Search Results for: Frank Welker

As some of you may know, I was the Supervising Producer of The Garfield Show, which is seen all over the globe. I'm still not sure what a Supervising Producer supervises but I wrote a lot of the series and directed the voices and did various producer-like chores. We did…well, I'm not sure if I should say four or five seasons. Seasons 1-4 consisted of approximately 26 half-hours each. "Season 5," as they called it, was four 11-minute episodes that could also be described as one four-part story.

The 78 half-hours that comprised Seasons 1-3 have been running for many years in the United States on Cartoon Network and/or Boomerang. Both channels are owned by the same company and they've sometimes run them on one or the other or for a while on both, usually four half-hours a day, seven days a week. They have run these over and over and over and over and over and over and over.

They do quite well in the ratings, which is why they run them over and over and over and over and over and over and over. Though they've had Season 4 and "Season 5" sitting on the shelf for a long time, they haven't aired them because Seasons 1-3 do so well as they run them over and over and over, etc. 4 and 5 have been broadcast all over the world; just not in the U.S. of A.

Right now, the shows from Seasons 1-3 air on Boomerang Monday through Friday at 10 AM, 10:30 AM, 10 PM and 10:30 PM. On the weekends, Boomerang has them at 2 PM, 2:30 PM, 10 PM and 10 PM. These are all Eastern Times I'm giving you.

And starting tonight, there's an additional half-hour every Tuesday night which will be airing the never-before Season 4 and (I think, later on, "Season" 5). This half-hour airs on Boomerang at 8:30 PM Eastern and then the same episodes air at 11:30 PM. Now, here's where it gets complicated…

Each half-hour of The Garfield Show contains two 11-minute episodes. Some of the 11-minute episodes in Season 4 are standalone 11-minute stories and some of them are 11-minute chapters of five-part stories. Tonight, for example, they're airing Part 1 and Part 2 of the five-part story, "The Lion Queen." Next Tuesday, you get Part 3 and Part 4 and then the following Tuesday, you get Part 5 of "The Lion Queen" and…well, I'm not sure. Maybe one of the standalone episodes or maybe Part 1 of another five-parter.

This is not the way I'd have chosen to air the shows but I do want to recommend them to you anyway. These episodes feature some of the best CGI animation I've ever seen on television and I was real happy with how the stories came out. (There are also songs; I wrote the English lyrics for tunes written by others in France.) "The Lion Queen" also has a superb voice cast: Frank Welker, Gregg Berger, Wally Wingert, Jason Marsden, Julie Payne, Fred Tatasciore, Phil LaMarr, Misty Lee, Laraine Newman and Stan Freberg.

I'm not comfy plugging my own work so this is as much as I'll say now. I hope you enjoy them and I hope one of these days soon, they run all five parts of a five-parter, one right after the other. I really like them that way.

Last March, the Emmy-winning cartoon voice actor Maurice LaMarche challenged me to come up with a list of the All-Time Great folks in his profession and I said I would do so once I figured out what form it would take and I set down some rules. I decided to break it into two lists — one to cover the first forty years of the art form; the other to cover everything since.

The first forty years began with Steamboat Willie in 1928 so it ended in 1968. (The first cartoon voice actor was, of course, Walt Disney…and though Mickey Mouse is probably the most popular cartoon character ever, I still decided Walt wasn't a good enough voice actor to make this list.) I will explain at some point why 1968 is a good cut-off year for the First Generation.

Frank Welker is not on this first list. Frank is by far the "workingest" voice actor who has ever lived and probably, among his peers, the most respected of anyone working today. So why didn't I include him? Because he started his animation voicing career in 1969. That is not the reason I picked '68.

My list only covers motion pictures and television cartoons that were made primarily for the American market employing American actors. I mean no disrespect to foreign performers. I simply am not qualified to do a worldwide list.

My criteria? How good they were, how memorable their work was, how influential they were and how "in demand" they were. Working a lot was not the major consideration but if it had been, the list would not have been that different. All of these folks did an awful lot of cartoons.

In case you'd like some hints on who I put on the list: There are 18 men and two women. All but five of the twenty did a substantial number of roles in theatrical animation and all but three of the twenty were in the regular casts of very popular animated TV shows. Most, of course, did both. I directed eleven of them at least once…and only one of them is alive.

I will post little pieces about each of the twenty here, one per week for the next twenty weeks, starting tomorrow. The list will not be in any particular order but I will tell you that if it was, the top five would include some arrangement of Mel Blanc, Daws Butler, June Foray, Paul Frees and Don Messick. And now you know who one of the women is and who the only person is on the list who's still with us.

A little while after I get through this list, I will start listing actors who got into the industry after 1968 and distinguished themselves in the next forty years. That list will require more than twenty names and may go on for some time.  You may not agree with one or both of my lists.  If you don't, you're free to ignore mine and make up your own.

The Emmy-winning thespian-for-animation Maurice LaMarche just wrote me about a list that's online called 20 Greatest Voice Actors compiled by a gentleman named Bill Treadway. I assume this is the same Bill Treadway who writes some smart political commentaries on the web so I'll just say as politely as I can that more than half the selections on his list don't make any sense to me. I'm not saying I disagree with his selections. It's that I don't see what his logic or reasoning is…oh, and some of those folks haven't done anywhere near as much as he apparently thinks they have.

Okay, so there's his opinion. Mine is that a list of great voice actors that omits Daws Butler, Don Messick and Frank Welker is like a list of great silent comedians that overlooks Charlie Chaplin, Harold Lloyd and Buster Keaton. Moe — that's what we call Maurice — wrote to me, "Mark, I think it's time for you to write a list that has some credibility." And it does say something about the list that a guy who was named on it as one of the 20 Greatest thinks it's lacking in credibility. I mean, put me on a list of the 20 Greatest Anything and I'll say you're a genius even if the other 19 choices are infectious diseases, human eyesores or Robert Durst.

So I'm going to whip up a list of some arbitrary number of Great Voice Actors…not today but within the next week or three. Or four or nine. Don't — repeat: don't — send me any suggestions because I want to do this myself and because I'm already wading through nominations here for the Bill Finger Award.

Also, before I even start coming up with names, I'm going to draw up some ground rules and criteria for myself…like I know I'm not going to include folks like Jim Henson and Frank Oz because I won't be doing a list of the 20 Greatest Puppeteers. Both men were brilliant but it's a different skill and if you're going to include them, why not Edgar Bergen and Shari Lewis and Paul Winchell and so on? I may just break it up into two lists — a golden age one and a modern one with 1968 as the dividing point. (There's a reason why 1968 and I'll explain it. The challenge of the job changed a lot that year.) Or the "current" list may take a different form so as to minimize the number of friends I lose. Watch this space.

