Finding Saban Moon: The Western World of Sailor Moon (Part 2) | Tales of the Lost

0:00 way way back in time an influential french guy once said patience is bitter but its fruit is sweet sometimes the answers you're looking for are just around the corner and often in the last place you look you just need to have the patience and persistence to see things through even if you come up short in the end that effort and drive won't go unnoticed if you don't quite get it right the first or second time around maybe your efforts will be just enough to open the doors for somebody else like with lost media hunts if you've got any energy left in you to keep on searching just do it exhaust every possible resource and leave no stone unturned even if you have to take a few breaks along the way during my investigations there were so many times where i mistook

0:46 patience for stagnancy and i assumed that physical action was the only measure of progression but sometimes things could come around when you stop intervening and just let nature take its course i mean they do say slow and steady wins the race i had to enact so much patience when exploring the mysteries behind saban moon in part one of this series so many months were spent trying to find new answers had i given up my search i never would have had the chance to speak with lynn walsh and if not for that interview i never would have been able to uncover new information about project y and without that very crucial sit down i never would have made contact with the mysterious man in red and rocky solitov two men who could potentially hold more secrets

1:31 about the lost live-action pilot if i hadn't kept digging down this rabbit hole the story of saban moon would still be a handful of leaked cells and a haunting piece of footage from the anime expo recorded so many years ago and somehow even with all of that progress made little did i know i had barely scratched the surface of my investigation and in between my time waiting for this climactic sit down with the two men at the center of this mystery new unexpected leads had revealed themselves and i very quickly found myself once again attempting to rearrange the missing pieces of an over 20-year puzzle in this episode of tales of the lost we pick up right where we left off from part one of the western world of sailor moon i finally have the opportunity to

2:19 sit down with the ceo of toon makers himself rocky solitov and the producer of live action known as the mysterious man in red in anticipation for this interview i decided to take a look at the new leads and people of interest that popped up as a result of the previous dock that could possibly bring me closer to the answers i seek and in the end find myself tying up a lot of loose ends i never thought were possible was i successful at uncovering anything new about saban moon from my sit down with rocky and the man in red or perhaps my answers came from the new leads that showed up along the way this is the thrilling conclusion of the western world of sailor moon [Music]

4:04 do [Music] if not for my discussion with lin there's no doubt that i wouldn't be standing here today on the receiving end of communication with saban moon's

4:49 producer of live action and good friend to toon maker ceo rocky solitov he suggested that the three of us sit down for a call to discuss their time and memories working on project y i had so many questions and was so excited to have reached this point in my search what more could be revealed about this lost pilot would they be able to confirm any of my previous theories or maybe they could reveal the identities of the remaining cast of the live-action pilot perhaps rocky and the men in red had their own little keepsakes from saban moon that they'd be willing to share maybe even a copy of the missing pilot i was dying to know and if you're totally confused as to how i got to this point who rocky solitov even is or what the heck is a project

5:35 why i'd strongly urge you watch the previous episode the western world of sailor moon part one as this serves to a follow-up to that peace go ahead you have an hour and thirty to kill pause this and meet me back here when you're finished okay i want you to be just as invested in this whole thing as i am alright okay cool now that you're up to speed after a bit of back and forth between rocky myself and the men in red we finally landed on a date where we could all sit down and talk it would be a whole month and a bit before i could finally pick their brains at first i dreaded the idea of having to wait any longer but i think in hindsight what initially felt like a long haul to the project ended up becoming an opportunity for me to slow down and look at this investigation with a more careful eye which in the end had turned

6:22 out to yield more results than i'd anticipated so before we can get to this big reveal the big sit-down interview i teased in part one i think it's imperative that i covered the events that transpired in between leading up to my interview with rocky and the man in red because in the end these events that transpired during my weight turned out to be those same key elements that helped me wrap up all the missing pieces to this almost year-long investigation i received so much feedback from viewers across the globe immediately after the premiere of the western world of sailor moon it was really great to hear people's stories perusing the web in the 90s and reading about their heartfelt memories growing up with the series i even appreciated the corrections and feedback that was given in regards to my own research i'm pretty much a one-man

