Premier Guide Media had a unique opportunity to talk with Emmy Award-winning creative force Seth MacFarlane. Seth began his career studying animation and design at the Rhode Island School of Design. While in school, MacFarlane created an animated short film entitled “The Life of Larry.” The film impressed executives at Hanna-Barbera, who then encouraged MacFarlane to move to Los Angeles in 1995 to create and direct a short film for them. After moving to the West Coast, he went on to work on numerous animated series, including “Ace Ventura,” “Jungle Cubs” and “Johnny Bravo.”
Shortly after, MacFarlane’s talent was noted by executives at FOX who made him an offer to create a pilot for the network. Over the next six months, MacFarlane created, animated, wrote, directed and provided all the main male characters’ voices for what became FAMILY GUY. The seven-minute short was delivered in May 1998, and was picked up just weeks later. At age 24, MacFarlane was the youngest executive producer in television.
FOX’s Animation Domination Crossover Event on Sunday beginning with The Cleveland Show at 8:30-7:30c continuing with Family Guy at 9:00-8:00c and then concluding with American Dad at 9:30-8:30c on FOX.
Have you ever imagined you would rule Fox primetime the way you have with Family Guy and the others, and because of the comedic nature of the shows do you feel like you can get away with a lot of things that other programs may not be able to do?
Seth MacFarlane: As far as dominating the network, I’m certainly not the first guy to do this. Norman Lear has had about a hundred more shows on the air than I have in any given time. Dick Wolf has done it. There are a lot of guys who have dominated much more of the landscape than I have. I think the fact that they’re all clustered together on the same night is a good thing. Blocks of television programming generally work the best when there is cohesion of tone. I think even back to the days of “Must See TV” on NBC those shows all felt like they belonged in the same universe. They felt like they belonged together on the same night and that’s something that Sunday night has going for it, but as far as dominating the network, I think that is probably an exaggeration, but I certainly appreciate it.
The topic of the day is the President Obama’s birth certificate, will you create a storyline around that?
Seth MacFarlane: Well probably not, I think the birth certificate issue is something that will very quickly go away and people will find a new ridiculous thing to get all wound up about. I wouldn’t waste a half hour of TV on something that probably no one is going to be talking about a year from now and obviously it takes us a year to make these episodes so it would be a bit of a risk.
Do you expect American Dad and The Cleveland Show to reach the same success as the Family Guy?
Seth MacFarlane: You never know, we didn’t expect Family Guy to reach the success of Family Guy. The beauty of these shows or rather the beauty of FOX’s treatment of these shows is that they have all been allowed to stick around and flourish or not on the strength of their own merits and not on whether or not they deliver high ratings in the first few episodes. American Dad, which obviously has been on a lot more years than Cleveland, has really emerged as a show with its own independent fan base, and I think oftentimes you see fans who, in the same way that fans will shy away from their favorite independent band when it gets too popular and look for another independent band that they can claim as “their own” I think you see some of that in American Dad. And I think for some of the fans, Family Guy ironically has become so successful that they are now looking for that other show that has that more underdog status and I think for a lot of fans that show is American Dad. Cleveland Show obviously is still starting out, but it is already showing indications of gaining its own following. Whether those shows will ever reach the success level of Family Guy, I don’t know. It is very rare that that happens. Take Family Guy out of the equation and both those shows bring in very, very respectable numbers. So I don’t know. Ask me again in five years.
Who are your favorite characters to work on as a voice in all the shows you produce, and how did you actually come up with this crossover episode event?
Seth MacFarlane: As far as character voices, Brian is probably my favorite voice to do because I don’t leave the record booth sweating. Most of the other characters, such as Stewie and Peter and, particularly, Stan require such a large amount of wind that I often times will need to take a nap after recording a show. It’s sorta the equivalent of doing an entire day of normal performing condensed into about an hour and a half, so it can be very exhausting. So certainly Brian’s voice gives me a little bit of a break, which is always nice. The concept of the hurricane trilogy dates back I suppose to the theme nights of the 1980’s where you have three sitcoms or four sitcoms in a row and there would be a theme that was kind of interwoven into each one making for a very cohesive, hopefully fun, special night of TV, particularly comedy. It was something that we discussed that Kevin Reilly brought up to us and said, hey, we haven’t really seen this kind of thing on television in a while it might be kinda cool. So, we went back and came up with this idea of a hurricane that is kind of blasting its way through all three towns and you know there were talks initially of doing a crossover with all the characters from all the shows which does play a part in this, but it became a little bit of a conundrum because you have three different staffs, each of whom is used to writing three different sets of characters and there is no way to blend them altogether without affecting the other episodes so it was a little bit of a challenge. But this idea of an outside force that kind of sweeps its way through all three shows linking them together seemed like kind of a cool way to accomplish that and it does, as I said, harken back to the theme nights of the 1980’s.
Is there any indication you guys might be doing another full night event like this again next season or in future years?
