Last uploaded: Late Monday evening, December 21, 1998

Our Canuck Webmaster Arrives in L.A....

Hey, I'm back! Greetings from Hollywood North where the temperture was an uncharacteristic -8 Celsius yesterday afternoon when my flight arrived; when I left Vancouver, it was chilly but nowhere near minus 8! And worse, when I left L.A. I was wearing a t-shirt and jeans. My coat was in the bag I checked in, which means when I left the plane and entered my native enviroment (now more like a meat locker), the emphasis was on getting that damn bag as fast as possible. Brr.

But enough of the land of frozen tundra! You wanna know what my trip to L.A. was like, right???

It was very cool. I arrived late Wednesday night. Originally I was faced with somehow figuring out how to get from LAX to the Comfort Inn in Hollywood. Wizard had arranged for me to pick up a rental car, but everytime I imagined myself trying to get to this Comfort Inn without really knowing the city's highways, well...the opening scene of Grand Canyon kept coming into my mind. Fortunately I had a savior in the form of The Spirit, one of my contacts who dwells in the City of Angels. I would have been a lot more stressed out had it not been for The Spirit's many acts of motor vehicle kindness, and for his kindness I rewarded him with Polar Bear Blocks (candy from Canada...never mind, it's a Canuck thing...)

Thursday was the day of the interview. I caught a cab to a non-descript building in Studio City, headquarters of Warner Bros. Television Animation and the creative nexus of Batman: The Animated Series, Superman and the reason I was there, Batman Beyond.

Being as I was from Canada, I wore my leather bomber jacket over my favorite black sweater. Of course I wore blue jeans for that relaxed, professional look. By the time I got out of the taxi and walked to the top of the building's steps I was already sweating. Winter in L.A. is a lot like a overcast summer day in Vancouver: cool but warm -- especially if the sun was out.

I arrived a few minutes before my 11 AM interview meeting was to begin. I was scheduled to meet a Warner Bros. publicity person (whose name I won't mention for reasons forthcoming) on the eighth floor. I walked up to the nice security guard who was situated directly in front of the 'cubes' for the WB animators. While he searched for my WB contact via the phone, I caught a view of the many sketches of his likeness that were tacked on the wall behind him, obviously done by the people in the cubes (great title for a low-budget horror movie, no? 'The People in the Cubes'!) Anyway, after five minutes the WB contact was still nowhere to be found, so the guard got a hold of Alan Burnett, one of Batman Beyond's creators/producers. After a few moments Alan came around the corner, introduced himself and off we went to his corner office.

We soon learned that Bruce Timm and Paul Dini, the show's other two producers, would be late: Bruce was sitting in on a sound meeting and Paul was running just a bit behind. Undaunted, I set up my gear, took off my jacket (thank you, relief, ahhh) and started the i-view. About fifteen minutes later Paul Dini poked his head in Alan's office and joined us; and another twenty minutes later Bruce Timm joined in.

Right now the interview exists as scribbled notes and four minicassette tapes; it's my task to turn that into a behind-the-scenes look at how an episode of Batman Beyond gets made. I've got my work cut out for me if I'm to make my early January deadline. I'm not going to go into details about what they told me about the show; that's what I'll be doing in my Wizard article. But what I do want to say is how cool the whole experience was. While I admit I've only seen some of the animated Batman series, what I have seen has constantly amazed me over and over again. Not only does the show really deliver on what the concept of Batman really and truly is, but these guys have redefined Batman again. That style of animation on Batman and Superman didn't exist before. These guys not only created a highly successful spinoff of the Batman franchise, but it's an incredibly cool one that old fans dig and captures the attention of younger fans as well. Critics also seem to adore it, and comic book fanatics like myself who gritted their teeth when Michael Keaton's Batman blew up people in the first movie know that this adaptation of Batman is the true Batman. The Dark Knight isn't all psychodramatic angst, nor is it about people who wear nipples on their costumes. Those are interpretations of the mythos, but the animated series takes everything that's cool from the comic books and movies and adds to it. And -- to me -- the best part of it all is that this is their day job. I'd kill for a day job like this.

