INTERVIEW: 'People Like Us' Songwriter Liz Phair

'People Like Us' Songwriter Liz Phair
by Scott McConnell

Published June 27, 2012

In theaters Friday, June 29 is the drama People Like Us, featuring original music by A.R. Rahman as well as the original song "Dotted Line" co-written by A.R. Rahman and Liz Phair, which plays over the film's end credits. The song is also included in the movie's soundtrack album.

Liz Phair recently sat down with Soundtrack.Net's Scott McConnell to discuss her role in creating "Dotted Line" and working with the film's composer and director. Ms. Phair is an accomplished singer/songwriter who first became popular in the early 90s with her hit album Exile in Guyville. People Like Us, co-written and directed by Alex Kurtzman (co-writer of Star Trek, Mission: Impossible III), stars Chris Pine and Elizabeth Banks. The conflict of the movie centers on Sam's uncaring father (Jerry) who dies and leaves his debt-ridden son $150,000 to give to a family Sam didn't know existed: his half-sister Frankie, and nephew Josh. Themes of honesty, trust and commitment are explored through the main characters of Frankie and Sam.

Scott McConnell: How did you come to the project?

Liz Phair: [Director Alex Kurzman] got in touch with me a year and a half ago and had been listening to my music when he was trying to get into the character of Frankie. My music sort of helped him understand how she was thinking–what was going on with her emotionally. So Alex wanted to reach out to me. He wasn't sure what he wanted me to do, but he wanted me to be part of the project because listening to my music had been fruitful for him and he felt there was a tie in there.

SM: What was the tie in between you and the Frankie character, emotionally?

Liz Phair: We didn't even really know. Alex needed to get to his character; he selected me and it worked for him. He started to write the story and then he felt like he should reach out to me and tell me that this important movie that he was making about something from his own life I had something to do with.

We met and a little bit later and I saw the first cut and he still didn't know what he wanted me to do. I was totally moved by the movie, sobbing when I watched it. Frankie's issues were my issues, so I felt, "Oh, my god!"

And then when Alex was working with [A.R. Rahman] on the score, he kept thinking, "Can we get Liz in here and maybe her voice can be in the background in the Frankie scenes." I think he was searching after something and then when I went home after meeting A.R., they said, "Can you write something?" I wrote something really powerful overnight. And I didn't think I'd be able to do so because it was a big deal for me. Then I came back in with what I had written and A.R. and I meshed our two parts–his theme and my song–and we came up with "Dotted Line" and it just fit for the end credits. It was all organic.

SM: Tell us about you and A.R. Rahman working together, especially his style, his type of melody.

Liz Phair: He's very different than I am. I think one of the interesting things for A.R. in the beginning was that Alex kept saying, "No, no. It's too perfect. I want it to be a little bit less perfect." A.R. is so accomplished. He can make these gorgeous arrangements that are epic and cinematic, but Alex needed them to not be 100% right. Like when you make a carpet and you leave a flaw so that the gods won't be pissed off. I think this was a struggle for A.R. So when A.R. met me that was pushing him even farther out of his comfort zone, because he was like: "Okay, she can't really sing and play." But A.R. loved what I ended up doing, so much so that he was even like, "I've got some music lying around and do you want to listen to it and write some melodies on top of it, because you're bringing a completely untrained, rogue element, all emotion, no technique, into like super emotion, super technique, elegance." And that is what Alex wanted to come together.

SM: What are the issues in "Dotted Line" and how is it organic to the movie?

Liz Phair: It's very interesting because Alex said my song can't be a love song because the characters are a brother and sister. But it has to be powerful with a lot of love in it. I thought about that and thought about what the movie had meant to me, and what I had really thought we were all circling around. I decided that that was the issue of commitment and the lack thereof. Also that your family is your first experience of commitment; your family is your first experience of knowing that someone will be there, that even if someone has decided that it will cost them or is hard for them, they will throw in with you. And when that doesn't happen, when there's some kind of disconnect or dysfunction in a family, it leaves you in your adulthood struggling with these issues. So I decided that this was what the film really was about for me: struggling with commitment.

So I wrote a song about stepping on the threshold of making a really big commitment, but one that is very conscious–one that you know you are overcoming some of your own bullshit to do this step. What would it feel like to be in that moment? For example, if it were in a romantic situation, say the night before your wedding, you'd been through this whole commitment thing and now you're really going to do it. What's that razor's edge between all your misgivings and actually taking that step? So signing the contract, on the "dotted line," that is what it meant to me.

SM: Can you tell us a little more about the process of creating "Dotted Line" for the movie.

Liz Phair: It was weird. It was so organic. It was just little bits. Alex would just disappear from my life and then pop up again and say: "Hey, you wanna see this?" The process for the song was just having this stuff brewing in me. I knew that the movie was something that was going to powerfully connect with me, because I had read the script. Then when I saw the cut, it was so much beyond what I expected that I was mortified that I was sobbing like an idiot in a room with two men who were figuring out, "Should we start the shot sooner?" And then meeting A.R.

It all literally happened in two days. I came in one day and they just threw me into a vocal booth and said, "We're going to put up a couple of scenes with the music. You just sing what you feel like." So I'm standing out there kind of shivering in my boots because this is A.R. Rahman! I'm completely like an idiot savant. I don't know how to play very well. I just kind of feel my way through things. And there is A.R., a completely trained musician, and I didn't know what they expected me to do, but I sang a kind of "Ah Ah Ah." I made up stuff as I went. And that happened for the whole day, which was nerve wracking. Then that night as I was leaving they were like, "Can you write a song?"

I literally went and wrote the song that night. A couple of days later I came back and had to show it to them and play it right out there in the studio again in front of six people. Embarrassing. Frightening. And they were like, "I like it, okay. Let's lay it down in the studio."

SM: So you wrote the music and the lyrics?

Liz Phair: Yes, but A.R. already had the [musical] theme that became part of the song. I knew what the theme was. He played it for me. "Na, Na Na, Na." It was like a lullaby. Alex really wanted a lullaby feeling because the characters had missed that feeling in their lives, the safety, which is what they were trying to recreate with each other in the movie. [The characters of ] Sam and Frankie both missed that. So I tried to put that in the lyrics: the sense of people who never got that sense of safety, of what it's like when you try as an adult to give that to someone and get that from someone.

SM. So you went home and wrote the song?

Liz Phair: Yes, incorporating A.R.'s theme into the song I wrote. Then I come in [to the studio] and they've got a guitar player there and they're ready to go. It's like, "Game On!" Every time I walked in there, they're just ready to go. It's just happening. So we went in and we recorded it. So I only went in twice. One time I did the vocal thing. The second time I did the song itself.

SM: Were there other sounds or emotions you were trying to work with the song?

Liz Phair: There was a whole bridge that didn't end up making it into the movie. A bridge about [singing]:

"Would you recognize in a crowded room,
If I laughed too loud and if I left too soon?
Would you see it in my eyes when I looked at you,
The piece of me I hide, the pieces that I hide from you?"

That is: would you care enough and know me enough to recognize when I'm bullshitting? A lot of this is about Sam. He hasn't felt that his father has been truthful, so he's not going to be truthful to Frankie for a long part of the movie. And that push through is what I was interested in.