If you've followed this blog, you know my life has been full of incredible coincidences. I told you about this one here on September 15, 2002…

Here's another one of those "incredible coincidence" stories you won't believe. But I have witnesses to this one, and am quite prepared to take a polygraph that it happened just the way I say it happened.

For much of a decade, I wrote and voice-directed a cartoon show called Garfield and Friends. This was great fun because the Powers That Be (aka Jim Davis, creator of the lasagna-loving feline) allowed me to write pretty much whatever I wanted, and to cast whomever I felt suitable to do the guest voices.

One week, I penned an episode entitled, Lifestyles of the Fat and Furry, which burlesqued the then-popular TV series, Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, hosted by Robin Leach. The program chronicled the indulgent creature comforts of folks with vast amounts of fame and/or cash, usually both. Teetering tenuously on the ledge of self-parody, the show drew much of its charm from the fustian, hyperkinetic narration of Mr. Leach.

Having written my parody of their parody, I set about to secure Robin Leach himself to do the voice of Robin Leach. I figured he could handle the role. About a week before we would be recording the voice track, I phoned his office in Los Angeles. They told me to call his office in New York.

I called his office in New York. They told me to call his office in Connecticut.

I called his office in Connecticut. They told me to call his office in London.

I called his office in London. They told me that Robin was on a six-week expedition down the Brahmaputra River, or somewhere equally remote. Wherever it was, he wouldn't be back 'til long after our tape date. So I shrugged and booked Frank Welker.

Frank Welker is the most gifted, amazing voice magician who has ever stood before a microphone in Hollywood. Frank can sound like anyone or anything. He is heard constantly in animated cartoons but also logs many hours doing voice matches and dubbing in live-action motion pictures. You hear him often in movies without knowing you're hearing him.

I knew he did a mean Robin Leach so I arranged with his agent for Frank to come in and play the part. I gave him a call time of 2:00.

Nine AM that morning, I walked into Buzzy's Recording Studio on Melrose Avenue for a full day of Garfield recording. I asked Marie at the desk, as I always did, if we were in Studio A or Studio B. She said — and I swear, I'm not making this up — "You're in Studio A. Robin Leach is in B."

Robin Leach???

That was what the lady said. I walked directly into Studio B and there — standing at a microphone, wearing a shirt imprinted with images of hundred dollar bills — was Robin Leach. In person.

I explained to him what we were doing over in A, and how I'd attempted to contact him, and how I'd given up and hired an impressionist, and he couldn't have been nicer. "Well, if the offer's still open, I'd be delighted to play me," he said. About an hour later, after he finished the spots he was recording, he came over to our studio and played Robin Leach like he'd been doing it all his life.

In fact, he played himself with enormous good-humor and that same sense of show biz and self-mocking that had made his show a hit. He exaggerated the vocal quirkiness of the Leach style more than I'd probably have allowed a mimic to do.

Robin was long gone by 2:00 when Frank Welker showed up. "Well, I'm here to do that Robin Leach bit," Frank announced. "I was warming up in the car on the way over."

"Uh, Frank," I said sheepishly. "I'm sorry but there's been a change of plans. I have a different role for you to play…not Robin Leach…"

Frank was puzzled. "What happened to the Robin Leach role?"

"Well, I don't know how to tell you this but, uh, we found someone who does a better Robin Leach than you do…"

Frank is a wonderful, cooperative person but he seemed a bit affronted — like his honor had been besmirched. He looked hurt so I added, "I'm sorry…I thought this other guy was a little better, Here — you can hear for yourself." And I told Andy the Engineer to run a few seconds of the voice track we'd recorded earlier that morn.

As the mellifluous tones of R. Leach boomed through the speakers, I saw shock upon the face of the best impressionist in the business. There, framed by stark horror, was the realization that someone had bested him in the category of Robin Leach impressions.

(I finally told him the truth. I didn't have the heart…)

I don't track this kind of thing but This Day in History informs me that today marks 26 years since Garfield and Friends debuted on CBS. One of the happiest professional experiences of my life was to serve as writer, voice director and co-producer of that series.

Odd thing about that "co-producer" title: I didn't ask for it. I never even asked to be credited as voice director or for the songs I wrote so I wasn't. But after the first time the show was nominated for an Emmy, one of the executive producers, Lee Mendelsohn, suddenly realized that if it won for Best Animated Series, I would not be receiving one of those nifty statues.

The rules were changed a year or two later to include someone who'd written more than a certain percentage of the episodes. I don't recall the number but I was then writing all of them so I obviously would have qualified there. Before that change was instituted, Lee — who literally has more Emmys than toes — decided it would be wrong for him to get one for Garfield and Friends if I didn't.  (He needn't have worried.  Though nominated a couple of times, it never won.)

Designating me a co-producer meant I'd be included so they made me co-producer. My actual duties did not change nor did my compensation. But I got a lot of messages congratulating me on my promotion…which shows you how meaningless some credits in television can sometimes be.

We did seven or eight seasons of the show, depending on how you figure. It aired over seven seasons but according to CBS and my contract, we did eight. They just made the show an hour its second year and aired Season Two and Season Three at the same time.

Writing it was a lot of fun because after the first few episodes, I was just left alone to write whatever I wanted and to hire the voice actors I wanted. It was so much fun to go in and work with the core cast: Gregg Berger, Thom Huge, Frank Welker, Julie Payne, Howard Morris and, of course, Lorenzo Music in the role of Garfield. I miss those sessions and some of those people. Some, I can't miss because they're still around to repeat their roles on The Garfield Show, the new series starring the lasagna-loving feline.

One of these days, I'll get around to writing more about this series. I'll tell you every problem and crisis we had and you'll think, "That's all?" Because it really was a joy — one that came into my life after a series of experiences in animation that were not and which had left me thinking I'd give it up and find something else to write. I'm glad I didn't.

On Saturday on my way to Quick Draw!, I passed this gent dressed in a Cookie Monster/Star Wars mash-up and thought he was very funny. Then on my way up the escalator to the top floor, I suddenly thought it would be funny to bring him into Quick Draw! and have the panel draw other variations on that mash-up. So I ran back downstairs, found him and invited him to come up for the event later. He never showed up so we did the premise anyway…and he missed out on all that attention, plus I'd sent my assistant out to get him a cookie.

Several folks sent me this photo of him which is apparently on several different sites at the moment. I don't know where it originated so I can't ask permission from the photographer but if it's you, please let me know if it's okay to leave it up here and let me give you credit.

