Interviews – Larry DiTillio

Hi, this is Larry Dottilio, writer for He -Man

and Beast Wars, and you are listening to the

Geekcast Radio Network. Hello and welcome to

the GeekCast Radio Network. This will be an interview

featured on ToonCast and the Beast Unleashed

podcast. I'm your host, TFG1 Mike, and joining

me is Michael Wilson. Hello, sir. Hey, how's

it going? It's going. Today we are here with

the man who is responsible for writing on shows

like He -Man and the Masters of the Universe,

Hypernauts, Babylon 5, and Beast Wars. Here's

Larry Dottilio. Hello, sir. Hi, Mike. I'm Michael.

How are you? No, I'm good. Good. Very good. Very

good. It's a real pleasure to talk to you because

you have no idea. I grew up on He -Man, and it

was just amazing. So did I. Yeah, you created

the stories. We watched them. It was pretty amazing,

yes. Yes. So getting a little background information

on you, where did you grow up, sir? I grew up

in New York City, the old country, Queens, Ozone

Park, right behind Aqueduct West Track. And after

college, I went to NYU. And then I came out to

Los Angeles, where I live now, to go to UCLA

graduate school. And I wanted to be a film writer.

it seemed logical to come out to Hollywood if

I wanted to be a film writer. So I got my master's

at UCLA, and then I went pounding the pavement

looking for a job. So what was it, Larry, that

got you interested in writing? You said you moved

out to Hollywood to become a film and television

writer. What was it that really got you into

writing? I like to be the guy in control. And

the writer is the guy in control. The story is

everything. Even if you're working on a toy show,

the story is everything. Sometimes they don't

realize that, so that's where arguments get fought.

But I'm more than happy to fight those arguments.

It's a sacred thing, writing. You have to dedicate

yourself to it. You never get any sun. You sit

in your house all day. You get hemorrhoids. You

do it for 30 years, and you're sitting 10 feet

higher than you used to. But, yeah, I liked everything

that was on. I was born in 1948, so Saturday

mornings were not a lot of cartoons. There were

a lot of Western stuff like Sky King and my friend

Flicka and Lassie and all those kids' drama,

you know, half -hour dramas for kids, really.

They were interesting. I had never planned to

go into cartoons at all. That never even crossed

my mind. I was a comic book fan. I liked comics

when I was a kid and superheroes and that kind

of stuff, you know, the usual stuff, Superman,

Batman, even Captain Marvel was being printed

when I was a kid. So I said, I want to do this,

you know. I want to write, and I want to write

for this medium that moves, this action medium.

I'm not that interested in writing prose, although

I've kind of changed on that over the years.

But TV and movies was what I liked, and that's

what I wanted to do. I wanted to be a movie writer,

and I started as a movie writer and then later

got moved into television because my movie career

wasn't going anywhere. And then after about 13

years of pounding the pavement, I got a shot

on He -Man. through Michael Halperin. If you're

a He -Man fan, you should know that name. Oh,

yeah. Oh, yeah. He did the original Bible for

it, and we were friends in the Writers Guild.

I did join the Writers Guild in 1971. Yeah, it

was 1971. And I did this feature called The Madman

Movie Makers. which was kind of a spoof of porno

movies. And that got me in, and it was for basically

a mafia -based company. And it had nothing to

do with me being a guy, and my agent said, hey,

they want you to write this movie. And I said,

well, yeah, I'd love to write a movie. And it

was a comedy, and it came out, and it got some

viewing because it played with the first incarnation

of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. It was on a double

bill. That's one of these double bills as well.

So a lot of my family had to go see it and then

sit through. It was kind of interesting. It didn't

go much of any place, but it did get me into

the right of the field, and that was what started

my career. Then in the... After the first movie

came out, it wasn't great shakes. So in a couple

of years, I hopped around trying to sell things

to mainly comedy. I wanted to be a comedy writer.

Stuff like The Odd Couple was going on then.

And I was pitching to those people. And I did

get a shot on, what was the show? Hmm. It was

The Odd Couple. That's what it was. That's right.

It was through Jerry Belson and Gary Marshall.

And Gary Marshall brought me in the office after

I did this script, kind of a spec script for

him, which I wasn't supposed to do because I

was in the Writers Guild. But he called me in

and he said, listen, kid. He said, there's two

kinds of funny. He says, there's funny zany and

there's funny weird. He says, we're funny zany.

and you're funny weird. And that kind of got

me out of comedy. I kind of thank Gary Marshall.

I still would love to write a comedy show, but

I just never got the chance, and I got kind of

more to be a dramatic writer, and then I got

into cartoons through Michael. And I got to that

because Michael Sons played D &D. which I did

as well. I was considerably older than them at

the time. But I had done an article for The Dragon,

which was a D &D magazine. Right, right. Actually,

it wasn't an article. It was a dungeon. So, you

know, it actually was kind of like doing a movie.

Dungeons were kind of like doing movies. And

he said, hey, I didn't know you wrote Sword and

Sorcery. He called me up and said, Larry, you

write Sword and Sorcery? I said, well, yeah,

I do. And he said, well, you've got to come in

here because they're doing He -Man at Film Nation

and they need plenty of writers. And go in there

and speak to Arthur Nadel, who's the producer,

and see what you can come up with. So I said,

thank you, Mike. And I made an appointment with

Arthur, and I showed him. I had a few credits

at that time. One was the movie, and the others

were little bitty religious shows. I worked on

a religious show at one point. Really? Yeah,

it was one of the Sunday shows that was a Lutheran,

two Lutheran ministers were the producers. And

I did a, that was during the Vietnam era, and

I did this, it was actually after the war had

finished, but I did a thing about a Vietnam vet

coming back who saved this junkie's life. A wino

that saved a junkie's life. They were pretty

nice about that. And they said, except one character

has to be the voice of God. I said, take your

pick, junkie or whiner. I'll go either way. It

was kind of a strange story. I don't think it

ever actually got on the air, but it was my first

live action piece. And I started being sent on

more live action for that. But this was well

before He -Man happened. So I went to see Austin

Adel, and he was, for some reason, impressed

by some, well, actually, I had done a biography

of Napoleon and Hitler. So I suppose that, and

I did that in a half an hour. So that was, I

guess that showed that I could, you know, I could

write, you know, briefly and still get a lot

of information in there. I worked for a show

called Against the Odds, which was hosted by

Bill Dix. It was biographies for kids. And I

became their, what they call their warrior rider,

every bloodthirsty dictator that went through

history. I got this assignment on after riding

Hitler and Napoleon. And that's actually how

we got started in the business, actually. Nice.

Well, that's... That kind of starts you off,

but what are you doing recently? We looked on

IMDb for research, but we didn't see much for

you for the last couple of years. No, there's

not much. No, because I got old. And when they

get old, they don't want you anymore. Oh, really?

Unless you're really, really grandfathered in

there. Like, nobody's calling me up saying, hey,

would you like to write this? Would you like

to write that? Unless it's some old friend of

mine. Seriously, I'm not much looking for work,

and that's why I haven't done anything in five

years. Usually if I'm looking for work, I'll

go get it, you know. Now I'm thinking of writing

a book. That's, you know, the saga of my family

and my life, I guess. I guess that's an old age

thing with writers, you know. You get older,

you say, oh, maybe I should write about myself

and my family. You got memoirs or an autobiography

or something? Yeah, something along that line.

There were some interesting stories about my

family and stuff, and my wife's family. I love

reading books, but I was never really big on

writing them. I do prefer the moving ones. That's

why I never tried to write for comic books. I

know how to do it, but I never wanted to do it.

There's something about... It's destroying your

whole love of things if you work on the inside

of things. You start to get very cynical about

it. When you're a kid, you're like, oh, wow,

this is really great. I'm working on He -Man

over here. And then a couple of years later,

you can't get arrested. But that's the way it

works. There's a lot of things that they don't

have on there, and there's some stuff that they

credit me with that I never did. I wouldn't trust

IMDB. I'd probably go over there and just give

them the information. I do have about 150 credits,

and some of the stuff I worked on was Babylon

5. I was story editor and executive story editor

for two years. Well, the IMDB is kind of like

a Wikipedia in that anybody can go on there and

enter information in. It wouldn't necessarily

be you, so it helps to keep on top of those.

Yeah, maybe one day I'd go to Wikipedia and rewrite

the very slim article they have on me. Or four.

I mean, it's nothing that interests me right

now. I might do it one of these days. A lot of

people were interested in you. In the golden

age of kids' cartoons, I worked for CBS mainly.

