As the captions used to say in The Phantom comic strip, for those who came in late, I am recounting my lengthy experiences at this year’s Comic-Con International in San Diego. I pick up the story as the American Splendor movie panel has just ended and I remained in my seat, waiting for the next panel to begin.
NEILCON DAY 2: MIRRORMASK
I have made the observation numerous times in the past that of all comics professionals, Neil Gaiman has the most distinctive costume – black leather jacket, dark glasses, et al – since Wendy Pini and Frank Thorne used to do their Red Sonja and the Wizard show at conventions. And here he was, in full regalia, on the panel “Henson Presents Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean’s MirrorMask” beginning at 4:30 PM in the large Room 6CDEF. As Gaiman told another person at the panel’s start, “You can’t make eye contact with me; I’m wearing the shades.” Indeed.
Earlier in the day I mentioned the MirrorMask panel to my filmmaking cohort Constantine Valhouli, who began chuckling, and insisted that the title must be a pun on “Miramax.” I don’t know about that (though Gaiman has worked for Miramax on the English language adaptation of the Japanese animated film Princess Mononoke). There actually is a mirrored mask in MirrorMask, which is a new film, part live action, and part computer animated, directed by comics artist Dave McKean, co-written by McKean and his longtime collaborator Gaiman, and produced by the Jim Henson organization, home of the Muppets, for TriStar Pictures. The film’s executive producers, Jane Henson, president of Jim Henson Pictures and daughter of the late master Muppeteer Jim Henson, and Michael Polis, who also executive produced the recent Kermit’s Swamp Years, were present on the panel along with Gaiman and McKean. Kevin Kelly, MirrorMask‘s story editor, introduced the panel.
In another indication of Comic-Con’s growing importance to the movie business, Polis and McKean said that it was at the 2001 Comic-Con that they had first discussed doing the movie.Gaiman continued the story, saying, “For me the whole thing started with a phone call from Lisa. She said that TriStar had noticed that The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth” – Jim Henson’s previous fantasy adventure films using puppets – “far from being the financial failures that they were commonly perceived to be, actually had become these rock-solid perennial sellers that people bought on video and bought on DVD. She said it was sort of good news and bad news. They’ve noticed this, which is really good, and they like the idea of making something else like that with Henson. The bad news was they were offering $4 million to make it with.”
Lisa Henson explained that The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth had each “cost more than $40 million twenty years ago. That would maybe be a $100 million dollar movie today. So now could we do it for one twentieth of the budget?”
“So,” Gaiman said, pausing, “it’s five minutes long.” (No, not really.)
Henson already knew Gaiman from previous work together, and though she had not met Dave McKean, she was a fan of his work. Henson and Gaiman discussed a short film that McKean had made, called “The Week Before.” “It’s a very wonderful short film that Dave made for nothing in his mum’s barn and on her pond,” Gaiman told us. “It looks absolutely amazing, and she said, ‘Do you think we could get Dave McKean to direct the film for no money if we promise him that, basically, it’s being made on so little money that you can actually do something really cool and creative?'”
Gaiman continued, “Then Lisa said, ‘Obviously we couldn’t afford you to write it, but maybe you could come up with a story and we’d go and find a writer.'” Another pause, allowing the audience to anticipate Gaiman’s reaction to this. “And I said that if Dave was going to direct it, then I was going to be writing it, and we weren’t going to talk about that bit any more.” And with that McKean interjected, somewhat plaintively, “You just assumed I’m free.”
So, the deal was made, Gaiman recounted, and they were “on the one hand being promised complete creative freedom, and on the other hand very little budget. I can say that smiling, because I haven’t just had to make a $100 million movie for $4 million” – in fact, McKean finished shooting the live action only the Friday before the Con, and was about to begin a year of work on the computer animation – “but Dave was about three foot taller than he is now.”
“With a full head of hair,” observed the balding McKean.
Gaiman then went on to describe the counterintuitive choice of a place to write the movie. Gaiman now lives in the United States, but, “In February, eighteen months ago, when it was really, really nasty and wet and cold in England, I went to England to write the film with Dave.” They were put up at the Henson family home in Hempstead. “It was in the spirit of saving money right from the beginning,” Henson said: “No hotel rooms!” McKean ensconced himself on the house’s second floor, where there was a grand piano and lots of light, whereas Gaiman chose the first floor “where it could get slightly warmer” in this British winter. (Henson confessed, laughing, that “They shamed us into renovating and gutting the house.”)
