KELLY ASBURY

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 think Baz Luhrmann's 'Romeo + Juliet' is a work of genius.

What I want to impart on any movie I work on is I want to make it entertaining. That's what I feel I do.

Animation tends to have several different writers who serve different functions. I think, on a lot of animated features, there are a lot of writers who don't get credited. It's the policy at Disney, for instance, in deciding who gets credit. It depends on the writer's contract, so many things.

I want the audience to walk out of the theater feeling they got their money's worth. Every movie that I enjoy, I leave the theater with something to take with me.

I don't approach my movies with a target audience in mind. I try to make something that's true to the subject matter as much as possible, while still being entertaining and fun.

There's a lot of movies, and I've made some of them that could be categorized this way, but there's definitely been a trend in animated features of all types to be a little bit cynical, if you will, to have a little bit of 'knowing' humor to them, kind of a wink to the audience.

A lot of people say to me, 'Is this good, to do to a Shakespeare piece?' And I think, 'You know, 'West Side Story' did it very cleverly, in a different way.' But if you look at 'Bonnie and Clyde,' 'Titanic,' 'Avatar,' 'Grease,' 'Brokeback Mountain'... they're all 'Romeo and Juliet' stories.

I think Shakespeare, at his heart, was just the way all of us are that make movies: He wanted to entertain people.

Star-crossed lovers who have a destiny that isn't necessarily going to work in their favor - that's a universal story; that's an archetypal story.

Smurfs must only eat Smurfberries. They can eat Smurfberry pie, they can have a Smurfberry sandwich, they can do whatever they want. But you can't have a Subway sandwich. It's got to be Smurfberries.

I think what's universal about the story of 'Romeo and Juliet' is every one has grown up and done something that was rebellious against their parents' wishes, be it love or something else.

I think a film should be appropriate to what it's trying to say or the characters in it.

I don't want to be the one accused of ruining the Smurfs.

I love all sorts of movies, whether made by Scorsese or Frank Capra. I love them all.

Shrek is the Mickey Mouse of DreamWorks.

I wish I had been a child when the Smurfs came on television.

I'm in the entertainment business, and I make commercially entertaining animated features.

In animation, there's not a medium I believe that's more collaborative. It is a team of people, of different disciplines, coming together. The decisions are made by consensus in many cases. My job as a director is to exercise the best judgement I can in terms of which decision is the best one to make for the movie.

I wanted to create a world that presented the Smurfs with obstacles and challenges and really put them in a fish-out-of-water situation but also make them very active in getting out of their situation. Make them really the central characters.

Tim Burton, let's face it: he's into stitches.

Certainly in the case of 'Gnomeo & Juliet,' if it makes children or adults a little more interested in Shakespeare, there's nothing wrong with that!

Every animated film that I've worked on - whether it was as a story artist or as Head of Story or even as director - where we originally started out with our story and where we eventually ended up were often very different places.

It happens a lot that a name actor will be signed on to a project in its germ stage.

Films like 'The Wizard of Oz' and 'Shrek' are hits because they hit on different levels with different age groups. Striking that balance is what I strive for. But I won't know if I've done it until the audience sees it.