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Hey everyone, welcome to more than meets these guys. We have a very special episode this

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week. We have a guest star with us, Michael Charles Hill. He is the writer of some of

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my favorite episodes of Transformers, The Gambler, The Starscreams Brigade, you have

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Bernard Hardness the Bear, The Killing Jar. He also wrote one of our favorite episodes

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of anything that we reference a lot on the show. And we just did a review on Cold Slyther

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from GIGM, amongst many other things you've done. So it is a pleasure to have you here

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today. Thank you so much. Thank you. Ed, would you like to start us off here? Yeah, actually,

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before we spin off into a bunch of nerd stuff, we want to know a little bit about Mr. Hill

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himself here. I'm very curious how you got into writing for television in the first place.

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Just doing a search through your IMDB entries, it goes into the episodes of TV that you wrote,

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but how did you initially get into that whole line of work? I kind of just stumbled into

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it. It was never an ambition or goal. As a kid of the early 60s, I watched a lot of Saturday

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morning cartoons, but it was mostly boonie tunes or fighting mouse or something. By the

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time I got into high school, I wasn't paying attention to any stuff anymore. And I grew

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up in a very small town in Vermont where I loved watching movies. We had a small theater

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in town that would usually get stuff six months after it opened in New York City. And I used

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to say that on Saturdays I'd watch Westerns and war movies, the film Noir is with my father,

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and on Sundays I'd watch musicals and comedies with my mother. But it never occurred to me

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that that was a job to have, behind the scenes stuff. So eventually I moved to Southern California

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and then moved to Hollywood with the ambition of being a writer-director. And the first

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thing I did was I got involved, I started working in film production, mostly TV commercials.

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And I worked on short film projects with people I was friends with. Anyway, long story short,

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I ended up meeting and becoming friends with Flint Dillard. And Flint and I had a writer's

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group that would meet every Monday night and bring in ten pages of script that we were

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working on to distribute to the other members and then discuss last week's ten pages that

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everybody had read and had noticed. And he, thanks to his grandfather, Flint's family

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owned the rights to Buck Rogers. So Flint and his agent were shopping that property

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around town to animation studios. And when they got, and everyone turned them down, but

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at Ruby Spears, they liked Flint and hired him straight away to write on Mr. T. And probably

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within a few weeks, Flint calls me up and says, hey, how would you like to get paid

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for writing? I said, sure. So he introduced me to the story editor on a show called Dragon's

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Lair, which was still a Saturday morning cartoon on the ABC, but based on Don Blue's video

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archival. They only did 13 episodes, but I ended up writing four of them. And I thought,

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wow, this is kind of cool. I don't have to get up at four o'clock in the morning to be

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on the station at six or soundstage at six and just stay home and write all day. And

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so I just, I, after my stint with Ruby Spears, I started contacting other animation houses

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and story editors and looking for freelance work. And that snowballed into Sunbow when

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they had decided to open a West Coast office and take over more creative control of Transformers

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and G.I. Joe. They hired me on staff to be a writer producer. So very nice. So building

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on that, I have a bit of a background in film. I worked in Los Angeles for a few months,

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years ago, but I had, I was more technical, like camera department, but I had some friends

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that worked, that were writers for television. And which is, that is more of a sort of a

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committee type arrangement when you're writing for sitcoms and that kind of thing. What is

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it like writing for animation? Is it the same kind of thing or is it, is it more of a one-man

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operation per episode?

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It's less than that. You don't have writers rooms, but you still have, we didn't even

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call them showrunners, basically story editors. So you still have to, whether you're a freelance

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or on staff, you still have to generate premises or episode ideas that you would submit to

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a story editor. And hopefully they'll like at least one that you submitted and you'll

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get to go ahead to write that. The next step would be writing the outline. Figure premises

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maybe a page, page and then the outline would be 10, 12, maybe even 15 pages where you break

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down the story scene by scene, act by act. And then once you get to go ahead on that,

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then you go to script. So it's less involved. And unlike a live action show, you're not

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plotting, we were not plotting out the entire scenes, especially in syndication. And we

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ran up against this all the time with GI Joe Transformers. There was no way that it could

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be guaranteed that the episodes would run sequentially. So most of the episodes with

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the exception of obviously the mini series and maybe a couple episodes that sort of dovetailed

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together, they were all standalone episodes. Okay. Yeah. We actually saw a bit of the,

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the non-sequential airing, especially during Transformers. There would be episodes that

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wouldn't have certain characters that would that had certain characters too early. So

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it was all a mishmash. And you kind of, you can kind of figure out how they were supposed

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to have aired originally. So that's, that's kind of neat to have that, their perspective.

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Oh no, that's that I was done with that part. So go ahead.

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The whole reason I thought to ask you about coming on the show was the, was because a

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week and a half ago we recorded our episode with of the gambler, which fun episodes. One

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of the favorite episodes I remember from childhood even it was, it was really neat because I

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like, I like TV shows, movies, stories with characters with a odd moral compass, not,

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they're not very, they're not, they're not white nights. They're not very evil. They're

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not very, everyone kind of has their own, you know, shades of gray. And so I really

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appreciated that. But I have to ask you, because I've heard stories, I believe from another

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a panel or something you had done, the name Lord Geikini, the, the basically the kind

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of the mob boss. What you, what I've heard is that that came from some friends of yours

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at the time, Gary Gygax and Dave Marconi. Can you give us a little background there?