“Each of us had half an idea,” Gaiman said, “and it seemed [each] could be part of the same idea.” I should add at this point that the panelists intended to show visuals for the movie, projected on a screen from McKean’s Mac laptop, but the Mac was misbehaving, and McKean was busy at his keyboard trying to correct the problem. Continuing the saga of the writing process, Gaiman mentioned a “big pad of paper” on which they wrote ideas, causing McKean to look up. “You’re behind the computer. You’ve lost now,” Gaiman declared. “My version is official.” (So, gentle readers, take this as a warning on reading this not-so-secret secret origin of the MirrorMask project. It’s a figurative hall of mirrors, I suppose, or perhaps the Gaiman-McKean remake of Rashomon.)
Though Gaiman and McKean have been working together since 1986, they had never worked physically together before, and this initially led to problems. “We frowned a lot,” reported Gaiman. “We glowered at each other a lot.”
Apparently feeling the need to add his own perspective to the story Gaiman was telling us, McKean spoke up. “We have completely different ways of working,” he said. “I’m a completely structured guy.” McKean said he likes to arrange “little pieces of paper” with story ideas on the floor. “You see patterns appear.” Turning to Gaiman, McKean asked, “How can you know what to write without the little pieces of paper?” Gaiman, in contrast, prefers to just start writing without planning ahead, and seeing where the story and the characters take him. “How do you know what they’re going to do unless you start to write it?” Gaiman asked McKean.
Although I don’t doubt there was tension at the time, and a little of it seemed to spill into this little debate on working methods, basically these reminiscences came across as semi-serious, semi-joking bantering between two people who are not about to let this get in the way of their collaboration or friendship. Indeed, as Gaiman recalled, going back to that week of writing, “On Day 3 we developed a working relationship.”
“On Day 4,” he continued, the filmmaker “Terry Gilliam came around for lunch, and he took one look at our piece of paper and said ‘Oh, that looks like a movie.’ This gave us more confidence.”
In fact, Gaiman and McKean writing in the same house proved useful in holding down the movie’s budget. Gaiman recalled that he would write scenes like one set in a classroom with lots of schoolchildren, and McKean would then point out the expense of finding the location, shooting there, and hiring all the kids. “Just do something cheap,” Gaiman claimed McKean would say, “like a city that crumples up like a piece of paper,” which, it turns out, can be realized inexpensively through CGI.
By the end of the first week McKean and Gaiman had completed the first draft of the screenplay, and TriStar okayed the duo’s second draft.
At this point the audience was shown what was termed “a five minute behind-the-scenes thingy” with an annoying rock soundtrack, mostly showing one of the actors being swung through the air on wires before a blank background. In other words, it was of dubious interest, but the audience applauded happily nonetheless.
It was revealed that apart from a small amount of location shooting for real world settings, most of the live-action footage was shot in front of a blue screen. McKean explained that “the bulk of the film” involves “a computer-generated city and characters” in another realm. These – city, people, costumes, strange animals, this whole world – are designed by McKean. It was pointed out that whereas for The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth the creatures and settings all had to be constructed in reality, in MirrorMask they are instead created via computer imagery. With the Mac now back on track, McKean showed images of various strange creatures and costumed characters onscreen.
Gaiman delineated the film’s story. “There’s a girl called Helena. Helena is played by a wonderful actress named Stephanie Leonidas. She’s fifteen going on sixteen. She’s part of a circus family, the Campbell Family Circus.” Helena “juggles” and “sells popcorn” and “She doesn’t really want to be part of the family circus. She would more like to run away and join real life.”
Helena argues with her mother (played by Gina McKee of Notting Hill) about it, and during a subsequent performance, the mother falls ill, and as a result the tiny circus is forced to close down. Helena blames herself, thinking the argument triggered her mother’s collapse. Helena’s father is no help, “falling apart” himself, and she finds herself living with “a mad aunt.” Then, on the night that her mother is undergoing an operation, “Helena has a dream,” Gaiman said, “or maybe not a dream, in which she gets to try and sort everything out for herself in her own way.”
Helena finds herself in another world, divided into the light kingdom and dark kingdom, ruled respectively by the Light Queen and Dark Queen (each played by McKee). The Light Queen has fallen into a sleep from which no one has been able to wake her, and her kingdom has falling into ruin. “In this world everyone wears masks except Helena,” Gaiman said, and all the masks are designed by McKean. Helena must go on a quest to the dark kingdom to find one special mask, the MirrorMask that will awaken the Light Queen. Along the way “Helena wonders why everyone thinks she is a princess.”
Accompanying Helena is a masked figure named Valentine (played by Jason Berry), whom Gaiman described as “an unreliable jester.” Gaiman also said that Valentine “is utterly feckless. No feck of any kind in this character,” and described him as “terribly funny” but “out for number one,” hence, I suppose, the unreliability.