And there were a ton of cool things I saw that redlined my cool-o-meter, but the top choice for eye candy had to have been Bruce Timm's office. For those of you who don't know, Bruce oversees a good portion of the artistic design work on the three series, and from what I saw he's literally a drawing machine. Pick up the recently released Batman: Animated book and take a gander at the artwork he's created to depict the series' characters as well as some of his depictions of the show's creators. After the photographers had finished taking a round of photos in Bruce's office, I got him to sign my copy of the book while I checked out his office. While Bruce is popping off the top of markers and pens, creating something I can't really see all that well in my book, my eyes are scouring his office. It's like a twister ripped through a Toys 'r Us and Staples: there must be something around three hundred action figures scattered around his office: on bookshelves, filing cabinets, on the window sill, his desk, the couch, in rows on his cabinets. Dozens upon dozens of markers, pens, pencils, erasers, inking tools are everywhere. Sketches and character proofs are tacked to what little open area there is. If I was still five, I'd still be there.

(I'll try and scan in what Bruce drew for me in my copy of the book tomorrow...)

The thing is, not only are each of these guys creatively at the top of their world but they're so down-to-earth you can't help but admire their style. Each man went out of their way to single out the work of the many others who're putting together Batman Beyond, sticking in an art designer's name here, or asking me to make sure I mention the contribution of this person for this reason. Bruce Timm went out of his way to make sure the others who put together the series -- from the name of the Korean animation house who works on each episode to the name of an artist who created the look of a new BB character -- was mentioned. There's no way I can get all of it into my article, but I do want to capture the feeling I got: unlike other animated series, everyone on the team is encouraged to contribute to the overall show. Animators can pitch their story ideas. Shirley Walker can have the creative freedom to explore musical choices that other animated series woukd outright reject.

There was one sore point during my time spent there: our WB person felt that we had extended our stay and wanted us out of there as soon as possible. Originally I was scheduled for 40 minutes with the three producers but each of them said I could take as much time as I needed. Both Bruce and Paul stayed longer to answer questions I had originally asked Alan and to make up for lost time. These three guys stuck around during their lunch hour to make sure the photographers got their shots, even though our WB official wanted us out of there. In fact, there was one moment while me and the photographer waited for our WB contact on the outside of one of the 'cubes' our contact was inside on the phone -- explaining to whomever she was talking to how "demanding" our requests were while making sure to mention how "accomodating" she was being. I have no idea if she knew that we were standing on the other side of the cube's walls, but what she was saying was very clear to both of our ears. In my entire time spent with the Batman Beyond producers, never once did I get the feeling I was being rushed out the door, or that I couldn't ask a certain question. In fact, when I said my time was up each of the three men waved off any time restrictions. I don't know if our studio contact was trying to come across as An Important Person, or if she was having a bad day, or if we somehow offended her...but I definitely felt that I was barely being tolerated by this person. That puzzles me because in all my talks with the superior of that individual, her boss has been extremely supportive, accomodating and gracious to my requests -- even going beyond what I had originally asked for. The question will go unanswered, I guess.

I also had the chance to speak with some other writers and producers about the projects they're working on. Yeah, I got some cool scoops that I'll be sharing with you this week...stuff that'll surprise you just like it surprised me when I first heard it. But you'll be reading about that stuff soon enough. I didn't have enough time to do all the things I wanted to do. I missed the opportunity to meet Lorenda Starfelt, the producer of The Bacchae face-to-face because of another commitment I had to make (next time Lorenda!); didn't get the chance to visit the set of Mystery Men (but hopefully that'll happen in late February) or meet with the producer of The Specials. And I forgot to get more six packs of Cherry Coke. Americans don't realize how lucky they are to have that certain brand of Coke while we here in Canada languish with merely Diet and Regular Coke. *sigh*

