Monthly Archive: October 2016

Mindy Newell: I’m Twisted

  • News
  • October 31, 2016

chinatown

Friday’s latest plot twist in this year’s Presidential campaign – the announcement that the FBI was reopening its investigation into Hillary’s e-mails based on some suspicious correspondence found on Anthony Weiner’s computer – had all of us spinning our heads like Linda Blair in The Exorcist…sans pea soup vomit, I hope.

Well, none of us knows yet the results of the election – now only eight days away, as the media would say in its annoyingly obsessive countdown – but one more immediate result was that it had me thinking about great fictional plot twists that none of us, or at least most of us, didn’t see coming, the ones that made go Whoa, Nellie!!!!

Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back

Darth Vader: “Obi-wan never told you what happened to your father.”

Luke: “He told me enough. He told me you killed him.

Darth Vader: “No. I am your father.”

Im-not-so-ho, the greatest plot twist ever. Search your hearts, you know it to be true.

Planet of the Apes

Taylor: “Oh, my God. I’m back. All the time, it was…we finally really did it.”

Taylor: “You maniacs! You blew it up! God damn you! God damn you all to hell!”

The original, not the remake. Oh, definitely not the remake.

And definitely the second-best twist ever. Imho, of course. YMMV.

The Sixth Sense

“I see dead people.”

The story of Cole Sear, a boy whose ability to see ghosts has sent him into a deep depression and an alienation from the world and from his desperate mother, and of Dr. Malcolm Crowe, the child psychologist who tries to help him, is a film whose plot twist totally sent the public’s head spinning – some people may have vomited pea soup from some of the gorier and emotionally upsetting scenes – in 1999.

The beauty of the film is M. Night Shyamalan’s writing and direction, for as an audience we became involved in the story unfolding before our eyes, which on the surface was a modern-day family drama with some, uh, creepier aspects, and totally missed the clues so beautifully woven into the storyline and superb cinematography of Tak Fujimoto – the color red, absent from movie’s pallet except when the “afterlife” is intersecting with our world; the drop in temperature whenever a ghost is around (Cole’s mother complains about the house being cold, we can see Cole’s breath in the red tent when the little girl visits him; Cole’s mother never interacts with her son’s psychologist; and Malcolm never interacts with his environment (touching or moving objects) except around Cole. Well, until the end of the movie, and that red doorknob.

The twist – that Malcom is dead – should also have been as plain as the noses on all our faces when Cole, in the hospital, tells Malcolm “…They only see what they want to see. They don’t know they’re dead.” But we were all so caught up in Cole’s personal trauma that we, collectively, only thought that Malcom was helping Cole by getting him to admit what was at the heart of his, uh, troubles.

The Others

Grace: “If you’re dead, then leave us in peace. Leave us in peace!”

Mrs. Mills: “And suppose we do leave you, ma’am, do you suppose that they will?”

Grace: “Who?”

Mrs. Mills: “The intruders.”

World War II has ended, and on the Isle of Jersey Grace Stewart and her two children are awaiting the return of her husband from the front. Her daughter Anne insists that she has seen “others” in the house, and when three servants appear on Grace’s doorstep in answer to her advertisement, other strange and creepy occurrences start to happen; curtains are taken down, the piano, dusty and out of tune, is heard being played in perfect resonance, Grace hears voices, and her son reports meeting a boy named Victor who told him that he (Victor) lives there with his family.

The twist: Stricken with grief upon the news of her husband’s death in the war, Grace went mad and smothered her children in their sleep, and then shot herself. Waking up the next morning to find her and the children still alive (the kids are pillow fighting) Grace believes that she has been given another chance by God to prove herself to be a good mother. But the real truth is that it is Grace, her children, and her servants who have been haunting the current occupants of the house – Victor and his family. It is they who took down the curtains, who played the piano, whose voices were heard by Grace. The family leaves the house, unable to exorcise Grace and her children, and as they drive off, we see Grace and the children watching them from a window as Grace promises the children that they will never leave their home.

Other great movies with great plot twists not seen coming include:

Chinatown:

“Forget it, Jake. It’s Chinatown.”

Evelyn Mulwray reveals to Jake Gittes that her sister is actually her daughter; she has had an incestuous relationship with her father, Noah Cross.