McKee plays not only Helena’s mother but also the Light Queen and the Dark Queen, obviously fantasy representations of the mother’s positive and negative aspects. Speaking of the Dark Queen, Gaiman said, “You think she’ll be evil in a Cruella DeVil way,” but “instead she’s like your mom, only worse,” whereupon Gaiman imitated a woman feigning sympathy for her child. More Wizard of Oz-style doubling goes on with actor Rob Brydon, who plays both Helena’s father and the mayor of the light city. Leonidas herself plays both Helena and the “Anti-Helena,” and, it would appear the film raises the question, as with the White King in “Through the Looking Glass,” as to whether Helena is dreaming the Anti-Helena, or whether the “real” Helena is merely part of the Anti-Helena’s dream.
Among the creatures McKean designed for the film is what Gaiman calls “a griffin who poses riddles badly” and giants who speak with exasperating slowness (whom Gaiman imitated vocally, in yet another example of his untapped potential for being an animation voice actor). There are the “monkeybirds,” all of whom, Gaiman said, are named Bob except for the one named Malcolm. And then there are small sphinxes, which live with a woman named Mrs. Bagwell. “She seems to be a cat lady,” Gaiman said. “She took in a couple, except in her case they’re little sphinxes, with incredibly sharp teeth and human faces, that destroy things. As Mrs. Bagwell explains, ‘Mr. Bagwell didn’t like them very much, but they loved him, and after he disappeared mysteriously, they wouldn’t eat anything for a week.'”
Here’s an odd paradox: it would be too expensive to hire an established SFX company to do the special effects for MirrorMask, so McKean is forming his own company to do them instead. But McKean thinks that this strategy will prove to be “the wave of the future.” He wants there to be a new era of “imaginative films, fantastical films” done with “manageable budgets” using “desktop solutions,” coming up with CGI effects that “look cool” but would be inexpensive to create.
Indeed the designs that McKean showed us onscreen were very striking, though I have no idea at this point how they will work in combination with the live action figures. Will there be too great a disparity between the real people and the highly stylized world and creatures around them? Or will they meld together into a whole? Moreover, as one might expect from much of McKean’s past work, the creatures and costumes do not look at all warm and cuddly. Will this fantasy world and its masked denizens look too bizarre and off-putting to attract a family audience? Is the real audience for this film older fantasy fans looking for a darker, edgier sort of fantasy world? Or will this film prove fascinating enough to intrigue viewers from the very young to artistically sophisticated adults?
Could this be the breakthrough for Gaiman and McKean into wider recognition, beyond the audience for comics and fantasy novels? The film medium is taken far more seriously by today’s cultural opinion makers than comics. If MirrorMask is a critical success, then there will be interviews with McKean and Gaiman in the mainstream press, and perhaps that will direct new interest to their extraordinary body of work in comics.
(For those of you who may be interested: it was at this point that my computer blanked out thanks to the Blackout of 2003. But, amazingly, I lost no data whatsoever, and the article resumes.)
Yet, either because I missed hearing it or because it was not made clear, not until I got back from San Diego did I learn that MirrorMask is actually intended to go direct to video in 2004 without theatrical distribution. That means that the majority of film critics will probably end up ignoring it or being oblivious to its existence. [Editor’s Note: Currently the release plan involves opening it small theatrically in major US markets.]
Well, I would hope that MirrorMask does get to the big screen, at least at film festivals (and not just animation festivals, either) and, even better, through theatrical release in major cities to test its audience appeal. This will clearly be a significant work from two important creative figures, and I hope it gets its shot at gaining the critical attention it will surely deserve. (A half decade ago, I would have joked that if Gaiman and McKean became successful filmmakers, they’d become too “big” to go to comic conventions anymore. But now that Comic-Con has become a center for promoting fantasy films, that is no
longer the case.)
And back to the subject of costumes. Towards the latter part of the panel, I noticed Gaiman looking towards a bright light, shielding his eyes with his hand. A strange large, glowing blue dot appeared in each of the lenses of his dark glasses, as if his eyes were glowing with an eerie blue light. He has his own kind of mirror mask, it would appear.
I next wandered about a bit on the convention’s main floor before heading into the next panel. Breaks like these can be necessary for getting food from the snack bars along one long wall of the exhibit wall. I take note that in the last five years prices for food sold here have risen to match the exorbitant levels one encounters buying snacks at multiplex theaters, which likewise have captive hungry audiences.
So let’s take a break here and ask ourselves the question, what if Casablanca had been set at Comic-Con International?
Major Strasser: Why did you come to the San Diego Con?
Rick: I came here for the Marvel booth.
Major Strasser; But there is no Marvel booth at the San Diego Con.
Rick: I was misinformed.
The next event on the schedule I’d planned for myself does not start till 7 PM, so I decide to drop back into Room 6CDEF and catch the second half hour of the panel “Cartoon Network: Clone Wars.” This spotlights a new animated Star Wars series that is set between Episode II, the last movie to be released, and the forthcoming Episode III, to be released in 2005. The most unusual aspect of this series is that each of its episodes is a mere three minutes in length, and, it would appear, Cartoon Network either has not quite figured out how to place these vignettes into a schedule designed for half-hour and hour-long programs, or simply hasn’t told the panelists yet how it is to be done. We do know that the series debuts on Friday, November 10.
