Fast-paced and brutally funny, only the humor deficient wouldn't get a kick out of Family Guy. Like The Simpsons on speed (or an animated Monty Python) the show revolved around the Griffin Family – father Peter, his wife Lois, their daughter Meg, their son Chris, and their talking dog, Brian. Oh yes – and their baby son Stewie, who is bent on world domination.
Fan support of the show pushed Family Guy to a three-season run on Fox before being cancelled, but repeats are currently enjoying massive ratings as part of Cartoon Network's nightly Adult Swim line-up, airing at 11:30PM EST.
The entire first season and the first half of the second season are available in the Family Guy: Volume 1 DVD set from Fox Home Video. Volume 2, which will finish out the series, is scheduled to be released in September.
We had a chance to talk with series creator (and voice of Peter, Stewie, and Brian) Seth MacFarlane. So what are you waiting for? Tally ho!
IGN FILMFORCE: Am I correct in understanding that you were born in Connecticut?
SETH MACFARLANE:
That's correct... I was born in Kent, Connecticut, which is a small town in northwestern Connecticut. That was 1973.
IGNFF: Did you spend your childhood in Connecticut?
MACFARLANE:
I spent my entire childhood in the same town, in Kent. I went to grade school there. There was a boarding school that my mother taught at, called – appropriately enough – Kent School, that I went to. Yeah, pretty much my entire childhood was spent in that town.
IGNFF: Was it part of upscale Connecticut?
MACFARLANE:
You know, at the time it was not. It was this sort of Smurf village of a town, that no one really knew was there, and it was just kind of stuck in the '50s. It's since become upscale Connecticut, because New Yorkers have found out about it, and so they started buying up houses in the town.
IGNFF: Now it's become just another suburb...
MACFARLANE:
Yeah, now it's all expensive.
IGNFF: So, at that time, it was basically small town life?
MACFARLANE:
Pretty much, yeah. When I was born, it was very much just a little hick town that no one knew about.
IGNFF: What was boarding school like?
MACFARLANE:
It was very buttoned up. You had to wear a coat and tie every day and go to chapel three times a week, which was kind of annoying.
IGNFF: Annoying how so?
MACFARLANE:
I wasn't nuts about, on 90 degree days, having to keep my coat on because it was the proper thing to do. I hear they've since progressed. I think they've actually made it into the '60s, of late.
IGNFF: From wool to cotton.
MACFARLANE:
Yeah, yeah. So they've supposedly made some progress. But it was a very old-fashioned, New England boarding school.
IGNFF: At the time, did you have a sense of how the other half lived, as far as other kids in public school?
MACFARLANE:
Not really. I mean, it's weird, because the elementary school that I went to was literally right across the river from this place. So it was a lot of the same kids from there went to Kent School. I didn't really have much of a sense of a different – obviously there were the kids that were there from overseas, and other places, but I didn't really have a sense of how it compared to the public school. I hadn't really seen it.
IGNFF: How buttoned down was the atmosphere, creatively, within the boarding school?
MACFARLANE:
Creatively, it was probably just the opposite. They had a terrific drama department, they had a terrific art department. It was actually... it was funny... it went against the tone of the rest of the place. So, creatively, it was actually a pretty rich place.
IGNFF: Quite liberal?
MACFARLANE:
Yeah, yeah. It's interesting. There's nothing liberal about the school itself, it was a very conservative place. But the art department – there were liberal people within the walls of the place who kept sort of an open mind as far as the creative end of things was concerned.
IGNFF: So it was the Kent School counterculture...
MACFARLANE:
Yeah, yeah – the liberal underbelly.
IGNFF: What were your creative bents at that time? Were there any?
MACFARLANE:
You know, I was doing cartoon strips for our local newspaper, and that was sort of about the extent of where I was at. I mean, I had done them, I had been drawing since I was about two, and I had made an animated film that was very, very crude in the eighth grade. I had a sense of exactly what it was I wanted to do, but it was just kind of tough. Even at that time, which was not that long ago, no one was really able to really tell me how animation worked ... It's funny, even now, not that much later, laymen are aware of how the process works. There's just so much more media now and people are just so much more aware.
IGNFF: Was it something that your parents encouraged, as far as a creative pursuit?
MACFARLANE:
It was. They were ex-hippies, so they weren't forcing me to be a doctor or an accountant or anything like that.
IGNFF: Interesting that ex-hippies would put you in such a conservative school.
MACFARLANE:
Yeah, it's interesting. Well, my mother worked there, so if a parent worked at a place, then you got to go for free. Otherwise, I wouldn't have been able to go – because, you know, we wouldn't have the money. We just figured, hell, take advantage of the offer.
IGNFF: Did they have any misgivings about the culture that the school represented?
MACFARLANE:
Not really, not really ... It's interesting, the student body was 99% conservative Republican, but the faculty – they were all locals. My parents knew them, had known them since I was a kid. So the interesting thing is the faculty was very left-wing. So it was kind of an interesting dichotomy.
IGNFF: It's interesting that none of that would be passed along to the student body.
MACFARLANE:
Right, right.
IGNFF: Were there different career paths that you considered during your high school years, or was it always a gearing towards going off to an art school?
MACFARLANE:
Good question. You know, no. No. I had gone through the phase where there were different aspects of the animation business that I had focused on. At one point, I was hell-bent on being a Disney animator, and sort of got over that in college and wanted to do my own stuff. You know, towards the end of college I had actually planned to go to the Boston Conservatory of Music for musical theater.
IGNFF: Another great love of yours...
MACFARLANE:
Yes, yes. And actually, I had had a lot of vocal training, which came in handy with all the little Broadway numbers we did on Family Guy. But, in high school, it was really – I pretty much knew what I wanted to do. There wasn't any real deviation from that.
IGNFF: How powerful was the pull between art and music?
MACFARLANE:
At the time – it's interesting. I think it's one of the things that attracted me about animation, is that it was a medium that really combined the two. One obviously in animation, one really can't exist without the other. Music is an essential part of the medium. So it seemed like a nice way to combine both
IGNFF: Was the musical aspect part of what drew you early on to consider Disney animation the way to go?
MACFARLANE:
Yeah... you know, I suppose.
IGNFF: Or was the fact that it was such an overwhelming name brand?
MACFARLANE:
Well, there was that. It was, at the time – visually it seemed like all the best talents were there, and they were doing the most spectacular looking stuff. Yeah, at the time, they were having this resurgence – they were bringing back the musical, basically. Those first three films that they did with [Howard] Ashman and [Alan] Menken before Ashman died, it was interesting to see. No one had written a real, old-fashioned musical in a while, and that seemed to be what they were doing. That definitely played a part.
IGNFF: Personally, when I think animation schools, I think of the Rhode Island School of Design. What lead to your decision to go there? Was it just proximity, or did the curriculum interest you?
MACFARLANE:
It was actually proximity, believe it or not. Ironically, it turned out to be the best possible place to go. Initially, I had applied and I believe gotten in – I can't quite remember, I think I got in – to this school in Florida that had an internship program with Disney. It was a small school – but, like, that was their hook. I got the RISD application in the mail, and my mother was working in the college guidance at the time, at Kent School, and I literally had the thing, was holding it over the garbage can. I said, "I don't need to apply to this place, right? I've already gotten in to the other place." She goes, "Well, what the hell. Why don't you just fill it out?" I filled it out and, you know, it just turned out that at the end of the day I didn't want to be all the way in Florida. I liked New England, and Providence was only a few hours away. Ironically, it turned out to be exactly the right decision. At the other place, I would have been steered into the Disney style, and sort of steered to become a Disney drone, if you will.
IGNFF: Towards a commercial style?
MACFARLANE:
Yeah, yeah. When I was at RISD, it was such a broad spectrum of what they cover, that it sort of opened my eyes to other options. By the end of the four years I knew exactly what it was that I wanted to do. It turned out to be exactly the right move.
IGNFF: Do you think it's the tendency of places like Cal-Arts or the school in Florida to steer their students toward that commercial style that they can easily parlay into a job?
MACFARLANE:
I don't know. I don't know enough about Cal-Arts. I've heard that maybe that's the case, but I don't know. I could be way off base. I know with this other school in Florida, I believe that was the hook that you were being trained to work for this particular company.
