The Point Radio: Kevin Conroy On Keeping BATMAN Fresh

BATMAN ASSAULT ON ARKHAM is the newest direct-to-DVD DC feature with a lot of familiar parts including Kevin Conroy reprising his Batman role, and telling us how he manages to always keep it fresh. Plus, comedian John Lehr goes from Geico caveman to western funny man in the Hulu series QUICK DRAW, and talks about how improv is a huge part of the show.

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Transcript

The Point Radio It's Mike Raub. Well, you knew him as the Geico Caveman for a long time, but now comedian John Loehr is part of a successful Hulu series called Quick Draw. It's a comedy western, and he explains all that coming up. Plus, Batman Assault on Arkham is the new DC direct-to-DVD feature,

and actor Kevin Conroy incumbent to explain how they're keeping it fresh. Let's get to The Point. This is The Point. The Point Radio. Get The Point Radio. John Loehr is a comedian and improv specialist, and you know him as the original Geico Caveman. Now he's starring in the second season of the comedy western, Quick Draw,

which he helped create and which appears for free on Hulu. I asked John what Quick Draw was all about. Well, Quick Draw is, as you said, a comedy western. It's set in 1875 in a small town in Kansas called Great Ben. I'm from Kansas, and so a lot of the history of the Wild West is folded into the show.

But at the same time, there's a lot of ridiculous comedy. I play a sheriff, the new sheriff, who recently graduated from Harvard University, and I bring my educated ways to solving crimes in the Wild West. So producing material for the web as opposed to television, any differences there? You know, there's absolutely no difference at all in the writing and the production.

I mean, it feels just like any other outlet that I've worked for. However, the one upside to it is you get a lot of feedback, you know, from the web, from comments, you're able to engage your audience and kind of hear what they like and what they don't like. So that part is really cool.

The immediacy of it is amazing. John has a strong background in improv, and as comedy goes, it's a lot tougher than stand-up. I ask him how that experience helps with Quick Draw. You know, I don't know. They're both, I've done both.

They're both really hard. One is more about stand-up, is more about honing something that's very, you know, honing it, making it very precise so that it can work in any audience anywhere. An improv is about kind of shutting down the right side of your brain and just vomiting your feelings out there with the hope that there's something fresh.

So we kind of do a combo of both. We don't write any dialogue in the show, but there are detailed scripts. The actors never see the scripts. The actors just show up on set, and we give them just enough to start the scene, and then we go.

So what kind of abilities does it take to do improv? You know, I think first of all, you have to be slightly mentally ill. That would be my first recommendation. So ask your parents to parent you incorrectly. And so after that, I think it's, you know, I'll tell you this.

A lot of the improv actors that we have on the show are people who have led really interesting lives. You need actors, sometimes straight actors, and, you know, they've just kind of gone to school, and then they're just in plays, and then they move to TV. Improv actors kind of wind through life in interesting ways so that they have interesting perspectives and things to talk about.

Was John always the funny guy in high school? You know, I was always the class clown. I was always the kid who talked too much. But in Kansas growing up, I never really thought I would do that for a living. Nobody around me had done that for a living.

So it wasn't until I went to school at Northwestern in Chicago that they had an improv show on campus. I did the improv show and I could not believe that I could say whatever I wanted. And that changed my life. Unfortunately, I later learned that it's very, very difficult to make a living in improv. So I, you know, I did other acting jobs like the Geico caveman.

And now I'm able to kind of take that what I love and do it. Being closely associated with a character like the Geico caveman can be either a dream or a nightmare. Which was it for John? Oh, being the guy, listen, I embraced being the Geico caveman. I loved it.

I did like 25, maybe even more national spots. And, you know, I obviously paid very well and supported me and my family and I loved it. I mean, the only downside to the Geico caveman was getting the makeup put on. It takes like three hours to put the makeup on and then another hour to take it off. So that part is, you know, takes some, you know, you got to kind of get into a mind space to do that.

But, you know, it's better than a real job. Catch all episodes of the second season of Quick Draw available for free right now on Hulu. Let's kick off the week with a look at the very latest in pop culture. The successful BBC series Happy Valley is coming to Netflix. Netflix got the right to air the six-part series and it'll begin on that service on August the 20th.

The show examines the police woman's life after she's accused of murder and the BBC at average just about 7 million viewers during its run. Sci-fi has released details on their fall programming, including the return of their much beloved 31 Days of Halloween celebration with about 600 hours of Halloween theme programming that run the entire month of October. Also, dates have been set for the return of Haven, which will be back on the network on September the 11th and the premiere of the new series Ascension, which debuts on Sci-fi on November the 24th. After months of fans complaining on the internet, it looks like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles reboot was a success. With a good box office for the first weekend and now a sequel announced to hit theaters in 2016, Michael Bay will be a part of that as well.

