Screenwriter Buzz Dixon

Episode Transcript
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SPEAKER_00 (00:02):
Lou Scheimer was on vacation in Hawaii because it
was hiatus season.
And Arthur read my short storiesand sent them to Lou via FedEx.
And then in the interim, I comein with the premises, and Arthur
looks the premises over and hegoes, Well, you know, they're
close enough.
I mean, he's he's clearly gotthe ability to tell a story.

(00:23):
And he leaves the premises onLou's desk.
So when Lou comes back fromHawaii, he's got my premises
sitting on his desk.
And Lou called up Arthur andsaid, Um, you know, I really
don't know who we should hire.
If we should hire the guy whowrote the short stories or the
guy who wrote the premises.
And Arthur said, They're thesame guy.

(00:44):
And Lou said, get it.

James Duke (00:54):
You are listening to the Act One Podcast.
I'm your host, James Duke.
Thank you for listening to ourlittle podcast at the end.
If you like what you hear, besure to subscribe to our
podcast.
Leave us a good review.
My guest today is screenwriterand author Buzz Dixon.
Buzz Dixon writes oddball TV,movies, games, comics, novels,

(01:15):
putting words in the mouths ofSuperman, Batman, Conan, The
Terminator, Optimus Prime, TheTeenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,
Mork and Mindy, Scrooge McDuck,Bugs Bunny, Yosemite Sam, plus
more G.I.
Joes and My Little Ponies thatyou can shake a stick at.
His short fiction appears inMike Shane's Mystery Magazine,
The Pan Book of Horror Stories,National Lampoon, Analog, and

(01:37):
numerous original and best-ofanthologies.
If you were a kid in the 1970sor 80s, there is a good chance
Buzz wrote for one of yourfavorite cartoons.
He is a wealth of knowledge, andwe had a great conversation.
I hope you enjoy.
Buzz Dixon, welcome to the ActOne Podcast.

(01:59):
It's great to have you on.
Thank you very much.
I enjoy being here.
I uh we were just chatting and Iwas just saying how much I've
been looking forward to this.
And you you've heard thisprobably often, but I was uh
looking at everything you'dyou've worked on in the past,
and I thought, man, this guywrote half my childhood.

SPEAKER_00 (02:21):
Well, I hope it was, I hope it was the better half.

James Duke (02:24):
Yeah, it was.
I mean, I, you know, you uh youworked on so many shows in the
70s and 80s at a time whenanimation was dominant in the um
uh Saturday mornings and what Icall coming home, the the the

(02:47):
afternoon block, coming homefrom school.
And we would rush home.
And so for me, I'll just giveyou a quick.
So for me, uh afternoons afterschool were Transformers, G.I.
Joe, Key Man, and and then likea collection of either

(03:09):
Thundercats or um you know,whatever else.
Um, but but the mainstays for mewere uh G.I.
Joe and Transformers.
And then of course Saturdaymorning was full of you know
whatever the networks you knowput out back then.
Um so uh so yeah, so I just lookback at that and I think, man,

(03:29):
this guy.
So you have you obviously havehad uh a pretty varied career
with all the different thingsyou worked on.
I'd like to start, if we could,um, just kind of back at when
you first got started.
So I'd love to know, did youalways want to be a writer?
Was that something that you uhgrew up passionate about?

(03:52):
And like what was thatencouraged uh early on in your
life?

SPEAKER_00 (03:57):
Well, um I wanted to be creative in some form.
And uh as a little kid, I wasalways drawing pictures.
Um as early as the third grade,I was trying to write stories.
Um believe it or not, I triedwriting a science fiction uh
stage play when I was in thethird grade, you know.
And I I I quickly realized aboutlike two pages in, I have no

(04:20):
idea what I'm doing.
So I stopped at that point.
But um I was always a creativekid.
Um my family moved a lot when Iwas growing up.
We we lived in 20 differenthouses before I graduated high
school.
That'll give you an idea of howmuch we moved.
And so almost every year I wasin a brand new class with brand

(04:41):
new uh classmates, and Igravitated towards science
fiction fandom because the nicething about science fiction
fandom was you were neverfurther away from your friends
than the mailbox.
You know, every time, every timewe moved, a change of address,
and my friends were waiting forme when you know we got to the
new house.

(05:02):
So getting involved in sciencefiction fandom, I became
interested in writing sciencefiction stories.
About age 13, I began seriouslywriting stories with the intent
that I wanted to submit them.
Uh, and I actually did startsubmitting when I was uh
somewhere between 13 and 16.

James Duke (05:22):
And when you say and when you say submit, so back
then, and what time period arewe talking about?

SPEAKER_00 (05:27):
So you like wow, this would have been uh 66 to
70.

James Duke (05:33):
So at that time there were uh like fan magazines
and things like that that youwould you can submit to.
Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 (05:41):
In fact, the the very first published byline I
ever got was in a magazinethat's now the magazine is now
called Midnight Marquee, butback then was called Gore
Creatures.
Um Gary Svela was was and stillis the editor of it.
And uh Gary published the firstthing I ever wrote that I got a
byline on.
And it was it was a critique onuh um how how fake uh rocket

(06:08):
ship sets looked in most sciencefiction movies because they were
they were crappy.
I mean, let's be honest.
1950s uh I think Cat Women ofthe Moon, it has like a film
reel hanging up in the wall.
It's like that's supposed to bescience fiction.
I mean, come on, but anyway.

James Duke (06:25):
Um although, although, although I just
watched Forbidden Planet againthe other day, and that movie
holds up.
That is that is a spectacular,and that set was unbelievable.

SPEAKER_00 (06:38):
They spent a ton of money on that movie.
Oh, they must have that set.
I was so impressed with thatset.
Oh, and and well, do you knowthe origin of Forbidden Planet?
No, no, what's the origin?
There, there was a specialeffects company.
Um Jack Rabin and uh oh gosh,what was the other guy's name?
Oh, I I'm blanking right now.

(06:59):
The the third silent partpartner was named DeWolf.
I can't remember the name of thesecond guy in it.
But anyway, it was a smallspecial effects company.
They mostly did titles and stufflike that for industrial films,
but they had a clever way ofdrumming up business.
They would figure out a reallycheap, inexpensive special

(07:21):
effect.
They would write a story aroundthe special effect, and they
would pitch it to low-budgetmovie companies.
And when the company would buyit, they would uh they would get
to do the special effects.
So they did um War of theSatellites for Roger Corman.
They did uh Unknown World, whichis about this tank-like thing

(07:42):
crawling into the center of theearth, um Monster from Green
Hell, which had stop motion, um,giant wasps in it.
Wow.
Um, let's see what else.
Oh, Kronos, you know, Kronos.
And they had they came up withthis great idea for a movie set

(08:05):
on a planet that was populatedby invisible monsters because
and their logic was impeccable.
You can have as many invisiblemonsters as you want, and so
they they came up with thisthing and they pitched it to
several low-budget studios, butsomehow um a copy of the pitch

(08:26):
wound up at MGM, and MGM wasseeing how successful uh the
thing and uh the day the earthstood still had been for other
companies, and they said, Well,we ought to jump on this sci-fi
bandwagon.
And so they bought it and theysaid, We're gonna buy you out
completely, we're not gonna letyou anywhere near the project,
but um so they bought them out,and that became the genesis of

(08:50):
Forbidden Planet, the the ideaof a planet full of invisible
monsters.

James Duke (08:54):
It it went from being a pitch to try to find the
lowest, the cheapest, the mostaffordable way to do effects to
being the really expensiveeffects.

SPEAKER_00 (09:03):
Yeah, I mean it's it's a tremendous, and it does
yet, you know.
You look at it today and youjust say to yourself, this is an
artifact of the 1950s, so itreflects that design
sensibility, that level of ofknowledge about science and
psychology that they had then.

(09:24):
But once you once you do that,it's like, well, this movie is
it hangs together.
It it really works.

James Duke (09:29):
It does.
It it it really it really does.
And I think that that, and Isorry, I didn't mean to cut you
off as you were we'll we'll getback to you.
But isn't that what greatscience fiction does?
Is that like watching ForbiddenPlanet, it's dealing with these
basic human themes that areuniversal in terms of our human
condition.
And science fiction does a greatwhat what's great about good

(09:52):
science fiction is that it'sdeeply human, and that it's it's
it's actually which makes whichmakes a movie from the 50s still
feel somewhat prescient todaybecause it's it's dealing with
issues of fear, fear of theother, fear of the unknown, um,
the idea of control and powerand manipulation.

(10:14):
These are all things that wedeal with, you know, every
generation and every every time,right?

SPEAKER_00 (10:20):
Yeah.
This is this is one of thereasons why a lot of 80s uh sci
fi films, uh lower budget sci-fifilms, don't hold together
because they they they had noconsideration of this.
It was just how how fast can weknock out an imitation of

(10:41):
something somebody else did?

James Duke (10:43):
So let's get back.
I we can we can I I I expectwe're gonna we're gonna enjoy uh
talking about all thesewonderful things.
Uh but but back to so yousubmitted um to um started
submitting to these fan fictionmagazines and uh fanzines and
also um professional sciencefiction magazines.

SPEAKER_00 (11:05):
I mean, I submitted to uh uh Galaxy if uh fantasy
and science fiction, fantastic,amazing.
These were all digests at thattime.
Um fantasy and science fictionand analog are both still being
published.
I I it took me 50 years, by theway, but I finally cracked
Analog.

(11:28):
Um but I've been yeah, I waswriting stories for them,
submitting them, and uh you knowspending a small fortune in in
uh mailing fees because backthen you back then you had to
put it in a self-addressedstamped envelope so they could
send it back to you when theywould reject it.
And you know, I I I I wentthrough a lot of mailings, let's

(11:54):
just put it that way.
Wow.
That's that's what you need todo as a starting writer.
You need to write, you need tosubmit it and get feedback and
get feedback.
And a lot of times uh today uhthey have um fan fiction sites
where people can literally postanything, and you get the

(12:18):
feedback directly from readers,which uh, you know, is better
than nothing.
But it really helps when youhave uh editors who will write
back to you and say, you know,we I'm rejecting this, but
here's why.
And and they would give you aninsight.
I mean, I I I don't have theletter anymore, but John W.

