Tag: Interviews

Geekly Speaking About interviews Josh A. Cagan

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Josh A. Cagan performs at w00tstock 1.2. Photo by Adam Savage.

There have been many great things to come out of the invention of Twitter, and one of those things is the fact that Joe and Jane Average Geek can have a closer relationship to the celebrities they admire. Of course, sometimes what happens as a result of those Twitter conversations occurs in a completely unpredictable way, and the result can be something rather spectacular.

Take screenwriter Josh A. Cagan (@joshacagan) for example. One minute, he’s noodling around on Twitter, the next he’s starting a friendship with Adam Savage from “Mythbusters,” after that comes an appearance at the inaugural w00tstock shows, and just recently, a script he sold last year was on the 2011 Hollywood Blacklist of the year’s “most liked” spec scripts.

But as Lowell Greenblatt and I found out during our interview with him, Cagan’s life and career has had its low points, too:

  • Am I ever going to start one of these podcasts without some audio difficulties? Skype is great for doing long-distance conference calls, but for some reason we had to stop and start so many times. The best part is that after every time we stopped the call, Skype sent us a “So how are we doing?” feedback form. Also, if you hear clicking, that’s me attempting to log some of these notes during the interview. I promise to use a quiet pen and paper (or my boyfriend’s iPad) next time.
  • Here’s the w00tstock performance by Josh Cagan which got me interested in stalking him following him on Twitter:

    • Josh A. Cagan performing in w00tstock at Largo Los Angeles, CA, 2009. from Kayla Cagan on Vimeo.

  • I gotta say, I only ever listened to the audio and I still cracked up watching the video of Cagan’s performance.
  • The items on the American Science & Surplus Clearance page alone makes this worthy of linkage. No wonder Mrs. Adam Savage took a fancy to the cut of Cagan’s jib.
  • Homestar Runner was one of the best Internet things ever; I’m sad that it hasn’t been updated since December 2010.
  • Yes, Virginia, there was an unreleased Fantastic Four movie from 1994; I don’t encourage people to bootleg media, but it’s the only way you can see the whole thing.
  • Almost every geek knows about “Mystery Science Theater 3000,” but only a select few will recall The Golden Turkey Awards; an interesting side note is that one of its co-authors is now a conservative pundit.
  • Just like Coke and New Coke, some people like the post-MST3K stuff from Cinematic Titanic, others like Riff Trax. You can like both, too! As Tim Gunn says, “It’s all a matter of taste.”
  • Interestingly, this very thing happened again back in July 2009 when the co-heirs to the estates of Superman’s creators were able to get a few, but not all, of the rights to that character back. The result is that Man of Steel is now in production, and the U.K.’s Henry Cavill (“The Tudors”, Stardust) is stepping into the famous tights, sans red briefs.
  • Still going strong, FilmThreat.com is still the awesome resource that Cagan remembers, minus original founder Chris Gore who is now does the film beat at G4’s “Attack of the Show,” amongst other things.
  • Yeah, “Turkish Star Wars” is really a thing.
  • “Undergrads” still maintains an official online presence with two clips from the show on it; I’m sure more stuff is on the fan sites that are linked as well.
  • The Calgary Expo just announced that Cagan, Pete Williams, and Andy Rheingold from the crew of “Undergrads” will be attending their show, which runs from April 27 to April 29 this year. Other recently announced guests include Wil Wheaton, Richard Hatch (both versions of “Battlestar Galactica”), and Tom Felton (Draco Malfoy, from the Harry Potter movies). Get your tickets and/or your passports now!
  • Is now a bad time to confess that I’ve never read Charlotte’s Web?
  • I have to say that having worked with a celebrity’s management agency in my former profession as a luxury real estate broker’s executive assistant, I know from experience that they are the real deal and do a lot for the people they represent. Cagan’s lucky to have had the people at H2F Entertainment at his side for so many years.
  • Just so you know, Gary Glitter is out of prison, and back in the U.K.
  • The sad (or maybe awesome) thing is that Yaffa Blocks still exist at its original website.
  • You can buy The Duff for your Kindle or your bookshelf; author Kody Keplinger’s site is here.
  • According to Gawker.com, here are the “rules” behind the concept of director jail. As for Todd Graff, I’m not sure if he’ll be put behind bars for having directed Joyful Noise, a choir competition movie starring Queen Latifah and Dolly Parton. It made $11 million on a weekend where it went up against the Mark Walhberg vehicle Contraband, the re-release of Beauty and the Beast in 3D and the very awesome and still out in theaters Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol—but it has a 35% rotten rating from the critics. Sounds like Graff just can’t please everyone all at the same time.
  • I remember Adam de la Peña as being a very cool guy to know in high school, and I also remember for our school’s French club and Spanish club fundraiser, he and his classmates translated the witch scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail into Spanish and performed it. Unfortunately, it bombed, because the audiences was all about the broad physical comedy, not the subtle foreign language wordplay comedy. (My original French skit about a writer and the characters in her private detective noir novel went over a little better.)
  • Cagan’s fellow writers in “The Job Factory” are: Rob McKittrick (Waiting…), Matt Allen and Caleb Wilson (Four Christmases and Soul Surfer), and John Davis (The Dukes of Hazzard, the Eureka: Dormant Gene miniseries).
  • Cagan’s comment about Wil Wheaton is referring to an interview I did with him for Sequential Tart.com in 2004 which was so long that it had to be split into two parts. A summer project I have is to convert those mini-tapes into something suitable for a podcast.

