DAVIDS: I want to begin with a shameless plug for my website, www.pauldavids.com. There, you'll find a section called EARLY DAYS which details a lot of the steps that got me into this maddening but fulfilling business. My first real passion as a child was photography, and figuring out how I could create special effects and 'trick photography' in 35mm stills, which led to making 8mm science-fiction films with friends when I was still in elementary school. That was before the days of video. 'Movie madness' continued through high school, and never really stopped, except for a brief pause during college years (but I even got into cartoon animation while in college). Knowing I had art talent, my mother dutifully enrolled me in lessons for drawing, oil painting, and pastels when I was still in grade school, but I neglected those gifts for many years. It was at a time when my film projects were all being delayed, after my work on THE TRANSFORMERS (in about 1989), that I began painting as a way to be creative and see immediate results without having to depend on the 'decisions' of others. Since then I've done about 130 paintings and hundreds of drawings. My passion for writing first flourished when I was in college, at Princeton, heavily influenced by my father, who as a professor (of American diplomatic history) spent about half of all his spare hours at a manual typewriter cranking out history texts -- and much of JFK's PROFILES IN COURAGE, at the request of then-Senator John F. Kennedy, whose wife Jackie was in one of my dad's classes at Georgetown.

TCC: Aside from being a successful writer for many years, you have also made your mark as an auteur, acting as producer and director as well as appearing in front of the camera on occasion. In which area do you find yourself most comfortable? Which is the most challenging and / or rewarding?

DAVIDS: I think directing gives the greatest 'life enjoyment' rewards, because I appreciate life most when I'm in an 'out-going' spirit, working with a group of loyal friends as a team, providing creative leadership but also helping others to do THEIR best in their unique contributions to a big project. Producing is REALLY difficult and often without results -- it's that never-ending commitment to trying to develop a project and get financial backing for it, whether it be finding and making a deal with a studio, network or distributor. You keep coming up against people who just don't see it the way you do, who don't share the enthusiasm or can't get the 'spark' of the creative idea -- or who think it isn't worth as much $$ as you do!! Writing is REALLY hard work, because most of writing is REWRITING. If you have a really good writing partner on a project, that can be fun, because you share the inventiveness, and in the end, two people have created a 'whole world' together that each understands in every detail and has worked out with the other. But it seems that screenplays are always rewritten ten to twenty times before they're made (and they keep getting better, for all that work!) And with books there's a lot of solitary, endless rewriting, too. Acting in films (the small cameos I've done in my own projects) is a 'flash in the pan.' It's just something you happened to do on a certain day, and then it's over! But it's there for people to see and remember long afterwards, and there's a special reward in that!

TCC: I suppose, when involved with the making of the TRANSFORMERS TV series, which was essentially a marketing tool for Hasbro's then-latest toy craze, you probably didn't expect it to remain such a presence in the minds of people more than a decade and a half later. Indeed, fans of a wide age range form something of an on-line community today, hosting websites, discussing topics pertaining to the various aspects of the TRANSFORMERS universe on Usenet, and as you could see for yourself this past summer at BotCon 2001, even congregate at annual conventions dedicated to the whole TRANSFORMERS hoopla. How do you feel about that?

DAVIDS: It doesn't really surprise me, and here's why. I still have a large place in my heart for the things I loved as a kid, and that includes all the science-fiction movies of the 1950s and '60s (as bad as some of them were, Ed Wood's movies included!), MAD magazine, Superman, Batman, FAMOUS MONSTERS magazine, Uncle $crooge (hey, what about those great adventures he took in all those comics!) and of course all the imaginative movies of Ray Harryhausen (7TH VOYAGE OF SINBAD -- I've seen it over 100 times!) and George Pal (in addition to his incredible space movies, I even loved TOM THUMB and WONDERFUL WORLD OF THE BROTHERS GRIMM!) So why shouldn't there be fanatic TRANSFORMERS fans? After all, our stories were good (I think!). I believe THE TRANSFORMERS actually DESERVES to get the attention it's getting from the generation that grew up watching it -- but it will never cease to amaze me that what DESERVED to happen has actually happened!! And that's really GOOD NEWS!