7:08 show so i knew i wouldn't be able to get everything down correctly so thanks for that interestingly enough of all the emails and messages to have come through i also received a handful of new tip-offs and information on possible new leads to investigate that hadn't previously been covered in the first part of the series fans had tipped me off to a few new names in particular that i wasn't able to fully investigate before and with a whole month and a bit before my official sit down with rocky and the man in red i figured why not look further into this whole thing while i still have the chance perhaps some new information could come out of this that could be brought up during my final interview certainly one of these new leads could yield some new information so i began to look more thoroughly at all the new information that had come in

7:55 i was led in so many directions with some people even suggesting that the pilot itself was held in archives like the library of congress of all places a little harder to investigate but definitely worth looking into but more specifically i had been given the names of three new individuals who were rumored to have been part of project y with more direct contact and a higher chance at responding to my inquiries this is where i thought i would have the best chance at getting more information the first person i'd been made aware of was legendary musician ron wasserman best known for composing the iconic power rangers theme song it was rumored that he had quite possibly had a hand at the musical arrangement heard in the saban moon music video ron was no stranger to the world of sailor moon as

8:40 he had also been credited as a writer and composer for a few songs off of the deke soundtrack for the english dub ron's previous ties to saban toy a and renaissance atlantic in the early 90s only strengthened the probability of him having some connections to the pilot this is especially more plausible when you consider the fact that the idea of a live-action iteration had only come to fruition from the climbing success of renaissance's most successful live-action show the power rangers luckily ron wasn't very hard to track down as he often communicated with fans over on instagram and facebook and seemed to be very open to responding to fan inquiries with a higher likelihood of hearing back from him it just made sense to reach out and see if he'd be willing to answer some of my own questions so i sent an email and linked

9:26 the old clip from the anime expo to see if he had any insight or if he could confirm his involvement with the musical score and soon enough i managed to get a response hi raven from what i remember that was a long time ago i only remember writing a few songs for the sailor moon album not sure i had anything to do with the pilot because i was deeply entrenched at saban in 94 doing power rangers x-men sweet valley high etc until i left there in late 95. let me know what you think ron upon listening to the anime expo clip wasserman had this to add hi raven it's odd that does sound vaguely familiar but i'm not 100 sure if i was involved with writing it or perhaps just mixing it just don't know i've written thousands

10:13 of things since then and a lot of it becomes a blur wish it could be of more help feel free to ask me anything else ron unfortunately with all the projects he'd worked on in the early 90s it was hard for ron to fully confirm whether or not he had any involvement in creating the music for the toon maker's live action pitch he did mention however that the tune sounded vaguely familiar so unless i was able to find a higher quality version of the clip or perhaps uncover more lost media pertaining to saban moon it might be hard to get a solid answer still i appreciated ron's willingness to help and took note of his offer to answer any more questions if needed be if i happened to find anything else at least that line of communication was now open but for now i had to move on so i

11:00 tucked this away in my back pocket and proceeded to look into two more leads that had shown up on my radar soon after my communication with ron i was then contacted by twitter user corza moon and adam of sailor moon news who both suggested i reach out to rumored saban moon actress tammy adrian george this rumor was so much stronger than the last i believe it caught wind during the old anime fringe interview with rocky solitov where he had briefly mentioned working with the starship troopers actress she was supposedly cast to play sailor jupiter this piece of information stayed largely unconfirmed because it's kind of hard to tell whether or not it's actually tammy adrian george in the footage that we've got but it had recently been revealed to corza having reached out to the actress that tammy

11:46 had in fact been a part of project y she was our sailor jupiter and after being told of my hunt for connections to the pilot she was open to the idea of sitting down to speak with me this was great news another name to come out of the woodwork who was kind enough to answer more questions i wondered what kind of stories tammy would be able to share of her time on set so many years had gone by would she remember any key details or even the names of her fellow cast members or perhaps some things would find their way back to her memory once the questions began to flow in i was very eager to hear her side of the story but that wasn't all corza had come to find in his search while all of this was transpiring a third person of interest had suddenly popped into the mix