Judy Price liked me for some reason. She was

the head of CBS at the time. I worked on Hulk

Hogan's Rockin' Wrestling, if you remember that.

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I worked on several low points

in cartoon history, and that was a low point

because it was a show full of wrestlers, and

they said, oh, but you can't have them wrestling.

Because that's too violent. Really? What do we

do with them? That's funny. I said, they can't

wrestle. There's not much we can do with Hulk

Hogan and the Iron Sheik. Then I worked on Galaxy

High School. I don't know if you remember that

show, which actually should have been a bigger

show than I was. I don't recall that one. Yeah,

it was, you know, Earth Boy goes to a high school

in outer space, you know, and meets all these

aliens. And it was like a teen comedy set in

outer space. The animation was terrific. And

it was pretty good, but it was before its time.

And it just lasted a year. And like New York,

it got an L .A. It got good ratings, but the

rest of the country just didn't see it, you know.

They just never watched it. It was a pretty good

show. That was TMS's first try at advancing Japanese

animation into American culture. Now, of course,

we're in. We're in. We're in. I just went to

anime. As for animated features, what was your

favorite show to work on? My favorite show to

work on? All of them. Anything I worked on. No,

California Raisins was my most unfavorable. Two

of us did the California Raisins, and it was

horrible. You know what's funny about that? A

buddy of mine and I were talking about that show

the other day, and you'd be surprised how little

information there is of California Raisins anywhere.

Even finding a clip on YouTube of it, there's

nothing. You mean the cartoon show? Yeah. Yeah,

you can find plenty on the ads. But Will Vinton,

he just got jobbed by Murakami Wolf. They said,

oh, well, we can do it. It'll be just as good

as your Claymation. And of course it wasn't.

And we did get Paul in the music. The music was

good, but the music was good before there was

a cartoon show. It was all Spoh. I loved all

music. It was fun, but, you know, when we saw

the result of it, it was like, oh, my God, you

know. But, you know, going from what I hated

working on to what I liked working on, He -Man

and She -Ra were both great jobs for me, as was

Beast Wars. Conan, I wrote a couple of Conans.

Do you remember Conan? Yeah. a clothing cartoon.

That was another one where you couldn't, you

know, you couldn't, you couldn't kill anything.

And I thought, wait a minute, this is not going

to work, you know. They had the cosmic pizza.

Where's the fun in that? You could send snake

men into the cosmic pizza in the sky and then

they'd be gone if you touched them with your

sword. I said, well, this is dumb. But I always

liked Conan. Conan was my, was my idol when I,

you know, when I got into sword and sorcery and

stuff. He was the first, Robert E. Howard, I

read everything he wrote. But good luck trying

to adapt the Howard story for that show. Right.

It's too violent. Yeah. Let's change gears over

to He -Man. Talk about some of the shows you

were on. He -Man was one of my favorite cartoons

back in the day. We were talking earlier about

people recognizing you from He -Man. And when

I would come home from school, I watched G .I.

Joe, Transformers, and He -Man. So it's like

those were formative for me. How easy was it

to translate your earlier sword and sorcery work

into stories for children's toys? Actually, my

earlier sword and sorcery work was mainly game

work. I'm a role -play gamer. And I buy dungeons.

That was my main sword and sorcery. That's why

I wrote that article for the Dragon. is because

that's where I was writing a lot of sword and

sorcery, just for playing with my friends. So

once I got the sword and sorcery, I didn't do

anything earlier than He -Man. He -Man was my

first cartoon show. I had no idea. The Gary Gygax

stuff, I'm not sure how well that would translate

into Saturday morning cartoons. But the principles

of role -playing follow the principles of a TV

show, of making it realistic and a fantasy at

the same time. I don't know if that makes any

sense. No, it does. I just took the sword and

sorcery stuff I would use when playing around

here with my friends and said, well, why don't

you stick that in Bohemian? Because it'll work.

My first show, The Dragon's Gift, which that

was the first story I sold to He -Man. And that's

kind of widely known as the most oddball episode

of He -Man ever written. Because He -Man loses,

for one thing. Yeah, he did. That was the one

that convinced them to hire me on staff. They

literally said... you know, we want to hire you

while I was writing that script. And I said,

well, I'm working on the script that I just told

you. They said, well, you'll have to work on

that at home because we want to hire you to work

over here. How did you make the move from He

-Man to She -Ra? Who pulled you over to the new

project? it was there was no move on that it's

we had done three by that time we had done three

seasons of a he -man and there were 60 but there

were 65 episode seasons right well you know that's

like that's like an almost an entire year of

work you know yeah even in even in limited animation

that was 75 stock footage that's a lot that's

a lot of work yeah exactly yeah so and uh and

The other thing was that it was the first time

working for a toy company, which is always an

interesting and agonizing process. Although we

had a good contract on that, so it wasn't as

agonizing as most of the other toy shows I worked

on. We can get into that later. And if I ever

want to get hired again by any of these people.

Not that I do. But I didn't really make a move.

We were finished with He -Man. It was supposed

to actually... They were gearing up for like

a fourth year of He -Man. And the Horde was supposed

to be the villain of that fourth year. And that's

because we had the Skeletor Syndrome hit He -Man

very quickly in the first season of it, which

means... Every story had to start with Skeletor.

It really couldn't start with He -Man, which

is something I tried to change at the end of

the first season, and fairly successfully, I

might say. He -Man couldn't do anything until

Skeletor made a move in the first season of the

show, those first 65 episodes. He -Man had to

hatch a plot. It had to come. I said, this is

not right, because our hero is not proactive.

He should be going after Skeletor. You know,

not waiting for Skeletor to come to him and do

something terrible to everybody. It was problematic,

but Skeletor was really popular, as you know.

I mean, the popular guy on He -Man was Skeletor.

That's what people told us in polls. Oh, yeah,

we love He -Man, but I really love Skeletor,

too. It was coming to, like, Megatron and Optimus.

You know, kind of got to love them both. Yep.

Yeah, you've got to get into both of their heads,

so you've got to love them both. You've got to

say, well, where are they coming from? It's an

interesting thing. But I didn't have to be pulled

to the... What happened was somewhere in there,

He -Man ceased to become the number one toy in

America. And if you'll remember, it was replaced

by Cabbage Patch Kids. Very strange. Very strange

transition. Flying off the shelf. Parents fighting.

Cabbage Patch Kids. But that was, again, what

was going on at that time is there was a big

thing about violence in cartoons and how it was

making all of you people who were watching the

cartoons grow up into psychotic people. I always

knew the difference, though. I was raised where,

like, I know that that's just a cartoon. It's

not real. Yes, I know. The only ones that didn't

know the difference was adults. It was these

adults that would get crazy and say, oh, this

is going to make you into this. This is going

to make you into that. No, it's not. We've had

these kind of stories for years, you know, the

Bible. The Bible itself has enough violent stories

in it to make you a psychotic. So that was just

an unfortunate period in history that we were

doing action shows. And yet action shows were

the biggest thing at that point, you know. Transformers,

G .I. Joe, that, and then there was Thundar the

Barbarian and all the others. Those were big.

They were big shows. The kids liked them. And

that's why we did them. We didn't do them right,

because we were constrained by the companies

we were working for. Well, there's still classic

nostalgia nowadays, so you guys must have done

something correct. Well, what we did on He -Man

and She -Ra was just concentrate on characters

and story. Speaking of characters and story,

I'm sorry to interrupt you. Speaking of characters

and story, what was the process in creating the

backstory for the She -Ra characters? I didn't

do a lot of backstory for She -Ra. Remember,

we had just done two years of 65 episodes, so

we were all kind of tired. When they gave me

She -Ra, I said, okay, it's got to be... And

they said, let's make her He -Man's sister. Okay,

we've done 130 episodes of He -Man and no one

ever mentioned his sister. So I said, oh, what

are you going to do? But I wasn't pulled to it.

You know, they said instead of doing He -Man,

they were going to do She -Ra. Oh, she wasn't.

They didn't know what she was called at the moment,

at that time. But the villains would be the Horde

that tended to come in to kind of replace Skeletor

on He -Man. And they decided, I think Lou decided,

that wouldn't work, and maybe they should do

something else. And Mattel decided that, why

don't we do a, hey, if he -man is for boys, let's

do a female he -man for girls. And what they

wanted in that was a lot of hair play. They said,

because that's what girls like, hair play. So

everybody had long hair. And a lot of, you know,

I laugh about, toy companies because they're

very, very passionate about what they do. But

what they don't understand from the writer's

point of view is we're not writing a story for

toys. We're writing a story for people. We have

to treat them as people and we have to create

them as people so that they will resonate with

the people who are watching them. There are not

toys watching them. There are people watching

them. Whether they're giant robots or, hell,

I even wrote for King Kong. That was kind of

the last thing I did was Kong. I don't know if

you've ever seen that series. Yeah, I remember

Kong the animated series. Yeah, it was just a

band series. I did one really good script on

that, but I've never seen it on TV. And they

don't sell box sets of Kong. I don't think it

does. But I had awful experiences over there.

