After co-creating characters like the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Kevin Eastman could have just sat back on his laurels and collected very large checks for the rest of his life. But first and foremost Kevin Eastman is a comic book fan and creator and when you give those guys funds, great things can happen. Eastman bought Heavy Metal magazine in 1991, wrote the movie Heavy Metal 2000 and founded the Words and Pictures Museum which is devoted exclusively to comic book art.
His latest work is being the animation supervisor for the straight to DVD anime Highlander: The Search for Vengeance. Highlander: The Search for Vengeance is directed by the legendary Yoshiaki Kawajiri and continues the story of the clan MacLeod. Far in the future Colin MacLeod battles his ancient enemy, Marcus Octavius, in the ruins of New York City.
Check out the official site for Highlander: The Search for Vengeance
Daniel Robert Epstein: At the last San Diego Comicon, [TMNT producer] Thomas Gray told me that he brought you into Highlander.
Kevin Eastman: Yes, absolutely. We had met a couple different times about various projects we wanted to do together. We had been friends since back in the day when we did the first live action Turtles move together. I was pitching animation this and animation that, the wave of the future. Being the big fan of anime that I am, I said, Wouldnt it be interesting if we took Hollywood-branded trademarks to an anime style to see if we can come up with an audience. He said, Yeah, and then we worked out a deal for the Highlander project.
DRE: Whose idea was Yoshiaki [Kawajiri]?
KE: We knew we wanted to work with Madhouse Studios since we are huge fans of the talent that is part of that company. I thought it would be exceptionally cool if we able to work with a classic talent like Kawajiri. We didnt think it would work. Hes a guy whos more interested in doing his own projects compared to a licensed project where you have to follow certain rules. Highlander has specific rules and storylines and plotlines that need to be adhered to for that fan base. It turned out he was interested in doing something like that.
DRE: It must have been amazing to be able to say that you got him.
KE: Totally.
DRE: Im not a big fan of anime but I liked this movie. The reason I dont like anime is because the stories often stop making sense
KE: Very quickly unfortunately. Usually about the middle of the second act.
DRE: How difficult was it and whose job was it to make sure the Asian filmmakers allowed this movie to make sense?
KE: Im not a huge, huge fan of anime, I love it more for the art. I am constantly frustrated by their style of storytelling, of script development and storyboards. A lot of times they will work on a very short, simple treatment. The story development process will take many months so whatever idea they may have had when they started storyboarding at the beginning of movie has been influenced by something else theyve seen or some other idea that theyve had. Then around the middle of the second act, they veer off in that direction. So most of the time you have an incredible first act, get lost in the second act and by the third act, you have no fucking idea what the story is or where its going. You dont even care about the characters anymore.
The goal of me and [producer] Joe Pierson was to bring in American three-act storytelling and use the sensibilities and skills of all these amazing, talented Japanese artists to make a film thats more acceptable to a world audience instead of just an Asian audience. It was an uphill battle. Joe and I sat down with a wonderful writer, David Abramowitz and we beat out a detailed treatment. David then wrote a wonderful script and we sent it over, and essentially the word we got back was Kawajiri really appreciates the pile of paper you sent over, but he chucked it away and is going to write his own movie. We had to start from square one and bring him back on track to make the movie. The movie ended up being about 60% of what we wrote. For the rest of it he had his own take on a number of things, which caused some re-editing issues and things like that to make it a bit more understandable and accessible. I do know Imagi is talking about releasing both the American version and the Kawajiri version to satisfy both audiences. I understand because I am used to writing and drawing my own stories and I dont want somebody telling me what to do with my stuff. Hes been that type of artist for a long time so when you bring in this Hollywood-style filmmaking of Heres your script and you have to follow this, I think that it just doesnt jive with his sensibilities.
DRE: Did you do any drawing or designing for the movie?
KE: I did a whole bunch and was asked not to send any of it. [laughs] Again Joe and I had sat down and he banged out some thumbnails and I had already worked on some designs and concepts. For me, its often easier for me to draw you a picture of what Im thinking than for me to tell you about it. So I did scores of sketches and designs and put together a whole package to send over. Then a representative from Madhouse Studios said, Thats not really a good idea. He would actually be insulted to be given some specific creative direction from here. Let him do what he does best. Give him a script to generally follow and let him go nuts.
DRE: That is a very interesting process.
KE: It is. It was frustrating on a number of levels and exciting on a bunch of other levels; again because youre working with a legend. The other part is that it is a licensed property so we were beholden to Davis-Panzer who owns and basically made Highlander what it is. Whether or not the previous movies and TV were good or bad, they control that property. I can relate to that myself since along with Peter [Laird] I own the Turtles property. We always want to try and keep that within the characters while still being creative.
