Month: September 2020

Unmasked History of Scooby Doo Episode 15: Victor Cook

September 25, 2020 alawlr4597 Episodes 0 Comments

In the fourth and final episode of September’s Mystery Incorporated themed month, Alexa speaks with director/producer Victor Cook. Victor also worked on the direct to video special episodes on the 13 Spooky Tales DVD releases, and the 2013 movie Scooby-Doo! Stage Fright.

Highlights of this episode include:

1- Victor’s path from wanting to be a print cartoonist, to directing in animation.

2- How Victor came to work on Mystery Incorporated, and his experience on the show.

3- Chatting about not only Mystery Incorporated, but also the direct to video specials, and Stage Fright.

Make sure to listen to the episode above! Or you can read a transcript of the interview here.

If you want to follow Victor, you can find him on Twitter, @Victor_Cook1.

Interview Transcript – Episode 15: Victor Cook

September 25, 2020 alawlr4597 Episodes 0 Comments

Not able to listen to the full episode? Don’t worry! You can still read the full transcript of the interview with Victor Cook below. Or click here to listen to the podcast episode.

AL: What’s your relationship to Scooby-Doo, did you grow up watching?

VC: Yes, I’m old enough to have seen the original show when it first came on. I was born in the 60s, so I was a kid in the 60s, and so I think the show, didn’t it premiere in ’69 or ’70? Yeah, so I would’ve been in third grade when that show came out. I was a huge Hanna-Barbera, Saturday morning cartoon fan back in those days. Jonny Quest, The Herculoids, and Scooby-Doo.

AL: Do you have a favourite personal memory related to Scooby-Doo at all?

VC: Not from watching the show, ’cause it’s like I loved the pantheon of all the Hanna-Barbera shows. Back in those days, I gobbled up Hanna-Barbera cartoons, and Marvel and DC comics. And also newspaper comic strips, like Charles Schulz’s Peanuts. And outside of those things, there was a syndicated show called Speed Racer that I was a fan of. So I was just sort of like, the whole pile of that stuff I was a huge fan of. My personal memories of Scooby I think have more to do with when I was working on the show.

AL: And how did you come to work in animation?

VC: How did I get into animation in the first place? I actually did not set out to have a career in animation. I grew up with the idea that I was going to be a cartoonist. I always thought I’d be a cartoonist, but I defined that, and in my imagination and goal was that meant I would either draw comic strips, political cartoons, comic books, or even like greeting cards. I thought I’d be like a print cartoonist. ‘Cause I really admired all those artists. When I was a kid, my parents didn’t really take us to the movies that much, so I didn’t really get to go see the latest Disney movie releases, so you know, the animation I saw was on TV, like I mentioned before. And I think one of the reasons why back then I didn’t have an interest in pursuing animation is I had read this biography or a story about Jack Kirby’s career. And there was this one little thing I read where one of his first jobs was he was an in-betweener at the Fleischer Studios, which used to do the old Superman cartoons and the Betty Boop cartoons, and the old Popeye cartoons. But he said he hated it, he said it was like a factory job. Like some guy drew this hand on the left, another guy drew the hand on the right, and his job was to draw the hand in the middle to create that motion of the hand moving. So I read that, and I’m like “God, that doesn’t actually sound that fun,” and I never sort of looked into all the other aspects of animation. So growing up, I thought I’d be a print cartoonist. When I was in college, I was in a life drawing class, and we’re all sitting around the model and drawing this figure, but I would always add horns to its head, or claws to its hands, or bat wings, or something. I’d always do something that wasn’t there on the model. Luckily my art teacher got a kick out of that, and she had said to me that one of her former students was an animator at Hanna-Barbera, and I should look him up. And I should mention by the way, that I was at a junior college in central California, which is like six hours north of LA, just a small little, almost farm town that had an Air Force base nearby, my dad was in the Air Force. But, because I had read that biography thing of Jack Kirby, I politely took the name of that artist and his number and wrote it down in my book, and I just sort of never intended to call the guy. And this is like 1980 or something, so there’s no Internet or anything like that. So I go to southern California, transfer schools, and I’m submitting comic strips to the syndicates, you gotta do a month’s worth of your comic strips, so I did a few of them. And I was working at a local paper as a graphic artist and doing political cartoons once a week. So after a few years of that and not being syndicated yet, I did think in the back of my mind, maybe I should look that guy up. And I cold called him, and he recommended I take an animation class at the union, the Animation Guild, because it’s taught by professionals and they teach you exactly how to create your sample to get a job. And I did. I never ever met this person by the way, face to face. It’s so strange, you know, 30 years later I wish I could look him up and find him, because it was great advice. I took that class, six months later I applied to Filmation Studios, they did She-Ra and He-Man and I got hired to do BraveStarr, it was like one of their last shows, as an in-betweener and assistant animator. And while there is when I discovered storyboards. They gave me a tour of the studio and I saw the storyboard department, and you know, it was like three panels on a page, and it looked and reminded me of a comic strip, which is one of the things I originally wanted to do. So I thought “Hey, I’m going to try to be a storyboard artist.” So I took classes at the union at night while I worked during the day to build up some samples and learn how to storyboard. And then two years after I had gotten that job at Filmation, they actually then went out of business. BraveStarr completely flopped, and it went out of business, but by then I had storyboard samples and got hired at A.L.F. and ALF Tales. The director of that show was a guy named Kevin Altieri, who later would be one of the four directors on Batman: The Animated Series. He gave me an opportunity to board on A.L.F. and ALF Tales, and the experience I got on that show gave me also samples that got me hired at Walt Disney TV Animation a couple years later on TaleSpin and Darkwing Duck. I spent 16 years at Disney, storyboarding on those shows, Gargoyles, Aladdin, and then got a chance to be a director on 101 Dalmatians, and various shows, Buzz Lightyear of Star Command, Lilo and Stitch, Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, those kind of shows. And then I left for a decade, and I did sort of four things in that decade. One was I got to co-develop for TV The Spectacular Spider-Man, and also showrun it with my partner Greg Weisman. Then after that went on to Scooby-Doo Mystery Incorporated, and then after that, went to Hasbro, and sort of reimagined with these writers Kevin Burke and Chris “Doc” Wyatt, we reimagined and executive produced Stretch Armstrong and the Flex Fighters, and then as that was ending I was approached by Disney Junior, to work with this creator named Travis Braun on a new show called T.O.T.S. which is what I’m doing now. So I hope that wasn’t too long of a story.

AL: How do you cross over from being a storyboard artist into directing?

VC: There’s not really any one way that I can think of. All I can say is if you are interested in being a TV animation director, you’re most likely going to get there by being a storyboard artist first. It has happened that people who are designers or had other responsibilites in animation on the show have crossed over to be episode directors, but it’s more likely you’re going to be a storyboard artist first and make that transition. But simply being a storyboard artist doesn’t mean you’re going to be a director, because there’s other sort of factors and skills that you find that are needed to be a director. When you’re a storyboard artist, you have your storyboard and you’re on it for six weeks and you’re focused only on what you have to do. And you’re not assigned anything else until you’re done with that storyboard. When you’re a director, you’re multitasking. You may be launching a storyboard artist on episode one, while working on your animatic of episode two, while editing episode three, it’s all kind of happening at the same time, and you’ve got to keep track of it. So I guess when you’re storyboarding, they one, want to make sure you’re creatively doing a great job as a filmmaker, you’re funny or dynamic or whatever that show needs, you’re able to do that. And then two, are you reliable, are you hitting the deadlines, are you able to do it in the time allotted, and then the third thing is like the quality of, you know, I don’t know how they decide this from storyboarding, but like are you going to be able to multitask. And sometimes that, they just have to find out by throwing the board guy into the directing role to see if they can do it. So for me, how I did it, and everybody does it a different way, but when I got in at Disney on TaleSpin, the showrunner had a pep talk at the start of the season where he said how everybody should learn what everybody else does. That the production assistant should learn what the background painter does, and that the character designer should learn what the storyboard artist does, and that the prop designer should learn what the writer does, and the writer should learn what the production person does, that kind of thing. And I was brand new, and I took it all to heart. I didn’t realize (until) later that a lot of the crew were just sort of like rolling their eyes and wanting to get back to work, but I took it to heart. And I thought “Okay, I’m going to learn what a writer does,” and I signed up for a UCLA extension class in animation scriptwriting, without any intention or goal of wanting to be a professional writer, I was just really doing it to learn about another part of the process. When you’re taking the class, you know, part of the assignment is you do have to generate springboards and premises and scripts, and they want you to do it based on existing shows. So I chose Darkwing Duck, I knew that was next coming up at Disney, so I just said “I’ll make this my class assignment.” Meanwhile, while I’m at work I am kind of hearing that Darkwing is part of the Disney afternoon, they just bought ABC, they had all these episodes they had to make, and I heard some writers and story editors commiserating in the hallway about how they really need to find more stories or more writers because of the big order of shows. So I went and mentioned to one of the story editors, “Hey, I’ve got some springboards and some story ideas,” because I had them from the class, and I pitched them, and they picked one. And then they said “Okay, you get to freelance one.” And I was a storyboard artist on this show at the time, and (I) got to freelance this script. And then months and months later, it was no guarantee I’d get to storyboard on my own script, but it worked out that I got to storyboard on my own script, and then after that was all done, the creator of the show, the showrunner and creator of the show, Tad Stones, came knocking on my door, and he was like impressed. I don’t think he was necessarily impressed like “Wow, this guy wrote a great script,” I think he was more impressed that I had the gumption to try to write a script, and I sold it. He said “We love you as a storyboard artist, and you writing this script also tells me you understand story in that way too, and those are the qualities I’m looking for in directors.” And that was the beginning of the company thinking of me as a director, and that’s how I became a director.

AL: And in your opinion, to be an animation director, or any other role really, do you need to have that artistic ability that you would have as a storyboard artist or a designer?

VC: You know, this has been a little bit of a debate recently on other projects. I think you do. Some of the shows, like up in Canada for instance, there was, for I’d say a good generation, 20, 30 years, they had their own industry, but they’ve also done a lot of work for hire for American companies. Usually just doing the animation portion of it, and then slowly maybe “Okay now we’re going to do the design portion of it.” And a lot of it is CG, so you have a lot of people who are great CG animators, who might feel like they’re ready to be episode directors. And some people could make an argument that they have the skills needed to do it because that last part of the pipeline, they can make all these adjustments in the CG, in the layout process. I’m more of the old school thought of “Okay, if you’re going to direct, you do need to be able to storyboard.” I mean, you do need to be able to put your ideas on paper. You can’t really act everything out. If you’re talking about a squash and stretch animal doing crazy Tex Avery antics, no human being can stand in front of another person, and you can’t physically act that, right. You need to draw what you mean sometimes. And TV moves so fast, like if you want a dynamic angle, you can handwrite the note on a panel, “Hey this needs to be more dynamic,” and hopefully a board artist, when he interprets that and does what he thinks is a dynamic angle, you’re going to be happy with it. But if you’re not, eventually you’re going to have to like loosely thumbnail in that dynamic angle. So the directors I had could storyboard, and the directors I hire can storyboard. And I just believe the best TV directors come from storyboarding, but there are exceptions, that they can come from other areas. So I can be proven wrong sometimes on that, but my preference is they are storyboard artists first.

AL: For those who maybe don’t know, can you describe what the role of a director is?

VC: Yeah, the director’s job is to basically, visually tell the story. You know, a writer wrote the script, right, but the director is, like when you watch any movie or TV, you see a series of closeups or far shots, and camera angles, and does the character walk from here to there, and how do they gesture. All those kind of things, the director is supposed to steer the ship on that, and have the final say on that. Especially animation, with the acting. It’s like, you know, how they physically act or move or stand, that’s going to be the director’s job, the camera angles. The places where the script isn’t as descriptive, like if it’s an action sequence, a chase sequence, or a gag sequence, there will be something written there, to kind of get that started, or maybe it will be super descriptive, but a director may feel there’s a different or better, or a more exciting or fun way to do it, and they have to dream that up. Or song sequences for instance. There’s some loose idea of what it’s going to be, but until you get in there and just start listening to the song and making up what you’re going to see, that’s the director’s job. 

AL: And conversely, what is the role of a producer?

VC: Well it really depends on where they came up from. So a lot of shows I’m on, there’s usually at least three people that have a producer title. One person who has that is really all about the schedules and the budgets, and making sure all that’s going to flow. But if it’s someone like me, then one of the producers is somebody who’s come up from a directing background, sort of the nuts and bolts of how to put the show together. And the other producer usually came up from being a writer. And together, their job is to sort of showrun the show. So I just described what a director does, a producer would usually then – the director’s job usually goes until the storyboard ships to animation. I’d say in a lot of cases his job may finish at that point. Then it’s the producer with the director background that would take it over from then, in terms of retakes, communicating to the animators, and then also editing, sound effects, music, all the producers together weigh in when we’re casting the show, when we’re choosing the actors. And all the producers together are also weighing in on what kind of music style do we want, what composer we’re going to hire, and also spotting each and every episode with the composer. And then the producers are at the final mix, giving notes about adjusting sound levels, sound effects, music, all that stuff, and they kind of sign off on the show. And I should go back in time, before the director does anything, the producers are developing the show, they’re developing it from who the characters are, what the storylines are going to be, and then on my side of it, the art of it, like what’s it going to look like, what is the filmmaking style of the show.

AL: And what is the difference when you’re working on a project in maybe both roles as opposed to just working in one or the other?

