You have to have some kind of power of observation, almost like a trained observer.
— Billy West
The most superior Billy West quotes that are life-changing and eye-opening
It had more layers than an onion. These writers meant business. There was a level for everybody. Your major could be celestial mechanics, and there'd be celestial-mechanics jokes.
Everybody's got a bully pulpit now, and everybody's mad.
I don't blame people for being angry and frustrated about everything. I'm old, but I'm not pulling my pants up to my tits. I take deep breaths of air when I enter a room and celebrate the fact that I'm alive.
I don't get to watch Futurama, until it's on TV.
It's very hard to take a character out of nothing, and put a hook on it, especially because it's only sonic. Futurama is a sonic world, and everyone's attention is focused on that sound and that little cartoon image. You can change it.
The only thing I have to say to people - try being the hero of your own world one day. Don't spend your life thinking about what somebody did or if they failed at this or if they did great at that or they got caught with a monkey, in a bathtub, having sex. You should at one point become the hero of your own world.
I'm not like a high intellectual. That's the thing.
Even when I was coming through school I was a loner and I used to study music and listen to it and play it and play it, and I was in bands.
I'm not angry. Everybody thinks I'm so angry because I have a point of view. They're expecting me to just be all Smucker's Jam.
If everyone else is doing something, I have little or no interest in it.
If you're known as this guy who can do any kind of sound or voice or whatever, somebody will go, "Do you do Christopher Walken?" "No." "Well, why not?" "Because everybody else in the world does it." My carpenter does Christopher Walken.
If someone gave me the chance to create something, I put myself into it.
I just want to try to do something that will last forever and that won't leave people saying, 'Gee, it could have been better, it could've been this, it could've been that.'
Tom Kenny is a master of changing a pubic hair this way or that way, and sounding like a totally different character.
I was basically a sound engineer, I produced radio shows and stuff and had to splice tape in the old days. And you knew a sloppy edit when you heard it, because I had enough of them. But that stuff takes the magic out of it, if you need to know everything. Then you become omnivorous. Everything is tender, and as soon as you burn it up, you're on to the next.
I had people that were coming on my own website and attacking me.
You know, they were like Hillary Clinton supporters? It was very ugly.
You watch people and study them the way an alien would.
I didn't create Bugs Bunny. You know what I mean? I can't get mad because I'm the third-best Bugs Bunny in the world.
I've always said that you can't be the new Mel Blanc by doing Mel Blanc's voice.
Robin Williams understands sonic performances.
He understands what it's like to change your voice up.
John Kricfalusi is very talented; he used to really piss me off. But I did good work, you know? The Ren & Stimpy show without me was totally unsuccessful. So if there's anybody listening out there with any doubts about what I can do for a show: Try me. The thing is, I wasn't about to stop doing a job.
When I was a little kid, I saw a guy with one of those cancer clarinets, and I flipped out. I totally flipped out. I said to my mom, "Mom, what is that thing?" And she happened to know, too, which was the oddest thing. She said, "That's a Bell Telephone artificial larynx, for men that had their voice boxes removed because of cancer." I was like, "Wow." And I couldn't wait to get one. I didn't get one 'til I was all grown up and everything.
I'm not like a high intellectual.
I consider myself to be flawed, but I made it work.
I'm not perfect. Anybody who thinks they are is whacked-out.
I got a liberal education. A white guy, rapping as Bugs Bunny, on a quintuple-platinum album.
But the throat just kind of falls into line once you realize in your head what it is. You got to remember the musicality of a character you're going to do.
I don't have that much of an ego where it's like "How dare you, you can't do something without me."
In a black-and-white world, back in the '50s, were voices from another era.
All actors used to sound different. Robert Mitchum sounded different from John Wayne, and John Wayne sounded different from Clark Gable. They were like men's voices, but they weren't Everyman, it was them.
As long as I can apply my craft, I'm happy.
Somebody's real voice is probably the hardest one that somebody could attempt.
Robert Mitchum sounded different from John Wayne, and John Wayne sounded different from Clark Gable.
Life is for the living. I was a little scared before surgery 'cause of the release you sign that says there's always a very small percent chance that you'll die during the operation.
Space Jam was weird because everybody has their own perception of what Bugs Bunny should sound like. Everybody. Somebody would just stick their head in the door and say, "He sounds too Jewish." Or, "He's too tough, he's off-putting. You gotta seduce kids, not scare them out the door."
To me, it all comes down to things being character-driven.
It's hard for me to look beyond that. CG and all this cool stuff - so be it. But to me, it pretty much begins and ends with character-driven plots rather than technologically-driven plots.