Words matter. These are the best Kelly Asbury Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
On ‘Shrek,’ Eddie Murphy was locked in as the donkey before we’d even designed the donkey.
We are all rebellious teenagers. Sometimes we grow out of it, and sometimes we don’t.
I think Baz Luhrmann’s ‘Romeo + Juliet’ is a work of genius.
I’ve seen animation features just languish until the right combination of things come along to keep it alive.
Animation tends to have several different writers who serve different functions. I think, on a lot of animated features, there are a lot of writers who don’t get credited. It’s the policy at Disney, for instance, in deciding who gets credit. It depends on the writer’s contract, so many things.
Films like ‘The Wizard of Oz’ and ‘Shrek’ are hits because they hit on different levels with different age groups. Striking that balance is what I strive for. But I won’t know if I’ve done it until the audience sees it.
I’m in the entertainment business, and I make commercially entertaining animated features.
A lot of people say to me, ‘Is this good, to do to a Shakespeare piece?’ And I think, ‘You know, ‘West Side Story’ did it very cleverly, in a different way.’ But if you look at ‘Bonnie and Clyde,’ ‘Titanic,’ ‘Avatar,’ ‘Grease,’ ‘Brokeback Mountain’… they’re all ‘Romeo and Juliet’ stories.
I think a film should be appropriate to what it’s trying to say or the characters in it.
Smurfs must only eat Smurfberries. They can eat Smurfberry pie, they can have a Smurfberry sandwich, they can do whatever they want. But you can’t have a Subway sandwich. It’s got to be Smurfberries.
When you have a name actor, with a face that people recognise and a name that can go on posters or billboards and be able to appear on the talkshow circuit and tout the film, that’s always a plus.
I think ‘West Side Story’ is one of the greatest, if not the greatest, musicals ever put onscreen – or stage, for that matter. I, frankly, like Zeffirelli’s ‘Romeo and Juliet’ very much, too. I grew up with that… I loved it. I loved the score; I loved the acting.
The Smurfs – and they’re this way in Peyo’s comics as well – do have a rubbery indestructibility about them. They can get bruised & battered. But they then just sort of bounce back very quickly, like those classic cartoon characters Wiley Coyote and Tom & Jerry.
Shrek is the Mickey Mouse of DreamWorks.
There’s a lot of movies, and I’ve made some of them that could be categorized this way, but there’s definitely been a trend in animated features of all types to be a little bit cynical, if you will, to have a little bit of ‘knowing’ humor to them, kind of a wink to the audience.
Star-crossed lovers who have a destiny that isn’t necessarily going to work in their favor – that’s a universal story; that’s an archetypal story.
Every animated film that I’ve worked on – whether it was as a story artist or as Head of Story or even as director – where we originally started out with our story and where we eventually ended up were often very different places.
I actually applied at Hanna-Barbera to work on ‘The Smurfs’ when I got laid off for a brief period of time from Disney. I didn’t get the job. That was my first introduction to Smurfs.
It happens a lot that a name actor will be signed on to a project in its germ stage.
I think what’s universal about the story of ‘Romeo and Juliet’ is every one has grown up and done something that was rebellious against their parents’ wishes, be it love or something else.
What I want to impart on any movie I work on is I want to make it entertaining. That’s what I feel I do.
What, if not Shakespeare, is open for interpretation?
I love all sorts of movies, whether made by Scorsese or Frank Capra. I love them all.
Certainly in the case of ‘Gnomeo & Juliet,’ if it makes children or adults a little more interested in Shakespeare, there’s nothing wrong with that!
Tim Burton, let’s face it: he’s into stitches.
