interviews

Interstitial: What Might Have Been

~ Renee Carter Hall ~ Leave a comment

Through the course of booking all our media appearances, there were various ones that didn’t work out. Some, I’m sure, we never heard about in the first place—I know it was mentioned that we weren’t always told about possibilities, so we wouldn’t all get our hopes up if things didn’t pan out. Some names that were dropped in passing were Today, Good Morning America, Geraldo, and Live With Regis and Kathie Lee (we were told that that one didn’t happen because Disney was the parent company, though who knows if that was actually the case).

We also had one magazine that, as far as we ever knew, didn’t print the story they prepared. We were supposed to be in TIME, and the interview and photo shoot had all been done. As fate would have it, though, the story was slated to run the week that turned out to be the start of the Gulf War, so it understandably got bumped for harder news. We were told it would still run, and week after week we kept flipping through the issues in the checkout line, but the story never showed up and we never heard from them with a copy of it, so I’m assuming it never ran. (If anybody can find it, please comment and let me know!)

A snapshot from the TIME photo shoot. At least we got free sweatshirts out of it.

We were also offered the chance to be on a revival of the game show To Tell the Truth, which would have meant a trip back to L.A. (the biggest argument in favor of it, in my opinion back then). We weren’t all sure we really wanted to do that, though—a game show isn’t exactly the same kind of spotlight as an interview—and in the end the dealbreaker was that they were only willing to pay for one parent to chaperone the three of us, which wasn’t something our parents were comfortable with doing for a cross-country trip.

And of course, much to our disappointment, we never got to be on what was then the Holy Grail of TV appearances: Oprah. There was word of it being a possibility at one point, but what I remember is that it was supposed to be a show about kids doing amazing things and we would be one segment on it, whereas they (WB/our publicist) were aiming for appearances where we were the only ones featured. (We didn’t care. We would have happily been on Oprah in a segment short enough to be a subliminal message.) That kind of info often got to us second- or third-hand, though, so I’m hesitant to state that as the reason (or even a reason) that it didn’t work out.

Also in the category of things that never happened were any other scripts or pitches for more Tiny Toons episodes. At the time we were told, yeah, sure, send in any other ideas you have, though I think even then we understood deep down that they were just being polite and encouraging to the kids. I do remember writing and drawing various ideas on a yellow legal pad, and I noted in my journal once that Amy and Sarah “have written another episode,” one about a concert featuring a fox singer/rapper called MC Frozen Yogurt. (I think it was inspired by their experiences at a New Kids on the Block concert they went to.)

My journal also has a cryptic reference one day that “I finished writing B&BGH 2-1/2,” but there are no other mentions of it that I can find, and I have literally no memory of whatever that sequel was. Hopefully Buster and Babs had a better trip, but I rather doubt it.

20/20, in 2022

~ Renee Carter Hall ~ Leave a comment

(You’re welcome, by the way, for not making the obvious “20/20 hindsight” reference in the title. Seriously considered it, though.)

When I think back on the entire experience of making “Buster and Babs Go Hawaiian,” there are 3 main events that stand out: the trip to L.A. and meeting Spielberg; the premiere of the finished episode, of course; and the airing of the 20/20 segment. It was by far our most involved media appearance and, quite frankly, probably the one that the most people had heard of and watched regularly, at least in our area. (And until it aired, none of our other national TV appearances could be set for firm dates, so I’m assuming they were given exclusivity.)

One of the details I’d forgotten about in the saga of 20/20 is that issue with the air date. On April 5, 1991, our publicist, Valerie, told us it would air on the 19th, so we immediately set about telling… everybody. Family, friends, teachers, local newspapers, local radio and TV stations. After all, as Thirteen noted in her journal, we were told that “the only way we won’t be on 20/20 on the 19th is if there’s a national disaster or something.” (We were somewhat familiar with this, since a planned article in TIME had been derailed by the start of the Gulf War.)

Ten days later, Valerie called back with the words “I’m a messenger from hell.” The air date had been moved from the 19th to the 26th. There was not, as far as we knew, a national disaster, and all of us ranged from irritated to furious, since we’d been waiting for this thing for months already and, more importantly, we had to call everybody and their brother back and tell them, uh, yeah, it’s not the 19th after all. Of course, like a lot of snags in big events, in the long run it was so unimportant that I’d entirely forgotten about it until I reread my journal—but Thirteen sure had some all-caps lines in those entries at being forced to wait.

Mom had to make a whole new sign to hang in the window of the family business. (Note the original date blotted out in the article.)

Friday, April 26, 1991:

It’s 6:20. Only 3 hours and 40 minutes left until showtime.

(Yeah, we were a little excited. I’ll spare you the running journal entry complete with timestamps…)

10:05

The title of our story is “When Dreams Come True.”

I still can’t believe it. I mean, us on 20/20. This is just so cool.

The running gag in my journal entry became how many times I kept writing “This is just so cool” or variations thereof. For anyone who cares (and I’m not sure I’m even among them), the grand total was 9.