VC: Well, there’s a lot of crossover. I would say on Scooby and Hasbro, it really was almost an intertwined role. You know, because I was a supervising director and a producer on those shows, my hands were really in the weeds on all of it. Like really getting into, almost like an episode director sometimes, and re-drawing and re-staging and sort of thumbnailing sequences and things like that. On my current show we have a supervising director and he really does all that, so I can take a step back and sort of take a broader view and kind of just step in sometimes on what he does, but because he’s so good at covering all that, it really gives me breathing room to see the whole thing and make sure everything is happening when it needs to happen and working how it needs to work and I can focus on speaking to the animators and that. So that’s the difference, if you’re doing both, like if you’re being a supervising director and you have this producer title, you’re really, you’re up to your eyeballs in work. If you are properly crewed and you’re an executive producer, like say you’re on the writing side, you’re an executive producer but have a story editor under you, that gives you more breathing room to oversee the whole show, so the same thing on the visual side. If you have a supervising director under you, it lets you kind of have a step back and have a broader view of the show. 

AL: Are there any challenges to having both roles, does the project either suffer or benefit from having one person in both roles?

VC: I think the main difference is time. When you’re doing both roles you are potentially going to be working evenings and weekends. And I think you do run the risk of burnout, if the show isn’t budgeted to have those extra roles. I feel like we are so blessedly budgeted for the show I’m working on now, it’s great.

AL: Moving more towards Scooby, how did you come to work on Mystery Incorporated?

VC: Before that show I was on The Spectacular Spider-Man, and my line producer Wade Wisinski rolled off the show before me, and he landed at Warner Bros. on Scooby-Doo Mystery Incorporated as line producer. He just contacted me and said “Hey, they’re looking for a couple of directors on the show.” And he introduced me to the supervising producer Tony Cervone. And we hit it off and he decided to bring me aboard. I met him and Mitch Watson and they brought me aboard as a director, and Tony was also simultaneously producing another show, and I’d say maybe four weeks into the job, he asked me if I would want to step up to be the supervising director on Scooby. And I said “Of course.” And then after that season, they asked me to produce the second season.

AL: What was it like to come into a darker overarching story as your first experience working on Scooby?

VC: I loved it. Like I mentioned before, I remember the original show, but in those days, as I said, I was a huge fan of the Hanna-Barbera action shows like Jonny Quest, The Herculoids, and those kind of shows. So this new darker approach to me, it made it more dramatic, it made it more grounded for me, which was more my sensibility. And especially after coming off The Spectacular Spider-Man, it just seemed like a perfect fit to go into a Scooby like this that had a big storyline that continued over two seasons, and there’s backstory to the characters and lore, and the characters’ personalities were fleshed out. It just seemed like it fit me more to do this type of a Scooby, so I feel very fortunate that it all worked out that way.

AL: And can you explain what maybe the day to day experience was like working on Mystery Incorporated?

VC: Oh my gosh, well let me try to remember. I do remember it day to day being a super pleasant experience. It was also an example of a show that was very well thought out schedule wise. So we were able to sort of handle the demands of the art directing and the staging because of just how it was scheduled out. It wasn’t all on top of each other what we had to do. So that I think also made it fun to do. What I remember, this isn’t like a day-to-day thing, but like what I remember when I first came on the show was how eclectic the crew seemed to me. Especially when you would tell people you were on Scooby-Doo, everybody thought, prior to Mystery Incorporated, every Scooby-Doo was, people had an idea of that original show but just updated, right. And I think most people in our business thought a certain, you know, we have people who sort of specialize in different genres in this business. Like the funny cartoon guy or the primetime cartoon guy, or the action show guy. And there’s a lot of people who pride themselves that they can sort of step in and do any of those roles, but I think Scooby was in the camp of up until that point, of only comedy people work on this show. So I get on the show and I’m watching this crew get put together. So besides me who just came off The Spectacular Spider-Man, they hired Curt Geda, who was like one of the top DC Universe superhero directors at Warner Bros. Batman Beyond, all those shows, he was on the show directing. They brought in this art director, Dan Krall, who came off Samurai Jack. Derrick Wyatt, who also designed Transformers. So it was this kind of an eclectic mix of sort of stylized action shows, comedy shows, all on this show. And it had all made sense, because you know, besides story-wise it being a more serious tone with an overarching story, filmmaking-wise, we were going to do it like mini movies. If you think back to the original show, and I think mostly because of the limitations of animation at the time, the original show was very left to right, and kind of flat. It wasn’t that dimensional, you know. But we were going to have up-shots, down-shots, like any angle you’d see in any horror movie or any action movie. And also, the show was going to still have comedy and be funny, but more in the sense of you know, I guess like Ghostbusters, where it’s kind of rooted in, the scary moments are really scary, you know what I mean. Anyway, I may have gone off track a little bit, but I just remember it was an eclectic crew that came together to really make this a very different sort of a Scooby.

AL: With people coming from all different backgrounds, how did that bump up the quality of the show?

VC: It worked out surprisingly well. Because Curt and I and the storyboard artists, we just, the sensibility was like “Okay, we’re going to stage this as if we’re on an action show.” As if this were a movie. We’re not staging this like a comedy left to right show, we’re going to do this like a movie. Meanwhile, the background painters are doing these super stylized paintings that aren’t necessarily realistic, they’re very artistic and stylized, and with the cinematic quality of a sequence would have a certain colour. Like this sequence is green, or this sequence is blue or whatever it’s going to be. So you put those two things together and it was like really something different, it was great.

AL: What was it like to be able to play with those horror aspects with a lot of the calling to other different horror movies within the show?

VC: It was fun. A lot of us were fans of these movies, and it was a lot of fun to do. There was an episode I remember directing, I think it was called mecha mutt, does that ring a bell? So Mitch Watson I know was riffing off certain horror things, but for me, when Scooby had to battle the mecha mutt, in my head I was thinking of Alien, I think it was Alien 2, when Ripley got into that palette mover thing and was fighting the alien. So I made Scooby get into that. So working on the show, you kind of, sometimes it would spark you to remember things of other horror movies and kind of try to put them in. 

AL: Moving to the special episode shorts, like Spooky Games, Haunted Holidays, I think there were six of them. Can you speak to how those came to be?

VC: Well, I gotta say, in terms of how it came to me, they were already planned and developed, like I had no idea of them I should say, until they actually said “Vic, we’d like to see if you want to do these.” I was on Mystery Incorporated, but as we were going into only post-production on the final season, I was approached and they said “Hey, we have this feature-length DVD and this sort of handful of these 30 minute specials, and we’d like you to do them.” And I took a look at them, and I thought “Sure, I’d love to do them,” but you know, they sort of had nothing to do with Mystery Incorporated, it was outside of our show in terms of storylines and in terms of art direction. Those shows were developed, I would say by Alan Burnett, who before he retired in recent years, was the co-producer of all the Scooby DVDs and specials. And his background, he was a writer. So he would work with different writers on all the various specials. So like I said, by the time it came to me, the scripts were done and my input was more after the scripts were done, but it was just really as simple as they had them, and they needed someone to do them, and they just asked me if I’d like to do them, and I said sure.

AL: Can you speak to the development process from when you came in to when they were realized?

VC: Well like I said, story-wise, they were already developed. For me, it was like “Okay, what is this monster going to look like, what are the powers.” So in the Christmas one, I really thought it would be really cool, if this snow creature could have sort of morphing abilities. And I started sketching out these different sort of like, almost like Sandman morphing abilities. And I bounced it off of Alan and he loved it, and he put it in. So like I said, the stories had been worked out, but I look at the monsters like “Okay what can we do to make it scarier or more monstrous rather than just a guy in a suit.” And we would somehow, the script would somehow explain in some pseudo-science way how this snowsuit was able to do it, but it was just like an excuse to have those visuals to make it extra cool. But you know, design-wise, it was really just based on the original Iwao Takamoto designs from 1969, just done today. And we would storyboard it like it was today. But design wise, the aesthetic was the original show for those specials.

AL: And in your mind, were you thinking of them like an extension of the original show, or was it more like a mini movie?

VC: Well, you know, my real, how do I say this. I love Scooby-Doo Mystery Incorporated, that’s my Scooby, right. That’s the one I was on and had that rich lore. The other Scoobys always seem to be standalone adventures. Even though there would be a whole series about it, it’s like they never talked really about that much, about what just happened in the last episode, and what they were doing now didn’t necessarily connect to future episodes. I’m talking about the original show. And so, to me, at least at that time, the specials also story-wise, didn’t seem to connect to each other at all. They were just standalone adventures, it was like, here’s Scooby and the gang in this situation, or this mystery to solve. So it, maybe Alan and the writers, it connected for them, but for me they seem like standalone adventures, unlike how Mystery Incorporated was done. 

AL: Out of all the specials, did you have a favourite?

VC: Hmm, I think I liked the Christmas special.

AL: And why?

VC: Just what I talked about, the snow creature, that was fun to do. That was a fun one. I liked the one, I can’t remember the name, but it was at a hotel on a beach, do you remember that one?

AL: Yeah, I think it’s called the Beach Beastie.

VC: Yeah. So the thing that was kind of fun about that is we had Adam West. And when I was a kid I was such a Batman fan, so it was just fun to have him, to be able to work with him was one of his last few projects. So I’d say those two were fun to do. Stage Fright wasn’t a 30 minute special, it was a feature-length DVD, and that was also really fun to do and one of the most fun things to do actually was the main title sequence of it, because we just sort of went off and did a completely different stylized version of all the characters, and I’ve always loved that main title sequence. I kind of hope one day maybe they’d consider making a show based off those designs, I thought those designs turned out great. They were designed by Stephen Silver, who was the Kim Possible character designer. 

AL: And moving to talk about Stage Fright a little bit more, what was it like to play with the Fred and Daphne dynamic in that movie too?

VC: That was fun. That’s one of those things that’s like built into I guess, the lore of Scooby, you know. It didn’t really, it wasn’t like a continuation necessarily of an arc from any other DVDs to this DVD, or after it. It sort of, to me, it’s like the ongoing Superman/Lois Lane kind of thing. That’s just part of what Scooby is about, is their relationship. But it was fun to do, it was definitely fun to do.

AL: And moving back to talk about the opening title sequence, what was it like to be able to play with a different style within the classic style of the movie?

VC: Well that was really fun. Especially when we were on Scooby-Doo Mystery Incorporated, you know, it is a stylized take also. It’s more angular. Derrick Wyatt did a fantastic job of, you look at the Mystery Incorporated designs, and yes you recognize those characters are very reminiscent of the Iwao Takamoto designs, but if you really, really look at them, there’s like these angles, and he just angled them the right way, and kind of the proportions, and made them even more animate-able. We hardly had any off-model issues in animation with this. So, and the background style also being non-traditional. So working on Mystery Incorporated, it’s like, I just love this idea of how you can reimagine this franchise and these characters in these different art styles. So when you do the specials, and the DVDs, you really don’t get that opportunity, at least at that time, you don’t get that opportunity. The style is to be the original style, but the main title is the spot where you can play. So yes, it was super, super fun. And like I said earlier, after we were done, I’m like man, that would make a great series if they did it that way. So it was very fun.

AL: What was your favourite part about getting to work on a handful of vastly different Scooby projects?

VC: Just to see the scope of them. At a very close proximity of time, I’m working on a Scooby that “Oh, these designs are Iwao Takamoto designs,” and then, literally within the same week, these new designs, and a more modern sensibility. And then also that main title sequence. So it was just fun to get to play and see how these characters and this premise, and this idea of Scooby-Doo works so well in so many different art styles.

 AL: Did you find any challenges working on Scooby at all?

VC: Actually not really. I mean just the usual challenges of you know, you want to make it great, and you have x amount of time to do it. And you know, you’re just racing the clock to make it great. But I don’t think there was any extraordinary challenges, you know, the crew, this was a top tier crew on Mystery Incorporated. Everybody was like at the top of their game. So it just made everybody’s job just that much smoother and easier because you know, you weren’t having to help pick somebody else up, because everybody was so great. The other directors, the producers, the writers, the supervising producers, the art crew, the actors, even our exec, I shouldn’t say “even our exec,” but the exec on our show. He was so great and pleasant and had great ideas too, with the notes he gave. It’s like if you’re on a basketball team and you’re the only one who can play, and everybody else is sort of like, has their arm tied behind their back, it’s going to be difficult for you. But this was like, you’re playing where everybody is like Magic Johnson, they’re experts. So it made it pretty fun and easy to work on.

AL: Do you have a specific episode of Mystery Incorporated, or one of the specials or the movie that you’re the most proud of?

VC: There’s quite a few. Like the first episode, which was directed by Curt, I just loved the way that turned out, that was awesome. I really liked the Dynomutt episode, with the Blue Falcon, that was really fun. And I like our two season finales, All Fear the Freak and then our season two finale, those were great. I love the twists and turns that Fred had to endure, thinking the mayor was his dad, and then finding out that he’s not, and that his real dad is not such a good guy. It’s like so many cool things about the show. 

AL: What was it like to come to work on a show that you had grown up watching?

VC: Fun. I couldn’t wait to get to work every day. It was a blast. Like I said, a lot of that also had to do with the crew. And besides them being such experts and professionals and good at their job, they were just a fun bunch of people to work with. The nicest people you’d want to work with.

AL: Why do you think that a cartoon about a mystery solving dog has held up for over 50 years now?

VC: Well, I will repeat something that Tony Cervone told me. And I think this is the key. Fear, food, and flashlights. I think that’s the reason for the success of the Scooby-Doo show. You combine those elements in just the right way, of drama and comedy and fear, you’re going to have a hit.

AL: Is there anything else you wanted to add at all?

VC: About Mystery Incorporated? No, I think that was good.

AL: Just before we end, do you have any recent projects that you’d like to promote?

