We're not the Faster-than-the-Speed-of-Light Generation anymore. We're not even the Next-New-Thing Generation. We're the Soon-to-Be-Obsolete Kids, and we've crowded in here to hide from the future and the past. We know what's up - the future looms straight ahead like a black wrought-iron gate and the past is charging after us like a badass Doberman, only this one doesn't have any letup in him.
All I need is a sheet of paper and something to write with, and then I can turn the world upside down.
When you have a young kid you can't go out much at night, so I spent a lot of time at home, watching movies and cooking dinner with my wife. It felt like what most people experience. White picket fence stuff. So there was some enjoyment of that normalcy, but I have to admit that part of me missed the chaos of touring. I think it's about balance.
As a kid, I kind of spent my life being amazed by being tricked. I love being tricked. I still love it today.
~There are moments when I feel like I have a looong road ahead of me, with college and dating and driving and all of that. But then I realize it just means that I have so much time left to enjoy my kids. And it really does go by so quickly. ~
My routine is really based around my kids, and I try not to hold myself to a schedule, because it is always changing. What has been the most influential thing to help me keep my center is to set priorities and stick to them.
It's just that the nature of being a director is being incredibly overwhelmed with getting the shots right, dealing with the locations, and then there's a two-year-old in the scene, and all that stuff - you know, there's a lot of kids in scenes.
All kinds of violence on the TV. You're not supposed to watch violence on the TV. Children, they can't watch it 'cause they're afraid maybe the kids will copy something they see on the TV. I can't even get a funny cartoon anymore because some 12-year-old somewhere watched a particularly violent episode of the Road Runner-Coyote show, and the next day, they found him at the bottom of a canyon, two giant springs strapped to his feet.
I think that's pretty crucial for it to succeed and be something more than just something you put your kid in front of and turn on the DVD. We wouldn't have got involved if it were just for little kids. We wanted to write something that works on both levels.
The only movies I saw till I was 17 were made by Disney. My parents had this thing. Disney was like, you know, "Ford is a good car. Disney makes good movies that are good for kids and safe. "
I would prefer the teacher to focus on teaching and have a security officer worry about keeping the kids safe.
Along the way, about certain things, you realize, "I don't know anything about this. " You think, "Is this going to sound ridiculous?" So I pestered more than a hundred different people over the course of the book. And when I finished the book I gave it to six or seven trusted readers, who are always the same, but I also gave it to a brother of mine who's a doctor and I asked him to read it, and he was very helpful. It's good to have a group of trusted readers. As my kids have grown up, they've joined this group.
Even one kid going hungry in America is one too many. How can we stand by when the reality is that there are more than 12 million underfed children in the U. S. ? We can make a difference.
I get up in front of a bunch of kids and say 'Hey, I'm gonna tell you a new story. Who wants to be in a new story?' Well some kid always sticks up their hand and that gives me a name, but it doesn't give me a story. I just say whatever comes to my mind and usually it's not that good. Every once in a while, however, I say something that turns into a really good story.
You do your job every day. When things go right, there's never any coverage. But when certain things happen, boy, the world descends on you and they plug you into a narrative that has been established that you're either a pig, you're a racist, you're a hater, and that's why you joined the cops and so forth. The good work you do - it's kind of like the CIA, every success nobody can ever know. You guys, not that your work is clandestine, but it's not news when you save a kid.
I am thrilled - I can't stress that enough - thrilled when I see kids getting active.
You have to have a lot of kids.
Be somebody for your kids to look up to.
Progress! Progress through everybody dying and their kids eventually not caring who their parents hated!
Okay, so, when I was a kid, definitely the drawings and the illustration. Then I stopped in sixth grade or so. And then I started again when I was in my twenties. I really didn't progress since then, so the way I draw is the way I drew in sixth grade.