Then on Sunday when I walked into one of my panel rooms, there was the real Cookie Monster. But I've already told that story.

Sunday was my favorite day of the con. As I mentioned, it started with the Jack Kirby Tribute Panel and then we had what was probably the best Cartoon Voices panel we ever did…including the last-ever performance of that "Snow White" script that panel attendees are sick of. Here's a decent video of the panel which featured, left to right, Gregg Berger, Vanessa Marshall, Fred Tatasciore, Debra Wilson, Robin Atkin Downes and surprise (to him) guest, Bill Farmer…

Then we did a panel called Cover Story: Art of the Cover. It's an annual thing I host in which artists discuss designing covers for comic books and this time, we had Amanda Conner, Fiona Staples, Mark Brooks, Jae Lee and Stan Sakai. A lot of folks seem to love the "shop talk" aspect of it. (Note to Self: Next year, either get the con to make this panel longer or have one less artist on it so we can go even more in-depth.)

My final panel of the convention was one called The Business of Cartoon Voices. Let me tell you two quick stories as to how this panel came about…

QUICK STORY #1: Many moons ago, I hosted the first-ever panel at Comic-Con with cartoon voice actors. Now, they're all over the place but back in whatever year that was, I got the con to give me a small room and I got a bunch of such people to come down and demonstrate their craft. Within a few years, we were turning away so many attendees that they moved us into the biggest room they had and because of how easily we filled that hall, we added a second Cartoon Voice panel — one on Saturday, one on Sunday.

For a while, we took questions from the audience but I finally decided not to do that. The questions were almost all about how to get into the profession and they warranted longer, more detailed answers than time allowed. The questioners also had a tendency to audition as they were asking their questions and it was obvious that most of the audience didn't want to hear that. People would start walking out the moment I said, "Let's take some questions from the audience." So I decided to stop saying that and to think maybe there should be a separate panel focusing on how to get into the business.

QUICK STORY #2 and this may not be so quick: There are an awful lot of people out there, mostly young, who want a career in voicing cartoons. By "an awful lot," I mean way more than the business can handle. Even if every one of them had the skills of a Daws Butler or June Foray, there could not possibly be enough work for them all. It's simple math. Not everyone who wants to pitch for the Dodgers will get that opportunity either.

Since there are so many people who want in, there's a thriving industry out there to coach and teach these folks. In Los Angeles alone, there are somewhere between 100 and 300 classes or private coaches and many of them are very, very good. But some are not. Some are, to put it bluntly, ripping off eager wanna-bes and promising them that which can never be. If a teacher has any integrity at all, it begins with not accepting money from folks with no flair for the profession.

The late Daws Butler was, I think, the best teacher of voiceover skills ever. (He was also, I am prepared to argue, the best practitioner ever of his art but if you wanted to say it was Mel Blanc or Paul Frees or Frank Welker or someone else in that phylum, I wouldn't quarrel.) The very first thing Daws did was to turn down students who he believed lacked promise. You could not get into his class with money…and if he did allow you in, he did not take an excessive amount of it from you.

I keep hearing of cases where someone has done the opposite and that's why my friend, the also-late Earl Kress and I started this panel called The Business of Cartoon Voices. Earl was a student of Daws and he shared my anger at such cases. Here's a recent one…

A troubled woman, about my age, approached me at WonderCon and said she was desperate for advice. Her daughter, who's about 25, is studying with a Voice Coach. Her daughter dreams of being a Cartoon Voice performer and has no other dream in life. The mother, who loves her daughter, is shelling out large sums of cash to a Voice Coach who promises the young lady will have a luscious and lucrative career.

This has been going on for around eighteen months without the slightest hint of a job. When the mother asks, "Shouldn't she be getting auditions or an agent by now?" the V.C. says more lessons (i.e., more payments) are still necessary. The woman told me the amounts of the checks she has written and I was shocked. They pretty much amount to her life's savings. She said, "I don't know if I should keep paying him or find another teacher or what." She is clearly motivated by nothing more or less than to help her daughter achieve her dream.

Much of the money she has paid out has been to make "demo" recordings of her daughter's work — the kind of recordings to which agents and casting directors listen. She gave me the most recent one and her phone number and I went home, listened and called her. While I hate to say that anyone could not possibly have a career in a dreamed-of field, I will say that Daws Butler would never have taken this woman's money in the first place.

This kind of predatory exploitation of burgeoning talent bothers the heck outta me. Earl and I talked about it years ago and we decided to start this panel to educate beginners and because we wouldn't feel good if we didn't do something like this. So I bring in agents (this year, Sandie Schnarr of AVO and Cathey Lizzio of CESD) and actors (this year, Gregg Berger, Vanessa Marshall and Bill Farmer) and we give the audience the basics. Some people have paid thousands of dollars just to learn what we dispense for free in ninety minutes. Sandie and Cathey are, by the way, two of the best voiceover agents in the business.

No, there's no audio or video of the panel available but in the coming weeks, I'm going to take some space on this blog to summarize what was said. For now, let me just say: If you want to get into voiceover work, be real careful about who you give your money to. There are great coaches and teachers out there. (Bill Farmer is one and Bob Bergen is another.)

So that was Sunday and that was Comic-Con 2014. I'll have more to say about the convention in the coming weeks. In fact, I'll probably be writing about it until it's time to prep for next year's…which, by the way, is earlier in the month than usual. Comic-Con International 2015 will convene on July 8 and run through July 12. It's barely worth my time to unpack.

I spent yesterday (a) voice-directing The Garfield Show and (b) catching up on sleep I didn't get over the weekend working on the script. The session went well thanks to a superb cast: Frank Welker, Gregg Berger, Wally Wingert, Jason Marsden, Laraine Newman, Candi Milo and Corey Burton. Today, we have all those folks back plus Laura Summer, Jewel Shepard and the legendary Stan Freberg. As I am fond of saying, when you hire the best actors, a rhesus monkey could direct one of these things. Normal blog posting should resume shortly.

Many of you have noted the new headers on this page — not just one but several new drawings of me by a man of mystifying talents. His name is Sergio Aragonés and I'd hoped the new art would go quietly unnoticed for a time but no. (I love the folks who are writing me to ask if I noticed it had changed.) There are more drawings yet to come.

Also to come on this blog: In the next day or three, I hope to post a long piece about the situation by which Bob Kane is credited as the sole creator of Batman while his collaborator Bill Finger is not equally heralded on the strip or the movies or the Hollywood Walk of Fame. I shall mount the best defense I can of Mr. Kane and make a few points in his favor on this. But you'll still conclude, as I did, that it's awful that Finger's name is not there.