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Sure. One of the things that we would love to do is create new names by either changing

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the spelling of them. So they still sounded the same or mashing up to me. So at the time

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I wrote that episode, Flint was working with Gary Gygax on a series of say guard books

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and Gary had rented this huge house on this estate at the top of the hill overlooking

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Beverly Hills Hotel. Once upon a time was owned by King Beaver. And it had an old horse

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stable that was just converted into a barn where Flint and I would set up these chainmail

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games that we play every Sunday night, but also a couple of little rooms for offices.

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So I was writing the script up there and David Marconi was a friend of ours. So anyway, yeah,

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I just took Geik, Geik, and it's actually pronounced Geikoni.

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Oh, okay. Geikoni. So Gary Gygax, David Marconi, Geikoni. Now, what didn't, this was the very

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first Transformer episode I ever wrote. So it didn't occur to me that I needed to spell

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out phonetically how the name should be pronounced. And somebody on their own decided it was Geikoni.

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And also I wasn't on staff yet, so I wasn't supervising the recording sessions as I did

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later on. So had I been in the studio with Wally Burr, I would have corrected it. But

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yeah, that's the story of Geikoni.

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I was going to ask if while you were hanging out with Gary, if you actually got to play

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Dungeons and Dragons, but you threw it way back bringing up chainmail. That's pretty

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awesome.

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Ed and I go back with Dungeons and Dragons quite a bit. So it's really nice to hear that.

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Well, I will tell you that the only time in my life I ever played Dungeons and Dragons,

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Gary was the Dungeon Master.

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That's absolutely amazing. Very cool.

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So yeah, actually, one of the most well-known, I guess, tertiary characters in all of Transformers,

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the original Transformers show is Devcon. And honestly, it was a really interesting

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deviation for the classic dichotomous nature of Autobots and Decepticons being on Earth

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or Cybertron. And so that was really nice. It was a nice change thrown in there. And

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it kind of built more backstory about what may have happened. Was there an inspiration

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for the character?

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Well, the truth of the matter is, as I said, it was my first time writing the Transformers.

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I had written a Gobots earlier, so I'll give you a little backstory. The story I wrote,

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again, I submitted three to six premises. They picked one. But the story editors had

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rewritten me enough that I didn't recognize the story. I think the basic premise was there,

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but they told it differently. So when I was generating premises for Transformers, and

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again, I didn't really get the tree. And so I really struggled coming up with story ideas.

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Even though I had read the Bible, I had read a few sample scripts that had already been

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written. I watched probably a couple episodes, maybe the first season, it was a meat soup.

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I still didn't really get it. I didn't know what I was doing. So to satisfy the number

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of premises I needed, the minimum number I needed to spit, I just threw in the same premise

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I wrote for the Gobots. And that's the one that bought. So when I was going through the

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list of all the characters, and I had this bounty on the character, there were no Transformers

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I thought that would fit. So I just created my own Transformers. And nobody told me that

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I couldn't. He said it has to be a pre-existing Transformer. So I just made up my own. And

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for whatever reason, nobody blinked an eye, not even Hasbro, which kind of surprised me

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based on some of the reactions I got from Hasbro once I was on staff, mostly to do with

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titles that they would object to. So yeah, and I never, to me, he was just a throwaway

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character. I tell that particular story. I was making it up as I went along, because

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I just didn't wrap my head around the whole idea of the Transformers. And unbeknownst

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to me, he had become a fan favorite. So the very first Transformer full convention that

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I had done was last year in Toronto. And the night I arrived, I was informed that Hasbro

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has finally come out with a DevCon action figure. Which I was simultaneously thrilled,

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but also at the same time thinking, it only took 40 years for Hasbro to acknowledge his

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existence. The other thing is, people have asked me, why did he only appear in that one

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episode? And I tell people, well, you can blame me, because by the time I was working

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at Sunbeam, I was working on the Transforming shows, it never occurred to me to bring him

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back.

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That's actually funny. We brought up in the episode, we would have watched the Slizzardo

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and DevCon buddy action show after that, because they were great characters.

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Yeah. And apparently, another writer, and I don't know why I don't remember this, because

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I supervised the recording sessions of almost all the shows. Another writer, Bruce Slizzardo,

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in another episode. I have no memory of it, but I recently discovered that, oh yeah, I

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remember the name of the episode. I think it might have been one written by Paul Davies.

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I think it was a season three episode. Yeah.

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Oh, he does show up again?

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He does, yeah.

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Oh, I didn't realize that. So yeah, I don't know if you're, you're probably not familiar

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with our show, but the kind of the hook of our show is that Evan is a lifelong Transformers

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fan. He knows, he's like an encyclopedia of Transformers. And I know nothing about Transformers.

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And so I watch these episodes with a fresh 40 something year old set of eyes here. So

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I'm learning this thing as we go along. I was a GI Joe kid when I was growing up. But

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you mentioned Hasbro having oversight over the shows. How did that work? Do they mandate

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what needed to be pushed in certain episodes?

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Yes and no. I periodically would get faxes from Hasbro listing all the new characters

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and toys that were, that were coming out and we're going to be hitting a shelf by a certain

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date. And they would ask us, maybe even instruct us, start writing episodes, including these

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characters, which is how Starscream's Brigade came about. Because when they, when they listed

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the combiners, I was the first person, at least in our office, to see this information.

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And so the Combaticons and Budapest was the most interesting to me. So I said, well, I'll

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write their story and I'll create an origin story because I don't think we were really

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doing anything. But mostly, well, and why I brought them up in the first place, it was

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also that particular episode where the original title was not Starscream Brigade. It was 30

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seconds over Megatron. I was a riff off of the old World War II movie. And Hasbro, you

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know, I got another fax saying, no, it sounds too much like a war movie. And my first response

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was, have you guys seen the show? But they would not, they would not budge. So I came

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up with Starscream Brigade.