It strikes me that this is a very clever, if expensive, way to promote the next movie: a series of three-minute stories that effectively act as a series of commercials, long enough to whet audience interest but so short that a Star Wars story longer than a few minutes on film remains a special occasion.
The panel was headed by Genndy Tartakovsky, a major figure at Cartoon Network, inasmuch as he is the creator of Dexter’s Laboratory and Samurai Jack and supervisor on Craig McCracken’s The Powerpuff Girls, three of its signature series. Now he is producer and director of Star Wars: Clone Wars, too. Accompanying him on stage were art directors Paul Rudish and Scott Wills and storyboard artists Bryan and Mark Andrews.
The new series deals with the Clone Wars, the civil war in the galactic Republic in which the Jedi Knights, including Obi-Wan Kenobi, Anakin Skywalker, Mace Windu and Yoda, lead the Clone Army in combat against the separatists led by Count Dooku. The panelists said that Lucasfilm had given them considerable creative freedom in devising stories, with the important exception that they were not to advance the romance storyline involving newlyweds Anakin and Amidala in any way.
The panelists discussed how they attempted to keep the look of the Clone Wars animated episodes as close as they could to the distinctive visual style of the live-action Star Wars films: for example, the use of “wipes” to indicate scene transitions.
At one point one panelist asked the audience if they would like to see the first Clone Wars episode again and, not unexpectedly, was met with an enthusiastic yes. This was fine with me, since, having come in late, I missed the initial screening at the panel’s beginning.
Now, the Clone Wars creative team does indeed imitate the visual style of the Star Wars films in many ways, but there is one considerable difference. Not only is Clone Wars an animated series, but it does not strive for a realistic look. Nor, I suppose, should one expect that from the creator of the brilliant visual stylization of Samurai Jack. Yet I think one of the predominant visual traits of the Star Wars movies is their efforts to make the fantastic look realistic, from the lived-in, “hunk of junk” look of the Millennium Falcon to the CGI creatures and backgrounds that blend seamlessly into the live action footage of the most recent two movies.
So it took me a while to accept the stylized look of this first Clone Wars episode. The starships and cityscapes are not a problem, but the characters were. Count Dooku was decidedly a caricature of his portrayer in the films, Christopher Lee. One questioner from the audience perceptively commented that the animated Amidala (who appears in a silent cameo in the first Clone Wars) looked like Cindy Lou Who (from Dr. Seuss’s The Grinch Who Stole Christmas).
But I found myself adjusting to the stylization quickly (it was only three minutes long) and admiring this initial episode. I don’t know whether stories of such brief length can be more than vignettes that establish mood: this first one was really no more than the depiction of the Jedi and a vast space fleet taking off for the war, but I look forward to the rest of the series nonetheless.
Oddly, the only cast member from Episode II who contributes his voice to the Clone Wars series is Anthony Daniels as C-3PO. Otherwise, what the panelists called “soundalikes” are used. And the “soundalike” voices for Yoda and Obi-Wan in this first installment were quite good.
But I wonder why the other actors would not do these cartoons. Not enough time (but how long could recording for three-minute installments take)? Not enough money? (But wouldn’t it relatively be plenty of money for very little time spent working?) A feeling that people who work on major movies should not stoop to doing a small TV project? Or was it a certain condescension towards animation voice acting? (That would be surprising, considering that Samuel L. Jackson, who portrays Mace Windu in the movies, is very publicly a comics enthusiast, and Frank Oz, the voice of Yoda in the movies, is a famous puppeteer. So now, with the Con two days old, I’ve heard two different dead-on impersonations of Yoda’s voice, one in Clone Wars and the other in the 30-minute Star Wars play. Were I Mr. Oz, I wouldn’t want it to get around that doing Yoda’s voice is not a unique talent.)
Perhaps that’s it. Yes, major actors continually turn up doing voices in The Simpsons or voicing the lead characters in full-length animated films: the Brad Pitt is Sinbad syndrome. And yet, even for a fairly high profile project like Clone Wars, is it possible that leading actors still look down on voice acting? And that leads us to our next stop, as I take my leave of the Clone Wars panel, which still has a half hour to go, and head next door to Room 6B.
COMIC BOOK: THE CONVENTION PANEL
I nearly made it to last year’s Comic-Con, where we hoped to shoot some footage for our documentary, but the plans fell through at virtually the last minute. As it turned out, another, bigger movie was being filmed there instead that year: Creative Light Entertainment’s Comic Book: The Movie, to be released November 11 direct to DVD by Miramax. There was even a long panel last year during which the climax of the movie was filmed, with the attending fans in the role of the audience. Not only that, but the participating actors kept the audience entertained for over four hours, telling anecdotes, singing songs, and more, in what appears to have been a highlight of last year’s Comic-Con.
