Turtle Power: The Definitive History of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014) - full transcript

PETER LAIRD: We got into
talking about these
bus-kicking turtles.

You know, the bus would be
going along Route 108,
I think it was,

between Durham
and Dover.

Suddenly this turtle
would jump out from
the side of the road,

kick the bus
really hard

and spin it
around on its axis,

and you'd be heading
back the other way.

We just got a real kick
out of talking about
these bus-kicking turtles.

We would laugh
uproariously.

And I think that is where
the Turtles came from.

We had no idea how big
big could be.



I felt obligated
to resist making it
a total commercial.

Every morning,
7:00 on the dot,

I watched every
single episode.

They're kind of like
the cartoon Beatles.

It's a story that really
tells you that anybody
can be successful.

Should it have happened?

The odds are
infinitesimally low,
but it did.

LAIRD: Nothing about it
was planned beyond how
do we do a 40-page comic

and make it at least
halfway decent?

KEVIN EASTMAN: [ECHOING]
There's too many
happy accidents.

MARK ASKWITH: In 1977,
you have this really
vital energy

happening
in popular culture.

If you want,
you can call it punk,

you can call it
new wave.



A lot of stuff was happening.

I mean, we were almost
at the very end
of the Cold War,

there's a lot of
multiculturalism
coming out,

and a lot of kids who felt out of place.

They didn't know how to
describe themselves

and they didn't have
the kind of community

that previous
generations have had.

Stores like
the Silver Snail,

a lot of comic book
stores in Berkeley and
throughout North America

really picked up
on that energy.

Two years before I met Kevin,

I had started this free comic book newspaper sort of thing.

It was actually
more like a booklet,
calledScat.

I got together
with a bunch of
local cartoonists

and we decided
to do this thing.

ASKWITH: It felt like Mad Magazine
in the '60s.

It had this really
interesting satirical,

black and white,
kind of edgy feel.

LAIRD: I used to love
comic books as a kid,
and loved reading them.

Sometime around my first or
second year of high school,
I think it was,

I became aware of Jack Kirby.

EASTMAN: One day, riding
the bus to the job I had
at the local pizza parlor,

I found this
magazine calledScat

put out by a bunch
of these artists
in Northampton.

With the address in hand,
I grabbed my portfolio

and went over
to their offices

to sell some of
my short stories,

some of my ideas,

because it was
kind of like-minded,

underground artist
inspired.

One of the guys at Scat gave him my address

and he wrote me a letter,
a very nice letter,

and I wrote him back

and said, "Yeah,
come on over and we'll
get together and talk

"and show each other
our artwork and whatnot."

EASTMAN: I walked into
his house in Northampton,

and the first thing I saw
was a Jack Kirby drawing.

LAIRD: I had a framed
Jack Kirby pencil page

fromThe Losers,
the DC comic,

hanging on the wall
and he just flipped out.

Oh, my God! I had
never seen an actual
Jack Kirby original,

having been such
a big inspiration to me.

And that was
pretty much it.

We hit it off
from the word go.

LAIRD: We sat
in the pizza parlor
in Wells, Maine

trying to think up good names for our business.

I remember we wrote on the back of a napkin or a placemat

a list of about a dozen names,

and Mirage seemed

the coolest sounding and
also the most appropriate

because it wasn't
really a studio,

it was the two of us
sitting in our tiny
living room

with our lap boards and
our old stuffed chairs

watching TV,
goofing around and
drawing together.

LAIRD: Genius at work.

[LAIRD LAUGHS]

EASTMAN: Late one night
in the studio,

I liked to bug Pete
as much as I could,

especially when he's
watching his favorite
TV shows.

LAIRD: One night,
we're sitting around
watching bad TV

and that's when it happened.

Kevin drew a turtle
standing on its hind legs

with nunchaku strapped
to its forearms

and with
a bandana-style mask.

And he showed it to me and he says,

"Hey, this is a ninja turtle."

And I was like, "Yeah, great."

So I had to do
my own version

and I changed just
a couple things.

And of course
I had to top him,

so I did a sketch
of four in pencil,

and each one had
different weapons and
this dramatic pose,

and I had to put
the comic title above,
"Ninja Turtle."

LAIRD: He handed that
to me and I inked that.

Sometime around
that point I suggested,

"Why not add 'Teenage Mutant' to the name?"

It had a kind of rhythm to it.

"Dude, we have to
come up with a story

"that tells how these
characters became

"the Teenage
Mutant Ninja Turtles."

We were both huge fans
of the underground
publishing movement.

You go back toZap Comix,
Robert Crumb, Kitchen Sink,

Rip Off Press,
Fabulous Furry
Freak Brothers.

A lot of that stuff
we had both seen and
enjoyed in the head shops

and that kind of
stuff you could find.

We realized pretty early on in our friendship

that we each had strengths that complement the other.

EASTMAN: I brought the
layout and the dynamic
Jack Kirby-isms

that paced out
the story this way.

He brought a lot of
great subtle nuances
to the story,

certainly in the script,
I think more than
anything else.

And his artwork style
was much more refined,
much more detailed.

LAIRD: Kevin was
really good at color,

and he had a really powerful color sense

and I was terrible at it.

EASTMAN: Peter didn't do much painting.

He did mostly

the most amazing
line work

and detail work
you could imagine.

So, I did up
a couple of roughs

and this is probably
the one I finally selected

before we did this piece here.

This was the first color painting of the Turtlesdone

back in 1984.

We decided early on
that we'd have some of us
on each page,

whether we're penciling
or inking or whatever,

there was a bit of
each of us on each page,

and it got to be
where we couldn't see
where I left off

and where he started
and vice versa.

It took us about two and a half months

to actually complete the entire thing.

Borrowed some money
from Kevin's uncle

and took whatever money
we had ourselves,

which wasn't
a whole lot,

and managed to
scrape that all together
and print 3,000 copies.

ROSENBAUM: 1984,
this comic comes out

created by these two guys

who love all the same stuff

but have very different perspectives.

One of them is more outgoing,

interested in
the violent side,

the more emotional
side of things.

The other one is a lot
more introverted, calmer,

more intellectual in
terms of storytelling,
in terms of art style,

but they're both fans of the same kinds of comics.

One of the strange things
about that first issue of
the Turtles

is it sent a very strong
and different message.

It didn't feel like
a mainstream comic,

there was
something about it.

And the fact that it was
a slightly wrong size

also gave a slight
sense of edginess.

It didn't feel like it was
coming from a factory.

ROSENBAUM: What that
first issue does is
comment on

everything that's going on

in superhero comics at the time.

What's interesting,
when the first issue
came out,

it was dubbed as a parody
and it was, in a big way.

It was like Dave Sim
when he started
with Cerebus.

He drew this funny little
barbarian aardvark

that was this barbarian
drawn in the style

of Barry Windsor-Smith
when he didConan.

What worked withCerebus,
and we tried to capture, too,

is thatCerebus just
had a lot of depth
and character.

Dave progressed
the story along and
made it interesting,

and that's why he
kept so many readers
for 300 issues.

And with us,
we really aped a lot of

Frank Miller-isms
and Daredevil-isms.

I mean,
you look at the origin.

The Hand inDaredevil,
we have the Foot.

Splinter is based on Stick.

We really pulled
some of our favorite bits

from some of our
favorite comics

in, what do you call it,
homage or whatever.

ASKWITH: So, yes,
they were making
fun of the ninja trend,

they were making
fun of the overblown
Frank Miller dialogue.

They were making
fun of the dynamic
poses of Jack Kirby.

But it was all with
great love, great heart,
great affection,

and that's one of
the reasons why
the comic worked.

It was real,
it was passionate

and that, you know,
come on.

That just shoots
out of the pages.

I am often asked,

"Why did you kill your main villain off in the first issue?

"That doesn't make a whole lot of sense."

And the reason is
that we never really thought
we'd be doing a second one.

This was done
completely for fun

and for the passion of
wanting to do comics.

And nothing about it
was planned beyond

how do we do a 40-page comic

and make it at least halfway decent?

After the first
3,000 were gone,

there were
more orders

and so we
printed more.

Then we sort of
figured out, well...

Again, because we
don't have a lot of other
distracting paying work,

it's like,
"Let's do an issue two.

"Let's continue to tell
stories of these characters
we created

"and try to make
a living at something

"we've both dreamed
about our entire life

"which is to write,
draw and tell our
own comic stories."

ASKWITH: The second issue
came out,

it felt like it was
aimed at people like me.

However, in ordering
the comic

and putting the comic
on the stands,

you began noticing that
all kinds of people

you wouldn't quite expect
to pick up the comic
were picking it up.

By the time we started
work on issue two,

I was living in
Portland, Maine

and Pete was living
in Sharon, Connecticut,

and we'd done the
pre-orders through
the distribution system

for how many copies
that they'd want to buy
for issue two,

and the orders
came in at 15,000.

ASKWITH: And very quickly,
by the third or fourth
issue of theTurtles,

it was selling more than
The Avengersin the store.

So, there was
something going on.

In many ways, theTeenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

started what became
then known as the
black-and-white boom.

And by '85, '86,
it was mind-boggling
how many we were selling.

