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Blaise writes...

RE: "Awakening Part 2" I agree, there is some real nice stuff in here.

I hadn't realized the problems you guys had with the Viking fight in regards to Broadway. Just so you know, I definitely got the idea that Broadway grabbed the meat soley for its value as a weapon (I was quite surprised in fact--when most animated shows introduce a character as an "eating machine" the audience is constantly reminded of that fact). I also noticed (and am glad) that Broadway's eating became down-played as the series progressed.
As for Hudson's sword...well, it took me a few viewings before I noticed that he didn't really have it until the Viking camp. I like the idea that the "character with the weapon" didn't start out with it.
Yeah, Lexington's admiration with the catapult would have been nice. Oh well, at least he was shown recognizing the helicoptor (sp?) as a contraption rather than a creature.
Personally, I never connected GARGOYLES with "Batman" so you'll be happy about that. And I didn't think that the laserbeam shot from Goliath's eyes (Xanatos was shown retrieving the laser in the previous scene).
On the subject of Xanatos, I knew he was at least tilted if not the outright villain. Mostly this is because he seemed like that in the "trailer" I saw on the "Nightmare Before Christmas" tape. However, there were also a couple of his lines. Whenever ANY character says the phrase "At last" in reference to a noun I tend to mark them down as untrustworthy. Then of course there's the wonderful line "Pay a man enough, and he'll walk barefoot into Hell." One of the coolest lines in the whole damn series, IMHO (I was surprised you guys got away with a character saying the ol' "H-E-double-hockey-sticks" word). But I did believe Xanatos when he said Goliath & co. were the last gargoyles on Earth (once again, it seemed the route so traveled I didn't expect it to change), and I thought the attack itself was for real.
Goliath's "suicide"--unfortunately I knew he was going to wake up in 1,000 years, and I never looked at it as a suicide until you pointed it out as such. I can be pretty thick-headed in some things. I did love their awakening in the 20th century, however. Definitely a sense there of the creatures of antiquity being reborn if you will.
As for Owen, there was definitely a mystique here--he only gets the one scene, yet he is so dignified and solemn, and seems more practical and level-headed than his "boss." How many other "villain's sidekicks" are like that?

Used WAY too much space. C'YA!

Greg responds...

Interesting observations. (By the way, the "barefoot into hell" line was all Michael Reaves.)

It's interesting about the "last Gargoyles on earth" thing. I mean, here you don't actually trust X, but you still are inclined to believe what he says. The next question is did you believe his story about Demona? And after David was fully revealed as a villain, did you think to reconsider what he had said about the eggs? Or did you just forget about them until Avalon?

Response recorded on March 31, 2000

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Tim writes...

Lessee...comments on Awakening, pt. 1. So many great moments. Frankly, I watch this episode the most because it has soooo many moments that are just so great. The growling accompanying the stone "AWAKENING" sign in the beginning is wonderful, evoking a "Wow...what IS this show?" kind of feeling. The direction of the Viking's first attack, the sun slowly setting builds up tension, and then the cracking of the stone, the wing muscles heaving, the eyes opening with a glow and Goliath majestically standing there wings spread holding a terrified Hakon and saying, "You...are trespassing." {Simultaneous Viking gulps here} Demona's first appearance, the music is wonderful, first we see the eyes glowing, then the wings wrapped around her like a vampire's cape, then she unfurls herself in all her glory and says another memorable first line: "Face me human...if you dare!" And then the screenwide terrifying hiss. She's like watching a shark or a tiger, terrifying and beautiful at the same time. Goliath's nobility, the trio's antics, Demona's protesting of what is to her, unthinkable behavior towards humans, Hudson's gruff advice, the prejudice of the humans and Katharine, all setting the tone for the tragedy to come. I love the part where Goliath and Hudson turn to stone slowly, and then the slow pan over the ground and Hakon's sword is drawn and the attack begins. And tears form in my eyes still when you see the mace swinging downward and the shadow effect of smashing gargoyles and the Captain's reaction. WONDERFUL music and direction here. And of course, the last five minutes when the horrified, "No..." escapes Goliath's voice and the slow pans around the burning castle, smashed fragments everywhere. The anguished look on his face as he says "My...angel of the night..." and then the roar towards the sky sends chills down my spine. So much wonderful pathos here it's hard to swallow. Then the "next time, on gargoyles" blurb appears and at the end, with Elisa going, "I don't konw...but I'm going to find out..."it cuts seamlessly into the thundering theme song [I LOVE CARL JOHNSON!!!] and it ends. Whew! You don't have to post this, no real questions here, just comments for Greg so he can know that five years later and countless viewings and what he thought up STILL makes me go, "Man, I love this show!"