The director of the movie and its lead actor was Mark Hamill, not only an icon at Comic-Con for playing Luke Skywalker in Star Wars, but an enthusiastic fan, advocate and sometime writer of comic books. What is truly unusual about the movie is that most of its cast are animation voice actors, many of whose characters are famous but whose own faces are unknown to the vast public they entertain.
Now Hamill and many of the cast members were back for the panel “Mark Hamill Wants to Give you a Sneak Peek at Comic Book: The Movie,” running from 7 to 9 PM in Room 6B. A show of hands demonstrated that a majority of people in the audience for this year’s panel had been at last year’s filming. So perhaps it should be no surprise that this was the other panel that drew what I considered overly fannish reactions: rather too exuberant for my taste. But that is not to say I didn’t find this panel as entertaining as I’d hoped.
At a Comic-Con years ago I had had a great time at a voice actors’ panel organized and moderated by the ubiquitous Mark Evanier, who is not only an animation writer but has directed voice casts for cartoons as well. This year I was amazed to see how frequently voice actors appeared on the Comic-Con’s schedule of events: not only on the Comic Book: The Movie panel, but in another Evanier voice acting panel, a voice acting workshop, and numerous panels spotlighting specific animated films and series.
When first brought onstage, and again towards the panel’s end, each of the voice actors performed one or more of his or her specialty voices, and so we got to hear Billy West do Stimpy, Jess Harnell speak as Animaniacs‘ Wakko (as well as, whenever he had an excuse, impersonating Austin Powers), Rob Paulsen doing Wakko’s bother Yakko as well as Pinky from Pinky and the Brain, Debbi Derryberry (who has an appropriate name for someone who plays animated characters) as Nickelodeon’s Jimmy Neutron, and Jim Cummings shifting from the voice of Winnie the Pooh into Tigger’s.
(Here’s another sign of getting older. I’m from the generation who grew up listening to the late Sterling Holloway voice Winnie the Pooh for Disney. Cummings is an example of a second generation of voice actors who has taken over doing voices created by their great predecessors. Cummings also treated us to his rendition of the Tasmanian Devil, a voice originally created by the late Mel Blanc. Listening to the audience’s reaction to the actors doing voices, I wondered if many of these fans were twentysomethings who had grown up watching latter-day shows like Animaniacs!)
After bringing on many of his fellow voice actors, Roger Rose, the voice of Cartoon Network’s Johnny Bravo, introduced the man he called “Elvis, the King!” And this was not an inappropriate estimation of the next guest’s importance to the world of comics. Out walked Stan Lee, making another of his surprise cameo appearances, and the audience rose in a standing ovation. (Lee still has no theme music, though, for accompanying these star entrances. What should it be? The original Spider-Man TV theme song with different words, perhaps: “Stan the Man, Stan the Man”/”Writes whatever a genius can”?)
Another member of the cast who was called up to the dais was Donna D’Errico, who is not a voice actress, but unlike with the voice actors, people do know what she looks like from her work on Baywatch.
Finally Rose introduced “a man who is truly one of us, who really loves comic books – our director: Mark Hamill,” who entered to another standing ovation.
Speaking of Stan Lee, Hamill said, “I think what Stan gave us in our childhood is something that even your parents couldn’t give you in a way. It was a special covenant and he made you feel like part of the team.” That is exactly right. Stan Lee’s Bullpen Bulletins, letter pages, and avuncular asides to the readers reached out to his audience. (Just how long has it been since the Bullpen Bulletins pages disappeared from the comics?)
Stan Lee was on the panel because he makes a cameo appearance in Comic Book: The Movie. But I suspect that for him being in this movie was basically just one more item in his crowded schedule of media appearances, and he knew little about it apart from that. “Have you ever had to talk about something you know nothing about?’ he asked the crowd.
But there was one element of this panel that particularly intrigued him. In all the panels I saw at this Con, this was the only one that had a woman standing on the side of the podium translating what was being said into sign language. Many of the voice actors, comedians by nature, had been interacting with her, trying to see how she could adapt to the vocal tricks they can play, but she coped admirably.
Stan Lee enthused, “I keep looking at her because she’s so much more interesting than what I’m saying, and what I’m saying looks so glamorous when she does the signs. I want her with me all the time!” Stan was on a roll, and finally the truth came out: “What a wonderful person – and you’re detracting from me!” he exclaimed in (partly?) mock outrage.
Returning to his previous topic of his own lack of information on the subject at hand, Lee said that people ask him what’s going on in comics nowadays, but “I don’t know what’s happening in comic books. I’ve been out of them for years. I know less about the movie than you, ’cause I can’t face the screen!” And it’s true, the screens were behind him and the dais of guests.