But I won't say anything more about Savannah,

because my two worst experiences were both at

Savannah. So I'll just give you the one, which

is calm. But I was working with Bob Ford on that

as well. I worked with him on Beast Wars. We

were all friends from formation, by the way.

And that's how I got into Shira. Now, how we

named, originally, they wanted to call her Hera,

after, you know, Zeus's wife. And then they went

and looked it up, and apparently somebody had

a copyright on Hera. I don't know how that could

be. You know, but somebody had copyrighted Hera,

and so we can't use it. But I was still, I said,

well, wait a minute now. What are we going to

do here? I said, I liked Hera. I said, well,

what we need here is He -Man, Well, obviously,

at one point I suggested Shira and the Mistresses

of the Universe. And they put me over the head

with a fish and said, stop it. It's not going

to be called. I remember you, I think you told

that story on one of the commentaries. Yes, I've

told them hundreds of times. So I know them by

heart. But what I wanted was something that conveyed

a godlike power. and a female. And at the time,

I just happened to be reading some Egyptian.

I'm big on mythology, and I was reading some

Egyptian mythology. And I said, well, Laura is

the name, kind of the generic name for God in

Egyptian mythology. I said, and I said, well,

I don't know. And it sounds kind of like Hera.

I said, but it's She -Ra, and it kind of has

a musical sound to it. Now, I have to say that

my niece's name is She -Ra, but she was not named

after the show. And it's spelled differently,

but it's pronounced the same. And everybody thinks

that I named the show after her, especially her.

But I really didn't, because this was before

she was born. Don't tell anyone. I wanted to

scotch that story for my family, if they're listening.

You know, they'll know. It's She -Ra. It just

came up with, you know, a female god, She -Ra.

And, you know, I like the name. The name was

better than Hera. And the problem with us, again,

we couldn't use the sword. We had to just have

her make it turn into ropes and stuff like that.

The background on the other characters, Glimmer,

Frosta, and the oh -so -horrible Casta Stella,

what a name that was. We just used to call her

Casta. We said, we're never going to call her

Casta Stella. That's too stupid. So we just had

people refer to her as Casta in the scripts.

And the biggest background was... And the biggest

thing was she started out as an enemy. She started

out as Adora, who hated the rebels. And, of course,

this was also in the years when Star Wars showed

its face and changed the nature of movies forever.

And, of course, I stole that. Geniuses borrow,

right? Good writers just steal. We don't borrow.

We steal right at it. So I said, okay, I'm going

to make them the Great Rebellion. I said, we're

going to call them the Great Rebellion. We didn't

call them the Great Rebellion. And I said, because

on Eternia, He -Man and his group are in control.

The king runs Eternia, and it's his skeletor

that's giving him trouble. You know, on Etheria,

it was totally changed. It was a torn planet,

and it was magic versus science. more technology

really um that made that show run i said so they

got to be the underdog they got to be trying

to take back their world rather than he man who's

just really protecting his world you know uh

and then you know then we had to go then i had

to work out the whole thing of how do you have

a sister that we never managed to mention in

130 episodes that even his parents never said

anything about you know well it all worked out

right yeah If you've got magic to work with,

you can work anything out. That's the beauty

of fantasy. If you have magic with it, you can

say, this is magic. And it's just as good as

saying stem cells will cure Alzheimer's, you

know, as to say, like, okay, cast a spell, it

can cure Alzheimer's. If you cast a spell, it

will be over, and you can think again. So there

was no pulling me to a new project or really

creating a backstory. And the reason for that

is because we were doing another 65 -episode

show. And 65 episodes is a lot. We had to get

everything in place. What I did do that was not

much done with He -Man is that we learned a lot

on He -Man. We learned a lot how to do a show

like that better. And so the She -Ra show could

be better still. And it could be for girls. But

there were a lot of female He -Man fans as well.

Yeah. Which the same, by the way, goes for Beast

Warrior. Oh, yes. We'll get into that. Quick

story. Bob Budiansky, who is an editor at Marvel

Comics, wrote most of the backstory for the early

Transformers line over a Thanksgiving weekend

in 1983. And this guy is still amazed at the

popularity of the stuff that he wrote way back

then. How do you feel about the ongoing wave

of nostalgia for He -Man? Ooh, got me another

job on the new He -Man. I love it. If they want

me to do a feature movie on He -Man, then I'll

be really happy about the nostalgia for He -Man.

I keep hearing rumors about that, too. Huh? I

keep hearing rumors about that He -Man movie.

Oh, there's always rumors about a He -Man movie,

but they made one, and it bombed terribly because

it was badly written, although it was well done

production -wise. And I was working for him as

well, Gary Goddard, who directed the movie. at

the time. You didn't have anything to do with

the movie? Only that I was working for, he directed

and produced and directed the movie. The He -Man

movie. If they had just stuck a little bit closer.

I said, wait a minute, he obviously didn't watch

the show, the writer. I don't think he ever watched

the thing, the episode. He did something else.

He was doing Conan, you know? Yeah. I believe

Goddard had mentioned on the commentary for that

Masters of the Universe DVD, he mentioned that

he was a big Jack Kirby fan, and most of the

characters in that movie are based off of Fourth

World characters and has nothing to do with He

-Man whatsoever, other than putting in, like,

Gray Skull and the sword and all that stuff.

Yeah, there was some of it. I thought Frank Ligella

was a great Skeletor. Oh, yeah, he was. But Dolph

Lundgren, I mean, he's not, you know, poor Dolph.

I mean, you know, he's not the worst actor in

the world, but at that time he was. Dolph was

this horrible mullet. Why don't you give it the

worst actor in the world? People forget Courtney

Cox was in that movie. Oh, yeah, that's right.

She was the teenage girl in that movie. She's

a cougar. It's always nice to have people like

what you did. I don't scream at people who say,

oh, tell me something about He -Man, because

I really loved it when I was a kid. I say, great,

if you loved it as a kid, you love my writing.

What am I going to say to you? You're an idiot

for loving my writing. That would be dumb of

me. If you like what I wrote and it gave you

pleasure and you remember it to this day, great,

thank you. That doesn't stain anything bad about

me, especially given the animation we had on

the old He -Man. Almost nothing moved. All the

more moving than Star Trek did. On Star Trek

you could see nothing moving at any point in

time. Just their mouth kind of moved a little.

But the nostalgia is great for it, you know.

And I don't get, like, over -the -top fans anymore.

They're all grown up and, you know, they're not

little kids. But we had a lot of kid fans, and

the kid fans I always was happy to speak to.

And I still have He -Man fans trying to befriend

me on Facebook. And if I can take a moment for

a personal ad that all people have, fan and friend

both start with an F, but they're not the same

thing. If I don't know you, you're not my friend.

You may be a fan of E -Man, but that does not

make you my friend. Did you set up a fan page?

Some of the writers have fan pages and friend

pages, and they will fan their fans and friends.

They keep those two separate, I should say. Yeah,

of course they do, you know, but I just go on

Facebook to, you know, upload pictures that my

relatives can see, you know, going to weddings

and stuff like that. So, you know, I mean, I'll

talk, people message me over there, but, you

know, and I'll, usually I'll send one message

back saying thank you, you know, and explaining

that, you know, if I let everybody that... was

a He -Man fan on the page, I couldn't find anything

on the page. Yeah, you'd have thousands. I know

Christy Marks has two separate ones, one for

fans and one for friends. I think she calls it

Christy's Playhouse. Speaking of Christy, she

had mentioned that she had gotten the head writer

position for Jem in the holograms because the

studio wanted a woman to write for the girls'

toy line. What were the considerations in putting

a man or men in charge of writing She -Ra? Well,

for one thing, we didn't have any female writers

on staff at that time. We had plenty of them

who wrote for us as freelancers, because you

can't do 65 episodes yourself, no matter how

great you are. Right. And we had a lot of, like,

Dorothy Fontana from Star Trek. I mean, yes.

