My mom's last name is Bob. My dad's last name is Waksberg. Every time I try to get a ticket at will call, they say last name. And I say, Bob-Waksberg. And I see them looking under W. I go, no, Bob-Waksberg. And they go, no, last name. And I go no, my last name is Bob-Waksberg.
Raphael Bob-Waksberg
It's something I've seen a lot of: these tortured geniuses, or self-proclaimed tortured geniuses, who kind of take their damage out on others. I think being a showrunner, you have a lot of unchecked power and I think that can be a very dangerous thing.
I am a big fan of 'Rick and Morty.'
Any show that kind of relish the damage of its main character without really investigating what that damage does, where it's from or what it means, is a show I think needs to be taken down a peg.
BoJack Horseman' would make sense in the world of 'Rick and Morty,' but it's hard to imagine Rick and Morty in the world of BoJack.
Who Framed Roger Rabbit' is one of my favorite movies of all time, and in fact it is maybe the first movie that I really loved in an adult way.
It takes great strength and courage to ask for help.
I think '300 Arguments' is a real tiny wallop of a book. It looks very slim, and at first, each little two-sentence or one-sentence thing kind of stands on its own, but again, as you read it, you get sucked into the momentum of it, and the whole of it is much larger than the sum of its parts in a really beautiful way.
I really believe that comedy is an incredible tool, and you can use it in many ways.
I thought it would be a fun change of pace to do a show about a really sad, depressed character.
I thought it would be fun to make a cartoon about this sad, misanthropic horse.
Saying someone's a fan of animation is as silly as saying someone's a fan of live action. That can mean anything.
I don't know if animation is a style. It's a format.
I really liked the idea of a talking horse in a human world.
I think we're so often, as writers, afraid of writing something that is less than perfect, and that fear paralyzes us. I'm a big fan of writing less than perfect things.
You need to know that you cannot control your feelings, and you cannot control your feelings about your feelings, but, as best as you can, intellectually understand that your feelings are valid and they're okay and don't try to stifle them or feel shame about them.
With Bojack we are seeing him on this journey. I think we're hoping for him to find a way to be more gracious and kind and positive and better to people in his life and better to himself, but I don't know if I necessarily frame it as he was a bad person and he will become a good person.
I don't believe in good people and bad people.
I named him Todd Chavez after a guy I went to middle school with, whose last name was Chavez and who I always liked. He had a good energy, and something about his spirit felt Todd-appropriate.
I wanted BoJack to be more of a cautionary figure than someone that you aspire to be.
Netflix really trusts us. We don't get a lot of network notes. They're not coming back all the time like, 'Oh, this is too sad,' or 'This is too weird.'
When we started on 'BoJack,' it was understood that the Netflix model was to give shows time to find an audience, and to build that audience, and I remember being told, 'We expect the biggest day 'BoJack' Season 1 is going to have is when we launch 'BoJack' Season 2.'
Netflix is looking for interesting ideas from interesting creators. They really want to help me make the show I want to make.
I'm excited when any Netflix show comes out. I'm like, 'Yeah, Netflix! Doin' great! We're all on the same side.'
I've written six seasons of a TV show with great help from an incredible staff of writers and other collaborators, but I still feel like I don't know what I'm doing. I've kind of freed myself of the expectation that I ever will.
Part of being a writer is just getting it in your bones, getting the muscle memory down, just doing it.
I don't believe there is any line bad enough that a good actor can't save.
I am really excited by the form of short fiction.
I have a short attention span.
What It Means When a Man Falls from the Sky' by Lesley Nneka Arimah blew my mind.
I don't know how everyone writes a novel; that sounds exhausting.
I'm very interested in telling darker stories that maybe you are not used to seeing in animation. Especially because in animation you don't see those kind of stories.
If you are stuck on a problem, go for a walk and think about something else for a little bit. Going for a walk is very helpful for a writer because if you are staring at a blank page of a computer screen there is all this pressure.
It is so easy now to never get bored because we have our phones with us all the time and we are always looking at stuff. I think when we get bored we are the most creative.
I don't know if I have writing habits. Writing is impossible and every time I have to do it I kind of forget how.
I would love to just watch episodes of 'Horsin' Around' if I could.
This whole idea of too much TV, I think is really gross. Because I feel like it's mostly white men who are saying it. And it's like, 'Yeah, man, there's too much TV for you, but by nature of there being so much TV, there are other voices being represented.' Isn't that a wonderful thing?
I have a lot of affection for those old shows. You can put on an episode of 'Full House' or 'Family Matters' or 'Growing Pains' now and I'll watch it. And I'll totally enjoy it.
I always loved 'The Critic' and how specifically 'New York' it was.
When I first moved to Los Angeles, I was staying with a friend of a friend of a friend up in the Hollywood Hills. I was in this tiny little closest paying $400 a month in this beautiful house.
My work is my work and my life is my life.
So many cartoons are about real fun, happy-go-lucky simpletons.
One of the things that set us apart early on, as opposed to other animated shows, was the fact that 'Bojack' was continuous and serialized.
I think we're all trying our hardest, and a lot of times we do bad things and need to do more good things. We need to be more caring, more forgiving, more loving.
Our better angels get clouded and we're more selfish than we should be, more anxious or neurotic or desperate or self-sabotaging. Crueler, even. But I do think there's hope for everyone... I think redemption is possible for anybody.
I am doing what I can to expand the tent and bring up other people and make sure we are telling different kinds of stories.
You're going to get different kinds of animation for different kinds of audiences. Traditionally, adult animation has been for the young male audience. There's no reason why that should be.
I moved out to L.A. from New York... and I remember feeling, kind of like anyone does when they first move, so very lonely and isolated.
I've been in rooms where the creator has sold a show and then felt like the network didn't buy the show they wanted. They bought a show they thought they could craft into the show they wanted.
Humor was a big part of my childhood. My family was full of comedians. We'd sit around the dinner table and try to one-up each other. It sometimes ended in tears, but usually in laughter.
