Otakon stuff...
I hope to have audio available... somehow, soon of the panels and the interview with Mary Elizabeth McGlynn, but for those of you interested, I have photos and the start of my transcripts with my interview with her. She is an awesome lady who admitted she got starstruck directing Samuel L. Jackson for Afro Samurai. If you aren't familiar with her work, she was the director of Cowboy Bebop and voiced the Major in Ghost in the Shell Stand Alone Complex.
I'm just going to link the photos because, well, there are 78 of them. I got to meet priestess_grrrl while at Otakon, which was awesome, though we only got to meet up the once. Seemed like we were never headed in the same direction for the rest of the con, but it was great to finally meet someone from LJ.
Link to Photobucket for my Photos.
Do you have a favorite motley crew song?
M: No, no, I don't.
Do you have a favorite song?
M: Uh...
Because you do a lot of singing.
M: I think um... what's, uh, what's that song... um... (hums song) It's a standard. It's a classic. I'll be seeing you.
Is there sort of an aspect of the job of voice acting and singing... Do the skills and talents carry over well? Like, I noticed in the Beck, we had some of the people who did the music work for that were saying that they were really glad that the voice actors talent really lended itself over to music.
M: Yeah, without a doubt, without a doubt. Well, I've been singing my whole life. I sort of studied singing as a kid, in choirs. Always snag in the church choirs and in the chorale in school and then in high school. When I came to LA, my first gig was singing in a club called the smoke house... Singing lots of standards and everything else. And then I stopped for a while. I sang with a big band and I wasn't crazy about the band leader. He actually made singing work and a chore and I started to feel really bad about my singing and started to get very insecure about it, so I stopped because singing was always a joy for me. So, then at that point I started directing, so I just said, well I'll just take a break and just sing with the family. The whole family gets together. We get together and sing four part harmonies at Christmas. It's really gross and wonderful. And, and then I got this call. Come and audition for, it was the same Zero Limit Productions, the same company that we did Cowboy Bebop with, um, so I was directing for them at the time and they said "Come and audition for this, uh, for this thing called Silent HIll" and I said, "Okay." And I looked at the song and I said, "Wow, this is for a much higher voice than me." And they said but that's what they want. They want a voice that is in contrast. The complete opposite of what it would normally be because it's this crazy, drugged out, freaky, freaky Silent Hill sort of thing. And that's how I got it. It was all about the acting. So, all the acting I had done was a complete, was the only way, basically, that I could get through the Silent Hill stuff is through the acting because it should really be sung by someone like Cary Walgrin or Kate Higgins who is kind of much higher, clearer, beautiful tone, you know. They wanted that contrast. They wanted that. And that's kind of what I gave them and what I'm still giving them.
This is actually something I was talking with Richard Epcar last year because I got to talk to them. Everything I heard from the panel on Friday was hilarious and squared perfectly with what I'd seen of him. One things that somebody else mentioned to him which I picked up on was when you have a show like, when you have something like the matrix where you have the Judeo-Christian model myth and being that drives the whole story, the underpinning of the story and with Ghost in the Shell, you sort of have the Buddhist and Hinduist model myth where everything is reincarnation and cycle of the spirit apart from the body. I was wondering if you had thought about that while you were doing the show that there's a very strong spiritual underpinning to everything that's going on. It's not just about machines and technology and software and so on.
M: Well, I always thought of more of the human condition, you know, and having to deal with, you know, the physical limitations of being in the body and what it could be like if you could actually do away with that and what kind of race would we become if we just became these sort of spiritual entities who could change our physical body just by plugging in to the web, basically.
Like changing a shirt
M: Yeah, pretty much. You know, what would that do to us as a society? And would we become, would the vulcans finally land? Would we get to the point where we were that...
Advanced
M: Advanced, basically, yeah. So for me, that's what it was always, always about. I started thinking what would I be like if my soul, spirit, whatever was in a completely different...
Container
M: Yeah, completely different container. It, uh, it leaves a lot of questions open and, uh, makes you think a lot about what kind person you are and how much you're affected by your physical being, and you know, how in our society, you know, people are treated a very specific way just because of how they look, so, so it's interesting.
Um, so what's it like coming here, um, after maybe people don't recognize you in public, but when you come here you have different panels where you have people calling you things like a goddess.
M: That's insane. That's an out of body experience, really.
Speaking of going out of body.
