March 3, 2025 • 46 mins
TIM MATHESON (Jonny Quest, Space Ghost) returns to talk about working with Mel Brooks, Anne Bancroft, Mel Blanc, Joe Barbera, and on shows including St. Elsewhere and Virgin River— all just part of his new autobiography, “Damn Glad to Meet You.”
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Ladies and gentlemen, children of all ages, we love Head of our
Mirror. Welcome to the Fantastic World
of Hannah and Barbera, a celebration of Bill, Hannah, Joe
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Barbera and the thousands of people, past and present who
have shared in their entertainment tradition.
And now your host, Greg Airbar. Thank you, Chris Anthony.
Welcome to fantastic world of Hannah and Barbera.
I'm Greg Airbar, author of the book Hannah Barbera, the
Recorded History, which is now an audio book.
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I am so thrilled to welcome backto our podcast A Hanna Barbera
legend, the voice of Johnny Quest and young Samson Sinbad
Junior, and an incredible body of work this man has
accomplished as a director as well as an actor.
And he has just put as much of that as he can into a really,
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really page Turner of an autobiography.
Tim Matheson, damn glad to meet you and welcome you to the show
So. Thank you.
We're going to mostly talk aboutyour book, but in no way will we
cover everything that's in there.
I thought I knew a lot about you, but I didn't know all of
the details. Not just from the standpoint of
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the credits, but a lot of the behind scenes, a lot of lessons
learned, lot of lessons learned.And one of the things was the
sidebars. So if you're a student of the
business, this is a really good book.
Did you feel like you had a obligation to do that for
somebody? I had a desire, you know,
because what I did was I did these little breakouts called
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film school boot camp, which is it's for it's almost anybody
that works with a group of people.
And, and it was some pitfalls that I sort of stumbled upon
when, when I was beginning acting or beginning directing or
producing. And you know, when you step back
and look at it, it's any of us who work with other people in
any job. It's how to best get along with
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those people and how to interactwith those people.
And in the best of circumstances, it's a team
effort always that gets the bestjob done.
I learned that the hard way. And I was fortunate enough to
work with very, very special people that taught me lessons
that are useful today. So that the young film makers or
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the young workers in any business, tech as well, they
don't have to reinvent the wheel.
You can just look back at what people have done before and you
can use their lessons to help you improve your craft.
Was this a story you wanted to tell for a long time?
You know the song. If they asked me, I could write
a book. Do you keep a journal?
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What brought this about? Well, I had started because I
was in a certain special place, I think, when Animal House was
made. And to me it was a story of Ivan
Reitman, John Landis, Harold Ramis, Doug Kenny and all these
very, very special people together for that moment in
history to make Animal House against the will of the studio.
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Studio didn't want to make the movie and how they all work
together to accomplish it. And yet those four people
changed the nature of comedy in American cinema.
So you look at the films they have done.
And so I started to write the book about how they work
together, how they accomplished what they did and and what it
was like on the set. I wanted to the making of Animal
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House was basically the book I wanted to to write.
And the publisher said, great, that's great.
But we love more about Lucy and Henry and Fonda and and Jackie
Gleason. And so I expanded it because,
you know, there were things about my journey as an actor
they wanted to include. So we kind of expanded it and
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and that's how it came about. You went into a lot of detail
about your childhood. It's a story that a lot of
people can relate to with your mother working constantly, you
know, latchkey kid before that phrase was invented and how
television was such a friend. For me, it was my solace.
I sort of escaped the the breakup of my mother and
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father's marriage by hiding out in the movies on the weekend and
watching television all the time.
And I mean, that was sort of what you mean.
Television was sort of a, a new thing when I was growing up.
And so it was something that I sought refuge in.
And I would watch old movies. They had a thing here in LA
called the $1,000,000 movie. And as I recall, it was the same
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movie played over and over and over five times during the week.
And I'd watch it over and over and over.
And I, so I'd watch a Billy Wilder movie or a Howard Hawks
movie or a John Ford movie. And you get to know the movies
much more in depth than typically you would if you just
saw it once. And I just became fascinated
with movies and how they made them.
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And then I would always stay andwatch the credits at the end and
go, what do all those people do?You know, it's it dawned on me.
It took a lot of people to make a movie, you know, they didn't
have behind the scenes back thenand you didn't really know how
movies were made. And so I used to drive around
and on my bike and, and go to studios and visit the scene of
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RKO and Paramount and Disney andand Warner Brothers and, and
sculpt around the back lot back in the day when they used to
have back lots. Not so much anymore.
Yeah, Speaking of sets and stuff, you keep referring to the
the fake fireplace on the RobertYoung show.
And what a shock was as a kid tosay this isn't real.
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But it was so cool. Yeah, and it was interesting
because here I was a kid and andI sort of discovered in the 6th
grade that I liked acting. We kind of had a, an improv
today show version every morningor every couple of days in the
class. And I didn't play the lead, but
I would be somebody they'd interview or some, you know, I'd
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play some part. And I found it to be very
rewarding and fun and, and I gotlaughs and Linda Blankenfield
was the prettiest girl in the class and, and she thought I was
cute and funny and it served me well.
And so I knew when I went back from San Bernardino, where I was
spending a year with my aunt anduncle, when I went back to my
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mom at the end of that year, when I get back to Hollywood, I
told everybody I'm going to be an actor.
And so that's when it first dawned on me.
But I, and I was fortunate enough as a kid to know what I
wanted to do with my life. And you know, a lot of people
don't know until they're middle eight 20s what they got to do.
And I was fortunate enough to know that's what I want to do.
Yeah, having goals is really important, even if you don't
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reach the one you think you want.
And sometimes, and you experience this over and over,
the one you think you want is probably, in hindsight, not the
one, but at least you had the goal to pull you through.
Yeah. You have a whole chapter in
there about what is it, Kurt Russell's expression about Peter
Pan's. If Sans and Peter Pan.
Yeah, you answer a lot of those.What's he or she like?
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What was it like on this? And also, what roles do you
think did you want that you didn't or for one circumstance
but in hindsight probably may not have been, your life would
have been different. Yeah, I mean, I wouldn't have
been a director. I found about every five to
seven years my life would sort of shift gears.
My career would shift gears. You know, like when I was a kid
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actor at 12 because I looked 12 and I was and Leave It to Beaver
and my three sons and all these different shows.
And then once I outgrew that phase, I was no longer a little
kid, you know, I mean, I was sort of just a teenager and I
was getting taller and so I couldn't play those kid parts
anymore. So that's when I found Hanna
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Barbera. They found me and I was with
them for like 3 years and intermittently then I did, you
know, years mine and hours and divorced American style and then
became another phase of my career.
What do I do after Hanna Barberawas westerns, I went under
contracted Universal and did theVirginian and 2 pilots for
Westerns, one with Sally Field and and then you're on Bonanza.
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And then shortly after that I did the quest with Kurt Russell
and then that ended. You were coming to the end of a
phase of your career and then you've got to figure out the
next one or you're done in the business.
You know, I found that in hindsight, you know, after a
couple of sort of turns that my career took, in hindsight, I
found that, okay, that's the wayit is.
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I got to stay out in front of itand figure out what's next, as
they say on The West Wing. What are the things that someone
must do in order to? Is it instinct?
Is it asking around? Well, you're a heavy reader.
Are it all of those things to sort of figure out where things
are going and where to take yourself?
Yeah, you got to do your research.
You got to constantly, I mean, Ithink I was my own best agent
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and my own best manager. I was always looking around.
I was reading the trade papers and, and looking at what, who's
doing what, what movies are being made.
Why can't I get up for this? And, and you're going on
auditions and things all the time.
And I think you got to scan ahead and look at the industry
and try and get a sense of whichdirection it's going and what.
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And I was a movie fan, so I was always looking at new movies
and, you know, foreign films. And I just loved everything
about it. And what I was going to say it
at one point was the second I walked on a set when I, Robert
Young set a window on Main Street.
I just felt at home. I felt so comfortable and
surrounded by all these wonderful people that really
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knew their craft and were executing it perfectly.
That's how movies got made. And I just, I felt right in and
felt, wow, I'm glad to be a member of this team.
Folks, if you haven't seen even a commercial being made, but a
movie, television show, if you haven't seen it happening, what
first might strike you is that the performers in front of the
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camera are all lit up and there they are.
But all around them is this De Mille movie of all these other
people working craft services, makeup, hair, and they're
scuttering around and it, it is a remarkable, remarkable thing.
The other thing people don't know the first time they watch a
film, some being made or commercial, how slow it is.
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You know you spend 10 hours, 12 hours doing 2 to 5 pages of
script. You know you do 1 little scene
and then you change the camera angle and then you do it again
and then you do a change anothercamera angle and you do it again
and again and again. I mean you may do 1 scene 506070
times for to cover the scene forthe director and the editors to
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have enough film to cut that together the way they want to.
And it can be tedious to watch, I must say.
You worked with some actors thatcould get through those long
periods and just pop right into character and then some that had
to remain focused and concentrate.
Yeah, I, I mean, I've learned that for me, the best way to
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perhaps work was to keep it light on the set, keep it fun.
I didn't have to stay in character all the time because
there was a period of my time where I was studying acting
because I was a kid actor and then and I could do certain
things. Then I realized there were
certain parts I would get that II I just couldn't find the
emotion and didn't know how to get there.
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And I didn't know I wasn't trained.