PARTNERSHIP: Behind some of the top animated concepts of the 1980s.

TCC: Through what events did you become Production Coordinator for the TRANSFORMERS series? At what point in the series did it happen, and were you familiar with the show before being hired to work on it?

DAVIDS: Getting hired to be Production Coordinator for 'Generation One' was probably my luckiest break up to that point in my life (apart from getting into Princeton, and the American Film Institute Center for Advanced Film Studies, and getting to work with the Grand-daddy of all Hollywood film agents, the wonderful Paul Kohner!!) I have Gerald Moeller to thank for my involvement in THE TRANSFORMERS, which began, I believe, right after the first 13 episodes were completed.

Gerald had also gone to the AFI film school. We became friends. He even posed as a Viking for me for a fantasy adventure photo book I began creating in about 1984, about Ponce de Leon's search for the Fountain of Youth. (I never published it, alas, but perhaps I still will -- or will release some of the fantasy photos on the Internet). Gerald was at Marvel Productions, working as Production Coordinator for the leading Producer of THE TRANSFORMERS, Nelson Shin (who with his wife Yung Shin owned AKOM Studios in Korea where some of the animation was done). Anyway, Nelson needed for Gerald to begin full-time work as Production Coordinator of THE TRANSFORMERS - THE MOVIE, and he asked Gerry, "Who should replace you? I need a clone of you!"

Gerry recommended me!! I had never heard of THE TRANSFORMERS (this was 1985). The TV show I had been producing as segment producer (F. Lee Bailey's LIE DETECTOR) had come to an end a year before, and I was stuck working in the computer data division of Columbia Pictures, after a dreary 6-month stint as branch manager of theatrical distribution in Columbia's Beverly Hills distribution office. I was very depressed dealing with computer data, so when I got Gerry's call, I left work that day to take an immediate meeting with Nelson Shin. I managed to persuade him on-the-spot that Gerald Moeller had not made a mistake by recommending me, and he didn't need to interview anyone else! Nelson doubled my salary immediately from what I'd been making at Columbia, and he asked me to come to work that afternoon at 2 p.m. It was truly like a dream come true. That gave me about one hour to go back to Columbia and tell my boss I was resigning immediately to do what I really wanted to do in animation production. My 'former' boss wished me well and easily found someone else to do what I had been doing.

TCC: What exactly did the position of Production Coordinator entail? What were your responsibilities?

DAVIDS: My responsibilities, in retrospect, seem like they were massive -- and part of the reason was that Nelson Shin spent so much time traveling back and forth to Korea, so I had to supervise almost all areas of pre-production and post-production in his absence. By 'supervise' I don't mean I was telling crafts-people what to do. I was really coordinating to make sure each step of every episode was being handled at the right time, so there wouldn't be any 'bottlenecks' to getting the shows finished. For instance, if a show required lots of new character designs and they weren't assigned to an artist and finished in time, it could hold up the whole package getting shipped to Japan for animation. If new characters were required for a story, I had to make sure that Wally Burr (the voice director) knew to get actors to audition for those parts, so we'd be ready to tape the show on time. When footage came back from overseas I'd assign it to an editor and do the re-take list as quickly as possible. The job meant staying on top of every facet -- storyboards, color keys, background art, voice recordings, editing and sound effects, and nudging along progress on getting stories approved and scripts finished. It was thrilling, it was great training -- and I could hardly imagine a nicer, more talented group of people to be working with. Also -- we had our own floor of our own building for TRANSFORMERS -- away from the rest of the Marvel operation (where Stan Lee worked), so we really were a world unto ourselves.

TCC: What kind of creative input and influence on the proceedings does a person in that position usually have?