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They're okay with that, but not 30 seconds. Okay. All right.

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I actually, it's kind of interesting though. I was like, one thing I wanted to ask you

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about during that episode of Starscream's Brigade, which Ed has not seen yet. So it's

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gonna be fun for him. I mean, did you have, was it in the show Bible, they wanted those

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characters pre-existing or was that something you just kind of came up with on your own?

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And also on top of that, I kind of get the feeling that because of the original title,

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you wanted to have the World War II style vehicles being used were really on purpose.

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And I don't know if that was, what vehicles that you used were your own purview or if

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that was on purpose?

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Yeah, no, I chose those. You know, good, bad, or indifferent. Those are ones that I chose.

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Yeah. And the whole Guadalcanal thing, that was all me. That wasn't anything at all. I

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mean, they had no say in how it would tell the story. They just said, these are new characters.

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I had model sheets. I had names. Maybe I had a little sample dialogue, but I'm not sure

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about that. And so that's all I had to go on. So everything else I just said, oh, I

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can do something with this. And I just knocked out a story.

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Nice. Yeah, actually, they've become some of the longest running favorite characters

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also in the show, which credit to their, I think their backstory makes them that much

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more interesting. And I don't want to give it too much away for Ed before he sees the

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episode because I'm going to experience that too.

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I think that one's coming up pretty soon too.

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Yeah, it is. I can't wait for that. But yes, speaking of that sort of thing though, one

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of my other favorite episodes that you worked on is The Killing Jar, which will come up

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in season three. Did you have, I don't know if you kind of maybe sort of answered this

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already, did you have a predetermined ideal of how the characters would react to each

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other or did Hasbro have a say like, we want them to be like this? Because the whole point

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of the episode was you put in different characters who may or may not like each other into this

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small area and see how they react to each other. And it really was a really good character

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building episode for season three. So I mean, did you have a, I guess, guidepost how to

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run that or is that all you as well?

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All me. Yeah, Hasbro had no saying that whatsoever. And in fact, with that particular one, you'll

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notice a share writing credit with a really good friend of mine who since passed away.

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But we were samurai brothers and we saw films together, we wrote feature scripts together.

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And he had been working at United Artists in the Story Department. And for whatever

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reason he found himself unemployed. So I thought I would help him out. Because I was already

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getting a salary as a producer on staff, so I was getting script fees on top of it. So

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I offered him a chance to write for animation with me and we'd share the credit and the

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fee. And if he enjoyed it enough, then he could go out on his own with two or three

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scripts as samples and try to get work on himself. I also liked the idea that because

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he didn't, he wasn't steeped in transformers or anything like that, that he would be not

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restricted on the kind of ideas that he would pitch to me. Now some of them were just too

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far out there. But some of them were interesting enough, I said, okay, I know how we can make

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this work with this show in this universe. So the killing jar was an idea that started

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with him. And then we literally sat together in my office every night, side by side, counting

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out the script. Actually, it plays like what I would think classic science fiction, hardcore

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science fiction, old Star Trek, the original series kind of premises, those ideas that

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it can be in any kind of setting, but the character premises are the same. And the whole

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point of the plot is like a universal plot. And I think that's why it played so well.

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So yeah, actually, one of the kind of fun things about that episode is Marissa Fairborn

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is in that episode, who is in lore, the daughter of Flint and Lady J. Yeah, which is kind of

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neat to bring once again, there's these little bridges between GI Joe and transforms and

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actually Jim, that link the whole universe together. And I really appreciate that Sun

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Doe universe having almost its own continuity at that point. And one of the best things,

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one of our most enjoyable episodes we have put out is our one on Cold Slither. I know

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that Ed has some questions about that. We had such a good time.

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I did. That was one of my favorite episodes when I was a kid. And I hadn't seen it since

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I was probably 10 or 11 years old and until last Sunday when we watched it and reviewed

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it. And I had an absolute blast that has aged like wine. It was so much fun to watch. But

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I've got to know man, who wrote the Cold Slither song? Because that was a gym. That was so

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much fun to listen to. That's great. That's off to you. I got a text from my ex wife who

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listens to the air every week. She goes, thanks to you, that song is stuck in my head. It

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is one of the best worms. Yeah, we had such a good time watching it. It was half of the

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episode was like a David Lynch movie. I swear it was the greatest thing to watch. We had

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such a good time. Ed, you want to bring in anything else with that?

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Yeah. Well, go ahead. Oh, no, that was all I wanted to say about

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Cold Slither. I mean, it was like I said, there was just too much going on. That broke

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my rating scale. It was so much fun. It was just an absolute blast to watch it. But no,

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I know. Go ahead. Go ahead. I was going to say that was another... This happens to me

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a lot, even in working in live action, is always my throwaway ideas are the ones that

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get chosen. I'll work really hard on five or six ideas that are really well developed.

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And then I'll just add one last one. It might be two or three lines and that's the one everyone

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says, oh, I like that idea. Let's go with that one. So it was a throwaway idea. It's

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basically a pie pie for sport. And I turned the script in and Tom and Joe... Well, if

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you don't know already, Sunbow was a division of an advertising agency out of New York called

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Griffin Bacall. So Tom Griffin and Joe Bacall were our bosses on everything. And probably

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every four to six weeks, they'd be in LA for some business and they'd always drop by the

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office. So on this one Friday afternoon, I think it was Joe came into my office and said,

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yeah, we like the script of words of song. He said, well, you wrote in the episode that

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there was going to be a song. We're not going to pay somebody to write it. Now we were already

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doing Jim and I knew that he had contracted songwriters to write all those songs. And

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so I went, oh crap, I got to write the song. So over the weekend, fortunately at the time

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I was married to a woman who was a songwriter. She specialized mostly in writing English

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lyrics for Brazilian songs. Did a lot of work for Sergio Mendes, Manhattan Transfer, a bunch

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of songs on Sarah Bond's last album, which was a Brazilian album that Sergio produced.