IGNFF: That was also, I believe, when Disney was really gearing up on their Florida facility. I can see that as a huge tie-in for a school to say, "Hey, there are jobs waiting."
MACFARLANE:
That's true, they have that MGM Studios at Walt Disney World.
IGNFF: What was the culture like, comparing Kent and Providence?
MACFARLANE:
It was kind of funny. Providence – it seems ridiculous now, living in Los Angeles – but Providence was really a big, overwhelming city to me. Like, that was how small Kent was. Providence, it's about a small a place as you get – you could literally spit from one end of the city to the other.
IGNFF: You could say that about the state, as well.
MACFARLANE:
Yeah, yeah. Really. And, it was fairly overwhelming. I didn't have a car, so it was very strange. I had been to New York from time to time, I had been to Boston a couple times, but really I spent most of my childhood – I just didn't have a reason to leave Kent. It was probably good to start small, not having done any real urban living. I suppose if I had gone to college in a place like New York City, I would have just been cowering in a corner somewhere the whole time.
IGNFF: It's interesting how Rhode Island has become the butt of many jokes. It always struck me as a situation where Massachusetts had to take Rhode Island because Mother told it so, to get to go to a party. How did that perception of Rhode Island formulate in your mind at the time?
MACFARLANE:
I don't even think at that point I had been to – I had been to Arizona, when I was about 10 years old. But really, Rhode Island – it was still New England. It was about 20 minutes from Boston, and I had relatives up there. In that sense, it wasn't all that overwhelming, just because it was still within the tri-state area. So it was, in that sense, somewhat familiar. But yeah, I enjoyed it on a whole. I found it to be a very easy city, once I was there for a while, to get used to. It was very sort of old fashioned, historical place as far as cities go. So yeah, the overwhelming aspect wore off for me soon enough that I was able to lead a normal life.
IGNFF: What aspects of the curriculum at the school have you found to be most useful in your career since then?
MACFARLANE:
I tell you, it's interesting. Probably, I would just refer to the overall structure of the way their curriculum operates. Again, they don't teach you a specific style. They teach you to do everything, and then your final year it's up to you and take all that you've learned and make the film that you want to make, and that becomes sort of your calling card in the industry. That set up was probably what governed where I ended up. Specifically in the area of animation timing, which is... I'm trying to think how I can describe that in simple terms. You look at a show like The Simpsons or, in an extreme case, I guess South Park maybe, but I'll point to The Simpsons as opposed to a Disney film. The way Disney characters move, they're very kind of slow and fluid and flowing, one pose kind of eases into the next. If you look at a show like The Simpsons and subsequently a show like Family Guy – the characters will jerk from pose to pose a lot, a bit more snappy. Which sort of goes along with the writing tone of the show.
IGNFF: Where it's more writing based animation than visual based...
MACFARLANE:
Right, but there is a visual style. If The Simpsons were animated like Disney characters, it would never be as funny. That was something that to have the freedom to experiment with timing, to literally put drawings under the camera at RISD and shoot them slower, shoot them faster – just finding your animation style was very valuable. I think overall it was just the open-minded, generalized approach that was the most valuable. I wasn't forced into one particular style, which was terrific.
IGNFF: How would you describe the style that you developed there?
MACFARLANE:
I would say simple. It was a simple style. The character design was very basic in a lot of ways. Boy, that's interesting. You know, I suppose I decided there that big, bulbous eyes were important.
IGNFF: Would you say it's more of a function over form kind of style?
MACFARLANE:
I guess... I guess, yeah. I suppose that's as good of way as any to describe it. I was more concerned with the way the characters acted than like how detailed the backgrounds were, or how intense the colors were. Which, I suppose, had something to do with my dabbling in the performing arts end of things. The thing about animation is there are people who associate it more with being a visual art. I've actually always thought of animation as more closely related to the performing arts. So many of the same rules of acting apply. In a lot of cases you don't have to be a terrific artist. In Family Guy, most of the people on staff could draw better than me. So it was more about from a direction stand-point... How do these characters act? What's the funniest way for them to move? I've completely lost track of what the question was and I'm rambling...
IGNFF: No... you're rambling, but making sense...
MACFARLANE:
Well, that's new.
Continue on to the second installment of Ken's conversation with Seth MacFarlane – in which MacFarlane discusses the genesis of Family Guy, writing for Johnny Bravo, working for Disney, and more. [This is the second installment of Ken's conversation with Seth MacFarlane. To access previous pages, use the above navigation links.]
IGNFF: Tonally, what was your material like in college?
MACFARLANE:
Pretty similar to what Family Guy became. I was doing standup at the time, and still do every once and a while, just for fun. That was sort of a helpful factor for me, in determining what the style of humor was that I wanted to do. It's funny – earlier on, I guess in my sophom*ore or junior year, I'd had this idea of this really cool little sci-fi film for my final project. Thank God I grew out of that, because it would have just been disastrous.
IGNFF: Disastrous how so?
MACFARLANE:
It would have been just far too ambitious and wouldn't have gotten the reaction that Family Guy got. I wouldn't have discovered this brand of comedy that I ended up exploiting for Family Guy. Again, I was doing standup at the time – on a local scale, at local comedy clubs. I had enough success that it sort of steered me into the area of animation comedy. So it was interesting. There was a lot about going to that school that wasn't necessarily curriculum related that contributed to what I eventually decided to do.
IGNFF: As far as the comedy aspect, a lot of people would remember Family Guy as being, I would say, a little bit beyond envelope pushing.
MACFARLANE:
Yeah, yeah.
IGNFF: Would you say that your comedy at that time was similar to that, as far as boundary pushing?
MACFARLANE:
Pretty much. A lot of that came from my family, actually. Everybody in my family had a real sick, twisted sense of humor. Most of the jokes we make in our house, we would just never even dream of making anywhere else. Just sick, horrible stuff. That wasn't anything new to college. We'd always been a bunch of sick bastards.
IGNFF: Would you say college just further refined it?
MACFARLANE:
Yeah, yeah. College made it far worse.
IGNFF: How did college prepare you for after college? Did it provide a clear line as far as, "Here are the job openings – you're prepared"?
MACFARLANE:
Yeah. RISD actually helped a lot in that – really, RISD had a lot to do with getting me my first job... which oftentimes, colleges won't necessarily do that. They sent my film to Hanna-Barbera to compete in this student film competition. I didn't even know they were doing it. And I ended up winning. It brought me to the attention of that studio, and that was where I was. I got a job offer there, probably about 2 weeks before I was supposed to graduate, and it was pretty exciting. Really, RISD essentially got me that gig, I suppose, by sending this film out.
IGNFF: That was sort of at the dawn of the second Golden Age of Hanna-Barbera...
MACFARLANE:
Yeah. They were doing a lot of original cartoon shorts. I had the opportunity to do one myself. They were sort of trying to reestablish themselves as a powerful force in the medium, and really, a lot of that was through Cartoon Network. What Hanna-Barbera was, is essentially now what Cartoon Network Studios is. It's a lot of the same people, and it's just, I think, the name is different. But yeah, that was sort of the beginning of their reemergence as a powerful force in animation.
IGNFF: And a great tonal shift as far as their output, anyway.
MACFARLANE:
Yeah, their whole philosophy at the time was to put animation and animated projects back in the hands of the artists, whereas they had been primarily writer-driven throughout the '70s and '80s. Obviously, the artwork in the '70s and '80s Hanna-Barbera cartoons was not the greatest, although I always thought it had its own style – which is now very retro, identifiable with that era.
IGNFF: It was very functional.
MACFARLANE:
You're right, it was very functional. But, you know, their plan was "Let's, like in the old fashioned Warner Bros. cartoons of the '40s, give control of the medium and of the shows and projects back to the artists," which I don't entirely agree with. I think since then, they've found a balance. I think that, really, there has to be an equal – having done both, there really has to be an equal balance between the writers and the artists. You can't give full control to... one really isn't more important than the other.
IGNFF: What were the problems that you saw in the purely artist-driven approach?
MACFARLANE:
Oftentimes the stories weren't interesting. For a seven-minute show, it actually makes all the sense in the world to have the artists in control. Because, really, that to me is the one format where it does work. Anything longer than that, you need to sustain an audience's attention through the characters, and it can't just look cool.
IGNFF: So it's the difference between actually being a viewable product or a student's short film...
