Interview by James Eatock - November 1997 / May
1999
Is
that Tom Sito?
Recently
I was browsing the He-Man and She-Ra sites
and I noticed you had one of my episodes up. Wow! It was
fun to see it again.
You
did some great directing for the She-Ra series!
Thank
you for your interest in our old Alma Mater and by all means
feel free to print it. The photo now contains two producers,
two directors, three authors and a trade union president.
Funny what time can do. I'll scrounge about for anything,
I'd ask Loo-Kee but I can never find the little beast. Did
you know that Arthur Nadel, our head writer, directed the
last Elvis movie? I believe it was Clambake.
Who
came up with the idea for Loo-Kee?
Arthur
Nadel dreamed up Loo-Kee and fought for it when we all thought
it wouldn't work. Time has proved him right. He did pass
away a few years ago after a long career.
What
are the other staff members doing?
After
the demise of Filmation Robert Lamb returned to his native
Kentucky where I believe he was doing something for the
local Christian media.
I've
interviewed a few other writers, such as Larry DiTillio
and Bob Forward.
Great
that you got in touch with the guys you mentioned. They're
great guys. Robby London, another writer, is today a vice
president at DIC productions, Don Heckman works at Universal
and still contributes musical reviews for the L.A. Times.
He was originally the first Rock & Roll reviewer for
the New York Times in the late 1960's. John Grusd
is also at DIC. I don't know what happened to Rowby Goren,
he was doing wild public-access cable shows for a while.
Robert
Lamb had mentioned that in the episode "Evilseed"
you animated the death of the villain?
Yes
I did animate those scenes in Evilseed. I had actually forgotten
about them until you mentioned it! Bob Arkwright was directing
that episode and he wanted me specifically to animate those.
When you directed Saturday morning cartoons in the US you
learned to cultivate the few animators who craved a challenge
and funnel to them the good character scenes. When I directed
I used Lenny Graves and Mike Girard. Mike later became a
big gun on the early Simpsons episodes.
I
was talking the other day with Dori Littel Herrick who was
the assistant head of cleanup at Filmation about your communications
and getting me hooked up with Robert Lamb. We recall how
after the studio closed former staff had to cover up their
Filmation past because the feature studios had a bias against
Saturday Morning credits. Now after the years fans like
you have made us re-examine our past work and give it a
new respect. Thank you for your zeal and admiration.
What
other scenes do you remember animating?
I
did do a good scene of He-Man full figure in profile facing
stage right punching his way through a wall and forcing
the last part of it open with his foot ("The Heart
of A Giant" and "Shera Makes A Promise").
Bob Arkwright responded best to hot-doggin' animation. Steve
Clark, Hal Sutherland and some of the others didn't want
the complexity.
Funny
how for all the attitude about He-Man and She-Ra
later in the great theatrical animation boom of the 1990's
Filmation folk contributed heavily. Dan St. Pierre the art
director of Disney's Tarzan was a Filmation layout
artist. The head of layout on Dreamworks' The Prince
of Egypt Lorenzo Martinez is Filmation. Almost the
entire effects department Mark Myer, Randy Fullmer, Jeff
Howard, Mauro Maressa matriculated to Disney's effects department,
ditto for many of the career key assistants like Randy Sanchez
and the late Bruce Strock.