12:32 while investigating on linkedin corsa had come into contact with another individual who had passed ties to renaissance atlantic a name i had previously come across in my search but was sadly unable to get a hold of a woman known as ellen price under her bio ellen price was known as the development and production executive for renaissance atlantic from 1994 to 1997. she was even responsible for producing all of the one sheets artistic bibles and video pilots and what really caught my eye was her listing of sailor moon as one show renaissance atlantic had worked on for the japanese toy company bandai would ellen be able to provide any more information on this having been responsible for all the art bibles and video pilots surely there

13:18 must have been some chance she had recollections of developing this pilot or even memories of the art bible contents perhaps even she was still in possession of some of the material she worked on all those years ago i asked corza if he would once again work his magic and within a couple of days i had myself a new phone number ellen had asked that i give her a call that evening but that very same day there was no response communication there had turned a little bit shaky and i'm not quite sure if it was because i had been calling from a different country or maybe because my name looked suspicious on the caller id as i wasn't even able to leave a message i attempted to call a few more times but didn't want to overwhelm her with phone calls and then the trail went cold i wanted answers but

14:04 i didn't want to look like some weirdo so unfortunately this would be another venture i'd have to revisit for another time perhaps i could call again at a later date and maybe from there things would just kind of fall into place but for now just like with ron my conversation with ellen would be another chapter i'd need to add to my back pocket [Music] even though i wasn't able to speak with ellen i was hopeful that i'd hear back from her down the line and my investigation was far from over because luckily i still had something to look forward to my correspondence with tammy

14:51 adrian george eager to learn more about the cancelled project i followed up with her over on instagram giving her more context on the documentary i was working on and wondering if she'd still be interested in partaking and right around the time my attempt to contact ellen had failed tammy's messages finally came through and from there our interview continued over email do you remember what the interview process was like were there a lot of people in the casting call i do remember it being a busy casting not just this audition but that time period as well pilot season is always a whirlwind of auditions sometimes five a day at least two or three of us were running into each other at other auditions i think mindy her character was in the wheelchair was the only one who was under 18 irl was the sailor moon live

15:38 action pilot your first experience in acting what started your passion for acting no sailor moon was not my first gig i'd been modeling and acting while finishing college i graduated in 1992 and because i looked much younger and i'm short i usually got the teen slash college parts i did print work slash commercials for miller's outpost jcpenney tampax big red secret plus a jillion others and a lot of music videos for young artists like kevin campbell my modeling agent said you need to be acting i was never gonna do high fashion in fact my first acting gig was for an educational series called math keys ha every now and then i'll meet someone who says you taught me math i've always been a performer of some kind competitive dance and cheer local and school shows i

16:26 just didn't train for it until i was an adult my degree is in writing applied to advertising and public relations my family's from the caribbean and it's no big deal to have multiple degrees certifications and careers do you have any on-set memories with the cast and crew wow as goofy as it looked we had a blast doing that song i think her name is danny asian actress and i both had dance backgrounds we both had naturally long hair that was tucked under those god awful wigs getting fitted for our school uniforms was hilarious because we couldn't be too sexy the voiceover work was amazing because i got to work with patricia alice albright an amazing prolific voice actor who is definitely a part of my childhood i vaguely remember adrian barbeau but only that she was

17:11 kind to us and still gorgeous do you remember the names of any of the girls you had worked with on set including any additional cast members or crew members danny mindy stephanie dickerson or dickinson maybe she and i both worked on the soap general hospital i think but at different times danny and i would run into each other sometimes but castings were usually done by racial groups so you just never knew who you'd see with the type of show sailor moon is i'm guessing there were a lot of different costumes on set did they have the girls dress up in superhero outfits or were those action shots strictly for the animated portion darn no superhero costumes school uniform casual wear pjs anything with powers was the animated part do you remember how you found out

17:58 about the pilot project it was just another audition the filming was maybe a week or so and because my agents knew as a pilot presentation that meant they were looking for more funding our hopes were to get a full pilot done but in the meantime there are other jobs to work on getting had you ever watched sailor moon or did you know about the japanese series prior to auditioning for the role of sailor jupiter no do you still keep in touch with any of the cast no we lost touch do you happen to remember sailor jupiter's civilian name that she used on earth when she wasn't in her superhero form i don't someone told me it was lita but i don't recall that do you have any memories of shooting this music video i remember one of the producers and the director coming into the makeup room playing the song

