Playboy Interview: Seth MacFarlane

On its website, the Parents Television Council explains that Family Guy "depends heav­ily on oblique sexual innuendo and sexual themes such as incest, bestiality and pedo­philia." This description is meant to express disapproval, but for millions of Seth Mac-Farlane fans, innuendo is central to the show's appeal, along with profanity, nudity, violence and musical numbers.

An animation phenom raised in Kent, Con­necticut by two teachers and educated at the prestigious Rhode Island School of Design, MacFarlane, following an apprenticeship at Hanna-Barbera, signed a contract with Fox at the age of 24, making him the youngest executive producer in television. Fox, hav­ing revived prime-time animation a decade earlier with The Shnpsons, debuted Family Guy after Super Bowl XXXIII in 1999, and 22 million people met the Griffins: oafish dad Peter and his wife, Lou, a rowdy former Miss Teen Rhode Island; teenagers Chris, a dim oval hated by schoolmates, and Meg, a homely blob disdained by her family; plus Brian, a cerebral dog who talks in a deep baritone and overindulges in alcohol, and baby Slewie, a devious tyrant who inexplica­bly has a theatrical British accent.

Three years later, with ratings for the show dropping, Fox canceled Family Guy. But

repeats on the Cartoon Network drew stellar ratings compared with other cable shows, and D VD boxed sets sold more than 3 million copies. So, like the villain in a cheesy horror film, Family Guy rose again: Executives at Fox changed course, and the show returned to the air in May 2005, three years after cancellation. MacFarlane signed another contract that included a second animated show for Fox, American Dad. Last year he renewed with the network for a reported $100 million, making him the highest-paid writer-producer in television.

Fans love Family Guy for its unpredict­able mix of the puerile and the surreal: In the middle of an episode, Peter may get into an extended fight with a chicken—one of the show's signature gags—or warble a bouncy number called "You Have AIDS." (After the show aired, the executive director of AIDS Project Los Angeles called the tune "inexcus­able.") For those who prefer waterboarding jokes, American Dad tackles political themes with a fral-boyish flavor, centering, of course, around a terrorism-obsessed CIA agent and a flamboyant extraterrestrial. MacFarlane, 35, unmarried and with a siring of glamor­ous Hollywood ex-girlfriends, enjoys the lime­light, sometimes even acting in such shows as Gilmore Girls and Star Trek: Enterprise.

This fall MacFarlane will get his third show on the air when Family Guy spins off The Cleveland Show, starring the Griffins' African American neighbors. Contributing editor Rob Tannenbaum met MacFarlane in L.A. for three separate interviews. "His office isn't what you'd expect," Tannenbaum reports. "There's a keyboard, stacks of classical CDs and film scores, movie posters—it's almost like TV isn't his first love. Aside from his pemerse sense of humor, he's almost anachronistic in terms of his interests and values.

"He left his office for a meeting and offered to get together again that night at a jazz club in the Valley. With a self-conscious laugh he warned he might be sweaty when I saw him because he'd be coming from a tap dance les­son—As if I haven't given you enough reason so far to think I'm gay.' The key to MacFar­lane is his resolve, whether he's learning tap or writing a show that is, as he said admiringly about astronomer Carl Sagan, 'an antidote to the superstition, fundamentalism and mysti­cism that runs rampant in this country.' Mac­Farlane is a scientist and a moralist in the guise of a fearless comedian."

PLAYBOY: This year is the 10th anniver­sary of Family Guy's debut. What do you remember about that first night?

MACFARLANE: The show debuted after the 1999 Super Bowl. It was a dull game, really one-sided. I was fried from work­ing on that first season, so I was excited to be out of my office. And I was annoyed it was such a lousy game. That was back when Fox actually spent money—when the word economy didn't come up in every fucking sentence. Maybe that's why Fox put George Bush in office, because it knew he would ruin the economy and Fox would have an excuse not to spend money, [laughs] Execs flew a lot of their talent to the Super Bowl on the Fox jet: Jason Priestley, Ben Stiller, Sarah Michelle Cellar, Jennifer Love Hewitt. I was in awe. I couldn't really walk up and talk to Jason Priestley. Now I would be a little less intimidated. playboy: Did you watch that first Family Guy broadcast?

