Quotes from Genndy Tartakovsky

One of the things I hate about TV for kids is that it conescends to them.

I'm super comfortable with TV, especially in my situation where I pretty much have 100% freedom. That's the ideal, and I've been fortunate in TV to have pretty much everything I've done be at least somewhat successful.

As soon as you think, 'Pirates are really popular right now with kids so I'm going to write a pirate movie'... that's when you're dead.

I grew up in the '70s, early '80s as a kid, and when we first immigrated to this country I went to a 7-Eleven and for the first time in my life I saw... back in the day they had this little spinning comic book rack, and there were comic books and I was basically drawn to them.

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.

I grew up in the 1970s and early 1980s, loving comic books, and they were much cartoonier. And then everything became super dark and muscular and airbrushed, and I stopped collecting comics.

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.

I feel like animation's stagnant. There's not much that's trying to push the artform, and so, for me, I'm way too critical about it.

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

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.

You can never guess what a kid's going to find funny - besides, you know, an obvious fart joke here and there.

I mean, for sure, from my history, I have an extreme fondness for 2D. I think it feels very hand-crafted, and you see the artist's personal touch. I think something about CG makes it a bit more sterile.

To me, storytelling is a mystery. Especially when you're directing.

Storytelling has changed. Shows like 'Adventure Time' have taken storytelling in a different direction.

I'm a very happy, optimistic person.

Besides kind of like the Wes Anderson, or, of course, a lot of the European movies, most everybody in the States, the big studios, make pretty much the same film. And we're kind of held to Pixar standards, or Disney standards, as it's kind of always been in the animation industry.

For whatever reason, I think we have one type of animated movie and it's so wrong. I want to do a drama, I want to do an action, a comedy. In live-action, there are all sorts of movies. There's independent movies, big movies, action movies, funny movies, and for us we have one movie.

I'm not a violent person at all, and I don't want to show violence for violent's sake.

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

I'm a true fan of animation, and it's my livelihood.

Luckily, as a director I can just tell people what I need and I don't need to tell them how to get it.