Mark Mothersbaugh Quotes

TV series, there's a lot of everybody talking to you and giving you input for the first couple episodes, and then they're on such a crazy schedule that you get another episode on a Monday, you have to have it done by Friday and it becomes very solitary work usually, TV shows.

This is the fourth movie that I've done with this set of director-writers and I've learned to trust them at this point, because actually I started on Lego before they did.

I write all the time. I do artwork that's part of a diary, and I write short stories to go with them pretty much every day.

I don't cook - I can cook - but I'm not very good. I like being asked over for dinner, because she can't cook either. We would starve if it weren't for modern technology. I know how to work a microwave, but love home cooked meals.

It's people who write music because they are obsessed that I like; because they have something to say and no other way to say it.

Rebellion is obsolete - change things from the inside working out.

If you get rid of a lot of the poseurs by destroying record companies, maybe it's a good trade-off.

With vinyl you had twenty-two minutes per side. CDs came along, and you had sixty, seventy, eighty minutes and people felt like they had to fill them up. They were like those Fuji apples from Japan. They look like perfect, super-gigantic versions of American apples.

Personally I'm very happy to be behind the scenes. I like collaboration, I like working with directors.

We are shocked and saddened by Bob Casale's passing. He not only was integral in DEVO's sound, he worked over twenty years at Mutato, collaborating with me on sixty or seventy films and television shows, not to mention countless commercials and many video games. Bob was instrumental in creating the sound of projects as varied as Rugrats and Wes Anderson's films. He was a great friend. I will miss him greatly.

When I was a kid, the book that I liked the most was 'Aesop's Fables.' There was a version of it that my father read stories to us kids out of. I liked the idea of the short story format.

To me I think artists in general make a statement - and for the rest of their lives - every album, every book - are variations on a theme.

My major was Fine Arts and Education thinking I would become an Art Teacher. I couldn't visualize myself as an art teacher, thinking how it wouldn't work.

The stories I write are often literal to events that have happened or observations that I've made, and sometimes they're fantastical.

I went to Kent State basically to avoid going to Vietnam, I had no idea what I was doing in the world. I was lost, and trying not to get into a fight every day.

As far as the style, I was fascinated by surrealism.

Before MTV, if you put out an album that sold 50,000 copies, your band could afford not to have day jobs for a while. That meant you could stick around, put out another album or two. Maybe it would be the second or third album where you'd make the statement you'd been trying to make all along.

Lego was our fourth film, because we did two Cloudys, so yeah there's a little bit of shorthand that's involved and then you can anticipate things- because for me it's like, I get a script for a movie and I go, "Wow that's a pretty good script", then you sign on and a couple months later they show you the first cut and you're like, "Whoa, how did that happen?"

Will Arnett and I were never in the same room, but once I saw early animation we started writing music for that and then he just kind of did his little rap over top, some of it was free form and some of it I made up, we all just kind of contributed to it.

When I was a kid, I would go to the record store, where there was a bin of things they didn't know quite how to classify. Those were my choices. That's where you would find Captain Beefheart or an early electronic album.

My favorite films, I would put my answering machine up to the television set and hit record. I'd tape my favorite movies and then I could go back and listen to them again. I only had the soundtrack, I didn't have the visuals. But I think it made me really pay attention to the soundtracks.

I think somewhere around high school, your brain starts to gel, to harden. Before that, there's this time where anything is possible and the more things that you artistically and educationally have in your repertoire, the more you become a child of larger possibilities.

'To Kill a Mockingbird' represents Hollywood at its very finest, when a popular film could truly contain a message. It has one of the most moving scores of all time.

Technology has taken its toll on albums in a tough way. The CD format and MTV really played havoc on artists.

Choose your mutations carefully.

If you're in music just to become a big, fat rock star, then I probably don't like your music to begin with.

Right now I just finished writing the music for a Rugrats feature film and the third week of September I go to London, and the Orchestra is going to perform the score.