Happy Halloween everyone!
Here’s an extra special, spooky episode of the podcast, focusing on the latest Scooby-Doo movie release, Happy Halloween Scooby-Doo. This episode features writer, director, and producer of the movie Maxwell Atoms, and also includes a few written responses from a very special guest, the voice of Fred and Scooby-Doo, Frank Welker.
I hope you enjoy listening!
In October, we’re back to a variety of different interviews after September’s Mystery Incorporated themed month. In this episode, Alexa chats with writer Jeremy Adams. Jeremy was one of the writers on Scoobynatural, and wrote the 2019 direct-to-video film Scooby-Doo! Return to Zombie Island.
Highlights of this episode include:
1- A brief chat about the LEGO Scooby-Doo shorts.
2- All things writing for Scoobynatural.
3- The writing process for Return to Zombie Island, and what it was like to write a sequel to the original Zombie Island.
Make sure to listen to the episode above! Or you can read a transcript of the interview here.
If you want to follow Jeremy, you can find him on Twitter, @spacekicker.
In the third episode for September’s Mystery Incorporated themed month, Alexa chats with lead character designer on the show, Derrick J. Wyatt. Derrick has done character design for not only Mystery Incorporated, but also for Transformers, Teen Titans and Ben 10.
Highlights of this episode include:
1- What the design process was like for various Mystery Incorporated characters.
2- How Derrick’s attempt at Iwao Takamoto’s style turned into the design for Mystery Incorporated.
3- The importance of character design.
Make sure to listen to the episode above! Or you can read a transcript of the interview here.
If you want to follow Derrick, you can find him on Instagram and Twitter, @DerrickJWyatt.
Derrick also sent me some photos, which you can scroll through below!
Not able to listen to the full episode? Don’t worry! You can still read the full transcript of the interview with Derrick J. Wyatt below. Or click here to listen to the podcast episode.
AL: What’s your relationship to Scooby-Doo, did you grow up watching?
DJW: Yeah, I grew up watching Scooby-Doo. I kind of grew up in the dark ages of Scooby, you know, the Scrappy era, so it was like 13 Ghosts and that kind of stuff. But also, when I would come home from school they would have, in syndication, they would have the first Scooby series and the (New) Scooby Movies which I really loved. I would always hope the Batman episode would be on, or the Addams Family. I liked Laff-a-Lympics and even A Pup Named Scooby-Doo, I liked that too.
AL: Do you have a favourite personal memory related to Scooby-Doo at all?
DJW: I just remember coming home from school and hoping that Batman episode would be on, that’s kind of my favourite memory of Scooby.
AL: How did you come to work in animation?
DJW: Well I started, I think in like 1999 interning at Spümcø for free. Then eventually I got my foot in the door at Warner Bros., and then kind of went from there. That started my real, actual career in animation.
AL: Was that something that you had always wanted to do?
DJW: Yeah, I originally kind of wanted to be either an animation or a comic book artist. But when I was in school the bottom fell out of the comic industry, and I really liked the New Batman Adventures. A lot of cool cartoons were coming out. Really it kind of influenced me to go that direction.
AL: Do you remember a specific moment when you realized that character design was something that you wanted to do?
DJW: Yeah, there was a Wizard magazine that had all those, the redesigned Batman characters in the New Adventures of Batman, and I just remember thinking like I didn’t realize that you could take these characters and make them so much cooler than they were before, and I just instantly knew that’s what I wanted to do.
AL: How did you come to work on Mystery Incorporated specifically?
DJW: They asked me to do some early character designs, like I think Sheriff Stone and the Slime Mutant. And they initially wanted them to be in classic Iwao style. And I couldn’t do it. That was my attempt at drawing in Iwao Takamoto style, is what kind of became Mystery Incorporated style. But I had always kind of wanted to work on a Scooby DVD or something, I thought it would be fun.
AL: For people who maybe don’t know, can you describe what a character designer does?
DJW: Sure. We sort of set the templates for all the characters you see in the cartoon, establish their looks and proportions so they’re consistently animated and they look like the characters you know and love.
AL: Can you describe what maybe a typical day of work on Mystery Incorporated was like?
DJW: Hm, well I don’t know if there was a typical day on Mystery Incorporated. We would always start with a story breakdown meeting where we’d kind of go through the script and we’d assign out characters, which character designer got what character. Then we’d kind of go back to our desks and come up with some rough ideas of what we thought. Then if those roughs were approved then we’d take them to a more tight stage that the board artists could use. Eventually we’d clean them up and then send them off to the ink and paint department.
AL: Are your designs always based on what’s going on in the script, or have you ever had to work with just a name or something?
DJW: Yeah, I’m sure I have. It’s not always described in the script. And a lot of times Tony Cervone would have a photo reference from 1969 that he would want us to use, or maybe he’d have a, like in the case of Professor Pericles, he had a pretty detailed sketch of how he wanted Pericles to look, and I just translated that into the style of the show.
AL: What’s your specific design process?
