"The Man of A Million Voices"

Seth MacFarlane was an animator on several of Hanna-Barbera’s hit cartoons on Cartoon Network like Johnny Bravo, Cow and Chicken, Dexter’s Laboratory and I Am Weasel, before finding eventual success on his own with Fox’s animated sitcom Family Guy. This success parlayed into even more success on Fox with the animated sitcoms American Dad and The Cleveland Show.

Now the 38 year-old takes his signature brand of risqué adult humor into new territory with his first live-action film Ted. MacFarlane also plays the voice of the titular character, a stuffed teddy bear wished to life that grows up with its owner John Bennett, played by Mark Wahlberg, and becomes the third wheel in his relationship with his girlfriend, played by Mila Kunis.

Seth talked about the liberation of doing an R-rated film versus doing TV series that are rated TV-14.

“You’re not dealing with the restrictions imposed by the FCC,” MacFarlane says, “They’re self-imposed, so in a way that does make it harder. You actually have to think about it, as opposed to just taking for granted that you’re not going to be able to do this. With a movie like this, most of it was language. This movie’s been labeled ‘hard R’. I don’t think of it as a hard R movie. It’s a fairly moderately R movie. There’s no graphic sex, there’s no ‘heavy’ drug use but it’s language.”

“It’s R for language,” he continues, “So if that doesn’t bother you, you’re fine. The first cut of this movie had a lot more uses of the word fuck, and we did cut that down somewhat because we found that, even though it’s an R-rated comedy and you can do whatever you want, it was starting to eat into the sweetness of the story a little bit. So you do have to impose restraints on yourself, and it is more difficult than just being told by someone you can’t do something.”

One

"The Man of A Million Voices"

commonality between Ted and his cartoon sitcoms that was pointed out is the clash between youth and adulthood.

“You know, adults acting like children and children acting like adults is generally a pretty reliable comic device,” Seth says, “On Family Guy, you have Stewie who is a baby that acts like an adult and Peter who’s a man that acts like a child. It’s a fairly reliable comic device.

“This movie is a bit more textured and has a lot more shades to it,” he adds, “But in terms of the dynamic, we’re essentially playing the teddy bear as the physical manifestation, in a symbolic or literal way, of John’s inability to grow up and get on with his life.”

Seth talked about why he waited to now to make film.

“Family Guy had that little cancellation thing happen to it,” he says, “And I wanted to make sure that it was fully on its feet after coming back before I stepped away to do a film because it did mean stepping away from the show completely for at least a year, and that was something that I hadn’t done yet.”

“This was an idea that had actually been floating around in my head for a while,” MacFarlane continues, “I had originally conceived it as an animated series idea and for a number of reasons shelved it. And when it came time to do my first movie, it seemed like a story that would make a much better film than a series.”

MacFarlane talks about how he decided to set the film in Boston.

“The comparison I always make is to Ghostbusters, as weird as that is,” he says, “Because to me, one of the reasons that movie worked was that you had this ridiculous fantastical element to the story, but it was set against not just a realistic city but a city we all know. You had ghosts running around, these exterminators who had to eliminate them, but

"The Man of A Million Voices"

New York is the very familiar, very real New York with all of its warts that we know and it kind of grounded everything and kind of earned you the rest of the stuff.”

“That was kind of what I wanted this movie to feel like,” Seth adds, “You have a talking bear. The rest of the movie should be as real and grounded as possible to earn that, and one of the things that you can accomplish that with is by setting it in an actual city with an actual regional flavor.”

Mila Kunis is a very familiar part of Seth’s creative world as the voice of teenage daughter Meg Griffin on Family Guy. He talks about what compelled him to cast her as John’s girlfriend Lori Collins in the film.

“I will say nine times out of 10 in a movie like this you do see the image of the hands on the hips, ‘Oh you. Stop this nasty behavior,’ kind of tone,” MacFarlane says, “That’s one of the reasons we wanted Mila for this. We tried to make sure it wasn’t that on the page, but even where we missed spots, Mila was there to very shrewdly, with laser-light precision, make sure that that did not happen.”

“And the character has a very valid point,” he adds, “In a lot of ways, she had the hardest job in the movie, but in a lot of ways, it’s the character with the most realistic goal because she has this guy who’s very childish and she likes those things about him. She likes the fact that he’s not perfect. She likes the challenge of maybe having to fix this guy a little bit. But, at the same time, in the higher part of her brain, she wants the stability, she wants the responsible boyfriend who’s going to step up. That’s very, I hope, very relatable. I think her beef with him is legit in

"The Man of A Million Voices"

the movie.”

MacFarlane also talks about how careful he is with the actors he chooses for both his cartoon sitcoms and for this film.

“It’s worth saying too, coming out of animation, you bring in A-list actors to an animated show and it separates the men from the boys instantly,” Seth says, “You see who is a pretty face and who actually has the chops. We’ve had plenty of A-list people who have come in and we’ve seen the Emperor’s clothes.”

“For all these years, we’ve thrown really a lot of very, very subtle comedy at Mila for the role of Meg, and you’re not seeing her lovely face, you’re hearing her voice,” he continues, “All you’re getting is her ability, and it’s tremendous. That, to me, is the best example of all. You are hearing her voice, you are hearing her skill, her comedic timing, and she’s getting laughs and has been for 10 years. So that’s worth noting.”