Our many thanks again to Josh Cagan for spending so much time with us. If you have suggestions for other people you’d like for us to interview who deserve a wider audience, please let us know in the comments below.

Trisha’s Quote of the Day: How Angelina Jolie gets around the Bechdel Test

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I felt it was a weird thing that every time you ask for a strong female role, it’s written in this strange way where it uses sexuality far too much. Or it’s all about being a woman and beating a man. So it wasn’t a surprise to me that the only way to do a strong female role properly was to not have originally written for a woman.

—The agent-and-publicist-less Angelina Jolie on why she decided to star in Salt, courtesy of the December issue of Vogue.

(Many thanks to indie blogger Anne Thompson for the link.)

Trisha’s Take: How to get the most out of one day at a convention, part 2

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What does dance have to do with comic books? Plenty, says LXD creator Jon Chu

Picking up where I left off, I didn’t stay very long in the southern end of the Javitz Center because the one panel I’d RSVP’d for was in the northern end of the hall with the majority of the large publishers, game companies, and stores.

When I registered as a member of the Press, I had to supply my email address, presumably so that I could receive a confirmation that they received my information. What also happened is that as the convention grew new, my Inbox became flooded with press releases from those same publishers, game companies, stores, and individuals who wished to promote their panels and get members of the Press to write about their work.

I’m not sure if that’s how they operate over at Comic Con in San Diego, but I will say that it was a very smart thing for Reed to do because if it weren’t for that, I wouldn’t have known about the panel featuring Jon Chu from the LXD.

Yes, I’m talking about the dance group which blew everyone away with their exhibition dance during last year’s run of “So You Think You Can Dance,” were invited to do a TED talk/performance (after which Madd Chadd allegedly did the robot with Bill Gates), and brought interpretive dance back to the Academy Awards ceremony. I’d heard about their web series before but didn’t watch any of the episodes for one reason or another, so I thought that it would be great to see what it was all about. The panel didn’t disappoint, and I was even able to speak to creator Jon Chu about the comic book story elements in the web series and how they’d like to tell their story in other mediums.

Listen to the interview with Jon M. Chu (and I apologize for getting the seasons numbers wrong!)

Now, I’d had an expensive hot dog and a medium-sized lemonade before the panel started, which meant by the time the panel was over, I had to use the bathroom. One of the things I remember from my days as a Sequential Tart was often joking about the way one could tell that women had successfully infiltrated the “boys-only” club of comics conventions is that the line for the women’s room was longer than the men’s. Over the years, this “joke” has become a reality, and while I feel great about that in terms of achieving parity, my bladder was not feeling the same way when I encountered the line outside of Hall A.