MACFARLANE:
Yeah... yeah, exactly. Exactly. With Family Guy, and with The Simpsons – obviously with any half-hour show – there's obviously an enormous work that goes into putting together a script and it's done, really, in exactly the same process as a live-action sitcom, you know, as an episode of Seinfeld. It's the same process from start to finish – you're just writing for animated characters instead of real people.
IGNFF: Were there arguments within Hanna-Barbera at that time, or was it pretty much carte blanche and no one questioned it until later down the road?
MACFARLANE:
There were some people who felt that it was not – I think at the time they were definitely in the minority. There were people who felt that it was not always the right way to approach things. And you know, it's interesting, they did have seasoned executive producers from the '70s and '80s whose job it was to sort of oversea these very green young artists – myself included. It's interesting, I was actually one of the few people who got hired into that program because, primarily, of writing. This is what they told me after the fact. Certainly, my student film was not – the drawings were not anything special. They were pretty crude looking. But, you know, it was the content – the jokes themselves – that were the reason that they hired me. It was interesting to be there, with so many people who were just phenomenal artists and who had been hired because of their artistic talent. I ended up writing on additional shows for them, shows like primarily Johnny Bravo. I was writing on that show for I guess most of the time I was there – about a year and a half, two years, after I did my first short. It was really helpful in trial and error as far as the writing process, doing script after script each week and seeing what worked and what didn't work. It was actually great training.
IGNFF: Was it better training also because of how short-form they were and how quickly they could be outputted?
MACFARLANE:
Yeah, yeah. You sort of condense – for Johnny Bravo, we wrote scripts for seven-minute projects. We did a couple of eleven-minutes, actually, and I wrote one of those. But it was primarily a seven-minute show. It was interesting, because you'd just try to condense the traditional story piece into a smaller format. That's what sort of made Johnny Bravo unique, is that it wasn't really – it's weird. It probably should have been a longer format with the kind of scripts we were doing, but that was the thing at the time – you had to do seven minutes.
IGNFF: It's also a show that greatly benefited by faster pacing – which became its signature style.
Yeah, yeah. And it was really – despite the short format, it was very helpful as far as training in the writing department.
IGNFF: Was Hanna-Barbera the kind of thing that would lock you into a certain series, or were you free to move around to various series that were in production at that time? Were there power struggles?
MACFARLANE:
You moved around. It was, in a lot of ways, the old fashioned Hollywood structure, where you just move from one show to another and you jump from a writing job on this show to a storyboard job on that show. I worked on, I guess, three shows while I was there, the short that I did not included. It was Dexter's Lab, Cow and Chicken, and then Johnny Bravo.
IGNFF: Was there a preference that you had?
MACFARLANE:
I had the most fun on Johnny Bravo, just because the other shows didn't use scripts, and what I was really, it seemed to me, moving towards career-wise was writing. It was kind of nice to actually be able to sit down and write a script from start to finish. That, certainly – that was fun for me. I spent the most time on Johnny Bravo, and as a series, the comedic style, it was sort of freer than anywhere else to sort of write with my own style. That was probably the most fun for me.
IGNFF: How would you compare writing for Hanna-Barbera with the work you did for Disney?
MACFARLANE:
The freelance work I did for Disney? There were a couple of situations where I wrote for a show called Jungle Cubs, I wrote a bunch of Ace Ventura: The Animated Series. Those shows were much more structured than Hanna-Barbera was. You were writing a script from start to finish. Ace was a half-hour show, so there was really a lot more that went into breaking the story. You sat down with a story editor and hashed out the plot points, made sure they all worked. It was actually, ironically, closer to what we did on Family Guy, and what you do on sitcoms, than anything else.
IGNFF: Was it difficult writing within the overall tone of a Disney project, like Jungle Cubs?
MACFARLANE:
It was a little more confining, obviously, because it's a bit more ...
IGNFF: Although why you couldn't do Hitler of the Jungle, I'll never know.
MACFARLANE:
Yeah, right! At Disney, why shouldn't you be able to do that? It was obviously much more – they do what they do and there's less freedom to deviate from that at a place like that, whereas Hanna-Barbera sort of encouraged more individuality. In some ways, though, it was really just as valuable – if not more – an experience, because I had to really strictly observe things like story progression and character stakes, and plot points. So it was, in a lot of ways – just from a writing standpoint – an even more valuable experience. Particularly with Ace Ventura.
IGNFF: How did you start planning for something beyond the Hanna-Barbera work?
MACFARLANE:
I had wanted to do prime-time animation for a long time. That was the one thing that I didn't like about working in the place that I was at. You couldn't do all the edgy stuff. All the stuff that really made me laugh, I wasn't allowed to do. It's interesting, now Cartoon Network has really – they now have this Adult Swim block, which actually Family Guy is rerunning on right now...
IGNFF: Irony of ironies.
MACFARLANE:
Yeah, I know, it really is. It really is. If I were just starting out there now, it would be a whole different thing. But, at the time, it was primarily a kid's audience. I really wanted to hear cartoon characters swear.
IGNFF: It's a noble dream.
MACFARLANE:
You know, I wanted to see characters that behaved like real people, like real adults.
IGNFF: It had to be somewhat daunting, because corpses litter the battlefield when it comes to prime-time animation.
MACFARLANE:
Oh yeah... oh yeah. I think, ironically, a lot of that is you have writers going into it who really don't know anything about animation. They think, "It'd be cool to write an animated show, you could just write anything."
IGNFF: Do you think it's also a balance with animators who might not know a thing about sitcoms?
MACFARLANE:
Yeah. I sort of felt, from my standpoint – while I wasn't by any means a sitcom writer, I hadn't ever done it before – I knew enough animation and I knew about writing at that point. I had had on-the-job training in both, so I was able to go into it with an idea of when I put stuff down on paper, exactly how it was going to come out, visually – right down to the exposure sheets, right down to the timing. That really, I think, is important with an animated show. You look at The Simpsons – Matt Groening was an artist. Mike Judge – those were his character designs. I think it's very important to have a knowledge of the medium when you're creating an animated show. It seems to me essential. I would be scared to death to do it, without it.
IGNFF: Do you think it's also a matter of not being terribly close-minded as the creator, the overseer of a show, to not bring in writers? A lot of these people, they're so intense on maintaining creative control, they won't bring in anyone to challenge them...
MACFARLANE:
That was me at the beginning. When Family Guy started as a series, I was very, very controlling.
IGNFF: Out of sheer paranoia?
MACFARLANE:
Out of sheer paranoia, because all of our writers had come off of live-action sitcoms. My first thought was, "Oh God, these people have never written for animation before." And really, by the end of the series, I could not have come to a more opposite viewpoint. It got to the point where you just rely on these people. Really, what I found was that good writers are good writers. Being in the writer's room and being able to give a little bit of guidance as far as what will work and what won't work in animation, and working with these experienced sitcom writers who really fell in to grasp the medium very soon after starting, it just turned out to be just a perfect blend. It became a very, very close-knit group, and we're all still very close friends at this point. It really was just an extraordinary group of writers. We just really lucked out. They were phenomenally talented.
IGNFF: Do you feel that you transitioned in that time from being somewhat of a gatekeeper to being more of a lens, to filter their ideas?
MACFARLANE:
Kind of, yeah. The show really became – a lot of that really had to do with my mellowing out. It was a valuable learning experience, because I think the next animated show that I do, I'll just take that and take the knowledge that it's important to have a very, very clear idea of what you want at the beginning. Once the show is developed and you're into production, it really is important – it becomes a group process. My producing partner, David Zuckerman, early on at the beginning of Family Guy would try to explain that to me and I just couldn't have been more stubborn about it. I just really was not hearing what he said, and it's funny, because it really is the case. It becomes a group process. You do need somebody, a person or a pair of persons there whose job it is to decide – to really function as a lens – to decide what's right for the series and what's not, and have a clear sense of who the characters are, so if there's a debate about something being right for a character or not, then that person is able to make the final call. You do need that person... otherwise, it's chaos.
IGNFF: But it's also valid to have that balance of, "Well, that might not be such a good idea, Seth."
MACFARLANE:
Yeah, exactly.
IGNFF: Otherwise, you're George Lucas.
MACFARLANE:
Exactly, right. Right.
IGNFF: Were there times when you bordered on being that sort of, "These are mine. Stewie would never say that. You're fired," kind of guy?
