John Lasseter Character Quotations

Every animator is really an actor performing in slow motion, living the character a drawing at a time.

You have to do three things really well to make a successful film. You have to tell a compelling story that has a story that is unpredictable, that keeps people on the edge of their seat where they can't wait to see what happens next. You then populate that story with really memorable and appealing characters. And then, you put that story and those characters in a believable world, not realistic but believable for the story that you're telling.

It [moviemaking] is about entertaining audiences with great characters and great stories, you want to make people laugh, you want to make people cry, you want to have great music that is memorable. You want a movie that, as soon as it's over, you want to watch it again, just like that. That's what it is, whether it's live-action, animation, hand drawn, computer, special effects, puppet animation, it doesn't matter. That's the goal of a filmmaker.

There’s never a wrong idea. You just keep throwing stuff out and inevitably there are elements of different things that inspire a character or environment.

You cannot base a whole movie on just the imagery alone. It has to be the story and the characters.

I do what I do because of Walt Disney - his films and his theme park and his characters and his joy in entertaining.

I just devoured all of his [Buster Keaton’s] films because his sense of comic timing was amazing. He’s the closest a human being has ever come to a cartoon character. And I was just amazed at his sense of character and timing, the humor. It's all just so…sophisticated, even when you watch it today.

I think that the entertainment industry and the entertainment press tends to focus on opening weekend box office as a measure of the success of a film and I think the true success is out there in people's homes and how much they absolutely love these characters.

You make a movie to entertain audiences. That's why you make a movie. The product sales is because people love the characters, and to me, that is a testament to how our movie has become so ingrained in family's homes all around the world and that's why I make movies.