LAIRD: Doing the numbers
on the second issue,
the first printing of that,

back in, I think
it was, late '84

and realizing that
Kevin and I would each
make $2,000 profit.

Pete faxed me this note

and at 15,000 copies, total cost involved,

we'd end up with
roughly $4,000 profit.

And it was a great
feeling to get to that
point in life when

what you really
want to do

turns out to be
what you need to do.

"2,000 for you, 2,000 for me, we do this every two months,

"we could make a living
drawing comics."

I literally packed up my bags

and moved out of Portland and moved down to Connecticut.

We then went ahead
and finished issue two.

You know what was cool,
when we did the first
issue of the Turtles

and we kind of knew
who the characters were,

we knew
their personalities.

Raphael was
loosely based on me

and Donatello was
loosely based on Pete.

But it was 40 pages,

you really didn't get
to know the characters
well enough.

They were sort of
introduced.

When we started
working on the second,
third and fourth issue,

the cool part was that
we really had to develop
these characters.

We had to know
them better than anybody,
so we could write them.

So, like any writer,

you kind of pull from
all these influences
around you.

Your crazy Uncle Burt,
your sisters,
an ex-girlfriend.

For example, April
was designed and written

after a girl that I had
dated in high school,

then we got
married later and stuff.

She was a big inspiration
for that character,
at least in name,

she didn't look
exactly like her.

She did in later issues.

Raphael, who was kind of
the crazy, the hothead.

The rest of the group
think he's crazy.

To have Raphael meet
somebody crazier...

So I started coming up with some ideas

for a vigilante character
that was not like...

Most vigilante characters
were their whole family
was killed,

there was some huge,
tragic event in their life

that got them to
either put on a suit
or whatever

and strike out
on their own

to take justice
on the bad guys.

So, I came up
with this guy.

I like this name,
Casey Jones.

He didn't have
this huge tragedy

that affected his will
to fight bad guys,

it was because he watched
too much bad TV.

Pete said, "You know
what would be really funny

"is if he had
a golf bag,

"and in the golf bag
he not only had bats,

"he had a golf club,
a hockey stick."

So, he was like
an all-sports nut

and that really made
the whole character perfect.

One of my favorite movies around this time

was a movie called Big Trouble in Little China,

and I thought Kurt Russell
as Jack Burton,

that's Casey.

That was really
a huge inspiration.

ROSENBAUM: It was only
those first few issues
that Kevin and Peter

wrote and drew together, the two of them.

As Ninja Turtles, the comic book,

started getting more popular,

they started building a studio.

LAIRD: We actually needed
to be a real business,

so we, in fact,
rented an office space.

The comic was doing well enough that we could afford that.

Funny story,
Michelangelo was actually,

a lot of him, was based
on Steve Lavigne,

who still works
with the studio.

I went to high
school with Steve,
and he was

the Robin Williams
of our high school.

He always had
the wrong joke
at the right time.

Pretty soon
after school,

he got the first book out
and came back to...

He was living
out in Western Mass
here with Pete

and came back
and asked if I was

interested in
maybe coming on board

and doing the lettering,
because he really hated

the lettering
aspect of the book.

I was like,
"Eh, I'll give it a shot,"
and he taught me to letter

and pretty soon
took that over

and just kind of
moved my way through.

[INDISTINCT CONVERSATION]

Totally...

[LAUGHING]

[IN FUNNY VOICE]
Who is that boy?

It was so weird,
I went in there

and there were
these three guys

kind of just
acting wacky

and having great success
at this comic book
they were publishing.

So, I showed them my stuff,

and I think maybe
right on the spot
at that time,

they offered me
an inking job.

EASTMAN:
You drew that on there?

LAIRD: Ryan became
a real important
part of the studio,

he was inking
Tales of the Turtles,

the first volume of that.

He got heavily into
the licensing art world

along with Steve Lavigne.

It was one of those
fortuitous things,

Ryan just came up
to us at a show
and introduced himself.

The early days of Mirage,

we really had full rein
on the Turtles.

We could think of ideas and
take it to Pete and Kevin.

We all worked together on it
and it was really

the best time of
my life creatively.

This is my first lesson in using high technology.

LAIRD: And what do you
think of it, Mike?

I think that I'm basically a cave dweller.

We all clicked immediately,
it was amazing.

Every one of us,

we were just absorbed
into the clique right away.

BROWN: It was just insane.
It was a circus every day.

Work a little bit,
play airsoft rifles,

shoot each other,
play basketball.

Then we'd go
to lunch at noon,
come back at 2:00.

We'd usually go shop
in the model shops.

One of the guys
used to refer to it as,

"We have to take
an occasional work break."

Meaning that in between
whatever we used to do,

throw things at each other,
airsoft gun battles
in the studio,

we'd have to remember that,

"Oh, yeah, we have to get
that T-shirt design done."

Or whatever it is that
people were working on
at the time.

LAWSON: When you think
about the guys that have
assembled here

for this purpose of
drawing the Turtles,

it's amazing to me.

They're Dooney and Berger,
Steve and me, Eric.

LAVIGNE: Ryan.

LAWSON: Yeah, we've been
like a family, really.

We've worked together,
we've played together,
it's stunning to me.

It really, I think,
is a rare

and kind of cool thing
that Mirage did there.

The Turtles have always
been very malleable.

Different artists have
different takes on them,

some more cartoony
than others,

some more realistic
than others.

BROWN: Mike Dooney, he's
a great all-around artist,

especially his paintings.

And Jim's dynamic
with his layouts

and his poses that
his characters strike.

Eric's a fan favorite,
everyone loves his stuff,
because his is real gritty,

kind of, in a way of,
like, Kevin gritty.

And I've always really
admired Pete's work,

because I think
it's so polished.

Kevin and I were incredibly happy

with what was going on with the comic

because it was selling really well,

I think issue eight
was our high point,

135,000 copies of
a black-and-white comic.

It was really
a dream come true,

we were doing exactly
what we wanted to do,

drawing what we
wanted to draw

and making
good money at it.

Pete!

LAIRD: What's that, Kev?

See, we had a design idea here.

See up here where it's all white,

and this is a solid black building wall.

I kind of got the idea that
I thought it should go
all the way to the top.

The fact that it was selling more than The Avengers was kind of wacky,

but to me it still
wasn't mainstream,

and it wasn't mainstream
until Surge Licensing hit

and the Turtles
really changed

and became more of
a mainstream product.

That was what
really surprised me.

When the boys decided,
"You know what,

"we're gonna not
control this so much,

"we're gonna
open it up

"and we're gonna let it
be something for kids."

That was a really
interesting decision.

Then the Turtles
went mainstream

in a way that nobody
could have expected.

The fact that Mark Freedman showed up as a fan

and convinced Kevin and Peter

to let him take this chance with the toys

was another one of these moments

where without this one thing,

the whole franchise would never have existed.

We started getting a couple calls from licensing agents, people that said...

We'd get this
call and be like,

"I'm so-and-so,
I'm from New York,

"I represent
blah, blah, blah...

"I think that your
characters would make

"great cartoon characters
or toy characters."

When I first heard the words

"Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,"

I jumped out of my skin.

There was something about that name.

We had a meeting with
a couple of these guys

that we really weren't
that impressed with

and until I think

agent number five or six
that called was a guy
named Mark Freedman,

and he wanted to
come up and meet with us.

He showed up at
our office door,

both Peter and
I were in shorts

and short-sleeved shirts,
and we had been re-painting
the office.

So, it was one of these worlds in collision kind of things.

My suit was rented, my tie was rented, my car was rented.

I am absolutely camera shy. I absolutely hate it.

LAIRD: Too late, Mark.

He starts on a spiel
where, "I want five years

"and I want this
and I want to do
blah, blah, blah..."

And we said, "Mark,
we've been down
this road before,

"we understand
trademark and copyright,

"and we've
protected our characters

"and we're very
happy with the business
we have now."

I know I've gotta represent the Turtles, this is gonna be it,

and I would have done any deal with them.

"We'll give you
30 days, 45 days,
and you go out

"and if you can
bring back something
interesting offer-wise,

"then we'll continue
talking with you,

"and you'll
progress from there."

FREEDMAN:
They gave me two things
as a going away present.

One was an original first
printing of the comic

where they wrote,
"Go out and make me
$1 million or else."

And they also gave me
a 4-foot foam rubber
replica of a Turtle,

which I knew
would really help me

in presenting this
to various toy companies

and broadcasters and
so on and so forth.

I'm leaving Northampton in my rented car

and I've got this
4-foot turtle next to me.

I had in my hands
what I hoped would be,

of course, no one knew, what I hoped would be a terrific hit.

Now the real work begins.

I was laughed at
by a lot of people.

I even heard secondhand
that even Disney looked
at it at one point

and thought
it was ridiculous.

So, again, it's
the classic story of
people always reject

what they don't understand.

Ultimately, I contacted a guy by the name of Richard Sallis,

who was the marketing director at Playmates Toys.

And I tell him,
"I have a really
interesting property.

"I've got to send
you something first."

I call up my friend Richard,

I said, "Richard, you get the box?"

He said, "Yeah. What is it?"

JOHN HANDY: And Playmates
manufactured action figures

for all kinds of companies,
including Mattel.

