So much of the time spent on 'Zootopia' was inventing it. What does it look like? How does it work?
— Rich Moore
I love living in Burbank. It has major movie studios, huge media empires, but the city still feels like a mom-and-pop town. It's not pretentious at all. It doesn't feel like a big Hollywood town, and it has every right to be, but it's very friendly and easygoing.
Good comedy films, if you listen to the score, the music is not trying to be funny. It's always, in a way, underscoring the tragedy and struggle of the main character.
I love the idea of a very simple 8-bit video game character struggling with the complex question: 'isn't there more to life than the role I've been assigned?'
What we've done now sits with those films that inspired me as a kid, and I hope there is a kid like myself today who is watching 'Wreck-It Ralph,' and he or she is inspired the way I was inspired when I was 5 years old, and now they'll pursue this crazy dream.
I'm really excited that the studio is trying, because when I began my career in the early '90s, late '80s, Disney was not something - though I respected it and liked what they were doing in those years - it's not like I thought I wanted to be a part of that studio right now.
Arcade-game characters have no free will. They're programmed to do one thing day in and day out - they don't have a choice in the matter.
I always thought that Mario was kind of the bad guy - because if you knew about the game, there was supposed to be a back story where Mario was teasing the ape, and the ape stole his girlfriend, and this was kind of karma for Mario, you know?
Being able to make a comedy at Disney was really appealing.
There was a moment with 'Zootopia' where we said, 'This is the experiment: let's try Judy in the role of the protagonist. Let her character introduce us to the city and this world.' And suddenly, all that struggling and trying to make traction into this story was done.
I think when, like, things like 'The Wizard' and even like 'Tron,' when it first came out, I was a teenager, and, man, I really wanted to kind of just kind of disappear into it.
I remember as a kid seeing Pong in a pizza place where I grew up in Oxnard, California, and having my mind blown by it. I thought it was a TV. I thought it was just something playing on a television. But then to be able to manipulate the paddle, and the ball with the knob was, in those days, pretty huge to a little kid! It was a simpler time.
I fell in love with this idea of an old school game character, like Donkey Kong, who looks like a very simple guy but is really wrestling with this very profound struggle: 'What's the meaning of life? What if I don't like this job I've been programmed to do?'
Between 'Futurama' and 'Simpsons,' I'm able to work with the voices of Michael Jackson, Dustin Hoffman, and the cast of 'Star Trek.' It's great, you know; it's great to work with such talented people.
'The Critic' was so absurd, and I loved that. I loved working with Jon Lovitz, I think he's got a great, great voice for animation.
You know how they say that old people with Alzheimer's, they kind of go back, and they revert to the most emotional part of their life, what they did when they were younger... I think I am going to be cursed with reliving 'Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope' in my mind. And playing 'Dragon's Layer' when I enter Alzheimer's.
I remember the N64 coming out. That was a beautiful day.
It was never someplace that I said, 'In my career, I must work at Disney.'
I like when entertainment not only makes me laugh or cry or thrills me, but makes the world a little clearer - and makes myself a little clearer.
People will sometimes put each other in boxes and have biases toward one another because of what they look like or where they come from or who they are. But ultimately, it's up to us to decide who we are.
If people want to watch a movie about a fox and rabbit becoming friends and turn that into an evil, agenda-pushing practice, then what can you say?
You put as much effort as you can when they're young into trying to teach them to be good people or make them the best they can be, and they're older now, my kids. I'm at that stage where I let them go, and you just hope that all that nurturing you did earlier on sticks, and you launched good people out there.
We try lots of stuff. We throw it against the wall, and the stuff that sticks stays in the movie.
I like giving the audience a lot of stuff to look at, and rewards for repeated viewings and paying attention.
I would say that what we called the Pixar sensibility goes back even further. It is kind of a CalArts sensibility because so many of the people who are creative instrumental people at Pixar came from that school.
The challenge is, how do you take someone who's supposed to be a villain and make that appealing and lovable? You have to empathize with him and put yourself in his shoes and root for him and want him to have the things he wants.
As an artist, it feels good that we've created something that is connecting with the audience, which is what we always strive to do.
Judy Hopps truly believes in something. We're not just giving her the run of the story, where we give her everything. Through her actions, she has to prove what she believes in. Personally speaking, I think that's cool.
My first movie I saw when I was a kid was 'The Jungle Book.' I was 5 years old, and I saw it in a movie theater. Seeing that movie really lit the fuse and ignited my passion for animation.
It feels like there's something for everyone in video games. It's not just a toy for a certain age group. It's steeped in the culture now.
This new generation of animators was trained in CG. They know all the fundamentals of any 2D animator, but a lot of them learned on these CG rigs. You give them a good rig, and they can make that thing sing.
I loved the Scarecrow and the Tin Man and the Lion and you could kind of see the actors' faces in them. It wasn't an entirely new face sculpted around them. What made those characters so human and appealing to me was seeing those great actors underneath there. They weren't lost behind a bunch of appliances.
I loved 'The Secret of NIMH.' When that came out, it felt like, 'Wow, this is something really, really new.' It looked like a Disney film, but it felt very cutting edge to me. To a twelve-year-old kid, it seemed very inspiring.
I spent a lot of money and time at pizza places. Golf and Stuff in Ventura, right off the 101, was my hangout. Skating Plus, right behind it, always had a good selection of games. That was the place to be when you were from Oxnard back in the '80s.
I think 'Wreck-It Ralph' can stand proudly in the pantheon of the great Disney animated films. It's a fairy tale disguised as something more contemporary. With its balance of heart and comedy, it is still very much rooted in the Disney legacy.
I don't like movies, TV shows, or books or anything that's preaching to the audience or speaking down to us.
It wasn't until I was in that world, directing shows and movies, that I realized basically my job is to give back to another generation what the generation before me gave to me.
Disney is a place that I've always rooted for, and I think the audience does also because we have a deep, deep love for what that means.
From the moment we started working on the first 'Wreck-It Ralph,' we knew there were so many possibilities with these characters.
A good movie makes the audience feel like they've journeyed with the characters.
It seemed like, when I was a teenager, there was a video game everywhere: they were in 7-Elevens, movie theatres, pizza shops; they were everywhere.
The hallmark of a good comedy is that it can make you laugh, but it can also take you to the point where you're in love with these characters, and you want to see them be happy, and you want to feel that emotion for them.
We can't put up a movie that looks beautiful but doesn't have substance.
I went to Cal Arts. I went to art school.
I never saw a Laurel & Hardy movie in a theater when they first ran, when I was a kid. But as a child, I knew who they were, and knew the culture of it, what they meant.
Rather than just making a movie about video games, I wanted to start with the character and what the character was going through.
I think it would be impossible to make a movie about video games if there wasn't some violence that we know from video games.
I think that 'Family Guy' and 'The Critic' come from some of the same kind of seed. I don't know what it is.
To me, I love being able to see some of John C. Reilly's face in Ralph, and some of Sarah Silverman in Vanellope. That there are hints of them there. In the broad strokes, they are there.
The best games came from great characters.