DRE: So none of your artwork got into the film?
KE: No none of it was utilized. I had a very specific vision of the movie stylistically that I was passing to Karajiwi but he preferred to have his own vision, untainted by anyone elses thoughts.
DRE: Was the Highlander anime always going to be R-rated?
KE: Yes. We wanted to put it on that level of an adult-style science fiction story. I think that there is some nudity in there but oftentimes it isnt so much the nudity as it is the violence that really will bring you the R rating and there is quite a lot of violence in it.
DRE: Yeah, its great like that. [laughs]
KE: [laughs] I hear you.
DRE: Are you a big Highlander fan?
KE: I do remember very clearly when the first movie came out. I thought it was an absolutely fantastic vision. Christopher Lambert had only done Tarzan so he really came on the scene with Highlander. Ive been a fan of those types of stories and Heavy Metal magazine for years and years so I really gravitated to the immortal thing and the sword fighting. I put it up there with some of my favorite Ridley Scott movies, like Blade Runner and any other things like that.
DRE: It is just a weird coincidence that the guys who produced this are the guys who produced the new Turtles movie?
KE: Thats the ultimate question. When we started talking with Tom Gray, it was prior to them acquiring the rights to the Turtles, which I still own a big chunk of. We wanted to do other projects like Highlander animated movies. So we had many months of talks with Tom about other projects, possibly doing another Heavy Metal movie, other kinds of animated movies that we think would work in the DVD marketplace and with anime growing in popularity, we thought they would take more American-styled storytelling, whether original or licensed property and do it in a direct to DVD form. I think theres a real strong audience there. Highlander had actually gotten underway prior to the Turtles getting underway, at least contractually and conceptually. During that process, [Imagi deputy chairman and co-chief executive officer] Francis Kao said that he was always interested in the Turtles and did we think there was a way to work with Mirage to bring that to life. So I helped hook up his appropriate people to talk to the other appropriate people and deals were negotiated to work on the Turtles film. I think [TMNT director] Kevin Munroe did a great job building up the foundation of the movie. I had worked on the Turtles for 20 some odd years and certainly had more than enough of my own input into the foundation for everything else to build on. So I thought Kevin did a wonderful representation of the property, bringing it into the year 2007 so personally it was a compliment that we found a new audience. Its really amazing that it still resonates with an audience and the kids somewhat.
DRE: Did you say that you still own the Turtles? I thought you sold the Turtles.
KE: No. That seems to be a continuing, on-going question and its due to whatever Mirage is putting out. When I started working on the second Heavy Metal movie and Heavy Metal as a company started growing the Turtles were really in a sleeping period. I told Peter that I wanted to spend more time with Heavy Metal and he said, Why dont we do a deal where Ill buy out your creative control? I still retain an ownership in the property and I get checks every quarter. Why wouldnt I, I drew the first Turtles, and Ive been with that property for 20 some odd years. So we reached an agreement that he would take over creative control. But I still own the Turtles and I still get money and Im grateful for that because Ive got bills to pay. A lot of people say, Why did you sell out on the Turtles? I say, First, fuck you I didnt. They are still very much my characters and whatever is done with them, hopefully Peter pulls together the right people to put together the vision that he and I created together.
DRE: This is what Peter told me four or five years ago, I think Kevin was just tired of it. He wanted to move on and has other things to spend more time on.
KE: I wouldnt say I was tired of it, but I would say that the fact that when Peter and I first started doing the Turtles together, we were spending 90% of our time drawing and writing and 10% of our time doing business. That was from 84 through 86, during the time that Turtles really started taking off. By late 87, we were spending 90% of our time on business and 10% on drawing. There were important lessons to be learned, things to be figured out, how animation works and how ideas work, licensing deals and how they work. But I never thought it would go beyond the first issue. I was a fan of Vaughn Bode and Richard Corben and underground artists like Robert Crumb, and people like that who spent their time going from character to character, idea to idea, long story, short story, whatever stuff you wanted to do. I had already set up two or three other things that I wanted to do after that first issue of the Turtles came out. The fact that it took off and provided me with a way to make a living made me want to stick with it for a while. Im glad I did. I bought Heavy Metal magazine in 1991 and I worked with Columbia TriStar to get the first film released and the second movie underway, built up the magazine subscription base, added a double line of hardcover publishing books and was working with a lot of other creative people like Simon Bisley, who has been a longtime collaborator of mine. Its good to work with other creative people from time to time. Peter and I only did like 21 issues of the Turtles together. The first 16 were just me and him. The next couple we wrote together and I laid it out, we partially inked with a group of people and issue 50 we did together. But thats not really a lot material that we did together. By issue 12, we had already said we wanted to start working with other people creatively. I started working with Eric Talbot and Simon Bisley and other people like that just to get the creative juices flowing and Peter did the same.
