PLUME: After you made it out to LA, how difficult was it to actually set up the animation studio?
LEE: Oh, it was easy. It was great… I loved it. We did a lot of shows. The only thing we began to realize was that we were doing shows for other people too – we did Defenders of the Earth for King Features, we did the Muppet Babies for Jim Henson, and a lot of other things – and we realized that we were real busy and keeping a lot of guys working, but we didn’t own a lot of these things. We were like a studio for hire. Again, the powers that be in New York didn’t feel that that was such a good idea, so at some point around 1990, we closed down the studio. But I was still out here, and by then we were trying to sell movies of our characters and television series. That’s what kept me busy most of the time.
PLUME: Speaking of movies, a lot of people don’t view those Marvel flicks from the late 80’s – early 90’s in a very favorable light…
LEE: I admire their judgment.
PLUME: Was it a budgetary problem, did the studios not understand the characters… What was it?
LEE: Well, the people back in New York who made these decisions – these contracts – gave the rights to do the movies to the wrong people. I mean, they took a valuable character like Captain America and they allowed a company to do it as a low-budget, quickie movie. They took The Punisher – which could have been good – and again, it was a low-budget movie. It was just a thing that was batted out. The only time we had a bigger budget movie, we were just unfortunate… And that was Howard the Duck. That should have been good, but every mistake in the book was made with that movie, and it didn’t work. I didn’t want to butt-in… I didn’t want to say anything about that movie, because I heard George Lucas was the Executive Producer, and there was no way I was going to try to tell George Lucas what to do. I think he must have had an honorary title too, because I can’t believe he had anything really to do with that movie. It just didn’t work.
PLUME: Marvel always struck me as a company that never really fought for any measure of quality control in the film adaptations…
LEE: No… We didn’t fight for it, we didn’t have it, and, in those days, I don’t think we would have known what to do with it if we had it.
PLUME: What do you think was the most successful adaptation?
LEE: The Hulk…on TV.
PLUME: Why was that?
LEE: The Hulk was done intelligently. It was done by Ken Johnson, who’s a brilliant writer/producer/director, and he made it an intelligent, adult show that kids could enjoy. He took a comic book character and made him somewhat plausible. Women liked it and men liked it and teenagers liked it… It was beautifully done. He changed it quite a bit from the comic book, but every change he made made sense. In the comics, the Hulk talked – he’d go, “Me Hulk! Me smash! Hulk kill!” That type of thing. Well, that would have been corny as hell on the screen. He left that out… He didn’t have the Hulk talk at all. He made Bill Bixby – playing Bruce Banner – the star. If you remember the Hulk series, you only really saw the Hulk for about 5 minutes in an hour show. You saw him for about 2 1/2 minutes in the beginning and about 2 1/2 minutes towards the end. The rest of it was Bill Bixby. It was like The Fugitive. It was a real, great, suspenseful, adult show with enough of the Hulk to please the young kids.
PLUME: But not too much to where it became hokey…
LEE: That’s right… So it was done very intelligently. Phil DeGuere did Dr. Strange, and that also, I thought, was a beautiful, intelligent, well-crafted production. Unfortunately, it was put on at the same time as Roots, so we weren’t lucky there.
PLUME: Also, as far as the films go – and despite its low-budget – I thought that the Corman production of The Fantastic Four showed a true love for the material…
LEE: Oh, that was a tragic event. I feel so sorry for the people involved. The director, Oley Sassone, is a friend of mine… He really tried his best, and so did the actors. They all thought that this was their big chance. The movie was never intended to be released. Bernd Eichinger, of Constantin Films, has had the rights to do The Fantastic Four movie for years and years and years. He never could get the script he wanted, and finally the people at Marvel really wanted to take the rights away from him and give it to somebody else. He didn’t want to lose them and I think, in general, I’m right about this – I may be wrong in a detail here and there- that he had to begin principal photography by December, or he would have lost his rights according to the last option he had. Well, there was no way – he hadn’t gotten the story he liked – so there was no way he was ready to start the movie, and yet here it was September or October. He decided he would put together a real quickie, cheapie, low-budget anything of The Fantastic Four – just to prove he had started principal photography so that he could keep the rights to the movie. So he got in touch with Roger Corman and they batted this thing out for a budget of about $1.98, and he was able to show that he had begun principal photography. That was never supposed to be seen by any human beings, but of course there are a lot of bootleg copies that have been distributed all over. Most people thought, “Jesus, what a terrible job that is! How corny! How cheap!” They didn’t realize that it wasn’t meant to be any better than that. Unfortunately, the people working on the project didn’t know that, and they tried their best. Really, I feel so bad for all of them… And it wasn’t really all that bad for what they did and the money they had to spend.
PLUME: I think it shows that they tried their best, and it also showed a close affection for the material…
LEE: Absolutely right.
PLUME: I hope that the same kind of dedication is in place for the big-budget version that they’re planning next year.
LEE: I don’t know what year it’s scheduled for. I know they’re still working on the screenplay.
PLUME: What do you think is necessary to make a good film adaptation of a Marvel product?
LEE: Well, the same thing that’s necessary to make any good film – you have to have a good story and you have to have the characters depicted in such a way that the audience is going to believe in them and care about them. I was just talking to somebody who was interviewing me and they were asking me a similar question… “What does it take to get a good adaptation?” Well, what does it take to get a good movie? I mean, when you adapt something, you’ve got to follow all the rules of just making a good movie, as if it’s an original project.
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