I'm going to throw this example in: I had an experience, a wonderful once-in-a-lifetime thing where I sang at the World Series. I did "God Bless America" in the first game in my home town of Chicago for the Sox in 2005. And I remember thinking: I can either try to hit that last high note or not. And I decided that the act of trying to hit that high note is a metaphor for the Sox trying to win the World Series, so I better damn go for it, to swell the crowd. For me the commitment part of that, the "dotted line" thing, is that I'm reaching for the commitment even though I don't know if I'm really up to it or if it's really going to work. So that was the push through with the commitment thing in that chorus. I believe in imbuing the stuff I do with the metal that it needs to win the fight. The Sox ended up winning.

SM: How do you compose? What techniques did you use when you were actually writing this song?

Liz Phair: I'm digging emotionally. I dig down until I get words that are as true as I possibly can. When I wrote this song, I was sitting in front of my fireplace and ended up crying because some part of it was actually about me. I've struggled with commitment my whole life. My whole life! It was a big deal for me to write about imagining myself on the threshold of actually doing it. So I know that I'm digging. I can feel when I'm a little bit uncomfortable and I try to sit there. It's like games of sobriety.

SM: Alex Kurtzman wrote in the soundtrack liner notes: "She [Liz] captured the essence of the movie with a perfect metaphor."

Liz Phair: I wrote from all three characters, Sam, Frank and Jerry. They are all very important to me. I wanted Sam's dad [Jerry] to be in the song. I wanted the song to be able to be sung by Frankie or Sam or his dad. It was really important to me that the dad not get left out of this commitment thing, because in the end what you find out is that he did commit to them. It was pitiful but he did commit. He couldn't live it in the light, but he made this commitment to these two people [his children Sam and Frankie] the best he could. I think that writing for the three characters really touched Alex. He said, "My god, you're the only person beside me who's written from all three main characters." I just did it naturally.

SM: Did Alex also think of you as Frankie?

Liz Phair: I don't know that I was Frankie. I mean, Frankie was Alex's sister. He knows what Frankie's going to do, but I don't think he always knew how she felt when she was doing it. And he needed that. What I remember is that Alex was mad at her. He had issues with her and I think my music allowed him to empathize more with how she felt.

SM: The second part of Alex's quote is. "She (Liz) helped me find Frankie's voice, now she was singing for her."

Liz Phair: It's true. It's cool. It's the magic of art and music. You somehow find a way to be someone, to speak for them. I think that art is always speaking for people who can't speak, even if it's you. I've written songs from my brother's point of view. I've done a lot of stuff like that. And with this movie, I wanted to make sure that what was essentially pounding in Sam's chest on the screen came out in song form.

Photo of Liz Phair (above, right) taken by Scott McConnell and ? 2012 by Soundtrack.Net.

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INTERVIEW: 'Thin Red Line' Music Editor Lee Scott

'Thin Red Line' Music Editor Lee Scott
by Paul Maher, Jr.

Published July 13, 2012

Publisher's Note: Lee Scott was the music editor for The Thin Red Line, among several other major motion pictures. In this interview, Mr. Scott gives us a fascinating peak into the process of integrating original music into a movie, and the influence and impact the music editor has on a film's final product.

The second half of this interview focuses on The Thin Red Line and developing the music for that picture, including how Lee Scott's worked with director Terrance Malick and composer Hans Zimmer.

The interview was conducted by Paul Maher, Jr. He is an author and editor whose latest book, One Big Soul; An Oral History of Terrence Malick is available at Lulu Bookstore. His blog on Terrence Malick can be read at www.terrencemalick.org.

Soundtrack.Net kindly thanks Paul for allowing us to publish the interview here. It has been lightly edited by me, mostly for clarity. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I did.

–Sean Saulsbury, Publisher

ON MUSIC EDITING

Paul Maher: Lee, can you share how you began working as a music editor in the film music business?

Lee Scott: The funny thing about music editors is that none of us said as a child "I want to be a music editor when I grow up", nor did anyone go to college to major in music editing. Everyone has taken a different path. I started out at eleven years old studying clarinet, saxophone, flute, piano and guitar. I went to the University of Georgia where I earned a degree in composition while still studying clarinet. I came to California to attend California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) partly because I wanted to study electronic music with Morton Subotnick. After earning a master's in composition I settled in as a starving artist. I worked for a while with Frank Zappa as a music copyist, bought an electric organ and started a psychedelic-punk-funk band Toxic Pets.

I got a few minor scoring gigs. One was a Saturday morning cartoon show for NBC, "Kid'n' Play." I worked for a few years as the manager of a company that rents audio gear to studios. At that time I got more interested in post-production work because I noticed that the film studios didn't bother asking what something cost to rent–"just send it now!"–while music recording studios were a pain to deal with money-wise.

Around 1993 I was unexpectedly fired. I had recently inherited $12k from my grandmother. I went out bought ProTools version 1. It had just come out and I knew it would change the world. I put an ad in the paper "Digital audio editing $5/hour" and I never looked for work again. I worked out of my house for about a year (my rates went up), one thing led to another and I got a call from Modern Music. My first job there was assisting on the temp score for Braveheart.

I knew nothing about music editing for film but I knew and owned a ProTools rig and I had a good musical background. The industry was just changing over from analog tape to digital computer editing. I taught my mentor how to use it. A few months later I was in the union and thrown into "the deep end." I think it took me about eight years to get to the point that I was confident that I knew what I was doing.

I still work for Modern Music. We are a stable of music editors who share resources. I love telling my story to younger folk; it shows that luck is when opportunity meets preparation.

PM: What is your first duty as music editor once you are contracted to a specific film?

Lee Scott: The primary job of the music editor is to handle all the music material and to keep the music in sync to picture. The picture is constantly changing. Then it breaks down into two different types of jobs: "temp" and "final." I more often start early in the cutting process and create a "temp" [temporary] score. I place music from other films mostly, classical music, songs, what not, into the cut.

I work with the film makers: director, editor, producers (it varies from film to film who has the most say over the music) to determine what type of music (orchestral, electronic, rock, etc.) will work, where the music stops and starts, and how the music works in general.

Quite often a composer will be told to copy my temp score. As a music editor, when I see a [final, completed] film I can generally identify what music was in the temp. There's not much that is totally original. The ironic thing is that the temp music editor ends up having way more influence on the score than the composer does and often [we are] not credited!

I may spend two to six months working with the filmmaker and then the composer comes in for four to six weeks. The composer doesn't have time to experiment and try out ideas like I do, so it's good that there is a template to work from. Usually when a studio previews a film for a test audience it is with the temp score.

Working on a "final" is a little less creative. It involves coordinating with the composer and keeping his music in sync. The picture has usually changed from the time the music was written and recorded, [and we] have to figure out how to make it work.

Often a director is not happy with a cue and I have to take bits and pieces from other cues to create a workable cue. This is called "tracking." With temp scores I am working only with stereo tracks, often layers of them. But a final score mix is many tracks with the various elements split out, e.g., strings, brass, percussion, electronics. This gives me a lot more flexibility in cutting.

PM: What are some of the film projects that you have worked on?

Lee Scott: Besides The Thin Red Line, my biggest contributions were to Moulin Rouge and Drumline as a production music supervisor. For There's Something About Mary I was music editor and [I was] co-composer for Me, Myself and Irene. Drumline was my most difficult job.

ON DRUMLINE

PM: Why was Drumline your most difficult job?

Lee Scott: I worked on it from pre-production to final mix. I traveled to Atlanta to be a part of the recording of the marching bands and drumlines and to be at the shoot to playback the music. I normally work as a music editor but for this part of the job I was given the title of production music supervisor. They did this in order to avoid paying me lots of overtime, which as a union music editor I would be due.

