Feature Category: Interviews

 

Former Futurama and The Simpsons writer Josh Weinstein took the time out of his day to answer our (admittedly occasionally fanboy-ish) questions about his current projects and the ways of the showrunner…

STARBURST: As you worked on The Simpsons for a number of years we’d be remiss in not asking you at least one Simpsons-related question. So, what is your favourite episode that you worked on?

Josh Weinstein: That’s a hard question ‘cause there are probably 5 episodes I’d rank as my favourites that I worked on: definitely “You Only Move Twice” but also “Marge Be Not Proud”, “Summer of 4’ 2”, “Who Shot Mr Burns (Parts 1 & 2)”, “A Fish Called Selma”, “Lisa Vs. Malibu Stacy”, the Poochie episode, help, I’m going to end up listing every episode. But my very favourite episode of all time?  Probably “Mr. Plow”. Or maybe “Marge vs. The Monorail”. Or…

Conversely, what is your least favourite?

There honestly aren’t any I dislike, though there are a couple we did where I wish I had the chance to redo some jokes! In fact, there’s one joke I really wish I could redo, but I won’t say what it is. It’s in a great episode but it makes me cringe every time I get to it. Ugh, next question!

Several years after you left The Simpsons and Futurama, you have brought the ways of the American showrunner (such as the writing room, which we don’t really see a lot of in the UK) over here with Strange Hill High. What prompted you to bring Strange Hill High to the UK in the first place?

I didn’t bring Strange Hill High to the UK – it brought me to the UK! Strange Hill High was created by the brilliant and hilarious Kat Van Henderson and I was brought on board to help bring it to life and serve as showrunner. From the second I saw the original designs and read the premise, I knew I had to do this show. And it’s been the best experience in my 25-year career. It’s something that’s never been done before, being made by people who may be the most talented people ever to make a show. And that’s not an exaggeration. I’m continually blown away by what we’re able to do and the skill with which it’s done. And while certain of my “American” ways might be good – like having the writing room for when we generate story ideas and the way I was taught to run a show on The Simpsons – that’s great, but there’s a spirit of creativity that I find at CBBC and in the UK TV business that’s totally unique. From the beginning, we’ve been encouraged to be as creative and weird and funny as possible. I also think there’s a great history of animation in Manchester and we’re inspired by that, as well (I’m obsessed with Postman Pat!) I may sound like a Matthews-style goody-goody here, but the UK has a tradition of comedy and humour that’s unequalled in the world. LA’s one of the least funny places on earth. I like to be with funny people. So working on Strange Hill High has been one of the true pleasures of my career. I would like to move to England in a few years.

Was there a teething process as the writers adjusted to a different way of working?

Not really. From what they tell me, they really like it (and we just get together when we’re brainstorming ideas, then we all go off and write our own episodes and, which are then turned into me and my friend Andrew Burrell at the BBC we then hone them into finalised scripts). Writing can often be a solitary process (and when you’re locked away on your own or with a partner writing a script, that’s a good thing. Sometimes I lock myself away for 48-72 hours straight of just writing) so it’s nice to get together with a group of writers to spitball ideas and develop stories and jokes together. A lot of times, we’ll come up with a story idea that none of us would’ve ever been able to come up with on our own. For example, we had spent a good hour working on a story – one that we ended up not using – but in the midst of that session, one of the writers blurted out, “What if that teacher were a were-teacher?” and that sparked the whole Mitchell-turns-into-a-were-teacher episode. That idea could only have come after about an hour of pulling our hair out over another story. Part of the key to running a rewrite room is to let things flow but also guide it along because you never know where a brilliant idea will come from and once you hear it, then you need to jump on it and see if it makes a good episode. But you’ve got to have a totally open mind. I also have to say that the writers we have on Strange Hill are just brilliant and hilarious. When you get those type of people together – along with the brilliant folk on our production team – it’s like lightning in a bottle where we’re all encouraging each other and it’s like a great comedy commune like The Simpsons is and Futurama was.

You work with stars of British television such as Caroline Aherne and Richard Ayoade. What kind of creative input do your stars have in each episode?

We get to work with some of the funniest people in the UK, so if they want to ad-lib a line, that’s fine by me. Like I said, you never know where a great story or joke might come from.  It could come from anyone on the show. The best comedies, in my opinion, come from a group of like-minded people working together. And we all love Strange Hill High so much that I think it really shows. But to answer your question more directly, yeah, it’s a thrill to work with people I’ve idolised for years. And that’s both with actors and writers. There are people like Emma Kennedy, who we originally hired as just a writer – because I loved her writing – but she was with us while we were developing the show and she so sparked to the character of Becky, and was so crucial to bringing her to life, that we knew from the earliest stages she had to be the voice of Becky, but we didn’t tell her right away so it wouldn’t go to her head!  I’ve also got to give a big shout out to our other actors because Mitchell is truly Ben “Doc Brown” Smith and I feel like nobody else in the world would be as good or funny as he is. He was our first choice for the character and we were thrilled when he said “yes”. Ben and Emma have both also written hilarious episodes. And our other actors – John Thomson, Jonathan Keeble, Marc Silk and Melissa Sinden are just some of the best and funniest actors ever – when we’re going over the soundtrack, there are so many lines that are funny because of their line readings. I’ll play those lines over and over again, chuckling deliriously.

How challenging is it working with hypervynorama?

It’s something that’s never been done, so we all dove in having no idea but certain we’d figure something out. So it was a cool learning experience for all of us. That’s the exciting thing about doing what’s never been done – there aren’t any rules. So along the way, everyone discovered neat little tricks to making this work. No one had ever combined traditional puppetry with modern CGI and stop-motion in quite this way before and it all works together really well – we still have that cool traditional puppetry and stop-motion feel while getting the best of modern effects.  Like stop-motion, this is very time consuming. We film just a few minutes of footage a day. But it’s so worth it. It’s like playing in an awesome world of magic miniatures.

There have been two seasons of Strange Hill High so far. Do you think the show is nearer its end than its beginning, or do you think it can run and run?

I think this show could go for years without us ever running out of new stories and jokes to tell. There’s always something new and amazing we discover we can do with our puppets and the sets and the world of Strange Hill. And it’s only in the second season that we really start to get epic in scale. The more used to all the technical aspects we get, the more innovations we discover. And our team is always up for every challenge, so we’re really just limited by our imaginations.

Have you been surprised by the audience reaction to your show?

I’m really happy that the audience loves the show as much as we do. While we were making the first season – before anyone else saw it – we all felt, “Wow, I think this could be something amazing” and it’s neat to have that confirmed. This is a real labour of love. I also think the characters are really great and have a lot of depth – people definitely connect with them.

What has been the proudest moment of your writing career?

This. That we could write something totally new and have it work (thanks to everyone on our production team) is incredibly gratifying. And that the audience is responding so positively is great. This also has as much to do with the look of the show and our awesome actors as it does the writing – it’s like all these different parts somehow work together (just like our puppets themselves – they look very simple on the outside, but inside, there are actually complex mechanisms to enable them to move so smoothly).

What other projects do you have on the table?

I’ve also been writing for Gravity Falls since Futurama ended. I love that show. I was an obsessed fan of it before I started writing for it. And I’m also developing a new animated show (very hush hush) but Strange Hill High is my biggest love.

Strange Hill High is out now on DVD.

 

Director Phil Hawkins’ The Last Showing has been getting praise from fans and critics alike. Horror legend Robert Englund steps away from the crazed glove of Freddy Krueger, instead playing the low-key, systematic Stuart; an old-school projectionist who’s irked at how the ‘youth of today’ view the art of film. Having discussed Freddy extensively with Robert last year, we were lucky enough to speak to the horror icon again, this time getting the lowdown on his latest movie and what keeps him interested in the genre.

Starburst: When we spoke to you last year, you mentioned having just finished shooting The Last Showing. How did you initially end up involved with the film?

Robert Englund: I get lots of scripts and I get lots of genre scripts. Some don’t come to fruition because of financing and things, but this one was all ready to go. I read the script and it reminded me of those great Brian De Palma films of the early ‘70s, like I could see the plot unfolding. Then I thought the use of the suburban mall movie theatre as a character in the film was a terrific idea, and I knew a little bit about Phil Hawkins because he’d be on the reality show, On the Lot, and I’d heard he was one of Steven Spielberg’s favourites. So I was really happy to do it. Then I found out that Phil Hawkins had written the part for me – I heard that 2 or 3 days into shooting – and that gave me great confidence, that he knew I could do a role like that, that he knew there was a quieter side to me. So I ate a lot of food in Manchester to pad myself out and I shaved my chin off, and I surrendered; I blew out any sense of vanity. I channelled a little bit of the great Sir Richard Attenborough in Séance on a Wet Afternoon and the banality of evil and all that, and I just got on with it. I think the real fortunate thing about the film is that we had Finn Jones – there’s whole reels of the movie where he has no dialogue and he’s just the mouse in the mousetrap. The audience needs to just go with Finn and feel his frustration because he’s the only one who knows what the audience knows, that knows as much of what’s going on as the audience. He gives such a wonderful performance and gives such a nice arc to it, as well as the terrific talents of Phil and Emily Berrington, too.

As touched on, The Last Showing is a slow-burning, intimate affair with maybe three core characters. How is that in comparison to some of the bigger, more over-the-top movies that you’ve done over the years?

There’s a sense of fun to it – there’s a bit of a wink in the way that it’s staged – and we almost had to be docudrama at times. We worked these horrible long hours every night in this empty theatre, so we sucked up that atmosphere, that kind of corporate mall cinema atmosphere. That helps, too. So it gives this soiled, late night, stale popcorn feel to this movie. And it was different to me as a lot of times on horror films or fantasy films or science-fiction film, the sets themselves are a little larger than life or the location is larger than life or the soundstage or camera angles are more different. This one was a little more traditional, although there was real style to it and a real interesting use of the frame within that medium. It’s almost what I’d consider a found style that I think Phil found within the complex itself – he found a kind of architectural style. There’s a moment in the movie when me and my wife were watching it in my hometown with the time frame going on in the corner, my wife says, “He’s made the movie theatre a character!” And it’s true. I loved that. I think that’s actually the fourth character of the film, the cinema itself.

Clearly Stuart goes to extreme lengths in the movie, but a lot of our readers will find themselves agreeing with some of his outlook in the movie. How much of the character’s thoughts are ones that are echoed by yourself?

Well that’s more Phil’s philosophy than mine, but I do share some of that. The other thing is, I don’t think Stuart ever intended to hurt anybody – that just happened and it got out of control – but I think when it does get out of control then he enjoys that. And I’m a bit like that too, with all of the rejection actors deal with over their careers as well as their success. You may have experienced this yourself in a pub or on a motorway, but you find that your middle goes away; you’re either really nice or you can really be an asshole. For me, I’d rather buy somebody a pint than fight in a pub if someone’s misbehaving. But I do find that point coming in me, where I don’t have a buffer. And I think that happens to Stuart – there’s no turning back. Actually he’s quite good at this, with his anonymity serving him quite well. There’s a great film out now called Blue Ruin, it’s a terrific film that you must look for. It’s a revenge fantasy film, a bit Peckinpah and a bit Don Segall in its style and construction, but the lead actor plays a homeless man that is damaged goods. He uses that invisibility to serve his revenge fantasy and it’s quite brilliant how he does it. There’s something about Stuart… there’s a moment where Stuart realises he’s good at it and a bit of arrogance starts to come up in him – this may be this little grey man’s calling.

As such an iconic veteran of the genre, what does it takes these days to grab your attention and pique your interest?

I just go where I’m wanted now, basically. I’ve done movies that I thought were great but were not hits for me early in my career and I’ve seen actors try and control their career, and that doesn’t always work. I’m at that stage in my career now where I just go where I’m wanted. I’m closing in on my eightieth feature film, I’ve done four television series, and I toy a little bit with reality television occasionally. Sometimes I get a job just to be working, sometimes I get jobs because I want to have a genre film out for my fans, sometimes it’s because it’s a great location – I’ll say yes to work in Sicily – and sometimes it’s quite frankly just about the money. It can be lucrative. Basically it’s just going where you’re wanted now. Also, it means that I don’t have to audition – I haven’t auditioned in years – and that’s fun. Auditioning is such a compromised, vulnerable moment in time in an actor’s career. No matter how established you are or how good you are, you’re compromised because you’re never really reading with actors – you’re reading with secretaries. Not to put down secretaries, but I can’t tell you how many times I’ve paused and they think I’ve forgotten my lines. You wanna strangle them, you know, grab them by their ironed Gwyneth Paltrow hair, grab them by their neck and strangle the little bitches! And I gotta say, sometimes you wonder why actors maybe do a direct-to-DVD career. I won’t mention any names but many times it’s because they’re sick and tired of playing the games in offices and in readings and in auditions, and they’d rather be a direct-to-DVD star than go through that dance. That’s part of just making that decision and going where you’re wanted and loved. By doing that, I occasionally strike gold. In the case of The Last Showing, it was really hard work and really exhausting work. I don’t think I had a bowel movement the whole time I shot the movie because I was working nights and eating too much curry in Manchester, but it was a great experience. Looking back on it in hindsight, I would’ve done the whole thing for free because I’m really pleased and happy with the way it came out. I think that performance in that film may give me a bit of a fourth act here in my life, which is nice at my age.