MACFARLANE: I watched on a Watchman on the bus back to the hotel. I was sick of it by then. I knew every joke by heart. PLAYBOY: Having the Super Bowl as a lead-in is a pretty safe bet. MACFARLANE: I was prepped that the show was going to be huge. The next day we got a call from the network that the show had done huge numbers. The following week the ratings dropped off a bit, as we expected, but it still did great. It continued to do extremely well airing after The Simpsons. Then Fox got over­confident and moved it to Thursday night, and that's when all the trouble started. That was the beginning of the end of the show.

playboy: What shows were you up against on Thursday nights? MACFARLANE: A lot of stiff competition. It was up against Friends, Survivor, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire at the height of its pop­ularity, the moon landing, the Olympics, the Kennedy assassination, 9/11. PLAYBOY: It's almost as though the net­work hated you.

MACFARLANE: The strange thing was the network liked the show. It pulled it off the air because nobody was watching the damn thing—when nobody's watch­ing a TV show, it generally doesn't stay on the air. But it stayed on longer than it would otherwise have, partly because we went out of our way to be respect­ful and to be team players, and I think that was rewarded.

PLAYBOY: The first episode—which you wrote—has a pretty shocking scene: Peter Griffin is watching Philadelphia, and he thinks it's a comedy. When Tom Hanks says "I have AIDS," Peter laughs. Was the AIDS joke a deliberate way of setting a tone for the show? MACFARLANE: I think that was a way to really stick it to those arrogant bastards with HIV. No, that was a gag from my student film in college, which was sort of a rough version of Family Guy. It got a huge laugh at the senior screening. It wasn't a conscious decision to shock; I just thought it was funny. And you

know, that's certainly not a joke you would see on The Simpsons. That show had taken edginess in prime-time ani­mation to a certain level. I was trying to take it to the next level. The AIDS joke is one instance.

There was one joke we had to cut out of the pilot. When Peter is taking com­munion at church, he takes a sip of wine and says, "This is the blood of Christ? Man, that guy must have been wasted 24/7." Fox made us take that out, so we put it in another episode. Then we found out the network wanted to take it out just for the premiere and was going to put it back in for reruns. So that gag is now in two episodes.

PLAYBOY: What would you say is your emotional age? MACFARLANE: Maybe 97. PLAYBOY: Really? It seems a lot more ado­lescent than that.

MACFARLANE: Yeah, it's sort of a combina­tion of 97 and 12. If somebody farts, I can get to laughing so hard I can't breathe. But I sure do love the music of Nelson Riddle. I love Woody Allen movies, and I love watchingyacfem. We've been criti­cized for being too crude and lowbrow on Family Guy. What in the world is wrong with that? That kind of laughter releases the healthiest endorphins. There's something puritanical about people who object to fart jokes or shit jokes. It's that puritanical idea that you shouldn't have sex because it feels good—and that's a sin. How can anything that makes you laugh that hard be bad in any way unless it's harming somebody? Farts are good; they clean you out.

PLAYBOY: Is there a lot of farting in the writers' room?

MACFARLANE: It happens once in a while. At one point one of the writers scrambled to his feel and started to run out of the room. He was clearly trying to outrun his own fart, but he was too late, and he let loose. It was awful tough to get back to work after that.

PLAYBOY: In order of importance, where do each of these rank in your world of com­edy: urination, defecation, masturbation. MACFARLANE: I would say defecation, mas­turbation, urination. The variety of def­ecation jokes you can make is a bit fuller than the variety of masturbation jokes. And urination jokes don't have quite as much bite as the other two. That sounds ridiculous.

PLAYBOY: How did the 97-year-old part of you get interested in show tunes? MACFARLANE: My parents exposed me to all the classic musicals when I was a kid. I was about 13 when the Woody Allen movie Radio Days came out, and from that I got into big band music. PLAYBOY: Musicals and big band music? Those are unusual passions for a kid. MACFARLANE: Look, my favorite movie is The Sound of Music.

PLAYBOY: Musicals, big band music and Julie Andrews: How is it you're not gay?

MACFARLANE: [Shntgs] 1 like vaginas. PLAYBOY: But it's fair to say you weren't like in her kids.

MACFARLANE: I was a Star Trek nerd in high school. I wasn't exactly the most outgoing person. In college I started getting into Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin, and by extension into Cole Porter, Rodgers and Hart, and arrangers like Nelson Riddle and Billy May. My friends in college were into indie bands: three chords, a guy yell­ing into a mike, no grace, no buoyancy, nothing that showed any complex musi­cianship. People have tried to get me into things like Radiohead. There's no fun to it. It's not exciting or surprising. PLAYBOY: What was the last rock band you liked?