DJW: It’s a tedious and horrible process with a lot of erasing. A lot of false starts. I start out, like on Scooby I would take a big size comp and I would take a little tiny Post-it, and I would draw the character’s silhouette in so it fit in with the rest of the cast of the show. And then I would take that little tiny Post-it and blow it up and refine that character. And that’s where I kind of came from. Oh, a huge part of the Scooby design process was our reference library. We had actually gotten catalogs, clothing catalogs from 1969, and would reference those things for the show, because the whole thing was like design didn’t evolve past 1969 in this world, it stopped there. So it was really fun to adapt that stuff.
AL: Are things still done (on paper) or is that moved more towards working on a computer?
DJW: It’s still done by hand, even when you’re drawing on a computer you’re still drawing with your hand. The colour process is a little bit more click and fill but even they have to draw out the shadows and stuff. I still work on paper for my roughs, and then I move those into the computer, and go from there.
AL: Were there any challenges in designing for Scooby?
DJW: Well the initial challenge was I couldn’t do it. But the other challenge, I guess the biggest challenge was the epic scope of the show. Even though I’m used to working on big action shows, the scope of Scooby would be crazy. We would have an entire prom one episode, and then the very next episode we were going to the knights fair and the pirates were crashing. It’s almost like designing two completely different shows with different settings and different characters or even the same characters in different costumes. So just the scope of the show was really hard. It was really, really challenging.
AL: What was it like to tackle these iconic characters?
DJW: I love that. It’s one of my favourite things to do is kind of take on these big iconic characters like that. It was just a lot of fun and I tried to put as much of my love and respect for the characters into the designs as I could.
AL: You mentioned that you had that reference library and you were working off the original, but did you have any other inspirations for the designs for the characters?
DJW: Well sometimes it was the actors, you know. They would want to capture, not a caricature of the actor really, but like a hint of the actor. Enough that it would feel right with his or her voice coming out of the character’s mouth. I can’t think of anything else offhand like that right now.
AL: Do you have any specific examples of a character that was maybe designed off the actor?
DJW: Yeah, but I can’t remember the actor’s name.* What was the guy from Community, he plays the Dean in Community right, and then he was, was he the publicist of the Crybaby Clown? I’m butchering this, but that is just the first one that pops into mind. Like it doesn’t really look like that actor but it’s just enough that it seems right with the voice coming out of his mouth, at least to me.
*His name is Jim Rash, and he did voice the publicist J.R. Kipple in The Night the Clown Cried II: Tears of Doom!
AL: What was it like to work on designs for a darker version of Scooby-Doo?
DJW: It was fun. Because the villains were never not dark, design wise. Especially the original guys, they’re pretty scary for kids. Even, I think of the werewolf screaming “Help, help” while he’s paddling down the river and it’s like, that’s creepy. But it was just fun to amp it up a little bit and bring a little more, I don’t know what you want to call it, a little more horror into it.
AL: Did you have a favourite villain that you had worked on?
DJW: It’s always hard for me to pick favourites. I tend to, I have to kind of tell you what I’m in the mood for I guess. I really liked Char Gar Gothakon, where we kind of put Cthulhu in a cenobite dress. I just liked how he came out, and I really love that episode too. I like the gnome too, because I tried to make the gnome look like a Rankin/Bass design kind of. He’s really wrinkly and has a big bulbous nose and stuff. Yeah, those are the ones that stick out right now.
AL: What was it like to develop some of the villains from myth, like the Manticore and the Hodag?
DJW: That’s just like, it was cool because you get to look up a different kind of reference for that. Like with the Manticore and stuff you can see what the ancient interpretations of it were and what everybody else’s thought of it. I think again, I tried to make that a little Rankin/Bass-y. It has kind of Smaug’s wings and stuff. The Hodag, I think Brianne Drouhard designed the Hodag. That was based on a real myth, right? A real local legend or something. The guy is real too right? What’s his name, I designed him I think. Gene Shepherd. I wonder what the Gene Shepard estate thinks of that. That’s the cheese episode too right, that’s one of my favourites because I love the design for the cheese shop owner and his little assistant that turns out to be the monkey.
AL: There’s a lot of really cool supporting characters in the show as well, do you have any favourites that you had worked on, or just ones that you really liked?
DJW: Well obviously like Vincent Van Ghoul is probably my top, top favourite. Just getting to bring him into the show was really cool. And we got official sanction from his estate to use his likeness and voice and everything, which is awesome, they were really excited about it. Actually, they wanted a hand-painted animation cel, so we did a little animation cel for them special. Oh and also I love Fred’s dad the mayor, and Sheriff Stone. I like Janet Nettles too, I think her design came out really cool. The colour they used on her outfit came out really awesome.
AL: What was it like to grow up watching 13 Ghosts and then be able to recreate Vincent Van Ghoul for Mystery Incorporated?
DJW: That was cool because I kind of got to take the cool part of 13 Ghosts and leave the rest of it alone. It’s not horrible, but it’s just not my Scooby, you know.
AL: And there’s one of the episodes that starts off with Daphne and Fred in the museum with the statues of Scrappy and Flim Flam, did you work on those?
DJW: Yeah, I drew those. It’s funny, Flim Flam’s original voice actor was Susan Blu, and I worked with her as a voice director on Transformers and Ben 10.
AL: Why do you think that the style of the character designs worked so well for a darker show and an overarching theme?