So I, I started studying and I started studying method acting,
you know, Stanislavsky and Strasburg and a lot of different
techniques and they're great. You know, I tried to stay in
character all day long and you call me by my character's name.
And then I learned it isn't real.
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It doesn't have to be real. It's what if it were real?
And the if is the magic if for that one moment, if I were that
person, how would I feel and howwould I speak and how would I
act? But I don't as a director.
I don't care what school of thought or technique an actor
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comes from. Whatever gets them to that
moment on camera where they can deliver a performance that is
representative of the story and the character and the scene,
then bravo. I don't care.
You know, it's just however you want to get there.
I remember the section about Bonanza and how you were doing
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run throughs and stuff and they weren't too thrilled because
they had to get a show done and it was like motivation and.
Well, I was rehearsing it like moment to moment, trying to find
this motivation in the camera setup.
Well, usually that's very perfunctory.
You just sort of, OK, you're here, you say this, I'm
Muhammad, and then you walk overhere and then, OK, they give you
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a mark. Then you go away, the actors go
away and they light it. And I was taking this time for
my motivational search to find the true beats and everything.
And the director, I said, what do you think of that?
And he goes, well, the audience is asleep by now, but the
blocking works fine. Let's just say performance for
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camera for the takes, OK. And it's like, oh, yeah, don't
worry, I'm going to speed it up.It's going to, you know.
But I was very selfish and innocently self involved.
And I must say that the people on Bonanza, when I asked Lauren
Green to call me by my charactername, he just went, no, no, Tim,
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you know, because they've been on the show for, I don't know,
14 years, 13 years. And I come in and I want to
change things up. And it wasn't going to happen.
Let's go back to Johnny Quest and all of that.
And in some ways, would you callthat one of the pivotal turning
points in acting being on that show?
You know, seriously? Absolutely.
Because you know, one of the most difficult parts of being a
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child actor is being a star as achild actor and then outgrowing
that. So basically, you're a child and
your career has just come to a halt because you're no longer
Dennis the Menace, you're no longer Beaver, you're no longer
on My Three Sons or whatever. Those careers have come to an
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end. You're no longer the kid in the
show. So what do you do now?
For me, I was fortunate enough to get into a craft with some of
the best actors I've ever workedwith in Hanna Barbera, and it
helped me transition and grow out of being a kid actor and
leave that behind because kid actors don't have the emotional
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maturity to process what it's like That last year I was on the
cover of TV Guide and I made, I don't know, $300,000.
And this year I'm not working and I'm making $22,000 or $5000
and I'm getting in line and not getting the parts.
The two that I can think of off the top of my head that made
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that transition the best, I think we're Kurt Russell and
Jodie Foster. They basically quit acting.
Jodie went to college. Kurt went and played semi pro
baseball and was going to becomea baseball player until he threw
his shoulder out. His shoulder got screwed up and
back then they didn't have TommyJohn surgery.
So he went back to acting. But he saw himself and Jody saw
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themselves as people who were progressing with their lives,
not just acting. That was the transition.
Then they came back to acting. So for me, I went to Hanna
Barbera and I learned a whole craft and worked with some of
the finest actors in a part of the business that I didn't even
know existed and made a living and learned that this is a multi
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faceted business and this is a craft voice acting that I can
master. And these were the best teachers
in the world. I mean, Mel Blanc and Don
Messick, Alan Reed and June Foray and Janet Waldo, I mean
all these people, they could do innumerable characters just like
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that. I didn't know where you kept all
that voice information. You know, how do you make a dog
with a personality and then craft it for the director on the
spot? And every time that that dog has
a moment on screen, you got to create a dialogue for that dog
and that personality. It's just it was amazing for me
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to watch. You mentioned this a lot on the
podcast. You got the joy of like radio or
stage all working in the same room together.
Exactly. Nowadays it's different.
I think everybody goes in separately because they're multi
careers and, you know, and people are in Spain or London or
Atlanta or New York or Hollywood.
And so nobody ever gets togetherand does it.
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And we did it like a radio play.And a lot of these actors, most
all these actors came out of radio.
They were primarily cartoon stars, Don Messick.
And I mean, it was just these guys were just amazed.
Dawes Butler was on Johnny Questdoing dramatic roles on there.
It was a consummate. I mean, so was Samson and so was
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Sinbad Junior. But for Johnny Quest, the
ensemble were people, I think Alan Melvin, Kathy Lewis.
Who was Jade. No, you're right.
A lot of character actors came in and did it.
You know, Marvin Miller, who wason The Millionaire, You know,
these are people that when I metthem, they had a whole career
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and made a fortune doing voice work and I didn't even know it
existed were any of. Them especially helpful with
advice if you asked or were you just in a session and it was
done or what you. Sort of did this session, you
were done. I mean, I know Joe Barbera was
very helpful to me and patient. You know, I think we joked that
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every time my voice changed, he'd find another part for me as
I got older, you know, and youngSamson and Space Ghost and
Sinbad Junior and he. Had an instinct for gags and he
was a a bored artist. But he also, like Hannah, had a
musical ear. But for dialogue, for great
voices and how dialogue flowed because on a Hannah Barbera
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cartoon, there was a musicality to it.
Yeah. Yeah, that was Joe.
I mean, Bill Hannah was around and I remember, you know,
knowing him and meeting him and seeing him, but not very often.
Joe was the guy that was in the room.
He directed almost all of the shows or supervised them, and
they had a good teamwork. But Joe took care of the studio
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work and the cartoons and Bill, I guess, took care of some of
the business aspects of it. And, and I'm sure they were both
were equally creative because Tom and Jerry certainly was
brilliant, but Joe was the guy that I worked with day-to-day.
Do you? Know Walt Disney had dad issues.
Joe Barbera had dad issues because I didn't.
Know. Oh yeah.
It's in his autobiography. So as you progress through your
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career, you kind of had these sort of dads along the way.
You know, I think that people doin life get sometimes they find
that in other ways. And yeah, he was like a
surrogate father for me and was very helpful and help guide me
and give me opportunities and encouraged me to pursue those
things. And it was great.
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And you know, we did long playing records, we did LP's.
And when I got offered a contract at Universal to be on
camera acting in the Virginian, it was hard for me because I I
knew if I did that I was going to have to leave Hanna Barbera
and leave all this work I was doing.
I'm probably would have stayed working with them more often
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than not had I not gone on. And actually, I'll tell you the
truth, I think it cost me money to go under contract to
Universal. But at that point, I wanted to
get back on camera as an actor and, and that was the road I
wanted to take and work out acting and, and that's what
happened. There's a really interesting
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section Speaking of Universal where you went right into the
executives office because it waslike, this is ridiculous.
I'm under this contract and, youknow, a lot of people think if
you're on TV or you're in the public eye, you're instantly
rich and you had an interesting thing and did it on your own.
That was a cool part of the book, you know well.
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Thank you. And you know, what had happened
was I'm under contract to Universal and I was there used
to be these term actors that were inexperienced and put under
contract and they studied there at the studio under a woman
named Monique James. And I wasn't that I was an actor
that they saw on Adam 12. I did an episode of Adam 12 and
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they hired me to be a regular inthe Virginian.
So I had a decent contract. And at the end of the season, we
figured the Virginians coming back and I was at home reading
the trades in the bed I was sleeping in, finally getting
some rest. And I'm reading the trades that
The Virginian is no longer goingto be a show on NBC, that
they've changed it to the men from Shiloh.
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And only Doug McClure and Jim Drury were going to come back
and they were adding Lee Majors and I think Stewart Granger to
the show. And all the rest of the cast was
gone. And it was like, I'm reading
this in the trades. And I knew that if it was in the
trades, everybody in town knew this already.
My agents knew it, the studio knew it, the network knew it.
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And no one called me. No one said, hey, sorry.
No one said thanks for, you know, nice work.
And I'm sorry this worked out. Nothing.
I heard nothing. Then they cancelled my contract,
as they should, because I'm no longer in a show for them.
And it was a hard time for me. I was going through a divorce.
I was overextended financially. And so I pulled up, you know, my
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pants, and I just tightened my belt and I said OK.
I built an apartment in the basement of this house I'd
overpaid for, and now I rented it out.
I lived in the basement. I pulled my bootstraps up and I
got through this. Then Universal calls and says,
hey, we'd like to put you back under contract because we'd been
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developing some pilots for you and we want you to do them, and
we'd just like you to go back under your contract.
And I said no way because they treated me poorly.
No one acknowledged all that I had done for the show.
I mean, I'd gone out every weekend, traveled around and
publicized the show and didn't rest.
And I ran to the set whenever they needed me.
And I take over Doug Mcclure's part if he didn't want to do it
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on the spot. So I demanded a, you know, my
agent said, no way you're going to get any more money from them
or an apology. Forget it.
And I, I said, I want to talk tothe studio exec.
And it was a guy named Pete Terranova who actually I just
saw last week and he's got a bitolder, but he remembered this
moment. And I go into his office with my
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agent and I tell him, I said, you know, I'm not coming back
under contract. I killed for you guys.
I did everything you wanted me to do.
And no one was even cordial enough to call and say sorry
about this. But we have to let you go.
And now that you find you need me because you've written a
script and invested in a script,now you want me to come back
under contract under the same terms?
No way. I ain't doing it.
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And he said, well, Tim, I, you know, you're right.
I apologize and I should have called you and we, we should
have thanked you for all you did.
He said, but the studio is not going to pay you more money for
this pilot. But, and when he said, but I
kind of my ears perked up. He said, I'll do it off books.