The film definitely shows a different side to you for those who are only familiar with the likes of Freddy…

Well it’s something I’ve always done, something I’ve done for years early in my career, but it’s not something that they always let you do after they get a sense that you’re just a really strong bad guy. So many directors like me for my energy and strength, and they don’t realise that there’s a quiet side that can also be compelling and/or very dangerous. I’m still athletic even though I’m an old man now. I surf and I bodyboard, I was a gymnast when I was young, and now I can barely get out of bed on Mondays if I’ve been doing stunts, but I can still move and sell a punch. There’s actors that I love, wonderful comedic actors like John Cusack, but I never want to see him hold a gun; he just can’t do it right, I just don’t buy it for a minute. Then there’s actors, some are tiny little men, who have a rage that makes you believe their anger, you believe it on screen. I have a bit of that and people seem to want to exploit it, so it’s nice to be kind of quiet at times. I’m angling for some suit-and-tie parts here in the future, to be the cold, strong, angry corporate type because I can do that well, too. Yet they sort of ignore me for that. Now that my hair’s gone grey, maybe they’ll put me in a chair with a suit and let me talk some exposition.

Being so synonymous with the Freddy role, having played the character for so long and so well, is there ever a feeling with you that you maybe get pigeonholed or not given the credit that you deserve?

You know, I have to look at the career. The only thing it’s ever cost me, it cost me a director’s job. I’d actually discovered Helen Hunt, who I believe has an Oscar. I got her in this film, she did the film but it was my idea, but the company thought, “Oh no, we can’t have Robert directing – he’s a villain!” What people don’t understand is, for five years in the theatre and in early television and film work, I did comedy. That’s their job to know that, that’s their job to do their homework. So you do get typed, but I never would’ve thought that I’d have stepped into the shoes of Klaus Kinski and Vincent Price and others. At my age, it’s just wonderful now that I’m playing the old priest or I’m playing the mad scientist or I’m playing the evil stepfather or I’m playing the crazy doctor. These are roles I probably wouldn’t be getting at my age if I’d have just stuck with comedy and sidekicks and best friends. All in all, I think Freddy’s been very good for me. And when you work in horror or sci-fi or fantasy work, you become international, as oppose to rom-com actors and talk show hosts who don’t translate internationally. So that’s been a great gift for me. I’ve done fourteen movies on the continent now! If I do a pilot and it doesn’t sell, I can run off to Spain and chase a beautiful, young Penelope Cruz lookalike around a castle. And believe me, the wife loves shopping in Barcelona, so it’s a good thing.

The Last Showing, reviewed here, is available on Blu-ray and DVD now. For a Freddy-heavy chat with Robert, why not go back and pick-up up Starburst #394.

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CAMERON DEAN runs the soundtrack reissue label STRANGE DISC RECORDS. Their first release, Jon McCallum’s score for the Troma trash classic SURF NAZIS MUST DIE, is out now. We reached out to Dean for this month’s OST column, and weren’t able to fit in everything. The interview turned out so well, we’re sharing it here as an online bonus…

STARBURST: How’d you get involved in the soundtrack business?

Cameron Dean: I kind of like had this idea about a year ago. It wasn’t that original an idea, ’cause other people are doing it, but I’ve always listened to soundtracks, always liked soundtrack albums – I think they’re cool, you know? I think it’s really interesting to take all the sounds that come from a movie and kind of transform them into an album. I think it’s a really cool concept, and it’s something that has fascinated me. That’s kind of why I wanted to dive into it, you know?

Kind of on the topic of taking sounds from movies and putting them on an album – what’s your opinion on dialogue on records?

I know a lot of people dislike it, but I’m kind of indifferent to it. If it’s overdone with dialogue, it can get in the way, but to me, it’s the same thing as an interlude on an album. So, if it can be done tastefully, it can be cool, but if it’s overdone, it’s overdone, just like anything. I’m not against it 100%, every single time it’s been done, but I definitely understand why people don’t like it. People say, “Oh, if I wanted to listen to the dialogue, I’d watch the movie,” which I get, but it can be done tastefully.

Since you decided to do this a year ago, has it taken that full year to get your first release – Surf Nazis Must Die – together?

Yes. I think I started this project last May or June, and it’s taken a really long time – way longer than I thought it would take. You think you can take these songs, put them on a record, pay a guy to make some artwork, and that’s it, but for some reason, it always takes a long time. That’s what I’ve been hearing from everyone else I’ve talked to at all the other labels: it always seems to take way longer than you’d expect.

What were some of the hurdles along the way?

One of the major hurdles was locating one of the songs for the soundtrack that was done by a different artist. It was tough, because the master doesn’t exist for it anymore. We were asking people if they had even a cassette of it somewhere – anything like that. We tried every single option and there was nobody who had it. So, we ended up having the dude who did the song originally re-record it. It wasn’t ideal, but everybody involved in the project felt that the song was important enough to the album that it should be on there in one form or another, do we ended up using the re-recorded version of it – which, again, isn’t ideal, but I think that it’s better with it than without it, for sure.

I saw mention on Twitter that someone else had tried to do this at one point.

Yeah – I was talking to the director, Peter George, and he said –  and, actually, Jon McCallum said this, too – that three or four or five other labels over the years have asked them about doing the soundtrack and for one reason or another, it just didn’t work out. Either the label backed out or, for a while, they didn’t have access to the masters. The masters were stuck on the 4-track they were recorded on. The liner notes explain the whole process. So, for a while, they didn’t even have access to the masters. They actually had to repair this 4-track and replace all of these broken parts on it to get the tracks off of that. And, it just so happened that when I contacted Jon McCallum, it was just within the last month and a half or so that he had gotten the masters off that 4-track. It was really, really coincidental timing that I stepped in.

Did you do any work to the tapes? Are they remastered at all?

Yes. They were remastered by Josh Bonati in New York City. He’s done a lot of cool stuff: he’s mastered the Mechandise records, he did the remaster for the Eraserhead soundtrack… he does a lot of work with Sacred Bones. I had him in mind, and wanted to work with him from the beginning.

Sacred Bones is kind of a nice dovetail with the whole Surf Nazis Must Die aesthetic. That’s very sonically similar.

Yeah, definitely. Sacred Bones is kind of like an inspiration for this label, among a lot of other labels that I’m trying to model after. Sacred Bones, aesthetically, I definitely like what they do: you look at a record and you pick it up, and you know what label it’s on. You know what it is, and you kind of have an idea of what it might sound like. Usually pretty good, you know?

The question that always comes up when a label has their first release in the pipe and ready to go is: do you have anything coming up next?

Yes. I have a few things I’m working on I can’t really announce yet, because they’re not finalized, but there are three, maybe even four records that I’m working on at the moment.

Are you aiming for a particular niche, other than music you enjoy? The Strange Disc logo says, to me, a sort of ’80s VHS focus.

Yeah, I’m glad you noticed that, because that’s kind of the idea. I really want this label to have a vibe. Like I said with the Sacred Bones thing – you pick it up, and you know what label it’s on. That’s kind of the idea for this label, too. But, yeah, you’re right – very ’80s-influenced, but at the same time, I want it to be very modern. I want it to be very deeply rooted in the influences, but not rehashing things that were cool thirty years ago, by being very modern at the same time.

For more information on STRANGE DISC RECORDS and their products, visit www.strangedisc.com. 

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Michael Rooker is recognised as one of the most versatile performers in Hollywood, from his terrifying eponymous portrayal of Henry – Portrait of a Serial Killer to the bad-ass, zombie hacking Merle Dixon in the wildly successful The Walking Dead television series and the whistling alien Yondu in James Gunn’s blockbuster film Guardians of the Galaxy, two roles that have won him countless fans and respect and renown from comic book aficionados the world over.

We recently had the privilege and the pleasure of snagging some time with Rooker to probe him about his recent successes and ask him about his appearances at the traveling pop culture convention Wizard World, which is currently making its rounds in the States.

STARBURST: Very recently, you showed up in Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy film, which has done and continues to do extremely well with audiences and critics alike. What was the most exciting part of playing your character, Yondu Udonta?

Michael Rooker: I enjoyed the whole make-up process and the technical aspect of what we were doing. The rest of the stuff, the acting mainly, was challenging at times, but I’m a wee bit of a geek so I enjoy all that sci-fi stuff.

You briefly mentioned the make-up process as a high point of your portrayal of Yondu. What was that process like every morning?

It took about four-and-a-half to five hours every day I was on-set. I’d do an hour or so of prosthetics, take a meal break, and then do all the airbrushing and stuff. I’d do my wardrobe next, which took about forty-five minutes.

Apologies in advance for this one, but what’s up with Yondu’s metal mohawk and the whistle-controlled arrow? The two light up at the same time.

Yep! They are totally linked to my biological system. Whenever I think or whistle, they react. If I get upset or need to get offensive or aggressive, they sort of get ready for action.

So it’s like an increased heart rate?

(Laughs) I guess so, yeah. It could be perceived as that. I think it’s a conscious choice, though. It’s not just a biological stimuli thing. It’s a conscious decision when I want to use a weapon or when I don’t.

You’ve worked with Gunn before on Slither and Super. What sets him apart from the countless other directors in the industry?

He’s a friend. Most of the other guys aren’t friends. They’re business associates and we’re there to do a job. Same thing with Guardians of the Galaxy, Slither, and Super. We were there to do a job, but we were also pals. We understand each other and we hit it off. We work well together.

So, in the same vein as our previous question, what’s it like working on a small budget movie like Slither as opposed to a big blockbuster flick like Guardians of the Galaxy? In other words, how did the abundance or absence of money during production affect the on-set experience for you?

We get better catering. We get a lot better treats, our snacks on the set are way higher-end snacks. Technically, while making a film you have a bit more leeway when you have some bigger budgeted projects. You always use your imagination, but sometimes when you have less of a budget you end up using your imagination a wee bit more in interesting ways. When you have a large budget, you can hire the experts and get stuff like that accomplished more quickly.

You probably can’t answer this in full detail, but has Gunn or Marvel approached you with ideas for Yondu in Guardians of the Galaxy 2?

Disney and Marvel have been thinking about that kind of thing for a while, but they wanted to see how the audience responded to the first one before anything else happened. Plus, actors really don’t get the scripts until they are already done and polished, so we don’t have to go through all the hard work, heartbreak, and craziness it takes to get a project like this up and running.

Despite what you may have heard or read from Marvel, what do you think is your character’s logical next step?

I really don’t know, and can’t say. Gunn has a very vivid imagination, and I’m sure that whatever he has planned will be intriguing and interesting. 

Between your popular roles as Merle Dixon and Yondu, which part was more challenging for you and why?

Well, they were both challenging in different ways. Merle Dixon was a much more emotionally and psychologically challenging character. I was also much more physical in The Walking Dead. I didn’t have to be as physical in Guardians of the Galaxy because Yondu’s weapon is pretty amazing and all I really have to do is think and whistle.

So, you’ve been making appearances at the traveling pop culture convention Wizard World 2014. What about those appearances and those experiences stood out for you?

Everything about the fans stands out. They’re there to see performers they’ve been watching for years and haven’t had a chance to meet, and some are there because they just saw my film or just started watching The Walking Dead. They are all very excited to be there. And that’s very cool for me.

GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY is in cinemas now, and THE WALKING DEAD is available on DVD/Blu-ray.

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The Crypt Keeper is one of the most iconic characters in the horror genre. The man behind that crazed, sinister, blackly-comedic voice for so many years was John Kassir. Having recently lent his his vocal talents to John Schneider’s horror ensemble Smothered, the veteran actor spoke to us about Tales from the Crypt, the failed live-action Justice League series, the ill-fated Team Knight Rider, voicing superheroes, practical effects, Robin Williams, and a whole host more, including wearing used Batsuits.

Starburst: Starting with Smothered, how did you get involved with that?

John Kassir: John Schneider contacted me knowing that I was in the genre and went to these type of conventions. Obviously the fans know the people, the iconic characters that we’re associated with – of course, me being associated with the Crypt Keeper. It’s not the only horror project that I’ve been on but certainly the most high profile one. He contacted me directly and wanted to include me in it. He had most of his movie in his head how he wanted to do it, which had me, like, “Wow! John Schneider doing a horror movie? I guess he must have a love for it. The guy from The Dukes of Hazzard?” Obviously there’s a comic twist to the whole thing, and he said he was gonna be shooting it in Louisiana, where he now has his production studio set up. I thought it was great and sounded like a lot of fun, and there were other people involved in it that I knew, including Kane Hodder and Bill Moseley and R.A. Mihailoff and Malcolm Danare; all people that I’ve known for a number of years. It sounded like a lot of fun. I was mainly playing a creepier version of myself that winds up handling these guys as an agent, so a lot of the time, in a funny twist, it was just my voice on the phone with a sort of Crypt Keeper-meets-New Orleans accent. So we thought that would be a funny way for it to not be the Crypt Keeper but be me and be a funny twist on the horror genre. I’m not really in the film that much but it was a fun little twist either way.

For long-time horror fans, Smothered is littered with fun nods to pick up on. Overall, it comes across as a fun, collaborative movie. In your time in Louisiana, is that how it was?

Yeah, I was down there for a couple of days, getting to watch them do some stuff that I wasn’t involved in. Of course, because these guys have all been to these conventions and that kind of thing, it definitely had a fun input to it. John had a fun idea of having the horror guys take it up the ass, so to speak, instead of giving it this time. That was a nice twist to be involved in. It’s played at various horror conventions and received some great reviews. John came to my house and showed me a rough cut of what he was doing with it, and it was in a completely different order to what the script was. He just wanted to make it interesting and it makes it really captivating. You can’t tell how an audience is going to react to it as it’s completely subjective, and because you worked on it you know what’s supposed to happen at certain points. But that’s what the director’s job’s for. It was kinda cool and we all had a great time hanging out, doing that, getting involved in it. We had a lot of laughs, knowing what really happens at these conventions – whatever’s the hottest thing happens to be getting all of the attention, and you either benefit from that with a lot more fans being there or it can be that that’s all they came for and you’re all of a sudden not the most popular thing there.

