We’re not in it for the glamour. Writing animation in Hollywood is not the road to fame and fortune. We don’t have a lot of street cred. It’s odd — since half (most?) of the movie hits in the past 30 years (Pixar, Disney, Dreamworks, Universal, etc.) have either been animated or associated with animated TV series based on comic books (X-Men, Avengers, Batman, etc.). Billions of happy viewers, all that money keeping the fading mainstream business going, and we “just write cartoons.” Even people that love our work aren’t always sure what we do (“Do you write the stories for the animators?”). It’s like that famous quote in the classic 1950s movie Sunset Boulevard: “Audiences don’t know somebody sits down and writes a picture. They think the actors make it up as they go along.” Thankfully, we love doing it. Have a look at the first page of our X-MEN:TAS pilot script, Mark Edens’ “Night of the Sentinels – Part One.” It all starts with the words.