Also, I haven't forgotten that I promised more tales of working on Welcome Back, Kotter and witnessing, live and in person, a Battle of the Network Stars. And there's that long essay about the late Al Feldstein I said I'd get around to. And a few other things..

As usual, I will be doing more than a dozen panels at Comic-Con International this year down in lovely San Diego. There will be all the usual ones plus a few new things and I'll post my schedule here as soon as the convention is ready to release the total list.

By the way: Please don't write me about three things. One is getting into the convention. Another is helping you find lodging during the convention. And the third is suggesting programming, especially long after the schedule is locked, which it pretty much was a few weeks ago. You'd be amazed at the number of people who write or call me each year a week or less before the con to ask if some panel they want to do can be added. I don't program that stuff. There are people paid to do that and they have to do it way before the con.

I gotta get to the studio. Back later.

To the surprise of absolutely no one, the legendary disc jockey, announcer and cartoon voice actor Casey Kasem has died. He was 82 and this sure sounds like one of those "glad it's finally over" deaths. He had been in terrible health for some time with his family fighting over what was best for him. It sure gave you the feeling that this is what was best for him.

There are some tapes that circulate of Mr. Kasem losing his temper during a couple of recording sessions and being less than a nice person. In fairness to the guy, let's remember these are three or four sessions out of tens of thousands that he did. I've never heard anyone else in his profession, when his name has come up, indicate that kind of thing occurred when they worked with him. My friend Frank Welker was in every one of the million-and-a-half episodes of Scooby Doo, the series on which Casey played the role of Shaggy. Frank said on several occasions that Casey was a joy to work with.

I was around him on a half-dozen occasions and that was sure my impression, too. What I didn't want to do was eat with the guy because he had very firm beliefs on what humans should and should not consume and he could get a little scolding in his expression of these views. When Hanna-Barbera set up a retirement dinner for Don Messick (the voice of Scooby), Casey insisted on dictating the menu at the Chinese Restaurant. We were all served huge platters of food some of us could not eat.

That was the most negative thing I can write here about Casey Kasem. The positive things would all have to be amazement and admiration for how much he worked and how good he was at what he did. For decades, you heard him everywhere — cartoons, network promos, commercials, radio shows, movie trailers, etc. He ushered in a new style of voiceover guy who favored personality over sheer testosterone. Someone once called him "The most successful off-screen announcer who wasn't trying to sound like God." If that's so and if there's a Heaven, he's probably finding out about now how far off he was.

The cable channel MeTV is rerunning episodes of the schoolroom sitcom Welcome Back, Kotter, which was the first TV series on which I had a staff job. This was back in 1976, back when I was teamed with a talented gent named Dennis Palumbo. The one they ran last Friday night was the first one we worked on, though somehow our names didn't get into its credits.

It was the episode I wrote about here.  Groucho Marx came to the set to do a cameo guest shot for it but his health simply wasn't up to it. Instead, pictures were taken of Mr. Marx with the cast and he went home. He looked very sick and very sad, and I assume that's why to this day I've never seen one of those photos anywhere.

There are a couple of interesting stories about the episode which runs this evening, which was called "Horshack Vs. Carvelli." Don't worry. I won't be doing this about all of them.

Dennis and I were hired as story editors during a sort of general coup. The network and the show's star Gabe Kaplan were unhappy with the direction the show was taking. They felt there had been too much emphasis on jokes and silliness, not enough on story and character. That was pretty much the way the show's Executive Producer Jimmie Komack wanted it but no one else did. In a move echoed somewhat by recent news out of the Ukraine, Jimmie was elbowed to one side and a course-correction was instituted.

For what it's worth, I thought Gabe Kaplan was very smart and very right. Absolutely none of the changes he wanted to see come about had anything to do with how much attention or how many laughs he got on the series. As far as he was concerned, Mr. Kotter could become a mute extra on The John Travolta Show if that show was good.

The old producers and story editors were surely capable of changing the direction to what ABC and Gabe wanted but the way things sometimes work in television is that you change the tone by changing the staff. Most of them were ousted and Dennis and I were, I believe, the first newly-hired members of the creative team charged with taking the show back towards its original concept. At least, we were the first ones to report for work.

This particular episode was a transitional one. The outgoing producers had developed it with a freelance writer and he'd delivered a pretty good script…that is, according to the old standard. The producers who'd hired him had gotten what they wanted but those producers were producing no longer, and the script was exactly what the new regime didn't want. Dennis and I were charged with doing a full rewrite of the script to make it into what the folks now in charge wanted the show to be.

The story had to do with a boxing match in which Arnold Horshack, the wimpy/whiny member of Mr. Kotter's class, went up against a recurring character named Carvelli — a street tough from a rival school. Everyone expected Arnold to get flattened and in the final draft by the freelancer, there was a gimmicky twist and Arnold wound up winning. Among the many changes Dennis and I made was to dump the gimmicky twist and have Arnold lose…but then to be hailed as a hero just for having the guts to step into the ring.

As it was going into production, another new producer and a couple more writers were joining the staff and they pitched in on subsequent rewrites. On Kotter, every script was rewritten extensively throughout rehearsals and by the time this one was taped, nothing remained of the original writer's work except the notion of Horshack boxing Carvelli. Page One Rewrites, as they're called, happen on just about every sitcom from time to time — on some, every time — and are usually not a reflection on the skills of the original writer.

During the rehearsal process, Dennis and I continued rewriting along with everyone else. At times, we were rewriting others' rewrites of our rewrites. One moment I will never forget occurred around 4 AM one morning as we were huddled in a dank, windowless office on the ABC lot, floundering about in what must have been about the ninth draft. One or both of us decided that the boxing match scene needed some preliminary business before the match commenced so we added in two things.

One was to have Mr. Woodman — the principal of the school, functioning here as referee — introduce a former student sitting ringside…Dino "Crazy" Delaney. "Crazy" had been mentioned in earlier episodes but had never been seen. We stuck him in there. George Tricker, one of the newly-hired writers on the show, wound up playing the wordless part. I believe he was cut out of syndication prints when they had to trim to make room for more commercials so he may not appear on MeTV.

Then I turned to Dennis and said, "You know what this scene needs? It needs cheerleaders."

Dennis looked at me through bleary eyes. "Cheerleaders?"

I said, "Yes, cheerleaders. People love cheerleaders. There has never been a motion picture or TV show that could not be improved by cheerleaders. If Gone With the Wind had had cheerleaders in it, it might have become a timeless classic."

