Michael Reaves R.I.P.

Mar 23

Mar 23 Michael Reaves R.I.P.

Of the many, many memorable moments I shared with Michael Reaves, few better sum up the man than participating with him as he battled Fred Silverman and Hideo Takayashiki for the integrity of The Mighty Orbots.

You could well cite this as a quixotic quest, attempting to bring as much skill and intelligence to a Japanese / U.S. co-production that never gained the traction it should, a one season wonder that faded from the memory of all except the most dedicated animation fans.

Michael would certainly have been forgiven for not fighting to the last bloody inch to make the show as good as he possibly could, especially in the face of a Japanese co-story editor who felt dishonored at having to share duties with an American and then having to face off against Silverman, a network executive best described as the Donald Trump of television.

Takayashiki could speak English and Michael knew this, but it was a point of honor to him not to communicate directly with any American writers.

We had a trio of female Japanese interpreters working for TMS at the time, and one of them drew the unpleasant short straw of having to translate the story sessions between Michael and Takayashiki.

The sessions, which took place in the TMS conference room with the Japanese and Americans sitting on opposite sides of a long executive table only slightly shorter than the flight deck of the IJN Hiryū, would typically start with Takayashiki wanting some change to bring the story being discussed more in line with Japanese sensibilities.

The poor lady translator would relay this in a soft, conciliatory tone.

Michael, knowing the series’ success hinged on it being a hit in the U.S., would resist, testily citing why the suggested change didn’t fit with the way Americans liked their cartoons.

The poor lady translator would relay his response in a soft, conciliatory
tone, even though Takayashiki understood what Michael said.

Takayashiki would regretfully (or so the translator said) disagree with Michael. Michael -- who like myself was a disciple of the Harlan Ellison school of fight long, fight loud, fight hard for your story – would respond somewhat…ah…forcefully.

The poor lady translator would relay this in a soft, conciliatory tone.

Takayashiki would reply in a tone somewhat akin to Toshiro Mifune wading into a yakuza gang.

…and the poor lady translator would relay this in a soft, conciliatory tone.

(Little wonder this translator quit mid-season to serve as a translator for an international commission attempting to hammer out a fishing treaty between the U.S., Russia, and Japan; that must have seemed awfully relaxing after dealing with Orbots story sessions!)

And if you thought that was fun, hoo-boy! Stick around for the second part of our doubleheader, a story session with Fred Silverman.

Silverman was a bullshit artist who catered to the lowest common denominator but for the first part of his career possessed enough savvy to find talented creators and not interfere too much.

He frequently repeated his catchphrase to anyone within earshot: “Sell the sizzle, not the steak.”

He didn’t like it when I pointed out that selling the sizzle was fine -- but you still needed to deliver a steak.

Silverman’s star was not merely setting at the time of The Mighty Orbots, it had collapsed into a black hole. Despite being the only person to head all three networks, after his success at CBS and ABC, he made a gawdawful mess of NBC and left the peacock to “go into independent production.”*

None of Silverman’s indie-prods ever caught fire (though a few of them should and their cast and crews would have willing supplied the matches). The Mighty Orbots was Silverman’s attempt to prove he was still the kid-vid genius who okayed Scooby-doo, Where Are You? and launched Joe Ruby and Ken Spears studio.

Perhaps it would have been better if we used translators in our Silverman meetings; speaking the same language certainly seemed futile.

The epitome of this was an epic battle Michael and I had with Silverman over how to get rid of a magnetic monster in one episode.

“I wanna throw it in a glacier,” Silverman said.

That wouldn’t work, Michael and I pointed out. Intense cold strengthens a magnetic field, intense heat destroys it. “Throw it in a volcano instead,” Michael said.

“No, I want to throw it in a glacier,” Silverman said.

Now some of you may wonder why fight over this minor point.

I mean, it’s only a dumb children’s show, right?

Wrong.

There’s a saying in the music biz that if you don’t play every gig as if it were a sold out gig, you’ll never play a sold out gig.

Michael (and myself, and Steve Gerber, and Marty Pasko, and Flint Dille, and many of the other animation writers of our generation) would never short change our audience no matter how young they might be.

We fought long and hard to make our scripts as good as they could possibly be, pushing the format bit by bit, inch by inch, edit by edit a little further along the path.

We may have been the despair of the producers and studios who hired us, but with no false modesty our efforts paid off in shows that people remember fondly to this day, shows that made groundbreaking shows of the 1990s and 2000s easier to fight for.

Those screaming arguments Michael fought with Silverman and others to keep the integrity of his scripts paid off, if not for him then certainly for the shows he wrote for.

Case in point: Dungeons & Dragons.

Michael wrote several of the best episodes of the show, which by Saturday morning standards of that era was a big hit, enjoying three seasons.

But when it was cancelled without wrapping up the main quest (i.e., the kid heroes finding their way back into the real world), Michael took it upon himself to write “Requiem”, a finale episode he made available to anyone who wanted to read it (eventually it was recorded by fans as an audio drama and that recording turned into a fan-imation by using scenes from other episodes).

Michael fought for writers’ rights and was instrumental in a couple of attempts to break animation writers away from the Motion Picture Screen Cartoonists and into either the Writers’ Guild or, when that failed, to start an Animation Writers Guild. He wrote / co-wrote / edited nearly 30 books, dozens of short stories, three feature films, plus more animation than IMDb gives him credit for.

I tried to recruit him for G.I. Joe but he refused, saying despite his action-adventure cred he couldn’t bring himself to write a show that glorified military force.

We respected him for that, and got him to write for Transformers, Jem, and My Little Pony.

He was a prickly sort, no denying that, but he was also the kind of guy you could trust to have your back in a story conference or a bar fight. He was married for several years to Brynne Chandler, a talented writer and editor on her own, and for a while they were happy. Among the children they had is Mallory Reaves, who continues the family tradition of writing and editing.

The end of their marriage and Michael’s subsequent diagnosis with Parkinson’s did a lot to simmer him down.

As Harlan himself demonstrated, you can’t roar through life full tilt 24 / 7 without burning out eventually. Michael’s personal situation and health issues didn’t daunt his creative endeavors, but they sure took a lot of piss and vinegar out of him.

We stayed in touch as he went through a prolonged period of couch surfing. He remained creative as long as he could operate a keyboard, but the Parkinson’s deprived him of speech.

The last time I saw him was at the Motion Picture home where a producer staged a table read for a new screenplay Michael had written. He could barely raise his voice above a whisper at that point.

He remained online for a few years after that, but the last thing he wrote on Facebook was a brief mention of our mutual friend Marty Pasko’s death. After that he put up a few links, but apparently even that become too much effort.

There are a few people in the industry that I’ve felt a special kinship with, and Michael was one of them.

It hurts to realize he’s gone.

* If Daily Variety reports you’re going into independent production, it means you’re fired. If they report you’re going to write a book, it means you’re really fired.