She wrote The Origin of Cringer, which was a

magnificent story. Dorothy, she's gold -plated

stuff. I like writing women. I do like writing

women. I have a lot of experience writing. I

wrote a novella, which I never got published,

but it was about a female warrior. It's a fantasy

novella called Shadow of Windchimes. Never did

get it. I think it doesn't really matter whether

you're a man or a woman. It matters whether you

can write, and you can kind of feel what people

feel. Nobody in Mattel said, well, we'd like

a woman writer to do it. If they had had a woman

writer there, maybe she would have done it. But

actually, it was just me, Robbie London, Roby

Gorin. We only had about four or five writers.

And that was it. And, you know, they were going

to do it. It's dumb to go and hire somebody else

to be like a story editor. Like, they never ever

gave me a story editor thing, although I kind

of worked. I did the job of a story editor on

He -Man. But I just did it for my own satisfaction

because I certainly didn't get the money that

a story editor would get for the same position.

Is that where the big books come from? Huh? Is

that where the big bucks come in? Putting big

bucks in anything with Filmation is just totally

wrong. They never had big bucks because every

penny Lou made went back into the company. Which

is why he was my best boss ever, Lou Scheimer.

He treated everyone like they were family. He

was just marvelous to work for. But pay, it wasn't

a lot of pay. Even for the story, you didn't

get the big bucks on a filmmation show because

they just couldn't afford to pay it and make

65 episodes in a year. It just was an impossibility

unless some millionaire or gazillionaire had

come along and given Lou $20 million. I was always

writing as if somebody had done that. Because

all of my scripts would usually get... The biggest

thing on my scripts would not be, well, this

line is no good. It would be dollar signs. The

other one would always be saying, Larry, this

is a terrific script, but we can't do it. There's

no way we can do this. It's too expensive. You've

got to cut these shots down. You can't have this

three -dimensional shot. I just had to learn

that it's when you're doing a limited animation

show, especially on a short budget, there's only

so much you can get away with. We learned on

the course of He -Man how to get away with it

really well, how to make strength out of our

weaknesses and how to apply it. And what you

liked about the show wasn't the animation. It

was the story and the characters. That's simply

it. You might not have realized that at the time.

You know, who does? When you're a kid, you just

look and say, oh, that's neat, you know. For

the writers, it's got to be, okay, I told a good

story, and I gave you some characters to work

with, and that's why at the end of the first

season of He -Man, I cataloged every episode

and every character that was in it and said,

here's who we're bringing back, and here's who

we're not bringing back. That's a story editor

job. I wasn't getting paid for it. Eventually,

I probably would have moved to producer, but

I left Filmation after the first year of She

-Ra. Besides... Besides cartoons, what were you

going to say, Larry? We got bucks. We got more

money. I was getting like three times more money

than I was getting at formation. Ah, that's always

good. Besides cartoons... Yeah, go ahead. I was

going to say, besides cartoons, our podcasts

also mostly revolve around Transformers, so let's

get into some Beast Wars stuff. How did you get

involved with Beast Wars? Okay, that would be

Chris Brough. Chris Brough, was the owner of

Alliance Mainframe Entertainment, and the show

was a Mainframe Alliance. There was some kind

of a thing there, and now they're apparently

Rainmaker Alliance. But Chris was an executive

on that show, and they were the ones who did

Reboot before Beast Wars. They were the first

guys. They really brought CGI to television.

I don't know if there's going to be some. No

one ever kind of mentions that. They were the

reboot. Remember reboot? Yeah. Remember reboot?

Yep. Oh, yeah. Very early CGI stuff. Reboot was

fantastic. So when they talked to us, Bob Forward

and I, they wanted both of us. For some reason,

they thought we were a team. And we had to disavow

them. We never actually wrote together, Bob and

I. Once we did on Transformers Animated. But

at the time, we weren't a team, but we both were

with the same agent. So she was talking to the

same agent, and she called and said, hey, there's

a new Transformers series going. What do you

guys think? And I have to say, what we said is,

oh, are you kidding? Transformers? We hate Transformers.

I know I shouldn't be saying this to a bunch

of Transformers fans. But really, it didn't sing

to either of us. But, you know, we were writers

and we were writers in need of a job. So we said,

well, if he wants to come down, and he was up

in Vancouver, Canada, and he's coming to L .A.

and he wants to meet with you guys and tell you,

you know, what this new show is and, you know,

see if you guys want to work on it. So, you know,

we're always willing to take a meeting. You know,

always willing. Why not? You get a free lunch

for one thing, you know, and if you drink a little,

you get a couple of beers as well. You know,

any writer would go out for a beer and a couple

of, you know, something to eat. Free beer. And

talk about getting a job. We loved to do that,

you know. I did it for Disney a lot, and I never

had any intention of working for Disney. I spent

a lot of money on beer. And a lot of the guys

would say, oh, we know you don't want to work

on it, but you might as well have lunch. Okay.

Anyway, we had lunch with Chris, and Chris was

a very dynamic guy. Very nice guy. And he said,

he said, Reboot was a success for us. He said,

he said, but frankly, he said, the stories sucked.

He said, they weren't, he said, the stories,

they just, they didn't hold water. He said, if

we had better stories, he said, I think the series

would be on the air. He says, you two are, kind

of have a reputation as the best story guys in

town. You know, I don't know if that's true or

not, but that was his idea. We left him with

that idea that, yes, in fact, we were involved.

So we said, okay. So he sat down and he told

us about Beast Wars and Hasbro and all this stuff.

And, you know, and we said, well, let us think

about it. And, you know, we'll think about it.

And he said, okay. So he went back to Canada

and Bob and I talked about it. And then he called

our agent, right? And he made us literally the

offer you can't refuse. I mean, he made us an

offer that no cartoon writer was getting at that

time at all, except maybe Jeff Scott, who was

CBS's main kid. They were paying him good, and

Mark Evanier, they always were paying Mark well.

But, you know. We weren't getting bucks like

this. I mean, it was a ridiculous price, and

it was literally a price we couldn't turn down.

This is nuts. This is like ten times what I made

a filmation. It was more than I was actually

making at Beast Wars. I mean, on Babylon 5. Wow.

I said, wow. I said, that's something, you know.

Because we were being paid as both story editors

and writers. So we would get quite a large amount

of money for writing a script. They paid well.

They paid well all down the line to the writers.

We got more than anybody else, but the other

ones were still getting paid over scale. Of course,

Reboot, they had a lot of money at the time,

and I guess they didn't care. We hoped that they

never said, oh, jeez, they don't know they're

paying us as much. We've got suckers here. We've

got to go for it, you know. So we had to do it.

The money was good. And we liked Chris a lot.

Now, they were in Vancouver as well. Now, we

weren't going to move to Vancouver, but they

didn't expect us to move to Vancouver. We had

to make sure we were getting paid American money.

Of course, at that time, American money was worth

more than Canadian. Today, you'd rather be paid

in Canadian money. But then it said you have

to be American. And we went to work on it. And

that was it. That's how we got involved with

it. We really literally, I mean, we knew of the

Transformers. We just had never watched the show

much. So we went out looking for, you know, how

are we going to do this show? What's this show

all about? And for me, it came from a comic.

But it was not Bob's. Bob actually was the editor,

but it was Simon Furman who wrote the Transformers

comic books. I found that whole line of G2 that

he did. And it was like about 13 episodes. And

it was all sitting there in a comic book store

for the cover price. I said, you're kidding me.

I'll buy them all. I took the whole set. And

I took it home. I said, this is good. That was

getting for like 65 cents a piece, you know,

comic book. And I said, wow, this was great.

And I looked in there and I said, wow, this is

how we need to do the show. And now this was,

this was G, these were G, G two transformers,

you know, often for one beast wars characters,

but reading the comic, you just totally forgot.

They were robots. You just met Simon. That Simon

is the writer. He gave optimists, personality

that was really multi -layered. And I said, this

is what we've got to do. We've got to play these

characters. They're warriors. They're soldiers.

They're in the biggest war ever, and they're

real soldiers. They can hurt, and they can feel

pain. They can do all that stuff. I got all that

out of Simon's thing. You brought Simon Furman

in at the end of the season run, right? Because

he's credited as a writer. Yes. That's right,

he is. He wrote one of the season three episodes.

