Feature Category: Article

Since its debut in the fall of 1979, director Fred Walton’s When A Stranger Calls has become a touchstone horror film. The opening twenty-minute sequence of a babysitter menaced by a frightening caller is absolutely iconic and justifiably famous. However, while the film’s been released on home video before, it’s never really been given the care and treatment due to something of its stature.

All of that’s changed with the upcoming Second Sight Blu-ray release. When A Stranger Calls has been restored, as has its sequel, When A Stranger Calls Back, made in 1993 for cable network Showtime. Both films look amazing, with wonderful new scans, and are the perfect way for these movies to make their UK Blu-ray debut. As an added bonus, the rarely (if ever) seen short film The Sitter – which Walton had made several years before and is essentially the film’s opening sequence with a different actress – also makes its first ever home video appearance.

It’s a glorious package, and so we were very excited to speak by phone with director Walton, who also co-wrote the film with Steve Feke. We discussed the film’s enduring legacy and how he came to be associated with the horror and thriller genres.

STARBURST: How involved were you with the restoration of When A Stranger Calls?

FRED WALTON: Is the short The Sitter part of the Blu-ray? Well, I had that. That only existed in one 35mm answer print, which I had held on to since my partner, Steve Feke, and I made it in the spring of 1977. I was able to pull it out of my garage and send in down to LA where they made a transfer of it. I was afraid that, because it had been over 40 years, and because it had been sitting in garages, attics, or basements of various houses that I’ve lived in, I didn’t know what sort of shape it would be in. I thought it might very well shred once it went through any sort of machine, but apparently not. It held up okay, so there you go.

It’s pretty amazing that people get a chance to see The Sitter, because it’s a pretty rarely-seen film.

Ever! We made it, Steve Feke and I – who was my co-writer and producer on the feature – we had been in college together, and when we made the short, the idea was that it would be a showcase for what we could do, and we would hopefully get work out of that, but we didn’t have the connections to get it seen, ultimately, by anyone who was in a position to help us.

So, we had the idea that, since that avenue isn’t working, maybe we can get it nominated – it doesn’t even have to win, if we can get it nominated for an Oscar for Live Action Short Subject, maybe that will help us to get work from it. At the time, in order for it to qualify for Oscar consideration something had to play for a week in a movie theater in LA or New York. We were actually able to pull some strings and get it shown in a theater in Los Angeles, and that was the first time I had seen it before a live audience.

At the time, short subjects were not that unusual, so it was playing before Looking For Mr. Goodbar, and so we go to this theater in LA to see it, and throughout, people are coming into the theater, and looking for their seats with their popcorn and their drinks, and they don’t know what the hell is playing. They’re up at the babysitter, and they’re saying “Is that Diane Keaton?” and we’re thinking “Oh, God, we’re just dying here”, but by the end, people get quiet and locked in, and at the end – there’s that moment where the door opens, and there’s the cop – there’s a big scream.

We thought “Wow! We’ve pulled it off”. We didn’t know until then that we’d made something that really worked. Of course, though, it didn’t get nominated, and we had to come up with something else, because we had gone into debt to make the short, so we came up with the idea to approach low-budget production companies like Roger Corman with this feature-length idea and say “Here’s the first act – it’s finished, and for a couple hundred thousand more, we can make a feature”, and eventually we got in contact with a guy named Mel Simon who had a production company, and he financed it, and he was like “We’ll just reshoot the whole thing with Carol Kane”.

It’s an amazing group of people who made When A Stranger Calls: you have Donald Peterman, who would go onto lens so many amazing films as your director of photography, Carol Kane, Charles Durning, Colleen Dewhurst, and cult folks like Rutanya Alda. How was the process of pulling all those people together? It seems like you captured lightning in a bottle.

Well, here’s the deal: the people who took us to Mel Simon, Barry Krost and Doug Chapin, they had a relationship with [him]. And, additionally, Krost and Chapin were talent managers, and one of their clients was Carol Kane, so they sort of insisted. “We need to remake this. Forget this business with this girl we’ve never heard of before. We’ll get Carol Kane to do it”.

I knew Carol Kane was a wonderful actress, but she would not have been my first choice, because we were looking for someone who was just like, an average babysitter, and Carol Kane is not average anything, talented as she is. But, it worked out. Then, Barry Krost knew that Mel Simon was a big fan of Charles Durning, and so we approached Durning and before he would commit to anything, he wanted to know “Who is this guy Fred Walton? He’s never directed anything”, so he had to see the short, and so we showed him the short, and he said “Oh, this is pretty good. I’ll be a part of this”.

Then he asked, “Have you filled any of the other roles?” We told him that we had Carol Kane, and he asked “What about this woman in the middle part? How about Colleen Dewhurst for it?” Colleen Dewhurst, at the time – and even now – was principally known as a Broadway actress who didn’t do movies, and we thought people would look at this as a low-budget, cheesy thing, and she’s not going to want to be involved, and Charlie said “Well, I know her, and I’ve worked with her, and I happen to know she needs to make some money right now” and so we talked to her, and we ended up with Colleen Dewhurst.

Charlie also said “Are you casting any black actors in this?” because he was very much involved in wanting to helping black actors or technicians to have a shot at making it in Hollywood, so that’s how we ended up with Ron O’Neal – Superfly! – as a cop. Tony Beckley came to us because he was a close personal friend of Barry Krost – a “look at his work” kind of thing – and he was real insistent about it, so he got hold of some film he had done, and we looked at it, and that’s how that happened.

Were you always interested in thrillers or scary movies, or was it just something you happened into after the success of When A Stranger Calls?

Happened into it. Happened into it. I have no particular love or affinity for scary movies. In fact, as a child, growing up, my parents wouldn’t let me go see scary movies. Psycho came out, and all my friends went, and I couldn’t go see it. But, when Steve Feke first told me this idea he claimed he had read about in a newspaper article n the LA Times back in 1972 as having taken place in Brentwood – an affluent suburb of Los Angeles – about this babysitter getting these phone calls, I just thought, “Wow, that’s incredible. Steve, we gotta make this”.

But, as I say, I never had an affinity for scary movies, and we made Stranger simply because I was trying to get a career going, and we came across this idea that happened to be scary that seemed – to me – to be wildly commercial, and couldn’t lose. After it came out, and was the success that it was, immediately I got pigeonholed and people wanted me to do another scary movie. I was resistant, but wasn’t able to convince anyone interested in the stories that I wanted to do, so eventually I had to make money and I was lucky enough at that time for April Fool’s Day to come along and other things.

When A Stranger Calls / When A Stranger Calls Back is out on Blu-ray on December 17th from Second Sight.

Over the past several years, Lowell Dean has wowed many genre fans with the exploits of alcoholic werewolf cop Lou Garou in his WolfCop movies. With the talented Canadian’s latest movie, SuperGrid, soon to be released, we caught up with Lowell to chat about this future-set Western, his Atomic Victory Squad comic book, upcoming projects, and, yes, that hard-drinking furball.

STARBURST: Firstly, how important was the Saskatchewan location in getting SuperGrid made?

Lowell Dean: I don’t think it was super vital. This movie is mostly just made because the producer Hugh Patterson really wanted to get it made and he’s from Saskatchewan. I think he’s more loyal than me right now, but he just really wanted to get it made. I think because he’s from Saskatchewan, a lot of his favours and friends are from Saskatchewan. So it kind of became a no-brainer that that was going to be the place where we were going to do it. Financially, it might have been smarter to do it elsewhere. I think the same about the WolfCop films. I think so much of what’s engrained in the concept and the heart of it, because we’re all from there, is from there. That plus all the favours made it a no-brainer. The DoP, Michael Jari Davidson did a great job. It was fun to show Saskatchewan. It’s a province that doesn’t get a lot of love visually. Even though it’s bleak, it’s still pretty beautiful.

The scenery throughout the movie looks absolutely stunning.

We picked a lot of great industrial car graveyards, closed down warehouses and junkyards to try and make it feel post-apocalyptic. Our first problem when we started editing, though, was that it looked too beautiful. So we had to grey up the skies, mute the lush and green grass.

So the idea for SuperGrid was one of Hugh’s that he had before you became involved in the project?

This was the easiest film I’ve ever had to get made, actually. I didn’t do any of the work; I was arguably a “director for hire” on this one. Hugh and Leo [Fafard] – who plays WolfCop – had the idea, and they brought on a writer, Todd McAuley. Todd and Hugh developed it for a few years. I always knew about it. They were working on this when we were even doing the first WolfCop. WolfCop was my baby and I brought Hugh along to produce it, and he always would tell me about SuperGrid, this post-apocalyptic movie. I was always, “Good luck with that!” After we survived two WolfCop movies together, Hugh was very kind to me and said he was impressed with how I handled the movies. When he had his own [idea], he told me that there was no one else he wanted to direct it. I was nervous and very honest, and I think I even turned him down a few times. I was scared to even make it. The first draft was 120 pages. It was a really ambitious film and much bigger than the film you see now. We always knew the budget was going to be around $1 million Canadian, shooting in Saskatchewan. For that kind of money, you should be doing a drama. We did the first WolfCop for that much, but even that movie, if you compare visually what we attempt in SuperGrid versus WolfCop, WolfCop is almost a little drama. There’s a couple of transformation scenes, there’s one and a half fight scenes. For SuperGrid, there was multiple chase scenes, explosions, shootouts, knife fights, and almost a full-on horror scene. I said to Hugh, “This is impossible.” He said, “Okay, well what’s the least amount of impossible we can make it?” So he brought me on and he brought on another writer, Justin Ludwig, and we just focussed on shaping it, tightening it, and adding a few more elements I wanted to see in there. By the end of it, I think our shooting script was 84 pages – like dangerously short. Even then, people were worried whether we had a full movie here. With the three and a half action scenes we have, we barely made it through our crazy seventeen-day shoot.

You and these short shoots!

It’s got to change. After WolfCop 2 and this movie back-to-back, we’ve talked about it before, I can’t do another seventeen-day shoot unless the script is different. I don’t want to be known for the suicide mission film shoots. I’m a firm believer in the pyramid of quality, time, and money. You have to find that balance if you want to make something great. I’m very proud of SuperGrid, but I also think it would’ve benefited immensely from five more days or maybe shrinking some of the action. Again, who wants to do that? You don’t want to cut it up.

Despite the intense shooting schedules, your sets always seem to be a whole lot of fun. How vital is it to create that vibe?

I always try to keep it fun. I’ve been on enough sets where it’s not fun. If you’re working on something really hard, there’s got to be some reward. If you’re not having fun and making light of it, why are you there?

In reality, was this a tougher shoot than the gruelling schedule you have for Another WolfCop?

I would say it was very close. I think it was tough in different ways. Another WolfCop, there was the pressure of making a sequel. I knew that enough people liked the first one, so I was very worried about letting people down. We had a bit more money, but we were really ambitious with the sequel. So much so, I was cutting stuff every day. SuperGrid benefited from Another WolfCop’s experience, because Another WolfCop was so out of control that I was learning lessons every day on how to manage a set, how to take on too much, and how to figure out a way that you might pull it off. The benefit with SuperGrid is that it was in the summer – which was nice, because that always helps – but we had lost so much more of our crew. We’re haemorrhaging through crew in Saskatchewan because we lost our tax credit. Every year that goes by that we don’t make a movie, all the skilled crew people have to quit film or leave the province. The difference between WolfCop and WolfCop 2 was we lost a lot of crew, but not enough to ruin the film. By the time we hit SuperGrid, half the people were new, they were very green; we had to pull back a lot of our favourites from other provinces but not everyone could make it. It was tough. Because we were taking on something really hard, we had a lot of people who hadn’t done it before. And we were in the middle of nowhere, too. Each had their challenges, but I would say that Another WolfCop was a little tougher due to the added pressure. With SuperGrid, I didn’t feel that people were writing to me every day online saying, “SuperGrid better be good!”

In addition to Leo Fafard being a key part of SuperGrid, other WolfCop alumni include Jonathan Cherry, Amy Matysio, and Emersen Ziffle. Leo was already involved, but were the other names already involved by the time you joined the project?

Because Hugh had done the WolfCop movies with me, I think he had promised them all some kind of involvement. When I came in, he handed it to me and said, “Well, good luck.” The only firm one was Leo was going to be the lead. I was like, “Oh great, Leo again…” The best part is when you work with someone multiple times, you do that because you like them and know they’re talented. I took SuperGrid as an opportunity to show a different side to pretty much everybody. Leo, my challenge there was, “We know you’ve got a great look. We know you’re really good with the werewolf make-up and you can put up with a lot of bullshit, but let’s really push you into your best performance yet.” Leo and I really worked hard together. He took it really seriously, and I think he’s the heart of the film. I think Leo arguably steals this film. His character is so well rounded; you feel his pain, and there are moments where I was almost tearing up on set when he was about to do something noble or heroic or bend over to risk his life for something. I was really drawn to Leo’s performance. We worked really hard on it together, and I think he killed it.