The Usual Suspects:

“Who is Keyser Soze? He is supposed to be Turkish. Some say his father was German. Nobody believed he was real. Nobody ever saw him or knew anybody that ever worked directly for him, but to hear Kobayashi tell it, anybody could have worked for Soze. You never knew. That was his power. The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist. And like that, poof. He’s gone.”

Keyser Soze is Verbal Kint.

Primal Fear

Martin Vail: “So there never… there never was a Roy?”

Roy: “Jesus Christ, Marty. If that’s what you think, I am disappointed in you, I don’t mind telling you. There never was an Aaron… counselor! Come on, Marty, I thought you had it figured, there at the end. The way you put me on the stand like that? That was fucking brilliant, Marty! And that whole thing like “act-like-a-man”? Jesus, I knew exactly what you wanted from me. It was like we were dancing, Marty!”

Aaron Stamper never existed, never had multiple personality disorder. It was always Roy.

Let me know what you think. Is Empire’s reveal better than Planet of the Apes? What have I left off the list? Did you guess the twists before they occurred, or did you just “say” you did around the water cooler?

Yeah, just like bowties, plot twists are cool.

Except in this year’s presidential election.

REVIEW: Batman: Return of the Caped Crusaders

BM66_ROTCCWhen Batman debuted on ABC in 1966, I was not yet eight years old, a prime target for this pop-art event. I was already a diehard comic book fan and couldn’t contain my excitement at seeing the heroes and villains come off the four-color pages and onto our then-new color TV. I was very excited and had no clue just how campy it was. That came later as the reruns began on WPIX and throughout the 1970s.

The Batman phenomenon has proven incredibly influential on several generations of comic book fans, professional writers, artists, and animators, and beyond. Thankfully, whatever legal entanglements there were between Greenway Productions, 20th Century Fox, and Warner Bros got ironed out, allowing a new generation of fans to glory in what is now known as Batman ’66. The latest offering is the direct-to-DVD animated feature Batman: Return of the Caped Crusaders, starring the voices of Adam West, Burt Ward, and Julie Newmar – sadly the last living main actors from the series.

Directed by Rick Morales and written by Michael Jelenic and James Tucker, there is tremendous love and affection showered on the production, billed as a direct continuation of the ABC series. In that regard, it comes close but not quite. After all, there’s no Batgirl and Robin is played as a still-16 year old with a learner’s permit, when by show’s end he’s acknowledged as older.  Additionally, there have been tweaks here and there so the Batcave is larger and more ornate, complete with the giant dinosaur and playing card trophies while exiting the cave is a more elaborate event. Even the Bat-chutes are reimagined as a singular giant parachute in black (and no evidence the Bat-chute Clean-up Van is still on duty).

The story teams up the fearsome foursome of Catwoman, Joker Jeff Bergman, nicely channeling Cesar Romero), Riddler Wally Wingert, also good), and Penguin (William Salyers) in an appropriately convoluted plot to takeover a space station abandoned after America and Moldavia cannot agree on its use. Batman is subjected to a chemical agent that twists him beyond recognition and he uses a far-fetched duplication ray to essentially stage a Bat-coup over Gotham City.

brcc021816As one expects from a film-length version of the show, all the tropes are there from giant prop death traps, Aunt Harriet’s near-discovery of their secret, the bond between Bruce Wayne and Alfred, the ineptitude of the GCPD, well-choreographed fight scenes, and deathless dialogue on public safety. And I grinned my way through most of it. Clearly, the script played up Catwoman since Newmar could run with the part and her fickle feline feelings has her switch sides with ease. There’s also a nice gag as a stunned Batman sees three Catwoman, one looking like Newmar, one like Lee Merriweather, and one like Eartha Kitt. There are several other sly touches like this one along with jabs at other filmed versions of the Caped Crusader.

Is it perfect? Of course not nor was the original TV series. I think the character designs for Robin and Riddler don’t quite work and the thugs come and go without explanation and when they’re present, there seems to be one of each and they do nothing to aid their bosses.  Speaking of the villains, when they teamed up on TV or first gathered for the live-action Batman film, they at least talked to one another before dissention rose among them. It would have been nice to see more of that here.

brcc027253This is certainly the most optimistic and enjoyable Batman film out in 2016 and that’s something to be thankful for.