Yeah, Nemesis, two -parter. Yeah. Yeah, we wanted,

Simon just inspired us so much that, you know,

also he knew all about G1, and he was a big Transformers

fan, and still is. He knew all this stuff, and

the second guy that got us into it was Benson

Yee. Ben Yee, who started the Beast Wars site,

and stuff on that. So that got us into it, and

we suddenly started to get, besides the money,

we started to get really excited about how we

could do this story. And basically, Chris was

telling us, you can do what you want. We have

to go to Cincinnati and speak with Hasbro about

it. But other than that, you can do anything

you want. And anything you want is exactly what

a writer. likes to hear yeah yeah i'm gonna go

i'm gonna go crazy i'm gonna go crazy you know

so then bob and i went to you know to write the

bible and that kind of stuff uh that's how i

got involved first with these wars um If there's

another question, I'll give you another answer.

Yeah, well, we've seen you described as both

a writer and an executive story editor for Beast

Wars. Now, is that just you pulling double duty,

or was there a promotion on there somewhere?

Basically, how do the two roles differ? The two

roles don't differ much. A story editor is a

writer. And the thing is, we didn't get a promotion.

That's the one thing we couldn't get was the

promotion. And that was not because they didn't

like us, because we certainly gave them a show

that hit the ground running and was a pretty

big success. It's a Canadian law that you can't

have a producer on a show who's not Canadian.

Really? Yes. I don't know if that law is still

in effect. Up in Canada. It may not be. That

might have been changed. But at that time, you

just couldn't get an American producer, a British

producer. It had to be a Canadian producer. You

could be a story editor, executive story editor,

as high as you could go. So we started the show

as the story editors. The next year, we became

the story editors because it's a logic. because

that's how the hierarchy works. You get promoted

the next year to the executive story editor,

which means you're still doing the same job.

You're still a writer. The only difference between

a writer on a show and an executive story editor

is the executive story editor is working both

on his or her own stories and everybody else

that's coming there. And what you do as a story

editor is you make sure that the tone of the

show is right, the dialogue is right. The guy's

got his information straight. The guy's doing

everything he can with screen, with the scenes.

And that gets you ready for the next step would

be producer. Now, you'd still be doing the same

job as producer. There's no difference between

your writing, except you're, again, writing on

everybody. We wrote on everybody's scripts. In

the best of worlds, like with Len Wein, You know,

you do one day of story editing with Len Wein

and you've got a script because I knew Len could

write a script that way. And I trusted him from

previous shows. I hired my friends. Bob fired

his friends to write. Of course, we also had

to have some Canadian writers on the show. And

they came later on with people. So there were

some people we gave a start to that I don't think

have gone. very far because the start wasn't

very good. They got their first credit off of

it and we fixed what was wrong. Then, so there's

no responsibility changing when you become a

story editor or even when you become a producer.

As a matter of fact, I don't think there's even,

there is a story editor, a friend of mine is

a story editor on Warehouse 13. But he's like

the only one I know of. Most people get a producer's

deal. And I'm sure if Warehouse 13, which seems

to be doing well, goes to next year, he will

be a producer. If Bob and I could have got a

producer credit, which they would have given

us, I think, without that law. Right. They did

give us some more money. That's always good.

Yeah, money is good. You've said that you weren't

involved in the earlier Transformers series,

so how did you come up with the whole idea of

using the Generation 1 Transformers in the crashed

Ark in Season 2? This is such a long story, I

don't even know if we have the time to get it

in. Okay. How many questions you got? Of course,

I think my family expects me to be out here by

6. Anyway. Yeah, I'll give you the fast version.

That all came about by us going on the Transformers

website. Because once we started working on this

show, I said, well, I want to know a little more

about it. So we go and do what we always do.

We go on everything. Well, there was no Google

at that time, but I Googled it. And I said, boy,

we're bucking like this cannon is ridiculous.

You know, there's like, I don't know, a thousand

Transformers. There seems to be one popping out

of every wall, you know, every place. I said,

you know, we need somebody on this. And there

was also beginning the buzz of this is going

to be terrible. This is going to make every Transformers

fan totally angry. You know, you're never doing

things right. You know, this will never work.

That came later. We started to talk to people,

and then at one point, I don't know, Ben became

like a friend of ours, and he was giving us archives

on the old Transformers show. So we actually

had the old archives that he had spent a lot

of time on doing, and we'd look at this, and

it was like every show that the Transformers

had ever done, even some of the Japanese stuff,

not just the American stuff. So it was the fans

that got us into G1. And, again, I got more interested

in through Simon's comic book that did the G2

turnover. And I got an idea out of that. And

then Bob got a couple ideas from that. And then

we started to talk about it. And, you know, it

was a move that we felt Hasbro didn't like it.

Which was really weird. They were our biggest...

problem came from Hasbro with this. They said,

well, we're not trying to sell old G1 toys. We

want these boys' toys. So it has to be these

boys' characters. Now, there was one guy on Hasbro.

He wasn't a high executive. He was kind of an

intern. And he also was a walking encyclopedia

of Transformers. he's one of those guys that

grew up on transformers and so he went and got

his dream job working for hasbro which i would

never i would never claim as my dream job but

i wasn't working for hasbro i was working for

mainframe right that meant i could call them

the head of hasbro stupid name oh the terrible

names that she never realized i was calling her

anyway you know that um the uh The whole tie

-in, regardless of what Hasbro felt at the time,

to us fans, that was just genius. I mean, just

being able to go back and tie it into the current

work of Beast Wars. In Season 1, even though

the tie -in was already kind of made a little

bit, but we never knew that it was actually Planet

Earth, how did the whole making it Planet Earth

storyline come about? Like, how did you guys...

make the decision process to say, oh, hey, this

is Earth now? Well, again, we didn't really have

that power. We didn't have the power to make

that decision. That decision had to be made by

Hasbro. So they were balking at it, right? And

the one guy on the panel there that really loved

the G1 Transformers, he would say, no, this is

good because it ties it in with the old show,

and then maybe we can bring back the old show.

Well, we don't know what happened there. They

brought back movies even better. Once we just

said the name Starscream, I forget what episode

we used that in, but we said something about

Starscream. Or no, we just put one of the guys

up in Canada, put Starscream into a shot of kind

of a flashback or a dream sequence. I think it

was in mine. I'm big on dream sequences. I think

it was in one of my episodes. And the cheater

was having his dream. Let's put someone in there.

And someone said, yeah, Starscream. He was real

popular, you know, so let's put Starscream in

there. And once people said, they said, was that

Starscream? Holy crap, this is really Transformers.

You know? And that's what started it. It started

a ball rolling. When we first did this, they

said, it's a prehistoric planet. There's no humans

on it. There's nothing there but some animals,

you know, and the two Transformers sides. But

it's not planet Earth. It couldn't be, right?

It had two moons. This is where the genius comes

in on us, you know. When we were trying to get

this in, we said, okay, listen, you know, if

it turns out that it's not, we said, all right,

it's not Earth. You've told us it's not Earth.

It's not Earth. But that didn't change the fact

that Cybertron was Cybertron in the old series.

And that's where it came from. So we kind of

like, it was really, I think we did a superb

job of kind of just finessing them into like,

and then we'd show them like the stuff on the

board. Look, people are screaming all over the

place. Oh, now, who are we going to see next?

Let's get this guy in. Now, of course, they didn't

want that. Again, they were trying to sell these

toys. Right. So, and then, finally. After all

this going back and forth on this stuff, and

this was about three or four episodes already

done and in, you know, somebody said to us, said,

oh, well, let's make it Earth. You know, we said,

oh, God, it's going to save us so much trouble

if you had just said that last time. This is

Earth. Now, once we got to this is Earth, right,

it was logical that the arc was there. You know,

it was just logical. You know, it made sense

that the arc was there, and that's how we got

it in. It was less a decision than a finessing

and a kind of an outcry from the people that

say, we want our own, we love these new Transformers,

but we want to see the old ones too. And we have

to blow up a moon. Yeah, and you had to blow

up a moon. Yes, that's right. We put up two moons.

We said, listen, if it turns out that you want

to make it Earth, we'll blow up one moon. That's

what I did. I didn't tell them I was going to

kill Optimus at the same time. I got a lot of

problems with that, believe me. Nice. Well, we

like to hear it when voice actors have action

figures from all of their characters that they

have given their voices to. But did you collect

action figures from the Beast Wars line? No,

usually they give them to you. But they didn't

give us... They gave us a couple of figures,

but they didn't give us much. All the figures

went to, this is the same on He -Man, by the

way. The people who got the action figures were

the artists, because they had to draw them. They

figured, oh, the writers don't need the action

figures, you know. Of course they do. Sometimes

they'd give us some cast -offs, like when we

went to Hasbro. We'd go to Hasbro like once a

year. to see how things are going. So they didn't

really send us a whole lot of Beast Wars figures.

