Seth MacFarlane

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Seth Woodbury MacFarlane (born October 26, 1973 in Kent, Connecticut) is an American animator, screenwriter, producer, director and voice actor. He is best known as the creator of the animated series Family Guy and American Dad!

Contents

1 Biography

1.1 Early career
1.2 ''Family Guy''
1.3 ''American Dad!''
1.4 Notable guest appearances
1.5 September 11, 2001 experience

2 External links

Biography

Early career

MacFarlane received his diploma at the Kent School in Connecticut, whose headmaster later publicly rebuked MacFarlane for his "low" brand of humor. He went on to study animation at the Rhode Island School of Design, which inspired the Rhode Island setting of Family Guy. While in college, he created a short film entitled The Life of Larry, an early ancestor of Family Guy. After graduation, he was hired by Hanna-Barbera Productions and later worked as an animator and writer for Cartoon Network's Cartoon Cartoons series, which included Johnny Bravo, Dexter's Laboratory and Cow and Chicken. He was also a writer for the animated version of .

In 1996, MacFarlane created a sequel to The Life of Larry for Hanna-Barbera Cartoons called Larry and Steve, which featured the bumbling middle-aged Larry and his highly intelligent dog Steve. The short was broadcast as one of Cartoon Network's World Premiere Toons. Executives at FOX saw both Larry shorts and contracted MacFarlane to create a series based on the characters.

Immediately before starting Family Guy in 1998, Fred Seibert (who brought MacFarlane to Hanna-Barbera) asked him to write and produce a short titled "Zoomates" for Frederator Studios' Oh Yeah! Cartoons on Nickelodeon.

MacFarlane is a skilled pianist and singer who, as a young man, worked with the same vocal coaches as Frank Sinatra. He is an avid fan of musicals and often employs musical numbers in his work.

Family Guy

Main article: Family Guy

Family Guy is an animated series which follows the life of the Griffin family. Patriarch Peter Griffin, the main character and all around funny guy, shares a thick middle-class New England accent with wife Lois, a kind, calm, level-headed housewife who frequently gets caught up in the moment and acts as irrationally as her husband. Lois teaches piano lessons from home part-time while tending to her offspring. Only daughter and oldest child Meg Griffin craves social interaction, respect of her privacy and the attention of her school's James Dean-esque cool kid. Her plain looks are the butt of many jokes. High school freshman Chris Griffin is an obese teen with subnormal intelligence, who has a talent for drawing and many of the same hedonistic impulses as his dad. By far the most eloquent and rational member of the household is Brian Griffin, a talking family dog who drinks alcohol, smokes tobacco, sings, acts and is Peter's best friend. Infant Stewie Griffin is a highly-cognizant genius infant with a head shaped like a sideways-sitting football and an effete, archaic English accent based on the voice of Rex Harrison. Stewie is hellbent on world domination and the defeat of all who oppose him, especially his mother. The only family member who consistently understands him when he talks and converses with him is Brian; the rest of them usually act like they only hear "baby noises" when he speaks and treat him like the normal, temperamental baby they believe him to be. On the show, MacFarlane provides the voices of Peter, Brian, Stewie, the sex-maniac neighbor Glen Quagmire, and the news anchor Tom Tucker who is seen regularly on the show. He also voices many characters who only occasionally appear on the show.

The show's future looked optimistic after high Nielsen ratings for the pilot episode, "Death Has a Shadow" shown after the 1999 Super Bowl on FOX. The show was moved to many different time slots after ratings declined, and FOX cancelled Family Guy after three seasons and 50 episodes. A huge undertaking by the show's loyal fanbase worked to bring it back to life. The show became a hit on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim block in 2004 and stellar DVD sales of the show's three seasons led to the show's unprecedented May 1, 2005 return to FOX's Sunday night lineup, where it remains. In 2005, the show was aired alongside American Dad! on BBC2 in the UK.

American Dad!

Main article: American Dad!

American Dad!, MacFarlane's latest undertaking, was first shown after Super Bowl XXXIX as a sneak preview on February 6, 2005. It then began airing regularly on FOX on May 1, 2005. It focuses on Stan Smith, a CIA agent convinced that terrorists are everywhere, even in his own household. He has a loving wife and two children, along with two unusual houseguests: Roger, the extraterrestrial alien who rescued Stan from Area 51, and Klaus the goldfish who hosts the transplanted brain of an East German Olympic skier. In 2006, American Dad! was picked up by Fox for two more seasons.

Notable guest appearances

MacFarlane is an avid fan of Star Trek and has appeared as the engineer Ensign Rivers on the show in the third season episode "The Forgotten" (3.20), and the fourth season episode "Affliction" (4.15). Since then, Patrick Stewart has had a recurring role as the director of the CIA in American Dad! (and also reprised his famed role of Jean Luc Picard in an episode of Family Guy). MacFarlane also appeared in a 2002 episode of the Gilmore Girls, entitled "Lorelai's Graduation Day" (2.21) as a classmate of Lorelai's (a number of episodes of Family Guy were produced by Gilmore Girls producer and writer Daniel Palladino, husband of the show's creator Amy Sherman-Palladino). Not only did he voice Wayne "The Main Brain" McClain in an episode of Aqua Teen Hunger Force, he has also voiced various characters on Adult Swim's Robot Chicken, including a parody of Lion-O.

He has also lent his voice of Stewie to Countdown with Keith Olbermann on MSNBC, often mocking Bill O'Reilly, Olbermann's main rival on Fox News Channel by saying "Oh, wait Bill. Stay right where you are, I want to soil on you. Victory is mine!"

MacFarlane was invited by Harvard University's class of 2006 to deliver the "class day" address on June 7, 2006. He spoke as himself, as Peter Griffin, as Stewie Griffin, and as Glenn Quagmire. Videos of the speech can be found on YouTube, Google Video, and among the external links at the end of this article.

September 11, 2001 experience

On the morning of the September 11, 2001 attacks, MacFarlane was scheduled to return to Los Angeles on American Airlines Flight 11 after being a keynote speaker at his alma-mater in Rhode Island. In 2005, on episodes of Loveline and Too Late with Adam Carolla, MacFarlane stated that he tried to make the flight, but arrived about ten minutes after final boarding ended. At 8:14 am, fifteen minutes after the departure of American Airlines Flight 11, the plane was hijacked before it crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center in New York City. He often jokes that he arrived late because he was hungover from the night before and jokingly says, "Drinking can save your life." He was then told he would need to wait for the next flight and then sat down next to someone as they were watching the attacks and he said to the man beside him, "I was supposed to be on that flight." In an interview in USA Today a few days after the attacks, he said that he was unable to get in touch with his office or his family in Los Angeles. He ended up driving halfway across the country before he finally was able to contact his office and parents to tell them that he was all right.

In an interview with TVShowsOnDVD.com, MacFarlane had the following to say about his 9/11 close call:

"The only reason it hasn't really affected me as it maybe could have is I didn't really know that I was in any danger until after it was over, so I never had that panic moment. After the fact, it was sobering, but people have a lot of close calls; you're crossing the street and you almost get hit by a car ... this one just happened to be related to something massive. I really can't let it affect me because I'm a comedy writer. I have to put that in the back of my head."

External links

[Official Family Guy Website on FOX]
[Official American Dad! Website on FOX]
[Official American Dad! vs. Family Guy flash game]
[The Seth MacFarlane Fan Club]
[The Life of Larry] -- a link to Seth's student film
[Seth McFarlane interview at AOL Television]
[Class Day 2006 speech (real media format)][(Flash Format)]

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