VC: As far as besides Disney Junior’s T.O.T.S., which is current, there’s also a show on Netflix called Stretch Armstrong and the Flex Fighters, that’s still on Netflix that I think people would get a kick out of watching if they decided to check it out.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Unmasked History of Scooby Doo Episode 14: Derrick J. Wyatt

September 18, 2020 alawlr4597 Episodes 0 Comments

In the third episode for September’s Mystery Incorporated themed month, Alexa chats with lead character designer on the show, Derrick J. Wyatt. Derrick has done character design for not only Mystery Incorporated, but also for Transformers, Teen Titans and Ben 10. 

Highlights of this episode include:

1- What the design process was like for various Mystery Incorporated characters.

2- How Derrick’s attempt at Iwao Takamoto’s style turned into the design for Mystery Incorporated.

3- The importance of character design.

Make sure to listen to the episode above! Or you can read a transcript of the interview here.

If you want to follow Derrick, you can find him on Instagram and Twitter, @DerrickJWyatt.

Derrick also sent me some photos, which you can scroll through below!

Vincent Van Ghoul. Photo courtesy Derrick J. Wyatt.
George Avocados. Photo courtesy Derrick J. Wyatt.
Teen Titans as Mystery Inc. Photo courtesy Derrick J. Wyatt.
Scrappy-Doo statue. Photo courtesy Derrick J. Wyatt.
Photo courtesy Derrick J. Wyatt.
Original Mystery Incorporated yearbook photo. Photo courtesy Derrick J. Wyatt.

Interview Transcript – Episode 14: Derrick J. Wyatt

September 18, 2020 alawlr4597 Episodes 0 Comments

Not able to listen to the full episode? Don’t worry! You can still read the full transcript of the interview with Derrick J. Wyatt below. Or click here to listen to the podcast episode.

Original Mystery Incorporated yearbook photo. Photo courtesy Derrick J. Wyatt.

AL: What’s your relationship to Scooby-Doo, did you grow up watching?

DJW: Yeah, I grew up watching Scooby-Doo. I kind of grew up in the dark ages of Scooby, you know, the Scrappy era, so it was like 13 Ghosts and that kind of stuff. But also, when I would come home from school they would have, in syndication, they would have the first Scooby series and the (New) Scooby Movies which I really loved. I would always hope the Batman episode would be on, or the Addams Family. I liked Laff-a-Lympics and even A Pup Named Scooby-Doo, I liked that too.

AL: Do you have a favourite personal memory related to Scooby-Doo at all?

DJW: I just remember coming home from school and hoping that Batman episode would be on, that’s kind of my favourite memory of Scooby.

AL: How did you come to work in animation?

DJW: Well I started, I think in like 1999 interning at Spümcø for free. Then eventually I got my foot in the door at Warner Bros., and then kind of went from there. That started my real, actual career in animation.

AL: Was that something that you had always wanted to do?

DJW: Yeah, I originally kind of wanted to be either an animation or a comic book artist. But when I was in school the bottom fell out of the comic industry, and I really liked the New Batman Adventures. A lot of cool cartoons were coming out. Really it kind of influenced me to go that direction.

AL: Do you remember a specific moment when you realized that character design was something that you wanted to do?

DJW: Yeah, there was a Wizard magazine that had all those, the redesigned Batman characters in the New Adventures of Batman, and I just remember thinking like I didn’t realize that you could take these characters and make them so much cooler than they were before, and I just instantly knew that’s what I wanted to do.

AL: How did you come to work on Mystery Incorporated specifically?

DJW: They asked me to do some early character designs, like I think Sheriff Stone and the Slime Mutant. And they initially wanted them to be in classic Iwao style. And I couldn’t do it. That was my attempt at drawing in Iwao Takamoto style, is what kind of became Mystery Incorporated style. But I had always kind of wanted to work on a Scooby DVD or something, I thought it would be fun. 

AL: For people who maybe don’t know, can you describe what a character designer does?

DJW: Sure. We sort of set the templates for all the characters you see in the cartoon, establish their looks and proportions so they’re consistently animated and they look like the characters you know and love.

AL: Can you describe what maybe a typical day of work on Mystery Incorporated was like?

DJW: Hm, well I don’t know if there was a typical day on Mystery Incorporated. We would always start with a story breakdown meeting where we’d kind of go through the script and we’d assign out characters, which character designer got what character. Then we’d kind of go back to our desks and come up with some rough ideas of what we thought. Then if those roughs were approved then we’d take them to a more tight stage that the board artists could use. Eventually we’d clean them up and then send them off to the ink and paint department.

AL: Are your designs always based on what’s going on in the script, or have you ever had to work with just a name or something?

DJW: Yeah, I’m sure I have. It’s not always described in the script. And a lot of times Tony Cervone would have a photo reference from 1969 that he would want us to use, or maybe he’d have a, like in the case of Professor Pericles, he had a pretty detailed sketch of how he wanted Pericles to look, and I just translated that into the style of the show.

AL: What’s your specific design process?

DJW: It’s a tedious and horrible process with a lot of erasing. A lot of false starts. I start out, like on Scooby I would take a big size comp and I would take a little tiny Post-it, and I would draw the character’s silhouette in so it fit in with the rest of the cast of the show. And then I would take that little tiny Post-it and blow it up and refine that character. And that’s where I kind of came from. Oh, a huge part of the Scooby design process was our reference library. We had actually gotten catalogs, clothing catalogs from 1969, and would reference those things for the show, because the whole thing was like design didn’t evolve past 1969 in this world, it stopped there. So it was really fun to adapt that stuff.

AL: Are things still done (on paper) or is that moved more towards working on a computer?

DJW: It’s still done by hand, even when you’re drawing on a computer you’re still drawing with your hand. The colour process is a little bit more click and fill but even they have to draw out the shadows and stuff. I still work on paper for my roughs, and then I move those into the computer, and go from there.

AL: Were there any challenges in designing for Scooby?

DJW: Well the initial challenge was I couldn’t do it. But the other challenge, I guess the biggest challenge was the epic scope of the show. Even though I’m used to working on big action shows, the scope of Scooby would be crazy. We would have an entire prom one episode, and then the very next episode we were going to the knights fair and the pirates were crashing. It’s almost like designing two completely different shows with different settings and different characters or even the same characters in different costumes. So just the scope of the show was really hard. It was really, really challenging.

AL: What was it like to tackle these iconic characters?

DJW: I love that. It’s one of my favourite things to do is kind of take on these big iconic characters like that. It was just a lot of fun and I tried to put as much of my love and respect for the characters into the designs as I could.

AL: You mentioned that you had that reference library and you were working off the original, but did you have any other inspirations for the designs for the characters?

DJW: Well sometimes it was the actors, you know. They would want to capture, not a caricature of the actor really, but like a hint of the actor. Enough that it would feel right with his or her voice coming out of the character’s mouth. I can’t think of anything else offhand like that right now.

AL: Do you have any specific examples of a character that was maybe designed off the actor?

DJW: Yeah, but I can’t remember the actor’s name.* What was the guy from Community, he plays the Dean in Community right, and then he was, was he the publicist of the Crybaby Clown? I’m butchering this, but that is just the first one that pops into mind. Like it doesn’t really look like that actor but it’s just enough that it seems right with the voice coming out of his mouth, at least to me.

*His name is Jim Rash, and he did voice the publicist J.R. Kipple in The Night the Clown Cried II: Tears of Doom!

AL: What was it like to work on designs for a darker version of Scooby-Doo?

DJW: It was fun. Because the villains were never not dark, design wise. Especially the original guys, they’re pretty scary for kids. Even, I think of the werewolf screaming “Help, help” while he’s paddling down the river and it’s like, that’s creepy. But it was just fun to amp it up a little bit and bring a little more, I don’t know what you want to call it, a little more horror into it. 

AL: Did you have a favourite villain that you had worked on?

DJW: It’s always hard for me to pick favourites. I tend to, I have to kind of tell you what I’m in the mood for I guess. I really liked Char Gar Gothakon, where we kind of put Cthulhu in a cenobite dress. I just liked how he came out, and I really love that episode too. I like the gnome too, because I tried to make the gnome look like a Rankin/Bass design kind of. He’s really wrinkly and has a big bulbous nose and stuff. Yeah, those are the ones that stick out right now.

AL: What was it like to develop some of the villains from myth, like the Manticore and the Hodag?

DJW: That’s just like, it was cool because you get to look up a different kind of reference for that. Like with the Manticore and stuff you can see what the ancient interpretations of it were and what everybody else’s thought of it. I think again, I tried to make that a little Rankin/Bass-y. It has kind of Smaug’s wings and stuff. The Hodag, I think Brianne Drouhard designed the Hodag. That was based on a real myth, right? A real local legend or something. The guy is real too right? What’s his name, I designed him I think. Gene Shepherd. I wonder what the Gene Shepard estate thinks of that. That’s the cheese episode too right, that’s one of my favourites because I love the design for the cheese shop owner and his little assistant that turns out to be the monkey. 

AL: There’s a lot of really cool supporting characters in the show as well, do you have any favourites that you had worked on, or just ones that you really liked?

DJW: Well obviously like Vincent Van Ghoul is probably my top, top favourite. Just getting to bring him into the show was really cool. And we got official sanction from his estate to use his likeness and voice and everything, which is awesome, they were really excited about it. Actually, they wanted a hand-painted animation cel, so we did a little animation cel for them special. Oh and also I love Fred’s dad the mayor, and Sheriff Stone. I like Janet Nettles too, I think her design came out really cool. The colour they used on her outfit came out really awesome.

Vincent Van Ghoul. Photo courtesy Derrick J. Wyatt.

AL: What was it like to grow up watching 13 Ghosts and then be able to recreate Vincent Van Ghoul for Mystery Incorporated?

DJW: That was cool because I kind of got to take the cool part of 13 Ghosts and leave the rest of it alone. It’s not horrible, but it’s just not my Scooby, you know.

AL: And there’s one of the episodes that starts off with Daphne and Fred in the museum with the statues of Scrappy and Flim Flam, did you work on those?

DJW: Yeah, I drew those. It’s funny, Flim Flam’s original voice actor was Susan Blu, and I worked with her as a voice director on Transformers and Ben 10.

AL: Why do you think that the style of the character designs worked so well for a darker show and an overarching theme?

DJW: I think we’ve had so many generations of animators now that have grown up animating sort of Bruce Timm style. And they really get that more angular style. Especially the studios Warner Bros. uses, they’ve been using them for a long time and it seems to really translate well, I think, into motion.

AL: How do you think that character design contributes to how the show looks in the final product?

DJW: Well it’s the most important thing, isn’t it? I mean, it’s a big part of the show. Obviously, if you have great characters and nothing else, you’re not going to have a successful show. But it’s like, that’s like what they say about food you know, you eat with your eyes first. So you’re kind of judging the book by its cover by the character designs. Then if that pulls you in, then you’ll give the story a chance maybe.

AL: How do the character designers maybe work with the people who are designing the backgrounds?

DJW: Well, we’ll design the characters and then they’ll design the backgrounds simultaneously. And then the color stylists, Brian Smith and David Patton on Scooby-Doo Mystery Incorporated, they were the color stylists. They’ll take the characters and colour them, and then kind of plunk them onto the background and see if it works. Then they’ll tint them to the background if they need, and they did a lot of affected colour, Mystery Inc. is a lot of special colour. So that’s a very important job, to make sure the characters live in those backgrounds.

AL: I wanted to talk about the designs for the Hex Girls. What was it like to update their designs as well?

DJW: Torture. We went through so many versions of Hex Girls. I think I only designed, no I didn’t design any of them actually. I took a pass at one of them, but they didn’t end up using it I don’t think. So I don’t even remember, it was all hands on deck that one. Hex Girls designed by like 10 people probably. 

AL: Why was it such a process, was it to keep the integrity of the characters or?

DJW: Yeah, I think Tony (Cervone) just had a real specific vision in mind for what they should look like in Mystery Incorporated. And we were getting close, but we just weren’t quite getting there. I mean, we got there in the end, but it took a while.

AL: Also for Marcie/Hot Dog Water, did you work on that one?

DJW: I did, I did, yeah. 

AL: What was your process for that (design)?

DJW: The funny thing is, originally I designed her, and the body was exactly the same as Hot Dog Water, but she had my friend Brianne Drouhard’s face instead of the current face. So that’s what I turned in originally. And then they’re like “Oh no, Linda Cardellini is going to play this role, so she needs to kind of reflect that in some ways.” So I made a kind of nerdy character that looked like Linda Cardellini could voice. But it was just like two versions for that, so it was pretty quick. She was pretty fun. Oh and then they originally coloured her in like lavender and pink and green and stuff, and I’m like “Guys. Look it, no. Her coat is the bun, and then mustard and ketchup. Hot dog, hot dog.” They’re like “Ohh.” Her coat even kind of looks like bread in a weird way. The wool part of her coat.

AL: One thing that always amazes me is the texture of the wool in that sweater, how did that work?

DJW: I can’t specifically remember. I think I just tried to make it look bread-y. And then added some kind of textural notes to it. 

AL: What about the colour palette for the supporting characters, does each person kind of have their own design that way?

DJW: Most of it, like I said, was done by the color stylists. They did that. But some of them were, you know, you can tell, like all the Rogers family is a greenish colour palette, the Blakes all have that royal purple. So things follow rules and have palettes. The others are kind of case by case. The individual characters that come in and out. 

AL: Did you often have input, like if you had a specific colour palette in mind?

DJW: Sometimes. Not super often. I know, the one thing I had specifically mapped out colour wise was when Hatecraft was writing the teen novel, and he was trying to think like a teenager so he had plastered his room with teenager posters and they were all old Hanna-Barbera shows. And so I had to kind of do a colour guide for that so they could plug in the right colours, cause that was pretty complicated. Nobody remembers those old characters except for me, so.

