The Flint Dille Interview -- Part III of III
Rik Bakke
Copyright 2005 Rikard Bakke
PART III OF III
TCC: Speaking of continuity, the third season didn't leave much
doubt that THE TRANSFORMERS existed in the same universe
as G.I. JOE. For one, there's the aformentioned recurring character
of Marissa Faireborn -- and even Flint himself makes a brief
(holographic) appearance as an older man in THE KILLING JAR.
There's the character of "Snake" -- AKA Cobra Commander -- along
with the specific G.I. JOE concept of synthoids in ONLY HUMAN.
There's even an Oktober Guard pilot in PRIME TARGET. Conversely,
THE GAMESMASTER features a computer game with a robotic
character that looks more than a little like Decepticon Shockwave.
Considering your pretty substantial part in the development of G.I.
JOE, was it your idea to cross over occasionally between the
different shows?
DILLE: We all did it. We were all entranced by crossover comics and
the like. Hector Ramirez (based on Geraldo Rivera) is in JOE,
TRANSFORMERS (I believe), and has a huge role in INHUMANOIDS.
Now, we'd probably make him a JOE team member. We liked doing this
and since Hasbro owned all of the shows, there wasn't any legal problem.
Never underestimate the number of cool things that don't happen because
of lawyers.
This is an interesting moment to bring up something very important
to the series. You could not have a better licenser and financier than
Hasbro in that era. They had an amazing amount of trust. Bob Prupis
did nothing but make our work easier, provide ideas, and make it a lot
of fun. Bob was the head of Boy's toys at Hasbro and our contact at
the company. Kirk Bozigian worked with him. Bob was great. He
nurtured the show. Kirk was the same way. We never received an
obtrusive note that I can remember and every issue I remember them
raising was perfectly reasonable. No small part of the freshness of
those shows was the feeling of liberation we all had from the networks,
which at that time were the worst mix of politically correct and creatively
meddlesome.
"No cooperation. No cooperation at all."
Dinsmoor -- PRIME TARGET
TCC: In terms of series continuity, the first and third seasons were
pretty consistent, but the second season had all kinds of twists
and turns, the most talked-about "controversy" probably being the
origin of the Constructicons as told in David Wise's THE SECRET
OF OMEGA SUPREME. When they first appeared in SEASON
ONE'S HEAVY METAL WAR, they were supposedly built on
Earth, but in SECRET, they originated on Cybertron, where they
fell victim to Megatron's programming. There's even a scene in
FIVE FACES OF DARKNESS that shows them constructing
Megatron on Cybertron. Although Bryce Malek and Dick
Robbins were the story editors for the first two seasons, you
were a part of so many processes that you must also have had
an extensive overview of the goings-on, so I'm interested in your
perspective, too. How do you suppose continuity glitches like
that managed to slip through the proverbial cracks?
DILLE: Again, Jay Bacal had the best metaphor for what working
on THE TRANSFORMERS was like. It was as if there was an
assembly line full of cars spitting them out like a car wash and
we'd see one and say, "Oh no, it doesn't have an engine" and
then the one behind it wouldn't have an interior and the one
behind that would be missing tires. At one point or the other,
things don't get fixed. That's one answer, the other one, the
kind that plays well in philosophy classes and might play well
here, is that there are "multiple truths."
TCC: Throughout the series, the multi-part episodes featured
narration at the end and / or the beginning, either indicating
upcoming events or summarizing events having transpired.
The same, of course, applied to all the parts of FIVE FACES
OF DARKNESS. Did you tend to write the summaries yourself
or would that task have been handled by someone else?
DILLE: I don't remember writing the summaries, but I probably
did. Usually, the writer was responsible for such things. Steve
edited me on FIVE FACES OF DARKNESS, so he might have
done it. FIVE FACES was a weird one. I was simultaneously
immersed in TRANSFORMERS to a greater degree than ever
before, and a lot of it was stuff that didn't make it into the movie
or grew out of the movie script, and I was utterly burned-out by
that point -- ready to move on. I think I was writing
INHUMANOIDS at pretty much the same time. Not sure, though.