MACFARLANE: Queen. That's pretty sad, isn't it? My friends will flay me for say­ing this, but sometimes I think Queen exceeds the Beatles as far as musical achievement.

PLAYBOY: You're pretty alienated from contemporary culture. MACFARLANE: I feel as though I'm living on a different planet. It always seemed as though everyone was having a great fucking time on those old recordings. If you watch Sinatra, Vic Damone or Mel Torme sing, or if you watch Gene Kelly dance, it's all about looking effortless, like it's happening for the first time and they're there purely for the enjoyment of the audience. Now it's the reverse. If I watch Christina Aguilera, she's work­ing very hard, and it doesn't look like she's having fun. She's sweating, and she looks as if she might possibly take a shit onstage.

I was always fascinated by orches­tration, which is a dead art. When we started Family Guy I insisted we use an orchestra for every episode, which The Simpsons has been doing for years. Family Guy, American Dad and now The Cleveland Show all use anywhere from a 40- to a 60-piece orchestra every week. PLAYBOY: Your mom was a teacher. What did you learn from her? MACFARLANE: That even if you harass a boy with polio in high school, you can still grow up to be a good person, [laughs] PLAYBOY: Your mom did that? MACFARLANE: She didn't just make fun of the kid with polio; she picked the rubber tilings off the bottom of his crutches when he leaned them up against the wall dur­ing fifth period—which you could say is either a blatant abuse of the handicapped or a delightfully wicked sense of humor. playboy: Why can't it be both? MACFARLANE: Right. Isn't that treating the handicapped just like other people? I bet that kid never felt like he fit in more than he did that day.

PLAYBOY: So your mother is kind of a prankster?

MACFARLANE: She's very liberal in her comedic taste. When my parents first got married, my dad would buy im-avboy and hide it under the bed. My mom would

find it, and she'd cut out all the breasts and vaginas and tape them under his napkin at dinner, [laughs] Yeah, she's a piece of work.

PLAYBOY: What else went on in your house when you were growing up? MACFARLANE: There was a lot of swearing. My parents call me after Family Guy airs and tell me whether they liked it. Some­times they say, "It was fucking hilarious." Sometimes they say, "It wasn't as funny as it was last week." After the episode in May with Lauren Conrad, my mother said, "1 always thought Lauren Conrad was a bitch, but she impressed the shit out of me last night." PLAYBOY: Your family sounds pretty unusual.

MACFARLANE: I had a relatively normal, peaceful, well-executed upbringing. Not much of it was dark or dysfunctional. PLAYBOY: Do you think your comic instincts are dark?

MACFARLANE: They're dark in a superfi­cial sense. If we make fun of the handi­capped, it's not because I was raped by a handicapped person. It's just because on a superficial level it's funny. It also skews into the more buoyant comedy we do, especially the musical numbers. There's a lightness in the tone that deliberately works against the dark, politically incor­rect humor on the show. PLAYBOY: The musical numbers put to use your love of show tunes, and animation fits well with absurdity. MACFARLANE: We had an episode in which Peter and Lois get into a fistfight. If you saw that on Everybody Loves Raymond, if Ray and Debra got into a fistfight, it

would be horrifying. But even on The Simpsons, if Homer struck Marge, it would seem as though it were over the line. PLAYBOY: What's the difference? Why can Peter hit Lois, but Homer can't hit Marge? MACFARLANE: It's a tonal thing. Our style of comedy is a little more bizarre, a little more removed from the laws of physics than The Simpsons' comedy is. At one point we had a script in which Lois cheats on Peter, and there was a lot of uneasiness from the network and the studio. People didn't like the idea that Lois was cheating. Never mind that Peter punched Lois in the face at least twice before in the series.

PLAYBOY: To go back to your par­ents, would it be fair to say they were permissive?

MACFARLANE: They weren't lax; they were progressive. They're very rational peo­ple. Their take was, "If you have sex in this house, make sure you use a rubber. And don't do it in our bed." [laughs] PLAYBOY: So what were the rules? MACFARLANE: There was never any of that Cosby Show discipline. I remember my parents saying they thought the Huxta-bles were terrible parents and treated their kids like shit, always punishing them severely for minor infractions. They thought Clair Huxtable was a flat-out cunt, [lauglis] My parents had strong feelings about the Huxtable family. PLAYBOY: The "420" episode in April made the case for legalizing pot. What did your parents tell you about drugs? MACFARLANE: Their policy on drug use was very enlightened. "We know you're going to want to try stuff; it's only nat-

ural. We just ask that you do it in this house." As a result we didn't do much, because the risk wasn't there. PLAYBOY: Did you get high with your parents?

