From our old nt2099 BBS archives:
Date: Thursday, 11 October 1990
From: Walter M. Amos
Subject: JERRY BECK INTERVIEW UPDATE
Well, as promised, here is the updated interview I completed with Jerry Beck.
A copy will also be placed on the FTP server at ix1.cc.utexas.edu. There were
only two real questions I wanted to ask, namely how well Akira has done and
what new projects are in the works. A few divergent discussions also
followed. As an additional note, I sent a copy of this to Mr. Beck to await
full approval before posting it, but since I hadn't heard from him I tried
phoning earlier this week. He is apparently still in NY for the opening of
Akira and an animation festival, but he said it was OK and gave me a few more
"What's new" tidbits...
----------------------------(cut here)-----------------------------
Q: I wanted a short idea of what the immediate plans are, and since Akira
was to be the test of whether anime could be accepted and do well, how well
that has now done.
A: Well, 9 months later, we're about to open in New York for the final
third of the test. We expect some very good publicity there. We'll have to
see what happens next. I may have another answer for you some months
from now. As to what's happened so far, it's been in some sense both a
success and not. It's been a success in that in all the theaters we've played
in it has done as well as the rest of the films they play. But these are mostly
"art" theaters, which are playing films like Cinema Paradiso and the like. The
grosses for Akira have equalled the biggest hit films of that genre. They
haven't equalled Die Hard because we're not playing in that many theaters
and we don't have the multimillion dollar ad campaign. But in the limited
way we're releasing it, into the theaters we're releasing it, it has been
phenomenal. I wasn't there firsthand in Austin but the grosses were pretty
good there, they were spectacular in San Francisco, LA, Chicago, all the big
cities. A lot of people who have never seen Japanese animation before are
definitely coming out to it and telling their friends and so on. As to how well
it will do in New York, will the same thing happen, this is a question to be
answered.
How we failed, well, on the major surface of things - we were hoping to
get some major stories and media attention. That really hasn't happened
yet. We need that kind of attention to really bring Japanese animation closer
to home for most people. We haven't failed really, but we haven't succeeded
yet in this sense either.The awareness in the media and in the big movie
studios about Japanese animation is the same as what it was when we
started.
New York and LA are the major media centers. When we played LA it
was a success but got no response from the movie studios and video
companies. We had hoped maybe to get a video deal with one of the majors
so that they could make their money back. That didn't happen. They still
feel that a violent cartoon is a violent cartoon.If it's not for kids it's not a
cartoon, it's not animation, that sort of attitude. So all we can do is forge
ahead and hope they'll see the light.
But by that time it may be too late for them. Right now we're planning to
get video rights ourselves. Again, probably December would be a better
update on that. We are now doing discussion on starting our own videotape
line and releasing on tape like we have in theaters. It's not signed and
sealed yet so anything can happen, but Akira might become the frontrunner
of a line of videos that we are for the moment tentatively calling "video
comics". Basically these will be a direct market to comic book shops. Again,
like we're distributing Akira to "art" theaters, we would be distributing
Akira on video to places where we know the customers are, namely comic
book shops. Hopefully six months later they would be in regular video
stores. But first we'd sell to comic book shops at low prices and dubbed in
English.
The reason we're into getting things that are dubbed into English is that
we are trying to reach out to a mass audience. We're not trying to reach out
to a goo-goo-ga-ga mass audience like New World did with Warriors of the
Wind. They don't understand the audience that's out there.
Our feeling is that Robotech got people into Japanese animation back in
1985, regardless of how different that show was from its original source
material. That's no longer on Carl Macek's mind - that was never his plan all
along, it was part of the Harmony Gold thing, to do it a certain way,but that's
not the way we're doing things. We're trying to be as faithful to the original
source material as possible. But, we want to present it in English so that
anyone can watch it. If it remains in Japanese it's going to be a cult thing
forever. We don't necessarily want that. We want people to understand that
there's some art here and to do that it's got move beyond the fandom. It's
got to get acceptance from people who accept Disney films and who accept
Die Hard and who accept Ghost and the like. We need that audience to
accept Japanese animation for what it is. Having it in Japanese is a
stumbling block. You can't underestimate either the intelligence or the
stupidity of the audience out there. We feel that these people are more
intelligent than what they are being credited for, so that's why we faithfully
adapt the films. Our own observations are that most people would get into
this and watch it in English, but Japanese is a turn-off to people who aren't
into it to begin with.