The movie was based on the real life experience of Dallas Austin, the hip hop producer. Dallas was also supposed to be the "music producer." My first job was to find out where and when Dallas planned to record the bands. I called his studio. The studio manager said Dallas likes to record string sections at such-and-such studio. I called the studio and asked them how big their room was. They said, "Oh, we can get forty players in here." I needed a place that would hold 100. So I called my boss at Fox Studios in L.A. and told him of the situation. He said, "well, you have to find a place." Now I was thrust into the position of being the music producer!

The climax of the movie was a marching band and drumline contest that was to be shot at the Georgia Dome. One night I was at the recording session for one of the bands that just rolled in from Louisiana. We ended up recording on a big soundstage in the same building that they had built some interior sets. At the same time the director (Charles Stone) was at the Georgia Dome rehearsing the other bands for the shoot that was to be the next day. I got a call from Charles, he asked me to cut two bars out of one the tunes the band was rehearsing to playback. Two bars seemed a little odd, so like any good music editor I cut an alternative version with 4 bars cut out just in case they needed it and sent the CD down to the dome.

The next day I joined the shoot at the Georgia Dome. This was a big deal. We had the top black marching bands from Georgia, Florida, Mississippi and Louisiana. They managed to attract 20,000 people to fill one side of the stadium. There was a stage set up in front of the audience for entertainers to keep the crowd occupied between the shooting of the bands. The football field was ringed with large monitors on stands to provide playback for the bands and to function as a PA for the entertainers on stage.

It came time to shoot the scene where the band would march around and fake playing to the music playback. When the tune reached the point where I had made the edit the band director (who had been rehearsing his band to my CD) stopped the band. Shooting stopped. The band director ran over to my station, he thought something was wrong. He put on my headphones and listened to what I had played back.

"That's right, that's right," he said as he listened. "But that's not what you just played back on the field!" I assured him that it was.

Meanwhile, since shooting had stopped, the giant PA is blasting hip-hop to keep the attention of the audience. Now you should know that the Georgia Dome is infamously loud, cavernous and echoey. We are all shouting at each other to be heard. So we roll playback again. When the tune reached the same point again the band director stopped the band again. Shooting stopped. It's like an aircraft carrier has run aground. The band director ran over to my station, put on my headphones and listened to what I had played back.

"That's right, that's right" he said as he listened. "But that's not what you just played back!" Again I assured him that it was. At this point the director, the assistant director, the director of photography, and the producer are all yelling at me. The music for the crowd has kicked up again. It's so loud it's like bombs going off. 20,000 people and a big film crew are waiting on me.

At this point I realized that they had rehearsed to the wrong version. Normally I would have been the person to play back the music, but since I was at the recording session the guy running the PA did it and he played the wrong track. I said "Ok stop, calm down. What do you want the music to do? I can fix it in a minute." I cut the piece the way they wanted, it only took a couple of minutes. I'm sure it felt like an hour to the director and the producer.

PM: Did it all work out?

Lee Scott: Everything was fine after that and I had a good war story. Generally the most stressful situation for a music editor would be on a dub stage. The clock is ticking, the stage is costing $2,000 to $3,000 per hour. When a director asks you to recut a piece of music you have to be fast, perfect and artful. When I tell other music editors my story I tell them that there is no comparing the stress on the dub stage to the stress on location. The worst thing that could happen on a dub stage would be your ProTools rig catching fire in the middle of making a recut. In that case the mixer would calmly say "We'll go work on some dialog while you get that sorted out." Contrast that to literally 20,000 people plus a big film crew waiting for you in a place so loud you can't hear yourself think.

The last day of shooting was an interior scene. It was easy and stress free. I was running playback for a party scene. I was hanging out in the "video village" where the director was watching the scene being shot on a video monitor. The scene was all set up, the camera started to roll. Charles and the others leaned in toward the monitors. Suddenly, the camera operator yelled "hold on." There was a problem with the camera. Charles leaned back and relaxed, there was a collective sigh in the room. Everyone relaxed. Then the costumer said "If there had been a problem with a costume it would have been a crisis, a disaster and an emergency, I added "Yeah, same for music."

ON THE THIN RED LINE

PM: When did you first start working on The Thin Red Line?

Lee Scott: The Thin Red Line was a huge project. When I started the film in June, 1998, the three picture editors and the director Terrence Malick had already been cutting the film for about eight months and they had about thirty hours of music loaded into their Avids, which they had been cutting as temp score.

PM: How long did you work on the film?

Lee Scott: I had worked a total of seven months.

PM: Were there classical pieces opted for The Thin Red Line but not used?

Lee Scott: There weren't any classical alts for cues at the dub. But here is some of what was in the temp score that got replaced with score: Wojciech Kilar, "Exodus"; Anatoli Lyadov, "The Enchanted Lake" (just the very beginning); Arvo Part, "Fratres" and "Cantus in Memory of Benjamin Britten"; and Stravinsky, "The Firebird." "Cantus in Memory for Benjamin Britten" was for the scene where Witt [James Caviezel] gets killed, it was fantastic.

PM: What is the basic breakdown of music you had sat your disposal during post-production?

Lee Scott: There were five types of music in the film. There was a great deal of each type, each of which had to be fully explored. They were:

1. The indigenous Melanesian music. This music consisted of choirs singing 19th century American hymns which had been taught to them by missionaries. Out of about twenty tunes, three were selected.

2. Other 19th-century American hymns, which were adapted for orchestra by composer Hans Zimmer. There were about fifteen of these which were worked with as themes, two of these survived.

3. Classical source music. There was a great deal of this of which two pieces made it to the end.

4. The Cosmic Beam. This is a unique instrument that was invented and played by Francesco Lupica. About half of my work involved working with this material. Franceso was just asked to do his thing.

I never expected to get writing credit [for The Cosmic Beam cues]. It wasn't until I had to start making the cue sheet that I realized we had to put down a composer for the Beam cues. At first I was told to credit Hans Zimmer. I had to tell the producer that Hans had nothing to do with the Beam cues. I realized that I had as much to do with the creation of those cues as Francesco did. With support from Hans and Malick, the studio reluctantly assigned writing credit to me and Francesco.

5. Hans Zimmer's original score. When I started the film, Hans had already written some themes which I began cutting as temp score. There was also Japanese Taiko drumming. Originally the drum group Kodo was considered to perform for the film but in the end Hans recorded his own Taiko drummers [Johnny Mori] as well as Tibetan chants and Bowls.

PM: In Terrence Malick's The New World and The Tree of Life, we can hear similar cues to the the Cosmic Beam...

Lee Scott: For The New World, I believe they used the same Fox recordings that I used to make The Thin Red Line cues. For The Tree of Life, they used a cue titled "Troops Advance" as well as some unused recordings from the Fox scoring session.

PM: Back to The Thin Red Line. What were you doing while the movie was being mixed on the dub stage?

Lee Scott: The main direction was to find more uses for the Cosmic Beam. He asked me to create a piece for the end credits with Cosmic Beam. It didn't end up going in. It was called "Peaceful Beam." Malick was a Cosmic Beam fanatic. He would come into my room, slap the inside of his left forearm like a heroin junkie trying to get a vein to come up, and then ask for another hit of the Beam.

PM: I especially admire the edit where Zimmer's score segues with Charles Ives in "Journey to the Line." It's brilliant.