DJW: I think we’ve had so many generations of animators now that have grown up animating sort of Bruce Timm style. And they really get that more angular style. Especially the studios Warner Bros. uses, they’ve been using them for a long time and it seems to really translate well, I think, into motion.
AL: How do you think that character design contributes to how the show looks in the final product?
DJW: Well it’s the most important thing, isn’t it? I mean, it’s a big part of the show. Obviously, if you have great characters and nothing else, you’re not going to have a successful show. But it’s like, that’s like what they say about food you know, you eat with your eyes first. So you’re kind of judging the book by its cover by the character designs. Then if that pulls you in, then you’ll give the story a chance maybe.
AL: How do the character designers maybe work with the people who are designing the backgrounds?
DJW: Well, we’ll design the characters and then they’ll design the backgrounds simultaneously. And then the color stylists, Brian Smith and David Patton on Scooby-Doo Mystery Incorporated, they were the color stylists. They’ll take the characters and colour them, and then kind of plunk them onto the background and see if it works. Then they’ll tint them to the background if they need, and they did a lot of affected colour, Mystery Inc. is a lot of special colour. So that’s a very important job, to make sure the characters live in those backgrounds.
AL: I wanted to talk about the designs for the Hex Girls. What was it like to update their designs as well?
DJW: Torture. We went through so many versions of Hex Girls. I think I only designed, no I didn’t design any of them actually. I took a pass at one of them, but they didn’t end up using it I don’t think. So I don’t even remember, it was all hands on deck that one. Hex Girls designed by like 10 people probably.
AL: Why was it such a process, was it to keep the integrity of the characters or?
DJW: Yeah, I think Tony (Cervone) just had a real specific vision in mind for what they should look like in Mystery Incorporated. And we were getting close, but we just weren’t quite getting there. I mean, we got there in the end, but it took a while.
AL: Also for Marcie/Hot Dog Water, did you work on that one?
DJW: I did, I did, yeah.
AL: What was your process for that (design)?
DJW: The funny thing is, originally I designed her, and the body was exactly the same as Hot Dog Water, but she had my friend Brianne Drouhard’s face instead of the current face. So that’s what I turned in originally. And then they’re like “Oh no, Linda Cardellini is going to play this role, so she needs to kind of reflect that in some ways.” So I made a kind of nerdy character that looked like Linda Cardellini could voice. But it was just like two versions for that, so it was pretty quick. She was pretty fun. Oh and then they originally coloured her in like lavender and pink and green and stuff, and I’m like “Guys. Look it, no. Her coat is the bun, and then mustard and ketchup. Hot dog, hot dog.” They’re like “Ohh.” Her coat even kind of looks like bread in a weird way. The wool part of her coat.
AL: One thing that always amazes me is the texture of the wool in that sweater, how did that work?
DJW: I can’t specifically remember. I think I just tried to make it look bread-y. And then added some kind of textural notes to it.
AL: What about the colour palette for the supporting characters, does each person kind of have their own design that way?
DJW: Most of it, like I said, was done by the color stylists. They did that. But some of them were, you know, you can tell, like all the Rogers family is a greenish colour palette, the Blakes all have that royal purple. So things follow rules and have palettes. The others are kind of case by case. The individual characters that come in and out.
AL: Did you often have input, like if you had a specific colour palette in mind?
DJW: Sometimes. Not super often. I know, the one thing I had specifically mapped out colour wise was when Hatecraft was writing the teen novel, and he was trying to think like a teenager so he had plastered his room with teenager posters and they were all old Hanna-Barbera shows. And so I had to kind of do a colour guide for that so they could plug in the right colours, cause that was pretty complicated. Nobody remembers those old characters except for me, so.
AL: Speaking of those older characters, in the Mystery Solvers Club State Finals, did you work on a lot of those as well?
DJW: Everybody loves that episode right, but it is for me, the most disappointing episode of Mystery Incorporated, because I didn’t work on a single one of those mystery crews. They were all just reuses of their classic stock model sheet from the Hanna-Barbera library. And I wanted to redesign them. I wanted it not to be a dream at all. I wanted it to take place for real, and that’s why they would unmask the Funky Phantom, because he would turn out to be a regular person in the end. But they just, they thought, there were two reasons, and one was we were really far behind on schedule, and it was another giant episode that they were super scared of. And the other reason was that our executive producer didn’t think that Jabberjaw belonged in the Mystery Incorporated world. He just thought it was too far out. And I had like an hour and a half intense discussion with him on why Jabberjaw should have been there, but I lost.
AL: How about Dynomutt then, since you came in on freelance for that one?
DJW: Yeah, that was super fun. I love those classic characters. I kind of wish we had done a Scooby-Dum or like a Pup Named Scooby-Doo flashback so we could adapt a few more of those classic characters. But Dynomutt was super fun. I didn’t get to do any of his transformations though, those looked awesome in the episode.
AL: What was it like to come back on freelance after not working on the show for a while?
DJW: It’s always hard because you know, you have a full-time, another full-time job and you want to do your best, especially since I love that character I want to put my best into it, and you’re already worn out from putting all the hours into your normal job and you have to go try to muster the energy to do that. But it was just one character, so it wasn’t that big of a deal. And I would’ve done it no matter what, because it was just too good of an opportunity to pass up.