Despite an amendment to the building code requiring more women’s stalls than men’s in New York City public buildings (PDF), I still feel that if I have to go, I have to go, especially since I’ve had kidney problems ever since I was born. Thus, it was with a little bit of bravado and a whole lot of chutzpah that I turned right around and walked over to the other side of the hall to get in line for the men’s room. Another female attendee had the same idea I did, and as we waited for the one stall, we talked about what we were there at the convention to see, while encouraging the poor confused men who entered and saw us in line to go ahead and use the urinals.

The funniest part of all was catching a glimpse of Brooklyn-based comics artist Dean Haspiel out of the corner of my eye, and saying hello to him… after he washed his hands, of course. He was naturally very surprised to see me, and when I found out that he was on his way to the Vertigo panel, I decided to make that my next stop as well. I got there in time to hear Haspiel speak about his most recent work called Cuba: My Revolution, a collaboration with writer/painter Inverna Lockpez. I attempted to catch Haspiel after the panel for a brief interview, but he said that he had to do a signing at a booth with writer/collaborator Jonathan Ames (The Alcoholic, HBO’s “Bored to Death”) and to try to catch him there.

That was just perfect for me, because by that time, I had started receiving text messages and Speed McNeil and let me know that she was in row F of the Artist’s Alley, which I had completely skipped over during my initial pass. Armed with this information and knowing that I had about an hour or so to kill before Haspiel was free, I wandered back through the Hall A throng and was surprised to find Evil Inc. creator Brad Guigar sitting with Scott Kurtz at the Webcomics.com booth.

I have a special place in my heart for Guigar because he was the first creator whom I’d interviewed the weekend after I left Anime Insider and I’ve followed almost all of his projects with great interest since then. I figured that now was as good a time as any to talk to him about Webcomics.com, and exactly why any and all webcomics creators should join up.

Listen to Brad Guigar’s Webcomics.com pitch, which was successful enough to convince me that our own Kara Dennison needed a 1-year membership

…to be concluded next week

Trisha’s Take: How to get the most out of one day at a convention, part 1

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Approximately 10 years ago, I used to go to a lot of conventions, like the San Diego Comic Con (aka “Nerd Prom”) and Anime Expo. In fact, in 2001, I think I went to six different conventions on two different U.S. coasts.

My most traveled year was 2003 when I was working for the now-defunct Anime Insider as an associate editor and went to the Wizard World conventions in Chicago, Arlington (Texas), and Philadelphia; my busiest year was when I was an assistant editor for Sequential Tart and covered Anime Expo all by myself.

Being such an old hat at attending conventions, I knew what my preparations would be when I made the decision to attend only one day out of three for the New York Comic Con/New York Anime Fest mega-con which was held on October 8 through October 10 at the Javitz Center:

Make sure you have your badge and that your new digital voice recorder and your cell phone has a full battery.

Eat at least once in the middle of the day.

Stay hydrated.

Sit down if and when you need to do so.

One of the nifty things that Reed Expositions did for everyone who doesn’t have an iPhone or an Android phone to download their apps was to not only post their schedule online, but for the “cost” of signing in with your email address, you could create your own schedule of panel events and save them to your Microsoft Outlook calendar. Because my work Outlook calendar is synched up with my Windows Moblie phone, I did just that, and was able to cherry-pick the panels I wanted to attend. It was difficult to make choices, but in the end, I ended up choosing a few things that were different enough in scope to be interesting to me but familiar enough to where I’d be able to hang out with old friends.

Because I’m a wuss, after exiting the subway at 34th Street and Eighth Avenue, I hailed a cab and paid $5 plus tip to get to the Javitz on Eleventh Avenue, which was closed to cabs dropping people off. My cabbie had to make an illegal U-turn and dropped me off outside the concrete barricades. All during the trip, he kept asking me about why so many people were going there, so I helpfully explained.