Lee Scott: That was my idea. Hans wrote a piece to copy the Ives but it didn't fly. However, that piece appears on the soundtrack album though it wasn't in the film. "Journey to the Line" was the first piece of music Hans composed that clicked for the film. Here is some super music editing trivia: In the film Magnolia there is a cue that copies the transition from Hans' score into the Ives. It must have been in their temp. They copied an edit!

PM: What about Arsenije Jovanovic's "The Prophecy from the Village of Kremnus"?

Lee Scott: I don't know where "Prophecy" came from. It was handed to me. I imagine that it was something [Malick] found.

PM: What was Klaus Badelt's role in the film?

Lee Scott: Klaus was one of Hans Zimmer's prot?g?s. He's credited with arranging some of the old hymns that were used, and probably did more than that.

PM: Do you recall what was cut from the film and didn't make it into the finished version?

Lee Scott: I just remember that there were a lot of beautiful shots but not enough room in the film for them. There were a lot more shots of nature, animals and insects. I think there were more scenes in the ship before the soldiers land.

I remember a scene after they land and a camp and a soldier exploring the jungle, looking at insects. There was a long fifteen plus minute section of [charter Private Whit] traveling to another island.

In the middle of the film a group of soldiers try to take a hill three times. It was cut down to two attempts. Scenes with Adrien Brody kept getting cut down to where I think he has only one line in the film. I think [editor Billy Weber] and Malick wanted to cut the scene with George Clooney, but there were already trailers out with him in it and Malick didn't want to slight Clooney.

PM: Do you think Malick was satisfied with the final cut?

Lee Scott: There are some that say he wasn't, but he reconciled to what it came to because of time constraints and being contracted to three hours and under. I doubt he was satisfied. I think with an ambitious project, no director is ever totally satisfied.

PM: What is the nature of the twenty-four minute track you worked on with Francesco Lupica?

Lee Scott: It was a thirty minute performance I recorded at his warehouse space. It's not any different from the Fox recordings except that Francesco does a little singing and plays what he calls "space guitar." He used to do a whole show incorporating the Beam, drum set, guitars, vocals and the sound of thunder and rain.

PM: Are there any other collaborators on the film that we don't know about?

Lee Scott: One day Michael Jackson came to a scoring session at Fox to meet with Malick. He was offering to write a song for the film!

PM: How did your role as music editor fit into the production?

Lee Scott:There was a lot of back and forth collaboration with [composer Hans Zimmer], myself, and Malick. Hans continually supplied and reworked his synth demos which I cut in. There were many places where I moved his score to other reels or cut different cues and themes together. In several instances Hans rewrote the score to match my edits.

PM: Was it challenging work?

Lee Scott: This film was a logistical nightmare. Because of budget constraints, I worked alone until two weeks into the final dub–when I finally got an assistant (Scott Rouse) who functioned as a technical manager. Adam Smalley came in at the final dub to sit on the stage while I continued to cut. We were reworking the music constantly all the way thru the dub. I was cutting continually right up to the end.

Here is the scope of the final [and some inside-baseball stats]: I had 54 gigabytes of final music, dubbed off two ProTools simultaneously. There were 364 ProTool sessions for the final dub alone. There were five and a quarter hours of recorded score and five hours of the Cosmic Beam recordings.

PM: Would you describe your time with The Thin Red Line as unique as compared to other films you have since worked on?

Lee Scott: This film was a unique experience for me because of the incredible spirit of collaboration fostered by the director. I had a major influence on the final shape of the score. At one point the director was concerned that the composer couldn't deliver the proper score and that it was up to me to track the film with this music. In one case, Malick preferred my inelegant edit to Hans' rescore (much to my chagrin). I was working with the orchestral scores, the Cosmic Beam recordings, and about one hour of miscellaneous music for the final. We ended up with a 137 minutes in the film.

PM: How many times did you think you were working on a final cut?

Lee Scott: The film was finaled three times over.

PM: That sounds daunting.

Lee Scott: This description barely outlines the scope of the job. I think I did the work of five editors.

PM: Was director Terrence Malick pleased with your work?

Lee Scott: From the beginning, Malick considered the music more than equal to the story and other elements of the film. Terrence Malick was extremely pleased with my work. He and the senior editor, Billy Weber told me (only half-jokingly) that I had saved the film!

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TV: Interview: Voice actor Rob Paulsen on playing Pinky, Yakko Warner, and two mutant ninja turtles

Welcome to Random Roles, wherein we talk to actors about the characters who defined their careers. The catch: They don’t know beforehand what roles we’ll ask them to talk about.

The actor: Rob Paulsen began his acting career in front of the camera, yet in spite of (or perhaps because of) featured roles in Body Double and Stewardess School, he took advantage of the opportunity to shift gears and pursued a career in voice acting instead. This decision was fortuitous: Paulsen has become one of the most recognizable and popular figures in his field, voicing characters in some of the most famous cartoons of the past few decades, including Animaniacs, Pinky And The Brain, The Tick, and, perhaps most impressively, two different heroes on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: first Raphael, and now, in Nickelodeon’s new incarnation of the series, Donatello. He also frequently discusses voicework with other cartoon stars on his podcast, Talkin’ Toons.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1987-1995)—“Raphael”
Rob Paulsen: A number of us—Townsend Coleman and myself, who became Michaelangelo and Raphael, respectively—were working on the animated version of Fraggle Rock with Stu Rosen, and Stu came into work one day and said, “Hey, so I’m casting this thing called Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles…” I was vaguely familiar with the comic, but not really. But Townsend and I, we went and read for it, along with Cam Clarke, Barry Gordon, and a bunch of other folks. We mixed and matched as far as who was voicing who. In fact, I remember when we got the job, at the first episode, nobody knew who was going to be which Turtle, so we just kind of said, “Well, why don’t you do this one, and why don’t you do that one?” And so on and so on, down the line. And then they hired Pat Fraley to be Krang, Renae Jacobs to be April, and James Avery, a.k.a. Uncle Phil on The Fresh Prince Of Bel Air, to be Shredder. We all went in there and banged it around for a bit, and they said, “Okay, why don’t you guys stay with the Turtle voices you picked?” And that was it. [Laughs.] 

We did five episodes that were paid for by Playmates, the toy company, and they were going to be done as kind of a weeklong miniseries during Christmas break. I don’t think they were hugely successful right out of the chute, but I think they decided there was at least enough interest to spring for eight more, so we ended up doing 13 total. Then they came back six months or a year later, and that’s when it really took off. It was just, “Hold on, baby!” It went crazy. We ended up doing over 190 episodes, which is a lot. So just a normal kind of audition, the kind where you get the job and say, “Well, let’s see what happens.” And now here we are, 25 years later, still talking about the Turtles. [Laughs.] Not bad.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2012)—“Donatello”
RP: This was one of those things where I can only assume that the stars sort of aligned, because as you know, I did Raphael on the first batch and got a chance to be involved in the iconic show that it turned out to be. I’d heard through the grapevine that Viacom had purchased the Turtles lock, stock, and turtle-van a couple or three years ago, and then two years ago, during the summer of 2010, I got a call from my agent to read for a new Ninja Turtles series. And my first reaction was, “Well, do they know who I am?” Not out of arrogance, but because there have been several iterations of Turtles that were done after our original show that had nothing to do with the original cast. Often, they would change casts from movie to movie. So I said, “Look, man, I’m happy to go read, but I want to make sure they know who I am, so I don’t get there and they say, ‘Oh, shit, he was Raphael on the first batch. Well, the old guy’s here, let’s throw him a bone.’” I just didn’t want to waste their time… or mine, frankly. 