With Jonathan and Amy, my one big thing was that I don’t want to remake WolfCop in every sense. Even if I’m working with familiar friends, I want everything to be a little different; I want to show that we’re not a one-trick pony. I was really concerned with making a movie with heart, and a movie about hope in dark times. To me, that’s what this movie is: it’s about hope in dark times and the underdog doing the right thing. With Amy, she said, “I want to be in this movie,” and I always wanted her in this movie. I didn’t want her playing North, because that was the sharp-shooting assassin who has her shit together and who may or may not be involved with Leo. That’s WolfCop! So I didn’t want her playing the same exact girl with the gun saving Leo’s ass. I think it was her idea to say, “I should be Spanner, the mechanic.” That was written for a man, so we flipped that. And for Jonathan Cherry, there was talk of him being the brother. For me it was, “No, I don’t want him being the wisecracking guy with Leo getting angry at him.” Again, that’s WolfCop. The role of Lazlo, the villain, wasn’t in early drafts. That was something that was really written to bring in Cherry and to have him be the corporate middle man. With Emersen, we knew there wasn’t enough make-up effects. I don’t even think the one character that has some make-up effects, One-Eyed Jack, was even in the first draft. He’s an artist and we trust him, so it was just a case of diving in with both feet and taking on the challenge. I can say from experience, I hate being pigeonholed. People will say, “Well, it’s not a horror-comedy. Are you sure you can do it?” I don’t like that done to me, so I don’t like doing that to people I work with.

Whereas in WolfCop it’s hard not to have the attention on the titular werewolf cop, how was it here to try and give adequate screen time and character development to such a strong ensemble of so many characters?

That came down to the script. Honestly, we were very worried that there were too many characters. For me, it is about the brothers; everyone else is brought in to help or hinder them. There’s a lot of characters, maybe too many characters.

Before getting to work on SuperGrid, were there any particular movies that you went back and watched for inspiration?

Yeah, the big one for me, which maybe isn’t entirely obvious, is Escape from New York. If you look closely, you’ll see a lot of obvious things. Not that we ripped it off, but there’s tonal influences. The opening, we had the cheesy computer graphics to tell you the time and place and what’s happening. I loved how throughout Escape from New York it’s obviously a suicide mission, a character going in to get something. I loved the little touches that Carpenter has, like, “I thought you’d be taller.” For us it was, “God, you guys are ugly” or “Your car’s a piece of shit.” Every time they’re pulled over, someone comments on their look or the car’s look. And we shot it anamorphic, we used lenses from the ‘70s. In prep, Michael Jari Davidson really wanted to give it a look that felt a little off, to give it that post-apocalyptic feel. If you’re shooting on a RED camera, like most people are, how do you make it feel different? We ultimately landed on lenses. Obviously there’s Mad Max; the old Mad Max not the new one. I really felt like Mad Max was baked into the idea, into the storyline, into people’s expectations. Whenever that kind of happens to me, I like to go the other way. So I really looked at Escape from New York as for me it’s a future Western. I thought it was subtle, but then I watched the movie after and was just, “No, this is pretty overtly a Western. There’s people in cowboy hats, Jay Reso in a cowboy hat.”

Speaking of Jay Reso, at times he steals the movie with his mannerisms, his delivery, and his facial expressions. How did a former WWE World Champion end up in your future Western?

I’m pretty sure that was the distributor, Raven Banner. They love having wrestlers in films because obviously there’s a big fanbase. We always knew that the role of Kurtis was going to be a good cameo-type role. We knew it was going to be the kind of role that wasn’t a lot of day commitment but still carried a lot of weight. They always try and do some sort of stunt casting for those roles. We didn’t have anybody on board, and Raven Banner really wanted it to be a wrestler. That was probably the one role that I didn’t cast. To be frank, I was a little nervous because I didn’t know Jay Reso, I didn’t know his acting experience. I had a conversation with him, he seemed like a pretty great guy. Just going off the recommendation of the distributors and my producers and a conversation with him, I was just, “Okay, let’s do it.” I’ll be honest, I was very nervous. Even though I say stunt casting, this character is a make or break character for the movie; he’s the tide-turning character, he has to wear a lot of different hats. He did a great job. On his first day, he has 3-5 pages of dialogue that’s just him talking. I knew I’d know in one take if we were in trouble or not, and he killed it. Not only did he know all his lines, he had the greatest delivery and he could take it up and take it down. It was just really fun to watch him offer up different styles and do some improv. He really won me over and I was just blown away. I can’t recommend him enough, and I’d work with him again in a heartbeat. He just got it. Movies like this, and a lot of the movies I like to do, are sometimes a bit of a specific tone; it’s not straight drama, it’s not straight comedy, it’s not straight horror. I like playing with different shades of genres. He was able to give that slightly heightened reality. This isn’t done as straight drama but hopefully it’s not too high camp or cheesy.

While the WolfCop movies tend to have a more tongue-in-cheek approach to their action or violence, how was it to frame things in a more serious way in SuperGrid?

The second WolfCop is extremely goofy. I think the trick was bridging the gap. There are moments that are dark and serious, but I think there are also moments that are a lot of fun. I always lean on the Indiana Jones tone of action. There are these moments that are so tense that you’re genuinely worried, but then someone will get killed in the most ridiculous way and they’ll be a Wilhelm scream. It’s keeping that rhythm and that pace. Keeping it fun but not so silly that you can’t walk into a serious room for a minute. I jokingly told people when we were making the movie, “It’s Children of Men meets Dukes of Hazzard.” That was what it was for me. I want this world to be serious and bleak, and I want us to feel, but these two brothers are cocky, ridiculous guys who are just, “Fuck it, let’s go out in this dangerous world. It is what it is. If people come after us, let’s pull out the guns and go.” It’s that weird contradictory tone thing that I love.

The dialogue also has a great balance to it, with some brilliant one-liners dotted throughout. The script was loosely in place when you came on board, but did you have much of a say in the dialogue?

I’m big on improv. I’d say my biggest contribution and/or sin was adding a lot of humour to the film. It was very dour, I felt. It’s a serious topic in a serious world, but going back to that Indy tone, I really wanted it to have a bit of fun. Probably a lot of the one-liners or jokes were improvised – a lot of the stuff coming from Cherry, a lot of the stuff coming from Daniel Maslany‘s Owl. It’s picking the characters who can be a little more sarcastic, then making sure that if there is a little bit of dead space or an opportunity for a bit of levity that they could come in for a joke.

With the improv, were there any scenes that you couldn’t use because it just cracked everybody up on set?

No, I don’t think we ever went that far in this one. It wasn’t like WolfCop where we were attempting to make each other crack up. I was probably a little more controlled in the respect that I would say to people like Amy or Cherry or Daniel, “Okay, this isn’t a funny scene but if you have some punctuation that you want to throw on the end of this… where I’d usually cut I’m not going to cut, so you could maybe look at the wall and say something ridiculous.”

You mentioned One-Eyed Jack before. The Jacks themselves are a creepy design, but there’s a particular scene with One-Eyed Jack that’s completely gruesome. How much direct involvement did you have in the design of these characters?

I’m sure that was mostly Emersen and his team. To me, the Jacks are set up as the big threat but then there’s the realisation that they’re just as sick as anybody. So you’ve got to make sure this is so upsetting when you see it that you realise, “Oh my god, these people out here are really suffering.” They’re not just having a little cough like some people are; they are barely alive. We thought of an extreme version of leprosy, like the look of an extreme Freddy Krueger. The only thing I said was, “When the mask comes off, there definitely should be an audible gasp.”

One of the key components of the movie is the Campbell brothers’ car, the Shitbox. After the car broke down on the first day of shooting, did you think the vehicle was doomed to be the ‘Bruce’ of your production?

Yeah, of course. Having the budget we had and being in prep, we just kept talking about it. I was begging to have two copies of that. We were using a K5 Blazer. It was a really cheap vehicle. I said that we had to have at least a second one, just for the interior or even one that can’t move. I really wanted one for back-up in case anything went wrong. On a small show like this, it’s not that they were ignoring the request. It was more that everyone was busy with other obligations. By the time we were a week out and I was, “Where are we with the second Shitbox?” The response was, “Yeah, it’s not going to happen, we’re never going to have one in a week.” By the end of Day 1 I was definitely dishing out the I told you so’s. It’s like having your main actor maybe showing up on some days. You have to rely on them. The vehicle is a main character. Speaking strictly as a director in terms of logistics, what do I shoot? I’m going to run out of things to shoot real quick. Luckily it was a small thing and it didn’t really screw us over, but there was definitely an hour there where I was, “What are we going to do? Are we going to find a completely new car? Is it going to look good if we’re going to have to build it in 24 hours?” They’d spent weeks putting so much love and care into the original.

For a $1 million independent movie, there’s over 200 VFX shots featured in SuperGrid – which is pretty much unheard of.

I was nervous because I’m a practical effects guy. I was very afraid to do this, but for me it’s always based around who I work with. Trevor Corrigan is actually an ex-Regina guy who does effects in Toronto. He went to film school with Hugh, actually. When it came time to do the end credits for WolfCop 2, we wanted to do some really cool end credits. And Trevor is actually the one who did the animated end credits for WolfCop 2, which I love. After he did that, just working with him and seeing what he was capable of, he was our first call when we knew we were doing SuperGrid. It was, “Hey, you work so well in this digital blending with reality space. This isn’t going to be easy, you’re going to be doing way to much for what we can afford, but do you want to be the designer who creates the look of this world digitally?” He was very excited to do it, so it was a really fun marriage. It was definitely a two-way street; we couldn’t afford to have him on set, but he was engaged and he would see pictures. He would see our design stuff early on and fix our mistakes later. He would amp up the movie and fix our mistakes.

Given how there’s so many characters involved and the story itself is a slow unravel, it’s a testament to the editing work just how well the picture flows. How hard was it to keep the pace strong while similarly allowing the story to breathe?

Very. Almost to the point where I’m sure some people would say it’s too short, that there maybe could be another ten minutes on the last act. We used literally all we had. I talked of the script being really short, but in our first edit there was a lot more business that happens before they even get out on the Grid. Hindsight is 20/20, but I almost wish I would have baked in a lot more of that character development or maybe shuffled it to the big showdown at the end. When we saw the first cut of the film, the brothers don’t actually go out to the Grid until half an hour in to the film. I was all, “Oh my god, we’re screwed. This is so boring. The whole point of this movie is two brothers forced together to go and do a thing. You’re giving me half an hour before we even start that journey?” Our biggest problem and challenge in editing and post-production was taking that first half an hour. I literally wrote on a blackboard, “We have to cut this in two!” I scrutinised every line of dialogue, every single shot, and I was beating it until we only had 15 minutes before we hit the Grid. For me, I look at it and I’m just so paranoid about that.

With this essentially being Hugh and Leo’s baby, how did they feel about seeing certain parts of the story cut out?

I honestly don’t know. I want to believe that they both really trust me. There were other big decisions and changes that we made throughout the film, and I’m sure there’s a few that Leo was, “I don’t like what you’re doing here.” But I felt loved and trusted, and I never once felt like if I wanted to do something creative I was ever fought. Hugh knows I think things out; I’m not just someone who on a whim is, “Let’s change everything!” Hugh has always been very supportive of me. When I said we needed to lose 15 minutes from the first half, he was, “Okay, go for it.”

What particular moments were ultimately taken out?

It was more of Deke being sad, a little bit more antagonising of him, a little more fighting between the brothers. We took the best version of everything, I think. If there was a note that was played twice, we definitely thought long and hard about which one got the point across the best.

Since the movie received its world premiere, what’s the early response been so far?

Pretty good. It’s weird for me. This film definitely feels like an under-the-radar film, and I think that’s going to be the biggest challenge for SuperGrid. I think that’s also weirdly what I like the most about it. It’s not the same, it’s a little different, it’s a little quieter. The adjustment for me is just accepting that it’s not going to be big and flashy, and it is a little more subtle. Hopefully it will find its audience and be a bit of a cult thing. WolfCop is so in your face that it’s hard not to look at. With SuperGrid, my intent going in was making a hopeful story about two brothers. It’s not as sexy or as crazy as a werewolf cop.

Given just how memorable of a character WolfCop is, how is it for you to have people constantly tie you to that character regardless of what other projects you’re working on?

I have no shame in that. WolfCop, weirdly to me, is more personal than SuperGrid. It’s my baby, I’d baked it in my brain for years. SuperGrid is a different kind of gift for me. It was a chance to make something with my friends, people I know and trusted, but it also flexes a different muscle. It’s more, “Okay, it’s not jokey, it’s not gimmicky. Let’s try and be a little more earnest. Let’s take a swing.” I see SuperGrid as a gift that Hugh gave me, and I hope that people find it and dig it. Like I said, I have been learning that it’s going to be a different film and it’s going to get accepted in a different way. It’s not the crazy genre film. It’s going to hopefully find a certain different audience.

Away from SuperGrid, you’ve recently smashed the target of your Kickstarter campaign for the Atomic Victory Squad comic book. Where do things stand with that right now?

Thank you, it’s going good. Right now, we’re just trying to figure out fulfilling the perks. The comic is, believe it or not, almost done already. I’ve seen every page of it. The artist has done the inking and now he’s done the final colour pass. We still have lettering to do and try to figure out printing, how many copies we’re going to make, where we’re going to release it. We’re leaning towards an independent distribution just because it’s our first go at it. It’s fun. The hard work for the artist is almost over, and for me and Emersen it’s about to begin. It’s, “Oh god, we better make all these things and mail all these things.” Emersen’s already making things in Vancouver. Atomic Victory Squad has been a pure passion project. For better or worse, I’ve got no one to blame but myself. I’ve loved every minute of it.

These are characters that you’ve had in your head since childhood. The art that’s come back so far, is it always how you envisioned these characters to be?