AL: Speaking of those older characters, in the Mystery Solvers Club State Finals, did you work on a lot of those as well?

DJW: Everybody loves that episode right, but it is for me, the most disappointing episode of Mystery Incorporated, because I didn’t work on a single one of those mystery crews. They were all just reuses of their classic stock model sheet from the Hanna-Barbera library. And I wanted to redesign them. I wanted it not to be a dream at all. I wanted it to take place for real, and that’s why they would unmask the Funky Phantom, because he would turn out to be a regular person in the end. But they just, they thought, there were two reasons, and one was we were really far behind on schedule, and it was another giant episode that they were super scared of. And the other reason was that our executive producer didn’t think that Jabberjaw belonged in the Mystery Incorporated world. He just thought it was too far out. And I had like an hour and a half intense discussion with him on why Jabberjaw should have been there, but I lost. 

AL: How about Dynomutt then, since you came in on freelance for that one?

DJW: Yeah, that was super fun. I love those classic characters. I kind of wish we had done a Scooby-Dum or like a Pup Named Scooby-Doo flashback so we could adapt a few more of those classic characters. But Dynomutt was super fun. I didn’t get to do any of his transformations though, those looked awesome in the episode.

AL: What was it like to come back on freelance after not working on the show for a while?

DJW: It’s always hard because you know, you have a full-time, another full-time job and you want to do your best, especially since I love that character I want to put my best into it, and you’re already worn out from putting all the hours into your normal job and you have to go try to muster the energy to do that. But it was just one character, so it wasn’t that big of a deal. And I would’ve done it no matter what, because it was just too good of an opportunity to pass up.

AL: And why did you leave Mystery Incorporated?

DJW: I got offered an art director job, a promotion to head up Ben 10: Omniverse and I would be working with one of my best friends in animation, Matt Youngberg, who I worked on Transformers with. And I just, like I was really sad to leave Mystery Incorporated, but I just felt like I couldn’t pass up that opportunity. Plus Ben 10 was going to have lots of cool toys, and Scooby never got any toys. And I really wanted toys.

AL: Yeah, that would’ve been cool!

DJW: I actually have, they did a Man Crab figure and a Freak in those faux LEGO figurines. And then there was a set of figures that came out, but they were just not great. There was a box set of figures. But you could tell it was Mystery Incorporated because Velma had bows. That’s the only way.

AL: Where did the idea come from to give Velma the bows and kind of update her look? 

DJW: That was Tony Cervone’s idea to do the bows. The idea of giving Velma lips had just been rejected flat out. They said “No thank you.” And then Tony was like “What if we give her little bows?” And I was like “That’s a really cool idea.” And they went for that. It just seemed, it just doesn’t seem like it’s outside of what Velma would wear to me. Like yeah, maybe she could wear little bows in her hair, I don’t think she would mind doing that.

AL: And I want to go back to the toys for a second, if you could have created a line of toys for Mystery Incorporated, what would you have done?

DJW: I would have like a line of action figures, and like I said I would have all the monsters have removable masks so you could unmask them. And I would love to see little like trap toys, little playsets with traps and stuff, or like a haunted house playset. I don’t know, like all kinds of cool stuff like that. A Mystery Machine car would be really cool. They did a pretty good job with all the LEGO stuff that came out.

AL: And what was your opinion on the show in general, what did you think about developing the relationships between the characters and things like that?

DJW: I thought it was cool. Especially like you mentioned earlier, one of my favourite parts is just adding all the secondary characters and the townspeople. And not only did the Mystery Inc. kids have relationships to each other individually and as a group, but they had relationships with the townspeople too and it’s just a lot of fun to see Hot Dog Water show up before she ever does anything really. Or Skipper Shelton, just show up every once in a while and do something weird. And then have seven brothers or something? He was, when I was designing him, Tony kept making me make him bigger. He’s like “No, no. Bigger.” And I was like “How big do you want him?” And he’s like “Do like Marv from Sin City.” And I was like “Oh my gosh, okay. Can that exist in this world?” But I guess it does, so.

AL: And Mystery Incorporated was really the first show to have a lot of those recurring supporting characters, and really just an overarching storyline. What was it like to be able to work on that show?

DJW: I’m so glad I worked on this version of Scooby, I think this was the one out of all of them that I would’ve picked to work on, if I had my choice. And I’m just super glad that it worked out that way. It was just so much fun, I love world-building, you know. And Crystal Cove is its own little world. It’s so full of, every little thing is designed so cool, like down to the phones and the hair dryers and you know, all the cars on the road. That’s all Jerry Richardson, he was our prop designer and he did all that cool stuff. The locket. Just love all the little details in everything.

AL: If you were ever able to work on another Scooby show in the future, would you take it?

DJW: I don’t know. I don’t know if I’d want to do another series, because I don’t know how it could ever top the experience I had on Mystery Incorporated. I just don’t think it could get better than that. But, if they wanted to do a Mystery Incorporated vs. Teen Titans I would be there in a heartbeat. 

AL: Speaking of that, you sent me the Teen Titans as Mystery Incorporated, where did that come from?

DJW: That’s from, we did these little shorts for a short-lived Saturday morning series on Cartoon Network called DC Nation. And there were little shorts and they did a sort of sequel series to Teen Titans called the New Teen Titans, and there was an episode where Mad Mod was kind of sending them back in time, and when they got to the 70s, that’s what they looked like. 

Teen Titans as Mystery Inc. Photo courtesy Derrick J. Wyatt.

AL: There’s a lot of fans, I think Mystery Incorporated is maybe either a love it or hate it show, but there’s a lot of fans that really want a third season. Would that ever be possible at all?

DJW: Like them starting over from scratch and stuff or would it be like… I don’t know. Huh. Interesting, I don’t know. I’ve never really thought about that, I’ve only thought about what else you could do within the confines of like season one or season two. I don’t know, it would be interesting. Maybe they could do like a direct to video movie or even a graphic novel or something to kind of show what happened.

AL: Were there ever any characters that you designed that didn’t actually make it into the show, or did everyone get in?

DJW: Oh yeah. There was a fake Shmoo I designed for the Mystery Solvers, in case they wanted to do the, I don’t even remember what the team with the Shmoo was. Seems like they were yet another bunch of teenagers with some boys and girls in them. But he was like half Shmoo and half Gloop and Gleep from The Herculoids so he wasn’t legally the Shmoo, but they didn’t end up using it.

AL: Why do you think that a cartoon about a mystery solving dog has held up for over 50 years now?

DJW: I just think that the character designs and the character performances from the voice actors are so iconic, you know. They really resonated for some reason. And just that fact of having a group of tight knit friends like that, I think that’s really what it’s all about, you know, you can’t pick your family but you can pick your friends, kind of thing. I don’t know, something like that.

AL: What was your favourite thing about being able to work on a Scooby-Doo project?

DJW: I really liked designing Fred. And drawing Fred in new outfits and stuff. That was a lot of fun. And he became my favourite character in the series.

AL: Oh, did you do the uniforms in the Humungonauts episode?

DJW: Yes, I did that. Yes. I love those uniforms so much. That’s a whole other reason they should’ve had action figures, just to make those. I think they’re sort of like part Macross, and like part Speed Racer or something, I can’t remember exactly what I was looking at. It was some 80s anime I think.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Unmasked History of Scooby Doo Episode 13: Roger Eschbacher

September 11, 2020 alawlr4597 Episodes 1 Comment

In the second episode for September’s Mystery Incorporated themed month, Alexa speaks with writer Roger Eschbacher. Roger wrote five episodes of Mystery Incorporated, including Battle of the Humungonauts, and The Hodag of Horror. 

Highlights of this episode include:

1- What it was like writing for a darker, overarching Scooby-Doo show.

2- Which character of the gang, and which supporting characters were Roger’s favourites to write.

3- Some specific questions about the episodes Roger wrote for Mystery Incorporated.

Make sure to listen to the episode above! Or you can read a transcript of the interview here.

If you want to follow Roger, you can find him on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or at www.rogereschbacher.com.

Roger also sent me the script for The Hodag of Horror (Mystery Incorporated, season 2, episode 5), which you can read below!

Scooby-Doo-Hodag-of-Horror

Interview Transcript – Episode 13: Roger Eschbacher

September 11, 2020 alawlr4597 Episodes 0 Comments

Not able to listen to the full episode? Don’t worry! You can still read the full transcript of the interview with Roger Eschbacher below. Or click here to listen to the podcast episode.

AL: What’s your relationship to Scooby-Doo, did you watch at all?

RE: Yeah, I watched it growing up, the original series, and various other versions along the way. When I heard that there was a possible opening for a writer on Mystery Incorporated I was like “Yes,” and I called my agents and talked to them to have them get me in on a meeting with Mitch (Watson). The meeting went well, he knew me from my work at the Groundlings, which is a comedy theatre up here in Los Angeles. Next thing I know, I’m writing scripts.

AL: How did you come to write for animation to begin with?

RE: Once again that’s through the Groundlings. Basically, a friend of mine who was in the Groundlings with me, named Mark Steen, was working on a show called Aaahh!!! Real Monsters which was a Klasky Csupo project that was on Nickelodeon. It was about sort of the alternate world or alternative world of monsters that sort of exist within our everyday world. Mark Steen was the head writer, the story editor I should say on Aaahh!!! Real Monsters and he asked me if I wanted to pitch some ideas, and I did. Then I started getting into it and writing animation scripts. I’ve always loved animation, especially like early anime like Speed Racer and Astro Boy and all that, so that sort of reveals my age, but I’ve always loved that stuff. So when I had an opportunity to get into it, I jumped at the chance and have been doing it ever since.

AL: Was writing animation something you had ever considered as a career?

RE: Not up until that point. I’d been trying to get into writing sitcoms since I came out here in Los Angeles. But it’s just one of those things where it kind of pays to keep your eyes and ears open, and even if it’s something that you weren’t necessarily thinking you could do, or even had an inclination to do it, you know, Mark mentioned this, and I thought “Whoa, that’s pretty interesting, it sounds like a lot of fun.” And I do love watching animation, to this day I enjoy it. So the right thing to do, from my perspective, was to kind of just go “Alright, well I’ll give this a shot.” And I went along and I’ve been enjoying the ride ever since.

AL: Was there ever a specific moment when you realized that you wanted to be a writer?

RE: I would say like back in grade school. I’m also an author, but back in grade school, early grade school, I started reading, I’m a (voracious) reader. I read a lot, and I always have. I don’t know, for me anyway, when you start reading a lot, that led me to want to maybe someday, sort of a pipedream, but someday like write a book. So I eventually got into that. I always had sort of an inclination to be a writer and when I came out here to Los Angeles, I’m originally from St. Louis, and when I came out here, I was almost immediately trying to get work as a writer on different shows. I don’t know, I’ve always had that inclination, but I would say that it started out with me liking to read books a whole lot.

AL: When it comes to writing shows, what’s the difference between writing for animation and writing for a live action sitcom?

RE: I would say the main difference is that in animation you have to make sure you pretty much describe anything that you actually want to see. ‘Cause you know if you think about it, with live action, the actors have been hired to interpret characters and interpret the script, and they’ll actually add a lot of their own to that. But in terms of animation, if you think about it, basically you have artists sitting at their desks, basically looking at the script and if it’s not on the script, I mean the artists are so talented that work in animation, they’ll add stuff if there’s gaps and all that, but it really helps if you, as the writer, are very diligent in describing what needs to be seen on the screen. So I would say in a script, the descriptions part of it, the action, tends to be a little more drawn out than definitely like a screenplay, but also even for a standard sitcom, the descriptions in sitcoms and in film are generally, unless it’s a high action thing where it’s very specific, let’s say like a Marvel universe sort of thing, the descriptions are pretty short because the interpretation of the descriptions and of the scenes are left largely to the director and the actors.

AL: When it came to Scooby-Doo specifically, were you given a premise for the episode before writing it, or did you get to kind of run wild and come up with the monster and things like that?

RE: A little bit of both. I would say, if we’re going to split percentages, I would say like 10 percent of the time, 15 percent of the time it was stuff that I pitched, like a story idea or whatever. The guys who were running the show, Mitch (Watson), Michael (Ryan), Tony (Cervone), and Spike (Brandt) and all those guys, really, this Scooby series in particular was really well thought out by people like Mitch ahead of time because they not only had a sort of monster du jour, but they also had a series wide arc that was spread out over two seasons. So they really kind of had to know, they knew where they wanted to go and so they would give sort of a general premise, and then I would, I or the other writers, would come into the office and we would work out the beats of that particular episode. Then I would go away and sort of clean up an outline and send it back, and they would tweak something and send it back. Then once I was given the go to write the script, it was pretty much all on me. Those guys are so funny, I mean, they contributed mightily to dialogue and all that stuff, but a lot of the fun sort of dialogue and little takes, the characters’ takes on the kind of stuff that was going on, and a lot of the story, the actual story, the nuts and bolts of the story were left to me, and the other writers too. So it was actually one of the most fun shows I’ve ever written on in that regard. We were able to put a lot of, they were totally open to a lot of smart aleck jokes and what have you. So it was a great fun show to work on.

AL: And what were some of the ideas that you had pitched?

RE: Oh, it was mostly stuff early on, again, it’s been a while since we did the show, so if I had to come up with something in particular, I could go back through the scripts and go “Oh yeah, that was mine.” But I would say it was pretty much a collaborative effort, but a lot of the actual story, for reasons that I mentioned, that it was a two seasons series wide arc, came out of those guys.

AL: What was it like to write for a Scooby-Doo show that did have that overarching story across the two seasons?