So tired of it? Yeah, to a point. But I still have more Turtle stories to tell, but at the same time, Im really enjoying the more edgy stuff I get to play with, editing Heavy Metal magazine, working with the kinds of artists and the type of material that inspired me so long ago.
DRE: If someone wanted to do something R-rated with the Turtles, would you consider getting involved then?
KE: Theres a funny story that sums up that question. The very last Turtle story I did was about a 100 page book called Body Count which I did with Simon Bisley. Thats probably just about the closest to an R-rated Turtles youll ever get. In the early 90s Simon was visiting and everyone was like John Woo, John Woo, John Woo and he was like, Who the fuck is John Woo? So I showed him The Killer and Bullet in the Head and at the same time we had been discussing doing some Turtles together. Then he said, Dude, we should do the longest running gunfight in comics and we should do it with the Turtles. I said, Well, thats sounds cool, but not all the Turtles. I wanted to just use Raphael, who was my favorite Turtle and Casey Jones who is my favorite character. I wrote Body Count and I had it laid out so that the action was a little off-panel. But Simon was like, Fuck that. So I think we got the rating of the highest flying eyeball count in Wizard magazine. There were blood and guts splattered everywhere, it was complete mayhem. It was the closest wed ever get to telling a John Woo-style Turtles story. That was obviously Petes least favorite Turtle story ever [laughs]. The amount of fan mail we got on it was pretty tremendous. People were like, Finally, the Turtles the way they should be: kicking some ass. But the Turtles franchise is still ruled by the beasts that have their licenses. The most recent Turtle movie is edgy but its still beholden to major licensees, like PlayMates Toys and the people who make the cell phone downloads and ice cream sandwiches. The marketing people at Warner Bros and The Weinstein Company wanted a very specific family-style film that would reach as wide an audience as possible so they can make as much money as possible.
DRE: I asked Peter this, did any comic book retailers ever drive a dumptruck full of black-and-white comics up to your house and drop them on your front lawn?
KE: No [laughs]. We still get blamed for the black and white boom. Its funny because underground comics have been around for years and [Cerebus creator] Dave Sim was a direct inspiration for us to self publish. Along comes the first issue of Turtles and we produced 3000 copies which sold out in a couple of weeks. We printed more and sold out. The first issue was priced at $1.50 and on the collectors market it was being sold for $25. So this was a hot new market. We counted at one point, 21 Turtles knockoffs. Anybody who put out a black and white comic for a very short period of time was suddenly getting orders for 100,000 or 150,000, and thats a lot of money for a black and white comic. Collectors were buying them and speculating that they were going to be worth $50, $60, or $80 down the road and that they would be able to put their kids through college by selling them. Soon everybody realized that they couldnt give them away and the market tanked and everybody dumped them. Fortunately nobody dumped them on our lawn. The same thing happened when Image Comics and all those guys got into it. The Death of Superman sold like seven million copies. With collectors buying 200, 300, 400 copies of a seven million press run and its not going to be worth more than two cents a copy in years to come.
DRE: Thats about what they sell for right now, I think.
KE: They probably line their hamster cages with them.
DRE: No, really. I think they sell them in the dime box at conventions.
KE: Ive been in the business since 1984 and Ive seen the self-publishing business go through the black and white phase and the color/multi-cover phase, the trading card phase, the action figure phase. The collectors come in and drive the market up to unprecedented heights and then when they realize the stuff they speculated on isnt going to be worth anything they all go away and what youre left with are the readers. The readers are the ones who keep it going through thick and thin because they dont really go away.
DRE: Richard Corben has gotten back into doing mainstream comics in the past few years. Im waiting to see something from Simon Bisley. Are you guys talking about anything?
KE: Yeah, Simon and I are talking about another project that we want to do together. Simons been doing higher priced fine art stuff. Collectors are really getting into his work and hes finding that the comic book work is tedious. The last fully painted comic book project that he worked on was this project that he and I worked on together called Simon Coldwater. We never finished it because part way through he said, Its just gotten to be too much fucking work to paint every panel like I used to. Im getting too old and Id rather spend my time doing beautiful paintings and doing my pen and ink line work on the comic pages. We talked about having him back because theres a 100 page story we want to do in Heavy Metal. But its more a matter of clearing each others schedule. Were developing a new film called Heavy Metal Unloaded for Sony BMG right now, which looks like its going to go. Theres another project that Simon and I did together called Fistful of Blood, which Im going to direct as a live-action picture later this year.
