You can now find the Unmasked History of Scooby Doo on Facebook! I must admit, I may not be great at posting on it, but I’ll do my best to keep the page up to date with news about new episodes, and everything else you might need to know about the podcast.
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Watch the above video for a clip of this week’s episode!
Episode 7 of the Unmasked History of Scooby Doo features Christian Campbell, who voiced Bram, leader of the vampire performance troupe in the 2012 musical film Scooby Doo! Music of the Vampire.
Stay tuned for the full episode, available on Friday, July 31.
Episode 6 of the Unmasked History of Scooby Doo features character designer Chris Battle, who worked on a redesign of the gang for the opening title sequence of the 2014 direct to video film, Scooby Doo! Frankencreepy.
Highlights of this episode include:
1- What the idea was for the redesign of the Scooby gang in the Frankencreepy title sequence.
2- How to design a silhouette of a character for animation.
3- What it’s like to be able to redesign characters that you grew up watching when you were a kid.
Make sure to listen to the episode above! Or you can read a transcript of the interview here.
Chris was kind enough to send me a photo of his redesign, which is attached above. At the end of the post, you can also see how his designs were used in the final title sequence.
If you want to follow Chris, you can find him on Twitter and Instagram, @chrisbattleart.
Not able to listen to the full episode? Don’t worry! You can still read the full transcript of the interview with Chris Battle below. Or click here to listen to the podcast episode.
If you want to follow Chris, you can find him on Twitter and Instagram, @chrisbattleart.
Chris Battle’s redesign of the Scooby gang for the opening title sequence of Scooby Doo! Frankencreepy (2014). Photo courtesy of Chris Battle.
AL: What’s your relationship to Scooby Doo, did you grow up watching?
CB: Definitely. As a kid who grew up in the 70s and the 80s, Scooby Doo was a big part of that, along with all the other Hanna-Barbera cartoons. But I definitely grew up as a young child watching the original Scooby Doo, and then of course I got to see all the other versions, like when they started having the celebrity guest stars like Sonny and Cher and Don Knotts and Batman, and even up to the old Scrappy Doo episodes in the 80s there for sure. Yeah, we go way back.
AL: Do you have a favourite Scooby Doo related memory, whether that’s from watching or some other memory?
CB: You know I just really remember watching a lot of the episodes while either at the kitchen table or on the living room floor with a pad of paper and actually trying my best to draw Scooby Doo while watching the cartoon. Given the fact that I did wind up drawing cartoons and occasionally doing Scooby Doo, that’s a pretty cool memory.
AL: How did you come to work in animation?
CB: Well, growing up in Los Angeles, it’s a pretty neat place to grow up because instead of it being some kind of far-fetched dream, wanting to work in entertainment, whether it’s music or acting or special effects or whatever, it’s not seen as something ridiculous, it’s like an actual career choice and you often will know somebody who maybe works in entertainment. So I grew up just always wanting to do cartoons, maybe comic books or comic strips or animation, I just wanted to draw funny pictures for a living. So my parents would always take me, whenever I got a chance, to meet animators whenever they were maybe releasing a book or had an art show. I even got to tour Disney Animation Studios when I was a kid. But the way that I really actually finally got into it, after I graduated high school, class of ’89 – this is right before the big wave of animation was taking off. I think the Simpsons had maybe just started their series, maybe Beauty and the Beast was coming out, Who Framed Roger Rabbit had already come out. I just needed a job, so I started working at the Hanna-Barbera retail store. There were very few of these shops in local malls where it was just like a lot of the Disney stores you see now, but it was all Hanna-Barbera themed. They had Flinstone rocks and Jetsons spaceship stuff and all kind of merchandise you could ever want with cartoons playing in rotation. And it was actually run by Hanna-Barbera Studios, so as part of being employees they wanted us all to take a tour of the studios so everybody would know how cartoons are made. Of course I was already way ahead of them on that, but I was very happy to go there and meet all the artists.
And the artists from the studio would often come by the store to buy all the merchandise and our manager said “When they show you that employee card for their discount, make sure next time they come in you give them extra special attention, because they’re the reason that we have our jobs here.” So I got to know the head of design there at the time, Scott Jeralds, your audience might be familiar with him because he came up with A Pup Named Scooby Doo and he was producer on a lot of the later movies as well, and my manager just dared me to show my work to him and I did not want to, but my manager just told Scott “This guy draws cartoons too!” and Scott said “Well, why don’t you show me some of your work.” and I sheepishly showed him a few of my little doodles that I’d been doing. And he said “These are pretty good, if you have more finished artwork why don’t you come over to the studio some time, come visit me and show me your portfolio,” which I eventually did. And he was pretty impressed with it because I didn’t really have any professional training and I didn’t go to art school, but he just said “Why don’t you keep in touch and maybe something might happen, we might need an extra hand or something.” And about a year later he called me up, he had left Hanna-Barbera and was heading up the new MGM Animation. They were working on a new Pink Panther cartoon at the time, along with plenty of other Hanna-Barbera artists, and he said “Would you like to come in and start doing design for a living,” and that was my beginning.
AL: I had no idea that those retail stores existed.
CB: Yeah, they didn’t last long, I think it was only about two or three years. There were two here in southern California, and there was one in Florida at Universal Studios where they had a big simulator thrill ride, kind of like Back to the Future ride, I think it was called the Funtastic World of Hanna-Barbera. And then when Turner Broadcasting bought Hanna-Barbera, they just slashed all the retail stores because there weren’t a lot of them at the time. It was very short-lived, but it was kind of cool.
AL: Do you remember a specific moment that sparked your interest in going into character design or had you just always had an interest?
CB: Oh, wow. I always did, yeah. Everybody will always remember there’s that time where as a kid you used to love drawing. And I never grew out of that, that was my one thing. All kids have a thing, you’re good at sports or you can do this, you can do that. My thing was always drawing, and I really loved it. My parents encouraged it so as a child, I knew that was a job that people had. I do remember when I was maybe five or six we went to Disneyland, and I think one of the little souvenirs my parents bought me was a little flipbook. It was of Donald Duck trying to hit a baseball and instead the baseball like hits him in the face or something like that, but you would just flip through it. And I learned from an early age that cartoons are made up of people’s drawings and that there are really people who draw them and that’s their job. So I always knew that could be a possibility. And I always thought maybe I could be the next Charles Schulz or maybe I could draw Spiderman for a living or something. But as I got older I realized that I liked doing the funny stuff, and my drawing real superhero stuff, drawing real people realistically was very hard, and cartoony was a lot more fun. And I just really started working towards that. But I really kind of got into it by accident, because I thought you had to be an animator, drawing all those 24 frames a second. But then as Scott Jeralds had told me when I met him, he said “No we don’t do that for television, they do that all overseas in Korea. All you really need to do is to be able to draw well.” And that was my in, luckily.
AL: How did you come to work on Scooby Doo! Frankencreepy?
CB: That came after many years in the business. I have been very fortunate, I’ve been working steadily for probably over 25 years now in the business. At the time that project came up, I was working at Warner Bros. Animation on Teen Titans Go! and they’re always making new Scooby series and also new Scooby digital movies, either for DVD, Blu-Ray, or now digital streaming. And it turned out a friend of mine from my Cartoon Network days, Paul McEvoy, he was the producer on Frankencreepy, and what they often do with a lot of the movies – the movies will have more of a traditional style to the classic style, but always, they try to do something different for all the main title credits. So they contacted me, because they knew I was right there on the other end of the lot, and they just said “We were thinking of doing something really kind of graphic and stylized for the opening titles, something like Samurai Jack, which I worked on, or Dexter’s Laboratory. So they gave me a little animatic of what they needed, a bunch of mysterious shadowy figures, and then the Scooby gang running around throughout this backdrop with all these spooky characters. So (they said), “Do some stylized versions of the characters, and they’re probably all going to be in silhouette, getting chased by the Frankencreepy character,” so that’s what I did.
AL: What was your first reaction when you were asked to do it?
CB: Oh, well I was like you know, it’s another job, it’s like “Yeah, sure, that sounds great.” Actually, quite often in animation you’ll have a short break, like maybe you’ll have one or two months off between seasons of a show, and sometimes you might take that time off to relax or other times people will call you up and have some projects for you to work on. Especially within the studio because they know they only have you for a limited time, before the next season starts up. So I had just been enjoying my time off, and it was probably the last week before I was going to return to a new season of Teen Titans Go! so it’s like “Okay, I was getting ready to work anyways, why not.” And it’s funny, you kind of don’t really think about it at the time, because it’s just another job, you have to get it done. But somewhere in there you kind of realize “Huh. I’m actually drawing one of these classic characters that I watched as a kid or that I used to draw on the pad on the living room floor. So it was kind of cool getting to do that, and then also you realize how challenging some of those classic designs are, because there’s a reason they’re classics. They’re so well designed. The Iwao Takamoto design of Scooby is an absolute classic, you really can’t mess with that too much. There’s nothing that needs to be fixed. So trying to do something slightly different is a bit daunting.
AL: What part of production were you brought in on, did you get to see what the movie was about or any clips from it before getting to work on your redesign? CB: No, it was really just that opening title sequence. So it was just a short animatic, which is kind of a rough animated storyboard that they’ll do for sequences. So it was really just for the title sequence. And they gave me a list of what they needed, just like “mystery man on the phone #1, mystery man in the doorway” kind of stuff. And then there was the Scooby gang being chased by Frankencreepy. I think I might’ve at least had a design of Frankencreepy to work from. But since it was all going to be in silhouette, I didn’t really need that much detail. No, I had no idea what the storyline was going to be, all I needed to know was he’s the monster of the week and he’s chasing them.
AL: What is it like when you’re coming into a project like that on freelance?
CB: Well it’s always kind of interesting to dip your toe in another project like that. Because sometimes when you are busy on another project that’s full time, you don’t have time to do everything. And you often can’t commit to a big job like that. But if somebody just says “Hey, here’s a little side project just for fun, you want to try designing this classic character,” or something like that, it’s always a lot of great fun to try that. And it’s not like your regular job where you’ve got to be worried that a whole series is depending on your designs. There’s not much pressure in it, so you can kind of relax and have fun. Especially in that one, where they gave me a very specific look to hit, they wanted that graphic look. It’s not like they were just like “Invent a new Scooby Doo we’ve never seen before that we could base a whole series off of,” it’s like nope, just the title sequence. Do that thing you do, have some fun with it. So it was pretty easy in that regard.
AL: What is it like to work on a project when you’re working on it by yourself and you’re not necessarily in a room with the rest of the crew?
CB: It’s very easy to focus on it, because I do that quite often. Most of the time, I’m in a studio working with a whole crew for over a year or more depending on how many seasons you have. But every once in a while, I will do a freelance project, some of them even remotely for other studios that aren’t in town. So it can be easy to remain focused on that. It can be a little difficult when you’re trying to do a whole bunch of different styles. If they don’t really have an idea of what they’re looking for, when they just ask you to do three or four different new versions of this classic character. That can be a little nerve wracking at first. But once they respond to it, and maybe say “We like that one, use the head from the other one,” or “Go in this direction,” it’s pretty good. And especially if you’re doing classic characters, because we all know who Scooby Doo is, that’s easy to get into doing that.
AL: What was it like to try and recreate Scooby Doo in that type of Samurai Jack style?
CB: It was very easy because for probably about seven years, I worked with Genndy Tartakovsky and Craig McCracken on shows like Dexter’s Laboratory, Powerpuff Girls and Samurai Jack. So, much of that style is ingrained on my own personal style, it’s very natural to go to. Really, since the characters really are iconic at this point, we all know what kind of clothes they’re going to be wearing. And since it’s the classic ones you’re like “Give Fred that ascot,” you know, “Give Shaggy the flared pants.” I wasn’t having to modernize them or anything like that. So it was quite easy to do, you know. And also, it’s part of the style that we had on Samurai Jack, it’s all about simplification and very strong shapes. So you really don’t have to get into the detail of the characters. Like Scooby is a very difficult character to draw if you’re drawing the classic one, because of his body and his knobby legs and everything. But when you’re simplifying it to get to a more graphic style, it makes it a little bit easier, because he is hard to draw if you’re doing the classic one.
AL: Was there anything in particular that you wanted to accomplish with your redesign?
CB: Basically I was really just trying to have some fun with it. Because whenever anybody gives you a classic character to do, you would like to have a little bit of fun. And sometimes if it’s going to be for some like major redo, it can be nerve wracking like I said. But for this, it was just for the title sequence, so really, they just laid it out, just what they wanted. They just wanted something graphic and modern, and it was just going to be for that quick sequence, so I just thought “Well, I’m going to have fun with this because I’m drawing the Scooby gang, that’s kind of cool.” You try to have as much fun as you can have drawing cartoons for a living. Even though it’s a job, we all got into this because we love cartoons, they make us happy. And I think that when you’re having fun with something, it translates into the final product.
