JOHN FRANCIS DALEY

Ever since I was 7 years old, I was writing. I remember being in the basement of my house, this dank, horrible basement, putting on plays with not-very-willing participants, and I would promise kids in the neighborhood that I'd play Nintendo 64 with them after we'd rehearse this stupid play that I wrote.

A lot of the time, as an actor, you don't have the freedom to change what your lines are, and they can often be very unnatural or difficult to portray in a real light.

I would visit Vegas every year when I was a kid. Vegas, to a kid, is a playground, as much as it is to adults. I discovered the magic store in a hotel and would spend hours and hours in there.

As an actor going into screenwriting, I was able to understand what type of dialogue feels natural. A lot of the time, as an actor, you don't have the freedom to change what your lines are, and they can often be very unnatural or difficult to portray in a real light.

You have more creative freedom with writing, in certain ways, because you can create everything that happens. But, as an actor you also have creative freedom because you don't so much focus on what has to move the story along, and only on how your character is reacting to situations.

Another thing that makes the process different is we go in there and are completely immersed in [that] world for however many weeks and then we would leave and they would be animating for however many weeks and we wouldn't have anything to do with it. Then we would come back and see all this work that they had done. So it just took a lot more time than it would on anything else.

You have to have all these elements of a feature but with a third of the length. And also the development process - there are so many more steps in getting notes from the studio, getting notes from the network.

Once you see the entertainment world from both sides, you really get a greater understanding of how it all operates. As an actor going into screenwriting, I was able to understand what type of dialogue feels natural and what an actor could actually say.

It's like live action if you reshot every scene a million times after finishing the movie. Because even apparently by the very end, a few weeks before they were screening it for the world premiere, they were making changes. That's just simply something you can't do on live action.

As a screenwriter and a half-Jew, I tend to look at the glass half-empty.

You have more creative freedom with writing, in certain ways, because you can create everything that happens. But, as an actor you also have creative freedom because you don't so much focus on what has to move the story along, and only on how your character is reacting to situations.

I had always been interested in screenwriting, ever since I could write things down as a child. Obviously, I started as an actor, professionally, but screenwriting was always something that I had a great interest in.

Ever since I was 7 years old, I was writing. I remember being in the basement of my house, this dank, horrible basement, putting on plays with not-very-willing participants, and I would promise kids in the neighborhood that I'd play Nintendo 64 with them after we'd rehearse this stupid play that I wrote.

Boys from my generation all love Jim Carrey! But you know, just being in his house with him and pitching jokes that he would act out, literally felt like the dreams that I had, so it was amazing.

I've always been the type of person that has told friends, if they're going through a rough time, I'm always there to talk to.

As a screenwriter and a half-Jew, I tend to look at the glass half-empty.

I'm avoiding having an assistant because then I would become the horrible boss. I can't justify having an assistant as a 25-year-old; I just can't do it!

A lot of the time, as an actor, you don't have the freedom to change what your lines are, and they can often be very unnatural or difficult to portray in a real light.

Once you see the entertainment world from both sides, you really get a greater understanding of how it all operates. As an actor going into screenwriting, I was able to understand what type of dialogue feels natural and what an actor could actually say.

Another thing that makes the process different is we go in there and are completely immersed in [that] world for however many weeks and then we would leave and they would be animating for however many weeks and we wouldn't have anything to do with it. Then we would come back and see all this work that they had done. So it just took a lot more time than it would on anything else.

I would visit Vegas every year when I was a kid. Vegas, to a kid, is a playground, as much as it is to adults. I discovered the magic store in a hotel and would spend hours and hours in there.

As an actor going into screenwriting, I was able to understand what type of dialogue feels natural. A lot of the time, as an actor, you don't have the freedom to change what your lines are, and they can often be very unnatural or difficult to portray in a real light.

You have to have all these elements of a feature but with a third of the length. And also the development process - there are so many more steps in getting notes from the studio, getting notes from the network.

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.

I enjoy both acting and screenwriting, in completely different ways. You have more creative freedom with writing because you can create everything that happens. But, as an actor you also have creative freedom because you don't so much focus on what has to move the story along, and only on how your character is reacting to situations.

You become sort of insulated in this bubble when you're working on something that it's hard to have an outsider's perspective on what works and what doesn't so it's always good to see what other people think.

It's like live action if you reshot every scene a million times after finishing the movie. Because even apparently by the very end, a few weeks before they were screening it for the world premiere, they were making changes. That's just simply something you can't do on live action.

We always for better or worse try to put on paper what's going up on screen - whether we're directing it or not. It's really just an extension of that habit which is trying to tell the reader what the movie will look like. Ultimately that is the job of a screenwriter to a certain extent.