But she called back and said, “No, no, no, they know exactly who you are. They love Raphael, but they also love Pinky and Yakko and all that, and they know you won an Emmy, but… they think you would be right for their vision of what Donatello should be in their version of the show.” Of course, they’re all younger guys, but what’s cool about the show now is that it’s all being produced and created by fans, folks who grew up watching it when they were 10, 12 years old, and now they’re 30. So I went in and read, and—lo and behold—I got the gig. Which, as you can imagine, is an incredible thrill, to get another bite of this apple. You don’t often in your career get to work on another version of an iconic show. And my son said, “Man, you’re going to be the answer to a Jeopardy! question: Which goofball middle-aged actor has gotten to do two Ninja Turtles in his career?” [Laughs.]

So that’s how that came about. But man, it was such an incredible joy when I got a callback. I thought, “Well, man, I might be in the running for this!” Never in a million years would I think I’d ever get a crack at Turtles again. And to get a crack at it with a great cast—they’re lovely people, just like the guys in the old group. They’re already wonderful friends. Mae [Whitman] is adorable; the other guys are fantastic. Hoon Lee, who plays Splinter, is just incredible. Kevin Michael Richardson, I’ve worked with on many shows. And I’m working with Sean Astin now, and I worked with his dad, John Astin, on Taz-Mania and The Addams Family. So that’s pretty cool. To be able do this show with Viacom’s juice behind it is just… wow. So with all due respect to Lou Gehrig, I think I’m the luckiest guy on the face of the earth. [Hesitates.] But mainly because I know guys like Sean Astin. 

Sean Astin: [Walks up to Paulsen.] Are you being asked actual questions for an actual interview? 

The A.V. Club: Theoretically, anyway. 

RP: He was just asking me, “What’s Sean Astin really like?”

SA: Oh, really. [Pointedly coughs loudly into the recorder.]

RP: That’s Rudy coughing into the recorder, ladies and gentlemen. [Laughs.] Seriously, I was literally just talking about working with your dad. 

SA: Oh, yeah? Well, in that case, here’s a quote for you: Rob Paulsen has the perfect attitude to build a lifelong career in this industry. He loves everything, he loves everyone, he approaches his work with passion, and everybody loves him. 

RP: God bless you, Sean-y. [Laughs.] How about that? That’s what I’m talking about: He and I have known each other for about a year now, since we started working on the show, and he’s just the nicest kid. He’s got a great attitude himself. And his mom and dad? Patty Duke and John Astin? Come on. And Jason [Biggs] is the same way. Biggs is just so… He’s got such a sarcastic, caustic, witty bent that’s hysterical to be around. And Greg Cipes is Michelangelo. I’m telling you, the guy was born to play the role. I mentioned Mae earlier, but I’ve actually known her since she was six months old, because I’ve known her mom, Pat Musick, who’s a very prolific voice actress. So this is a really great group. Plus, the show looks pretty goddamned cool, too! [Laughs.] 

AVC: Was it difficult stepping into the voice of a different Turtle after all these years?

RP: You know, it was pretty effortless, because they still want Donatello to have sort of the brains of the outfit and create gadgets and stuff. Barry Gordon set such a high bar for doing that role years ago. The thing they want Donatello to have now is, he’s got a little more of an edge. He’s not just a nerdy guy who makes machines and tries to figure out global positioning systems. He’s still that, but he’s also a kick-ass brother. He also has this really interesting sort of romantic relationship with April, which is kind of cool. That’s right: an interspecies relationship. [Laughs.] I don’t know that it’s reciprocated by April, but Donny has a huge crush on her. I’m an actor, so it’s not supposed to be that difficult. Once I get the job, it’s supposed to be my job to be as good at it as I can be. And certainly it hasn’t been difficult. It’s been a real cool labor of love, and I like having an edge to Donatello. Before, Raphael had the edge, and he still does with Sean’s version of it, but now Donatello’s got more of an edge, too, so he can be butt-kicking. He gets short with his brothers when they try to hurry him along, and that type of thing. So there’s a comedic edge to all of us, which is really cool.

AVC: But what the world really wants to know is, are they aliens?

RP: [Laughs.] Not as far as I know. One of the things I think I’m most proud of, in regards to [executive producer] Ciro [Nieli] and his team, is that they respect the genesis of the show and the Turtles. Ciro’s really sharp, and you can really see his passion in the show and how much he and his team respect the mythology Kevin [Eastman] and Peter [Laird] created. That these guys were created out of this ooze, that they have this giant rat that mentors them… As far as I’m concerned, I don’t know what Paramount and Mr. Bay have in store for the movie; that’s their business. But man, the whole story of the Turtles is so bitchin’, anyway! I mean, it’s a very cool story, and we know that Krang and some of those guys are from Dimension X and all of that, but the Turtles? No, man, they were created from the ooze and the sewers, and they get to go up and find pizza for the first time, and it’s really neat getting to go through all of that again. 

Taz-Mania (1991-1995)—“Timothy Platypus”
The Addams Family (1992-1993)—“Mr. Normanmeyer”
RP: I mentioned working with John Astin on Taz-Mania, but Maurice [LaMarche] and I worked on that show together, too, along with Dan Castellaneta. Fantastic. I told Sean-y this when I met him, but one of the great things about having a long career in this business is the people with whom I’ve gotten to work. On The Addams Family, Grandmama was Carol Channing, Uncle Fester was Rip Taylor, my wife in the show—Mrs. Normanmeyer—was Edie McClurg, and we had a child played by Dick Beals. He recently passed away, but was the voice of Speedy Alka Seltzer and Davy on Davey And Goliath. He was the same age as my parents, and he just passed away. So to be able to work on that show was just a huge thrill all around. But Sean’s dad answered every question I had about The Addams Family or anything else I wanted to know about his career. He was just delightful. 

Body Double (1984)—“Cameraman”
RP: Oh, dear. [Laughs.] That is an interesting story, actually. My son was coming along, and I remember that my agent called me—I was still doing live-action stuff at that point—and said, “Hey, Brian De Palma wants you to come in and read for him.” And I said, “Wow! That’s pretty cool!” I don’t know how the hell he knew who I was, but I was happy to do that, because he had actually just come off of directing Scarface, and Scarface had a lot of press that was very… [Hesitates.] Not criticizing, really. I mean, the movie got pretty good notices, and it was a successful movie. But [De Palma] had gotten a lot of reviews that suggested that the violence of Scarface should’ve made it an X-rated movie. Mind you, this was 28 years ago, so the stuff that was considered racy or violent then was nothing compared to what it is now. I read an article in the L.A. Times where Brian De Palma said, “You know what? Screw those people. If they want an X-rated movie, I’ll give ’em one!” And that movie was Body Double. 

I remember going to audition for Body Double, and I read for a different role, and when I went in, I read the part, and Brian said, “Put the script down, let’s just improvise.” And I’m comfortable with that, so we did. And by the time I got home, I had a message on my machine from my agent, saying, “Hey, Brian loved you! He doesn’t necessarily want you for the part he read you for, but he really loved you and wants to use you. It’ll be three or four days.” And I said, “Oh, great!” Mind you, I was in my late 20s at the time, Brian De Palma was a big deal, and it was a Columbia Pictures movie, his first movie after Scarface. So they just said, “Your call time is such and such, you’re going way down on Melrose, way past Hollywood. It’s Melrose and Heliotrope, it’s an abandoned warehouse, and you’re going to shoot your stuff there.”