(12:39):
Campbell of um Analog, um, andhe was like he was like one of
the the greats of sciencefiction.
He he goes all the way back tothe 40s.
He wrote Who Goes There, whichis the basis of the the thing
movies.
Um Campbell goes from like the40s up through the 70s, and when

(13:00):
I was in the army, I submitted astory to him, and he actually
wrote back like a two-pageletter, one or two page letter,
where he said, I'm rejectingthis, but I like the thinking on
it, and here's why I'm rejectingit.
And it was it was a very goodinsight because it gave me uh
said, Okay, here's here is whereI'm deficient, here's where I

(13:22):
need to apply myself.
Um I had I had been, I'll I'llI'll give you a really brief
recap to get me into animationso we can move along.
Uh I wanted to be a moviedirector when I was in high
school, and I was I was writingscripts and short stories, but

(13:43):
the ultimate goal was to be adirector.
And in 1972, I was uh drafted.
I I I tell people I won I won alottery that gave me a free
all-expense paid trip to Korea,uh, which was lucky because I
met my wife there.
So I'm not knocking that.
But in any case, I was draftedin 1972.

(14:05):
The army figured, well, he canhe can string three words
together, so let's make him anewspaper editor.
And I post newspaper for uh ayear, and then I was um I was on
the um um, I was the what wouldyou call it, the um NCOIC,

(14:26):
non-commissioned officer incharge of public affairs for the
fourth U.S.
Army Missile Command, uh, whichum no, excuse me, not for U.S.
Army Communications Command.
Uh the Missile Command was thepost newspaper.
Uh it was with the fourth withthe U.S.
Army Communications Command,which uh I was at I was writing
press releases and stuff thatgot uh you know anonymously, but

(14:50):
it would end up in like TimeMagazine, Newsweek, things like
this.
So I I had a chance every day toto hone writing skills.
Yes.
You know, 99% of the time it waswhat we called grip and grins,
where you know somebody'sgetting an award, and you just
write the caption of these twoguys shaking hands.

(15:10):
But it it gave me a chance towork at writing.

James Duke (15:14):
And and and especially even something even
that specific where it'severything's similar, you have
to figure out how how do I saythe same thing differently.

SPEAKER_00 (15:24):
Oh, yeah, yeah.
It uh it is a challenge.
In any case, when I got out ofthe army uh in 78, um uh I was
married, uh, we had a child.
Uh I had been accepted by uh theUniversity of Southern
California to their film school,but the film school wouldn't

(15:45):
start until fall.
And I was discharged inFebruary.
So my wife and I decided we'llcome out to California.
Uh, I would try to find a job inthe movie industry as a driver
or in the mailroom, gopher,something like that, just to get
my feet wet until schoolstarted.

(16:06):
And I literally started atUniversal Studios just handing
my resume out.
I started there and I worked myway all the way down to
Filmation Studios.
Filmation wasn't 100 on thelist, it was literally 98.
I'm not kidding.
And so I go into FilmationStudios and I've got my resume

(16:28):
and go up to the receptionist.
This is probably March, uh,March, early April 78.
And I go in and I say, uh, I I'mI'm looking for a job and I'd
I'd like who do I who can I givemy resume to?
And the receptionist said, Well,are you looking for a job in
animation or live action?

(16:49):
Well, I don't know anythingabout animation, so I said,
Well, live action.
And she says, Wait a minute.
And she takes my resume and shegoes in the back, and then she
comes out and she says, Arthur,we'll see you.
And this is Arthur Nadell, whowas the producer of the live
action shows at FilmationStudios, because Filmation
primarily did animation, butthey also did a number of live

(17:11):
action shows.
And it turns out it was hiatusseason.
And in animation, hiatus seasonwas that period between the time
you finished the last show thathad been bought for the previous
season, but the networks had notyet started buying shows for the
next season.
So there was like a three-monthperiod where nothing's

(17:34):
happening.
And um, if the studio was bigenough, they would keep you on
and you would be developingideas for them.
Uh, if they weren't big enough,they would cut you loose.
And at Filmation, it wasvirtually a ghost town at that
point.
And Arthur was sitting in theback with nothing to do, and he
goes, Yeah, send this guy back,give me some anything to kill an

(17:57):
afternoon.
So I go back and I met Arthur.
And Arthur, I gotta say, one ofthe sweetest gentlemen I've ever
met in the business.
Arthur is is just a was just awonderful, nice person.
And we struck up um, you know, agood rapport with one another.
Um, he was asking me about whatI had done in the army and my

(18:20):
plans and this and that.
And I mentioned I had written anumber of short stories.
I hadn't sold any, but I hadwritten them.
And he said, Well, if you'reever around here again, uh drop
off you know your short stories.
I'd be happy to take a look atthem.
Well, you know, you don't haveto hit me over the head with a
shovel.
I go back to the apartment wherewe're staying.

(18:40):
I dig out my short stories fromuh the suitcase they're buried
in.
And about a week later, I goback and I say, Well, Arthur
asks to see these, and say,okay, go on back.
I go back to see Arthur.
He thanks me.
And then he says, You know,we've got um a show we're
developing and we're having adifficult time coming up with

(19:01):
premises for it.
So now I can't ask you to do anywork because if I do, I have to
pay you.
But if you on your own were tocome up with some ideas and
wanted to show them to me, I'dbe happy to take a look.
Wink, wink, nudge, nudge.
So, you know, again, you don'thave to hit me with a shovel.
I go back, I pull out mytypewriter, I I spend about a

(19:24):
week coming up with six or eightideas.
And a week later, I go back andI drop the ideas off with
Arthur.
What I didn't know was this.
Lou Shimer, who was uh with NormPrescott, was one of the two
principals at um Filmation.
Lou Shimer was on vacation inHawaii because it was hiatus

(19:45):
season.
And Arthur read my short storiesand sent them to Lou via FedEx.
Now, this is 1978.
Sending something FedEx toHawaii is a big deal in 1978.
Yes.
Sends my short stories to Lou inHawaii.
And then in the interim, I comein with the premises.

(20:06):
And Arthur looks the premisesover and he goes, Well, you
know, they're close enough.
I mean, he's he's clearly gotthe ability to tell a story.
And he leaves the premises onLou's desk.
So when Lou comes back fromHawaii, he's got my premises
sitting on his desk.
And Lou called up Arthur andsaid, Um, you know, I really

(20:26):
don't know who we should hire,if we should hire the guy who
wrote the short stories or theguy who wrote the premises.
And Arthur said, They're thesame guy.
And Lou said, get him.
And so Arthur said, Would youlike to write, you know, uh a
script for us?
And well, sure, absolutely.
So this is maybe April, earlyMay of uh 78.

(20:52):
I wrote a script for a showcalled, no, geez, Starlight and
Moonlight, Starlight andSunlight, Bright, something like
that.
Um, Jebuzite and Amalachite, Ican't remember, but the the
premise was there were two twinsisters, one of whom got her
powers from uh her superpowersfrom the night, the other one

(21:16):
who got her superpowers from thedaytime.
And uh, so of course, obviouslyyou've got to do stories where
the the switchover is crucial towhat's happening, and that
proved a very difficult show forpeople to come up with ideas
for.
And even though I wrote a scriptfor them that they bought, they
ended up canceling the showbefore it even went into

(21:39):
production.
So um it never it never wentanywhere.
But I at least got my foot inthe door.
And after I wrote the firstscript and they saw that I could
write uh fast and well enough tobe edited, because I was
terrible in those days, I'mgonna be honest.
Um, I had I had a story editor,um, Len Jansen, um, who worked

(22:04):
at Filmation get so ticked offat me one time he tried to smash
my head against the wall with acoat rack.
And I have to say he wasjustified, okay?
He was not being unreasonable atthat point.
But um, yeah, we we we had wehad stuff going on.
Filmation.
Uh anyway, um I got I got thegig writing for filmation.

(22:30):
And when fall came around, uh,and most of the other people
were put on hiatus, uh, theysaid to me, you know, we'd like
you to stay and develop storyideas for us.
So I'm thinking, you know, I'mmaking a living, I'm paying my
rent, um, I'm I'm taking care ofmy family.
I'll I'll put off um collegeuntil next year.

(22:53):
Next year never came.
Wow.

James Duke (22:56):
Wow.
So you and never ended up, youwere accepted in the USC and
never ended up going.

SPEAKER_00 (23:00):
Never ended up going there.
No.

James Duke (23:02):
Wow.
That is that is so back thenfilmation had um a with they
were a production company thatwould sell shows to, I guess
back then it was just thenetworks.
What is was it just CBS, NBC,ABC back then?
Yeah, and and so they would sellshows.

(23:24):
So they were selling live actionand animated.
Right.
And um, and so when you uhstarted developing stuff with
them, what was the transitionfrom live action to animation
for you?

SPEAKER_00 (23:37):
Well, the the transition occurred uh before I
got there, and I never got achance to write live action for
them.
I I was at one time in the liveaction studio because they
needed space for animators inthe uh um the regular studio,
but uh I never got a chance towrite live action for them.

(24:00):
Um but I I I hung around withArthur and uh all of the people
working there.
They had figured out a way ofdoing inexpensive um action
adventure shows on Saturdaymorning.
They did ISIS, they did Shazam.

(24:21):
A friend of mine, MichaelReeves, um came up with the
brilliant idea that ISIS couldmake things not happen.
So, you know, she would show up,the damn's going to burst, and
she would go, Damn, don't burst.
And you know, it's like there'sany number of things you can
stop from happening, you know.
It's like the it's the like theinvincible, invisible monsters

(24:44):
from forbidden.
Exactly, exactly.
They they loved Michael.
I mean, they they'd hireMichael, come in and and have as
many things not happen as youcan think of.
Uh that's awesome.
They they did these shows on alow budget, but they did them
with a sense of uh a sense ofstyle, and they did them with a

(25:05):
sense of um there was depth tothem.
It wasn't just knocking out uhpointless action adventure.
The the one thing that filmationhad going for it in those days,
um they got their start when CBSwanted to do, uh I think it was

(25:28):
CBS, wanted to do a Supermananimated show.
And they approached HannaBarbera, and Hanna Barbera said,
you know, our plate is full.
We can't, we can't put anothershow in production.
And Lou Scheimer was working asa background artist for um Hanna
Barbera at that time.
And Lou heard about this and heapproached CBS and said, I can

(25:50):
put a studio together and we cando um, you know, the Superman
show for you.
And he partnered up with NormPrescott and I want to say Dan
Christensen.
I may be wrong here, so don'thold that, you know, don't hold
that as as uh uh authoritativeinformation.