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So I'd run all the lyrics by, and then she wrote the music. I gave her an idea of the

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sound I heard in my head. And when we submitted it, then Joe says, well, we don't want to

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use your wife's music, because we already have Rob Walsh under contract right now. So

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she was not happy about that. But then I had to do the same thing with Rob, is put together

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a demo tape, a lot of different music that I heard in my head that I said, this is the

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sound I'm looking for. And then he wrote the music, which I thought was perfect. Now, what

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a lot of people don't know is that I was deliberately making fun of heavy metal music, because I

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was not a fan. I think we both picked up on that. I was in high school in the late 60s.

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So that's when I came of age, of all the music that was coming from. And when I first moved

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to Southern California, and I'd come up to, before I moved to LA, there were all these

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great clubs on Sunset Strip, where the kind of music that I listened to growing up in

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Vermont, the actual artists were playing. And then sometime in the mid-80s, all those

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clubs became heavy metal bands. And so it was my intention to write a bad heavy metal

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song. And I only recently realized that I failed miserably.

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Actually, those lyrics are great. Those lyrics are, I mean, you can look at me and say and

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tell that on some level I'm into heavy metal music. And I read those lyrics and I was like,

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I want to cover this right now. This is so, it's very over the top. And I like that. So

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it was very cool. I mean, you may have failed parodying metal, but it definitely works.

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It's funny in that way. I think that sometimes the things we lampoon, we try to lampoon the

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most actually end up being hits or working really well because you understand it to a

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level that you can make fun of it. But once, like you said, you failed miserably. And I

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can honestly say that was one of those episodes of Gia Jo when I was younger that of course,

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when there's the bad heavy metal being played, my dad would walk in and wonder, what are

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you watching? Like, oh no, it's kind of embarrassed. But it worked so well for that. It aged amazingly

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well too.

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Yeah. And as far as Transformers and Gia Jo, I've been out of the loop for so many years.

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So you and most all the other fans know far more about this stuff than I do because my

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area of knowledge was limited to just a few years. And it was so long ago, there's a lot

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I don't even remember. So I wasn't aware of what kind of following that that particular

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episode had until I stumbled on Bandcamp. I saw people doing covers. And then I started

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seeing people making t-shirts. And then I find out that people are making custom cold

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silver action figures. And so my very first Gia Jo convention was last November in Des

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Moines, Iowa, as assembly required. And every year, I think last year was the 12th, they

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do a theme. And the theme last year was Dreadknives. Friday night, it was cold slither. So they

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made cold silver t-shirts. They made cold silver demo tape. A friend of the organizers

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who's a copywriter at an ad agency, big fan, he wrote a couple additional verses, which

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were great fit right into the verses that I wrote. And then they recorded a brand new

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version. And I mean, it was surreal experience for me because I didn't anticipate it. The

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kind of fandom that cold silver is created, but also just being confronted with seeing

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cold silver everywhere that I went in the convention. But I had a great time. And when

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we were talking on the phone about my coming out, I came down to, I just think it would

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be a missed opportunity for both of us if I wasn't there. But I had a great time. And

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it kind of inspired me to want to do more conventions in general, but specifically Jo

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and Transpo. I've got a couple more lined up this year.

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Nice. Very nice.

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I just did another transformer a couple weeks ago.

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Yeah, TFCon.

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And then I'm going to TF Nation in Birmingham, England.

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Very nice. Did you have, I'd say input, but did you have any kind of creative input with

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the Transformers, the motion picture or the G.I. Joe and their motion picture?

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Definitely. I don't remember having any, as far as G.I. Joe goes, I don't remember having

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any discussions with Buzz at all. But with the movie, Flint is really big on crowd source.

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And so occasionally he would ask us all to come into the conference room, sit around

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the table, and just spitball ideas. Basically ask him anything you've ever wanted to see

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in a Transformer episode. And he would just pick and choose that stuff. We found something

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interesting and he'd put his own spin on it. But that was really the extent of it. I didn't

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even, even though I was supervising all the recording sessions for the series, I wasn't

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even there for the movie. Which in a way I was kind of grateful for because I certainly

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didn't want to be the one to tell Horace and Wells that he was playing the planet.

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Okay. Well, I think we're actually running over the time that we agreed on there. We

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don't want to keep you too much longer. But I did want to ask though, how does it feel

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that people, 40 years after you've written this stuff that are still making costumes

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and nerds like us are doing these cultural archaeology podcasts and just delving into

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those? I mean, how does that feel after 40 years?

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Well, it's a mixture of validation, a little gratitude, but also just kind of overwhelming.

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And the number of people who come up to me and tell me how much a particular thing that

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I wrote meant to them and got them through a difficult time. When we were doing a panel

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at TFCon Los Angeles a week and a half ago, I forget what the question was asked of me.

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But I mentioned a particular episode that I had said not many people asked me about

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and that was the Burden Artist Bear. I said, for whatever reason, that seemed to resonate

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less with people than some of the other episodes I wrote. But this guy made a point of coming

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up to me afterward before I even left the day to tell me how important that particular

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episode was and it was going through a difficult time and it's kind of heartwarming. But at

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the same time, when we're writing these shows, we never imagined anything we were doing would

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have any impact on anybody. All we knew was we were doing well in the wait-and-see. And

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that was it. Our goal, if you want to call it that, was really to entertain ourselves

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and entertain each other. Usually when we pitch a story idea, we start with, wouldn't

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it be cool if? We were just making it up as we went along and we did not imagine that

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it would sort of become the foundation for generations of stories to follow. We just

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assumed once they pull the plug on this, something new and cool will come along and that will

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be the new thing and nobody will remember to make that.