So I drove down there, and they said, “Your scenes are going to be with Craig Wasson and Melanie Griffith, the stars of the film.” And I remember Steve Burum was the director of photography, a very well-known and excellent DP, and, of course, De Palma’s there, too. Now, I knew that the movie had something to do with the adult-movie business, but I didn’t know that I was going to be involved in the parts that were directly involved in the adult-movie business. [Laughs.] But when I got down there, they just kind of handed me the script and said, “You’re this guy.” And then the guy that was playing the director in the adult movie was Al Israel, a really intense actor who got a lot of notices for being the chainsaw guy in Scarface. So I was already thinking, “Wow, this is really weird…” And then as I was getting ready to do my scenes, they brought Melanie and Craig in, and then they also had a bunch of extras who were real adult-movie actors, and… It was all just really bizarre for a young man from Flint, Michigan. [Laughs.] I mean, I’d already been out here for about five years or so by that point, but it was still pretty disconcerting. But I didn’t have the guts to say, “I can’t do this.” I don’t think it was purely discomfort. It was a little bit of consternation, but also going, “Wow, what the hell is going on here?” 

So these folks were all in various stages of undress, and Melanie was very uncomfortable with all of the people there, so the only crew that were allowed on the set were the DP, Brian De Palma, and… that was it, actually. The rest of us were actors. And it was a very odd circumstance. They shot more than [they] ended up [using]. But that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. [Laughs.] I was on the movie for three days, and I remember coming home and telling my wife, “Wow, that was a bizarre experience. At least I know I’m making some diaper money, but it was pretty wild.” Luckily, I didn’t have to take off my clothes. Nobody’s going to want to see me naked, anyway. Trust me. 

Years later, my son was about 16, he had a bunch of buddies over, and they were watching movies. I’d already gone to bed, and he came in and said [whispers loudly], “Hey, Dad!” He woke me up, and I said, “Yeah! You okay?” He said, “Yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh… Were you in a movie called Body Double?” And I heard my wife immediately laugh. He and his buddies were watching Body Double, and they saw me. Then he said, “That was so cool!” I said, “It wasn’t really that cool, buddy, but…” [Laughs.] So it came back to haunt me. And it shows up every now and then in articles like this or whatever. But, hey, if you decide to be in show business or politics, your life is an open book. So I have no problem with people asking about it. I suppose it’s a left-handed compliment: When you achieve a certain modicum of celebrity—and I don’t consider myself a celebrity, but other people do—your past is available. Whether it hurts you or helps you, it’s all fair game. 

Goof Troop (1992) / A Goofy Movie (1995) / An Extremely Goofy Movie (2000)—“P.J. Pete”
The Adventures Of Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius (2002-2006)—“Carl Wheezer”
RP: Oh, Goof Troop was great! An interesting thing about P.J. is that he’s this big, rotund kind of guy, and that voice became sort of the archetype for Carl Wheezer on Jimmy Neutron, albeit not quite so large. I had worked for Disney before on series like Darkwing Duck, TaleSpin, [Adventures Of The] Gummi Bears, and that kind of stuff, but that was, I think, the first show where I had a really meaty role. And I got to work with Jim Cummings, who played my dad, and Billy Farmer as Goofy. A great cast. And then Dana Hill played Goofy’s son, Max, at least in the TV series. As a matter of fact, this evening I’m going to get to hang with April Winchell, who played Peg, P.J.’s mother. April is also Paul Winchell’s daughter, not to mention just an incredibly gifted writer and actress, and one of my dearest friends in the world.

That was a great show and a great group. Just getting a chance to work with Billy Farmer, who’s just an iconic Disney character, but Dana Hill was a terrific actress, and I was a big fan. Several years earlier, she’d done a movie called Shoot The Moon with Albert Finney, and she was really great in that. Unfortunately, Dana was a diabetic, and she passed away as a result of a diabetic incident, so Jason Marsden ended up playing Max in the two movies, A Goofy Movie and An Extremely Goofy Movie. So, yeah, that was a great experience. Everyone was wonderful, and we’re all still friends to this day. I’ve had April and Bill and Jim and Jason on my podcast, so if we don’t still work together, we still hang out when we can.

AVC: The cast of An Extremely Goofy Movie is particularly interesting: in addition to Jason Marsden, you’ve got Pauly Shore, Bebe Neuwirth, Vicki Lewis, and Brad Garrett. 

RP: Yeah! I just spoke to Brad two weeks ago. He and I are very close. Of course, he’s had his TV success, but he’s also got his own comedy club in the MGM Grand, which is where David Copperfield has his show. I’m working with [Copperfield] on some projects as well, and he became a buddy of mine through Brad, so there you go! [Laughs.] I get to work with these incredibly gifted people who are way bigger stars than I, and I just love it. I’m so grateful, because what’s really cool is that these guys all have a pile of money, but they’re all looking for… Copperfield is legendary, he’s iconic, and yet the guy’s always looking for the next cool illusion. He doesn’t need the money. And I love that. I love working with people who are driven to perform and improve their gigs, because I don’t count myself in their same category in terms of their celebrity, but I certainly do in terms of my drive. I’m always looking to try and do something cooler and different and not just say, “Okay, I’m fiftysomething years old now, I’m done, I’m just gonna relax.” I want to work until I die and try to keep coming up with new, cool stuff. So it’s really great fun to work with people who have achieved a certain level of success but don’t allow that to stop them from trying to better their gig or improve their gig. I love that. 

The Tick (1994-1996)—“Arthur”
RP: Oh man! Another show I just loved. Ben Edlund was the creator of The Tick, but I didn’t really know Ben or his comic book. I knew it was kind of similar to Ninja Turtles, in that it was a well-known comic, sort of underground, but it had a pretty devout following. When I got hired on it, though, I read for it with a bunch of other actors, but my Ninja Turtles buddy Townsend Coleman—Michelangelo on the original show—was hired to do the voice of The Tick and I was hired to do the voice of Arthur. A few days before we were set to record, I got a call from the director, Sue Blu, and she said, “Sweetie, I hate to tell you this, but the producers decided they want to have a celebrity do Arthur.” And I said, “Oh, okay. That happens. It’s not the first time that’s happened to me.” “But they really want you, so they’re going to bring you in to do all of these ancillary characters. There are lots of bad guys and all these other wacky superheroes.” And they did, and I did most of the first season in that capacity. But I said, “So who’s the celebrity?” And she said, “Micky Dolenz.” I said, “Micky Dolenz?” I mean, I was a huge fan of the Monkees, but… Micky Dolenz? It turns out he did a good job, but I don’t know that that necessarily drew people to the show, y’know? But, anyway, my job isn’t to question. My job is to be grateful and show up. 

So I worked with Micky, and that was cool, because, hey, I got to work with a Monkee. But after the first 13 episodes, Micky decided to go on the road with some theater show, so Sue came to me and said, “Micky’s leaving. We really would love for you to fill in and do the next season.” And I said, “I would love to, and that would be great, but if you wouldn’t mind, can we just have a gentleman’s agreement that, if he comes back, this is still my gig? Because I got it initially, and then you changed your mind, and you’re entitled to do that because this is show business. But just promise me that, unless I suck, I will be Arthur, even if he comes back. And she said, “Okay, we’re cool with that.” So I did the next 23 episodes over the next two seasons, and man, what a show. The people on that show… Ed Gilbert, who’s since passed away, the guys from the Firesign Theater came in, Jess Harnell and Maurice [LaMarche], Kay Lenz. And then getting to work with Ben! Just an incredible show, and one that still holds up. To this day, it still has a devout following. When I go to Comic-Con, people know the things for which I’m most known, like Animaniacs and Pinky and Turtles, but they find out about Arthur and they freak out all over again. [Laughs.] 