Unlike our esteemed gaming expert Adrienne Ryan, I had been to the Javitz for a previous NYCC and NYAF and so finding the press room wasn’t that difficult for me. I would find out later that they were charging something like $5.95 an hour for wifi access in the press room, where several people were already camped out with laptops and a few more were conducting interviews.

Had I more time, I probably would have investigated the press options more, but I was running late to the first panel on my schedule. As I walked towards the room, I saw voice actor/director Mike Sinterniklaas (Dean Venture of “The Venture Bros.”, Leonard from “TMNT”) chatting with a cosplayer. I gave him a hug and helped him by holding his smoothie and Danish while he got her contact information, for she wanted some more information about voice acting for his studio. Just as we were chatting, Rachel Lillis, another voice actor appeared and I walked with them to the panel room.

The title of the panel was “East Meets West” but as more American voice actors appeared (including Stephanie Sheh and Tom Wayland), they started to wonder if they were supposed to be on the panel or if it was a panel for Japanese voice actor Minori Chihara and maybe only one or two other people, for there were only three microphones on stage. Sinterniklaas volunteered to be the group’s spokesperson and after a quick conversation with the staff, another table and three more microphones came out. I was only able to stay for the first half of the panel, but one of the things I was glad to learn was that when Chihara-san records her audition tapes at home, she uses an Sony IC Digital Voice Recorder, just like the one I just bought in preparation for this weekend.

As I made my way through NYAF’s Artist Alley/panels area/Maid Cafe-and-stage, I remarked that the average age of the attendees seemed to be college-aged. For the most part, they were very rambunctious and giddy, and I’m sorry I wasn’t able to linger to find out how the artists were faring in the basement. I also ran into Japanator editor Brad Rice, who took great pains to explain to everyone who asked that no, he wasn’t cosplaying as Harry Potter, thankyouverymuch.

Upstairs, I wandered through the Autograph area section, waving hello to some friends staffing the Otakon booth as well as Eisner-award winning editor Adam P. Knave (Popgun) and Attila Adorjany, two friends who joined forces to form Voltron purchase some booth space in the small press area. They were located next to Chris Hastings (The Adventures of Dr. McNinja). I would find out later on that the ended up co-opting booth space from Flaming Carrot creator Bob Burden, who himself traded up to a corner booth in the Alley and then later on Sunday would move into the larger Exhibit Hall on the north side, proving that even in the comic book trade it’s all about “location, location, location!”

Just beyond that was the comics Artist Alley section, and I was on a mission to find Finder creator Carla Speed McNeil, because in addition to being one of my favorite artists ever, she’s also a real good friend whom I hadn’t seen in about five years. My plan was to hang out with her at her booth for a while to tease her about “selling out” to Dark Horse… except, I had no idea how to find her.

This was a problem earlier on the NYCC website, where when you clicked on an Artist Alley name and a large graphic of their came up, but no biographical information or location information. However, I thought by the time the show came around, there’s be some information in the program book, but no dice. I would find out later on that there was one sign in the Artist Alley area that had a list of creators and their booth numbers. Not good, Reed. Not good.

Instead, I decided to wander the AA to see who else had shown up that I knew and remembered from my comics-peddling days and ran into Kevin Bolk from Interrobang Studios, who had no idea that Kara Dennison had written about him for this very website. As I wandered about, trying to find Speed McNeil, I found children’s book author and illustrator Nick Bell who was giving out free mini-buttons which read “i am great” to promote his new book Brian the Great and his existing book Mary the Tooth Fairy.

Listen to the interview with Nick Bell

Ever since I became the aunt to two very adorable nieces, I’ve become fascinated with the idea of finding children’s books which are smart and encourage young girls to grow up to become strong women. Since I had it on me at the time, I decided to do a quickie interview with Bell on my new recorder, and the results will go up in a few days.

A person could spend hours wandering the AA, but I couldn’t linger, for I had to get over to the north end of the convention hall to attend the only panel to whose press release I responded favorably.

To be continued…