MACFARLANE: Not until about four years ago. My sister and I brought pot to my parents' house around Christmas, and it was very entertaining. My father's a brilliant guy, very thoughtful, which is always funny when you mix it with weed. He said, "Seth, this is the first time you and 1 have been high together. My God, I've got to write about this in my jour­nal!" My mom was passed out with her face on a potted plant. It was not the first time for either of them.

A year later I had a terrible experi­ence. I was working at my house with another Family Guy writer, and we were smoking pot all afternoon. He left, and I called Pink Dot, the grocery delivery service, and ordered some Chips Ahoy! cookies. By the time the guy got there I was terrified to go to the door. I thought there was something wrong with my swal­lowing, so I drank some water, lay down and then thought to myself, Jesus Christ, what am I doing lying down motionless? That's how people get paralyzed! Then I went through the "something went wrong and I'm going to be this way for the rest of my life" phase. I haven't really smoked since then.

PLAYBOY: The levels of THC in weed are so much higher now. MACFARLANE: Yeah, that doesn't help any­body. Except Pink Dot and Nabisco. PLAYBOY: Your family's ancestry is Scottish. What's the most Scottish thing about you?

MACFARLANE: Probably my tolerance for liquor. It's quite high. PLAYBOY: How high?

MACFARLANE: 1 can have a large amount of Jack Daniel's and still function and speak clearly. I think there's a word for that. I forget what it is.

PLAYBOY: Does it start with alcohol and end with -if}

MACFARLANE: [Laughs] That may be it. I prefer to call myself a traditionalist drinker.

PLAYBOY: Why Jack Daniel's? MACFARLANE: I used to drink scotch, but then my casting director gave me a book about Sinatra, The Way You Wear Your Hat, and I read that he swore by Jack Daniel's. I actually like it better than scotch, and the hangover isn't quite as bad. If you pace yourself you can maintain a pretty substantial buzz with Jack. I mean, I did Inside the Actors Studio, a five-hour taping, and I rode that fucking horse pretty much the whole way. PLAYBOY: Ever gotten a DUI? MACFARLANE: No. If I'm going to be drink­ing a lot I'll hire a car. Although when I'm sober I rip around in my car like a bat out of hell. Only when I've had a few drinks do I follow all the traffic rules. Analyze that as you will.

PLAYBOY: So take that, Mothers Against Drunk Driving. People drive better when they've had a few drinks. MACFARLANE: I think there's some truth to that. If you get pulled over for a violation sober, you get a ticket. If you've had a few, you'll go to jail for the same violation. So why wouldn't you drive more carefully when you're drinking? PLAYBOY: So if we required teenagers to

drink before they drive------

MACFARLANE: It would be safer for all of us. PLAYBOY: What kind of grades did you get as a kid?

MACFARLANE: I knew from pretty much the age of two that I wanted a career in animation. Anything that wasn't about animation felt like a waste of time. I got great grades in things I liked and lousy grades in things I didn't. I was anywhere from a B to a C-minus in science and his­tory, which is ironic because I'm now a big supporter of the importance of science in schools—for other people. I want to make sure when I'm 50 years old and the big flu hits, somebody's working on my fuck­ing antibiotics. And there better god­damn well be a spaceship before I croak. PLAYBOY: So how did you get started in animation?

MACFARLANE: It was a mystery to me. I thought you had to be a citizen of the magical kingdom of Hanna-Barbera to create animation. My parents, being sup­portive, pulled together spare change and bought an eight-millimeter movie camera, which allowed me to produce animation frame by frame. I just kept experiment­ing. I wanted to work for Disney. That's why 1 went to art school: to be trained to be employed by Disney. I would have

stuck with it had The Simpsons not come out and completely changed the anima­tion playing field.

PLAYBOY: As an animator, what did you find so radical about The Simpsons? macfarlanE: Once you learn the basics, timing is the thing that separates great animators from mediocre ones. You have to know exactly how many in-between drawings will make an action funny. The Simpsons reinvented animation timing for television. Its slapstick is funny because it doesn't have a lot of squash and stretch; it isn't cartoony. If Homer Simpson falls, you think. Shit, this guy may actually be hurt. You don't get that sense when Bugs Bunny beats Elmer Fudd over the head with his own rifle.

