Creativity Quote by Don Bluth

Story, for Bluth, is less a puzzle box than a ride: you buy a ticket, you buckle in, you feel something, you leave changed. That’s a deceptively simple credo from an animator whose films - The Secret of NIMH, An American Tail, The Land Before Time - were practically manifestos against the era’s drift toward antiseptic, irony-proof family entertainment. He’s talking about “escapades,” but the operative word is “journey,” and he means it in the old mythic sense: movement that costs the hero something, and costs the audience comfort.

The intent is almost managerial. Bluth frames directing as custodianship of feeling. Not “express your vision,” not “wow them with technique,” but shepherd an audience through a designed emotional arc. The subtext is a rebuke to creators who hide behind cleverness, lore, or visual flourish. If the viewer isn’t carried along - if the film doesn’t earn tears, fear, awe, or catharsis - the director hasn’t done the job.

Context matters: Bluth emerged from Disney, then broke away in the late 1970s to chase richer animation and sharper stakes. His work often includes genuine peril, grief, and moral clarity - the kind of intensity that trusts kids (and adults) to handle darkness, as long as the story is honest. The quote’s quiet provocation is that “emotional reaction” isn’t a happy accident; it’s craft, timing, and responsibility. Entertainment, in Bluth’s view, is an ethical transaction: take the audience seriously, guide them somewhere real, and don’t let them off the hook with empty spectacle.