RE: Personally, I loved it. I thought it was really cool that they gave a lot of thought to that, you know, obviously ahead of time, that’s how it was pitched. I thought that it was a lot fun that they ended up doing something like that. It was a little out of the ordinary, as I’m sure you’d agree, for what a standard Scooby series might be like, and I really appreciated the amount of thought and the storytelling that went into that. I write science-fiction and fantasy novels, it’s sort of my side hustle, so I appreciate a good sort of deeper story and you know, don’t get me wrong, I love the monster of the day angle, those are always a lot of fun to write, but I really enjoyed that there was sort of a deeper level to this series than is normally the case with other series. Not a knock against the other series, it is what it is, I mean, that’s the beauty of Scooby-Doo, but I really did enjoy the sort of deeper aspect of a series wide arc. That was actually sort of the beauty of it, in my opinion, and I’m biased because this is the series I worked on, but I think it’s the best, personally, no offense to anyone else but I think it’s the best. But that was really sort of like the fun, cool aspect of it from my perspective, is that they had worked out a lot of this stuff and were able to tell a story with, in my opinion, great depth. Like I was saying with the books and stuff like that, you kind of have to dig a little bit deeper with the story if you’re going to plot out a novel. It’s got to be a little bit deeper. And I think those guys accomplished that just on an amazing level.

AL: In the episodes that you had written, there were a couple interesting reveals, like in the Hodag they find the piece of the Planispheric Disk in the cheese, and the Night on Haunted Mountain they have that Spanish conquistador story revealed. What was it like to be able to take a stab at writing that?

RE: It was a lot of fun because like I said, we would go, we writers, or I would go in to have that big session where we sort of beat everything out, and it was really cool to discover that in my particular episode a certain piece was revealed. The sort of fun challenge to that was working it into the monster of the day sort of challenge, because the two were often connected. So it was just fun to use your brain to like see how that was going to work out, but also just to learn from them that at this point, this piece of the disk is uncovered and the gang have found another one. So I thought that was pretty cool, to be honest.

AL: How do you keep the voices of the characters consistent?

RE: That’s, people like Mitch (Watson) and Michael (Ryan), that’s sort of what their job is. Their job is to keep track of that kind of stuff. In terms of just writing for different characters, you’ve got five well-known characters that everybody knows how they talk. And everybody knows that every dialogue point that Shaggy has, he has to say “Like,” in there somewhere. So you kind of pick up the show and with those guys, having our backs, having the writers backs in terms of what they want, keeping the characters’ voices consistent, it’s actually a lot of fun. I kind of describe it as like, I’ve had the benefit of writing for like Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck and then Scooby-Doo Mystery Incorporated, and for me it’s like writing for animation royalty, as kind of odd as that sounds. But I really believe that it’s like a privilege to write for those characters. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and to answer your question directly, those guys, the story editors, that’s their job, is to make sure that everything tracks towards what we would expect from the characters, even new ones. It all sort of fits in with the tone of the show.

AL: Out of the gang specifically, who’s your favourite character to write for?

RE: I really liked Velma. I thought Velma was a great character, she’s my favourite character. Beyond her, Shaggy’s awesome and I don’t know, they’re all awesome. They all have their fun moments and that was kind of a cool thing, like going a little deeper on Daphne let’s say, and her sister and what that family was like, and so what kind of reaction they would have, a little snarky-ness and all that. I would say my favourite was Velma, followed closely by Shaggy. 

AL: Out of the really cool supporting characters in the episodes you had written, was there one that you particularly enjoyed writing?

RE: Let’s see. I liked the guy, his last name was Shepherd, in the Hodag of Horror. He was sort of a huckster who brought the traveling curio show into town, Gene Shepherd was his name. I enjoyed that character quite a bit. But there’s a lot of fun characters, you know. The brothers in the Battle of the Humungonauts. I guess the villains. I also liked Sheriff Stone, he was a lot of fun because he had so many conflicting urges, that was always a fun character to write.

AL: For the minor characters that would be featured in just episodes that you had written, were you able to come up with the names for them or was that already decided?

RE: As I recall, it was a combination of both. Like in Hodag of Horror, the waiter, I think his name was Umberto or something. As memory serves, and as people listening now know my memory is somewhat sketchy, I was able to come up with names like that.

AL: Out of the episodes that you had written for the show, do you have a favourite?

RE: I would have to say it would be the Hodag of Horror. That’s the one that I use, as an indicator of that, that’s the one that, when I’m going for a job, and my agent will send out a list of “Well this is what he has available,” the most requested are my Scooby scripts. So out of those, I’m asked by my agent to pick the one that I think would be the best sample, and I always pick Hodag because it’s number one, pure nuts, but it’s also a truly pure Mystery Incorporated sort of story and I think I served the main characters well, and present them in the best light possible. So that’s the one that I pick to send out as a writing sample.

AL: When it came to writing an episode, what was your specific process?

RE: Well, I get word that they wanted to give me another assignment, which was always very cool. Then I would go in and meet with those guys, and like I said, I’d have the premise ahead of time, whether it was supplied by me or by them, and then we would go through and we would beat it out, in terms of this has to happen, we’re going to reveal this part of the disk in this episode, and that sort of thing. And then once I had that happen, I would go home and I would write all that stuff up, taking copious notes, I would write all that out and come up with sort of a first draft of an outline and then send that in. Then it would go back and forth maybe a time or two, and then once I had been given the go, the greenlight to go to script, start writing the script, I’d basically do that. I come up with a first draft based on that, and often there’d be little snippets of dialogue that we as a group came up with or I came up with in the meeting, and those would be inserted. And I would write a rough draft or a first draft and I’d send it in. Then we’d get notes, first from the creative team, Mitch (Watson) and all those guys. Then once that happened, I would adjust to their notes and refine it, and maybe do another draft or two, finishing up with what is called a polished draft, which means that most of the rough edges have been knocked off of the story so to speak, and the polished draft is just making everything smooth and making sure everything is connected well and there’s good transitions and good dialogue and all that. Then that would be it. So I would say, you know, a rough outline, a polished outline, a first, second draft and then a polished draft.

AL: Were there ever any challenges to keeping the darker tone that Mystery Incorporated has, while also still inserting a lot of the comedy and lightheartedness of Scooby-Doo?

RE: No, not for me anyway. I grooved on all that stuff, I thought it was awesome. I liked that this particular series had a little bit of a darker tone to it. There were consequences, you know, that were kind of serious and I liked that, in that it was a true mystery with peril, with actual real peril in the storyline. So that didn’t bother me at all, I actually thrived on that, I loved it.

AL: I have a couple of episode specific questions. For the Battle of the Humungonauts, what was it like to write that relationship feud between Velma, Shaggy and Scooby?

RE: That was fun. I enjoyed that. In all the series there’s always a little bit of that going on, but I think it was sort of highlighted in this particular series. So when there was conflict, it was fun to do it and I would say the underlying note to all of that, is that at the end of the day, even though they were sort of really hardcore not getting along, there was always, you knew that there was underneath it all, there was always affection and loyalty. So I don’t know, I enjoyed writing that.

AL: Was it your idea for Fred’s solution to the feud to be group uniforms?

RE: That sounds like something I would do, so I’m going to say yes. I’m going to say 85% yes.

AL: In this episode specifically, Mr. E has a riddle that he gives them, but more broadly, what was it like to be able to kind of craft those Mr. E clues?

RE: Again, I would say those characters, characters like Mr. E who were sort of the purview mostly of Mitch (Watson) and the other creatives on the show. So I got my cues on a lot of that stuff from them. And that was done obviously to sort of keep the voice of the show consistent, and you know, those characters weren’t necessarily all over the series, but it was really important that when they showed up, what they contributed to a particular episode or to the series in general was very clear and consistent.

AL: Moving on to the Wild Brood, how did you come up with the gag where Sheriff Stone wanders into a closet in Daphne’s house?

RE: Again, that sounds like one of mine, so I will take an 85-90% credit for that. And how I came up with it, I don’t know. How I write in general is I’m kind of, I have all my information that I’ve gotten story-wise and all that from everybody, and then I kind of do it in sort of a stream of consciousness way. I have my skills that I apply to it, and if I went back and looked at the actual script, I might be able to tell you something, but offhand, I don’t know. I’m sorry, I hope this is not disappointing to you or your listeners.

AL: And in the beginning of the Siren’s Song, the episode starts with Fred and Daphne walking through the museum and they come across statues of Flim Flam and Scrappy. Do you remember how that scene came about?

RE: I think it was just looking for what would be in that museum, and just sort of going back and almost like a sense of tribal memory of like stuff that had happened in previous series and stuff. I hope I’m not stepping on any toes here, but I remember specifically Scrappy being, well, not one of my favourite characters, let’s put it that way. So I just remember thinking about a way to sort of get a little dig at Scrappy. I don’t know, I’ve described him before as being sort of like the Jar Jar Binks of the Scooby series, sort of this bizarre character that some people love, but not everybody likes.

AL: All of your episodes have so many great lines that have occasionally turned into the odd meme, like Velma’s response with the chick mustache, and Scooby’s questions about love sequence. Did you ever expect that lines like that would get that kind of reaction?

RE: I’m always very pleasantly surprised when anything like that happens from any of my scripts from any show that I worked on. But I mean on this one in particular, I consider it an honor when that kind of stuff gets repeated. It’s so much fun, like I said, for me, the thrill was writing for this animation royalty, and so coming up with lines that fit totally into their character, ideally, and are fun and repeatable to me is just a real super nice kind of bonus.

AL: And just generally, why do you think that a cartoon about a mystery solving dog has held up for so long?

RE: Boy, I don’t know. That’s great. I just think over the years, there’s been some, even with some of the stuff that’s sort of campy, sort of traditional Scooby stuff, I think that whether it’s the voice acting, or the writing, or the direction, or the expectations that the audience has, that at the end of an episode the mask is going to be pulled and the town whatever, curmudgeon is revealed as the true villain. I think all that stuff is just, it’s just sort of a fun thing that people have sort of grooved on it. As to specifically, I mean, why that would have gone on, I know like early on, when they pitched that stuff, I know it was because Hanna-Barbera had a great track record with getting shows that kids liked to watch on the air. I know that they had probably somewhat of an easier time pitching that sort of thing. But in this case, a lot of that show, I mean for years and years and years, sort of the same formula repeating itself, I think that half of it has to do with the sort of like appeal of something that you recognize and you look forward to and how are they going to do it in this particular episode.

AL: And what was it like for you to hop on to writing a show that you had grown up watching?

RE: It was so cool. Like I said, I heard about it, and then I got my agents to go in and get it so I could go in and meet with Mitch (Watson). Like I said, the meeting went well and I got hired. And to me, that was like, talk about thrilling moments in animation, for me, it was one of my thrilling moments. It was so cool to be involved in that show that I basically grew up watching the original series. The Saturday morning cartoon thing was in force and every Saturday morning watching a Scooby episode was pretty darn cool, many years later, being actually involved in the making of it. And same for Bugs Bunny and the Warner characters, very cool.

AL: Is there anything else you wanted to add at all?

RE: I would say just in general, it’s been a dream come true that I was not expecting to happen that I’m an animation writer. So many great shows and stuff I’m working on now, stuff I’ve worked on recently, Scooby, stuff prior to all that, Klasky Csupo stuff, all that. I love writing animation, and I always feel lucky and privileged when I get the chance to do it.

AL: Just before we end, do you have any recent projects you’d like to promote?

RE: Yeah. I’ve been working on this show called Hello Ninja, which is a pre-school show. It’s about these two little kids, Wesley and Georgie, and they sort of work through life using ninja ethics codes to solve their everyday problems, like the first time they ride around the block on their bicycles, that sort of thing. It’s a lot of fun and above all it’s not preachy, but it’s just a lot of fun. There’s a bit of a message, but it’s not too heavy-handed. So I’ve been working on that. And then I mentioned it before, I write science-fiction and fantasy novels, and I’ve been doing that for years and I just love doing it. I’ve got a couple books coming out that will be out before the end of the year. So yeah, I keep busy. I like to write, so I like to keep busy with that.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Unmasked History of Scooby Doo Episode 12: Mitch Watson

September 4, 2020 alawlr4597 Episodes 0 Comments

This episode marks the first of a month full of Mystery Incorporated themed interviews! To kick off the month, Alexa chats with producer and head writer of the show, Mitch Watson.

Highlights of this episode include:

1- Some fun behind the scenes stories from the show.

2- What it was like to develop an overarching story for Scooby-Doo, and discussions about the timeline.

3- Chatting about the development of the characters, especially about the direction they went with Velma and Fred. Also, how setting the show in one town gave them the ability to give the gang parents, and to develop so many other recurring characters.

Make sure to listen to the episode above! Or you can read a transcript of the interview here.

Mitch generously sent me some great photos of the cast and crew from Mystery Incorporated, which you can take a look through below! As usual, they’re watermarked to ensure they don’t start circling around the Internet without credit, since Mitch was so kind to send them to me.

