I think that - whether I should admit this or not - Joe and I, going back to 'Tom and Jerry,' have been very lucky in being able to do cartoons that have universal appeal.
I used to pretend that I was Tom attacking Jerry, who was drawn on the ball.
We used to make a 'Tom and Jerry' short every six weeks and they were about six minutes long, so we were producing about a minute of animation a week.
I couldn't watch Tom and Jerry. The cruelty was too much. I had all these strange images, of tiny animals, all mixed up.
I think we had made 160 'Tom and Jerry' cartoons.
I can consciously say I like squashing things because I saw 'Tom and Jerry' films or Charlie Chaplin in 'Modern Times.' That's true.
The Smurfs - and they're this way in Peyo's comics as well - do have a rubbery indestructibility about them. They can get bruised & battered. But they then just sort of bounce back very quickly, like those classic cartoon characters Wiley Coyote and Tom & Jerry.
We got on American Bandstand, where kids would dance to a record and then rate it. We called ourselves Tom and Jerry. I was Jerry.
I saw one of the old 'Tom and Jerry' cartoons the other day. I hadn't seen it for 30 years and I didn't remember it. We made 160 of them! I thought it was a very funny cartoon.
I enjoyed doing the 'Tom and Jerry' cartoons, and if we had never done anything else, I would have been perfectly satisfied.