MACFARLANE:
I never went as far as, "You're fired," but I think there were times when I was just – it wasn't even like aggressive posturing, it was more like me stressing. Me tearing my hair out, "Oh boy, I think we can beat that joke." People would be saying, "Well, it's 11:00 at night." It was my first time up at bat, and there was a lot that I really had to learn.
IGNFF: So it was more from a position of insecurity, than anything else?
MACFARLANE:
I guess. It was almost, though, the opposite problem. It was almost extreme security, in that I always knew exactly what was right. You know really, when I look back, there were writers who could write better than me. Once a show gets going, what I've learned is it just really becomes a collaborative process, and if you embrace that it makes it just a blast.
IGNFF: How often in those early times did you come across points where your stance that you were absolutely right turned out to be wrong?
MACFARLANE:
Well, luckily, that never happened.
IGNFF: Or else there would have been a coup.
MACFARLANE:
There were a few times – it's interesting. There were days when I would fight for a joke that was a pure animation joke, where you couldn't see what – it was one of those situations where I was like, "Just let me do this in the editing bay, and it'll be funny," where it wasn't necessarily funny on paper, but ...
IGNFF: It was a visualization issue.
MACFARLANE:
Yeah. As an animator with a knowledge of animation timing, I would occasionally be fighting for something that I was asking people to take on faith that it would work. Fortunately, thanks to my RISD training and how helpful that place was, most of the time those kind of situations, the jokes turned out to work. There were a few that blew up in my face, so ...
IGNFF: Those were days that the tears ran.
MACFARLANE:
Right.
Continue on to the third installment of Ken's conversation with Seth MacFarlane – in which MacFarlane discusses pitching Family Guy to Fox, initial casting for Brian, the hardest voices to do, the recasting of Meg, and more. [This is the third installment of Ken's conversation with Seth MacFarlane. To access previous pages, use the above navigation links.]
IGNFF: Backtracking just a little bit, am I correct in understanding that Family Guy was actually pitched at the same time as King of the Hill?
MACFARLANE:
It was, actually, yeah. Yeah, it was pitched. It didn't get bought until after King of the Hill had become a hit and their appetite was whetted for new animation projects.
IGNFF: And you were also associated with Mad TV at the time?
MACFARLANE:
Yeah, that's right. Family Guy was supposed to be a series of shorts on Mad TV, in the way that The Simpsons began on Tracey Ullman. It just came down to a budgetary thing. They didn't really have the budget to do any kind of animation at that point.
IGNFF: What was your initial assessment of pitching to Fox?
MACFARLANE:
I viewed Fox in the way that I had viewed Disney in high school. That was the place you wanted to be for prime-time animation. And I actually think that's still the case. Really, they're the only place that has been able to successfully launch a prime-time animated show. It's to their credit that they've done it a few times.
IGNFF: Whether they stand behind it is a different issue.
MACFARLANE:
Right, whether they stand behind it is a different issue. But, you know, Family Guy – we went three years. King of the Hill is going into eight, and The Simpsons, I think, is in their 27th season.
IGNFF: Or you could be Futurama.
MACFARLANE:
Right, right. You know, at the time, it was where I wanted to be. I loved The Simpsons. It had sort of laid the groundwork, sort of paved the way for subsequent animated shows. They sort of established the new method of doing primetime animation. I was very excited about pitching to Fox, and everyone that I dealt with there just seemed really cool.
IGNFF: How did you pitch? What was the initial pitch for the show?
MACFARLANE:
Initially, I was introduced to Leslie Collins and Mike Darnell, who ran the alternative comedy department. I was actually introduced to them through a development executive at Hanna-Barbera, who was trying to get Hanna-Barbera back into the prime-time business, at that time. I was still working at Hanna-Barbera, and I had this idea for Family Guy, and I had this script and some character designs and everything. So he took me in to meet these people, and at the time, they just weren't – they had just bought King of the Hill, and they didn't know how it was going to do. So it didn't go at that time. It just kind of sat on a shelf. About a year later, I called Fox, just for the hell of it, to find out what the story was. I spoke to Leslie, who I had met in the first meeting, and she said, "You know what, why don't you come in? We're thinking we might want some new animation." When I went in, they gave me this very, very strange proposal. They said, "If you can do a pilot for us, for like $50,000," and obviously it costs close to a million dollars to do a half-hour episode of an animated show for prime time, they said, "If you can do this for $50,000, we'll give you a shot at a series." They really liked the characters... they really loved Stewie. Obviously, I said, "Yeah, I'll do it." Not knowing whether I could or not. Once again, that was where RISD once again paid back the tuition money. I spent six months animating like crazy at home, and by the end of six months had a very, very simply, crudely animated film – with just enough to get the tone of the show across – that I presented to them. They loved it. They held onto it for a couple weeks or so, and I didn't know what was going to happen. One morning I got a call at about 7:00 A.M. from my mother, ironically, because she had read online in the trades that they had picked up 13 episodes of Family Guy. It's funny, because Variety and The Hollywood Reporter always seem to have the story before anyone else.
IGNFF: Including the participants.
MACFARLANE:
Exactly, yeah. So it was cool. That was how I found out. It was pretty exciting.
IGNFF: Well what were the differences between the pilot and the final show? Because I know there were some differences.
MACFARLANE:
We had character designers who took my character designs and kind of streamlined them, sort of smoothed out the edges and sort of broke them down into shapes that could be communicated to a number of different artists, so they would all draw the characters at the same time. There wasn't a whole lot of difference between the pilot presentation and the pilot episode of Family Guy. The primary changes were in writing, actually. That was where they had sort of beefed it up a little bit, as far as the story was concerned and as far as emotional drive and that kind of thing, that at the time I really didn't know a whole lot about. That was really the only change. I mean, it was really almost exactly the same script. It was just kind of reanimated to fit with the way the rest of the series was going to look.
IGNFF: In assembling the show, was it always your intention to play most of the characters?
MACFARLANE:
You know, I guess it was. I had done voices since I was a kid. I'd done impressions and that type of thing, and I really sort of had the thought that by doing voices for these characters, that it would enable me – from a direction standpoint – to act them out on paper exactly as I had in my head, so it would all come from the same sort of tone. That was actually a valuable sort of advantage to have, to be able to do that. But yeah, you know, when I had designed the characters and conceived them, it really started in a lot of cases with voices. You know, Stewie's voice came before the design, and I did the design of the character based on what I thought the voice looked like.
IGNFF: For a lover of musicals to use Rex Harrison is not very surprising...
MACFARLANE:
Exactly, exactly. Henry Higgins. I think Stewie does a number of – there's a few instances where he does songs from that show in the series.
IGNFF: Was there any hesitation on Fox's part to essentially turn over three of the lead roles to you?
MACFARLANE:
Amazingly enough, there wasn't. It's interesting. I think it was because it wasn't like I was going in saying, "Look, trust me, I can do this." I did have a pilot presentation that I had done, that they had screened a number of places. They had screened for advertisers and it got a lot of laughs. I think they just figured, "You know what, let's not screw with something that's working. If he wants to do the voices, let him do the voices." We did audition Brian, just for the hell of it. I can't remember why, but we did audition that character and we were looking. There were actually some cool people – at one point, William H. Macy auditioned for Brian.
IGNFF: That would have been interesting.
MACFARLANE:
That would have been interesting, yeah. But once again, it came back – the way you do animation auditions is you just bring in five tapes and play them for the network executives, and you narrow it down to like the five that you like. You don't tell them who they are, and they just listen to the voices and they sort of go off of that. We put my original Brian in there with the batch, and that was the one that they chose. Once again, I think it was because of the presentation. It was the fact that they had heard Brian that way in the initial pilot, and at that point they were used to hearing him that way. I think they just didn't want to mess with it.
IGNFF: It's not like the voices sound similar anyway.
MACFARLANE:
Yeah, luckily, doing things like standup helped. Even the amount of local theater that I had done when I was younger probably didn't hurt. But really, even in that capacity, I felt like it was hugely valuable training. By that second season, I felt like I knew exactly what to do.
IGNFF: Was there one voice more so than any of the others that you slipped into more easily?
MACFARLANE:
You know what's strange? Tom Tucker, the news guy, was always the easiest character of all to do for some reason. I guess it was because everything is delivered in that newsy, this is all very formal, and everything is 100 percent under control, and this is what's going on. He was sort of modeled after the cigarette spokesman from the 1940s commercials.