But they weren't marketed
under their own name.

So, we were interested

in possibly getting into
the action figure business,

but I only wanted to do it
if we could do something

that was completely
different.

And one particular day,
these black-and-white
comic books came in

about the Teenage
Mutant Ninja Turtles.

And Karl Aaronian, who
was the marketing guy,
and myself

were asked
to evaluate these

and see what we thought,
if there was anything there.

Richard Sallis, who eventually became my boss,

and really the key to
Turtles in many ways,

threw me a couple
of the comic books
across the table

and said, "What do you think about this?"

And I guess I gave the right answer, because I got hired.

And we both independently
fell in love with them

and thought in
their current form,

they're a little
too adult for kids,

but in a different form,
the essence of what
they were all about

would be perfect
for an action figure line.

The more we worked with it,

the more we had tangible
things in our hands,

the more we decided this
was gonna be really big.

And being the
over-promoter that I am,

I told everyone
in the company,

"On Friday,
you're gonna see

"the best product line
you've ever seen
in your life,

"it's gonna change
the face of Playmates Toys."

So everyone came.

We sat around
this big table,

and Karl and I proceeded

to tell the story
of the Turtles and
show these products,

and we were so into it,
we weren't even really

watching the reaction
of the crowd,

which wasn't
particularly good.

[INDISTINCT TALKING]

I remember sitting in
my office with Karl,

and we were
polishing up our resumes.

Just basically we
gotta get out of here,
because we just had...

We just wasted
three months

and the company's
not that happy with us.

And in comes
Richard Sallis,

who was the
head of marketing,

and he said, "Hey, guys,
I really loved the Turtles
on Friday.

"That was great.
Great product line."

And we were just silent,
and I said, "Mr. Sallis,

"it would be awfully
great of you

"if you had said
something in the meeting,

"we needed a little bit
of support there."

And he goes, "No,
you lost the crowd,

"the crowd was
against you,

"but it's not the end.
It's never quite the end."

The comic wasn't reaching a broad enough audience.

So, we knew before we could sell a single toy,

we had to produce the backstory in animation.

We had to tell the story through television

and bring it to the kids.

It was 1985 or '86

when an advertising agency

named Sachs Finley
came to me with a comic book

and put it down on the table in front of me

and said, "Fred, can you make a TV show out of this?"

First I kept staring
at the title,

and I thought,
"This is cool."

And I said, "Well, I'll look at it,

"but I think it's safe to say

"I can make a TV program of just about anything."

They went to a writer
named Chuck Lorre.

Chuck Lorre created
Grace Under Fire,

Big Bang Theory,
Two and a Half Men.

He's the most
successful sitcom guy
probably of all time.

At that time,
he was doing animation

and he was already
moving into sitcoms,

and he just didn't
have the time to do it.

He said,
"But I know this guy

"who would be
perfect for it."

And working with the writer, David Wise,

who was, in my opinion, what really set

the keystone of the whole franchise.

He said,
"I'm calling because

"we're going to be
doing this new show."

And with great embarrassment in his voice

he said, "It's sort of about teenagers and mutants."

And I said,
"Teenage Mutant
Ninja Turtles?"

And you could
hear him

fall over backwards at
the other end of the line.

You could hear
the back of his head
hit the floor,

when he picked
himself up, he said,
"You've heard of it?"

I said, "I have the first
five issues of the comic."

So, very cleverly, while Playmates Toys was designing these toys

to be made from
the comic book,

we were making the TV show.

WISE: It's
such a genius title,

it's such a genius concept.

If we do it right,
it could be a hit.

And so really, especially those first five episodes

that set the table for everything else that followed

was a collaborative effort between Playmates

and Fred and everybody else.

EASTMAN: Playmates Toys.

Playmates Toys flew
us out to California

and started discussing
the Turtles as toys.

Added into the mix
shortly thereafter

was Turtles as
an animated series,

and even in those days,
you're talking '86, '87,

you still had to have
this partnership between

the animation and
toy companies as
commercial exploitation

and get the thing out there
so everybody makes money.

This is very neat.

LAIRD: It's pretty nutty.

[IMITATING SCREAMING]

Let's talk first about action figures.

In December of 1986,

we signed our first license with Playmates Toys.

Kevin called and says,
"Get over here,

"we got big news."

So, Jim and I hopped
in the car and went over,

and they said Playmates
had accepted the Turtles
and they were gonna do it.

[ALL CHEERING]

And it was just great,
it was just amazing.

[LAUGHING]

Yeah!Yeah!

Mom goes, "This is
my dream come true."

It was a surreal
moment to think

less than three years

after we scraped
together the money

to publish this first issue
of the Turtle comic,

we were gonna have
a TV show and a toy line.

Ladies and gentlemen,

this is for the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

Wait a minute, is it on? [GRUNTS]

[CORK POPS] [ALL CHEERING]

We should do
a massive toast.

[ALL CHEERING]

In the early iterations
of our product line,

we had a lot of
things that we were

looking at and
struggling with.

We thought we would
take everyone who would be

a recognizable
kind of character
in New York City,

a fireman,
policeman, baker,

most of them
were bad guys,

and they had
weapons relating
to their profession.

Powerfully spring-loaded
leg right here,

you'd cock it back

and then you got
your trigger in the back,
and you aim this thing.

And Kevin and Peter
had to look

at all these things about
these crazy bakers

that had pizza
throwing devices
and all this stuff.

LAIRD: There's an aspect
of this character
that disturbs me,

and it's sort of related to what we were talking about earlier

about drifting over into the really silly stupid realm.

EASTMAN: Yeah, too beyond. Too much.

We did some goofier things,

and even the figures themselves,

quite frankly, were
probably too ambitious,

because we had
sculpted figures
that were huge,

and some of the bad guys were muscle-bound

and probably would have been a $10 figure in 1988.

You have to go
as far as you can

and iterate as much
as you can

and then
pull it back in.

If you start narrow focused,
you'll stay there,

so we blew it out
as big as we could.

The key for playsets
in those days

is let the playset be
a character as well.

So if you remember
Snake Mountain and
Castle Grayskull

and all these things,
they had characters to them.

So, we were even
struggling with what
would the Turtle...

Would there be something
built into the walls

of the Turtles' lair
in the sewer

that would be a character
that could also talk and
be part of it?

But I think what happened

is Bill Carlson felt like
that looked like a deity.

He said there'll be
no deities in the
Playmates line,

so we had to
cancel that out,

and it didn't hurt anything
to get rid of it

because it really
didn't need that.

That was just a place
for them to hang out

and it made it
less complicated

to explain what that
character was anyway.

Like anything else, we retrenched and said, "Okay,

"let's dial it back
a couple of notches

"and let's try to make this
a little more realistic."

So, it meant making the
figures somewhat smaller.

This to me is like
the perfect size.

EASTMAN: Is that
the size you want?

That's the size we're going for.

I love it.

Three and a half inches
was the scale we picked,

and that's small,

that would be
the size of a G.I. Joe,

but with the bulk
of the Turtles,
they looked bigger.

And then that
scale worked with

all kinds of vehicles
that we could create.

We put the essence
of the Turtle into
every product,

so the van had
the turtle shell top

and the helicopter had
that grimacing face,

and we just had turtle
essence in all of the
stuff that they had.

The Turtles' lair playset and the Technodrome

were these golden opportunities

to put everything in its correct context.

They were almost legendary
among my friends.

WISE: I basically
wanted a mobile
villain's headquarters.

So I had the idea of
this big giant thing
on wheels,

and I said,
"It's this huge globe,

"it's like a world,
it's like a Death Star
on wheels."

So, that's what
the design did.

What I didn't say was,

"It had a big
eyeball on top."

That wasn't my idea,
that was a design idea.

My physical contribution
just on the action
figures alone,

taking one that
was already posed out

and deciding to cut that up
as a posed figure.

Not with the arms
straight down and
the legs straight out,

and cut the limbs
and bias the forearms
and put the ball sockets in,

and actually realized that
that makes a better figure
than one that was

traditionally
before that.

They were all
straight up and down

and you put the
pose on them.

Well, we started with
the first size study
that Steve Varner did

and actually made
the articulation
based on that.

VARNER: He just had the
black-and-white comic book,
that's all he had.

He just showed me
the comic book and
it was really

up to me to come up
with my version of it.

And to begin with,
at least on these
first ones,

there were no
drawings involved,

I just did it in 3D.

I just kind of went,

"Okay, well, this is what
I would do to make it
the way I like it."[LAUGHS]

The only
differences, really,

is that first one that
we did had a tail,
which we lost.

But other than that,
it just pretty much
stayed the same.

There was a lot of
focus on the fact that
they were in the sewer.

And what's in the sewer,
you know?

Nasty, ugly, stinky stuff,

and how can we play that up,
but in a nice clean way

for consumption?
Not literally, hopefully.

Most toy guys would realize from day one

that you've gotta sell multiple characters, figures,

and if they look identical or similar,

that's gonna be tough to do.

That's probably the only limitation of Turtles I can think of.

It's perfect in every other respect,

it's unique, it's exciting,

is that a Turtle's a Turtle.

So, from day one, I think he realized,

even in the graphic novels

where they all had red bandanas,

that there had to be more differentiation of the Turtles.