AL: And what was it like to also create those other characters like the mystery man with the phone and other ones?
CB: There wasn’t too much to that, I tried to keep them close to the storyboard and just to create an interesting silhouette and try to communicate what was going on, like whether somebody was on a phone but you don’t have all the line work and everything, fingers on the phone to show what’s going on. Much of good design comes with communicating something with precious few shapes. When speaking about silhouettes, the silhouette of a character is something that we discuss even when designing characters that aren’t in shadows, like when you – take for example Mickey Mouse. If you saw a silhouette of Mickey Mouse, you’d know that’s Mickey Mouse. If you saw Batman in silhouette, you know that’s Batman. So it’s very clear to the audience what this character is. So it really leaned back into those classic design principles that we use so in a way, it was kind of easy to do somebody and not have to worry about all their details, like what their hairstyle is or what their clothes are, because they were just in silhouette.
The opening title sequence of Scooby Doo! Frankencreepy (2014), featuring Chris Battle’s designs.
AL: Speaking of the silhouette, what is the process when it comes to designing the basic silhouette for animation?
CB: Well, you’re just trying to create something that communicates something very quickly and visually. Because if you look at the shape of a character, you just want to be able to tell a lot more about that character. Like if it’s a character you’ve never seen before, the way they’re standing, or if they’re skinny or if they’re large. Are they threatening, are they friendly, things like that. Can you tell what they’re doing, do they have their hand on their hip, or are they pointing at something. You want that to be able to read to the audience. Now what helps is when it’s classic characters like Scooby Doo, we know who Scooby Doo is. He’s got that big thick neck and the pointy ears, and those skinny legs and the big soft padded feet. So as soon as you get him in a silhouette where people know that’s Scooby Doo, well then you draw the skinny guy with the scruffy hair and the flared pants, and we know that’s Shaggy. And so you go on down the line with the other characters as long as you draw this fit guy, and maybe you can tell from his hair or if you can see that the ascot is there, you know that’s Fred. And you just go on down the character line and pretty soon you can tell, even standing there in the dark, that’s the Scooby gang.
AL: You mentioned that you had drawn a non-silhouette version just for reference, what kinds of details dissipate when it goes to just the silhouette?
CB: Definitely a lot of all of the clothing like wrinkles and things like that. You know when you picture Shaggy, he’s got a lot of loose fitting clothing. You don’t need to have that much stuff, and especially Scooby because Scooby is the most complicated. His classic design, he’s got those really bony legs and there’s real dog anatomy that’s at work in there. So that is really challenging when you’re drawing it real. But since we’re doing it in a simplified form, I didn’t have to have all that real anatomy, which again, goes back to me deciding as a child not to have to learn to draw real, but draw cartoons instead, because real anatomy is hard.
AL: In your opinion, what contributes to a successful silhouette in animation?
CB: Like I said, if somebody can just see it right away, especially if it’s in the dark, that they can tell who that character is. Or, even if they’re not in the dark but it’s a complicated action scene where somebody is doing some kind of crazy martial arts move or a superhero pose, if it really sells the action. And it really has an impact. People can look at that scene and go “Ooh, wow, look at that cool freeze frame of them kicking that guy and they’re flying through a window,” or something like that. As long as it has an impact with the audience, you know you’ve succeeded.
AL: What was it like to work on a Scooby Doo project specifically?
CB: That’s another one of those things where you realize after you’ve done it, that you just worked on something you watched as a kid. And you’ve kind of fulfilled this whole cycle of people who are inspired by a given film or music or whatever. And now you’re part of the history of that project. And maybe there’s a kid watching now, that’s going to be their favourite thing and they’re going to get inspired to become an artist too. It’s kind of a cool thing about working on those legacy projects. You become part of something that’s much larger than you and you’re actually sort of part of the history of it, you know.
AL: What was it like to contribute to a redesign of iconic characters rather than drawing the typical classic designs over again?
CB: Well that is always the fun part, as I’ve had a chance to redesign several classic characters. Sometimes for just development in-house that never sees the light of day, sometimes for things that make it into actual production. But you know, as an artist, you want to be able to put your own stamp on things, because sometimes you may look at something, be it a design or if you like movies, you can watch a movie and see how the story goes, or if you hear a song played, you think “I have my own ideas about how they should do this song.” As a creative you always have those ideas and sometimes rarely do you ever get to put them into practice. But with this it’s always fun when they ask you to put your spin on it, because so often part of animation is you have to adapt to a show’s style. And usually that’s the creator of a show or the art director, they’ve set the tone. And it is part of your talent and skill set, that you have to draw like them, adapt like them. But when somebody comes to you and wants your particular spin on it, well that’s just a real bonus, that’s a lot of fun when somebody asks you to do, especially something that is so famous and iconic as Scooby Doo.
AL: What’s your favourite part of being able to see your versions of classic characters in productions? CB: Probably one of my favourite parts, it’s definitely one of my favourite things about animation as an art form as a whole, is that it’s not just you who does it all, it’s a huge group effort. I’ll do the drawing, but then a storyboard artist will create the scene, and they’ll have cleanup artists who make our rough artwork look all pretty. Colour designers will choose the colours for them, and they’ll go on top of the background and the environments are the people who draw those and the people who paint them. We have sound effects, we have great voice over artists. All these people who put together all these little pieces of this giant machine and it becomes a cartoon. And that’s just the magic that we all fell in love with as kids. And to know that you played a part in that, along with all of these other people, we’re all making each other’s work look better, that’s the real magic that comes in for me, for sure.
AL: Are there any challenges when you step into a project where you’re working with iconic characters?
CB: Well normally it’s just the whole thing of, if they’re really going with your designs and it’s not just development or something. That when they’re actually going into production, that can be nerve wracking if you haven’t figured out very specifically what you want to do. But luckily, some projects I’ve been on where I figured out how I wanted to do it and the studio gave me all the support, or in the instance of Scooby here, it was just for that one sequence, and they were very direct on the guideline, they just said “You just do your thing, we love that drawing or that Samurai Jack style,” and that’s it. And that was just nice on that one, no worries on that.
AL: I wanted to chat a little bit more about what it’s like to work on a redesign for characters you had grown up watching, a little bit for Scooby but also on your work on that Flinstones series that’s coming up?
CB: It already premiered in the U.K. on Boomerang UK and a couple other overseas markets, I don’t know if there’s any plans for it domestically. But that was one that had a long development process, like back in 2016 I was one of several artists that they had, who had already taken a stab at trying to do a new Flinstones thing centered on the kids. I did a bunch of development, it almost went to pilot and they said “Eh we’re not going to, we decided not to do that, we’re going to try to rework it.” And I thought okay, that’s fine, it was another thing I did on break between seasons of Teen Titans Go! and then in the fall of 2017 on another break between seasons, they called me up and they said “We circled back around to your designs and we want you to do them. We know we only have you for a month or two so can you just design the whole show for us, we’ll just take you for as long as we have.” And that sort of thing is just pretty exciting when you really get handed the reigns for that and it’s nice, like I said, when they say “You do your thing, we like that. Just keep going with that.” When you have definite ideas, and especially when doing these legacy projects, sometimes there’s so much that has been done before. It’s very easy to cherry pick what you like and what you don’t like. You can go back to the original designs, you can skip over maybe those ones from the intermittent years, and maybe there was a more recent one that also you can pick from. If you really have a feel for it, or you really have definite ideas it can be a lot of fun.
AL: Does growing up watching a series make you more particular or possessive over the original?
CB: I tend to never be very possessive over things. I know there are certain people who can be very traditional and some people who are like super deconstructionist about classic things. I kind of fall somewhere in the middle, but I do lean more towards a deconstruction because you know, we all grow up with things that we love, and as the years go on we could probably look at it with fresh eyes. Be it an old movie or a comic book series or music, and you can still love what you love about it, but you can probably acknowledge what needs fixing. Personally, I’m always up for new takes on classic materials, whether it’s movies or television shows, new reboots. If they’re done well and they’re done with a real creative flair, I really like to see something new. But at the same time, I know what I like about a classic thing. So I think often that’s what some of the studios like about my work, is that especially from a business standpoint, whenever they announce a new show, everybody already gets upset that they’re going to screw up something that they love. But then, if they know that the creators of the new version actually have a love for the old version, when that’s apparent, that seems to work out well. So my area that I work in is that I’m always familiar with a lot of the classic stuff and I’ll always have a nod to that, but I don’t hold it so tightly, and be that precious about it that it can’t change from like the 1960s version of whatever the title is, so I guess that’s my little sweet spot that I work in there.
AL: With Scooby Doo especially, but also with a lot of other older cartoons, a lot of the fans are particularly protective of the original and what that show meant to them. What is it like to step into a show where you may be critiqued quite a bit by the fans?
CB: Well, it always goes without saying that you can never please everybody. As we’ve seen time and again with new things, initially, everybody will be mad. Sometimes you hope that maybe after something comes out and people watch something, that they might enjoy it. Or even if they say “I like that old one better, but I can see there’s some things I like from this.” And sometimes projects are for different audiences. If you see somebody getting upset over one of the DC animated movies that were like PG-13, rated R kind of things for adult comics fans, and somebody says “My six year-old watched this and she got really upset when Wonder Woman decapitated that demon,” it’s like “Well, sorry, it wasn’t for children, this is for adults.” And likewise some series are for little children, and they’re not for older kids or necessarily for 33 year-olds. But really, I think it’s a testament though to how beloved certain franchises are, so sometimes you will try to do your best to honour an old show, but you hope that people can enjoy a new version. And also these days, you definitely know that another version, another reboot is really just a few years down the road. So if somebody doesn’t like this one, they can like the next one, you know. I definitely don’t take it personal at all, because in the end, it is just a job and hopefully it’ll be a job that you can really put your heart into in some way or another. So it’s not too rough if people don’t respond well, because hopefully somebody will like it.
AL: When it comes to Scooby specifically, why do you think that the franchise has held up for over 50 years now?
CB: Everybody loves dogs, that’s a major thing. Everybody loves them. Even if a kid can’t have a dog, they can dream about having a dog who would be as much fun as Scooby Doo. And who doesn’t love a good, safe scary mystery thing, you know. Even when you’re a little kid, you like monsters. You don’t necessarily like a full on horror movie, but every kid likes spooky monsters to a certain degree. Especially going back to the original series, those are some of the best, fun, spooky monsters that you can imagine. It’s like a lot of other things that everybody falls in love with. Like well, you know, something that name drops them directly like Buffy the Vampire Slayer is the perfect intersection of comedy with spooky horror stuff and of course as they all call them the Scoobies for a reason. I think that mix just works great.
AL: If you were given the opportunity to design a villain or a monster for a Scooby Doo project, what would it look like?
CB: Wow, that is a tough one. I think going back to what I just said, if I could hit that intersection of spooky with comedy, that would probably be pretty good. It would definitely have to be something big that would seem threatening, but also goofy big as well.
AL: If you were given the opportunity to work on another Scooby Doo project, if you had the time, would you take it?
CB: That might be fun to actually do that, yeah. I just dipped my toe a little bit in the Scooby sandbox, and it would be fun to really take a deeper dive on that for sure.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Episode 6 of the Unmasked History of Scooby Doo features character designer Chris Battle, who worked on a redesign of the gang for the opening title sequence of the 2014 direct to video film Scooby Doo! Frankencreepy.
Stay tuned for the full episode, available on Friday, July 24.
Episode 5 of the Unmasked History of Scooby Doo features Kate Melton, who played the role of Daphne Blake in the 2009 and 2010 live action TV films Scooby Doo! The Mystery Begins, and Scooby Doo! Curse of the Lake Monster.
Highlights of this episode include:
1- What the audition process was like for Scooby Doo! The Mystery Begins.
2- What it was like to bring a cartoon character to life in live action, and what Kate wanted to bring to her interpretation of Daphne.
3- Behind the scenes stories from the filming of both movies.
Make sure to listen to the episode above! Or you can read a transcript of the interview here.
Kate also sent me a few photos from the filming of Scooby Doo! Curse of the Lake Monster, which you can see down below! Again, I’ve watermarked them with both the podcast’s name and Kate’s name, seeing as Kate was so kind to send these photos, and I don’t want them to be circling around the Internet without credit.
(left to right) Nick Palatas as Shaggy, Kate Melton as Daphne, Marion Ross as Hilda Trowburg, Robbie Amell as Fred, and Hayley Kiyoko as Velma for Scooby Doo! Curse of the Lake Monster (2010).Kate Melton.Hayley Kiyoko, Robbie Amell, Kate Melton, and Nick Palatas for Scooby Doo! Curse of the Lake Monster.Kate Melton and Hayley Kiyoko for Scooby Doo! Curse of the Lake Monster.Kate Melton as Daphne with Marion Ross as Hilda Trowburg, for Scooby Doo! Curse of the Lake Monster.Robbie Amell, Nick Palatas, Kate Melton, and Hayley Kiyoko for Scooby Doo! Curse of the Lake Monster.Hayley Kiyoko, Robbie Amell, Nick Palatas, and Kate Melton for Scooby Doo! Curse of the Lake Monster.Kate Melton.