All of this stuff was a long time ago. I had dinner with Tom Griffin
a while back and we decided that it was high time for a reunion of
all these ridiculous characters (the writers and producers, not the
Transformers). That was a wonderful time in my life for a lot of
reasons; Sunbow wasn't the least of it.
TCC: From having met and talked to you a few times, I've gotten
a definite sense of you as being someone who cared about the
series a great deal, not just in terms of your own contributions to
it, but also as an overall entity. Would you be able to cite any
favourite episodes, whether they were yours or written by others?
DILLE: Oh, yeah. We really ate, drank, and slept the shows. I
hesitate to list favorite episodes, because of who I would leave
out. There was one episode by Christy Marx that needed no
editing. That was a first and a last. The amazing thing is that
when I told Sunbow that, they agreed with me, but still paid
my editorial fee.
Another interesting thing, while I'm on the soapbox, totally
irrelevant to your question, is how important the way Sunbow
functioned was to the success of the shows. They were the best
payers in history. The second your premise was approved, they
FedExed your check. They paid very well. The second you turned
in your script, they FedExed your check. One story editor (who
shall go unnamed) routinely borrowed money from them. Carole
Weitzman still busts my chops about having to front me money
to get a tax shelter. The point is, they were incredibly trusting and
in a very real way caring. It was repayed in spades with loyalty.
There was no business friction with them. That is amazingly rare,
but I would say it was true of pretty much every successful creative
company I've worked with. I can't think of a time when anybody
took their money and ran. I don't think they lost a dime by being
trusting and I know that they gained that extra ounce of effort
that you need from everybody to create anything approaching
magic.
Okay, so I've dodged the question. I don't like naming favorite
episodes for fear of those people I've forgotten.
TCC: Similarly, did any characters hold particular appeal for you,
whether talking about the characters you wrote for or the characters
in general?
DILLE: Yeah... Starscream. What a treacherous swine. Liked him.
As I said before, I liked Chris. He was surprisingly popular when
I polled people at Botcon in the signature line. The Junkions were
fun (a lot of that was Ron Friedman). Optimus, of course. Blurr.
The steadfast guys like Kup and Ironhide.
TCC: I already sort of touched on this with FIVE FACES OF
DARKNESS, but I wanted to ask you what you thought of the
overall quality of the episodes, whether or not they were episodes
you wrote. How did the finished work match up to your own vision
and expectations, both in terms of imagery and narrative?
DILLE: It's funny... I'm not sure I ever saw the finished episodes.
I have the DVDs but there's something narcissistic about going
back and watching your old stuff. My son isn't old enough for FIVE
FACES or THE MOVIE yet. He's a gentle soul. I'd let him watch them,
but he doesn't want to yet. Actually, he's not that gentle, he was
murderous on JAK 3 this morning.
I kind of feel like the work I've done is this kind of present waiting
for me to watch it when I'm old -- a way to look back and relive my
life. Maybe I should, to critique and get better, but I don't do that.
I remember being a little relieved and slightly disappointed when I
saw them. The animation seemed a little flat. Nothing was as cool
as I saw it in my head. Except, of course, when Larry Houston did
the storyboards. I had a great, mysterious chemistry with him.
Interviewer's Note: Houston was a storyboard artist turned
producer on G.I. JOE.
I remember one scene was so hard that I had to have Steve
Gerber write it for me. I can't remember what scene it was.
Looking back, I think the best thing about FIVE FACES OF
DARKNESS is that it exists. I don't think that many toy shows of
that era ever would have permitted something so dark and complex.
"Me, neither, and you gotta wonder why!"
Rodimus Prime -- FIVE FACES OF DARKNESS - PART 2
TCC: If you don't mind, I'd like you to clarify something. You said
you're not sure you ever saw the finished episodes, but then you
also just mentioned being relieved and slightly disappointed when
you saw them.