Moving away from Smothered, we do have to talk about the Crypt Keeper. Tales from the Crypt is something that so many people grew up with and it used to scare us but fascinate us with its dark humour. From your point of view, did you ever expect it to become as successful as it was?

It’s funny because, first of all, I loved the comic books as a kid – I was so into the comic books. Of course, there was a lot of bad press about them, people saying they caused juvenile delinquency and that kind of thing. To this day, comic books have rating on them because of the Tales from the Crypt comic books and the other EC comics. So when they were looking to hire somebody to play the Crypt Keeper, I was just wowed that I got asked to do it. I had just won Star Search, which was a big talent competition on television, as a stand-up comedian. I did a lot of voices and characters in my acts, and I was doing another series for HBO where I played a Bulgarian football player who kicked 60-yard field-goals, so they got me in to do it. It was very popular but HBO, at that time, was not in every household the way it is now and, of course, hadn’t yet wound up international. We did end up, though, shooting our seventh season in London with a lot of people who were virtual unknowns in the US and who have now become stars. I don’t think it’s because of Tales from the Crypt but more that they were great actors coming up at that time. If you’d have asked me at that time whether kids were watching the show, I’d have said absolutely not – it’s creepy, it’s got language, it’s got nudity. We did create a cartoon that kids were watching and a game show that kids were watching, but now I’ve found out that people like yourself grew up with it and it’s bigger than it ever was. I go to these conventions now and I have longer lines of fans that are interested in meeting me and hearing about the show and how great it is than I ever had. I have people come up to me with tattoos of the Crypt Keeper, they have me sign the tattoo and then they go and get the signature tattooed – that’s kinda creepy in itself.

We guess it’s really flattering but just a bit creepy…

Yeah, c’mon, I love the Crypt Keeper too. I’m a horror fan, I was hugely into the Universal movies when I was a kid, so this is a big deal to me. Over your career, not everything you do you’d necessarily sit down and watch, but this is something that I’d have been glued to whether I was involved with it or not. The original producers I worked with – the big producers like Joel Silver, Richard Donner, Bob Zemeckis, and Walter Hill – were huge guys in the business so were able to get stars involved and the best practical make-up guys, the best practical effects guys, including Kevin Yagher who developed the Crypt Keeper. I don’t think that they thought it would continue to be as popular, that the popularity would grow. Of course, me being on the ground floor of it and having direct contact with fans, I was trying to impress on them for years that it was becoming more and more popular. But these guys had their hands in so many big projects, they let the rights lapse for Tales from the Crypt.

And is that partly why it ended?

Partly. But it largely ended because they had close to 100 episodes, it was an expensive show to produce, and they had enough to go into syndication. So I think they thought at that time that they wouldn’t make any more. But now, years later, it could be one of the most successful shows on TV if done correctly. I know that the Gaines family still hold the rights to it and want to do something on their own with it. But they don’t hold the rights to the Crypt Keeper that I did because that particular version of him was created for the HBO series that I did. So it’s kind of a sticky wicket, as the British would say, in terms of what its future will be. They have talked about doing another series of Tales from the Crypt, something a little different and involving me as an actor, as an homage in the same way that Alfred Hitchcock would put himself in his own movies, but who knows, it’s hard to say, television is a tricky thing. Getting something on the air, no matter how popular, is always difficult. Will the fans accept something different? I don’t know. I’m convinced that if they came back today with the same version of what we did, with all the new great directors, with new stars and new stories, it would be a huge, huge hit. But the Tales from the Crypt folks that I work with don’t have the rights any longer. We’ll keep our eyes peeled, as something will develop over the next few years, but there are 90-something episodes, and people go back, get the DVD boxsets, start watching it and go, “My God, I don’t remember seeing this episode.” So there’s a lot for them to still see.

Most people know you for the Crypt Keeper but you’ve got a ridiculous amount of credits to your name. How is it as an actor when most people know you for your vocals?

It’s great! I have a lot of on-camera credits but I can walk down the street. Occasionally someone will come up to me and say, “Hey, I saw you in this,” but I like to think of myself as an accessible person. Then you have our poor friend Robin Williams, who back in the day was a friend of mine. It was heartbreaking what happened to him but he was a guy who couldn’t walk down the street, except in his own neighbourhood, without be deluged by adoring fans. Early on, I found that kind of uncomfortable. For me, I’m really proud to have had not only a lucrative career but a colourful career, many great projects, but still be able to fly under the radar. It’s a double-edged sword, though, as sometimes you go for a project and they pick the person who has the higher face-profile than you do. That’s just the way it works. At the same time, the trade-off is worth it to me and I still get to work on big projects. Just from recent memory, I got to work with Bryan Singer on Jack the Giant Slayer. After 30-something years, to still land something like that is really great. But I love voice-over work – I can chill in my pyjamas if I want to.

There’s stuff that we didn’t even realise you were involved in, like CatDog, and then there’s plenty of superheroes and comic characters that you’ve provided the voices for over the years. Out of all the voice work you’ve done, are there any personal favourites?

Well I’m 5’8” and 160 lbs, I’m not a menacing, big guy. To get to play villains and superheroes, things I’d never get to play on camera, I get to play with those. So those are some of the most fun projects I’ve gotten to do, like playing Deadpool or Buster Bunny or the Crypt Keeper or playing a Smurf. It’s very liberating as an actor. I love fantasy, I’ve always loved fantasy – even when I was a stand-up comic I’d do The Wizard of Oz in 2 ½ minutes, with all the characters. So I’ve always loved the opportunity to do that type of fantasy character. I’ve always loved the movies that were big epics and with a lot of fun character parts. I would’ve loved to have been in one of the Hobbit movies. To have a career like an Ian Holm would be great, but at the same time I get to play with some pretty out there stuff.

Like the Justice League TV movie. It was supposed to be a TV series, right? And what were your experiences like on that show, on playing The Atom briefly, and what was the plan for the show?

First of all, to get that part, I was like, “Really, I’m gonna play a superhero?” It was great! If you watch it today, there’s been so many edgy, dark superhero movies made, and it looks dated. But the idea of that particular show that CBS wanted to make at that time was they wanted to make it a show like Friends-meets-superheroes. We were people that you’d walk down the street and not look twice at, but we’d have these powers and we’d do the right thing and save people from what’s going on. The concept was that it was a show that you could sit down on a Friday night and watch with the family. That’s tricky to do these days because everyone has a TV, the kids have a TV, kids watch TV on their phones now. Even back then it was hard to do a show that teenagers, kids, and adults would watch. Their hope was to do that kind of thing. We showed up and there was a big audition process. I was the first person who ever auditioned for the part. I think they went through 600 people or something, and they ended up giving it to the first person who auditioned and I got the part. We had a lot of fun shooting it, but they didn’t want to build new suits for us yet as it was a very expensive suit to produce for television. Even though the effects nowadays would look very pedestrian – you could probably do them yourself on your computer – back then they were pretty cool. We had pieces of Batman suits that we were wearing under the costumes that they gave us for when we turned in to the muscular characters. So I had, like, Chris O’Donnell’s legs and Val Kilmer’s stunt-double’s upper body, and none of it fit me right .

We were surprised when that got dropped as it didn’t seem to be something that would be haemorrhaging money and it seemed like quite a cool concept…

Yeah, it was really, really cool. A pilot is always hard and you always have to put too much in it, but what they did was very, very good and showed a lot of promise for what the series would be. And the network loved it. Now they only do shows for 11 episodes a year, especially when you have people on it like Eddie Izzard, where their availability is only to do, like, 11 episodes a year. That means that you have to have the show on the air for 7 or 8 years before you have enough episodes to put it in syndication and make money on it, as that’s where they make the money. So financially they couldn’t justify it and it ended up being an 11 million dollar TV movie!

One thing that did make it to series, even if it did get mixed reviews, was Team Knight Rider. How was that?

That was a lot of fun! That was a show that was produced on a small budget and I had some friends who were producing that for the network. Of course, Knight Rider was very popular and the idea of making Team Knight Rider felt like a very cool idea. Also, people liked it – it was really big in Germany and the places where Knight Rider was big. None of us got paid much for making it but it was a labour of love and I got to make it with a lot of friends. I had a lot of fun.

Do you think it was maybe a victim of being a few years too late?

Yeah, it’s funny how some things can seem dated out of the gate, especially if they’re just trying to recall something that’s already been done. I saw the new Planet of the Apes, and I was impressed with the last one, but now this new one makes the effects of the last one look archaic. When we were doing Jack the Giant Slayer, they were using the people who had done Avatar, and they were looking at new machines and ways to do things. Then they’d change something in the script and we wouldn’t be able to do it but then somebody would come up with a way to do it. Some of these people who work on these movies are geniuses and could probably work for N.A.S.A, but because they’re creative people then they want to work in the movie industry instead. It’d be interesting to see if they did something different with Tales from the Crypt these days, would the Crypt Keeper be a motion-capture character? I think one of the things that people love about the horror genre is that they still do a lot of practical effects. There’s a lot of people that I meet at conventions, even young people, their dream is to go and study practical effects and do make-up like Kevin Yagher does or Tom Savini does.

As somebody who has worked on the likes of Jack the Giant Slayer, where it’s full of CGI and motion-capture, how different is that to the more practical movies, at least in terms of environment?

In terms of environment, one of them’s a huge financial environment, like a $200 million movie compared to often a $2 million movie. Obviously, you’ve got a different result, you’re making something different like a 3D movie where people are expecting to be transported to somewhere where you couldn’t be transported to on earth. That’s the point. With practical effects, it’s time consuming. On one movie I had an effect where it looked like I had my eye took out by a hammer, and with not a lot of money or with a lot of time we did something that looked great on film. When it comes down to it, it’s a lot of glue, a lot of paste, a lot of rubber, and somebody working in a shop, breathing in a lot of fumes. Then you work on something like Jack the Giant Slayer, where there’s hundreds of cameras capturing you and you’re being captured virtually and digitally all at the same time. It’s literally like performing for N.A.S.A. – you’re creating everything around you in your mind as oppose to everything being there with practical effects. You’re expected to create a spaceship over your heads or giants around you or these kind of things, and there’s a lot of math involved in the bigger budget movies in terms of where to look and how big that should be in relation to that and how many computers is it gonna take, how many technicians is it gonna take, how many days is it gonna take to finish this movie. With practical effects it’s more like, “That guy knows how to do it, let’s just let him turn up with his junk and do it.”

Just wrapping things up, you had previously done some early stand-up work with Robin Williams. Any experiences that you’d like to share with our readers?

I can’t say I ever really knew Robin Williams – I can’t say who really did apart from the people who were really close to him. He was a very private guy, very guarded, and with lots of energy. We met and did some improvisation on stage together back in the day with people like Rick Overton. I remember him one night, we got up on stage, Bruce Willis jumped up on stage, Charlie Fleischer, who was the voice of Roger Rabbit, jumped up on stage… it was a pretty amazing night for the fans, I’m sure. There was a time where I would see Robin a lot, when he was around doing improv, and that’s most of the time I got to spend with him. It wasn’t very long but we were peers. He took me up to San Francisco for my birthday with some mutual friends. He didn’t really know me that well but he included me, and I got to see him perform a benefit performance for Neil Young. He in Waiting for Godot, which they were doing at the Lincoln Centre with Steve Martin, F. Murray Abraham and with Lukas Haas as the little boy. I didn’t get the part but I had known Robin well enough to let him know that I had been auditioning for it and he told me to go and see the performance. They were sold out, but he got a seat for my sister and I to sit up in the catwalk to watch the show. Afterwards I got to go down and hang out with him, Steve Martin and the rest of the cast, in their dressing room below the Lincoln Centre. 20 years later, I landed a show called The Glorious Ones and I was in that same dressing room, performing on that same stage, and there wasn’t a night that I didn’t think of them and Waiting for Godot. He was a generous man and a lot of people have a lot of wonderful things to say and memories about him, including every single person who saw him perform. He made a lot of people laugh and it’s a sad, sad loss to all.

And up next you have a movie called Minkow. We know it’s got Mark Hamill in it, but what else can you tell us about the film?

All I can tell you is that I shot it and it’s got Ving Rhames in it and James Caan and Mark Hamill and some great people in it. It’s based on a true story about a kid who had created a business on his own and it was doing so well that it wound up on the stock exchange. Then he wound up creating fake businesses to keep it going. All of these people were investing in what they thought were real businesses but they turned out to be fake. He wound up going to jail. It’s one of those stories, kinda like Catch Me If You Can. I play his crooked accountant who helped him fiddle the books. Very often you do these movies and you don’t know if they’ve got distribution or when they’ll be out there. Very often you do your job and never hear from these people again . I had fun doing it and there were some great people involved. It’s funny, I’ve been making my living as an actor for 33 years, and very often most of your career is being the best thing in a bad project. Very often you see that you’re in a good project and nobody winds up even seeing it. One of my favourite projects that I ever did was The Three Stooges, which Mel Gibson produced, Michael Chiklis played Curly, and it was really well received as it came out as a TV movie. When we were shooting it, ABC liked it so much that they thought they’d like to release it as a feature film. Mel Gibson thought it wasn’t a good idea as we weren’t thinking of it like that when we filmed it. We put it out on television so that everyone could see it – it will only be there for a short period of time but everyone will see it and it will be appreciated for what we made. It was a great project and very often people still ask me about that. I think it’s on YouTube, maybe you can rent it on Netflix, but it’s one of those things that you wish everyone could see. But that’s the reality of what we do. You’re lucky to have something like Tales from the Crypt that’s lasted all of these years, became so iconic, and has certainly launched other aspects of my career.

