Recentemente è uscita un'intervista ad uno degli scrittori principali del cartone, Evan Gore. Riporto alcune citazioni che riguardano strettamente Finalmente Weekend e faccio una sintesi in italiano:
www.beyondthecartoons.com/evan-gore/CITAZIONE
My writing partner is my wife, Heather, whom I wrote with on ‘The Weekenders’. We were not married at the time but have since raised a family together.
The 6-11 comedy cartoon is sort of my niche and it’s the kind of work that comes most naturally to us. And I say “us” and “me” interchangeably because when the economy changed around 2008, it was about the same time that our lives changed in terms of having a second child, so I went a number of years just writing on my own because there really wasn’t the work to support the two of us while we had kids also. Last year, we got back together as story editors on a Nick Jr. series, which actually was very fun, because it brought us back to what our career and work life was back in days of ‘The Weekenders,’ which were the good ol’ days.
On ‘The Weekenders’, and then after that ‘Dave the Barbarian’, the economy was stronger, so shows could have a writing staff. That has had a bit of a come back recently, but for a long time writing staffs went away. A freelance writer’s business is like being an actor or being a carpenter, you build something then sell it.
So in the good ol’ days when you’re working for a studio on a series, you’re getting a pay check and it’s just like a normal job - you go to work, you get a check on Friday, and it’s a very nice little life. That’s the part that people envy.
Ai tempi di Finalmente Weekend lui e Heather Lombard scrivevano insieme gli episodi. Si sposarono appena finì la prima stagione. Dopo diversi anni passati a scrivere progetti separatamente, sono tornati insieme per una serie targata Nickelodeon Junior, il che gli ricorda i bei vecchi tempi.
Quando programmi come Finalmente Weekend o Dave Il Barbaro andavano in onda l'economia era più forte e la produzione poteva permettersi di avere un gruppo di scrittori fisso.
CITAZIONE
Do you think that the way you approach writing and animation in general changed after you had kids?
Before we had kids people were amazed that we did this. “How do you know what kids like?” they would say to us. And our answer then was the same as it is now. Our answer then, when we were working on ‘The Weekenders’ and ‘Dave the Barbarian’ and didn’t have kids, was that we were just people suited for animation writing because we had vivid imaginations and we wanted to do funny stuff. It was just a good fit. We got really lucky too.
So the old answer was well, why are kids any different? When we’re writing for kids, we’re just writing for humans. Who’s let go of being fifteen? Hasn’t that stayed with you? Don’t you remember all of your junior high school and elementary school experiences? We were mystified that it didn’t come to other people as it was just natural to us. I don’t let those memories go. It was a horrible time, I remember it vividly.
So we’ve written a number of things over the years, especially on ‘The Weekenders’ which was such a human relatable show, that were just from our lives. It was a case of having a memory from your childhood and writing about it.
L'intervistatore chiede se il suo approccio alla scrittura e al mondo dell'animazione in generale è cambiato da quando ha avuto figli. Lui risponde che prima di metter su famiglia le persone gli domandavano continuamente come fosse possibile che qualche adulto potesse conoscere i gusti dei bambini/ragazzi così bene. La sua risposta ai tempi di Finalmente Weekend e Dave Il Barbaro è la stessa che darebbe oggi: perché i bambini sono diversi? Quando si scrivono personaggi come bambini e ragazzi si tratta pur sempre di esseri umani. Chi ha dimenticato come ci si sente ad essere quindicenni? Quindi lui ed Heather scrissero tante sensazioni, impressioni e ricordi tratti dalla loro vita nei programmi, specialmente in Finalmente Weekend, definito da lui un cartone molto umano e immedesimabile.
CITAZIONE
Was there ever a moment that first made you realise animation had such influence beyond being merely a series of pictures?
Well, an odd thing that’s happened in recent years is meeting perfectly lovely adults who watched the shows that we wrote when we were younger, meaning we’ve done this long enough that when we meet someone in their thirties, they watched ‘The Weekenders’ (laughs).
The show that we were just on for Nickelodeon, our line producer was a woman in her early thirties and sooner or later everyone is reading your resume and she said “wow, you were on ‘The Weekenders’!” There was another show she was really into too, I think it was ‘Doug’, something that we had written meant a lot to them.
I can’t say that I’ve had the opportunity to see the impact that a certain piece of animation has had on the world. It’s certainly interesting to see on Buzzfeed when there’ll be a piece that says something like “you know you’re a child of the 90s when you liked ‘Doug’ on Nickelodeon” and I think I was a grown up when I wrote on that show! - so that’s an old guys problem I would say, but it also makes me feel like I was part of something cool.
‘The Weekenders’ was heavily influenced by the creators own childhood. The guy who created it, Doug Langdale, grew up in San Diego and so Bahia Bay was based on San Diego. He instructed the designers to take a look at pictures of San Diego and said that’s the vibe, and he called it Bahia Bay which is Spanish for “Bay Bay”, which was his own little joke. He was raised by a single mother, as Tino was, and the voice of Tino’s mum was played by his wife at the time, who is a voice actress, so I think a large part of the success of that show was that it came from a place of the creators heart.