DRE: Wow! I didnt know about that.
KE: Yeah. Were starting to put the pieces together on that. Its a $2.5 million production. Well start small, much like I did with the comics. If its good, its my fault and if its bad, its my fault. With that type of a budget, I dont have to worry about any type of studio or other kind of people, coming in and fucking it up.
DRE: What is it about?
KE: Its actually based on a graphic novel that Simon and I did. We did it in ten page installments in Heavy Metal magazine about two and a half years ago. We did a hardcover collection, which you can find on the Heavy Metal website or at a local comic store. Its basically Fistful of Dollars done Heavy Metalstyle with a female lead. Theres a gang of bad guys on one side of town and a gang of bad guys on the other side town and this town is trapped in the middle. This lone drifter comes into town and plays one gang off the other, ends up wiping them all out and saves the family. Were doing it with vampires on one side and zombies on the other and a Heavy Metal babe heroine in the middle as the avenging angel with no name.
DRE: Thats pretty ambitious for $2.5 million.
KE: I know. Im pretty psyched. Ive storyboarded the whole thing myself, working with a good buddy of mine Paul Jenkins
DRE: The comic book writer?
KE: Yeah. Paul and I go back a long way. I hired Paul back at Mirage in 89. We both lived in Northampton, Mass and he was in need of work and we were in need of help, so he came over. He ran the production department for me at Tundra Publishing for a while and when he left Tundra, he went on to write his first comic book, Hellblazer. I talk with Paul at least once or twice a week on a variety of things were doing together. Pauls a great guy.
DRE: I was just watching A Fistful of Dollars the other night and was thinking, Why doesnt someone do this story again? And now I hear about thisits a little weird. [laughs]
KE: [laughs] That is really weird.
When Fistful of Dollars came out, Sergio Leone was actually sued because he stole so many shots specifically from what Akira Kurosawa had done in Yojimbo. Leone just made it a western and made Clint a star. Years later, Walter Hill directed Bruce Willis in Last Man Standing, which again is the exact same story as Yojimbo/Fistful of Dollars. Ive always loved that simple, basic story with single location kind of thing. Ive wanted to direct a movie for a long time and Ive been on a lot of sets like the Turtle sets, sets with Julie [Strain, Kevins wife] so I wanted to try my chops at it. I storyboarded all the Turtles issues I worked on except for one that Peter and I did together, probably storyboarded over 1000 pages of stuff that Simon and I did together, Ive storyboarded Fistful of Blood for the movie project. Theres a single location, the town, there are 14 zombies, nine vampires, four tourists, three family members, a smattering of other characters and our lead. So its a limited cast, limited location and now it is just a matter of what I do with it.
DRE: I know you were good friends with the great Andy Sidaris before he died; it sounds like his style of filmmaking was an influence on you.
KE: I have huge respect for him. Not only was he a first-rate character in every sense of the word. But he had this other life as this legend that won 11 Emmys and directed four Olympic games and 29 years of ABCs Wide World of Sports. The man actually designed how to shoot and photograph Monday Night Football. I first knew him after he was already making movies for a while. He would bring down these stories for a movie he was doing like Return to Savage Beach or Day of the Warrior, and it would be a 30 page outline with a smattering of different types of dialogue and hed come in saying, Best damn script ever fucking written. Fuck Tom Cruise. Fuck these guys and their pansy ass movies. This is a real fucking movie. You used to think he was kidding, but he was serious. But the best part is that his movies have a very specific style and he knew exactly what he wanted to do. One of the things that got me really excited about wanting to direct was watching him on his sets figuring out what he wanted to do and how he was going to do it and his movies only cost $350,000 or $400,000. The guy mortgaged his house to make that stuff happen. The way he would cheat shots was brilliant. One time he needed two girls to run down a deserted beach. So he got two girls to run down a crowded public beach and he would shoot and edit in such a way that it would look deserted. It was the Roger Corman school of fudging it and still making it look cool with no money. I remember watching [director] Steve Barron on the set of the first Turtles movie and it seemed like he was one man in a sea of people asking him questions all at the same time. Watching the process made me think that it is a miracle that any movie comes out good ever.