Smothered is still awaiting a confirmed release date, although you can find our review here.

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There are few working voice actors more humble or more kind of heart and spirit than Vancouver native Matt Hill. Though the West Coast animation Mecca lies over 1,000 miles north of Los Angeles, Canada’s greatest city, or Hollywood North depending on who you speak to, is the place you go if you strive to be one of the best, if not the greatest, in the industry.  Matty (to his friends) Hill, is one such person.

Matt’s first big break was the role that found him worldwide recognition; his portrayal of Raphael in 1994’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III and then during the live action show TMNT: The Next Mutation in 1997. Hill found further global success afterwards, voicing the characters Ed in Ed, Edd & Eddy (EE&E), Kira Yamato in Gundam Seed Destiny, Tenderheart in Care Bears, and Soarin’ in My Little Pony.

He keeps his father’s personal mantra “the only thing you can do is your best” close to his heart, and takes inspiration from the adages of his heroes; the most pertinent to his life coming from the recently deceased 60 Minutes commentator Andy Rooney, “I’ve learned that simple walks with my father around the block on summer nights when I was a child did wonders for me as an adult.”

In the summer of 2008, Matty Hill pulled what one might refer to as ‘The Michael Jordan’ – or perhaps even the ‘Forest Gump’ – when he stepped away from his life’s work to pursue a challenge greater than himself.  After setting up the charitable foundation Run for One Planet (RFOP) in 2006, an organization whose driving force is raising awareness and promoting viable-if-not-sometimes-ambitious action on environmental change, Matt Hill set off on an 11,000 mile run across Canada and around the contiguous United States, determined to bring his message to the continent.

Matt sat down with STARBURST recently in honour of our Ninja Turtles special to discuss his career in animation, his experiences in film, and the true vocations of his life.

STARBURST: Young Matt Hill is sitting in 8th grade in North Vancouver and the voice acting bug bites him.  What happens next?

Matt Hill: Wow.  Well, I secretly missed school that day and took the bus all the way downtown (about an hour and a half journey) and I walked into – I’d actually just heard a radio commercial with this lady (who later turned out to be my agent) saying “Vancouver is the burgeoning film, tv and voice acting market, we need new actors, we need people like you!”  And I thought, ‘Oh My God, this is the answer to what I’ve wanted to do forever’ – because already at the age of 12 I was contemplating my life’s contributions so far.  And so I walked into this office – a classic New York-y office where I no kidding walk in through a shroud of smoke (because back then you could still smoke in offices), and she goes “What’d you want?”  She had just opened an agency out west here, and I say, “Well, I’d like to be an actor ma’am, and I’m here to learn because I heard you guys were looking for new talent.”

She kinda looks me up and down. “How old are you?” “Well, I’m 12.” “Got any experience?” “No, but I just really want to do this.”

And she gives me the once over again and goes, “Ya’know, I don’t know what it is about you, but I’ve got a good feeling – if you sign up to my class, I’ll consider being your agent.”  And I’m so excited I’ve already signed my first contract in my mind.  So I go home and she calls later wanting to confirm my attendance in this class, and my dad catches wind of it and goes: “There’s absolutely no way in you-know-what that you’re going to spend…” (I think it was $250 at that point back in ’81), so he politely declined this lady; “Thank you but there’s no way – my son is crazy.”

And then she goes, “Let me tell you something. I’ve never had a kid come in with so much positive energy and a belief that this is what he was going to do.  And so you don’t think I’m shesister-ing you, I won’t charge anything and when he starts to work he can pay me back.”

And so my dad goes, typical English lad, “Well, ok! Sounds good to me!”

And honestly the rest, as they say, is history. I got my first gig exactly 14 days after I finished that first course, and in many respects, never looked back. It’s amazing that power of believing in your dream, and there are so many people who show up along the way that help you to achieve that. I think it’s our jobs, as human beings, to be always trying to relight that fire, to always go back to that simplicity – what do I want to do?  What makes me sing inside, what makes my heart want to jump out of bed and get the day going – because honestly it’s an amazing journey we live. For however long we’re here man, lets just do it and make it a great ride and contribute a good legacy.

And though you’ve been working now the best part of three decades, you can still hear that excitement and passion in your voice.

Absolutely! Thanks for recognising that, but we can talk about the other side of it too – there’s always the downs. In these 3 decades there’s been lots of times where I was like ‘Ah man am I ever going to book another job?’ And as often happens, it’s kind of like surfing that wave to be honest with you. You get that nice calm before the storm, and then you’re riding on the wave of your life.  It’s no different with say an acting career this long – they both belong.

And the interesting thing about the ride is being able to know that whether you’re steeped in so much work that you can almost barely keep up, or you’re steeped in no work – it allows you to open up other areas of your life. To say, ‘Wow, how lucky am I to be able to do this, because it not only affords me a great life, but it gives me this open space to develop something else, to see how I can contribute in different ways.’

The two are symbiotic almost.

Absolutely – if that’s one thing I’ve learnt in 30 years of this business it really is that truth. And also that the truth of it always turns out better than expected. Always. Even when you think ‘man, things couldn’t get any worse’ – when you get back to that gratitude you think ‘no no no wait a second, I have a lot of choice in how I’m going to react there.’ Once you realise that you kind of set yourself free.

And I’m no different from you or the STARBURST subscribers, because we’re all living sort of what I call our ultra-marathon life; we all need to eat, we all need love, companionship, we all want to feel that we’re living purposeful lives.  Its funny because we’re totally not unique, and yet we’re totally unique. It’s the ultimate zen.

What was your first project, and how did The Bionic Woman factor into it?

Oh my God dude you’re good! I had the biggest crush on Lindsey Wagner as a kid, you know that age demographic – I grew up watching the Six Million Dollar Man.

Steve Austin.

Yeah! Steve Austin. I even had the Steve Austin doll, the action figure. You know it’s funny, the guys’ toy is the action figure, and the girls’ is a ‘doll’.

Like Ken and G.I. Joe are so absurdly different.

Absolutely. And yeah, Lindsey Wagner seriously, I was just enamoured, I had a bona fide crush on The Bionic Woman. But then it was so wild that one of my first film experiences was literally a two liner in this movie – and at that point I think she was even pregnant, I’m standing there in the food line with her thinking “this is the best thing in the world.”

And so hit fast forward another 15 years from that moment and I get cast again in a movie . So we ended up becoming great friends and it was such a cool way the twist of fate works in terms of that, right?  Someone I admired I ended up getting to work with and ended up getting to know quite well.

Imagine telling 12 year old Matty Hill that.

I know! That’s what I mean! I even asked her “do you remember that movie?” And she was like “oh yeah I remember that movie.” And she didn’t totally remember that moment because I was literally the kid saying “Hey, I’m here” or something – but she was just so gracious about it. And just a firm believer in the power of your dreams, and doing everything you can to allow them to happen. Work really hard and invest in the dream, but then you know, kinda let it all go at the same time and let that flow happen.

And that flow brought you to the Ninja Turtles. Can you take us through the process of signing on for TMNT III?

Yeah, I gotta be honest with you man, the first big film experience I had definitely has to be Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III, for sure. To that point, that was definitely the biggest thing I had done in terms of a recognisable film or character definitely. When I got the call from my agent to go audition for it, it was kinda cool because like the local casting agent knew me, and so as soon as they said ‘Turtles’ need people to come in, put paper bags on their head and do gymnastics and jump around and be really energetic, he thought “Oh my God Matt Hill.” And literally that was the audition, we went in and we learned scenes right from the very first movie, so I learned the, um, you remember the first scene where Raphael confronts Casey Jones in the park?

Big trench coat, hat?

Yeah, and he’s like “A Jose Conseco bat – what are you kidding me?” I learnt that scene, I knew every nuance of it because that was the scene we ended up auditioning with the paper bag over our heads. Because we had to assimilate being – what I learned later – blind, deaf, and dumb. But it was brilliant because it was kind of my first foray into kabuki theatre.

Did you feel any extra pressure performing a character with such history and with such a passionate fan base?

Well, and that’s a great question, because this is where I’m hoping it worked for me – I wasn’t dialled in on how huge the fan base was – admittedly my technical savvy is like, almost zero. Thankfully I can type my name and I’ve become a great two finger typer through writing and blogs, but back then in 1992 all I knew was that it was a super popular show and movie. I remembered watching the first one and going ‘Oh my God, this is just brilliant.’

And so in that respect I wanted to give the very best performance of my interpretation of Raphael that I could ever possibly do. It’s funny because I didn’t think about anything else to be honest; I wasn’t living in a world of, you know, fan pages and people going “well I really liked the first one but the second one sucked” – so I didn’t have that type of pressure on myself. The pressure I put on myself is the same kind I always do, to literally just do the best, kickass job that I can do.

So now I’ve actually got the gig, and I remember one of the executive producers asked – in one of the call backs “Ok, so now I got a question for you – do you know how to do a fwip ?” And I’m like, ‘a fwip?  What the fuck is a fwip?’ Oh. ‘It’s a flip, you idiot.’ So I say ‘yeah yeah no problem I can do a flip’ not even thinking that they might ask me to do it. And so he goes “Ok, can you show me fwip?” And so now part of me is going ‘Ohhh nice job Matty Hill, you’ve never done a backflip in your life.’

And so now I’m thinking that I probably know how to do a kick-ass handspring or something. So I say; ‘How about this, I don’t want to take anyone out, so what if I do the most kickass handspring into a flip, if I can?’ Right? And so it’s one of those things where it’s like your moment, man.

And I did this back handspring which I guess looked enough like a flip that they bought it – and then he asks me “Ok, are you, uh, claustrophobic?” And I’m like, ‘claustrophobic?!?’ Which makes me think of the first movie again:

Donatello: “You’re a claustrophobic.”

Casey Jones: “You want a fist in the mouth? I’ve never even looked at another guy before!”

That’s why I love Casey Jones. But I didn’t really understand why he was asking until later – he asked because I guess one of the other actors that they’d cast in TMNT II, after they were all set, all flown to London to the Jim Henson Creature Shop to do their life casts – he turned out to be unbelievably claustrophobic and absolutely scared of getting into the life cast material, and so they ending up having to get somebody else.

So for them, it was a big concern to make sure that I could go through the whole process – and then at the same time I found out once we got to production that it was three months of the most claustrophobic, hot, heavy, sweaty, insane tapping on your brain from all the circuits inside my head, from the turtle head, and basically acting blind, deaf, and dumb.

Speaking of – you acted in the suit for TMNT III, and then provided the voice for TMNT: The Next Mutation, which makes you the only actor to play a Turtle both in and out of costume. What did you take from the experience of wearing the suit into the TV show, and how did it inform your performance?

Well I’ll tell you something – I was so grateful that I took it on. Because the second I got cast I thought ‘holy shit this is the biggest thing I’ve been cast in’ – for me this was like being adjacent to the possibility of winning an Oscar. Like, I knew it was Ninja Turtles and it wasn’t going to win an Oscar, but for me it was the biggest film franchise that the world knew, and so I wanted to give an Oscar winning performance in terms of ‘Ok if I’m inside the suit I’m going to ooze Raphael.’

So I was really glad that I was able to train with Shishir Inocalla, who was Michelangelo’s martial arts turtle, and lived in the next town over from Vancouver. And so they hooked him and I up, and he’s like an 8th degree black belt in Arnis , which is Filipino Stick Fighting. So he’d kick my ass for 6 months, literally kicked the shit outta me for 6 months. It was fun and I was so glad we did that because it lended itself so perfectly to the role. For the first time I could almost do the splits and could now pull off a bona fide backflip, and so it was a really great way to get into Raphael.

I didn’t think I was just a guy waving his arms in a suit, I was acting my brains out.

And then it came to TMNT: The Next Mutation.

Well originally when they were casting TMNT III they found out from my agent that I did voice-over work, and so originally I was going to get a shot at reading to play Raph’s voice as well, but then obviously they hired Tim Kellecher who I believe is a true New Yorker. And hats off to him he did a great job.

And then for TMNT: The Next Mutation, they originally invited me to come back and get back in the Turtle suit as well as record the voice, and at that point I guess I knew what I went through before – which was phenomenal but it was hard work, and I dunno, I just felt that I could really lend my voice to you know, really round out the character as they say.

Being in the suit was like a rite of passage.

Yeah, I was just so honoured that they would ask me again. Exactly that – for whatever it’s worth I got to play Raphael both inside and out.

So you’re about to voice Raphael in The Next Mutation for the first time. What, if anything, were you able to take from Josh Pais, Laurie Faso, or Tim Kellecher’s interpretations of the character?

Absolutely, you can’t not take from those guys. There’s always going to be a different way of doing it, but I always went back to Ninja Turtles I, because that’s what really cemented it for me in terms of that internal battle they had; in being turtles but really wanting to fit in. That angst they had of bonding as brothers but also wanting to be recognised as individuals.

So when it came for me to do the voice, I went back and I just really liked the voice Josh had on Raph in Turtles I. But then it’s weird because I ended up watching Turtles 3 quite a bit to see my own (non-verbal) performance, because when I learnt the script cover to cover I thought my voice might be on the scratch track. It actually turned out the other way as Noel MacNeil, who is a brilliant puppeteer, who’s actually been Snuffleupagus on Sesame Street for many years – he was my amazing awesome partner in crime. So I heard his voice inside my head through the speakers, so that’s what I kinda heard for Raph.

So when you saw TNMT: TNM – did you find yourself challenging the new Raphael, Mitchell A. Lee Yuen’s mannerisms at all?

Nah, not really.

You’d already handed the part over?

That’s how I try to roll in life, I try to take responsibility for my actions and roles I’ve been asked to play, and then give the respect to the person who’s taking over. In my mind as long as everyone’s doing the best job they can do, that’s all I care about.

