Reporter's Inside Stories: An Interview With Miller

Reporter: Today for this installment of Reporter's Inside Stories, we're going to be smurfing with another Smurf who's part of the food smurfing industry in the Smurf Village who smurfs alongside Farmer Smurf in the area of smurfing food ready to be smurfed in the kitchens. His name is Miller Smurf, who as everybody knows is the village mill operator, who smurfs wheat and grains into flour for our village cook and his helpers. He's a very busy Smurf whose job relies on the windmills and watermills smurfing their jobs. We'll be smurfing with him out near one of the mills to see why he likes smurfing his job so much.

(Reporter finds Miller in the wheat fields harvesting wheat with a machine made for that particular purpose, singing the Smurf song as he does his work.)

Miller: (shouting above the noise of the machine) Hello there, Reporter. Something I can smurf for you?

Reporter: (shouting back) I'm here to smurf an interview with you, Miller. Can you smurf off that machine for a minute?

Miller: (shutting the machine off) There! It's a really smurfy machine Handy built, because it smurfs me a lot of time to smurf through the fields and harvest all the wheat that's in it. And then I just smurf it into the smurfomatic flour smurfer that he smurfed into the mill, and my work here is done. Of course, the first time I smurfed that machine to my friend Biscotti, I ended up being smurfed into it and I came out all smurfed up in a sack and ready to be smurfed to the bakery. Biscotti thought it was funny, but I surely didn't.

Reporter: That machine could be dangerous if not smurfed properly. Don't you worry about Handy's machines smurfing most of your work away from you?

Miller: Handy is a well-meaning Smurf who just wants to invent things that make things in our everyday lives easier. I can't blame him for smurfing up with these inventions, although using them properly is something we as Smurfs don't always smurf into practice. Like the smurfomatic food processing complex that made food preparation so smurfomatic with Handy's other invention, the smurfomatic berry picker, that every Smurf was just wasting food, and Greedy's kitchen helpers were left with nothing to smurf. I never want inventions to smurf away what I do the best, and sometimes I do have to smurf things by hand when the machines aren't smurfing like they should.

Reporter: You and Farmer are always busy out in the fields smurfing the crops, that it makes the other Smurfs wonder what you smurf in your spare time.

Miller: Yeah, it's a very important job that doesn't smurf me much of any spare time, because the Smurfs can never totally smurf without wheat that they need to smurf the meals that they smurf every day, Reporter. I try to smurf together with Farmer and Biscotti every chance I get to smurf games with each other, but most times we just talk about what's smurfing on in the village.

Reporter: And you're very protective of your windmills, to make sure they're smurfing properly, Miller.

Miller: Very much so. I have Handy smurfing them on a regular basis, though one time he had smurfed the propeller blades from one of the windmills so that he could smurf up a way to fly like Empath does. But other than that, he's usually making sure they don't fly off like one of them did during that hurricane we smurfed a few years before Empath returned home for good. We almost lost Handy, Hefty, Brainy, Lazy, Smurfette, and Tracker in that thing when they got smurfed off into that volcanic island that they smurf-landed in, and it took Handy and his inventive mind to smurf the thing into a whirlysmurfer so that they could smurf out of the volcano before it smurfed.

Reporter: I remember Handy and Brainy had blamed Lazy for smurfing on the job when he was supposed to lock it down and make sure that it didn't fly off from the village.

Miller: Lazy is so guilty of smurfing on any job that it was just too easy to blame him for it, even when they found out that he smurfed his head trying to do the job. I'm glad to hear Lazy had redeemed himself when he smurfed over in helping the fly the whirlysmurfer when Handy had his head smurfed trying to fly it out of the volcano. But I don't think it will ever truly change Lazy for the better, though.

Reporter: It won't smurf us from hoping that he will change, Miller. Speaking about Handy's inventions again, I hear that you've been behind the smurfing of one of them for Greedy's kitchen.

Miller: Oh, yes, the smurfomatic cereal maker. Greedy wanted to smurf something a little different for breakfast, and so he smurfed with me and Handy with the idea of what he called "cold cereal", which is much different from porridge, one of my favorite meals. It smurfed a joint effort from the three of us to smurf this thing together, and when we finally smurfed it, the first kind of cereal that we smurfed was this batch of little red and blue nuggets that tasted like smurfberries called Smurfberry Crunchies. I thought that they were very sweet, maybe too sweet for breakfast, but the other Smurfs thought it was smurfect. So Printer smurfed up the boxes for the cereal with the images Painter had smurfed for them, and that's how it smurfed about.

Reporter: Culinary thinks that this cereal really isn't healthy for us to smurf on a regular basis.

Miller: (laughs) Well, Culinary is entitled to his opinion on food, I guess. I'm more of a fan of healthy cereals myself, which is why I like to eat corn flakes and toasted oats and raisin bran. I don't think the Smurfs need to smurf a whole lot of sugar and sweetness. It can get rather sickening after a while, and if Polaris' reaction to anything sweet is any indication, it can also be very dangerous.

Reporter: It's not easy smurfing things for someone who just can't smurf any sugar, Miller.

Miller: It does make me wonder how the Psyches smurf this thing they call nutrient paste, Reporter. It's a very thick and tasteless kind of porridge that I don't even like thinking about smurfing. And if we know Greedy, we know that he doesn't like smurfing up things that he wouldn't want to smurf up for himself. But being the village cook that he is, and being very good at it, he tries to smurf it every day just the way that Polaris Psyche would want it. It's one of those secret recipes that the Psyches simply aren't willing to share.

