 All right, so in the back Our mics aren't working so our projection is only our voice if you guys want to move forward or anything We'll try and fill the room. I know I can but I'm not being a loud speaker so so there you go. You might want to move forward if you can't hear So if you guys aren't aware this is Michael Hill Writer you've done a lot of things in TV by a lot of cartoons gi Joe transformers space you soggy in human oids Jim's on the hologram A ton but you're here this weekend. This is your second Us kind of show you were in Toronto for transformers, right? So the transformer community has already embraced him the transformer wiki has all of his episodes on it for transformers But for gi Joe you did you work on several that you were the main writer for two episodes three I think I did three for Sunbow and two or three for deep Sorry, I was a producer on this series So I had supervised every episode So you have a hand in all of them, but the reason why this was very special to us is Because if we start the song everyone in this room can sing called slither Which I don't know if that's been shouted at you a lot this weekend Actually nobody has sung this song to me. Okay. Well the D-class We're gonna get the finest to do it since they cosplay it they they're on the hook So with that I know a lot of episodes had music I know there was some royalty things with music what brought What brought cold slither to light? How did this come about? Well? What's typical whether you're a freelancer or on staff and you want to Get an assignment to write it a script you will pitch If the story editor will even allow you to you will pick X number of premises, which are usually a page and a half maybe two pages long you sort of break down Just in prose the the basic concept film within kind of three acts and Usually they'll ask from a minimum of three Sometimes maybe it's five or six and this is conversation. I never had with any other writers but my own personal experience is If it was three I come up with two really great ideas that I had fully developed and I knew How I was gonna write them because from the premise stage if once if it gets approved Then you go to an outline where you literally break down each act So that's like 10 or 12 pages and when that gets proved then you go and write the script so it's a You know three to four week process from premise to script So what happens with me is I'll always be one short and I'll have a throwaway idea that I Didn't get a lot of thought to but I knew there was a kernel of something interesting in it and nine out ten times The story editor would pick the throwaway And then it's like oh crap I gotta figure out what the story is about And how I'm going to tell it So that's what happens coleslaw and it was essentially Because the series was more fanciful than say the comic books we were doing a lot of Nutty ideas and in some ways we were always trying to talk competing with the other writers trying to top the nuttiness and so Coleslaw there was kind of a combination of a pipe pipe a story and my poking fun it's sort of the ridiculous lengths and cobra would go to and also poking fun At heavy metal music, which I was not a fan of in the 80s because I came of age Musically in the 60s So You know I saw the Beatles live on it's all of that first night in 1964 and then you know in the mid 60s You know they started having you know Bob Dylan and the birds and Buffalo Springfield and then the who and cream and Let's eblin and that's that was my music and All these clubs on the Sunset Strip That in the 60s that Jimi Hendrix play out of the doors and now becoming these heavy metal venues with these guys Who I just thought look ridiculous And their long hair and their makeup and playing these what I thought were Veronica songs with Really simplistic lyrics, so I was kind of poking fun at them So I write the script Pretty much kind of made it up as I went along because it wasn't really well-developed and What we were doing with Jim because they had contracted songwriters to create the songs Was and what we do in the script is when it would come to the scene where there'd be a Song in a live performance, so you just literally write Play song here So I did that with with cold slither and I turned the script in and one day Tom Griffin and Joba call who Owns Sunbow, which is subsidiary of their advertising agency Come out to the West Coast come to the office they walk down the hall they come in my office said love the script But where's the song? What do you mean said You pitched us that you were going to write this script And it included a song I'm not going to pay somebody else to write the song So so you have joined with the pantheon of hair bands that you were trying to make fun of yes So over the weekend With guidance from mine now ex-wife who was a songwriter herself, but she specialized in English lyrics for Brazilian songs and she was working with Sergio Mendez So all right, so my objective was to write a bad heavy And I didn't realize until Actually quite recently is that I failed completely I Apparently is an anthem more than it is a bad And so that's how it came about I my wife had written the music for me. I sort of gave her the ideas That I That we're in my head and she kind of knocked out something on the piano We gave that to Joe and Joe said well, we like the lyrics We don't like the music and we already have Rob Walsh on contract So we want him to write to me. So then I had to do the same thing with Rob and I gave him a demo tape of I had the time in collecting demo CDs