Not able to listen to the full episode? Don’t worry! You can still read the full transcript of the interview with Kate Melton below. Or click here to listen to the podcast episode.
(left to right) Nick Palatas as Shaggy, Kate Melton as Daphne, Marion Ross as Hilda Trowburg, Robbie Amell as Fred, and Hayley Kiyoko as Velma for Scooby Doo! Curse of the Lake Monster (2010).
AL: What’s your relationship to Scooby Doo, did you grow up watching? KM: Yeah, I absolutely did. In fact, when I got the audition for it, I remember thinking “Wow, this would be so cool,” because I dressed up as Daphne for Halloween when I was a kid, I grew up on it. I loved it. And I had seen, up to that point I had pretty much seen every Scooby project that there had been. So, I had a very good relationship with it. There’s tons of pictures of me as a kid, I had a bunch of Scooby Doo T-shirts and stuff, like I was really into it. So when I got the audition, I just remember thinking how cool that would be for whoever got to do it, to get to be a part of a franchise that is so loved by so many and has been for such a long time.
AL: Do you have a favourite personal memory related to Scooby Doo before you booked the project?
KM: I mean, definitely when I booked the project that sort of trumped all other memories. But I remember there was, I’m probably going to butcher this, but there was one that was like Ghoul School? I used to be obsessed with that when I was little. I used to watch that like every single day. And I haven’t seen it now in probably 20 years, but I think that for me, those memories of, especially being home from school in the summer, I would always watch that. I have some very fond memories of watching that one.
AL: What was the audition process like for the Mystery Begins?
KM: It was really long. Let’s see, I was I believe probably 15 when I auditioned for it, and it was one of those projects that everybody in town was going out for, I mean, they cast a really wide net for this one. I think that they auditioned everyone. You know, being an actor, all of my friends were my same age but they were all actors too, so literally everybody that I knew went out on this project, especially because there are four such distinct roles, right. There’s kind of a type for everyone.
I got the audition and I went in and I believe that the casting director, Harriet Greenspan, I had known her for a while just because I’d been auditioning for such a long time, and you know, I went in, I had the audition, it went really well. I think that I want to say we did something close to maybe, I want to say I probably went on seven auditions for it. It was the original audition and then callback after callback and then – I don’t know how much you or your listeners know about the audition process and the way that these things work – but you go in for a couple of auditions with the casting director, and then you go in and you meet the producer and the director. So eventually I went in front of Brian Levant and Brian Gilbert, the producer and the director. And then eventually after you make it past the producers and the directors then you have to go in front of the entire network, and do what’s called a screen test and a chemistry read. When we got to that point, there were two groups. So there was two of each of us. There were two Daphnes, two Shaggys, two Freds, two Velmas, and we were kind of all competing against each other. What they do generally in a chemistry read and a screen test is they’ll kind of mix and match people to see who has the best chemistry and who works the best together. And it was actually, my group was me, Robbie, Hayley, and Nick. It was the four of us from the very beginning. So it was like, I knew either we were all going to get it or you know, none of us were. And for some reason in that room it just clicked. We did the scene in the library where we’re all at the table and we’re in detention, before the books start flying and stuff. And I mean, we just, it was weird, we all just sort of clicked and it was like the perfect fit, and I think I got the call a couple days later that we got it. But yeah, I mean it was a couple of months worth of auditioning, it was quite a process. Every time I’d get called back I’d be like “Oh my gosh, again?” It’s torture kind of! Like it’s exciting but it’s also, it’s kind of tedious, (it’s) a tedious process because you just keep going back and back and back and wondering like “Is this the time they’re going to tell me I got it? No, I’ve got to go in again.” So it was pretty tedious.
AL: Was there a point when you were pretty confident you were going to get (the part), or were you always in the back of your mind thinking that you might not get it?
KM: I mean I think that as an actor, especially a young actor, you kind of have to always have a certain level of skepticism and cynicism about it because you know, if you go into everything thinking you’re going to get it, you’re going to be destroyed so many times emotionally, and especially when you’re as young as I was. I think even when I got the call that I got it, even though I was excited I just remember being like “Okay well I’m not going to celebrate until I’m on set,” you know, because you just never know. Things can change, and there’s so many different factors. So I feel like I thought that I would, but I had gotten really close on several other projects, like I was really close on Wizards of Waverly Place, I was really close on Hannah Montana actually, so I had been through this quite a few times, this process of going on 10 auditions and screen testing, and then not getting it for whatever reason, so I think with this one I was cautiously optimistic. I felt good about it, but I just tried to stay grounded in it.
AL: What was your reaction when you did get that call?
KM: You know it’s weird, I think because you have this vision of like jumping up and down and screaming and you’re so excited, but I feel like I was in shock. Because it wasn’t just any project. It was Scooby Doo, and it felt, from the very beginning it felt like something really special. And I don’t think it actually sank in for me until I was on a plane to Vancouver with Nick Palatas. I think that’s when I was like “Oh wow, this is really, this is really happening.” So obviously you know, I was really excited, everyone in my family celebrated, we were so excited. But it definitely took a while to feel real, just because it was such a big job.
AL: Had you ever met Nick (Palatas), Robbie (Amell), or Hayley (Kiyoko) before the screen test or was that the first time you had met them? KM: Nick I had met before, Nick and I had a lot of mutual friends, and you know, he’s a little bit older than me. (Since) he was a little bit older, we didn’t really hang out too much, but we had met before and I knew of him. His little brother Cameron is closer to my age. Then, Hayley I had never met, Robbie I had never met, but we all met at the screen test and after we all booked it, we got together a couple of times and we had lunch, I think we went to like IHOP once, just to kind of get to know each other. But with the exception of Nick, the screen test was the first time I had met Hayley and Robbie.
AL: What was the dynamic between the four of you?
KM: I just feel like it was really good. I think that we all were really different and we all got along. I was the youngest, and then it was Hayley, and then I think Robbie and then Nick. So, I was 15, Hayley was 17, and then I think the boys were like 19 and 20. So there was a little bit of an age difference there, but we all just, we had a really good time, we all got along super well. There was no drama, and we all worked together really well.
AL: What’s your favourite thing about the character of Daphne?
KM: The character of Daphne… She’s really smart but she also you know, has a flair for the dramatics which I definitely have, and I like that even though she was fashionable and pretty and all these things, I like that she was still grounded and she was still really smart. I think that too often as women, we kind of are told that we have to be one or the other. And I think that she’s a great character because she gets to be all of those things. And that was another thing that I really like about the live action interpretation that we did, was I feel like they gave Daphne more meat, if that makes sense. In the cartoon sometimes I feel like she’s just kind of a pretty face and she’s just there, but she was contributing, you know. I feel like that gave girls a really good role model to look up to like “Oh, I can be pretty and fashionable and all these things but I can also be smart and helpful and a good problem solver.” She had her own way of doing things but she got the job done, I guess is what I’m trying to say, and I really admired that about her.
AL: And what did you want to bring to your interpretation of her?
KM: I think I just wanted to make her feel three-dimensional. I wanted to make her feel like a real person as opposed to, like I said, the cartoon which was just you know, she wasn’t the main focus of the cartoon. And she wasn’t the main focus of our film either but I think it was really important for Nick, Hayley, Robbie, and myself to bring a little bit of our own personalities into it. So, you know, I gave Daphne a little bit more of an attitude, she was a little bit sassier at times. I just really didn’t want her to be the stereotypical like ditzy, pretty girl. I really wanted her to have some depth. And I think that I accomplished that. And I also didn’t want to go in and copy anything that Sarah Michelle Gellar had done, because I think Sarah Michelle Gellar did a wonderful job, but I thought it was really important, and I know that the whole cast felt that it was important that we set our interpretations apart and just have fun with it, and I think we did that.
AL: What is it like to try and bring such an iconic cartoon character to life in live action?
KM: You know I would say that it’s difficult, just for the fact that, because it is Scooby Doo, there’s going to be so many critics out there, you know. So many people that, no matter what I did, or no matter what anybody else did, they were going to have something to say. The Scooby Doo loyalists, as I call them. So it was a lot of pressure in that sense. But the great thing was that we had an amazing director, Brian Levant, who encouraged us to just go with our guts and said “You know there’s a reason you guys got these roles, you’re perfect for them, and we want you to just go for it.” And he really encouraged us if we had ideas of “Oh this would be funny,” or little things we wanted to add, little improvisations, he was very open to that. And I think that took a lot of the pressure off of us. So I would say there was a lot of pressure but I felt just so lucky and so honoured to get to do that, especially with a franchise that I, like I said earlier, that I grew up with and loved. I just felt like that was such an honour that they chose me to do that.
AL: After both of those movies came out, had you ever had kids come up to you recognizing you as Daphne?
KM: Yes, I definitely had that happen to me a few times but also, after the movies were done, after the first one, I was back to my blonde hair. We dyed my hair red and then I was back to blonde, and I think that I look very, I don’t know. For some reason when I would have blonde hair people just didn’t really pick up on it. Although it was funny, several years after the movies had been released, I want to say 2017 or 2018 maybe, I had a girl come up to me at Universal Studios Hollywood of all places, and she was like “This is crazy but you look just like this girl from this movie, from Scooby Doo Curse of the Lake Monster,” and I was like “Yeah, that’s me.” But it was just so funny that all these years later, people are still recognizing me, or even I get a lot of people that find me on social media and they’re very confused and they’re like “Wait, is this you?” And I’m like “Yes, it’s me.” So I definitely had people recognize me back then, but I mean even to this day I still get, occasionally I’ll get people that track me down on social media and want to know, “Hey, you look like this, is this you?” Yes, it’s me. It’s actually amazing to me how many people are still so invested in these films.
AL: What’s that experience like having people recognize you?
KM: Weird, but I mean I think as an actor that’s kind of what you, that’s part of it, that’s part of what you sign up for, and part of what you want. So, I just have always felt flattered by it and lucky that I have been able to have any sort of impact on anybody’s life in a positive way. You know, I’ve had people tell me that the films helped them through a certain point in their life or that Daphne inspired them or that I was a big part of their childhood and honestly I feel so honoured by that and I feel so lucky that I’ve been able to be a part of so many people’s lives in that way. So any time anybody recognizes me or recognized me, I always just feel grateful.
AL: Going off the hair here, you are naturally a blonde, was there ever any discussion as to whether you would dye your hair or maybe wear a wig?
KM: No. I think from the very beginning, and I had said to them, they asked me “Would you be willing to dye your hair,” and I was like “Of course I would be willing to dye my hair,” you know. For this role, of course. And then, no, I mean, if anything, the first movie my hair was more of a, like a strawberry blonde. It wasn’t really that traditional, like cartoony red. And then by the second movie I remember having a conversation with them and just being like “Listen, if we’re going to do it, let’s just do it. Let’s just go full red.” That to me is like the classic Daphne hair, the Daphne from the second film. And I had the most amazing hairdresser on that film, her name is RaMona Fleetwood, she’s worked on everything in the world, and it was quite a chore to keep up that hair. I mean, I would have to stay, like everyone else would go home at midnight and I would be in the hair trailer until 3 a.m. getting my hair touched up once a week. To keep up that continuity, you know, because red hair fades a lot, and really easily and so to keep up that continuity of “Okay well my hair was this red in the scene prior,” so we had to keep it up. It was crazy, it was a lot of time spent on that hair, I’ll say that.
AL: What was the atmosphere like on set?
KM: It was so fun. Both sets were just two of the most fun experiences I’ve ever had working in this industry. Everyone was just so nice and so happy to be there, and we were working with people that, for example in the second film our director of photography was Dean Cundey, who was the director of photography on like Back to the Future and so many huge films. So we were surrounded by people that really knew what they were doing, and were such inspirations to us as actors. Robbie, Hayley, Nick, and I, we really loved each other, we hung out, especially when we were in Vancouver we would hang out on the weekends and it was just such a pleasant experience. It was honestly just no drama, and I can tell you right now, there’s not a lot of sets that it’s just totally drama free, but ours really was one and I think we all just had a genuine love for each other and for the project.
AL: Who would you say you got closest with on your time on set?
KM: I would say Nick. Nick and I have stayed really close and he’s just a great guy. Everyone is awesome, but I would say Nick and I bonded the most for sure.
AL: Out of both movies, or one for each, do you have a favourite scene?