AL: And why did you leave Mystery Incorporated?
DJW: I got offered an art director job, a promotion to head up Ben 10: Omniverse and I would be working with one of my best friends in animation, Matt Youngberg, who I worked on Transformers with. And I just, like I was really sad to leave Mystery Incorporated, but I just felt like I couldn’t pass up that opportunity. Plus Ben 10 was going to have lots of cool toys, and Scooby never got any toys. And I really wanted toys.
AL: Yeah, that would’ve been cool!
DJW: I actually have, they did a Man Crab figure and a Freak in those faux LEGO figurines. And then there was a set of figures that came out, but they were just not great. There was a box set of figures. But you could tell it was Mystery Incorporated because Velma had bows. That’s the only way.
AL: Where did the idea come from to give Velma the bows and kind of update her look?
DJW: That was Tony Cervone’s idea to do the bows. The idea of giving Velma lips had just been rejected flat out. They said “No thank you.” And then Tony was like “What if we give her little bows?” And I was like “That’s a really cool idea.” And they went for that. It just seemed, it just doesn’t seem like it’s outside of what Velma would wear to me. Like yeah, maybe she could wear little bows in her hair, I don’t think she would mind doing that.
AL: And I want to go back to the toys for a second, if you could have created a line of toys for Mystery Incorporated, what would you have done?
DJW: I would have like a line of action figures, and like I said I would have all the monsters have removable masks so you could unmask them. And I would love to see little like trap toys, little playsets with traps and stuff, or like a haunted house playset. I don’t know, like all kinds of cool stuff like that. A Mystery Machine car would be really cool. They did a pretty good job with all the LEGO stuff that came out.
AL: And what was your opinion on the show in general, what did you think about developing the relationships between the characters and things like that?
DJW: I thought it was cool. Especially like you mentioned earlier, one of my favourite parts is just adding all the secondary characters and the townspeople. And not only did the Mystery Inc. kids have relationships to each other individually and as a group, but they had relationships with the townspeople too and it’s just a lot of fun to see Hot Dog Water show up before she ever does anything really. Or Skipper Shelton, just show up every once in a while and do something weird. And then have seven brothers or something? He was, when I was designing him, Tony kept making me make him bigger. He’s like “No, no. Bigger.” And I was like “How big do you want him?” And he’s like “Do like Marv from Sin City.” And I was like “Oh my gosh, okay. Can that exist in this world?” But I guess it does, so.
AL: And Mystery Incorporated was really the first show to have a lot of those recurring supporting characters, and really just an overarching storyline. What was it like to be able to work on that show?
DJW: I’m so glad I worked on this version of Scooby, I think this was the one out of all of them that I would’ve picked to work on, if I had my choice. And I’m just super glad that it worked out that way. It was just so much fun, I love world-building, you know. And Crystal Cove is its own little world. It’s so full of, every little thing is designed so cool, like down to the phones and the hair dryers and you know, all the cars on the road. That’s all Jerry Richardson, he was our prop designer and he did all that cool stuff. The locket. Just love all the little details in everything.
AL: If you were ever able to work on another Scooby show in the future, would you take it?
DJW: I don’t know. I don’t know if I’d want to do another series, because I don’t know how it could ever top the experience I had on Mystery Incorporated. I just don’t think it could get better than that. But, if they wanted to do a Mystery Incorporated vs. Teen Titans I would be there in a heartbeat.
AL: Speaking of that, you sent me the Teen Titans as Mystery Incorporated, where did that come from?
DJW: That’s from, we did these little shorts for a short-lived Saturday morning series on Cartoon Network called DC Nation. And there were little shorts and they did a sort of sequel series to Teen Titans called the New Teen Titans, and there was an episode where Mad Mod was kind of sending them back in time, and when they got to the 70s, that’s what they looked like.
AL: There’s a lot of fans, I think Mystery Incorporated is maybe either a love it or hate it show, but there’s a lot of fans that really want a third season. Would that ever be possible at all?
DJW: Like them starting over from scratch and stuff or would it be like… I don’t know. Huh. Interesting, I don’t know. I’ve never really thought about that, I’ve only thought about what else you could do within the confines of like season one or season two. I don’t know, it would be interesting. Maybe they could do like a direct to video movie or even a graphic novel or something to kind of show what happened.
AL: Were there ever any characters that you designed that didn’t actually make it into the show, or did everyone get in?
DJW: Oh yeah. There was a fake Shmoo I designed for the Mystery Solvers, in case they wanted to do the, I don’t even remember what the team with the Shmoo was. Seems like they were yet another bunch of teenagers with some boys and girls in them. But he was like half Shmoo and half Gloop and Gleep from The Herculoids so he wasn’t legally the Shmoo, but they didn’t end up using it.
AL: Why do you think that a cartoon about a mystery solving dog has held up for over 50 years now?
DJW: I just think that the character designs and the character performances from the voice actors are so iconic, you know. They really resonated for some reason. And just that fact of having a group of tight knit friends like that, I think that’s really what it’s all about, you know, you can’t pick your family but you can pick your friends, kind of thing. I don’t know, something like that.