Greg responds...

Man. Me too. Thanks. And wow. Nice evocations.

(We all know I do this for the benefit of my own ego? I mean I don't have to pretend otherwise, right?)

Response recorded on March 31, 2000

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Michael Norton writes...

Dear Greg,

"Awakening, Part One" which I just saw again last night on Toon Disney is spectacular. If you will forgive the reference, the first time I saw the first ep reminded me a lot of the first time I saw the original "Highlander" movie.
The jumps in the time period of the story sort of parallel, but it is more the fact that I wasn't sure what the heck was going on in the first few minutes but I was captivated anyway. I mean that in a good way. The story kept me sweetly off balance as it developed into a masterpiece. It was a tremendous foundation for a fantastic series.

Greg responds...

Thanks.

The original Highlander movie was a mixed experience for me when I first saw it in NYC way back when with Cary Bates. There was so much to enjoy: Lambert, Connery, Clancy Brown. And such great ideas.

But I felt the execution was a little disjointed. It's been a while since I last saw it though. I think it's aged well, as long as you ignore the sequel films. (By the way, I thought the series was wildly inconsistent. Some great episodes and some real dogs. Never reached its full potential, but some times it came damn close.)

Response recorded on March 31, 2000

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Blaise writes...

Hey Greg! Thanks for answering my questions from October 13 (though now I feel a little embarrased about the question on Maggie & Derek).

Anyway, as for "Awakening Part 1"--The ep that started my love of the show. Caught it when it first aired on Oct. 24, and thought it was just beautiful. Yeah, now that you mention it, the cliffhangers for the first two acts did display the gargoyles in a more "threatening" manner. I know for my own part when Goliath scowled at the end of Act 1 I expected him to royally tell everyone in the dining hall off or something. Nope, he showed more dignity than most of the humans there. Yeah, that scene with the dog would have underlined the hypocracy wonderfully, but most of us got the idea even without it. As for the Trio...well I don't think I really expected them to attack the humans (though frankly, I kind of felt the humans deserved the fright...). Then of course, the revelation that it was the Captain who was the traitor and not the Magus (I still am flabbergasted that the late Ed Gilbert did the Captain's voice even when he was in disguise at the Viking camp--he did a mean Bennett!).
As for Elisa, I wondered what her connection with the gargoyles would be. Goliath's first awakening--kickass! Demona's first appearance--she really interested me, mostly because she was the only female gargoyle I saw in there. Her behavior when chastised by humans made me wonder about how her character would have developed. When Goliath grieved over the remains at the end...well first I was surprised that the rest of the gargoyles had been killed in the first place. Given the character development she had already recieved I was a little hesitant to believe her dead, but this being a new series I wasn't entirely sure what to expect.

WHEW! Long one! I've taken up enough of your time!

Greg responds...

Thanks for the info. Looks like we did our job for you at least.

Response recorded on March 31, 2000

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A NEW CONTEST

Ladies & Gentlemen, I invite you all to enter our latest ASK GREG contest:

Why is that Villainess Smiling?

At the end of "Her Brother's Keeper", Elisa has a gun on Hyena, forcing the Packmember to surrender. Cut to a close-up of Hyena... who SMILES!!

In one hundred words or less, tell me why she's smiling.