DAVIDS: As I said earlier, Gerald Moeller moved on to work full-time on the movie, and then when the film was done he came back to the series as a producer. The producer takes the script and works with the storyboard artist to visualize how it will all be done, and then times everything to the very frame -- even gives the animators keys to how the mouths will move for each word. The Production Coordinator works to prepare the 'package' -- i.e., everything that will be needed for the actual animation to begin (backgrounds, character designs, voice recording, getting final script and finished storyboard coordinated with all the visual 'elements') -- and then the coordinator oversees the post-production and re-takes when the film comes back from overseas animators (Toei in Japan and AKOM in Korea). I didn't know what Gerald Moeller's credit was on the first season -- but I stepped into his shoes, with a lot of help from Nelson and Yung Shin.

TCC: In order to understand better the production hierarchy, what exactly is the difference between the functions of Production Coordinator, Production Manager (Carole Weitzman for most of the series), the Executive Producers (Joe Bacal, Margaret Loesch, and others), the Executive in Charge of Production (Lee Gunther), and the Producer himself, Nelson Shin?

WAREHOUSE: The home of pre- and post-production of Marvel TV series.

DAVIDS: The actual production of the show (pre-production and post-production) was done at Marvel Productions in Los Angeles, where I worked (Van Nuys, actually, in the San Fernando Valley, in a sort of windowless warehouse!) and the animation itself (the drawings and photography of cels onto 35mm film) was done in Japan and Korea. The Sunbow Productions people were located in New York. Their production company was a sort of subsidiary of Griffin Bacal, which is a huge New York advertising agency with Hasbro as a client. My recollection is that Carole Weitzman, as Production Manager, was not dealing with the day-to-day physical production -- she was primarily responsible to Hasbro in Rhode Island. Hasbro had very specific needs related to this show.

Most of those needs had to do with how the toys would be portrayed visually, including the specific design drawings, colors -- and even the voice actors selected for major roles, who were in fact 'interpreting' those Hasbro toys as characters. Carole and Joe Bacal were the 'buffers' between Hasbro and Marvel Productions, and any instructions from Hasbro came down to us from them. Margaret Loesch and Lee Gunther were top executives of Marvel Productions, with responsibilities for every series Marvel was doing -- and there were quite a few of them (including G. I. JOE, POTATO HEAD KIDS, DEFENDERS OF THE EARTH, etc.). Margaret and Lee had global responsibilities related to overall financing, delivery, and distribution -- they didn't get involved in creative and production aspects of individual episodes. However, when we had to go on hiatus, because we were waiting to be approved to do more episodes, Margaret and Lee very much had a role in deciding the 'core staff' that would stay on and who would be let go until production geared up again. Jim Graziano was also very important to the smooth functioning of the show, and I heard from him rather rapidly if he became aware of any detail that had not been adequately taken care of. I was fortunate in that I was part of the 'core staff' all the way up to my departure at about show #95.

Above all, there were two people, more than any others, who were the very essence of what this show was, creatively and in every other sense. At first it was mainly Nelson Shin -- who continued to be the leading creative luminary at all times. He was brilliant and highly disciplined, having begun in animation by doing the 'light sabers' for the first STAR WARS movie. Then later the strong creative force was also Jay Bacal, son of Joe Bacal. From his office in New York, Jay exercised his authority to approve every storyboard by hiring a creative executive, Roger Slifer, to handle the specifics of storyboard review, for the storyboards being done through Marvel on the West Coast. Roger Slifer, whose meticulous review of storyboards (and requests for many changes) helped shape the flow of each episode in the TV series, began his work in the third season, as I recall.

TCC: Aside from being a key contact in the U.S. for Nelson Shin, who did you work with the closest, other than people like Wally Burr and the voice actors?

