Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths NYC Premiere Event
Newsarama just finished a live panel with the creators about the animated project, Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths, which will be available on DVD everywhere on February 23rd! Andrea Romano (voice director), Dwayne McDuffie (writer), and James Woods (yes, the actor!) were there to answer fans' questions about the project and what's coming up.
Here's the transcript (contains SPOILERS for the movie): (Blame Newsarama for any possible errors; I just copied/pasted it here.)
Panelists are introduced: Dwayne McDuffie, Andrea Romano, James Woods
? "Dwayne is matched up with two of the fastest talkers in the history of entertainment."
Question: "What did it sound like for you compared to how you wrote it?"
McDuffie: "I originally wrote this for the Television series actors, but every actor brought something different to the story and the characters. Owlman I've never written before, and, I'm really sorry I killed you."
Woods: "It's an alternate universe, no problem."
Question for Andrea and Woods: "You never met before tonight, you recorded across the country from each other, how did you collaborate?"
James Woods: "With animation it's almost better to not be distracted, as you're living in another world. With this character, you have the ultimately dark existential "hero". It worked that she directed me to play it more understated."
Romano: "It's so easy to play a villain big and broad and 'oh, I hate the world!' But there's the part when he just says 'get them' and it was just so simple. We record and it's maybe 8 months before we see picture, and he didn't record at all with Gina Torres (the love interest in the film). She's so overtly sexual--"
Woods: "--and predatory."
Andrea: "--and he's so calm."
Woods: "The voice is done first, it's not a looping job, you get to be a big part of the collaborative process"
Question for Woods: "You're a nice guy, but you get these Rogue's gallery characters to play.."
Woods: "Well, they're bad if you think destroying the universe is bad... What's his motive? Entertain his point of view. He's vastly disappointed with the devolution of the human race. We were talking about slavery, upstairs, and we were talking about how there's probably more slavery now than in human history. You kinda wonder, his solution isn't a welcomed solution, but the despair is something you can relate to. This has the 'balls' to address these kinds of issues more than a lot of feature films and other mediums."
Romano: "There's a moment when Owlman is on Earth Prime, and I'm listening to the performance and thinking, Well he's kinda convincing me! There's almost something sympathetic about it. He's clearly insane, but there's that bit of reality to it."
Woods: "I was reading about an idiot savant chess player, and he went into real mental illness because he was so far ahead of his competitors that he got bored and was waiting to see them realize there was no way out."
Woods described that as being Owlman's character
Moderator: "That's the kind of answer you get when your lead actor went to MIT"
Q: "What was the genesis of this script?"
McDuffie "I was working on Justice League, and we were about to start Justice League Unlimited. The plan was to do a version of this story as a bridge from how they went from 6 characters to 60. There wasn't the staff to do the design for both of these at once though. Bruce Timm called me and asked if I'd be willing to rewrite it to be a bit more like the comics and less like the series. We switched Green Lanterns, we switched out all of the guest Justice Leaguers. In the TV series, they were all characters who had met Batman in other series. The only one who was in both versions was Aquaman, who was going to be in there, cause I think Aquaman's cool."
Woods: "You realize that in my Entourage episode, I was the villain in the Aquaman movie. What's an Easter Egg, tell me one of them."
McDuffie: "Well, one set of villains was modified versions of Justice League Detroit."
Woods: "Is there anyone who keeps track of this stuff?"
McDuffie: "Probably some right here."
Woods: "Is there anyone normal who keeps track of this stuff?"
Fan Question: "Why the short length of the films?"
McDuffie: "It's budget, it's what we can do so that they're not 30 bucks."
Romano: "It's also just a standard that's been made. We ahve two versions of this too, one that's less bloody to run on Cartoon Network, for kids, and their attention span is shorter, about 70 minutes, that's about it."
Fan Q: "Andrea, are there new challenges that you still see after doing DC animated for so long?"
Romano: "They're always new and different. THere's still Justice League characters that I haven't seen before. I'll see them and say, there's MORE? I've cast batman 9 times now, and superman and wonder woman, and more. There's the temptation, with the first Batman I cast was Kevin Conroy, who set the standard. The first time I had to recast him, I was like NO! "But I did understand it later. Whether he's being animated differently, or the story is moved in a different way. None of us want to repeat ourselves and play the same roles, or write the same scripts... A lot of this was 'let's play to the tone'. We didnt' want to play the characters as too much of caricatures."
Woods: "We've had enough of Batman, let's go to Owlman."
Romano: "We haven't had Owlman before, I don't think."
