Reddit AMA Recap: Robot Chicken’s Seth Green

 

 

Seth Green recently took to Reddit to answer questions for his loyal fan base the same day in which a Robot Chicken panel was announced for New York Comic Con. Interestingly enough the AMA wasn’t as Robot Chicken heavy and was actually pretty even up through the course of his pretty awesome career. Questions and answer topics included Family Guy, Can’t Hardly Wait, and even his band Dujour. However, it doesn’t mean Robot Chicken was left in the dark and show creator Seth Green was even asked what his favorite sketch EVER was and you would think after so many seasons and episodes it might be something a bit more recent alas he picked one that was from the FIRST season:

I always go back to Voltron Breakdancing, it was in our first season and our fifth episode, we were still figuring out what was possible. The fact that we could make this iconic robot breakdance like a B-Boy was really sort of liberating. And it opened a lot of things up. It was the first time that we wrote and recorded a song ourselves, and got a character to dance on-camera, and if you look at everything that happened since then, we just took it and run with it.

So Seth Green would go on to talk about his days on Without A Paddle when…HOLY SHIT A STAR WARS: DETOURS UPDATE!

So there’s actually been quite a bit of talk about this, but Detours is just on hold currently. We have 39 finished episodes and around 62 finished scripts. But that entire show was created before the decision to make more Star Wars movies, so our show (which was created by George Lucas) is an animated sitcom in the world of Star Wars, so we had a lot of conversations with Kathleen Kennedy about Star Wars in not just the next 3 years but the next 30 years, and when you’re in as privileged a position as we were to be able to work on Star Wars content with its creator, you get a great sense of responsibility to the whole. I was introduced to Star Wars as a child and it was without any ironic or comedic lens, so I saw Darth Vader as scary, and I saw all of those messages very very clearly. We didn’t think it made any sense, in anticipation of these new movies coming out, to spend the next 3 years with an animated sitcom as 3 generations’ of kids first introduction to the Star Wars universe.

I’ve had a lot of parents approach me in the last few years where they showed Robot Chicken or Family Guy Star Wars before they showed them regular Star Wars. The writers on Robot Chicken and I are seeing this a lot. The same way we were introduced to classic music through Bugs Bunny or Tom & Jerry, kids are taking our ironic interpretations of He-Man or other pop culture icons and never having the opportunity to meet them sincerely. It’s a really bizarre thing to wrap your head around, and because I’ve witnessed it firsthand, it made me more thoughtful about what we were putting it out.

I do feel that Detours is a timeless bit of entertainment. Media distribution is changing so quickly, so dramatically, that can you even imagine what distribution of content will look like in 5 years? In a day and age when Netflix series are nominated for the top accolades TV has to offer, what is to say what it will look like when the new Star Wars movie comes out? So Detours can sit on a shelf until the Star Wars movie comes out without losing any of its lustre, because what we’ve created is very funny, very smart and like I said before, timeless.

Wouldn’t that be something if the Star Wars: Detours thing FINALLY saw the light of day? The show looked GREAT and this is coming from a guy that doesn’t even like Star Wars so to kind of harp on Seth’s point I completely agree because me a non-Star Wars fan wants to see this series happen so now you are taking the Star Wars universe and making it palpable for everyone. The series was pretty much put on hold after the Disney buy out of the Star Wars brand, but we have still seen things like LEGO Star Wars which has been very good so there could still be a shred of hope that Star Wars: Detours happens before the day we die.

Another pretty awesome chapter in Seth’s career was Greg: The Bunny. For those that haven’t heard of the series Greg the Bunny was a show that started out on FOX, what seems like forever ago, and it was a live-action puppet series revolving around Greg and a number of puppets that more or less work in the entertainment industry. The series was on FOX for the first season, then it came back on IFC for a little more than a season as sort of a take on Beavis and Butthead but with movies and puppets instead of cartoons and music videos, and then there was a spin-off on MTV that aired in 2010 called Warren the Ape which only lasted the one season, but in my opinion I don’t know if the latter two iterations of Greg the Bunny were as good as the first season on FOX. In any case, Seth did give an update that pretty much waves goodbye to the series for good:

Greg the Bunny has had several lives across multiple networks and platforms, which is a testament to how indelible the original creation was. Dan Milano, who remains one of my closest friends, I just knew from seeing their public access show that I had to be a part of whatever this guy was doing. I don’t know what people know, but Greg has had a life on both NY public access and on the Independent Film Channel and then on FOX as well as on MTV… so I know there are DVDs available for all of that stuff, if you love Greg there is a bunch of stuff you probably haven’t seen. And if you’ve seen it all you’re probably one of us.

There’s a WHOLE bunch more and Seth Green is very thorough and thoughtful with his answers and you can definitely tell he has so much love for his fans. Every time I see him at Comic Con he still has the kid-like excitement and he’s always snapping pics of cosplayers and what not so you can tell he loves his gig. Read more of Seth Green’s AMA on Reddit here.