I think I got a couple sitting around here somewhere.

The interview that you and Bob did on the Beast

Wars DVDs, the one that Bob did, for some strange

reason, there was an Optimal Optimist sitting

next to him in the interview that he did for

Bob Forward. I don't know if that was a prop

or if that was actually his. it probably was

his see because bob liked to get that bob like

that stuff you know i like them for for you know

i like them for staging scenes you know just

kind of like mapping out your scene by using

the toys you're kind of playing with toys aren't

you and also getting making money and playing

with toys fun that's what i would do that was

fun but And they're good to have, but everything

that needs to be gotten right on the figures

has to do with the artists and not the writers.

I will say on the new He -Man, they sent me a

whole box of figures, which is now in storage

in their original boxes. It's a collector. That's

my legacy. Did you get a chance to talk with

any of the voice actors about their roles as

you had written them, or was there like a strict

division between writers and actors? Well, the

thing is, we weren't there. We were here in Los

Angeles. They were up in Vancouver. That's right,

yeah. So there was not really a lot of stuff.

We spoke to the voice actors the year we went

to the BotCon. Oh, after that, yeah. I couldn't

believe that guy. That's an interview we would

have been dying to get. Yeah. I mean, Scott would

basically be talking to himself all day. You

know, these things that was all his characters.

And he could do it. He could just go in and out

of them like crazy. I mean, voice actors make

you in cartoons. I mean, if you don't have good

voice actors, you're dead in cartoons. And we

had an excellent, you know, not everybody, but

most everybody was really excellent on Beast

Wars, where the voices were concerned. I mean,

really, they were great. And Scott could do it

all. You know, and Alec Willis just did Tarantulas.

He did Tarantulas. He did that one voice, you

know. And Venus Terso did My Favorite Black Arachnid

Lady. And that's half of why there are shrines

to black arachne up on the internet all over

the place. That was great for 12 -year -old boys

at the time. And a couple of the adults as well.

Yeah. Although the writing chores changed hands

between Beast Wars and Beast Machines, would

you care to speculate a bit and tell us what

you would have done differently if you had continued

with the franchise as far as going from Beast

Wars to the new series, Beast Machines? Well,

first of all, they never asked us to work on

Beast Machines. Ever. Okay. We were never considered

for Beast Machines, and that was because the

original Beast Wars was syndicated. Beast Machines

was a network show. And the network's saying,

well, we can't have these guys that are syndicated.

We have our own guys, both of whom, by the way,

are friends of ours, Bob Skier and Marty Eisenberg.

Just work for the guy. I can't remember his name.

I mean, they were acquaintances of ours. You

know, they were friends of ours. And, you know,

we had nothing against them. They didn't come

looking for our jobs. They had done Godzilla,

which was a big hit for Fox cartoons. So they

said, well, let's get Bob and Marty to do this,

you know. Now, we've been working on Beast Wars

now for two years, and, you know, we could have.

worked on it, again, if they wanted us, but they

didn't want us. There was no even negotiation

or even idea. Unfortunately, you know, they helmed

the sinking ship. So it kind of worked out. You

know, it's a little shameful out there. But,

you know... They just, and I know that once you

get in the network vein, it's very, very hard

to get something good out of it because they

have a hundred things they don't want you to

do and very little idea of what they do want

you to do. So writing for Beast Machines would

have been, like, I think, agony for us because

it was not our characters. It was not our guys.

They were changing. We had already changed them

from... to their original Beast Wars, to Fusors,

to Transistors, or whatever we call them. I don't

know. Transmetals. Transmetals, right? Transmetals.

I said, you know, and then, so now they're going

to be Beast Machines. I said, well, so now you're

back to the original Transformers, where you

have an animal turning into cars, right? We wouldn't

have done it. What we would have liked to have

done, had we stayed on there, if they wanted

to do another show, was to take them back to

Cybertron with Megatron in pursuit of them. And

eventually get back to Cybertron itself, because

there was a lot going on on Cybertron that was

happening because it had happened in Beast Wars,

and they had changed the timeline. Optimus Primal's

head shot off by Megatron. A lot had changed

on the Cybertron because of that. Our dream was

to go back to Cybertron and really have them

in space. We thought they worked better in space

than they did on Planet Bound. you know, they

could go in anywhere in space and we could put

them off against a lot of stuff. That was the

idea we had. But, I mean, once we knew that we

were not going to work on it, we just stopped,

you know, getting any ideas because it was not

going to be our stuff, so we didn't care. Not

that we didn't care about you guys. We cared

about the fans, but, you know, we just didn't

care about Fox and what they wanted to do because

they didn't even get a shot to write it. And,

consequently, You know, Bob and Marty got castigated

by Beast Wars fans. They're poor guys. I mean,

they got the stuff that we got when we first

started Beast Wars. But worse, because now everybody

liked Beast Wars, and they didn't want to change

to this next incarnation. I never saw it. I never

even seen a single episode of Beast Machines.

Now, see, I love Beast Machines. I love Beast

Wars, but I also – I never – because I see it

as – I know you guys had stopped at season three

of Beast Wars and they brought in Marty and Bob.

But I see it as one whole continuous story. That's

just me personally. And I absolutely love Beast

Machines. I love both series. Personally, I think

that the writing for Beast Wars was a lot better

than the writing for Beast Machines. Not because

Beast Machines wasn't a good story. It's a very

good story arc. It's a nice couple of seasons

story arc. But in many places, the sequential

storytelling was just off. It didn't work very

well. it's hard to tell what's going on in some

scenes and things are hard to follow or they

don't make sense from moment to moment. I mean,

if you hadn't seen it yourself, you probably,

you know, have no idea. But I mean, if you had

seen it, you probably could have picked it out

right away. Yeah, I would say so. I mean, compared

to your stuff. No original family. Easy. Yeah,

you can see stuff like that. I mean, it's not

really Barbara and Marty's fault. It's more the

point there's too many hands in the pot on a

network show. And everybody thinks that they

have the greatest idea ever. And then the toy

company is going to come after you with what

they want, and they have no idea whatsoever of

how to make a show. Right, right. Well, to change

gears a bit... You survive a toy company. You

don't really work for them. You survive them.

To persevere. Worst business in the world. They'll

cut you throat in a minute. I'm almost tempted

to stick with that concept for a minute. Yeah,

changing gears. The animated series that you

wrote for usually had a lot of other writers

each doing their own episodes, like taking He

-Man, for example. Was there any communication

between the writers in order to help continuity

or focus characters? Yes. It was with us. We

would take pictures, again, doing the story editor's

job. We were not getting paid for it. But we

were taking pictures from writers, and we would

work back and forth with the writers, with the

freelance writers. That's what a story editor

does. But we were staff writers, and staff writers

do that as well. They didn't like us talking

to the artists at the filmmation. They thought

we were fooling around too much and not working,

that we should be at our desks. And we liked

talking to the artists. Because art is like a

different thing from the writing. Were you all

in the same building? Yes. That was the beauty

of working for Filmation. It was a complete animation

company in one building. Wow. And it was the

only one left in America. Even Disney wasn't

doing animation that way. I had always just assumed

they shipped it overseas to be done or something.

No, none of the Filmation stuff was shipped overseas.

It was all on the shelves. Wow. That was one

of the beauties about it. That was one of the

beauties about it. We learned everything about

animation and Filmation. We learned about recording.

We learned about voiceover. We learned about

in -betweeners and containers. We learned it

all. And we'd go with them. um you know and say

okay here's what i want here can you do that

can you draw we love talking to the artists because

i can do this you know and then they see they

could they could sneak stuff in there that we

couldn't sneak in because we do communicate between

writers but you know once once the script is

done you're right you're you're off and you're

on the next script there's not a lot of time

to sit around and talk in the way we used to

do things uh 30 years ago What is the difference

in writing for animation versus writing for live

action, such as what you did with the Babylon

5 series? And follow up, is it just a subject

matter that changes from like kid stuff to more

engaging? Well, it's just not for kids. So there's

kind of an art to writing for kids where you

don't give them too much to handle. Now, I have

a different take on it because I... I kind of

write cartoons like they're live action, and

I consider them not kid shows but family shows.

I consider that there's a six -year -old kid

watching He -Man, and his dad may be sitting

next to him watching with him, which was the

case in a lot of... We had a lot of... Actually,

34 % of our audience who did a poll one time

were adults. Mainly those were college students,

though. But they were older adults, too. And

on Beast Wars, we had a lot of people that were...

