Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
You always want to aim high.
Everything in culture moves in a cyclical way.
Film shouldn't be a pain. It's a creative process.
You are a product of what you watch as a kid largely.
'Muppets' is incredibly analog, 'Alice' is very digital.
Muppet films are never easy to film 'cause Muppets have no legs.
Cable news is 24 hours long, so you have to fill it up with something.
I think the children of Hollywood are more influential than the parents.
I never want to make a movie which is going to be CG filled, cold, and computerized.
When you try to teach children things, you're trying not necessarily to do it directly.
'The Muppet Show' spoke to me at 5, and it speaks to me in my late 30s in the same way.
Inevitably in any work you do I think that there is a sense of continuity, and I like that.
I'd rather not ever make anything overly simple just because I'm scared people won't get it.
I am always a great fan of keeping things on an eye level for comedy because it plays better.
I am a great believe that your humor is developed at a very early age and it doesn't ever change.
There's a cyclical nature to what people like in the world. Through time, things come around again.
'Alice' is effectively a story about a game of cards. 'Through the Looking Glass' is a story of chess.
'The Muppets' is really about innocence and charm and sweetness and light and having hope - and stupid gags.
I've always loved 'Alice,' and I've always loved Lewis Carroll. I love his kind of tone and his intelligence.
My kids were always my test audience. I'd take home the dailies and show them what we'd been filming that day.
There's nothing sadder than being in a tribute band - especially a tribute band for your own thing you did originally.
I love the idea of exploring the Victorian imagination and what Victorians thought the world of fantasy would look like.
My films have a lot of historical context; I'm a huge fan of ruins. You see a lot of ruin work in my movies, I like ruins.
I think, as a director, it's always worth pushing yourself and finding out new areas and exploring new ways to tell story.
Honestly, puppets themselves are actors effectively. The joy of puppetry is that it is very simple and low-fi, which I love.
The Muppets are always really positive when they come across adversity, and they always have the ability to see the good in people.
I've always liked the Muppets. I watched 'The Muppet Show' in England every week as a child. The show was originally broadcast in England.
No, the Muppets are not communist. And the character of Tex Richman is not an allegory for capitalism in any way. The character is called Tex Richman.
I think one of the great bits of The Muppet show is that it was set in a 19th century British theater and they live so nicely amongst that lovely old theater.
The Muppet Show is very much seen as an English thing. So for us in the U.K. it is one of the treasures of the history of children's TV and of comedy basically.
It's a beacon of hope in a dark world. You watch 'The Muppets' and you're smiling for an hour and a half, and then you go outside, and the economy is in crisis.
Watching 'Dark Crystal' now, having made Muppet films, it really strikes me just how ambitious that film is in terms of the constructs, the builds, the puppeteering.
I love the idea that if you build something with enough depth and texture, you can watch it again and again and see new things every time, and that's very important.
You're basically the same person forever so you find the same stuff funny forever. The Muppet Show spoke to me at 5 and it speaks to me in my late 30s in the same way.
I think we live in an entertainment world where performers like to flaunt how great they are. The Conchords don't do that. Even when they stumble onstage, people like it.
In England, 'The Muppet Show' is very much seen as an English thing. So for us in the U.K., it is one of the treasures of the history of children's TV and of comedy, basically.
I am a great believer that your humor is developed at a very early age, and it doesn't ever change. You're basically the same person forever, so you find the same stuff funny forever.
With humans you would say, "Don't stand over there." and that would probably work. With puppets, you can't stand over there because you would see the guy underneath. So it is a lot of foreground stuff.
I've always thought that Lewis Carroll himself had a certain comedy tinge to him. He was a guy who was a satirist. He really was a social commentator in many ways and was trying to satirize Victorian society.
Personally, I've always liked movies about big diamonds, like 'Pink Panther' and 'The Thomas Crown Affair.' I've always found those films really interesting, and they have a good energy about them, which I like.
I'm probably an overcompensating introvert. I live in Hollywood, but I don't go to parties where I have to work the room. I could do that, but I don't want to... I try and stay the same and live a fairly normal life.
I remember watching 'The Muppet Show' in the '70s. I was six or seven, and my dad watched it with me, and my grandparents watched it with me, and we're all laughing throughout, but I think we were probably laughing at different things.
'Muppets' was very much an exercise in anti-CG and the anti-effects world. It was very much in camera. We wanted to create a world where tangible puppets walked around and talked to each other. You could touch them. You could meet them.
Lewis Carroll, you see, wasn't really interested in telling an exciting story. Well, he wasn't interested in things like cause and effect or a linear narrative. It's surreal, it's absurd, it's wordplay, it's satirical, it's analyzing itself, it's funny, it's an enormous challenge.
Cable news is 24 hours long so you have to fill it up with something. No, the Muppets are not communist. And the character of Tex Richman is not an allegory for capitalism in any way. The character is called Tex Richman. It's a joke. Clearly he is a classic, old school bad guy. He's bad not because he works for an oil company but because he's evil. No, it's not a communist movie in any way.
It doesn't matter if you're good at anything, just try your best. Then there's the idea that individually they're flawed but together they can do amazing things. I think that's a very nice message and it's not something you hit people over the head with. It just comes with The Muppets; it's what they're about. It's that kind of innocent try, try, try quality. And it also makes them underdogs. You can't help but support the underdog.