If you have
four characters,

especially four characters
who look alike,

you want to give them
distinct personalities.

In the comic, the only way
you could tell them apart

was by what weapon
they were carrying.

AARONIAN: Now, that ended up
being done with color
more than anything else.

So, the bandana colors,
the pad colors and
the skin colors.

And then the added initial
on the belt buckle

was just a way
to reinforce that.

The whole idea
was that you could

immediately
tell the difference
between the Turtles

by looking at the figures,

whether they were in the package or not.

WISE: And when you
have groups of four,

there's sort of
a classic archetype four.

And there's
a reason for that,

because it's
kind of like

spirit, mind, body,
left foot, I don't know.

If you just looked
at the comics,

at our drawings
of the Turtles,

you couldn't tell
one from the other,
except for the weapon.

You couldn't say
one's the leader,
right?

But everyone
who reads it,

all these little kids,
they know Leonardo's
the leader,

they know Raphael's
the crazy one,

they know Michelangelo
is the goofy one,

they know Donatello
is the serious one.Right.

And I think once
the kids start getting
into the stories,

and especially if
the animation is gonna
be on TV,

and they're gonna be
absorbing these kinds
of stories

and the toys will
feed into the TV
and vice versa.

And I really thought,
"What will work
for these guys

"and what will work for
making a TV series?"

Well, you need a leader,
he would be the most

into the martial arts,
and the lore of
the martial arts

and the tradition
and the training.

You need the science guy,
the gadget guy,

theMacGyver guy,
and that obviously
became Donatello.

You need a sarcastic one,
and that became Raphael.

You need somebody

who really embodies
the teenageness

of the fact that
these are teenagers,

and who embodies
that spirit of fun

and that is gonna
be Michelangelo.

And I will tell you
that my original idea
with Michelangelo

was to make him
kind of street.

And, in fact,
you will notice
the very first line

spoken by a Teenage
Mutant Ninja Turtle

in the first episode

of Teenage Mutant
Ninja Turtlesis what?

DONATELLO: Chill out, homeboy.

It was a modest, focused toy line.

A half-dozen assortments,

10 figures, and
that was about it.

HANDY: Toys "R" Us loved it,
thought it was super fresh

and were very excited
about it and said

that they would take
a major position on it,

and we started
moving forward.

So, the TV show first aired late '87

between Christmas and New Year's.

And the ratings were great.

♪ Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

♪ Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

♪ Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

♪ Heroes in a half shell

♪ Turtle power

The very first Playmates

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle action figures

hit the shelves
and they sold out.

Your kids are
gonna be real familiar
with these characters soon,

the cartoon show debuted
just last weekend

on almost 200
stations nationwide.

MALE REPORTER: For an adult,
as you can imagine,

the whole idea seems,
well...

Pretty radical.

They keep on adding
good guys and bad guys.

MALE REPORTER:
At such a frenzied pace

that you wonder how
the workers in this
Chinese factory

can keep up
with the demand.

Guess what, they can't.

♪ Splinter taught them
to be ninja teens ♪

So as we laughingly said, the first night

of the TV shows being on the air,

we heard all those trucks rustling out

and all of the toys
going out to all
the markets there.

So, that's where it became
the biggest hit ever.

EASTMAN: And when it actually
appeared inTV Guide,

and the shows aired

and the ratings were good,
and we're sitting
in our living rooms

and watching these,
it's like, "Oh, my God,

"it's really happening.
This is amazing!"

I recall it being slightly
surreal, because

we had done this thing
just for fun.

And it really kind of
took on a life of its own.

Playmates was delighted about it,

so I was delighted after.

So, I waited
a couple of weeks,

then I contacted them again.

I said,
"When do we do more?"

And they said, "That's it.
There is no more."

MALE ANNOUNCER:
From Playmates.

And I said, "What?

"I mean, we got a big hit here."

He says, "No, we're satisfied."

Playmates, Richard Sallis, had indicated,

"We did so well, we did so many million."

I forget the number, but it was something like 25 million.

All right!
Now we can relax,
catch some boob tube

and forget about
all that weirdness
we just went through.

And I said, "Well, who's got the rights?"

He says, "Well, we had the rights to the five

"to produce and distribute.

"So, you'd have to speak to Mark Freedman of Surge."

And I said, "Mark,
what'll it take to get this?"

And he said,
"What did you want to do?"

And I said, "Well, I want to do more of them."

And he liked that idea,

and so we came to some conclusion,

some idea that
I would get the rights.

[THEME MUSIC PLAYING]

And the first assignment we got from CBS involving the Turtles

was an order for 26, which was extraordinary

because they usually tested the waters.

But the waters were already tested,

the Turtles were out there, they were a raving success.

The Turtles turned out to be
the saviors of the city.

They're, like,
totally rad, man.

Yeah, I want to be
a turtle when I grow up.

APRIL: But who are they?
Where did they come from?

It's a complete mystery.

And with Turtleson five days a week on the CBS, came on Saturday,

we're on six days a week,

and for a couple of heartbeats or so

there was something happening on Sunday.

They were on seven days a week.

We were turning out a show
every seven weeks.

Six to seven weeks.

A show turning
out to go overseas.

And they would have
an additional six weeks
to do something.

So, within a 13-week cycle,
we'd have from beginning,

from the recording,
to a finished product,
edited, delivered.

It was fun to be
associated with it.

But there was no place
to really go out and
have bragging rights,

to go out and sit in a bar and say, "Do you know that

"I'm the guy that's putting this show together?"

[INTERVIEWER LAUGHS]

In the first episode,
I contrived a scene

where Michelangelo
has to surf.

They're in a building
that's being flooded,

and there's a file cabinet
that goes over
and he jumps on it,

and I remembered
fromPeanuts

in around '64 or '65,

Schulz did a sequence
where Snoopy is surfing

and he goes, "Cowabunga!"

That's where I got it from.

MICHELANGELO:
Cowabunga!

When Fred heard
the recording session,
he said, "You know what,

"that 'Cowabunga'
really works as
a catchphrase,

"let's use it again."
And I went, "Yeah."

And so the next time,
in the next episode
he's going, "Cowabunga."

And then they're going,
"Cowabunga, dude."

It's like "cowabunga"
and "dude."

Putting them together,
that was my genius, folks.

Cowabunga!

The teenager needed
to be in there,

and I thought, "Well,
what do teenagers do?"

They eat pizza,
they watch videos.

Fred quickly had the idea
they should put funny stuff
on the pizzas.

Who had the pepperoni
and ice cream?

DONATELLO: I want
some of the jelly beans
and mushrooms!

WISE: I mean, it was
a contest to figure out
what kind of

bubblegum, gefilte fish,
caviar, matzo balls.

These characters, Rocksteady and Bebop

were designed
initially by Playmates,

so they were brought into
the show immediately.

We had no qualms
about them.

EASTMAN: These are
some ideas we have
for mutant characters,

or I should say Pete has.

Now, this is cool.

This is very neat!

This is a good one.
This is a punk warthog

with snot gun, I believe,

or something similar. WOMAN: Mmm-hmm.

But after a while, they started developing some other

elements that became very complicated.

Here's our famous Turtle Van.

That's a little
complicated to draw.

These are some
of the acetates.

As I think by now,
everybody knows that
these acetates are

tracings of the drawing and then painted on the back.

WISE: And in animation,
unlike live action scripts

where you generally
just write in master shots,

and if there's a fight scene,
basically you say,
"They fight,"

unless there's
plot stuff going on.

In animation,
you break it down into shots

and they don't
necessarily follow that,

but it's to
give them an idea of
where you're going.

And we look
to you to start.

You go first.Always.

I'm like
Senator Foghorn.

Let's look to the guy
with the biggest mouth.

[ALL LAUGHING]

Are you rolling?

My first encounter
with the Turtles

was a call
from my agent.

I mean, it was really nothing, no big deal.

I mean, it was great to get a show.

My agent called me and said, "You have an audition for a show

"called Teenage
Mutant Ninja Turtles." I said, "What?"

Stu, the director,
came in and he said,

"You guys are not
gonna believe this,

"I'm gonna be directing
this new show,

"and I want to
bring you guys in on it,

"but look at this."
And he opens his bag

and he pulls out a copy of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

One of the original comics.

Teenage Mutant
Ninja Turtles?

Teenage Mutant
Ninja Turtles?What?

It was just the mix,
it was the chemistry.

Everyone had to
have chemistry,

but particularly
the four of us

had to really
feel like roommates.

Yeah, we don't get
many humans down here.

Tonight I dine
on turtle soup.

[MAN LAUGHING]

AVERY: I remember
the first session
when I came in,

and from the very
first session that I met

all these people,
and it was just...

It was a party, it was a joy.
It was a joy.

CLARKE: Originally, when
we first started doing it,

they didn't know whether Towney or I,

who was gonna be Leonardo

and who was gonna be Michelangelo.

We were supposed
to then switch back
and they never did.

COLEMAN: They sort of
wanted the surfer dude,
kind of valley guy stuff,

and the only thing
I could think about
at the time was Sean Penn

in Fast Times at
Ridgemont High.

And so I kind
of drew upon that

and did a bit of
my version of that.