I think the big impact of the 20/20 airing wasn’t so much anything about the segment itself—though of course it was well done, and even Thirteen notably had no complaints about it—but the fact that it was a show we already watched every Friday night in our house. It was part of our normal media landscape, and now… there we were, on the screen. It might be hard to fully understand this, in the age of YouTube and viral videos, but back then, being on TV was big, and not just in the “I’m famous and people recognize me in the grocery store!” kind of way, but in a more internalized, personal, “this feels not entirely real, but apparently it is” kind of way. We were now a part of what we watched. (That would be true to some degree again when “Buster and Babs Go Hawaiian” finally aired, but we were so involved in that whole process that the premiere felt more like just wrapping things up.)

At the time of posting this, “When Dreams Come True” is available online for those of you who haven’t seen it. (I should note that I’m not affiliated with the YouTube channel that posted it, but do check them out, like, subscribe, etc. They’ve got some fun old commercials posted too.)

If/when the video below disappears, you can also check out the segment’s transcript below.

See what you think, but… y’know, I think it’s still pretty cool.

2020 transcriptDownload

Media appearances: Old School Lane and Kaimancast, plus a blast from the past

~ Renee Carter Hall ~ Leave a comment

Some links to share!

First, 3FW was mentioned in the first episode of Media Hall of Fame over on the Old School Lane YouTube channel, as part of an episode about fans influencing their favorite animated shows:

I actually never realized until this video (or I’d forgotten, which is also possible) that The Simpsons did an episode that riffed on our Tiny Toon scripts. That’s kind of funny, given how much I was also into The Simpsons in the early ’90s. Wikipedia tells me that the episode aired in April 1993, which I’m thinking was after I’d drifted away from the show, so I guess that’s how I missed it. (Kind of meta that our real-life story inspired a writer to do a spec script about fictional characters submitting a spec script and… yeah, my head hurts now.)

I also recently did an interview with Redd Kaiman for his Kaimancast, which you can listen to on Spotify:

Kaimancast Episode 21: Interview with Renee Carter Hall

And he did this fun video trailer for the episode that includes some footage from the 20/20 segment:

And speaking of that 20/20 segment, it’s currently online again! (It’s low res, but hey, so were the ’90s.)

Just as a final housekeeping note, I know this blog has been sitting idle for a lot longer than I intended. (That was one heck of a summer break.) I do still have a few more stories to tell, so I’m hoping to wrap things up with some final posts in 2022, and then let this sit as an archive unless something new comes up.

In the Spotlight (Part Two)

~ Renee Carter Hall ~ 1 Comment

Probably the most extensive print article done about us was the cover feature for USA Weekend, a magazine distributed in many Sunday papers at the time (though our local ones carried Parade instead).

The article was good, but we didn’t care for the pictures they ran with it

Okay, we hated those pictures. Especially that cover photo, which we loathed with a passion that only teenage girls can muster for lousy photos of themselves.

Thirteen’s commentary:

Amy’s hair was, like, standing up and Sarah’s hair was blown around, and mine looked all stringy. Besides, Amy had her mouth wide open, and the sun was, like, glinting off my forehead . . . And then, in the black-and-white one showing us at lunch, you couldn’t even see Sarah, I looked like Kathy Bates from Misery, and all you could see of Amy was her hair (from the back, of course).

(Granted, just the day before she’d written…)

We’ve gotten used to seeing pictures of us and stuff. Before, we would have cringed to even glance at a photo of us. But now we’re used to it. Same with seeing ourselves on TV, hearing our voices, and seeing our names and stuff about us in print. It’s kind of fun, really. (not)

USA Weekend cover feature

Three other newspaper articles from the second wave of publicity, leading up to the episode’s premiere in November 1991:

The Sunday News Leader (Staunton, VA)

Daily Press (Hampton Roads, VA)

Roanoke Times & World-News (Roanoke, VA)

 

In the Spotlight (Part One)

~ Renee Carter Hall ~ 1 Comment

And then word got out.

Here’s a sampling of some of our print interviews. (I should note that to this day, there are still resources online that get Sarah’s last name wrong — early on, a typo morphed it into “Creek” instead of “Creef,” and unfortunately it got copied along from there.)

PDF of articles from local newspapers

(The irony of a Warner Bros.-related story showing up in a Disney magazine was not lost on me.)

Once the story hit the wire services, it was picked up everywhere. We were sent clippings and copies from newspapers across the US (including Hawaii, of course), from The Stars and Stripes, and even from other countries. Interviews became commonplace (if a little boring sometimes because of having to answer the same questions over and over again).

The only story that never panned out was for TIME. They came and did an interview and a fun photo shoot (even to the point of buying us color-coordinated sweatshirts to wear in the photos), but the week the article was slated to appear, Operation Desert Shield became Desert Storm, and from what we understood, our story kept getting pushed back because of all the Gulf War-related news taking up page space. We kept checking each issue for weeks, but to our knowledge, the article never appeared.

Nostalgia Critic interview

Video ~ ~ Renee Carter Hall ~ 1 Comment

No, this blog has not been abandoned; it’s just been a temporary casualty of real life/the day job. To start the resurrection, here’s an interview I did recently with the Nostalgia Critic webseries.

By the way, since there’s apparently been some confusion on this point (even from my husband, no less): In that graphic below showing the three of us as cartoon characters, I’m the one on the far right, in green. Just to set the record straight. XD (You’ll also notice that toon-me is wearing a watch on her left wrist. I don’t remember all the details now, but somehow someone or other took notice that I was wearing my Bugs Bunny wristwatch when we were meeting with the writers/staff of the show, and it wound up getting a nod in my character design.)