(26:12):
But anyway, they put togetherFilmation Studios.
Norm Norm was an old radio guywho uh when I say radio, I mean
DJ guy, who um uh got intovoiceovers and uh had actually
produced an animated filmseparate from Norm.
He did uh Pinocchio in Space.
Um and so they got together.

(26:33):
It's not a bad movie, actually.
I mean, when you when you lookat it as a cheap 1960s animated
feature, right?
You go, okay, you know, for whatit is, it's not bad.
Um anyway, they they puttogether the um uh Superman
show, and they were notoriousfor uh they were deter, they

(26:58):
were determined to make money atevery stage of production.
Anna Barbera did what was calleddeficit financing.
The studio would give them, Imean, the the network would give
them a quarter million dollarsto do an episode that would
really cost a half million.
So they would go out and find abank and they would borrow a
half million to do that episode.

(27:20):
Then the hope was at some pointin the future you sell it as a
syndication package and you makeyour money back that way.
Got it.
Normally will work, butsometimes you get a really
terrible show and and itdoesn't, and you end up losing
money.
Lou and and God bless him, Louwas a union guy, even though he

(27:42):
ran the studio, he was a unionguy.
He insisted on you using uniontalent, but on keeping the
budget so low they would make aprofit even off uh you know
quarter million dollar budget,and so they used every trick in
the book to keep the the costdown.

(28:03):
I mean, just ridiculous stuff.
You look at it now, and it'sit's funny to see just what the
cost-saving things they weredoing.
Um, when they did the Archieshow, almost all the dialogue
was shot over the the backshoulder of whoever was talking.
So here's Archie talking to Mr.

(28:24):
Weatherby, and then you cut likethis, and here's Mr.
Weatherby answering Archie.
You never see their lips moving,you only see the person they're
talking to.
He didn't have to animate thelips moving.
That's cool.
And uh, when they did the StarTrek animated show, they would
get these tight close-ups ofeyes so they don't have to show

(28:46):
mouths moving.

SPEAKER_01 (28:47):
That's the reason why I I remember those tight
shots.

SPEAKER_00 (28:52):
And um uh they they loved characters with masks
because then you don't have todo uh you know lip syncing, and
they would go through and theywould storyboard action scenes
and they would give the writersthese big thick notebooks of
action scenes and say, whenyou're writing a script, go

(29:16):
through and call out specific umaction scenes that we've got
animated, and we will use themagain.
I wrote one episode of uhBravestar, and I've never seen
any other episode of Bravestar,and I'm sure it's a good show.
I know people who worked on it.
I I am not putting it down, butI know if I see a second episode

(29:39):
of Bravestar, I'm gonna realizehow much same as animation was
in my episode, and it's going todisappoint me.
So I only have watched myepisode of Brave Star, and I'm
going, hey, pretty good.
You know, I like that.

James Duke (29:52):
All right, I'm gonna tell you, I'm gonna tell you how
pathetic I am, uh, Buzz.
I watched way too muchtelevision when I was a kid.
I can sing to you the Brave Startheme song.
Um, and my my favorite thingabout Brave Star.
I'm not gonna, I'm gonna, I'mgoing to save you and the
audience that, but but but thetheme song um was all his animal

(30:15):
powers, right?
So eyes like a hawk, sorry,brave star, eyes like a hawk,
ears like a wolf, brave star,strength of a bear.
And then the one that alwaysmade me laugh, even as a kid, is
he it wasn't the speed of acheetah, it was the speed of a
puma.

SPEAKER_01 (30:33):
And I I wondered why did they go with the puma?

SPEAKER_00 (30:41):
Might have been hopes for a tie-in.
I mean, there was a puma branduh shoe at that end.
Anyway, that's there, that's mybrave heart connection.

James Duke (30:48):
Um, yeah.
So when you so here you arewriting for film uh filmation,
and um man, yeah, boy, theyturned out a lot.
What was your first professionalscreenwriting credit that that
aired?

SPEAKER_00 (31:05):
Ah, geez.
Um, it would have been a segmentof a show called Tarzan and the
Super Seven, which no matter howyou count the configuration,
does not equal seven.
Um, they they had their Tarzanshow and they edited it down
from a half hour to a 20-minuteepisode so they could add other

(31:29):
segments.
It was like an hour-long show,and I think um Space Academy
premiered on this too.
I'm not a hundred percent sure.
Space Academy might have beenit, might have been Space
Academy or it might have beenthe serial version of Jason of
Star Command, because they did aa uh live action serial.

(31:52):
In any case, um I wrote um aFreedom, at least one Freedom
Force episode.
I wrote a couple of um Manta andMoray and Super Stretch and
Microwoman episodes.
I wrote a Webwoman episode, andwe would get sued like nobody's

(32:15):
business because Marvel and DC,once they found out we were
doing these shows, they doubleteamed us, and they sued um
Webwoman, claiming that uh it wewere infringing on Spider-Man
and Black Widow, and theyactually had a point because her

(32:36):
original costume looked a lotlike Black Widow's costume at
that time, so we had to changeit from a logical looking
quasi-commando outfit into thisridiculous fishnet stockings and
tights thing that that was onthe air.
Um super that's so much moreacceptable to put the woman in

(32:57):
the fishnet.
Exactly.
Yeah, super stretch and microwoman got sued by DC because
they said we were we wereemulating uh the Adam and the
elongated man.
I totally remembered that.

James Duke (33:11):
That they they I think they would show that on
some other one out later on.
I totally remember that show.
Super stretch and micro, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 (33:19):
And and Marvel sued because they said uh you're
you're you're ripping off AntMan and Mr.
Fantastic.

SPEAKER_03 (33:27):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 (33:28):
Um Marvel and DC both sued over Manton Moray.
Marvel saying you're you'reripping off Namor, and DC saying
you're ripping off Aquaman.
And I told Lou, I said, forheaven's sakes, just tell Marvel
and DC's lawyers, decide whichone of you is getting ripped
off, and we'll we'll take thethe winner on.

James Duke (33:52):
Now, now help help our audience understand.
So back back then, I mean it'sstill today, but they do it
differently now.
Because, but um, if I remembercorrectly, and please correct
where I'm where I'm notremembering right, but back then
the the networks were requireduh to put X amount of, I don't

(34:15):
know if it was through the FCCor something, but they were
required to put uh X amount ofhours on television that were
considered educational or forchildren.
Exactly.
And so the Saturday morning, sowhat so they would basically
just hire companies like HannaBarbera and Filmation to just
create blocks of TV for them.

(34:36):
So the reason why, like you'retalking about, the reason why
there were so many differentcharacters is that Filmation
would literally have four hourson CBS that they had to fill,
and they would just rotatethrough characters that worked
or didn't work.
And it but but literally theyhad a block they had to fill.
Oh yeah, yeah, that they werecontracted by by CBS, ABC, or

(34:58):
MBC.
And they and they had all thesedifferent shows on all these
different characters, and somehit and some didn't, and they
would just kind of keep rotatingthrough.
But it was the networks didn'tproduce it themselves because
they didn't care, they just weretrying to fulfill their
requirement.
Is that right?

SPEAKER_00 (35:12):
Almost never did a network uh directly produce a
show for for Saturday morning.
There are a few exceptions, butthey're not you know
significant.
Uh they they would certainly putpressure on a studio to do a
certain type of program acertain type of way, but they
they uh they rarely got theirhands dirty actually doing the

(35:35):
production themselves.
Uh, we had, as I said, we had areal problem at filmation with
just getting sued by people leftand right.
And one one of the examples waskind of heartbreaking to me.
There used to be a comic stripcalled Tumbleweeds done by a guy
named TK Ryan.
And Tumbleweeds was just thisreally funny, really witty

(35:59):
takeoff on um uh old westtropes.
I mean, it was just it was everyold west cliche parody you could
imagine.
And I I loved the comic strip, Iwas a big fan of it, and Lou
sold a show to NBC called uh TheFabulous Funnies, which to be
perfectly honest, was neither.

(36:24):
And most of the stuff he had waslike really old.
I mean, it was like the Cats andJammer Kids, Alley Oop, um,
Nancy and Sluggo.
Um, he got Broomhilda, and healso got he said, um
tumbleweeds.
And when I found out he hadtumbleweeds, I I immediately

(36:45):
campaigned.
I said, I love this comic strip.
Let me do it, let me write it.
And I figured out a way ofincluding the Native American
characters into it because evenat that time, um Lou would not
hire someone to do an ethnicvoice if they weren't that
ethnic person.
And about the only ethnic actoranybody knew in Hollywood at

(37:10):
that time for Native Americanswas um Iron Eyes Cody, which, if
you know, was not a NativeAmerican, he was Sicilian
descent, but he really loved theNative American people.
He he became, you know, um, Iwon't say he was delusional, but
he certainly embraced thatculture.

(37:33):
He championed for their rightsand protection.
And as I recall, at least twotribes formally adopted him as a
blood brother and and to thetribe because of all the work he
had done.
But yeah, he was Sicilian, hewas not um, he was not Native
American, but he would be theonly person that they could
afford if they were going to doa Native American voice, and uh

(37:55):
so they didn't want to have anyNative American characters in
Tumbleweed.
And I said, Well, you've got twocharacters in the strip who are
mute, they never say anything.
You got this big guy, BacolicBuffalo, and then you've got uh
this little scrawny guy calledLots of Luck, and Lots of Luck
would write notes and hand themto people in the strip.
And once they realized, well,Buzz knows this and he can

(38:19):
include the Native Americancharacters in a way that we
don't have to hire an extravoice, they gave me all the
scripts to write.
So I I was I was in Hog Heaven.
I was gonna do at least fourscripts for Tumbleweeds, and um
we I I had written the first twoscripts.

(38:40):
The first episode had beenanimated.
Uh when the show premiered, itwas on um that morning, and he
his tumbleweeds face was in thelineup.
And Monday we got a call from TKRyan's lawyer saying, Mr.
Ryan really liked the episode.
He's just wondering why younever got a contract with him.

(39:02):
Because apparently, what hadhappened, um, Lou's lawyer had
contacted Ryan and said, We'dlike to do uh a Tumbleweeds
animated show.
And Ryan said, Okay, send me astoryboard so I can see what
you're gonna do with it, and ifI like it, I'll say yes.
And the lawyer just went, hesaid yes, and never followed up.

(39:23):
And so we we we animated an airto show that we had no rights
to, um, and and that was adisappointment because I was I
was having fun doing it, but um,you know, it it got yanked.