DAVIDS: I worked closely with everyone in our building. That included Nelson Shin and his wife Yung (an invaluable asset who seemed always to remember every detail about every toy and character), producers George Singer, John Walker, Gerald Moeller, and Gwen Wexler, our entire art department (including 'stars' like Dell Barras), our colorists, editors and sound effects people -- and even the freelance storyboard artists. Sometimes I'd get to assign which storyboard artist would do which script, depending on people's schedules. I was also in touch with many of the writers directly, as some of them, such as Flint Dille, Don Glut, and Buzz Dixon, became very good friends of mine. (Don was actually partially responsible for my deciding to leave the east coast and come to Hollywood, as you'll learn at my website where it talks about the early days of FAMOUS MONSTERS magazine.) I was in touch with Wally Burr almost every day and attended all recording sessions. The story editors (Bryce Malek and Dick Robbins), who worked in the main Marvel building talked with me nearly every day, as we went over progress toward getting premises approved, and the status of each script (first draft, rewrite, etc.) Later story editors Flint Dille and Marv Wolfman shared the work load, as Bryce and Dick were assigned to DEFENDERS OF THE EARTH (which was another show I wrote scripts for -- THE TIME FREEZER and THE PANTHER PERIL). Marv was a top comic book editor who'd come out from New York, highly experienced. And Flint, who came from the family that created the original Buck Rogers (the work of his grandfather) was simply our 'man of letters' when it came to TRANSFORMERS lore. Flint could talk endlessly about minor nuances of every single character. And of course, occasionally I would visit with Stan Lee himself over in the main building, who would grill me about progress on the show (and who kindly wrote the Preface to my first book, THE FIRES OF PELE: MARK TWAIN'S LEGENDARY LOST JOURNAL).

TCC: While I'm on the subject of voice actors, you say you were present for all of the recording sessions. What can you tell me about that experience? Are there any special moments that stood out for you?

DAVIDS: Attending voice recordings with Wally Burr was great training for when I became a film director. What talents we had to work with on that show! They were all phenomenal, as funny without a microphone as when they were performing. I had to tend to all the practical details, such as compiling the cast lists for each show, notifying the agents who we needed when, making sure we followed SAG [Screen Actors Guild] rules and that we didn't use an actor for 'too many' voices in any given show (we'd have to pay double if they did more than three voices). And of course, once in a while my opinion would be asked about what a certain line really meant -- what kind of implication it was supposed to have (Serious? Sarcastic? Wise-cracking?).

TCC: There are quite a few instances in the cartoon of characters sporting a new voice for no discernible reason. For instance, Dan Gilvezan originally played Autobot Outback in FIVE FACES OF DARKNESS, but when the character later appeared again in THE QUINTESSON JOURNAL, Gregg Berger performed him instead. Given the evidently common process of actors unavailable at a particular session coming in on later days to do 'pick-ups,' what might have been the reason for what appears to have been a bit of on-the-spot recasting?

DAVIDS: I don't remember the specifics, but this could have happened because Dan Gilvezan already had three voices to do on a specific day, and Gregg might have only had two. We would have pulled a switch (thinking we could get away with it without too many people noticing) to save money. An actor automatically gets paid double as soon as you ask him to do a fourth voice in one day (at least that's what the rules were then) and he or she also gets double residuals, too! (We animation writers didn't have a union backing us then. There were never any residuals for us -- only one flat fee for writing the script, which varied from around $4,200 to $5,000 per episode, depending upon whether Marvel was paying or Sunbow. Sunbow usually paid the higher rates.)

TCC: Something else recently occurred to me -- with regards to the casting of actors for the combiner teams that were introduced during the second season -- the Aerialbots, the Stunticons, the Combaticons, and the Protectobots. Three of these teams were performed by voice talent either completely new to the show at the point of their introduction (among the many are Charlie Adler, Roger C. Carmel, Johnny Haymer, Milt Jamin, Terry McGovern, and Rob Paulsen) or at least new to the second season (Jack Angel and Ed Gilbert), but for some reason, the Protectobots' voices (including the voice of combined-mode Defensor) consisted entirely of actors that had been with the show from the very beginning. Was that bit of casting deliberate or a thing of coincidence?