TMNT Doc Blog Post 4
There used to be a show called “Thrill of a Lifetime” that I watched a few times when I was a kid.
It was one of those shows that looked like it was made for seven hundred and forty bucks an episode, and I bet you anything it was made by the same guy who made “Mad Dash”.
Okay, having summoned the awesome power of Wikipedia, I can now tell you that, indeed, the same producer came up with both of those cheesy, early-80s Canadian TV shows, and I can also hand you this little tidbit: apparently “Thrill of a Lifetime” is how Shannon Tweed ended up posing for Playboy, which begs two questions:
One - Can this really be true?
Two – What does this have to do with the Turtles?
The answers are “yes,” “nothing” but isn’t it kind of distressing that a young Canadian girl’s thrill of a lifetime would be to pose in Playboy? The girls that I went to school with were interested mostly in having their own pony or winning a figure skating medal.
But I digress.
What matters is that our plans for making this documentary made it necessary for us to send Isaac down to New York City for the Comic Con, where we were hoping that he would be able to get some interviews from the people from Mirage.
In advance, it looked like they were going to go ahead and let us get those interviews, and it was also looking very much like Isaac was going to be allowed into the hallowed Ground Zero for Turtlery of all sorts – Mirage’s office in Northampton.
Now you’ve probably figured out exactly how Thrill of a Lifetime fits into this post.
But you would be wrong.
Isaac and his cousin Rob (working second camera) high-balled it for New York and got into town just in time to join some costumed Turtles that the 25th anniversary PR company, Peppercom, was sending out into the streets to fight crime, meet some fans and shake a few claws.
Wandering around and grabbing streeters was fun, but what was blowing Isaac’s mind was that, somehow, he had found his way Inside. The good people from Peppercom were letting him have full access to their events and shoot whatever he needed. They were on board.
He sent us a text along the lines of “Going great! Hanging with the turtles! Going to meet Peter Laird OMG!!” which was all a huge relief to The Hustler and I back at home because it meant not only that he was getting the footage we desperately needed to bring this fan documentary to life, but that we wouldn’t have to pay for the grief counseling had he returned home without it.
It was also a huge relief that I could now stop worrying about whether or not we would be able to get coverage of Peter Laird and Mirage and start worrying about trying to get some footage of Kevin Eastman.
At this point, I feel it incumbent on me to say that I don’t have any desire to speculate about what may or may not have happened between Mr. Laird and Mr. Eastman, and whether or not there have ever been strained relations between the creators of the Turtles is not a focus point in our documentary. That’s not the story that appeals to me.
If these two men who created something so pervasive and culturally prominent ended up working apart after years of working together, that’s their business. People grow up, their interests pull them in different directions and they wind up leading their own lives. That doesn’t automatically mean there’s a feud or bad feelings or any other kind of problem.
In the case of Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird, all I knew, and all I had to know, was that Peter was still at Mirage and therefore we were now lucky enough to be getting footage of him and Kevin wasn’t at Mirage, so we weren’t getting anything unless we made a solid connection with him at the New York Convention.
“Do you think he’s likely to talk to us?” I asked Steve Murphy, Creative Director at Mirage.
“Probably. He is one of the nicest guys you’ll meet and he loves the fans.”
And that was our “in”.
Isaac was going to be meeting up with Stephan Reese, a superfan from Los Angeles who had been in contact with Kevin over the years, and with whom we were also hoping to get an interview in Los Angeles down the road. Stephan is a lifer Turtle fan, enough so that he’s gotten them tattooed on his arm, along with Kevin and Peter’s signatures.
He was also firmly of the belief that Kevin would be agreeable to doing an interview with Isaac. All Isaac would have to do is make some kind of connection in New York, sell the idea of the documentary, and try to look less like a crazed fan and more like a filmmaker.
So I carried on with my life, waiting for text messages or email, waiting for some kind of news one way or another. Could we make a doc without Kevin? Yes. Would it better with him in it? Yes.
Then I got Isaac’s text.
It went something like this:
“Going out for drinks with Kevin!!!! Holy F!”
There may or may not have been a few more letters after the F.
It turned out that Kevin was, just like Steve Murphy said, one of the nicest guys around, and he was happy to appear in the documentary.
He was happy to talk to Isaac, draw some turtles, sign some swag, appear on camera, and spend some time chatting later over a cool beverage.
In his few days in New York, Isaac had:
Attended the Comic Con and skipped the hours long attendee line
Been part of the Turtles entourage in a public forum
Hung out with the wizards at Mirage whose work he had been obsessed with for years.
Been invited to the Turtle temple back in Massachusetts where he would be able to talk further with Peter Laird and watch him work
Hooked up with Kevin Eastman and found him to be incredibly friendly
And all this without wetting himself with excitement.
But you still can’t think back to Thrill of a Lifetime.
Once Isaac came back from New York, flush with joy, stories and tons of awesome footage, I picked up the phone to call Mr. Eastman myself because we were hoping to make some arrangements to get some more time with him out in Los Angeles.
We were planning to shoot with Stephan, hopefully get some time with Kevin, and if things went as it looked like they were going, we were coming amazingly close to a reunion of the original voice cast from the old TMNT animated series.
It was all based around Kevin Eastman. If we had him, it would be worth it to go, and the other stuff we were planning on would be gravy.
I called him up one day after school, wondering how it would go.
Four weeks later, I was sitting at the Detroit airport with The Hustler, waiting for a flight to Los Angeles.
We would be out there for eight days, and we had a busy schedule.
Stephan was giving us an interview and opening up his place for us to show his awesome TMNT collection.
Sure enough, Isaac had pulled it off and we were shooting the reunion of the voice cast, with almost everyone agreeing to attend.
We had gotten a call back from the Henson Creature Shop and were told we would get an interview with Brian Henson, who had directed second unit on the first TMNT movie, and whose company had engineered the Turtle rigs for the actors to wear.
The guys from Revision 3’s The Totally Rad Show had also agreed to appear in our documentary, which a real treat for me, as I love that show and their geek cred would be a nice addition of expert commentary.
Best of all, Kevin had agreed to shooting with us over a few days, letting us record him at work, rest and play, basically giving us all the access we could have imagined and more.
Oh yeah, there was one more thing - and we would be staying at his house in Beverly Hills.
And we didn’t even have to pose nude.
Eat that, Shannon Tweed!
April 30th, 2009 at 3:06 am
–>> Well hollllllllllly sh 9 -