James Duke (39:37):
So man, that's yeah, that's I I can't imagine doing
all that work, and then but butit was a little bit of the wild,
wild west back then, I guess.
Yeah, because they had to putout so much and they were so
used to getting sued by Marveland DC probably that weren't
that worried.
You so your your career ispretty varied in terms of uh

(39:58):
mentioned that earlier, you'vewritten on So many shows.
Can you explain what the processwas for writing for?
I mean, because literally, like,I mean, Alvin and the Chipmunk,
Dungeons and Dragons,Scooby-Doo, Thundar the
Barbarian, Heathcliff, ofcourse, G.I.
Joe, Mr.
T.
I love, I remember that show.
Oh my gosh.
Of course, Transformers, G.I.

(40:19):
Joe.
Um, were what was the processfor writing animation back then?
Were you working for filmation,or were um uh were you uh
writing stuff on spec?
Would you get called and say,hey, we need uh what uh as
opposed to say a writer's roomwhere you would sit around with

(40:41):
a bunch of writers, how did itwork?
Did it vary from show to show,or or what was the process like
in writing for all these TVshows?
Well, the answer to thosequestions is yes.

SPEAKER_00 (40:54):
It um every show that I got involved in, I got
involved in a different way.
And um nonetheless, there was agreat deal of overlap.
Um, I worked two years atfilmation and then they had a
dry spell and they couldn't keepas many people on for hiatus as

(41:15):
they wanted to.
And so they turned me loose andthey said, uh, stay in touch.
We'll want to hire you back whenwe we go back in production.
And I was trying to find work,you know, to keep uh, you know,
the roof over our heads, andsomeone said, Well, why don't
you try um Ruby Spears?
They're a struggling youngcompany and they're trying to

(41:37):
get scripts written.
So I you know contacted RubySpears.
I forget who the story editorwas at the time, but um I had uh
they gave me the the show Bibleon um I think it was Dingbat in
the Creeps.
I may be mistaken.
It might have been Mighty Manand Yuck.

(41:59):
Might have been Mighty Man andYuck.
But in any case, they gave me aBible that said, Come up with
some ideas.
And so I came up with a coupleof ideas and they said, Okay,
this one will work.
And they bought it from me, andI wrote it as a freelance
script.
And they said, You got any more?
And I said, Well, give me giveme a chance, and I wrote a few
more.
I think I wrote around three orfour as a freelancer, and then

(42:24):
they said, Well, you know, we'regonna be gearing up soon for
regular season production.
Do you want to come on board asa a you know, staff writer?
So I agreed, and then Lou calledme and said, uh, you know, I'd
like to have you come back.
And I said, Well, you know, RubySpears is offering me this much
money.
Can you meet it or beat it?

(42:45):
And he said, No, I can't dothat.
I'm sorry, you know, best ofluck.
And he, you know, let me go,which is unfortunately for Lou
what happened with a lot of histalent.
Um, you know, they used to sayfilmation was where, you know,
it was for people on their wayin or their way out of the
industry.
It was it was either newbies whowere learning the ropes and who

(43:09):
would soon go on to bigger andbetter things, or it was old
guys who were burned out, andthat was the best they could do.
Um, anyway, I I ended up onstaff at uh Ruby Spears.
I think the first staff writingI did was for Mighty Man and
Yuck.
Uh, I met Steve Gerber therebecause they brought Steve

(43:32):
Gerber on board.
Steve was in the middle of hislawsuit against uh Marvel
Comics.
He was trying to claim ownershipof Howard the Duck.
And Steve was doing a comic bookcalled Destroyer Duck, which was
um uh one of the earliestself-funded independent black

(43:52):
and white comics.
Excuse me, it wasn't black andwhite, it was full color, my
goodness.
I'm I'm misremembering here.
It was a full color comic, anduh he was using that to fund his
lawsuit against Marvel.
And Steve, and I'm not I'm notspeaking ill of him here because
Steve and I were great friends,but the truth is Steve

(44:13):
frequently had deadlineproblems, and on more than one
occasion, he would call friendsup and say, Can you help me out
and you know, move things downthe block?
And he he said to me at onepoint, he said, I've got to
finish the script for thisissue.
And we've got Jack Kirby, youknow, drawing it.

(44:34):
I need you to write a two-pagefight scene for Jack to draw
while I'm finishing the rest ofthe script.
Um, you know, and so I go, okay,sure.
I write a two-page fight scene,and uh I I tell people my first
job in comics, I was I I wrote Iwrote something that Jack Kirby
illustrated, and it's beendownhill ever since.

(44:57):
But no, I I I wrote this thingfor Jack, uh, didn't meet Jack
at that time, but I wrote it forhim.
And then um, excuse me, strikethat.
I had met Jack at that time.
I had met Jack.
I'll tell that story in amoment.
Okay, in any case, I'm I'm onstaff.
Uh we're developing ideas, we'rewriting scripts.

(45:20):
Um somebody came up with theidea of Thundar the Barbarian.
Just just somebody, I love it.
Well, here's the thing.
Um Joe would say veryconcretely, I came up with the
idea.
And I believe Joe probably hadthe germ of the idea.

(45:44):
Steve would argue, no, I came upwith the the general shape of
it.
Once we decided to do abarbarian in the future story, I
crafted it as to what it wouldbe with input from people like
Marty Pasco and Marc Evanier,who who all had been in the room

(46:06):
when the development was goingon.
Marty was the guy whocontributed the name Ookla for
Yes, Ookla, yes.
Yeah, because because when Martywas in Paris, um young Parisians
kept asking him, well, where doI get an OUCla shirt?
U-C-L-A.

SPEAKER_01 (46:25):
That's the origin for Ookla.
I had no idea.

SPEAKER_00 (46:30):
And um uh uh I was I was there, but I wasn't involved
in the immediate genesis ofThundar.
But once the the general ideawas developed, and once they got
to go ahead to do more formaldevelopment on it, uh Joe had a

(46:50):
big meeting, all the writerscame in, the the heads of the uh
storyboard and designdepartments came in, and um
we're we're discussing the show,and Steve said, I know a guy who
would be perfect, you know, todesign the show.
He said, Let me let me call himand I'll bring him in and we'll

(47:10):
you know get him involved.
And so we had a meetingscheduled for the next week or a
few days later, uh, a bigmeeting where we were all going
to get together and just hammerout all the details of the show.
So uh when the meeting comesaround, I come in and into the
conference room, and JohnDorman, who was the head of the

(47:34):
storyboard department, wasalready in the conference room
and he's talking to this littleold man.
And I tell people, uh, you heardthe expression that somebody's
eyes were twinkling.
This is the only person I'veever met whose eyes literally
were twinkling all the time.
I mean, just you could see likeideas sparking behind them.

(47:56):
And so I come in and Johndoesn't introduce us, you know,
to each other.
And I figure, well, you know,when the meeting starts, we'll
probably all go around the tableand introduce ourselves.
So I didn't get, you know, uh, Ididn't get uh, you know,
concerned about it.
And gradually, one by one,everybody drifts in until

(48:16):
finally uh Joe shows up and wesit down and there's no
introductions.
Everybody just, you know, startscontributing to the meeting.
And the little old guy and Istruck it off really well
because I could tell right awayhe had great ideas.
He was plussing stuff, he wasdeveloping, you know, just

(48:37):
verbally developing stuff andshowing how you could expand
things and this and that.
And uh I recognized, wow, thisthis is gonna be a really cool
show working on it with this guybecause he's he's really on top
of things.
And so the meeting goes on forabout an hour or so, and then
uh, you know, Joe says, Okay,well, the the writers will go
and start developing scripts,and uh, you know, you guys in

(49:00):
the art department, you go startdesigning stuff, and we'll meet
again next week and you knowcontinue from there.
So I went into Steve's roomafter Steve's office after the
meeting, and I said, you know, II'm really fired up about this
show.
It sounds like it's gonna betons of fun.
I said, but who was the littleold guy in the room?
Nobody ever introduced us.

(49:20):
And Steve said, That was JackKirby.
Wow.
And if I had known it was JackKirby, my contribution to the
meeting would have been I, youknow, this was back before the
internet, and I I knew JackKirby by reputation, had no idea

(49:41):
what he looked like.

James Duke (49:43):
So Jack Kirby is somewhat responsible for the
look and design of Thundar aswell.

SPEAKER_00 (49:48):
He is responsible for like 90% of the design.
Uh Alex Toth.

James Duke (49:53):
I had no idea.

SPEAKER_00 (49:55):
Alex Toth and Doug Wilde did the initial designs on
the characters.
And uh you can you can findtheir stuff online, you'll look
at it, and and both of them didThundar, Ariel, and Ukla in
their personal styles, but youknow, you can tell it's the same
character.
Jack came on board and starteddoing all the incidental

(50:18):
characters, all the backgrounds,all the the supporting
characters and weapons andvehicles and everything else.
We did a a um script where inone scene um I had I had written
that uh Ariel, Ukla, and Thundarcross a river on a raft ferry.

(50:40):
You know, you've you've seenthese in Western movies.
Somebody makes a raft, they'vegot a rope strung across the
river, and you just pull yourway across.
And so I describe a raft ferry,and Jack designs it.
He comes back with the deck ofan aircraft carrier on top of a
raft of sequoia logs.

(51:01):
And I took one look at this andI said, no, we are not wasting
this as a throwaway backgrounddetail.
I'm I am building an entirescript around this this uh this
vehicle here, and that becamethe genesis of a script called
Treasure of the Mocks.
Wow.
Because uh, I put a piratecaptain and her crew on it, and

(51:23):
they're looking for the mocktreasure, and they're going up
and down the river.
I mean, it was you know, Jackdid this all the time.
You'd ask him, uh, yeah, givegive the guy, you know, some
weird weapon, and he would comeback with something that was
just like mind-boggling, and hejust knocked this stuff off.
I mean, it was just astonishing.

(51:45):
Um, in any case, Ruby Spears,for about a three-year period,
had what was widely regarded asthe best story department in the
business.
And I'm not saying this to braguh because I was part of it, but
we just had top-notch people.
We had uh Steve Gerber as storyeditor.

(52:07):
There was myself, there's GaryGreenfield, um Norman Maurer.
I mean, there was just a lot,excuse me, not Norman Maurer,
Norman was a director, uh,Michael Maurer, his son.
Um we just had a lot of reallygood people working there, Jack
Anyart.

James Duke (52:25):
Um and you guys would all do multiple shows.
So when you say this when yousay the story department, uh
just give us a rough idea.
How many shows was that storycompart story department
contributing to?