by Musicians who were basically creating a library music That they could sell for commercials or film trailers and they would break it up into different genres And so all the ones who were doing hard rock and roll heavy metal stuff I would listen to that okay I can I can hear the lyrics to that that kind of sound and I would give to Rob and Then Rob went and did a sting and he sent me the tape So with that did you find a love for this kind of music or are you still thinking ridiculous? So you've made one we can all sing and it's not your kick. Yeah, but I will admit it's really catchy Every time I hear it, I can't get it out of my head Yeah, it was not not my goal at all the whole episode I mean we focus on that the whole episode is great with giving kids the very cartoonish What you guys do get a studio with the kicking of chairs co-commander yelling and the women coming in and What's going on like the whole thing is is very charming Well, the whole music video thing is before I got an animation. I worked at film production So mostly commercials So I was on a soundstage every day and I was working with directors who like to wear their safari jackets They're tinted Ray Vans, Afscots, and so it's kind of making fun of them too So this good job is just your way of going people stop taking yourself so seriously. Yeah, okay This is great. I Mean after all these years You've also had Because you worked on all of them Cole Slyther is just a very small part of what you've done for GI Joe But I know we've we talked about the knowing this half the battle the PSAs How did those come about and in how many of those did you personally write put together? Well, there's what 26 of them 30 of them are 34 of them You know, I had really I remembered that I had done and in preparation for being here and realizing I'm gonna have to talk about stuff. I haven't really thought about it for years I was really digging deep and trying to remember chain of events and how things happen and So yes, I wrote the PSAs and I Was kind of convinced That I had come up with the catchphrase and I remember the experience I had in writing and there was a very popular National NBC PSA campaign that ended with the more you know And I remember trading off of that and the whole knowing is half the battle It's not original idea because so many phrases ended in you know, it's half the battle However, and I did a lot of research and okay, where did this come from and everything led me back to the PSAs But a very reliable source informed me pointing to you Tim just a couple of days ago that He had interviewed So when I never heard of or had any interaction with Griffin McCall who claims that he wrote the first four and that he came up with that phrase and Then for whatever reason he didn't have time to do anymore And asked Joe to get Some need some of those to write in because I was produced to the show It was my responsibility. So my memory was I wrote them all and then I had created a catchphrase I know I had to come up with a whole list of ideas to send to Hasbro that they would Rubber stamps on yeah, we like that go to the script or not so much that one and I thought I had done them all but apparently I Again according to very reliable source. I did all before and it's Tim is one of our smartest people. Yeah. Yeah, so good. And so So now I feel only comfortable in claiming that I share some responsibility in Making and knowing is half the battle become a popular catchphrase which I wasn't aware of until About 15 years ago a friend of mine's son Told me about all these The videos on YouTube Rewriting the dialogue It's great. I mean it's definitely a sign of I loved this enough to put this level of effort into making fun of it It's beautiful We I mean most of us could probably close as well It's funny as an adult. We watched those PSAs and go did we like these as a kid? But yeah, we love them as a kid They were great as a kid the PSA for fall see I and I wasn't aware of that because it I Don't know if has real said this outright But I was well aware of that we were up against Peggy Sharon and Action for children's television And she hated not only did she hate our shows Because they were glorified 22-minute commercials but she came down on All kinds of shows and they were literally counting the number of acts of violence per minute And it wasn't just G.I. Joe in terms of it could be duct tape. I mean it could be anything They really had a problem with that and I guess there was some kind of loophole. Thanks to Reagan that allowed These kind of shows to get on the air in their first place and I think the Twisted logic was oh, we're not promoting the toys. We're promoting the comic books so So it feel like this was writing the PAs was their way to Kind of soft and say you see we are an education So they were really simple ideas You know a lot of them were based on Things, you know, my mother would tell me when I was kid like you know we'd go to The pond to go swimming and then if you have lunch where you can't You guys you gotta wait an hour after lunch for you go to the water, which I think we all just accepted So they were they were all kind of in that pain and I just thought As the viewers that they would hate You know these little moral morality After just watching something that was gloriously fun, I think most TV in the 80s was a morality tale of some sort. So no nobody turned their TVs off early With so And outside of GI Joe You've done a lot with transformers. I know a lot of people in this room collect transformers. You did a lot with Jim You've been