Reporter: I'd be better off not knowing what the secret recipe is for it. What was it like for you to grow up working in the mills with your Papa Smurf while the other Smurflings your age were playing?

Miller: My Papa Smurf was such a hard worker like Farmer's Papa Smurf, they could never smurf a day's rest if they could. I learned how important it was to smurf this job, even if it never allowed me to smurf a rest from it. I do feel jealous that the other Smurfs my age had time on their smurfs for playing and enjoying each other's company, even if Hefty was such a big smurf that we had to smurf his feet whenever he smurfed by. He was so hard on Sassette that she ended up smurfing away from home, and none of us even knew what she smurfed when she was away. I felt so sorry for the little Smurfling that Hefty treated her like he did, that when Avengelica smurfed her into one of her minions years later, I couldn't help but feel that Hefty was finally reaping what he smurfed, but fortunately it didn't smurf too far with Empath, Papa Smurf, and Smurfette reasoning with her.

Reporter: Before then, though, how did you handle losing your parent Smurfs to the disease that left you in the care of Empath's Papa Smurf?

Miller: I wished that I could smurf one more day with my Papa and Mama Smurf, Reporter, because even though they were hard workers, they were the best parents that I could ever smurf. It wasn't until years later when I thought they had smurfed back from the dead that I felt that I had my wish smurf true, but the whole thing just smurfed out to be one of Chlorhydris' evil tricks upon us. Anyway, Uncle Cully was such an understanding Smurf who knew he had a tough job ahead of him, and I just smurfed the best that I could to make him proud. I could never smurf back calling him Papa Smurf, not then, not now, and not ever, because I really felt that he became that to me in the most important part of my life.

Reporter: And what did you think of Empath when he first visited the village during his time in Psychelia?

Miller: Oh, he was such a strange Smurf during his first visit. I had the impression that every Smurf was thinking the same thing about him back then, because he was a Smurf without any kind of passion or emotion for anything, and he was so fearful of himself when he smurfed himself in just a hat and pants. He never liked being touched, and it made me wonder why. Empath smurfed me years later that it was because the Psyche Master had smurfed him that nudity and physical contact were the smurfings of savage creatures, and I didn't like that it made me smurf all creepy inside, as if I wanted to do something unsmurfy to him. I tried to smurf him like everybody else that we're not the savages that this Psyche Master had smurfed us to be.

Reporter: How do you think Empath has changed over the years, Miller?

Miller: I think he's gotten used to the fact that he is a Smurf, and so comfortable with himself that he doesn't mind his fellow Smurfs touching him, knowing that we could never do anything unsmurfy to him. Unless, of course, you're smurfing about Hefty, who's just wanting to smurf up Empath for making him be an embarrassment to the other Smurfs, though I think Hefty is just jealous of Empath. He likes to smurf the physical work around the village, although nowadays I hardly see him smurf anything physical since Papa Smurf had smurfed him in the role of the assistant counselor. It's probably for the rest that his talents would be smurfed more for something other than the menial tasks around here.

Reporter: Or for helping Smurfette expand on her talents, I would smurf it. Which makes me wonder what you think of him and Smurfette smurfing together for a few years now.

Miller: What can I say about this relationship? I love Smurfette, and I would want to marry her someday, just like every Smurf here except possibly for Vanity, but who knows who or what he really wants? But Smurfette's been in a bind over who she wants to smurf with for the rest of her life because she loves all her fellow Smurfs equally. And it's not easy for someone like her to find a Smurf who's right for her when every Smurf has their own faults and quirks. I was hoping she would find that someone special in her life, but I think it just happened without anyone even trying. Empath just smurfed up here for his 150th smurfday, and there it was.

Reporter: So you have no problems with the possibility that Empath and Smurfette might get married someday?

Miller: If that's who and what Smurfette wants, Reporter, I don't smurf any problem at all. I just wouldn't want her to smurf her heart to Papa Smurf, who one time smurfed after her in the worst way possible, and would have smurfed her if it weren't for Empath. That was just so wrong, it makes me feel really creepy for having to imagine what a marriage would be like.

Reporter: I can understand that feeling, Miller. But what would you smurf with your life if Smurfette does decide to marry Empath?

Miller: I wouldn't stop living it, because I have a feeling that I will smurf in love with someone someday. Brainy may think the idea is crazy, but I think that there's another village out there with female Smurfs, and one of them has to be a Smurfette who I feel is the smurfect match for me. My only hope is that we may discover this other village if it exists. Wouldn't you want to smurf in love with a Smurfette who's just right for you?

Reporter: If that's an option, I would want to have it be available to me.

Miller: Well, Tapper helps me to smurf my faith in the future, even if he does try to have me believe in this Almighty of his from his holy book. He's such a strange Smurf in that regard, but he's helped me over the years when it came to smurfing things that are beyond my own abilities to smurf. And I feel that we're such good friends that I can smurf him anything that's on my mind and he will keep it secret. He smurfs this barley brew from time to time which I sometimes enjoy, but not many other Smurfs like smurfing it because of its taste. His tavern will always be better known for smurfing sarsaparilla ale.

Reporter: I should hope so. And on that note, this wraps up today's edition of Inside Stories. I would like to thank you for letting me interview you, Miller.

Miller: I'm very delighted to help.