Seth MacFarlane: It’s always possible. It’s an enormous challenge because the three shows are, when you are dealing with animated shows, you have probably about three times the amount of work that needs to get done each week production-wise as you do on a live-action comedy, at least with multi cameras, and it’s a substantial undertaking that requires resources that realistically the shows just don’t have but somehow we pull it off. Yeah, if this thing does really, really well, then I’m sure there will be talk of doing another night of this type, but it does require a lot more man power than you would think and the only issue is that it sometimes passes the production status of other episodes that are in the process of being made. So it is not something that we would want to do often, but if it does well, then it is something we would certainly consider doing again.
Will Quagmire have his own show, and do you have any plans for future spinoffs?
Seth MacFarlane: It was never really a serious discussion to give Quagmire his own show. Mainly because as a character, Quagmire is much better as an incidental character. He is much better as a side character. It allows him to be a little more conscience free, which makes him funnier. Cleveland had much more obvious potential to be a character who could really sustain his own show. He was much more dimensional. He had more heart to him. He was a guy that you could believably see having a heart moment or solving an ethical dilemma at the end of each episode. Quagmire, it would change him too much. I seem to remember people making that observation about Joey when that show came out that the character was just different than he was on Friends and part of that is that you really do have to construct a character in a different way when they are driving a series as opposed to when they are just a side character there, there to deliver jokes, and it would of fundamentally changed Quagmire’s character. I don’t think people would have responded well to those changes because he is a pretty well liked comedy character as it is, and Cleveland was just much more of a logical choice. That is, he is more dimensional, he’s got more heart and I think he is much better equipped to carry a show.
In a world where people don’t age, why do you think animated series are so successful?
Seth MacFarlane: Um, well yeah and the fact that people don’t age and people don’t start looking bloated is part of the reason those shows do continue to do well, I think. It’s that impossible, but very comfortable imaginary reality, so to speak, of a world in which things do not change and people stay kind of frozen in time and there is something that I think is kind of appealing about that. It is a constant and I think that is why the Simpsons have gone on as long as it has. My biggest criticism of animated shows that last extended periods of time, and not just animated shows, I mean all shows, live-action shows is that you do tend to fall into formulaic way of doing things and you tend to stick to safe patterns because the show has become so successful in such a juggernaut depending on what show it is–in some cases, the massive hit like Friends. You do see shows safely keeping within the confines of a certain way of doing things because it is such a successful franchise that the producers or the network doesn’t want to risk doing anything to shake it up and to me that’s ironically the quickest way to kill a show. When a show has been on for a really long time and is really doing well and has an audience, I think they want to see change. I think they want to see you shake it up and as producers, it’s really our job to do that and why would you not want to. It’s been a lot of fun doing shows like Brian and Stewie, which is the episode where they’re trapped in a vault for an entire episode and there are no cutaways, no flashbacks, just those two characters. Shows like And Then They Were Fewer, which is completely the opposite; it was an hour-long show that was very cinematic and was written as a murder mystery with jokes and I think as long as you stay true to the core of who your characters are you know that is something that is I think all too often shied away from on shows. I mean my philosophy is if it’s something that can potentially ruin the show forever, then it’s probably something we should try. That’s served us fairly well and reached the viewers of the show as the show has aged and I mean at the end of the day, it’s what’s the worst that could happen? Shows live and die all the time and better to go out taking some risks than to rest on your laurels and fall into lazy patterns.
Are you working on anything new right now?
Seth MacFarlane: I’m pretty creatively satisfied right now with everything that is going on. I don’t feel like I’m starving for new stimuli. I’m definitely juggling a lot of things at once and I think any more would be too much to deal with. That will certainly change, I’m sure, very soon when one or two things start winding down, but, no, everything that you see that’s been announced that is out there right now, that is pretty much what is on the docket. I’m not hiding anything from you as far as you know.
Will there be any extended-length features like what was done with the Stewie Griffin Untold Story ?
Seth MacFarlane: Yeah, I think that is always a possibility, and it’s certainly not something that works very well at this point for American Dad. We don’t have any immediate plans, but when you are talking about direct-to-DVD projects, that is something that is certainly a much more likely thing to get off the ground in the near or fairly near future than when you are talking about a theatrical release. Again, there aren’t any immediate plans to do another one of those, but it is something that I think again, particularly in the case of American Dad, is something that would not be unrealistic.
Who are some of the guest stars we can expect?
Seth MacFarlane: We are always looking for celebrities who are fans of the show. We always stop and take a glance and see if we have something that is right for that person. We have obviously Emily Deschanel, Eliza Dushku, Katee Sackhoff, Robert Rodriguez soon. Shows coming up in the somewhat near future, Ricky Gervais is the big one who comes to mind. He plays a dolphin who moves in next to the Griffins in an upcoming episode and Cate Blanchett in an upcoming episode of Family Guy and she will be doing an episode with Stewie.
_Daedrian McNaughton