What have you seen of the later TMNT incarnations? Excited to see what they do with the new movie?

You want my honest answer? I haven’t seen any of them.

It’s funny, because maybe 12 years ago I was approached again in Vancouver by ABC, who were going to do a ‘Ninja Turtles – 15 years Later’ special. A four part miniseries where the Turtles are living in NY, Raph has a girlfriend, Mikey has a pizza shop – and dude, the script was so funny, it was brilliant. It was just so them.

And so the flight was booked to go to England to go to the Creature Shop, and I wasn’t about to pass this chance up because I was going to be Raphael in the suit and do the voice too. And then literally, it went away as quickly as it came. The tickets were unbooked, and it turns out that the distributing company doing the project with ABC, just kinda dropped it because I think they kinda knew that the sort of big, next inceptions of the idea were already being crafted in film form.

Which would have been 2007’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles?

Yeah. I have a feeling though, that when I have a son or daughter of my own, I have a feeling that that’s when I’ll go and revisit this stuff because I’ll then want to be able to share some of it with them.

Well how do you explain the lasting appeal of the franchise then?

I’m going to go with that raw honesty of the characters. The chord that they strike in people is so, I dunno, pure. And the story goes that Laird and Eastman invested their last $1,500 in their dream, and people identify with that. And let’s not be too altruistic, it’s been a great money maker and why shouldn’t it be? It’s touched a lot of lives, and whether you’re from Vancouver or Kuala Lumpur, if you’ve seen the Ninja Turtles you’ve been touched by these characters in their own unique way because everyone relates to one of them.

And it’s often Raphael that people are so drawn towards.

Well yeah – he’s kinda like that dark hero who’s who finds his light, you know? At his core he feels misunderstood, yet he has the biggest heart. And yes the other turtles too – Mikey wears his heart on his sleeve, Donny uses his brain, Leo was the bona fide, first-born leader. But Raphael really is the one who in the quiet of darkness makes sure that little old lady gets across the street ok – but he won’t tell anyone about it.

I think that’s why people are so drawn to him. He doesn’t make any bones about it, he just is who he is.

So is that why he attracts talent? You’ve arguably been on the top of your game for the past two decades, Nolan North, another heavy hitter in the voice-over world, voiced Raphael in the 2007 film, and now Alan Ritchson is being touted as the runaway star of the new Turtles movie.

Yeah, and then two degrees of separation, one of my heroes, Sean Astin, who re-inspired me to be an actor the first time I watched Rudi in the ’80s, just finished playing Raphael in the latest cartoon version for Nickelodeon.

It’s kind of like this lasting legacy that just gets re-energized with each incarnation. Like a great rock song or Shakespeare – it’s because it’s good. At its heart TMNT is the classic story about the hero on a journey, it’s no different and that’s why in its own way it stands the test of time – and in Shakespeare’s day there was probably something like the Ninja Turtles!

Shakespeare in the Park: Raphael and Juliet?

Absolutely! Me and my fiancé just saw The Tempest, there’s a summer theatre here who do a 6 month run on the beach overlooking Vancouver’s water front, and that was the first time I’d ever seen that play. And although I actually wasn’t familiar with it, within 10 minutes I knew exactly what was going on even though I had no idea what they were saying.

The characters are so archetypical.

Totally. Bill, you’re a genius! But really it’s no different , in its own way I mean.

Take us through the collaborative nature of recording.

For most of the voice-over I do, say for animated weekly series, we do a ‘Pre-Lay’. And so that’s literally what it is, we as actors lay the voices down before the animators – so they can take our performances and animate around them. And that’s how a lot of the time inadvertently the animation takes on a bit of a look of the actual actor – mostly just in mannerisms and things like that.

And well I’ve done a lot of Japanese Anime as well, which is typically the opposite of what I just said about ‘pre-lay’. They have already been animated and voiced once, and so that’s why they call it ADR – we’ll go into a studio, most of the time you’re by yourself, and whilst looking at the screen you’ll hear three beeps and you have to finish talking by the next three beeps. It’s kind of like painting fences in that you have to act the part that’s already been played, but then also bring a fresh take on it in English.

It is well known that most voice over work is done separately – have you ever worked with others during a recording session? How does it differ?

Well for instance on EE&E, all three Eds would record every single episode together. We’d do our sessions together and then the rest of the cast would get together in that afternoon to record. Except for the first recording session, which just went so far over time and budget that we never had the full cast of the show together, just the three Eds. It definitely helped the three Eds bond in a way we couldn’t have otherwise.

Ok, so Ed, Edd and Eddy. How did it start? Did you ever think it would become the juggernaut it did?

Not. Even. Ever. In a Moment. No. Not ever.

We knew it was freakin’ genius – because myself, Sam Vincent who was one of my best friends, and Tony Samson who ended up playing Eddy, we were thrown together on what is still a record I believe in Vancouver, for the most call-backs for an animated show. Usually you can maybe expect 1, 2, maybe 3 call-backs before they finally go ‘ok you got the part’ – but for EE&E I think we topped out at 7 call-backs, and we had no idea what we were doing!

But Danny Antonucci said in an interview once that we were screaming by the seats of our pants – not flying, screaming; “we don’t know what he wants!”

So for me to finally get the nod from Danny on ‘Single D’, I remember it so closely. We had been in there for probably an hour, I’m sweating my bazuumbas off, and I’m so frustrated because I don’t know how to give him what he wants – and finally I blew into the mic, which I’ve never done, and I tapped the mic and I just went “Eugh, how do you get water from this thing here?” It came out of nowhere, it wasn’t even a line. And everyone on the other side of the glass stopped, went quiet, before Danny burst out laughing – and then I knew, that’s what he was looking for. And he told me later, ‘that was Ed’. Everyone else has these lines that were so carefully crafted, and then Ed comes in like a freight train from the left with something so asinine and just so far away from what they’re talking about.

And it was like that; we gave our blood, sweat, and tears for every minute of that show, and at the end of the day it’s one of the shows I am most proud of because we never did any pick-ups on lines. Danny was so laser-clear on every single word that in the first season we weren’t even allowed to ad-lib anything – like if we got to do an ad-lib it was a big gift, because usually we’d do something and Danny would stop the tape and just go “do the line”. And we’d just be (snivelling) ‘sorry, sorry, sorry’.

But at the same time I have so much respect for him because at the end of the day we never did pick-ups, which is basically unheard of in animation. As a human being he’s a genius and I think the closest to Eddy – I think he wrote him a little bit after himself. Totally. But then he’s got the heart of Ed, just a heart of gold. Again, I never worked on a show where the creator of it threw so many gratitude events for the cast, and was so involved with the Make a Wish Foundation. When I was on EE&E I probably went down to A.K.A studios at least twice a month for 8 years just to hang out with kids who were fighting for their lives – and they just literally had their last wish of being able to meet EE&E. And we’d often leave there with tears in our eyes, just realising that this show had such a huge impact on kids.

And so that is when you started to realise its success?

Absolutey. Hands down. Because again I never read reviews, I just knew we were on a popular show and to be honest I was just so grateful for the life it gave me. And though I felt honoured to be able to do that, honestly I just thought I’d be going on to the next gig. I didn’t truly realise the impact it had on other’s lives in such a positive way till we started helping fulfil all those Make a Wish dreams. It’s funny, because it’s the Ninja Turtles, and Ed, Edd & Eddy that have, no kidding, struck such a chord in so many people’s hearts and lives.

And then a few years later we took off on the RFOP tour around North America – talk about the power of these cartoons and the superheroes that I’ve been blessed to play. Because it just helped us connect with the kids so much – suddenly it wasn’t just another boring talk it was Raphael, and Ed, and Tender Heart there to talk to the kids about saving the planet.

And down in the South of America where EE&E was huge, there’d be 2,000 kids in some of those big inner city schools, where I could just go and ask “Hello my buddies and buddiettes – who wants to save the planet?” And again, 2,000 kids screaming in unison; it saved our bacon and just gave me the gift of coming full circle, making me realise ‘My God Matt Hill, how lucky are you to be able to do this work?’ I was always grateful for this life, but I didn’t realise how much of an impact it was having and in such a positive way.

You’re currently playing Soarin’ in My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. How did that happen, did you ever envision yourself in that role?

Yes indeed, and in fact I just got booked to do another episode so I’m quite excited.

It was so cool, after we got back from the RFOP tour, Terry was in Vancouver (who has known me forever as he actually directed me on EE&E) and looking for someone to play this new character Soarin’. The writer’s son has autism and so named this character after him – and this guy was an extreme athlete with tonnes of energy and blah blah blah. And apparently Terry just said “I know the guy” and they just phoned me and brought me in. And I thought great, I’ll go down and do as good a job as I can do – I didn’t think it was going to resonate with the fans, in terms of going “Oh my God I love pie, SAVE MY PIE”. But again it’s another one of those things, like Raphael, it’s so neat to be recognised with such an established franchise because of its power to inspire people – for me that’s what its all about now.

And it has completely taken off.

Yeah! Holy smokes.

There’s an almost rabid fandom online for it.

It’s probably good I’m so technically challenged then.

But when I go to the conventions that’s where I really realise that ‘man you guys really dig MLP’, and to take a line from Sally Field ‘you really, really like me!’

We’d be remised if we didn’t get your thoughts on the Brony culture.

Yeah, man. I got invited to a convention last year in Texas – BronyCon. And I realised again, I personally believe that we’re no different, we’re all cut from the same cloth. And with the BronyNation, it’s a whole group of people who feel so passionate about something they feel they can identify with, which are great values. Because ultimately to me it doesn’t matter where you come from or what you’re interested in, you deserve my respect and honour and love, like I deserve. So in those terms, why not, ya’know? Why not have a nation of people that feel empowered and inspired, and if it’s cartoons that’s helped them to do that then all the power to you!

It’s really humbling. All the guys at the conventions they’re going “Oh my God, thank you” and I’m saying ‘no, thank you’. It’s such a symbiotic relationship, because if I wasn’t doing the show I wouldn’t be doing this hadn’t reimagined it, if the fans hated it, then we wouldn’t even be having this conversation.

And there’s a lot of power in that, giving someone the ability to feel empowered – because whether it’s in animation or not, we’ve all felt that feeling before of not belonging. We’re no different, and that title ‘BronyNation’ they give themselves – that’s their club, their posse, it’s no different than my hockey team.

So tell us about Run for One Planet.  What inspired you to take action?

Well the idea for the tour just landed on my shoulders. I was on a flight to an animation convention in Detroit where I was one of the guests, and so in a way it had already started. The cartoons were my through line.

My journey was acting, but then there was also this other part of me, that ever since seeing Terry Fox when I was 10 years old, just wanted to give back, doing something that really was not about me so much, but about the Hero’s journey of my life. Done because you want to contribute not because you want to gain fame or notoriety, but because deep inside your heart you’re asking these questions: ‘if I’m going to live to 85, 105 years, what do I want my legacy to look like? How can I give with what I have?’ For me it’s always been running, it’s always been my energy, my love, total love of people. And as you get older you realise you can’t single handily protect the planet, you’d be an idiot, it’s about what my contribution would look like.

So for me, it started at looking ay my personal footprint – how I was eating, which again came from a role; when I got Ninja Turtles that was the first time I really started looking at my diet and how it affected my environment. And it’s wild because now I can realise that the Ninja Turtles role, where I was trying to bring out all these values in these kids and the big kids, the adults, was really the early inceptions of RFOP. The truth of it was that I had been asking these questions of myself; ‘what was my story? How was I going to be a role model for these kids?’

And so when the captain turned off the no-seat belt at 28,000ft I got those answers loud and clear – for me I call it God, others might call it the Universal Spirit or your Deepest Wisest Self, the answer really came down and said “Ok Matt Hill, sit down son because you’re about to get these answers and its about to change pretty much everything”. And so really over the next 18 months we prepared for the tour, an 11,000m run across Canada and around the perimeter of America, all to inspire environmental action, one step at a time.

I truly wanted to inspire the entire Continent if I could – one marathon a day reaching and inspiring 333 million North Americans, because I thought ‘if you’re going to do this, man you gotta go big!’But then also quickly realise the value of that saying: take it one step at a time. Because we couldn’t have finished our 22 millionth step at the end of the very last day without taking that very first step after deciding to do it.

And so we had this quite cathartic 10km on the day we decided to do the tour, where we made some huge decisions: we will never look backwards, we will only go forwards, we will do everything humanly possible to make this dream happen. We’ll take care of the running, and ignore everything else that we don’t have control over – again to use my Dad’s adage: “the only thing you can do is your best.” And so after 18 months of training we ended up eventually running 420 marathons, destroyed 30 pairs of running sneakers, we consumed and burned about 3 million calories each, and yeah, in the process we ended up speaking to about 50,000 elementary school kids, in more than 220 schools. It changed my life and it’s something that I’m so proud of.

And I’m so grateful in so many ways that it coincided with the Economic Meltdown. And we weren’t kidding, we truly wanted to raise $1m to start a legacy fund for these kids, so we could grant these huge green dreams all around the world. But what, the economy happened. Could we do anything about it? No, it was what it was. All we could do was go forwards, alter our game plan. Take one kid at a time, one school at a time.

And then, serendipitously, there was also the biggest election of all time, with President Obama. We had all this publicity just go away, and to top it off we were one step away from economic meltdown. Countries were losing their entire gross capital. The East coast of America was literally for sale, people were in foreclosure – when McDonalds are having McValue Recession meals – you know things are not good. And that was our reality and that’s why I’m so proud, because we could have gone ‘oh well, we’re screwed, we’re not going to raise $1m, Oprah won’t cover us, Anderson Cooper won’t bring us in’, and when we ran through NY it was 3 days before the election and nobody covered us.