Let's show them
the Turtles know
how to party!

We've gotta practice!

That was pretty much...

I felt like the Professor in Gilligan's Island.

Well, no matter
how it happened,

it's up to us
to do something!

And he said, "Just kind of be yourself with Donatello."

So, I was.
I mean, I just...

This is my voice

[IN HIGH VOICE]
and I just kind of
pitched it up here.

Welcome aboard
the Turtle Blimp!

It's almost
Shakespearean,

it's almost
over the top

and Shakespearean,
in that sense.

[IN DEEP VOICE] The same way I would do this, I would go,

"Mislike me not
for my complexion

"the shadow of
the burnished sun,

"to whom I am a neighbor
and near born."

[LAUGHING MANIACALLY]
Killers!

That's quite a brain
you've got, Krang!

Of course it is,
it's all I've got.

FRALEY: Underneath,
secretly, I was playing
a Jewish mother, with Krang.

[NASALLY]
This is what I get,

I shouldn't expect
anything else.

[IN NORMAL VOICE] You know?
They never knew,
but it was funny.

SPLINTER: I in turn
named them after my favorite
Renaissance painters.

They wanted him to sound like a very learned man.

The sensei,the teacher.

It's news!

Wait, come back
with my hiding place!

And when I had to do Vernon,

I wanted to get as far away from that as possible,

so I got into a little bit of a higher register.

[IMITATING] April, come on, let me do something, let me get some credit.

I came in one day
and they said,
"You're doing Bebop."

I'm real good
at video games.

[IN LOW VOICE] I had to make it really low.

[IN LOW VOICE] I did Rocksteady,

and I just made him like a big, dumb kid.

Third floor,
lingerie.

And that is how
they became

the Teenage Mutant
Ninja Turtles.

Cowabunga, dudes!

Hiya! [GRUNTING]

[IN HIGH VOICE]
I am Donatello.

[IN LOW VOICE]
I'm Shredder.

[LAUGHING MANIACALLY]

This is April O'Neil, Channel 6 News.

You should have seen
some of the outtakes,
these people are insane.

This man is crazy.

[IN NASAL VOICE]
Rule the universe!

They're all crazy.
Him, all of them together.

[IN LOW VOICE]
It was a pleasure
being Splinter.

[IMITATING] I've always been Donatello, even before I turned green.

Wait until the world
gets an eyeful of this!

♪ Turtle power

The five-part miniseries airs

and all of a sudden it's like a little tremor before an earthquake.

We could just sense that

kids were watching it, and they liked it.

There was something going on, it was almost electric.

Today's hot new heroes

are the Teenage Mutant
Ninja Turtles.

[AUDIENCE CHEERING]

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

The Teenage
Mutant Ninja Turtles.

The crazy crime-fighting
Ninja Turtles.

These heroes
on the half shell are
now in the top 20

best-selling toys
in the country.

Your sons love those
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

They do,
it's an amazing story.

Even adults
like them too!

FREEDMAN: Gentlemen,
it's history in the making.

MAN: Where you at? Aim that way.

Okay,
you're gonna narrate.

I'm gonna narrate.
History in the making.

[INDISTINCT TALKING]

And almost any parent
of young children
can tell you

this is an idea
whose time has come
to the silver screen.

It starts with a gentleman by the name of Gary Propper,

who was the road manager
for the comedian, Gallagher.

And he found the first
graphic comic book,

and Gary Propper's manager
and Kim Dawson

used to direct Gallagher's
Showtime specials.

Kim was a pretty experienced director of those shows

and knew a lot
about television,

but didn't really
have a lot of

influence or friends
directly

in the motion picture
industries.

Listen, Golden Harvest is
so right for this

because Golden Harvest
did the Jackie Chan,
Bruce Lee films.

And they had
the best martial art guys

in the world,
which everybody knows.

And I went to
Tom Gray, my boss,

who looked at me
like I was smoking dope.

I said, "Bobby, I'm not even interested in that title."

You know, "Why would I even be interested in that?"

And he said, "Well,
it's gonna be big!"

I went, wallpapered
Hollywood for,

off and on,
three months

pitching it to everybody,

who also thought
I was on massive
doses of drugs.

I'd go in and pitch it,
and they'd go, "Turtles?"

GRAY: He said, "Well,
would you do me a favor
and have a meeting with Kim,

"at least tell Kim
why you don't want
to do it and whatever."

And I was more
interested in the food

than I was in listening to
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

As I was pushing
out of the booth,

I took one of
the magazines,

and I looked at it
and I had an epiphany.

I suddenly got it.
I said, "Wait a minute,

"this is nothing more than
our Chinese stuntmen.

"We're the best kung fu
makers in the world.

"We put four of our
best stuntmen in suits

"and we shoot
this in Hong Kong,

"we can make
a movie like this!"

We talked about doing a live action movie

using animatronic Turtle figures.

I remember talking on the telephone with Raymond Chow,

and he said, "What do
you think you could make
the movie for?"

And I said, "I think
we can probably do it

"around two and a half,
three million

"if we do all of it in
Hong Kong at the studios."

The initial writer
they brought us,

Peter and I
completely freaked out.

Trying to figure out
how are we gonna get this

stereotypical
Hollywood kind of guy

to understand our characters and the importance

because a lot of pressure
was on us now.

Fortunately, Golden Harvest
hired this director,

his name was Steve Barron.

I had seen a reel
that he did with
Michael Jackson and a-ha,

and I knew he was
working rotoscopes

and all these
kind of techniques,

and I really liked
what he was about.

BARRON: Golden Harvest
had had a script written

and they'd come away from

the original material,
which a lot of movies do.

They come away
from the book

and they think
because it's a film,

you've gotta come up
with the scenes that
work in film, so called.

And I felt that a lot of
these scenes that were
in the comic books,

the original few
book volumes

were great movie scenes.

We had discovered
a young writer

who was writing
for Wonder Years,
called Todd Langen.

BARRON: So, I brought him in
and we actually sat in L.A.

at the Mondrian Hotel
for two months,

and we locked the door, and I had all the comic books,

and I ripped out
all the pages that I just
felt were movie scenes.

It was gonna take
six months to prepare

all of those uniforms,
the props,

everything ready
to shoot on time
in July,

and I didn't have the money,
so I gambled.

I was emotionally committed,
but I didn't have the guts

to go back and say,
"I think this is not three,

"it's looking more
like seven or eight."

These are the original

ideas for that sewer, which actually...

When I finally talked it over with the director

and producer,
they didn't change very much.

Well, texture gives you
atmosphere,

especially this disused pumping station down in the sewers,

which was their home.

And the very first sketch I did of their home was this one.

They collect stuff
that comes down the tunnel,

they wander about finding all kinds of interesting things.

So, it was
creating an environment,

because there was
a big battle in the sewer,

and they lived
in the sewer

and so much of the action
happened there.

We built all this
out of fiberglass to
stand up to the stresses

and had actual water
pumping through it.

We really lucked out on that first movie

for two main reasons,

Steve Barron, the director, and Jim Henson.

Steve Barron, very creative guy,

had a real good vision,

solid idea of what he wanted to do

within the fairly limited budget he had to work with.

And Jim Henson, fantastic talent.

We really got lucky
to be able to get him
to do the creatures,

and he nearly
didn't do it,

because he was really
not happy with,

early on,
the violence in it,

in relation to his Muppets
and his fan base.

It was something very risky
for him to put his name to.

He'd had not a lot of
contact with the film,

although he and
Steve Barron were
good friends,

and obviously he and I were
father and son,

so he stayed in touch
with the film in a large way.

At one point,
he was concerned that

there wasn't enough money
to finish the film,

and I think he was trying
to help with that,

because it was
made on a very low budget.

I started having
second thoughts

about doing it as
a Hong Kong movie,

but I was somewhat afraid
to go back to Hong Kong

and tell them that
I needed more money.

Playmates were
telling me that

Christmas was gonna be
huge for the toys in '89,

and so I felt confident
that I'll sell the film.

I just took a risk,
I took a gamble.

And then I went
to the marketplace
and I got killed!

Nobody wanted the movie.

At the same time
we'd been seeing all
the design concepts

that Jim Henson's
Creature Shop had been
doing in London.

Building, sculpting
the heads and the bodies
of the costumes,

and sending us
video tapes of the tests
of the people wearing them.

BARRON: There was also
a thing where we needed
to test quite a lot of

stages of the
Turtles in London.

So, we thought we'd get
one guy from London,

and so we could
constantly use him
to test the first prototype.

So, I had maybe
180 grand in cash

and I got
an $8 million budget,

pay or play with Henson.

And the deal that
I thought I had

that would have
saved all of this

has just died.

I said, "Raymond,
I need $6 million."

He said, "Tom,
we don't have $6 million!"

"I don't know if
we'll make money,
but I'm so convinced

"that if you give me
the money, we'll open

"and we'll get
our investment back.

"At least that."

And it was a pause
and he said, "Okay,

"I'll go find it."

Okay, so now what?

Now what? Now what?

The first thing was

we needed the main,
the principal Turtles

and the characters to be
cast who were gonna be
inside the suits.

SISTI: So, I went
and I did what I call my
Full Tilt Bozo performance.