The film arrives in a Blu-ray, DVD< and Digital HD combo pack. Beyond the film, there are just two bonus features: “Those Dastardly Desperados” tries to shine a light on the importance of the villains but lacks context (or TV clips); and,  “A Classic Cadre of Voices” as vocal cast and production crew talk about the importance of recreating the sounds of the sixties.

 

Ed Catto: Trick or Treat For Comics

img_4751

img_6145For the umpteenth year in a row, we’ll be giving out comics instead of candy for Halloween today. We’re typically met with a mixture of surprise and delight… by both kids and their parents. Returning families call us “the comic book house” and tell us that they remember this tradition from last year.

The occasional parent confides in me that “this is the kids’ favorite house.” They probably say that at all the houses, but it’s still nice to hear.

When I was kid, the standard Halloween traditions were often modified. “Trick Or Treat for UNICEF” was designed for kids to collect small donations from neighbors as they’d go from house-to-house with a specially designed orange UNICEF container. I fondly recall TV ads that basically taught young trick-or-treaters to scream “Trick or Treat for UNICEF” when they knocked on doors. The program still continues today.

img_6138Another modified tradition, which must have been either a local one or an Italian one, was that one the night before Halloween we’d put on our costumes and my parents would drive us around town to several relatives’ homes. We had a big Italian family in town and getting to their houses to hold them up for the yearly candy ransom clearly mandated a car and driver. My brother and I would gleefully don our costumes for this pseudo “dress rehearsal” and of course, enjoy collecting the extra candy in that insatiable way that all trick-or-treaters do.

So it’s natural that by giving away comics instead of candy, we’d put our own twist on the annual candy tradition. But I’ve heard about many other comics fans giving away comics for Halloween.

For the past few years, we’ve been setting up two tables: one filled with “All Ages” comics that are appropriate for the youngest kids and another with comics more suited for older kids. We label each table. In the early hours we only need the younger kids table, and in the later hours we just leave the older kids table out.

img_6140The kids never seem to pick out the comics you’d expect them to choose. It’s fascinating to see the selection process when kids are presented with a table full of choices. Sometimes they choose by character or just by an interesting cover.

Some kids know just what they want and quickly sift through the choices. Too many kids are unfamiliar with comics are amazed to see media properties in comics form. “Scooby Doo? Cool!”

In this age where a hero like Iron Man who used to be a B-lister has hundreds of kids dressing like him, the impact of comic heroes at Halloween is palpable. Every kid now knows Iron Man and Thor, but few of them have read, or even seen, an Iron Man or Thor comic.

I love the kids that struggle to make a choice between two comics. If we have enough comics, we typically let them get both.

img_4750But traditions change. We’re empty nesters and we’ve just moved after 26 years to a town called Auburn, nestled in the Finger Lakes region of New York State. It’s a great town with a rich nerd history.

Auburn was blessed with one of the pioneering comic shops back in the 70s and several after. There was also a back issue dealer who was selling in Auburn before the Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide was established. He’d use the Passiac Book Guide to establish pricing. On the other hand, Auburn NY was the site of one of those comic book burnings in the 50s.

It will be fascinating to see how our new neighbors react to comics on Halloween. I’ll let you know next year how it all went.

img_4760One More Halloween Thought

Orson Welles’ Mercury Radio Theater was an old time radio program that adapted classic books as radio dramas. But on Halloween in 1938, they tried something a little different with their H.G. Wells’ War of The Worlds adaptation. Orson Welles cast himself as a reporter broadcasting live from the horrific scene of the Martian invasion. Some listeners who tuned in midway through the broadcast thought it was real.

Last year, a podcast on the Panoply Network tried the same trick with a drama called The Message. It’s a spooky thriller, with clever twists and turns. And they played it straight – just like Orson Welles did all those years ago. If you need one more Halloween fright this year, give it a try!

Emily S. Whitten Talks With Christy Carlson Romano

christy-lingerieIn my recent Dragon Con Round-Up, I mentioned that at the con I’d gotten to sit down for a super-cool interview with award-winning actress, voice actress, and singer Christy Carlson Romano; and I’m happy to be able to share that with you all now.

