The Life of Larry and Larry & Steve (1997)

Original title

The Life of Larry

Directed by

Seth MacFarlane

Genre

children's film

Country

United States

Runtime

10h 15m

Rating

5.7 of 10 from 15 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

These two short films follow a dim-witted middle-aged man named Larry and his intellectual dog Steve. They show the early beginnings of what became the Family Guy series.

lightheartedquirkyanimatedwhimsicalsimplecomicaloffbeat

What happens

The Life of Larry and Larry & Steve are two animated short films created by Seth MacFarlane in the mid-1990s that eventually led to the development of the animated sitcom Family Guy. He originally created The Life of Larry as a thesis film in 1995 while attending the Rhode Island School of Design. His professor at RISD submitted MacFarlane's cartoon to Hanna-Barbera, where he was hired a year later. Later that year, MacFarlane created a retool of The Life of Larry called Larry & Steve that features the main character of his first film, the dim-witted, middle-aged Larry, and an intellectual dog named Steve. MacFarlane was also hired as a writer for Disney's Jungle Cubs. The short was broadcast as one of Cartoon Network's What a Cartoon! in 1997. Executives at Fox saw both Larry shorts and contracted MacFarlane to create a series based on the characters, to be called Family Guy. Peter Griffin, one of the main characters in Family Guy, is largely based on Larry, while Steve is the main inspiration behind the Griffin family dog, Brian. Fox proposed MacFarlane complete a 15-minute short, giving him a budget of $50,000. MacFarlane stated that the pilot for Family Guy took half a year to create and produce. Recalling the experience in an interview with The New York Times, MacFarlane stated, "I spent about six months with no sleep and no life, just drawing like crazy in my kitchen and doing this pilot." Upon completion of the pilot, the series went on the air. The network executives were impressed with the pilot and ordered thirteen episodes, seven of which aired during the first season of Family Guy. MacFarlane was offered a $2-million-per-season contract. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

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