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I have to say, our generation was essentially the latchkey kids and cartoons and TV shows

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were kind of, in a way, they were the babysitters. They were there keeping us company when our

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parents were working or whatever happened. In a way, you wrote the entertainment of our

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childhood. I can say definitely I appreciate that. Even to the point where I realized when

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I was looking at your credits that you wrote for the Bozo Show. From a young age, those

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things that were part of my everyday afternoon life. When I was really young and went to

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a daycare center, they'd have the Bozo Show on and they'd have G.I. Joe Transformers on

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after that. All these kinds of things all intermingled together. It's almost like you

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as well as Flint and many others were integral and really kind of building our imaginations

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and our creativity from a young age. I can definitely say I appreciate that.

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The Bozo Show was kind of an interesting story. Flint and I and all of our friends at the

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time, we wanted to write scripts for movies. The big goal and validation was to become

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a member of the writer's group. That would really prove we're now part of the club. At

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the time we were doing animation, none of the animation studios were signatory to the

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writer's skill. We didn't get health benefits. We didn't get the message awards. In fact,

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I think the only union that any one who worked in animation studio was with the team. In

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some markets, Chicago was one of them, every day on the Bozo the Clown show they ran one

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act of G.I. Joe. Because plaster television distributed G.I. Joe and Transformers, well

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I guess all the shows move there. They also were the distributors for the Bozo Show. That

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was the connection there. So one day I get a fax, a producer on both G.I. Joe and Transformers,

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that I have to write dialogue for Bozo to recap the episode, the act you saw yesterday

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and tee up the act you're going to see today.

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I saw a little bit of that actually. That's great.

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And because Larry Harmon, who is the original Bozo, owned the rights to Bozo, Larry Harmon

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Productions was signatory to the writer's skill. And that is how I was eligible to join

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the writer's skill, which never in my wildest dreams did I imagine it would happen for writing

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dialogue for Bozo.

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That's amazing. That's pretty genius though. That's a great way in.

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I definitely want to thank you for coming on here and sharing your stories. These are

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things that we only guess at over the years and to hear the stories that you have, it's

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priceless to someone like me and many others like us. And even to the point, you're talking

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about chain mail with Gary Gygax in a barn, or talking about how you came up with things

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for the Bozo Show, the Transformers, all of this is really foundational for our generation.

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So with that, I have to say thank you very much for your time. This has been wonderful.

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And that is why you prepare everything ahead of time. Ask the guests how long they have

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and how long they're willing to give you. And as you can see, Michael Charles Hill,

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he's very generous. And I wish I knew him ahead of time over to the buzz while I'm down

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the show, but I was so glad he stayed along with us. So keep in tuning to this episode

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and hopefully we'll keep entertaining you and learning more about past of the Transformers

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in GI Joe. Thanks everyone. Bye.

362
00:42:06,680 --> 00:42:09,840
I thought we were going to go much longer.

363
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I did have, there was stuff that I cut out that I thought we had you for 30 minutes.

364
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I had to do at least a full hour.

365
00:42:18,520 --> 00:42:24,360
By all means, then I will let you continue, Ed. Okay. So I had a question about Space

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Adventure Cobra. Okay.

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So did you do the English translation for that? Is that correct? Yeah. Okay. When was

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that? Because I can't find a solid date. I think there are multiple English versions.

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Yeah, there might be. It seems to me, I cannot remember the name of the company that distributed

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that. So it would have either been Streamline or it would have been Manga Entertainment.

371
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Streamline. Streamline. That was with Carl Masek, right?

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Right. Carl was a friend of mine. I had worked on a show that he was a co-story editor. I

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think it might've been Cops. Okay. Loved Cops.

374
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And so I'm guessing I wrote that in 95, 96. Okay. Okay. Because there was a lot of conflicting

375
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stuff about, like the date that I found on it was 82, but I think that was the actual,

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the original Japanese version. And then there was a UK version that Manga did around the

377
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same time. And I think it was a different translation or something like that. But I

378
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was a fan of that because there was a, in the early nineties, there was a singer named

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Matthew Sweet that used a bunch of clips from that movie in a video that he did prior to

380
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it coming out. Yes. I think I remember that. Yeah.

381
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Great song. Fantastic song. Not heavy metal. Yeah. He was a real sixties pop sounding kind

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of guy. And I'm, I'm, I was, I'm still a fan of him to this day. But when I first saw that

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video, I was like, like, I was like, what, what movie is this from? I've got to say,

384
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I have to find this. This looks amazing. Cause that was from a weird time when anime was

385
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still, I don't know, it was still kind of underground at that point. It was hard to

386
00:44:23,360 --> 00:44:28,000
find and you know, it wasn't really, you know, there was like, you know, there were a few

387
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things like Robo tech and Carl Masek did a lot of that kind of stuff around then.

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But yeah, when it finally came out, I was like, Oh, this is finally the movie from the

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Matthew Sweet video. I was real excited. I was real excited when I finally got my hands

390
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on Cobra. Yeah. I think I wrote a few things for Carl for the feature. I know I worked

391
00:44:50,640 --> 00:45:01,560
on another Japanese anime show called the Saber Rider and the Star Shares. Yes. Okay.