Spinning around and jumping around and doing my lines.

And then I finished with a big flourish and a roundhouse kick

and put my foot through the wall.

So, there I was with my foot stuck in the wall,

and thank God he laughed

and he said, "Anyone who would put that much energy into the performance

"deserves to be one of my Turtles."

And he asked me to be Michelangelo.

It was a very sweet, lovely script and silly,

and I'm silly,

and working with turtles, like, why not?

Seemed like a good idea and I was up for it.

And anything that's got Jim Henson's name attached to it.

Went in, I actually met Steve Barron,

the director,
the first audition

and, from what I remember,
maybe the only audition.

It was one of
the easiest experiences.

And we just
talked about punk rock

and the Sex Pistols
and things like that,
and I got it.

And I got to wear
Sid Vicious T-shirts
throughout the whole thing,

so I was really
into that at that time.

MAN: Thirty-six,
take seven.

BARRON:
Ready, and action!

MAN: We were
awesome, bros!

So, I was the
puppeteer captain,

and then once the film
started shooting...

So, I had to find
the performers

and develop the hand controls with everybody,

and then once
the film started shooting,

I handed that function
over to Kevin Clash.

CLASH: I had
another role withNinja

where I was kind of
the puppet captain
for the movie.

So, I was the one who had to go to Steve and say, "Listen,

"Raphael's not gonna work, his head is not working,

"and we have no idea when it's gonna be up and running."

And they would
lose their mind.

HENSON: With Steve Barron,
who started talking
to me about

how we could
do these Turtles,

it was really important
to him that, if possible,

there was no wires
going to the characters,

no cables going
to the characters.

I even remember
we had a test sheet

that showed the character
had to be able to do
a forward handspring

then a flip and then drop
through a manhole cover,

was what his litmus was.

He wanted it to be
able to do that move

and still also be
an animated character.

They were seriously challenged in those suits.

There were times where

you would have to rip a head off and give them some oxygen.

I really felt like,
"I better do my job fast

"because this guy's gotta
get that suit off now!"

CLASH: I remember
Leif getting sick inside
one of the heads,

which was very interesting.

It was like, "I'm gonna be..." And it was too late.

SISTI: The whole rig
weighed about 70 pounds.

So, between that
and the fact that
we were suddenly

thrown into the midst of these things where you could only see out of

two little tiny holes in the front of the head,

it got a little hairy at times.

It was very difficult to get out of their suits.

They had... All of
the cables and everything

went down the back of their necks.

So, they would be able to take the head off,

but they couldn't
take it totally off,

they would have to
put it off to the side.

And all of the servos
and all the mechanisms

were actually
inside of the back
of the shell.

BARRON: Then we built
these wooden horses

that we'd put
around the set.

So that the best way
to rest this 65 pounds
on your back

was to lean forward
in a certain position,
which they sort of...

They found that position,
built these wooden horses

and so they'd sit
on them on the set.

So, 11:00 at night
in South Carolina
somewhere,

and these four
turtles would be
dead on these horses

in the middle
of the fields,

and it was
a very eerie image.

Any times that there were
any kind of animatronics

where there was any
dialogue going on,

you'd have the hero suits,

and they would be
doing their thing.

And then anytime that
there was any kind of
fight sequence,

then that's when
we would step in.

HENSON: Initially,
nobody was sure

what the second unit
was gonna shoot.

Steve thought he wanted to
just give me some sequences,

like flashback sequences,

to just let me shoot
and have fun with.

Then he found he had
to shoot the drama,

and couldn't shoot
the fights often,
to stay on schedule.

So then I had
to start shooting
fight sequences,

which was
a lot of fun for me,

which was not at all
what I was expecting
going in.[LAUGHS]

Although I had
been involved

with the creation
of the characters right
from the beginning

and knew they had
to be able to fight.

So I had been
working with stuntmen

all the way through the preparation of the film.

Normal film speed
is 24 frames a second,

and the Turtles
were cumbersome
and a bit slow,

and I wanted to have them

believably able to
use those muscles.

So, we shot a lot of it
at 23 frames per second,

even the dialogue stuff,

which was
kind of unusual.

I don't think it had
been done before.

And that would just...
Only one twenty-fourth
of a second,

but it would just sharpen up their movements a little bit.

So, when you'd
see them on set,

they'd be a tiny
bit slower than when
we got them on film.

And then we'd use 22 and 23 for the ninja fights,

which is very common
in Hong Kong, anyway.

I tell you, the technology was a challenge.

When you talk to some of the puppeteers

who actually had to program those heads of those Turtles,

they would
program all of these
different expressions

and different things
they would want the
Turtles to do,

and the next morning,
everything would have
crashed

and they would have to start all over again.

It was very frustrating,

because it was very primitive at the time.

We were shooting very close
to the Wilmington airport,

and every time
the guys set up for a shot,

the Turtles wouldn't react

or they would react
when we're not ready,

and we suddenly
figured out

that the interference
from the radar...

We had to go on
a military frequency

because
the commercial frequency

was too close to
our own frequency

for the radio waves.

We had to figure out
all these things going on.

HOAG: We used to have
something we called Major
Turtle Breakdown, MTB.

Sometimes you'd see a Turtle,

suddenly a jaw
would drop

or an eyeball would go off in a weird direction,

and something would happen,

so you wouldn't have them there.

So, I got used to working with, if necessary,

a paper plate on
a C-stand or nobody.

Where's Raphael?

Hmm? MAN: Cut it.

Then they would always say, "Okay, we'll shoot the rat."

Because the rat was hardwired,

it wasn't fully radio-controlled.

Um, I'd like to do
that again, if I could.

The truth is Splinter took
a close-up much easier

because we weren't
trying to hide a person
inside of Splinter.

Splinter was
a hand puppet,

so all the interior of
the mouth was really there.

The Turtles were tough
because the actors inside

were looking through
holes in the actual head.

If the mouth was open,
they could see a little bit
through the mouth,

but the truth is
if you put a lot of
lights on,

the camera would be
able to see right inside

and see that there was
a person in there.

When I was a kid,
I watched very
dark fairy tales

and read dark
Grimm's Tales,

and even though
you'd find them
a bit spooky,

that was the
most exciting thing
and engaging stuff.

HENSON: That was
a controversial decision,
to say the least,

in the making of the film.

I think there was
a lot of concern
from the studio

about how dark
the film was.

CLASH: Steve had

unbelievable vision for this movie,

I mean, unbelievable.

He really didn't want anybody to really "see them" see them.

That was a whole thing at the beginning, as far as

not letting the audience, but teasing the audience.

He really made you
feel like you were

in a sewer with
these four turtles.

OFFICER: You all right, ma'am? APRIL: Yeah, I'm fine.

In hindsight, I know that was the right decision,

that Steve thought,
"I'm gonna keep
the film moody

"and contrasty and dark,

"and that's gonna
help me to allow

"the cameras to get
a little bit closer."

I felt, "Let's just
really try

"and get into these eyes
of these creatures."

Even though
they weren't real,

and even though everybody
was worried about that.

There's a big scene
with Splinter and Raphael,

and it moves from
one to the other,

and nobody had been
that close to an animatronic

in animatronic history,
I don't think.

I am here.

My son.

The darkness gave the film
a gritty credibility

that I think is
the difference between
it making $20 million

and it making way
over $100 million,

and in the end, God knows,
$500 million.

It was fortunate that,

I think most of the guys at the studio here,

Jim Lawson, Steve Lavigne,
and Ryan Brown,

Mike Dooney, Eric Talbot,

were all able to
go down to the set,

because it was
in North Carolina

at the old Carolco studios.

And we were all
able to walk around
on their backlot,

where most of
the street scenes
were filmed.

It was a trip.[LAUGHS]

I don't think any of us
had ever been on
a movie set before.

There, 20 yards away,
20 feet away,

was some of the Turtles
in full costume,

in the stunt costumes,

playing around,
one was playing around
with a Mexican hat.

And it really...
You froze dead
in your tracks

because it was night,
it was live,

and it was
a real Ninja Turtle,
you believed.

It's like, "There they are
and they're alive
and they're real.

"This is amazing.
This is amazing
on every possible level."

It was virtually stunning.

[INDISTINCT TALKING]

It's a very
exciting moment in history.

Hopefully
history's in the making.

LAIRD: All right,
show them the production.

It's like they
reached into my brain
and Kevin's brain

and pulled out what
we felt these Turtles
should look like,

and then they did it.

In foam, latex
and acrylic paint

and bits of leather.

They just did it.

Steve Barron, I think,
just because he
wanted to be nice

or maybe he thought
we would be great
in the parts,

asked Kevin and me
if we would like to be

in the background of a scene
as garbage men.

And I'm not really
comfortable with doing
those kinds of things,

so I said,
"Thanks, but no."

But Kevin was up for it.

I seem to recall
that at a certain point,

you can kind of see
this blurry dark shape

moving across the screen
behind one of the Turtles

way off in the distance,
and I think that's Kevin.

FREEDMAN: When you see
a film being shot,

you only see
little snippets,

you see some dailies,
just short segments,

you don't see
the vision of the filmmaker
put together on film,

so it's very,
very hard to judge.