18:44 and asking if we could dance to it danny and i hop to it right away funny i remember dancing in that makeup room more than i remember dancing on set we learned the words and sang the song too the version you hear now sounds more like a mashup to me did you ever think the project would have gained such a large online cult following in recent years now that i've been part of a few cult loves starship troopers star trek ds9 beverly hills 90210 so many black sitcoms general hospital bratz big time rush and my husband eric bruscotter has had the same long-term love from his fans i'm not surprised anymore i think there's something so wonderfully dorky about projects from decades past the star trek episode i guess starred on was directed by anson williams and james

19:29 darren was on the episode as well two seriously talented performers with great bodies of work and deep fan bases from decades before and i was starstruck i spent every free moment singing old songs with them do you happen to have any relics from your time on set that you'd be willing to share with us for this documentary whether it be photographs set pieces wardrobes i didn't keep anything we'd always thought that the pilot would get funded so production held onto everything from my character even the wig are there any upcoming projects that you're working on or any business you'd like to advertise most of the time that i was acting 20 plus years i also had a side business as a pilates instructor 31 years now it was something to keep me

20:15 grounded and to give me the freedom to turn down parts that i didn't want to do major nudity girlfriend of drug dealer gangbanger super destitute crackhead wasn't for me other actors took those parts and turned them into something brilliant it was meant to be it let me know that this was no longer fulfilling me because i wasn't willing to go there and the travel was getting tough once i had my son and my husband's health was taking a downturn i was getting offered gigs in other countries or on the other side of the u.s i didn't want to miss my son growing up i stopped acting around 2015 maybe though every now and then i might still do a modeling gig social paint was a recent one i owned tammy's take on pilates rehab nutrition specializing in sport specific training

21:02 and in rehab work my nutrition work is usually with someone who's dealing with a medical diagnosis not just wanting to lose a few before a wedding i've also recently become an instructor on opc onlinepilatesclasses.com a membership platform that caters to other instructors and some die hard pilate lovers all over the world that's what was launching for me last week and the response has been amazing a streaming platform just offered me my own show so you never know how things circle back i've been so lucky to realize that i was getting more joy from helping people overcome their obstacles than i ever did from a performance even hair and makeup could be drama because sometimes they didn't have product or personnel who knew how to work with brown people maybe if the times had been more like they are now diverse casting without having a beg

21:48 to be seen for a white part actually pay better accommodations for parents etc i loved acting but not like i love healing people put it this way the connection to my clients is so powerful i've had some of them for 20 years the great thing about being an actor people recognize is that i'm always connecting with someone new sometimes it's how a new client finds me and it's a great icebreaker sometimes it's just a great conversation at the beach sometimes it's getting to wander down memory lane with people like you best to you keep me posted on what you find tammy it was great getting the chance to pick the brain of someone who could have been the face and voice of sailor jupiter had things gone differently it felt surreal hearing

22:33 about tammy's time on set filming with the rest of the cast and i never expected all of the new leads that would have come in from our interaction she'd managed to name four of her co-stars she'd worked with while filming the live-action pilot according to tammy steeler mercury was played by a girl called mindy sailor mars actress was known as a woman named dany and an actress by the name of either stephanie dickerson or stephanie dicken's son supposedly played the role of sailor moon unfortunately tammy was unable to recall the name of her co-star who played sailor venus even still i was left with two nicknames and a full name with alternate spelling all new persons of interest to look into tammy revealed that they had not only worked alongside legendary actress adrian barbeau who

23:20 voiced queen serenity and queen beryl but they had also done voice work with the american actress patricia alice albrecht who famously voiced phyllis in the 80s animated series gem and the holograms patricia albrecht was intended to voice luna in the live-action adaptation sadly any hopes of reaching out to patricia had come a little too late as the actress had long since passed away at the age of 66 in december of 2019. my investigation now boiled down to mindy danny and of course stephanie mindy and danny would prove to be a lot more challenging to find as i only had their first names to really go off of and these names tammy could recall were more likely their nicknames a more thorough investigation would have

24:06 to be done to find the actresses who played sailor mars and sailor mercury and maybe just maybe my search for these girls identities would eventually lead me to the final scout sailor venus but first it was time to find stephanie [Music] [Applause] unlike danny and mindy looking for stephanie a full named active actress in the early 90s who previously worked with tammy adrian on other projects felt like a cakewalk during our interview tammy mentioned that she and stephanie had both worked on the ongoing 1963 series