392
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Actually, I'm sorry, go ahead. And then I also wrote the pilot episode for Sailor Moon,

393
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the English language version of Deet. But you won't find my name on the credits. They

394
00:45:19,440 --> 00:45:25,720
had, they knew that, that I was capable of doing this kind of work, which is really labor

395
00:45:25,720 --> 00:45:34,400
intensive, but you got to go frame by frame. You have a rough translation of the Japanese

396
00:45:34,400 --> 00:45:41,920
dialogue, but you've got to come up with a version of it that sounds like something that

397
00:45:41,920 --> 00:45:55,600
somebody would say in the same time frame and make sure you hit the box, right? So Deet,

398
00:45:55,600 --> 00:46:03,680
because they're kind of their American French company, they do a lot of their work in Canada.

399
00:46:03,680 --> 00:46:10,640
They had already contracted with Canadian actors and writers to do the Sailor Moon show,

400
00:46:10,640 --> 00:46:18,960
but none of their writers could do it. So they asked me, or they hired me to write the

401
00:46:18,960 --> 00:46:29,680
pilot episode and explain to the Canadian writers how to do this. And they paid me more

402
00:46:29,680 --> 00:46:36,680
money than what their normal rate was, which was never very good to begin with. They said,

403
00:46:36,680 --> 00:46:41,120
but we can't give you credit for it because we've contracted with these Canadian writers.

404
00:46:41,120 --> 00:46:46,720
So even though you wrote the episode, your name is not going to be on it. And I said,

405
00:46:46,720 --> 00:46:53,360
yes, I didn't necessarily at the time needed to be associated with Sailor Moon. That's

406
00:46:53,360 --> 00:47:01,560
not my thing. Just like Jim was not my thing, but I was coerced into writing an episode.

407
00:47:01,560 --> 00:47:06,320
I didn't know until today that the, I've never seen Sailor Moon, but I didn't know until

408
00:47:06,320 --> 00:47:12,240
today that the character's name on that was Usagi because of her pigtails. I had no idea.

409
00:47:12,240 --> 00:47:19,240
But you also worked on a show called a movie called Space Usagi. That was the samurai rabbit

410
00:47:19,240 --> 00:47:31,840
in space. Is that, that was supposed to be a series. And I worked at Mirage studios.

411
00:47:31,840 --> 00:47:39,440
That means the name is the home of Ninja Turtles. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. The Kevin Eastman, Peter

412
00:47:39,440 --> 00:47:46,800
player. Is that right? Okay. So initially I was working at DC comics as an editor and

413
00:47:46,800 --> 00:47:57,320
they hired me as a consultant because they, their agreement with Fred Wolf films was that

414
00:47:57,320 --> 00:48:05,480
they got to review every script and make notes. Now, whether Fred actually ever followed those

415
00:48:05,480 --> 00:48:11,960
notes or not, I don't know. Here, Kevin didn't know anything about animation or writing.

416
00:48:11,960 --> 00:48:18,640
So they hired me to be their consultant. So every script that came out of Fred Wolf studio,

417
00:48:18,640 --> 00:48:24,400
they would send to me, I would read it and I'd make my notes based on what Peter and

418
00:48:24,400 --> 00:48:33,360
Kevin told me that they want from there. Less about what they want to see more about what

419
00:48:33,360 --> 00:48:40,720
they didn't. And then I would give the notes to Peter and Kevin and they would review it

420
00:48:40,720 --> 00:48:49,200
and then boom, it was watched by the world. So, and they paid me an obscene amount of

421
00:48:49,200 --> 00:48:58,240
money to do that for a script. And then they had me write a new Bible for the show because

422
00:48:58,240 --> 00:49:05,680
they were big fans of the Batman animated series. And I felt like, oh, that's the turtle

423
00:49:05,680 --> 00:49:15,240
show we want. It's like that. And that ultimately went nowhere. Fred Wolf was not happy about

424
00:49:15,240 --> 00:49:25,080
it because most of the world knew Turtles based on Fred Wolf's animation design. All

425
00:49:25,080 --> 00:49:35,080
the licensing was made for Fred Wolf animation, not Peter and Kevin's original Black and

426
00:49:35,080 --> 00:49:47,880
White. And Fred also was getting a nice percentage of licensing as the creator of the animated

427
00:49:47,880 --> 00:49:57,160
series. But Judy Price, who was running the Juris Department of CBS, finally had a meeting

428
00:49:57,160 --> 00:50:08,160
with her and made my presentation. And she said, you know, right now, she says, I'm only

429
00:50:08,160 --> 00:50:18,080
paying $250,000 per episode for the Teenage Mutant Ninja series. Warner Brothers spends

430
00:50:18,080 --> 00:50:26,640
$500,000 an episode for the Batman series. And we're already the number one rated show.

431
00:50:26,640 --> 00:50:33,360
So why would I want to spend $500,000 to be the number one rated show when I could spend

432
00:50:33,360 --> 00:50:41,360
$250,000 to be the number one rated show? So that went nowhere. They also hired me to

433
00:50:41,360 --> 00:50:47,360
write a Tristramen special that we ended up never doing, but it was based on one of their

434
00:50:47,360 --> 00:50:54,960
original comic books. So anyway, at some point, they decided it would be less expensive to

435
00:50:54,960 --> 00:51:03,360
hire me full time than to pay me as a consultant. And they still offered me a lot more money

436
00:51:03,360 --> 00:51:10,560
than I was making at DC Comics. So I said yes and moved up to Northampton, Mass. So

437
00:51:10,560 --> 00:51:19,520
while I was there, I was under the umbrella of Mirage Studios with Mirage Publishing and

438
00:51:19,520 --> 00:51:32,720
Mirage Licensing. So I had two titles. One was Creative Director for, I think, for License