It is. That’s the cool thing. That’s why I went with that artist, Javier Caba. It’s almost like picking the actor in a film. You have to take a risk, for sure, but you have to find someone who looks like they are playing the same instrument or in the same musical world. For me, I didn’t want someone who looked like they were doing a serious comic, but I also didn’t want to be like Simpsons cartoony. It’s a very Venture Bros. feel. When I saw Javier’s art in a few other comics, it was, “You are perfect for this!” Luckily he was interested. He’s from Spain. I never would’ve guessed I’d be working with an artist from Spain, but 21st century, 2018 technology is amazing. Every few days he sends me an email saying, “What do you think of page 8?” And I love it every time.

What’s in the pipeline once Atomic Victory Squad is done?

I’ve got multiple things. I’ve written some TV pilots. This is the first year in a while I haven’t made a film, so I’m getting antsy to shoot something. In the last year, I’ve just had my head down developing stuff. I’ve got a handful of TV pilots that I’m just about ready to start pushing out into the world and trying to get people to take a look at. There’s some genre stuff, some familiar feeling stuff, and some weird stuff. I’m completely new to the TV game. I have a lot of friends who are in that space. It doesn’t sound like it’s that crazy of a leap from indie film, so I’m excited to get into that world as a creator. I was just reading online Guillermo del Toro talking about all the unproduced screenplays he’s got. That breaks my heart. I myself, I still have two or three feature films that I’ve put years of development in to that I really want to make. I haven’t given up on them yet. One’s a zombie script that is a pretty original take on zombies. I’ve been dying to make it for ten years. After SuperGrid, Hugh was, “Well, what do you want to do next?” I gave him the elevator pitch and he was just, “Why haven’t you made that yet?” I think he’s pretty eager to make that his next film, but we’ll see. I hope I can make it, because as much as I’m sick of the zombie genre, I don’t even know if I’d call this a zombie film. It’s going to be such a unique take on it.

So that’s looking like it could be your next feature?

I hope so. We’ll see. I think the thing is with film, you always have to have four or five irons in the fire. I actually have a drama-thriller, too. It’s written by Justin Ludwig, who’s one of the writers of SuperGrid. I’m really hoping to make that next year, and another film. So I’ve got three films I’m looking to make. I’m hoping if I push three films, one will hopefully happen next year. It’s the gambling that you have to do.

The last couple of times we’ve spoken you’ve made mention about how you’ve still got so many ideas for WolfCop. Are there still plans for a third movie for Lou Garou?

I think the idea of a third film is still very much up in the air; we are still decompressing from the second one. I, of course, love WolfCop and I’m just dying to make more WolfCop. It’s just going to be pulling everyone together and making it worthwhile for everybody. I’ll never not love WolfCop and I’m as eager as everyone to bring him back. Yeah, there’s lots of ideas for a third or fourth film, a TV series, I want to do it all.

To bring things back to SuperGrid, as a filmmaker what did you learn from the production?

I think I learned I want to do something with a bit of weight. I want to make something a little more personal. I like making a film with something to say. I’m not saying the WolfCop films didn’t have something to say, but it’s very gratifying to think that you’re saying something about the world or about what it’s like to be a human at this time. I made a lot of mistakes on SuperGrid. I hope I get to make a film soon enough so that I remember them and don’t repeat them. You have to think that way as a filmmaker; take stock and do post-mortems. What am I doing right? Am I wasting time here? Am I giving the actors enough time? Am I giving the crew enough time? Are we getting what’s needed across? Are these the best angles? The whole point of making movies is to say something and get better, and that’s the joy of it for me.

When is the film going to be widely available?

We’re doing a theatrical run in Canada, maybe in the United States. It’s out on VOD December 18th in Canada and the US, and I’m pretty sure it’s been picked up for other territories. I know that it’s going to have a Blu-ray release in February or March of next year, and we’ve got half an hour of extras and Hugh and Emersen and I did a commentary. There’s definitely going to be some fun stuff coming up.

How much fun was it to do a chat track for this film?

It’s fun. I did it on WolfCop and 13 Eerie. I like it when I’m doing it with friends, because then it’s more like a conversation. When you take it too seriously it’s kind of just fact-checking; it’s a bunch of statistics and you just want to mention everyone’s name and talk about what they did. The SuperGrid one was really loose and playful. The best thing we did in it is that we were very honest. We just talked about how hard it was to make the movie. Me as an aspiring filmmaker, which I think I still am, I just love listening to commentaries where there’s no bullshit; the directors or producers or actors or production designers or whomever just talk about what they wanted to accomplish, what their influences were, what their challenges were, and an honest assessment of that. I just love that stuff.

For more on SuperGrid and Lowell’s upcoming projects, be sure to follow @SuperGridMovie and @lolofilm on Twitter. And in the meantime, click here to check out our review of SuperGrid.

Adrienne Barbeau is a huge favourite of many a genre fan, with her having appeared in iconic movies such as The Fog, Escape from New York, Creepshow, Swamp Thing, and so many more. Initially, we caught up with Adrienne to discuss her role as Catwoman in Batman: The Animated Series as that beloved show gets a new Blu-ray release, and we were lucky enough to grab enough time to touch on a whole range of other fascinating topics.

STARBURST: How did you first end up involved in Batman: The Animated Series?

Adrienne Barbeau: I have a voiceover agency that I’m signed to for doing voiceovers, and they just called and said, “Come on in, we’ve got an audition for you for Catwoman.” I went in, it was probably a 30-second recording, then a month later I got the call. I don’t remember watching Batman growing up. I knew [former Catwoman] Eartha Kitt because I had grown up listening to her recordings, but I didn’t know any of the women who’d gone before me in terms of the role. They just heard something in the audition that they thought would work.

As someone who was relatively unfamiliar with that world, how was it to come in to the show when so many of the people involved were such huge fans of Batman and comic books in general?

I don’t think I let on [laughs]. All I remember was thinking, “This is a fantastic job because I don’t have to get make-up on and I don’t have to wear a costume.” And I was working with all these great people. One of the delights of it was showing up at the studio and discovering who was going to be in the show that week; the guest artists or whatever. I had grown up watching Efrem Zimbalist Jr. [BTAS’ Alfred], so I was delighted to be working with him. I don’t think I knew any of the other cast members, but it was just a fun job to do.

Would you say you have a preference between live-action and voice acting, or do you just enjoy them both in different ways?

Both of them in different ways. It really comes down to the character and the project. In the last couple of years, I’ve done a handful of video games – some of them have just been voiceover, others have been motion capture – and that’s a whole different experience. Voiceovers just are easier. I don’t mean to make light of it, but, in terms of the demands, you don’t even have to memorise. With Batman, we were so fortunate to have Andrea Romano as our director because, for me at least, she just guided me through. As you know, we’re seeing a written script but we’re not seeing any visuals, we’re not seeing any animation, and Andrea is – she has the storyboards or whatever in front of her – and I remember there was one day where Catwoman goes running off the top of a building and lands on the street below. I ran off the top of the building and I land with an “Oomph” or something. Andrea said, “Adrienne, it’s a 20-story building not a 10-story building!” Then you make your adjustments. If I’d not had her there to tell me what the audience was seeing, I wouldn’t have been as loud.

While you wouldn’t see the animation while you were recording the voice work, the show itself instantly just felt so special to watching audiences. When did you realise that this series was something quite special?

When fans started telling me [laughs]. You know, I’m one of those actors who does the work and then goes on to the next thing. Some of my films I’ve never seen, or I never watch anything more than once. The artwork I was aware was exceptional, the art deco take on it. I just knew that that was something we hadn’t seen before. But I didn’t watch cartoons, I’m not an aficionado, so it really started filtering back to me. And now it’s become so loved that you’re doing an entire magazine article about it. Most of my fans, at least at the conventions, aren’t even aware that I voiced Catwoman. Actually, more and more I’m having people bring up the little Pop! figures of Catwoman for me to sign.

With the Catwoman role then, did you realise that this character was such a big deal to so many people? Maybe role model isn’t the correct word, given some of her antics…

At the time we were doing it, no, I did not realise that. I have since come to realise it because that’s the kind of response I get, even now. People coming up and saying, “Oh my gosh, that was my favourite character in the world when I was growing up, and I wanted to be just like Catwoman.” But at the time, no, I wasn’t aware that she was as special as she is to so many people.

Whatever project you’ve been involved in over the decades – be it a movie, a TV show, a video game, an animated effort – you always manage to stand out and make the most of your minutes, often showcasing a huge range. Do you ever feel that you were a little pigeonholed at times, though?

I have been pigeonholed along the way. When I came to California, I was a Broadway actress, I was a musical comedy star, I had just won the Tony nomination for Grease. So my first label, I guess, was stage actress, theatre actress. Then my first show here was Maude, which was a half-hour sitcom, so then I was a comedienne, and nobody would see me for drama. Then I started getting the dramatic roles. By the time I did do The Fog I was associated with John Carpenter romantically, so suddenly I’m a genre actress or a horror actress. So, along the way there have been labels, but they’ve continued to change. Then I did The Cannonball Run and Back to School and all of those, and then I did a lot more TV and all of that. I think that it probably wasn’t until Carnivàle with HBO that maybe I was given an opportunity to show some other aspects of my ability. I’ve taken the roles I’ve taken for a lot of different reasons. I wrote a memoir in 2006 – and it was just rereleased as an eBook so I was able to update it – in it, I talk about when I hear a producer say, “Oh, there’s no sense in making the offer to her. We couldn’t possibly get her.” I think to myself, “Make the offer!” You never know why an actor takes the role. I filmed one of my movies because it was filming in Moscow and I wanted to be in Moscow. I knew it was going to be a terrible movie, but I wanted to go to Moscow. I’ve taken other jobs because I had termites and I needed to tend to my house. So, it’s been an eclectic career and continues to be. I just made nine movies in the last year and a half. Then there’s the writing and everything. And I do a lot of voice work these days which is not widely heard; I do video describing for the blind, which I really love to do – whether it’s features or television series or whatever. That’s just sort of for my own enjoyment really. Sometimes I think it’d be nice to have an animated series for the same reason I said to you at the beginning – it’s not quite as much work, it’s not 14-hour days in the middle of a blizzard – but it all just comes down to the role that’s offered. Actually, I have a project coming up that will be just voice. I can’t talk about it yet but it’s a podcast series that I’m looking forward to.

To talk about The Fog for a moment, that was your first feature film and you were working with John, who you were then married to. Did you manage to keep your professional and personal lives detached on that shoot, or would ‘work’ often carry on over to ‘life’?

Yes, we got married on New Year’s Day of 1979. Then we started filming in probably February or March, maybe a little later than that. We had met about nine months before on Someone’s Watching Me. I remember the first day of shooting on The Fog, we were both determined to be extremely professional. We had taken separate hotel rooms and everything, nobody was going to say he was treating me differently. We were all great friends – Tom Atkins is one of my closest friends, and Nancy Loomis and Tommy Wallace were at our wedding – but nobody was going to say that he was treating me any different because we were married. About halfway through the morning, John came over to me and said, “I’m not having any fun at all. This isn’t going to work.” We weren’t even talking! Maybe it was because I knew John first as a director, and I trusted him completely. He had written the role of Stevie for me, so I assumed he trusted me as well. There was only one moment on the set when we had a little frisson. We were getting ready to do, I think, the scene where the piece of driftwood starts burning up. So John said, “Okay, sit down and we’ll shoot.” I said, “Sit down?! Oh John, I don’t think she’d sit down. She’s much too upset and nervous. I don’t think she’d sit down.” He said, “Okay, stand up and we’ll shoot.” That was the only time we had a disagreement about working together.

The Fog is very much a slow-burning classic ghost story that was very different to a lot of what else was being offered in the horror genre at that time. For you, why did that movie work so well?

I think it’s because you care. For me, there are two reasons. I think the location that he chose is as much a character in the film as the rest of us. It’s one of the most beautiful part of the country. We ended up buying a home up there, which unfortunately burned down years later. I think that’s a portion of it. And then, you care about the characters; you know them, you like them. So much of the material that I get these days, by the second page four people have been sliced to death in the most gruesome manner. You don’t even know who they are, and it doesn’t matter. This is people in jeopardy that you care about because they’re witty, they’re interesting. Those are what make the movie appealing to me. And I guess it’s really scary to a lot of people. There’s even one man out there who uses The Fog as a like a clock radio – he puts it on every night to fall asleep – and I have other people who say they watch it once a month, more than that. It’s not a genre that I am that familiar with except for what I’ve done, because I don’t like horror films. I don’t like to be scared, I don’t like to jump, I don’t like the tension. Of course, that’s the thing about John. Nobody can create tension like John can.

There’s certainly an irony there of you marrying a man often referred to as the Horror Master…

I’ll tell you my favourite story. The night that I went on The Johnny Carson Show and announced that John and I had gotten engaged, I went right from that taping to the first screening of Halloween. I had invited Tom Atkins and his wife at the time, Garn Stephens, and another friend of mine, Mews Small, who was in Grease with me. She was one of the two girls in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest – in those days her theatrical name was Marya Small. I mean, I’ve never even seen Psycho, so this wasn’t my sort of thing. I spent the whole film hitting John every time something happened! I’m sure he was black and blue by the time it was over. And Tom and Garn and Mews, who had not met him yet, when the film ended the three of them looked at each other and said, “We cannot let her marry him!”

These days, John is often focussed on his music and touring – which sees him working with your son, Cody. How is it for you to see Cody and John working together?

I have to be honest, the first time I saw the show I was driving over there thinking, “Oh my gosh, an hour and twenty minutes of electronic music…” I was hoping John was going to sing, to do some music from The Coupe De Villes. I didn’t realise they were using the videos. I was just blown away by the show, it was so exciting. But for me to see the two of them communicating and working off each other, it brought tears to my eyes. It was just wonderful.