But instead it was our chance to take the gift of the moment and do what we said we were going to do; we said we were going to run around North America, we said we were going to connect with anyone who wanted to connect with us – and who reached out to us? Kids. Was that probably the greatest gift from God I could have been given? Yes. Why? Because it helped us share our message. Because it always turns out better than expected. In the end, I personally believe in my heart that the situation helped us connect with kids even deeper – because in light of everything that was going on it still meant so much to us and they could see that.

And then for me, just looking at all the gifts I received personally, seeing all these kids being blown away, all of them saying “Oh my God I’m hanging out with Ed from EE&E, with Raphael”, the gift of being welcomed into their hearts and their brains. Giving us the chance to say “Yo, yo, yo – you too can make powerful choices for yourself, you too can choose to make the world a better place, you can make a lighter footprint.”

It’s funny because I almost can’t read too much about these doomsday predictions, the pessimism. Somebody said to me ‘we’re totally screwed, the polar ice caps are already at this level, greenhouse gasses are already beyond here and here, and so basically it’ll be nothing but cockroaches and Keith Richards who’ll survive our eventual demise.’ And it probably will be, Keith will be asking ‘can I smoke that?’ But also, and this is what fires me forward – my personal, passionate belief in the human spirit because I don’t care what anyone says, man it is alive and well.

What were you surprised you fell in love with, during that time?

Oh, wow, that’s such a great question. I deeply fell in love with my country, and also with America. I was already in love with running obviously, and I don’t want it to sound cheesy, but I also fell in love with the hero that was inside me, because I realised that I was truly answering those declarations I had made as a 10 year old, 30 years earlier.

So then what questions did this massive responsibility, make you ask of yourself? What did you learn about yourself?

How am I going to be?

I was the one who signed up for it, I’m the one who said it was what I wanted to do, and I had this moment right across Canada – literally faced with anger and hurtness and all of the “dark sides” that the hero is forced to face in themselves, and just realising in the power of every moment’s choice. The moment always empowers us, and that’s what messes us up: when we forget, when we think that other people make the choice, when we think that other people have done us wrong. And it really does come full circle; I talk to my fiancé about it all the time, about our power to choose. And instead of “pointing fingers” at people saying it’s their fault, you stop, back up, and point the finger at yourself. You yourself have the power to choose how you’re going to be. And that’s what I needed to learn – if I said I was going to be a leader then I was going to have to lead, but also I had to be ok with being a human being who was also learning on this journey – because boy was it a lot of pressure!

And it’s in those cathartic moments, in-between when you’re totally out of calories because you’re running a marathon a day, and you’re totally sleep depraved – you’re at the height of your hero’s journey. And that’s really the only way I can describe it; when you choose big, you’re tested big.

I’m not going to BS you, I don’t think I’d be doing cartoons still – sorry, doing cartoons with such passion at decade number 3 – if I hadn’t been able to go out on all these other big journeys because I wouldn’t have realised my own value. That’s what I learnt, what I just realised, that it’s not selfish to realise your own value.

So turning down the intensity a little: your toughest role – and the toughest sound effect you’ve been asked to perform?

I gotta give EE&E and Raphael the toughest roles physically. Obviously TMNT speaks for itself – locked in an 85 pound suit, taking one pee a day, drinking 7 litres of water to hydrate. And then EE&E for just the sheer intensity of vocal performance – in Danny’s want for the perfect take I’d often do 27 takes. But yeah it’s definitely a tie between the two.

And oh! Toughest sound effect, because still to this day I can’t get it. When we did A Monkey’s Tale .

Ok, so it’s Soarin’, Ed, Ironhide, Finn, Kira Yamato, and Raphael – and you, in a footrace. Who wins?

Ah brilliant! You know what, I’m saying Ed. You know why? Because he’d be running with his head back in the way that he did, he’d be laughing and he would trip all the other guys, and he would fall so far forward that he’d be in the lead without even realising it.

Brilliant. Thanks so much Matt.

It’s been a huge honour, thank you very much for chatting to me.

I just wanted to say thanks for reaching out, because any time I get to talk about what it is I do, especially since coming back from the RFOP tour, is an absolute honour. You know I really realise the effect that the cartoons I’ve gotten to do over the years and the film roles, have had in other people’s lives: people being able to say to me “dude seriously, that role really helped me get over (this) or (that)”. And they’re right, it wasn’t me, it was the role that helped them get through a tough time or help them to feel like they belong. And that is my absolute pleasure.

Before we go, any last stories you’d like to share with us?

Ok. So the height of the Turtles popularity is like 1993, and I’m actually down in LA living after I finished filming on my work permit. Obviously I got invited to the premier and all that. And I’m at the Universal Amphitheatre, we’re being introduced and all these Hollywood kids are there thinking we’re the coolest things on the planet. Well, I realised when I sat down that I was actually sitting behind one of my childhood heroes in the rock world, and that was Alex Van Halen and I literally turned into a 13 year old again. And his kid is with him, so during the movie I’m plotting how I can talk to him, and now 20 years later I’m kicking myself because all I had to do was tap him on the shoulder, he would have turned around, I’d have gone ‘Hey dude, I’m Raphael’ – and his kid would have gone full Walter Mitty. And before you know it his kid thinks I’m the coolest, I’m hanging out with the band, I’m going on tour with Van Halen.

And you know what the life lesson is there? Always tap your idols on the shoulder.

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BRYCE PAPENBROOK is an American voice actor best known for his lead role as Eren Jaeger in hit anime series ATTACK ON TITAN.  He is also the voice behind popular characters such as Rin Okumura in BLUE EXORCIST, Red in POKÉMON ORIGINS and Kirito in SWORD ART ONLINE. We caught up with him at the recent MCM Manchester Comic Con to find out more about his work on ATTACK ON TITAN.

STARBURST: For those unfamiliar, what is Attack on Titan?
Bryce Papenbrook: Where do I start! Humanity has been pushed behind these massive walls. There are these creatures on the outside of the walls, sort of like gigantic zombies that eat humans. The story is about some of the things going on behind the scenes to all this and the story behind these huge monsters. That’s where it starts and where it goes is crazy.

Had you read the manga before picking up this role?
I had not read the manga but I was a fan of the anime before I knew there was going to be an English dub. I never thought I’d be able to work on the project because the company that eventually got it was based in Texas, a company called Funimation. I had never worked for them before and I got really lucky to even get an audition for the project. My friend Patrick Seitz is a friend with the director Mike McFarland and he received the sides from Mike to audition. He asked, “Hey, can my friend Bryce audition for you as well?” Mike said “Yeah, sure”. I went out and bought sound-proofing for my booth at home and screamed as loud as I could and it resonated all the way to Texas.  They wanted me out there; it’s a fantastic experience.

There’s a lot of screaming, and some of it is very special. How do you prepare for that?
There’s three very distinct voices for Eren. Young Eren, which was challenging because I have to scream in a child’s voice. Then I played Eren at 15 and that’s actually a little bit deeper than my normal speaking voice. Then there’s ‘other’ Eren and I did all the sounds as well, though I had some help from the engineers and post-processing. I did them all; lots of very long and loud bursts, with my voice pushed down to very bottom of the register.

You auditioned for the roles of Armin and Levi as well, which role did you really want?
Of course, Eren, he’s the lead. You always shoot for the part that’s going to give you the most work. I personally thought I was going to book Armin because I can get my voice to that range. It’s kind of funny; I’ve played a lot of characters who are voiced by women in Japan because I sound like I’m twelve years old, so I thought I might land Armin. I thought my audition for Levi was pretty good but I don’t have bass that Matthew Mercer has, I can’t sound that badass unfortunately. I think Eren suits me well; Josh Greely who plays a fantastic Armin, it just blows me away.  I think the entire cast did well and I’m just thankful that I got to work on the show.

Eren is a very angry character, how do you get yourself in that mindset?
I don’t think there’s any sort of preparation that will get you that angry. I walked into the booth and just reacted to the way I felt that day. I physically made myself angry and I left still angry, I was yelling at people in traffic. It resonated with me even after recording.

Who different is Eren from your other roles, such as Kirito from Sword Art Online?

Kirito had some pretty massive screams, but they were different from Eren. These two characters are very similar in age but I tried to play them differently. Kirito is a true hero, the sounds I made for Eren where nasty and disgusting. Normally you’d clear your mouth but for Eren we left it all in. There’s one moment in Attack on Titan where Eren bites himself and I bit my thumb which left a bruise. I’m a fan of the show.

How are you finding MCM Manchester Comic Con?
Fantastic. I’ve had a lovely time in Manchester. My wife has some family here. We’ve been shown around and had a chance to explore and the architecture is beautiful and people have been lovely.

Attack on Titan is huge at the moment. How has the fan response been?
Bigger than I could have imagine. I’ve travelled all around the world and I just cannot believe the response that people have had to the show. You look out at the cosplaying and you just see a sea of people cosplaying as characters from the show.

It’s a dark and weird series. What’s the appeal?
It’s one of those shows like Game of Thrones; you don’t know what they’re going to do next. They break rules and kill off characters and they do things you wouldn’t have guessed they were going to do. It twists and turns and just sucks you in. I was watching it week by week and it just drove me crazy. I just wanted more!

ATTACK ON TITAN Season 1 is available on DVD and Blu-ray from September 15th.

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John Ferguson is the writer of fantasy superhero comic SALTIRE (reviewed here) and the co-founder of independent publishers DIAMONDSTEEL COMICS. STARBURST caught up with him to chat about the comic and his plans for the continuing series.

STARBURST: Tell us about how Saltire first came about and what the process of developing the concept to realisation and publication was like.

John Ferguson: It first came about because of a quite derogatory online article that suggested it was a daft idea for Scotland to have its own superhero as the country was too boring, dreich and drab, and that if it did it would probably be called Drunk Man. As a Scottish person I thought it was a rather unfair description of what I think is a vibrant country.

I’ve always had a big interest in the superhero genre and mythology, and I thought that comic book superheroes are essentially modern mythology. The Spider-Mans, Batmans, Supermans and Hulks of the world exist because America is such a new country it doesn’t have old myths, an old world or heroes of the past to point to, so they created new ones. Scotland is the oldest country in the Western world and has more mythology, legends and folklore than anywhere else, albeit not very well known. As superheroes are based on mythology, it seems odd to suggest that Scotland couldn’t have one of its own. You just take the two and stick them together! Scottish history is almost a story in itself, so we decided to do a pseudo-history of the country. We don’t know our own history very well; people are aware that the Romans came to Scotland but they aren’t very sure what happened. Same with the Angles and Saxons, or the Vikings. So I thought that’s perfect: stick a giant blue superhero in there and fill in the blanks. Since people don’t know exactly how these victories were achieved we can throw in a fantasy element.

As a brand new publishing company, it was quite an undertaking to actually get the book on the shelves. I spent the best part of six months writing what I thought was a good script, but to create a comic book you also need artists and as someone new to the market, who’s going to want to work with me? Duncan of Jordanstone Art College at Dundee University has a comic book studies course, so we contacted the head of the department for his opinion and decided to have a competition. There were two really good entrants who had actually worked together before and were both very keen on the project, so we ended up using them in conjunction. From there we found high-quality printers and managed to find our way into all aspects of publishing and distribution so we could get the book into places like Waterstones and Forbidden Planet. Since then it’s really taken off.

How much of a challenge was it debuting and promoting an independent comic and carving out a presence for yourself in a crowded market?

To break in on anything other than a real indie level would require a stall at a comic mart, but we decided we didn’t want to do that. We wanted to put it in front of people, have a relationship with the big shops and let the work speak for itself. It was a challenge, but we did enough in the way of marketing and intriguing people with this idea of a Scottish superhero who was a big heroic figure like those Scotland’s had in the past, instead of a typically comedic Scottish character like Super Gran, Desperate Dan or Oor Wullie. We’ve got to give a lot of thanks to people in the social media world, people in comic book shops and people who run independent shops, who got behind the comic and kept on selling out their stock. It grew without us putting in lots of money, while what money we did have we used to pay for the artists, the printings, and the distribution. So it wasn’t through throwing lots of cash around; people liked what they were seeing. It wasn’t easy, but it was good fun. We treated it as a challenge and it’s worked.

After the action of Invasion and the origin of Inception, what can we expect to see from Annihilation?

Invasion is your introduction to this big ginger superhero, which it does in a really dynamic fashion, but Annihilation takes it way past that; it’s a darker and more immersive tale. It’s set in the Dark Ages, the time when the Angles and the Saxons were new to the island of Britain and saw Caledonia as something they would like to have as well. It was a time when Scotland was full of magic and alchemy, and we’ve tied up quite a lot of the history of that period with the darker myths and legends and expanded it into an epic fantasy tale, probably comparable to Game of Thrones or Lord of the Rings. We see a lot of the different areas of Scotland and meet a lot of the different clans. They’re all very different and some of them don’t trust each other, but they have to come together behind Saltire. It’s in two parts, and next year we’ll bring it out as one individual piece of work, probably with Invasion attached to it as well, so it chronicles the entire first period of Saltire from the Roman invasion right through to the Dark Ages.

Are both volumes coming out at the same time?

No, we’re bringing one out in September and the second one won’t be long behind it, hopefully by Christmas, but if not it won’t be long after. It’s to give people a chance to absorb part one and get excited about part two.

Are you working with the same artists as previously?

The artists from the first book have graduated from their degree at Duncan of Jordanstone and they’re no longer going to be working on the indie circuit, but we’ve gone for just as dynamic a team. Again, graduates of Duncan of Jordanstone, studying comic book studies.

I love it how that’s now an actual thing.