M: I feel like Sally Fields in Soap Dish. I go to the mall in Paramas and all of a sudden, "It's the woman from the soap opera." And I'm like, "what?" You know, like, it's crazy because I live a pretty anonymous life, you know? We go into a very small, dark, no rather nice, beautiful, dark room and I sit and, we watch TV and we talk to the TV, and we, I get a group of actors in the room. We do original animation, so it's a very tight-knit group of really amazingly talented people in LA that we do this with and, it's just, you come here and you realize, wow the stuff that we're doing really affects a lot of people and is touching a lot of different lives. And it makes you want to go back and do better, and better, and better. Although, last Friday, we had this amazing young man, uh, it was our Make a Wish day. It was his Make a Wish, was to come into the studio, a beautiful boy named Cameron. And his whole family came in and, I mean, that was his Make a Wish was to come in to Naruto, and sit in in the afternoon and spend, you know, four hours with us. And, that to me was sort of, it was everything. So, imagine that on this now huge scale of all these people. It's mind-blowing, you know. I used to do on-camera work and I really didn't like being in the spotlight so much. I sort of like being behind the scenes now, so this is, this can be overwhelming, but in the best sense. In the best sense. Hopefully, I can take this back with me and spread it around to everyone, and sort of share the love and then pay it forward and see if we can continue to do the show that we're doing better and better and continue to improve the work that we're doing because we see what kind of response and we're doing it for them. You know? That's the reason that I do it, anyway.
I'll take the next one. You co-wrote the script for Metropolis. What was your first impression when you saw the movie and what was your biggest challenge working on it?
M: Time. Really. I mean, I'd seen the trailer for the movie, Metropolis about a year before and just thought, Oh, that would be amazing, and when Zero Limit got it, and, uh, Mark Handler was supposed to write the entire thing, but they were in such a time crunch, and I was directing Digimon at the time, uh, season three I think. And they said, "We need to get this script done in a week, so will you write the second half?" And I said, "Absolutely, whatever I can do." I was story editor for Digimon at the time so I still had, and directing, so I lot of work to do, but I just would go home at night and write and write and write. And I started at the middle of the movie, and I just knew if I can get to the Ray Charles song, I'll be fine. I'll be fine because that's a good three minute chunk and then we're right near the end and, um...(drifts off) God that's a beautiful movie. That's a beautiful movie. That was an absolute honor. I remember talking to Mel Brooks about that. I met him in a sushi restaurant and he was there with his business partner and he goes, (does impression) "What d'you do? What d'you do? What's your name? What's your name?What d'you do? What d'you do?" And his business partner, his writing parter was a big, uh, anime fan, which I had no idea. I said, "Well, I just finished writing the second half of Metropolis," and this guy just freaked out. And Mel's just like, "What does she do? I don't understand. What does she do? Tell me. Tell me. Tell me, tell me." You know, and sort of explained it. "McGlynn?" "McGlynn." "Your name? McGlynn? McGlynn." "Yeah, Mel. McGlynn." So it was sort of nice to know that I at least impressed Mr. Brooks' partner. It was an amazing film. It really was.
Actually, our blog's creator's favorite movie as well.
M: Yeah, it's exquisite. And I think Kevin Seymour did a great job with it. And, uh, it was hard. It was a, you know, very condensed time of focus, focus, figure out how to make this amazing, and, and to deal with. Mark was doing the first half and I was like, "Send me what you have so I know that I'm on the same, that I'm styling the characters the same way that you are." It was great. Great challenge.
You talk about, you know, the sort of fan in the mall moment.
M: Yeah.
Um, Have you ever been on the other end of that? Like, you know, you find yourself in these studios or like meeting Mel Brooks or something like that. Do you ever find yourself just sort of "Oh my God, I'm meeting..."
M: Yes. Oh, completely. Of course. I get starstruck all the time. We do a lot of original stuff, well, directing Sam Jackson was just "Uuuhhh, Uhhh." Are you kidding me?
Wonderful story.
M: Yeah, just, you know, so to try and just sort of keep your cool is a very... I was picking up, my husband shot a commercial in South Africa about 15 years ago, and I went to pick him up at LAX international and it was the weekend of the Oscars, and the year of Sense and Sensibility, and off the plane walked Emma Thompson, who, for me, is just it. You know, to me, she's sort of the Katherine Hepburn of my generation, or the... you know, so I said, Daran will be here in about five minutes. I have to go say hello to her. You know, "I just want to welcome you to Los Angeles and say good luck at the Oscars. I just think you're amazing." It was such a fangirl moment for me. And, she was like (does impression) "Oh my gosh, thank you. What's your name?" And, you know, she was so sweet and unassuming. And wonderful. Yeah. But in LA, it's kind of different. You have to play it cool in LA. Like, people don't want to be bothered. People... You have to respect their privacy. People really expect that. Unless you go to The Ivy or you go to a place with, you know, paparazzi. And we had Miley Cyrus across the studio from us once at the Studio City Bar and Grill and it was just insane to watch these people. They'd fall over themselves to try and get a picture of her, and for the most part, you know, when people come in to work, you just, you want to work. And you don't want to feel like "Uhhh." You know. I'm just a person, and they're just people. And that's how they want to be treated, for the most part, I think.