I'll write you another check every week for your raise.
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And it was $200 a week. So he he wrote me a separate
check every week on top of my contract and I got my raise and
I got my apology and of course the agent took credit for it
later. Well.
Taking credit for stuff is, and it's not just a Hollywood
exclusive because I think we've all been there.
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The Larry Tate thing. Ain't it the truth you talked?
About universal and tightening your belt and I thought we
should throw in a little boom sound effect like Sinbad junior.
Exactly. Exactly.
You know, you mentioned reading the trades and finding out stuff
that was like, why? And tell us about the whole Mel
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Brooks thing. Well, it was a.
Similar situation again. It's in the morning and I'm
reading the, you know, I think over coffee or lunch or
something. I was reading the the daily
Variety and there was a column by Army Archard and it was
called Just for Variety. He was a gossip columnist and he
would call up people and talk tothem about what what are you
doing next? What's going on, your movies
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coming out next week. It was a full page of just sort
of chatter and some of it would come to fruition and some of it
didn't. People would just talk about
what they hope to do next or I'mtrying to get this movie made or
that. So he's talking to Mel Brooks
and Mel Brooks says, well, I'm going to remake.
I think it was just after History of the World Part 1.
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It was I'm going to do a remake of the Ernst Lubich movie To Be
or Not to Be, which starred JackBenny and Carole Lombard and
Robert Stack and Bancroft and I are going to be the lead and I'm
going to hire this young actor named Tim Matheson to be the Co
star. And I was like, what?
I've never even met Mel Brooks. I don't know anything about this
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project. I just like, I'm just reading it
in the trades, like I did my firing at Universal later on.
I called my agent, I said, what's the deal?
And he goes, yeah, it looks likethis is going to happen.
And sure enough, Mel offered me the part.
And it was it was one of those crazy things that came about.
And, you know, it was a joy to work with Mel and Ann.
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I can't tell you. Did you ever?
Find out anything specific aboutwhat he saw you in or anything
like that I think. Probably Animal House.
I think that was the time it was.
I had just done 1941. I don't think 41 might have been
out. Yeah, 41 had already been out,
you know, So I'd done Animal House in 41 and a few other
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movies, but I think that probably was Animal House.
I'd like to talk. A little bit about to be or not
to be because TCM showed it and I knew you had been in the
remake. So we watched them both
back-to-back. Oh yeah.
Really interesting. Well, well, first of all, you
being a movie buff, there you are doing Lubitz because a lot
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of it was word for word. Some of your scenes in
particular, you're speaking those words that must have been
mind blowing. Well.
Yeah, and intentionally, I didn't look at the original, all
right? And I have looked at it, but I
just wanted to take it as a piece of something.
I'd seen it years before. I knew the movie.
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I knew of the movie. And I loved Ernst Lubitch.
You know, he isn't one of the great Hollywood directors, but I
was more interested in how Mel was going to do it and how, you
know, my scenes with Anne and, and I know it was pretty
similar, but I, I just kind of wanted to find the moment with
Anne and any scene I was in withMel and Oh my gosh, working with
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Anne Bancroft was a dream come true.
She's one of the finest actors that ever lived.
She won an Emmy, an Oscar and a Tony.
She was an incredibly wonderful woman.
Yeah, those. Scenes together that you do.
She just knows how to use every every inch of her face and eyes
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and mouth and was just playing that so fun.
And when she swings you around and all that, it is kind of like
doing a dance when you've got that kind of thing going on.
That must have. And you mentioned you were
intimidated at 1st and found outshe was completely down to
earth. Oh, she was.
So, you know, she was a, an Italian woman, women from the
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Bronx. She had an inner strength and an
inner core of steel. And she was the only person who
could really handle Mel. Mel was very intimidating and
dominating and obviously one of the most brilliant comedic minds
in the business. He'd already done Blazing
Saddles and Young Frankenstein and History of the World.
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And so Mel was was it's good to be king, you know, but I
remember one day he came on the set during a a rehearsal of Mel
and Charlie during and the director and Mel didn't direct
that picture. And and the director was, you
know, working with Charlie during and and Ann and Mel comes
in and goes, no, no, no, no, that's not right.
(29:16):
Let's do it this way. I think you should do this.
And Ann, you should do this. And Charlie, you should do that.
And and goes hold, hold, hold on, hold on a second here.
I just want everybody to to takenote of this that Mel Brooks is
trying to tell Oscar winner AnneBancroft and Oscar nominee
Charles during how to act. They like the way they were
(29:37):
doing the scene and every and Mel goes, OK, OK, OK, do the
scene the way you want it. All right.
And he left them alone. But only Anne could call him
like that and be funny. But she was a remarkable woman.
What you. Do see in this movie is a lot of
them and a lot of what you just described because they make
jokes about her name being way smaller than his and her putting
(30:01):
him in his place. And that's where the Mel Brooks
comes in because the movie has alot of Mel Brooks shtick, but it
also has those Mel Brooks tendermoments, those moments where
everybody stops and things get very emotional.
It does have aspects that the original did not have.
They're both very much worth saying, and frankly, between my
wife and I, we've pretty much seen almost everything you did.
(30:25):
She loved Bonanza. I like Tucker's witch.
OK. Short lived, yeah, but.
It was a cute show it. Was bewitched in a in a
detective show? Exactly.
But a great cast. But the stuff that you've done
is very accessible in many ways because you can find almost
almost every anything on the various streaming services and
(30:48):
me TV, me TV, plus all of these things.
So we do live in a remarkable age.
Hannah Barbera material Johnny Quest is on Blu-ray and it just
looks incredible. You can also get Young Samson
with Space Cadets, which it usually ran in tandem.
Oh, OK. The only.
One that hasn't happened yet is Sinbad Junior, but I'm sure
(31:12):
that's coming. And in the case of Sinbad
Junior, that was a lot of episodes.
Oh, I know. I think we did 80 or something.
It was just insane. And you know, that chance to
work with Mel Blank was a treasure.
I mean, this was one of the mosttalented voice actors that ever
lived. The ability to embody all those
(31:33):
different characters and those voices.
I don't know how you do that. I just don't know how you do it.
And then if you look at the old Jack Benny programs, I don't
know how many people have seen that.
Mel's in there and he acts all these different characters.
He's fantastic and very funny. Yeah, including.
The car he and he did speed buggy later and was the car.
(31:54):
You know the other interesting thing about your three cartoons,
They're good examples of how they could modulate timing and
pace because Johnny Quest was the 30 minute one story cartoon
which they invented with The Flintstones because it's a
different structure than a feature or a theatrical short.
Then you had five actually maybe4 1/2 minutes with Sinbad, and
(32:18):
yet the stories work. Could you tell the scripts are
in the boards at all? How that pacing, Was it
different, was it the same or what?
Well, it was totally different for Johnny.
I mean, because Johnny was like doing a play.
I mean, there were basically 3 acts, but it was, it was like
doing a live performance and it was like doing a radio show.
And I actually had the good fortune to do a radio show at
(32:40):
NBC right towards the end of radio with the Foley guy making
this, you know, all those sound effects and, and all of that and
all the actors standing around the microphones acting together.
And it was very much like that. But Sinbad Junior, you know, we
would do two or three episodes at a time because they were just
sort of vignette ish, short little pieces and certainly
(33:02):
paced up. And it's a different kind of
story. Nothing was as extensive or sort
of developed as Johnny Quest because they were big stories,
sort of epic scale. I mean, and they were adventure
stories. And I think the other ones,
Space Ghost was a little longer,I believe.
Yeah, they were a. Little longer than Sinbad and
(33:24):
shorter than the other because you had had to share the space
with Dynaboy. There were two space ghosts, so
they were roughly 6 or 7 minutes.
So yeah, you did. We did every format.
And then we would do a record ofQuest or we would, do you know
Space Ghost or I believe there'sseveral out there that we did.
And I don't know if it's an houror 40 minutes or something, but
(33:46):
there's a longer version of the show that was just the voice
work. Yeah, you.
Did a Johnny Quest 20,000 links under the sea and a Sinbad
Junior Treasure Island. A little bit more like radio
shows but also like Hanna Barbera cartoons.
You may have done a Space Ghost.There are albums that were never
released, so that's possible. Oh my.
(34:07):
Gosh, that's. Yeah, that's one of the things
at the end of the book we mentioned there are tapes of a
handful of things that were planned before the record
division folded. So we can only hope folks, was
it Charlie Shows who kind of ranthe story, the direction on the
records or Hanna and Barbera there at any of that?
Because those were made at the studio.
(34:28):
They were made at the. Studios.
I think it was Joe who ran them.I don't recall Charlie, so I
don't know if there was another director brought in it.
It all seemed to me to be Joe Barbera always was the creative
force behind those shows. But it's hard for me to
remember. I mean, I was, you know, just
16-17 at the time. There's a lot in there about
(34:48):
moving into directing lessons learned a lot, a lot of
surprising things. One of the statements you make,
and this is what one of the one of the things I say about Hanna
Barbera a lot. You say anyone can direct when
they have tons of time and tons of money.
When you have a finite time, especially with television and a
(35:08):
limited budget, the fact that you can carry off something
entertaining is a remarkable thing.
Oh. Absolutely.
