A Station Eight Fan Web Site
Ask Greg Archives
Behind the Scenes
Archive Index
: « First : « 100 : « 10 : Displaying #158 - #167 of 536 records. : 10 » : 100 » : Last » :
Posts Per Page: 1 : 10 : 25 : 50 : 100 : All :
Todd Jensen writes...
Thanks for the "Cloud Fathers" ramble, Greg!
I will confess that I can't remember from my first-time viewing whether I was surprised or not by the revelation at the end that Carlos Maza had passed on. However, I do find myself wondering, whenever I watch it on tape now, whenever either Elisa or Beth asks Peter if he wants to "go visit grandfather" while he's in town, how many first-time viewers did suspect that Carlos was dead, and how many were surprised.
Arizona, incidentally, now has a little more personal significance to me than it did when the episode first aired; my mother and stepfather moved there a few years ago (they live in the Phoenix area). They've sometimes mentioned Flagstaff in conversations with me, but haven't as yet mentioned anything about sand-carvings of Coyote or Kachina dancers. :)
Xanatos's "cliched villainy" line is a particular favorite of mine; only Xanatos would make such a remark! Though the bit where he admits that he has no desire to kill Goliath or any of the other gargoyles - this is just a necessary part of his coyote-trap - definitely stands out to me as well. You don't see the main antagonist saying that to the hero too often in an animated adventure series!
I liked the touch of the Cauldron of Life being incorporated into Coyote 4.0. (As I mentioned once in chat, it reminds me a bit of the scene in "Camelot 3000" where Mordred incorporates the Holy Grail into his armor.) The mention of the iron obviously was a foreshadowing of what was coming in the very next episode. (Was Xanatos's follow-up remark of "Ironic" intended as a pun, by the way?)
I also got a kick out of the mild confusion over "Which Coyote are we talking about here?" - the best part of all being when Coyote the Trickster threatens to sue Xanatos for trademark infringement. (And Xanatos's response that he's a "trickster at heart" rings true to me - the man's living proof that you don't have to be a Child of Oberon to be a trickster. He fulfills the archetype just as surely as Puck, Raven, and the rest do.)
I hadn't noticed the similarity of the Coyote robot to Wile E. Coyote until you mentioned it here at "Ask Greg" (not in this ramble, but in earlier answers to questions), but I certainly see it now. (Though, judging from the name of a certain merchant in "Vendettas", Coyote the robot isn't the only "Gargoyles" character to be influenced by Wile E. Coyote!)
So the multiple trickster story was what you'd originally planned for the Puck-and-Alex story before you decided to merge it with the Cold Trio for "Possession"?
Thanks for another enjoyable ramble, Greg.
Greg responds...
I'm not sure the iron/ironic thing was an intentional pun. But it was so long ago, I may have forgotten.
The Multi-Trickster story was indeed slotted for our 64th episode... with Reckoning planned as our 65th. Then at some point, we learned that Hunter's Moon would not be a direct to video, but would instead have to be folded into our regular series. So HM1-3 became episodes 63-65. Reckoning was moved back to 61, so that we'd have at least a little Demona distance between Reckoning and HM. And then we had to combine a few springboards to make room for Hunters Moon. (For example, Vendettas was a combo of two springboards: (1) Vinnie's Vendetta and (2) Hakon & Wolf's Vendetta.)
So another couple of springboards we combined were the Multi-Trickster story and the Coldtrio story. Cary Bates and I worked the combo for some time, but we finally RAN OUT OF TIME. We were on deadline, and we just couldn't crack a story with so much going on. So we simplified back down to one Trickster, i.e. Puck.
Chris Roman writes...
Greg, as a fellow Disney-ite (well, currently on 'hiatus' as Disney waits to see if American Dragon does well), I was disturbed by your recent complaint about heading up the writing staff of WITCH, but it being 'non-union'. How does that work? Didn't Disney hire you to write for the series, or did the French animation company officially hire you? Isn't this something you could bring up with Steve Heulett and the Union?
Just concerned about Disney's apparent disdain for following Union protocols of late...
-Chris Roman
Greg responds...
Hey, Chris.
I was hired by SIP Animation in Paris. They are my bosses. Thus the show is non-union... and there's nothing TAG can do about it.
Disney subcontracted production of the series to SIP (which they partially own). This, I'm sure, was done for financial reasons, in particular the subsidies that the French government provides for "European content". (WITCH was originally created as a comic book in Italy by Disney Publishing Italy.) The fact that the series would then be non-union was, I believe, a financial bonus for Disney.
Joey Conaway writes...