So Stan turned to a different topic, the signing lady, once more: “Wonder if I can talk too fast for her to go,” Stan said, whereupon Marvel’s fast-talking Founding Father went at top speed, and lo and behold, the highly capable signing lady kept up with him the entire time.
Hamill undertook explaining the origin and making of Comic Book: The Movie. Except for D’Errico, Hamill had worked with every one of the actors on the dais before, as a voice actor himself, and says he found himself calling people he had done plays with years ago. Hamill called it the “cinematic equivalent of looking for change in the cushions. We don’t have anything to pay them, “but we can give you lots of credit.” (Sounds familiar to me.)
Indeed, Jess Harnell later talked about the big name actors hired nowadays to do voices for animated movies, and how there was a social distance between them and full-time voice actors like himself. But Harnell said that he and his associates regarded Hamill, who works regularly as a voice actor, as “one of them. He’s in the club.”
Hamill said he wants the movie to serve as “a souvenir of the Con,” in effect to capture a sense of what it is like and celebrate the Con. Originally his idea was to make the movie about a filmmaker going to the San Diego Con to make a documentary. “We gotta get Comic-Con on film. It’s just too wonderful not to put on film. It’s a wonderful backdrop for something to happen.”
Eventually Hamill decided that “to be a real voice for comic books,” he couldn’t play a director in the film. He did not want a lead character from the jaded worlds of New York or Los Angeles; instead he thought of the “nice, genuine people” he had met while working once in Wisconsin. (Hey, that’s the home of the late Mark Gruenwald!) “I have to be a true comic book fan who goes into the world of Hollywood.”
Hence Hamill evolved the character of Don Swann, a high school teacher from Wisconsin who is a comics historian on the side. The character was “modeled after Roy Thomas,” perhaps the greatest expert on comics’ Golden Age, who started out as an English teacher before turning comics professional. To dissuade viewers of the film from identifying him with Luke Skywalker, Hamill grew a beard for his new part.
As Harnell outlined the plot, “Hollywood options this character from the Golden Age of comic books, but they try to take it from being this very patriotic character with a sidekick named Liberty Lad … and turn it into Codename: Courage, who’s a guy in a black Kevlar jumpsuit with two Uzis and a chick in a rubber suit with him.
“The fans have an issue with this, so the studio decides to hire the world’s greatest authority on the old character, to sort of buy credibility with you guys for this big movie.” And that is the character Hamill plays, Don Swann.
(Hey, wait! I’m a former bearded teacher who is a leading authority on comics history. Hamill is unintentionally playing me! And this comics historian is paid, presumably big bucks, to act as a consultant to the makers of the Commander Courage movie. Do movie companies really hire comics historians? And none of them have hired ME?!? Where have I been?)
Now, actually, the movie company intends to ignore all of Swann’s advice. (Yep, that is indeed credible.) “They hire the advisor to co-opt him, so people won’t talk on the Internet about it.” (In other words, Comic Book: The Movie is actually acknowledging the growing power that comics fan opinion has in Hollywood.)
“What they don’t know,” Harnell said, “is this guy is the most subversive fan of all,” who proceeds to sabotage the Codename: Courage movie, bringing about “the unmaking of a major motion picture.”
The voice actors in the cast perform various roles onscreen. For example, Billy West plays a sheet metal worker, “sort of dopey,” from upstate New York, who happens to be the grandson of the creator of Commander Courage. Attending the San Diego Con, he finds himself a center of attention, and “has to reinvent himself in four days” to fit into his new role as comics world celebrity, only to end up going “from being a sweet guy to a total Hollywood scumbag,” Harnell said. West also did the music for the movie, writing songs with Harnell, one of which they performed onstage, the rather sweet and wistful “Four Color World.”
In addition various real life guests at the 2002 Comic-Con appear in the film, including J. J. Abrams, creator of Alias; actor Ron Perlman; Comic Buyer’s Guide editor Maggie Thompson; Simpsons creator Matt Groening; sci-fi movie favorite Bruce Campbell, and the inevitable and omnipresent Kevin Smith. Surprisingly, the cast also includes legendary comedians Sid Caesar and Jonathan Winters, appearing together in a film, it was noted, for the first time since It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.
One might wonder when Christopher Guest will get around to adding comic conventions to his list of “mockumentaries”: such as the recent A Mighty Wind. Perhaps Hamill’s movie has preempted the subject. Hamill told the audience he dislikes the word “mockumentary” and that he is not “mocking” something in his movie. He says this is the “first story about a fan made by a fan for fans” and that “We come off as real people with varied tastes.” “I’m not here to do a Trekkies thing,” he said, presumably referring to the documentary about obsessive Star Trek fans; “It’s not arch.”