439
00:51:32,720 --> 00:51:38,320
and then Director of Special Projects, which I think is for the publishing part. So they

440
00:51:38,320 --> 00:51:46,000
had a half dozen in-house artists who were working on either directly on the turtle books

441
00:51:46,000 --> 00:51:55,440
that we were publishing or working on their own titles that Mirage Publishing. So I initially

442
00:51:55,440 --> 00:52:04,880
started out helping them pitch their projects around Southampton with no success. At some

443
00:52:04,880 --> 00:52:19,280
point, I was asked to come up with a lot of develop ideas for future live action turtles

444
00:52:19,280 --> 00:52:31,280
movies, making them A, evergreen and B, international. New Line wasn't interested in the reverse

445
00:52:31,280 --> 00:52:37,440
that I came up with. So then the next, the other thing they wanted me to do was just

446
00:52:37,440 --> 00:52:51,200
come up with new non-turtle projects to pitch to the networks. And the entertainment attorney

447
00:52:51,200 --> 00:53:02,480
for Peter and Kevin really thought the way to go was sci-fi, space stories, but Star

448
00:53:02,480 --> 00:53:09,680
Wars was so huge. So Stan Sakai was already a friend of people and Kevin. So we came up

449
00:53:09,680 --> 00:53:16,400
with this idea of doing space and science, which I think existed a little bit in comic book form.

450
00:53:16,400 --> 00:53:23,520
So Stan and I took some of the characters that already existed in this universe and

451
00:53:23,520 --> 00:53:28,720
then I created some new characters. And we put together this pitch. I got all the artists,

452
00:53:29,440 --> 00:53:37,760
in addition to Stan, inside the studio to ship in and do model design for new characters.

453
00:53:37,760 --> 00:53:46,320
And then working with Fred Wolf, we came up with a three minute promo piece of animation to shop

454
00:53:46,320 --> 00:53:53,680
around town. And so that I think is still available on YouTube, but that's as far as we got

455
00:53:53,680 --> 00:54:03,600
because we ultimately never ended up selling the show. I think we did get maybe a tournament

456
00:54:03,600 --> 00:54:15,120
license on board, but we didn't sell the show because everyone kept saying Bucky O'Hare.

457
00:54:15,120 --> 00:54:20,960
That's exactly what I was about to say. It's real close to Bucky O'Hare, which I liked also,

458
00:54:20,960 --> 00:54:27,920
but around that time when that came out, I was a massive fan of independent comics. And I love

459
00:54:27,920 --> 00:54:34,160
Sakai's stuff. It was something about the way the stories were. I don't know if you ever read those,

460
00:54:34,160 --> 00:54:44,640
the original Usagi books, but the stories were real down to earth, period accurate samurai dramas

461
00:54:44,640 --> 00:54:50,720
that just happened to be, everyone just happened to be drawn like a rhinoceros or a bunny or

462
00:54:50,720 --> 00:54:54,480
something like that. I thought they were great. How was Stan to work with?

463
00:54:54,480 --> 00:55:06,080
Well, Stan and I already knew each other from animation days, but Stan is, he's just a wonderful,

464
00:55:06,080 --> 00:55:11,120
beautiful person and I love working with him.

465
00:55:11,120 --> 00:55:11,620
Nice.

466
00:55:15,040 --> 00:55:21,840
Well, I kind of wanted to kind of go back a second though with the Sunbeau stuff. I know you said,

467
00:55:21,840 --> 00:55:28,960
obviously at the time it was a lot of throwaway episodes, the characters and whatnot, but there

468
00:55:28,960 --> 00:55:38,560
was a fun theme that joined Colt Slyther and the gambler together. And this is all about working

469
00:55:38,560 --> 00:55:45,200
with, I guess, almost like a mob boss. In Colt Slyther, there was a very, it's a little person in a

470
00:55:45,200 --> 00:55:54,000
back of a CD, Bill Yersole or like, let me see if I can get this right, Lord Guy Connie. Yes.

471
00:55:55,280 --> 00:56:02,240
They were both, basically like, they would give them, we'll give you a loan at a very horrible

472
00:56:02,240 --> 00:56:08,560
interest rate. Were there any other elements you liked to include with your episodes that you did

473
00:56:08,560 --> 00:56:10,880
between Jem, G.I. Joe, Transformers?

474
00:56:10,880 --> 00:56:20,400
You know, if there is, I probably do not remember them. I mean, it seemed like most of the time,

475
00:56:25,040 --> 00:56:29,280
well, probably not fair to say I was making it up as I went along, because obviously before I

476
00:56:29,280 --> 00:56:36,800
could get to the script stage, I had to plot out everything in the outfits. So I knew what I was

477
00:56:36,800 --> 00:56:46,640
going to be writing before. But maybe any influences I had, one conversation that Flint and I used to

478
00:56:46,640 --> 00:56:58,560
have a lot was the kind of backgrounds that we brought to the table. So just with Sunbeau alone,

479
00:56:58,560 --> 00:57:05,760
we had Steve Gerber who had a comic book background. So he kind of brought that to the movie.

480
00:57:06,560 --> 00:57:12,400
Flint was more of a games guy, so he brought that to, and I was a film guy, so I brought that.

481
00:57:13,760 --> 00:57:22,960
So, you know, it's something as simple as, you know, the titles for my episodes. You know, my first

482
00:57:22,960 --> 00:57:32,160
idea would always be based on a pre-existing film type or a twist on a pre-existing film,

483
00:57:33,040 --> 00:57:42,800
like 30 Seconds of a Megatron, or, well, The Gambler had nothing to do with a few films.