24:54 general hospital so my search quickly led me to imdb to check out a list of the show's full cast and crew my hope was that stephanie would have been listed under these credits despite not having a recurring part on the series i kept my eyes out for anyone with the name stephanie and anyone with a last name close to dickerson or a dickens son stephanie braxton nope stephanie williams no stephanie c allen but at the very bottom of the page the very last stephanie listed was a woman who played a character known as gina williams this actress was listed as stephanie dicker though she didn't have a photo on imdb all it took was a quick

25:39 google search to see that she was more than likely the girl i had been looking for overlaying images of stephanie and the girl in the music video it was plain to see that this was definitely her stephanie dicker was our live action sailor moon interacting career stephanie was most active from 1981 to 2001 and made appearances on shows like general hospital boy meets world saved by the bell and even friends she even appeared to be a serious regular on the 1997 show fame la since then stephanie hasn't been in the acting world for some time she got married in 1996 and currently goes under the last name shanfield today stephanie shanfield still lives in los angeles and works as a realtor under her

26:25 own agency with a few weeks left until my sit down with rocky and the men in red i wondered if there was any time left to reach out and schedule a possible interview with stephanie i'm sure like tammy she may have still had some memories of being on set from all those years ago maybe she had more information on mindy and dany or would even be able to disclose the identity of sailor venus i wondered if she was aware of the small cult following that had grown from saban moon and all of the people who had attempted to hunt down copies of not only the music video but the pilot itself perhaps with her playing the lead role of sailor moon this would be a project she'd be happy to share her stories with or maybe not maybe she wouldn't even remember but it was still worth reaching out before concluding my documentary i kept telling myself leave no stone unturned because

27:13 if rocky and the man in red say they didn't have the tapes maybe others connected to the project would with it being so far into the past there was a good chance she'd have no idea what i was talking about but i sent her an email i found off of her website tried not to come off as too creepy and hoped for the best things went pretty silent for the next couple of weeks and at that point i figured i probably wouldn't be hearing back from her odds were she either didn't want to talk about it wasn't interested or she just didn't remember still if stephanie ever wanted to sit down for an interview i would love to sit down and hear from sailor moon herself about her experiences in the meantime it was still danny and mindy and although i didn't have a lot to go off of name-wise i had hoped that

27:59 taking a second look at my interview with tammy could potentially help with extracting more clues about the identities of the remaining sailor scouts [Music] finding danny and mindy proved to be much more challenging as all i really had to go off of were their first names so i figured my best move was to go right back to my conversation with tammy adrian george some key details she provided could help to better pin down these actresses from my interview with tammy i could conclude the following

28:45 details about danny and mindy the girls would often see one another in passing at casting calls and though they were in their early 20s in 1994 they were often cast for younger teen roles due to their youthful appearances for dany i was looking for an asian actress now in her early 50s or mid-40s in 1994 dany would have had long hair as tammy had mentioned that both she and dany were fitted into uncomfortable short wigs that had to hide all of their long hair and like tammy dany was also a trained dancer the only thing i was really able to gather about mindy was that in real life the actress didn't actually have paraplegia another detail i had to keep in mind was that according to tammy out

29:30 of all the cast members mindy was the only actress who was actually under 18 when they had started shooting the pilot which would mean i'd need to look for a red-haired caucasian actress in her late 30s or early 40s knowing that tammy adrian was often cast in teen dramas and sitcoms made narrowing down the possible shows they would have likely appeared on a little bit easier tammy mentioned in our sit-down that she would be running to up to five auditions daily and would often run into two or three of the other girls auditioning for the same shows and these shows would have likely been teen sitcoms and dramas of the late 80s and early 90s so i wound up scrolling through the imdb cast and crew lists of shows like blossom boy meets world my so-called life and any other 90s teen

30:17 drama tammy had made an appearance on if their paths had crossed as much as tammy recalled surely some of the girls would have booked other auditions for the same shows there may be some kind of overlap here other than the time tammy had worked with stephanie on general hospital and also boy meets world i searched high and low for any cast and crew members who had the same names as mindy and dany i even attempted to search under different spellings of their presumed full names danielle and melinda but as persistent as i was to make some sort of find my search had unfortunately led me nowhere being able to get a clear picture of the girls would have made this so much easier i thought to myself if only i could get my hands on higher