DILLE: I think I was referring to the finals of FIVE FACES OF
DARKNESS. You see, the way it worked was that we'd see the
show in several permutations before it was final. So when I say
that I saw it, I saw a non-final version of it (we'd call for retakes
and the like). In order to see a final, I'd have to screen it months
later, for no particular reason. That's why I rarely saw finals.
TCC: I suppose it might seem a little redundant to look back on
something that happened 20 years ago in terms of rethinking it,
but if you had things to do over, is there anything you would
have changed or possibly expounded upon?
DILLE: No. It was a great era of my life. It started well, it ended
well and it was great inbetween. Sure, there were little things I'd
go back and change, but not if they disturbed the total picture.
TCC: When the third season came to its end with THE RETURN
OF OPTIMUS PRIME, that also seems to have marked the end
of your involvement, as you apparently had no part of the final
chapter of the series, THE REBIRTH. What were the circumstances
of your departure from the show?
DILLE: I just kind of faded away. I was off to INHUMANOIDS and
/ or VISIONARIES. Did MUSCLE MACHINES somewhere in there.
TCC: What would you say that you learned from working on
animated series like this one and G.I. JOE that you found most
valuable? Was it helpful in any way to your career?
DILLE: Yeah... In what other medium do you get to try experiments,
have them come out, try something different next time and keep
going? I'm not sure what was most valuable, but it added up to a
formative experience.
TCC: It's not very likely that an animated series like THE
TRANSFORMERS will happen again, with the kind of creative
freedom and therefore relatively intelligent storytelling that
accompanied it, but if it did and you were offered a shot at it,
would you want to do it?
DILLE: Well, I'm trying to make it happen again with BUCK ROGERS.
We're trying to put together an animation deal and bring in some
fascinating people to work on various episodes of it. Can't say more
than that, but many of them will be familiar.
TCC: Beginning in the 1990s, you've written a good many video games
-- and it's perhaps for that work that you are now the most recognized.
What, if any, are the differences between writing for game-oriented
animation and writing for animated series like THE TRANSFORMERS?
DILLE: Games and TV are different mediums. Different demands.
However, games are much more like animation than live-action. Skills
I learned doing the animated shows have paid off in spades in games.
There are similar resource issues.
"Assembly required, batteries not included, but I believe in me."
Wreck-Gar -- FIVE FACES OF DARKNESS - PART 4
TCC: I've heard that the competition for writers -- and perhaps especially
in animation -- is pretty stiff in Hollywood. As is the rather blatant case
with actors, even age seems to be a factor in a writer's marketability. Is
the game avenue an easier one to break into these days?
DILLE: It is never easy. It took me five years to break in. There were a
lot of scripts growing dust on my shelves. Still are. Basically, you keep
hammering away until that day a break comes. Then another, then
another. I think, in the TRANSFORMERS era, it was much easier to get
into animation, because there was so much of it being done, but the
corollary is that there were a lot more people doing it so there was more
competition. It probably shakes out about the same. It's just hard. If a
writer is to have one thing, tenacity is probably more valuable than
genius. Resourcefulness is probably more valuable than connectedness.
I think. Bear in mind, I'm not really in the animation business anymore.
When I finished, every show I'd worked on had been #1 in its category
unless it was #2 to something else I was working on. No reason to give
up the record unless something irresistible comes along.
Age is an interesting issue. When you're young, you're new and fresh.
After that, you trade newness for experience. Freshness for relationships.
You have to keep making the best trades you can until that day when
you retire or die. For me, I keep fresh by constantly trying to find new
and different challenges. Never underestimate the power of relationships.
I'm doing projects right now with people I've known for 10-20 years --
creatives, executives, etc.
TCC: Again, your life has revolved pretty much around writing -- for
TV series, films, video games, graphic novels, and so on -- as well as
producing and directing. So what does Flint Dille want to do that he
hasn't done yet?
