Mike Judge

Mike Judge:(when asked what changes he would like to see in the industry) It would be nice-and some directors have this-if you could go out and cast whoever you want with no arguments from the studio.

Mike Judge:(when asked what about animation appealed to him in his youth) I've always loved the way cel animation looks, particularly in a theatre. And it seems like people my age (he was 41 at the time of this interview) just assumed good animation was gone. It seemed like it had all just gone to hell. Saturday morning stuff was pretty bad, especially for people like me who loved the old Warner and Disney stuff. So when I first saw an animation festival in 1985 while I was in college I was blown away, as there was all this cool-looking stuff being done independently. I wanted to be a part of that, but I thought, "Well, I have no idea how to do that. Even though it's being done independently, it's being done by people with commercial studios."

Mike Judge: (when asked how he went from engineering to animation) I'd always wanted to try animation, and as a separate pipe dream, I wanted to go into comedy somehow, but I knew stand-up wasn't for me. Engineering didn't last very long for me, so I was a musician for, I guess, six years. I thought of animation as something I wanted to try if I was ever rich or retired. I went to an animation festival, and there were some cels from a local animator there. I'd always assumed that you had to buy an expensive camera, and it seemed like something I couldn't afford. I never thought about it long enough until I saw this guy's cels. Then I thought, "Okay, you can probably rent a camera to do all the work." So that's what I did. Actually, I bought a Bolex camera for $200 and started messing around with it. I just nerded out on this stuff, and the first thing I finished was the first "Office Space" short.