Review Fix chats with Manny Galan, co-creator of the Award-winning TV show, Captain Cornelius’ Cartoon Lagoon. Celebrated by Amazon Studios with the “Audience Award†at the 2012 New York Television Festival, the studios’ first two public screenings completely sold out to laughing crowds.
In this Q & A, Galan discusses the series and its future.
Review Fix: How did this project come together?
Manny Galan: Several years ago I noticed that my kids were sleeping in late on Saturday morning and I just couldn’t believe it. I began mentioning to them how special Saturday mornings were when I was growing up and how we would all look forward to getting up early, sneaking downstairs and parking ourselves in front of the television with a big bowl of cereal and preparing for the next four hours of sugar-fueled animated splendor.
To which they wondered, “Why didn’t you just record the shows or watch them On-Demand?” and once I explained to them that those options didn’t exist, that you had to watch it real time or risk missing out for life. They were taken aback and wanted to hear more.
Kids have so many options on how to consume media and absolutely no restrictions on when they can watch something, that the idea of “appointment television” was completely beyond comprehension to them. The ephemeral nature of how I watched cartoons growing up fascinated them and I thought, what if there were some way to present and preserve some of these notions?
Cartoon Lagoon was basically my way of balling up the pop culture that I grew up with and create a time capsule of my youth for kids and parents to be able to enjoy together today.
Review Fix: How does the show try and recreate the Saturday morning experiences of yesteryear?
Galan: The show is an amalgamation of many things we grew up with in the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s. From “CAPTAIN KANGAROO” and the “THUNDERBIRDS” to “PEE-WEE’s PLAYHOUSE” and “ONE TO GROW ON” every facet of the show is meant to feel like a love letter to our pop culture childhood.
We also created our own imaginary network, “CLS”, where we present promos for shows that could have existed on Saturday Morning as well as commercial parodies featuring toys and cereal. We’d like to think of it as the spiritual essence of Saturday mornings gone by distilled into a show that modern audiences could appreciate.
Review Fix: Speaking of which, what cartoons did you watch on Saturday morning as a kid?
Galan: Some of my favorites were “Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends,” “The Smurfs,” “Superfriends,” “Mr.T,” “Dungeons & Dragons,” “Laff-O-Lympics,” “Mighty Orbots,” “Rubik the Amazing Cube,” “Galaxy High,” “Pole Position,” Thundarr the Barbarian” and of course “Scooby-Doo.” Most of them were mainstream but there are some obscurities in there for sure.
Review Fix: Any guilty pleasures? Shows fans would expect that you like?
Galan: Oh, there are so many but I’d have to say “JEM” was probably my favorite guilty pleasure. “JEM” was one of several cartoons that were aimed at girls but that I enjoyed in private. It wasn’t the type of cartoon you’d find any boys talking about on the playground at school but as an aspiring artist I was immediately pulled in by the amazing animation in the opening sequence, and the catchy theme song really helped.
I was also a huge fan of G.I.JOE, and not only was the animation for “JEM†done by the same studio but many of the same writers wrote for this series as well, so there were some similar fantasy elements that appealed to me. And of course there were gorgeous girls wearing the finest clothing that the ’80s had to offer so that helped.
Review Fix: How is the show accessible to both kids and adults?
Galan: We carefully crafted the scripts to have dual layers so you have one layer of context that is apparent to kids and one layer of subtext that should go right over young kids heads. If you look at the current television landscape there is a serious void in co-viewing opportunities and so it was important for us create something that had over the shoulder value for parents aside from just ringing any nostalgic bells.
Review Fix: How does to it feel to have Chris Phillips associated with the project?
Galan: I had worked professionally with Chris Phillips for two years before this project and never had an opportunity to get to know him on a personal level. Originally I approached him because I needed a professional voice with gravitas for CAPTAIN CARTOON and I knew from our previous interactions his mellifluous voice would be perfect. Not only was I right, but also I wasn’t aware that we had similar interests in cartoons and toys and we grew tremendously close during the production of Cartoon Lagoon.
Review Fix: What are your hopes for the series now that it’s on DVD?
Galan: While we really enjoyed our independence in the production of this first installment of CARTOON LAGOON we realize that being picked up by a network at this point would be ideal. Going into this creative exercise we didn’t have a definitive deadline–which was a luxury, as we had to figure a lot of things out as we went along. It was kind of like building and airplane while flying it.
Even still, there are a number of independent routes we could pursue on our own. But it took us two years to complete this project, and the support of a network and a dedicated crew would make the production schedule faster and the air dates more reliable…. as reliable as Saturday morning.
Check out a trailer for the show below:
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