PLAYBOY: Did you ever aspire to work on The Simpsons?

MACFARLANE: I was more interested in fol­lowing in its footsteps. A slew of new ani­mated shows have been canceled, like Sit Down, Shut Up, and none of them learned from The Simpsons. There's always a desire with new animated shows to differentiate them from The Simpsons because it's so iconic. I began Family Guy with the attitude,

Let's start from what The Simpsons has done and hopefully take it to the next level. PLAYBOY: One of the criticisms of Family Guy is that it's not very original. MACFARLANE: Why would we say "Let's stare from where The Flintstones left off?" That would be stupid. The animated shows that succeed are the ones that emulate The Simpsons. King of the Hill applied a lot more production rules from The Simpsons than you'd think, as many as Family Guy. PLAYBOY: How much do you owe Matt Omening?

MACFARLANE: The guy created a new incar­nation of what was a dead medium and opened the door for all of us to have a career. I owe him a great deal. PLAYBOY: What do you owe him? A beer? A car? A house?

MACFARLANE: It'd be more in the line of a house. But he's also truly one of the kindest guys, very humble. He takes his enormous success with such class. I talk with him a few times a year. We don't pal around, but we have a friendly relation­ship and a lot of mutual respect. PLAYBOY: But The Simpsons has taken a few shots at Family Guy. In 2002 a joke in

one episode implied that Peter Griffin is a clone of Homer Simpson. MACFARLANE: Look, there are similarities between Peter and Homer. There are also similarities between Peter and Jackie Glea-son. We're ripping off Ralph Kramden, but I Figure The Flintstoiifs did it before me, so it's okay. I don't take those Simp­sons jokes as anything more than friendly ribbing. If I did it would make me a huge hypocrite, because God knows Family Guy has shit on so many celebrities. PLAYBOY: The characters you voice do a lot of singing on the show. How good a musi­cian are you?

MACFARLANE: I've played piano for about 15 years. 1 wrote a musical number called "Down Syndrome Girl" for an episode that will air next year. Stewie sings it to Chris when Chris is getting ready for his date with a girl who has Down syndrome. PLAYBOY: "Down Syndrome Girl," huh? MACFARLANE: Yeah, it's a bouncy Broadway number.

PLAYBOY: Will Down syndrome advocacy groups be offended?

MACFARLANE: The joke is that the charac­ter is also a bitch. Chris is dominated by this incredibly pushy, controlling girl with Down syndrome. 1 actually think they'll appreciate it. It's funny and not disre­spectful. But there is one episode we did this year that Fox won't air. PLAYBOY: Why is that? MACFARLANE: We did an abortion story. Lois is asked to be a surrogate for a cou­ple she knew in college, and after she's implanted with the embryo, the couple is killed in a car accident. The Griffins can't afford another child, which provides a basis for conflict. The entire third act is one long discussion among the family about whether or not to have the proce­dure. The word we've gotten is that Fox read the script and doesn't want to air it. But to their credit, the network folks are letting us produce it. They reserve the right not to air it, but they're letting us take it through the production process, and it will be released on DVD. PLAYBOY: Why not put up a fight? You have a lot of power.

MACFARLANE: There have been regimes at Fox in the past I would have done that with. Kevin Reilly, the network chief, is not a snap-judgment guy. There's no doubt in my mind they did their homework as far as what kind of fallout they'd get and whether it's worth it.

PLAYBOY: You're unusually forgiving for a creative person.

MACFARLANE: I like to think of myself as rational and calm. I've made a slink about some things. In season six we did a joke at the expense of The Simpsons, a kind of Hitchcockian thing we thought was hilari­ous: Quagmire tackles Marge, they sleep together and then go back to the Simp­sons' house; Homer walks in, and you hear gunshots. The network thought we were saying, "Yeah, fuck them. Kill The (continued on page 118)

SETH MACFARLANE

(continued from page 36) Simpsons," which wasn't the intent of the joke. We'd already had the screening, and it got a huge laugh. It was no meaner than any shot they've taken at us. Fox said no. I kind of blew my stack. Fox said, "We want to stop this feud." I said, "There's no feud. And even if there were, this is the first shot we've taken at them. You never batted an eyelash when they took shots at us." I said, 'Just know that if you cut the gag it will affect our relationship." And they cut it. When you come out of art school you have no inter­est in the day-to-day politics and bullshit of running a show. That's when it comes down to what kind of a job your parents did. Did they raise you to be polite and diplomatic? My parents might as well have prepared me to get into business with the UN. PLAYBOY: Rupert Murdoch, who owns Fox, the network that broadcasts Family Guy, is a big supporter of conservative causes. Is it difficult knowing you're putting money in Murdoch's pocket?