Woods: "And this was gonna be his debut, until the "sissified" owlman showed up in Brave and the Bold."
Fan Q: "For James, what's the difference in how you approach Voice Acting versus live action?"
Woods: "The first big role was as Hades in Hercules. I remember I had 8 animators just for my hair. We were actually taught how to do animation acting. Hercules was an infant and I had a pacifier, and the line was 'here's a sucker for a little sucker.' The voice was originally going to be done be another actor, a friend of mine, who wasn't working, and they asked how I'd do it and I said 'I'd do it like a used car salesman.' It's hard to be subtle in voice work, if you're too dry, you lose the edge to the character. In this, I over annunciate and there's almost no character to it at all. You have to be so careful not to break the integrity of the character in voice acting."
Woods told a story about Film Acting, where "when you're wearing makeup, etc, if you're not zeroed in on the character in your entire face, it's all wrong. In voice acting you have to do it all with just the voice, zero in just there. When I was doing Final Fantasy, they said that someday they'll be able to do animation that's nearly identical to human beings. But they'll never be able to duplicate the nuance of the human voice. You can do it a million, a trillion different ways, and it'll be unique every time. The human voice, I'll tell you how cool the human voice is. Someone asked if I listened to Billy Baldwin's Batman to do an opposite version of it. And we never did any recording together, but the writing and directing was so good, we were two different people that wound up sounding somewhat alike."
Fan Q: For McDuffie, the cameos were a big joy, but why were none of the principals people of color?
McDuffie: "Not having John Stewart was the easiest way to say 'this is the comic book, not the tv show. But I snuck Black Lightning in there (twice).
Fan Q: "As someone who was criticized for having too many african-americans on your Justice League team, you had 4."
McDuffie "That's too many"
Fan Q: "Do you write from the point of view of african americans?"
McDuffie "It's part of my tool box. When I write black characters, yes, it's based partly on people I know, it's just one of my tools though."
Fan Q: "Since this was originally written before JLU, did this have anything to do with the episode where Superman killed someone and changed the course of human history?"
McDuffie: "On the blu-ray version, that two parter is actually on there. It's a similar story, but a, I guess a different universe!"
A fan asked a question about Pinky & the Brain to Andrea Romano.
Romano: "I actually prefer to ensemble record anytime I can. The actors who played Pinky and The Brain always worked together. Sometimes you get people that are funny, and I make them do multiple takes just for my own entertainment."
Fan Q: "A question for Dwayne, you said DC dictated some of the characters, are there any you didn't get to use?"
McDuffie: "Icon was in one draft of it, but we couldn't bring him in cause we couldn't get the rights. There were so many characters, and I wanted to make sure everyone got one good bit. Sometimes though more isn't better."
Fan Q: "What's planned for the future?"
Gary (moderator, publicist): "Well right now, we are focuse on Justice League. It has Spectre on there, too, as a DC Showcase. Then this summer we have Batman: Under the Red Hood."
McDuffie: "I have written two more films in this series, but I'm not allowed to say what they are. But when you see them, you'll love them too."
Fan Q: "Is there any future for the JLU, even on the direct to video circuit?"
McDuffie: "As far as I know there are no plans, but never say never."
Fan Q: "Dwayne, generally speaking Batman's forte is his intelligence and his preparedness and fighting, but in this, Owlman kicks his ass!"
McDuffie: "Well, Owlman's his opposite, but with the power suit..."
Woods: "And Owlman has nothing to lose. What do you do when someone has nothing to lose, no fear of death?"
Fan Q: "Is it hard to cast and get these bigger stars to work with you?"
Romano: "There are so many actors who want to play in this universe. James Woods was originally cast, years ago as Lex Luthor."
McDuffie: "It was the original version of THIS ONE."
Romano: "That's right!"
Woods: "And I was like, he's a good guy? The people at DC are dropping acid over there or something! The more interesting question is, was I pay or play on that one?"
Romano: "To get back to your question, I watch a lot of tv and films, and I keep a list of people who I want to work with. A lot of agents call me and ask if they can be in animation projects. A lot of actors have kids who can't watch their live action work. And they can jump into animation, and be in Spongebob or be BATMAN and be the hero of the neighborhood. I cast Mark Hamill as The Joker years ago, and I wish I could take credit, but that was Mark calling me and asking me if he could be a part of my Batman project!"
Final Fan Q: "All the DC Animated movies have been standalone. Any desire to link continuity of them in the future?"
Gary: "There are some projects coming in the future that kinda do that. Kind of yes, but not entirely."
