Genndy Tartakovsky

“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.”

“If you look back at Disney's 'The Hunchback of Notre Dame' or 'Pocahontas,' animated films were trying to get more and more real before CG really arrived.”

“And there is no finer moment, when I sit in a screening, and the parents and the kids are all laughing at the same gag.”

“I think the fate of 'Star Wars' is everlasting, which is great.”

“I was really fortunate in my career where I always had executives who were very like-minded.”

“I had done it all in my career. I always felt, as a kid, that that's what a director needed to be. Hitchcock could do anything in my mind. He's the director. That person has to be the best actor, the best designer, the best cinematographer. Then I came to realize that isn't the case. You just need to surround yourself with the best.”

“I always felt like as the director, I gotta be the best at everything.”

“I'm a very happy, optimistic person.”

“In feature animation, cartoony or exaggerated animation is almost taboo. There is this precedent that if you do that kind of stuff people won't like it or it will be too zany.”

“For me, doing all the TV stuff and having the experience directing, knowing what you want to make is 90% of it. The rest of it is just guiding everybody on that one path. But, figuring out the path is the difficult part.”

“I love to have contrast.”

“One night I was sick and I watched the old black and white 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers.' And it freaked me out.”

“I didn't want 'Hotel Transylvania' to be the nail in the coffin for cartoony animation. Because if the movie failed, I could see people blaming that aspect of it. I was really nervous about that.”

“If you have a character who wins all the time - well, if you have a character that loses and wins, it makes him more alive. Bugs Bunny, for example, didn't always win.”

“I can't tell you how satisfying it is to have something that is your own idea get produced and then become successful.”

“I don't want to do animation to mimic reality. I want to push reality.”

“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.”

“The one amazing thing about 'Jack' is that I did it in 2001, you know, and it still survived. There's something about it that's connected with people.”

“Being a hardcore old-school comic book lover, it took me a while to accept the need for comic book movies.”

“I love the way the long scenes feel - one of the characteristics of '70s filmmaking is that you don't cut around a lot; you let things play out. I did that on 'Samurai Jack,' and it carried over into 'Clone Wars.'”