Dennis stared at me for a long moment, then said — because at 4 AM, almost anything can sound like a good idea — "Okay, fine. Cheerleaders." I wrote in a description of four female students in cheerleader costumes doing a little routine at ringside before the match. They chanted — and it will take me exactly as long to type it here as it did to write it that night —

Horshack! Horshack! We're with you!
Rock him! Sock him! Ooh! Ooh! Ooh!

"Ooh! Ooh! Ooh!" was, of course, Horshack's catch-phrase on the show. Someone had stolen Joe E. Ross's old catch-phrase and added another "Ooh!" Just to make it different.

We finished the rewrite, sent it off to be retyped, copied and distributed, then went to our respective homes to crash. The next morning around 11 AM, I staggered into the studio. I did a lot of staggering while on Kotter and I've never had a drink in my life. On stage there — don't ask me how this was arranged so fast — were four young women in cheerleader costumes plus a choreographer. They were practicing the cheer.

It was kind of a stunning moment for me. Something I'd written seven hours earlier had somehow become a reality. It reminded me of when I was much younger and could occasionally master a real good magic trick. It was like, "Gee, how did I do that?"

Just then, the Associate Producer came up to me and said in a grumbling manner that between giving lines to four extras, hiring the choreographer and making the costumes, our little addition had cost the show about fifteen hundred dollars. I said, because I honestly didn't know how much trouble we were in, "Are you telling me we shouldn't have written that in?"

She didn't say yes. She didn't say no. But she did say, "I think the joke would have been just as funny with two girls."

One of those girls, by the way, was Kristine Greco, who I wrote about here. I had met her a few weeks before and we'd begun going out. It was because of the cheerleader bit that we decided to keep our friendship secret. She didn't want people to think she'd gotten a line on the show because of her relationship with one of the writers. I didn't want people to think I'd written it in just for her because…well, you can figure out why not. I hadn't even thought of who they'd get to play the cheerleaders because, you know, it was 4 AM.

Another one of the cheerleaders was Elaine Ballace, who I mentioned here and who I still occasionally see at autograph shows and Hollywood-type events.

A month or two later, I went with Gabe Kaplan to the taping of one of those Battle of the Network Stars athletic events. He was the captain of a team of stars from ABC shows, competing against the CBS team (captained by Telly Savalas) and an NBC team (helmed by Robert Conrad). They did them at Pepperdine University in Malibu and the bleachers were filled with students who had turned out to see the celebrities, especially Jaclyn Smith, get wet. I missed Jaclyn getting out of the pool but in the dressing room, I did see Hal Linden naked.

At one point, Gabe and I were walking by the stands and suddenly, about thirty young women leaped up and with a little bit of improvised terpsichore, chanted…

Kotter! Kotter! We're with you!
Rock him! Sock him! Ooh! Ooh! Ooh!

Gabe grinned and waved to them, then turned to me and asked, "Didn't you write that?"

What I said in response was a pretty dumb thing, even for me. I said, "Yeah…where'd they hear it?"

Gabe said, "Maybe they own television sets, you putz!"

Oh, yeah…

Getting back to the episode, I remember two other things that might interest someone. During our first rewrite, Dennis and I had decided to give Carvelli a sidekick. We specified that he be black and I'm pretty sure I was the one who decided to name him Murray. I used to name a lot of characters Murray back then. The casting director recommended a black actor for the part and he was hired and began rehearsing.

It took an hour or two but we all realized he was wrong for the part. He was a very large Murray — tall, wide and built like a Sumo. Carvelli was supposed to be the tough guy who was certain to pound Horshack into library paste…but standing next to this actor, Charlie Fleischer didn't look so menacing. The large black guy was replaced with a smaller black guy, an actor named Bob Harcum who turned out to be so funny that he was brought back to appear on the show several times. Since Dennis and I were not the credited writers of that episode, we did not receive the payments that go to a writer when a character he or she originates appears again.

Another memory. At the last minute, our producer rewrote a line of Gabe's at the end, at the part of the story where he's telling Arnold that though he lost the fight, he won a victory just by showing up. Mr. Kotter said, "As far as we're concerned, you're the gold medal kid with the heavyweight crown." That's a line from a song in West Side Story and it prompted a Defcon-2 Alert from the show's Standards and Practices supervisor.

TV shows don't really have such people now but back then, they were everywhere, interfering and destroying humor in a futile effort to achieve two goals. One was to stop the show and network from being sued. The other was to make sure nothing was said or shown that would spark protests and angry mail. The lady from Broadcast Standards insisted Gabe couldn't say the line because it would surely lead to legal action from…

Well, I don't know. Stephen Sondheim, maybe…or the producers of West Side Story. Perhaps the show would have to pay a music clearance fee and who knew how much that could be?

As I recall, this was not noticed or raised until the final taping and so after the audience was released, everyone stood around on the stage arguing, with the Standards Lady insisting an alternate line be written, taped and substituted. Gabe Kaplan, backed up by others, insisted that it was fine. The line was spoken, not sung. More arguing ensued.

The Standards Lady asked the producers to keep everyone there and in wardrobe for that scene while she went off and phoned someone higher-up at ABC Legal. Gabe Kaplan said, "You can call whoever you like but Mr. Kotter is not saying any other line and I'm going to go get out of these clothes," and he headed for his dressing room. That ended the taping for that evening and I never heard anyone mention any problem with the line again. No one sued. No fees were paid. Nothing.

This was my first experience with Broadcast Standards. As I would soon learn, though they seemed to fill an important need, there was a problem with the whole system. That problem was that the people charged with flagging content that might cause legal problems or public outrage were darn near Always Wrong. If they said Act One was fine but Act Two would spark lawsuits and protests, you could just about bet the family jewels that there would be no hassle over Act Two and if there was any trouble, it would be with Act One. I would accrue many more examples of this throughout my days in network television.

I don't remember much else about this episode and I've already gone on about it a lot longer than it deserves. I was not thrilled with a lot of the final product on that series but I thought this was one of the better ones. Anyway, it's on MeTV tonight, in case you have MeTV and want to catch it and haven't already missed it while reading this.

Oh, wait. I do have to tell you one other thing about it. Remember that outside writer whose work was so totally rewritten? Well, Dennis and I hadn't met him before we did that but we made a point of letting him know what had happened and that he hadn't failed. He had simply done a script for a show that always rewrote heavily and he'd done it adhering to guidelines that through no fault of his were no longer applicable. He absolutely understood.