IGNFF: It's surprising you never had Tom do an ad.
MACFARLANE:
I know, I know. Well, you know – that was also a little bit of quagmire territory, also. He was also a kind of dated character.
IGNFF: It's amazing how many of the characters are representatives of certain eras – thrown into a blender.
MACFARLANE:
Yeah, yeah. Exactly. I suppose that's true.
IGNFF: Which character was the hardest to do?
MACFARLANE:
Stewie was definitely – that took the most energy. I mean, both Stewie and Peter were high energy characters. Just as far as sheer exhaustion, Stewie was definitely at the top of the list. I was usually red in the face after I got done with Stewie scenes.
IGNFF: How difficult was it adding the accent on top of the energy?
MACFARLANE:
Oddly enough, that was never a problem. I've actually always been able to do dialects. I had watched My Fair Lady so many times to really nail down that impression. That, oddly enough, was something that just became – I just wasn't even thinking about it. It just happened. It's interesting, Brian – as far as straight lines, as far as scenes where a character actually had to do a line that was not a funny line, that was more of an emotional line – ironically, Brian was the hardest. Because, there was no real ...
IGNFF: Range?
MACFARLANE:
Well, it's more that there was no silly voice to hide behind. You know, Brian's voice is slightly altered, but essentially my own voice. To have to do a heart moment, as we called them, completely straight was something that was arguably one of the most difficult aspects of the voiceover end of things.
IGNFF: But they were quite effective.
MACFARLANE:
Yeah, I got the hang of it after a little while.
IGNFF: I'm surprised – with My Fair Lady being such an influence – that you never did the sort of Gilligan's Island/Hamlet, Family Guy does My Fair Lady episode...
MACFARLANE:
There's an episode at the end of our second season where a British family moves to town and takes over the Drunken Clam Bar. The guy has a daughter whose name is Eliza, who speaks in this co*ckney accent and Stewie is just so disgusted by her dialect that he takes it upon himself to teach her to speak like a lady. We did make a direct reference to it at that point. There was another episode where Stewie sings "I've Grown Accustomed to Her Face," which is the song that Henry Higgins sings at the end of the show when he's pining over the fact that Eliza is gone. We did it in the context in which Lois runs for school board, and so she's never home and Stewie misses her. He sings "I've Grown Accustomed to Her Face" while he's looking through a photo album of pictures of him trying to kill her.
IGNFF: And, strangely enough, the age difference was still the same.
MACFARLANE:
Yeah, exactly! Exactly! No difference.
IGNFF: I guess another casting coup would be Alex Borstein.
MACFARLANE:
Yes, yes, absolutely. That whole cast – we just, once again, really lucked out. She did probably 75% of our female voices. I mean, she was just phenomenal. Again, it was totally accidental. She was on Mad TV, and she had their breakout character at the time, Miss Swan. Leslie Collins, the executive who had commissioned the presentation – this was when I was still doing the homemade version – I didn't really know any female actors that were right for this. I didn't really know any to begin with, who I could say, "Hey, would you do this for next to no money?" So she talked to Alex at Mad TV, and she said, "Listen, there's this pilot that we're doing. Would you be interested in doing it?" And she said, "Yes." It was just by sheer luck. It's just an amazing good fortune, because she just turned out to be so unbelievable. She ended up writing for the show. There was an episode – she wrote on a lot of episodes, but there was one in particular in the third season, where Lois and Meg go on spring break. That was a story that Alex had written. It was so great having her in the writer's room, too, because you have a bunch of guys and it's harder for us to write female characters than it is to write males. She really brought that character into a whole new dimension that I really don't think has been done as effectively on any other prime-time animated show. I would place Lois Griffin above Marge Simpson any day of the week. That may be sacrilege, but that's how highly I think of what Alex did for that show. She's just really, really phenomenal.
IGNFF: I think there's just a range of emotions there that you don't often see, as you said, out of Marge Simpson.
MACFARLANE:
Yeah. She had, like, this other side, too. She had kind of this mischievous side of Lois. She had smoked pot, she had done some bad stuff.
IGNFF: Sometimes a little more than smoked pot...
MACFARLANE:
Exactly.
IGNFF: She had quite a sex history, if I remember correctly.
MACFARLANE:
Yes, yes. We established that she slept with Gene Simmons at one point.
IGNFF: And yet did not know KISS.
MACFARLANE:
Did not know KISS.
IGNFF: What was the reason behind the recasting of Meg?
MACFARLANE:
You know, it was just purely a contractual thing. Lacey Chabert, I think there was a mistake in her contract, and I guess she had not intended to be involved for, like, the full run of the show. I don't even remember. To be honest, I don't really, to this day, know what it was. It was nothing – there was no tension or anything. She wanted to go, and she was very cool about it. We obviously don't want to keep anyone there who doesn't want to be there. So, you know, it was early on enough in the show that it wasn't a huge – that happens from time to time, you've got to replace a voice actor. Fortunately, what Mila brought to it, Mila Kunis, was in a lot of ways, I thought, almost more right for the character. I say that Lacey did a phenomenal job, but there was something about Mila – something very natural about Mila. She was 15 when she started, so you were listening to a 15-year-old. Which oftentimes with animation they'll have adult actors doing the voices of teenagers and they always sound like Saturday morning voices. They sound, oftentimes, very forced. Mila, really, you were listening to a teenager. She had a very natural quality to Meg that really made what we did with that character kind of really work. There's was another thing that I remember when Mila came in to audition, there was this line that she read – I can't remember what it was, it's something where Meg calls Pete an idiot – she read it, it just made us all laugh and it sort of made us think, "Well, wait a minute." We hadn't been able to figure out really who Meg was, prior to that. We were thinking maybe she is – the character's a loser, but maybe this is another aspect of her character that she's just kind of blunt with her parents, you know, that she'll call her dad an idiot, which he most certainly is. So when Mila did that part, Meg definitely got a little more bite to her.
IGNFF: The character definitely blossomed, and as you said, a lot of comparisons were made in that first season to Meg being basically a Lisa Simpson redo – which was greatly dispelled in seasons two and three.
Right. Yeah, yeah. I think that was to be expected. There were a lot of comparisons to The Simpsons early on that I think we effectively emerged from.
IGNFF: Was it a conscious thing to try and move away from The Simpsons, or was it always "We're doing our own thing and eventually people will figure it out..."?
MACFARLANE:
The only time that would come up would be if somebody came up with an idea for a story and The Simpsons had already done it, then we would either try to come up with a different angle or just come up with a new story that they hadn't done. But really, you know, for the most part, it was we were just kind of doing what we did and eventually the show came into its own.
IGNFF: Was there any point where Fox's support of the show faltered? I know there were some issues at the end of the first season.
MACFARLANE:
Yeah, that was actually, ironically, not even an issue of lack of support. It was an issue of overconfidence. They felt that because the show was doing so well on Sunday nights after The Simpsons, that after seven episodes it could do well anywhere. Obviously, that wasn't the case. I mean, people didn't know – no one really knew that we had moved to Thursdays, and plus we were just getting hammered by Friends, by wrestling, by all these other shows. Again, it was not a lack of support for the show, it was just an overconfidence in the show's ability to stand on its own.
IGNFF: It seemed like a mistake that Fox always makes.
MACFARLANE:
Yeah, yeah. Really. I think that's a mistake that continues to be made. But really, Family Guy was probably the extreme example. We were just bounced around all over the place. On the other side of the coin is that support. There are a lot of shows that – by episode eight of the first season, we had already taken our first ratings hit. And that was purely because of the move, granted, but nonetheless a network is a business. If something doesn't recover, they'll cancel it anyway – whether it's their booboo or not. Geez, I just f***ing said, "Booboo." What the hell? I've never said that before in my life. But really, to their credit, despite all the scheduling problems, the fact that they did stick with it after that to up to 50 episodes, as much as they're maligned by fans for mis-scheduling us, they really did like the show, and there was a lot of support for the show. I think that's why we did last as long as we did, where I think a lot of shows wouldn't, that didn't have internal support. So, really, as far as individuals over there, everyone really did support the show substantially and they fought to keep it on as long as possible.