Heather and I got onto that show fairly early in the series. We’d gotten one job before that - we sold an episode to ‘Futurama’ and that really was how she and I started as a writing team, but then ‘The Weekenders’ was our first real series.
L'intervistatore chiede se c'è stato un momento che gli ha fatto capire che l'animazione ha un forte impatto sulle persone, al di là di essere una serie di immagini messe insieme, lui risponde che proprio negli ultimi anni ha incontrato degli adulti che guardavano da ragazzi quello che lui ed Heather scrivevano. A volte capita di incontrare trentenni che dicono che guardavano Finalmente Weekend. E la produttrice del programma che hanno scritto per Nickelodeon ha letto il suo curriculum e gli ha detto "Wow, hai lavorato su Finalmente Weekend?" ed era anche una fan di Doug.
Finalmente Weekend è basato sulla vita di Doug Langdale. Lui è cresciuto a San Diego, la città su cui ha volutamente basato Bahia Bay. Chiese ai disegnatori di cercare foto di San Diego e di rappresentarla in forma cartone al più fedelmente possibile. Decise di chiamarla Bahia Bay che significa Baia Baia, ed era un piccolo inside-joke tra sé e sé. Ne ha scritti molti di questo genere nella serie (tipo Campo Fields o Lago Lago). Fu cresciuto da una madre single e la signora Tonitini fu doppiata dalla moglie che aveva al tempo. Evan Gore crede, infatti, che il successo del cartone sia dovuto al fatto che è venuto fuori dall'anima del suo creatore, da cose importanti per lui.
CITAZIONE
Given that you are writing for studios in Rio and Spain etc, do you believe that the work of an animation writer can be done from anywhere in the world, or is it best to live nearby the bigger studios?
There’s a couple of skills involved in anything you do - there’s the skill to do the job, which is what we all think about, but then there’s the skill of getting the job, which we don’t think about.
It was a job that we got snaking through the relationship chain having to do with the fact that we came to Hollywood as young writers and we struggled. We got our first script on ‘The Weekenders’ because we were introduced to Doug Langdale [creator of ‘The Weekenders’] because of the script that we had done for ‘Futurama’. We had a mutual friend and Doug had just sold the pilot, and our actor friend who came and said, “Oh I have some friends who are great cartoons writers, you should all meet each other.” So, instead of meeting we sent him our episode of ‘Futurama’ and he laughed and laughed at it and that’s how he agreed to take pitches from us.
We got to see the starting documents for ‘The Weekenders’ and we pitched probably six stories and of those stories was one of the first five episodes of ‘The Weekenders’ that was so early in the series that it established elements that became regular parts of the show, like Helpers Helping the Helpless which was the name of a charity.
One of the pitches Heather and I had when we were trying to get a job on the show was for an episode called “Perfect Weekend”. It was a really classic Weekenders show where it’s Friday and all four kids have this great weekend planned but one by one all the three other friends - Carver, Tish, and Lor - all have these surprise things that take them away and Tino is the only one left, and the lesson for him in the episode is that he’s got to learn to be flexible - that’s the story.
But in that episode it establishes Lor’s grandma - Granny MacQuarrie, the macho grandma - and it established that Carver had to do envelope stuff for Helpers Helping the Helpless, and also the character of the always-pregnant neighborhood volunteer mum, “Mrs Duwong”. So there were all these elements in that episode that became recurring aspects throughout the series and that’s probably the episode that I remember the most out of the series. I can’t remember all of them quite as well.
L'intervistatore chiede se per lavorare nel mondo dell'animazione si debba per forza vivere nei pressi di studi importanti, lui risponde che ci vuole, più che altro, la capacità di "vendere" il proprio prodotto. Uno dei modi più sicuri per riuscire a lavorare è tramite conoscenze, e fu proprio questo il modo in cui entrarono nel mondo di Finalmente Weekend. Gli fu presentato Doug Langdale dopo aver scritto il loro primo episodio per Futurama e lo trovò divertentissimo, così decise di ascoltare che idee avessero lui ed Heather.
Lessero i primi documenti di Finalmente Weekend e proposero circa sei trame ed una di quelle finì tra i primi cinque episodi perché stabilì dei dettagli importanti ed elementi che diventarono ricorrenti nel programma, come il Centro Assistenza che Assiste gli Assistiti.
L'episodio "Il Weekend Perfetto" fu proposto da loro, ed è un classico del programma perché si vede per la prima volta la nonna di Lor, Carver che aiuta le signore presso il centro d'assistenza e anche la signora Duong perennemente incinta. Questi sono tutti elementi introdotti in quell'episodio che diventarono aspetti ricorrenti nel cartone.
caspita non sapevo di Kim Possible! sono un grande fan di quella magnifica serie infatti vorrei tanto poter scaricare gli episodi se li trovassi. comunque aspettiamo e vediamo come si comporteranno con i palinsesti 