Still, the experience got him to wondering if maybe he was in the wrong end of his profession. He'd always wanted to pursue a career as a stand-up comedian and writing for sitcoms, which he'd done briefly, began to feel like a mistake to him. Instead, he began to focus on performing.

About three years later, I went out to the Ice House, a popular club in Pasadena to see a friend of mine, Frank Welker, performing. To my surprise, Frank's opening act was that writer and he was very, very funny. His name was Garry Shandling. I believe the next time he wrote for a sitcom, his name was in the title. Wonder if anyone rewrote him then.

This week, IDW Publishing is releasing the first issue of a four-issue mini-series of Rocky and Bullwinkle. Each issue features a complete tale of Moose and Squirrel in two parts with a brief adventure of Dudley Do-Right, both written by Yours Truly and expertly illustrated by Roger Langridge.

I'm doing this somewhat to scratch a long-held itch. For years and years, going back to the days when Jay Ward and Bill Scott were still around, I kept being approached — and in some cases, actually hired and paid — to write projects with characters from their studio. In fact, when Bill passed away, we were in the middle of one. He was, as you probably know, the head writer/producer of most of what Jay's company produced and Bill was also the voice of Bullwinkle, Dudley, Mr. Peabody, Fearless Leader, Super Chicken and so many more. At the time of his death in 1985, he and Frank Welker and I were writing a screenplay for a live-action Dudley Do-Right movie for MGM.

This had nothing to do with the one made by others in 1999 with Brendan Fraser. The actor everyone wanted for ours was Marius Weyers, who was so funny in the film, The Gods Must Be Crazy. He was never approached but he sure looked the part…and the idea was that his voice would be dubbed by Bill, and all the other actors in the film would be dubbed by June Foray, Paul Frees, Daws Butler, Frank Welker and other cartoon voice professionals. MGM bought the idea and was even willing to press on with it after Bill died but then we ran into a rights problem.

Having a deal with Jay Ward turned out to be not enough. Back then, the control of those properties was a morass of competing claims and partners, silent and otherwise. Most animation historians will tell you that the reason Jay Ward stopped producing cartoons was that he was fed up with having to deal with network interference. That was certainly a reason but another was that he didn't want to, or maybe couldn't deal with the lawyers and the various alleged owners if he wanted to do anything with his most famous properties…and that was all anyone seemed to want out of him.

Anyway, our project disappeared into that morass…and I'll tell you how messy it all was. A few years later, I was approached by a major animation producer who said, "We have the rights to Rocky and Bullwinkle, and we want you to write a special for us." I said fine, terrific, I'll do it. Before we got around to the part where I sign a contract and they pay me money, a different major animation producer called me and said, "We have the rights to Rocky and Bullwinkle, and we want you to write a special for us." I said yes to them, too.

For a brief time, I hoped I could get them both to pay me for writing the same script but the attorneys began duking it out and all plans were off. Much the same thing happened a couple of other times. It got so when someone called and asked me to write Rocky and Bullwinkle for something, I'd say yes and then think to myself, "Well, let's see how long it takes this one to collapse." Boris Badenov couldn't kill Moose and Squirrel but for a time there, the legal profession was doing a darn good job of it.

What's changed? Well, eventually, a wise and dedicated lady named Tiffany Ward stepped in, spent pots of dough on lawyers, and managed to free Rocky and His Friends from various claimants. Now, controlling her father's characters free and clear and alone, she licenses 'em to the right folks to do good things with them. I hope our comic proves to be one of them.

So that's one comic book I'm writing these days. Another is Groo the Wanderer, which will be returning to the comic book racks shortly. I'll post a message soon about that. And I'm still writing most (not all) of the Garfield comic book published by Boom Studios. Solicitors and dealers advertise it like everything in it's by me but a clever gent named Scott Nickel, who works for Jim Davis, pitches in when I'm swamped with other tasks or am just plain running low on lasagna jokes. I don't like to write too much about what I have coming out because I don't want this to be one of those blogs…but one of these days, I'll write a little more about this comic and why you should buy every issue of it.  In the meantime, Rocky & Bullwinkle #1 comes out this week.

I said some time back here that I was working on a new comic book with characters I'd always wanted to handle. The fine folks have finally announced it so I can say it's a four-issue mini-series of Rocky and Bullwinkle, the first issue of which comes out at the end of March. Each issue features a complete tale of Moose and Squirrel in two parts with a brief adventure of Dudley Do-Right, both expertly illustrated by Roger Langridge. What I've seen so far of the artwork looks terrific.

I'm doing this somewhat to scratch a long-held itch. For years and years, going back to the days when Jay Ward and Bill Scott were still around, I kept being approached — and in some cases, actually hired and paid — to write Rocky 'n' Bullwinkle projects that fell through.

The one I regretted losing the most had me working with Bill Scott who was, as you probably know, the head writer/producer of most of what Jay's company produced. He was also the voice of Bullwinkle, Dudley, Mr. Peabody, Fearless Leader, Super Chicken and so many more. At the time of his death in 1985, he and Frank Welker and I were writing a screenplay for a live-action Dudley Do-Right movie for MGM. This had nothing to do with the one made by others in 1999 with Brendan Fraser.

Bill's tragic passing was not the main reason our script never got made. The main one was a rights problem. Having an arrangement with Jay Ward turned out to not be enough.

Back then, the control of those properties was a morass of competing claims and partners, silent and otherwise. Most animation historians will tell you that the reason Jay stopped producing cartoons was that he was fed up with having to deal with network interference. That was certainly a reason but another was that he didn't want to, or maybe couldn't deal with those who claimed to own or control some or all of his most famous properties.

Our project disappeared into that morass…and I'll tell you how messy it all was. A few years later, I was approached by a major animation producer who said, "We have the rights to Rocky and Bullwinkle, and we want you to write a special for us." I said fine, terrific, I'll do it. Before we got around to the part where I'd sign a contract and they'd pay me money, a different major animation producer called me and said, "We have the rights to Rocky and Bullwinkle, and we want you to write a special for us." I said yes to them, too.

For a brief time, I hoped I could get them both to pay me for writing the same script but the attorneys began duking it out and all plans were off. Much the same thing happened a couple of other times. It got so when someone called and asked me to write Rocky and Bullwinkle for something, I'd say yes and then think to myself, "Well, let's see how long it takes this one to collapse." Boris Badenov couldn't kill Moose and Squirrel but for a time there, the legal profession was doing a darn good job of it.

What changed? Well, eventually, a wise and dedicated lady named Tiffany Ward stepped in, spent pots of dough on lawyers, and managed to free Rocky and His Friends from various claimants. Now, controlling her father's characters free and clear and alone, she licenses 'em to the right folks to do good things with them. I hope our comic proves to be one of them.

