Recently I spoke with the creatives behind the upcoming new season of Curses.
Mary Gillespie – Hello! I’m Mary Gillespie with Skewed and Reviewed here in Phoenix. Go ahead and tell me who you are so our listeners will know.
Jim Cooper – I’m Jim Cooper
Jeff Dickson – I’m Jeff Dickson. We were the two creators behind Curses!
Mary – And Curses! Is wonderful by the way. I just finished watching this because I was like “I gotta watch this!” I really enjoyed it! When you were developing this did you expect for adults to watch this too or did you write it more for kids?
Jeff – We always said from the get-go, from the very very beginning that we never wanted to call this or say we were creating a kids show. We were creating a show for everybody that was accessible to kids. And so, there are a lot of times where we thought about some of the stuff we loved growing up like the gateway scary stuff like Gremlins, Goonies that kind of stuff and there was some real scary stuff in there; people forget that Poltergeist was rated PG. There is a lot of like scary stuff that was essentially for kids as well as adults. And so, we always set out to create a co-viewing, multi-targeted show that was assessable for kids, not only for kids.
Jim – We both have kids and we really wanted to create a show that we would want to watch with them or introduced them to and go “hey, you gotta check this out”. In many ways it was sorta like we were like viewing ourselves of a few years ago. We were like, lets make if for that family right there so everyone can go along.
Mary – My husband watched it with me and we both were like, “we gotta get the Grandkids involved in this one!” My two favorite characters are Stanley and Larry. I absolutely love them and I was so sad when they were almost gone. I was all “NOOOO! They can’t leave us!” Were they patterned after anybody in particular or where they just created in your mind?
Jim – They are sort of us! It’s one of those things you don’t necessarily realize at the time. As a writer we were like, “oh, we should have some characters who are from this world of the artifacts. Because we need someone to understand that world and explain it to the family.” And we would be like “oh, it would be interesting to be artifacts, but what kind of artifacts would they be?” Personality-wise they just sort of developed to the point that, by the way this is funny cuz I don’t know if you know about this in animation, you record the actors but when you need a line or two, to animate to and you haven’t had another recording session, someone on the crew just needs to do the voice so it is in there and recorded and Jeff and I would do that! Oh my gosh it was so embarrassing to see like Rhys Darby looking at me when he hears my voice coming out of Stanley and it’s like “yes…it’s horrible” (said in a “Stanley” voice).
Jeff – There is definitely some traits of both of us in there. Some people, this was never in our brains by the way, we never saw them or had an homage to anything, we always just had our own creations with a little bit of ourselves in there. A lot of people have said this is totally like C3PO and R2D2 right? This is totally a Laurel and Hardy right? No, we never had any of those in mind. We just always liked the two of them and like Coop said, we needed someone knowledgeable from that world to act as the base of knowledge for the restricted wing.
Mary – The characters in here and the voices are spot on. If I’m going to listen to a Pandora, I’m like, yeah, that is what a Pandora would sound like…a snarky teen/pre-teen. How much do you go into choosing/picking who is going to be the voice actors for those parts? Is that something you are very involved in or is there someone else on your team who handles this?
Jeff – Both. The DreamWorks casting department is phenomenal and they would come to us and say “hey, do you have any ideas or what do you think are these types of characters” and we would have some shoot for the stars ideas where we were like “hey lets try it, why not!” and sure enough they would come back with them and we got most of the people we wanted. So, we were very involved in every step of the process but honestly we have the DreamWorks casting department to thank for that. They were phenomenal.
Jim – Yeah, there would be times where we would have a list of potential people and we would be like “we can get so-and-so!?” and they would be like Yes! Absolutely!
Mary – They definitely fit the character with the voice perfectly. So, season 2. I am chomping at the bit to watch season 2. I can’t wait! I know you can’t give me any spoilers but what are some of your favorite things that are going on in season 2?
Jim – I’d say my favorite thing…we were like, “lets just go bigger!” More interesting, what haven’t we covered? What are realms of curses, of places, of things, that you wouldn’t normally go to in an animated show. So, we would constantly try to push the boundaries of things. That is what was so exciting. You’re like, “ok, how do we make a Kaiju episode, how do we do Larry and Stanley based episodes?”
Jeff – I would have to add to that one of my favorite things in season 2 was that we had this foundation in the characters and a lot of the side characters didn’t get to be front and center in Season 1. And so in this season, a lot of the side characters get to have their own focused episode. There is definitely a Stanley focused episode, a Larry focused episode, a Margie focused episode. We got take what was some of the side characters and push them a little more front and center. The other thing that I will say is because we all went through a season together as far as the creatives and the studios, and the production and everybody, there was a comfort factor where we were all like “we trust each other now”. And so, because of that trust, because of that comfort, we were able to push it a little harder. This season is scarier, there are a few more bolder choices in this season, and I think a lot of that came from the trust and relationships built in the first season.
Mary – Well I am definitely looking forward to Season 2. This is a DreamWorks and DreamWorks has animation that is pretty standard, but this isn’t. The animation plays into the feeling of the show, and I can’t even imagine this would ever be live.
Jeff– The budget would be ridiculous!
Jim – But, believe it or not, we had actually thought at one time live action. But it would be impossible to make, it would cost so much money going to locations and such. But animation, and by the way, things still cost a lot in animation, you can bounce all over the world.
Mary – So what made you go with what I feel is a more comic book feel?
Jeff – We have everything to owe for that to our art director David Chung and our supervisor director Leo Riley. We were initially talking about doing something in the 2D space as we all have loved the old EC comics, Tales from the Crypt, Vault of Horror and all that. They came to us and said “hey, why don’t we look at using that styling but push the 2D look in the 3D universe”. So, we call it 2 ½ D, and that’s where we kind of landed. And those guys created, and DreamWorks let us create an entirely new pipeline that DreamWorks had not built before. So, they were huge in letting us experiment and letting us build that from scratch.
Jim – The support we got from the studio for that was phenomenal. And honestly, we didn’t entirely know what it was going to look like until we started seeing the first, everything all together, and then we were like, that’s it, and it really helps create the tone and the vibe of the show.
Mary – We are out of time, darn it, I could talk about this all day. I want to thank you very much for your time you have taken with me. Looking forward to it, keep going, it’s a great show, I’m going to show my grandkids and we are going to sit down together this weekend and watch it!
Jeff – Do us a favor, if there are any moments where the kids are watching it and they are watching it a little bit behind a blanket, or snuggled up, take a photo and send it to us! We are collecting photos of some execs, some friends, and it is so much fun seeing the kids watching it like this and it just warms our hearts so send them in!
Mary – Will do! Thank you, thank you very much, I appreciate it!