I mean, the trick is I was just reading a book about John Ford,
the great director, won five Academy Awards, won more
directing Academy Awards than any other director, you know,
did Stagecoach and you know, theman who shot Liberty, Balance,
(35:30):
the Searchers. I mean, he invented John Wayne,
made him a star. You have to fashion what you're
shooting to fit the schedule. And they don't talk about that
so much in film school. And it's like, oh, this will be
a great shot. That would be a great shot.
But how long does it take to setit up?
I had a teacher of mine named Bruce Block at UCLA.
You taught visual components of the cinema.
(35:52):
I took that at some point because I was interested in how
do you production design fit into the telling of a story.
And Bruce was the director whisperer in Hollywood.
And Bruce would get hired to help first time directors get
through a movie because what they didn't know, they didn't
(36:14):
know. And scheduling and where you put
the camera has everything to do with whether you're going to
make your day or whether you're going to go over budget and over
schedule or lose the light if the sun goes down.
What before you've covered the scene.
Bruce helped me, counseled me onmy first directing job.
It wasn't St. Elsewhere was my first directing
job, but I was doing a movie that I bought the rights to at
(36:38):
Universal and I was directing Peter Coyote and Courtney Thorne
Smith. And I do my shot list.
And he said, well, if you stage it like this, the way you've
described it, it's going to takeyou a long time because you're
shooting in three different directions.
But if you stage it this way andyou maintain the same camera
angles for the scene and you don't cross the line and have to
(37:01):
relight it, then you'll cut halfthe time out of it.
So you want to stage it more simply if you don't have them
crossover this way and that. These were big lessons and he
helped me immensely. And it's those kinds of tricks
and just sort of understanding that help you be a good director
so you don't you don't get fired.
(37:24):
Well, Speaking of directing episode, you describe in detail
the whole St. Elsewhere thing.
I mean, read the book because it's going to be longer than
this, folks. But just in brief, what?
How did that go? Well.
Bruce Paltrow was the showrunnerand head writer and producer of
that show. And I had done a little sex the
(37:45):
the movie with Kate Capshaw withhim, and he's the greatest, one
of the most wonderful people I ever worked with and good
friend. And so he said, you want to
direct? Come on.
OK. And I hung out on their set a
lot and I watched and he said, OK, you're ready, let's go.
And I directed an episode. And so day one shot one in the
dressing area where all the doctors show up and they're
(38:06):
putting on their scrubs and they're getting out of their
civilian clothes and putting on their, you know, operating
outfits and stuff. And, and I said, OK, here's what
I see. I put the camera here.
We're going to, you know, and everybody's in front of their
locker and you're kind of changing.
And I want to, you know, Denzel's Washington is in it and
David Morrison, Howie Mandel andEd Begley Junior.
(38:27):
And so I said, OK, so here's theway I see it in the blah, blah,
blah. And Denzel and all those guys
looked at me and they'd go, I can't believe it.
And now the crew's going odd andeverybody turns and walks off
the set, leaving me alone on theset with my assistant director,
who I was good friends with, Howie Horowitz.
And he looked at me and said, well, that didn't go well, did
(38:47):
it? And I thought, oh, my, my
career's over. I mean, I lost.
I lost the actors. And then I sort of kind of
walked around the corner and there's Paltrow who set the gag
up and all the actors laughing with the crew and laughing like
they gotcha. And I was like, oh, you killed
me. You just killed me.
(39:08):
But that was the kind of set they were on and that that's the
way you relieve the tension of it.
And perhaps wasn't the best episode ever of Saint elsewhere,
but I I did unique stuff and andI learned a heck of a lot.
And it was the beginning, you know, and what happens?
Why did I become a director? Because I wasn't getting acting
jobs, you know, I mean, I was ata point in my career where they
(39:30):
stopped making, you know, whatever it was that there.
I don't think the TV movies I was doing where there was many
of them. And so I started directing
because I wasn't working enough and I had a family I needed to
support. I also thought it's a bigger
challenge for me to now broaden my skill set into directing.
And of course, every actor thinks they can direct.
(39:51):
Then you learn on the first timeyou shooting, you don't know,
You may know a lot about certainkinds of things, but you get
into certain situations like action sequences or I don't
know, say a big crowd scene or different elements of production
that you have no experience in. And unless you have that great
(40:13):
assistant director who's very good at doing crowd scenes,
you're going to die, you know, And there's tricks to doing.
Large crowd scenes, which you want to shoot the broad stuff
first with all of the the background artists and then you
want to thin that out and then get the pieces.
And you don't need all those background artists for it.
So you let them go and it saves money.
(40:34):
So you have to calculate and andmathematically orchestrate what
you're shooting and how you're going to shoot it to accomplish
your goal on a fixed amount of money.
And now you're acting and directing on Virgin River, which
my wife and I just watched all 10 and about 10 days.
That's great. Thank you.
(40:54):
This is what is a season 6, Season 6.
Was just on and now we're comingback for season 7 in March.
Oh, and. You've got a great storyline
that just, there's a huge revelation at the end of, oh,
that's why they're doing it. You know, that's the only thing.
You binge it and you get so usedto it.
It's like, I want more. I want more.
(41:15):
I know. It's hard, you know, because the
thing that takes so long is whenyou go into post production
after we finish shooting, it hasto be translated and dubbed in
every language in every country that Netflix has a show in, you
know, has a presence in and France, Italy, you know, Sweden,
(41:37):
Denmark, Germany, wherever subtitled in that and you.
So it's a lengthy process. So that's different than
networks where you'd finish a show and maybe 3 weeks later to
be on the air. There is some dry comedy with
Doc. There's a great scene with you
and Martin Henderson where he was told by Annette O'toole's
character, go in there and act all puppy dog and he's, Oh yeah,
(41:59):
what are you doing? And it's like she told you,
there's wonderful moments in in all the seasons.
There's always the big festival where everybody gets together
and you get all these plot. You know, it's like, oh, when's
the festival? It's great escapist TV and it
takes you this wonderful land where you get involved in all of
these problems. But it's loads of fun and you're
(42:21):
wonderful on it. And one of the questions I have
about Doc is that you talk a lotin your book about doing
accents, and Kennedy was tricky,and Reagan you got down real
well, and Doc has a really subtle country accent.
Is that something that you developed specifically?
(42:42):
How do you keep it consistent? I don't think a lot about it,
you know, I just, I mean, now six seasons in, it's just sort
of there and it feels like once I'm in character, it's sort of
there. I can tell you that I remember
doing 1 scene and it was emotionally tricky scene and it
(43:03):
was, you know, involved other actors and it was kind of a
complicated scene to at least inmy head.
And we got it all done and I went, I don't think I had an
accent and but there was enough of it there.
It was all fine, you know, you tend to overthink these things,
but it's a wonderful show and and it's like a putting on an
(43:25):
old comfortable pair of shoes when you start back.
Because I love the people that Iwork with and, and the cast and
the crew and the writers. And so it's just a joy.
It's, it's a family, you know, and it's so innervating and
lovely to, to be at this point in my career and find a new home
like that and find a new group of people to spend so much time
(43:50):
with and that I care for. Also regarding accents, you've
got Martin Henderson, who is from New Zealand, but he
completely makes that accent into American.
You'd never know. How does he do that?
No, he's. Great.
And the Brits can do that. And I think the Australians and,
you know, I mean, half of the stars of, you know, Marvel
movies are foreign actors and British actors.
(44:11):
And you can do American accents 10 times better than Americans
can do British accents, althoughsome actors have been able to do
that very well. You have.
Worked with Legends and you've also been on some of the most
iconic shows and movies, some movies, low budget and TV movies
and then massive ones like 1941.With working for different
(44:34):
companies professionally and scope wise, where does Hanna
Barbera fit in that? Well, it's a totally different
world. And Hanna Barbera was all about
budgets. I mean, because Joe and Bill
brought cartoons to TV in a way that had never been before.
(44:55):
Because, you know, the way they did them at MGM, it cost a lot
of money and the way they did them at Disney cost a lot of
money. So they devised a way to do a
low budget show and how can we do this every week and afford it
with a television budget. And that was their genius, I
think. I mean, there were other ones,
(45:16):
Rocky and Bullwinkle and, you know, but on a broader scale,
they invented the wheel. I mean, they invented cartoons
for TVI think. And and, you know, there may
have been one or two shows before that that were around
and, and you'd know better than I do, Greg, but about what
preceded what they did. But there's Rough and ready and
(45:37):
all the shows that they did, they found a way to do it for
the nickel and 1/2 that they gotfrom the network and the studios
and created an empire. Yeah, and.
Employed probably more people intheir history than any studio
ever did. Yeah well the book is damn glad
to meet you my 7 decades in the Hollywood trenches.
(45:59):
It is available as a actual bookthat you can read and hold in
your hands. It is an e-book that comes with
images as well and so does the audio.
The audio gives you a little package I believe of images as
well. So you get the best of Tim
Matheson no matter what format you get.
And you've given us so much of your best.
(46:21):
And you're so kind to have spentthis time with us.
And thank you for sharing your quest.
Oh, thank. You and it's been great, Greg.
It's good to talk to you always.We hope you.
Enjoyed the fantastic world of Hannah and Barbera with Greg
Airborne. Please join us again and Many
thanks for listening.
Ladies and gentlemen, children of all ages, we love Head of our
Mirror. Welcome to the Fantastic World
of Hannah and Barbera, a celebration of Bill, Hannah, Joe
(00:32):
Barbera and the thousands of people, past and present who
have shared in their entertainment tradition.
And now your host, Greg Airbar. Thank you, Chris Anthony.