RULES:
--All answers must begin with the following heading:

"THE HYENA CONTEST"

--ANSWERS MUST BE THOROUGHLY PROOFREAD! Spelling and punctuation count! Remember I'm a former and current teacher.

--Answers that run longer than 100 words will be disqualified.

--Answers without the correct heading will be disqualified.

--Answers must be posted to ASK GREG by the end of April. Answers posted in May will be disqualified.

Once I've read all the April answers (hopefully in May) I will choose a winner based entirely on my own subjective preferences. That winner will receive a prize of zero actual value but hopefully of some real fan interest.

Good luck.


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Chapter XII: "Her Brother's Keeper"

I think Michael Reaves came up with this title. I wanted to shorten it to "Brother's Keeper" so that it would implicitly include the Trio, Goliath and his late rookery-brothers, Jackal & Hyena. But Michael talked me out of it. He was right.

This was the second out of three episodes where we attempted to do Kenner a solid by inserting a toy into the series. The Helicopter was a much more awkward fit than Brooklyn's motorcycle had been. But we all agreed to make it work. Originally, Lex was going to repair Derek's police chopper, but someone suggested using the Pack 'copter instead. So we tried to make it all play as organic as possible. Lex and the Simulator, to set up his ability to pilot the thing. Broadway bringing up the obvious question as to why winged gargs would need a chopper, so that the audience didn't think we were ignoring those points. Etc. And in the end, it still plays artificial. But fortunately it's in an episode that is othewise filled with tremendous emotional honesty. So maybe it all balances out.

Of course, the irony was that Kenner never made a gargoyle helicopter. Without telling us, they switched to a sky sled sorta thing, because they couldn't figure out how to do a helicopter that successfully interacted with the garg-toys' wings. No good deed goes unpunished.

Broadway: "If cops were meant to fly they'd have wings." I love that line.

Derek - This was part of our plan to turn Derek into Catscan. Of course, the Catscan name was eventually dropped for Talon. The original plan for Catscan had him being a scientist that worked for and was duped by Xanatos. Picture us trying to combine Derek and Anton. (I know it's a mind-bender. It was more like Derek's personality and Anton's expertise.) But the Garg Universe told me otherwise once we created Derek for "Deadly Force". He'd be the cursed one. And this was just step one. Step only, if we never got a second season. So we left it open ended. And I think it's a pretty stunning bittersweat ending. The snow starts to fall (all very symbolic) and we don't know if Derek will listen to Elisa's tape of Fox or not. And we leave Elisa, standing, wondering, thinking, as the snow falls. It's not your typical Saturday morning cartoon conclusion -- not even for a drama. What did you all think at the end of that after your first viewing?

The snow became a very important visual metaphor for me. I exchanged a few faxes with Japan to make sure (that contrary to the script) there was NO SNOW on the ground at Xanadu, no snow at all, until it starts falling during Elisa's last conversation with Derek.

CONTINUITY:

Sure, Jackal and Hyena were at large, but we establish here that Wolf and Fox are in prison. Anyone looking back at "Thrill" would know that this makes sense. Lex and Goliath take Dingo, J & H out on the roof. No human witnesses to their evil. And they didn't do anything against anyone but the gargs. But Wolf and Fox were photographed taking human (well, fashion model) hostages. So they go to prison. Dingo goes to Europe. J&H are still around to do mischief. But meanwhile, most normal humans still regard them as celebrities, until Hyena pulls a knife. (We had planned once-upon-a-time to make knives a bigger element/part of their arsenal. But it was a bit problematic S&P-wise, and it became moot after "Upgrade".)

Broadway, ever Elisa's biggest fan, thinks Derek should just trust her.

Brooklyn, still scarred from trusting Demona, points out that trust doesn't mean much without honesty.

Lex, still pissed at the Pack, just wants to catch them.

And it's nice to see Morgan and Matt again. If you like guys in towels.

Xanatos, as usual, is so cool.

"Never a gargoyle around when you need one."

"Detective. Always a pleasure."

"My life is anything but dull."