If for some reason you don’t immediately know Christy, you will once I mention that she was Ren Stevens in Even Stevens; or that she voiced Kim Possible in the excellent cartoon of the same name . I loved watching both of those shows; and, in fact, despite being occupied with oh-so-important things like college classes at the time, when it came out in 2002 Kim Possible was the one show that my college roomie and I tried our darndest never to miss, and always watched together. D’aw.

Of course, Christy has done all kinds of other cool things in her career as well; and is, in fact, something of a Renaissance Woman – having not only been an on-screen actress and voice actress in many, many properties, but also a singer, recording, among other things, songs for Disney soundtracks; a Broadway performer, playing Belle in Beauty and the Beast and Kate Monster in Avenue Q; a novelist who wrote a YA novel titled Grace’s Turn; and a director and co-producer of short films and dramatic features. Whew! Add to that the fact that Christy teaches and does outreach to child actors in need of counseling, and one wonders how she has time to sleep!

That question may never be answered; but many others were in our interview, where we touched on all of the subjects above while having a really great chat. You can watch and enjoy the whole interview here, and I highly recommend it, because Christy is a delight to talk with.

So enjoy! And until next time, Servo Lectio!

 

 

John Ostrander: And Be A Villain

suicide-squad-and-be-a-villainMy friend Brian Skelley recently e-mailed me a question that gave me some pause: what is the difference between an anti-hero and a villain? Having trafficked in anti-heroes for some time, you’d think I know but I had to parse it out.

As I postulated it to Brian the basic answer was that the anti-hero is the protagonist of a given story; the villain is often the antagonist which makes him a support character. The main purpose of any supporting character is to bring out some side or aspect of the main character, the protagonist. A villain can be the protagonist; I’ve written stories where the Joker is the main character, for example, or with Captain Boomerang, neither of whom could be called a hero in the conventional sense.

cumberbatch-hamletThe anti-hero doesn’t display the usual heroic attributes such as courage, empathy, decency, integrity and so on. They don’t care about the common good; they care about #1. Some, like John Gaunt (GrimJack) may have their own code but one of the questions I put to myself when I began writing GrimJack was “how do you make a moral choice in an amoral world?” I once had Gaunt shoot a guy in the back and that alienated some readers. My response, then and now, was that Gaunt was never intended to be a role-model.

Whatever the anti-hero’s deficiencies, he or she are usually better than those surrounding him/her. Why are we rooting for the anti-hero to succeed? If we feel nothing for them, what is the point? At the very least, we need to be rooting for them to get away with whatever it is they are doing. We want Danny Ocean’s plan to rip off the casino to work, in part because (in the later movies) he’s played by George Clooney at his most charming.

wastelandFor myself, I like working with anti-heroes more than the conventional heroes. I don’t know what it says about me to say that they seem to resonate more within me. I can more easily find something to identify with in the anti-hero than with the conventional hero. Writing Martian Manhunter was far more difficult for me than writing The Spectre. J’Onn J’Onzz was a far more decent being than Jim Corrigan. No doubt it points to some deficiency in me.

I guess I like my heroes more morally ambiguous. Certainly none of them have been more morally ambiguous than Amanda Waller not to mention the Squad as a concept. However, I’ve never considered Amanda to be an outright villain. Some folks who have written her took that tack, but I think she’s more interesting as an anti-hero. She has a conscience; she knows the difference between right and wrong. It doesn’t stop her from doing the bad things but she knows what she’s doing and does what she does deliberately. She hocks her soul for an ostensible greater good. What she does marks her as a villain; the reason she does it makes her a hero.

And then, of course, there’s Wasteland. Chock full of anti-heroes. We have a father who dissects his son’s biology teacher for traumatizing the boy. (Actually, by the end it’s a heart-warming tale… in a way.) I asked the reader to step inside the mind of a serial killer and, however briefly, identify with him. There have been occasions when I almost told a person, “You don’t want to mess with me. I wrote Wasteland.” That should scare most people.

Some times it scares me.

Marc Alan Fishman: Danger – Driving While Plotting!

lucha-libre

I often receive puzzled looks when I tell folks that Unshaven Comics makes the trek from the southern burbs of Chicago to the New York Comic Con by car. I reassure them that if we could afford to ship an entire booth setup and merchandise to the Javits, convince ComicMix’s own Glenn Hauman to pick us up from La Guardia (a hell I wouldn’t wish on anyone, let alone our most gracious host), and then be beholden to said Haumans for most of our transportation needs, we would. But, rest assured, we’ve made the trip enough for me to admit I actually look forward to the nearly 14-hour jaunt across Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey.