Welcome to fantastic world of Hannah and Barbera.
I'm Greg Airbar, author of the book Hannah Barbera, the
Recorded History, which is now an audio book.
(00:55):
I am so thrilled to welcome backto our podcast A Hanna Barbera
legend, the voice of Johnny Quest and young Samson Sinbad
Junior, and an incredible body of work this man has
accomplished as a director as well as an actor.
And he has just put as much of that as he can into a really,
(01:18):
really page Turner of an autobiography.
Tim Matheson, damn glad to meet you and welcome you to the show
So. Thank you.
We're going to mostly talk aboutyour book, but in no way will we
cover everything that's in there.
I thought I knew a lot about you, but I didn't know all of
the details. Not just from the standpoint of
(01:39):
the credits, but a lot of the behind scenes, a lot of lessons
learned, lot of lessons learned.And one of the things was the
sidebars. So if you're a student of the
business, this is a really good book.
Did you feel like you had a obligation to do that for
somebody? I had a desire, you know,
because what I did was I did these little breakouts called
(02:00):
film school boot camp, which is it's for it's almost anybody
that works with a group of people.
And, and it was some pitfalls that I sort of stumbled upon
when, when I was beginning acting or beginning directing or
producing. And you know, when you step back
and look at it, it's any of us who work with other people in
any job. It's how to best get along with
(02:22):
those people and how to interactwith those people.
And in the best of circumstances, it's a team
effort always that gets the bestjob done.
I learned that the hard way. And I was fortunate enough to
work with very, very special people that taught me lessons
that are useful today. So that the young film makers or
(02:46):
the young workers in any business, tech as well, they
don't have to reinvent the wheel.
You can just look back at what people have done before and you
can use their lessons to help you improve your craft.
Was this a story you wanted to tell for a long time?
You know the song. If they asked me, I could write
a book. Do you keep a journal?
(03:07):
What brought this about? Well, I had started because I
was in a certain special place, I think, when Animal House was
made. And to me it was a story of Ivan
Reitman, John Landis, Harold Ramis, Doug Kenny and all these
very, very special people together for that moment in
history to make Animal House against the will of the studio.
(03:31):
Studio didn't want to make the movie and how they all work
together to accomplish it. And yet those four people
changed the nature of comedy in American cinema.
So you look at the films they have done.
And so I started to write the book about how they work
together, how they accomplished what they did and and what it
was like on the set. I wanted to the making of Animal
(03:52):
House was basically the book I wanted to to write.
And the publisher said, great, that's great.
But we love more about Lucy and Henry and Fonda and and Jackie
Gleason. And so I expanded it because,
you know, there were things about my journey as an actor
they wanted to include. So we kind of expanded it and
(04:14):
and that's how it came about. You went into a lot of detail
about your childhood. It's a story that a lot of
people can relate to with your mother working constantly, you
know, latchkey kid before that phrase was invented and how
television was such a friend. For me, it was my solace.
I sort of escaped the the breakup of my mother and
(04:37):
father's marriage by hiding out in the movies on the weekend and
watching television all the time.
And I mean, that was sort of what you mean.
Television was sort of a, a new thing when I was growing up.
And so it was something that I sought refuge in.
And I would watch old movies. They had a thing here in LA
called the $1,000,000 movie. And as I recall, it was the same
(04:58):
movie played over and over and over five times during the week.
And I'd watch it over and over and over.
And I, so I'd watch a Billy Wilder movie or a Howard Hawks
movie or a John Ford movie. And you get to know the movies
much more in depth than typically you would if you just
saw it once. And I just became fascinated
with movies and how they made them.
(05:19):
And then I would always stay andwatch the credits at the end and
go, what do all those people do?You know, it's it dawned on me.
It took a lot of people to make a movie, you know, they didn't
have behind the scenes back thenand you didn't really know how
movies were made. And so I used to drive around
and on my bike and, and go to studios and visit the scene of
(05:42):
RKO and Paramount and Disney andand Warner Brothers and, and
sculpt around the back lot back in the day when they used to
have back lots. Not so much anymore.
Yeah, Speaking of sets and stuff, you keep referring to the
the fake fireplace on the RobertYoung show.
And what a shock was as a kid tosay this isn't real.
(06:03):
But it was so cool. Yeah, and it was interesting
because here I was a kid and andI sort of discovered in the 6th
grade that I liked acting. We kind of had a, an improv
today show version every morningor every couple of days in the
class. And I didn't play the lead, but
I would be somebody they'd interview or some, you know, I'd
(06:23):
play some part. And I found it to be very
rewarding and fun and, and I gotlaughs and Linda Blankenfield
was the prettiest girl in the class and, and she thought I was
cute and funny and it served me well.
And so I knew when I went back from San Bernardino, where I was
spending a year with my aunt anduncle, when I went back to my
(06:45):
mom at the end of that year, when I get back to Hollywood, I
told everybody I'm going to be an actor.
And so that's when it first dawned on me.
But I, and I was fortunate enough as a kid to know what I
wanted to do with my life. And you know, a lot of people
don't know until they're middle eight 20s what they got to do.
And I was fortunate enough to know that's what I want to do.
Yeah, having goals is really important, even if you don't
(07:07):
reach the one you think you want.
And sometimes, and you experience this over and over,
the one you think you want is probably, in hindsight, not the
one, but at least you had the goal to pull you through.
Yeah. You have a whole chapter in
there about what is it, Kurt Russell's expression about Peter
Pan's. If Sans and Peter Pan.
Yeah, you answer a lot of those.What's he or she like?
(07:31):
What was it like on this? And also, what roles do you
think did you want that you didn't or for one circumstance
but in hindsight probably may not have been, your life would
have been different. Yeah, I mean, I wouldn't have
been a director. I found about every five to
seven years my life would sort of shift gears.
My career would shift gears. You know, like when I was a kid
(07:53):
actor at 12 because I looked 12 and I was and Leave It to Beaver
and my three sons and all these different shows.
And then once I outgrew that phase, I was no longer a little
kid, you know, I mean, I was sort of just a teenager and I
was getting taller and so I couldn't play those kid parts
anymore. So that's when I found Hanna
(08:13):
Barbera. They found me and I was with
them for like 3 years and intermittently then I did, you
know, years mine and hours and divorced American style and then
became another phase of my career.
What do I do after Hanna Barberawas westerns, I went under
contracted Universal and did theVirginian and 2 pilots for
Westerns, one with Sally Field and and then you're on Bonanza.
(08:38):
And then shortly after that I did the quest with Kurt Russell
and then that ended. You were coming to the end of a
phase of your career and then you've got to figure out the
next one or you're done in the business.
You know, I found that in hindsight, you know, after a
couple of sort of turns that my career took, in hindsight, I
found that, okay, that's the wayit is.
(09:00):
I got to stay out in front of itand figure out what's next, as
they say on The West Wing. What are the things that someone
must do in order to? Is it instinct?
Is it asking around? Well, you're a heavy reader.
Are it all of those things to sort of figure out where things
are going and where to take yourself?
Yeah, you got to do your research.
You got to constantly, I mean, Ithink I was my own best agent
(09:24):
and my own best manager. I was always looking around.
I was reading the trade papers and, and looking at what, who's
doing what, what movies are being made.
Why can't I get up for this? And, and you're going on
auditions and things all the time.
And I think you got to scan ahead and look at the industry
and try and get a sense of whichdirection it's going and what.
(09:45):
And I was a movie fan, so I was always looking at new movies
and, you know, foreign films. And I just loved everything
about it. And what I was going to say it
at one point was the second I walked on a set when I, Robert
Young set a window on Main Street.
I just felt at home. I felt so comfortable and
surrounded by all these wonderful people that really
(10:08):
knew their craft and were executing it perfectly.
That's how movies got made. And I just, I felt right in and
felt, wow, I'm glad to be a member of this team.
Folks, if you haven't seen even a commercial being made, but a
movie, television show, if you haven't seen it happening, what
first might strike you is that the performers in front of the
(10:29):
camera are all lit up and there they are.
But all around them is this De Mille movie of all these other
people working craft services, makeup, hair, and they're
scuttering around and it, it is a remarkable, remarkable thing.
The other thing people don't know the first time they watch a
film, some being made or commercial, how slow it is.
(10:52):
You know you spend 10 hours, 12 hours doing 2 to 5 pages of
script. You know you do 1 little scene
and then you change the camera angle and then you do it again
and then you do a change anothercamera angle and you do it again
and again and again. I mean you may do 1 scene 506070
times for to cover the scene forthe director and the editors to
(11:15):
have enough film to cut that together the way they want to.
And it can be tedious to watch, I must say.
You worked with some actors thatcould get through those long
periods and just pop right into character and then some that had
to remain focused and concentrate.
Yeah, I, I mean, I've learned that for me, the best way to
(11:38):
perhaps work was to keep it light on the set, keep it fun.
I didn't have to stay in character all the time because
there was a period of my time where I was studying acting
because I was a kid actor and then and I could do certain
things. Then I realized there were
certain parts I would get that II I just couldn't find the
emotion and didn't know how to get there.
(11:58):
And I didn't know I wasn't trained.
So I, I started studying and I started studying method acting,
you know, Stanislavsky and Strasburg and a lot of different
techniques and they're great. You know, I tried to stay in
character all day long and you call me by my character's name.
And then I learned it isn't real.
(12:18):
It doesn't have to be real. It's what if it were real?
