ABFF Recap: Black Dynamite Panel Sheds Light on Show’s Origin, Chemistry, New Season
When I entered the School of Visual Arts auditorium on West 23rd Street in Manhattan for the Black Dynamite panel, I was seeking out Adult Swim’s publicist so I could introduce myself in person. She texted me a description of what she was wearing (no, not in a kinky way… alright, maybe a little bit) so it would be easy to spot her. Looking for a description to differentiate myself from the others in the crowd, I scanned the group, and typed the most obvious response I could think of: “I’m the white guy.”
It worked. After all, this was the American Black Film Festival, And it’s no secret that a large portion of the show’s fans are black and that it’s geared toward blacks – for good reason. As panel member Walter Newman, head of comedy development at Adult Swim, stated: “A lot of the black voices unfortunately – or fortunately, for us – don’t seem to find that many outlets where they can be as creative as Carl [Jones – creator, producer, writer, & director] and Michael [Jai White – creator, producer, writer, & voice actor) and any of these guys on Black Dynamite. It’s just a win for us.”
The other panel members were Byron Minns (creator, writer, & voice actor), and Scott Fuselier (editor, producer.) During the course of the hour-long panel, they talked about the origins of Black Dynamite, the process behind making a show, the upcoming season, and some tips for aspiring creative-types (which will appear in a later article.)
As Byron explained, Michael Jai White came up with the original idea, “The conception, Mike’s idea, calling me and saying ‘I got this idea based on James Brown’s ‘Super Bad’ and I want this guy to be this way.’ And from just that idea, just us starting to actually execute that germ of a seed, by us just taking the time and actually focusing and doing it, it just became this.”
Initially Black Dynamite was a film, Byron continued, explaining the ideal conditions. “We wanted to do some type of animation but didn’t have a direction. And then having someone like Carl Jones being interested in a project without us even knowing, and that coming together. It’s nothing that we planned.”
However, there are differences when acting in a cartoon versus live action, as Michael explained. “You can’t rely on your physicality. It’s a whole other art. There’s different inflections in your voice; you say the same word 20 different ways. That’s why there are a lot of people that are voice actors primarily. A lot of us actors – stage, screen or TV – have to learn this type of stuff.”
Actors like Byron Minns, the voice of Bullhorn. “We were sitting in a bungalow that Mike and I work in at his house when we first wrote the film, and I had no intention of playing Bullhorn whatsoever,” Byron said. “But I heard the voice in my head, and I just said to Mike that that’s how I think he should sound. And Mike said why don’t you do it?”
As the panel discussed their fondness for Bullhorn, Carl pointed out one of the trickier parts to the character. “I don’t think everyone realizes it, but all of Bullhorn’s lines rhyme,” he said. “When we made that decision we didn’t completely understand the corner we were painting ourselves into. It isn’t easy.”
But fast forward one season, and it’s clear the show and its creators, writers, and producers are just working. “It’s a chemistry thing,” Michael explained. “It’s one of those things that doesn’t happen very often. We get in a room and we have like-minds and like-tastes, and our influences are from all over. Carl and I, our influences were Monty Python. A big influence of mine is Peter Sellers. We have a really wide range of what we draw from, and Byron as well. We’re nerds. You put us in a room together and things happen.”
But what kind of experience did they bring to the table to compliment that chemistry? “I think working on Boondocks was definitely a prerequisite,” Carl said. “It was the first time we did a ‘black anime cartoon.’ And half the animation was done in Korea, and it was very, very difficult to explain a lot of stuff to them. For example, they used to ask us why Huey never smiled. We were trying all these different ways to explain it to them, and they really wanted to know. Like they didn’t want to move further until they understood why he never, ever smiles. And we said, ‘Malcolm X,’ and they said, ‘Ohhhhhhh! Now we get it.” It’s those little nuances that we struggled with and we learned through the years how to get better at communicating ideas with overseas studios. So when Black Dynamite got picked up, we already had that in our repertoire. We knew what we needed to do to overcome some of the more challenging aspects of production.”
Looking back on their first complete season, someone in the audience inevitably inquired about their favorite episodes. Since a lot of people generally ask that question, I’m going to assume a lot of people want to know the answer. It was the Michael Jackson episode, almost unanimously. “It was satire about the most famous human being on the planet,” Michael said.