In those middle-hours of driving, somewhere between lunch and arriving in New York, we found ourselves unpacking The Samurnauts as a concept. You ever want a first-class ride on the creative-process express? Buckle-up, Sally.

When we finally complete Curse of the Dreadnuts (which by my estimation will occur before it’s 2017), Unshaven Comics decided that the next course of action would be to test each of our mettles to be the best creators we could be – individually. With The Samurnauts, we afforded ourselves an immortal mentor. This allows us to spin off the series into a bevy of period pieces that allow Unshaven to explore literally every genre and art style that tickles our fancy. Cool, no?

Over the course of the car ride, we came to a few conclusions. Matt Wright will plot and draw the entirety of a Samurnaut tale set in a sleepy Mexican village in the 1920s. There, Luchanauts will save humanity from the threat of an inter-dimensional demon with the power of their lucha libre. Kyle Gnepper will pen (and art chores will be a still-undetermined new deputy Unshaven lad) a tale of an early Samurnaut team waging war against Repsimian – the monkey-dinosaur hybrid bent on destruction.

And me? Well… I’m headed for a completely different direction. One that requires a bit of an odd digression. Follow me. It’s worth it.

Every year for the past two years, I’ve lent my artistic hand to my friend Nina Rose and her “Speak To Me: A Pole Event for Autism” fundraiser show. The evening is a raucous blast where hobbyist and professional pole dancers perform marvelous numbers all to raise money and awareness for Autism. I provide the posters, programs, and last year… collectible trading cards. The theme was the 1980s. It was the excuse to let my inner Patrick Nagle freak flag fly. And while sitting in the front row during the performances would render most with a carnal reaction to whoop and holler? I was left slack-jawed. I saw comic book stars in waiting. The spark of an idea for The Samurnauts was born in between twirling loops on a ten-foot pole.

Smash cut back to my Dodge Caravan, midway through Ohio.

My 2017 Samurnauts project? Well, it’ll be an all-female team fighting a Communist-Mutant-Hive-Mind of femme fatales… all set in the 1980s. We make no bones about it: Samurnauts is homage to the tropes we grew up with, recast in a modern light. What better tropes to mine than those directly from our time growing up amidst Sailor Moon, Battle of the Planets, M.A.S.K., and Jem and the Holograms? There are none better, and I won’t listen to you if you try to disagree.

Matt rides shotgun with notebook in hand, and Kyle leans far forward from the middle row of our packed conveyance… I start the ball rolling. As often is the case, I am the most lofty of the Unshavens. I immediately blather about girl power and passing the Bechdel test. Matt – the gear-head of the gang – is immediately drawn to discuss costumes, weapons, and accentuating my clean-line style. Kyle, the stalwart left-brain, cracks the whip on setting up an outline.

Exits whiz past as we bounce ideas from one bearded ne’er-do-well to the next. “We need to have a roller derby fight scene.” “Al (the immortal monkey leader…) needs to have a dojo in need of saving.” “They should all pilot attack ships.” “The Commie-Chics needs to have a spy, a close combat expert, a ballistics expert, and the strategist.” “We absolutely need the bitch on wheels business chick…” And so on.

By the time we needed to gas up the van, a scrawl of pages lay on the Caravan floor. A complete outline spanning two 36-page issues lay amidst character notes, weapon choices, set pieces, and big reveal plot points. And underneath it all, a personal challenge to myself to stretch my boundaries as an artist and a writer. To keep my tongue in cheek with the obvious choices, in lieu of smarter ones. To keep my designs clean and memorable. To ensure that the Samurnauts of this story are heroes, regardless of their gender. That the final book be fun, clever, and full of monkey-fighting. And this time? With way more Hammer pants and day-glo makeup.

And with that, the pages were tossed into the cashbox. Energy drinks were popped open. New fresh sheets were exhumed from the notebook. With five hours left to go, we had plenty more to plan for the future.

Emily S. Whitten, Brian Henson, Puppets, and Muppets!

brian-henson-the-muppets

In my recent Dragon Con Round-Up I shared that this year’s Dragon Con kick-started a new fascination with puppetry for me (which, if you can imagine, may someday even rival my obsession with voice actors!).

