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Jason Hillhouse Strikes Back
by Zach Demeter

He's back! After the rousing success of our first interview (deemed "Hilarious!", "Informative!" and "Exciting!" by me), Hillhouse has returned to answer another round of questions that tackle his work on past and future DVDs as well as his desire for more nudity.


Now that the final volumes of the DC animated universe are all on DVD, is there anything you regret not being able to include? Deleted scenes, storyboards, etc.?

There is always some stuff that could have gone on, I suppose. They never did get the full on Lord of the Rings 47 disc per set treatment and I know there is the fantasy that every recording session is filmed with at least three cameras and there is footage from the writer’s room of Glen running around with a towel around his neck acting stuff out and so forth, but there is fantasy and reality and I think, all things considered (logistics, time, budgets, participation, lawyers, and so on), it went pretty well.

We really tried to cover every aspect of the shows at least somewhat. And I think when all is said and done; we did a pretty good job touching on a variety of stuff. Even as far back as the single disc releases, there were pop up features and pieces like the storyboard piece on “Justice League: The Brave and The Bold” (and even the Brave and the Bold piece for that matter). We had the look at some of the backgrounds, stuff with actors, creators' takes on characters and so on. I feel especially grateful that we had a chance to talk to and about Shirley Walker, because that was an aspect of the shows that I felt that many people had overlooked a bit over the years and then, on the same note (HA!), to later have the opportunity to do music only tracks for a few things was great. That was something that was important to BT as well and I think it really shows a different side of the shows that might sometimes get taken for granted.

The nature of how these things were rolled out over the last few years may not have quite tied it all up in a perfect bow, but if you take a look at the whole collection you see that the reach is pretty wide. There could always be more. I have storyboards in my office right now that maybe weren’t as dynamic as some of the ones that did make it. And I am probably one of the worst to pick things apart and say, “I wish…” or “We shoulda…”, but there isn’t anything (that I can think of) like “Dark Knight’s First Night” that never made it on.

We put together a funny little Easter egg that was a music video cut to a longer version of Kevin singing “Am I Blue” that never made it. But if you were less than happy about us choosing do a commentary on “This Little Piggy”, then this wouldn’t have made you feel any better. But I liked it.

Actually, I thought of something. I have here a blown up version of the comic strips from the newspaper that Clark is reading in the “Mxy” episode. We talked about it in the infamous video commentary, but I wish we could have been able to show the big blown up version. Not that it is Earth shattering, but it is a funny bunch of inside jokes about the staff of the show. Just a fun little thing.

Oh and if, for some reason, we never had the picture of Dan Riba dressed like Gorilla Flash in any disc, then shame on me.

And more Zod.

What went into the decision process of cutting the commentaries down into the “Close up on…” featurette?

Well, there are all sorts of reasons as to why anything you see on a DVD ends up on the DVD. Every DVD. Time is always a factor and these types of decisions are usually the result of a variety of reasons. Sometimes, it is a brilliant creative idea, sometimes there is a marketing hook, sometimes it involves talent availability or it can depend on the preferences of different studios or different people that work at the studios or different producers. In fact, over the course of these DVD titles, I’m sure, if you bothered to look, you can see the difference between pieces I worked on with Jonny, ones I worked on with Scott, ones I did more myself, which editors we worked with and so on. That’s not to mention the different people we have worked with at WHV. In the case of these shows, I can say, everyone has had commitment to these shows and brought something to the table creatively, both at WHV and here at New Wave.

So, more specifically, sometimes when you are faced with a challenge, you are forced to come up with creative solutions. There is always a mandate to push it and do something different and creative and things evolve. Commentaries begat video commentaries and this is a hybrid of that and the panels. And I think they turned out pretty well. Better? I don’t know. But they are pretty cool and we, in a way, actually covered more ground by doing them that way than if we had done straight audio commentaries.

Follow up to the “Close up on…”: Were the full commentaries recorded for the episodes or did the crew merely watch specified clips?