MACFARLANE: There are things I don't like about Fox, most notably Fox News, but Mur­doch is clearly a shrewd businessman first and a conservative second. If a show like Family Guy, with a very liberal slant, is mak­ing money for him, he'll let it be. He seems to be taking global warming seriously. He seems to be much more of a critical thinker than the guys he employs on Fox News. If Sean Hannity could think as critically as Rupert, I might like him. PLAYBOY: Your success helps pay for Han-nity's and Bill O'Reilly's salaries. MACFARLANE: Hannity's salary? Shit, [laughs] I guess if some of it could go toward hiring a dermatologist for O'Reilly and a dietician for Hannity, I'd feel a little better about it. PLAYBOY: Have you been invited on Fox News?

MACFARLANE: I haven't, and I would do it in a second. I love arguing with people I disagree with. Those guys are fundamen­tally wrong about so much, but they're also superb debaters. Maybe I'd get my ass kicked, but it would still be a rush. Speak­ing of Rush, we're writing a Family Guy epi­sode for Rush Limbaugh. In 2007 he came on to do our Star Wars episode and was, amazingly, a very pleasant guy. It's going to surprise our audience. It seems like exactly the kind of thing we shouldn't be doing, and that's the reason to do it. PLAYBOY: Now that you have Limbaugh, who else is on your fantasy list for guest stars? MACFARLANE: We tried to get Bill Maher for a while, and he graciously accepted. We were trying to figure out what we could write for Senator Chuck Schumer. He's a fan of the show and said at one point that he would do a guest spot if we asked him. So we have that in the back of our heads. Obviously we'd love to have Obama on the show.

PLAYBOY: What if we let you bring one per­son back from the dead to be on the show? Anybody you want.

MACFARLANE: I could bring back Jesus, though it would be awkward if he wasn't much of an actor and we had to recast him.

'Jesus doesn't sound like Jesus on tape, so we brought in Steve Buscemi." PLAYBOY: We wanted Family Guy fans to have their say in this interview, so we solicited some questions from them on social net­works. Here's one from Devon: "Is Stewie coming out of the closet?" MACFARLANE: Not yet. We had an episode that went all the way to the script phase in which Stewie does come out. It had to do with the harassment he took from other kids at school. He ends up going back in time to prevent a passage in Leviticus from being written: "Thou shalt not lie with mankind as with womankind. It is abomination." But we decided it's better to keep it vague, which makes more sense because he's a one-year-old. Ultimately Stewie will either be gay or be a very unhappy repressed heterosexual. It also explains why he's so hell-bent on killing Lois and taking over the world. He has a lot of aggression, which comes from confusion and uncertainty about his orientation. PLAYBOY: Natali asks, "What advice would you give a woman who feels like a real-life Meg?" MACFARLANE: How about "The hungrier you are, the better you look"? [laughs] First I would tell her to ignore what 1 just said. I would probably need some elaboration on what the hell is going on in her family. I guess maybe her parents are not as loving as they should be. As a result I would say "Your parents are assholes. Get out of the house as soon as you can."

PLAYBOY: David wants to know, "The show has established that Lois is Protestant. Why does she sound Jewish?" MACFARLANE: Watch this season. That pretty much answers your question. Lois finds out she is in fact Jewish.

PLAYBOY: A question from Erin: "Do you imagine all babies have inner monologues similar to Stewie's?"

MACFARLANE: No. They're fucking babies. They're idiots.

PLAYBOY: Lauren wants to know, "Why did Cleveland get his own show? He's the weak­est link."

MACFARLANE: We've been asked why Quag­mire didn't get his own show. Quagmire works as an ancillary character. He's an utterly despicable human being, someone who doesn't have enough of a wholesome streak to be a leading character. Cleveland is much more soulful and dimensional. It truly feels like what it was intended to be: Thejef-fersons to Family Guy's All in the Family. PLAYBOY: But Cleveland is the dullest black character on TV.