all over the place what is What is next for you in terms of like how do you how do you want us to? Come to you like because we're all fans of what you've done. We you have affected everyone in our childhood like This is fun for us. We want you here How do we how do we accept you into this community? How do we bring you in? Just keep inviting me back now see for many years. I was I guess the best way I've been saying is just out of the loop because after when When after decided we weren't gonna do a third season of GI Joe weren't gonna do another season of Transformer We were winding down everything else and maybe even Jim which I only Did one episode and that was under duress little sidebar in addition to my my contract as a producer of on staff I had a Pay-or-play contract to write minimum number of scripts and every year when we get close to the end of the contract And be ready for no I was thinking I'm gonna get paid for not writing And then they sweep in in the last minute and say You're gonna write a champ I'm not that guy. So I tried to pitch stories to Hasbro that I knew that they would hate and wouldn't want me to write and So this one episode called out of the past The basic premise was the girls find their father's diary in the attic. So all the back story that Was never sort of dramatized in the series They'd read an entry and we cut to a flash One of the big deals was that Jim's mother had been a folk singer in the 60s And she had died and I don't think was ever explained how she did so taking a page out of Clark Gable's life who's married to Carol Lombard and and again the connection is My wife and I were friends with Sergei Mendez. We used to go to his house for dinner And he had bought Clark Gable's house that he had built for his wife Carol Lombard To live in so I had this great scene I thought it was great where you see there. She's on tour in the plane flying along and there's You know some kind of mishap and it slams into the side of the mountain first big explosion burst of flames and She's killed and it's a big sob story in the press There's no way they're gonna they're gonna go for that if we just don't kill characters in these shows and They love So that's how you end up writing Jim But I'm not answering your question. No, this is answering it. This is great. So, oh, so So we kind of all went our separate ways after I think that we're finishing up some my little ponies and blow worms or something some kitty stuff and So it you know, we're all just looking for our next gig Assuming it would be an animation and mine turned out to be I went to work for a graphic design company as a in-house producer and Copywriter because we're doing music videos and title sequences films and you're doing record album covers and packaging for software and things like that and Then next year I got an opportunity to work with Mara Wolfman over at Disney and we were editing the comics in the Disney Adventures magazine Which was something new at the time that would be right next to the TV guide and to check out kind of grocery store and occasionally the editor of Disney comics that was doing DuckTales and Tales and Chippendale Would get overloaded because Marv and I were always way ahead of schedule We had our books months in advance and we had our work ready to go to print Then ask us that and this is and from there I You know get a call from Dick Giordano DC Comics and he wants me to come to New York and be the editor for this new line of collected edition of the trade paper acts Coincidentally my wife gets a job with Polydore Records in New York, so it's like So I won't bore you with everything else But I had a you know and that led into me working for the Teenage Mutual and Age of Turtles versus consultant and then creative director and the North Hampton, Massachusetts So anyway, so just a series of new opportunities after I left Sunbow and I didn't really give It was just something you know it had been a job the job that I Enjoyed it was a I mean we were all very fortunate to be in the right place at the right time and had this great sandbox to play and Probably we all did our If we didn't do our best work, we had the most fun Yeah doing that work Because we were making it up as we went along. We had no idea That it involved into a billion dollar franchise so there was no No pressure to be you know precious about how we handle it. It's just plus also It was like working at a factory, so we just had to crank stories out every week every week I've got to get a new script So tomorrow we'll get a story before artists get into production make our deadline for the show to air So when that's going on you're not really getting the feedback that most of us are having arguments with mom And they want us to turn off TV. We had no interaction with fans at all And so I mean we knew we're doing okay in the ratings. Yeah, but other than that So I know a few of us have seen like the Gryffindor to call Bible for some other commercials, but I haven't seen one for for like the shows I mean were you guys getting a lot like every season as the new toys? I mean are you getting new Bibles? Are you getting new? Well, we're getting new guides or yeah new style guides I'm pretty sure by time I came on board because they had already done I think one season Or maybe it's just mini-series. They had the five the five by many series So I came on board in 85 spring of 85 and so I think the first thing I got Was a three-ring binder that was like the Bible so it basically had The model sheet of the character characters name a brief bio