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Confundrum writes...

Hi Greg. I wanted to drop a line and congratulate you and the rest of the team responsible for Gargoyles. I saw the show for the first time this summer, and I enjoy it thoroughly. It's just raggedy that several of the episodes seem like they won't be aired. I guess I'll just have to be patient until some brave tv station will air the rest of them.

My question is about the plot of Gargoyles. My favorite part about Gargoyles is that each episode affects the ones to come. The plot builds, like a soap opera with the important distinction being that Gargoyles is cool. It almost seems that Gargoyles was created completely in advance, because it fits so well together. How did you anticipate how many different directions Gargoyles could and did go when creating it? ... especially since the story never became sketchy or contradictive?

Greg responds...

Thanks.

Some of it was dumb luck. Serendipity. We started out with a pilot that had Vikings attacking a Scotish castle in the year 994 and then after the fact discovered that such an event was historically accurate.

After that we made an effort. We did research into both history and mythology (of multiple cultures). I already had an extensive background in Shakespeare (and a number of other random disciplines).

And we planned ahead. A whole bunch or us. Myself, Frank Paur, Michael Reaves, Brynne Chandler Reaves, Cary Bates, Gary Sperling, Lydia Marano... etc.

Personally, I had some long term plans. I was just careful about laying groundwork. I spent years working in comics which was good training for the kind of episodically serialized tapestry that we were creating. (I've also been watching ALL MY CHILDREN on and off for nearly thirty years, which didn't hurt.) HILL STREET BLUES was a big influence too.

And mostly, the stuff just wrote itself. I don't want to make it sound easy. But I had a definite sense that the Gargoyles Universe existed somewhere and that my job was to tap into it and discover what happened. Sometimes things just seemed right. Of course, Owen was Puck. Of course, Fox and Xanatos were in love. I didn't know these things when I started. But the answers became self-evident.

Nothing in my professional life, before or since, has ever given me as much pleasure.

Response recorded on December 30, 1999