Woods: "So is Owlman coming back, or what?!"
Romano: "I have to say, it's remarkable, to all of you I have to say this now, I got to direct James Woods!"
Here's the transcript (contains SPOILERS for the movie): (Blame Newsarama for any possible errors; I just copied/pasted it here.)
Panelists are introduced: Dwayne McDuffie, Andrea Romano, James Woods
? "Dwayne is matched up with two of the fastest talkers in the history of entertainment."
Question: "What did it sound like for you compared to how you wrote it?"
McDuffie: "I originally wrote this for the Television series actors, but every actor brought something different to the story and the characters. Owlman I've never written before, and, I'm really sorry I killed you."
Woods: "It's an alternate universe, no problem."
Question for Andrea and Woods: "You never met before tonight, you recorded across the country from each other, how did you collaborate?"
James Woods: "With animation it's almost better to not be distracted, as you're living in another world. With this character, you have the ultimately dark existential "hero". It worked that she directed me to play it more understated."
Romano: "It's so easy to play a villain big and broad and 'oh, I hate the world!' But there's the part when he just says 'get them' and it was just so simple. We record and it's maybe 8 months before we see picture, and he didn't record at all with Gina Torres (the love interest in the film). She's so overtly sexual--"
Woods: "--and predatory."
Andrea: "--and he's so calm."
Woods: "The voice is done first, it's not a looping job, you get to be a big part of the collaborative process"
Question for Woods: "You're a nice guy, but you get these Rogue's gallery characters to play.."
Woods: "Well, they're bad if you think destroying the universe is bad... What's his motive? Entertain his point of view. He's vastly disappointed with the devolution of the human race. We were talking about slavery, upstairs, and we were talking about how there's probably more slavery now than in human history. You kinda wonder, his solution isn't a welcomed solution, but the despair is something you can relate to. This has the 'balls' to address these kinds of issues more than a lot of feature films and other mediums."
Romano: "There's a moment when Owlman is on Earth Prime, and I'm listening to the performance and thinking, Well he's kinda convincing me! There's almost something sympathetic about it. He's clearly insane, but there's that bit of reality to it."
Woods: "I was reading about an idiot savant chess player, and he went into real mental illness because he was so far ahead of his competitors that he got bored and was waiting to see them realize there was no way out."
Woods described that as being Owlman's character
Moderator: "That's the kind of answer you get when your lead actor went to MIT"
Q: "What was the genesis of this script?"
McDuffie "I was working on Justice League, and we were about to start Justice League Unlimited. The plan was to do a version of this story as a bridge from how they went from 6 characters to 60. There wasn't the staff to do the design for both of these at once though. Bruce Timm called me and asked if I'd be willing to rewrite it to be a bit more like the comics and less like the series. We switched Green Lanterns, we switched out all of the guest Justice Leaguers. In the TV series, they were all characters who had met Batman in other series. The only one who was in both versions was Aquaman, who was going to be in there, cause I think Aquaman's cool."
Woods: "You realize that in my Entourage episode, I was the villain in the Aquaman movie. What's an Easter Egg, tell me one of them."
McDuffie: "Well, one set of villains was modified versions of Justice League Detroit."
Woods: "Is there anyone who keeps track of this stuff?"
McDuffie: "Probably some right here."
Woods: "Is there anyone normal who keeps track of this stuff?"
Fan Question: "Why the short length of the films?"
McDuffie: "It's budget, it's what we can do so that they're not 30 bucks."
Romano: "It's also just a standard that's been made. We ahve two versions of this too, one that's less bloody to run on Cartoon Network, for kids, and their attention span is shorter, about 70 minutes, that's about it."
Fan Q: "Andrea, are there new challenges that you still see after doing DC animated for so long?"
Romano: "They're always new and different. THere's still Justice League characters that I haven't seen before. I'll see them and say, there's MORE? I've cast batman 9 times now, and superman and wonder woman, and more. There's the temptation, with the first Batman I cast was Kevin Conroy, who set the standard. The first time I had to recast him, I was like NO! "But I did understand it later. Whether he's being animated differently, or the story is moved in a different way. None of us want to repeat ourselves and play the same roles, or write the same scripts... A lot of this was 'let's play to the tone'. We didnt' want to play the characters as too much of caricatures."
Woods: "We've had enough of Batman, let's go to Owlman."
Romano: "We haven't had Owlman before, I don't think."
Woods: "And this was gonna be his debut, until the "sissified" owlman showed up in Brave and the Bold."
Fan Q: "For James, what's the difference in how you approach Voice Acting versus live action?"