SPEAKER_00 (52:39):
It depended on it depended upon the season because
some seasons we would have showsthat might have three different
segments, and so instead of 13episodes, you're really writing
39 segments because each one wasindependent of one another.
Um, other show, other seasons wemight have only two shows on the

(53:02):
air, and you'd only do a handfulof of episodes.

James Duke (53:06):
Um, like you wouldn't, so uh I'm trying to
remember.
Was Thundor a 21, 22-minuteshow, or was it like an 11 to 11
minute show?

SPEAKER_00 (53:16):
It was it was uh a half hour show, it was in a half
hour slot.
It may have gotten trimmed downat some point and reruns so they
could squeeze an extra publicservice announcement in or
something like that.
But it was it was always meantas a half-hour show when we were
writing it.

James Duke (53:35):
Okay, and you would break it out as uh with
commercials, would that be likea five-act?
Yeah, yeah.
Were all your shows written infive acts?
Uh no, three acts, three acts.
You would do three, so you youwouldn't cons consider them
between each commercial break,you would just be each there
were only two commercial breaks.

SPEAKER_00 (53:55):
Um I seem to recall that we had three commercial
breaks.
I know definitely in the Sunbowmaterial we had three commercial
two commercial breaks, threeacts, two commercial breaks
separating the acts.

James Duke (54:07):
Okay, okay.

SPEAKER_00 (54:08):
Um, I I now you got me wondering.
I can't remember if Thundar wastwo acts separated by a
commercial or if it was uh threeacts separated by commercials.
But basically, you knew you hadonly X amount of time to tell a
story.
And with animation writing, atthat time we were doing what was

(54:30):
called directing on paper, wherethe writer would break the scene
down for the storyboarddepartment, literally movement
by movement.
Uh, camera goes in, camera comesout, the this character does
that, uh, uh and and call everyshot close up on this, far

(54:51):
angle.
And you literally had tovisualize the entire story in
your head and and break it downfor the the storyboard
department.
So our scripts would be twice aslong as a uh live action script
of similar length.
If you did a um half-hour actionadventure show in live action,

(55:15):
it would have run about 22, 24pages at that time.
Thundar scripts typically ranabout 44 pages.

James Duke (55:22):
Wow.
And and explain to our audiencewhat was the animation process
back then?
Like how long from the by thetime you turned in a script to
the time it aired on television,what was the what was the time
um that took?

SPEAKER_00 (55:38):
When when all cylinders were firing smoothly,
we could get a show back in sixweeks' time.

James Duke (55:46):
Oh wow, six weeks.
Okay.

SPEAKER_00 (55:49):
But this means we already had a lot of um same as
animation, even in Thundar,you'll notice they jump over the
same tree every episode.

SPEAKER_03 (56:01):
Yes.

SPEAKER_00 (56:02):
Uh, we had a lot of same as animation.
We had a lot of of stockanimation that we could reuse
again and again.
Um we had a good design teamthat could uh you know design
characters, we had a greatstoryboard department.
I can't I cannot overemphasizeJohn Dorman ran one of the best

(56:26):
storyboard departments I've everseen anywhere.
And and John John was a wildman.
Let me explain this.
I mean, it's it's when you whenyou realize how good the stuff
was and you realize how chaoticthe office, the the storyboard
department was.
But uh Jim Woodring, who is isnow famous as a um you know

(56:47):
alternate comics guy, you know,he does the the Frank books.
Uh Jim Woodring was a friend ofJohn's, and he and he worked
with John in the storyboarddepartment.
We had guys like Kurt Connor andDan Reba, uh just tons of people
working there.
And I was one of the few writerswho actually went down and

(57:09):
talked with the storyboardartists and found out from them
what made a script good forthem.
Because a lot of times peoplewould write stuff and then the
storyboard artists are going, Ohcrap, how are we gonna how are
we gonna draw this?
How will we depict it?
Um, and I went down and I wouldsay, well, what what do you guys

(57:30):
need?
What makes your job easier?
And they would give me advice.
Yeah, write scenes that we cando this instead of you know a
more difficult and cumbersomeway of doing things.
Um I'll I'll jump ahead a littlebit.
I'll tell you a story about um ashow called TurboTene.

SPEAKER_01 (57:51):
Yes, TurboTeen.

SPEAKER_00 (57:52):
I totally I I dodged the bullet on that one.

James Duke (57:56):
I I was on Turbo Teen for all the 15 minutes and
and Joe just so people who don'tknow, and I'm sure there's some
people out there, I know acouple of friends of mine that
that we joke about TurboTene.
TurboTeen was uh literally ashow about a teenage boy who
would transform, was it becauseof waters?

(58:16):
I can't remember what he wouldtransform into a a race car,
basically.
And uh yeah, very interestingconcept.

SPEAKER_00 (58:26):
I I this actually the the the turbo teen story
actually tries ties intoTransformers, but specifically
for John.
Uh I went over to see him onetime for lunch, and he and the
storyboard department were justsitting there glowering.

(58:48):
And um I'll I'll clean up thelanguage here a little bit, uh,
and I won't mention the name ofthe person responsible, but John
went Joe Blow, and they allstarted pounding their desk, you

(59:08):
know.
Joe Blow had written a turboteenscript where turboteen as a car
climbs up on a high divingboard, jumps up and down on the
board as a car, executes a jackknife, dives into the pool,
swims over to a rowboat in thepool as a car, climbs into the

(59:33):
rowboat as a car, and they wereexpected to draw this.
And that is why they werecursing Joe Blow for having
written such a script.
Um because nothing had beendrawn like that before.

James Duke (59:48):
So everything.

SPEAKER_00 (59:54):
I gotta I gotta say, uh John, I I I loved him like a
Brother, he was one of theoriginal wild men of animation.
I mean, he was he was bonkers, Igotta be honest.
But he was brilliant, he didgreat storyboards.
Um, but but he and his crew werefrequently chemically enhanced,

(01:00:18):
and I think for shows likeTurboTene, that was a necessity.

SPEAKER_01 (01:00:22):
That was a necessity for Turbo Teen.

SPEAKER_00 (01:00:25):
I mean, even as a kid, I'm watching TurboTene
going, this is ridiculous.
All right.
Some of the episodes are onYouTube, and I I I invite people
to try to watch an entire onebecause you get about like five
minutes into it, and you'regoing, nothing in this makes any
sense at all.
Yes, thinking up.

James Duke (01:00:44):
And I and I remember thinking of that as like a
10-year-old or however it was Iwas, yeah.
Um, okay, you've done so manyshows that I love.
Um, I mean Teenage Mutant NinjaTurtles, Mr.
Alvin the Chipmunks.
So there was this um uh butokay, so there is this
transformational kind of momentin the 80s.

(01:01:07):
Uh and I know you know so muchof the backstory of all this
stuff because you were part ofit.
That's why I want to I want topick your brain on this.
And there's been some now,there's been some documentaries,
and there's been some stuffthat's kind of come out.
So I'd love to just hear yourperspective.
So Transformers, so for me, itwas like 1A, 1B was my favorite
shows were Transformers and G.I.

(01:01:28):
Joe, and they were back-to-backuh uh weekdays.
And I you know memorized halfthe episodes of all of them
because you know, back then theyjust went on repeat.
And so um uh for people who arefamiliar with the Transformers,
they decided to make a movie.
And you know, back they wereall, and just a reminder, all

(01:01:50):
cartoons are back back then andeven now, but they're all about
selling toys, right?
They're all about movingmerchandise.
And so Transformers wanted tothey make a movie, and uh I've
I've watched a littledocumentary on the making of it,
which is hilarious because thedirector, I don't know if you've
seen it, Buzz, but the directorof the Transformers, the movie,

(01:02:11):
uh, is like this Japanese guy,and he um like to him, it was
like a paycheck, and he does notunderstand, even in the
documentary, you can tell why amI being interviewed about this
stupid movie that I did that inhis mind wasn't even that good.
And you can just tell that he islike, why am I?
But you know, it's a all theseshows are so beloved now, my

(01:02:34):
people.
Um, well, so there was acontroversy for us fans.
I was there opening weekend, Iforced my sister, my older
sister, to take me to the movietheater and watch the
Transformers movie, and we allwere shocked when Optimus Prime
dies.
Spoiler alert alert there.
And um, and literally, like allof us kids are why why would you

(01:02:56):
do that?
And and the Transformers showjust bombs after that.
It just has a huge effect on itbecause everyone's like, why
would you do that?
So, in the meantime, I know thatG.I.
Joe is talking about making amovie, and then they see the
response.
So, take us back to because youwere connected to all these
people.

(01:03:16):
So um, when the Transformersmovie came out, so my first
question to you is when the wasthere already talk of doing the
GI Joe movie before theTransformers movie came out?
Yes, and and and talk a littlebit about uh so that's the thing
too.
Yeah, you're not you're you'rethe writer of the GI Joe movie,

(01:03:37):
but your credit, and you cantell that story later too.
Your credit doesn't necessarilyreflect that, but you're the
writer of the GI Joe.
So talk a little bit about theconnection between the
Transformers movie and the G.I.
Joe movie, and then I'd love totalk to you about the
specifications.

SPEAKER_00 (01:03:51):
Well, if if you don't mind, we're gonna
backtrack to uh Ruby Spears,because Ruby Spears is where the
first domino starts falling thatleads to Transformers and GI
Joe.
Um, what had happened was in the1960s there was a show called
Hot Wheels, and uh a parentsgroup complained to the FCC

(01:04:15):
about it, saying it was just ahalf-hour commercial for the
toy.
The FCC agreed and they issued aban that there could be no
toy-based cartoon shows.
You could have a cartoon basedon a literary property, but you
couldn't have one based on atoy.
Um jump ahead about 15 years,and the Smurfs reach American

(01:04:40):
shores as these littletchotchkis, keychains, good luck
charms, stuff like that.
They were popular.

There was a woman at my there was a woman at my
church who had an entire root,an entire room in her house of
little smurf figures.
It was crazy.
Yeah, they were huge.

SPEAKER_00 (01:04:59):
Nobody in America knew their origin, nobody knew
where and how they were created.
They were they were actuallycalled, I think, strumps or
something like that.
They were a Belgian comic book.
But the toys hit America andthey boom, big, huge, profitable
thing.
And I think it was NBC said,gosh, if only we could do a a

(01:05:24):
Smurfs cartoon show.
And someone said, Well, it'sbased on a Belgian comic book.
And they said, Oh, really?
So they put the show intoproduction.
The FCC goes, You can't do that.
And they say, Oh no, no, look,Belgian comic book.
See, it originated here.
The FCC goes, Okay, all right,fine.
You know, you're allowed to doit.