I'm just going to link the photos because, well, there are 78 of them. I got to meet priestess_grrrl while at Otakon, which was awesome, though we only got to meet up the once. Seemed like we were never headed in the same direction for the rest of the con, but it was great to finally meet someone from LJ.
Link to Photobucket for my Photos.
Do you have a favorite motley crew song?
M: No, no, I don't.
Do you have a favorite song?
M: Uh...
Because you do a lot of singing.
M: I think um... what's, uh, what's that song... um... (hums song) It's a standard. It's a classic. I'll be seeing you.
Is there sort of an aspect of the job of voice acting and singing... Do the skills and talents carry over well? Like, I noticed in the Beck, we had some of the people who did the music work for that were saying that they were really glad that the voice actors talent really lended itself over to music.
M: Yeah, without a doubt, without a doubt. Well, I've been singing my whole life. I sort of studied singing as a kid, in choirs. Always snag in the church choirs and in the chorale in school and then in high school. When I came to LA, my first gig was singing in a club called the smoke house... Singing lots of standards and everything else. And then I stopped for a while. I sang with a big band and I wasn't crazy about the band leader. He actually made singing work and a chore and I started to feel really bad about my singing and started to get very insecure about it, so I stopped because singing was always a joy for me. So, then at that point I started directing, so I just said, well I'll just take a break and just sing with the family. The whole family gets together. We get together and sing four part harmonies at Christmas. It's really gross and wonderful. And, and then I got this call. Come and audition for, it was the same Zero Limit Productions, the same company that we did Cowboy Bebop with, um, so I was directing for them at the time and they said "Come and audition for this, uh, for this thing called Silent HIll" and I said, "Okay." And I looked at the song and I said, "Wow, this is for a much higher voice than me." And they said but that's what they want. They want a voice that is in contrast. The complete opposite of what it would normally be because it's this crazy, drugged out, freaky, freaky Silent Hill sort of thing. And that's how I got it. It was all about the acting. So, all the acting I had done was a complete, was the only way, basically, that I could get through the Silent Hill stuff is through the acting because it should really be sung by someone like Cary Walgrin or Kate Higgins who is kind of much higher, clearer, beautiful tone, you know. They wanted that contrast. They wanted that. And that's kind of what I gave them and what I'm still giving them.
This is actually something I was talking with Richard Epcar last year because I got to talk to them. Everything I heard from the panel on Friday was hilarious and squared perfectly with what I'd seen of him. One things that somebody else mentioned to him which I picked up on was when you have a show like, when you have something like the matrix where you have the Judeo-Christian model myth and being that drives the whole story, the underpinning of the story and with Ghost in the Shell, you sort of have the Buddhist and Hinduist model myth where everything is reincarnation and cycle of the spirit apart from the body. I was wondering if you had thought about that while you were doing the show that there's a very strong spiritual underpinning to everything that's going on. It's not just about machines and technology and software and so on.
M: Well, I always thought of more of the human condition, you know, and having to deal with, you know, the physical limitations of being in the body and what it could be like if you could actually do away with that and what kind of race would we become if we just became these sort of spiritual entities who could change our physical body just by plugging in to the web, basically.
Like changing a shirt
M: Yeah, pretty much. You know, what would that do to us as a society? And would we become, would the vulcans finally land? Would we get to the point where we were that...
Advanced
M: Advanced, basically, yeah. So for me, that's what it was always, always about. I started thinking what would I be like if my soul, spirit, whatever was in a completely different...
Container
M: Yeah, completely different container. It, uh, it leaves a lot of questions open and, uh, makes you think a lot about what kind person you are and how much you're affected by your physical being, and you know, how in our society, you know, people are treated a very specific way just because of how they look, so, so it's interesting.
Um, so what's it like coming here, um, after maybe people don't recognize you in public, but when you come here you have different panels where you have people calling you things like a goddess.
M: That's insane. That's an out of body experience, really.
Speaking of going out of body.