And that's just his dialogue. His plan is audacious. He has Owen call the Police, counts on Elisa and the gargs to rescue him from Jackal & Hyena. (We loved playing that irony.) And instructs Fox to tell Elisa everything. He's so confident, he even has no qualms about leaving Elisa and Derek alone to talk at the end.

And you gotta love a guy named Xanatos naming his retreat Xanadu.

I love the Hannibal Lechter inspired scene between Elisa & Fox. This of course was the moment when we all figured out what the garg universe already knew: "My god, Fox is in love with Xanatos." I hadn't known that back when Fox was created in the development days of yore. Hadn't known it when we did "Thrill". Hadn't known it until we were way into script on this. But there it was. And nothing would ever be the same. (Did you guys realize it there? And how far did you think we'd take it?)

Suddenly, the events of "Leader of the Pack", "Eye of the Beholder" and "Vows" seemed to spread out before me. And Alexander became a glimmer in my eye (if not Xanatos').

Elisa acts true to form here. What we'd spell out later in "Revelations" is already implied here. Elisa is extremely (if subconsciously) reluctant to share her gargoyles secret with anyone. Three times Goliath tells her to share her secret with her brother. Three times she finds an excuse not to. (Frank Paur found this repetitive. He tried to take one of the scenes and make it play more subjective. Like Elisa imagining a conversation with Goliath, while the actual Goliath was sleeping in stone. It was a sweet idea, but it didn't make any logical sense in terms of story flow and forced us to make storyboard changes and call retakes in order to get the version we've all seen.)

We loved playing irony. Elisa and Peter are right about Xanatos, but dead wrong about the way they're trying to control Derek's life. Diane and Derek are absolutely right about Derek needing to control his own destiny, but make the tragic choice of trusting that destiny to Xanatos. Those two scenes are terrific. (Helped immensely by vocal performances. And I also love Nichelle Nichols as the diamond exchange saleslady.)

Derek thinks Elisa thinks Xanatos is the "Prince of Darkness". "He practically is!" she responds. <SIGH> Tricksters are always being confused with Satan.

But that was more irony. It's not the demonic-looking gargoyles who are being compared to Satan. It's the handsome, rich Bruce Wayne-esque playboy. I guess the goatee helps.

My daughter's reactions:

As you may have gathered, it's become fascinating to me to see how Erin is reacting differently seeing all these episodes for the second time at age 5 1/2.

She was stunned at the end of Act One and following when Derek told Elisa that he was accepting Xanatos' offer. "That's not supposed to happen," she kept saying.

And all the trio stuff made her laugh. She especially liked Goliath's admonitions to the Trio: "Try to get along."

Brooklyn sure knows his pop-culture: Star Wars and Star Trek references within a few minutes of each other.

It was important to us to show that even guys as close as the Trio could get tired of each other. Sure they're all Rookery brothers and best friends. But if they had stayed at Wyvern (i.e. if there had been no massacre) they wouldn't have had to spend ALL their time together. At the very least, females would have provided a distraction. But here in the 20th century they're all they've got. So of course, there'd be good days and bad days. Like any siblings.

And of course, the sibling theme was central to the episode, including the Jackal & Hyena's relationship. The irony there being that they were getting along better than the Trio or the Mazas.

I loved Goliath's outrage at the lack of appreciation that the Mazas and Trio have for their siblings. It's very moving to me. (And helps us set up Coldstone for next episode.)

When Lex comments that if Broadway had his way, the garg-copter would be covered with food, I knew that we were pushing Broadway's eating habits into the dull one-joke tired category. I hate that line. And we tried to back off the eating jokes after that.

Anyone notice our tribute to Launchpad McQuack when Lex says "Any landing you can walk away from..."

Some gorgeous animation in this one. I loved what they did with the lighting when Lex gets Jackal and Hyena in the chopper's spot.

S&P

--The trio toss Jackal & Hyena out of their chopper. It's o.k. They're wearing parachutes. But did the Trio know that? Maybe with Jackal, since Hyena's chute had already opened. But was Hyena tossed to her presumptive death.