MACFARLANE: See, I've found him to be refreshing. When I watch sitcoms pander to black audiences with loud, obnoxious stereo­types, I think, No black person 1 know would watch this. On Family Guy, Cleveland maybe didn't have enough to do, and as a result he came off dull. He makes a point of saying that in the Cleveland Show pilot: "I'm sick of being just an accessory to Peter's world. I've got my own shit going on." Cleveland is a polarizing character. People either love him or they're bored by him. PLAYBOY: Do the Griffins appear on The Cleveland Show}

MACFARLANE: From time to time. And from time to time Cleveland and his family appear on Family Guy. In an upcoming epi-

sode of Family Guy we have characters from all three shows involved in the same story. It's our Return of the Jtdi tribute, our third Slar Wars installment.

PLAYBOY: Would you like to see your shows as agents of social change, such as acceptance of homosexuality, legalization of marijuana? MACFARLANE: That would be great. This may be a lame example, but didn't the plight of the Afghanis suddenly get national attention when Rambo HI tame out? PLAYBOY: You're the embodiment of what Bill O'Reilly calls the Hollywood liberal elite. MACFARLANE: Yes. Which 1 think is okay because Hollywood is one of the last liberal bastions. Somebody has to offer us that point of view. And here's what pissed me off dur­ing the election: Republicans kept saying, "Obama is too liberal." He's a hell of a lot less liberal than Bush is conservative. We tried your extreme; why can't we try ours? People love to accuse Hollywood of being out of touch. My parents were teachers. We had no money. For years I lived in a shitty one-room apartment with no air-conditioning, barely able to pay my rent. Look at the Bushes. That's out of touch. It's also a very ill-thought-out label. Hollywood is not full of people who are wealthy because they were born that way. It's full of people who are wealthy because they did something people were interested in. PLAYBOY: One other thing we've noticed online: Family Guy and American Dad have a lot of fans and a lot of detractors. No one really hates a show like CSI, but there are people who hate your shows. MACFARLANE: There's a site called damn youall.net that is part of the Family Guy fan site. It's kind of hilarious because it's a group of avid viewers. They watch every week, and every week they talk about how terrible the show is and then come back and watch the next week and talk about how terrible il is again. If the show is polarizing, it's better than if it's just pleasant. That's something you see in animation fans, science fiction fans and comic book fans—all the nerds, basically. Nerds can get really angry. This is not meant to sound insensitive to their plight, but when you pour a disproportionate amount of your life force into one particular thing you can lose some objectivity.

PLAYBOY: In the past few years you've been linked romantically to a bunch of hot actresses: Christa Campbell, Camille Guaty, Drew Barrymore, Eliza Dushku, KateTodd, Selma Blair, Amanda Bynes and Ashley Greene. That's pretty good for a former Star Trek nerd.

MACFARLANE: I've met Selma Blair a few limes, and Drew is a friend. Everyone else on that list you could more or less put in the "have dated" category. All of them arc girls I have fond things to say about, every one. PLAYBOY: What would they say about you? MACFARLANE: I suspect they would have good things to say. When I break up I do it by the book—I do it through my agent. [laughs] The criticism I have always gotten is "You let your job interfere with the relation­ship." Even when I was 12, girls were saying "You're letting your career get in the way." PLAYBOY: When did your relationship pros­pects begin to improve? MACFARLANE: When the show started to

become big. Now you're in that circle; you meet those people. That kind of suc­cess does give you confidence. When I was younger I was definitely very shy. A bit of that still lingers. But I don't have any qualms about asking for a girl's number. What can go wrong? She says no. PLAYBOY: Do you ever check your MySpace page? You're very big with young girls. They keep leaving comments about what they'd like to do to you.

MACFARLANE: Oh man, where the fuck were they when I was in high school? [laughs] PLAYBOY: Do Peter and Lois have a good sex life?

MACFARLANE: Yup. They're still very attracted to each other.

PLAYBOY: It makes sense for Peter to be attracted to Lois, but why is Lois attracted

to Peter?

MACFARLANE: It's simple: He makes her laugh.

PLAYBOY: Are they kinky?