Andy will be greatly missed. Besides giving me my first acting role, if you are on set and youre free, then you are in the movie. He used to come out to the house three or four times a week, steal cigarettes and have a Coke when he wasnt supposed to. Hed come in and just start rattling of stories about his crazy day or stories from 30 years ago that would just crack you up.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
His latest work is being the animation supervisor for the straight to DVD anime Highlander: The Search for Vengeance. Highlander: The Search for Vengeance is directed by the legendary Yoshiaki Kawajiri and continues the story of the clan MacLeod. Far in the future Colin MacLeod battles his ancient enemy, Marcus Octavius, in the ruins of New York City.
Check out the official site for Highlander: The Search for Vengeance
Daniel Robert Epstein: At the last San Diego Comicon, [TMNT producer] Thomas Gray told me that he brought you into Highlander.
Kevin Eastman: Yes, absolutely. We had met a couple different times about various projects we wanted to do together. We had been friends since back in the day when we did the first live action Turtles move together. I was pitching animation this and animation that, the wave of the future. Being the big fan of anime that I am, I said, Wouldnt it be interesting if we took Hollywood-branded trademarks to an anime style to see if we can come up with an audience. He said, Yeah, and then we worked out a deal for the Highlander project.
DRE: Whose idea was Yoshiaki [Kawajiri]?
KE: We knew we wanted to work with Madhouse Studios since we are huge fans of the talent that is part of that company. I thought it would be exceptionally cool if we able to work with a classic talent like Kawajiri. We didnt think it would work. Hes a guy whos more interested in doing his own projects compared to a licensed project where you have to follow certain rules. Highlander has specific rules and storylines and plotlines that need to be adhered to for that fan base. It turned out he was interested in doing something like that.
DRE: It must have been amazing to be able to say that you got him.
KE: Totally.
DRE: Im not a big fan of anime but I liked this movie. The reason I dont like anime is because the stories often stop making sense
KE: Very quickly unfortunately. Usually about the middle of the second act.
DRE: How difficult was it and whose job was it to make sure the Asian filmmakers allowed this movie to make sense?
KE: Im not a huge, huge fan of anime, I love it more for the art. I am constantly frustrated by their style of storytelling, of script development and storyboards. A lot of times they will work on a very short, simple treatment. The story development process will take many months so whatever idea they may have had when they started storyboarding at the beginning of movie has been influenced by something else theyve seen or some other idea that theyve had. Then around the middle of the second act, they veer off in that direction. So most of the time you have an incredible first act, get lost in the second act and by the third act, you have no fucking idea what the story is or where its going. You dont even care about the characters anymore.
The goal of me and [producer] Joe Pierson was to bring in American three-act storytelling and use the sensibilities and skills of all these amazing, talented Japanese artists to make a film thats more acceptable to a world audience instead of just an Asian audience. It was an uphill battle. Joe and I sat down with a wonderful writer, David Abramowitz and we beat out a detailed treatment. David then wrote a wonderful script and we sent it over, and essentially the word we got back was Kawajiri really appreciates the pile of paper you sent over, but he chucked it away and is going to write his own movie. We had to start from square one and bring him back on track to make the movie. The movie ended up being about 60% of what we wrote. For the rest of it he had his own take on a number of things, which caused some re-editing issues and things like that to make it a bit more understandable and accessible. I do know Imagi is talking about releasing both the American version and the Kawajiri version to satisfy both audiences. I understand because I am used to writing and drawing my own stories and I dont want somebody telling me what to do with my stuff. Hes been that type of artist for a long time so when you bring in this Hollywood-style filmmaking of Heres your script and you have to follow this, I think that it just doesnt jive with his sensibilities.
DRE: Did you do any drawing or designing for the movie?
KE: I did a whole bunch and was asked not to send any of it. [laughs] Again Joe and I had sat down and he banged out some thumbnails and I had already worked on some designs and concepts. For me, its often easier for me to draw you a picture of what Im thinking than for me to tell you about it. So I did scores of sketches and designs and put together a whole package to send over. Then a representative from Madhouse Studios said, Thats not really a good idea. He would actually be insulted to be given some specific creative direction from here. Let him do what he does best. Give him a script to generally follow and let him go nuts.
DRE: That is a very interesting process.
KE: It is. It was frustrating on a number of levels and exciting on a bunch of other levels; again because youre working with a legend. The other part is that it is a licensed property so we were beholden to Davis-Panzer who owns and basically made Highlander what it is. Whether or not the previous movies and TV were good or bad, they control that property. I can relate to that myself since along with Peter [Laird] I own the Turtles property. We always want to try and keep that within the characters while still being creative.
DRE: So none of your artwork got into the film?