Yes. After all they're still thinking (first season) like tenth century warriors, not like twentieth century super-heros.

--One of the advantages to Syndication over Network is a more liberal S&P. We could show Broadway's fist heading into camera. We couldn't actually show him punching Jackal in the head, but we could show Jackal's POV of that fist heading toward him. A couple frames of black, and then we cut wide to Jackal on the ground, and we know what happened. But on Network, in "The Journey" or, say, "Max Steel", we are NEVER allowed to even imply a head blow. And we can't show a fist or gun or whatever pointed directly at camera (i.e. at the audience). Too disturbing, I'm told.

And finally, at the end, when Elisa arrests Hyena, I've got to ask, what do you think Hyena's smiling about?

Maybe that's the next contest...

Hmmm....


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ATTENTION ANIMATION WRITERS-IN-TRAINING

Writer-Producer Kevin Hopps and I will be teaching a class through UCLA EXTENSION at Universal CityWalk
starting next week. There are still seven spaces available for "From Script to Cel: A Complete Writer's Guide to the
World of Television Animation" The class meets Wednesday nights, through early September (with a few weeks off in
the middle). In addition to Kevin and myself, we'll be having numerous guest speakers from every discipline of
producing an Animated series. And students will come out of the course with a completed spec script. I'd recommend this
class to anyone living in the Greater Los Angeles area who is truly interested in writing for TV Animation. If you're
interested contact Brandon Gannon or Kathy Pomerantz at UCLA Extension's Writer's Program. 310-206-1542.


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Queue is empty again.

Sorry. I've informed Gorebash.


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Nothing is in the queue...

I've passed Gore again.


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Todd Jensen writes...

I liked your rambling on "Awakening Part One", and look forward to the rambles on the other episodes following.

Both I and a number of other Gargoyles fans had indeed picked up on Princess Katharine's hypocrisy that you mentioned, disapproving of "beasts" (i.e. gargoyles) in the great hall, but permitting the dogs to roam about in there during the feast. I was amused to learn about how you'd planned to make that bit more pointed with the dog making off with somebody's food.

The bit where Lexington and Brooklyn were talking to Tom about not having names, and calling each other "Friend" instead, was a part that I liked as well. It was at that point that I definitely decided that I liked gargoyles.

I don't remember for certain what I thought about whether Demona was alive or dead. I suspect, however, that I may have believed her to ultimately turn up again, simply because it struck me as improbable that a character with such a big role in Episode One would be killed at the end of it and never heard from again.

I very much enjoyed the medieval scenes, which reminded me a bit of David Macaulay's animated specials for PBS about building in the ancient and medieval world (particularly the first one, "Castle"). Not to mention (as I said before) that I was delighted with the Vikings looking much more historically accurate, with not a single horned helmet in sight, being already familiar with the way that they actually did dress (I know that I should be thanking the animators on this, actually, but there isn't an "Ask Frank Paur" page up anywhere as far as I know, so this'll have to do :)

Before the episode first premiered, I'd been aware of "Gargoyles" soon to be coming out, but wasn't certain as to whether I'd like it that much or not, fearing that it would just be another mainstream super-hero series. But when it quickly began the "Scotland - 994 A.D." sequence, I decided that I was definitely going to like it. (And indeed, felt slightly disappointed when I reflected that the bulk of the series wouldn't be set in medieval Scotland, considering how much I was enjoying that part of the story - I'm something of a Middle Ages buff - and began to fantasize about "Wouldn't it be great if they did a prequel series set in 10th century Scotland before the massacre?" - which, of course, I now know that you did indeed plan on doing later on.

At any rate, thanks for the ramble again.

Greg responds...

You're welcome. And thanks for responding in such detail.

In an ideal world I'd have definitely used the massacre to "kill off" characters that you got to know well, to make the tragedy more personal. But there was no room to include even Othello.

When you say that the "friend" conversation was the point where you decided you liked gargoyles, do you mean the series or the species?

Response recorded on March 25, 2000


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