(01:05:45):
So now other people are lookingat their properties, and the
strawberry shortcake people say,Well, does greeting cards count
as literary property?
And the FCC goes, Well, printedon paper, yeah, okay, sure.
They count as printed property.
Well, all right, now we gotstrawberry shortcake.
So they do the strawberryshortcake series.

(01:06:07):
Um, and at that point, Matteland Hasbro both go, oh, all it
takes is a comic book.
So Mattel approaches DC and theydo the He-Man Masters of the
Universe comic, a three-part uhmini-series which bears no
resemblance at all to the showthat got on the air.

(01:06:29):
But at least at least let themsay we've we've got a comic book
it's based on Marvel.
Um uh Hasbro went to Marvel,they got Larry Hama to create
the G.I.
Joe series for him at Marvel,the comic.
I forget who the uh team wasbehind Transformers, but they
got Transformers going.

(01:06:52):
While all this is happening,Hasbro is also coming out to Los
Angeles and talking with everyanimation company because the
end game is to get aTransformers and G.I.
Joe TV series on the air.
And I was at the time the giantrobot bug, you might say,
because every studio I work for,I was championing, you know, we

(01:07:15):
got to do a giant robot show.
They're they're big in Japan,they've they've got huge
followings.
We've, you know, this issomething kids will like giant
robots.
And everybody buzz your nuts,shut up, go away.
So, anyway, Joe calls us into ameeting, Joe Ruby, and the
Hasbro guys are there, andthey've got this suitcase, and
they open it up, and it isfilled with transformers because

(01:07:38):
they had they had bought thelicensing rights to like three
or four lines of transformingtoys in Japan.
And they were gonna mix andmatch them, and they were gonna
rename them and all this stuff,and they just had this suitcase
full of transforming robot toys.
And I'm sitting there trying tokeep from bursting out with
excitement, you know, andthey're talking with Joe.

(01:08:00):
And uh in the end, they, youknow, they the meeting ends,
they close the suitcase, theywalk off with it, and they are
barely out of the building whenI say to Joe, we have got to do
this show.
It is gonna be huge, it's gonnabe great, it's it's gonna be
tremendous.
You have got to get this show.
And Joe goes, Nah, I got abetter idea.

(01:08:20):
We're gonna do a show about ateenage boy who turns into a
car.
And uh, as I said, I I lastedabout 15 minutes on that show
because when when Joe got aBible developed for it, he
called us in for a writer'smeeting, he gave us all copies
of the Bible.

(01:08:40):
He said, Go back, read the theBible, and then start developing
ideas.
I got about halfway through theBible, I tossed it in the trash
can, I came back to Joe's officeand I said, Joe, I'll develop
ideas for you, but you got toexplain a few things to me.
If the kid is a car and theytake the wheels off, if he turns
back into a kid, is he missinghis hands and feet?

(01:09:02):
If the kid is a car and theytake the battery out, if he
turns back into a kid, is he uhmissing his heart?
If the kid is a car and they puta suitcase in the trunk, when he
turns back into a kid and Joegoes, I'm putting you on another
show.
So anyway, we are gonna jumpahead now.

(01:09:23):
Um we we uh Ruby Spears, as Isaid, had what was regarded at
the time as the best storydepartment.
But for reasons not related toJoe and Ken, they lost that
storyboard department in aboutlike three weeks' time.

(01:09:44):
They they had somebody who uhworked under them who managed to
piss off the entire storydepartment in in a single
afternoon.
And we were like all on ourphones calling our agents, you
know, get me a gig somewhereelse.
So this person basicallyhamstrung Ruby Spears by uh by

(01:10:06):
alienating all the writers init.
But that's a different story foranother time.
Anyway, Steve Gerber ended upworking on um Dungeons and
Dragons.
And I said to Steve, because wewere friends, I said, Can I can
I pitch to the show?
And he said, Well, you know,they they seem to be closed.

(01:10:27):
Um, I don't think you can getin, but you know, here's the
person to contact.
So I contacted them.
And as a courtesy, because I,you know, had been working in
the business, as a courtesy,they they let me come in and
pitch a story, even though theywere full at the time.
And I pitched a story calledQuest of the Skeleton Warrior,

(01:10:49):
which personally I regard as aturning point in my own writing,
because it was the first time Iwrote about a villain who was a
sympathetic villain who had anunderstandable motive.
And um, you couldn't hate him.
You you you go, well, we got tooppose him, but we understand
perfectly well why he's doingthis.

(01:11:09):
He's not acting out of selfish,irrational reasons.
And they liked it so much theymade space for it in the uh
original series, and um, I endedup, you know, being one of as a
result, ended up being one ofthe writers on the original
Dungeons and Dragons show.

I remember that show really well because it was uh it
was a late.
Okay, so this is once again,this is what you get when you're
someone like me who watched waytoo much.
Is you could watch the patternof the shows on Saturday
morning, they would get thelater in the Saturday morning it
would go, it'd be more for olderkids.

(01:11:47):
Exactly.
And um, and Dungeons and Dragonswas on CBS, and it was their it
was their late show that would,I think they paired it with uh
the CBS um uh storybook time orwhatever that eventually went
over to ABC, uh, which wasusually more uh tween, tween or

(01:12:07):
teen themed or whatever.
Dungeons and Dragons was goodstorytelling.
It was also really goodanimation, with slightly
different animation than uh eventhe earlier shows, too.
The quality of animation and thequality of the of the writing, I
distinctly it stood out to me asbeing.
I don't know if I want to usethe word more mature, but it

(01:12:28):
definitely had a different uhquality to it.
Would that be the correct way tosay it?

SPEAKER_00 (01:12:34):
Yeah, absolutely.
Um it it was a step up inquality all the way around.
I was very happy to be involvedin it.
And as I said, it it I view itas a personal stepping stone
where we move, I moved up as awriter, one notch in being able
to write uh stories aboutcharacters who are a lot more

(01:12:59):
complex than the typical youknow supervillain that you
encounter.
Um, in any case, from there, I Ifreelanced around a little bit,
and Steve ended up being hiredto story edit uh the G.I.
Joe TV series.
Now, by this time, they hadalready done the two, uh, the
first two uh mini-series thatRon Friedman had written.

(01:13:24):
And uh, as I mentioned, Ron hada really good agent.
The um animation writers werenot protected by the writers'
guilt.
And as a result, uh there was noarbitration on final credits.
And Ron, by the way, Ron is awonderful guy.

(01:13:45):
We're friends, I have noanimosity, don't read anything
into this, please.
Yeah, Ron's agent got him a dealwhere if he wrote the first
draft of something, his namewould be the only name on the
script.
And you know, that agent didexactly what an agent is
supposed to do, represented thebest interests of his client.

(01:14:06):
So I, you know, I I'm notblaming Ron for anything.
So please don't read anythinginto that.
But Ron wrote two, uh, the firsttwo um miniseries, and I had
seen them on television.
And if you remember, these arethe ones where you know tanks
are split in half by jetsswooping down and slicing them

(01:14:29):
with their wingtips, and you'vegot sergeants giving orders to
colonels and things like this.
And when Steve got assigned thestory editor position, I uh I
contacted him, and Steve said,Well, you know, we've we've
already staffed up, we'vealready got uh staff writers,
and we're not taking freelancesubmissions right now.

(01:14:52):
Um said, But if if I could,would you look at a couple of
scripts and just give me somefeedback?
Because he knew I had been inthe army for six years.
So I looked at him and I gavethem, you know, read them over
and I made some notes and gavethem back.
And and basically I said, Well,you know, the the people writing
these don't understand how amilitary unit functions on a

(01:15:14):
day-to-day basis, they don'tunderstand the chain of command.
Uh, there's a lot of technicalstuff that is really wildly
wrong in what they're doing.
Um, you know, and but you know,best of luck.
I hope, you know, I hope itworks because they got some
interesting characters.
Steve called Sunbow and said,uh, you know, we really ought to

(01:15:36):
hire Buzz as a technical advisorbecause he was in the army, he
knows animation, he, you know,he's a good person to have on
this.
And they said, Well, we don'thave any budget for um a tech
writer, I mean a tech umadvisor, but we could squeeze in
another staff writer.
So I got I ended up becoming astaff writer and the de facto um

(01:15:59):
assistant story editor almostimmediately.
And almost every script that waswritten there, you know, passed
through my hands just to makesure you know there were no
egregious mistakes in it.

So would that have been would that have been what
season would that have been?

SPEAKER_00 (01:16:15):
Because I know first season.

So they did uh I'm trying to remember the
mini-series.
Was it like the weather machineone or something like that?
So they did a couple of those,and then that's when you came
in.
Okay.

SPEAKER_00 (01:16:27):
Yeah, and then I I was I was doing uh, I think we
did 65 half hour episodes.
We did not write down, we neverwrote down to to our audience.
And I think the reason RubySpears had a reputation of
having the best story departmentwas that we were we were

(01:16:49):
striving to write up.
And and frequently our stuffwould be edited down by
somebody, but we were alwayswriting at a at a higher level
than uh than the studiosrequired.

This was my I completely agree.
This was my theory as a as afan, right?
So as a fan of the genre ofanimation that you were at at
its peak, right?
I I used to me the reason whytransformers and G.I.
Joe worked was because it workedat two different levels as

(01:17:24):
opposed to He-Man.
He-Man, which I also watched,He-Man uh worked at a toy level
better than it worked as a showlevel.
Um trans both both Transformersand G.I.
Joe had something over He-Man,and that was their toy lines
were super impressive, but andand diverse and really

(01:17:48):
interesting, and you you couldget really excited about the
characters that they werecreating in the toys.
But then the shows themselves,separate from the toys, were
just also fun and great to watchand engaging and had a depth of
storytelling that was different.
Did am I am I off base here?