And the if is the magic if for that one moment, if I were that
person, how would I feel and howwould I speak and how would I
act? But I don't as a director.
I don't care what school of thought or technique an actor
(12:39):
comes from. Whatever gets them to that
moment on camera where they can deliver a performance that is
representative of the story and the character and the scene,
then bravo. I don't care.
You know, it's just however you want to get there.
I remember the section about Bonanza and how you were doing
(13:00):
run throughs and stuff and they weren't too thrilled because
they had to get a show done and it was like motivation and.
Well, I was rehearsing it like moment to moment, trying to find
this motivation in the camera setup.
Well, usually that's very perfunctory.
You just sort of, OK, you're here, you say this, I'm
Muhammad, and then you walk overhere and then, OK, they give you
(13:23):
a mark. Then you go away, the actors go
away and they light it. And I was taking this time for
my motivational search to find the true beats and everything.
And the director, I said, what do you think of that?
And he goes, well, the audience is asleep by now, but the
blocking works fine. Let's just say performance for
(13:45):
camera for the takes, OK. And it's like, oh, yeah, don't
worry, I'm going to speed it up.It's going to, you know.
But I was very selfish and innocently self involved.
And I must say that the people on Bonanza, when I asked Lauren
Green to call me by my charactername, he just went, no, no, Tim,
(14:05):
you know, because they've been on the show for, I don't know,
14 years, 13 years. And I come in and I want to
change things up. And it wasn't going to happen.
Let's go back to Johnny Quest and all of that.
And in some ways, would you callthat one of the pivotal turning
points in acting being on that show?
You know, seriously? Absolutely.
Because you know, one of the most difficult parts of being a
(14:29):
child actor is being a star as achild actor and then outgrowing
that. So basically, you're a child and
your career has just come to a halt because you're no longer
Dennis the Menace, you're no longer Beaver, you're no longer
on My Three Sons or whatever. Those careers have come to an
(14:52):
end. You're no longer the kid in the
show. So what do you do now?
For me, I was fortunate enough to get into a craft with some of
the best actors I've ever workedwith in Hanna Barbera, and it
helped me transition and grow out of being a kid actor and
leave that behind because kid actors don't have the emotional
(15:14):
maturity to process what it's like That last year I was on the
cover of TV Guide and I made, I don't know, $300,000.
And this year I'm not working and I'm making $22,000 or $5000
and I'm getting in line and not getting the parts.
The two that I can think of off the top of my head that made
(15:35):
that transition the best, I think we're Kurt Russell and
Jodie Foster. They basically quit acting.
Jodie went to college. Kurt went and played semi pro
baseball and was going to becomea baseball player until he threw
his shoulder out. His shoulder got screwed up and
back then they didn't have TommyJohn surgery.
So he went back to acting. But he saw himself and Jody saw
(15:58):
themselves as people who were progressing with their lives,
not just acting. That was the transition.
Then they came back to acting. So for me, I went to Hanna
Barbera and I learned a whole craft and worked with some of
the finest actors in a part of the business that I didn't even
know existed and made a living and learned that this is a multi
(16:23):
faceted business and this is a craft voice acting that I can
master. And these were the best teachers
in the world. I mean, Mel Blanc and Don
Messick, Alan Reed and June Foray and Janet Waldo, I mean
all these people, they could do innumerable characters just like
(16:43):
that. I didn't know where you kept all
that voice information. You know, how do you make a dog
with a personality and then craft it for the director on the
spot? And every time that that dog has
a moment on screen, you got to create a dialogue for that dog
and that personality. It's just it was amazing for me
(17:05):
to watch. You mentioned this a lot on the
podcast. You got the joy of like radio or
stage all working in the same room together.
Exactly. Nowadays it's different.
I think everybody goes in separately because they're multi
careers and, you know, and people are in Spain or London or
Atlanta or New York or Hollywood.
And so nobody ever gets togetherand does it.
(17:27):
And we did it like a radio play.And a lot of these actors, most
all these actors came out of radio.
They were primarily cartoon stars, Don Messick.
And I mean, it was just these guys were just amazed.
Dawes Butler was on Johnny Questdoing dramatic roles on there.
It was a consummate. I mean, so was Samson and so was
(17:50):
Sinbad Junior. But for Johnny Quest, the
ensemble were people, I think Alan Melvin, Kathy Lewis.
Who was Jade. No, you're right.
A lot of character actors came in and did it.
You know, Marvin Miller, who wason The Millionaire, You know,
these are people that when I metthem, they had a whole career
(18:12):
and made a fortune doing voice work and I didn't even know it
existed were any of. Them especially helpful with
advice if you asked or were you just in a session and it was
done or what you. Sort of did this session, you
were done. I mean, I know Joe Barbera was
very helpful to me and patient. You know, I think we joked that
(18:33):
every time my voice changed, he'd find another part for me as
I got older, you know, and youngSamson and Space Ghost and
Sinbad Junior and he. Had an instinct for gags and he
was a a bored artist. But he also, like Hannah, had a
musical ear. But for dialogue, for great
voices and how dialogue flowed because on a Hannah Barbera
(18:55):
cartoon, there was a musicality to it.
Yeah. Yeah, that was Joe.
I mean, Bill Hannah was around and I remember, you know,
knowing him and meeting him and seeing him, but not very often.
Joe was the guy that was in the room.
He directed almost all of the shows or supervised them, and
they had a good teamwork. But Joe took care of the studio
(19:18):
work and the cartoons and Bill, I guess, took care of some of
the business aspects of it. And, and I'm sure they were both
were equally creative because Tom and Jerry certainly was
brilliant, but Joe was the guy that I worked with day-to-day.
Do you? Know Walt Disney had dad issues.
Joe Barbera had dad issues because I didn't.
Know. Oh yeah.
It's in his autobiography. So as you progress through your
(19:40):
career, you kind of had these sort of dads along the way.
You know, I think that people doin life get sometimes they find
that in other ways. And yeah, he was like a
surrogate father for me and was very helpful and help guide me
and give me opportunities and encouraged me to pursue those
things. And it was great.
(20:01):
And you know, we did long playing records, we did LP's.
And when I got offered a contract at Universal to be on
camera acting in the Virginian, it was hard for me because I I
knew if I did that I was going to have to leave Hanna Barbera
and leave all this work I was doing.
I'm probably would have stayed working with them more often
(20:22):
than not had I not gone on. And actually, I'll tell you the
truth, I think it cost me money to go under contract to
Universal. But at that point, I wanted to
get back on camera as an actor and, and that was the road I
wanted to take and work out acting and, and that's what
happened. There's a really interesting
(20:44):
section Speaking of Universal where you went right into the
executives office because it waslike, this is ridiculous.
I'm under this contract and, youknow, a lot of people think if
you're on TV or you're in the public eye, you're instantly
rich and you had an interesting thing and did it on your own.
That was a cool part of the book, you know well.
(21:06):
Thank you. And you know, what had happened
was I'm under contract to Universal and I was there used
to be these term actors that were inexperienced and put under
contract and they studied there at the studio under a woman
named Monique James. And I wasn't that I was an actor
that they saw on Adam 12. I did an episode of Adam 12 and
(21:28):
they hired me to be a regular inthe Virginian.
So I had a decent contract. And at the end of the season, we
figured the Virginians coming back and I was at home reading
the trades in the bed I was sleeping in, finally getting
some rest. And I'm reading the trades that
The Virginian is no longer goingto be a show on NBC, that
they've changed it to the men from Shiloh.
(21:50):
And only Doug McClure and Jim Drury were going to come back
and they were adding Lee Majors and I think Stewart Granger to
the show. And all the rest of the cast was
gone. And it was like, I'm reading
this in the trades. And I knew that if it was in the
trades, everybody in town knew this already.
My agents knew it, the studio knew it, the network knew it.
(22:12):
And no one called me. No one said, hey, sorry.
No one said thanks for, you know, nice work.
And I'm sorry this worked out. Nothing.
I heard nothing. Then they cancelled my contract,
as they should, because I'm no longer in a show for them.
And it was a hard time for me. I was going through a divorce.
I was overextended financially. And so I pulled up, you know, my
(22:33):
pants, and I just tightened my belt and I said OK.
I built an apartment in the basement of this house I'd
overpaid for, and now I rented it out.
I lived in the basement. I pulled my bootstraps up and I
got through this. Then Universal calls and says,
hey, we'd like to put you back under contract because we'd been
(22:53):
developing some pilots for you and we want you to do them, and
we'd just like you to go back under your contract.
And I said no way because they treated me poorly.
No one acknowledged all that I had done for the show.
I mean, I'd gone out every weekend, traveled around and
publicized the show and didn't rest.
And I ran to the set whenever they needed me.
And I take over Doug Mcclure's part if he didn't want to do it
(23:16):
on the spot. So I demanded a, you know, my
agent said, no way you're going to get any more money from them
or an apology. Forget it.
And I, I said, I want to talk tothe studio exec.
And it was a guy named Pete Terranova who actually I just
saw last week and he's got a bitolder, but he remembered this
moment. And I go into his office with my
(23:37):
agent and I tell him, I said, you know, I'm not coming back
under contract. I killed for you guys.
I did everything you wanted me to do.
And no one was even cordial enough to call and say sorry
about this. But we have to let you go.
And now that you find you need me because you've written a
script and invested in a script,now you want me to come back
under contract under the same terms?
No way. I ain't doing it.
(23:58):
And he said, well, Tim, I, you know, you're right.