KE: No none of it was utilized. I had a very specific vision of the movie stylistically that I was passing to Karajiwi but he preferred to have his own vision, untainted by anyone elses thoughts.
DRE: Was the Highlander anime always going to be R-rated?
KE: Yes. We wanted to put it on that level of an adult-style science fiction story. I think that there is some nudity in there but oftentimes it isnt so much the nudity as it is the violence that really will bring you the R rating and there is quite a lot of violence in it.
DRE: Yeah, its great like that. [laughs]
KE: [laughs] I hear you.
DRE: Are you a big Highlander fan?
KE: I do remember very clearly when the first movie came out. I thought it was an absolutely fantastic vision. Christopher Lambert had only done Tarzan so he really came on the scene with Highlander. Ive been a fan of those types of stories and Heavy Metal magazine for years and years so I really gravitated to the immortal thing and the sword fighting. I put it up there with some of my favorite Ridley Scott movies, like Blade Runner and any other things like that.
DRE: It is just a weird coincidence that the guys who produced this are the guys who produced the new Turtles movie?
KE: Thats the ultimate question. When we started talking with Tom Gray, it was prior to them acquiring the rights to the Turtles, which I still own a big chunk of. We wanted to do other projects like Highlander animated movies. So we had many months of talks with Tom about other projects, possibly doing another Heavy Metal movie, other kinds of animated movies that we think would work in the DVD marketplace and with anime growing in popularity, we thought they would take more American-styled storytelling, whether original or licensed property and do it in a direct to DVD form. I think theres a real strong audience there. Highlander had actually gotten underway prior to the Turtles getting underway, at least contractually and conceptually. During that process, [Imagi deputy chairman and co-chief executive officer] Francis Kao said that he was always interested in the Turtles and did we think there was a way to work with Mirage to bring that to life. So I helped hook up his appropriate people to talk to the other appropriate people and deals were negotiated to work on the Turtles film. I think [TMNT director] Kevin Munroe did a great job building up the foundation of the movie. I had worked on the Turtles for 20 some odd years and certainly had more than enough of my own input into the foundation for everything else to build on. So I thought Kevin did a wonderful representation of the property, bringing it into the year 2007 so personally it was a compliment that we found a new audience. Its really amazing that it still resonates with an audience and the kids somewhat.
DRE: Did you say that you still own the Turtles? I thought you sold the Turtles.
KE: No. That seems to be a continuing, on-going question and its due to whatever Mirage is putting out. When I started working on the second Heavy Metal movie and Heavy Metal as a company started growing the Turtles were really in a sleeping period. I told Peter that I wanted to spend more time with Heavy Metal and he said, Why dont we do a deal where Ill buy out your creative control? I still retain an ownership in the property and I get checks every quarter. Why wouldnt I, I drew the first Turtles, and Ive been with that property for 20 some odd years. So we reached an agreement that he would take over creative control. But I still own the Turtles and I still get money and Im grateful for that because Ive got bills to pay. A lot of people say, Why did you sell out on the Turtles? I say, First, fuck you I didnt. They are still very much my characters and whatever is done with them, hopefully Peter pulls together the right people to put together the vision that he and I created together.
DRE: This is what Peter told me four or five years ago, I think Kevin was just tired of it. He wanted to move on and has other things to spend more time on.
KE: I wouldnt say I was tired of it, but I would say that the fact that when Peter and I first started doing the Turtles together, we were spending 90% of our time drawing and writing and 10% of our time doing business. That was from 84 through 86, during the time that Turtles really started taking off. By late 87, we were spending 90% of our time on business and 10% on drawing. There were important lessons to be learned, things to be figured out, how animation works and how ideas work, licensing deals and how they work. But I never thought it would go beyond the first issue. I was a fan of Vaughn Bode and Richard Corben and underground artists like Robert Crumb, and people like that who spent their time going from character to character, idea to idea, long story, short story, whatever stuff you wanted to do. I had already set up two or three other things that I wanted to do after that first issue of the Turtles came out. The fact that it took off and provided me with a way to make a living made me want to stick with it for a while. Im glad I did. I bought Heavy Metal magazine in 1991 and I worked with Columbia TriStar to get the first film released and the second movie underway, built up the magazine subscription base, added a double line of hardcover publishing books and was working with a lot of other creative people like Simon Bisley, who has been a longtime collaborator of mine. Its good to work with other creative people from time to time. Peter and I only did like 21 issues of the Turtles together. The first 16 were just me and him. The next couple we wrote together and I laid it out, we partially inked with a group of people and issue 50 we did together. But thats not really a lot material that we did together. By issue 12, we had already said we wanted to start working with other people creatively. I started working with Eric Talbot and Simon Bisley and other people like that just to get the creative juices flowing and Peter did the same.