Continue on to the fourth installment of Ken's conversation with Seth MacFarlane – in which MacFarlane discusses Family Guy's scheduling shuffle, dealing with the censors, what didn't make it onto the DVD box set, and more. [This is the fourth installment of Ken's conversation with Seth MacFarlane. To access previous pages, use the above navigation links.]
IGNFF: It was a show that gained a reputation as the show that wouldn't die. It always was popping up somewhere at sometime. It was just a matter of finding where it was.
MACFARLANE:
Yeah, yeah. And I think really that was Fox trying to figure out, "Where can we put this show that we all really like, and that is struggling? We all believe in it, where can put it?"
IGNFF: It surprised me they never tried Sundays.
MACFARLANE:
The problem was, I think, that Malcolm in the Middle was such a hit for them and they had no intention of moving that from where it was. My guess is they saw what happened with Family Guy when they moved that show and they figured, "Well, we're not going to make mistake again. We're going to let Malcolm build its audience." In that sense, I don't think that was ever an option, to go back to Sundays. But, it would have been nice. We all sort of felt that we were a better fit with The Simpsons than anybody.
IGNFF: It's a shame the show didn't last an additional year, post-X-Files, when that whole hour opened up.
MACFARLANE:
Yeah, it would have made sense, actually. It would have been nice.
IGNFF: We would have been spared Oliver Beene.
MACFARLANE:
What's your real opinion?
IGNFF: Were there ever any content issues with Fox – as far as censorship?
MACFARLANE:
Yeah, there was really nothing but content issues. I mean, what really helped us was we did have a good relationship with standards and practices, who are the censors. A lot of the stuff that we got away with – as far as legal, as far as making fun of other shows, as far as languages and sex jokes – really came as a result of the fact that there were terrific people. They were really nice, cool people who were running those departments, and they really took into account, "This is a really funny joke, let's find a way to make it work. Yeah, we'll probably get yelled at, but let's try it." Which was really cool. I think that's the reason the show was able to be as edgy as it was. There were a few instances where there were big fights over something. We did this one parody. I don't know if you remember the DeBeers diamond commercials with the silhouette, the shadow of the man putting the diamond ring on the shadow of the woman's finger...
IGNFF: The going down commercial...
MACFARLANE:
Right, right. The one we did, obviously, was he puts the ring on her finger and she goes down below frame, presumably to fella*te him. There was a huge, huge argument over how far down she can go. Literally, I remember standing there one morning in the editing bay with the head of standards and practices – literally, frame by frame we were bargaining ... At the end of the day, I always say this, because I think it's important for the fans to know that the reason that that show was as outlandish as it was, is because we were allowed to be so by our friends in standards and legal, who really, really took a lot of heat for it on our behalf.
IGNFF: Were there any battles that you lost that you regret losing?
MACFARLANE:
Boy. You know what? That's a good question. There probably were. I can't think of any offhand.
IGNFF: Any that made it completely to finished product?
MACFARLANE:
Well, you know, there was one actually that I really liked that didn't make it. This was a standards issue. Oftentimes, a lot of our problems come because of religion. Anything that makes fun of religion, they get really nervous about. We did one where it was the Last Supper, and they've all got their goblets and Jesus says, "Drink this for this is my blood ..." And basically, everybody just spits it out in disgust.
IGNFF: Did that make it to final animation?
MACFARLANE:
It made it to final animation, it never made it to air. We fought so hard for it, and they just said no.
IGNFF: One would think that would be the perfect thing to put on a DVD.
MACFARLANE:
Yes.
IGNFF: And yet, the DVDs are so incredibly disappointing.
MACFARLANE:
You know, that's where, ironically, the legal department of home video seemed to be much more conservative than the television people. I sent them a whole bunch of stuff and they wouldn't clear any of it. But the good news is that they'll be on the second set. I guess we somehow managed to get through to them, that there will be 15 minutes of deleted scenes on the second release.
IGNFF: I guess they saw the sales figures for the first set.
MACFARLANE:
It was very surprising, because a lot of our commentaries, you'll notice big gaps. There was a lot of stuff that was pulled out, that they felt was too offensive. It was surprising, because I would think that on a DVD, there's no advertisers to please – you're going straight to the fans.
IGNFF: And they even have a huge disclaimer.
MACFARLANE:
Yeah, yeah. You've got me. That one's a head-scratcher to me.
IGNFF: Were there commentaries recorded for every episode?
MACFARLANE:
Yeah.
IGNFF: Because it seems like there are entire tracks missing. There's references made back ...
MACFARLANE:
Yep, we did every show and that was how much got deleted ... I disavow all responsibility – they edited us.
IGNFF: I guess it's better than what they got in the U.K., which was nothing.
MACFARLANE:
You know, regardless, the DVDs have been just selling. They're calling me and telling me that they can't keep them on the shelves.
IGNFF: What was the issue about the Osama Bin Laden joke, which made it to air originally, was excised from the re-air, and was excised from the disc?
MACFARLANE:
Yeah, again, that was one that the more I field this question, the more I think it should have been on. I was kind of neutral. They said, "Listen, we think we might cut this out," and I said, "Well, I don't know."
IGNFF: Well, you also have personal experiences ...
MACFARLANE:
Yeah, my argument was, "Well, look. I missed that flight by 10 minutes and I'm okay with putting it on." I don't know. There were two arguments. There was the argument that, well, you know, it's an interesting piece of entertainment history and it was made two years before this happened, which I tend to agree with. It's just – take it for what it is.
IGNFF: Beside the wound being fresh, there's really no way you can justify one and not excising one like the Hitler show.
MACFARLANE:
Exactly, exactly. I think that's the only reason. Like you say, the wound is still fresh. The argument against it was, "Well, you know, people are going to be watching this and it's just going to get a gasp and it's going to bring the whole show down." I don't think that would happen. I think people are smart enough to know ...
IGNFF: To realize the context and the fact that it was a joke. You see jokes – what was it, the dancing Osamas on Jay Leno? Which was pretty soon after that happened anyway.
MACFARLANE:
Right. Yup. You know, it's a tough one.
IGNFF: Was your view of that joke different after the events happened, that you were so closely involved in?
MACFARLANE:
No, no. That episode re-aired, or was supposed to re-air not too long after September 11th. In that context, I fully supported them cutting that out. That would just be suicide to air that, especially for people who hadn't seen the first airing and didn't know. They would think that we made it after September 11th, and that would have just been disastrous. That I did support. I do think it should have been on the DVD.
IGNFF: Is there a chance it'll be on the second set?
MACFARLANE:
It's possible, just kind of in and of itself, I suppose.
IGNFF: It is a standalone, because it's been floating around on the Net for the last two years.
MACFARLANE:
That, at least, is good that it's out there for people who want to – the fact that it's not there doesn't hurt the episode itself.
IGNFF: It's weird, the sort of double standard.
MACFARLANE:
Well, that's what the entertainment industry is all about. One big double standard.
IGNFF: What was the other deleted scene – wasn't the Mister Rogers scene deleted for the re-air?
MACFARLANE:
That was, yeah. That's on the DVD obviously, but that one, that was a ridiculous deletion. That one I did not agree with. It was because of one of the school shootings and I can't remember which one, but there was yet another elementary school shooting and it had happened a few weeks ago and they felt that Stewie firing at Mister Rogers with a laser gun ...
IGNFF: With an obvious laser gun...
MACFARLANE:
Yeah, yeah. That's something that was just such a stretch. I mean, that was kind of absurd.
IGNFF: It just shows that we have to keep laser guns out of schools.
MACFARLANE:
Exactly, exactly. We can give them real guns, because we have to protect our Constitutional right to shoot each other, but ...
IGNFF: Guns are fine, but these laser guns...
MACFARLANE:
These laser guns, they're just no good.
IGNFF: And they destroyed Make Believe.
MACFARLANE:
They did. Destroyed the Neighborhood of Make Believe.
IGNFF: But now, as you say, that was restored for the DVD. It's just odd how these decisions are made or not made, as the case may be. What was deleted – 15 minutes, you said, that you submitted?
MACFARLANE:
About 15 minutes, yeah.
IGNFF: What were the majority of the scenes? Were they trims?
MACFARLANE:
I went through a bunch of tapes and picked out scenes that sort of stand on their own, like you don't really have to know the rest of the story. Sort of like free-standing gags that you can watch and they sort of work on their own as a string of scene. They're all animatics, actually, which should be kind of interesting for fans. They're all like the early, first pass that we do, where it's essentially a video storyboard – which, you know, oftentimes you don't get to see.