The “Close Up On…”s for BB were actually done a little bit differently than the things we did for JLU. We shot the BB stuff like a mini panel and Scott and I threw out questions, topics or suggestions (if needed) and then the guys ran with it. Then we cut in clips and such to compliment what we were talking about.

The JLU stuff was similar, but the various panelists were actually watching sections of episodes while talking about them.

So, no, there are not any “lost” commentaries for those episodes. They were recorded as you see them. Well, they were edited down, so there is some stuff you haven’t seen/heard, if you want to get caught up in semantics. But for the most part, you have all the best stuff. (Unless you are a fan of my creative swearing)

How much research do you do before start recording the special feature sessions you host? I’ve never even heard about that Terry/Dana centric Batman Beyond episode before watching the special feature on the third season set.

I had no idea who these guys even were when I first sat down with them. Just kidding. (Although I’m sure quite a few people probably just screamed, “I KNEW IT!”) When you do any kind of interview, I think it’s important to have done your homework. You don’t want to be wasting anyone’s time by not being prepared. When I’m going to be on camera, I’m a bit more paranoid about it because I can’t as easily edit out the embarrassment. But I take this very seriously. I do have a good knowledge of this material, but, even with years and years of info to pull from the well, there is a lot of prep that goes into these things. And believe me, even with the prep, I have had plenty of “D’oh!” moments.

With these panels, we have usually gone over the topics and points of interest beforehand (sometimes right beforehand) and gotten thoughts and ideas from Bruce and the other folks we’ll be talking to. Nothing is scripted by any means and I can’t say there hasn’t been a couple of times where we didn’t have a more “off the cuff” go of it, but these are also topics that we just happen to know a lot about and that always helps. That said you don’t want to over prepare, because you may wind up doing the interview before the camera rolls and you will be getting freshly recycled info or lose some of the spontaneity. It’s also a big help to work on something you love and not feel like you are having to just do a job. In this case it helps that, for the most part, I already knew the folks I was talking with. So, there was something of a comfort level going in. Believe me, I could ask questions and bore these guys for hours (and I probably have).

This is also a time to reiterate again how fortunate we were on these sets to have people genuinely interested in participating in these releases. Some of these folks have given up hours and hours of their time over the years to make these were what they were. Bruce especially spent more time indulging our silly ideas (then telling us if they were stupid), giving us materials, feedback and picking episodes for commentaries and then trusting us (much to what may be his eternal regret) to deliver solid sets for these extraordinary shows. Zod knows that these shows certainly speak for themselves and they are obviously the main attraction when it comes to buying the DVDs, but it was important to Bruce (and to James, Eric, Paul, Alan, Glen,…everybody) that we put together the best sets we could for no other reason than that the fans deserved it. It’s my job, but it was their time and energy and patience that made it happen. And I think it really shows. Without them, you’d just have me and some finger puppets. Just let that sink in for a minute. Finger puppets. And maybe Glen.

Were you as bummed out as I was when I found out you weren’t hosting any of the JLU special features?

HA! I could hear the message boards at Toon Zone rejoice! But c’mon! What am I gonna say? Dude, we got Hamill! Sure it would have been fun to do another one, but listen, I have no room to complain about anything. This has been just a blast for me and doing the on camera stuff was certainly a real bonus. I’ve had so many great opportunities in the last few years that any card carrying geek would sell his Action Comics #261 for just for a taste.

We actually did shoot an Easter egg where I came in and interrupted BT as he was doing the music intro and started berating him for doing the panel without me, yelling at him that I coulda been Solomon Grundy and storming off the set. BT was funny in it, but we didn’t get to use it.

Are you going to be working on the upcoming DTV (Superman Doomsday, New Frontier) DVD releases? If so, how much can you spoil about the films for us, right now?

Sadly, I’m not. What little I know or think I know you all probably already know. And if not, I shouldn’t really comment.

I bet you were worried you wouldn’t get a short answer from me. And on the subject that everyone wants to know about, too. Sorry. But I am really looking forward to seeing how the movies turn out. I really dig the new Luthor design for "Doomsday" in particular and "New Frontier" is one of my favorite comics from the last few years. I'm excited like everyone else.