AL: What was your favourite thing about being able to work on a Scooby-Doo project?
DJW: I really liked designing Fred. And drawing Fred in new outfits and stuff. That was a lot of fun. And he became my favourite character in the series.
AL: Oh, did you do the uniforms in the Humungonauts episode?
DJW: Yes, I did that. Yes. I love those uniforms so much. That’s a whole other reason they should’ve had action figures, just to make those. I think they’re sort of like part Macross, and like part Speed Racer or something, I can’t remember exactly what I was looking at. It was some 80s anime I think.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
In the second episode for September’s Mystery Incorporated themed month, Alexa speaks with writer Roger Eschbacher. Roger wrote five episodes of Mystery Incorporated, including Battle of the Humungonauts, and The Hodag of Horror.
Highlights of this episode include:
1- What it was like writing for a darker, overarching Scooby-Doo show.
2- Which character of the gang, and which supporting characters were Roger’s favourites to write.
3- Some specific questions about the episodes Roger wrote for Mystery Incorporated.
Make sure to listen to the episode above! Or you can read a transcript of the interview here.
If you want to follow Roger, you can find him on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or at www.rogereschbacher.com.
Roger also sent me the script for The Hodag of Horror (Mystery Incorporated, season 2, episode 5), which you can read below!
Scooby-Doo-Hodag-of-Horror
Not able to listen to the full episode? Don’t worry! You can still read the full transcript of the interview with Roger Eschbacher below. Or click here to listen to the podcast episode.
AL: What’s your relationship to Scooby-Doo, did you watch at all?
RE: Yeah, I watched it growing up, the original series, and various other versions along the way. When I heard that there was a possible opening for a writer on Mystery Incorporated I was like “Yes,” and I called my agents and talked to them to have them get me in on a meeting with Mitch (Watson). The meeting went well, he knew me from my work at the Groundlings, which is a comedy theatre up here in Los Angeles. Next thing I know, I’m writing scripts.
AL: How did you come to write for animation to begin with?
RE: Once again that’s through the Groundlings. Basically, a friend of mine who was in the Groundlings with me, named Mark Steen, was working on a show called Aaahh!!! Real Monsters which was a Klasky Csupo project that was on Nickelodeon. It was about sort of the alternate world or alternative world of monsters that sort of exist within our everyday world. Mark Steen was the head writer, the story editor I should say on Aaahh!!! Real Monsters and he asked me if I wanted to pitch some ideas, and I did. Then I started getting into it and writing animation scripts. I’ve always loved animation, especially like early anime like Speed Racer and Astro Boy and all that, so that sort of reveals my age, but I’ve always loved that stuff. So when I had an opportunity to get into it, I jumped at the chance and have been doing it ever since.
AL: Was writing animation something you had ever considered as a career?
RE: Not up until that point. I’d been trying to get into writing sitcoms since I came out here in Los Angeles. But it’s just one of those things where it kind of pays to keep your eyes and ears open, and even if it’s something that you weren’t necessarily thinking you could do, or even had an inclination to do it, you know, Mark mentioned this, and I thought “Whoa, that’s pretty interesting, it sounds like a lot of fun.” And I do love watching animation, to this day I enjoy it. So the right thing to do, from my perspective, was to kind of just go “Alright, well I’ll give this a shot.” And I went along and I’ve been enjoying the ride ever since.
AL: Was there ever a specific moment when you realized that you wanted to be a writer?
RE: I would say like back in grade school. I’m also an author, but back in grade school, early grade school, I started reading, I’m a (voracious) reader. I read a lot, and I always have. I don’t know, for me anyway, when you start reading a lot, that led me to want to maybe someday, sort of a pipedream, but someday like write a book. So I eventually got into that. I always had sort of an inclination to be a writer and when I came out here to Los Angeles, I’m originally from St. Louis, and when I came out here, I was almost immediately trying to get work as a writer on different shows. I don’t know, I’ve always had that inclination, but I would say that it started out with me liking to read books a whole lot.
AL: When it comes to writing shows, what’s the difference between writing for animation and writing for a live action sitcom?
RE: I would say the main difference is that in animation you have to make sure you pretty much describe anything that you actually want to see. ‘Cause you know if you think about it, with live action, the actors have been hired to interpret characters and interpret the script, and they’ll actually add a lot of their own to that. But in terms of animation, if you think about it, basically you have artists sitting at their desks, basically looking at the script and if it’s not on the script, I mean the artists are so talented that work in animation, they’ll add stuff if there’s gaps and all that, but it really helps if you, as the writer, are very diligent in describing what needs to be seen on the screen. So I would say in a script, the descriptions part of it, the action, tends to be a little more drawn out than definitely like a screenplay, but also even for a standard sitcom, the descriptions in sitcoms and in film are generally, unless it’s a high action thing where it’s very specific, let’s say like a Marvel universe sort of thing, the descriptions are pretty short because the interpretation of the descriptions and of the scenes are left largely to the director and the actors.
AL: When it came to Scooby-Doo specifically, were you given a premise for the episode before writing it, or did you get to kind of run wild and come up with the monster and things like that?