MACFARLANE: We've seen them do pretty kinky things. We've seen them get dressed up in leather. They're talking about the kids while they're putting on leather masks and spiked collars, and the scene ends with Lois saying, "The safety word is banana." PLAYBOY: We're guess­ing you haven't been asked this before: Does Lois swallow? MACFARLANE: You guessed right. That's something we'd have to discuss in the writers' room. But I would say yeah, prob­ably. She's a pretty hard-core chick. PLAYBOY: As an adult, what is the least and the most amount of money you've ever made in a year? MACFARLANE: When I started as an ani­mator 1 was making

J7UU a week. It's funny. I had no credit until Family Guy got picked up. I didn't apply for credit cards in college because I had the attitude that I wasn't going to be a sucker like everyone else. I found that having no credit is worse than having bad credit—I couldn't get a credit card. I finally got one that had a $100 limit. When Family Guy got picked up I was able to get credit cards overnight, literally. PLAYBOY: Did you get a Black Card? MACFARLANE: [Reaches into wallet] There it is. That's the Black Card. PLAYBOY: Do chicks dig it? MACFARLANE: The good ones don't. PLAYBOY: Name five people who make you laugh.

MACFARLANE: Johnny Knoxville because he doesn't care if he hurts himself. Woody

Allen because I relate to more of those neu­roses than I should. Bill Maher because he's just about the funniest, smartest guy work­ing today. Gary Larson because he's got cows named Warren. And Hitler because that mustache is just adorable. PLAYBOY: Name five people who don't make you laugh.

MACFARLANE: Wow, okay. Rob Schneider. Rob Schneider again. Oh, Rainn Wilson— I'm sure he's a super nice guy, but he doesn't make me laugh. I'm sure Adam Sandier is still funny, but he doesn't do funny things anymore; it's that Eddie Murphy curse. When I was in college I thought Sandier was funny on SNL, and I don't know whether that was because he was funny or because I was in college. And Shrek, not funny. The thing that drives me nuts about those Pixar

movies, those Dreamworks CGI movies, is that they're gorgeous to look at, impressive beyond belief, but not incredibly nutritious. A lot of the jokes are obvious and kind of tired. I saw that moment in Shrek when they do that Matrix thing, moving in slow motion, and I thought, Jesus, you're like the hundredth person to do that. With all this money you have and all this access to writing talent, surprise me. PLAYBOY: In the course of our interviews we've noticed you have a few tics. MACFARLANE: I have tendonitis in my wrists. It's painful, and I get it if I've been drawing for long hours.

PLAYBOY: But you've actually been having involuntary spasms in your arms. MACFARLANE: Really? Fuck, maybe I have Parkinson's, [laughs] When I was a kid I used

to have little tics here and there—an eyebrow twitch—when I was heavily in thought, and it was usually related to stress. PLAYBOY: Here's what we're trying to recon­cile: On one hand you're a very handsome guy. MACFARLANE: Oh knock it off, you knuck-lehead.

PLAYBOY: You've had hot girlfriends. You're a huge success. You sing, produce, act and write, and you seem very much at ease, except for the involuntary twitching. MACFARLANE: Yeah, that's not good. PLAYBOY: But you also identify with Woody Allen and talk about being neurotic. Are die neuroses just well hidden? MACFARLANE: I'm so critical of everything I do that whenever we start writing a new episode of Family Guy I always have a minor panic attack; I worry we used up all the funny in

the last episode and won't be able to do it again. The neurosis is more an obsession with my own mortal­ity, with things like what astrophysics can tell us about where we're going and the makeup of the uni­verse. I've read a fair amount of Stephen Hawking's writing and just about every­thing Carl Sagan wrote. In Annie Hall there's a sequence in the therapist's office where Woody Allen says the universe is expanding and one day it will just break apart and that will be the end of everything. And the psychiatrist says, "Well, that's why we've got to enjoy ourselves while we're here." I empa­thize with both char­acters in that scene. I experience the stress young Alvy Singer is going through, and I absolutely agree with the psychiatrist's response. PLAYBOY: So you

spend a lot of time thinking about your own mortality?

MACFARLANE: I lie in bed from time to time and think to myself, Gosh, at some point I'm not going to exist. What the hell is that all about? I don't believe in any kind of an afterlife. I would love to believe the Chris­tians are right, that we're going to some magical Candyland after we kick off. But I just don't see how that's possible. PLAYBOY: So we die, the lights go off, our loved ones put us in a box, and our bodies begin to slowly disintegrate? MACFARLANE: Right. It sucks. And it does seem like a cruel joke. Although there are people like Hitler, Stalin and Reagan who make you think, Well, maybe it's for the best.

A candid conversation with the not-so-family-type guy about crude humor (yes!), modern music (no!), getting high with Dad and why he wants to guest on Fox News

When I'm sober I rip

around in my car like a bat

out of hell. Only when I've

had a few drinks do I follow

all the traffic rules. Analyze

that as you will.