Woods: "The first big role was as Hades in Hercules. I remember I had 8 animators just for my hair. We were actually taught how to do animation acting. Hercules was an infant and I had a pacifier, and the line was 'here's a sucker for a little sucker.' The voice was originally going to be done be another actor, a friend of mine, who wasn't working, and they asked how I'd do it and I said 'I'd do it like a used car salesman.' It's hard to be subtle in voice work, if you're too dry, you lose the edge to the character. In this, I over annunciate and there's almost no character to it at all. You have to be so careful not to break the integrity of the character in voice acting."
Woods told a story about Film Acting, where "when you're wearing makeup, etc, if you're not zeroed in on the character in your entire face, it's all wrong. In voice acting you have to do it all with just the voice, zero in just there. When I was doing Final Fantasy, they said that someday they'll be able to do animation that's nearly identical to human beings. But they'll never be able to duplicate the nuance of the human voice. You can do it a million, a trillion different ways, and it'll be unique every time. The human voice, I'll tell you how cool the human voice is. Someone asked if I listened to Billy Baldwin's Batman to do an opposite version of it. And we never did any recording together, but the writing and directing was so good, we were two different people that wound up sounding somewhat alike."
Fan Q: For McDuffie, the cameos were a big joy, but why were none of the principals people of color?
McDuffie: "Not having John Stewart was the easiest way to say 'this is the comic book, not the tv show. But I snuck Black Lightning in there (twice).
Fan Q: "As someone who was criticized for having too many african-americans on your Justice League team, you had 4."
McDuffie "That's too many"
Fan Q: "Do you write from the point of view of african americans?"
McDuffie "It's part of my tool box. When I write black characters, yes, it's based partly on people I know, it's just one of my tools though."
Fan Q: "Since this was originally written before JLU, did this have anything to do with the episode where Superman killed someone and changed the course of human history?"
McDuffie: "On the blu-ray version, that two parter is actually on there. It's a similar story, but a, I guess a different universe!"
A fan asked a question about Pinky & the Brain to Andrea Romano.
Romano: "I actually prefer to ensemble record anytime I can. The actors who played Pinky and The Brain always worked together. Sometimes you get people that are funny, and I make them do multiple takes just for my own entertainment."
Fan Q: "A question for Dwayne, you said DC dictated some of the characters, are there any you didn't get to use?"
McDuffie: "Icon was in one draft of it, but we couldn't bring him in cause we couldn't get the rights. There were so many characters, and I wanted to make sure everyone got one good bit. Sometimes though more isn't better."
Fan Q: "What's planned for the future?"
Gary (moderator, publicist): "Well right now, we are focuse on Justice League. It has Spectre on there, too, as a DC Showcase. Then this summer we have Batman: Under the Red Hood."
McDuffie: "I have written two more films in this series, but I'm not allowed to say what they are. But when you see them, you'll love them too."
Fan Q: "Is there any future for the JLU, even on the direct to video circuit?"
McDuffie: "As far as I know there are no plans, but never say never."
Fan Q: "Dwayne, generally speaking Batman's forte is his intelligence and his preparedness and fighting, but in this, Owlman kicks his ass!"
McDuffie: "Well, Owlman's his opposite, but with the power suit..."
Woods: "And Owlman has nothing to lose. What do you do when someone has nothing to lose, no fear of death?"
Fan Q: "Is it hard to cast and get these bigger stars to work with you?"
Romano: "There are so many actors who want to play in this universe. James Woods was originally cast, years ago as Lex Luthor."
McDuffie: "It was the original version of THIS ONE."
Romano: "That's right!"
Woods: "And I was like, he's a good guy? The people at DC are dropping acid over there or something! The more interesting question is, was I pay or play on that one?"
Romano: "To get back to your question, I watch a lot of tv and films, and I keep a list of people who I want to work with. A lot of agents call me and ask if they can be in animation projects. A lot of actors have kids who can't watch their live action work. And they can jump into animation, and be in Spongebob or be BATMAN and be the hero of the neighborhood. I cast Mark Hamill as The Joker years ago, and I wish I could take credit, but that was Mark calling me and asking me if he could be a part of my Batman project!"
Final Fan Q: "All the DC Animated movies have been standalone. Any desire to link continuity of them in the future?"
Gary: "There are some projects coming in the future that kinda do that. Kind of yes, but not entirely."
Woods: "So is Owlman coming back, or what?!"
Romano: "I have to say, it's remarkable, to all of you I have to say this now, I got to direct James Woods!"