But I did get to do some other very cool things: not only did I visit the famed Ackermansion, not only did I get the chance to touch the dinosaurs (The!) Ray Harryhausen worked with while creating the stop-motion effects for the original 1933 King Kong but I got to take (The!) Forrest J. Ackerman to lunch on Saturday! Listening to Forry's stories about how (The!) Ray Bradbury conned Forry into believing he had an autographed novelization of Kong, but also hear about the stories behind the films...man, that was very cool indeed. While I was a kid growing up in Vancouver I used to count the days between issues of Famous Monsters of Filmland, asking for my allowance so I could walk up to the closest drug store and buy my copy of FMoF. Last Saturday I got to see the Martians that were donated by War of the Worlds director George Pal back in the 50's; got to see the original cape worn by Bela Lugosi while he was starring in Dracula on-stage in London back in the 30's; took a photograph of the letter a 13 year old Stephen King sent in to Forry all those years ago; touched the lifeclock crystals you saw in Logan's Run; drooled at the Ymir, Pteranodon and Saucermen models; gawked at the original tribbles used in David Gerrold's classic Star Trek episode; marvelled at Christopher Lee's teeth from his Hammer films; was left awestruck that I was looking at the helmet from one of the original Rocketmen serials from the 30's; and thought it was incredibly neat that someone had a Cylon Warrior all dressed up like a Christmas tree in their living room. The man is still amazing people even though FMoF's time has gone by, and his eyes light up when you ask him to tell the story about that prop there, or why this tentacle is lying on the ground here. You don't know how nice it is to know that someone's profession is to be a five-year-old kid all the time. The only downside is that Forry's in his seventies and you wonder what would happen to all this stuff if the unthinkable happened. What if the old wiring went up and there was a fire and you had only enough time to grab just one thing, my accomplace The Spirit asked me that day. Just what do you grab?? And this house is filled with movie history that cannot be replaced. I used to remember reading two-page articles in FMoF issues (time and the loss one one's innocence now recognizes these small 'articles' as filler material) that listed the names of every FMoF reader that went on to become Someone Important. Guys like Joe Dante, Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Robert Zemeckis, George Landis, Stephen King, Tobe Hooper and way more others read those magazines as kids. They may not have made films if it wasn't for this guy and his magazine, so how hard would it be for some of these guys to donate a million bucks so the wiring is re-done or that some groundswork or preventative maintenance gets done now and then. What about preserving Harryhausen's stop-motion creatures, whose foam materials are slowly being rotted away?? Where's this one-of-a-kind collection of material going to be fifty years from now??? No one knows.

In any case, if you ever get the chance to be in L.A. on a Saturday, call the Ackmermansion and see if Forry will be conducting a tour that weekend. You'll be amazed by what you see.

And if you happen to be in L.A., stop by these other places for cool visual orgasms: Creature Features is a store that specializes in model-building. They currently have a display devoted to the collectables from The Nightmare Before Christmas, including a model of Jack Skellington and his ghost dog Zero that I soooo wanted to be able to afford. But what almost made me drop $495 bucks was the ultra-cool model of an Alien squatting on a Giger-esque ledge of biomechanical rock, head tilted to the side. Not only was it fully painted but the painter had added the Alien's resin and drool on it. Please. I want it. Pllllleeeeaaaseee...someone out there in Hollywoodland hire me on their writing staff so I can afford this! $495 American bucks is like one month's rent in Canadian monies. Waah!!

Blast From the Past and Puzzle Zoo are the be-all, end-all depots of action figures. I snagged my hands on the action figs of Sasquatch and Vindicator (two members of Marvel Comics' all-Canadian supehero team, Alpha Flight). Golden Apple on Melrose is L.A.'s finest comic book shop where you can find anything comics-related; and the Toys R' Us in America are godsends to Canadian fanboys like myself: you can't find any decent action figures up here (would someone explain to be how Canadian Toys R' Us's have absolutely-no-FREAKIN' Alpha Flight figures at all??!!), but in Toys R' Us I walked away with my pre-packaged assortment of original X-Men figs...for fifteen bucks. That's right -- fifteen Yankee greenbacks and the original students of Charles Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters are yours. Unbelievable.

I didn't really see mych in the way of celebrities, but Robert Forster was eating dinner two tables down from me Saturday night. What I really figured out this trip was that everyone who is a waiter in L.A. is struggling to become an actor, I'm convinced, while everyone who is a waiter in Vancouver is one because it's literally a profession up here. And you guys hand out beepers while you wait for your table in some L.A. restaurants!

Amongst that was a bit of holiday mall shopping at the Beverly Center and Century City malls. We have Gap stores in Canada but no Victoria's Secret or Brookstone. Now that my eyes have been opened to the glory of these fine American establishments...there can be no turning back.

So that was my final American trip of 1998. I began the year by flying down to L.A. for the Vanity Fair photoshoot, returning to San Diego in August for the International Comic Convention, and back for Wizard. The sheer size of Los Angeles is still a bit frightening for a guy like me, but the city is full of cool places and nice enough people. After all the inside horror stories I've heard from many a contact about why no one in their right mind should be working in show business, I can't help but hope that that day comes soon for me when I can fly down to take a meeting for a production that I helped create. But for the moment, while it may have claimed The X-Files, L.A. isn't my home. I'm glad to be back in Vancouver with my friends and family, and even though I may not have as cool a day job as the guys at Warner Bros. do, I've got CA to share my experiences with you.

I'll try scanning in photos if I can get them developed and paste them on this page over the course of the next week, so keep your eyes peeled for new stuff! Next issue will be my annual Wish List for 1999, so be prepared to read about what films I'm most looking forward to in 1999...ten short days away from today.

Merry Christmas everyone!

Patrick Sauriol
Creator, Chief Content Writer & Director
Coming Attractions

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