New Kids On The Block (1990) / ProStars (1991) / Where’s Waldo? (1991)—Various characters
AVC: You must be very proud to be able to say you had a hand in New Kids On The Block’s animated series. 

RP: Um… was I in that? [Laughs.] If I was, I don’t remember. I probably did it, though. You know, I’ve done over 2,000 half-hours, probably approaching 2,200 by now, but especially back then… There’s all sorts of things I did, like Jem. And ProStars, which was Wayne Gretzky, Michael Jordan, and Bo Jackson, I did a few of those. There was a Where’s Waldo? cartoon, and I did a few of those, too. But I’d never be able to remember all of them. So, yeah, I probably did do a couple of nondescript thugs or goofball kids or something. I don’t remember it, but I won’t deny it, either. [Laughs.]

Jonny Quest (1986-1987)—“Hadji”
RP: Oh man, that was really cool. That was the first big show I got before Turtles. Like most people my age, I was a huge fan of Jonny Quest—it used to be a prime-time show on ABC in the mid-’60s—when I was probably 10 or 11. The first voice of Jonny Quest was Tim Matheson, and the original Hadji was a guy named Danny Bravo. But then there was a second iteration of the show at Hanna-Barbera in the mid-’80s, when I was just starting to do a lot of animation, and Gordon Hunt, who had hired me for a couple of things over there, brought me in to read for Hadji. I got the job. And for me, that was a big deal, because everybody knows who Hadji and Jonny Quest and Bandit and Race Bannon are. If they’re a fan of ’60s cartoons, anyway. So that was a big deal for me. I was basically matching Danny Bravo’s original voice. [Goes into his Hadji voice.] “Sim sim salabim! Careful, Race, it’s a pterodactyl!” 

It was cool! And one of the things that was really cool about it was that the original voice of Dr. Quest, Don Messick, was the voice of Dr. Quest in our version, too. So man, I’m telling you, the first day I was recording for the show, as soon as Don Messick broke into his voice and said, “Come on, Jonny, we’re going to blah-blah-blah…” I was like, “Wow! That’s Dr. Quest!” [Laughs.] It was very cool. Don and I became very good friends and worked together on so many shows. He passed away years ago, but he was absolutely delightful. He was the voice of Boo-Boo and Papa Smurf and Scooby-Doo. I mean, come on. He was just amazing. Oh, and he was Hamton on Tiny Toons, too! So that was a very cool thing. 

Scott Menville, who is now working every now and then with us on the new Ninja Turtles, I met him when he was 12, because he played Jonny Quest. And [Granville] Van Dusen was the voice of Race Bannon. We’re still buddies. But yeah, that was a big deal for me, because that was the first major recurring role I ever had. I’d done work on G.I. Joe and Transformers, and that was kind of recurring, but then I got this job where I was a regular and it was a semi-iconic role. Plus, it was a job where I was hired for a voice other than my own. I was getting quite a bit of work with my regular young-superhero voice, but that was the first one where I had to use kind of a dialect. So yeah, Jonny Quest was a big deal for me. 

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TV: Interview: Dan Schneider on Head Of The Class and creating some of Nickelodeon’s most memorable shows

Casual television viewers—especially young ones—might not know the name Dan Schneider, but they’ve probably seen one of his shows. After launching a career as a young actor in films like Better Off Dead and shows like Head Of The Class, Schneider stumbled into creating some of Nickelodeon’s most popular shows ever, from All That to iCarly and Victorious. He’s launched the careers of countless child stars including Kenan Thompson, Amanda Bynes, and Miranda Cosgrove, and spearheaded hundreds, if not thousands of hours of smart, funny entertainment for an entire generation of kids. On the eve of the iCarly series finale, The A.V. Club spoke to Schneider about how he got into the business, being a showrunner, and whether he keeps up with the kids from Drake & Josh. 

The A.V. Club: You grew up in Tennessee and that’s where you started acting, but it seems like you sort of just fell into it. How did that happen? 

Dan Schneider: I grew up as the funny guy in class, and that was pretty consistent through my childhood. I was never a great student. The thing I excelled at most in high school was that I would do plays. I moved to a new high school in Memphis my junior year. In my senior year, I won senior-class president. I basically did that by getting onstage and giving a speech that got a lot of laughs. Because of that, I was onstage a lot. I would get onstage in front of people and do little skits and do funny stuff. I realized I really loved performing. 

After high school, I kind of floundered a bit. At that time they were shooting a movie in Memphis. It was a big deal because it was the first time Hollywood had ever come to Memphis. My teacher in an acting class at Memphis State—now University of Memphis—said, “There’s a role you might be able to get. There’s a couple of speaking roles.” I went to this big casting call for the movie [Making The Grade]. There was a sea of teenagers. They were doing extra casting as well. It was this huge mob scene. I almost left, and this guy comes up to me and just sort of saw me and said, “Hey, are you here to audition for the film?” I said, “Yeah.” He said, “Come with me.” I went and read with him, and he turned out to be the producer. He didn’t even know I had an appointment. He liked my face, I guess. He hired me for that movie, and I was supposed to work for four days on it. It ended up being four weeks. Then he hooked me up with another film that was shooting in the Caribbean [Hot Resort]. At the time, I was kind of blowing off school. I had a job. I worked at a store that sold Apple computers. I was fixing Apple computers. After the two movies, I was like, “Wow. I’ve never even left Memphis, and I got two movies. Maybe I should go to L.A. and see what I can do.” So I got a manager and an agent, and that led to another movie or two and that led to a TV show called Head Of The Class. By the mid-’80s, I was an actor. I was never super-famous, but I was definitely on the map.

AVC: On your IMDB page, which is surely very accurate, it says that people still stop you on the streets and say, “Ricky from Better Off Dead!” Is that true?

DS: It is true. Here’s what’s true about it: I did Head Of The Class for five years. It was a pretty big hit on ABC. That’s what most people know me from. But people are like, “Oh yeah, he was Dennis on Head Of The Class. Who cares? Big deal.” [Laughs.] 

There’s an age group of people out there, though… I guess right now they’re probably 35 to 45. When they find out I was Ricky in Better Off Dead, they look at me like I’m The Beatles. It’s so funny. It was just this little movie I did in 1985. To this day, I hear about Better Off Dead at least every month. People freak out. Nobody gives a damn that I was in Head Of The Class, but when they know I was Ricky in Better Off Dead, they’re like “Holy crap, man! You were Ricky.” They go crazy.

AVC: You sort of fell into creating All That after you hosted the Kids’ Choice Awards, right?

DS: Yeah, the second Kids’ Choice Awards, which were in ’88, I think. I was a co-host. 

AVC: Who was your co-host?

DS: Tony Danza. He was the far more important host. I met this guy, Albie Hecht, an independent producer at the time who was producing the Kids’ Choice Awards. I had a relationship with him, and he landed at Nickelodeon as the head of development. So I ended up writing this pilot called All That, which was a kids sketch-comedy show. I thought it was just going to be a part-time job between acting jobs, because after Head Of The Class I did another series called Home Free, which you probably don’t remember. It was only on for one season. I played Matthew Perry’s best friend. That was right before he got Friends. That show went away. I was just kind of filling the time until the next pilot season when I wanted to get another TV show. Then they put All That on television, and suddenly I was writing and producing a TV show. And that led to Kenan & Kel. Then somewhere in there, I got to be a very busy guy writing and producing two TV shows at once. 