of the character, you know weaknesses strengths and What was really helpful not every studio does this is sample dialogue I mean it was more helpful. Well, I guess it was helpful in those shows. It really gave me a sense of How the characters spoke and made it easier for you to get inside their head and think the way they did And then you know every time they would release new toys and they would just send Faxes of those sheets and we just add them to the To the Bible from a writer's perspective From like an animators and the comic books and everything else for writers perspective Were you guys also given any of the toys or the prototypes or anything to have around the office? Yes, and do we still have those? Well, I would send us cases of everything. Yeah, so in my office Huge shelving unit. I'm just Every figure transform or figure and every GI Joe figure. It was great taking my box And so I had you know something three-dimensional versus a two-dimensional piece of art and Because I'm visually oriented. So I think Even when I'm reading a newspaper article, I'm Visualizing it as film in my head And so that for me it makes it easy to write because I just write what I see And then just put them away And they even sent us a USS flag You know That was a concern that we would mess it up some now And I remember us being like we be very careful we just Didn't end up not abusing it was so so that was kind of cool. So anyway, the answer to the question is I did not think That once the show is canceled toys nobody would care about toys and all that stuff We just go away. Something new would come along to replace it and There'd be no value so I ended up giving all those toys to my son who you know, of course Sure, he's five years old. That's all of us. Yeah, and so I I didn't other than Copies of storyboards and hard copies of scripts that I wrote and you know the original Bibles the binders and stuff like that. I didn't really keep anything. So it's not until now 40 years later it finally occurs to me one At an age where you know, it's too late to gain for me to become a serious collector, but I thought I should at least have Copies of Things that I created for help contribute to me and so when I went to Toronto the night I arrived I find out has to have come out With a figure of a character that I created. I thought I need to have this and then I realized quite recently But I never get never did get a cat claymore in this special mission was ill which we didn't even talk about so you With Captain Claymore that was a that was a stork's visit to our toys are toys are us But you you had a huge hand in Did you write the entire script for the yes the audio tape? Yes So for all of us that have that tape the back side is blank for kids to record their own stories on to You know to for us to match what you put on the front side of which I don't remember If that was there it must have been their plan and so they must have told me or in facts I knew that but it was something I forgot about but that was another thing as much as a producer of the show I Got a fax he looked directly from Hasbro or via Carol Weitzman who is VP at Sunville kind of our go-between between Hasbro and Sunville West And it was that they're doing exclusive with toys are us and It's gonna be five figures and four of them are going to be Existing figures, but they want to create a new one and they're going to create it out of spare parts And I didn't even know what those parts were but my responsibility was to Come up with the name Come up with the name come up with this origin this bio for the file card and then it was oh by the way We're also going to include an audio set With a little radio drama and we want you to write the script And it was and it wasn't called anything. So I created Captain Claymore. I called it special mission Brazil He's kind of a tribute to my wife because of her Brazilian connections and wrote And then I had remembered that my father When he was kid used to talk about how he'd sit by the radio missing the Lone Ranger and shadow So I really wanted to have that kind of old old-timey radio drama feel to Know so, you know, I Turned all that stuff in and then just kind of forgot about it. They did not Because I had supervised all the recording sessions for Transformers and GI Joe in Los Angeles, you know working with wallies or any actors They did not use any of those actors for the The tape so I think they recorded all of New York and they never sent me a cop so I never even Heard it till about 10 days I found on YouTube somebody posted the audio This is interesting Maybe you've gone back and gotten yourself a claymore figure. I just I found I didn't think I was going to do it When I was talking to Brian He was telling me how it was a holy grail 500,000 thousand You should have done that 20 years but After talking with Brian, I happen to stumble upon a YouTube video Of a guy does the podcast called needless things and he was very excited that he had just Got the special mission Brazil set he was showing off all the characters at the end of the video Yeah, it's a pie is to show that He had discovered some guy who makes these custom design display stands For characters and he had the guy design Stands he says I'm not going to do for all my characters That's that's much, but I'm going to do it for a special mission in Brazil and he had this guy Design and I thought I'm doing so great. I Need to have one even though I have the figures Maybe I will get the figures, but at least I have to stand in case if I wait till I get the figures in