Because we did some stuff on Beast Wars that

was pretty tough for kids, like killing Dinobot

and every other guy. We killed almost every other

guy in Beast Wars. And that's what Bob wanted

to give. Bob said, I want to go out with us having

completed as much as we could of our story and

give it a signature closing, which he did. Very

good. He's a very, very good forward. We had

blamed Simon Furman for killing everybody off.

That tends to be a signature. It wasn't Simon.

This is the thing about animated cartoon writers

who write action shows. We're just dying to kill

somebody because we never could do it before.

They never would let us. But I mean, my most

vivid memory of Beast Wars is getting a letter

from a guy who had watched Code of Hero with

his kid. And the kid just burst into tears at

the end of it. You know, I mean, the kid was

like, oh, he said, yeah, he's talking about his

dad. And he said, the guy said, one, that I was

kind of mad at you guys. And then I, he said,

then he had this talk with his son about people

live and people die, you know, which, you know,

as parents, I don't know if you guys are parents,

but I'm a parent. If this is a talk you should

have with your child at some point, you know,

and that this lent itself to that. I thought

that was, I said, okay, we're really doing something

good here. If they can watch that together. And

at the end, the kid was okay. He said, could

we watch it again, Dad? You know? But really,

Code of Hero was, that was, to me, the best episode

of Beast Wars was Code of Hero. And it was great.

That's also because Bob directed that as well.

Yes, he did. I had no interest in directing.

I can't even get up that early in the morning.

I'm strictly a writer. Since we brought up Dinobot's

death, would you like to give us any behind -the

-scenes info on the rejected Dark Glass script,

where supposedly he was supposed to come back

to life? Yeah, I knew you were going to answer

that. Everyone asked that question. That was

the famous Dark Glass controversy. What happened

is that the first draft of Christie's script,

we just simply didn't like the script. People

said, oh, they censored it because it was too

dark for kids. No, sometimes, and I hired Christy

Marks in a minute. Every show I ever worked on,

I hired her for, I believe, if she wasn't, in

fact, working on her own show at the time. And

she's given me jobs a couple of times. So, you

know, Christy is a great writer, but on that

script particularly. It just didn't work. The

script just didn't work. And you just don't want

to put on a script that works because everybody

hates you for it. On the other hand, that meant

she had to go back. We paid her for the story

and I think the first draft. And I said, come

up with something else because there's no amount

of work on the script that's going to fix it.

It's just an instinct that you have that you

know. Often they'd go on, he used to say there's

two kinds of scripts, producible and unproducible.

Dark Glass was an unproducible script, it wouldn't

have worked. So she had to come back, and what

did she come back with? She came back with Transmutate,

which is my second favorite story on these ones.

That story, that makes me cry. That story was

very deep. Transmute, it's a very, very disturbing

story. When you look at it, it's like an abused

child story, you know. That was a ten times better

script than Dark Glass ever was, you know. And

if we had done Dark Glass, she wouldn't have

wrote Transmute. She wouldn't have written that

script out of it. And I think it's one of the

best things she's ever written. Hire Christy

Marks out there, people. You don't have to hire

me. I've got plenty of money. But hire Christy.

What is your favorite character type to write

for? Heroes, villains, or is there another type

of character that you like better? Who gets the

best lines? Well, let me tell you who my least

favorite character is in He -Man. It's He -Man.

Okay. It's He -Man, yeah. You know, the funny

thing is that I don't really, I like heroes'

sidekicks. Orko. Orko? Oh, no, Orko. You said

heroes' sidekicks. You said heroes' sidekicks,

and I said Orko. Yeah, Orko. Well, Orko, you

know, I wrote a lot of Orko stories. And when

I went to work for the new He -Man. They said,

we want you to do an Orko story. And I said,

oh, shit, I knew they were going to do that.

Oddly enough, I really enjoyed writing that story

for the new He -Man, the Orko story. I like weird

characters, and Orko was weird. And he's funny

weird. See, I came back to the comedy. He was

funny weird. And you could do things that Orko

couldn't do with anybody else. So I really did.

At first, I didn't like him because he was the

kid character. Because every filmmation show

has a kid character. I don't like kid characters.

I hate kid characters. I'd like to blow them

all up. It's not that I don't like kids. I just

don't like kid characters in action shows. Because

they're getting away. And I'm not that crazy

about heroes, you know. Villains are always great

to write for because you can bring your dark

side out and write all this cool stuff for the

villain. You can kind of get all that stuff out

of you. But heroes, where do you go? I mean,

you can't get your good stuff out there by writing

for heroes. It just doesn't connect. It's just

a hero. He's a hero, you know. I also wrote at

one time for the Superman cartoon show. That

was very hard because what do you do to Superman?

That was the hardest character I ever wrote for,

because you have to figure out, how do I defeat

Superman? And there's only two ways, as far as

I can see. You have a character that uses magic,

and has a character that has Lois Lane kidnapped.

Those are the two things. On Kryptonite, there's

a third of Kryptonite, but I didn't want to go

to Kryptonite on Superman. So I did two shows

on Superman, which, by the way, when it came

out, we called it Adequate Man. The animation

is really bad. Anyway, I like villains, and I

like odd characters, and I happen to like sidekicks

a lot. I really do like sidekicks. You might

say I like Poncho better than I like Sisko, like

in Zorro. In Sisko Kid, rather. I like funny

characters. I still have that idea that I'm kind

of funny, and I like to do some funny stuff.

But, you know, it's just a character that you

can... Obviously, Tarantulas was my favorite

character, which is kind of an odd pick, because

he's a total sociopath. But he was the only guy

on Beast Wars that actually knew what was going

on. I said, he's the only guy that knows the

actual story. That was never really fully told

because I just didn't have the time to do it

at the end of the season. If only he would have

expositioned a little more. In the third season,

we were only allowed to write two scripts each

because we were more expensive than the other

writers. And also, they just didn't want us to

write too much on it. We wrote a lot in the first

and second season. And of course, since we were

rewriting, we were kind of rewriting scripts

that didn't work. So we kind of wrote it, but

we didn't put our names on it. And yeah, that's

about it. We just got a couple more questions,

so we're almost done. As a writer, what's the

weirdest thing that has ever happened to you?

Oh, I don't know. The weirdest thing that's ever

happened? No, I don't really know. I don't think

anything weird has happened to me that has to

do with my writing. Let's try something else.

Have you ever been asked to write something that

you didn't want to do? Oh, sure. But if I'm asked

to write something I don't want to do, I don't

do it. Well, besides Disney. Okay, I did take

the money on Transformers, that's true. But if

I write something I really don't want to do,

I don't think I could be good at it. I need to

have a passion for it. And so what happens, if

it's something, it's true, neither Bob nor I

wanted to do Transformers. And we started with

it. What we did was turn it around to a point

where we could make it ours. And so we did this.

And they gave us that opportunity by saying,

okay, all you've got to do is have these, you

know, these guys turn the thing, and then you

have to make up everything else, you know. And

making everything else up, since we didn't have

to know anything, we didn't have to know anything

about the old. series to write Beast Wars. Dave

Hasbro said that. They didn't give us any help

there, except for Tony. That was the Transformers

guy. So if you get something and you want the

money or you need the money, you make it your

own, and that's the only way it'll happen to

you. But weird stuff, we're home all the time

writing. Nothing weird happens to us. So Mickey

Mouse never made you an offer that you couldn't

refuse? Oh, yeah. Yes. No, Mickey Mouse. Yeah,

they wanted me to write Mickey Mouse mysteries.

I said, I'm assuming I can't kill anybody. And

they said, well, no, you can't. I said, well,

then the heck with it. I wrote a murder she wrote,

and they read it, and they liked it. They liked

my murder she wrote script, so they said, oh,

you can write mysteries. So maybe that's the

weirdest thing that ever happened to me. Disney

asked me to work for them about four or five

times, and I turned them down every time. I didn't

want to write to Disney. I just really didn't

want to. And something I don't want to do, Peter

Pan. I worked on Peter Pan. I did want to do

that until I saw how they were doing it. Is that

the one with Tim Curry as Hook? Yeah, the animated

sedan series. Did Tim Curry play Hook? I don't

think it was a sedan series then. No. No, no.

Tim Curry played Hook somewhere else. There was

one where there was an animated series where

Tim Curry played Hook and it was awesome. Tim

does a lot of it. He does voice work. Yeah, he's

a great actor. Anyway, we know you've attended

BotCon once or twice. What was that like? That

was mind -blowing. That might be the weirdest

thing that ever happened to me. Bob and I went

to a BotCon that was out here in California.