It would be remiss of us not to talk about Escape from New York, which was again with John and was a year after The Fog. How much fun was it to be involved in that and to get to play the badass role of Maggie?

Again, I had the advantage of having the director write the role for me [laughs]. I loved Maggie, I loved her morality. It’s all right there in that last scene, when she reaches out her hand for the gun from Snake because she’s going to try and do away with The Duke. I loved Maggie. It was an easier shoot for me than it was for all the guys, because most of my stuff was done here in LA at the USC Law Library. So, I wasn’t in St Louis working. It was very, very, very hot and they were working nights. It really was an exhausting shoot for John. But to have the opportunity to work with Donald Pleasance, who was one of the funniest men I’ve ever worked with, and Harry Dean [Stanton] and Ernie [Borgnine]. It was fantastic.

With you being such a popular genre figure and John still being involved directly with the Halloween franchise up until Halloween III: Season of the Witch, was there ever any point where there was talk of you joining the franchise during that time?

No. Well, I did do Rob Zombie’s Halloween, but it ended up on the director’s cut, it ended up on the cutting room floor. But no, I don’t remember ever discussing it. That was one of those things where Rob called me on the day it was premiering. He said, “Are you going to the premiere?” I said, “No.” He just wanted to warn me that I wouldn’t be seeing myself.

Another huge favourite of so many is 1982’s Creepshow, where you again stole the show as the bitchy Wilma. How was it to work with George A. Romero and the fantastic ensemble cast put together for that anthology?

I had a ball, I just had the greatest time. If you get a chance, and it’s very cheap on Amazon, check out my memoirs, There Are Worse Things I Can Do. I have a whole chapter there about turning down Creepshow, because I read the script and I thought, “Oh gosh, I can’t do this. This is terrible! This is vile and bloody, and the language.” Then I called Tom Atkins and I said, “Tommy, you’re doing this movie?” Of course, John, to whom I was married at the time, was saying, “Are you kidding?! You’re going to turn down the opportunity to work with George Romero?” Tom said, “No, no, Adrienne, you don’t understand. It’s going to be a comic book, it’s going to be stylised. You’ve gotta do it!” I almost turned it down. And I don’t drink. I showed up to the rehearsal and said to George, “Look, if this isn’t what you want, you better send me back.” George created that role for me. It was the first time in my acting career where anyone ever said, “Go big or go home.”

To wrap things up then, is there a particular experience that stands out as the all-time career highlight or experience for you?

I loved doing Carnivàle. I don’t know if it’s seen very much in England, but it was just one of my all-time favourite jobs. Not only for the role but for the entire concept of the show, the metaphysics of it, the spirituality of it, the cast, the crew, even the caterers. It was the kind of job where I could still get my kids to school in the morning and sometimes be home before they went to bed. I just loved doing that, and I just loved the character. So Carnivàle stands out. Creepshow, of course. The Fog. I just was on the road with Pippin – the national tour of Pippin – where I was hanging upside down from a trapeze 15 feet in the air, singing my song and doing my trapeze act. That was a great job, too, but not in film and television. I’m just hoping they’ll bring it to the screen before I can’t do it anymore. You know, I’ve done a lot of stuff that I hope nobody ever sees, but everything I’ve done I’ve had a good time doing.

You can keep up to date with all of Adrienne’s upcoming projects by heading on over to her Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter pages or by visiting www.abarbeau.com.

When it comes to classic cartoon shows, Tom Ruegger has worked on a who’s who of the industry – from Scooby-Doo, to Yogi Bear, to Taz, to Tiny Toons, to Animaniacs, to Pinky and the Brain, and so many more. On Batman: The Animated Series, Tom was on board as a writer, producer, and as one of the creative forces behind this juggernaut of a show, and so, with BTAS now having had a swanky new Blu-ray release, we caught up with this fascinating fella to talk the Caped Crusader and a whole host of other fun topics.

STARBURST: With Batman: The Animated Series, is a fair to say that you were involved with the concept right from the very, very start?

Tom Ruegger: I came in at Warner Brothers just about when the Tim Burton Batman movie was making its way through the production process. At that point, I was making Tiny Toon Adventures at Warner Brothers, with Steven [Spielberg] and Bruce Timm and Eric Radomski and Paul Dini – they all worked on Tiny Toons. With the success of the Batman movie, suddenly Warner Brothers were just rolling in cash. So, they could afford to make Tiny Toons with a full orchestra for every episode, and they could afford to pay Steven and make a pretty heavy budget production. Warner Brothers looked at their assets and thought, “Well, Batman is huge for us. Maybe we need to make an animated series.” At that moment, people on our crew were very excited. We were doing the comedy with Tiny Toons, but now here was an opportunity to create a real iconic show that built on the visual concept that the Fleischer Studios contributed to animation back in the ‘40s with the Superman animated theatrical series. That was the inspiration for the new Batman TV show. Bruce Timm and Eric Radomski separately came to Jean McCurdy and me and said, “Hey, here’s some designs for the Batman character.” That was Bruce Timm, and then Eric Radomski said, “Here’s the design concept for the backgrounds.” And that was unique, because the backgrounds were all painted on black paper. Normally people are starting with a white canvas and adding colour and shadow to it. Eric started with the black canvas and then built colours out of it – which is what I think gives the series its film noir quality that very few animated series have ever achieved. There’s a book – A History of Television – that says Batman: The Animated Series was created by Tim Burton, and that is not the case. Certainly, Tim Burton’s movie was an inspiration for Warners to pursue it, but it was definitely created in-house at Warner Brothers TV Animation.

Do you feel that BTAS couldn’t have been done in the style and tone that we ultimately saw if it wasn’t for that 1989 Batman movie?

I suspect the tendency would’ve been to go with a lighter quality if the Tim Burton movie hadn’t existed. Especially for TV animation, Batman: The Animated Series was unique. It wasn’t really aimed at a very young kid audience. Clearly, not every little kid should’ve been watching it, because it was a little bit rough or a little bit more violent. The music was by Tim Burton’s orchestrator, Shirley Walker. Danny Elfman had done the music for the feature film, and Shirley Walker had been Danny’s orchestrator. That’s one of the odd little moments with the series, because Shirley wrote the theme music for Batman: The Animated Series, and Danny Elfman was very unhappy that Shirley had gone off to do this. What happened with the theme tune is that Danny insisted that it be slightly rewritten so his name could be credited. That was between Danny and Shirley, but it worked out and Shirley did all of Batman: The Animated Series; she did all of the composing and she was just fabulously brilliant.

And as well as the music, there was obviously the vocal talent on show. To this day, so many of us hear those voices when reading that Bat-books of today.

Isn’t Kevin Conroy perfect? Mark Hamill, I think The Joker was maybe his first voiceover work. He embraced it and became The Joker and, as you know, is world renowned for being one of the best Jokers ever – the definitive one.

Can anyone truly voice Bruce/Batman who isn’t named Kevin Conroy?

He is perfect. No false moves. I dare you to find a scene where he blows the moment.

Every time there’s an animated movie or show that doesn’t feature Kevin Conroy’s voice as Batman, it always takes a little bit of getting used to.

Why are they imitating Kevin Conroy?! He’s available. When I was a kid, like you, Batman had a role in my life. In this case, I’m talking about the Adam West and Burt Ward series from the ‘60s. When I was a kid, that was the definitive Batman. When I was writing an episode called Beware the Gray Ghost…

An episode that many view as one of the greatest episodes in the history of animated television, might we add…

Well, I had to drop that in [laughs]. As I was writing it, I definitely was hearing Adam West as the voice of the Gray Ghost. Bruce Timm and I had shared stories about our earlier life, and our favourite show was Batman with Adam West. So, in coming up with Bruce Wayne’s iconic hero as a child – the Gray Ghost – we thought, “We have to get Adam West to play this role.” I also insisted, with great resistance from Bruce, that he play the villain in this episode so that they [Kevin Conroy and Adam West] would have some screen time together.

Why do you think that Batman: The Animated Series is still seen as so special to this very day?

The character of Batman himself, he’s iconic. There have been lots and lots of comic book looks for each generation to enjoy, but really, the comic books were never really animated; they had never really been done in the way that they appear in the comics. I mean, Batman was this crimefighting superhero, and the only real animated versions of him were, first, a campy version in the ‘60s, then later really low-quality Super Friends episodes where he’s sitting around doing whatever, just kinda waiting for the call to go out, almost like a cop. So, it had never really been done properly. I think the series itself was really an answer to many fans’ request to do it right. I remember Batman: Mask of the Phantasm, it premiered here on Christmas Day. I know that a lot of people go to the movies on Christmas Day, but this was a $3 million animated movie, so that’s not really theatrical release quality. But Warner Brothers decided to put it out on Christmas Day. My kids were young at that point, so we all got in the car, we all went to the local movie theatre to see Batman: Mask of the Phantasm. Every kid in my kids’ school was there, each with a father. It made me realise that Batman really speaks to generations of children, whether they’re children right now enjoying the fantasy of superheroes, or they were Batman fans from childhood and they want to relive that. That was one of my favourite moviegoing experiences – Christmas Day, with neighbours and friends, watching this TV cartoon on the big screen. It was a lot of fun.

That must have been a tad surreal for you. And did the people there know that you were involved in the making of this movie?

There were people calling out to me during it. They’d punch me in the back of the head, “Hey, great line!” Of course, it was written by Alan Burnett. Certainly not everybody though, and the kids couldn’t care less – they just loved the movie.

As a viewer, as a fan, and as a kid at the time, as soon as you see that opening title sequence for the first time, you instantly realise that this is something truly special. Being involved in the show, when did it hit home for you that this was going to be really, really good?

That is a perfect question, because that opening animated title is really where it began. That title, that is the refined beautiful version of that title. But the first proof of concept piece of animation that was made was a very rough version of that sequence. It was much more violent and there was a lot of gunfire in it, but it was basically the same sequence and it was Bruce Timm and Eric Radomski’s first piece of film that they ever produced professionally. It was Eric’s backgrounds, Bruce’s characters, and some really fun animation. This was reduced to a minute and ten seconds, and it was brought to the executives at Warner Brothers. They were always scared. When they have a hit like [Tim Burton’s] Batman, the last thing they want to do is diminish it in any way. So they were not chomping at the bit to make an animated series, because they didn’t want to spoil their golden goose. But when they saw this, this very violent, rough rooftop battle sequence with Batman, and they saw it was truly art – it was mood, it was film noir, it was splashes of red, it was this sinister character with his eyes narrowing – they said, “Oh, okay. Let’s make a series.” When the show first came on here, the first episode we aired was On Leather Wings. The animation performance in that, I felt if you’re going to start to make a good performance, that’s a great choice. It was beautifully animated, and it was very serious and dark, too. There was nothing kid-friendly about it.

Was there much pushback from the Warner Bros. higher-ups in regard to BTAS being slightly more violent and serious than the other cartoons of the day?

There are a few moments that are sort of humourous in BTAS, but for the most part it doesn’t really seek out to make audiences laugh. It seeks to thrill and, I think, maybe overwhelm your eyeballs. It really seeks to tell a big dramatic story with consequences. That’s something that just isn’t that common in children’s TV animation.

One of the best elements of BTAS is how you brought in lesser-known characters and made them feel important. A prime example is what you did with Mr. Freeze and how you gave audiences a piece of true TV gold in the A Heart of Ice episode. What was the motivation to use characters that people may not necessarily be too familiar with, and was it a case of believing in these characters or more the challenge of making them seem relevant?

On Heart of Ice, we had a staff of really talented writers and we had Alan Burnett and Paul Dini leading the charge. Both Alan and Paul, as kids, were big Batman fans. They were beyond aficionados; they were walking, talking Batman encyclopaedias. And Bruce Timm, certainly. Only those sorts of people can give these lesser characters the weight that they need to carry a story. Paul Dini is the kind of guy that can look at the Batman universe and realise The Joker needs a female assistant that is going to actually carry some weight. Another person walking in the door saying, “I wanna come up with a character named Harley Quinn…” They’re just not going to do it because they’re going to be too worried about getting The Joker right. But after our team had gotten a bunch of great Batman episodes under their belt, then they could start crafting brand new ideas and characters. And that’s where Harley Quinn comes in – she’s now one of the major characters in Warner Brothers’ vault. She’s super popular at all the Comic Cons. Everyone wants to be Harley Quinn, often in various stages of dripping make-up. Sometimes she looks great, sometimes not. There’s Harley at 10am, Harley at 10pm, and Harley at 3am.

How was it for those involved in the show when Harley Quinn became canon and appeared in the comic books for the first time?

She’s been a gamechanger really, because how many great, great women villains have been produced in the DC Comics universe. There are a few, but Harley’s taken her place at the top of the list now. They’ve teamed her up with Poison Ivy, and they’ve had all kinds of great stuff. I know that Bruce Timm drew the original Harley, and Paul Dini came up with the original material and concept of Harley, so I know those two guys are highly gratified that she’s become so iconic.

One new creation for Batman: The Animated Series that often gets overlooked is Renee Montoya…

Thank you. For the design of Bullock, he was a villain in the first animated sequence Bruce and Eric made. Bullock was the major tough guy Batman was beating up on the rooftop. He was such a great design that Bruce and the team didn’t want to waste him on a little promo piece, so he was cut out of the promo piece and became the tough cop who you can’t really trust all of the time. One of our first ever story editors was Sean Derek, and she brought life to Montoya in the first few episodes. We were making this series for FOX TV, and they were delighted to see the presence of someone who was a female in the series, because I think the show itself carried a lot of male testosterone. So FOX was very pleased and encouraged us to keep Montoya very much active in the series.

