A Macek Kind of Interview
Jan. 21st, 2010 09:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
krpalmerAfter an interview with someone from Geneon sounded interesting enough for me to try an Anime News Network podcast at last, I've listened to a few more of them. I've got to admit that the great majority of the time I skip over the hosts talking to each other and get straight to the latest interview to sound interesting, and so far as that goes an extended discussion with Carl Macek did indeed catch my attention. Having to head off to three twelve-hour night shifts in a row did delay my starting into it, but I was able to get through on my days off.
Before that, I did manage to read some message boards threads responding to it. They might have influenced what I thought about it myself, though. It's perhaps tempting enough to think of the interview as "Carl Macek gets to tell his side of the story," and the story already in my own mind might have amounted to "Macek worked on Robotech, but his efforts to move beyond 'localisation' and make more of it didn't quite work; after that he ran a company called Streamline Pictures that sold some of the first anime on VHS, but he still seemed to 'localise' it too much in the eyes of some and the company shut down in the mid-1990s; a while after that he worked for ADV Films, but his projects never seemed that successful." Some of the people before me might have had their own stories in mind, and I noticed a certain number of comments ranging up to complaints that Macek seemed to be trying to suggest that infamous accusations swirling around him were never his own fault (although to say he was constantly assigning "blame" seems a bit much), and there was something sort of unprofessional about things at ADV anyway. With that in mind I did wonder myself at times about what he was saying and how, but then I can also wonder just how pleasant an interview trying to get someone to make a ritual admission of mistakes they've been proclaimed to have made would be. Nowadays, too, I can see Carl Macek getting to comment on the current battered state of the anime industry as a sort of "now who's laughing?" situation. An anime industry run at a lower key throughout, spending in licensing and production costs what seemed a reasonable expectation instead of an airy hope to make back (which was a theme to be found back in the "Geneon podcast"), might never have left an impression of caving in on itself. On the other hand, I can wonder if the television series that wouldn't have been licensed would still have been "fansubbed" anyway such that shady underground interest spread far and wide anyway...
On that note, though, I did notice some people making a somehow familiar complaint that Macek shouldn't be credited with getting the anime industry under way anyway; after all, Voltron was popular, wasn't it? I found myself thinking that, as amusing as experiments in "alternative history" may be, speculating how the fans of Star Blazers might have kept interest in animated series like theirs alive underground for a decade until VCRs and video subtitling equipment spread or anything else, to say something might not have been essential to events unfolding almost as they did doesn't mean that thing had no effect in the history we actually live in. In any case, if Macek did say that he was "essential," I don't think I heard it. Beyond that, I noticed someone getting into more of an "obsessive fan critique" (if still one also familiar to me) and accusing the conclusion of Robotech: The Macross Saga of taking a moment from the conclusion of Macross that had first been "we'll colonise the galaxy and not be wiped out by any one catastrophe" and turning it into "we're going to confront the real villains on their home ground!" The funny thing is that (no doubt getting into something of an "obsessive" response of my own) the moment in question seemed reinterpreted in later Robotech projects into just "we'll go and negotiate for peace."
In the midst of his recounting the foibles at ADV, Macek got in a dig at the new dub of Macross made there (one he wasn't involved with), stating it was an attempt to strike a blow against Robotech but basically had no effect (the hosts agreed with him there) because ADV didn't really understand things. I do have to admit now that my own initial reaction to listening to the dub myself was to wonder if it made Robotech that much more "obsolete," but I can also admit now to understanding that a lot of the people who would have even heard about this new dub would probably have just held the original Japanese dialogue in a place of primacy so as to focus on every flaw, which ties in a neat way to Macek's comments about just who he had tried to sell to and how... The initial description of the making of Robotech seemed just like I'd heard it before, and my interest picked up more when Macek moved on to his later projects. When a later comment brought him back to "Robotech: The Movie," though, he seemed to get more interested in things. Again, perhaps, it might have seemed like an attempt to deny there was "fault" to be assigned at all, suggesting the whole project started almost by accident (and turned into an attempt to convert "Megazone 23" only after some looking into Macross: Do You Remember Love didn't work out), but I've seen a comment or two before about how test screenings showed less "everybody instantly found the problems everyone was repeating to each other years later" than just "the demographics were a lot older than the executives had planned to advertise to," and the studio went bust before they could retool the promotional campaign.
Near the very beginning of the interview, Macek commented on how he had been involved with the early promotion of the original Star Wars before 1977. Now, I do have to admit remembering reading an older interview with him in an issue of "Newtype USA" where he got in a dig at Attack of the Clones just perhaps because everyone else was at the time, which didn't help my impressions of him (or, indeed, that other now very much finished project linked to ADV). However, he didn't make any comments nearly as gratuitous here, nor did he to me seem to imply he'd been essential to the effort. He had just worked for "Mediascene" magazine, which had run an early cover story, and been involved in some way with Howard Chaykin drawing the original promotional poster. This interview, then, seems to have helped my impressions of Carl Macek. There were moments where he seemed as mellow as when he was just reading great chunks of a book to provide an audio commentary for "Robotech II: The Sentinels," but he did get more enthusiastic at other times, and at other times he managed some strange Kermit the Frog-esque voices when involving other people in his recollections. That, though, wasn't the only interesting thing about this interview for me.