Matthew Lillard (Shaggy), Mindy Cohn (Velma), and Michael Ryan (story editor). Photo courtesy Mitch Watson.
Mitch Watson with Matthew Lillard (Shaggy). Photo courtesy Mitch Watson.
Grey Griffin (Daphne) doing ADR. Photo courtesy Mitch Watson.
Grey Griffin (Daphne) doing ADR. Photo courtesy Mitch Watson.
Harlan Ellison. Photo courtesy Mitch Watson.
Mitch Watson with Harlan Ellison. Photo courtesy Mitch Watson.
Udo Kier (Professor Pericles). Photo courtesy Mitch Watson.
Mitch Watson with Udo Kier (Professor Pericles). Photo courtesy Mitch Watson.
Mitch Watson, Tony Cervone, Mindy Cohn (Velma), George Segal (Peter Trickell), Collette Sunderman, Spike Brandt, Matthew Lillard (Shaggy), Grey Griffin (Daphne), and Frank Welker (Scooby and Fred). Photo courtesy Mitch Watson.
Mitch Watson, Harlan Ellison, Victor Cook, and Jeffrey Combs (H.P. Hatecraft). Photo courtesy Mitch Watson.
Richard McGonagle (Ed Machine), Dave Allen (Dr. Rick Yantz), Matthew Lillard (Shaggy), Joe Holt (Hugh Dederdee), Mindy Cohn (Velma), Paul Rugg, Frank Welker (Scooby and Fred), Grey Griffin (Daphne), Marion Ross (Grandma Moonbeam), Collette Sunderman, Jason Wyatt, Bianca Olivencia, and Mitch Watson. Photo courtesy Mitch Watson.
Bianca Olivencia, Mitch Watson, Collette Sunderman, James Hong (Chen), and Victor Cook. Photo courtesy Mitch Watson.
Udo Kier and Mitch Watson, with a chair Udo made as a gift for the birth of Mitch’s first daughter. Photo courtesy Mitch Watson.
Grey Griffin (Daphne), and Matthew Lillard (Shaggy). Photo courtesy Mitch Watson.
Udo Kier (Professor Pericles) acting like his character. Photo courtesy Mitch Watson.
Dan Krall, Derrick J. Wyatt, Victor Cook, Jerry Richardson, Mitch Watson, Jason Wyatt. Photo courtesy Mitch Watson.
Collette Sunderman, Victor Cook, Michael J. Anderson, Mitch Watson, and Michael Ryan. Photo courtesy Mitch Watson.
Frances Conroy (Angie Dinkley) and Collette Sunderman. Photo courtesy Mitch Watson.
Victor Cook, Michael Ryan, Collette Sunderman, Mitch Watson, Tony Cervone, and Jay Bastian. Photo courtesy Mitch Watson.
Michael Ryan, Matthew Lillard (Shaggy), Mitch Watson, Grey Griffin (Daphne), Kate Higgins (Mayor Nettles), Collette Sunderman, Jason Wyatt, Martha Quinn, Quinton Flynn, and Tony Cervone. Photo courtesy Mitch Watson.
Tony Cervone in front of the season 2 episode arcs. Photo courtesy Mitch Watson.

Interview Transcript – Episode 12: Mitch Watson

September 4, 2020 alawlr4597 Episodes 0 Comments

Not able to listen to the full episode? Don’t worry! You can still read the full transcript of the interview with Mitch Watson below. Or click here to listen to the podcast episode.

AL: What’s your relationship to Scooby-Doo, did you grow up watching?

MW: Yeah, I mean, the originals were on. I probably watched, ’cause they were on before I was born, so I probably watched reruns. I remember the original pretty well, and I remember a few iterations of it here and there, but I definitely cannot say that I was like some massive Scooby-Doo fan before I started working on the show, which is why I ended up working on the show. In fact, I think they probably chose, you know, I think I probably was asked to do it, or one of the reasons they approached me to do it was because I really wasn’t like some super fan, you know, so I could take it, look at it from a different angle and maybe come up with something that they hadn’t thought of before.

I was definitely not one of these people that’s like, “Oh my God, everything is canon and you can’t do this because they would never do that.” And in fact, once the show was done and it aired, there were many people who were diehard Scooby-Doo fans, who did not like the show because they felt that it did things that went against canon and blah, blah, blah. My feeling about that was there were so many iterations of Scooby-Doo at that point that there really was no canon. I mean, I guess you could go back to the original and say that that was canon or whatnot, but the problem I have with saying something is canon is you sort of box yourself in, and then you stop yourself from actually exploring new ways of taking the show or the subject matter, because you’re so hamstrung by rules and stuff – that don’t even really exist by the way, that have just sort of been created out in the ether. So I think when you take over a franchise like Scooby it helps to have reverence, but not be so reverent that it keeps you from exploring and trying to do something new with it.

AL: What was it like to come onto a show where the franchise does have those loyalist fans that are kind of obsessed with what is, and isn’t canon?

MW: You know, it was my first experience with that. And then right after Scooby I did my version of Batman and I experienced it more on that show than I did on Scooby. On Scooby, you know, we got a lot of, it was really funny. The most pushback we got, I think in the entire series from the fans was all about Velma. It was about how we were portraying Velma. And we were doing, we had a very specific – and I would always respond if anybody interviewed me, I would go like “You don’t quite see the whole picture of what we’re doing with Velma, but when you see the whole picture, I think you’re going to appreciate what we were doing.” And some, maybe they did. And maybe they didn’t because I never followed up with them, but that was – we got a ton of feedback on Velma for the way that she was acting towards Shaggy and the fact that we were actually showing them having a relationship and, and blah, blah, blah. And then people are saying, “Oh, we don’t like the way Velma was acting towards Shaggy.” And we just held our tongues because we knew what we were doing. And we knew that it was going to pay off. It’s somewhere down the line in the second season, but we weren’t allowed to talk about it really, because you know, we were setting up Velma to be a character who was sort of figuring out her own sexuality and coming to grips with the fact that, you know, she’s gay. And part of that was to show, you know, her reactions to Shaggy and how he wasn’t giving her what she felt she needed. And then ultimately she realizes that it’s not so much about Shaggy. It’s more about her. I mean, she was looking in the wrong place. And so then we have that, there’s a mermaid episode. And then we start, that’s where she really gets the first inkling that, “Oh, wait a minute. Maybe guys are not what I’m looking for.” And then we introduced Hot Dog Water. And then by the end of the series, we were hoping that it would be pretty clear that if the show goes on, or whatever happens in their lives, that Hot Dog Water and Velma are together, you know, they’ve found each other. And so Velma is finally content with who she is. So we knew that going all the way through, but we sort of had to endure all the attacks because we weren’t allowed to talk about it. It was not something, there was no way at that time. ‘Cause this was like, like I said, 10 years ago or so. They were not going to let us portray Velma as gay. Period. So, you know, we had to figure out a different way to do it. And that was how we did it. And some people got it and some people didn’t. So anyways, that sort of answers that part of the question. That was the most pushback we got. Everybody fucking flipped out about, first off with Shaggy and Velma making out in the first episode I think. I remember, even the executives – because the show was originally done for British or European Cartoon Network, not the United States. And I remember they wigged out, they were like, what are you, what? They just flipped out that we were doing this. We were like, well, no, no, no, it’s going to be fine.

And then what happened was the executive that we were dealing with in England, he either quit or got fired. We never quite found out what happened. All we knew was we just suddenly didn’t have an executive on the show anymore. And for those of you unfamiliar with how shows work, every show has at least one or two executives on it. They’re the ones who represent the studio. And so they make sure that you’re maintaining, you know, the brand or whatnot and they give you notes. Well without an executive on a show, we can pretty much do whatever we want. You know, there wasn’t, it was, there was no teacher watching over us. So because that guy lost his job, I think by, right around the second episode, we were without an executive for a good 10, 12 episodes.

And so we were able to get a lot of stuff in that we normally would not have been able to get in. And then an executive came on the show and stopped a bunch of that. So I remember one of the biggest things I think that happened when the executive came back on the show was the reintroduction of Scooby snacks in the show because I had banned them. I said, “I don’t want to do it. I don’t want this to become a show about a dog eating a bunch of biscuits.” I said, you know, well, it’ll show up periodically, but I don’t want to make this like the whole fucking Scooby snacks show. ‘Cause a lot of the old, the other iterations of the show had been obsessive about Scooby snacks. And like, okay, great. But they’ve done that. Let’s dial that back a little bit. And then when the executive came in, he dialled it right back up again so. We battled back and forth over these very important life questions of how much Scooby snacks to show in an episode. But anyways, that’s my long winded answer to whatever the question was that I have now completely forgotten.

AL: Coming back to talking about what you could or couldn’t do with Velma, it’s been circling around on social media lately that Tony had actually confirmed that Velma was a lesbian and there’s still so many people that are like, “Whoa, that wasn’t obvious.” What’s your reaction to that?

MW: Well, to me, it’s obvious if you actually, I mean, I guess it’s obvious if you’re looking for it. To us, it was very obvious, especially after the mermaid episode and then also the final shots of Velma and Hot Dog Water on the bed together at the end. I mean, to us, it was crystal clear. My response is like, come on, really. I mean, I think now if you did it, it would almost be like, of course, you know, and expected and encouraged. But 10 years ago you just, even then you couldn’t do that kind of thing. So, you know, a lot of what we did on Mystery Incorporated was we would just go through the blogs and the Reddit posts and anything else to see what fans were saying. And so there were things that ended up in the show that were based on theories fans had, which was a lot of fun for us.

So we were very well aware of what was going on in terms of how people felt about Velma being gay or not gay – we just sort of ignored it. I think we got a big chuckle out of it ‘cause we knew what we were doing and we were doing it from the very start. And once we started doing it, there was no going back and we were pretty happy with the decisions we’d made. So it was, it was alternately like annoying that no one was sort of getting it, but also very, very fun to see how angry people would get with each other. And I think that’s why Tony finally said, “Look. It’s been 10 years, god damn it. She’s not bi, okay, she’s gay.” And so he just wanted to make that point. And then he immediately texted me after he did it. And he said, “Dude, just so you know Velma is gay is trending on Twitter.” And I’m like, “What? Oh, who let that cat out of the bag.” And he’s like, “Well, I posted this thing.” I’m like, alright, cool. Finally. I was wondering when that would finally come out, but anyway, so I think, what was your question? Your question was the fan reaction to all of that, what was my response to it? You know, I had been, at that point, it wasn’t, you know, not my first rodeo. So I was familiar with fan feedback and I had sort of built up a bit of a thick skin to it because of, you know, the thing about the internet and the interesting thing about writing, especially animation, and the fact that responses are immediate and you’re not, they’re not showing up in a letter in your mailbox. They’re literally showing up seconds after the show. ‘Cause I used to watch the show while watching some other – they used to live blog. People would live blog while watching the show. And so I was watching criticisms in real time and I got a big kick out of it, but you know, it never bugged me really. I enjoyed it. I always enjoyed it. In fact, the more hostile, the better. I got to a point where I really, really started to like all the anger, you know, I found it very entertaining because I thoroughly believe that if you’re going to do anything that will even remotely be remembered in any way, it has to offend somebody. If you do something that’s completely, you know, that everybody across the board just loves it and thinks it’s wonderful, that means, yes, you’ve probably created something entertaining, but you didn’t create something that sort of pushed the boundaries of whatever you were doing. And until you do that people are just going to be like “Yeah, it’s great,” and then move on. But if you can push them, push their buttons in some way, then they remember you. So I always feel that if you’re going to do something, you need to get both, you should have both negative and positive reactions. And that means all right, great. You did something that caused people to have a particular feeling about it, which means you must’ve done something right. So, I mean, Mystery Incorporated was a very interesting show for Tony and I, because you know, while we were doing it we had no idea how it was going to be received. And we got a lot of mixed messages from the studio. Warner Bros. was totally behind it, but Cartoon Network never liked the series. They didn’t like it at all. And they kept pulling it off the schedule and putting it in different places, and it became very hard for people to find. It wasn’t until it showed up in its entirety on Netflix, that people really started to get behind it. And Tony and I would say it all the time, we were like, “Yeah, maybe nobody’s going to appreciate it now. But five years from now people will appreciate it.” Then it actually happened a little quicker than that, but there was a certain point of working on the show where we were kind of like, alright, we’re not going to get, we’re not getting any support from Cartoon Network. They’re not going to promote the show. We’ve just got to accept the fact that for right now, people just aren’t going to ever get to see it, really see it. But that’s not going to stop us from doing what we wanted to do. With the hopes that somewhere down the line, somebody would finally discover the show and watch it and pay attention, but it was always a bit of a bummer that Cartoon Network just never really got behind it. They always thought it was too dark and they thought it was too weird, and this, by the way, this is all stuff I heard second-hand. And one other rumor that I heard was that it premiered at around the same time as Adventure Time. And the ratings – this I do know was true. The ratings for Mystery Incorporated were better than the ratings for Adventure Time in the beginning. And then they pulled us off the schedule because, and this is, I don’t want to get in the weeds on this. There was, there’s always been a rivalry, or there was a rivalry between Cartoon Network and WB, even though they’re owned by the same company, they function completely separately. And there was a rivalry, you know, like Cartoon Network wanted to prove that they were the better studio, I think. And Warner Bros. wanted to show that they were the better studio. And so the trouble was that all of Warner Bros.’ stuff ultimately ended up on Cartoon Network. And we were at the whim of Cartoon Network’s programming people. So, if they wanted to tank a show, they could tank it. And they pretty much did, in my opinion. Only in the United States though, it became a major success for, I think, two years running all over the world. And then there was a big backlash where they asked, they wanted to know why it was successful everywhere else in the world, but not in the United States. And somebody finally said, well, they pointed out the fact that it had been pulled off the schedule 13 times, and moved to different spots. And then nobody was told about it. Cartoon Network also used to do trailers for the show that literally would reveal who the villain was in the episode. They would cut trailers together. And at the end of the trailer, they would do the unmasking. We’re like, what are you doing? What you’re literally, you are actually just giving away the ending of the show. That was at the point, we were kind of like, are they… are they sabotaging the show? So I don’t know if they were or not. Ultimately, I’m sure they would say they weren’t, but it’s hard to understand why they would do that and pull the show off the air 13 different times during the course of its run and with no real explanation why they were doing that. But ultimately it was, I think finally, everybody came around to the fact that, yeah, there was somebody at the top that just didn’t like the show and they were doing whatever they could to make sure that it didn’t succeed. And then it succeeded anyways. So that was very satisfying. But fortunately, like I said, Scooby ended up on Netflix and when it ended up on Netflix is when it exploded because everybody could watch the show in continuity. And that was the other thing they used to do. They used to put shows on in the wrong order. It was just really a nightmare, and there was nothing we could do about it because they were the platform we were on at the time. But that was what was great when it came out on Netflix. Cause then everybody could finally see the show as it was intended to be seen. And the rest is history.