I apologize and I should have called you and we, we should
have thanked you for all you did.
He said, but the studio is not going to pay you more money for
this pilot. But, and when he said, but I
kind of my ears perked up. He said, I'll do it off books.
I'll write you another check every week for your raise.
(24:19):
And it was $200 a week. So he he wrote me a separate
check every week on top of my contract and I got my raise and
I got my apology and of course the agent took credit for it
later. Well.
Taking credit for stuff is, and it's not just a Hollywood
exclusive because I think we've all been there.
(24:40):
The Larry Tate thing. Ain't it the truth you talked?
About universal and tightening your belt and I thought we
should throw in a little boom sound effect like Sinbad junior.
Exactly. Exactly.
You know, you mentioned reading the trades and finding out stuff
that was like, why? And tell us about the whole Mel
(25:00):
Brooks thing. Well, it was a.
Similar situation again. It's in the morning and I'm
reading the, you know, I think over coffee or lunch or
something. I was reading the the daily
Variety and there was a column by Army Archard and it was
called Just for Variety. He was a gossip columnist and he
would call up people and talk tothem about what what are you
doing next? What's going on, your movies
(25:22):
coming out next week. It was a full page of just sort
of chatter and some of it would come to fruition and some of it
didn't. People would just talk about
what they hope to do next or I'mtrying to get this movie made or
that. So he's talking to Mel Brooks
and Mel Brooks says, well, I'm going to remake.
I think it was just after History of the World Part 1.
(25:43):
It was I'm going to do a remake of the Ernst Lubich movie To Be
or Not to Be, which starred JackBenny and Carole Lombard and
Robert Stack and Bancroft and I are going to be the lead and I'm
going to hire this young actor named Tim Matheson to be the Co
star. And I was like, what?
I've never even met Mel Brooks. I don't know anything about this
(26:04):
project. I just like, I'm just reading it
in the trades, like I did my firing at Universal later on.
I called my agent, I said, what's the deal?
And he goes, yeah, it looks likethis is going to happen.
And sure enough, Mel offered me the part.
And it was it was one of those crazy things that came about.
And, you know, it was a joy to work with Mel and Ann.
(26:25):
I can't tell you. Did you ever?
Find out anything specific aboutwhat he saw you in or anything
like that I think. Probably Animal House.
I think that was the time it was.
I had just done 1941. I don't think 41 might have been
out. Yeah, 41 had already been out,
you know, So I'd done Animal House in 41 and a few other
(26:46):
movies, but I think that probably was Animal House.
I'd like to talk. A little bit about to be or not
to be because TCM showed it and I knew you had been in the
remake. So we watched them both
back-to-back. Oh yeah.
Really interesting. Well, well, first of all, you
being a movie buff, there you are doing Lubitz because a lot
(27:07):
of it was word for word. Some of your scenes in
particular, you're speaking those words that must have been
mind blowing. Well.
Yeah, and intentionally, I didn't look at the original, all
right? And I have looked at it, but I
just wanted to take it as a piece of something.
I'd seen it years before. I knew the movie.
(27:29):
I knew of the movie. And I loved Ernst Lubitch.
You know, he isn't one of the great Hollywood directors, but I
was more interested in how Mel was going to do it and how, you
know, my scenes with Anne and, and I know it was pretty
similar, but I, I just kind of wanted to find the moment with
Anne and any scene I was in withMel and Oh my gosh, working with
(27:50):
Anne Bancroft was a dream come true.
She's one of the finest actors that ever lived.
She won an Emmy, an Oscar and a Tony.
She was an incredibly wonderful woman.
Yeah, those. Scenes together that you do.
She just knows how to use every every inch of her face and eyes
(28:11):
and mouth and was just playing that so fun.
And when she swings you around and all that, it is kind of like
doing a dance when you've got that kind of thing going on.
That must have. And you mentioned you were
intimidated at 1st and found outshe was completely down to
earth. Oh, she was.
So, you know, she was a, an Italian woman, women from the
(28:33):
Bronx. She had an inner strength and an
inner core of steel. And she was the only person who
could really handle Mel. Mel was very intimidating and
dominating and obviously one of the most brilliant comedic minds
in the business. He'd already done Blazing
Saddles and Young Frankenstein and History of the World.
(28:54):
And so Mel was was it's good to be king, you know, but I
remember one day he came on the set during a a rehearsal of Mel
and Charlie during and the director and Mel didn't direct
that picture. And and the director was, you
know, working with Charlie during and and Ann and Mel comes
in and goes, no, no, no, no, that's not right.
(29:16):
Let's do it this way. I think you should do this.
And Ann, you should do this. And Charlie, you should do that.
And and goes hold, hold, hold on, hold on a second here.
I just want everybody to to takenote of this that Mel Brooks is
trying to tell Oscar winner AnneBancroft and Oscar nominee
Charles during how to act. They like the way they were
(29:37):
doing the scene and every and Mel goes, OK, OK, OK, do the
scene the way you want it. All right.
And he left them alone. But only Anne could call him
like that and be funny. But she was a remarkable woman.
What you. Do see in this movie is a lot of
them and a lot of what you just described because they make
jokes about her name being way smaller than his and her putting
(30:01):
him in his place. And that's where the Mel Brooks
comes in because the movie has alot of Mel Brooks shtick, but it
also has those Mel Brooks tendermoments, those moments where
everybody stops and things get very emotional.
It does have aspects that the original did not have.
They're both very much worth saying, and frankly, between my
wife and I, we've pretty much seen almost everything you did.
(30:25):
She loved Bonanza. I like Tucker's witch.
OK. Short lived, yeah, but.
It was a cute show it. Was bewitched in a in a
detective show? Exactly.
But a great cast. But the stuff that you've done
is very accessible in many ways because you can find almost
almost every anything on the various streaming services and
(30:48):
me TV, me TV, plus all of these things.
So we do live in a remarkable age.
Hannah Barbera material Johnny Quest is on Blu-ray and it just
looks incredible. You can also get Young Samson
with Space Cadets, which it usually ran in tandem.
Oh, OK. The only.
One that hasn't happened yet is Sinbad Junior, but I'm sure
(31:12):
that's coming. And in the case of Sinbad
Junior, that was a lot of episodes.
Oh, I know. I think we did 80 or something.
It was just insane. And you know, that chance to
work with Mel Blank was a treasure.
I mean, this was one of the mosttalented voice actors that ever
lived. The ability to embody all those
(31:33):
different characters and those voices.
I don't know how you do that. I just don't know how you do it.
And then if you look at the old Jack Benny programs, I don't
know how many people have seen that.
Mel's in there and he acts all these different characters.
He's fantastic and very funny. Yeah, including.
The car he and he did speed buggy later and was the car.
(31:54):
You know the other interesting thing about your three cartoons,
They're good examples of how they could modulate timing and
pace because Johnny Quest was the 30 minute one story cartoon
which they invented with The Flintstones because it's a
different structure than a feature or a theatrical short.
Then you had five actually maybe4 1/2 minutes with Sinbad, and
(32:18):
yet the stories work. Could you tell the scripts are
in the boards at all? How that pacing, Was it
different, was it the same or what?
Well, it was totally different for Johnny.
I mean, because Johnny was like doing a play.
I mean, there were basically 3 acts, but it was, it was like
doing a live performance and it was like doing a radio show.
And I actually had the good fortune to do a radio show at
(32:40):
NBC right towards the end of radio with the Foley guy making
this, you know, all those sound effects and, and all of that and
all the actors standing around the microphones acting together.
And it was very much like that. But Sinbad Junior, you know, we
would do two or three episodes at a time because they were just
sort of vignette ish, short little pieces and certainly
(33:02):
paced up. And it's a different kind of
story. Nothing was as extensive or sort
of developed as Johnny Quest because they were big stories,
sort of epic scale. I mean, and they were adventure
stories. And I think the other ones,
Space Ghost was a little longer,I believe.
Yeah, they were a. Little longer than Sinbad and
(33:24):
shorter than the other because you had had to share the space
with Dynaboy. There were two space ghosts, so
they were roughly 6 or 7 minutes.
So yeah, you did. We did every format.
And then we would do a record ofQuest or we would, do you know
Space Ghost or I believe there'sseveral out there that we did.
And I don't know if it's an houror 40 minutes or something, but
(33:46):
there's a longer version of the show that was just the voice
work. Yeah, you.
Did a Johnny Quest 20,000 links under the sea and a Sinbad
Junior Treasure Island. A little bit more like radio
shows but also like Hanna Barbera cartoons.
You may have done a Space Ghost.There are albums that were never
released, so that's possible. Oh my.
(34:07):
Gosh, that's. Yeah, that's one of the things
at the end of the book we mentioned there are tapes of a
handful of things that were planned before the record
division folded. So we can only hope folks, was
it Charlie Shows who kind of ranthe story, the direction on the
records or Hanna and Barbera there at any of that?
Because those were made at the studio.
(34:28):
They were made at the. Studios.
I think it was Joe who ran them.I don't recall Charlie, so I
don't know if there was another director brought in it.
It all seemed to me to be Joe Barbera always was the creative
force behind those shows. But it's hard for me to
remember. I mean, I was, you know, just
16-17 at the time. There's a lot in there about
(34:48):
moving into directing lessons learned a lot, a lot of
surprising things. One of the statements you make,
and this is what one of the one of the things I say about Hanna
Barbera a lot. You say anyone can direct when
they have tons of time and tons of money.