Before that, I did manage to read some message boards threads responding to it. They might have influenced what I thought about it myself, though. It's perhaps tempting enough to think of the interview as "Carl Macek gets to tell his side of the story," and the story already in my own mind might have amounted to "Macek worked on Robotech, but his efforts to move beyond 'localisation' and make more of it didn't quite work; after that he ran a company called Streamline Pictures that sold some of the first anime on VHS, but he still seemed to 'localise' it too much in the eyes of some and the company shut down in the mid-1990s; a while after that he worked for ADV Films, but his projects never seemed that successful." Some of the people before me might have had their own stories in mind, and I noticed a certain number of comments ranging up to complaints that Macek seemed to be trying to suggest that infamous accusations swirling around him were never his own fault (although to say he was constantly assigning "blame" seems a bit much), and there was something sort of unprofessional about things at ADV anyway. With that in mind I did wonder myself at times about what he was saying and how, but then I can also wonder just how pleasant an interview trying to get someone to make a ritual admission of mistakes they've been proclaimed to have made would be. Nowadays, too, I can see Carl Macek getting to comment on the current battered state of the anime industry as a sort of "now who's laughing?" situation. An anime industry run at a lower key throughout, spending in licensing and production costs what seemed a reasonable expectation instead of an airy hope to make back (which was a theme to be found back in the "Geneon podcast"), might never have left an impression of caving in on itself. On the other hand, I can wonder if the television series that wouldn't have been licensed would still have been "fansubbed" anyway such that shady underground interest spread far and wide anyway...
On that note, though, I did notice some people making a somehow familiar complaint that Macek shouldn't be credited with getting the anime industry under way anyway; after all, Voltron was popular, wasn't it? I found myself thinking that, as amusing as experiments in "alternative history" may be, speculating how the fans of Star Blazers might have kept interest in animated series like theirs alive underground for a decade until VCRs and video subtitling equipment spread or anything else, to say something might not have been essential to events unfolding almost as they did doesn't mean that thing had no effect in the history we actually live in. In any case, if Macek did say that he was "essential," I don't think I heard it. Beyond that, I noticed someone getting into more of an "obsessive fan critique" (if still one also familiar to me) and accusing the conclusion of Robotech: The Macross Saga of taking a moment from the conclusion of Macross that had first been "we'll colonise the galaxy and not be wiped out by any one catastrophe" and turning it into "we're going to confront the real villains on their home ground!" The funny thing is that (no doubt getting into something of an "obsessive" response of my own) the moment in question seemed reinterpreted in later Robotech projects into just "we'll go and negotiate for peace."
In the midst of his recounting the foibles at ADV, Macek got in a dig at the new dub of Macross made there (one he wasn't involved with), stating it was an attempt to strike a blow against Robotech but basically had no effect (the hosts agreed with him there) because ADV didn't really understand things. I do have to admit now that my own initial reaction to listening to the dub myself was to wonder if it made Robotech that much more "obsolete," but I can also admit now to understanding that a lot of the people who would have even heard about this new dub would probably have just held the original Japanese dialogue in a place of primacy so as to focus on every flaw, which ties in a neat way to Macek's comments about just who he had tried to sell to and how... The initial description of the making of Robotech seemed just like I'd heard it before, and my interest picked up more when Macek moved on to his later projects. When a later comment brought him back to "Robotech: The Movie," though, he seemed to get more interested in things. Again, perhaps, it might have seemed like an attempt to deny there was "fault" to be assigned at all, suggesting the whole project started almost by accident (and turned into an attempt to convert "Megazone 23" only after some looking into Macross: Do You Remember Love didn't work out), but I've seen a comment or two before about how test screenings showed less "everybody instantly found the problems everyone was repeating to each other years later" than just "the demographics were a lot older than the executives had planned to advertise to," and the studio went bust before they could retool the promotional campaign.
Near the very beginning of the interview, Macek commented on how he had been involved with the early promotion of the original Star Wars before 1977. Now, I do have to admit remembering reading an older interview with him in an issue of "Newtype USA" where he got in a dig at Attack of the Clones just perhaps because everyone else was at the time, which didn't help my impressions of him (or, indeed, that other now very much finished project linked to ADV). However, he didn't make any comments nearly as gratuitous here, nor did he to me seem to imply he'd been essential to the effort. He had just worked for "Mediascene" magazine, which had run an early cover story, and been involved in some way with Howard Chaykin drawing the original promotional poster. This interview, then, seems to have helped my impressions of Carl Macek. There were moments where he seemed as mellow as when he was just reading great chunks of a book to provide an audio commentary for "Robotech II: The Sentinels," but he did get more enthusiastic at other times, and at other times he managed some strange Kermit the Frog-esque voices when involving other people in his recollections. That, though, wasn't the only interesting thing about this interview for me.