I actually applied at Hanna-Barbera to work on 'The Smurfs' when I got laid off for a brief period of time from Disney. I didn't get the job. That was my first introduction to Smurfs.
I was a big fan of 'The Smurfs' growing up, even though by default - my mom used to force me to watch because she was a 'Smurfs' fan.
The Smurfs 2 is a great movie. The Smurfs are tiny little creatures that everybody loves. They're like Justin Bieber - minus the part about everybody loving him.
I thought the idea of 'Smurfs' lent itself to the 3-D environment pretty well, I think, better than some of the farm animal movies that have been done before. I was a fan of the 'Smurfs' and they come with their own fan base, which I thought was nice.
In 'The Smurfs,' I was actually a live action character. So, I was a real person in that movie. But I was working with animated characters, which is very strange because they're off recording their work, and we're kind of reacting to nothing when we're doing the film.
My mom was a big 'Smurfs' fan, so she would force me to watch every Saturday morning. I had no choice in the matter. I would jump downstairs on Saturday morning, 'Hurray, cartoons!' and she would say, 'Smurfs! That's what you're watching.'
I don't know who Azazel is," he said. "Isn't he the cat from The Smurfs?" He cast about , but Isabelle just looked up and rolled her eyes at him. "Clary?" he thought Her voice came through, tinged with alarm. "What is it? What happened? Did my mom find out I'm gone?" "Not yet," he thought back. "Is Azazel the cat from The Smurfs?" There was a long pause. "That's Azrael, Simon. And no more using the magic rings for Smurf questions.
My sister pursued acting, and one day, I was like, 'Hey, I want to do acting, too' - this was just in commercials - and then one day, I got an audition for my first movie, 'Smurfs 2,' and I did it.
You've just got to have to put the work in. Put work first. Put the hours in and the time in, and do your job. And when you get a little time off, you can go out and have a little fun. But you have to make sure you get done what you need to get done first off.
Up until the time Turner Broadcasting bought Hanna-Barbera, it was essentially an independent studio whose planning cycle had to be nine months. You got a pickup in January, and you put it on the air in September. That's been the cycle.
I don't want to be the one accused of ruining the Smurfs.
I remember as a kid being really scared of the Smurfs.
I wish I had been a child when the Smurfs came on television.
I wrote on a show called Johnny Bravo when I was at Hanna-Barbera.
I started working at Hanna-Barbera in '92 on 2 Stupid Dogs.
I joke that I learned the essentials of storytelling from Hanna-Barbera, but I pretty much did. That kind of television is what enamored me as a kid, and that's what really got me hooked. You could say that's where it all began.
I had a brief theater background and loved the backstage world there's more backstage work in television, so I saw a job advertised and applied, and got it. That was back in 1977, when getting jobs was easy.