So that's one comic book I'm writing these days. Another is Groo the Wanderer, which will be returning to the comic book racks shortly. I'll post a message soon about that. And I'm still writing most (not all) of the Garfield comic book published by Boom Studios. Solicitors and dealers advertise it like everything in it's by me but a clever gent named Scott Nickel, who works for Jim Davis, pitches in now and then when I'm swamped with other work. He did several stories while I was immersed in Garfield TV projects and didn't have time to squeeze out any additional lasagna jokes. His are pretty good and he deserves credit for 'em. End of plug.

Last evening, most of the folks in Los Angeles who do cartoon voices for a living descended on the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood for a gala event. One of the few who wasn't present was Frank Welker and someone (I think it was me) was heard to mutter, "If a bomb went off here tonight…Frank would still have all the work." One who was there was the First Lady of Cartoon Voices, June Foray. When they mentioned on the post-screening panel that she was in the room, the entire assemblage jumped to its feet for a heartwarming standing ovation.

The screening was of I Know That Voice, a new documentary on the trade and I can summarize it as follows: 95 minutes of close-cut interviews with folks who either do cartoon voices or work with such people, all taking about the profession, the art and the intersection thereof. If you have the slightest interest in this area, either as a fan or wanna-be, you're going to want to see this. I'll tell you in a moment where you can do that.

A lot of skilled hands worked on this film but the three main ones were voice actor John DiMaggio, whom many of you know best from Futurama; director Lawrence Shapiro and producer Tommy Reid. They conducted interviews with hundreds of actors, producers, engineers, directors, etc. The audience last night at the Egyptian loved it for two reasons — one noble, one shallow. The shallow one, of course, was that an awful lot of us were in it…me, fortunately, for not very long. The noble one was that it celebrates — and nicely explains — this world. If nothing else, you will take away from it the following observation: "My God, some of those people are amazing!"

Throughout, and especially in one funny section, the film debunks the notion that it's easy, that anyone can do it if they can make a funny voice, etc. As a guy who sometimes does casting, I encounter this. Sure, you can do an impression of Christopher Walken that your friends all tell you is dynamite. But that doesn't put you near the level of a professional voice actor anymore than being able to throw the occasional strike makes you ready to suit up and play for the Yankees. (One other revelation you'll take away from the film, by the way, is that every single person in the voiceover business can do Christopher Walken. The few who didn't do so in the movie were doing theirs either on the panel that followed or at the cocktail party that followed the panel. Christopher Walken should do half as good a Christopher Walken as Rob Paulsen.)

At the afterparty, there was much happiness and congratulating, though one could note a bit of grumbling and forced smiles by those who got cut out or barely cut in. If the filmmakers did anything wrong, I suspect it was that they interviewed about five times as many people as they needed…but that just speaks to the devotion and care that went into this project. There is talk that those hundreds of hours of unused video will surface somewhere on the 'net.

More relevant is where you can see the 95-minute version we saw last night. If I heard and remember correctly, it'll be on In Demand at the beginning of December, on iTunes at the beginning of January and available as a DVD purchase shortly at this website. I'd keep an eye on that site for more accurate info on all of this…and I'm sure it'll turn up in other places.

I'm glad the producers had this big screening/party. There was something so right about seeing all those voice actors not only on camera but on an actual movie screen. They really are stars and they sometimes aren't regarded as such. Every working voice actor I know is as proud as they can be of what they do…but last night, some of them actually seemed to be even prouder than ever of their profession.

That's a photo of me with Lou Scheimer, who ran Filmation Studios, producers of hundreds if not thousands of hours of Saturday morning-style TV cartoons. Lou passed away Thursday just a few days shy of what would have been his 85th birthday. He'd been ill for some time with Parkinson's Disease and he'd been declining public appearances. So this was not unexpected.

Filmation Studios is a controversial topic in some circles of the animation community. Here are some positive things you hear: They produced a lot of shows that a lot of people remember fondly, including the first Superman and Batman cartoons made for television, the Star Trek cartoons, Masters of the Universe, many different programs featuring the Archie characters and the show I thought was the best thing they ever did, Fat Albert. They gave an awful lot of work to an awful lot of artists and writers. In some cases, they gave new people an important break. In others, they gave old-timers a place to earn a paycheck after other studios had closed. Lou was very proud of all those breaks and paychecks.

Virtually alone among producers of animation for TV in their time, they fought to keep work in Los Angeles rather than farm it out to overseas houses. One time when the Animation Union struck over this problem, Lou — as a member — was put in the awkward position of picketing his own studio. No one would have faulted him if he'd not done this but instead, he went out, picked up a sign and marched around his own building, demanding that management (i.e., him) cease this pernicious practice that it was not committing. Lou had a good sense of humor and a friend of mine who worked long and hard at Filmation said, "To the extent it didn't get in the way of making a profit, it was a fun place."

The negatives? Well, they produced TV cartoons with all the restrictions and problems that TV cartoons had in those days. There were times when their shows were better than others who had to operate under all these handicaps and times when they weren't. Still, if you cringe at most animation of the seventies and eighties, Filmation offered you much to cringe about. Someone once said of Lou, "He knows how to take the impossible deal and make money off it." Some of his shows were produced on budgets that would have caused any other studio to say, "It can't be done for that" and pass. Depending on your point-of-view, it might be a negative that he didn't do that.

This article will tell you more about the history of Lou Scheimer and Filmation, though it repeats the oft-made claim that the studio never sent animation work out of this country. They did but only rarely and when desperate. And this obit in the L.A. Times will tell you more. So I think for the rest of this piece, I'll just tell you about my own path-crossing with Lou Scheimer.

Every time I saw him in the last twenty or so years, he'd throw an arm around me, hug me and tell everyone within earshot that I was one of the many talented writers who'd started with Filmation, done wonderful work for him and then gone on to bigger and better things. "I'm so proud of Mark and guys like him," he'd say. He was so happy and complimentary that I never had the heart to tell him the total amount of work I'd done for his studio. It was one script…and he hated it. I was offered work there on many occasions but, to put it simply, I always had better offers, both in terms of money and in the chance of doing my best work. Once though, I was trapped.

Filmation had a series that they were trying to sell to CBS. CBS was reticent to buy it. Filmation was getting desperate. They were counting on selling that series so they would not have to lay off one entire division. Lou went to CBS and said, in essence, "Tell me what I have to do to get you to buy this show." At the time, I was doing a lot of development work for CBS, which meant I'd write a bible (outline of the format, description of the characters and how they operated, sample plot ideas) and a pilot script for a potential series. I'm not sure who it was at CBS but someone there suggested I might be the guy who could whip it into a shape that the network could purchase.

