#6 “I became animated…”

It’s 1982 and I’m living in L.A. To put food on the table I’m writing commercials for the Armed Forces Radio & Television Service (AFRTS). Easy work, lousy pay. Adding to that, thanks to cashing in on my modest retirement fund from my parents’ clothing business, which I will have to pay a penalty on, I’ve got a bit of cash in the bank. So I rent a nice condo in a building in Studio City filled with entertainment industry types – a locations manager, a make-up artist, a soap star and Bob Eubanks, host of The Newlyweds Game. Nice guy, great poker player.

There’s also this young Frenchman – Jean Chalopin, who bears a strong resemblance to John Lennon – who lives in the building. A quiet type, but friendly. One evening at a party in the building, he tells me he heard I’m a published novelist. I nod, happy to hear my ‘fame’ is spreading. Jean says he’s started animation studio here in Studio City and asks if I’d like to take a shot at writing for children’s television. I explain my novels deal with murder mysteries and the occult, so I’m not sure writing for children’s television is for me. I tell him I’ll think about it and get back to him.

Later, it’s three-thirty in the morning and I’m sound asleep. Suddenly my eyes pop open, I sit bolt upright in my bed and shout, “What am I, crazy?!”

The next morning I knock on Jean’s door. He opens it and I say, “Ok. I

thought about it. How about we have lunch and talk?”

And that’s how I became animated.

#5 “And then I took the leap…”

So how did a writer who, at the time, had four successful novels – a murder mystery, an action/adventure novel, an occult/romance tome and a historical saga – under his belt end up writing for children’s entertainment?

I’d always liked writing novels. Still, only a fraction of people read novels compared to almost everyone who sees movies and watches television. Any episode I ever wrote of Care Bears had a monumentally larger audience than Shakespeare did at the time he wrote Macbeth. To put it another way, a novel that sold just 9,000 copies in a week in the 1980s would hit the New York Times bestseller list. In the same week, literally millions of viewers watched a Saturday morning episode of Heathcliff and the Catillac Cats.

Well, most writers want to reach as large an audience as possible. So, it seemed to me the way to reach the largest audience was through writing for motion pictures and television. And that was why, after MGM purchased the film rights to my first published novel in 1977, I left my parents’ clothing business, loaded up my white TR7 with all my worldly possessions and drove to L.A. where I was certain my golden fingers would lead to my becoming the next wildly successful screenwriter.

What I didn’t realize was that seven thousand, eight hundred and nineteen would-be-screenwriters were loading up their cars with all their worldly possessions and were moving to L.A. with the same notion of becoming the next wildly successful screenwriter.

I’d find out about that soon enough…

#4 First Things First Part 3

Understand that except for animated films in the early days of animation and the notable exceptions of The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle, The Flintstones and, later, The Jetsons, in the early days of television’s animated series, there were few animation ‘writers’ around. Most of the ‘writing’ was done by animation artists who wrote a few lines here and there to keep the ‘story’, such as it was, moving along.

Then, in 1981, a Frenchman named Jean Chalopin changed everything with an animated series entitled Ulysses 31. The storyline pitted a spaceship crew struggling against divine entities. Imagine asking animators to write a few lines here and there to keep that story moving along!

While the series was successful in Europe, it wouldn’t be until 1986 that Ulysses 31 aired in America. No matter. By then Jean Chalopin had completely changed the concept of animated television series.

Jean was a visionary. I was fortunate – actually blessed -- to work with him during The Golden Age of Television Animation. He sensed children wanted to be shown a story and that they had become more sophisticated than children from previous generations. So, he sought writers who could tell stories.

I was one of them. Here are a few of the many series I wrote for Jean: The Littles, Care Bears, Hello Kitty’s Furry Tale Theater, The New Adventures of He-man, M.A.S.K., Super Mario Brothers Super Show, Popples, The Bots Master, King Arthur & The Knights of Justice, Lady Lovely Locks, The Get Along Gang.

And that’s just the tip of my iceberg!