For the most part, BTAS was made up of one-episode stories, but were there ever any talks back then of doing season-long narratives at all?

In Great Britain and all over the world, shows – like Doctor Who – had long arcs and multi-season arcs. I think our TV shows didn’t figure that out until a lot later; we didn’t pick up on it. I think if we were making Batman: The Animated Series brand new today, that’d probably play into it. We were just frantic to make enough to get on the air in time. It was quite a rigorous process just getting the ones made.

Were there any particular comic book arcs you looked to adapt but ultimately decided against doing so, be that in Batman: The Animated Series or The New Batman Adventures?

I’m not really answering your question, but there were a bunch of comics that we liked that were too dark for us ultimately to pursue. There was one story that I wrote that we didn’t make, and I don’t even know why because I spent a month writing this. Everyone knew I was writing it and they were all cool with it, and yet ultimately the network said, “Too dark, we can’t do it.” I’ve spoken about this a little bit before, but it was called The One and Only Gun Story. It started in a mine where different metals are being mined out of the ground, and we follow the metal to the factory where it’s melted down and turned to steel and different things. We watch this delivered to a manufacturer – and this is all before anyone speaks – but we find that where it’s been mined, there’s a Native American there saying, “This is sacred land, you shouldn’t be there.” So, the metal gets turned to a gun. The camera, which has been watching this rock taken out of the ground and turned to metal on a gun, it follows this gun, it gets put in a box, and the next thing we know the box is being opened in a gun store and someone’s buying the gun. You follow it home, it’s put into a safe, the safe is closed, then blackness. Years pass, then it turns out this is the gun that kills Bruce Wayne’s parents. We watch this gun, which gets flipped into the river and fished out by a kid. Ultimately, Bruce Wayne gets hold of this gun and, at the end of the episode, melts it down and turns it into a plaque for the grave of his parents. That’s The One and Only Gun Story that the network said, “No, we’re not making that!” This is self-serving, I guess, but it was a very good script. It was dramatic. Obviously, they had never aired anything like it. They were just scared. They thought, “Oh, this is going to get us a lot of attention, and it’s about guns, so we’re not going to do it.”

You used a whole lot of different characters throughout the series, but were there any ones out there that you were pushing for but couldn’t use?

No. I came from the whole Adam West era, so I was satisfied with what we had. I thought we had a better Joker, a really good Penguin, The Riddler worked, and I felt that Ra’s al Ghul was an improvement over King Tut [laughs].

Due to your depiction of Dick Grayson in Batman: The Animated Series, many naysayers began to take Robin seriously and realise what a fantastic character he is.

You clearly have the Robin thing figured out. For some people, he’s the Scrappy-Doo of the Batman world. And poor Scrappy gets no love anymore. I think Robin worked out in our series pretty well, the Dick Grayson Robin. I think it was smart that we didn’t start with him, because I think immediately it looks almost like a spin-off.

It’s just a shame that Batman Forever and particularly Batman & Robin again soured some audiences on Robin.

No, I don’t think it did help.

So you didn’t ever think of incorporating nipples into your Batsuits, then?

[Laughs] George Clooney would shake his head ever so slightly in every scene so that his ears would wiggle. That’s not helpful either! Michael Keaton would always just stay very still.

Personally, Michael Keaton is always my Batman when it comes to live-action.

The thing about Keaton, I was shocked. I thought, “I don’t even wanna go and see this. Michael Keaton as Batman?!” But he was great. At the time, I didn’t know he could play serious. He’s constantly holding back information. I don’t know if it was the director or Michael, but the voice – the low voice – every line was very effective.

We’ve touched upon Heart of Ice, Beware the Gray Ghost, and Mask of the Phantasm. To you, what would you say would be your finest moment from your time involved in the world of Batman: The Animated Series?

It’s probably a dramatic scene between us and the network. I’m not giving you an episode, but early on the network wanted to get rid of Bruce Timm and Eric Radomski. They said, “These guys, they’ve never made an animated series before, they don’t understand TV, they’re not making a show for kids, we need this thing to be nicer.” I remember going to Bruce and Eric and telling them this. They said, “Can we quit now?” So, we made a stand against the network and said, “Listen, they’re not going. Cancel this series, because we’re making this with Bruce Timm and Eric Radomski. They have the vision that works alongside Tim Burton’s vision. You’ve seen the little clip that they’re capable of making. Now you just have to let them do it, clear out, and let’s just continue – or skip it!” We did get to that moment, and normally I think the network gets its way. At that point, we had had experience with the network in making the Steven Spielberg show [Tiny Toon Adventures]. On that production, they’d say, “Oh, we don’t like this, we don’t like that, we want that changed.” We’d go back with, “Well, Steven likes this, and we don’t want to change it.”

Let’s face it, Steven Spielberg is quite the name to have as back-up.

We knew that they had a breaking point. Tim Burton really wasn’t involved, but we knew that Eric and Bruce had a visual vision that would make this show unique and special. The network may have wanted it to be a better flavour of vanilla, but we did fight them on that. So, not an answer to your question. That was an episode, but there’s so many episodes of Batman: The Animated Series. I wrote the first Poison Ivy episode, and I realised that I loved the show and I loved the process when I was writing the first scene for that script. I realised, “Oh my gosh, this is like we’re making movies here. We’re actually making 22-minute feature films.” They were very dramatic. The first scene I had was Harvey Dent at dinner with the character who would become Poison Ivy. I believe he’s lamenting that Bruce Wayne couldn’t make it, “Where’s Bruce? He was supposed to come to dinner. But you know Bruce, he’s always a lowkey, loner of a guy who stays to himself and doesn’t like to go out much.” We’re intercutting everything Harvey Dent says with contradictory footage of Bruce as Batman beating the living crap out of a villain. I realised, “This is so much fun to write!” For me, that was like a turning point in that, “Oh, I don’t just have to write little shenanigans with Buster and Babs. I can write these really dramatic scenes and I have the freedom to let it go wherever it goes.” It was just a wonderful creative writing experience that I think was the turning point for me. This was the episode prior to Harvey turning into Two-Face.

The great thing about Harvey becoming Two-Face is that you had already began to drop in elements of the Two-Face personality such as the short temper, the dual identity element of Big Bad Harv…

That’s Bruce Timm and Eric Radomski having the vision, and ultimately Paul Dini and Alan Burnett as story editors. Early on, Bruce and Eric knew where these characters were heading. Many series would’ve started with Harvey as Two-Face, and maybe in the midst of that story tell a backstory about what happened. But here’s a series that’s not worried about how it re-runs, what order the episodes are going. We were going to show Harvey Dent before he became Two-Face.

Decisions such as giving Harvey Dent a dual identity before he became Two-Face, and creating a female sidekick for The Joker, they’re bold choices that the fanbase could’ve easily rejected. If you were making this show today, in the midst of social media, do you think such bold calls and changes to established canon would go down well with fans?

I think it always has to do with the creative people that are closest to the material, that really have been hired to pursue it, to make it, and who really have the chops to do a great job. When those people are allowed to have the freedom to do it, I think they almost always turn out a great product. It’s when executives and the front office – and I’m not talking about the animation department, necessarily – the people who should allow the creative people to pursue it but instead get their fingers involved in it and start micromanaging it, that’s when it all goes to hell. The beauty of making this in the ‘90s is that we had a president of the division in Jean McCurdy who was not there to tell us how to make it, she was there to protect us from people. She picked the people that she thought could make the show well, then her job became keeping other people out of the kitchen until we were ready to show the pies that we’d made.

 Were you ever in the frame to return for The New Batman Adventures or Batman Beyond?

I wrote the story for Big Time used in Batman Beyond.

Having worked on shows like Tiny Toon Adventures, Animaniacs, Pinky and the Brain, and Taz-Mania, how much fun was it to go with a more serious narrative for Batman: The Animated Series?

Definitely a different muscle.  I would occasionally like to add jokes to my Batman work. In Never Too Late, I had Batman meet with a priest inside a church. In my initial draft, Batman spoke with the priest inside the confessional. As Batman leaves, two altar boys notice the Dark Knight leaving the confessional. One altar boy says to the other, “Funny, I always thought he was Episcopalian.” I fought to retain this scene, but the network insisted it be cut.

Is it really true that Yakko, Wakko, and Dot of Animaniacs fame were based on your own kids? 

Yes. My three sons Nate, Luke and Cody served as the personality inspirations, while the character designs were based on a trio of characters I created for my college animated film, The Premiere of Platypus Duck. By putting red noses and ears that stick up on these characters, the platypus trio became the Warners.

How do you feel about the change to more CGI-driven animation these days, and do you think that takes away from some of what makes animation truly great?

There is a human quality to hand-drawn 2D animation that is eliminated by the plastic-looking models found in many CGI shows. Realism is more achievable in CGI, but movement and wild takes seem limited in CGI.

You’ve worked with so many great characters over the years, but is there any one animated character you’d love to work on but haven’t had the chance to?

I’d like to work on a feature with Bugs, Daffy and Elmer.

What can you tell us about what you’re currently working on or have in the pipeline?

Developing a few new animated series – two comedies and one drama. One with Paul Dini, another with a Hollywood icon. I’m developing all three with my son Luke Ruegger, who is an incredible artist, designer and animator, and who, as a kid, voiced The Flame on Animaniacs as well as Big Fat Baby and Billy the Kid on Histeria.

Batman: The Complete Animated Series is out now on Blu-ray, and you can keep up to date with Tom’s work by following him on Twitter.

With She-Ra and the Princesses of Power having wowed many since landing on Netflix, we were lucky enough to catch up with composer Sunna Wehrmeijer to discuss her time working on this fan favourite project, her work on some truly huge Hollywood blockbusters, and a whole host more.

STARBURST: How did you career in music start?

Sunna Wehrmeijer: I studied composition and music production in the Netherlands, where I’m from. I always played music, I always composed pieces. I wasn’t quite sure what I wanted to do with it, but I wanted to do something with music. By the end of my studies, I decided I’d go to L.A. for a few weeks, see what that’s like and then I’d study something proper and get a normal job. Those few weeks in L.A., I fell in love with the place. Finally, it all made sense. I started working for other composers from there and really found my calling. It’s something I really love doing.

Moving from the Netherlands to Los Angeles is quite the big deal. How was it make the jump at such a young age?

It sounds weird, but it wasn’t really a big deal at the time. I’d just finished my studies, I didn’t have any responsibilities yet, it was just me. I found it very exciting. The initial plan was to go for eleven weeks. It never even entered my mind that I would move there. It wasn’t until someone in my class said, “Well, why don’t you move here and do the whole program?” That just made so much sense. I basically went home for Christmas and told everybody that I wouldn’t be coming back. It wasn’t such a huge thing like, “Oh, I’m packing up all my stuff.” I basically left and had my family do that for me [laughs]. It was such an exciting thing that I didn’t have to think much about it. I just felt that in L.A. the world was at my feet at that time.

Was there a certain moment or certain job that cemented to you that this would be your career?

It was so funny. You have to have these visas, which make things annoying. You get a visa for two years when you’re a student. During the first year, I started doing some unpaid internships. It was only three days a week that you actually had to go to UCLA. The second year, I’d already found a job as an assistant to Mark Streitenfeld. I told him during the interview, “I am very available to do this job, I want to do it, but could you help me with a visa?” That was extremely awkward. I was one of a lot of people wanting that job, so making requests was very uncomfortable. But he did end up sponsoring me, which was great. It’s one of those things. Leaving never entered my mind; I was just, “I will find a way to do this.” I wasn’t thinking about how this might not work or how I might have to go back home. I never thought about that because it was never an option. I never even considered it and thank god it worked out well.

You have quite the eclectic array off credits to your name, from Dorothy and the Wizard of Oz, to Prometheus, to Robin Hood, to Drag Me to Hell, to Nightcrawler. Is there a certain genre that you prefer to work in or are you always open to exploring the right project?

I definitely love doing different sort of things. The fact that the two shows I’m doing now [She-Ra and the Princesses of Power and Dorothy and the Wizard of Oz] are animation is just a coincidence. Like you say, I’m not just an animation composer. I love a dramatic score, I love to write dramatic music for action, adventure, emotional drama. That’s just really what I enjoy doing. I enjoy writing the themes and thematic music. Obviously, sometimes you have to create tension, which I also enjoy doing. It’s not like I don’t like to do that. I don’t want to say I don’t like doing this, I do. I would say my first love is a dramatic score in which I can write and develop a nice theme. Which at the moment, I’m very lucky that I have a show in which I can actually do that.

There are always going to be certain similarities in your scoring work from project to project, but how conscious are you of not having projects sounding too similar to each other?

Obviously, there’s always the danger of that, especially because I sound like me. We all have a certain style and little things that we do. For instance, an action scene I’d write for She-Ra is very different to an action scene I’d do for Holmes & Watson. One is live-action, one is animation. They could be doing the same thing on screen, but in animation you’d score it differently. I’m always very inspired by the visuals, and because the visuals are always different to each other I will always come up with something just slightly different. Sure, I rip myself off by accident sometimes [laughs].

Do you have a preference between live-action and animation projects at all?