It could happen.
When Justice League Unlimited: Season 1 was announced, everyone assumed there was an error in the special features listings as there was only information for the first part of the season (the first 13 episodes) and none of the Cadmus arc was covered. Was anything ever set in motion to attempt to record features before the discs went to print or was it simply too late of a discovery?

I was as surprised as anyone by that. My inbox exploded. But it’s been hashed and rehashed online. Wires got crossed and things changed. It happens. But there was certainly a moment of “What do we do?” And I’ll tell you this was right before we went to Comic Con and I thought we would really get grilled. But we didn’t. (We did sit in a hospitality suite with Snoop Dogg, though. Because, what else would I be doing at Comic Con? Sitting in a hospitality suite with BT and Snoop. That’s what I do. The only thing that would have made that better is if Terrance Stamp had walked in holding the monkey from “BJ and The Bear”, then, oh ho Daddy! Wait. I forgot the question. Oh, yeah.)

So, we did try to see what we could do, but there really wasn’t anything at that point and if we had managed to do something, it would have been rushed and that would have been worse to me. And I think we made up for it on Season 2 (3?).

The Cadmus featurette on the JLU: Season 2 set was almost over twenty-five minutes in length—how much footage for the featurette was shot? I think it was the longest special feature across all of the DVD sets.

Yeah, man! It was our long, prog rock style, epic statement on Cadmus. It was the “Supper’s Ready” of the DCAU! (Peter Gabriel era Genesis, anyone? No? Well, ok, then.) Actually that was quite a long shoot. We had a lot to cover and we wanted to make it extra special for a variety of reasons. Obviously, WHV was cool with it and there you go. If I remember correctly, we actually shot all of the stuff for the set in that one night. And with all of the camera moves, green screens and so forth, it was one of our more complicated evenings. But everyone soldiered through and there you have the final results (minus the in depth discussion on KISS and the aforementioned Easter egg). We were really happy to have a Cadmus piece, even if it was on another set.

From one fanboy to another, is there anything you wish you could have seen in any of the shows before the (as of this writing) final curtain dropped?

More completely gratuitous full frontal nudity.

It’s hard to believe, considering I can still vividly remember the original BTAS: Volume 1 announcement, but all of the Timm-produced animated series will all be out on DVD on March 20th. You were there from the very first single-disc releases and up until the very end. What was it like to have worked on all of the sets?

I don’t think I was in on the very first couple of the single discs releases. I can’t remember which one of those four episode extravaganzas was my first one, but it was fairly early on and I have at least had a claw in them one way or another ever since. We have done a bunch, that’s for sure.

As a fan, let me tell you how I feel about these shows and the people that did them (taking any personal relationships out of it for a moment). You know that thing about how like “Citizen Kane” is obviously just the best movie ever and we should just all accept that and move on to the next discussion? Well, that is what Batman: The Animated Series very easily could have been for these guys. They could have just done that and called it a day. But not only did they keep making more shows, they had the stones to revisit Batman and then take a risky idea that made fanboys want to burn their homemade capes in effigy (a teenaged Batman!?!) and then they just said, “the heck with it let’s do the whole universe and tie it all together!”. And even if you look at them each individually, every one of these series is really, really great. Maybe not every episode, but these series have set the new gold standard in not just the way an animated action show can be done, but in the way superhero stories are told and, frankly, the way we look at iconic characters that have been around for 70 years. And if you choose to look at the whole thing as one big story, well it is really something staggeringly impressive and, as a fan of DC Comics, pretty much a dream come true of what I would have wanted to see when these characters were brought to life. Regardless of the medium. This is just my opinion, of course, but I don’t think I am overstating the case.

So, what was it like to have any small of association with something like that? Well, it was pretty f-ing cool.

Any exciting new projects you’re working on that you can divulge?

Doing some work on some more comic related stuff (Hollywood is loving comics!), as well as other types of projects. If you miss seeing me on screen, check out “Fletch: The Jane Doe Edition” DVD (in stores this May!) for more of my particular brand of jackassery.
 

The World's Finest would like to thank Jason Hillhouse for his participation in this Q&A.

 

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