Either that episode, or the Richard Pryor one. “When Eddie Griffin was in the studio doing Richard: that was something special,” Scott said.
So what took so long with this season? When the new one airs on October 18,2014, it will be over two years since the last one ended. “The misconception is we’re just chillin,” Carl said. “But it is a lot of work. Just conceptualizing the episodes, each of the stories in the writer’s room, all the way to writing the actual scripts themselves… you’re talking about months. And then there’s the actual production process. We’re still working through it.”
And they’ve not making them one episode at a time either. “We have three or four episodes in various stages of production at one time,” Carl explained. “One show we might be recording, one show we’re storyboarding, one show we’re animating, and then there’s another show in post – all at the same time.” “Each episode takes about six months to complete altogether. There are 24 frames of drawings per second.”
Everything has to be perfect, Scott said, referring to the group’s perfectionist attitude. “It’s constantly in a state of change. We keep changing things – shots, music cues, sound, everything – right up until the last minute; like it’s only actually done when we upload the Quicktime to Adult Swim and we literally cannot change anything anymore. It’s constantly moving back and forth. The shows have to be 22 minutes and we make about 25 minutes and pick which things to cut out.”
Will it be worth the wait? Prior to the panel, parts of two episodes were shown, and everybody (myself included) laughed their asses off. One involved Mr. Rogers (of Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood) kidnapping a bunch of children. Another had a group of patrons in a bar watching Roots for the first time, flipping shit, and rushing out to enslave the white man. This episode actually had a backstory from Carl’s childhood, he explained. “There was a lot of controversy around it, as if we didn’t even know slavery existed until we saw Roots. So I said, let’s show what could have happened. What if we got so mad that we tried to do the same thing?”
When first asked about Season Two, this episode was the first thing mentioned. “Woody Allen is in shackles,” Byron said, referring to the episode. “That’s all you need to say.”
Carl hinted at a few more plot-lines as well. “We got a Bob Marley episode: ‘How Honey Got Her Groove Back.’ We also got a ‘Soul Train’ episode, with Don Cornelius. We got ‘Black Jaws.’” The last one got the most laughs by far.
They do everything, but surprisingly, there were some episode ideas that actually did get nixed. “We had one episode where we were going to show the origin of Jheri curl and Jheri was actually going to be a person. I can tell you, since we’re not actually going to do it. There was a white guy named Jheri (or Jerry) that caught his wife with a big black guy and decided he was going to destroy the minds of the black people by poisoning them through their hair,” Carl said, laughing. “We didn’t get to do that one.” Oddly, it wasn’t scrapped for being inappropriate, but instead because there was a Boondocks episode that was similar.
Someone also asked if they’d ever try making a kids show. “I watch a lot of kids cartoons myself,” Carl said. “I’m a big fan of the Warner Brothers stuff and Hannah Barbera; I still watch The Flintstones and stuff like that. I love kids cartoons, it’s just that … there’s so much I want to say that is probably touching on topics that are a little more risky or a little more taboo. I guess I just get a little bit more satisfaction out of telling stories that put people in an uncomfortable space. We want to stimulate people’s minds and provoke certain thoughts that they maybe wouldn’t normally have.”
Fair enough, but how about another movie? “That’s definitely the plan,” Michael revealed. “Hopefully sooner than later. The first draft of the script is just about done. The movie would go on as if there weren’t a television show, although there will be some things that are true to both. They won’t co-exist, I mean, in the movie people go to the moon, so…”
It’s much more far out, compared to the film. And by far out, I’m not referring to the fact that it takes place in the 1970s. “We turned the 70’s into its own universe,” Carl explained. But he wanted to stress that that’s not the overarching theme behind Black Dynamite. And it’s not what makes the show likeable – not just for one race, but for everyone. It’s about people, the time period is insignificant. “I think aesthetically it feels familiar to [fans] and it has a 70’s vibe to it, but the show is not really about the 70’s and it’s not really about Blaxploitation, per se. It’s really about a family of four characters and them trying to work through their differences and live together. With that being our main focus, trying to build stories that support these characters’ personalities and trying to find different angles between all four of them… that’s what makes it have more of a mass appeal.”
With appeal like that, and comedy like the panel showcased, Black Dynamite has a bright future.