I love both. The good thing with animation is that you can often write lots of themes. The other side of that is that it takes a huge amount of work – especially with She-Ra. Every 22-minute episode is like a mini-movie. I’m emotionally drained by the end of it because it’s very intense. With some forms of live-action, you take a little bit of a step back as a composer because you don’t want to do anything that’s too much on the nose. It’s just a different way of scoring, but I have to say that I really enjoy both.

With She-Ra, did you get to see the animation before you put the music together or were you going in blind?

Yes, there was the demo phase. Getting the job, it was between me and a few others, and you get very early sketches to see what was going on. When I got the job and began working on it, I got a full episode to score. It wasn’t completely locked.

How did your involvement in She-Ra and the Princesses of Power come about?

All these DreamWorks animated series, they usually try and find a new composer. I demoed for it, they listened to it blind so that they don’t know who it’s from, and that was the first round. After that, the demoing phase that I mentioned, I had three scenes with very rough pictures. I just did what I thought was right, and I guess that they liked that; they seemed to agree with that. So yeah, that’s how that happened.

Were you a fan of She-Ra as a child?

It’s so funny. I’m 34, and everyone I mention the show to, they’re all, “Oh my god, I used to love She-Ra!” Either it never made it to the Netherlands or I completely missed it, but I had no idea who She-Ra was. I can say it now, although obviously I didn’t mention it before [laughs]. But no, I didn’t watch it. I don’t know if it played there, but I guess it wasn’t a big thing in Holland. Even my husband when I mention it, he’s all, “Oh my god, I used to have the Greyskull castle!” I’m just, “Okay…”

So your first experience of She-Ra was when you got involved with Princesses of Power?

Yes it was, that’s right. I went back and had a look at it [1985’s She-Ra: Princess of Power series], and obviously it’s really cool. This is such a new approach and such a new thing, though. It’s much more cinematic, it’s much more emotional, the characters are much more developed. To me, I know their names are the same, but it’s such a new take on the whole thing that I don’t think the two need to be connected musically at all. The music worked very differently in the ‘80s. It suited it really well, but this take on it needed a more adventurous score. They were quite clear about what they wanted for the score. [Executive producer] Noelle Stevenson had worked on this for years before I came on. She’d gave it a lot of thought and wanted a classical orchestral adventure combined with contemporary ‘80s synth – which is exactly what it has become. There was a very good vision for it, and hopefully I’ve been doing what they asked for. It just fits the show really well. I don’t want to say anything bad about the ‘80s one, because it did what it did for that show and worked really well. I think that TV shows have become so much more cinematic, like mini films. That has a lot to do with the music also becoming more cinematic and helping to play the episodes like a movie. That’s probably where the biggest difference is.

Did you happen to see any of the weird backlash on the internet when She-Ra and the Princesses of Power was first announced, with middle-aged men saying that this character needs to be more sexualised?

It’s ridiculous. From what I’ve heard, young people are loving it, both boys and girls. The 40-year-old creeps in their basement, they don’t think she’s hot enough. I think we’re good [laughs]. It’s like, “I’m sorry this 16-year-old isn’t giving you an erection.”

And are we correct in thinking the second season has already been announced?

I’m allowed to say that there will be a second season.

And you will be back?

I hope so [laughs]. But yes, I will.

Would you say that there’s now more respect and appreciation towards music than there maybe was for shows in the ‘80s and in to the ‘90s?

Maybe. To be honest, I can’t quite answer that as I wasn’t around in the ‘80s. Generally, whoever I’ve met in the film industry, they always find music important. We always come on later in the game, obviously, usually in post-production, and it’s only one part of the production. You’re not the main thing, you’re one of many elements. From my experience, there’s lots of appreciation for the music. Most filmmakers aren’t musicians, so they’ll find different ways of explaining what they want. I find that they respond with great enthusiasm about music that fits their film or their project.

You mention there how musicians are part of a larger production. Do you feel that when people first get into the industry, they maybe lose sight of that a little and try to overpower the overall project with their music?

It’s hard when you watch a project and you don’t know what the process was. If the music is too much, whose fault is it – the composer or the director? I think you have to be very aware that you’re not the most important person on this film. I only mean that in the sense that the filmmaker has many tools to make his film, and you’re just one of those tools. That’s just how it is. If you’re a concert composer, it’s so different. The filmmakers have been on these projects for years. I can come on later on, my job is to help them finish their movie in the best possible way. If that means rewriting something ten times, then that’s what that means. In fact, if I have to rewrite something ten times then they likely should’ve hired someone else [laughs]. But there’s going to be some rewrites involved or some rearranging. I put a lot in there, then I watch the final product and it gets taken down or it’s overpowered by sound effects. That’s just how it is. No, it’s not always fun, but it’s just how it is.

What is the process of working on something like She-Ra and the Princesses of Power like?

There’s a schedule, which is basically two weeks per episode. Then there’s another two weeks of adjustments and fixes before it gets made. So, one episode will usually take a month. There’s usually three things going on at once; you’re finishing one, doing fixes on another, and starting another one. Now, I’m much ahead of the ones that have just launched on Netflix. By now, it’s so much easier than it was on Episode 1, because you’re finding the sound, you’re coming up with themes, I’m making sure I’m doing what they’re looking for.

How much easier is it once you’ve established a signature theme for a character or location that you know you have in the bank and that you can go back to?

Absolutely, that is a relief. The thing with animation, because you’re hitting so much, it rarely happens that I can take a whole cue and take it somewhere else. That’s never going to work, but I can take bits. I think it’s always good to have that recurring feel, so people will notice, “Oh, this is about She-Ra or Glimmer or whomever it’s about.” I think that’s good in many ways.

In your career, there have been small independent projects, giant Hollywood movies, animated efforts, and so much more. Is it possible for you to pick a particular career highlight so far?

A couple of things. First of all, getting She-Ra. DreamWorks just makes really nice things, so I was very excited to become part of that team in the DreamWorks world. On the big screen, I do still think it’s pretty cool that my vocals ended up in three out of four Hunger Games films. That was a nice moment, especially because it was so unexpected. That was so not ever my intention, so it was such a lovely surprise. I felt very appreciative.

How did it happen that your vocals made it in to the Hunger Games movies, then?

It’s a bit of a fun story. I was working for James Newton Howard at the time at his studio. He was writing Hunger Games and there was this one scene he did for Katniss, Jennifer Lawrence’s character. It was a very quiet cue, very beautiful, very lovely melody, a solo vocal. Vocals are very hard to sample, so the melody sounded great but the vocals sounded like shit. The next day, I just went in at 6am or 7am and re-recorded that vocal line myself and I said, “I put a little placeholder there so that you don’t have to listen to that horrible sample. You can re-record it with a vocalist later.” He really liked it, and so the actual recording I did myself is in Catching Fire, then Mockingjay – Part 1 and Mockingjay – Part 2. That was so weird but so nice. Then the vocal thing just kept kind of coming back. Maleficent I sang on, and now on She-Ra. A lot of scores don’t suit vocals at all, but She-Ra just makes so much sense.

What else are your currently working on or have in the pipeline at the moment?

There’s Dorothy and the Wizard of Oz, the Warner Brothers animated series that we’re starting Season 3 of. That’s playing around the world on Boomerang. The age group is a little younger than She-Ra, but it’s a really lovely show. It’s classic Warner Brothers cartoon music, it’s very exciting, the characters are really lovely. It’s just a really lovely show.

Having worked on dramatic films such as Prometheus, Robin Hood, Nightcrawler, and The Hunger Games, it must be nice to do something a little more light-hearted?

Yeah, it was. I have two kids, so it’s nice that they can walk in while I’m working. If they walked in on a scene I was doing from Prometheus, that wouldn’t be good. So yes, it is nice to do something a little lighter, for sure. They both love Dorothy, although they’re both slightly young for She-Ra. My son thinks that I get paid to watch cartoons all day for a living, which is kind of funny and not completely untrue either.

To keep up to date with Sunna and her upcoming projects, be sure to check follow her on Twitter or head over to http://sunnawehrmeijer.com.

With Batman: The Complete Animated Series out now on Blu-ray, we continue our celebration of BTAS by catching up with one of the show’s mainstay voice talents: the brilliant Loren Lester. Whether as Robin or as Nightwing, Lester delivered a multi-layered Dick Grayson throughout BTAS and beyond, and we were lucky enough to grab some time with Loren to discuss a whole host of fun and fascinating topics.

STARBURST: When did it become clear to you that acting and voice acting was a realistic career for you?

Loren Lester: I started at a very young age – I was sixteen – and I was very lucky, because the agent that I had covered all of the different areas where actors worked. Now it’s very specialised – you have a voiceover agent, you have a commercial agent, you have a movie and TV agent – so this agent I had, my very first one, he had departments for all of the different areas. I started working immediately; I worked with the great Hanna-Barbera studio, I was very fortunate to do that, and the rest is history. I’ve been doing voiceovers, I’ve been doing commercials, I’ve been doing movies, I’ve been doing theatre. I’ve been very lucky. I’ve just passed forty years as a member of the Screen Actors Guild, which I’m very proud of. It came to me as a bundle – wherever we can sell you, wherever we think you can work you’ll work – and I was very lucky.

Until the mid ‘90s, it seemed as if voice acting was almost a closed shop of sorts – as in a lot of the same people did a lot of the shows out there.

It was very small group of people, and I was lucky enough to be embraced by that small community. Now, of course, it’s wide open, and especially a lot of celebrities are doing the work. They all have kids, so they love the idea that they’re going to be doing animated shows and their kids are going to hear them. It’s very, very fulfilling to them. Back then, it was kind of unusual. We had tonnes of celebrities do our show, but it was kind of the beginning of that. It was really the breakthrough of that. We had some incredible people, people who’d been working in television for many, many years. Especially a lot of them had been in radio. Bob Hastings, who played Commissioner Gordon, actually had a big radio career. He was familiar with voiceover, but he was also a TV actor. I remember him from McHale’s Navy. It was exciting for me to be working with all of these people I’d grown up with on television.

You have a background in stage work, much like Kevin Conroy. Do you feel that there’s something about stage performers that translates perfectly to voiceover work?

Voiceover actors are simply wonderful actors. The best acting that people can get is in the theatre. Most people agree with that. A lot of people don’t get a theatre career anymore, they just say, “I want to be a voiceover actor.” But the best ones are people who are well trained actors, and the best training is in theatre. So yeah, that helped me. Kevin was a theatre actor, Mark Hamill, Bob Hastings, we were all theatre actors. And the celebrities, too. They all had had starts in theatre. So that was a big, big thing.

When BTAS was being cast, there was some major A-list competition for the key roles. How was the audition process for you, and do you know who you were up against?

I don’t know for certain, because I’m not on the other side of things, but I don’t think there were any celebrities. I know that every colleague of mine was up for the part, everybody wanted it; everybody really, really wanted the role of Robin. That was my pool of actors, all of my colleagues who I knew from auditions and work. I don’t think that there were any celebrities that they auditioned for it. Now, of course, that’s the first thing they do; they go for a celebrity. It’s too bad, because we have such a fantastic cast. We’ve become the icons of Batman and Robin and Nightwing. We are the icons of that, and it’s too bad that they say, “Well, let’s get a celebrity the next time we do a Batman or Robin show.”

It’s testament to those involved in BTAS that your voices have become synonymous with these characters. To this day, people hear your voices when they’re reading comic books.

I hear that so often, I hear that all the time. I’m at Rhode Island Comic Con and I know that I’m going to hear that at least a hundred times. And I’m saying that in a good way. It’s really an honour to hear a lot of people saying that to me. I have a very good friend who actually wrote a series of Nightwing comic books, and he said, “While I was writing it, I was hearing your voice in my head.” It’s just an honour and it means a lot.

Were you a fan of DC Comics and the whole Batman mythos before you became involved in Batman: The Animated Series?

I had a real passion for the Batman series of the ‘60s. I was a very little child. Now I look at it and I see that it’s a spoof, it’s funny. As a kid, I took it very seriously. It would play on Tuesday and Wednesday, and Tuesday they’d leave a cliff-hanger. Tuesday, I’d say, “Oh my god, Batman and Robin are going to die! They won’t be back on Wednesday!” Of course, they would be. Everyone else who was older was just, “Of course they’re going to be back!” But to me, it was very, very serious. I had every possibly piece of memorabilia I could find. I had everything you could possibly get; the utility belt, there’s the Batman you threw up in the air and he’d land with a parachute. So I was a huge Batman fan. I wasn’t necessarily a big fan of Robin. I didn’t hate Robin or anything, but I was a Batman fan. So, when the opportunity came for me to audition for this, I was pretty excited about it. “Oh wow, I have the opportunity to be the voice of Robin!” I think only one other person at that point had been the voice of Robin, so it was an opportunity to kind of recreate that voice.

As someone who grew up reading comics, I always took Robin as a big deal – whether that was Dick, Jason, Tim, Stephanie, Damian…

No, no, no. There’s no other Robin, there’s just Dick Grayson [laughs].

For those who were only familiar with Robin from the Adam West and Burt Ward TV show, they often saw Robin as a joke character. In that regard, Batman: The Animated Series had such an important role in making people realise just how much of a fascinating character Dick Grayson is.

What they did was very smart. They started the Robin character in college, so that he was already older, he wasn’t this naïve kid. He was at a crossroads. He’s still young and naïve in some ways, but ready to transition. Later on, when they transitioned him to Nightwing, it was perfect because he was already on his way to getting there when they started him as Robin. By the time they got to Nightwing, he was ready for that. Interestingly enough, when I do these conventions and panels, I learn things that I never ever knew that were going on. Bruce [Timm] and Eric [Radomski] said they had no plans when they started the show of having Nightwing, which was interesting because it seemed like they were headed in that direction. Maybe it was subliminal or something, that they knew they wanted to go in that direction. And it was great, because he became his own man, he became his own superhero, and he was important as opposed to just being a sidekick.