Now the film is together

and Tom Gray calls me
and says, "I want
to show you the film."

It was Tom Gray, it was myself, Mark Freedman,

Peter Laird, Kevin Eastman,

there may have been one or two other people from Mirage Studios,

and we're in a theater without children,

and we see the film with no audience reaction,

and we start to shake, we get scared.

We're not sure if we like it,
we're not sure if it's good,

we start doubting ourselves,
we start thinking about it,

second guessing, you name it.

We're scared.

[GONG STRIKING]

People were cheering
this trailer.

And these weren't necessarily little kids as well.

They were just
people who thought
this looked great.

We get to the movie theater

about 45 minutes before the first showing

on a Friday night in March of 1990,

and we're first on line,

I looked behind me and I don't see anybody.

I said, "Well,
isn't that special?"

And within 15 minutes,

people show up
and the line grows

out the movie theater,
around the block.

Ya!

I love being a turtle!

FREEDMAN:
When the credits rolled

and the audience erupted in applause and cheers,

I think I grabbed onto my wife Renee and I said,

"I'm not sure what this is, but it sure feels good."

We opened at 25 million,
or 26 million.

Broke all single records,

non-holiday playing time,

in the history
of the business.

That Monday morning
after we opened
on the record week,

every single studio guy
that had seen the film

and passed on it
in the year and
a half prior to that

called me, all wishing me congratulations, everything.

"I wish we had seen it.
God, how did you know?"

All that and, "Oh,
by the way, can we
have the sequel?"

And I said, "Fellas,

"the sequel stays
with the believers

"and that's
New Line Cinema."

Huh?

ALL: Cowabunga!

I went out to dinner with Jim after that

and we drove past a movie theater,

and there were lines of kids with the whole outfits on.

And we actually saw
one of the ushers come out,

and at a certain point
he had to tell them

that they weren't
gonna get in.

And, man, we saw the
emotion that happened
down that line.

Jim and I watched it

and he said,
"Wow, this movie's
a big, big hit."

So, yeah, that was
the last film that
he was on.

I was glad that he
was around to see

the success of
Ninja Turtles also.

From my point of view,
it's very humbling

that people would,
after all these 20 years,

that they would
still be into something
that we helped create.

All the hard work, all of the people that said no,

it just went out the door. We did it, we made it.

Coolest part is that
on camera they worked,

you believed
they were real.

I cannot sit here
and honestly say

there is anything
I would change

about them to
make them better.

I remember
watching that movie
kind of religiously,

almost every day.
The first one, anyways.

Going to bed or
before I went to bed,

it wouldn't feel right
if I didn't watch
that movie at the time.

I don't know
what that was,

but it definitely had
an impact on me.

I do remember the feeling of

the first time I heard the theme song, which was...

At that moment, I just kind of instantly knew

that it was gonna be a lifetime investment.

The great thing
about the Turtles
was that

they were so unbelievably
huge when I was growing up

that you had to
be a Turtle fan.

There was the Thundercats and He-Man toys,

but then there's this one green toy that stood out,

this one toy that was so different.

I remember just even
the typography of it,

the fact that it was
made from the shells
was always really cool.

I was really into
toys like He-Man
and all that stuff.

I saw these toys
and I was like,

"What is this?
I don't get it."

You know, "Do they like
pizza or something?"

It just didn't make
any sense or whatever.

So, I got Donatello

not really knowing the
context of what it was,

of what he belonged to
or whatever.

And then other kids
in school

would be like,
"Oh, you have Donatello!"

And they have Leo or somebody and they go together.

If I were to be
a world leader,

then I would
definitely have to say

that being a kid
and growing up with
Ninja Turtles

definitely affected the
way I view the world.

EASTMAN: We would have
a bunch of discussions

with our agent,
Mark Freedman,
of longevity,

and he always said,
"Look, kids, it's
gonna be intro year,

"the banner year, and then
the discount bin year.

"Three years tops for
any successful toy item

"and then you're
done and gone."

AARONIAN: Usually if a toy line,
especially action figures,

if they can last three years,
that's fantastic.

A three year life cycle
is really good
for this industry.

The percentages of
a successful product
are probably one in 10,

so it's very low.

Without a doubt,
Turtles affected my life.

I was obsessed with Ninja Turtles!

Everybody wanted
to be the Turtles.

Everybody was
either Mikey, Leo,

the geek, Donnie,
or the badass wannabe,
Raphael.

Somebody could set a
Barbie doll in front of me
and a Ninja Turtle,

and I was just drawn
to the Ninja Turtle.

I think it was the action.

You see something, especially in a group,

you just can't help but to just be like, "Oh, my God,

"I want to be this one,
I want to be that one!"

It was just real to me.

I don't know anybody
my age who wasn't crazy
about the Turtles.

Every school had almost every class filled with Ninja Turtle fans.

I like Michelangelo.

Leonardo.

Raphael.

Donatello.

Mikey.

I remember walking downstairs Christmas morning

and I got Leonardo.

It's really like everything
that kids would want.

And I like the Turtles,

but the most best
is Splinter.

So, I made this Turtle Van out of a shoe box,

and that shoe box
came with me everywhere.

Around that time,
it was my life.

They at one point had Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Valentine's Day valentines.

Come on,
that's a no-brainer.

I gave you the
"Cowabunga, dude" one.

But it pretty much
took over the world.

And I think a lot of kids
who grew up with it

know exactly what
I'm talking about.

Now we're becoming
successful in Canada,

now we're becoming
successful in Mexico,

now it's theTortues Ninjas
in France.

♪ Tortues Ninja, Ninja
Tortues Ninja ♪

[LAUGHING]

And then we're doing...

The name has
to be changed to

"Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles"
in the UK

because they've
outlawed "Ninja."

It's still
successful there.

Rock, dudes!
We did it, we won!

It was kind of
thrown out that,

"If you guys want to try
to come up with some ideas,

"you can send
them to Playmates,

"and if they get used,
that's cool."

Probably the toy I'm
most famous known for
is Rat King.

BROWN: They took
Leatherhead, Ray Fillet,
the cockroach, Scumbug,

Wyrm, Mondo Gecko,

toy Antrax
was created by Mike Dooney
and Dan Berger,

and then the Canadian
Royal Mounted Police Moose,

and that's the one
they picked, obviously,

because that
makes the most sense,

it's more than
a basketball-playing
giraffe, or...

I did an elephant, too.

Well, the elephant's
a witch doctor,

so I don't know if
that's politically correct,

but at the time
it was accepted.

I did Sergeant Bananas and Wingnut from Screwloose.

It was almost a rule

that you could not
have a character

with two arms the same
or two legs the same.

One of them would
have to be a toilet plunger

or a robot leg
or a tentacle,

and it was cool!

They did some really
amazingly creative sculpts
and designs

and paint jobs
and stuff.

Mutagen Man.

Actually, I think I did the
preliminary design for that.

Turtles have been kind of the Barbie of action figures.

You can apply almost anything to Turtles.

BROWN: Playmates decided
nothing sells better
than a Turtle,

so they were
starting to concentrate
on just Turtle variants.

I submitted
a lot of stuff,

a lot of really
bad stuff.

I had this line
of mutant people,
like a plumber.

I had Motorhead,
which was a mutant cabbie,

a traffic cop who had
a stoplight for a head.

Also, can we talk
for a second,

about to blow
your minds,

about the video game.

TRACHTENBERG:
There's a couple tiers
of the video game.

There's the original game,
the Nintendo game

that was in the movieWizard,
that was impossible.

ALBRECHT:
It is the hardest game.

But the arcade
four-player beat 'em up.

That video game is almost,
in its own category,

bigger thanTeenage
Mutant Ninja Turtles
were in their category.

That video game was special
in its own right, you know?

I remember playing people and I was like,

"I have to be Donatello,
that's my guy."

Not because of
his skills,

but because that was the guy
that I related to the most.

TRACHTENBERG:
Turtles in Time
at the arcade.

$20, and we were so close to beating it.

We ran out of money, and that was our allowance of five weeks.

ALBRECHT: Man, back in the day,
you had to pump money in...

So, produced
through the studio,
the Archie Comics...

Steve Murphy
wrote a lot of those,

Ken Mitchroney and
a lot of the guys
drew all that stuff.

We produced it in house and
published through Archie.

BROWN:
Pete and Kevin said,

"Do whatever you want
with the Archie book,"
and we did.

I had some ideas
I wanted to do

and no one else
wanted to do it.

I think Mike
Dooney had done

an adaption of
the Murakami-Wolf show.

DOONEY: So, I was actually
watching it on TV at home,

we didn't even
have a VHS of it
or whatever.

I was watching it on TV
and I had the storyboards,

so I would
draw it that way.

And I felt that there was
some other things
we could do with it

if Pete and Kevin
agreed with me,

and I talked to
them and they said,
"Yeah, that'd be great."

Then I talked to
Murph and wondered

if he'd partner up with me,
because I couldn't write it.

If something in the book

influenced someone
to maybe recycle

or make the world
a better place,

I think it's all
for the better.

BRAMMER:
They were just goofy
and strange enough

to where you can do a lot of things with them,

and that's one of the things that makes them so popular,

they can go to
an alien world,

they can run around
downtown New York.