And most of the creative team on this original film will be involved with that second movie, which again is set to hit theaters in 2016. Seems like every couple of days somebody new gets added to the cast of The Flash. And now it's Clancy Brown, who you know as the voice of Lex Luthor and a ton of different DC animated features and an accomplished actor in his own right. And now he'll play the General in episode 5 of the new CW series. The character, by the way, was originally part of the Captain Adam mythology and will tie into the character of Plastique, who was also added to the new Flash series a couple of months back.

It was a hot month for Marvel and comics in general. When we look at the comic store sales for July, Marvel at the number one spot again, trailed by DC, the difference between them, 35% to 28% of the marketplace. Couple of interesting titles in the top 10. We'll tell you what ended up in people's hands in comic stores during the month of July coming up in just a little bit. Batman Assault on Arkham is the new DC direct to DVD feature that has a lot of things familiar about it.

First of all, there's Batman, there's Arkham, there's a ton of familiar villains, and behind the microphone Kevin Conroy, again playing Batman and talking about how he still manages to keep it fresh. The trick for me has been to keep it real, to keep it authentic and to keep it fresh. It's not about approaching it differently. It's just about being sure I don't get into some kind of comfort zone where it's not Batman. And the great thing about Andrea Romano is she's so good at working with actors. She can keep you honest and keep you authentic without hitting you over the head with a hammer. She loves actors.

She started out as an actress. She was very young, and she understands the way actors approach roles. She tries not to give you line reading. Because if he gives you an actual line reading, it can be the death of the line. Because then they're just going to imitate what you've said.

And once they've heard the way you say it, it's hard to get it out of your head, no matter how hard you try. So rather than give line reading, you always try to steer the actors. You say, well, think about this, well think about that. Try and get them to get there on their own so that it's an organic sound. And she knows that about how to judge it.

If you deal with a less experienced director, they'll just give you the line. Say it like this, you know, and then it's dead as soon as they do that. So she knows how to work on it. Kevin's a fan of Andrea Romano, but it goes both ways. Whenever I'm given a job, because I'm a freelance director, and they come to me and they say, we have this job.

It's got a bad man in it, it's got a joke in it. I always say, my first question is, may I use the actors I've used before? May I use Kevin Conner? May I use this? And so, they say yes on this one.

Yes, you can use Kevin Conner. Thank goodness. Because there's a bit of like, okay, I don't have to explain anything to Kevin. And they have to say, you're actually running during that line. That may be the extent of my direction on the Kevin Conner way.

You're actually panting, because you've been through a lot of action by the time we're in this scene. But other than that, he knows the character better than actively anybody I know. There's some new actors involved, including Matthew Gray-Gubler, who plays the Riddler, and decided to approach that character from a different aspect. I'm a giant Batman fan, and I mean, back to the Adam West TV show, so I'm familiar with Frank Portian.

They're all, you know, deep-seated in my mind, but I didn't really revisit anything in creating the character. I wanted to make him hopefully unique. I wanted to be more of a showman, like a P.T. Barnum sort of carnival showman, lunatic quality to him. And the one thing that I attempted to do was, I feel like the Riddler often asks questions as though he wants to prove he's smarter. I wanted to make it seem more like an obsessive-compulsive obsession.

Like, he needed these things answered with a sickness more so than a prideful thing. He was more like, please fucking answer this question. It's more of a pain for him to do it. Batman Assault on Arkham, available right now on Blu-ray DVD or watch it instantly on Amazon Prime Video. In years past, even before the advent of comic book stores, the summer was always a great time to be in the comic book business.

Comic sales always soared during the summertime. Well, because the big readership, mostly young people, were out of school and had a lot of time on their hands. Well, interestingly enough, July was a great month in the comic book stores, and it gave a boost to comic sales and now put them in the plus category so far for 2014. Marvel was the number one bestseller, followed, of course, by DC, the difference between them, 35% to 28%. And overall, comic book sales in stores were up 19.23% in July.

Making it now a positive sales year for comics, which just 30 days ago was not the case. That being said, here's your top 10 best-selling comics in comic stores during the month of July. At number 10, DC's Harley Quinn number 8, number 9, the legendary Star-Lord number 1 from Marvel. At number 8, Grayson number 1. At number 7, Justice League number 21.

Number 6, Original Sin number 6. Number 5, Spider-Man 2099 number 1. Original Sin number 5 came in at number 4 on the list. Number 3, Amazing Spider-Man number 4, and the second best-selling comic, Batman number 33. But at the top of the list, and tell me are you really surprised, Rocket Raccoon number 1 from Marvel.

Good point! And that's it for the podcast. We're back at the end of the week with a lot more, and you can always find it in the usual places at ComicMix.com, at MichaelDavisWorld.com, and in the iTunes podcast directory too. Meanwhile, we're coming closer to unveiling the new Get The Point Radio. Get details on that at GetThePointRadio.com, or follow us on Twitter and Instagram under The Point Radio.

See you back here in a few days. Thanks for watching!