Exactly! Twenty years ago people would have laughed at you, but to me it’s just as valid as any other form of storytelling. The creativity that goes into it is just as important, just as difficult, just as skilled. The new team’s artwork matches the story; it’s slightly more epic, slightly more grand, maybe a wee bit more mainstream, if you take the darker elements of DC Comics like Batman or the Blackest Night series. It’s going to be interesting to see how the finished product comes out, but we think people are going to like it.

Although Saltire is pretty much straight-up fantasy, historical events like the disappearance of the Ninth Legion and the construction of Hadrian’s Wall are featured. Will you include other key moments from Scotland’s history in future books?

Absolutely. What we are is a pseudo-history; you don’t read it and think that’s what actually happened, probably because there’s a giant blue superhero in it. But in the Dark Ages there were skirmishes, battles and wars between the Angles, the Saxons and the people of Scotland. The historical elements have actually happened, but are given a completely fresh twist so you’re not just going to be reading a history book and waiting for Willy Wallace and Robert the Bruce to turn up! It’s characters from the folklore of Scotland mixed in with the history and the superheroic element of Saltire and the Guardians. We believe it’s a really good mix, and the fans have really taken to it so we’re going to continue that.

Superheroes are defined by their vulnerabilities as much as their strengths. In Invasion, apart from taking a couple of hits from the avatar of a Roman god, Saltire seemed pretty unstoppable. Does he have any specifically defined weaknesses, a kryptonite if you like?

Let’s just say the answer is definitively yes, and we’ll find out all about it in Annihilation. I can’t say too much without giving away the ending of the book, but it’s a major crux of the story that he’s not completely indestructible. Like all good superheroes there’s a weakness there, and it’s a traditional Scottish weakness that ties into the Scottish psyche. I’ll leave it at that.

Seeing as Saltire has been established as powerful enough to take on deities, will he be encountering members of any other pantheons?

Short answer: yes. He is the immortal protector of Scotland; he was created as something more than a superheroic character who can stop a bank robber or a criminal on the street, he is there to defend the people of the nation and to defend the land itself. So when the threat comes from something bigger, from something mythological, from something like a deity then Saltire can step forward and deal with that. Scotland’s invasions have not always come from the same place: the Romans, the Vikings, the Angles and the Saxons didn’t come from the same part of the world and didn’t have the same belief systems or practices in war, which takes the story into the realms of the pantheons of gods that come from those beliefs.

Heroes are often more engaging when they battle interesting villains. Do you have any plans to include recurring enemies?

Again, without giving too much away from the next book and beyond there will be recurring villains. As you say, the most iconic superheroes quite often remain so because they have the most iconic villains. The reason, I think, that the most popular superheroes are Spider-Man and Batman is because they have the best villains. Everyone knows who the Joker is, the Riddler is, the Penguin is; everyone knows the Green Goblin and the Sinister Six. It was in our head that great superheroes always have great villains. It’s not enough to just have some bloke who’s a baddie, you need something more than that.

As Saltire is immortal and thus can plausibly appear anywhere throughout time, do you have plans for any far-future sci-fi stories?

We’ve actually written the groundwork for a futuristic story. There are some shorts set in different parts of Scotland in the future; one each in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Dundee and Aberdeen. They haven’t actually been illustrated yet, but it’s something we’d hope to do in the next year or two. They’re the first inkling that Saltire is not just about swords and sandals and things that happened in the past; he can exist in the future, because, as you say, with immortal superheroes that’s one of the benefits of them!

One of my favourite aspects of Invasion was the warriors from the Ten Tribes forming a Pictish Avengers that fights alongside Saltire while battling the Romans. Like Saltire himself, will aspects of the Tribes and their mightiest heroes also remain constant in some form throughout history?

The idea is that the Guardians, the heroes of each clan, will recur through one of the Scottish myths of the Blue Stones, which are essentially lesser-known versions of the Stone of Destiny. There are several throughout Scotland that still exist to this day, and they were revered by a variety of different tribal people and were believed to carry great energy in the same way the Stone of Destiny does. Each of the clans has their own Blue Stone – or Blue Stane as we would call them – and they carry the energy from one Guardian to the next, and so the name and essence of that Guardian will travel up through the ages, meaning that Saltire will always have an affinity with them. While the Guardians from the Lowlands and Highlands came to be a bit separate, they will unite when there’s a cataclysmic event in Scotland, and in Annihilation we start to expand their characters.

So after Saltire was created in Inception, those rocks he was carrying were the Blue Stones?

Yes, they are a real thing.

I’ve never heard of them before.

There’s one in Crail in Fife, there’s one in St Andrews up where the golf is, there are a couple up in the Highlands. The stone footprints, where you step into the Ethereal World and the Otherworld, are also real; there’s one in Fife and there’s one way over on the West Coast. Nobody really knows how long they’ve been there, but they certainly predate the Dark Ages.

That’s part of the reason I really enjoy doing this, bringing out information that’s already there. These are real things in Scotland that people genuinely believed had energies and powers that took you into other realms, and I enjoy the fact that they, like yourself, are going “Oh, I didn’t realise that’s a real thing!” Next time you’re in St Andrews you might go “Oh, there’s a Blue Stone!

Are the immortal inhabitants of the Ethereal World and the Otherworld also going to be recurring?

Yes. They have Blue Stones in their realms that allow them to move between the worlds and they are immortal like Saltire. They don’t live in Scotland as Saltire does, they live in a parallel world, one of which is a lot darker, the other a lot lighter.

People like the darker side of comic books and there is a real element of that in Scottish mythology and folklore. In Annihilation you learn a lot more about the character Sloan from the Otherworld and Riada from the Ethereal World. Eilys, the Oracle of the Fae, is a core character who will be recurring through most of the books, if not all of them. This is the book where people will learn a lot more about the pantheon of characters, the three different realms, and that if you are an immortal, you can connect between them.

Before Saltire’s initial summoning in Invasion the ritual mentioned calling upon the “Thirteenth Tribe,” presumably referring to where Saltire resides when dormant and implying others live there. Is that in any way accurate and are there any intentions to expand upon this?

It doesn’t quite get dealt with in Annihilation, but Saltire is the Thirteenth Tribe. Scotland is split into twelve clans, two of which are in the immortal world and ten of which are in the real world. So when it describes the Thirteenth Tribe, Saltire is the representation of the Thirteenth Tribe. He is, if you like, the perfect creation – or what we think is the perfect creation – to protect the people and the land, and the story will delve into his background and what exactly is this aether he was created out of.

For any readers not familiar with Scottish history and legends, could you explain the mythology and symbolism incorporated into the story?

Some of it is the essence of things that people understand like the Stone of Destiny, from which Saltire was created. It incorporates a lot of the elements of Scottish animal iconography. In most places a national animal is an eagle or a tiger or something like that…

A lion…

Or a kangaroo! Something you can see. But we picked, goodness knows how far back, a unicorn, which tells you just how mythological our background is! Also, the last dragon that ever existed in history, according to the myths of Northern Europe, was in Scotland and was supposed to have fallen in Dundee, which is why there’s a giant statue of a dragon in the middle of the city. It ties in elements of the animal iconography and our belief in nature, as well as a lot of the aspects of the cultures who invaded us and their belief systems.

We also look at the Picts, the Gaels and the Celts, the tribal people who existed in Scotland and predate the name Scotland. They believed in three realms so we stuck to that. They didn’t believe in heaven and hell, to them the world was a bit more like a yin/yang, where there was a balance to everything: everything light had something dark and everything dark had something light. The story ties to that, both visually and in the characters themselves: every essence of a hero has something slightly more sinister about them and every character that you think is sinister will always have a certain nobility in him as well.

Annihilation takes us into some of the darker elements of the mythology of Scotland, with a character called the baobhan sith who was one of the earliest vampiric characters in folklore and puts it in amongst the mix of this warmongering Saxon/Angle group who really want… Well, it’s called Annihilation; it gives you a pretty good idea of what they’re interested in!

Since Saltire was created as the embodiment of Scotland (or Caledonia), does his personality alter parallel to any change in the nation’s identity?

That’s a good call! Scotland goes through certain changes in its faith and its belief systems; it becomes less tribal and more political and starts to come together more as a nation. Like most parts of the world it grows and develops, it gets different ideologies and different religious practices come in while other religious practices go out the window.

Coming from prehistory, Saltire and his ideology take a bit of changing. The landscape of Scotland doesn’t just remain the same, and by landscape I don’t mean just the scenery, I mean that the idea of the people, the tribes and their belief systems will change as we go. You have centuries between the most iconic things that happened in Scotland; we’ve gone from the Roman era and now we’re in the Dark Ages, so we’re talking about several hundred years, while the story after that is set in the Viking era, hundreds of years past the Dark Ages. Any connections, without giving too much away, will have to be from the immortal element.

The Saltire itself (as in the Scottish flag) has only been in use since the ninth century, whereas our hero made his grand debut during Rome’s invasion of Britain around 700 years beforehand, while his creation occurred even earlier. Should we take this to mean that the name and look of the nation’s flag were taken from the warrior?

Very perceptive of you! Our flag is actually called Saint Andrew’s Cross; saltire is a word of unknown etymology, so that’s why it’s perfect for the name of our legendary guardian! Saltire has a saltire cross because when he was created he was scarred by the Stone of Destiny, which has a matching marking. The flag will be a representation of him from the ninth or tenth century, which actually becomes a little part of a story still to come.

Saltire was recently nominated for Best British Comic (Colour) at the True Believers Comic Awards (congratulations, by the way) where you’re up against the likes of Titan and 2000 AD. How do you feel about that?

Quite chuffed! We’re a very small company and we didn’t expect something like that, but we’ve seen the reaction of publications and critics and also academics. We were just talking about how it’s great to see comics being spoken of as a university subject, we’ve seen the reaction of fans from kids through to real comic book aficionados and the great positivity towards the first book and the idea that there’s a follow up. Our company came into existence in 2013 and here we are in June 2014 talking about being nominated alongside Titan Comics and 2000 AD. I don’t think we could have done better than that.

With Scotland soon to be holding a referendum on independence –

Really? I hadn’t noticed!

– do you have any comment on the timing of publishing a comic containing themes of unabashed patriotism?

Yeah, Saltire’s creating a little bit of controversy, but superheroes generally are patriotic. Any comic book superhero has to stand for something. It’s the old adage: if you don’t stand for something you’ll fall for anything. There’s not a particular agenda, just the idea that the graphic novel field in this country should be bigger and better than it is.

Scotland has always had a sense of itself; in my life I’ve certainly never seen it go anywhere. We are patriotic people. We support our football team, we support our rugby team, we’re very proud to have our own songs and our own languages. I’m not fortunate enough to know the Gaelic language but I speak Scots like most people in Scotland. There’s nothing wrong with Scottishness. People have said in conjunction with the referendum that there’s no such thing as Scottishness, and I could not fundamentally disagree more. We don’t have much of a creative industry up here and in a country as educated and as aspirational as Scotland I think we can do a lot better.

Each new book of Saltire is planned to be published simultaneously in English and Gaelic. With the number of Gaelic speakers gradually declining with each passing generation, did you feel it was important to support the language’s survival?

Unequivocally so. Gaelic in Scotland is in a resurgence. We’ve now got a new school in Glasgow that has more submissions for new students than it can handle, and there’s also now a school in Edinburgh. It’s no longer just the language of the Highlands and Islands. It used to be the language of huge parts of Strathclyde; not that long ago there was no real difference between knowing Gaelic, Scots and English, and we feel it’s very important to support people who want to hang on to that language.

We’re also hoping to bring out all the Saltire books in the Scots language. There’s an idea that the Scots language is for the lower classes, which I find absolutely appalling. If we can bring out all our publications in three languages, and it helps people learn Gaelic by having a big blue superhero to relate to then that’s absolutely fantastic. We’ve got the support of the Gaelic Book Council, and the Gaelic schools are very interested in getting their pupils to embrace it because it’s something different; it’s not a staid school text but an exciting, dynamic superhero story. Gaelic is an important part of our history and it should be an important part of our present.

Do you have any plans for the direction the story will take after Annihilation? Do you have an overall narrative planned out or do you intend for the series to carry on indefinitely?

We have it planned out. We’re not just sprawling off into goodness knows where, essentially because Scottish history’s already been written!

I’m just editing the book after Annihilation, which is going to be called Domination and set at the turn of the first millennium where Vikings are the next threat to Scotland. Beyond that, there are one or two things that happened in Scotland in the 14th century that are a wee bit exciting , that I think everybody who ever went to school in this country knows about. So we might touch on that!

We’ll then look at what some people might see as being the most interesting parts of Scottish history, heading towards the last two or three hundred years where we had a period where we lost it for a bit. We’re not going to brush over that and we’re not going to pretend that Scotland didn’t fight amongst itself or that things didn’t get a bit cataclysmic and fall apart; events like Oliver Cromwell and the Battle of Culloden where things became very desperate in Scotland. But that’s several books in the future.

Will you eventually branch out into publishing comics by other writers and artists, or is the plan to stick with Saltire for the time being?

We’d branch out if we could, but Saltire is a big project and we want to see it do well. We will obviously put a lot of our time and effort into that, but we have the channels to market and if we can help other people we will. Certain aspects of the creative side of things just don’t exist in Scotland and you have to leave and go abroad to expand your horizons, and graphic novels and comic book storytelling is one of those. Don’t get me wrong, if you become big and famous and you’re Grant Morrison or Mark Millar you can stay in Scotland and do what you like. It’s with the young folk coming through that we see the quality of artists, the quality of storytelling and the fact that there’s a real Scottish aspect to the stories. I genuinely believe that the people of Scotland would like to read things they can relate to.