That's why people started getting into Japanese animation after Robotech.
That's how people started - by discovering, perhaps even badly dubbed
things on television, like Battle of the Planets or Eighth Man or something.
People get into it by seeing that one translated version first and then going
on. That happened with the Robotech fans because that was done better
than most previous dubbed shows.
My gut feeling is that we will see Japanese animation back in the
broadcast media but the time isn't quite right yet. 1990 isn't quite right.
They've got Ducktales on their brain and Tiny Toons in their heads. But I
think it will eventually come back, these things move in cycles. We'll make a
hit in theaters and that will hopefully start the ball rolling.Eventually these
things will be making it to TV unaltered, basically just an English version of
these shows, this is what we want to present. It doesn't mean Warriors of
the Wind. It doesn't even mean Akira. We weren't altogether crazy about
some things in the dubbing of Akira. It just means a faithful version done
well. I really hope that someday people can see the version of Totoro that
we ourselves did.
We need the fans to help get theaters to play our movies. Fortunately we
have fans all over the place who are helping us. We need the help because
unfortunately in places like Alaska there is no theater that can play these
things - it's like Texas - you happen to live in the one town that is playing
our films in that entire giant state. I feel so sad - there's so many fans in
Dallas that it breaks my heart. It breaks my heart for a lot of reasons - I
know if we ever play there we will do well because of the number of fans.
We've already lost the rights to Laputa now, so we'll never bring that one
there.
Count your lucky stars that you're in Austin because you have the Dobie
willing to play these things. Although now ironically there's a second theater
in Austin that's been contacting me about playing these films - the Village
Arts I think it is.But the Dobie has done so well for us I'd like to be loyal to
them. It's not fair that there are now two interested theaters in Austin and
none elsewhere.
Q: You've now gotten in the Akira blurb, so now we need the what's new
blurb.
A: Well there are some things that are all signed and others that are sort
of tentative and in the works. But I'll give you some of the super sneak
previews and Carl will probably be upset at me. We're not sure what our
next film is going to be [after Lensman], but that's because we have two to
choose from. The film that was going to be our next film was Robot Carnival.
The only reason we might hold up on Robot Carnival is that we're working
with a couple of comic companies and trying to do some sort of Robot
Carnival comic. I don't mean the Robot Carnival film itself as a comic, but
the idea of it as a comic. No actual deals have been made, but we're friendly
with Dave Stevens and Mike Kaluta, who's a big Japanimation fan - these are
some big names in American comics. We want to approach people like that
and get them to a 6 or 10 page story on robots. Basically the same idea
Robot Carnival had, which was to get nine animators together and each do a
short film on robots somehow. That's what we want to do - an anthology
title with the only connection between the stories being that the main
character is a robot. It could work if we get some of the better names in
American comics. And it wouldn't just be the Mike Kaluta or John Byrne
type - we might also go to funny animal artists, and to artists who draw in
the anime style - we might even get some from Japan. We have a large idea
for this and we are talking to some of the major comic book companies here
about doing it. I'll leave their names out of it but they are major ones.
That's one of the possibilities. Robot Carnival will definitely be released in
early 1991, but whether it's December or March or April, that has yet to be
decided.
Another film we're dealing with is Fists of the North Star, which of course
also has the comic book out. There's also the Nintendo game, which is also
very violent and strange. That's the kind of idea we want to keep going, that
Japanese animation is an "outlaw" kind of cartoon. Your mom doesn't want
you to see it - that's the sort of attitude I'd like to foster.These are things
you can't get on TV or anywhere else, unless you join a club and watch it in
Japanese. We want to get that sort of club feeling into the theater. It also
has a crossover potential for people who like action films.