KM: Oh, wow. Out of both movies I would say my favourite scene is probably the scene in the second film where Fred and Daphne are in the boat and they get trapped. And the monster breaks the valve or whatever so the room starts to fill up with water. Just because I thought it looked so cool and it was such a nightmare filming that scene that when I saw it and it looked really good I was just so happy because you know, we were in a water tank pumped full of water and the water was so warm. It was like, you know that feeling when you’re in a hot tub for too long and you feel like you’re going to pass out? It was that, and we were in there for probably two hours. And there were light bulbs exploding where they shouldn’t have been and so it was such a nightmare that to see it and see how cool it looked and how well it came together was really, really cool and I think that’s just a great scene.
AL: The character of Daphne is often known for being a bit of a fashionista, what’s your favourite outfit that Daphne wears in either of the movies?
KM: I definitely like the Daphne fashion a little bit more in the second one, I think it’s a little bit more grownup. I love that just iconic purple turtleneck dress that I wore. I think I wear it in the beginning of the second film. It’s like a purple turtleneck, it’s when they’re arriving at the country club and all that. I love that one, and in the second film we did the music video, musical number portions, and the costumes for those were so cool. Like the disco costume and the barbershop quartet outfit with the mustaches and the 60s one. I loved all those costumes as well. We got to wear really fun stuff for that.
AL: Out of those costumes, do you have a favourite?
KM: I really love the I Can Be Scared with You, the 60s outfit when I’m playing the tambourine. I love that outfit. It’s so fun. I obviously don’t know how to play the tambourine either if you watch that, I’m like not even. I don’t even know how to find a beat, it’s so embarrassing. But Hayley’s a real drummer, so that was really her playing the drums, which you can tell actually, she looked really good. But oh boy, I did not. They’re like “Kate, you have to find a beat, that’s how this works.” I’m like “Oh, yeah.”
AL: Did you get any input when it came to the wardrobe at all?
KM: I think on most sets – well, I don’t know, I can’t speak for most sets. But I think on a lot of sets it is a little bit of a collaborative process. So I know that at the end of the day, the final say went to the director Brian. But I definitely in my wardrobe fittings would kind of be like “I don’t like that” or “I do like that” you know, and the things that I would gravitate towards and feel the most comfortable in, because you want your actors to feel comfortable in their wardrobe. It’s their character, and they’re the ones that are up there for the whole world to see, so you definitely want them to feel comfortable. And so I think that, like I said, at the end of the day Brian got final say, but I definitely think the wardrobe department allowed me to sort of say to them “Oh I like this” or “I don’t like that” and the things that I really liked and felt comfortable with, because they trusted me as an actor and they knew that I was in touch with my character, they would sort of try to push those things a little bit. So I think that, yeah, I would say I got a fair amount of input on it. I would say probably more so the second one because the characters were developed and we were all so comfortable in them at that point, that I think that they really listened to me a lot on that one.
AL: After filming ended for either of the movies, did you get to keep anything from set or a wardrobe piece or anything?
KM: I don’t have any wardrobe pieces just because they are not usually very willing to let you do that because they take all the props, all the wardrobe pieces and stuff, they take them back to the warehouse and they store them in case we ever needed to do re-shoots or something like that. But, I do have certain things, like I have my chair back that says Kate Melton, it has the Mystery Machine and it’s signed by everybody, I have certain little things. There’s a little, what is that cartoon dog, Huckleberry, there’s a bobble-head in the Mystery Machine of another Hanna-Barbera character, and my parents have that. So we do have little things here and there, but as far as wardrobe pieces, no I don’t have any wardrobe pieces unfortunately. I wish that I did! Oh, actually, wait. I do have my scuba gear from the second one. I have my flippers and my scuba mask from when we scuba dived but I think that’s about it.
AL: Moving more specifically to the Mystery Begins, what was it like to be able to film an origin story for Scooby Doo?
KM: It was awesome. I mean, it was so cool because it hadn’t really been done at that point. In fact, I’m so protective of it, that now when new, like SCOOB! just came out for example, and I’m like “That’s not right, that’s not the origin story, we already did it!” I’m so protective of it because at that time it felt so special and it felt so cool that we were going to get to tell that story first. And it still does. I’m just going to forever consider our origin story the real origin story. I can’t say enough about how much that franchise has meant to me over my life and how much getting to bring an iconic character to life, especially telling the origin story of how they all got together, how much that meant. I mean, there are films that people have done and people will do that are popular but they’re not part of a legacy in the way that Scooby Doo is. And I just can’t express enough how awesome that was.
AL: Out of the more out there, crazy scenes like the fight on the bus, the library books flying off the shelves, and just running from ghosts in general, which one was the most difficult to film?
KM: The most difficult to film… let me think about this for a second, this is a good question. The library books was really fun because – I mean, I say it was fun, it’s fun looking back. In the moment it probably wasn’t that fun because there were literally just crew members throwing books at us. In fact, I think my mom actually got in on it too and was actually throwing books with the crew members, which I’m sure she loved. But, I’m going to say the most difficult scene to film, not even technically, but the scene where we go in the first film to the graveyard, and Velma does the rubbing of the gravestone. That was probably the most difficult to film only for the fact that it was like 2 o’clock in the morning, and we could not keep it together. Like, the four of us could not stop laughing. I don’t know why, I think we were just tired and we were just, whatever. I think Nick had a line and it just cracked us all up and we must have done 40 takes of that scene. And Brian Levant is like “You guys need to get it together!” and we just like couldn’t stop laughing. We were just dying during that scene. And I think it was just, we were all tired and we were all so comfortable with each other. So that was difficult for that reason. That’s the only time in my career that I just haven’t been able to get through a scene. I couldn’t keep it together, none of us could.
AL: Which was the most fun to film?
KM: The party in the second film was really fun, where the lake monster shows up to the party and Robbie gets thrown across the room. That one was really fun. Also because we had Nichelle Nichols on set that day. She was in the original Star Trek, so we were all really big fans of her, so that was a cool day. I loved filming the scene where Shaggy eats the napkin in the second film, just because it was so fun to watch Nick eat the mascarpone napkin over and over and over. I really enjoyed watching, I didn’t do very many stunts, or any really at all which is probably for the best because I am not very coordinated. But I really enjoyed being on set and watching the boys get to film those scenes. I was fascinated by Robbie and Nick and their ability to do their own stunts and I thought that was really cool. Also another great scene was the scene where we unmask Velma as the witch, Wanda. That was really fun. I just can’t think of a single day on those projects that I wasn’t just so excited to go to work or that I didn’t have an awesome time. It’s so hard to kind of pinpoint what was the most fun because overall it was just such an enriching and awesome experience and every single day was just the time of my life.
AL: Going off of Nichelle Nichols, there were a lot of really cool people playing supporting characters in the two movies, who was your favourite to work with?
KM: I’m going to have to go with Jonathan Winters. And actually, correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t actually even know that his scenes made it into the final cut of Scooby Doo! Curse of the Lake Monster. But he plays the owner of the barn that we burn down. And I mean, just a legend. And that was so cool. He was just ad-libbing, he was totally going off book, and he was just cracking us all up and it was hilarious. He was just such a legend and sadly he has passed but it was so cool to be in the presence of somebody that has had such a huge – I mean I think even Robin Williams said that Jonathan Winters was like his biggest inspiration. Being around him was just so cool and I think he passed not too long after. Then Marion Ross, that was really cool. She was the mom on Happy Days, she’s worked a lot. Nichelle Nichols. It was so cool as young actors to be surrounded by these veterans of the industry that have been in it for so long. We were just in awe of them. It was so cool and they were so kind to us and would give us advice and it was a dream. Still to this day I just can’t believe how many awesome people we got for those films. And I think a lot of it is due to Brian Levant, because Brian Levant has been in this industry for a really long time and he’s known a lot of these people for a really long time and he’s worked with them. So, he was able to get us quite a few really special guest stars.
Kate Melton as Daphne with Marion Ross as Hilda Trowburg, for Scooby Doo! Curse of the Lake Monster.
AL: For the Mystery Begins, what’s the filming process like when it comes to CG things that might be added in later?
KM: We had people kind of cueing us so while we didn’t exactly know what the ghosts were going to look like, I mean we’d seen storyboards so we had an idea but I mean that’s part of being an actor. You just have to sort of use your imagination. It was weird getting the hang of the ghosts and Scooby and kind of getting the hang of knowing where Scooby is and the right height of Scooby and how to interact with him. Nick definitely had it a lot harder than us in that respect. But I think once we got the hang of it, and like I said you know, we had Brian Levant who is such a veteran in the industry, and I don’t know if the movies would have been half as good as they are if it had not been for him kind of walking us through it. Because none of us had really done anything like that up to that point. And so we would have him trying to scare us like the ghosts would and showing us where they would be and we just had to kind of react to them. It got a little bit easier when we got to the second film because when we got to the second film then we had Luke Youngblood who was in the Scooby, like a Scooby green screen suit type thing and would walk around on all fours. And he had like mo-cap sensors and he would do the faces and the dialogue and kind of react for us, and that definitely made it a lot easier. But I feel like by the second one we were kind of like pros at it already because we had been through that already.
AL: When you go down into the old school underground, that was actually real spiders and snakes wasn’t it?
KM: Yes, it was. I had like a tarantula on my shoulder and the trainer, because whenever you work with animals, like even a frog like how we had frogs in the second movie, or a spider, there are people there making sure that all of those frogs get back, you know, make it out of set safely. In fact, if you, say you’re filming with like 10 spiders and you lose one, you can no longer put at the end of the movie “No animals were harmed during the making of this film,” which is a big deal. I just remember the spider handler being like “Okay, we’re going to put this spider on your shoulder, but just whatever you do, don’t blow on the spider. Like just don’t put air on the spider. You’ll be fine, just don’t blow on it.” And I’m like “Okay.” And then Brian Levant is like “Somebody blow on the spider, we’ve got to get the spider to move!” So they have a straw and they’re blowing on this spider and I’m like “This spider is going to attack me.” It was one of the more frightening experiences that I’ve had on a set just because I am not, I am not a spider gal, I can tell ya. And then actually when we did Curse of the Lake Monster we had all those little baby frogs and we lost one, like we couldn’t find it, it got away. And they had to shut down set for like two hours to find this frog.
AL: Did they find it?
KM: They found it, they found it. But this is why people say they don’t want to work with children or animals, because it’s crazy.
AL: So at the end of the film you have the recreation of the Scooby Doo opening, what was it like to shoot that?
KM: That was so cool, we were so excited about that. And that was all the brainchild of Brian Levant again, who is such a Scooby Doo loyalist and really wanted to give a nod to that. And you know, it was cool we had all the classic villains from the original opening like the voodoo guy and the clown and again, I think any time we were doing something that was a nod to the original we were so happy. Like that is what we all really wanted to do. I think it turned out great. Like I said, I’ve said it a million times, I’ll say it a million more, Brian Levant is a genius.
AL: Moving more specifically to the Lake Monster, how much of a break did you have between wrapping Mystery Begins and starting on Lake Monster?
KM: I think probably about a year. Because we didn’t start until after Mystery Begins aired. They already had the script but if my memory serves me correctly, we didn’t actually get the green light to go ahead and do Curse of the Lake Monster until after the network and Warner Bros. and everybody saw how successful the first one was. I believe to this day, Mystery Begins is still the number one rated broadcast in the history of Cartoon Network. I believe it’s still to this day. So once they saw that and they realized what a success that it was, I think that’s when they went ahead and gave us the green light. And actually we were supposed to be a television show at one point. It was considered what they call a backdoor pilot which just means that they’re kind of testing the format of a show to see if it would work as a show and they’d do it as a film. So we were going to go on and we were going to do a season of a television show but what ended up happening was the CGI was too expensive and the network didn’t want to do it, which is a shame because it would’ve been a great show I think. People would’ve loved it and so yeah, I would say we had about a year’s break because I want to say I was probably about 15 when we wrapped Mystery Begins and then 16 by the time it aired, and then I don’t think we started on Curse of the Lake Monster until I was about 17.
AL: You mentioned that you didn’t really do a lot of stunts, but when Daphne falls out of the barn, was that actually you?
KM: That was me. And that’s probably why they don’t have me do my own stunts, because it was hard. Being on a harness like that, like you think it’s going to be easy but it’s hard! And I got to be honest, I don’t have a whole lot of like core strength at that point in my life I guess. So you know, you’re strapped to this harness and then you have to kind of keep your legs up to make it look real. Then of course Robbie caught me. But that was me, that was my one and only stunt, was falling out of that barn. And it was something else. Although I could consider playing tennis a stunt, because I didn’t have any idea how to play tennis. I mean, they asked me, they’re like “Can you play tennis?” and I’m like “Yeah, sure, I can play tennis. Like how hard can it be.” No. I could not hit a ball to save my life. It took them forever, there’s videos of Brian Levant out on the court trying to show me how to hit a tennis ball, because Daphne’s supposed to be a good tennis player and I was the worst. I’m just like the least athletic person alive. I think if you watch the movie you’ll notice they never actually get me on camera hitting a ball because I couldn’t.