SPEAKER_00 (01:18:05):
But you were absolutely right, because one of
one of the blessings in disguisefor GI Joe was that when Marvel
got the gig to do the G.I.
Joe comic book, they handed itover to Larry Hama and they
basically took their hands off.
They just went, Yeah, this isthis is just bread and butter

(01:18:27):
money for us.
You know, we're not expectinganything of it.
Yeah, do whatever you want.
And uh ironically, I think therewas another show.
Um uh not uh something aboutgem, not not our gem, but uh
Amherst or something like that.
There was another uh mini-seriesthat Marvel did with um a female

(01:18:50):
magic character in it that waslike really well written, and it
was because, yeah, nobody'spaying attention.
It's this is just uh a side gig,it's not our characters, we
don't care.
They hand it to Larry, and Larryalso was a military vet, and
Larry brought a level ofsensibility to it that would not

(01:19:13):
have gotten there with any otherwriter.
And Larry was also an artist, sothat he could he could block
these stories out, he could showhow they should be done.
And Larry just did a great jobwith the the G.I.
Joe comic book.
He also wrote the character biosthat appeared on the backs of

(01:19:34):
the cards.
Oh, yeah.
What you see on the back of thecard is about one-third of the
actual bio that that uh Larrywould write.
We lucked out because Hasbrosent the full bios to us in in
um the show Bible.
And so we had the these insightsonto this wide diversity of

(01:19:54):
characters that Larry hadcreated.
Then, on top of that, we'rebringing our own sense of.
Into it, our own experiences.
Um, and everybody um everybodyhad a chance to use their own
voice.
We we had a wide diversity ofepisodes because we had a wide
diversity of writers.

(01:20:15):
We had people with differentinterests, different points of
view.
Once we got the series underway,um, we had Transformers going 65
episodes, we had G.I.
Joe going 65 episodes, we had atleast one other show we were
doing, which I think was aweekend show that was doing like

(01:20:37):
13 episodes.
My little pony got introduced atsome point in the proceedings.
Wow.
We at one point, I remember wejust totaled up the number of
episodes that we had to do in aspecific period of time, in like
a one-year period of time.
And I think it was somethinglike 160 episodes.

(01:20:59):
And we were writing these thingsfast.
Uh, Flint Dilly, who was wasmore of a Transformers writer
than a Joe writer, though we didwrite several Joe episodes.
Flint said Flint said, you know,you fix the two things in a
script that you hate the most,you put a bow tie on it and you
kick it out the door.
Um, every every day on onwhatever series you were working

(01:21:23):
on, every day a finished scripthad to go through the door.
It, you know, I I likened it toa slow-moving freight train.
Every day, every day an openboxcar came by you and you had
to throw something into thatboxcar.
And um it had to be finished.

(01:21:44):
If it was good, that was evenbetter, but it had to be
finished.

Now, how many of you?
So, out of a hundred, how manypeople are writing 160 plus
episodes that year?

SPEAKER_00 (01:21:57):
It's it's hard to say because despite having a
staff writing pool, we ended upusing a lot of freelancers.
I'm sure, yeah.
We had a few guys get burnedout.
Yeah, we had a few people whowere in production positions who
would write scripts on the sideas necessary.

(01:22:19):
Um, frequently, if you werewriting for one show, you would
get called to do another one.
I mean, I did I think my name ison three Transformer scripts,
but I'm pretty sure Icontributed to many more than
that.
I mean, at least at least sixscripts I wrote or rewrote for

(01:22:41):
Transformers.
And my name isn't on thembecause my my point of view has
always been if I'm a storyeditor, it it's not my place to
put my name on somebody else'sscript.

Yeah, but you're you're you're you had your hand
on all of these scripts thatwere coming in and out as GI
Joe, yeah.
Story editor, yeah, for G.I.
Joe.
Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 (01:23:01):
Um, okay.
So we we move ahead to the theyear that they did the the My
Little Pony Transformers in G.I.
Joe movies.
And Hasbro had struck a dealwith Dino DiLorena's Productions
that uh Dino promised um youwill have three shows on

(01:23:24):
Saturday and two shows on Sundayif you do an animated feature.
So Hasbro thought, well, that'syou know, we can live with that.
We can that'll that'll be goodenough.
Hasbro wanted to introduce newcharacters to My Little Pony,
Transformers, and G.I.
Joe.
And in retrospect, theyrecognized it's a mistake to

(01:23:46):
introduce new characters in afeature film because people
coming to the feature film arecoming to see the characters
they already know and love.
They don't want to be introducedto a brand new bunch.
Introduce new characters in aregular season.

You don't we don't want you to just
indiscriminately murderIronhide, one of my my favorite.
Don't even give him a chance tosay a line and replace him with
all the yes, yeah.
Sorry, I'm not bitter oranything, I'm not bitter.
It's been 30 years.

SPEAKER_00 (01:24:15):
So we, you know, you had the problem with G.I.
Joe because uh I I think umMajor Blood is in the opening
credits and he's in thebackground in one scene, and
that's it.
And I had to fight tooth andnail to give shipwreck even a
few lines.
I mean, they were adamant theydid not want to use shipwreck,

(01:24:36):
and I just I just hammered himin as hard as I could because I
wasn't gonna have a G.I.
Joe movie that didn't haveShipwreck in it.
But um, what had happened wasthey they had started three
different scripts.
Um I I forget I should havelooked up who wrote the um My

(01:24:58):
Little Pony script.
But um Ron wrote the first draftof the well, Ron wrote a first
draft for a G.I.
Joe movie.
And Hasbro through Sunbocontacted me and said, uh, you
know, your story editor, um,would you first would you take a

(01:25:19):
look at the My Little Ponyscript and give us some
feedback?
And basically, I just pointedout places where you know it
would be good to have a songhere about this sort of thing or
that sort of thing.
I mean, my my contribution wassmall.
Um, I almost tied in My LittlePony with Transformers and G.I.
Joe because at one point thelittle ponies are looking for

(01:25:41):
help, and I wanted to have oneof the little ponies fly to the
Transformers base and ask themif they could help.
And no, sorry.
And then I wanted one to fly toG.I.
Joe headquarters, and you know,um shipwreck would be on the
rear porch of the barracksdrinking beer, and this little
pony flies up.

(01:26:01):
Gee, mister, can you help us?
And you know, he's just lookingin shock, and then as the pony
flies off, he throws the beeraway and takes the the pledge
not to drink again.
Um and they shot that seed down.
I I, you know, didn't get achance to tie it in.
But anyway, I I gave somefeedback on the on the My Little

(01:26:22):
Pony movie, but I really I nomajor contribution other than to
suggest where songs could go.
They gave me the G.I.
Joe movie and said, Would you wewant to talk with you about it,
uh, read it on the airplane,flying to New York, and then
we'll have a talk here in NewYork.
So I get on the airplane, I readit on the airplane, I have the

(01:26:46):
meeting with them in New York,and they say, Well, what do you
think we can do to fix this?
And I said, I'll be brutallyhonest, I would advise throwing
it out and starting fromscratch.
And I'm not saying this is aslam against Ron, but it it just
didn't capture what the serieshad evolved into.

(01:27:07):
I think Ron was writing fromwhat he remembered the show
being when he was doing theminiseries.
Uh, it had changed obviously bythat point to something
different.

Now, did his version even address or deal with the
origins of Cobra, like theeventual film?

SPEAKER_00 (01:27:26):
I cannot recall.
Okay, I do know that onecharacter he created, Nemesis
Enforcer, was a big hit witheverybody.
And they thought, well, if we'regonna salvage anything, salvage
salvage nemesis enforcer, theguy with the wings and the I
love uh buzz.

I love Nemesis Enforcer.
I yeah, I that's like a term ofendearment in my household, like
with my kids.
I know Nemesis and especiallymerited saying it.

SPEAKER_00 (01:27:53):
That's Ron and give Ron all the credit.
It was it was a good imaginativecharacter, and um uh he came up
with it, but anyway, they theyasked me to come up with um a
script for it.
Now, again, you gotta forgiveme.
I'm gonna backtrack a little bithere.
After the first season of G.I.

(01:28:14):
Joe, it was picked up for asecond season of 25 episodes,
uh, and then they would justrerun the previous season's
episodes.

unknown (01:28:23):
Yep.

SPEAKER_00 (01:28:24):
And I had an idea that I pitched to Sunbow called
The Most Dangerous Man in theWorld.
And it was about the Karl MarkFrederick Nietzsche of Cobra,
the guy who had come up with thephilosophy that Cobra was
supposedly based on.
But Cobra Commander hadperverted the philosophy and he

(01:28:45):
was doing it wrong.
And he throws this guy in prisonuh to keep him isolated so he
can't be telling Cobra you'redoing it wrong.
The guy escapes from prison.
Cobra ceases all worldwideactivities to try to track this
guy down.
The Joes have no idea who he isor why he's important.
They only know if Cobra wantshim, they got to get him first.

(01:29:09):
They catch him first, theyrealize he is this enormous pain
in the ass, and he escapes fromthe Joes at the end of the
episode.
And the Joes basically go, youknow what?
He's out in the world causingproblems for Cobra.
We don't care, let him go.
And that was going to be myorigin of Cobra, and it's
different from Larry Hama'sorigin because Larry's the comic

(01:29:32):
book G.I.
Joe continuity is a separatecontinuity.
It's it's two parallel but notidentical continuities.
I wrote this up and theyaccepted it and they said, Yeah,
you know, I did an outline, goto script on it, just be sure to
include the Cobra Emperor.
And I said, The Cobra Who?
And they said, the CobraEmperor.

(01:29:53):
And I said, Well, who's theCobra Emperor?
And they said, He's the leaderof Cobra.
And I said, No, he's not.
I said, We've just done a wholeseason where we've established
Cobra Commander as the supremecommander of Cobra.
If you had told us, drop someclues, there might be somebody
above him, we could have donethat, but you didn't.
So, how do we explain where thisguy comes from?

(01:30:15):
And they go, hmm, good point.
Come up with some ideas.
So uh I've said this before.
I tell young writers, if someoneasks you to come up with a
couple of ideas, don't come upwith the idea you want to do,
you know, because if they couldcome up with ideas, they
wouldn't be hiring you.
That's good.