RE: A little bit of both. I would say, if we’re going to split percentages, I would say like 10 percent of the time, 15 percent of the time it was stuff that I pitched, like a story idea or whatever. The guys who were running the show, Mitch (Watson), Michael (Ryan), Tony (Cervone), and Spike (Brandt) and all those guys, really, this Scooby series in particular was really well thought out by people like Mitch ahead of time because they not only had a sort of monster du jour, but they also had a series wide arc that was spread out over two seasons. So they really kind of had to know, they knew where they wanted to go and so they would give sort of a general premise, and then I would, I or the other writers, would come into the office and we would work out the beats of that particular episode. Then I would go away and sort of clean up an outline and send it back, and they would tweak something and send it back. Then once I was given the go to write the script, it was pretty much all on me. Those guys are so funny, I mean, they contributed mightily to dialogue and all that stuff, but a lot of the fun sort of dialogue and little takes, the characters’ takes on the kind of stuff that was going on, and a lot of the story, the actual story, the nuts and bolts of the story were left to me, and the other writers too. So it was actually one of the most fun shows I’ve ever written on in that regard. We were able to put a lot of, they were totally open to a lot of smart aleck jokes and what have you. So it was a great fun show to work on.
AL: And what were some of the ideas that you had pitched?
RE: Oh, it was mostly stuff early on, again, it’s been a while since we did the show, so if I had to come up with something in particular, I could go back through the scripts and go “Oh yeah, that was mine.” But I would say it was pretty much a collaborative effort, but a lot of the actual story, for reasons that I mentioned, that it was a two seasons series wide arc, came out of those guys.
AL: What was it like to write for a Scooby-Doo show that did have that overarching story across the two seasons?
RE: Personally, I loved it. I thought it was really cool that they gave a lot of thought to that, you know, obviously ahead of time, that’s how it was pitched. I thought that it was a lot fun that they ended up doing something like that. It was a little out of the ordinary, as I’m sure you’d agree, for what a standard Scooby series might be like, and I really appreciated the amount of thought and the storytelling that went into that. I write science-fiction and fantasy novels, it’s sort of my side hustle, so I appreciate a good sort of deeper story and you know, don’t get me wrong, I love the monster of the day angle, those are always a lot of fun to write, but I really enjoyed that there was sort of a deeper level to this series than is normally the case with other series. Not a knock against the other series, it is what it is, I mean, that’s the beauty of Scooby-Doo, but I really did enjoy the sort of deeper aspect of a series wide arc. That was actually sort of the beauty of it, in my opinion, and I’m biased because this is the series I worked on, but I think it’s the best, personally, no offense to anyone else but I think it’s the best. But that was really sort of like the fun, cool aspect of it from my perspective, is that they had worked out a lot of this stuff and were able to tell a story with, in my opinion, great depth. Like I was saying with the books and stuff like that, you kind of have to dig a little bit deeper with the story if you’re going to plot out a novel. It’s got to be a little bit deeper. And I think those guys accomplished that just on an amazing level.
AL: In the episodes that you had written, there were a couple interesting reveals, like in the Hodag they find the piece of the Planispheric Disk in the cheese, and the Night on Haunted Mountain they have that Spanish conquistador story revealed. What was it like to be able to take a stab at writing that?
RE: It was a lot of fun because like I said, we would go, we writers, or I would go in to have that big session where we sort of beat everything out, and it was really cool to discover that in my particular episode a certain piece was revealed. The sort of fun challenge to that was working it into the monster of the day sort of challenge, because the two were often connected. So it was just fun to use your brain to like see how that was going to work out, but also just to learn from them that at this point, this piece of the disk is uncovered and the gang have found another one. So I thought that was pretty cool, to be honest.
AL: How do you keep the voices of the characters consistent?
RE: That’s, people like Mitch (Watson) and Michael (Ryan), that’s sort of what their job is. Their job is to keep track of that kind of stuff. In terms of just writing for different characters, you’ve got five well-known characters that everybody knows how they talk. And everybody knows that every dialogue point that Shaggy has, he has to say “Like,” in there somewhere. So you kind of pick up the show and with those guys, having our backs, having the writers backs in terms of what they want, keeping the characters’ voices consistent, it’s actually a lot of fun. I kind of describe it as like, I’ve had the benefit of writing for like Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck and then Scooby-Doo Mystery Incorporated, and for me it’s like writing for animation royalty, as kind of odd as that sounds. But I really believe that it’s like a privilege to write for those characters. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and to answer your question directly, those guys, the story editors, that’s their job, is to make sure that everything tracks towards what we would expect from the characters, even new ones. It all sort of fits in with the tone of the show.
AL: Out of the gang specifically, who’s your favourite character to write for?
RE: I really liked Velma. I thought Velma was a great character, she’s my favourite character. Beyond her, Shaggy’s awesome and I don’t know, they’re all awesome. They all have their fun moments and that was kind of a cool thing, like going a little deeper on Daphne let’s say, and her sister and what that family was like, and so what kind of reaction they would have, a little snarky-ness and all that. I would say my favourite was Velma, followed closely by Shaggy.
AL: Out of the really cool supporting characters in the episodes you had written, was there one that you particularly enjoyed writing?