AL: And what was it like to work on a Scooby show that really pushes the boundaries with having an overarching story and explorations of sexuality and things like that?

MW: Well, it was great, you know, that was our intention. When I was first approached to work on the show by Sam Register, he asked me to do it. And at first I was reticent because I was kinda like, you know, that show’s been allowed around for a long time. And I don’t know that there’s any, you know, I really wasn’t interested in just sort of doing another reboot version of the original series. And the original series, everybody loves the original series. The original series is iconic and I don’t want to just rehash it, but Sam was pretty open to, you know, us exploring new ways of doing it. So I sat down with Tony, actually it was Tony and myself, because I guess I think they’d been, they’d taken a couple of stabs at it already and nobody had sort of gotten it where they wanted to.

So then I met with Tony – and Tony and I didn’t know each other. And then we just started sitting down and hashing it out. And his partner Spike Brandt was also involved in the beginning, but then Spike sort of left to go work on, I think some Tom and Jerry stuff, but anyways. So then Tony and I just started hashing it out and we were both of the same belief that if we were going to do this, we were going to do it in the way that we would have liked to have seen the show. And so the first thing, you know, the first thing we tackled was, strangely enough, was how old are these kids? ‘Cause nobody knew. We would ask people, how old do you think they are? And then people well, some will go, “Well, they’re in college.” And then other people would go, “Well, they’re in high school.” And then other people go, “No, they’re in their twenties. They’re out of college.” Nobody knew. So we went into the archives. That’s one of the nice things about working for a place like Warner Bros. is they have all of this stuff archived. So all the original pitch materials from the original show are there and you can read them all. So we went back to the original material and read and discovered that, “Oh, they’re high school students,” and “Oh, they all basically live in the same town.” And the town, I don’t think the town had a name in the original materials. It certainly wasn’t Coolsville. But it was like La Jolla. They had described it as a beach side town. So, we were like, okay, and so we created the idea of Crystal Cove. And we said, instead of having them driving all over the place, so you never know where they live or see their parents. I said, “Let’s set them in a town. Let’s give them parents, let’s give them backstories. Let’s give them, you know, let’s add some dimensions to their characters. Let’s give them real personalities.” And then we had to figure out, well, what’s the deal with this town though? And Tony and I had been talking about the fact that there were places in the United States that were regarded as sort of supernatural towns, you could take these haunted tours. They were all over the place. So we said, what if we constructed a town that took all of the past history that we know about the show and just sort of up-ended it.

So this town has a history with all of the original monsters and ghosts that you saw in the original series, and they’ve figured out a way to monetize it. So, because part of the conceit of the show, if you really look at it is that adults cannot be trusted. That was like a theme that we wanted to impart. And so we created this idea, the idea of this town that’s completely run on supernatural tourism and every one of the kids’ parents are involved in some way. And the economy of this town is all based on it. And the only thing screwing it up for everybody is these four kids and their dog who keep disproving that these things are actually supernatural, which is driving tourism away. So the town hated the kids. They hated them. They were continually being arrested for sticking their nose in places they weren’t supposed to go, but they just couldn’t stop them. So that was so that became the conceit of the show. And then we said, but then why do they keep going? Why do they just keep going even when they’re being told not to do it. And then that was when we created the idea of the prior Mystery Incorporated that had vanished and Daphne finds that locket in the very first episode and that opens it up. And then we started layering the story, you know, with Angel Dynamite, that we would make her Angel Dynamite and Mr. E and all of these were all of these old members of the team, although you don’t find that out till later, you know, and they were all still circling Crystal Cove because they were all still looking for the treasure and that treasure being the Planispheric Disk.

So that would become our big story that we would tell throughout the season and then into the second season. And then in the second season my friend, Mike Ryan came on the show as a story editor because the first season was pretty much written by Tony and I, even though we hired other writers to come in and write them. And the way we would function was we would go to lunch and go, “Alright, this is the idea.” And we would start just bouncing ideas back and forth, and while we would do that, Tony would sketch whatever he wanted the monster to be or what he was thinking in his head. And I would just pepper him with questions and we would bat them back and forth until after a couple of lunches, we had the outline of a story and I would go off and write it. And then either I would write the episode or give the outline to a writer to do, but it was just us for the first season, because that was the way Warner Bros. worked. So we didn’t have a staff or anything. And then the second season, because I was also working on Batman at that time, we brought in [Mike]. And so the second season was created by Tony and myself and Mike Ryan, literally in late nights in Mike’s office, just pretty much just getting drunk and just coming up with our crazy notions that we wanted to do. And Mike was fun because Mike added the whole, really brought in the whole Nibiru aspect of the whole thing, ‘cause he was obsessed with that stuff. So we took what Tony and I had been doing, and then we just layered in that Nibiru stuff, which we had been flirting with ideas about it in the first season with the dog dies and all that stuff. And then it really came to fruition in the second season when Mike came aboard, because he had all this information about, you know, the lining up of the planets and – ‘cause that’s all based on real stuff. Real, you know, conspiracy theory stuff. So Mike was an integral part of the show in the second season in terms of pushing us in that direction. And then the other fun part of the show was the fact that we would put all these references, movie references and stuff. Like there’s an entire episode that’s devoted to Werner Herzog, you know, there’s an entire episode devoted to, the one with Harlan Ellison is all devoted to Lovecraft and stuff. So we were able, with that format, we were able to explore pretty much anything we wanted to do. I don’t even know if that answers your original question because I can’t remember what your original question was.

AL: And when you’re working on an overarching story like that, obviously you mentioned that the Nibiru stuff came in later, but how much did you know going into an episode? Did you have a huge timeline of when things would get revealed?

MW: Yeah, yeah, yeah. We had a board, I have pictures of it somewhere. Oh no, we had it all, it was all mapped out. We had two cork boards, you know, wall sized cork boards. So it basically filled two walls of my office with notecards that mapped the entire thing out. No, it was all planned. I mean, obviously new things would come up here and there that we would add in additionally, but it was pretty much all, like, we always knew that the show was going to be a prequel. So we knew what we were working towards. We always knew that the Planispheric Disk was always going to lead us to this sort of ancient evil that lived within the city. We, you know, there was the whole, in one of the episodes or later episodes when they talk about it, the town that fell into the sea, that’s all based on a real town. And a lot of stuff was based on like weird lore that we had heard too. But no, to answer your question, the only thing that was not mapped out, and it literally came from the fans was in I think the third episode, whatever the Gatorsburg episode was. Our art director, Dan Krall, who’s a fantastic guy and really created the look of the show. Dan put a gag in one of the backgrounds of the neon sign on the hotel, where they stay, where several of the words go out on the sign and it spells out “the dog dies.” And we did it as a gag. It was just a gag. And then we started to notice that on the blogs and stuff that people were really getting into that. They created all these conspiracy theories about what does that mean? Are they setting up that Scooby’s going to die? So there were tons of these theories and we thought, “Oh, we have to capitalize on this somehow.” So that theory of the dog dies, we worked it into the whole notion of that, the entity living beneath Crystal Cove, in order to become corporeal, needed an animal host. And that to us was our explanation for it needed a particular, particular type of talking animal host, which doesn’t really make a lot of sense, but you know. We were like, we’re never going to explain why Scooby can talk. We didn’t want to get into the weeds on that, but we were like, “Wouldn’t it be cool if the entity couldn’t become physical, unless it took over a host body.” And what if that host body ultimately was supposed to be Scooby’s. And so that was what led to the creation of all the different teams that all had different animals in them. So like the original team with Professor Pericles. And then in the second season we introduced all the other teams that also had animals. And, the idea was, and what we came up with was that the entity had been searching for centuries for an animal to take over. And every time it had failed. Something had always happened, the animal wasn’t worthy, or something got screwed up, like there’s the one with I think the monks and the pig or whatever, and that one got screwed up. And there’s the steampunk-y ones that had the chimp, that got screwed up. But then finally, Scooby was the one that Nibiru would actually be able to take over. And, you know, and the concept of Nibiru is a very Lovecraftian even though Nibiru is taken from a different thing, it was a very Lovecraftian concept. It was the idea of these, the elder gods coming down and, you know, possessing some sort of creature to take over the world, which is pretty much what happens at the end of the series with Professor Pericles. So that was really the big, that was really the only thing that wasn’t pre-planned, but came out by the third episode. By the third episode, we had sort of figured out how we were going to do that. But it was really fun to see the fans create an idea in their heads of a conspiracy. And then we just took that idea and ran with it. So I liked that kind of thing because, you know, it’s when people can get involved in a show to the extent that they’re like, “Oh, I wonder if this means that and this means that,” I always, I love to like validate some of those feelings, because they were pretty close to figuring out where we were going with it. And then they just took it a little one step further and we really liked that one step further. So we just decided to run with it when we heard the whole thing about the dog dies and it became a very integral part of the entire series. So thank you, fans.

AL: Just to delve a little bit deeper into the timeline, when you were naming the town, did you have that Spanish conquistador story in mind already?

MW: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We did. Again, because that story of the conquistadors and all that stuff was based on something that really happened. I forget where the town was, but there was, I think it happened in the 17th century. There was a town that literally everybody disappeared and I think it was a coastal town. I don’t know if that’s where we got the name. I don’t remember how the name of Crystal Cove came to be. It was always meant, you know, we were basing it on the original materials for the show, which had La Jolla pretty much, I think, as the town. So we wanted to create a La Jolla type town in Crystal Cove. I don’t know who came up with the name of Crystal Cove, but that’s what we came up with. But yeah, that conquistador story. That was always there. That was always part of the narrative, that the town itself had been built over some sort of ancient thing that had killed numerous times. Like the town disappeared essentially because of Nibiru, because of the evil. And a lot of other stuff had happened because of the evil and the show itself was just the latest iteration of the evil, trying to rise up and take control of an animal. So yeah, it was always there.

AL: And was the Planispheric Disk based on something real as well, or was that something that you had created?

MW: No, the Planispheric Disk was something that Tony and I came up with. I don’t, again, I don’t remember. We wanted to come up with this sort of intricate puzzle treasury kind of thing that when you put it together in the correct way, it would reveal things to you. I don’t know where that idea came from, but it was very much of a sort of Indiana Jones, Da Vinci Code kind of thing, where you use some sort of ancient artifact that if you could put the pieces together, I mean, it was partially for plot reasons too. We wanted a disc that could break apart so that we could, there’d be multiple episodes where you were trying to find it. And then once you did find it, we had to sort of figure out how, you know, you had to move it into a certain position, and it would show you clues or coordinates and stuff like that.

Like I was telling somebody the other day, you know, we hid a lot of Easter eggs in that show. And one of them that we had was, I believe it’s when the Planispheric Disk comes together and gives the longitude and latitude of where they’re supposed to go. That longitude and latitude is actually the coordinates of Sam Register’s office on the Warner Bros. lot. And we were always hoping that somebody would figure that out. I don’t think anybody ever did, but we did that, you know, we just kept thinking, we were like, “What are we going to do if somebody actually tries to pinpoint this and finds Sam’s office?” And we’re like, ah, who knows? We probably won’t be working here when that happens. And that was the truth, but there was a lot of stuff in there. Like I think the show Lost was still on the air when we were making that show. And if you were a fan of Lost, you know that there was this whole like number sequence that they used to use, that was sort of a red herring on that show. And we did the same thing. We it’s in several episodes where they find all these numbers and, you know, they’re all like, what the fuck are these numbers? And those numbers are the exact numbers from Lost. So we buried stuff like that all over the place, especially like in the Char Gar Gothakon episode, the Lovecraft takeoff, there’s stuff all through there that we hid. And that was fun for us. I was telling somebody the other day, one of the funnest things for me was I said that I already told you that our executive in England had quit or vanished, anyways. And so all we had left that was giving us notes was the broadcast standards and practice guy. Now, traditionally, those guys are the worst because they’re there to essentially catch anything that you might’ve done that could be offensive or get the studio in trouble or whatnot. But the guy we had in England was a big sci-fi, horror fan. And so he got a kick out of finding all the clues and all the things that we would hide in episodes that were references to movies or science-fiction stories or other things. And so every script that I would turn in when he would give us back his notes, part of his notes were a listing of all of the things that he found in the script. And he would always quiz us at the end. Like, did I get them all? Did I find them? And we were like, okay, you got them all in this episode, but then some episodes, he wouldn’t get them all. And he would be so disappointed that he missed a couple, but that became sort of a game with us over the course of the series. And he became a big fan of the show, but it was just so fun to see what we could slip in there that would stump him because he was pretty good. He would usually find everything. But again, that was another wrinkle to that show that just made it really enjoyable for all of us is that, you know, we were, I think everybody from top to bottom on the show were, we were all big fans of the franchise, but we were all also big sci-fi and horror fans too. And so, you know, everybody kind of got to do a lot of like, “Well, wait, I’ve always wanted to do this and stick this in something.” So we were able, that show allowed us to do that. And that was why I think people had a really good time working on it. So because we all, everybody really, we had a very good time working on that show. Sometimes shows are really difficult and awful and unpleasant, but not that one. That one, despite the fact that it was a very small crew. It was, we all had a very good time working on it.

AL: With the darkness of the show and the overarching kind of sci-fi story, was it originally supposed to be marketed towards children or was that kind of ambiguous?