(01:30:36):
So I came up with two ideas.
One was uh became the origin ofthe mini-series Arise Serpentor
Arise.
Oh, yeah.
Basically, they decide to createa new leader using DNA.
The other was uh there is alost, there's a secret
organization or something, uhLost World type thing that has

(01:31:00):
been funding Cobra all thistime, and they're sick and tired
of Cobra Commander screwing up.
So they send Serpentor in.
And Sunbo calls me and says, uh,they love it, do it.
And I said, Do which one?
They said both.
So we did Arise Serpentor Ariseas the mini-series, and the one

(01:31:22):
involving Cobra Law that becamethe movie, and um I did you
create Dr.
Mindbender for that, or did theyalready mindbender was already
around, but I it was hard tofind things for Dr.
Mindbender to do.
This was the first time I reallyhad a story where he was germane

(01:31:43):
to the plot and was actuallycontributing to it.
Yeah, um, in any case, we we dothe G.I.
Joe movie, um, and they weretelling us we we want you to
introduce all these brand newcharacters, and we're gonna
cycle out a bunch of the oldcharacters.
Now, they had done this beforein the TV series and the
miniseries, and typically whenthey would cycle out an old

(01:32:07):
character, they just disappearedfrom the show and a new
character would come in.
We did, however, on occasion doreferences to the fact that
these characters were cycledout.
There's uh one G.I.
Joe episode where they go to aparallel world where Cobra has
won, and the characters thatwere being cycled out of the

(01:32:29):
series at that point, they optto stay in that world and
continue the fight againstCobra.
Um, Sparks, the originalcommunications guy for G.I.
Joe, he came back in um uh thesecond season as a civilian uh
contractor.
And somebody they contacted andsaid, Hey, you worked on this

(01:32:49):
before, can you give us anyhints?
And we established that theyregularly cycle out of the GI
Joe team and they go back tocivilian life.
So that way, if a kid, you know,if if a kid was missing a
character, they could at leastknow, well, you know, they
finished their tour of duty andnow they're civilians again.

(01:33:10):
So they wanted to introduce awhole bunch of brand new
characters and they wanted toget rid of several of the old
characters, including Duke.
I know.
Um, you know, they did notrealize at that time they had a
core group that you simply couldnot touch.
There were there were charactersthat everybody wanted to see,

(01:33:31):
and so you don't get rid ofDuke.
But anyway, they told me we werewe're cycling Duke out, and I
said, Well, you know, we've beendoing a war show for like two
years now, and we've had allthis combat, we've had
characters get injured, but youknow, they always get better and
come back.

(01:33:51):
We've never actually killedanybody, and this is a movie,
and it's big, and you're gettingDuke out of the product line.
Let's let Duke go with a heroicdeath, you know, and they go,
Yeah, that's a good idea.
So they let me write Duke'sDeath, where he sacrifices
himself to save LieutenantFalcon, his half-brother.

(01:34:12):
Okay, and Hasbro liked it somuch, they told the guys doing
Transformers, kill off OptimusPrime, because we're we're
taking him out of the toy line,too.
Are you serious?
We worked reverse.

So the so the the death of Duke inspired the death
of Optimus Prime.
I did not know that.

SPEAKER_00 (01:34:31):
Exactly.
Exactly.
What happened though was this.
And and Hasbro later said theymade a mistake.
They should have released themovies in reverse order.
They should have started withG.I.
Joe, then Transformers, thenfinished up with um um My Little
Pony.

(01:34:52):
The deal, as I told you, thatthey had with uh Deal Rennes was
that they would release a movie,a new movie every month that
summer.
And they would start with the MyLittle Pony movie.
And you know, My Little Pony'saudience, their little kids, six
years old, eight years old, uh,have to come to the movies with

(01:35:12):
their parents.
And there's nothing in the MyLittle Pony movie that um is
traumatic.
Okay, it's it's it's a good, funuh kids animated movie.
It's it's perfectly uh in tunewith the My Little Pony
universe.
I wrote My Little Pony episodes,and you know it was a fun show
to write, and you know, Ienjoyed it.

(01:35:35):
Transformers their targetaudience was roughly nine years
of age.
And nine-year-olds were morelikely to have to go to the
movies with their parents than12-year-olds.
G.I.
Joe's target audience was 12.
A 12-year-old intellectuallyunderstands war is deadly.

(01:35:58):
People get killed in war.
If they're watching a war movieand a character gets killed,
they are old enough to knowintellectually that's a
possibility.
It might sadden them, it mightshock them, but it's it's within
the realm of possibility tothem.
Nine-year-olds have just beenwatching this fun show every

(01:36:20):
day, and it's bright andcolorful, and they really like
it, but they haven't yet wrappedtheir mind around the finality
of death.
And as I pointed out to Hasbroat the time, you really can't
kill a robot.
You can you can run them overwith a steamroller, you can chop
them up into little bits, youcan do all kinds of things to

(01:36:43):
them, and you can always repairthem and put them back together.

Right.
I remember even as a fan, right,we would always uh you you'd
always laugh because uh everyoneshoot both on both shows,
they're shooting laser guns ateach other.
Yeah.
And uh when a transformer getshit, when when an Autobot gets
shot by a Decepticon, you know,they're a robot.

(01:37:07):
So you see them fall down, oh,and then you see them laying
there and their friend picksthem up.
And G.I.
Joe, we never understood how youcould get shot by a laser, and
then they could just get up andkeep and keep moving.
So you're right, like even theeven as a kid, you understood
that there was a differencebetween a giant robot getting
shot and with a with a persongetting shot.

SPEAKER_00 (01:37:28):
Right.
So the Transformer movie cameout first.
Oh, excuse me, the the My LittlePony movie came out first, the
Transformer movie came outsecond.
You had all these really revvedup nine-year-olds dragging their
parents to see the Transformermovie.
And I I feel sorry for theparents because the parents are

(01:37:50):
in this theater trapped in whatto them looks like an acid
flashback from the 1960s.
They have no idea what's goingon.
The dialogue might as well be inhigh Martian for all they can
understand it.
And then all of a sudden, everykid in the theater starts
screaming and weeping, andthey're going, What?

(01:38:10):
What happened?
What's the matter?
I killed Optimus, you know, andit's just you know, we there was
actually a kid in Philadelphia,in uh Pennsylvania, we heard
that had locked himself in acloset for a couple of days
because he was just sotraumatized by this.
Was that was that '85, did itcome out in '88?

Yeah, I think it was.
And so I was, just so you know,I was nine.
I was nine.
I was the target audience.
I was nine years old.
My sister uh took me, and shewas 13.
And um, and she got angry as a13-year-old, she got angry, not

(01:38:53):
like cried.
She got angry that they wouldkill off Optimus Prime.
I remember it well.
I remember it well.

SPEAKER_00 (01:38:59):
So, anyway, the the edict immediately came down do
not kill Duke in the movie.
So they very, very clumsilyintroduced two lines of
dialogue.
He's in a coma, and then at theend of the movie, he's uh oh,
good news, he's out of the coma.
No, I I kill that sucker dead.

I love that.
That was one of my all-timefavorite moments as a kid, is
hearing he's in a coma, like offcamera.

SPEAKER_01 (01:39:26):
And it was like, what?
There's blood splatteringeverywhere.
Who gets into a coma beingstabbed into the heart?
I never understood that.

Yeah, you know, so you so when you so um when you
so the Transformers movie cameout, and there was this
reaction.
Um, and they said, Go make thechange, you know, add this
dialogue.
So the the the film had alreadybeen animated, already been
made, right?

(01:39:55):
And so they just threw this lineof dialogue in.
Um the Did they end up releasingbecause I don't remember seeing
the judge?
They didn't they didn't evenrelease them, Peter's, did they?

SPEAKER_00 (01:40:06):
No, because because what happened was DeLorentis
double crossed Hasbro, andinstead of three shows on
Saturday and two on Sunday, theyonly got two shows on Saturday
and one on Sunday.
And that's like a 40% drop inbox office revenue right there.

(01:40:27):
And they I forget exactly whathappened, if there was a lawsuit
or anything like that, butbasically the distribution deal
evaporated and G.I.
Joe, the movie, was neverreleased in 1985.
Uh we had one screening at SanDiego Comic Con where we had a

(01:40:50):
work print and they got thereels out of order in the work
print.

SPEAKER_01 (01:40:54):
Oh no.

SPEAKER_00 (01:40:55):
Yeah.
And um then it just wentstraight to video.
I mean it it it was re-editedinto another mini-series and and
put that's that's how I rememberit is it came out as a five
part.

I feel like it was like the premiere, it was like
premiere week in 86 or 87 orsomething.
The five, five, that's like awhole week.
It was a whole week of the G.I.
Joe the movie.
So when you wrote that uh thatopening sequence is fantastic.
Was that your like that openingsequence is a little mini uh

(01:41:32):
kind of uh best of hits, justthat the fact that they decided
to do a song, a music comment,and and just the way uh it was I
just to this day, I think all II I want to give credit where it
is due.

SPEAKER_00 (01:41:47):
That is all Larry Houston's work.
It was great.
Larry did a great job.
Um, it it would have beenwonderful if the whole movie
could have lived up to thatenergy.
Yeah, yeah.

Um animation was the animation was so clean and
slick, and it was great story.
It was all really good.
Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 (01:42:06):
My uh my portion starts uh the script that I
wrote starts with um, you know,outside the terror drome as um
uh Pythona is creeping up toinfiltrate the the terror drone.

Well, Buzz, this has been fantastic.
I you've um I've learned so muchabout this world and I I I I
just love talking with you.
And I know I know we could talkfor another two hours on on all
of the stuff that we didn't getto cover, but I I I think that
for our audience, the fact thatum to know the intricacies of of

(01:42:43):
animated television that umbecause of all the kids that
grew up on what you wrote arenow animators and storytellers
and filmmakers themselves, anduh you've really made an impact
in uh in in that way.
So thank you.
Thank you so very much, not onlyfor what you've written and what
you contribute to, but for beingwith us today.

(01:43:04):
We always like to close ourpodcast by praying um for our
guests.
Would you allow me to pray foryou?
Absolutely.
Thank you.
Heavenly Father, we just uhthank you for today and thank
you for Buzz and thank you forjust uh such amazing stories and
such an amazing career.

(01:43:25):
And um, God, just thank you forjust his kindness to be able to
share with us today.
God, I pray uh just a prayer ofblessing over Buzz and his life
and his family.
Uh God, thank you for uh justthe chance that we have to just
uh learn from him and and uhGod, we just pray that uh that
uh you'd give back to himtenfold that he gives to others.

(01:43:46):
And um just thank you for thisopportunity.
And we pray this in Jesus' nameof your promise as we stand.
Amen.
Thank you for listening to theAct One podcast, celebrating
over 20 years as the premiertraining program for Christians
in Hollywood.
Act One is a Christian communityof entertainment industry
professionals who train andequip storytellers to create

(01:44:06):
works of truth, goodness, andbeauty.
The Act One program is adivision of Master Media
International.
To financially support themission of Act One or to learn
more about our programs, visitus online at Act One Program dot
com.
And to learn more about the workof Master Media, go to
mastermedia.com.

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