I was sitting at home one day here when my phone rang. The voice on the other end of the line identified itself as Lou Scheimer…and it sounded like Lou Scheimer. I'd once interviewed Lou for a magazine called The Monster Times and I'd heard him speak at animation-related gatherings. Yes, it sounded like Lou Scheimer but it also sounded like my friend Frank Welker's impression of Lou Scheimer. Frank is arguably the best mimic alive and inarguably the most in-demand cartoon voice guy, and a few weeks earlier, he'd done a medley for me of his impressions of people who'd hired him, Joe Barbera and Lou Scheimer among them. The Lou Scheimer on my phone sounded less like the real Lou Scheimer than he did like Welker's impression of Lou Scheimer.

Certain it was Frank, I decided to play along. I said, "Hi, Lou! What can I do for you?" Before I realized it wasn't Frank, I was half-committed to write this pilot for the real Lou Scheimer. Later in the day, a fellow at CBS called and asked me, as a favor to the Children's Programming Department at his network, to do this development for Filmation even though the money was a bit on the thin side. So, blaming Welker and not myself of course, I committed the rest of the way. Filmation sent over what they'd done so far on the idea and I instantly saw the problem.

The show was overpopulated. As developed so far, it had about 30 regular characters, 25 of which didn't contribute much, if anything. The concept was lost in the crowd, so to speak. Lou had left the U.S. on a business trip and I'd been told to deal with his second-in-command, a lovely gent named Arthur Nadel. I told Arthur what I wanted to do and he said, "Okay, we trust you." Emboldened by that trust, I rewrote the bible so the show had but five regular characters. When I wrote up suggested plot outlines, I used about five more of those extra players as characters who might appear once…but I basically threw out 20-25 characters as superfluous.

CBS liked the bible. I got the go-ahead to write a pilot script. I did. They liked it and they committed to the series. This was all while Lou was still in Europe. A few days later, I got a call: Lou was back in town and would like me to come in and see him.

I went in, figuring there'd be confetti and party hats for my having sold the show and saved the day. Instead, Lou's first words when I stepped into his office were, "Ah, here's the man who killed twenty toy deals for me." I thought he was kidding but he wasn't. To try and sell the show, he had lowered its price down to a level he felt CBS couldn't refuse, a level that would force him to produce the show at a loss. To then get the show above water, he'd made a deal with a toy company to put out action figures of all the characters…but the deal called for all those characters to appear a certain number of times in the first season. The math didn't work if every episode didn't feature a lot of them.

Remember what I wrote earlier about how Lou could take an impossible deal and figure out how to make it work? Well, this show was an impossible deal but in pruning all those characters, I'd gotten in the way of what he was counting on to make that particular deal work.

I told him I was sorry but my assignment had said nothing about toy deals. My job was to get CBS to commit to the series and they had. Lou admitted I was right and I got a grudging "thank you" — but he also told me that he had to get a lot of those characters back into the show. Which is what he did. Once CBS had signed the paperwork and the show was officially on their schedule, he began convincing them the show needed this guy and that gal and this monster. Eventually, it was so unlike what I'd written that my pilot script was never produced. I had nothing to do with any of this. I was contractually entitled to a screen credit every week — "Developed for Television by Mark Evanier" — but I never got it and never made an issue of not getting it. I watched one episode and it had very little to do with what I'd done.

In spite of this, I liked Lou. He and his partners Norm Prescott and Hal Sutherland fought like crazy to build his studio and keep the doors open over the years. They were the little guys in a field where the biggies had the power to step on them but they succeeded, nonetheless. In a sense the whole studio was an impossible deal but Lou and his cronies found a way to make it work.

I rarely talk here about what I'm working on but it might be appropriate to mention this. Yesterday, we recorded the voice tracks for the last episode of Season Four of The Garfield Show. The series is seen all over the world though its U.S. home — Cartoon Network — tends to put it on a for a while, then take it off for a while, then put it back on for a while. It's off right now but will return. During its last "on," they ran some but not all of the episodes we produced for Season Three. I assume it'll come back on one of these days and they'll debut the rest of 'em amidst reruns aplenty. Some other countries have already run them all ten times.

I wear many hats on this show. I am the supervising producer. I am the main writer. I am the voice director. When asked what I do on it, I'm inclined to just mention the middle one, believing as I do that any title with the word "writer" in it is vastly more important than any title with the words "producer" or "director" in it. It is to me, anyway. For those of you scoring at home, I provided similar duties on 121 half-hours of the original Garfield and Friends, and now have completed my end of 104 half-hours of The Garfield Show. That's a lot of lasagna jokes with more to come.

We had a wonderful cast this season and I'm going to mention their names because the way Cartoon Network shows the credits, they're impossible to read. Frank Welker plays Garfield, Gregg Berger plays Odie, Wally Wingert plays Jon, Jason Marsden plays Nermal, Julie Payne plays Liz, Laura Summer plays Drusilla and Minerva, Audrey Wasilewski plays Arlene and all of those folks juggle several other roles. They were joined on different episodes throughout Season Four by the following folks in no particular order…

Stan Freberg, June Foray, Laraine Newman, Fred Tatasciore, Joe Alaskey, Rose Marie, Grey DeLisle, Corey Burton, Frank Buxton, Bob Bergen, Candi Milo, Jewel Shepard, Neil Ross, Bill Farmer, Misty Lee, Susan Silo, Mark Hamill, Phil LaMarr, Brooks Gardner, Diane Michelle and Scott Whyte. As I keep telling people, the secret to voice-directing a cartoon show is to hire good people and get out of their way. You'd be amazed how little acting direction you have to give performers like these.

I'm really happy with this series, which is not something I say about everything I work on. I removed my name (or at least tried-to and partially succeeded) on another cartoon series I did, plus I yanked it off three or four shows where I wrote the pilot episodes. They don't always come out the way you want them to, especially when others are trying to be the Giant Ape on whom all eyes must be focused. But you put up with those jobs not because they pay — although there is that — but you have to slog through those on occasion to get to the good ones. This for me is one of the good ones, especially because of the brilliant direction and animation being done by our director Philippe Vidal and his amazing crew.

I have no idea when Season Four will air in America. I don't even know when the rest of Season Three will air in America. But when it does, I hope you'll enjoy those episodes even a tenth as much as I enjoyed working with the people I get to work with.