You can just use them in different situations,

and it always just seems to work.

We also produced live entertainment.

In fact, we opened up on Radio City Music Hall.

You couldn't stage a play, so to speak, for little kids,

so instead they
had the Turtles
become rock stars.

The day of the opening, the Turtles were just above

the Radio City Music Hall marquee,

and they were performing one of their songs live,

and it was a terrific show.

And that show
went on the road,

and the Turtles appeared
live across the country

in venues everywhere
and internationally as well.

The summer after my
sophomore year of college,

a friend of mine
was working

at a theater company
as an intern.

Todd Holoubek ran into a State rehearsal and said,

"Does anybody here want to be a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle?"

I'd heard the name Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle, I thought it was funny,

I didn't really know what it was.

I think everybody in the group said yes.

So, we went to this
rock and roll office.

A guy named Steven Leber
ran this office.

GARANT: So,
they needed anybody
who could go out

and put on the costumes and do the advance work.

So, you would travel one city ahead of the tour

and do promotion.

They were producing
a rock and roll Turtle tour

called the Coming Out
of Our Shells Tour.

GARANT: And the songs
that they were singing

were on this big
giant show at
Radio City Music Hall,

which had sold out
a four-week run
at Radio City Music Hall.

So, it was this big show
and Broadway dancers
were in the outfits.

♪ We're the Turtles!

♪ You can count on us!

And on the subway home,
my friend Ben is going,

"You know, it would be
kind of cool to sort of

"get paid to
travel the country
and be a turtle."

And I'm like, "Yeah,
it would be kind of
cool to do that."

And by the end of
the subway ride, we had
convinced ourselves

that we were gonna
drop out of school

and become Teenage
Mutant Ninja Turtles.

And that's what we did.

So, it's this vinyl suit

with big rubbery attachments

and a hard plastic shell
and the robotic head,

which is filled with
servos and whirring gear

and electronics,
and the eyes open
and the mouth moves

and you control it
with a remote control.

Me and Mike Black both did an appearance as the Turtles

at a pizza restaurant somewhere in Juarez, Mexico.

They were doing
a show in Texas,

but we were
gonna go into Mexico
in Juarez to promote it.

And the idea was
we were gonna go to
this ice cream store

and greet kids at
an ice cream store
and wave,

but when we showed up,
there were thousands of
kids there.

And there was no crowd control,

there was no cops,

it was just this sea of people.

And we went up on the roof of this thing

and it was like Saigon.

We were up on the roof in these turtle outfits

as a sea of Mexican children were just...

And we had pizza to throw down at them and T-shirts.

I'll never forget looking
through this turtle mask

at these
thousands of kids

just massed
outside this store

cheering and waving,

and we're dancing.

It was kind of
a profound moment,
because

it brought home
not only the phenomenon
of the Turtles,

but there was also something
sort of larger and sadder

about the state
of our world

in seeing
all these poor kids

who were
just as caught up

as their American
counterparts in this thing,

but had no access to it,

in the way that their
American counterparts did.

It was kind of a bummer,
but the ice cream was good.

♪ We gotta let the music be

♪ You know you gotta fight
to be free ♪

We were afraid that
this was a one-off.

Obviously, so was New Line,
so was everybody.

The whole industry said,

"It's a one-off,
it's Cabbage Patch,

"it will never
be another one."

So we rushed,

we came up with a concept.

We got that thing shot
and on the screen
in one year.

That's pretty amazing.

And then we decided,

"Let's air it out
for a year. Let's...

"It's got muscle in it."

It did from 134 to 82,
that's not too bad.

So, when we did
the third movie,

we tried to make it more
towards the first movie,

which had a bit
more of an edge and
a bit more of an epic feel

and the back to Japan
storyline.

LAIRD: The first movie
I see as a huge step forward,

maybe even a huge leap forward,

and the second movie was a huge step backwards,

so we kind of ended up in square one with the third movie.

EASTMAN: It's really
hard to describe,

even when
you're going through it,

when you're in
the middle of it.

I remember the biggest
effect it had on probably
both Peter and I

was that we went from guys
that got into the business

to write and draw comics,
tell our own stories.

In, say, 1986, '87,

we were still drawing
roughly 90% of the time,

80% to 90% of the time,

and then handling business
10% to 20% of the time,

and then the following year,
it was a complete reversal.

LAIRD: Kevin and I,
we had kind of
been growing apart

as friends and also business people.

He actually moved out to the west coast,

I think, in the early '90s.

At that time, I had

a number of other
creative things that I had.

I ownedHeavy
Metal Magazine

and we were producing
a new movie there.

LAIRD: And we
ended up realizing,

I think both of us came to the conclusion

that you can't really run a partnership this way.

We'd already gone 10 years,
or at least seven years

beyond where they thought
it was going to go.

I'm grateful for every
single one of those years

and experiences,

so I signed over
creative control
to Peter.

LAIRD: Back in 2001,
I started up the
Turtle comic again,

really doing it myself
except for the penciling,

which Jim Lawson did.

I was plotting it, writing it, lettering it, toning it,

doing some inking
on the first few issues.

And I was really having
a whole lot of fun with it,

and I thought, "This is great, because I'm able to pick up

"about 10 years
after the last time I did
a regularTurtle book."

And although it did appeal
to a bunch of people,

I also started getting
a lot of people
commenting that,

"Jeez, I really liked
the old Eastman/Laird
ones a lot better."

And I think that the problem

that people were having with it

actually relates to something,

one of those fortuitous circumstances

that comes along every so often

where two people of largely different personalities

can get together
and work together
on something

and the whole is greater
than the sum of its parts.

It's actually
one of the things
I kind of regret,

about the fact that
Kevin and I have not

been so close
over the years,

because he and I
went through this together
and no one else did.

And I'm sure
there are things

that he would say to me
or I would say to him

that would spark some memory in our heads,

like, "Oh, yeah, I remember
when that kind of
goofy thing happened."

Pete! LAIRD:
What's that, Kev?

See, we had
a design idea here.

See up here where
it's all white...

LAIRD: My favorite Turtle
has always been Donatello,

because he's the
pacifist of the group.

Kevin's favorite
Turtle is Raphael,

probably the most
aggressive of the Turtles.

And I think it was
the combination of
those two approaches

that really made
those early issues
something special.

RICHARDSON: So, it's been
two and a half decades
for the Turtles,

so we've seen lots
of generations of

five to 11-year-olds
come through,

but they all react
similarly

when it comes to the Turtles,
so there's something...

The core of the Turtles is appealing to kids.

But now we're seeing
parents, especially dads

coming up
with their son,

and the son's three
or four years old,

and the dad's like,
"I loved the series,

"the original Turtles,
when I was a kid,

"and now my son has
found it on his own."

LAIRD: The sale of
the Turtle property

was something that had been
considered for a long time,

and then in October of 2009,
we signed some papers

and got some checks
and that was it.

We're walking
down the toy aisle,
the action figure aisle,

and this mother's
kind of dragging this
kid out of the aisle going,

and the kid's pitching a fit going, "Mommy, please!"

And just as
we're getting there,
the mom was like,

"No, no, no,
I'm not buying you

"one of those
stupid Ninja Turtles,"

and went off.

And Peter and I
looked at each other
and went like,

"Holy, what did we do?"

These characters were as real,

and are as real, even today,

for so many people,

because it just touched so many lives.

The Turtles is a great story from that standpoint,

it's a story of two guys
that borrowed money

and had a dream and
took a comic book to press.

It's lightning in a jar, it really is,

and you can't create that on purpose,

you just got to do it from your heart.

To put it in perspective, the peak year

we shipped 100 million units of figures and vehicles.

Which I would guess that

that is the biggest single year

that any action figure line has ever experienced.

If nothing else ever is said about this franchise is that

it changed so many people's lives,

and at this point in life, it's all good.

Certainly when we got the job originally, none of us,

and I'm sure you've heard this from everybody else on the show,

nobody knew that we'd be here talking about it a generation later.

There is something about
that central concept of the
Turtles that is timeless.

Four outsiders
brought together
under a mentor,

living in this world

and trying to
make their way,

it's a fabulous
sort of parable
for adolescence.

Even The Avengersare big on the movie screen,

but the Turtles also had a TV show

that was on every day, that kids watched,

they had three movies out, they had an album and a tour.

So, if The Avengersalso had songs about being Avengers,

and were going on tour on stage as The Avengers,

there's no comparison.

I do think that there's
something just built
in the core

of these four green guys

that is endearing forever.

How I was working
in a lobster restaurant
in Maine,

met a waitress
that I really liked,

we fell in love,

she was going to
school in Amherst,

I moved with her
to Amherst,

happened to have
a getting-by job
at a pizza place,

just happened to be
on the bus

on the right day,
at the right time,

to find this magazine
that somebody left behind

that made me pursue
my career goal

of wanting to write
and draw comic books

to this place in Northampton, which led me to Peter.

What if that person who had that Scatmagazine

hadn't dropped it on the floor of that bus

that Kevin was taking from Amherst to Northampton?

It would never have happened.

There's too many...

Too many
happy accidents.

[INSPIRING MUSIC PLAYING]

[YOU GOT THE POWER
[TURTLE POWER]PLAYING]