DILLE: Never done a non-fiction book. Never done a live-action hour
series. I like novels, but I'll be better at that when I'm older. I'll probably
write a live-action movie that gets made (done several that didn't get
made). There is a lot left to do in games. Things are going pretty well
in the game world. THE CHRONICLES OF RIDDICK got a lot of awards
last year, including best script. DEAD TO RIGHTS did two years ago. I
was kind of bummed that I didn't get to work on the TRANSFORMERS
game until I saw the result. I'd love to do a JOE online multiplayer, but
Atari doesn't seem inclined to do JOE. They're French and don't get JOE.
Just signed a first look deal with Dimension (they get to see my film ideas
first) and they're making BACKWATER, based on a game document John
Zuur Platten and I sold them. And, very germane to this conversation, I'm
looking forward to doing the SIN CITY game, and hanging out and working
with my buddy Frank Miller, whom I met all those years ago in the Sunbow
conference room while trying to figure out the ending for the
TRANSFORMERS movie.
TCC: By the sound of it, you were less than impressed with the
TRANSFORMERS PS2 game. What did you find to be disappointing about
it?
DILLE: I didn't play it enough to know whether it was good or not. I got
the demo at E3 and my son and I put it in, played with it for a while, and
it was okay. For one reason or another we never got around to playing
the real game, so any opinions I have about it are pretty worthless. Bear
in mind, too, that I am far from an objective observer of TRANSFORMERS
stuff, I have my own biases and ideas about it, which may or may not be
relevant in the modern marketplace. Also, I'm a game guy, so that
compounds the problem.
TCC: On a final note, is there anything you'd like to say to the fans?
DILLE: Yeah... Thanks.
"Didn't you wanna say something about concord and tranquility in the galaxy?"
Ultra Magnus -- FIVE FACES OF DARKNESS - PART 1
TCC: Thank you for taking the time out to tell me about your part in
making one of the most memorable animated series of the 1980s. I
hope that your current activities are keeping you happy and inspired!
DILLE: Thanks again. It's fun to think about that stuff again. The
great thing is that I still know a lot of the people involved. I see
Buzz for breakfast all the time and we've worked on numerous things
since Sunbow. I'm working with Marv Wolfman right now on a huge
video game project (can't name it yet). I saw Paul Dini and Gordon
Kent last Saturday night at Paul's engagement party. They're both
still buddies. Gordon still yells at me about politics. I saw Gerber at
Comic-Con last year and have his new blog on my "must read" list.
Talked to Tom Griffin a couple weeks ago, get e-mails from Bob
Prupis. Jay Bacal sent me some music he wrote. I hear Joe's doing
well. Went to the première of SIN CITY with Frank Miller. Saw Wally
Burr at BotCon last year. As I said, was in his studio, probably about
10 years ago. It was like a shrine to 1986 and I missed it. Watched the
Superbowl a year ago with Hildy Mesnik and her husband. Talked to
Dough Booth a while back. Funny, as I write this, it doesn't seem that
long ago.
--
Rik Bakke
silverbolt at c2i dot net
THE CYBERTRON CHRONICLE
http://cybertronchronicle.com
The Phazer
well worth a read.
I really hope the lost TF:TM script surfaces someday. That'd be
fascinating.
Phazer
Kil - Michael McCarthy
> THE FLINT DILLE INTERVIEW
> Copyright 2005 Rikard Bakke
Another wonderful read. Thank you so much doing these interviews, Rik.
They are a great service to the fandom.
> Never underestimate the number of cool things that don't happen because
> of lawyers.
Heh. I wonder if Merytneith still reads this group. : )
> Another interesting thing, while I'm on the soapbox, totally
> irrelevant to your question, is how important the way Sunbow
> functioned was to the success of the shows. They were the best
> payers in history. The second your premise was approved, they
> FedExed your check. They paid very well. The second you turned
> in your script, they FedExed your check.
Sunbow, the anti-Dreamwave.
-Kil