So tired of it? Yeah, to a point. But I still have more Turtle stories to tell, but at the same time, Im really enjoying the more edgy stuff I get to play with, editing Heavy Metal magazine, working with the kinds of artists and the type of material that inspired me so long ago.
DRE: If someone wanted to do something R-rated with the Turtles, would you consider getting involved then?
KE: Theres a funny story that sums up that question. The very last Turtle story I did was about a 100 page book called Body Count which I did with Simon Bisley. Thats probably just about the closest to an R-rated Turtles youll ever get. In the early 90s Simon was visiting and everyone was like John Woo, John Woo, John Woo and he was like, Who the fuck is John Woo? So I showed him The Killer and Bullet in the Head and at the same time we had been discussing doing some Turtles together. Then he said, Dude, we should do the longest running gunfight in comics and we should do it with the Turtles. I said, Well, thats sounds cool, but not all the Turtles. I wanted to just use Raphael, who was my favorite Turtle and Casey Jones who is my favorite character. I wrote Body Count and I had it laid out so that the action was a little off-panel. But Simon was like, Fuck that. So I think we got the rating of the highest flying eyeball count in Wizard magazine. There were blood and guts splattered everywhere, it was complete mayhem. It was the closest wed ever get to telling a John Woo-style Turtles story. That was obviously Petes least favorite Turtle story ever [laughs]. The amount of fan mail we got on it was pretty tremendous. People were like, Finally, the Turtles the way they should be: kicking some ass. But the Turtles franchise is still ruled by the beasts that have their licenses. The most recent Turtle movie is edgy but its still beholden to major licensees, like PlayMates Toys and the people who make the cell phone downloads and ice cream sandwiches. The marketing people at Warner Bros and The Weinstein Company wanted a very specific family-style film that would reach as wide an audience as possible so they can make as much money as possible.
DRE: I asked Peter this, did any comic book retailers ever drive a dumptruck full of black-and-white comics up to your house and drop them on your front lawn?
KE: No [laughs]. We still get blamed for the black and white boom. Its funny because underground comics have been around for years and [Cerebus creator] Dave Sim was a direct inspiration for us to self publish. Along comes the first issue of Turtles and we produced 3000 copies which sold out in a couple of weeks. We printed more and sold out. The first issue was priced at $1.50 and on the collectors market it was being sold for $25. So this was a hot new market. We counted at one point, 21 Turtles knockoffs. Anybody who put out a black and white comic for a very short period of time was suddenly getting orders for 100,000 or 150,000, and thats a lot of money for a black and white comic. Collectors were buying them and speculating that they were going to be worth $50, $60, or $80 down the road and that they would be able to put their kids through college by selling them. Soon everybody realized that they couldnt give them away and the market tanked and everybody dumped them. Fortunately nobody dumped them on our lawn. The same thing happened when Image Comics and all those guys got into it. The Death of Superman sold like seven million copies. With collectors buying 200, 300, 400 copies of a seven million press run and its not going to be worth more than two cents a copy in years to come.
DRE: Thats about what they sell for right now, I think.
KE: They probably line their hamster cages with them.
DRE: No, really. I think they sell them in the dime box at conventions.
KE: Ive been in the business since 1984 and Ive seen the self-publishing business go through the black and white phase and the color/multi-cover phase, the trading card phase, the action figure phase. The collectors come in and drive the market up to unprecedented heights and then when they realize the stuff they speculated on isnt going to be worth anything they all go away and what youre left with are the readers. The readers are the ones who keep it going through thick and thin because they dont really go away.
DRE: Richard Corben has gotten back into doing mainstream comics in the past few years. Im waiting to see something from Simon Bisley. Are you guys talking about anything?
KE: Yeah, Simon and I are talking about another project that we want to do together. Simons been doing higher priced fine art stuff. Collectors are really getting into his work and hes finding that the comic book work is tedious. The last fully painted comic book project that he worked on was this project that he and I worked on together called Simon Coldwater. We never finished it because part way through he said, Its just gotten to be too much fucking work to paint every panel like I used to. Im getting too old and Id rather spend my time doing beautiful paintings and doing my pen and ink line work on the comic pages. We talked about having him back because theres a 100 page story we want to do in Heavy Metal. But its more a matter of clearing each others schedule. Were developing a new film called Heavy Metal Unloaded for Sony BMG right now, which looks like its going to go. Theres another project that Simon and I did together called Fistful of Blood, which Im going to direct as a live-action picture later this year.
