to I had a great happy childhood and SpongeBob was part of it. You get all colours of the spectrum in terms of people coming up. Not just with SpongeBob either. It may be some cartoon that was a failure, or a videogame that took an hour to record in 1996. But they say it was the biggest thing in their life at one point. It's mind-blowing. You don't realize the footprint of what you're doing is leaving behind."
"The business I’ve found myself in for my adult life, it requires a certain amount of stereotyping. It’s just the nature of the beast. You have a limited amount of time to tell a story; in particular on camera. So you want the visual information there to provide a certain amount of background. People that look a certain way are cast in certain roles."
"I’m always looking for opportunities to explore that freewheeling imagination and insanity of children. To be able to plug in to that and let that carry you in to a performance is such a gas, I have so much fun with that. I love kids; I raised two girls and I love being a parent. Being a parent is hands down the greatest thing of my life, and I loved when they were young because as a parent you can spend that special time with them when they’re young and you can attach your imagination on to their ride and go with them and do what they’re doing. I always loved that and it’s kind of how I approach Patrick. I don’t know if this makes sense, but I guess that’s my approach and that’s what I continue to do because I’m so fortunate to keep going with this character. It’s very satisfying and enjoyable."
"I am essentially a child at heart, and that's something that's never lost on me. It starts with the liberation of the writer's imagination. When you have that kind of really inspired material in your hands, if you can't enjoy it... there are some curmudgeonly people I guess who don't care for this stuff, but it's such a gas. It's so much fun."
"I enjoyed it from a very early age. When I had to make my own living after college, I decided to give doing what I enjoyed most a shot as a profession. It worked out and I’ve never had to “work” for a living since. If I hadn’t gotten so lucky, there were plenty of options open to me being, after all, a young educated white male in America."
"First time directors - they may not make good movies all the time but they are always the best directors to work for because they’re always so excited, always so committed to what they’re trying to do."
"I mean, there is a certain amount of exposition you have to have in films and how that exposition is handled tells you whether it's a good script or not, whether it's a good filmmaker or not. You know, the more exposition that can be handled without a character speaking it, the more thematic metaphors that you can do visually, to me that’s a better situation."
"Well part of the reason I have that many credits is I don’t get in my director’s face too much. I just do what I’m told. But I’ve also been burned by first time directors. Anthony and I talked about it and, you know, he thought he was picking me and I thought I was picking him and we hit it off. He’s very visual which is exactly what you want for this."
"I helped Stephen with the story and then I auditioned for SpongeBob, I used my Plankton voice, which sounds like a mix of Tony the Tiger and Gregory Peck. It’s actually an imitation of a friend from high school that had a really deep voice."
"The Plankton character was only supposed to be in one or two episodes, but I was a writer on the show and I really liked this character. Stephen told me to come up with more ideas for Plankton. I’m not just his voice. I get to create how the character is written and how he evolves over time. You very rarely get that experience."
"It’s a quality show and I think it came along at the right time, America wanted something stupid after the insanity of 9/11. The SpongeBob character is a naïve idiot but he also has a heart. He’s a dumb, well-meaning person, like Forrest Gump or Jerry Lewis."
"What they need is a wall."
"You can’t believe something like that is happening to you; meeting the President of Ireland and the spectacle of the parade. And everyone is so nice. They all feel like they know you. That’s the nice thing about being in something that’s as universally recognised as Star Wars. Parents normally tell kids ‘Don’t talk to strangers’, but everyone thinks they know me, wherever I go. I embrace being the more Obi-Wan like character, because that’s the natural progression of life. There was a period after Return of the Jedi when Star Wars had not come back. These movies are timeless, not dated by their cars or fashions. So, you have these fans who are parents with young children who have just seen Star Wars for the first time and think we made it two weeks ago. The parents say, ‘Look who it is, it’s Luke Skywalker!’ And there I am at 50, and the child is aghast. ‘What happened to this guy, he really let himself go!’ It’s natural and good to see the ageing process. So at least now, when they see me, it’s OK because they’ve seen me in the current film rather than thinking about me in my 20s."
"My puppeteer was Olly Taylor. The first couple of sessions, I said, "Who's the guy going the Scientist?" It was Olly Taylor, and I loved his vocal performance. [expressing his inner monologue at the time] "Why are you voicing this guy? He's great!""
"[in his Larry 3000 voice] One reviewer said, "Larry 3000 makes C-3PO look like a teamster"! [in his normal voice] Which I thought was so interesting, 'cause I never thought about... I mean, because he was a robot. So what sexuality is involved there?"
"I’m sure everyone is different, but I believe the performance will always be stronger if you’re working with another actor."
"You don’t tear up the room because there’s a sweet spot for the microphones, and you can’t deviate very far from that or else the engineer gets mad. You have to act with your whole body, but keep it right in the zone."
"Comedy is a lot harder to do if you don’t go to the mean place. The cheapest laugh you can get is an insult or snarky comment, so if you take that off the table you have to write smarter."