MW: Such an interesting question. So the show originally was, yes, it was supposed to be marketed to older kids, but the show itself was supposed to be scary. They really, that was one of the, probably the only main thing that Sam told me in the beginning was they really wanted it to be scary. They wanted a legitimately scary Scooby-Doo show. And so we gave them that. In fact, one of the episodes, the spookified children episode where all the children rebel against the parents and the town, Cartoon Network actually kicked it back to us for being too scary. They said, you can’t, you got to change this. It’s too scary. And we’re like, really? Cause no one thought you could make a Scooby-Doo episode actually legitimately scary, but we did. And so we had to go back and trim some stuff and change music in a particular sequence because apparently it was freaking people out too much. So the show itself was originally supposed to be a truly scary show for kids. And then it became too scary and they made us tone it down. But no, it was always meant for, it was always meant for kids, but part of what I’ve always liked doing, and I know Tony does too with these shows is not just to make them for kids. You know, that show, Mystery Incorporated was designed for yes, if you’re a child, you’re going to be entertained by it. But it’s also designed for parents or people in their twenties or whatnot to be watching the show and enjoy it as well. Because I’m a parent, I have two kids, I have two daughters and I cannot tell you how excited I get when I get to sit down and watch a show with them that I actually enjoy watching because the majority of them make me want to gouge my eyes out with large knives. ‘Cause they’re just so boring. And so like, blah, it’s the same thing and dah, dah, dah. So whenever they find a show that I can get into too, it’s like, “Yep, that’s the show we’re going to watch.” So that was our goal with Mystery Incorporated was we’re going to make a show that the parents would like as much as the kids. And I think we succeeded because the majority of the fans are not kids. The majority of the fans are actually the parents of the kids who started watching the show. I mean, I have a lot of friends who, to this day are like, “I was binge watching it with my kid and oh my God.” The parents are the ones I hear the most from. So that’s great. You know, to me, that’s the goal of any good animated show, and I think that’s why movies from Pixar worked so well and some Disney stuff and other, and Dreamworks, you know, is that they appeal to adults and kids. They don’t just appeal to kids. And so it’s, to me, what you should be striving for. A lot of shows don’t, but Mystery Incorporated certainly did.

AL: Is it difficult to get into the mindset of writing a show that appeals to both generations?

MW: No, not really. Not for me at least. You know, there are certain things that you can’t do in kids animation, and as long as you avoid those things, you can pretty much, I mean, I feel you can tell virtually any story you want. I mean, you can’t, you know, the big no-nos, sexuality, no, nothing sexual, not even real implied sexual, stay away from that. Stay away from swearing or derogatory words or anything like that, you know, in general mean, super like abusively, mean stuff obviously you stay away from, but barring all of that, it’s a pretty wide open field. So when we sit down or when I sit down to write these things, I don’t write them for kids. I’m writing them, basically the story that I would want to see. You have to, obviously you have to be a bit of a child yourself of which no one would say that I wasn’t. So there’s definitely that aspect of my personality, which I think helps. But no, you don’t see, I don’t, I don’t believe at least when I’ve talked to people about writing for animation, I always say don’t, don’t think write for kids because you’re, you’re hamstringing yourself, basically. You’re going to stop yourself from going to places that might be really entertaining if you think that, “Oh, a kid wouldn’t like that.” One of my biggest pet peeves when working with studios is when I’ll throw a word into a script and I’ll get a note back “A child’s not gonna understand that word.” And my response is always the same. It’s like, so? So what, so he asked his parents what that word means and oh, look at that. He just learned a new word. I go, what’s wrong with that? Why are we dumbing down these shows for kids making them stupider? And it doesn’t make any sense to me. I grew up watching the cartoons I grew up with which, you know, like Looney Tunes and other Saturday morning cartoons that look, some of them were terrible, but you know, some of them were relatively sophisticated and I would have to ask my parents like, what does that mean? Or what’s going on there? And I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. And so to me, it’s, if you continually dumb down these shows and trust me, there is, you know, it’s not as bad as it used to be, but there’s definitely, you know, a section of the children’s animation community, which feels that everything should be nonthreatening. There should be no words that people don’t understand. No one should be offended. No one, you know all jokes should be, there should be a tinge of kindness to them and there should be no conflict. And it’s kind of like, ugh, I don’t want to do that, it sucks. So anyways, but to answer your question, I never go, I never start writing something with the intention of it being for kids. I write something for my own, pretty much for my own enjoyment. Like I think this is good. I like this. It doesn’t, it doesn’t step on any of the rules that you kind of have to follow in terms of, like I said, the sexuality and the swearing and stuff like that, as long as I’m not doing that, to me, everything is fair game. So if I put a big word in there or political stuff, you know, every now and then we’ll slip in some political subject matter, or we’re telling an emotional story that maybe you normally wouldn’t see in a kids cartoon. So what, you know what, so what. I think kids, I think people don’t give kids enough credit. You know, the show was, Scooby was designed, Mystery Incorporated was designed for kids seven and up. And having daughters that are nine and almost six, they can handle it. The only thing I would say about Scooby is it might be a little scary for some kids. But subject matter wise it’s, it’s fine. I do think if some kids are susceptible to being scared really easily, like my older daughter is she can’t watch, she doesn’t watch the show. She can’t watch it because it’s too scary for her. She will someday, but my younger daughter has absolutely no problem with it. So that part sort of depends on the kid, but in terms of subject matter, I don’t think anything should be off limits except the sexual stuff.

AL: For you personally, was it at all difficult to keep the darker tone while also inserting the comedy and lightheartedness of the Scooby franchise in your writing?

MW: No. No, not at all. ‘Cause I love, first and foremost, I love horror movies. I’m a huge horror movie fan. I’ve written horror movies. I’ve, you know, I watch horror movies constantly, so no it didn’t at all. Stuff that I write naturally, a lot of times just comes out humorous anyways and writing something scary was just, I loved it. I would love if I could just continually work on shows where I got to do horror and comedy at the same time. Fantastic. But I have yet to be able to do another show like that. I dream of doing another show like that someday, because it’s, it was one of my favorite working experiences to do that. The nice thing now with animation is that because of Netflix and other places like Amazon, they’re finally getting into doing like true adult animation that isn’t reliant on, you know, like it’s not just a sitcom. It’s actually an adult drama or adult horror animated show. And they’ve had some success on Netflix with them, with like Castlevania and things like that. So I’m hoping that we’re going to continue to do that to the point where we actually get to do an actual animated horror thing, because I think it would be great. But to finally answer that question: no, not whatsoever. It was easy. It was a piece of cake for me because it’s the exact kind of stuff I love to do.

AL: As producer/head writer in an overarching show and bringing the odd freelance writer on, how do you make sure that all the characters seem consistent?

MW: Rewriting, really. You know, animated shows or any show for that matter, it goes through a sort of a metamorphosis process, which you just kind of let it, you have to kind of let it just take its course. And it starts with, you know, when you write the pilot, and write the voices that’s the first step. And then the second step is what the actors are going to bring to it. One of the interesting things that happened on Mystery Incorporated was we had to, you know, Frank Welker who was the voice of Fred and also the voice of Scooby, you know, Frank had been on the show since 1968. So he was, Frank was sort of the you know, he was the, the final old guard that we had to get past in terms of whether he was going to go for how we were doing this particular show.

And so at the very first record, he read the script and started doing Fred how he thought we wanted Fred to be done. And we said, “No, Frank, we don’t want you to change anything. We want you to do that same voice, the same attitude, the same inflection, all of it. We wrote the character with your voice in mind. We just wrote him differently. But he should sound just like Fred.” ‘Cause you know, in our version of Mystery Incorporated Fred is slightly on the spectrum. You know, he is slightly, he’s a little bit Asperger’s-y, you know, with his obsession with traps and his inability to sort of read human emotions properly and everything. So again, we never said this in the series, but this is what we, this was what was in our minds. So, but the point I was going to make was when you write these shows and then it goes to the actors, the actors then bring a whole new element to it.

And if you’re paying attention, what you do is you then listen to the way they’re reading the dialogue and then you go back and you rewrite the dialogue. So to answer your question, if I get a script in and in the dialogue, I can’t hear the actual actors’ voices in the dialogue that I’m reading, I go through and I adjust the dialogue. You know, that’s part of the job though. You know, part of the job of being either the head writer or the story editor or whatnot, is to make sure that all of the scripts sound like they’re coming from the same show. The tricky part is not to just completely step on the voice of the writer who wrote those scripts. The sweet spot is to be able to let the writer’s voice be heard, but still make it feel like it’s all part of the same show. If you don’t do that, you end up with a very disjointed series where one episode seems like the show and then other episodes don’t seem anything like the show. So it’s just, it’s just rewriting. Going through and just making, putting everything on model as they would say.

AL: And speaking of trying to get Frank Welker on board with the way you were doing the show, how did you get Casey Kasem on to do Shaggy’s dad?

MW: Okay. So, Casey obviously had been doing Shaggy for a long time. By the time we did the show, Casey was not in great health. So we knew that he wasn’t going to be able to play Shaggy. And I don’t even think he wanted to play Shaggy at that point. ‘Cause he was, you know, you could get maybe a good half hour out of Casey and then, and then he was just, he would just get too weak. So we came up with the idea of making him Shaggy’s father to sort of continue all of that, continue the unity for it. But in terms of getting him, it was easy. He wanted to be part of it. And he was more than, you know, because it had been a while since he had been doing it, Matt Lillard had taken over the role for a while and he was, you know, Matt had sort of become the character and I think Casey was fine with that, but Casey also knew his own health wouldn’t allow him to be as involved as he had been before.

So that was why we created the role of Shaggy’s father and gave it to Casey because it was sort of our way of paying homage to him and getting his involvement. And we were very fortunate that we did because he passed away, I think during the making while we were doing that show or maybe just after we did it. So we were all very excited and happy that we got to put him in there and got to use him at the very end.

AL: When you have actors that have been doing the role for so long, did you ever get any pushback on, you know, what maybe fits their character or not?

MW: We did. It was interesting, the only one we got real pushback from in the beginning was Mindy Cohn who was playing Velma because like I said at the very top of this thing, Mindy also did not know what we were doing with the character. We purposely kept her in the dark. So when she read the character initially, she didn’t understand why the character was acting the way she was acting. And that was exactly what we wanted her to feel because that was what Velma was going through, but it made her uncomfortable with some of the dialogue that she was saying. And so we had to sort of talk her through it and explain that she just had to trust us. And there was a reason for this and we were going somewhere with this and she did. And she was great, you know, but in the very beginning, in the, I think the first couple of episodes, she just didn’t understand why we were making Velma act the way Velma was acting. And we sat her down and just sort of had to have a talk with her and just kind of go, “We get it. We think you’re brilliant. And we love what you’re doing. Just trust us. There’s a reason that she’s acting like this and it will all become clear later on.” And then once she trusted us, everything was awesome, you know. But yeah, that was the only real issue we had with one of the main actors.

The only other time we had trouble with an actor on that show was when we did the Twin Peaks episode. When we brought in the little person who had played the dancing man or whatever they call him on Twin Peaks, in the little red suit. He, I don’t think he really dug it. I don’t think he was particularly happy to be there. So he was not happy when he was there and he was supposed to come back in the final episode and just didn’t, he didn’t refuse to do it, but he quoted us a price that was just so exorbitantly expensive that we were like, we can’t, we can’t do it. So that was why we ended up getting Harlan Ellison again, bringing Harlan back for the very last episode, because we couldn’t get the little person from Twin Peaks. He just, he was not having it. He was, he was not into it basically, but besides him, I think that everybody else we had on the show, I mean, we had George Segal, you know, we had a lot of pretty decent people. Florence Henderson, who was fantastic, but everybody else was pretty great. We didn’t really have any issues. 

Even Harlan Ellison, who everybody thought was going to be a major pain in the ass, you know, Harlan agreed to do it because he and I were friends. And he was like, “Are you going to pay me?” We’re like, “Yeah, of course, we’re going to pay you Harlan.” And he goes, “I’m in.” So he did it. And he was, yeah, everybody was really afraid because Harlan has a reputation for being kind of a pain in the ass, but he was awesome. He was great. And he loved it. I have a picture somewhere of, we went to, because Harlan was, he’s since passed away, but he was, and he was kind of sick then. And he got sick and I got a frantic call from a friend of mine saying that, “Hey, do you have a copy of Harlan’s episode because he’s not doing well and they’re not sure he’s going to make it through the weekend. And I would love, and it’d be great if he could see it.” And I’m like, “Oh shit, okay, well, let me call the guys.” So I called our post place and they were like, “We could put together a special cut-up like dub of it for you.” So they did a special dub. I drove up there with my buddy Josh on the weekend, we went to Harlan’s house and we sat there in Harlan’s living room with Harlan in his pajamas because he wasn’t feeling well. And his wife and myself and my friend, Josh, and we all watched it together. And I have pictures of Harlan, like a child sitting in front of the TV, like three or four feet away with this big smile, just loving it, just enjoying the hell out of it. So that was extremely, that was really, that was one of the nicest moments for me on the show was because he was kind of a idol, you know, Harlan’s kind of an idol of mine and very inspirational to me as a writer and to see him so, you know, engrossed in it and just so enjoying it, knowing that he was sick and that this had cheered him up and everything, it was just, that was one of the moments that I will always have with me from that show is that moment. And I fortunately have a picture of it too.

It’s a work in progress! Check back soon for the full transcript.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

September is Mystery Incorporated Month!

September 4, 2020 alawlr4597 News 0 Comments

A bit late, but happy September everyone! This month should be a good one for the podcast, as every Friday in September will feature a new Mystery Incorporated themed interview.

Kicking off the month is an interview with Mitch Watson, producer and head writer of the show. The next three guests include writer Roger Eschbacher, lead character designer Derrick J. Wyatt, and producer/director Victor Cook.

Check out a teaser below.