This was due to two panels I attended, Brian Henson’s Evolution of Puppetry, and The Puppetry of Star Wars’ BB-8. Both were fantastic; and I found it just fascinating to watch the magical way in which the puppeteers, behind the scenes, bring the puppets to life. I was also fortunate to be able to ask Brian Henson some questions at a small press conference; and now, of course, I get to share all of that with you!

First we have a few clips from the Evolution of Puppetry panel which are just super fun. In one, Brian Henson demonstrates the Henson method of puppeteering with an actual puppet. It was delightful to be able to see both what Brian was doing “behind the scenes” and camera; and what the puppet’s actions actually looked like on screen. I tried to capture a little bit of that for all of you as well, so check out the video clip linked above to take a look. The second clip is another fun demonstration, this time of dual puppeteering. In this clip, Dave Chapman (one of the BB-8 puppeteers of the aforementioned Puppetry of BB-8 panel, along with Brian Herring) joined Brian Henson from the audience to help him demonstrate how two puppeteers can work the head and hands of a puppet in synch (or sometimes not so much in synch!). It’s really funny, so check it out here. And finally, we have a bit of the audience Q & A that Brian Henson did at the end of his panel, with some cool insights into what it’s like to be a puppeteer.

Next, I asked Brian some questions during his Dragon Con press conference; and it was awesome. He talked about adapting Terry Pratchett’s The Wee Free Men; the challenges of puppetry; the improv show Puppet Up; animatronics and puppetry; Fraggle Rock; Labyrinth and its fandom; the heart and goals of the Henson Company; previous and upcoming Henson Company projects; the interactions of the Muppets with real people and celebrities; adapting classic literature using The Muppets; and much, much more!

You can watch the whole press conference here; and it’s well worth it. What an amazing, talented guy!

So check that out, enjoy, and stay tuned for more cool stuff coming soon. And until then, Servo Lectio!

Ty Burrell and Kaitlin Olson Discuss Finding Dory Voices

finindg-dory-baileyWhen Finding Dory was released in movie theaters earlier this year, the stunning sequel to Finding Nemo was an instant smash. The aquatic adventure has since splashed past $1 billion at the global box office and is currently the fifth highest-grossing animated movie of all time. The film hit Digital HD channels this week.

The blockbuster swims home in time for the holidays when it is released on Blu-ray 3D, Blu-ray, DVD and On-Demand later this month, when audiences can watch Dory’s hilarious and heartwarming quest to find her family. Fans will also be able to continue the underwater story with hours of immersive bonus features featuring the creative talent of Pixar and the all-star cast.

To celebrate the in-home launch, we dive deep into the kelp to find out more about the making of the film as we chat to Ty Burrell and Kaitlyn Olson, who provide the voices of Bailey and Destiny in Finding Dory…

Finding Dory is an amazing underwater adventure. How much do you love the ocean?

Ty Burrell: I am a big fan of the ocean. I didn’t grow up near the beach – but every summer, we would go to the beach and I would swim in the sea for a couple of weeks at a time. I grew very attached to the ocean. Being underwater is something I did for almost all of my growing up. I try to bring my kids to the water as much as possible, so that they grow up around it, too.

What about you, Kaitlin? Are you a fan of the sea?

Kaitlin Olson: Well, I’m not a big fan of boats. I am the person in the car who will always get car sick, so I do not care for being on a boat – but I like swimming in the ocean. And I love fish. I haven’t been to an aquarium for a long time, but we went to Fiji on our honeymoon and we spent a lot of time in the ocean there. We snorkeled and looked at the coral reef, which was really special. I’m not a big fan of cold water, but I’ll swim all day long in warm water. To me, that’s bliss.

What do you love the most about your quirky underwater characters in Finding Dory?

Kaitlin Olson: I love the fact that Destiny is sweet and lovable because she’s insecure about not being able to swim very well. I love her little brother/sister relationship with Bailey, too. For me, it was really nice to play a really sweet character.

finding-dory-destinyHow does your eyesight compare to Destiny’s?

Kaitlin Olson: My eyesight is perfect. Thank you for asking! Although I’m sure it’s headed downhill for me pretty soon…

What do you love the most about Bailey, Ty?