AVC: Did you always want to write or produce?

DS: Absolutely. I actually wrote an episode of Head Of The Class. As a kid—I say as a kid, but I mean 21 or 22—I knew that actors on TV shows come and go. Some of them last. Most of them don’t. Most of them just sort of fade off into the sunset after the show’s over. I was 21 and thinking, “When this Head Of The Class boat ride ends, I don’t want to fade off into the sunset. I want to keep working. I want to be involved in the entertainment business.” I felt like, “Don’t just be a passenger on the ship. Learn how to captain the ship. Learn how to drive. Learn how to write. Learn how to produce.” I paid attention to the directors on Head Of The Class and how things worked, and I wrote an episode. I just sort of wrote it on spec, but the producers liked it, and they bought it. That was my first taste of selling something that I wrote. 

It’s funny. Right when I moved to L.A., I started writing. I wrote some screenplay. I’m sure it’s terrible. But I wrote a screenplay by myself. When I first moved to L.A., I had no friends. I didn’t know anybody. I just sat in a little studio apartment, and I wrote a screenplay. 

I used to write sketches. I loved David Letterman in the ’80s. I used to write Top 10 lists for him, and I faxed them in anonymously. I’m sure they threw them away. 

So yeah, I’ve always wanted to write, and after I was doing All That and Kenan & Kel, I got the opportunity to do another TV show—I was still going on auditions. I realized that if I took that show, I was going to have to give up All That and Kenan & Kel. I really didn’t want to do [that]. I was just having too much fun, and I was really enjoying the action of being a writer and producer. I passed on the acting role, and that was really the turning point, I guess, in 1996, when I was like, “You know what? I’m going to put my acting career on the back burner, and I’m going to be a writer-producer.” Then I wrote the movie Good Burger.

AVC: How does your experience as a teen actor affect how you deal with the kids on your shows now? 

DS: It puts me in a very unique position, because I’ve seen it from both sides. It helps me because I know how actors think. I know what’s important to them. And I have a very clear perspective because I starred in two TV shows, and I guested on several. I know the emotions and the thoughts that actors have about what they’re doing. I understand them very, very clearly. The kids I work with—and not just the kids, all the actors, because I hire adults, too—all the actors I work with know I was an actor. To them, I’m in their club. They accept me as one of them because they know it’s been my face in front of the camera, and I’ve had to do exactly what they’re doing now. There’s a level of trust and respect that I think a producer that hasn’t done that wouldn’t get. They trust me. 

I often play the role of an acting coach. The actors will come to me and say, “Dan, I don’t feel like I’m making this funny. How can I make this funny? How should I say this?” They don’t do that with your average producer because your average producer may not know how to say it; they’ve never been a comedic actor before. 

It’s helpful to me because I can anticipate. I’ll be in the writers’ room, and I’ll say, “Yeah, we’re long. Our script is long, but I don’t want to cut this joke because we cut another joke from this scene for him yesterday. If we cut this one, we’re leaving him with no good jokes, and he’s going to be bummed.” I never want an actor to feel bad; I think like an actor. 

When I’m with the guys and girls in the writers’ room and we’re writing a scene, when we finish it, very often I’ll go, “Let’s read it out loud. Let’s perform it.” It’s up on the screen already, so we scroll back, and we perform it. I think I do that because I’m an actor. Yes, I’m a writer, but I’m writing words for someone to speak, not for someone to read. I’d write very differently if I was writing a book than if I’m writing dialogue. I know that because I’m an actor. I’ve had lines that were difficult to say, and I’ve had lines that were great and easy to say. I’m familiar with those rhythms. I want to write dialogue that if it were for me, if I were getting it, I’d want that material. 

AVC: One thing that Nickelodeon has done is given kids a lot of credit, both as viewers and as actors. Their programming, for the most part, isn’t just dumb shows where kids make fart sounds. 

DS: I love that you get that. It sounds like you get the difference between my shows and other shows in my genre. I can’t go around saying that because I don’t want to sound like an egomaniac, patting myself on the back, but I do think that within my genre, which I guess is kids/family TV, my shows stand in their own little niche. 

I’m never going to write fart jokes, because I feel like I have a responsibility to the audience to give them good stuff. I should be able to come up with something funnier than any third-grade boy could think of. I’ll say that in the writers’ room. I’ll say, “Would that get a laugh? Yes. Is it okay? Yes, but we’re not going to win a clever award for it. Let’s try to be cleverer. Let’s try to be more original. Let’s try do something that your average writers’ room wouldn’t come up with. Let’s be more creative.” 

Also, I never woke up one day and said, “I want to write TV for kids.” That was never a goal of mine. I sort of fell into it through my relationship with Albie. I grew up watching reruns of old shows. My dad would have me watch the shows that he liked. I watched I Love Lucy. I watched The Dick Van Dyke Show. I watched M*A*S*H and Mary Tyler Moore and Bob Newhart and Taxi and Cheers. In fact, I credit the Charles brothers [Glen and Les], who were the main forces behind Taxi and Cheers and a little bit of the original The Bob Newhart Show. To me, those guys were my heroes. And also Larry Gelbart, who did M*A*S*H, and Larry David, who did Seinfeld. Those are my heroes. That’s the kind of sitcom writing that I like. I like Friends. I like Seinfeld. I’m a student of sitcoms, of comedy television. I love it. The original Saturday Night Live is another big influence. I was watching that when I was 7, 8 years old. That’s the comedy I like. When I got into kids TV, I never was like, “I want to write a kids show.” I was like, “I want to write a show like M*A*S*H or Cheers or Friends. That’s what I love, but I have to make it suitable for kids.” 

AVC: Do you think about the success of your show in the long run, whether it will stand up to scrutiny 10 or 20 years down the road? 

DS: That’s exactly how I feel. Often I will say when we’re writing or producing something, and I want to do one more take, make it a little better, and people are looking at me like, “Wow, it’s late, Dan. We’ve already done six takes. Do we really need another one?” I’ll always say, “Guys. Our name is on this forever.” I take a lot of pride in it. 

Television audiences have fragmented so much because there’s so much product and there are so many channels and so many shows. No shows get the big audiences like they got 20 years ago, 30 years ago, 40 years ago. All the audiences are small. It used to be, for an episode of Cheers or M*A*S*H, practically the whole country was watching. Now, you’re a big hit show if 13 million people watch, which is a relatively small audience compared to what audiences used to be. 

What I love about kids TV is it’s really the last bastion of television where everybody watches. You can’t find a teenager who doesn’t know Drake & Josh. You can’t find someone in their 20s who hasn’t heard of All That and Kenan & Kel. And you certainly can’t find a kid today who hasn't heard of iCarly and Victorious. They all watch. I know when those kids grow up, in seven, eight, nine, 10 years when they’re in college, that’s going to be a common thing that they remember together. 

I try to make my shows smart. God knows I do a lot of goofy, physical, broad comedy, but so did Kramer on Seinfeld. On Friends, Joey and Chandler had a duck and chicken. Broad comedy works at all levels of television. Saturday Night Live has very broad comedy. So I do my share of broad, goofy comedy, but I also try to make it smart. 

And I do think about that. I think to myself, “I want iCarly to live on, and people who watch it when they’re 20 and 30 to still like it.” Sometimes I will look back at a show I liked as a little kid, and I’ll go, “Oh my God, that show was so stupid. What did I see in it?” I don’t want anybody to say that about one of my shows.

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