this guy drops dead so And the only charges $15 for me Yeah, which is Facebook page yeah and dozens and dozens of different designs So I contacted him and he's he said he'd love to do it Would not let me pay him even though it was only $15 and I have casually mentioned that I was coming to the show and You know I've done cold slither. It turns out he's been cold Nice to do that do a display stand for cold feet slither, but I've been out loose for so long I don't know those figures exist. So I thought it would be conversation. We would have down the road So last Tuesday Just a couple of days before I'm ready to find out fly out. I get a package from and it's the To Special mission Brazil Display stands one for claymore and one for the audio tape, which I also don't have And I thought well, if I just get a black Set tape release give the appearance What it's design for any included the cold slither display stands? Amazing and those are at your table right now. They're at my table right now and I have a little She the paper that has his contact information because I said if you're not gonna let me pay you let me promote you but Then I Said oh it'd be so bad It'd be so much better if I came to the show and I had these displays things that I actually had something to display So I thought all right. I'll go on you eBay and see how much I'm really gonna have to drop one of these claymore figures and Some of them were really you know by now really high price Some of them a lot of them were you know broken. Yeah, it starts at 99 dollars. I said well Spend that kind of money. I don't want to broke it And I found a really good Deal on a pristine one. I just pulled the trigger. So now I have a cap And the other figure that you had mentioned at the start of this was a transformer Yes, and so I know we're not a transformer show, but it is it's very cool that you just Through a transformer into a it's one of your scripts not thinking about whether or not you can and now we have this fan favorite transformer That was That was the bounty hunter episode. Yes, the rambler episode the gambler. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah quick So if you like transformers, yeah, so the quick story Because I know it's transformers. We don't want to get out talking very first episode of transformers. I ever wrote I was still freelancing. I Had to even interview the Sunbow yet. I don't even think I knew Sunbow was even opening an office in Los Angeles Got the Bible. I Think I saw the mini series I got a list of shows that it scripts had already been written and ones that were sort of in production or development and again had to Come up with a minimum number of scripts and I was one short so I Had written an episode of go box from our bearer and a Lot of it got rewritten to the point where I didn't recognize My show so I took my throwaway idea was I resubmitted the same present to go box and they brought it so But the one thing was that Nobody told me I couldn't create my own transformers Which It doesn't make sense to me why they why they didn't Hasbro wants to sell their toys so you got to use those toys and But I had created this character who's a bounty hunter I went down the list all the seconds All the Autobots there was nobody That you could call an Autobot and again, let me say up front. I Had no idea what I was doing. I didn't really have a handle on the show at all It didn't make any sense to me. I couldn't find you know The point of angle that I could round it I could make sense even any kind of internal logic I mean the biggest thing was I didn't understand why they turn into cards in the first place so And the bounty hunter in my head he wasn't really he what definitely wasn't bad guy, but he wasn't Really a good guy. He was He was moral. He was tough We had you know, he was on a mission to Go after bad Mostly deceptive bad transformers in general so I just made them up and I say nobody told me I couldn't and so I Never thought about it again show goes on the air to me it was just it was a throwaway episode throw big throwaway character and over time Much later. I started hearing that he was a fan favorite that I had no idea So this seems to be your pattern. Yeah, something that you're not you're not too concerned with we all fall in love with And then almost 40 years later has to finally acknowledges and comes out with the dev con Figure in their new legacy So for those of us that do both GI Joe and transformers dev con is yours. Just like I more is Did you do any of the other like? Cassettes that they did for GI Joe transformers stuff like that or was it just the mission just special mission I'm not even aware of any other There are a handful none of there's only two that are really like from collectors standpoint or expensive and Saw it after this should result be one of the two This is awesome. I know we have I think 1120 is our stopping point So I've been trying to signal that I'm good about reading lips It's 1116 so we should wrap it up. Okay, I honestly I just I personally appreciate Ever since you showed up with us Thursday night. You've hung out with all of us. You're very charming. You're very giving of your time And so if you haven't stopped by the booth and had this conversation Thank you for being here. Thank you for joining our community after you've been absent for 40 years And hopefully we all only show you the love and keep you coming back Yeah, well, thank you because I didn't come here to you know hide out in my room and Then a lot of hours leave me I want to hang out with you guys because I had