IGNFF: Hopefully we'll have full commentaries next go around. Has there been any discussion about that?
MACFARLANE:
Actually, we did not do commentaries on the deleted scenes, and there's some interesting stuff. Those were put in fairly recently. I suppose we could go back in and put those in there ...
IGNFF: Well, that's what – 15 minutes for everyone to sit down?
MACFARLANE:
Yeah, yeah.
IGNFF: Was the Osama Bin Laden scene submitted with that?
MACFARLANE:
You know, it wasn't, and I didn't even think to bring it up. Mainly because every time I've brought it up in the past they had said they're just not willing to put this on there. It's too bad. At one point I had suggested maybe why don't you put it on there with like ...
IGNFF: A bumper or something?
MACFARLANE:
A disclaimer. I'm even happy to do like an audio thing beforehand, just to say, "This was made prior to September 11th."
IGNFF: Just so it's not only available floating out there as an "illegal clip" on the Net...
MACFARLANE:
Yeah.
IGNFF: You would think they would want the sets to be complete so they didn't have fans whining about it for years on end.
MACFARLANE:
I know, I know. It's interesting. I don't know, maybe... who knows? Maybe that's an excuse to release a special edition Family Guy direct DVD set.
IGNFF: The Unexpurgated Family Guy.
MACFARLANE:
The Director's Cut – which is exactly the same as everything else, but it just has that scene back in.
IGNFF: Fox loves to please.
MACFARLANE:
Pay another 45 bucks.
IGNFF: As the end of the third season approached, did you all know that it was going to be the end, or was there still hopes of a renewal at that time?
MACFARLANE:
To be honest, we actually thought that we were going to go to a fourth season. We got a six-script order, which means we're supposed to write six additional scripts on the assumption that we would get picked up. Because of that, and the money they pay you for those scripts, we thought, "Oh, well, this is a good sign. We'll go to a fourth season." I think the economy was at the point ... we just didn't have a shot.
IGNFF: The writing was on the wall.
MACFARLANE:
The writing was on the wall.
IGNFF: But those six scripts are completed?
MACFARLANE:
Those six scripts are completed. Actually, that's kind of an interesting thing. God knows what the venue would be to release those. I suppose they could be released onto the Internet. But they do exist.
IGNFF: One would think that with Cartoon Network's big Adult Swim push – and they did resurrect Home Movies...
MACFARLANE:
Most likely what would happen, I think, would be that if Family Guy were to return, my guess it would be in the form of – because these DVDs have done so well – it would be in the form of a direct-to-video feature property. And perhaps a series of them. That, to me, would be the most likely reincarnation of the show.
IGNFF: Or you could just do After Family Guy, with Stewie and Brian working in a Veteran's hospital.
MACFARLANE:
Exactly. After M*A*S*H. Who knows? They're animated characters, so they don't age.
Continue on to the final installment of Ken's conversation with Seth MacFarlane – in which MacFarlane discusses the possibilities for resurrecting Family Guy, the popularity of Stewie, his upcoming projects, and more. [This is the fifth installment of Ken's conversation with Seth MacFarlane. To access previous pages, use the above navigation links.]
IGNFF: Have there been any discussions of an afterlife or resurrection?
MACFARLANE:
There've been several discussions of several different venues. Enough that I sort of get the impression that those characters will be back in some form or other.
IGNFF: We both know it would take millions of dollars to lure Seth Green back.
MACFARLANE:
Yeah. Actually, probably not. He's a guy who's always been very dedicated to the show, and – once again – like Alex, just an unbelievable talent. He did so many voices. I don't know if people know, but he did Neil Goldman, the nerdy kid that likes Meg.
IGNFF: Oh really?
MACFARLANE:
Yeah, that was Seth Green.
IGNFF: Well, the way you guys beat up on him during the audio commentaries ...
MACFARLANE:
Seth is a great guy, and he's somebody who really is very successful now. The great thing about him is it's never about money, it's about what he wants to do. It's about what projects he likes and those are the projects that he does. So hopefully, unless he becomes a money-grubber between now and then, we'll be able to get him back.
IGNFF: Him becoming money-grubbing would take a complete personality shift – but Hollywood has done stranger things to people. How quickly could you reconstitute the show if the money or the deal came through?
MACFARLANE:
You know, probably fairly quickly. The designs exist, the backgrounds exist. It's all there. It's not a matter of starting from scratch. My guess is it probably will not return as a television series. I could be wrong – but I could not imagine it, even if the DVD sold more copies than any other release in the history of the medium. Once a network sort of makes its decision about this kind of thing, they don't really waver from it.
IGNFF: But again, as we've seen, Cartoon Network has definitely been pushing in that direction.
MACFARLANE:
Yeah, yeah. They have. The thing about cable that's difficult is that the show is so expensive to produce. I mean, as animated shows go, it's very costly – and we would really have to cut the budget in half, and we don't really know how that would affect the show. There's no telling. We may take a stab at it at some point, but who knows.
IGNFF: Is it a show that could be reduced down to seven-minute vignettes?
MACFARLANE:
It could. From my standpoint, just career-wise, I just don't know if it would be worth it. Again, I think the most likely incarnation is these DVDs are selling through the roof. They're just doing better than anyone expected. So my guess is if anything new happens, it'll be in that medium.
IGNFF: Have there been any thoughts to release a CD?
MACFARLANE:
There have been, yeah. We had a thought at one point doing like a Stewie/Brian, Hope/Crosby style release. It's so hard to sell anything in that business that's not rock or hip-hop or whatever.
IGNFF: The Simpsons releases sold well.
MACFARLANE:
That was also, I think – god, that was 10, 15 years ago at this point. But who knows? It would be nice. It's interesting. I have CDs of all the orchestra tracks from the series, and they're just, I think – you get a little bit of a sense on the DVD that you didn't before, just because of sound quality, but it was about a 35-piece orchestra that we used for every single episode. You can really hear it on the DVDs, if you listen to that opening overture in "Road to Rhode Island" – that's a big band. That was all recorded on the Newman stage at Fox, where they did Star Wars, they did The Sound of Music... just all these great scores.
IGNFF: There's so much great music. I'm surprised how many people don't think of Family Guy as a musical show, when you've done probably a dozen songs, at least...
MACFARLANE:
Actually, we won the Emmy for Best Song this past year, for "You've Got a Lot to See," which Brian sings to the old woman that he does community service for in the third season episode that we did.
IGNFF: Even if it was a special, limited-run project, it would probably sell like hotcakes, if a CD was actually done. I can't believe I said, "Sell like hotcakes." You said, "Booboo," I said, "Hotcakes." What about action figures?
MACFARLANE:
Yeah, there were some dolls, that were prototypes, that were in limited release. You could get them at, like, Spencer's Gifts – those types of places.
IGNFF: Those are quite disturbing.
MACFARLANE:
Yeah. There was never really a second draft. It was one of those things where they showed us the prototypes and we said, "Oh yeah, those are really cool." We were going to give notes and just maybe little fixes to make them look more like the characters, and before we know it they're out already in stores. You know – better than nothing.
IGNFF: That and the scale issue with Stewie, which was rather frightening. Would make for a great episode, though...
MACFARLANE:
Yeah, yeah.
IGNFF: Attack of the Six-Foot Stewie.
MACFARLANE:
Yeah.
IGNFF: Have there been any discussions with toy licensees, as far as licensing the characters?
MACFARLANE:
Yeah, well, you're preaching to the choir on that one. I think it's just an issue that the show is just not on the air anymore. It's so weird. It almost seems like Family Guy kind of got the shaft with all that stuff. They never did any of that stuff. It seemed like everybody put out a CD but us, you know. I don't really know what went wrong. But yeah, who knows. There's a number of ways – my hunch is that this DVD is just selling so well that they're going to want to find a way to make some sort of money of off it.
IGNFF: How influential are you in the licensing process?
MACFARLANE:
They showed me things and they would say, "Are you cool with this?" They would run stuff by me. Early on, when we first started, they just had a really terrific merchandising department, and it all of a sudden just kind of went away. I think it was when the show was first pulled of the air, for that big gap, that the retailers were like, "Wait a minute. We just bought all this stuff from you and now the show's not on?" So I think that didn't help. But really, they had this great line of products that were set to go that they showed us the prototypes for. These clothing lines that incorporated Stewie and Brian, there was this Brian martini shaker, there were the dolls – just a lot of cool stuff that I guess made it into the stores on a limited level, but I think that's about it.
