TMNT, The Early Years

fcmoss · 04-19-2011, 04:58 PM

Someone invited me to start a new thread, so here I am. I have no clue what people are interested in hearing about, so I’ll just plunge in.
It was 1988. There was a writers’ strike. I was walking a picket line in front of 20th Century Fox studios, when I met a tall skinny older writer. We started talking. His name was Jack Mendelsohn. He found out I’d written several other cartoon shows, and we talked about “the biz.” Jack had started working for Fred wolf Films on the new season of an animated kids’ show, something called “Mutant Turtle Ninjas…” no, it was “Teenage Turtle Ninja Mutant…” We both had trouble getting the name right.
It wasn’t a Writers Guild show (the Guild only covered live action), so there was no strikebreaking involved. We hit it off and, in the fall of 1988, he hired me.
At first, my job was computer guy and office factotum. Jack was a bit computer-averse, so I set up the office on Ventura Boulevard in Sherman Oaks, and created some styles in WordStar (!) to make margin-setting easier. Up to then, he’d been tabbing over for character name and dialog margins. Writers came in with floppy disks of premises, outlines, scripts and I massaged them through our new system. We were off & running.

04-19-2011, 04:58 PM	#1
fcmoss Official TMNT Staff/Cast Join Date: Apr 2011 Location: LA Posts: 25	TMNT, The Early Years Someone invited me to start a new thread, so here I am. I have no clue what people are interested in hearing about, so I’ll just plunge in. It was 1988. There was a writers’ strike. I was walking a picket line in front of 20th Century Fox studios, when I met a tall skinny older writer. We started talking. His name was Jack Mendelsohn. He found out I’d written several other cartoon shows, and we talked about “the biz.” Jack had started working for Fred wolf Films on the new season of an animated kids’ show, something called “Mutant Turtle Ninjas…” no, it was “Teenage Turtle Ninja Mutant…” We both had trouble getting the name right. It wasn’t a Writers Guild show (the Guild only covered live action), so there was no strikebreaking involved. We hit it off and, in the fall of 1988, he hired me. At first, my job was computer guy and office factotum. Jack was a bit computer-averse, so I set up the office on Ventura Boulevard in Sherman Oaks, and created some styles in WordStar (!) to make margin-setting easier. Up to then, he’d been tabbing over for character name and dialog margins. Writers came in with floppy disks of premises, outlines, scripts and I massaged them through our new system. We were off & running. __________________ Francis Moss www.cartoonscripts.com