AL: I think you actually might.
KM: Do I? Like just barely maybe. But like it was a process. And I just remember Robbie would sit there and laugh and laugh and laugh at me when I was trying to hit those balls. It was, oh man, that was one of the more embarrassing days of my life actually.
AL: So that barn moment really kicks off the romance that’s kind of played up in Lake Monster with Daphne and Fred, what was it like to act that out with Robbie?
KM: I mean it was weird I guess because we were friends and you know, there was sort of a brother-sister dynamic there. But I think everyone knew that’s kind of what the fans wanted to see. They wanted to see the Fred and Daphne dynamic, but it was fun to do the scenes where they kind of start fighting, and like the jealousy issues and stuff like that. That was cool. Robbie’s a super good actor, he’s a super good dude. So he’s super respectful and I always felt very comfortable and I think that he did too and it was just, you know, just another day at work.
AL: What are your thoughts about the Fred/Daphne romance in the franchise, do you think it’s totally a thing?
KM: I mean, yeah, I do. In fact, I didn’t know how they were going to, because we were supposed to do a third film, and there was a lot of discussion about what they were going to do. Were they going to have that be a thing again, was that going to kind of be us addressing it and then we were going to squash it. But I mean I think that there’s always that chemistry between them. I think that’s an indisputable part of it. The thing that was weirder to me was the Shaggy/Velma romance. That was where I was like “This is weird.” The Fred and Daphne thing felt just kind of natural, but I mean, I don’t think we’d ever seen a Velma/Shaggy type romance ever before so that to me was weirder, not weird in a bad way, but like weirder than the Fred and Daphne thing. It was like “What?” Cause I mean everybody expects Fred and Daphne to be a pair, right? I think that’s what people wanted to see and I think that the Altiere brothers who wrote both scripts were really interested in giving the fans what they wanted to see. And they wrote an amazing script for the third film and I’m just so sad that it never happened.
AL: What was the plot supposed to be like for that?
KM: So, obviously it’s been a long time since I read it but I’ll do my best to kind of summarize. Essentially what it was going to be was that it was going to take place in Europe. London, I believe. And it was a time travel movie, so we were going to time travel and at one point I think that Daphne was supposed to end up as like a druid sacrifice and they were going to save me. It was going to be really, really cool. And I think too that there’s been, the Altiere brothers I think did an interview where they kind of elaborated on it, but it was going to be so fun. I was going to get to ride a horse, which I was big into horseback riding at that point, so I was going to get to ride horses in it and it was going to be awesome, I’m so sad that they didn’t end up doing it. And I think the reason they didn’t end up doing it was just because, I mean it was weird because like I said, Mystery Begins was the highest rated broadcast in Cartoon Network History at that point, and then when Curse of the Lake Monster came out that was now the second highest rated broadcast in the network history at that point. The division of Warner Bros. that co-produced the film, Warner Premiere, they just sort of started to fall apart. And I believe it was the people that owned Scooby or something, they just didn’t want us to do it and it just became a whole mess but we were ready. We had a table read, the whole cast got together, we read the script. We were ready to start working on it and then at the last minute it just kind of fell apart but it’s a shame because it was going to be a really, really good movie, I have the script somewhere. We were going to go to Eastern Europe and film it, so we were all really excited about that. It’s just a real shame.
AL: Now you and I think Nick as well aren’t as involved with acting anymore, but if the chance came to maybe reboot that would you do it?
KM: Oh, absolutely, yeah. I mean here’s the thing, I’ve been an actor since I was 11. So for me I just wanted to kind of take a step back and work on the other side of the industry for a bit, but I am an acting teacher, I’m an acting coach, so that is my number one love in life. I love acting, I would always 100 percent, if they ever called me, I mean I think I’ve probably aged out of it a bit now but if they called me and they wanted to reboot it, yeah, I would be there in a heartbeat for sure.
AL: Moving back to Lake Monster, what were your thoughts when you first read the script, especially with the Velma storyline?
KM: I loved that script. Curse of the Lake Monster is my favourite out of the two. And I thought that script was hilarious, I thought it was different, which I liked. That was obviously a huge twist that it would be Velma. I think we were all really excited about it. It gave us a lot more room to play and do a lot more than we got to in the first one, and there was more classic Scooby gags in the script I felt like, like when they’re running from the frog monster, and he paints like a tunnel on a wall, stuff like that. We got to do – one of my favourite things was the classic gag where we’re running down the hall and then we go in one door and come out the next door and then we go in another door, you know what I mean. That was something we really loved about that script was I feel like there were so many more classic, because also we had a much bigger budget. And we were able to do a lot more. I loved that script, the Altiere brothers are phenomenal writers and I think that they did such an amazing job bringing these characters to life for us.
AL: What was the filming process for the running through the doors?
KM: I would say that it was exhausting. Listen, I told you I’m not very athletic, the other thing I’m not great at is running. I literally had to, the medic – every film set has a medic on set in case somebody hurts themselves, right. That medic was by my side non-stop. The other thing was they would put me in heels, and then they’d be like “Okay Kate, run up this hill,” and I’d be like “What? I’m wearing like three-inch, four-inch heels, what do you mean run up the hill?” So it was just a lot of me being stressed out trying not to fall on my face, is what I remember about those because I just am not super coordinated. I’m just not. In fact, there’s one part of the music video section where we’re all holding hands and we’re skipping down a hill or something. If you watch that you will notice that I’m staring at my feet. ‘Cause I’m on a grassy hill wearing like thigh high boots and I was going to fall down at any moment. So if you watch that, you’ll notice that I’m literally just staring down at my feet the whole time.
AL: Going off of that, what were your first thoughts when you heard there were going to be musical numbers in that film?
KM: We all had the same reaction, and that reaction was “What?”
I’m not a singer, okay. I’m not. I will just be really honest with you, I can carry a tune, but like, not very far. And neither can Robbie. Obviously Hayley can, and Nick, you know, I think the song was a little high for Nick’s voice but I won’t get into that here. Nick and I have had this conversation though, I love you Nick if you’re listening. You know, that was not in the original script. That was something that Brian Levant came to us with like a week before we started filming and was like “Guess what?” and we’re like “What?” He’s like “I’ve added musical numbers!” and we were like “What?” Like I was just like “Excuse me?” and so much of it, again, I’m not athletic. If you pay attention in the skating scenes, I am not in those scenes. Because I cannot skate. Like the roller disco, I am not in those. And actually they built me a little machine where they dressed me up, and then they put me – this is so embarrassing – they put me on this like rotating, it was almost like a merry-go-round. And they had me like stand like I was doing a pirouette with my leg up, and then they spun me around and they shot me from the waist up so it would look like I was spinning. And it looked so bad they didn’t use it. So I mean I think we were all just like, oh, I don’t know. We were really surprised by it, I was not expecting it. I just remember there being a lot of confusion. It was totally sprung on us out of nowhere. And honestly I’m glad that it wasn’t in the first film because I probably wouldn’t have gotten the role. I think I did okay but it took a lot of rehearsal for me to get it.
AL: What was the process like when it came to putting together all those various musical numbers?
KM: We had a choreographer that came and worked with us. We rehearsed for like, I want to say we rehearsed for probably about a week before we started filming. We would meet up at a dance studio near our production office and we would rehearse the choreography and stuff. But I just remember Nick and Hayley being super into it and Robbie and I just both being like “What in the world is going on, like what are we doing.” That’s my memory. And then when we had to go and record the actual vocals, because that’s us singing backup, I just remember feeling like I was going to pass out from the stress, I was so nervous about it. And if you watch some of the behind the scenes stuff of us recording the vocals, me and Robbie just look like we’re mortified.
AL: What was it like to have to go into the recording studio to do that?
KM: I mean it was really cool just because the composer that worked with us, his name is David Newman, and he, I mean, he did the score for the animated film Anastasia, he did Matilda, he’s won many many many awards. So he was like a big deal. So that was cool, we actually went to his house in Malibu and that’s where his recording studio was, and we were surrounded by you know, I think he has an Academy Award, we were surrounded by his various awards. So that was really cool. His cousin I think is Randy Newman. So it was just cool, like I said, we got the experience of working with some of the coolest people that I can imagine. Like I said, I always say Dean Cundey, our director of photography, who I believe even did Jaws, like he’s done everything. And then David Newman which was a big deal. And I mean it was fun, that’s the thing, we always had fun. Whatever it was that we were doing, we all generally really enjoyed each other and we had a good time. So it was fun for that reason, but I do definitely remember that I was very nervous, and very uncomfortable.
AL: Do you have a favourite out of those musical numbers?
KM: I really, I liked the By the Light of the Silvery Moon one where we went through all the different genres of music, I thought those were really cool, and I love Nick and Hayley’s performance on that as well.
AL: Was the rap always part of it or was that added in a little bit later?
KM: The rap! I forgot about the rap. That was added in when he added in the musical numbers. That was added in when he told us “There’s going to be this and this and we’re going to do this and also you’re going to rap!” and we’re like “What? We’re going to what?” And he’s like “Yeah, you’re going to rap.” We’re just like “Oh my gosh.” But, yeah, the rap. Good stuff man. Now I’ve got to re-watch these movies.
AL: As we are coming up to the 10 year anniversary for Curse of the Lake Monster, and the 10 year for Mystery Begins was last year, what is it like to still have people messaging you about those movies 10 years later?
KM: I’m always just like shocked kind of. I would say in the last couple of years it’s gotten even more, I’ve gotten it more so. And I feel really lucky, I don’t think there’s a lot of actors that can say that they’ve done a movie or a series of movies that 10 years later are still so popular. And so I feel, like I said earlier, I just feel really lucky and really blessed and I’m so happy that people still respond to it so much. It was such an awesome time of my life and I’m still so proud of it to this day, and the fact that people still love it and still message me from all over the world, I mean, I get messages from all over the world. Brazil, China, Canada, everywhere. And it’s just really cool, it’s a cool feeling.
AL: And why do you think that Scooby has been so popular for over 50 years now?
KM: You know I just think that, I mean, let’s see. I think that Scooby Doo itself, I think that there is somebody for everybody to relate to. You know I think that you can either relate to Daphne or you can relate to Fred or maybe you can relate to Shaggy or maybe you can relate to Scooby or Velma. I mean, there’s a little piece of each of us in those characters, and there’s a little piece of those characters in each of us. Even if it’s a combination of two characters that you relate to. But I think everybody has someone that they can relate to, and I mean, who doesn’t love an adorable talking dog with a speech impediment? I mean seriously, who doesn’t love that? And you know I think it’s kind of the same concept as like, crime shows are really popular and I think that’s because people love a good mystery. And they love a whodunit. And so to take that format of a crime show and these mysteries and then put it together with these awesome characters, like who wouldn’t love that?
And I also think that you’ve got generations of people that grew up with it, right, and now we’re going on 50 years. So people that introduced it to their children because it was a piece of their childhood, and then they loved it, and they introduced it to their kids. So I think it’s very much because it’s been around so much, it’s just a very generational thing. And I think, you know, I know that when I have kids I’m definitely going to want them to watch Scooby and I’m going to introduce them to that. So I think you just have grandparents that introduced it to the parents and then parents introduced it to the kids and it’s just really stood the test of time in that way. And I think also, they’ve been very smart in the way that they’ve constantly reinvented him, reinvented Scooby. And you know, done an origin story, and then they did this, and it hasn’t become stale yet because they’ve constantly kind of reinvented it.
AL: I wanted to chat about your coaching a little bit, had that been something that you had always wanted to do or did you stumble upon a love for it?
KM: I kind of just fell into it. I sort of decided I wanted to try something else and kind of take a break from the process of auditioning, it’s kind of a tedious process. And so I started working in casting, I actually started working for the casting director that cast Scooby. I started with her and I really liked casting but it wasn’t quite what I wanted to do, and then I ended up working at an acting studio here in Los Angeles with primarily young actors and I just realized that it was something that I was really good at, and I think that part of that comes from my, obviously my years of experience as a young actor. I think when you have an acting coach that is able to kind of relate and walk you through the unique challenges that young actors face, I think that’s a really good perspective to have. And so I ended up leaving the studio that I was at and I branched out at the beginning of 2019 and I created Kate Melton Coaching, and it’s beyond my wildest dreams. I feel so lucky every single day that I get to wake up and do what I do. I love my young actors so much. I work with kids from the age of seven to, I think my oldest right now is about 22. And I love it, and I just happen to be really good at it. My kids are booking left and right, I mean, I just feel so lucky that I get to be there to walk them through the process and also to help the parents, because it’s kind of a scary industry for a kid, you know.
AL: What’s your favourite part about getting to work with young people?
