I still go to the conventions, and I like to hear the point of view of people today. I'm a little afraid they're being brainwashed by this new pop-culture. I think it's not really elevating our lives like it did in the good old days of Hollywood, where you had a happy ending. They used to criticize happy endings, but really, what's the point of going to a film if you have to come out hating your fellow man?

I brought in the stories many times. I don't just do animation.

Animation had been used only for things like King Kong and the destruction of cities, which was very popular in the 1950s. I got tired of destroying cities. I destroyed New York, I destroyed San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge, Rome, and Washington. I was looking for a new outlet, and I came across the Sinbad legends.

I know pretty well in the broad sense what I'm going to do, because I have to know that when we shoot the live-action, so that it'll synchronize. Then I know pretty well when I get to the animation stage, what that scene requires.

The whole point of making a film is to tell a story. That seems to be forgotten. Many films today just rely on special effects and they have an explosion every five minutes. Who needs it? It's rather repetitious.

You could believe that Sinbad could fight a skeleton because that's from a period in the past, a magical period. But if you had James Bond fighting a skeleton, it'd be almost comical.

If you make things too real, sometimes you bring it down to the mundane.