"I was running to lots of other things, whether it was sex or drugs or booze or things to distract me from, to numb myself from the pain that I was running away from most of my life. The irony is that booze can give you this temporary relief, but then the next day amplifies that anxiety tenfold. So, then you’re running back to get more and it just becomes this vicious cycle."
"My career was in a place where I felt like even though I had accomplished so many things up to that point, I was still, and to be honest, even now, I still feel this way. I feel like I’m a bit on the outside looking in. I’ve never really felt like I am a part of whatever the cool kid group is."
"Prayer and meditation are very important, which are also somewhat synonymous, I think, in some ways. Sometimes my prayer is meditation. Sometimes I’m just there and allowing God to take over what that time is. I’m not really saying anything as much as I’m just spending time. I think one of the most important things, at least for me, is taking my thoughts captive. Our minds are so powerful, but they are so easily, so easily hijacked if we don’t really go, ‘Oh, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. I’m doing it again. I’m starting to speak ill of myself again. I’m starting to be harsh or critical of myself. I’m starting to judge where I’m at in my life."
"I’ve gone through points in this where I felt really confident, and I’ve gone through some really heavy moments where I thought, ‘I’m crap in this show.’ Then for this to happen, it really smacks you in the face and says, ‘Listen to your people that love you and that are telling you you’re doing good work."
"Honestly, the biggest challenge is just my own brain."
"I know as an actor I don't want to sacrifice my morality or my integrity; I wouldn't be able to sleep at night."
"If you are taking shortcuts, cutting corners or essentially compromising your integrity... then you might get there, but how stable will it be? How long will it last? How fulfilling will it be? Look—I dunno—maybe there are people who've cut all kinds of corners and they get to the top and they're so stoked. But I can't relate to that type of person; I don't understand."
"We all stumble, we all fall, we're all broken. But to highlight someone who, even through all that imperfection, is still trying to do what is right, to hold on to what is most valuable."
"Not to say you can't make movies for the flock, that's great, too...I personally want to make movies that get to everyone. I want inspirational stories that inspire hope and faith to get to people that don't have a lot of hope and faith. I think this movie does that; there's a natural inspirational aspect to it you can't get around."
"But I want to encourage people and not take things too seriously. I want myself and everyone else to feel at ease and feel like they’re in their safe place."
"Growing up, my love for theater was insatiable. I just love to make people laugh and clap and smile. When I discovered drama and the ability to move people to tears, it was so powerful. As much as you can feel like God created you to do something, I believe He made me to entertain."
"You work with so many people of different backgrounds, especially in community theater. From aspiring actors to an optometrist who likes to moonlight (as a performer). It's such a weird and fun and funny environment, but I was so grateful. You are an amalgamation of all the people you've worked with or that encouraged you, or that you learned from."
"The coolest thing about awards season is celebrating together. What a great year it's been for Broadway. That I get to be included is amazing."
"I was a person who always followed my heart and followed my passion. Like things like money and strategy and all of those things that never really occurred to me. It was just really doing all the things that I love and Stomp was kind of all of it. You know, it allowed me to be an actor, it allowed me to be a drummer, allowed me to be a mover, a martial artist. So, it was one of those serendipitous moments at a wonderful period of time that kind of culminated perfectly."
"I’m in there. You can’t have Gollum without Jar Jar. You can’t have the Na’vi in ‘Avatar’ without Jar Jar. You can’t have Thanos or the Hulk without Jar Jar. I was the signal for the rest of this art form, and I’m proud of Jar Jar for that, and I’m proud to be a part of that. I’m in there!"
"On a very practical level, we were striving for a deeper and more engaging sense of story and emotional character development for games. We brought character development, production design, animation, and effects from the film industry. We wanted to feel like you were playing not just a challenge, but someone’s fate – someone that you had to be responsible for. On a more philosophical level, I wanted to take the most pop of pop culture, and convert it into meaningful modern day myths that would have great appeal to a wider audience. We also believed that people could find more empowering messages through gaming. So we targeted the anti-hero as our main character. Abe wasn’t the muscle-bound superhero that you wanted to be – he was the rather pathetic chump that you actually are. It was about rendering the journey out of the more powerless beings that we see ourselves as and at the place we most typically are, which is at the bottom of the global corporate food chain."
"It was film that was the key inspiration, but from games the most fun I personally had, aside from pure racing and arcade-style games, was the great early side-scrollers like Prince of Persia, Out of This World and Flashback. I loved those games, but most importantly those games made me feel like I was controlling a lifeform more than a piece of art in some challenge contest."
"I think the game served a lot of people who wanted to see deeper and more developed characters in games that had more real world relevance to them. I believed, and still do, that the audience wants richer entertainment than they are currently getting. I also hear a lot of people in the business claim the game inspired them to want to start making games. But I have to say the most intangible rewards were the heart-breaking and inspiring fan mails from people whose lives the game so deeply affected. It’s uncanny the impact the game had on some people, but it was why I personally wanted to make the games."