KM: I love that I have all of this information in my brain of like years of training that I did and years of learning and years of experience, I love that I get to pass that on to somebody, and it’s not just sitting in my brain driving me crazy. And there’s something that I just love about working with young people where they’re so much more resilient than we are as adults, and they’re so much more open to criticism than we are. I learn from them every single day, I try to learn to not take myself so seriously and I try to learn to be brave. Because these young actors, they’re putting themselves out there every single day and they’re so brave to be doing that, and even though I used to do that as well, I feel like as we grow up, we just kind of tend to put up walls and try to protect ourselves because we’ve gotten a glimpse of the real world. They remind me that not everything is so serious, and that it’s okay sometimes to just have a good time and step back and be a little bit more vulnerable. And I think that’s a super valuable thing to be around every day.
AL: Is there anything else you wanted to add at all?
KM: I would just like to say something to the fans out there if I could really quickly. I just want to say, and to you too Alexa, I really appreciate you contacting me. And just to anyone out there that the movies have meant anything to, I just want to say how much I appreciate you guys, how much I know that Nick, Robbie, and Hayley appreciate you guys, and you know, just thank you for always being so kind to us and bringing us into your homes and allowing us to be part of your families and your childhoods. We love you guys and I’m so happy that this film has stood the test of time and means so much to so many people. It just, it makes me so happy. I love you guys.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Episode 5 of the Unmasked History of Scooby Doo features Kate Melton, who played the role of Daphne Blake in the 2009 and 2010 live action TV films Scooby Doo! The Mystery Begins and Scooby Doo! Curse of the Lake Monster.
Stay tuned for the full episode, available on Friday, July 17.
Episode 4 of the Unmasked History of Scooby Doo features Scooby Doo and Guess Who writer Mark Hoffmeier. Mark wrote two episodes for the show: A Mystery Solving Gang Divided, with guest stars Abraham Lincoln and the Funky Phantom crew, and Attack of the Weird Al-Osaurus, which naturally guest stars Weird Al Yankovic.
Highlights of this episode include:
1- Mark discusses his work at Hanna-Barbera in publicity.
2- What it was like to bring back classic Hanna-Barbera characters in a Guess Who episode.
3- How Weird Al’s personality contributes to an animated episode of Scooby Doo.
Make sure to listen above! Or you can read a transcript of the interview here.
If you want to follow Mark, you can find him on Twitter and Instagram @hoffwrites, or @hoffcomedy.
Not able to listen to the full episode? Don’t worry! You can still read the full transcript of the interview with Mark Hoffmeier below. Or click here to listen to the podcast episode.
If you want to follow Mark, you can find him on Twitter and Instagram @hoffwrites, or @hoffcomedy.
A scene from Scooby Doo and Guess Who? A Mystery Solving Gang Divided!
AL: What’s your relationship to Scooby Doo?
MH: I grew up watching Scooby Doo, and then the really cool part about it is in the late 80s, I joined Hanna-Barbera, I worked in the publicity department. I worked as an assistant, and then I sort of moved up to arranging interviews for a lot of the voice cast and stuff. I not only got to see a lot of the production stuff on Scooby Doo, and then my very first piece of animation writing was I did a short re-write on a scene as sort of a test for one of the producers, and that was on A Pup Named Scooby Doo which was really fun. But I used to get to take Daws Butler* out to do interviews where he would talk about Scooby. And so that was really fun because Daws was the original voice of both Scooby and Astro. So he would talk quite extensively about that and that was really fun.
*Although Mark says Daws Butler, I believe he meant Don Messick, who was the original voice actor for Scooby Doo and Astro (The Jetsons.) Daws Butler was the voice of Yogi Bear, Huckleberry Hound, and for the Scooby Doo franchise, Daws voiced Scooby-Dum.
AL: Do you remember which Pup Named Scooby Doo episode that was?
MH: I have no idea. I know it involved was it Velma in a chair with curlers on or something, or a barber chair, and it was spinning around. I don’t remember the specific episode name. What I remember was around that time they were doing a lot of shows that were like baby-fied versions of classic shows. Like they were doing the Flinstone Kids, and that was the big pitch that people would make is “Let’s make it a baby-fied version,” but I remember thinking that the Pup Named Scooby designs were really, I thought, some of the cutest of that era of you know, Muppet Babies and all that kind of stuff. I thought the way they re-did a Pup Named Scooby, it looked really cool, I thought it was really well done. It just looks great, it’s a really fun show.
AL: Did you ever watch the new Scooby Doo movies which also featured celebrity guest stars?
MH: I think I’ve maybe seen one of them, a buddy of mine wrote the one with the wrestlers, one of the most recent wrestling ones that came out. And now I’m trying to think, was it John Cena maybe? I’m trying to remember what wrestler was in the movie. So I’ve seen parts of that one, and I think they hold up. I think it’s great that Scooby is one of these timeless characters that sort of everybody relates to and what’s great is I remember the early stories about how the show was pitched by Joe Barbera was that he wanted to do sort of a serious mystery show for kids. So he had the van and he had the kids and that’s why some of the original backgrounds are kind of scary. And then one of the network execs he was pitching to, said you know, “Well I think this might be too scary.” And Joe says “Well what if we added a dog. What if we added a talking dog and his buddy.” And that’s sort of how that idea was birthed was it came from not wanting to make it too scary and I think he really had great instincts for finding something that people and kids in particular can relate to.
AL: Why do you think that adding the formula of having celebrities on the show works?
MH: I think it gives it a really sort of terrifically fun, almost like a movie of the week for kids. Around that time there were a lot of, like movie stars would guest on movies of the week, that was a big thing. And I think, you know when I was a kid in the 70s they had, was it the Sunday Night Mystery Theaters on I want to say NBC and they had like McMillan & Wife and all these, they had McCloud, and they were all these movies where people solved mysteries. So I think it was sort of a thing at the time to do. And I think it just, you know throwing in guys like Don Knotts and Jonathan Winters, and of course the Harlem Globetrotters, who were just great at that time. I remember going and seeing the Harlem Globetrotters live with Curly Neal and Meadowlark Lemon and they were not only amazing athletes but they were such great showmen that it added this great component to see them in animated form, you know, doing their stuff with Scooby. And guys like Jonathan Winters, what a great take, and then Sandy Duncan I think was in there. And for the stars, it was great because, I mean, that’s an easy day of work actually. They don’t have to get into makeup, they don’t have to memorize their lines. And that doesn’t mean it doesn’t take skill and talent to do the voice acting, but it’s just different. So they can just go into Hanna-Barbera and do a recording and you know, and have fun like that. So I think it worked out very well.
AL: And if you could pick anyone to guest star in Scooby Doo and Guess Who, and if you also got to write the episode, who would it be?
MH: Oh, for me, it would be Patton Oswalt. I love him, I think he would get into it because he’s got a young daughter, and he’s just, he’s done voice over stuff, he’s a very fun guy, I think it would be fantastic.
AL: When did you know that you wanted to be a writer?
MH: I knew in high school actually. I did a lot of writing for the high school newspaper and I wrote some poetry, and so I sort of knew by high school that I wanted to write. And I didn’t know exactly how or where or what that would mean, (but) since then I’ve always been writing. And so then when I got into college out here in California, I was also writing, like my roommate and I in college did our own sketch comedy show, we wrote and produced a sketch comedy show, I wrote a bunch of short stories in college, and I wrote for the newspaper extensively. So I sort of always knew that’s what I wanted to do, but I also liked performing so it just sort of came down to, in my case, that I was making more money writing than I was performing, so.
AL: How did you get into that publicity job for Hanna-Barbera?
MH: I had a friend of a friend. Hanna-Barbera at the time was owned by a company called Taft Entertainment and they were based in Cincinnati. Bill and Joe had sold Hanna-Barbera to Taft Entertainment I want to say in the early 80s, late 70s. And they were retained as you know, co-presidents of the company, but it was owned by Taft Entertainment. And it was before the huge broadcasting conglomerates that we have today, so they owned numerous television stations in the Midwest, they needed syndication, product for syndication deals, Hanna-Barbera could do that. And I believe Taft also owned certain theme parks, and that’s how they also got the characters put out into theme parks and stuff. And they also had the heft then to be able to go make licensing deals for things. Although interestingly, the deal for Flinstones vitamins, and I believe Flinstones cereals, was made prior to the Taft deal, and was made as they say in perpetuity so in other words, those deals are going to go on forever, they can keep making Flinstones vitamins and Flinstones cereals as long as they want, so that was before deals got renegotiated every few years, that was just done like “Here you want it, you got it.”
So he called me up and there was actually a job in the mail room. So I started in the mail room and about five weeks in, I was a messenger, I used to have to do running around delivering stuff. And about five weeks in a job came up in publicity, and most of the guys that worked in the mail room wanted to go into production, so they were waiting for a production job to come up, and I was like “Well this has to be better than driving around in my car in LA when it’s hot out.” And I talked to the head of publicity, my boss Sarah Baisley, and she was like “Well, there’ll be a lot of writing of bios and talking to directors and writing up press kits and are you comfortable writing stuff?” And I was like “Yeah,” so I got to do that. And that was really fun because I got to do things like, I remember they needed an article written for TV Guide that I got to co-write with Mr. Hanna, and it was all about the Flinstones. And it was sort of updated versions of the Flinstones like “Who would come visit Bedrock now?” And so I got to do stuff like “Well it would be Arnold Quartzenegger,” right, it would be all that kind of fun. You know, Flinstone-izing the modern stars and that was really fun that I got to do stuff like that.
AL: What was your favourite part of doing that?
MH: My favourite part of doing that was actually arranging and going out on interviews with the voice actors and stuff. Like Daws Butler was a favourite of mine because Daws would often get — like you’d end up a lot of times on what they called “morning zoo radio shows” you know, that’s the guys that are doing real crazy and “Oh we’ve got the traffic and now it’s a helicopter, woo-hoo what’s going on” and Daws Butler was actually, he was actually very serious, he was a very great voice actor, he was also a DJ, and he also voiced Dr. Benton Quest on Johnny Quest. So that was actually his real voice, was this deep sort of resonant voice that he would give and he’d say stuff. And so it was sort of weird that he also did all these talking dogs. And so people would ask him, “Yeah well, I see here in your credits you do a lot of talking dogs so you basically, you’re Astro and Scooby, and they’re sort of the same guy aren’t they,” and then they’d go on, and Daws would stop them and say “No, no, no, let me correct you there. Astro and Scooby are actually two different voices, you see. Scooby is actually a very deep chest voice like this “Reah, I want a pizza,” whereas Astro is actually a throat voice, “Ri George, Ri love you,” so they’re very, very different. And I would just sit back in awe of the fact that he’s sort of scientifically breaking down the vocal differences between Astro and Scooby, and it was great. Frank Welker, who was Fred, would come along on those interviews and of course he’s now Scooby, and he would come along and he would do voices and it was just great to be in the room with them, and I got to meet a lot of people setting up interviews for them. I got to meet Little Richard, and I got to meet, Tim Curry did some stuff for us, I got to meet, I can’t think of his name, Tim Matheson, who was the original voice of Johnny Quest. A lot of people don’t know that. But when they did the new Johnny Quest, I set up a photo shoot between the voice of the new Johnny Quest and Tim Matheson came in, to just pose with a Johnny Quest photo. And Tim Matheson was so nice about it and so professional, and I realized “Oh yeah, this guy’s been in the industry since he was a kid,” so he knows how all of this works. So it was just, it was a really fun time, and it was really great setting up all those interviews and stuff.
AL: How did you transition into writing episodes for various different series?
MH:Well when I was at Hanna-Barbera, I sort of got a reputation as a jokester. I did a lot of jokes around the studio. I was also working as a stand-up comedian and doing improv comedy, so people sort of knew me, that I could do jokes and I could do that kind of stuff. And I got to be friendly with some of the people who were producers there, a good friend of mine, Lane Raichert, who was the producer/head writer on Pup Named Scooby sort of knew this, and I had gotten a writing agent because I was actually speccing, what they call speccing, I was writing scripts for live action shows like Miami Vice, so trying to get into that work, the original equalizer on TV, trying to get into that. So, I think he’d read one of my scripts or something and he had this rewrite on a couple of scenes from Pup Named Scooby and he asked me if I wanted to do it and I said sure. Then from there I did some, I just did some freelance scripts, they had a show called Monster Tails, which was really great. It was done by a friend of mine called Don Dougherty and Don was a real classic cartoon gag man. He’d been trained by Tex Avery, one of the guys that helped train him, and it was a show where it was the pets of famous monsters. So it was like Frankenstein has a dog and all this kind of stuff. So the very first script I wrote was for Monster Tails, and one of the voice actors on that show was Jonathan Winters. So I got to go to the record and see Jonathan Winters reading my words and then riffing and being funny and it was fantastic, it was really great.