The makers of Comic Book: The Movie are intent on attacking the Hollywood mindset that insists on altering the letter and spirit of comic book properties that it adapts into movies and television, and to advocate that great comics properties be adapted faithfully to the screen. (Of course, the Batman animated series of the 1990s, in which Hamill plays the Joker, is a superb example of faithfully, intelligently, and entertainingly translating the spirit of a comics series and its characters to another medium.) Hamill was saying all the right things on the panel, saying his movie is out to celebrate the San Diego Con and the people who attend it. This gets my hopes up for the movie.
But the trailer for Comic Book: The Movie that we were shown makes me worry. We saw people in costumes on the convention floor; Donna D’Errico, apparently impersonating a stereotypical fan, asking dopey questions with an affected lisp of Daffy Duck dimensions; an actor portraying Commander Courage speaking in a self-parodying stentorian voice.
I worry that if Comic Book: The Movie spends too much time having fun with comics fan stereotypes, it will just reinforce the prejudices of mainstream reviewers who write about the film. And there are plenty of the close-minded out there. Last time I praised Daily Variety‘s preview of this year’s Comic-Con; recently I saw an article in Variety‘s weekly edition following the Con that characterized it as a place where Hollywood representatives “get chic with the geeks.” I expect these particular two writers are delighted with their little rhyme, which sours the effect of Variety‘s discerning preview of the Con the previous week.
What I’d love to see, though, is if Comic Book: The Movie, by parodying stereotypical fan behavior, draws in the mainstream critics who condescend to comics, and then succeeds in persuading them that the comics themselves are indeed worth taking seriously. Now that would be truly subversive.
Stan Lee departed the panel before its close (Elvis had left the building), and towards the end, some of the actors did more of their famous voices. Hamill was persuaded to perform what was called “a full Joker rip,” a loud, long burst of laughter directly into the microphone. Jim Cummings charged up the audience by energetically performing the over-the-top introductory narration of Disney’s mock-superheroic Darkwing Duck as the title character.
Encoring from last year’s panel, Rob Paulsen performed Yakko’s rapid-fire Animaniacs patter song listing virtually all the nations on Earth, and at long last, after meeting so many challenges, the signing lady finally had to surrender. The audience, though, kept clapping along in time, and stood and cheered when Paulsen finished. Paulsen then spoke of “getting paid essentially for what used to get me in trouble in seventh grade.” he went on, “If you’re fortunate enough to find something you love, you’re blessed -especially if you get paid for it.” Paulsen also noted that since voice acting is such “an anonymous profession,” he wanted to thank the crowd “for paying attention.”
And that, ideally, is what Comic Book: The Movie will be about: paying attention to voice actors, to the Comic-Con, and to the comics medium itself. I hope the filmmakers pull it off.
AWARDS AFTERMATH
While I was being regaled by the goings-on at Mark Hamill’s panel, the annual Will Eisner Comics Industry Awards started at 8:30 PM in the enormous Ballroom 20.
I have never yet attended the Eisner Awards, and I didn’t get to them this year, either. This is because I had a bad experience at a San Diego Con awards ceremony back in the 1980s. Every year the San Diego Con itself presents the Inkpots, which, no, are not a Motown singing group, but awards that the Con presents to various individuals, most of whom are comics professionals invited by the Convention committee that year to be special guests. (And , hence, it is said that it was strongly recommended to various special guests to make sure to attend the Inkpots ceremony.)
One year I decided I should attend the evening award ceremony to see what it was like since it was an Important Thing to Do. As I’d heard, people dressed up for the ceremony, and people sat at large round tables before a podium, and it all seemed very much a formal, prestigious event. And it was boring and seemed interminable. I recall that the only thing in the ceremony that stirred my interest was glancing over to the bare shoulders of two strikingly dressed female comics pros sitting at different tables than mine. (No, I am not going to tell you who they were.) And I decided, never again.
Later in the 1980s the Kirby Awards were inaugurated. A panel nominated contenders for the awards, for which comics professionals could vote, and the winners were announced during a daytime ceremony at the Con, which could be attended by pros and fans alike. Jack Kirby, after whom the awards were named, sat alongside the presenter as the winners were announced. This was not at all a formal event, people were dressed casually (continuing a theme, I remember one female comics pro making her acceptance speech looking good in shorts; I’m not saying who she was, either), and it was a pleasure to be there.
Soon, however, there was a schism among the organizers of the Kirby Awards, and the Kirby Awards were supplanted by two rival ceremonies, the Eisners, which continued to be presented at San Diego, and the Kurtzmans (named after another comics legend, Harvey Kurtzman, creator of MAD), which were held at another Con. Jack Kirby no longer had anything to do with either set of awards, and it seems a shame that in effect he lost the honor of having comics industry awards named after him.