Had did you approach that transition, from the Boy Wonder to a full-blown hero of his own?

It was very exciting, because when the show ended I thought that was the end of it. I didn’t know that they were going to go on and create The New Batman Adventures. Andrea [Romano] called me up and she said, “I have some good news and some bad news for you. You’re not going to be Robin anymore…” I was just, “Oh my god, why?!” “But, you’re now going to be Nightwing.” I was just so excited that that’s where they were taking the character. I think the show ended far too soon, because I think they really had plans to go even further with that, even create a Nightwing series at the time, but it never happened. If they ever made this Nightwing movie that they’re talking about, then maybe they will make a Nightwing series – and, y’know, I’m available. When they make the live-action Nightwing movie, there’ll be some young hunk in spandex, but then they’ll turn around and make an animated series. That’ll be me.

When you’re so synonymous with a role, how is it to see other people voicing that character?

It’s not great. Every time they’ve done a new version of the show after our version of the show, they’ve actually made me audition for the role. They said, “We want something different, different than it used to be.” The fans don’t want it to be different. The fans want that. Every time I do these comic cons, they say, “When are there going to be new episodes? We want that show, not these other iterations.” Every time they do a new version, when they try to create something new from the ground up, it’s not really what the fans want. The fans want the show that we did. And you still have Kevin, you still have me, you still have Diane Pershing [Poison Ivy], you still have Paul Williams [Penguin], Mark Hamill. We’re all still here and we can all still do these voices. We could do this show again, and please not just one generation but two generations of fans. Every time I do these comic cons, I have people come in who watched the show originally, so they’re in their 30s, and they’re standing there with their kids who are 10, and they watch it together. Even the last show I did, which was Alamo City Comic Con, I had three generations. I had the grandfather, his son, and the grandson. That’s three generations that love that show and ask, “When is it coming back?” Hopefully after they release this Blu-ray, people at DC and Warner Brothers will say, “Hey, let’s do this again.”

It was, and still seems to be, a rarity to have an ensemble cast brought together for rehearsals and performance.

Nowadays, when you work you usually are by yourself. Especially with interactive games, you’re totally by yourself in a booth. So this was a great thing, and Andrea was very responsible for that. The group ensemble, it’s like doing a mini play, a mini radio play. We were all there, even the celebrities. Now, you’ll do a job and hear how so-and-so will do their own stuff when they’re available. With this, the celebrities were always there. We never had anybody be a prima donna; they were all there.

With BTAS, Dick Grayson didn’t turn up straight away, instead being introduced later down the line. Do you know what the thought was behind that?

What happened was I did the pilot episode. The original concept was Robin was going to be there from the beginning, but then they decided they wanted it to be a darker show, they wanted it to be like that first Batman movie with Michael Keaton. They wanted him to be a loner, very dark, and they drew the cells on dark paper, and the music was very dark and foreboding. They wanted a dark show, and they didn’t want it to be lightened up by the presence of Robin. After however many episodes it was, FOX Kids said, “Hey, where’s Robin? You can’t have Batman without Robin.” They started to put me in a few episodes, then they did this two-part episode called Robin’s Reckoning, which was a turning point. After they wrote that and after we recorded it, they saw that Robin was a really important part of the story. Things changed and Robin became a really important part of the show. That was an episode that won an Emmy, which was very nice. That was a great two-part story. I remember getting those scripts and thinking, “Wow, he’s really going to become part of the show.”

Audiences were instantly in love with BTAS, but, as someone who was involved in the series, when did you realise you were on to something truly special?

Remember, we record the voice first and then they animate to the voice. So, we didn’t see anything for six months to a year after we recorded it. Only then when we came back in for ADR, where we have to replace some of the dialogue, did we say, “Oh wow, this is really different.” It wasn’t a cartoon, it was truly a cinematic experience. That’s what Bruce Timm and Alan Burnett and all of these people, they were creating a cinematic experience like a movie not like a cartoon. It was at that point, after we’d recorded many, many episodes, that we started to see the show being completed. There was a richness and a subtlety. Cartoons aren’t very subtle, but you think about Robin’s Reckoning, one of my favourite moments is that you don’t see the death of Dick Grayson’s parents. You see a rope swing out of frame and then swing back broken. You know exactly what’s happened, and the drama of it is just as powerful, it not more powerful, than if you’d seen them go splat.

Moments like that were just so cleverly constructed, covering some rather serious topics and dark moments but still managing to work within the restrictions of a kids cartoon show.

They were up against restrictions. No one ever died in that series, they couldn’t show blood. It’s just like in the golden age of Hollywood they couldn’t show sex or real violence. They could show a guy getting shot and dying, but the violence that we’re used to now, they couldn’t show any of that. But they created fantastic atmospheres, and that’s what this show did – it created a fantastic atmosphere even under the restrictions.

When we see Dick become Nightwing in The New Batman Adventures, was that still like putting on a familiar old slipper, or did you approach it a little differently?

In a way, but also the scripts for my character were much richer. When I got those scripts, there was so much more for me to sink my teeth into as an actor. It was very exciting coming back and seeing those scripts. At the time, and I don’t know if it’s still the case, but there was a policy where when you reach a certain number of episodes for syndication, you stop making the show and make a new show. Which is too bad, as I think there was a big audience then, and there’s a big audience now for it. The fans didn’t want it to end, we were hugely popular, yet they still ended the show because they felt that they had enough for syndication. It’s not like we jumped the shark – we didn’t have enough time to jump the shark!

The quality was definitely still there in The New Batman Adventures…

My favourite one from The New Batman Adventures was Old Wounds. I got to play both characters; I got to play Robin because they did a flashback, and then in the present I got to play Nightwing. They told the whole backstory of how Robin fell out with Batman and his conflicted moralities. He wasn’t going to put up with that anymore, so he punched Batman and he left to become his own man. That was a pretty thrilling episode from The New Adventures. We can see it again, they just need to pull the trigger.

That would be brilliant to see, although there’s the fact that Andrea Romano and Alan Burnett are now retired, and Paul Dini and Bruce Timm no longer seem to have a working relationship. Given that the crew of Batman: The Animated Series was just as important as the cast, it could prove tricky.

When we did Batman and Harley Quinn, that was Bruce’s film. I don’t know if he’s interested or what’s going on, but I think he could pull the trigger. Actors are the last people to know. When I did Batman and Harley Quinn, I got a call out of the blue. I had no idea they were writing it or doing it. So, I have no idea what they’re planning or what’s on the drawing board, be that DC or Warner Brothers. I think if they wanted to, they could definitely do it. We had a perfect reunion last year, so we could do it again – Kevin and me and Bruce, and it was terrific.

Why do you think that Batman: The Animated Series is still held up as so special by so many people?

People love comic books because comic books create three-dimensional characters with backstories and reasons for what they do, including the villains. They have reasons for what they do, and the show was very concentrated on that. All of the villains – except for The Joker, who’s just insane and we don’t know what his story is – everyone had a backstory for what they did and why the did it. It was three-dimensional characters, living, breathing human beings. That’s what makes a great comic book, and that’s what makes a great animated series. Nowadays, they don’t always follow that rule.

Was there ever a preference for you between playing Robin and Nightwing?

They were both incredibly fun, but I do have a special love for Nightwing. Nightwing really became his own man, and the scripts really became very multi-faceted for him. Robin was a sidekick in many, many of the episodes, but Nightwing was his own man – so I have a great affinity to that character. People tell me when they come up to me, “Nightwing is the coolest!” And I say, “You know what? You’re right!” He’s just a really cool character.

It might be like asking you to choose a favourite child, but is there a specific favourite episode, moment, or scene for you?

It’s three things. Mostly, it’s Old Wounds because I got to play both Robin and Nightwing, both sides of Dick Grayson. And then, Batman & Mr. Freeze: SubZero. That was a terrific movie. I’ve done a number of on-camera films, and that was like doing a really good on-camera film. Then, of course, Robin’s Reckoning.

As an actor, do you have a preference between live-action or animation work?

No, not at all. I’ve been very lucky to have a 40-year career doing all of this. When it’s a really good script and a really good director and everything is going terrific, it doesn’t matter if it’s animated or it’s live-action. Those experiences are unfortunately pretty rare. There’s usually a factor missing, like the script is good but everybody involved isn’t so good, or just other different variations of that. I did a movie called Red Eye that was directed by Wes Craven. That was a great example – a good script, a great director, the cast, everything was spectacular. Here [BTAS], I’ve had many, many episodes having that experience.

Is there a particular dream project out there for you, either Batman or not-Batman related?

I would love to take the next step. As you know, in the comic books Nightwing becomes Batman in Knightfall. It would be interesting, not to necessarily do it that way, but to have Kevin and I existing together as competing Batmen. With Kevin and myself, we love working together. I don’t want to speak for him, but I’m assuming that he feels the way that I do, that he would really love to do that.

Batman: The Complete Animated Series is out now on Blu-ray.

Right now, Netflix is in the midst of delivering some truly stunning animated TV shows, including The Dragon Prince. With the hugely popular series already renewed for a second season, we caught up with composer Frederik Weidmann to discuss his musical work on The Dragon Prince, plus his work on a slew of genre favourites featuring the likes of Batman, Superman, Green Lantern, Aquaman, and so many more.

STARBURST: When did it first hit you that music could be your career?

Frederik Wiedmann: It’s interesting. That started very early. I’ve had this one career desire since I was a teenager. There was nothing else I really wanted to do. The trigger for me was, I was 12-years-old and watching Dances with Wolves. Hearing that amazing John Barry score, I fell in love with it on the spot. That was the first soundtrack that I had. That played on repeat in my room for the next couple of years, and then I slowly increased my film score collection. That’s really when I realised that this is a profession and people do this for a living, and that there’s soundtracks to movies that you can buy. I think the next pivotal step for me was to meet a friend of mine through an ex-girlfriend of mine at the time. He lived in Augsburg, Germany – where I lived – and he was a film composer, a working guy who did a lot of work for TV, for a bunch of German shows. To me, that was eye-opening. I walked into his studio and I was just, “Oh my god! This is what I need to do.” Already being a film music nerd and having done some mild composing myself, practicing violin and guitar, and a little piano, that was the moment where I went, “I can’t believe this is actually something people can do. This is something I have to do.” Since then, it’s been pretty much a straight shot to where I am today. Back then, there were not that many colleges that offered film music or film composition as a specific major – so Berklee College of Music was one of the only options back then, in Boston, so that’s where I went. I finished my Batchelors and went straight to Los Angeles to work. I really never have wanted to do anything else. I wanted to be a composer.

When you became obsessed with the Dances with Wolves score, had you already begun to play instruments or is that what gave you a kickstart to delve more into music?

I started playing violin when I was six, so I’ve always been involved with instruments from an early age. I was never the virtuoso wunderkind genius by any stretch of the imagination, but I enjoyed playing. When I was fourteen, I switched over to guitar. Being a cool teenager, a violin wasn’t something I wanted to carry around. That’s what I wanted to do, and my parents were completely open to that. The good part was that the teacher they chose for me was a jazz guitar teacher, not rock or fusion or anything like that. He was very deep into the jazz world. There’s something about jazz. There’s a huge world of music theory involved with learning how to be a good jazz guitarist. And he sort of cracked that with me, he started to talk about that, and that’s when I really dove into music theory and composition, the more theoretical aspects. It was a combination of already knowing about music and, having played music for my entire childhood, loving music itself. Moving into that world through my guitar teacher, and then meeting my friend, it all just kind of came together to this one thing that I completely fell in love with.

Do you feel that a wider audience has, not necessarily a new appreciation, but found a renewed appreciation for scoring work in recent years?

It’s funny, there’s two sides to this. I completely agree with you that there is a huge interest for this kind of music, which is, to me, a great gateway into the classical world that a lot of people may not necessarily want to dive in to. But once they start to love film music, it’s a natural next step to explore something else from that literature. I think it’s a really nice thing for them to explore that side of music. The concerts that they’re pulling off these days, and concerts that are massively packed and sold out over the world from all of these video games, it’s incredible to witness that, to see that there is a big interest of people to go and see this stuff performed. I think there’s a big interest in that, but the other side of the coin is that, ironically, soundtrack sales have gone down dramatically over the past ten years. You kind of wonder why that is. I don’t know if piracy has something to contribute to that. It’s certainly exciting to see that people like film music, people go to concerts, people talk about it. Young kids did a rock version of my Green Lantern theme, which I was a huge fan of seeing that online. Somebody did a six-minute mash-up of themes, going back and forth before The Dragon Prince and Avatar: The Last Airbender. It was amazing! The amount of time this person spent doing that, it was great. I even commented on that video.

How did your involvement on The Dragon Prince come about, then?