AL: Do you have any influences on your writing?
MH:Influences, wow. I don’t know. I mean a lot of my influences, you know I mean it’s so weird, this is going to sound so odd, but it goes back to like Shakespeare, I did a lot of Shakespeare in college, I read a lot of Shakespeare in high school. Sort of the classic writers, you know, Hemingway, and his sort of really, not curt but tight style. I think screenplay wise, there are a number of guys. It was funny because I remember when I was first getting into it, you could go, there was a store on Hollywood Blvd. and you’d go down and you could buy scripts, leftover scripts from old television productions. And I remember getting an early script for a Simpsons, and it was written by Conan O’Brien. It was the monorail episode. So reading through that and seeing how do they play out their jokes, how do they do this kind of stuff. I remember reading some early Miami Vices, I don’t remember who wrote them but that kind of stuff. It was really a combination of sources, but a lot of it with writing for Hollywood for screenwriting and television, a lot of that is just the formatting. So you have to really just sort of sit down and understand what the formatting of the scripts are. So it was really helpful to actually read scripts, to be able to sit down and look at scripts. And that was a really fun thing to do.
AL: What are the differences between some of the earlier writing, like writing for the newspaper and stuff and writing screenplays?
MH:I did a lot of feature writing for the newspaper. So feature writing, a lot of lighter stuff. News, the way I was trained, was strongly formatted and you tried to pull out a lot of your opinion and just dispense information. Whereas, like feature writing is a lot of fun and fluffy and how do you get people interested in stuff. So that was a lot more useful. Also that and ironically sports writing, because if you’ve ever read the sports page, (there’s) a lot of jargon, a lot of puffed up stuff, a lot of funny way to introduce quotes, there’s a lot more opinion on the sports pages, because everybody has an opinion about who’s the better pitcher, or who the Dodgers should be batting third in their lineup. So those influences helped, but there’s so much that goes into learning the formatting of television writing, and specifically sitcom writing is different format than screenplay writing at the time. Animation writing was very different because at the time, in animation writing they wanted you to suggest scenes and shots. They wanted you to sort of direct the episode on paper so that the networks knew what they were getting. And that’s all changed, and I think it’s good that it’s changed, because it gives the storyboard artists more freedom to interpret it the way they want. And it makes it easier on the writer. So it’s more gone the way towards screenplays. But a lot of that is learning how to write concise, funny dialogue but also writing concise, instructive scene descriptions. So people know what’s going on, but you’re not doing too much flowery stuff, or it’s too long, or it makes it really boring for people to read the script.
AL: What do you like about writing for animation specifically?
MH:I think, one of the fun things about it is it can be almost anything you want. In a lot of cases, unless you’re doing a really heavy CG thing, which is a lot more like live action in that you have to be conscious of locations and setting and character count. Regular 2D animation, you can almost go anywhere and do anything. And that makes it really, really fun. You can play out ridiculous gags, you can do stupid stuff, you know, you can do all that great Ren and Stimpy, Rick and Morty kind of craziness, which is I think the real power of that medium, is doing that kind of stuff, you know.
AL: And you’ve written for quite a few superhero shows as well. What are the differences between writing something for a superhero like Spiderman for example, and writing a Scooby Doo episode?
MH: Well, you know, Spiderman is sort of more inherently dramatic. It’s sort of, a lot of times they use the phrase action-comedy. And it really is more action-comedy. Whereas I would say Scooby Doo is comedy-action, if that makes sense. Scooby Doo starts more from a comedy perspective because that’s just who he is, right. But Spiderman starts more from an action perspective. And they’re both in their own unique ways about empowerment, which I like. That’s where their similarities are. Spiderman is a teenager trying to figure it out, and how do I defeat this guy in the rhino suit while I have a math assignment due tomorrow. And Scooby Doo is about overcoming your fears. He and Shaggy are the fraidy cats, and are obsessed with food, and it’s like how do they we get to see them overcome their fears, and how do they do it so that it’s also funny too. Whereas Spiderman that twist would be in a more dramatic fashion, a more dramatic way. And his problem solving is, he has to protect people, he has to actually save people from real threats, whereas in Scooby Doo in the end they pull the hood off the guy “It’s Mr. Carstares” right, you know. “I would have done it if it weren’t for you meddling kids.” We see it’s all hokum, it’s somebody trying to put one over on us. I think those are the main differences.
AL: And how did you come to work on Scooby Doo and Guess Who? MH:A good friend of mine, Mike Ryan was the producer on the show. So he called me up and said do you want to do some, and I said sure. And I’d worked with Mike on several shows, and so that was really fun to have a chance to do that.
AL: How is it decided as to who might be writing what episode?
MH:That’s totally, usually up to the production staff. I know on that particular show, in a lot of cases it was, you know, you have to go out and see “Okay, here’s a list of people we’d love to have on the show as guest stars. Let’s go out and see if they could possibly do it,” and then in some cases you get back they can’t do it, or they’d like to do it, will it fit in their schedule, those kinds of things, there’s a lot of practical considerations on that. And then I know like with the Funky Phantom episode, they just knew they wanted to do a Funky Phantom episode. And they knew I had a reverence and sort of knew all those old Hanna-Barbera shows, and so they knew I could sort of handle the voices on that. And so that turned out really fun to be able to do that, and at the end to throw in not only the Funky Phantom but a Goober and the Ghost Chasers gag, because Goober and the Ghost Chasers was basically Scooby Doo done by the Ruby Spears gang, you know, it was sort of a derivation on that. So that was really fun to be able to throw all that together and that they said “Yeah, let’s do that.”
AL: Do you ever get to toss in any input as to what guest stars you might want to write an episode for?
MH: I remember having some discussions with Mike about that, like have you asked about this person, have you asked about that person. And it’s so complex because you don’t know, have they already asked that person, do they maybe not have that person on their list because, I mean like, especially in today’s Hollywood, what is their reputation like, do we want to put them on a kids show, you know. What’s their reputation family wise, are they as you would say “family friendly.” There’s just so many considerations. Are they doing a movie maybe with Warner Bros. and it would be great to have them on the show because that helps support all the product that’s going out, you know. So there’s a lot of different considerations that go into it, and so. Like a master list is made up, and then they throw stuff in there and try to do it. I know we tried to do an episode, we tried to come up for an episode for Jabberjaw, and that involved, was it Sealab 2020 I think and Jabberjaw. And we just couldn’t quite make it work, it just didn’t all quite hold together. So sometimes that happens too. You write out a premise and you say, “This would be great, let’s do Jabberjaw and let’s make it underwater and it’ll be crazy,” and it just doesn’t work out.
AL: How much freedom do you have in the writing process, are you given an idea of what the plot should look like, or can you just run wild with the characters?
MH: Oh no, it’s all very, it’s sort of strictly laid out. It’s sort of like a logic problem. So the process is you’ll get a premise, you know, in this case, the premise for like Funky Phantom I remember was “they’re visiting a civil war battlefield and they come across these ghosts” and what’s going on here, and how do we explore the competition between the two teams. And that was sort of laid out that way by Mike because you know, the historical aspect to the Funky Phantom, and so we were folding in the history of the civil war. I was sort of, I’m a history buff so I love the civil war, so I was careful to make it a fictitious civil war battlefield because I didn’t want it to seem too irreverent to make it a real civil war battlefield that all this crazy stuff was happening on. So, you start with a premise, and everybody approves it, or goes around and makes their notes, and this is what we should do. Then you go to an outline, so you know, if a premise is one to two, sometimes three pages, the outline will then usually be you know, 10-12 pages and you lay out again, more of the action, you actually lay out where the scenes will be. Again, you get more notes, and then you go to script. So it’s all sort of carefully orchestrated and laid out. It’s sort of building, starting with the skeleton, building the inner structure, building the outer structure, and then you know, laying it all out there. So it’s kind of like building a building. You got to start with plans, then you have to put up the skeleton of the building, then you have to put up the exterior, then you have to finish out the insides of it. So it’s a lot like that.
AL: And is the monster of the week decided in that premise too or do you get some input?
MH: Usually, yeah. Usually the monster of the week is going to be decided in the premise. So the premise will basically give you the beginning, the middle, and the end. It lays that out so that you have an actually story, because a story is a beginning, a middle and an end. So you usually get that laid out, usually (in the) premise. And that doesn’t mean it can’t change, somebody might say, “That villain is too close to one we’ve already used, or we’ve already got one that’s already going forward,” or somebody might say “What if we changed it and made it like this,” and so. But in a lot of cases by the time you go to outline you know who your bad guys are, and basically, what your beginning, your middle, and your end is.
AL: And what’s your specific writing process?
MH: Well it’s sort of that. In some cases on shows, depending on the show you’re working on, they’ll want you to do premises, so you can sit down and write, 10 or 12 premises for a show. You’ll know the basic concept heading into the writing process, and you submit those premises and then you get feedback. And they’ll say “We like this one, let’s push it forward,” and let’s do that. In the case of the Guess Who scripts, they already knew what they wanted to do, just because that show sort of needed to, with the timing of guests coming on they sort of needed to know what direction they were going in to begin with. So I think they had a master list of “Here’s who we’re trying to get, here’s how we’re going to make it work.” And so they came to me (and) already had a premise sort of. Funky Phantom, set on a civil war battlefield, it’s a competition between the Funky Phantom crew and the Scooby crew. And it’s like okay, and it’s building the story out from there. For me, it’s about sitting every day and having to write. You got to sit down every day and you got to write, and you got to hit those, sort of your target deadlines. I do a lot of stuff where, let’s say I’ve been given the go to script, and I know a script is going to be usually between 28-35 pages, I’ll actually break down and say, “Okay, in order to hit the deadline, I got to write five or 6 pages a day.” And you sit down and you try to do that. And some days maybe you write eight, and some days you’ll write fewer, because you’re being lazy, or you’re just stuck with a certain problem. That’s sort of the basics of it.
AL: What is it like to be able to write for these iconic characters?
MH: Well like I said, for me it’s pretty cool because having worked at Hanna-Barbera, working on Scooby, and having gotten to do, you know, I remember I got to revise one of the bios on Daws Butler so I got to take him to lunch and talk to him about his career and all the stuff he’d done, you know, from Boo Boo Bear to Scooby to Astro, to Johnny Quest and so. To me, it’s great to be able to, I sort of hear those voices in my head when I’m doing it, you know. And to be able to voice the Funky Phantom, done by another great voice actor Daws Butler who I got to meet and interview, and sit down in his home studio with. And he was fantastic, and so it was great to hear these guys. And they’d been old radio guys so they got used to performing, I think both of them did radio content during World War II, where in a lot of cases, they played all the characters. So frequently in the studio, when both Daws and Don were performing, the audio engineers would have to tell them, “Can you redo that sequence, because you didn’t leave enough spaces between the characters,” because they were able to switch from one character to another so quickly, because they were used to doing it on radio, that the editors didn’t have enough space in there if they needed to put a cut between the characters, so they’d have to tell them to spread it out a little bit as they switched. And so to be able to write for the voices that I talked to them about and can hear in my head, it was really fun.
AL: Who’s your favourite character of the gang to write for?
MH: It’s got to be Shaggy and Scooby. Although Velma, I like writing for Velma too because you can, you know, Velma in a lot of cases, there’s a lot of exposition going on there, but she’s also smart so it’s great. You can drop the knowledge in there, and the crazy science stuff, and it’s always fun to have a character like that. Like I wrote on Back to the Future animated series too, and Doc Brown, right. I did a baseball episode, so he’s dropping in all kinds of crazy statistics about baseball cause that’s who he is. So it’s always really fun to have smart characters too.
AL: Were you able to be present for the record for both of those episodes that you wrote?
MH: Those, I was not. In many cases you can be, but I know in that case, the schedules were just so crazy and demanding, and getting like guests together with all that, it didn’t work out. I was kind of bummed because I love Weird Al, and I’d actually met Weird Al before. And he’s very personable and very charming, and very sort of self-effacing. He’s just a great guy and he’s sort of, he has a great outlook on the fact that he’s become this famous song parodier. And so I was bummed that I couldn’t get to go see the records, but I understand too. When you’re doing a production schedule, sometimes it just doesn’t work out, you just can’t invite everybody who’d like to be there.
AL: Of the two episodes you wrote, do you have a favourite?
MH: I am sort of partial to the Funky Phantom episode, only because it’s such classic Hanna-Barbera. And it’s one of those things that, back in the early days of Hanna-Barbera when I started, they probably wouldn’t have done a crossover like that because the eras didn’t match. By the time I was there when Pup Named Scooby Doo was going on, they probably wouldn’t have dropped Funky Phantom into A Pup Named Scooby Doo, because they would’ve just said “Well, who cares.” But it’s such a great mash-up now of some of the classic Hanna-Barbera stuff that I love being able to do that. I think being able to do Weird Al stuff was really fun, but having classic Hanna-Barbera stuff in there, to me, was the real treat.