If you look at the American market, the superhero comic book genre has become movie franchises worth fortunes. I’m not suggesting that Scotland can turn around and suddenly produce the new Marvel’s Avengers, but we don’t have any access to try. Three out the five nominations for Best British Comic came from Scotland. Now, do you believe any of those three will have access to big name computer game companies, movie companies, or TV shows? No chance; it just doesn’t exist in this country.

I think the creative industries should probably look at modernising themselves. What is it young people want nowadays? Are they wanting to go to the jazz festival and go to the ballet or are they playing Call of Duty and watching Iron Man at the cinema? Now you can say that that’s not art, but you know and I know how much effort goes into making Call of Duty and how much effort goes into making Iron Man the successful franchise that it is. I like opera, but can you make a billion pound franchise out of it? Wouldn’t have thought so. Could you potentially make it out of what Scotland is creating in graphic novels? Just maybe. If you can create something bigger and better you should always give it a shot.

SALTIRE: INVASION is available now and SALTIRE: ANNIHILATION PART 1 is due for publication in September.

El Diabolik and Simon McLean host the somewhat-monthly podcast, El Diabolik’s World of Psychotronic Soundtracks. It’s an in-depth exploration of film and television scores, and an absolute must-listen for fans of genre music. We reached out to El Diabolik and McLean for this month’s OST column, and weren’t able to fit in everything. The interview turned out so well, we’re sharing it here as an online bonus.

STARBURST: When did the podcast actually start? I checked the website, but couldn’t quite make out the precise date. It’s been at least a few years, right?

El Diabolik: We started the podcast at the beginning of 2010. Initially, it was going to be a general music podcast, but the person I was supposed to be recording it with kept putting it off, so I went ahead and recorded a podcast on my own, while waiting for him. And this is what became El Diabolik’s World of Psychotronic Soundtracks. As I was a bit nervous in starting on my own, Simon McLean was supposed to just be my guest for the first show, 35 episodes later, he’s still here!

Simon McLean: I was very pleased to be asked – when we started, I had no idea I’d still be doing it four years later, but certainly when we did the first one there was a definite sense of ‘We could be onto something here!’

What’s the response been to the podcast – people’s reactions / number of subscribers?

El Diabolik: We’ve had really great support from the listeners from the start. Of course, the first few shows were mainly listened to by our friends etc, but we had a couple of online mentions and the ball started rolling. It’s hard to say with 100% accuracy how many people listen to the show, we have a rough idea from the site and hosting stats, each show will usually get 300-400 unique downloads in the first week or so of publishing, then by the end of the month, they mostly end-up around the 1000 mark. Obviously, some shows are more popular than others.

How do you determine what gets played – the themed episodes are pretty self-explanatory, but do you start with a theme or find one comes together?

El Diabolik: There are no actual criteria, it’s mostly music from a certain period. Loosely, this would be from 1962 to 1985. When we started, I had no idea why we only played music from that period, something to do with my childhood? But when I thought about it, I realised it all seemed to start with the early sixties and the beat boom of The Beatles etc. From the early ’60s popular music invaded film scores, from John Barry’s score for Dr No, with Vic Flick’s twangy guitar, to Ennio Morricone scoring A Fistful of Dollars with Alessandro Alessandroni’s whistling and twanging guitar, to people like James Brown and Isaac Hayes putting soul and funk into film scores, then later, the rise of the synthesizer with the likes of John Carpenter – these are the sounds that make a psychotronic soundtrack.

You’ve participated in the occasional film screening, DJing film scores as part of the screening. Does that happen often?

El Diabolik: I DJ mostly in London, mostly film nights, various clubs and bars, I DJ at a few vintage events and quite a few private events. One of my more regular DJing gigs is playing with the film club Filmbar70. Filmbar70 are a like-minded bunch who show fantastically cool films from the same era we play music, it made perfect sense when we joined-up. I always try to play a set of music that fits the film they are showing that night, and of course, only ever from vinyl!

How long have you and Simon been collecting? I’m guessing you’re older than myself, given that some of the things you’ve discussed – especially in the recent TV episode – date back to the ’70s.

El Diabolik: Simon is a few years younger than me, but he may as well have been born in 1950 for all you’d know. Seems he was born 20-30 years too late! I’ve been buying records all my life. I was born in 1974, so there have always been records everywhere, my dad had a nice selection of ’60s LPs, Stax soul, Beatles and Stones, that sort of stuff. As far as OST collecting goes, I started buying them as a kid in the mid-eighties. Most of the soundtracks I wanted were certainly not to be found in my local record shops, so I took to recording them from the video recorder to a tape deck, editing out some of the dialogue – I remember doing this with Dirty Harry, Enter the Dragon, Halloween and Once Upon a Time in the West . So, the sounds and obsessions of the podcast have been with me most of my life. This was the pre-internet days, so it was almost impossible to know what was available and what wasn’t, I looked in vain for years for the Dirty Harry soundtrack, only to find (on the internet) there never was a Dirty Harry soundtrack LP! So, I’ve always bought soundtracks, but I’m much more serious these days, I’ve always got my eye on LPs online and check my local record shops weekly. Any vacation has to be divided between sights and record shopping!

Simon McLean: Records have always held a bit of a fascination for me – my parents’ collection was in a box in my room as a child, and as we didn’t have anything to play them on at the time, I was always curious as to what they contained.  I started properly collecting when I was 10 and got my first record player, buying anything in the charity shops that took my interest. My own musical tastes were heavily influenced by television – the music that really interested me was the stuff coming out of the speakers… theme tunes, adverts, the music on Pages From Ceefax, that kind of thing. When I was about 9, my local branch of Woolworths had a copy of the BBC Sporting Themes cassette in it, which I was amazed by – you could actually buy this stuff! That was my introduction to the magic letters ‘KPM’, and my library music obsession started from there.

You talk about secondhand shops quite a bit. Do you find that they’re a better source for material than proper record stores?

El Diabolik: In the UK, we have a huge number of charity shops, they sell everything from clothes to old LPs. These can be great places to find records, but as the years have gone on, finding a bargain is getting hard, as they tend to price depending on price guide books. So you can find a smashed-up worthless Beatles LP for £100, because they’ve looked it up and seen the mint value and don’t understand that a battered copy is almost worthless. In the old days you could find some genuine amazing finds, less so now. I mostly look in these shops for private pressed local entertainer albums, made on short runs for the acts to sell at their shows. I have a bunch of very good local secondhand record shops that I visit pretty much every week. I could of course buy all my records from Discogs and eBay, but I’m a digger and have been all my life, the joy of digging through record shops will never go away. Besides, I still find records all the time that are not listed on any site online, the thrill of taking a chance on an odd obscure record is too strong!

Simon McLean: I am a cheapskate by nature, so buying records from secondhand shops makes perfect sense to me. Sadly, they’re more expensive than they used to be, but I’m glad I caught the last few years of charity shops being really interesting, before Mary Portas got her hands on them!

Is there a set schedule for releasing the podcast to which you try and stick?

El Diabolik: There’s is no exact schedule, I try to do one a month, but it works out more like one every 6 weeks. Simon is a real local radio newsreader who works quite a bit at weekends, so it is hard to get him over to London sometimes. When I know there will be a gap in recording, I prepare a special music only mix to bridge the gap. These, so far, have been ‘Dawn of the Synth’ parts 1 and 2. I was rather shocked to see that the first part made the Top 40 iTunes chart in Germany.

Is there a means by which people can support the podcast – other than booking you for a DJ gig, of course?

El Diabolik: People continuing to listen and spread the word is more than enough support. But if anyone does feel like going that extra mile, there is a donate link on the website which goes to help with the costs of running the podcast.

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You can find out more information regarding El Diabolik’s World of Psychotronic Soundtracks and subscribe to the podcast at their website.

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DragonBall Z is a name that resonates with people all over the world, not just for being a popular anime but also for Hollywood’s shameful attempt at adapting it. In order to save DBZ from live-action purgatory, it would need the help of its loyal fans. Harry Kirby and George Kirby are those fans and K & K productions is their filmmaking company. STARBURST had the opportunity to speak to them about their work.

STARBURST: When did your appreciation for film begin, beyond just being a fan? What was the catalyst which made you think you could make your own films?

Harry Kirby: We were introduced to film at a very young age and I can remember being obsessed with Star Wars. Our dad gave us a video camera when were in our early teens and we would make stop motion LEGO films. One of the films that really inspired us to want to make our own, was Jurassic Park. That film blew our minds at the cinema and it got such a huge reaction from the audience. After that we were both saying that we wanted to create that buzz and reaction for other people.

Which actors or filmmakers did you look at for influence? When you looked at these was there anything in particular you liked?

HK: James Cameron is a huge inspiration to me. Aliens is probably my favourite film. I just love the way he creates entire worlds and draws you into his movies. Plus he is great at directing action.

GK: I’m a big fan of Zack Snyder. The way his films are so stylized really appeals to me. He is another great action director.

Which films or filmmakers did you look at and think ‘I don’t want to be compared to that movie or person’?

HK: DragonBall Evolution! (Laughs)

Did you ever have in mind what kind of films you wanted to make? Or was the first goal just to make a film?

HK: Well the film we discussed making the most was a DragonBall Z movie. We are both huge fans of the anime and it combines everything we love. Action, martial arts, fantastical abilities, great characters and story. What more do could you want! So in terms of a feature length movie, that’s what we have our sites on.

When you were learning the process of making a film, what challenges did you have to overcome?

HK: We are always learning and every shoot provides new challenges. When we directed the live action DragonBall Z Saiyan Saga trailer, it was a huge learning curve. I’d say one of the biggest joys and challenges is working with other people. When you have a team that works well it creates a really great atmosphere. If there is someone on the team that doesn’t jell or isn’t on the same page creatively, it can cause issues, but you have to keep everyone happy and working toward your end goal.

When you were watching DragonBall Z, did you ever think it would be good as a movie? Did you think it only worked as an anime?

HK: It would be amazing as a movie! There would have to be some minor tweaks to ground it in reality a little more, but the story and characters are so strong. Plus the visual effects would be very important, because they are what’s needed to bring the audience into the DBZ universe and replicate the epic fight scenes.

Had you begun making the film or were you still studying when Hollywood announced a DragonBall Z movie?

HK: When DB Evolution came out I was 25 and George was 22. We had made a few short films by that point. Our disappointment in that film was one of the catalysts for us making the Saiyan Saga trailer.

As word of this movie spread what were your thoughts initially? Were you worried or confident in Hollywood’s ability?

HK: We were trying to stay optimistic as we give every film a chance, but as we saw more footage in the trailers our optimism waned!

When the trailer was released and then when you saw the movie, what did you think?

HK: We thought it missed the mark on pretty much every aspect of the film. The casting, the changes in story, the action… everything! When you have the amazing source material that is DBZ, why change it so much?

Your approach to Dragonball Z seems to be grounded while staying true to the source material. Was this the intention as fans of the show yourself?

HK: Yes we felt that the crazy bright colours of DBZ wouldn’t translate so well in live action. So we toned them down a bit. Goku’s Gi is orange, but it’s just a bit earthier. We wanted to stay true to the characters and the feel of DBZ, so we stuck closely to the source material in those respects.

How did you fund this project?

HK: We used a crowd funding platform called IndieGoGo, which is much like Kickstarter. We initially put together a cast, scouted locations and then we put a video on YouTube showing the cast and locations we would be using and expressing our passion for DBZ. We then hit Twitter and Facebook and made sure we kept people constantly updated on what we were doing. This got a great reaction and we raised three times as much money as we initially asked for, which was amazing!

Where did you film the Saiyan Saga trailer? Did you enjoy shooting at these locations?

HK: It was in a place called Dorset in the UK. Disney had actually just finished shooting some scenes for the film John Carter. It was a beautiful location and we felt very lucky to shoot there. We also got to film at PineWood studios, which was a big dream come true for us. We were right opposite the 007 sound stage.

When you were editing and putting the finishing the touches on it did you worry about what the reaction might be of the trailer?

HK: We knew we wouldn’t please everyone, but we felt we had stayed true to DBZ and that was what we set out to achieve. So we were happy and just hopped other DBZ fans would be. With 7 million views and a 93% approval rating on YouTube, we think that they were.

When you posted the trailer online, what was it like seeing the reaction?

HK: It was amazing! We got 2.5 million views in the first week and now we are up to 7 million. We literally read every comment! It was such a rush seeing that people were enjoying it and we felt privileged to have become a larger part of the DBZ community. Yahoo! Japan also shared the trailer, which was really cool, because it meant the Japanese DBZ fans got to see it as well.

You recently attended Sunnycon. What was it like seeing fans of your work and speaking to those people?

HK: We really enjoyed ourselves. It was so nice to meet some of our fans and chat about DBZ. We will be returning next year and we are attending 3 or 4 other cons this year.

You have also made a trailer for the Freiza Saga, is it your hope that you can make a movie or web series? Have you spoken to any studios in order for this to possibly happen?

HK: We have made two teasers for the Frieza Saga. One based on the Super Saiyan transformation and the other showing Frieza himself. For now that is where was have stopped as we are trying to secure the rights to do a high budget web series based on DBZ. We are currently in meetings to try and make this happen, so watch this space!

What do you hope for the future for K & K productions? What other projects are you working on?

HK: We hope that we’ll be bringing a full DBZ web series to your screens soon. We are also working on some other fun short films and have a new DBZ video being released in the next few months.

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For more information on K & K PRODUCTIONS, you can visit the following:

Website: http://www.kandkfilms.co.uk/

YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/K8KProductions

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DBZSaiyansaga?ref=hl

Twitter: https://twitter.com/DBZ_Saiyan_Saga