M: I feel like Sally Fields in Soap Dish. I go to the mall in Paramas and all of a sudden, "It's the woman from the soap opera." And I'm like, "what?" You know, like, it's crazy because I live a pretty anonymous life, you know? We go into a very small, dark, no rather nice, beautiful, dark room and I sit and, we watch TV and we talk to the TV, and we, I get a group of actors in the room. We do original animation, so it's a very tight-knit group of really amazingly talented people in LA that we do this with and, it's just, you come here and you realize, wow the stuff that we're doing really affects a lot of people and is touching a lot of different lives. And it makes you want to go back and do better, and better, and better. Although, last Friday, we had this amazing young man, uh, it was our Make a Wish day. It was his Make a Wish, was to come into the studio, a beautiful boy named Cameron. And his whole family came in and, I mean, that was his Make a Wish was to come in to Naruto, and sit in in the afternoon and spend, you know, four hours with us. And, that to me was sort of, it was everything. So, imagine that on this now huge scale of all these people. It's mind-blowing, you know. I used to do on-camera work and I really didn't like being in the spotlight so much. I sort of like being behind the scenes now, so this is, this can be overwhelming, but in the best sense. In the best sense. Hopefully, I can take this back with me and spread it around to everyone, and sort of share the love and then pay it forward and see if we can continue to do the show that we're doing better and better and continue to improve the work that we're doing because we see what kind of response and we're doing it for them. You know? That's the reason that I do it, anyway.
I'll take the next one. You co-wrote the script for Metropolis. What was your first impression when you saw the movie and what was your biggest challenge working on it?
M: Time. Really. I mean, I'd seen the trailer for the movie, Metropolis about a year before and just thought, Oh, that would be amazing, and when Zero Limit got it, and, uh, Mark Handler was supposed to write the entire thing, but they were in such a time crunch, and I was directing Digimon at the time, uh, season three I think. And they said, "We need to get this script done in a week, so will you write the second half?" And I said, "Absolutely, whatever I can do." I was story editor for Digimon at the time so I still had, and directing, so I lot of work to do, but I just would go home at night and write and write and write. And I started at the middle of the movie, and I just knew if I can get to the Ray Charles song, I'll be fine. I'll be fine because that's a good three minute chunk and then we're right near the end and, um...(drifts off) God that's a beautiful movie. That's a beautiful movie. That was an absolute honor. I remember talking to Mel Brooks about that. I met him in a sushi restaurant and he was there with his business partner and he goes, (does impression) "What d'you do? What d'you do? What's your name? What's your name?What d'you do? What d'you do?" And his business partner, his writing parter was a big, uh, anime fan, which I had no idea. I said, "Well, I just finished writing the second half of Metropolis," and this guy just freaked out. And Mel's just like, "What does she do? I don't understand. What does she do? Tell me. Tell me. Tell me, tell me." You know, and sort of explained it. "McGlynn?" "McGlynn." "Your name? McGlynn? McGlynn." "Yeah, Mel. McGlynn." So it was sort of nice to know that I at least impressed Mr. Brooks' partner. It was an amazing film. It really was.
Actually, our blog's creator's favorite movie as well.
M: Yeah, it's exquisite. And I think Kevin Seymour did a great job with it. And, uh, it was hard. It was a, you know, very condensed time of focus, focus, figure out how to make this amazing, and, and to deal with. Mark was doing the first half and I was like, "Send me what you have so I know that I'm on the same, that I'm styling the characters the same way that you are." It was great. Great challenge.
You talk about, you know, the sort of fan in the mall moment.
M: Yeah.
Um, Have you ever been on the other end of that? Like, you know, you find yourself in these studios or like meeting Mel Brooks or something like that. Do you ever find yourself just sort of "Oh my God, I'm meeting..."
M: Yes. Oh, completely. Of course. I get starstruck all the time. We do a lot of original stuff, well, directing Sam Jackson was just "Uuuhhh, Uhhh." Are you kidding me?
Wonderful story.
M: Yeah, just, you know, so to try and just sort of keep your cool is a very... I was picking up, my husband shot a commercial in South Africa about 15 years ago, and I went to pick him up at LAX international and it was the weekend of the Oscars, and the year of Sense and Sensibility, and off the plane walked Emma Thompson, who, for me, is just it. You know, to me, she's sort of the Katherine Hepburn of my generation, or the... you know, so I said, Daran will be here in about five minutes. I have to go say hello to her. You know, "I just want to welcome you to Los Angeles and say good luck at the Oscars. I just think you're amazing." It was such a fangirl moment for me. And, she was like (does impression) "Oh my gosh, thank you. What's your name?" And, you know, she was so sweet and unassuming. And wonderful. Yeah. But in LA, it's kind of different. You have to play it cool in LA. Like, people don't want to be bothered. People... You have to respect their privacy. People really expect that. Unless you go to The Ivy or you go to a place with, you know, paparazzi. And we had Miley Cyrus across the studio from us once at the Studio City Bar and Grill and it was just insane to watch these people. They'd fall over themselves to try and get a picture of her, and for the most part, you know, when people come in to work, you just, you want to work. And you don't want to feel like "Uhhh." You know. I'm just a person, and they're just people. And that's how they want to be treated, for the most part, I think.