such a great time at the Joe convention because it was really I opening to hear from the fans point of view what the stuff we did Now resonate because we got no feedback whatsoever other than we knew how it was doing in the ratings But you know when someone's off the air there were no ratings. So It's just completely oblivious to Reception any of the things that we had done And meant anyone and also at some point I'm trying to be really brief because they're really gonna go. I heard it at black con in 2014 pastina One of their exclusive for that year was a dev con character And I thought oh wow this will be the only time I'll I'll ever get it You know, it's small simple tiny thing and so I contacted and introduced myself and said you're really nice If I can get one of these oh well come on by so I thought What you're doing this big show you got all these guests here. I thought Maybe they'll want to include me But no, so I get there I meet my contact person He gives me this little plastic bag, and it was basically okay Thanks for coming by we'll see you and So I just figured that nobody for whatever reason I Tried not to take it personally, but for a reason nobody was interested in the writers would kind of Ruffled my feathers a little bit because it becomes such a big franchise And I wanted to believe that the work that we had done Both G.I. Joe and Transforms laid the groundwork for what the franchise ultimately became and I couldn't understand why Nobody would be interested in the original writers and especially those who worked at Sunbaugh But I let it go and so it was only I Think the first time anybody So I did some of the things and got no response from Joe Khan Other transformer events. I mean they didn't even say thanks, but no thanks. They just didn't respond to emails so tfcon contact me for the first time in 2019 I Think late in the game because I was in Hawaii on vacation So I said well I come back Saturday night so I could show up on Sunday at you know afternoon for a couple hours and So but I didn't really get the con experience until This past summer These are great people I want to Do more of this so Kind of worked the same way with Brian when He started promoting this event and then I saw the cold so the connection I said As the original creator I proved Yeah, so Brian's fantastic, it's great that he's brought you in So Toronto and now Des Moines and hopefully more next year. Yeah. Yeah, I'm talking to people at Joe fest so maybe that'll happen and there was a guy in Lake Georgia, New York who said he wants to do a Joe show The first weekend in May and wants me to come out for that which would be great because it's not it's like in an hour Or an a half drive to my hometown where all my Joe and transformer stuff is in storage Well, if you if you show up in Des Moines again or at Joe fest or any other Joe show I'd love to be there. Thank you. All right. Thank you Question that we didn't cover At the end of course You said you worked on the deep series as well. Yes, I'm the big series doesn't get as much attention As the Sunbow series kind of among the fans, but it seems to have a different tone than the Sunbow series Did you have a did you have a different direction or a different approach to the big series? Not me personally Doug booth who worked with us at at Sunbow was hired to be the story editor So I don't know if he developed that new approach But he just called me up and say hey, you want to you want to write a few scripts I think he was calling everybody who had worked on G. I. Joe at Sunbow And I said sure now I had worked for deep before I was familiar with the kind of work They did so I know what I was getting into but it definitely had a different sensibility Then I was used to but I have to admit Well first of all I've never seen the episode because I can't watch any deep show and But I have to admit I kind of just took the money and ran It's like it was an easy payday But it did not feel like it was the same show at all that I was working on Probably why it doesn't get a lot of love for most of us Which was it you're right was it just an officer in a bike room officer in a bike room in shadow of a doubt And if there was a third one, I can't remember what the title was those were good. Yeah Oh, yeah, oh good There you go, well again, that's I'm glad to hear it because I've never seen him and I've never heard anyone talk about Well, some of us were born Ten years old this time so that would be your introduction Always More interest in the these series and yeah, not as many people talk about it So basically anything that you can say about it is probably new information Okay, now it's there Is the value of the figures is that increased at all? Yes, they are starting to go up. Yeah. Okay, cool And when they as well made is as the Original yeah, all right. Yeah, that means it's still in that 13 years of what we call the real American hero That's the 13 years of love before they had a break in the line And that's where everybody after that everybody's like, well, we tapered off But that was 13 years a lot of us older guys are like 82 to 86 and then we okay, we'll get 87 now 88 And we end up at 94 Yeah, so then deep was only animation we had it Yeah, and I get and I guess metalhead was exclusive to the dick shows Yes, I did I'm not sure if I wrote any episode he was in But he wasn't familiar to me, but I recently discovered there's a new Six inch Yeah, and that he has this cold slither I need to get one of those But I didn't know anything about the character Time to go Brad, I mean Brian