"A couple key ingredients. One was studying fan cultures. Trying to figure out what builds strong followings for people. Why people feel more attached to one film versus another– or one property versus another. When you analyze that, one property usually has more depth. It usually has a more resonating meaning. A deep universe, well fleshed out feels like you know it better than your reading, or your viewer knows it. They feel like they’re uncovering something that a creative team is really ahead of them on in terms of the believability of the universe. There are so many factors. What makes people want tattoos of a motor cycle brand or a rock band? What brings people to feel so passionate about properties that they’re willing to make life long commitments to something that they didn’t even create? I was fascinated by that and came away with a lot of takeaways. The other factor was, I always had a different outlook on life. Maybe because my dad was in the nuclear submarines as I was growing up throughout the cold war. Or serious global issues. My favorite fishing places, in Vermont, had died as a result of acid rain. These were the most gorgeous lakes and there was no fishing in them anymore. They looked clear; they were absolutely beautiful, but all the fish were dead. I was realizing there were cold plants in the midwest; and they were also mentioning cold plants merging in China. This was in the 1980s. I was seeing this big impact on the environment. At the same time the media was basically silent and people were ignorant of what was going on in the world in an environmental level. In my own circles, people just weren’t aware of these things. If you talked about things like the meat raising practices of fast food companies burning the lungs of the planet in South America for cheaper grazing lands and cheaper meat, people thought you were a conspiracy theorist. They were really uneducated. Even educated people had no idea what was going on on the planet. That was very stressing for a kid spending a lot of time in the woods connecting with nature. I found that really disturbing. I wasn’t looking at it as a business venture. I was coming at it as, “what if stories are richer? What if we could get connected through characters that are more like we are?” I was feeling pretty helpless in a world that makes decisions and screws up our abilities independent of our control; independent of our vote. Since that time we’ve seen the rise of the 99 percent. At that time people were saying capitalism is great. That was disturbing. So as an artist, people reinterpret what they’re seeing in the world. What makes that message resonate is A. there’s substance to it. B. it’s told beautifully. C. it has respect for the audience. My point is, when you see these things in the world, I felt more and more people were feeling more isolated. And I felt more and more people were headed for the third world. If you look at the 2008 financial crisis in the United States; what happened to the middle class and how it’s now basically poverty class. It’s all around us, and it’s pervasive, and it’s got a lot of momentum. In the ’80s people were still riding high. Global Warming– Al Gore hadn’t made his film yet. It took something like that to get people to start paying attention. If I agree to what many other climate scientists are saying is a whole other issue. What I think we can agree on is that human impact on the Earth has been substantial. When I started making Oddworld, that’s what made my heart heavy when I went to sleep every night. When I’d travel the world and see different places that’s what would break my heart, the continued impact of the environment and what that probably meant for our future. But who wants to see a documentary game?"
"It was so moving! And to me, it was absolutely fitting. The entire series was about sacrifice. He never got back because he always gave up his chance for someone else! And the only way he was finally able to get back and do his mission, that he was born for, was by someone else giving the ultimate sacrifice for him."
"So this guy goes into the dining hall and this is the first week after the attack and there is just this sombre sadness and you hear the guy go, 'guys, guys, you're not gonna believe whose been cooking your dinners. It's Batman!"
"Something strange happens: I feel closer to my deceased parents, I think about them intensely while I wait for her [referring to his daughter], as if I were finally able to see things from their perspective. It's a new position for me. It's too late to pay tribute to them, so I'll try to make up for it by being a good father and scholar. [1]"
"For me, the arrival of my daughter was a burst of enthusiasm and death. We will have a condensed time. I will talk to her from day one. I don't want her to find out who her father was after I'm gone. Even now, I try to capture every moment. I write. I take photographs."
"Max Biaggi has never had it easy in life and has had to and must continually fight for his certainties. He has a sense of revenge against something that only he knows; this is why he wants to prove, to himself before others, that he is a strong person. As a rider, he is a great professional, someone who takes nothing for granted and who physically prepares himself more and better than the previous year. When he gets on his bike, he is a beast fuelled by his successes, but when he takes off his racing suit, he is an exceptional guy with a complex personality, but also very tender, affectionate and sensitive."
"Until 23 October, the day I suffered a stroke, I thought of my 60s as the ideal age, when you are mature, can make the right choices, yet still feel fresh and youthful. After the 23rd, my perspective changed slightly: at this age, you enter a funnel that narrows your horizon, you see life thinning out, assuming that life continues, you make important assessments about living the relationships that matter, you no longer waste time, you prioritise the fundamental things. Yes, it's a great achievement, but I remain enthusiastic and I haven't given up hope of resuming a life full of energy, even if my legs are a little weak."
"Becoming a father at an advanced age, as happened to me, was a choice made out of love and not an act of selfishness: having a partner who is much younger than me, I know that Stella is in good hands and that makes me feel better about the concerns related to my age. I fight to continue to see my child grow up, to be there for her and be a point of reference."
"In theory, I am in the worst possible condition to host an entertaining game show [L'Eredità], but my desire to play and to entertain the contestants and the audience at home overcomes any physical obstacle, and I find myself joking and bantering with them in a way I never did before: paradoxically, my illness has become an added value, an enrichment in my work."