Well, there is that, and there are two other things we will be doing. We
are going to be getting into video in 1991 one way or another. As you know
we already have the Akira production report. That's our first video,
although we never thought of it as such. It's just something that we were
able to get the rights to the original footage so we made an English version as
a one shot thing. We had no thought beyond that as far as video. But we've
been dragged kicking and screaming into video - not that we don't want to
but that's where the business is. We have to do more there only because of
necessity.It's like what we're doing with the theaters - no one else seems to
want to do it. Now yes, there are a few companies with subtitled videos, but
our feeling is that we have the facilities and the contacts and the actors to
produce dubbed films. So it looks like video may be a direction we want to
take in 1991.
The other thing is that as we deal with the producers of these films we've
been contacting them about the original art. We have cels from Akira and
we also have all the cels and background art from Robot Carnival. We intend
to make these available for sale to the fans at very reasonable prices. We
had some for sale at the San Diego Comic Convention, and we are now in the
process of cataloguing all the stuff we have. We may make the catalog
available, and make the cels available to the direct market, through comic
shops. We plan to do some direct sales. Unfortunately it's very difficult.It's
not like we can give everybody their choice - everybody wants Kaneda on
the bike or something. That's really impossible, but we want to give
everybody a fair shot at the really good ones, so we'll come out with a
special catalog listing them with pictures; of course this will be our own
determination of what the best cels are. A lot of the lesser cels we'll "blow
out" by making them available in little packets that are going to be for sale
at comic book shops and at conventions. But that's another aspect of the
business we're going to get into.
What happened was, the cels we have from Akira, they were going to be
junked. They trimmed the top, took some of the best ones out and sold them
in Japan. But the rest they had in a warehouse and they were ready to take
a match to them. We inquired about them and made an arrangement. All
they wanted was to get them out of their warehouse, they didn't have any
room for them. We made an arrangement where a certain percentage of our
profits will go to the film's producers. When we got Robot Carnival we also
inquired about that. Of course, some of the films we're dealing with are
older, so the cels no longer exist. Lensman, forget it.Fists of the North Star
is a question mark. Most of these films are a few years old, so we have to deal
with newer films if we want to get the cels.
Also, with Robot Carnival and Akira, we're trying to pick the best films to
be theatrical and we also want to have the best cels. We want to offer the
best possible stuff. So cels, video, and theatrical.
We're still trying to be very selective about the films we're getting. I've
begun to drop my guard a little on fan favorites. I wouldn't say I've
dropped it entirely, but a year down the road, there's a particular fan type of
film that's also a theatrical, even if it's lesser in quality than Akira, which
almost everything is, I might consider releasing it because the audience by
that time might be sophisticated enough to "get it". I just think some of the
fan favorites are also the fan favorites in Japan, but we're not living in a
society like Japan where animation is so commonplace. We already have a
particular genre of animation that is well liked by the public here, and that's
the Disney type movies.
Q: Well if you want my two cents do Wings of Honneamise.
A: Everybody always asks about that one, but it has already been done.
Done badly though, it's sort of ruined.
Q: It's not fair you can only do these things once and once it's ruined once
it's ruined forever.
A: Well you can do it more than once. Lensman was done twice.
Lensman was done by Harmony Gold and we rejected their version. But
what Harmony Gold didn't have was the rights for American distribution. So
once we got those rights we said that even though there's an existing English
version we're not going to accept it. Harmony Gold had put their own music
in it - we put everything back in it the way it originally was, the original
music and everything. The same happened with Wings of Honneamise. It
was dubbed as Star Quest. It was shown out here at a theater, and I was
under the impression a video company had it - perhaps that's worth
investigating further. We've totally lost track of that film.Let's put it this
way - if we could get our hands on it we would. And we would also re-dub
it. There was a showing of it at Mann's Chinese Theater a few years ago and
I had to be out of town that very day. They only showed it there for one
reason. They invited everyone in the universe, somehow they had gotten
hold of fan lists and the like. I got an invitation in the mail. But all my
friends who went said they only did it so they could take pictures of all
these people coming to the theater to see it so they could show these in
newsreels and magazines in Japan that the film opened in the US even
though it really didn't. It was a big scam. Supposedly the fans who saw it
said it was abominable. And I'm talking about anybody out here on the
West Coast that you may know, like Fred Patten. And yet they still
reccommend it to us, saying "Get it, get it!" because they know we'll do a
better job.