IGNFF: Was it surprising to you that Brian and Stewie were the breakout characters of the show?
MACFARLANE:
It was surprising to me that Stewie was. When I created the show, Stewie was sort of the afterthought – he was sort of the last of the bunch to be created. I just didn't expect him – it was just something that I thought would be funny, and I didn't expect him to be as popular as he was. The whole Stewie-Brian relationship really came about – that's where, really, the collaborative process once you've started a series becomes just invaluable, because that was really something that the other writers pointed out. "Hey, these two seems to have a sort of chemistry and it might be good to exploit that, write to that and make them kind of adversaries." That was something that really emerged after the series started. That was not something that even occurred to me when we began.
IGNFF: Whose idea was it for the Hope-Crosby parody?
MACFARLANE:
That was mine. I loved those movies. I've always loved Bob Hope, I loved Bing Crosby. My cultural tastes are a bit dated. That song that they sang is obviously "Road to Morocco" from the 1941 movie. We did a couple of those, and those were fun shows to do.
IGNFF: Was that the "European Road Show"?
MACFARLANE:
Right.
IGNFF: Was that at one time called "Road to Baghdad"?
MACFARLANE:
The original was called Road to Morocco, and that was Hope and Crosby. That was like their second road movie, I believe.
IGNFF: What was the original episode title?
MACFARLANE:
The original episode title was "Road to Rhode Island."
IGNFF: The one you did in season three?
MACFARLANE:
That was "Road to Europe."
IGNFF: Someone had mentioned that the original title for that was "Road to Baghdad."
MACFARLANE:
Oh really? That sounds like an Internet rumor.
IGNFF: Maybe because of the Arab aspects to it.
MACFARLANE:
Yeah, because they spend all that time in the Middle East.
IGNFF: That could be the direct-to-video thing – an expansion of a big "Road to" movie.
MACFARLANE:
We've kind of given that some thought, if we were to do something like that. That would probably be the direction we'd take.
IGNFF: I'm still waiting for that Stewie action figure, though.
MACFARLANE:
Hopefully at some point.
IGNFF: All these people out there having to console themselves with Barry Ween merchandise. Was that a controversy that ever got back to you, because I know Judd Winick mentions it all the time...
MACFARLANE:
What was it specifically?
IGNFF: That it's amazing how similar Stewie looks to Winick's Barry Ween character – he's a genius and a child as well, with a football-shaped head.
MACFARLANE:
I don't even know what ...
IGNFF: Basically a chunky version of Stewie is what it looks like – the same football shaped head, a couple of hairs on top...
MACFARLANE:
Really? I haven't even heard of those things.
IGNFF: Yeah, you can check it out on the Net. So yeah, he's been going around conventions saying, "Yes, it's rather ironic that this character appears after my Barry Ween character."
MACFARLANE:
Barry Ween?
IGNFF: Yes, W-E-E-N.
MACFARLANE:
Oh, so he thinks we ripped off Stewie.
IGNFF: He's been very subtle about saying it, but it's the impression I get...
MACFARLANE:
There was another guy, who did like an underground comic strip, that he claimed ...
IGNFF: I think it's the same guy. It's Judd Winick, who was on The Real World.
MACFARLANE:
It's that guy?!
IGNFF: Yes.
MACFARLANE:
Really? Wow. Does Puck have any problems with Brian?
IGNFF: You know, at this point, he probably does.
MACFARLANE:
Oh for god's sake. That's hilarious. I think this is a different guy, but there was another cartoonist who had a problem with – I think it was... the character, I believe, was Jimmy Corrigan, Boy Genius. It was this comic strip about the smartest kid in the world. He claimed that the Stewie design was possibly – I'll put this delicately – influenced by his own design. And I saw a copy of the strip, and it's amazing. It was so similar. He had like the same shape head, he had like the same hairs on top. I had never seen it before, but it was actually pretty shocking. I can see how he would reach that conclusion. But yeah, I didn't know about the Judd – Winnipeg?
IGNFF: Winick.
MACFARLANE:
That's the first I've heard of that.
IGNFF: I caught one of his lectures a few months back, and it was quite interesting to hear his description of it.
MACFARLANE:
Tell him to be quiet.
IGNFF: I'll just buy him a DVD set.
MACFARLANE:
Tell him to move on with his life – the show's off the air.
IGNFF: Yeah, where's The Barry Ween Show, Judd?
MACFARLANE:
Oh boy.
IGNFF: So what was your transition like out of The Family Guy? For a major part of your life and career to end like that ...
MACFARLANE:
Ironically, it was the first vacation I'd had in about four years, so it was kind of nice to be able to just kind of sit back and not have to work 100 hours a week for a while. But, you know, I've moved on to other projects. I have about three other projects that I'm working on at the moment. It was sad, and the only reason it wasn't completely devastating is they are animated characters and they can always return somewhere down the line. Nobody's going to get nailed, they're not going to age. It's perfect cryogenic suspension.
IGNFF: And no matter what, the show ran longer than Capital Critters.
MACFARLANE:
Yeah, that was the other thing – three years was not as long as we'd like, but it's just long enough to give it some legitimacy. You know, when you say it ran for three years, it's a respectable run. It's not great, but we didn't get canceled after the first season.
IGNFF: And it's made it out on DVD, it still has a loyal following...
MACFARLANE:
Yeah, yeah. Especially with the response the disc has gotten. Ironically, the reviews of the DVD have been better than the reviews of the series. How that's possible, I have no idea. I don't quite get that one.
IGNFF: Well now it's a nostalgia kick...
MACFARLANE:
I guess it is.
IGNFF: What was your consulting position on The Pitts?
MACFARLANE:
That was created by Mike Scully, who ran The Simpsons for a number of years. I was, and am actually, still under contract with Fox – so while I was in development, they were looking for other things that they maybe needed to put more people on. I had known Mike Scully in passing, and I just didn't know him all that well and I was kind of anxious. I had really liked the pilot, and I said, "If there is any room on The Pitts, it would be cool to go over there." It was truly just a fantastic experience. It's no wonder that The Simpsons is as funny as it is, with that guy at the helm. He is truly one of the funniest guys I've ever met in my life. That was a consulting job, it was like one day a week, but it was really great fun. Actually did a few voiceovers on The Pitts as well, which was just kind of amusing.
IGNFF: And you've also done some live action?
MACFARLANE:
Yeah, I did a little bit of live action. I did a Gilmore Girls. Odd things here and there. I did a Will & Grace voiceover that wound up on the editing floor, but I did that. Then I did a Crank Yankers.
IGNFF: Is it something that you would like to pursue more, as far as on-camera acting?
MACFARLANE:
Yeah. I haven't really had time to take that end of things seriously, but I've thought about it. I'm meeting with my theatrical agents for the first time since I've been with the agency that I'm with, just to talk about it, because Family Guy – I received an Emmy for Stewie, so I figure, "Well, you know, what the hell." Take a crack at some more of this kind of stuff.
IGNFF: When are we going to see you on Broadway?
MACFARLANE:
When they bring back Rodgers and Hammerstein.
IGNFF: You need to be the man who brings back Rodgers and Hammerstein.
MACFARLANE:
I know, I know – we'll see. One of the projects I'm working on is a musical project. There'll be plenty of tunes.
IGNFF: Television, film, animation?
MACFARLANE:
Film animation. That's about all I can tell you at the moment. That's all I'm at liberty to tell you ... I mentioned it to somebody else and I got in trouble for it.
IGNFF: I guess at this point, the big Barbara Walters question – would you say that you're content with where your career has gone?
MACFARLANE:
Yeah. Particularly now, with the sort of vindication of this release doing so well. Yeah, it would have been nice to have done more. It's so damn difficult to get a show on the air in the first place, and this was my first attempt ever, and they bought it. So I'm not complaining.
IGNFF: You almost sound like a con man, "And they bought it – suckers!"
Introduction: My name is Gregorio Kreiger, I am a tender, brainy, enthusiastic, combative, agreeable, gentle, gentle person who loves writing and wants to share my knowledge and understanding with you.
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