Hey Greg I bought the GARGOYLES DVD today and I have enjoyed it already here is my question
to ya
How long did it take yall to do the animation and get the voice overs
for Disney at that time please let me know thanks
Greg responds...
It took ten months for every step. (It's called a ten-month sliding schedule.)
That is we had ten months to write the scripts. Ten months to record the voices. Ten months to storyboard. Ten months to animate. Etc. But all of those various "ten months" overlapped. The whole process was probably more like 14 months.
Entity writes...
Mr. Weisman, I watched "The Edge" today and found myself amazed by how well you and the writers (in this case, Michael Reeves) pulled off your surprise endings. They were always shocking without feeling 'cheap.' This is because they always make perfect sense in the context of the episode, once you know what's really up. I think the way you accomplished this, without resorting to manipulative or dishonest tactics, was to make the viewer feel like he was in control. For instance, in "The Edge," the viewer is happy to believe Xanatos has created a new, more advanced Steel Clan robot. That would have been a cool plot development in and of itself, and something the viewer felt he grasped better than the gargoyles did. In "The Price," the viewer knows that Macbeth is immortal, while the gargoyles do not, so he feels more in control than the gargoyles. Perhaps this even results in a sort of gracious laze-of-mind in the viewer, by which you and the writers used the gargoyles' naivete, both of the modern world and of the show's arching plot, as a way of lulling us into a false sense of security. Was this a conscious tactic? Is it something you and the show's writers saw yourselves pulling off or was it business-as-usual? Is such stuff taught in television writing classrooms? I've never seen another show pull off its surprise endings quite as remarkably as Gargoyles. The very first time you pull one off is "The Thrill of the Hunt," an episode that could well have ended, just as "The Edge," after the gargoyles turned to stone. But like "The Sixth Sense," you kept going, and in the process, turned what would have been merely "good" stories into great ones. These episodes and the others like them were not created for the sole purpose of their surprise endings. They were flesh-and-blood stories that you and the writers ended with surprises nonetheless. Most of the praise for Gargoyles goes to its multiethnicity, its voice cast, its music, its gothic atmosphere, the dialogue (which you claim was sixth-grade level, but I've never read a newspaper article as verbose as Goliath), and all deservedly so, but one of the most enduring aspects of all were the shock endings.
Greg responds...
I'm glad that stuff works for you. It worked for us.
The main drive behind endings like that was a desire not to undercut our lead villains. Villains get tiresome when they lose all the time. And heroes are pointless if they lose all the time. (It's fun and dramatic and right to have both sides lose occasionally. But if either side loses ALL the time... well then where's the drama?)
But if a hero wins the battle and then we secretly reveal (in our patented Xanatos tags) that he may still be losing the war, then that keeps both sides interesting.
So it's not shock value for shock value's sake. But it lead us down a path that gave you the surprises you enjoyed. It forced us to always look BEHIND the obvious. Forced us to work harder. Then, I think the trick is to play fair. We may not reveal all, and -- your right -- our characters (human and gargoyle alike) may make incorrect assumptions about the situation, but all the clues are there from the moment the "PREVIOUSLY ON GARGOYLES..." starts to roll. (In fact, sometimes I feared that too many clues were planted.) By playing fair you get that double whammy at the end... both the surprise but also the "Of course..." That feeling that it's right. That it's not cheating. That in fact nothing else could possibly make sense.
Perhaps the ultimate example of that was the Owen/Puck revelation.
As for whether that's taught in writing classes? None specifically that I've taken. I've touched on it, here and there, in a couple of the classes that I've taught over the years. But I don't think I've ever focused a lesson plan on this point either. It's very much at the fine tuning end of the spectrum. Not something you'd get into in a survey course.
snoop g'rgg writes...
Subject:controversial scenes
Greg did you ever recieve a lashback from some of the episodes Disney aired during its run ala Eye of the Beholder Fox's brief nude scene, Elisa removing her bottom gown (On this note some perves were ready to see Elisa in her panties, Which thank God you guys place a mini skirt instead also I bet you'll anticipated parent viewers on the The Mirror episode where Goliath falls showing under his loincloth and finally were you taking a risk on the Hunter's Moon episode where Elisa gives Goliath a kiss?
Greg responds...
I think the Fox thing was a bit of a risk, though none of the other things you mentioned. (You're exagerating the loincloth bit where we had full wrap-around, so to speak.) But no, there was no "lashback" at all about these scenes or episodes.
The only thing that comes close to what you are describing is the episode "Deadly Force". We had no outcry over it at the time, quite the reverse, we received a lot of praise for it. But later, Toon Disney refused to air it for years because of the realistic depiction of violence (the exact thing we were praised for). I'm told they do air it now though.
