I used to pretend that I was Tom attacking Jerry, who was drawn on the ball.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
If you could see the instructions that I gave Jerry to begin with, I'd be embarrassed.
Jerry and I always felt that the character was enjoying himself. He was having fun: he wasn't taking himself seriously. It was always a lark for him, as you can see in my early drawings.
I was acting when I was playing baseball.
Before I ever put anything on paper, Jerry and I would talk back and forth.
Jerry picked up the technique of visualizing the story as a movie scenario; and whenever he gave me a script, I would see it as a screenplay. That was the technique that Jerry used, and I just picked it up.
I was very fortunate to hook up with Jerry in the first place. The network was already committed to doing something with him, so I skipped a couple of hundred steps right there.
I couldn't watch Tom and Jerry. The cruelty was too much. I had all these strange images, of tiny animals, all mixed up.
It was not a friendly game, and Jerry certainly did not have friendliness in his eyes. He had an extra mean streak that day. He was out of control and probably should have been ejected.
I played soccer, and I was the kid who ran the wrong way, or I was pretending to be some sort of zebra and I would flail my arms and kick up my legs.
We got on American Bandstand, where kids would dance to a record and then rate it. We called ourselves Tom and Jerry. I was Jerry.