One of the signature and controversial trademarks of MacFarlane’s humor is the use of racial stereotypes, which is employed through an Asian neighbor character in the film. Seth talks about how he draws the line with such material, especially in a film.

“Well, in a movie like this, we adhere to the same rule as we generally do with the animated shows, that if you’re going to make fun of one group, you’ve got to make fun of them all,” he believes, “Of course, the cliche is equal opportunity offender. In this movie, pretty much every religion, race, creed is poked fun at. The white trash name alone is the white folks taking it. Of course the guy that brings the duck to a party is our little friendly jokey jibe at our Asian friends. It’s all across the board so I think that if you’re going to make fun of one group of people, you’ve got to go all across the board.”

“As far as

"The Man of A Million Voices"

something going over the line, the systems that are in place as far as the screenings and audience testing, it’s pretty clear what’s over the line and what’s not,” MacFarlane adds, “If something gets a gasp eight times in a row at eight screenings, you know it’s probably got to go. There’s been a couple of those jokes. Even on Family Guy, we do screenings of each episode before it goes to full animation and our own staff is not shy about going, ‘No, no, no, no, that’s way over the line!’ If you’re getting enough laughs on the way there, then it’s probably okay. If even your friends are telling you that it’s offensive, then they’re probably right.”

Seth was asked if it was true that every time Mark Wahlberg did a take, he said, ‘Action, honky,’ to him.

“And I insisted that he watch Game of Thrones as all white people do,” MacFarlane replies.

MacFarlane was asked if he took out jokes in the film that went too over the line.

“There was only one that I can think of that I won’t repeat here because it didn’t work,” Seth says, “For the most part, by the time it got to the test screenings, we had excised most of that material. There was one that we pulled out because the audiences just thought it was too over the line.”

One particular highlight of the film is a motel room fight between John and Ted. It was asked how that scene was filmed, and if it was based on the Peter vs. The Chicken fight gags on Family Guy.

“The chicken fight was very cartoony and broad in a lot of ways,” MacFarlane says, “This was supposed to be something very different. The whole joke of this was that we wanted to play it as realistically as possible. We wanted it to feel like a fistfight in The Bourne Identity, except one of the

"The Man of A Million Voices"

characters happens to be a teddy bear, and I think we pulled that off.”

“I mean, Mark just sold it 150%,” he continues, “Even without the bear in there, when you look at that raw footage with the sound effects and him getting the shit kicked out of him by this invisible adversary, it actually still kind of works. Hopefully we made it painfully realistic.”

MacFarlane was asked if the special effects in the film was harder than expected and if he was able to fix the dialogue of the CGI Ted in post-production in case the original lines weren’t that funny.

“No, the special effects were surprisingly a smooth part of the process,” he says, “We were trying a fairly new technique of doing it all live on set, to get a sort of improvisational feel, but it went surprisingly smooth. We had two great studios, Tippett and Iloura, that just knocked it out of the park for us.”

“And yeah, we had a little bit of liberty to do new Ted lines in post, in case something didn’t work,” Seth continues, “That was kind of a luxury that we took advantage of. We would screen the movie and if something didn’t work, we’d try a different line at the next screening. That’s one of the good things about an animated character.”

Seth talks about how he designed Ted in the film.

“I wanted to keep it very simple,” MacFarlane explains, “There’s a style of 2D animation that The Simpsons employs and that Family Guy employs. I use Homer as an example. When Homer Simpson is being addressed and he’s just sitting there listening, it’s a blank stare. It’s just a blank, wide-eyed stare and there’s something 100 times funnier about that than if there were a series of Disney-esque subtle reactions because each audience member can kind of imprint what they think is going on inside his head based on their own bullshit. I wanted

"The Man of A Million Voices"

to do the same thing with Ted, and oftentimes CG characters are so humanlike that they come off kind of creepy looking.”

“Did you ever seen Jack Frost, that movie with Michael Keaton, that terrifying snowman that just gave you nightmares?” he adds, “That would be an example of CG gone wrong, and they all acknowledged it after that movie. And I wanted to keep Ted simple. His eyes are very kind of blank. There’s a little expressiveness with the eyebrows but it’s a pretty simple design and that was deliberate. I wanted to leave enough to the imagination that what that expression is or what that thought process is would be maybe a little different for each audience member.”

Music is a big part of MacFarlane’s animated sitcoms, whether it comes to uses of songs or background music. Seth talks about how he chose the music for Ted.

“They’re song choices that fit with the movie,” he says, “I’m a film score junkie. I’m the world’s biggest John Williams fan. I wanted this movie to have a classic film score because I felt like what it would do, it would play against the edginess of the comedy and earn you some of the harder jokes.”

‘You kind of have to have that to balance things out,” MacFarlane continues, “With Family Guy, for years, that’s what we’ve done is we’ve got these hard-edged jokes but we have a pretty serious musical style. I think it works in tandem with each other.”

Finally, Seth MacFarlane talks about why he decided to reference the 1980 Dino DeLaurentiis film version of the space adventure serial Flash Gordon constantly in the film, which culminates in a cameo appearance by the film’s star Sam Jones.

“The Flash Gordon idea was just it’s a cult movie that a lot of people know and it’s ridiculous and absurd,” Seth explains, “And it seemed like a funny piece of pop culture for John

"The Man of A Million Voices"

and Ted to bond over. It was something that worked as their movie that was kind of the symbol of their friendship. We just looked up Sam Jones and asked if he wanted to come do it, and he was very enthusiastic.”