Ty Burrell: I don’t play a pessimist in my day job on Modern Family. Phil Dunphy is an indefatigable optimist, so it’s fun to play a character who is as neurotic as Bailey in Finding Dory. Bailey is a nice, well-intended whale who is very flawed and full of doubt. He’s probably much closer to me than Phil.

How much fun did you have in the recording booth for Finding Dory?

Kaitlin Olson: It was a lot of fun in the recording booth. Working with [Finding Dory director] Andrew Stanton was great. He’s a real actor’s director, so it was a wonderful experience.

What was the funniest thing to happen to you in the recording booth?

Ty Burrell: Bailey is a Beluga whale and when I researched the animal online, it looked like Belugas are heavily congested. Just look at their heads and you’ll see what I mean. I came into the recording booth with the idea that Bailey would have a really congested voice, like he had a bad cold. When I finished my first scene, there was a long stretch of silence. They were super, super nice about it – but they said, “Well, now let’s try a different voice. Why don’t we try your voice for the whole film?” That worked out much better.

What funny experiences in the recording booth can you share, Kaitlin?

Kaitlin Olson: For me, the craziest thing was when they decided that my character doesn’t swim very well, so they wanted me to sound like I was swimming off-balance. I think they assumed it would be hard to do, so they brought in this weird balancing board that I was supposed to try and stand on whilst saying my lines. It was so weird! I was like, “Let’s just get rid of this board and let me act it out instead.”

Did you try the balancing board?

Kaitlin Olson: I tried it for two hours, but I wasn’t really off balance. Apparently, my balance is impeccable because I was doing fine, so I had to pretend to be off-balance and that was even worse. We ended up getting rid of it quite quickly, although I had some amazing ab strength the next day. It was definitely great for that.

Have your thoughts on underwater life changed since working on Finding Dory?

Kaitlin Olson: Definitely. The movie’s made me think a lot about rescue and rehabilitation for ocean animals, as well as ocean conservation. We’ve got to make sure our planet is still here for our children, so that’s very important to me. I’m very focused on making sure that we keep our oceans clean and that we take care of everything down there. We need all of those species. They all serve a purpose.

Ty Burrell: I agree. I love the way that Pixar creates a whole universe that audiences haven’t really experienced before. We’ve never really spent that much time underwater, but we have now with Finding Dory. Today, I see the ocean a little differently. In a weird way, I see it more as a little community down there – but it’s a community that we have to make sure survives.

What excites you the most about the in-home release of Finding Dory?

Kaitlin Olson: I’m really excited about the in-home release because my four- and five-year-olds are addicted to Finding Dory. We’ll be watching it over and over and over and over again! Sometimes it’s hard to take your kids to the movie theater and not every age can sit and watch a whole film. In my house, the greatest thing about watching a movie is that my older kid can sit there for the whole film and the little one can get up and go to the playroom for a bit if he gets antsy – and then he can come back to watch the rest.

How much do you enjoy watching movies at home, Ty?

Ty Burrell: As a family, we love movies. In fact, we have a movie night every Friday at home. Finding Nemo was part of that, and now Finding Dory will be involved. My kids saw the movie at a screening and they loved it. That won’t be the last time they’ll want to see it!

Why does the world love Dory so much?

Kaitlin Olson: The world loves Dory because she is fallible. She’s a really sweet character who is funny because she’s masking an insecurity. I think a lot of people can relate to being a little imperfect, just like her.

Ty Burrell: For me, I don’t know if Ellen DeGeneres gets enough credit for her acting skills in the movie. Ellen is a really talented voice actor and Dory is lovable because Ellen makes her lovable. She’s great.

What would you like to ask Dory if you met her in the ocean?

Ty Burrell: Boy, that’s a good question! I’d ask her, ‘How do you stay so positive? How do you keep that much optimism in your life?’

Kaitlin Olson: Yes, how does she maintain that optimism? That’s a real skill. Dory doesn’t let anything get her down and that’s impressive. She, “Just keeps swimming.” I think we can all learn from Dory in that respect.

Pixar animators love to hide Easter eggs and secret movie references inside their films. Do you ever pause and try to find them?