There were some movies we were attempting to get, like Venus Wars,
that we gave up on. We gave up for various reasons. One was I wasn't that
crazy about it, and number two, we gave up because the producers of that
are still sort of living in 1980 where they think they can sell these things
for a million dollars and there's nobody in this country that wants to pay that
much. That's why some of these things may never come out. We're
breaking the ice here.
Q: this reminds me of something I found interesting at Project A-Kon,
where I spoke with Trish Ledoux, editor of Animag. She said they had
terrible problems with some companies when they went over and said "Hey,
we're doing an article on Five Star Stories" or something, and the companies
looked at it and said "This is ours, this is ours, and that's ours - why aren't
you paying us a million dollars for use of these characters?" and Trish went
"Oops." But then Miyazaki and such people, the artists who actually write
and create this stuff, were very excited and were very helpful. It seems like
here, where the artists are more interested in having people be exposed to
and enjoy their work, while the studios are only interested in the money.
A: That parallel is in this country. I mean, case in point, look at Disney
and Warner Brothers. Basically why there haven't been many books on
Warner Brothers cartoons is the attitude that "We own Bugs Bunny, so pay
us a million dollars and you can do a book on Bugs Bunny." And that's why
no one has done a book on Bugs Bunny. Now Disney on the other hand
realized that having these books out is publicity, but Warner Bros. is the
opposite. These companies are so big that they can feel this way. It makes
no difference to their bottom line if their films or characters are exploited or
not. So even if you go to them and say "I can take this thing from your
shelf making no money and turn it into money." it may make no difference
to them. they would rather you paid them the million dollars and then you
could do whatever you wish. That's how something like Warriors of the
Wind happened. New World finds out it needs an additional film in its
schedule, and it sees this Japanese animation film, won a lot of awards, so
they pay the million dollars and do it their way.
Q: Namely, they destroy it.
A: They don't even realize there are fans of this stuff. It's such an
incredible ignorance. I've been saying this for years and I'm going to keep
saying it until it happens - maybe it will happen when we open again in
New York - there will be a big story on Entertainment Tonight or in Time
Magazine about the fans of Japanese animation in this country, and that
article or item will show a line of fans outside a theater to see Akira or some
other film, and that's when we'll finally get some recognition. That story
hasn't broken yet, no one has written on the following of anime in this
country. But the fans are indeed out there, and they're everywhere. We're
getting good grosses in every city we play. Even towns that I didn't think
had anime fans like Toledo Ohio.
Q: The dynamics of it is indeed quite interesting. Looking at it from the
net, there are people who post from Wisconsin saying "Where can I get
tapes?" and the like. And a friend of mine who wanted to borrow and copy
some tapes of the popular new show Ranma 1/2, and since he only had a
beta machine had to have someone take it into work to get it copied, he
didn't see the tapes again for a week because everyone in work started
watching it.
A: Well there you go - there's the point. The point is that the people in
work who don't know of this stuff need to see it, need to know it's there.
Hopefully people will get into it by seeing these translations. How can they
see it - the best way is if it's broadcast on television, especially in prime
time. But that's not going to happen. The next best method is maybe to get
it into video stores, but we're going to do it our way. Our way, for the
moment, is to get it into the local art theater, where there's some measure of
respect, where it will be reviewed and hopefully the review will be good.
and maybe they'll check it out when they hear about it. That's where it's
going to start and it's going to have to snowball. We're trying to reach out to
those people. The visuals are strong enough that it doesn't matter what
language it's in to catch their interest.But if it's in English,those people
willwatch it even more, because they'll know what's going on. If things aren't
in English,even if ther's an initial curiosity people lose interest because they
feel they can't understand any of it. You start to lose people that way.
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