They asked us to come. And all the guys came

down from Vancouver, too. A lot of the voice

actors came down to do it. That's where we met

Scott. And, unfortunately, Venus didn't come.

That character wasn't in yet. But Christina's

pretty good looking on her own. So we all like

to meet them. I've gone to VodCon and tried,

but what we didn't realize was how international

this thing was. I mean, we were meeting fans

from Germany, Japan. They said, well, you know,

we want you guys to do like a panel and then

sit down like at the autograph booth. so people

can get your autograph on stuff. And we said,

are you kidding us? No one ever asked us to send

an autograph. No one wants our autograph. We

were signing autographs for five hours. This

is ridiculous. We said, what have we done here?

Have we made people crazy or what? Why do they

want our autograph? It was nice. It was fun.

It was fun to see that so many people were into

this from all over the place. I never realized

it was such an international phenomenon. I mean,

I realized it started in Japan and went on, but

anime didn't travel that far in those days. Well,

what year was that? Was that 96 or 97? That would

probably be 96. It was in Anaheim. The year Baikon

was in Anaheim. At the Anaheim Convention Center

out by Disneyland. Right, right, right. So that

might, yeah, that should have been like, and

then Black Lightning came later, so yeah, that

should have been 95 or 96. I've been to Comic

-Con, doing a He -Man panel. There's a convention

here I always used to go to, LostCon, which is

a sci -fi convention, so I go there and do the

Dog and Pony show with Joe on Babylon 5. which

always was a big, that was exciting. Yeah, yeah.

Until I got fired. But that's a weird thing that

happened to me. But I like, I'm known as fan

-friendly, you know. Yeah. You know, if you come

up to me, you know, as long as you don't, you

know, talk my ear off or, you know, start sending

me links to things. I don't want to be attacked

too many times. I don't want links. I'm grateful

for fans. It's nice to have fans. And most of

the ones I've met have been very nice to me.

I don't have anybody that was rude to me. Sometimes

they just go overboard. They're so happy to talk

to you, they're trailing you like a piece of

toilet paper on your shoe. Like, you know, hey,

guy, you know, like, you know, or, you know,

if you're having dinner and, you know, people

come in and sit and they want to, you know, they

want to sit down, you know, come on, man. Oh,

yeah. You know, but, you know, most of the fans,

they were, and the kids were great. The kids

were always great and their moms would bring

them up and, you know, they'd come to me and,

you know, I'd, you know, I'll send you a cell

or something. I'd send them some old cell and

they'd love it. It's good. It gives you some

kind of awareness that you're actually doing

something that people like. Every few of us get

that noise. It's all good. Except for the money

information. But that was all good in terms of

learning the business and working for just a

truly great man. We know recently, well, Now,

about a year and a half ago, you wrote an episode

for Transformers Animated called Predacons Rising

with Bob Forward. Was this the first time you

had written with him since Beast Wars? Yes. That

happened with Marty. I saw an episode of Transformers

Animated, and I was amazed because it's totally

different. It's all of the Transformers. It covers

all the shows, but they hadn't done much on Beast

Wars. And so they had one more, and they had

asked us to write for it. And again, I said,

you know, we're not really a team. Again, we're

not a team, you know. But they said we have only

one episode left. Because both of us went, you

know, we figured we'd get a job down there. And

I liked it because it was humor -based. It was

humor -based. Yeah. And, you know, and it was

kind of for smaller children to like the Transformers.

And the animation, which was like flash animation,

was oddly appealing, you know? And they said,

we want to do a thing and, you know, about...

Larry? Okay, yeah, hold on a minute. My wife

just walked in and handed me... This is our last

question. We're going to wrap up after this.

The question that you're answering right now

is the last one. Okay. What was I saying? It

was a story about Predacons Rising. They had

approached you about doing Beast Wars stuff.

They said, we want to do this. They said, you

can do anything you want. And they said, but

we want to have like... like a Beast Wars homage

in it, and of course they wanted to use Blackarachnia,

who was my other favorite character, and Waspinator.

It was really the origin of Waspinator. So we

did that show. I did not actually write a single

page of the script. Bob wrote the whole script.

But he wrote it very much to a very intricate

story I had done. So I had done the story, and

he just took it and put it into script form.

But when I was writing, I said, how are we going

to end this? I said, okay, they're going to teleport

away. And I just said this one. I said, we see

silhouettes in the background of Black Optimus

and Rhinox and stuff like that. I said, and Blackarachno

looks up and says, you've got to be kidding.

And they said, great! Great! Fantastic! And I

saw it, and it was good. That was the best ending

ever. We were actually having a conversation.

I was going to say, we were having a conversation.

Who were we talking to? Derek J. Wyatt, who was

the lead designer for that show. We were talking

with him about You know, what did that mean?

What does that mean? And he's like, look, you

know, don't read too much into it. And it's like,

no, seriously, what happened there? Who knows?

Yeah, it sounds like you would be the guy to

ask. Black or African, maybe on the Beast Wars

planet. Give this with time. That's so awesome.

All right, so we would like to thank Mr. Dottilio

for taking the time to talk with us. It was very

enjoyable to talk with you, sir. Is there any

way that if fans wanted to interact with you,

is there any way that you would allow fans to

do so? Have you set up a fan page on Facebook

separate from your personal account? I have not

set up a fan page on Facebook. And I don't really

want a place that fans can get to me easily because

I'm going to be swamped. Okay. You could, if

you wanted, you could send me a message on Facebook.

And I don't go there that much. Okay. A lot of

fans send me messages, and I usually will write

them back. But I don't want to start, like, a

thousand messages coming to me that I have to

answer. Right, right. We understand. You can

take your chances. If you say something interesting,

you may get a response. Okay, very cool. So thank

you for joining us here on the Geekcast Radio

Network. Good luck with your current work. We

will ask you to hold the line, and we'll be back

with the outro after this. We'll return to the

Beast Unleashed podcast after this. This podcast

is released bi -weekly by the folks over at geekcastradio

.com. And I want you to listen to it because

it's the world's first beast wars and beast machines

review podcast. If you don't listen to it, I

will send my vehicles to remove your sparks and

destroy you. So, from now on, you will listen

and tune into the Beast Unleashed. Or else. Excellent.

Yes. Now, back to the Beast Unleashed podcast.

You have just heard over an hour's worth of questions

and answers with us from Larry Dottilio. Wow,

that was awesome. Yeah, yeah, we had a lot of

fun. That was very, very awesome. It's like hanging

out for a while with Larry and just, you know,

hearing his stories. Yep. Very, very cool. And,

you know, kind of like what we said in the interview,

I mean, I grew up watching He -Man. A lot of

us grew up watching He -Man. You know, I got,

a couple of years ago for my birthday, my mom

got me all four volume DVD sets. Because that's

all He -Man is in right now is the old Entertainment

Rights volume DVD sets. And I've watched every

special feature on there. And, you know, it's

him talking. I've watched almost every episode

with commentary. Most of the time it's him with

Lou Scheimer. And it's just amazing. I was going

to ask him about the Masters of the Universe

Classics line, because they finally did a show

-accurate Orko, but we just didn't have time

for it. What are you laughing at? I was reminded

that he was talking about the rise and fall of

He -Man and how He -Man rose and fell, and I'm

thinking, he did that in 2002, too. Kind of like,

oh, well, this is going to be a really good series,

and then it... died on the vine, and right about

now, Mattel is laughing all the way to the bank

with their collector series. Yeah, well, you

know, the thing about the 2002 He -Man was they

didn't get picked up for another season, so it

didn't really die. They just, I mean, it wasn't,

I don't know, actually, almost really. I like

the two series, the Filmation series and the

Mike Young Production series, which was the 2002

cartoon. I like them in their own perspectives

because obviously the original series was, it's

the nostalgia in me. The 2002 series gave the

He -Man mythos actual continuity throughout that

entire series. Whereas the old He -Man shows

are basically one -shot stories each episode.

And yeah, I like them both. I love the 2002 series.

It's just the toys didn't sell very well. So

they had the accent. Yeah. Yeah. But no, I mean,

being a Transformer collector, you're not allowed

to have... More than one collection, I should

say. There is one toy that you got away with,

thanks to Phineas and Ferb. I do have a Doofenshmirtz

still on my desk. That's awesome. So anyway,

we're getting way off track here. This has been

the interview of Larry Dottilio, and it was a

great pleasure to talk to Larry. And we've got

to thank Christy Marks, because really she's

the one that talked to him about it. to even

get me his contact info to contact him for the

interview. So that's it, and I guess we're out

of here.