But I wonder now if, considering the evolution of the awards, whether it makes more sense to have them named after Eisner and Kurtzman, who are associated with alternative comics, rather than Kirby, who is the greatest artist of the comics mainstream. (As fate would have it, Kirby passed away nine years ago whereas his contemporary, Will Eisner, still presides over the award ceremony.)
The Comic-Con program book hails the Eisners as “the Oscars of the comics industry,” but they strike me as being more like the Independent Spirit Awards, which are given out the day before the annual Academy Awards ceremony. The Oscars celebrate mainstream Hollywood; the Independent Spirit Awards honor alternative and independent cinema.
Both the Eisners and the Harveys likewise primarily concern themselves with alternative comics, and, invariably, there is a large percentage of nominees that I’ve never heard of. Come to think of it, since I have heard about most Independent Spirit award nominees each year, perhaps I’d be better off comparing the Eisners to, say, the Village Voice movie critics’ annual Ten Best lists, a genuine exercise in elevating the relatively obscure and esoteric.
In past years the Eisners were presented at the same nighttime ceremonies as the Inkpots, and, I was told, people still dressed up to attend, there was a big party afterwards, and the ceremony itself was still boring as hell. So I skipped it year after year, though at times I would encounter a friend who expressed shock that I would duck such an important event (and then who would admit that it was boring).
I intended to look in on the Eisners this year, and I knew that the ceremony had been streamlined: the Inkpots were now given out at the recipients’ panels during the Con. But, first, the Comic Book: The Movie panel looked as if it would be more entertaining, and more than lived up to my expectations. This panel ended at 9, only half an hour into the Eisners, which began at 8:30 PM. So, I told myself, I’d miss Neil Gaiman’s keynote speech, but could still see most of the awards (and seeing one Gaiman convention event a day does seem sufficient).
But as soon as the Comic Book: The Movie panel ended, I was tapped on the shoulder by another member of the audience, Peter Coogan, co-organizer of the academic Comic Arts Conference held every year at Comic-Con. And we ended up walking over to the entrance of Ballroom 20 and talking animatedly on a variety of subjects, while the Eisners ensued within. In time we were joined in conversation by some professorial ladies who were also attending the Conference. And so I had a good time standing at the threshold of the Eisners, but not actually going in. (Maybe next year.)
I was still interested in the post-Eisners party I’d heard about over the years, so I and the others wandered into the Ballroom after the award presentations were over. Despite what I’d heard about people dressing up, I don’t recall seeing any man under sixty wearing a suit in there, although there were more well-dressed younger women. If there had been a post-Eisners party in past years, there was not one now. As one of the aforementioned well-dressed women, Colleen Doran (looking sleek and glamorous in a green suit), aptly commented to me, the party, such as it was this year, consisted of “milling about.”
But by now it was closing in on 11 PM, I had found Constantine and the rest of our filmmaking crew, and with the end of Friday’s convention I was quickly growing too tired to engage in much post-Eisners shmoozing. Luckily, so were they, and eventually we were back off to Alpine and our hotel.
It was interesting to learn afterwards that Myatt Murphy, one of the interviewees in our film, had received an Eisner as Most Promising Newcomer. When Constantine told me he had interviewed Murphy for the film and presented it to me as a fait accompli, I had no idea who he was. It’s a pleasure to find out that Murphy is indeed a newcomer of stature.
And another thought. These awards ceremonies are clearly bids by the comics industry for greater respect through honoring its own for artistic achievement. But several years ago, I finally caught up with the movie Boogie Nights, and was surprised to find that it depicted an (apparently actual) convention for porn moviemakers with its own award ceremony. Now that, for me, undercut the idea that an awards ceremony necessarily connotes respectability more than Gaiman’s serial killers’ convention in Sandman did!
EPIPHANY
So here I am, halfway through this year’s Comic-Con. Looking back over Friday’s events, I recall one particularly unusual incident. Noting my registration badge, veteran comics writer Len Wein asked me if I was here representing Marvel. Well, no, I’m here as an (alas, as yet) unpaid writer for Constantine Valhouli’s Prince Street Films. But, looking at my badge, I see that it’s true: it reads “Peter Sanderson, Marvel.” Since I was working for Marvel on each of my many past trips to San Diego, the Comic-Con computer labeled me as a Marvel representative yet again.
But wait, if there is no Marvel booth, and if Marvel is not an exhibitor at Comic-Con, then has the Comic-Con computer designated me as the default Marvel representative? Or is there something more at work that I don’t know about? Have I been chosen by unknown parties as a member of a Marvel shadow government in exile, lurking at Comic-Con while waiting for our time to come again? The mystery deepens, perhaps to be solved in the next column and Day Three of Comic-Con International 2003.
-Copyright 2003 Peter Sanderson
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