RE: Let’s see. I liked the guy, his last name was Shepherd, in the Hodag of Horror. He was sort of a huckster who brought the traveling curio show into town, Gene Shepherd was his name. I enjoyed that character quite a bit. But there’s a lot of fun characters, you know. The brothers in the Battle of the Humungonauts. I guess the villains. I also liked Sheriff Stone, he was a lot of fun because he had so many conflicting urges, that was always a fun character to write.
AL: For the minor characters that would be featured in just episodes that you had written, were you able to come up with the names for them or was that already decided?
RE: As I recall, it was a combination of both. Like in Hodag of Horror, the waiter, I think his name was Umberto or something. As memory serves, and as people listening now know my memory is somewhat sketchy, I was able to come up with names like that.
AL: Out of the episodes that you had written for the show, do you have a favourite?
RE: I would have to say it would be the Hodag of Horror. That’s the one that I use, as an indicator of that, that’s the one that, when I’m going for a job, and my agent will send out a list of “Well this is what he has available,” the most requested are my Scooby scripts. So out of those, I’m asked by my agent to pick the one that I think would be the best sample, and I always pick Hodag because it’s number one, pure nuts, but it’s also a truly pure Mystery Incorporated sort of story and I think I served the main characters well, and present them in the best light possible. So that’s the one that I pick to send out as a writing sample.
AL: When it came to writing an episode, what was your specific process?
RE: Well, I get word that they wanted to give me another assignment, which was always very cool. Then I would go in and meet with those guys, and like I said, I’d have the premise ahead of time, whether it was supplied by me or by them, and then we would go through and we would beat it out, in terms of this has to happen, we’re going to reveal this part of the disk in this episode, and that sort of thing. And then once I had that happen, I would go home and I would write all that stuff up, taking copious notes, I would write all that out and come up with sort of a first draft of an outline and then send that in. Then it would go back and forth maybe a time or two, and then once I had been given the go, the greenlight to go to script, start writing the script, I’d basically do that. I come up with a first draft based on that, and often there’d be little snippets of dialogue that we as a group came up with or I came up with in the meeting, and those would be inserted. And I would write a rough draft or a first draft and I’d send it in. Then we’d get notes, first from the creative team, Mitch (Watson) and all those guys. Then once that happened, I would adjust to their notes and refine it, and maybe do another draft or two, finishing up with what is called a polished draft, which means that most of the rough edges have been knocked off of the story so to speak, and the polished draft is just making everything smooth and making sure everything is connected well and there’s good transitions and good dialogue and all that. Then that would be it. So I would say, you know, a rough outline, a polished outline, a first, second draft and then a polished draft.
AL: Were there ever any challenges to keeping the darker tone that Mystery Incorporated has, while also still inserting a lot of the comedy and lightheartedness of Scooby-Doo?
RE: No, not for me anyway. I grooved on all that stuff, I thought it was awesome. I liked that this particular series had a little bit of a darker tone to it. There were consequences, you know, that were kind of serious and I liked that, in that it was a true mystery with peril, with actual real peril in the storyline. So that didn’t bother me at all, I actually thrived on that, I loved it.
AL: I have a couple of episode specific questions. For the Battle of the Humungonauts, what was it like to write that relationship feud between Velma, Shaggy and Scooby?
RE: That was fun. I enjoyed that. In all the series there’s always a little bit of that going on, but I think it was sort of highlighted in this particular series. So when there was conflict, it was fun to do it and I would say the underlying note to all of that, is that at the end of the day, even though they were sort of really hardcore not getting along, there was always, you knew that there was underneath it all, there was always affection and loyalty. So I don’t know, I enjoyed writing that.
AL: Was it your idea for Fred’s solution to the feud to be group uniforms?
RE: That sounds like something I would do, so I’m going to say yes. I’m going to say 85% yes.
AL: In this episode specifically, Mr. E has a riddle that he gives them, but more broadly, what was it like to be able to kind of craft those Mr. E clues?
RE: Again, I would say those characters, characters like Mr. E who were sort of the purview mostly of Mitch (Watson) and the other creatives on the show. So I got my cues on a lot of that stuff from them. And that was done obviously to sort of keep the voice of the show consistent, and you know, those characters weren’t necessarily all over the series, but it was really important that when they showed up, what they contributed to a particular episode or to the series in general was very clear and consistent.
AL: Moving on to the Wild Brood, how did you come up with the gag where Sheriff Stone wanders into a closet in Daphne’s house?
RE: Again, that sounds like one of mine, so I will take an 85-90% credit for that. And how I came up with it, I don’t know. How I write in general is I’m kind of, I have all my information that I’ve gotten story-wise and all that from everybody, and then I kind of do it in sort of a stream of consciousness way. I have my skills that I apply to it, and if I went back and looked at the actual script, I might be able to tell you something, but offhand, I don’t know. I’m sorry, I hope this is not disappointing to you or your listeners.
AL: And in the beginning of the Siren’s Song, the episode starts with Fred and Daphne walking through the museum and they come across statues of Flim Flam and Scrappy. Do you remember how that scene came about?