When you have a finite time, especially with television and a
(35:08):
limited budget, the fact that you can carry off something
entertaining is a remarkable thing.
Oh. Absolutely.
I mean, the trick is I was just reading a book about John Ford,
the great director, won five Academy Awards, won more
directing Academy Awards than any other director, you know,
did Stagecoach and you know, theman who shot Liberty, Balance,
(35:30):
the Searchers. I mean, he invented John Wayne,
made him a star. You have to fashion what you're
shooting to fit the schedule. And they don't talk about that
so much in film school. And it's like, oh, this will be
a great shot. That would be a great shot.
But how long does it take to setit up?
I had a teacher of mine named Bruce Block at UCLA.
You taught visual components of the cinema.
(35:52):
I took that at some point because I was interested in how
do you production design fit into the telling of a story.
And Bruce was the director whisperer in Hollywood.
And Bruce would get hired to help first time directors get
through a movie because what they didn't know, they didn't
(36:14):
know. And scheduling and where you put
the camera has everything to do with whether you're going to
make your day or whether you're going to go over budget and over
schedule or lose the light if the sun goes down.
What before you've covered the scene.
Bruce helped me, counseled me onmy first directing job.
It wasn't St. Elsewhere was my first directing
job, but I was doing a movie that I bought the rights to at
(36:38):
Universal and I was directing Peter Coyote and Courtney Thorne
Smith. And I do my shot list.
And he said, well, if you stage it like this, the way you've
described it, it's going to takeyou a long time because you're
shooting in three different directions.
But if you stage it this way andyou maintain the same camera
angles for the scene and you don't cross the line and have to
(37:01):
relight it, then you'll cut halfthe time out of it.
So you want to stage it more simply if you don't have them
crossover this way and that. These were big lessons and he
helped me immensely. And it's those kinds of tricks
and just sort of understanding that help you be a good director
so you don't you don't get fired.
(37:24):
Well, Speaking of directing episode, you describe in detail
the whole St. Elsewhere thing.
I mean, read the book because it's going to be longer than
this, folks. But just in brief, what?
How did that go? Well.
Bruce Paltrow was the showrunnerand head writer and producer of
that show. And I had done a little sex the
(37:45):
the movie with Kate Capshaw withhim, and he's the greatest, one
of the most wonderful people I ever worked with and good
friend. And so he said, you want to
direct? Come on.
OK. And I hung out on their set a
lot and I watched and he said, OK, you're ready, let's go.
And I directed an episode. And so day one shot one in the
dressing area where all the doctors show up and they're
(38:06):
putting on their scrubs and they're getting out of their
civilian clothes and putting on their, you know, operating
outfits and stuff. And, and I said, OK, here's what
I see. I put the camera here.
We're going to, you know, and everybody's in front of their
locker and you're kind of changing.
And I want to, you know, Denzel's Washington is in it and
David Morrison, Howie Mandel andEd Begley Junior.
(38:27):
And so I said, OK, so here's theway I see it in the blah, blah,
blah. And Denzel and all those guys
looked at me and they'd go, I can't believe it.
And now the crew's going odd andeverybody turns and walks off
the set, leaving me alone on theset with my assistant director,
who I was good friends with, Howie Horowitz.
And he looked at me and said, well, that didn't go well, did
(38:47):
it? And I thought, oh, my, my
career's over. I mean, I lost.
I lost the actors. And then I sort of kind of
walked around the corner and there's Paltrow who set the gag
up and all the actors laughing with the crew and laughing like
they gotcha. And I was like, oh, you killed
me. You just killed me.
(39:08):
But that was the kind of set they were on and that that's the
way you relieve the tension of it.
And perhaps wasn't the best episode ever of Saint elsewhere,
but I I did unique stuff and andI learned a heck of a lot.
And it was the beginning, you know, and what happens?
Why did I become a director? Because I wasn't getting acting
jobs, you know, I mean, I was ata point in my career where they
(39:30):
stopped making, you know, whatever it was that there.
I don't think the TV movies I was doing where there was many
of them. And so I started directing
because I wasn't working enough and I had a family I needed to
support. I also thought it's a bigger
challenge for me to now broaden my skill set into directing.
And of course, every actor thinks they can direct.
(39:51):
Then you learn on the first timeyou shooting, you don't know,
You may know a lot about certainkinds of things, but you get
into certain situations like action sequences or I don't
know, say a big crowd scene or different elements of production
that you have no experience in. And unless you have that great
(40:13):
assistant director who's very good at doing crowd scenes,
you're going to die, you know, And there's tricks to doing.
Large crowd scenes, which you want to shoot the broad stuff
first with all of the the background artists and then you
want to thin that out and then get the pieces.
And you don't need all those background artists for it.
So you let them go and it saves money.
(40:34):
So you have to calculate and andmathematically orchestrate what
you're shooting and how you're going to shoot it to accomplish
your goal on a fixed amount of money.
And now you're acting and directing on Virgin River, which
my wife and I just watched all 10 and about 10 days.
That's great. Thank you.
(40:54):
This is what is a season 6, Season 6.
Was just on and now we're comingback for season 7 in March.
Oh, and. You've got a great storyline
that just, there's a huge revelation at the end of, oh,
that's why they're doing it. You know, that's the only thing.
You binge it and you get so usedto it.
It's like, I want more. I want more.
(41:15):
I know. It's hard, you know, because the
thing that takes so long is whenyou go into post production
after we finish shooting, it hasto be translated and dubbed in
every language in every country that Netflix has a show in, you
know, has a presence in and France, Italy, you know, Sweden,
(41:37):
Denmark, Germany, wherever subtitled in that and you.
So it's a lengthy process. So that's different than
networks where you'd finish a show and maybe 3 weeks later to
be on the air. There is some dry comedy with
Doc. There's a great scene with you
and Martin Henderson where he was told by Annette O'toole's
character, go in there and act all puppy dog and he's, Oh yeah,
(41:59):
what are you doing? And it's like she told you,
there's wonderful moments in in all the seasons.
There's always the big festival where everybody gets together
and you get all these plot. You know, it's like, oh, when's
the festival? It's great escapist TV and it
takes you this wonderful land where you get involved in all of
these problems. But it's loads of fun and you're
(42:21):
wonderful on it. And one of the questions I have
about Doc is that you talk a lotin your book about doing
accents, and Kennedy was tricky,and Reagan you got down real
well, and Doc has a really subtle country accent.
Is that something that you developed specifically?
(42:42):
How do you keep it consistent? I don't think a lot about it,
you know, I just, I mean, now six seasons in, it's just sort
of there and it feels like once I'm in character, it's sort of
there. I can tell you that I remember
doing 1 scene and it was emotionally tricky scene and it
(43:03):
was, you know, involved other actors and it was kind of a
complicated scene to at least inmy head.
And we got it all done and I went, I don't think I had an
accent and but there was enough of it there.
It was all fine, you know, you tend to overthink these things,
but it's a wonderful show and and it's like a putting on an
(43:25):
old comfortable pair of shoes when you start back.
Because I love the people that Iwork with and, and the cast and
the crew and the writers. And so it's just a joy.
It's, it's a family, you know, and it's so innervating and
lovely to, to be at this point in my career and find a new home
like that and find a new group of people to spend so much time
(43:50):
with and that I care for. Also regarding accents, you've
got Martin Henderson, who is from New Zealand, but he
completely makes that accent into American.
You'd never know. How does he do that?
No, he's. Great.
And the Brits can do that. And I think the Australians and,
you know, I mean, half of the stars of, you know, Marvel
movies are foreign actors and British actors.
(44:11):
And you can do American accents 10 times better than Americans
can do British accents, althoughsome actors have been able to do
that very well. You have.
Worked with Legends and you've also been on some of the most
iconic shows and movies, some movies, low budget and TV movies
and then massive ones like 1941.With working for different
(44:34):
companies professionally and scope wise, where does Hanna
Barbera fit in that? Well, it's a totally different
world. And Hanna Barbera was all about
budgets. I mean, because Joe and Bill
brought cartoons to TV in a way that had never been before.
(44:55):
Because, you know, the way they did them at MGM, it cost a lot
of money and the way they did them at Disney cost a lot of
money. So they devised a way to do a
low budget show and how can we do this every week and afford it
with a television budget. And that was their genius, I
think. I mean, there were other ones,
(45:16):
Rocky and Bullwinkle and, you know, but on a broader scale,
they invented the wheel. I mean, they invented cartoons
for TVI think. And and, you know, there may
have been one or two shows before that that were around
and, and you'd know better than I do, Greg, but about what
preceded what they did. But there's Rough and ready and
(45:37):
all the shows that they did, they found a way to do it for
the nickel and 1/2 that they gotfrom the network and the studios
and created an empire. Yeah, and.
Employed probably more people intheir history than any studio
ever did. Yeah well the book is damn glad
to meet you my 7 decades in the Hollywood trenches.
(45:59):
It is available as a actual bookthat you can read and hold in
your hands. It is an e-book that comes with
images as well and so does the audio.
The audio gives you a little package I believe of images as
well. So you get the best of Tim
Matheson no matter what format you get.
And you've given us so much of your best.
(46:21):
And you're so kind to have spentthis time with us.
And thank you for sharing your quest.
Oh, thank. You and it's been great, Greg.
It's good to talk to you always.We hope you.
Enjoyed the fantastic world of Hannah and Barbera with Greg
Airborne. Please join us again and Many
thanks for listening.
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