Todd Jensen writes...
Just so that I've gotten this straight - so in the very first outline for "Mark of the Panther", it was were-jaguars rather than were-panthers? I'm glad that that was changed; since jaguars live in South America rather than Africa, it'd be pretty strange seeing one (ordinary or were) showing up in Nigeria.
Greg responds...
Yep, and that's why the change was made of course. We got the beast wrong. So we fixed it.
Joey writes...
If Gargoyles hadn't (temporarily) ended when it did, would it still be going or would you have run out of material by now? 10 years is a lot of episodes. How many eps per season would there have been anyways? 13, 52, or somewhere in between.
Greg responds...
Well, there are SO many "ifs" in your hypothetical question, I don't know how to evalute the specifics. But I am QUITE confident that I would not have run out of material by now. The new comic book can easily go twice that long assuming sales support us.
As for how many episodes per season, that's a financial question, not a creative one. We didn't do 13 in season one and 52 in season two for creative reasons, but for financial ones. Likewise the decision to make 13 in Season 3 (Goliath Chronicles) was again financial. So in the intervening seasons, the answer is zero per season, for what Disney perceived as financial reasons. So how to evaluate financials for a hypothetical non-existent season is impossible.
DPH writes...
How exactly did you come to realize that Puck and Owen were the same person?
Was it because you looking at who Puck had served and needed somebody?
Greg responds...
I can't believe I haven't answered this before here. But since Todd didn't field this one, I guess I haven't... or at least not here at ASK GREG.
Anyway... No.
We always knew there was something special about Owen, but didn't know what it was at first. Then when we first started working on "The Mirror" and created Puck, it suddenly occured to me that Puck was Owen. An epiphany. I immediately called Brynne Chandler Reaves and Lydia Marano. The conversation went something like this...
Greg: "I just realized: Owen is Puck!"
Brynne & Lydia: "We know!"
It was just so right. The references in "The Mirror" to Puck "serving the human" and in "City of Stone, Part One" to Owen being "the tricky one" were put in post-epiphany.
Rhonda writes...
Hi Greg,
I have been a huge fan of Gargoyles for years. It still remains my favorite TV series of all time. One of the reasons I was so pulled in was the intricate storyline. I love the way we were clued in, little by little, to what happened in the past, real identities, and real motives of the characters. My favorite moment was when Owen was revealed to be Puck. I literally fell off my chair!
I've always wondered how far in advance you would plan out the episodes. It seems like you must have had the entire storyline in your head before you sat down to write a single one. Or were these things thought up as you went? (Maybe one day you just thought, "Wouldn't it be cool if it turned out that Owen was really Puck?"). Did you come up with Demona and MacBeth's entire storyline in the very beginning?
Thanks in advance. I truly hope that I can have the pleasure of enjoying new Gargoyles episodes some day in the future.
Greg responds...
Not everything was figured out from day one, no.
For example, while working on "The Mirror" it suddenly occured to me that Owen was Puck. Note the phraising. It wasn't: "Wouldn't it be cool if it turned out that Owen was really Puck?" It was more like: "Oh my God, Owen IS Puck."
I immediately called writer Lydia Marano and Story Editor Brynne Chandler to tell them. They're response: "We KNOW!!"
That's when you know a show is working... when the characters tell you there truths. When it all just feels right.
Much of course, was planned out in advance. I didn't have all the details down, but in "Awakening" we knew that Demona was lying about sleeping for a thousand years. Certainly by "Enter Macbeth", I knew the broad strokes of Macbeth and Demona's relationship.
We did have a plan.
I still do for that matter.
GargFan1995-present writes...
Hi, Greg!
I was wondering if there were any plans to release the Mighty Ducks series (which you worked on), the Aladdin series (which you worked on), or the Tail Spin series (which you worked on) onto DVD. What's the latest word at Disney about that?
Greg responds...
I have no idea about the if or whens of these series being released on DVD. Keep in mind, I don't actually work at Disney anymore. Haven't since 1996.
For the record, none of these three series were shows I had that much to do with.
I led the original development team on Mighty Ducks, but then I moved over to do Gargoyles, and I had nothing to do with the production of the series and its simultaneous redevelopment.
On TaleSpin, I was a junior creative exec giving notes on stories, trying to be helpful. I also did the voice of one of the Pandas of Panda-La: "Father, the rockets aren't working!"
On Aladdin, I was involved with the development of the series, particularly with "The Return of Jafar". I had little to do with the production on this one either. (Although a bit more than Mighty Ducks.)
: « First : « 100 : « 10 : Displaying #158 - #167 of 536 records. : 10 » : 100 » : Last » :