RE: I think it was just looking for what would be in that museum, and just sort of going back and almost like a sense of tribal memory of like stuff that had happened in previous series and stuff. I hope I’m not stepping on any toes here, but I remember specifically Scrappy being, well, not one of my favourite characters, let’s put it that way. So I just remember thinking about a way to sort of get a little dig at Scrappy. I don’t know, I’ve described him before as being sort of like the Jar Jar Binks of the Scooby series, sort of this bizarre character that some people love, but not everybody likes.
AL: All of your episodes have so many great lines that have occasionally turned into the odd meme, like Velma’s response with the chick mustache, and Scooby’s questions about love sequence. Did you ever expect that lines like that would get that kind of reaction?
RE: I’m always very pleasantly surprised when anything like that happens from any of my scripts from any show that I worked on. But I mean on this one in particular, I consider it an honor when that kind of stuff gets repeated. It’s so much fun, like I said, for me, the thrill was writing for this animation royalty, and so coming up with lines that fit totally into their character, ideally, and are fun and repeatable to me is just a real super nice kind of bonus.
AL: And just generally, why do you think that a cartoon about a mystery solving dog has held up for so long?
RE: Boy, I don’t know. That’s great. I just think over the years, there’s been some, even with some of the stuff that’s sort of campy, sort of traditional Scooby stuff, I think that whether it’s the voice acting, or the writing, or the direction, or the expectations that the audience has, that at the end of an episode the mask is going to be pulled and the town whatever, curmudgeon is revealed as the true villain. I think all that stuff is just, it’s just sort of a fun thing that people have sort of grooved on it. As to specifically, I mean, why that would have gone on, I know like early on, when they pitched that stuff, I know it was because Hanna-Barbera had a great track record with getting shows that kids liked to watch on the air. I know that they had probably somewhat of an easier time pitching that sort of thing. But in this case, a lot of that show, I mean for years and years and years, sort of the same formula repeating itself, I think that half of it has to do with the sort of like appeal of something that you recognize and you look forward to and how are they going to do it in this particular episode.
AL: And what was it like for you to hop on to writing a show that you had grown up watching?
RE: It was so cool. Like I said, I heard about it, and then I got my agents to go in and get it so I could go in and meet with Mitch (Watson). Like I said, the meeting went well and I got hired. And to me, that was like, talk about thrilling moments in animation, for me, it was one of my thrilling moments. It was so cool to be involved in that show that I basically grew up watching the original series. The Saturday morning cartoon thing was in force and every Saturday morning watching a Scooby episode was pretty darn cool, many years later, being actually involved in the making of it. And same for Bugs Bunny and the Warner characters, very cool.
AL: Is there anything else you wanted to add at all?
RE: I would say just in general, it’s been a dream come true that I was not expecting to happen that I’m an animation writer. So many great shows and stuff I’m working on now, stuff I’ve worked on recently, Scooby, stuff prior to all that, Klasky Csupo stuff, all that. I love writing animation, and I always feel lucky and privileged when I get the chance to do it.
AL: Just before we end, do you have any recent projects you’d like to promote?
RE: Yeah. I’ve been working on this show called Hello Ninja, which is a pre-school show. It’s about these two little kids, Wesley and Georgie, and they sort of work through life using ninja ethics codes to solve their everyday problems, like the first time they ride around the block on their bicycles, that sort of thing. It’s a lot of fun and above all it’s not preachy, but it’s just a lot of fun. There’s a bit of a message, but it’s not too heavy-handed. So I’ve been working on that. And then I mentioned it before, I write science-fiction and fantasy novels, and I’ve been doing that for years and I just love doing it. I’ve got a couple books coming out that will be out before the end of the year. So yeah, I keep busy. I like to write, so I like to keep busy with that.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
In this episode of the Unmasked History of Scooby Doo, Alexa speaks with Laren Bright, writer and story editor on A Pup Named Scooby-Doo.
Highlights of this episode include:
1- Laren’s stories from working at Hanna-Barbera.
2- What the writing process was like for A Pup Named Scooby-Doo.
3- Laren’s thoughts on including positive messages in children’s cartoons.
Make sure to listen to the episode above! Or you can read a transcript of the interview here.
Below you can take a look at a bunch of photos Laren was kind enough to send me.
Episode 8 of the Unmasked History of Scooby Doo features Christopher Keenan, former Senior Vice President of Creative Affairs for Warner Bros. He worked on early direct to video Scooby Doo movies from Cyber Chase to Chill Out Scooby Doo, and was also involved in the What’s New Scooby Doo? series. Christopher is currently Executive Producer of Mattel Television.
Highlights of this episode include:
1- What the development process was like for the early direct to video movies and What’s New Scooby Doo.
2- How Christopher wanted to evolve the gang’s personalities from their original versions in the movies and series that he worked on.
3- What the aspects are that a Scooby Doo movie or series needed to have.
Make sure to listen to the episode above! Or you can read a transcript of the interview here.
Hello all!
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.
Click here to check out the page, and make sure to give it a “like” as well! I’ve also added it to the social icons on the sidebar of the website.
And while you’re at it, if you haven’t followed the podcast on Instagram and Twitter, what are you waiting for?
Grab your magnifying glass, your ascot, or your snacks fit for Shaggy and Scooby, and follow the Unmasked History of Scooby Doo!
-Alexa