DRE: Wow! I didnt know about that.
KE: Yeah. Were starting to put the pieces together on that. Its a $2.5 million production. Well start small, much like I did with the comics. If its good, its my fault and if its bad, its my fault. With that type of a budget, I dont have to worry about any type of studio or other kind of people, coming in and fucking it up.
DRE: What is it about?
KE: Its actually based on a graphic novel that Simon and I did. We did it in ten page installments in Heavy Metal magazine about two and a half years ago. We did a hardcover collection, which you can find on the Heavy Metal website or at a local comic store. Its basically Fistful of Dollars done Heavy Metalstyle with a female lead. Theres a gang of bad guys on one side of town and a gang of bad guys on the other side town and this town is trapped in the middle. This lone drifter comes into town and plays one gang off the other, ends up wiping them all out and saves the family. Were doing it with vampires on one side and zombies on the other and a Heavy Metal babe heroine in the middle as the avenging angel with no name.
DRE: Thats pretty ambitious for $2.5 million.
KE: I know. Im pretty psyched. Ive storyboarded the whole thing myself, working with a good buddy of mine Paul Jenkins
DRE: The comic book writer?
KE: Yeah. Paul and I go back a long way. I hired Paul back at Mirage in 89. We both lived in Northampton, Mass and he was in need of work and we were in need of help, so he came over. He ran the production department for me at Tundra Publishing for a while and when he left Tundra, he went on to write his first comic book, Hellblazer. I talk with Paul at least once or twice a week on a variety of things were doing together. Pauls a great guy.
DRE: I was just watching A Fistful of Dollars the other night and was thinking, Why doesnt someone do this story again? And now I hear about thisits a little weird. [laughs]
KE: [laughs] That is really weird.
When Fistful of Dollars came out, Sergio Leone was actually sued because he stole so many shots specifically from what Akira Kurosawa had done in Yojimbo. Leone just made it a western and made Clint a star. Years later, Walter Hill directed Bruce Willis in Last Man Standing, which again is the exact same story as Yojimbo/Fistful of Dollars. Ive always loved that simple, basic story with single location kind of thing. Ive wanted to direct a movie for a long time and Ive been on a lot of sets like the Turtle sets, sets with Julie [Strain, Kevins wife] so I wanted to try my chops at it. I storyboarded all the Turtles issues I worked on except for one that Peter and I did together, probably storyboarded over 1000 pages of stuff that Simon and I did together, Ive storyboarded Fistful of Blood for the movie project. Theres a single location, the town, there are 14 zombies, nine vampires, four tourists, three family members, a smattering of other characters and our lead. So its a limited cast, limited location and now it is just a matter of what I do with it.
DRE: I know you were good friends with the great Andy Sidaris before he died; it sounds like his style of filmmaking was an influence on you.
KE: I have huge respect for him. Not only was he a first-rate character in every sense of the word. But he had this other life as this legend that won 11 Emmys and directed four Olympic games and 29 years of ABCs Wide World of Sports. The man actually designed how to shoot and photograph Monday Night Football. I first knew him after he was already making movies for a while. He would bring down these stories for a movie he was doing like Return to Savage Beach or Day of the Warrior, and it would be a 30 page outline with a smattering of different types of dialogue and hed come in saying, Best damn script ever fucking written. Fuck Tom Cruise. Fuck these guys and their pansy ass movies. This is a real fucking movie. You used to think he was kidding, but he was serious. But the best part is that his movies have a very specific style and he knew exactly what he wanted to do. One of the things that got me really excited about wanting to direct was watching him on his sets figuring out what he wanted to do and how he was going to do it and his movies only cost $350,000 or $400,000. The guy mortgaged his house to make that stuff happen. The way he would cheat shots was brilliant. One time he needed two girls to run down a deserted beach. So he got two girls to run down a crowded public beach and he would shoot and edit in such a way that it would look deserted. It was the Roger Corman school of fudging it and still making it look cool with no money. I remember watching [director] Steve Barron on the set of the first Turtles movie and it seemed like he was one man in a sea of people asking him questions all at the same time. Watching the process made me think that it is a miracle that any movie comes out good ever.
Andy will be greatly missed. Besides giving me my first acting role, if you are on set and youre free, then you are in the movie. He used to come out to the house three or four times a week, steal cigarettes and have a Coke when he wasnt supposed to. Hed come in and just start rattling of stories about his crazy day or stories from 30 years ago that would just crack you up.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
VIEW 7 of 7 COMMENTS
squee_:
Cool interview. I love the Turtles.
paulnikon:
Interesting.