Through a friend. The first animated show that I did – that really started this career – is Green Lantern: The Animated Series with Bruce Timm. Getting that job was just an incredible first step into this world. One of the leading creative co-producers, Giancarlo Volpe, was working on that with me. Him and I got very close because we talked about the music a lot. He ended up moving on to The Dragon Prince and put my hat in the ring, so to speak. There was a big process of playing some music, demoing some of the scenes – the usual process on how you’d get hired on a show like this – and eventually they decided I was the right person to score it. Interestingly on this project, since Giancarlo introduced me early on to the team, we had a lot of time for a whole lot of exploration with instruments, dramatic material, and so forth. I wrote a large amount of music prior to scoring a single scene of the show, just to conceptualise what I was to do. It was very nice to do that, to have the time and to have the breathing to go into a world and decide on things. Once we got to episode one, things were already established, people know the themes that we’ve come up with, so when you end up using them in certain places it becomes so much more impactful and the creative team are already familiar with it. It’s like a puzzle that comes together really quickly.

When tackling something like The Dragon Prince, is there a worry in your mind about trying to keep this completely fresh and original to what you’ve done on other shows previously?

Oh, absolutely. In this case, Dragon Prince is a very inviting canvas for me because it is a completely made-up fantasy world. Even though the DC and Marvel universes are also made up – there is no Gotham City, there is no Metropolis – at least there is something familiar to those words that feels like it could be happening in the present day in America. In Dragon Prince, you’re more in a Lord of the Rings type of environment where everything is new; all the names are new, the races are new, the languages are new. It’s this entirely new thing that now invites me musically to go in a completely different direction to the DC animated stuff. On top of that, a very good component of The Dragon Prince, which is sort of there in a lot of the DC movies, is a very strong emotional character development of the key characters that slowly progress from episode to episode. Being able to build this character arc from the first episode to the last is a very challenging but also great place for a composer to start dialling the certain key elements of the music that, when reoccurring, gives you the goosebumps, makes you feel more for the character. There’s an emotional difference, and also the world is just an entirely different world. We also needed to go heavily into exploring some soloistic instruments that were becoming a key part of the score. In our case, there is a lot of ethnic flutes that I don’t even know the names of. There’s a wonderful player here in LA who has hundreds of them – “How about this one? This one’s from Peru. This one’s from Brazil. This one’s from Nicaragua.” We’re just coming up with something a little unorthodox where you go, “Oh, I kind of know what this is, but I can’t pinpoint a region or country.” That was the idea.

With The Dragon Prince being in-tune with Lord of the Rings, did you go back and listen to any of the Howard Shore scores as an inspiration, or did you just go with your own instinct on this?

That’s exactly what happened. All I had to go on was conversations with the creative time and the beautiful concept art of the characters and the cities and the landscapes and the dragons. Really, all I had was these beautiful, very low rendered images. No videos, nothing was moving, just stills. There was a conversation about where the story was going. It emerged out of that. Whatever creatively that they had to go on visually that I could use as a reference, that was the starting point.

Would you agree that music is just as important as the visuals in terms of setting the tone of a movie or TV show?

I sort of agree with that, but at the same time I’m always coming in from the perspective of the filmmaker; as in, all I’m trying to do is tell the story that the filmmaker or whoever is in charge is trying to tell. In the end, that’s the most important thing; you have to make a movie, you’re not writing a tome poem or a concert piece of any sort that you want to draw too much attention to. What I’m really trying to do when I’m working on a project is how can I compliment the story and the mood and the images so that it elevates the experience. Ideally, you don’t want people coming out of a movie and the first thing they talk about is the music. My goal is for them to come out and say, “I saw a great movie, I was really moved by this film.” To me that’s a much bigger compliment. That’s at least my perspective. I really need to focus entirely on telling the story that needs to be told. If something gets stuck with the audience – they hum a theme when they walk out – that’s great. Ultimately, my goal is to make the film as good as it possibly can be and have the audience acknowledge that a lot more than the score itself. I have a fair amount of problems when I read the reviews of film music. There is so much of an evaluation on the music itself, and not enough on examining how did it work in the movie. I wish film music reviewers would be more like, “The score worked well in the movie, it did this in the movie. When I finished, I felt this and this and this” as opposed to, “It didn’t have any themes, it was boring.” All film music really needs to do is tell the story of the movie and make the movie better. Sometimes a score may be really effective and perfect for a film, but we’re not trying to write a great listening experience for a soundtrack. If that accidentally happens, great. First and foremost, it’s whether the score worked for the movie. If so, you praise that. If it made the movie exactly what it needed to be, to me that’s winning the game.

Do you feel that some of those who are in the infancy of their careers can at times have a tendency to lose sight that they are part of a larger project and that the music shouldn’t necessarily overpower the end the product?

I think there’s a lot of that going on. I meet a lot of young film composers that reach out to me online. I did bit of teaching at USC for a couple of years, and I know that there is definitely a big resistance to feedback. They’re like, “No, my music is great. What are you talking about?” What a lot of people need to learn is how do you take feedback and how do you understand that what you’re doing is you’re employed to work for somebody and to realise somebody else’s vision – not your own! It’s very important as a film composer to know your place and to really focus on that; how do you get the vision of your employer realised in the best possible way. A lot of people fail to see that.

In your career so far, is there a particular emotion or feeling that you’ve found trickiest to convey?

No, there’s really nothing like that. There were a few things that used to intimidate me, like when I was working on All Hail King Julien for Netflix, the other animated show from DreamWorks, they asked me to write songs, which is something I’m not necessarily experienced in as much as score. That was a little bit daunting, but I ended up winning my first Emmy for the song. So I’m at a point where that doesn’t scare me anymore, I feel that I can pull it off. It was funny how that worked out. I think the most difficult thing for most composers is always comedy. You’re relying on so many aspects of the joke, the performance, the setting, the way it’s edited, the entire vibe of the show or the movie. How do you play comedy? Often, comedy is perfect dry with no music. You need to help it, but what do you accentuate? Do you create a mood, do you accentuate a certain punchline, do you need to start the music at a very specific place? Comedy is the thing that can be created in so many different ways, and a big factor is also taste; how do you want to treat comedy? I think it’s always the most complex nut to crack in a movie. Not necessarily children’s comedy for animation – that’s easier because you know what kids need – but when you get the more sophisticated adult comedic material, then it becomes a very tricky thing. It requires a lot of patience and understanding of how jokes work in movies to really nail that moment and make it as funny as it can be.

Is there a difference in your approach at all to live-action and animated projects?

There is a difference. Ultimately, I’m trying to establish the same thing with both. The story, that’s ultimately my goal and the first thing on my mind. In terms of the technical approach, the big thing that I’ve encountered over the past couple of years is that in animation I never have temp music. Temp music is existing music from other scores that the editor uses as a placeholder for previews to show it to directors, etc, to give an idea of what the movie will play like. Often, that’s a good jumping off point for composers to discuss what works and what doesn’t; it sort of gives you a roadmap of where to go. In animation, there never is such a thing. I’m basically just given the material completely dry. Most of the time it doesn’t even have sound effects. I don’t hear any footsteps, I don’t hear breathing, I don’t hear coffee mugs hitting the table and doors closing. That’s all gone. All I’m hearing is bone-dry ADR, and sometimes even unfinished animation. The state that I receive the material to work on is vastly different from a live-action movie, which has fully rendered sound, good performances, finished editing, and sound effects and a temp score. I think my brain has to be set in a different mode when approaching animation, because there’s so much that I need to imagine on how the story should be when it’s finished versus actually seeing it. It’s an interesting thing to realise in the beginning when you’re not very experienced; you tend to over-score things in animation because nothing’s there. It requires a lot of experience and knowledge of how things will end up in the end. Based on that, you can make good decisions on what to do with the music.

Bruce Timm brought you in for Green Lantern: The Animated Series, and you then went on to work on plentiful animated comic book movies and show. Were you a fan of comic books, or was that just a great opportunity that came along?

I knew a lot about the DC universe, and I read a bunch of comics when I was growing up. I wouldn’t necessarily call me a big fan or a fanboy that knows everything, but there was certainly a big love for superhero material in general – especially from a composer perspective. If you ask any film composer, they’d say that their big dream is to score a huge Spider-Man movie or some other superhero film. For me, it was definitely on my bucket list, to be working on superhero material, but I wouldn’t necessarily call me a big fan to begin with. In Germany, especially where I grew up, it’s not as big as it is here [in the United States]. I grew up reading Lucky Luke, Asterix and Obelix, and Tintin. Those kind of comics were way more popular in comic book stores than Batman.

Across the DC realm, there are so many different characters and different locations. For instance, you have Green Lantern up in the stars, whilst Aquaman is fighting the good fight in the depths of Atlantis, and then there are Elseworlds tales such as Gotham by Gaslight. Is there a favourite corner of that world that you prefer to work in?

No, not really. I really enjoy working in all of those places. They’re such a wonderful treat to be working on, to be honest. It’s my favourite thing to do. The filmmakers are so nice, they appreciate music so much, and it’s just this wonderful working environment Warner Brothers creates for me to do what I do. All of these are amazingly fun to work on. It’s always exciting when there is a project coming along that steps out of the norm. Not that it’s more enjoyable than the others, but it’s a nice little challenge thrown at you. Working on a movie like Gotham by Gaslight, where you’re suddenly working in an era where Batman doesn’t have his tools as it’s around the turn of the century, it’s a steampunk era, there’s no cars, people don’t have guns. It’s a whole different environment in a standalone universe that you’re trying to create. So it’s always a nice challenge to figure out a way to blend in the Batman material score to a world like this. This was similar to Gods and Monsters, another DC movie that I did a couple of years back. The whole backstory of the heroes is twisted and unusual, so that also was an invitation to do something slightly different. Long story short, they’re all amazing projects to work on, I thoroughly enjoy them, and when there’s occasional standalone projects that need a different approach, that’s always a nice little challenge for me.

You mentioned live-action superhero movies earlier, so is that the ultimate dream project for you, or is there something else out there?

I would love to score a movie like Legends of the Fall. Just a big, sweeping orchestral, dramatic, a big family story, beautiful cinematic landscapes. That would be very exciting for me. That’s one of my all-time favourite scores anyway, by James Horner, and I think I would completely enjoy it. I had a little bit of a taste of that when I was working on Field of Lost Shoes, the civil war movie a couple of years back. That was a nice project because we got to do something a little along those lines. It was a small version of that, but certainly something like that would be an amazing thing for me to work on.

Having been in the industry for over a decade now, how is it to have that seniority now where people come you to head up projects?

It’s amazing. I never would have dreamed that I would be doing that at this point in my career, at my age, at 37. It’s just amazing what’s been happening. I’m incredibly grateful for the people who have provided me with all of these opportunities over the years; the great filmmakers that keep coming back to me for more. It’s an amazing feeling. I just love the work. I’ve been very blessed with a great variety of work, too. There was a time early on in my career where I thought I might get pigeonholed to becoming a horror composure, as there was a lot of that going on for me. I love working on horror and I love watching horror movies, but it was not something I wanted to do exclusively. It’s very nice to see that I’ve drifted off of that path. Now I have this whole superhero world, I have the fantasy world from Dragon Prince, I’m working on great thrillers for other friends, a great Al Pacino movie called Hangman, some action projects, a comedy show for German television. It’s all very different the things I get to do, and I’m extremely grateful for that. I need that variety in my life.

In the horror genre particularly, it seems to be extremely easy to get pigeonholed.

It’s sad. I know there’s a lot of people that this has happened to, and I know what they’re capable of. It’s a challenge for them, because once you’re in that world it’s very hard for people to look at you differently. But you know what, this guy can do something else. I’ve always wanted to be a composure that is a filmmaker, not just a horror composer or an action composer. I want people to look at me and say I’m a filmmaker, that I’ll work on your project. So far that’s worked out, and I hope I can keep that going.

How was it for you making the move from Germany to the United States back then? Was there work already lined up, or was it more a case of just taking a chance and trying to find work?

Since I’ve wanted to do this one job for so long, Los Angeles has always been my target city to work in. It worked out that I got accepted to Berklee College of Music in Boston. I’d actually lived for England previously for a year, in Bristol, because I needed to learn more English. I worked with disabled children for a year as part of my studies. I needed to just be a better English speaker in order to succeed in college in America. Moving to Los Angeles, the thing that really helped me was that I met my now-wife back at Berklee and we moved to Los Angeles together. We were always dealing with the hardship of starting over in a new town, in a new country together as a couple. I think that makes it a whole lot more enjoyable than dealing with it by yourself. Needless to say, it was very difficult and very hard to get a foot in the door anywhere here in this town. It is so incredibly competitive with so many young people trying to do the same thing as you. Then there’s the hurdle of visas and not being a citizen and not having proper credit lines because you’re from another country. It’s a challenge on many, many levels. Luckily, being with my partner certainly made things a lot easier to cope with. And also, Berklee College of Music lent me an enormous amount of support once I came out to Los Angeles; to help me get connected with filmmakers and other composers that I could assist for the time being. That’s an asset that many people don’t have. Without that, it would’ve been very difficult for me to get started anywhere, I think. So I can give Berklee College of Music great praise for helping me to jumpstart this thing that I have going on now.

You mentioned about an upcoming German comedy show, so what else have you got in the pipeline that you can tell us about at this stage?

Sometimes it’s tricky because of non-disclosures and because things aren’t really announced yet, but I am working on the new Doom movie for Universal. I don’t know when it’s coming out, but we’re actually in the middle of it and it’s coming out great. So if you’re in to that video game, you’ll hopefully like that movie. The German show is for a channel called RTL. It’s about a woman who works as a police psychiatrist helping to solve cases. There’s a big dramatic component to it, but also a nice light-hearted feeling to it. It’s a nice show for primetime TV, it’s good entertainment.

The Dragon Prince’s first season is now on Netflix, and you can keep up to date with Frederik’s work and upcoming projects via Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or www.frederickwiedmann.com.