User blog:Ericmoro/Seth Turns to Live-Action Comedy with Ted

Family Guy, American Dad and The Cleveland Show creator Seth MacFarlane is venturing out into the world movies. Not only that, he’s trading in his patented sense of boundary-pushing cartoon humor for that of live- action R-rated, comedy. In Ted, Mark Wahlberg stars as John Bennett, a grown man  who must deal with the cherished teddy bear who came to life as the result of a childhood wish... and has refused to leave his side ever since. Mila Kunis, Joel McHale, and Giovanni Ribisi also star.

Wikia had the opportunity to catch up with MacFarlane and Whalberg at the SXSW Film Festival to chat about the film. What follows is their interview…

WIKIA: Where did the idea for Ted come from?

 SETH MACFARLANE: Practically speaking, it was an animated series idea that wasn’t really suited to be a series. It felt more like a movie. But really more than any other place, the desire to do a movie in which an animated character received no special treatment – was just a member of the cast like anyone else. And I always really thought of this movie as an ensemble piece about these three characters who are involved in this relationship triangle. That’s something I haven’t seen before in movies that involve a CG character. There’s always a pristine quality to the CG character in the scene that’s interacting with the actors – there’s a pristine quality to the recording of their voice and it separates them from that world. And one of the things that worked out really well for this movie was that we did everything live. All the bear’s audio was recorded in the room with Mark, with Mila and it made everything feel like it was part of the same world. Everyone was breathing the same air and I think that went a long way to bringing the bear into this reality and I haven’t seen that before in other films.

MARK WAHLBERG: After we do part two, three, four, five, and six, can we do an animated series?

 SETH MACFARLANE: Let’s do it, man. Let’s do it. Franchise.

'''WIKIA: Mark, you mentioned earlier that you were sent over some Family Guy episodes to look familiarize yourself with Seth’s work. Which episodes were they?'''

MARK WAHLBERG: Well the first one was the 150th episode, with Stewie and the dog getting locked in the bank vault. And I just assumed, “This is a fuckin’ cartoon. I can watch this with the kids.” And we watched it and, my kids and I haven’t shared a laugh like that since. And it was such a great moment, but my wife heard this howling. And she comes running into the room like she was missing out on something. And then she realized what we were watching and she immediately turned it off. But we’ve since taken a few peeks.

'''WIKIA: Was there ever a concern that, “Sure, Seth does fantastic animation. But he’s never done live-action before?”'''

MARK WAHLBERG: No. Reading the script and once we sat down, I knew I was going to be in good hands and we were going to do something really cool. It was just a matter of sitting down and communicating to him that I really loved the idea but the only thing that made sense to me was that I needed to play it as straight as possible – try to make it as real as possible. And I wasn’t sure if that’s what he was looking for. I felt that was probably the goal based on the way the script was written and the fact that you were on this journey with these three people and you really believed in their bond and their relationship and you wanted to see them figure it out and come out on the other side, all of them still in that special relationship. But you never know until you sit down in the room and talk to somebody and hear from them first hand.

WIKIA: And Seth, what was it like making that switch from TV to feature film, animation to live-action?

 SETH MACFARLANE: It was smoother than I would’ve thought it would be. And one of the nice things about animation… one of the key things is absence of coverage. In animation, you don’t get the advantage of coverage. Whether you’re going to a wide shot or a close-up or a cowboy shot, you have to plan it all in advance. Whatever you lock into your storyboard as the shot for this individual line, that’s what it is. You can’t switch it around in editing. So that was probably the big luxury when it came to switching over to movies. I would say doing an animated series might be some of the best prep I could’ve had for switching to movies because it’s a very feature-like process. You’re planning everything in advance so meticulously before you even start production, which you have to do when you’re doing a movie. You have to be conscious of score – leaving room and having a sense of how music is going to play into the picture and opening up your film if you want that to play a part and leaving room for it. Just the scope of what you can do in animation is similar in a lot of ways to what you can do in movies. The 10 years I spent doing TV animation was good prep, so it wasn’t as harsh a transition as it could’ve been.

'''WIKIA: So… how do I ask this tactfully? Does Ted the teddy bear have physical human feelings?'''

MARK WAHLBERG: Of course, he gets wood.

 SETH MACFARLANE: There is reference in the movie to the fact that he does not have a penis, but it doesn’t come up until later.

MARK WAHLBERG: And it doesn’t stop him from banging beaver, either.

'''WIKIA: Mark, you’ve made some great career choices in regards to the films you’ve acted in. Are you intentionally trying to pepper in comedy?'''

MARK WAHLBERG: Sure. I wanted to do comedy for a long time, it was just a matter of finding the right thing to really get in there. There was comedic elements to past performances, but never like a full-blown comedy. But that was always the goal.

 SETH MACFARLANE: There seems to be nothing he can’t do. We threw every style of comedy at this guy. When its broad and physical and when its subtle and verbal, he runs the gamut of comedic color. I can do a hundred movies with this guy.

WIKIA: How improvisational was the set?

MARK WAHLBERG: Not much. He would tolerate it, but he definitely didn’t encourage it. But he didn’t have to; the script was so fucking tight. There were a couple of things, where you just try something, but you always ended up reverting back to the material, which is usually the complete opposite because usually you’ll do what’s on the page and then you’ll spend the rest of the day trying stuff and throwing stuff out there. But you’d always end up coming right back to what was on the page.

 SETH MACFARLANE: Obviously, it was used to augment because if there’s a joke there, you don’t want it to sound rigid. You want it to sound conversational. So the script was sort of a backbone that we kind of gilded from time to time.

WIKIA: Will there be a longer unrated cut of the DVD?

 SETH MACFARLANE: Yeah, I think you’ve got to do that with any comedy nowadays.

'''WIKIA: This is the latest in a string of films to be set in Boston. What’s with Beantown becoming the new Hollywood?'''

 SETH MACFARLANE: It’s a great city. I was born in Connecticut, but most of my family is from Massachusetts – nobody actually in Boston, but around the perimeter of Boston.

MARK WAHLBERG: There’s no shortage of characters in that part of the world, that’s for sure.

 SETH MACFARLANE: It’s an inherently hilarious dialect. It’s the same reason that Peter Griffin has the Rhode Island dialect, which I think has gotten kind of lazy over the years. It’s turned into this weird sort of Brooklyn thing in season 10. But the Massachusetts Rhode Island dialect is so aggressively hilarious; it just lends itself to comedy.

WIKIA: Any other folks from the Family Guy cast or crew making appearances in the film?

SETH MACFARLANE: They pop up here and there. Patrick Warburton is in the movie, who does Family Guy. The two writers, Alex Sulkin and Wellesley Wild who I co-wrote the movie with, have been on Family Guy for years. So they’re peppered throughout. Mark and I both have past associates peppered throughout.