Kelly Asbury

“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.”

“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.”

“I don't want to be the one accused of ruining the Smurfs.”

“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.”

“I wanted to create a world that presented the Smurfs with obstacles and challenges and really put them in a fish-out-of-water situation but also make them very active in getting out of their situation. Make them really the central characters.”

“The way I choose voice talent is I don't let them tell me who the actor is.”

“I think Shakespeare, at his heart, was just the way all of us are that make movies: He wanted to entertain people.”

“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.”

“What, if not Shakespeare, is open for interpretation?”

“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.”

“I look back at my childhood, and the films that I remember the most are things like 'Mary Poppins,' 'Chitty Chitty Bang Bang,' 'Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory,' 'To Kill a Mockingbird.'”

“It happens a lot that a name actor will be signed on to a project in its germ stage.”

“I wish I had been a child when the Smurfs came on television.”

“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.”

“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!”

“Gnomes are supposed to be good luck in a garden, protecting against pests and diseases. A mythic gatekeeper, in the way a Kitchen Witch is.”

“I'm a lover of the great adventure films of the 1980s: 'Goonies,' 'E.T.,' 'Raiders of the Lost Ark,' 'Star Wars.'”

“In animation, there's not a medium I believe that's more collaborative. It is a team of people, of different disciplines, coming together. The decisions are made by consensus in many cases. My job as a director is to exercise the best judgement I can in terms of which decision is the best one to make for the movie.”

“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.”