AL: More generally, what’s your favourite show that you’ve written for, or do you have a favourite episode that you’ve written over everything that you’ve done?
MH: Oh wow. There was a show done years ago that I loved, called Bruno the Kid. It was Bruce Willis’ Bruno character, his harmonica playing band character, but he was a kid spy called Bruno the Kid. And what was great about those shows was they were incredibly silly spy things, they were written by guys who had done sitcoms, so they had a very sitcom sensibility. And I got to throw in jokes I never thought would get into an animated show, and those turned out really great, those were some of the most fun I’ve had. I think, other than that, my run on Spiderman, being on staff on Spiderman for all those years, took us four or five years to get all of that done. It was really great, you know. It’s still, I think that show still holds up. It was really great to work on some of those classic episodes and classic villains. That first season, there were a lot of meetings, and in those meetings Stan Lee would be in the meetings, and so you’d get to hear Stan’s input and talk to Stan about stuff and that was really, really fun and important. And then, a lot of the stuff I did with LEGO was really fun too because LEGO has this great sense of family-friendly snark, so I got to, you know, like doing a LEGO version of the Avengers is really fun because you get to poke fun at like, Thor, in this LEGO-y fun way. In particular, Thor, I was always told I was going too far with Thor because he has that theatricality right. And it was like “You’ve gone too far with Thor, you need to pull Thor,” “Okay, okay,” but you know. It was like, doing jokes like they’re having a party and there’s a bowl of mini meatballs. “The mini meatballs are cold, this is a job for Mjölnir! And he’d strike them with lightning, and it’s such a stupid joke and such a stupid thing to use with his magic hammer, reheating meatballs, but it was really fun to do stuff like that, and people really sort of saw the fun in being able to do a LEGO-ized version of something. I did LEGO Frozen, and what was great about doing LEGO Frozen was all the original, I think we had every original voice actor come in from Frozen and do the LEGO version because they were like “Yes, we want to do the LEGO version.” And it was like “Oh, okay, fantastic. Come on in and do it.” It was really fun. That one was fun, I actually got to be in the booth for that, and what was great was I got to do a lot of, they wanted extra lines and improv lines, so we got to do a lot of that, that was really fun, being able to throw in lines from listening and hearing them doing a line and “Oh, why don’t you try it like this,” or “Oh how about this one,” and I’d write one real quick and they’d put it in the booth and that was really fun to do that.
AL: Moving more specifically to A Mystery Solving Gang Divided, the Funky Phantom episode, what was it like to write a rivalry between the two groups?
MH: That was really fun. I mean, it was really fun because you got to play with all those tropes of the mystery hunting gangs and all that kind of stuff, and like how they were going to investigate it. Because they sort of all match up one on one with each other in the gang and so you could have these just funny crazy rivalries and of course, then the whole idea that one group has a ghost with them, and one group has a talking dog. And the fact that Scooby’s afraid of ghosts and the ghost is afraid is ghosts, I mean it was like, it was just stuff piled on top of stuff. And then of course they’re actually solving a mystery too together, so that was really fun. And of course the fact that they have like, you know, competing vehicles, and it was really cool because I think that’s always a fun way to do it when you have a rivalry like that. And so, being able to write to that rivalry, it sets up, it just naturally sets up all kinds of gags.
AL: They’re often knocking each other in the episode, do you have a favourite jab or insult that happens in the episode?
MH: I’m trying to remember, gosh this takes me back. There was some stuff I think that took place in the diner, where they’re in the diner. And it’s Fred going after the guy who leads the Funky Phantom group, and I remember that exchange specifically in the diner, and there’s some pancake gags I think with Scooby. And so that to me was a really fun scene to write because that sort of really sets up their rivalry and it’s really, we sort of see Fred taken out of his cool exterior because he’s feeling so “I’ve got to defend my turf,” you know.
AL: What was it like to bring back those older Hanna-Barbera characters and reinvent them to the year that it is now?
MH: Well it’s really fun. The other fun part about that is, what I love now is, when you need to do research on that stuff, if you just Google it, you’re going to find it out there somewhere on YouTube, right. So you get to see how those gags were played out, and especially on Funky Phantom, he had this classic gag he did when he was afraid, where he would become like a window shade, which is kind of old because I don’t know if that many people have window shades anymore, right. We have the blinds and those kinds of things. And he would like pull on the bottom and the shade would roll up. That’s kind of a classic gag that you pull on it, and it zips up. And he’d do that to get out of a scene, you know, he’d be afraid and he’d want to get out, right. Or, suddenly he has a ghostly canoe and he’d paddle his way out of the scene. And it was so bizarre that I loved being able to play with that stuff. Because that is very cartoony, you know.
AL: And you mentioned that you’re a bit of a civil war buff, what was it like to be able to bring that aspect into it as well?
MH: To me, that’s the really cool stuff too. When you can bring in, hopefully something that you can say okay, maybe kids watching or somebody will then get interested in the civil war or want to know more, or say was this a real battle, or what’s going on, and so. When you sort of bring in, at least just in that one, at least touching or a flavour of actual history, to me that’s always great. Because then you can, especially in a show that’s set sort of currently, not a sci-fi show or a Batman show that’s set in an alternate world, you can bring in real world stuff and hopefully you’re getting people interested in stuff that really, they should they be interested in it, they should be interested in that history.
AL: Do you know what the thought process was to make the guest star Abraham Lincoln?
MH: I do not, I think it was just that, you know, it seemed like, Abraham Lincoln and the civil war, it was important and so, let’s make it about that, and this important time period. And so I think, I think it just worked out story wise, I think it just integrated very well in the fact that they were on a civil war battlefield and so yeah, also let’s bring in Lincoln, you know.
Weird Al Yankovic with Shaggy and Scooby in Scooby Doo and Guess Who? Attack of the Weird Al-Osaurus!
AL: Moving towards the Weird Al episode, what was your reaction when you found out you were going to be writing an episode with Weird Al in it?
MH: I was so jazzed because I went back to, I actually found it on YouTube and I remember, I was in Mike’s office, and I was saying, “There is one of the earliest videos of Weird Al playing one of his parody songs.” And I don’t remember which song it was, but Weird Al used to have a guy who would accompany him, Weird Al would be playing his accordion and singing, and this guy would be playing the suitcase. And he’d be banging on it like a drum, and he had like kazoos attached to it and bells, and it was the craziest, weirdest thing and I just wanted to be able to push it in all directions. I remember in early meetings I was like “Can I have a kid who wants to play the suitcase or the kazoo?” And we tried to figure out, can we do that, can we make it work, and then we specifically focused on the accordion, because the accordion is a ridiculous instrument too.
AL: How difficult is it to write someone like that into an animated show?
MH: Well Weird Al, I mean fortunately Weird Al sort of has this big personality already, right. The aloha shirts and the wild hair, and the glasses. And he plays an accordion, you know. Other than playing the bagpipe or a banjo, I can’t think of a sort of a wilder, more comedic instrument. Because you can do stings, he can play a crazy song all of a sudden. And he sort of lends himself to animation better than most, just because of who his persona is and actually, some of that isn’t persona, that’s just him. That’s just sort of who he is and how he’s established himself. And so it just, it lends itself almost perfectly to being able to do that kind of crazy, wild stuff you can do in animation.
AL: What do you have to do to stay true to his personality to get him in an animated episode? MH: I think a lot of it is just knowing, do you sort of know his songs, I remember watching more YouTube, like I watched a lot of his videos again. I’d seen them before but I think I watched Like a Surgeon again, and Eat It, I think I watched Eat It, because he has this very, again, like the LEGO stuff, Weird Al has a very, sort of family-friendly snarkiness, right. It’s not mean spirited, it’s very fun, and so it’s from that fun point of view. And so, same thing in the way that like Scooby Doo has this sort of fun take on ghosts and what’s going on, and monsters and stuff like that, Weird Al lends to that because you can immediately break the tension if they’re say, sneaking through a cave and it’s dangerous and he’s playing musical stings on his accordion, right. It’s just great.
AL: Talking about those musical stings, did you write the words for those?
MH: I wrote some words, I don’t know how much of my original stuff got in, because I know he’s such a creative guy, that I know they allowed him the freedom to be like “If you want to do something, you can do something. If you want to follow what’s down there, what’s down there.” In a lot of cases with voice actors, especially really talented voice actors, you know, like Frank Welker, and I know with Daws Butler, and a lot of the other voice actors I’ve worked with throughout the years, you can say to them “Just give me a couple of takes as written,” and then a lot of times they’ll say “Can I try something?” “Sure, please try something,” or they’ll say “I have something I think would be fun,” and they’ll do their own take on stuff. Especially when you’ve got a guy like Weird Al, you actually want that, because it shows that they’re sort of invested in the story, and they’re sort of invested in bringing their own voice to that story, and how it can work, and that kind of stuff is really fun too.
AL: Do you have a favourite part within that episode?
MH: I would say, I think there’s a great part in there where he’s, all the kids are leaving or their parents are coming to pick them up, and he’s, you know, he’s talking to the kids and we’re first introduced to the camp kids and the whole accordion idea, and there’s some great stuff there with just Weird Al and the fact that he’s wearing an accordion the whole time. And then I think that the Scooby stuff where they’re sneaking around and he’s playing stings on the accordion. To me, that’s the kind of stuff that’s like, it’s so unique to his character, that really no other character can do that, right. There’s no other character that can have an accordion strapped on and be doing stuff like that, you know.
AL: Moving back a little bit more generally, why do you think that a cartoon dog solving mysteries has had so much staying power over the last 50 years?
MH: I think it’s the, you know, the relationship between all of them, you know. The gang, and Scooby and Shaggy, it’s really a family. It’s sort of a crazy family and they all have their roles, and they all do certain things that are important to the group, and so, it makes it this level of it’s recognizable, it’s sort of family friendly, you could sit down as a family and watch these shows, and everybody’s going to get a little bit of something fun out of it. And I think just, you know, the idea that it’s a talking dog. I think we love to personify our pets and our animals that are around us. I have a dog, I love dogs, and so I’m always doing that, I know people do that with their cats, and the grumpy cat memes, and so I think that being able to have this big goofy, and he’s a Great Dane, right. So you know, like Marmaduke. They’re sort of big, funny, goofy dogs that normally, if you looked at a Great Dane, you’d be quick intimidated by it, they’re big animals. I had a friend who had a Great Dane and he said “Yeah, we had to be careful what we put on top of the refrigerator because he could actually stand on his hind legs and get to the top of the refrigerator.” And you’d go like, Jesus, it’s like a horse, right. It’s not like a dog. And so I think that the fact that it’s a Great Dane that’s goofy and funny and scared of stuff, and more actually like what Great Danes are, I think that’s so relatable to people, and I think kids say “I’d love to have a pet like that.” If you don’t have a pet, you want to have a pet like that, if you do have a pet, you want to think your pet is goofy and silly and funny like Scooby, but also could protect you and be your pal. So I think that’s a universal thing.
AL: Is there anything else you wanted to add at all?
MH: No, I just wanted to say thanks to you. It’s always fun to talk to people who are appreciative of this and into this and looking to ask more questions and learn about it. Again, having that curiosity for the world and figuring it out. The other thing I would say is that I certainly hope that anybody watched that Funky Phantom episode would want to learn more about Lincoln and the civil war, and particularly US history about that era because we’re still living that era, we’re still living the consequences of that war and those decisions, and those decisions, speaking of the Funky Phantom, go back to the founding of our country, and so you can trace that timeline all the way up to what’s happening in modern times, and we can’t understand what’s going on with the protests and things on our streets now, unless we go back and look at all that history and how far we’ve come. And same thing with the Weird Al episode, I would hope that kids would want to learn more about dinosaurs, right. Because that’s sort of a fun thing there, the fact that we put a paleontologist in there, and actually had some stuff about dinosaurs in there, to me, let your inquiring mind go and really sort of look at that stuff and have fun and understand it.
AL: Just before we end, do you have any recent projects you’d like to promote?
MH: I just did a series, it was released last year on Netflix called Legend Quest. And it is like a Mexican version of Scooby Doo. So it’s produced by a Mexican animation company called Ánima, and the difference is it’s a gang of kids solving mysteries, but the monsters are real and the monsters are from world myth and legend. So they go around the world trying to see what’s going on with these world myths and legends and there’s a larger plot going on. So it’s very serialized, it’s very fun, had a great time doing it, there’s a lot of great monsters from the world in that series that you can look at and like “Oh, okay, here’s some really great monsters we can look at,” and figure out who they are, and how do they fit in the world. Like a Japanese doll that can turn people into dolls and there’s just creepy fun stuff in that, so if you get a chance watch it, it’s Legend Quest on Netflix.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
