Quotes from Rich Moore

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?'

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.

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.

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 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.

'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.

It was never someplace that I said, 'In my career, I must work at Disney.'

I don't like movies, TV shows, or books or anything that's preaching to the audience or speaking down to us.

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.

So much of the time spent on 'Zootopia' was inventing it. What does it look like? How does it work?

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.

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.

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.

When I was young, I was on a real hot streak with 'Crazy Climber.' There was a good three-week span where I couldn't get that game out of my head. I could not get back to the arcade fast enough to try and climb up there and not get kicked by a potted plant this time. That one got under my skin.

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.

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.

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.

We can't put up a movie that looks beautiful but doesn't have substance.

For artists, we're always looking for approval. We're putting our artwork out there and saying, 'What do you think?'

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?'

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.

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'm part of that original generation that came up playing video games, that pumped a lot of our allowance into video games. We financed the rise of video games. I started playing them in the Straw Hat Pizza Palace at the Carriage Square Mall in Oxnard, CA.