484
00:57:42,800 --> 00:57:51,120
Forget the Kenny Rogers film. It was a James Conn film called Gambler.

485
00:57:51,120 --> 00:58:01,360
I think it might have come out before I wrote it. And the one gem episode I wrote was called Out of the Packs,

486
00:58:01,360 --> 00:58:09,600
one of my favorite film writers, even though it has nothing to do with that.

487
00:58:09,600 --> 00:58:21,680
But because I'm visually oriented, you know, I just have a stockpile of film images in my head.

488
00:58:21,680 --> 00:58:28,400
So maybe, you know, I draw from that more than most people might with their

489
00:58:30,400 --> 00:58:34,160
hardwired to a different kind of background.

490
00:58:34,160 --> 00:58:41,840
It makes a lot of sense with your background. All right. Well, as we are in an hour here,

491
00:58:43,840 --> 00:58:47,360
let's go here. I appreciate all your time and the very generous with your time.

492
00:58:48,640 --> 00:58:56,000
Like I told you before, you and many of the writers were instrumental in our development

493
00:58:56,000 --> 00:59:00,800
as creative people in our own right. So we appreciate that immensely.

494
00:59:00,800 --> 00:59:06,320
And where are you? What would your next conventions coming up on? Let people who listen know that.

495
00:59:07,520 --> 00:59:17,280
I'm scheduled to do a one day event at SoCal JoeFest in Temecula, California on,

496
00:59:17,280 --> 00:59:33,040
I think it's May 19th. And then JoeFest in Georgia, June 21st, 22nd, 23rd, somewhere around.

497
00:59:33,040 --> 00:59:35,840
It's a weekend. I don't remember the specific date.

498
00:59:36,560 --> 00:59:39,120
Where in Georgia is that? That's not far from us at all.

499
00:59:39,120 --> 00:59:40,400
Yeah, I'm in Auburn.

500
00:59:42,800 --> 00:59:43,680
Good question.

501
00:59:43,680 --> 00:59:45,680
Augustans? Okay.

502
00:59:45,680 --> 00:59:55,120
Augustans. Then also in June, I'm doing a one day event here in LA called Robo ToyFest.

503
00:59:57,120 --> 01:00:06,560
In August, I will be in Birmingham, England for Transformation. And then in November,

504
01:00:06,560 --> 01:00:14,960
I'll be back in Des Moines for Assembly Require. Excellent. I'm glad you're finally seeing what an

505
01:00:14,960 --> 01:00:21,520
impact you had on a lot of people. And what may have just been something to do and something you're

506
01:00:22,160 --> 01:00:27,360
trying to do as a job back then, impact a lot of people. So I'm glad you feel that validation.

507
01:00:27,360 --> 01:00:34,960
Yeah, again, I was just completely out of the loop for so many years. And also,

508
01:00:35,680 --> 01:00:41,840
while I was doing Transformation, I never read the comics, because I didn't want to be influenced

509
01:00:41,840 --> 01:00:48,960
by their storylines, even subconsciously. And I also found out they never watched the episodes.

510
01:00:48,960 --> 01:00:58,240
So after I left Sunbeam, my tour of duty was done. I just went on and did other things and never

511
01:00:58,240 --> 01:01:05,920
really... I didn't run away from it. I was embarrassed about the work. It was just a job

512
01:01:05,920 --> 01:01:11,680
I had a certain era in my life. And I went on to other things and I didn't... I didn't

513
01:01:11,680 --> 01:01:20,880
look back on it. There was nobody in sort of my life that was interested in... If I had casually

514
01:01:20,880 --> 01:01:28,960
mentioned, I had worked on these shows. Really? So it just became a subject. And I wasn't paying

515
01:01:28,960 --> 01:01:37,440
attention to all of that. And I was just... I was just... I was just... I was just... I was just

516
01:01:37,440 --> 01:01:45,760
a subject. And I wasn't paying attention to all these conventions that were there. So yeah, I'm

517
01:01:45,760 --> 01:01:55,120
still relatively new to it. But it's kind of cool. Yeah. 40th anniversary of Transformers this year.

518
01:01:56,480 --> 01:02:02,960
It's been a franchise that's really stood the test of time. And I know no small part from you as

519
01:02:02,960 --> 01:02:07,840
well in there because a lot of the episodes you wrote are big favorites of mine and many others.

520
01:02:07,840 --> 01:02:14,640
So I'm glad of that. So I hope you have a wonderful day there. And I'm going to let you

521
01:02:15,520 --> 01:02:19,840
get on with your day. So thanks so much for being here today. And Ed, if you want to say

522
01:02:19,840 --> 01:02:26,400
anything here too? I got nothing. No, just thanks for your time. That was amazing. Yeah,

523
01:02:26,400 --> 01:02:31,280
you had a great time just talking there. Great. Well, before we go, I just want to make sure

524
01:02:31,280 --> 01:02:40,000
was there any questions you didn't get to ask that you're... Honestly, I went beyond what I had

525
01:02:40,000 --> 01:02:45,760
ready for you. Same. Same. Yeah. I mean, is there anything else that you want to plug? Do you have

526
01:02:45,760 --> 01:02:49,520
any other projects or anything that you want to promote or anything while we got you?

527
01:02:50,320 --> 01:02:55,280
I am working on this sort of right now secret project for an upcoming convention. But

528
01:02:55,280 --> 01:03:03,920
I don't feel... I'm not sure I can talk about it yet, but that's really about it.

529
01:03:05,280 --> 01:03:10,400
Okay. Perfect. Hopefully that works out well for you then. And you have a wonderful day and

530
01:03:10,400 --> 01:03:26,240
thank you so much for being here today. All right. Thank you. All right. Bye.