Kaitlin Olson: This is all very new to me, but I heard how they like to hide things in Toy Story and its sequels. I can’t wait to try and find them in Finding Dory. I haven’t spotted the Pizza Planet truck yet, but I will soon. My son will help me. He’s a good spotter.

Ty Burrell: You know what? I think I know one of the Easter eggs. You can correct me if I’m wrong, but my friend was saying that she thought she saw a character from Inside Out looking through the glass in the Marine Life Institute. That might be one! I can’t wait to try and find more…

Martha Thomases: The Importance of Fleeting Contact

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The casual serendipity of random intimacy is one of the wonders of adulthood. I don’t mean the kind of groping that hides in crowds so that its perpetrators can perform a criminal act. I mean the temporary companionship we discover with people we don’t know when circumstances cause us to spend a few hours together.

When I first moved to New York I’d talk to strangers on the bus, surprised at how easy and pleasant it was. I made friends for life (whom I haven’t seen in 30 years) when my son was born prematurely, and I spent a few weeks in the Neo-Natal Intensive Care Unit with parents of other premies. At the playground, I enjoyed getting tips from other parents and caregivers.

So it is with comic book conventions.

It tends to be my role at these events to staff the booth and make sure the talent is comfortable and free to interact with the fans who have paid to be there. I fetch water and snacks, if possible. I stand a lot because fans are more comfortable when they can talk with me eye-to-eye. I keep a smile on my face even though I’ve been asked the same question a couple hundred times, because it’s the first time for the person who is asking.

Just as at the playground, the conversation is both deep and fleeting, subject to easy distractions and the call of duty. We’ll talk about good places to eat, the future of the industry, and which bathrooms have the shortest lines. We’ll get judge-y about cosplayers. We’ll gossip. We’ll speculate with no basis in fact.

For the six to eight hours each day, my booth mates are my best friends ever. It doesn’t matter where they come from, what kind of work they do, or what political views they hold. We have a lived through the fires of hell together, and we all deserve to go the a bar for a drink.

This is why I am so sad about the loss of Steve Dillon. I don’t claim that I knew him well. I never met his family, or even saw a picture of his home. I only spoke with him a few times away from a convention, and one of those times, I interrupted him with a phone call at a pub when there was an important football game happening.

There were hours and hours when I stood behind him at the DC booth as he signed one autograph after another. Sometimes, he’d doodle a little profile of Jesse Custer of Preacher, the book most fans wanted him to sign. I must have watched him draw that image hundreds of times. He could do it with just a few lines, and each sketch had the emotional intensity he brought to so much of his work.

My first comics editor, Larry Hama, would tell me that one of the advantages of working in the graphic story medium was that we had an unlimited special effects budget. It cost just as much to create a page with an intergalactic battle as a page of two people talking in a coffee shop. His point was that I should consider taking advantage of this freedom to write stories that would be incredibly expensive to film. He wasn’t saying that scenes with people talking were bad, but rather that I should have really good reasons for writing them that way.

Steve Dillon could make scenes of people talking in a diner the most intense, emotionally involving possible story-telling choice. When I read his work, I projected deep and volatile emotions into the faces of the characters. Maybe it was his pacing. Maybe it was the way he laid out the panels. Maybe I just had an affinity for his work.

I hadn’t seen Steve in more than 15 years when I heard that he died. My first thought was to wonder what Garth Ennis would do, which is more than a little bit ridiculous. Both of them had other collaborators, and both of them did magnificent work on those projects.

To me, though, they will always be sitting side by side, signing work, making snarky remarks, and otherwise making their fans feel special.

Tweeks: PowerPuff Girls Interviews

At San Diego Comic Con, we were so lucky to interview the Powderpuff Girls cast & writers.  Cartoon Network rebooted the series this year with new writes & voices and while change is hard (PPG was one of the defining cartoons of our childhood) we really warmed up to Amanda Leighton (Blossom), Kristen Li (Bubbles) and Natalie Palamides (Buttercup).  We also got to talk to some of the writers Jake Goldman &  Hayley Mancini (also the voice of Princess Morebucks) and the producers Nick Jennings  & Bob Boyle.  We talked a lot about how the Powerpuff brand of feminism has been updated for 2016 and what it’s like to be voice actors and what kind of choices go into voicing such iconic characters.  There’s so much to talk about!

 

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