31:02 quality footage if only there was a way to master that captured footage at the anime expo maybe then it would be a much simpler task of identifying these girls and on top of this limitation i didn't even have a first name for the actress behind sailor venus the remaining sailor scout so once again it was just something i had to put away for later into my back pocket just when i thought my trail had gone cold i wound up receiving a very curious email from a man by the name of ian landry who claimed to be in direct contact with a possible lead i had briefly looked into in my last documentary ian had on and off communication with raymond iacovaci a name i had seen many times in my search the producer of animation who appeared

31:49 in the cast photo that lynne walsh shared with me the same raymond via kavachi whose storage locker was cleared out all those years ago which was a key event that sparked the rumors of the existence of an americanized sailor moon yep that same reimundia kavachi that's said to own a copy of the saban moon pilot that's rumored to be tucked away in his storage locker in the philippines ian had come to know raymond through his own investigation into saban moon as an artist and animator landry was looking to start a saban moon project and recreate the pilot from the ground up using both existing animation stills and portions from the scripts that had been leaked online he reached out to raymond to research further into the project and through their shared love of animation

32:35 the two remained in contact well sort of during one of ian's sit-downs with raymond he confirmed that he was in fact in possession of the lost tape and that it was tucked away in one of his storage lockers ian made many attempts at convincing raymond to share the recording but raymond would always decline as he would need permission from those who owned the original copyright before publicly releasing it he did however make mention that if he were to show the tape in full it would have to be through a private screening but with raymond no longer living in the philippines would it even be possible for him to retrieve a copy of the tape then suddenly out of the blue their contact got a little bit weird raymond was described as being more or less flaky and a bit of a shady character he

33:22 would randomly pop up then disappear for months on end moving from place to place only to respond months later continuing their conversation as if no time had passed in between to make things a little more complicated whenever project y was brought up raymond would switch back and forth from being an open book to suddenly becoming tight-lipped and much of his stories were said to at times conflict with previous retellings of his time at toon makers because of this ian began to question the legitimacy of raymond's claims as his stories would often devolve into what felt like tall tales perhaps raymond's memory wasn't what it had been before or perhaps something was being kept hidden after watching part one of my documentary and seeing raymond's name pop up ian wanted to reach out to give

34:09 me further insight on his own experiences with the animator and potentially act as a point of contact despite raymond's claims of being in possession of saban moon ian held the hope that my meeting with raymond could potentially yield a different outcome and could possibly be the sit down to reveal the truth of all raymond's confusion another person connected to project y claiming to be in possession of the tape but also a character i was told to keep my wits about there was no way i wasn't going to look into this further and potentially set up a meeting of some sort maybe the rumors circulating about him were true what if raymond was the only person left with a legitimate copy of the pilot maybe he would know what came of the original cast members and just maybe he was in possession of more lost keepsakes from

34:55 project y perhaps his perspective would be drastically different from my upcoming sit down with rocky solitov i thanked ian for passing along raymond's contact information and let him know i'd be in touch but i was told to proceed with an absolute air of caution as this apparently would not be an easy interview [Music] after my talk with ian i was told to try my luck at calling raymond myself to see if he'd be interested in discussing his time working on project y in the first half of this documentary i'd made a few

35:41 attempts at reaching out to raymond but the email and phone number i got my hands on most likely weren't in service anymore but this new number given to me by ian was undoubtedly his most recent contact info i also had to keep in mind that raymond had been described by ian and many others as eccentric and a bit of a boastful character i've never met him so i wasn't really in any place to cast any judgments but with him claiming to be in possession of the pilot i didn't want to do or say anything that would threaten my communication with him as i didn't really know what to expect could the tape really be hidden at his storage locker in the philippines from what i was told about him would raymond be willing to cooperate with me or would he just up and disappear what's the worst that could happen here

36:28 with how aloof people said he was he probably wouldn't even pick up i thought and if he doesn't pick up then i can just move on hello uh hi is this raymond diakavacci yes who's calling hi my name is raven simone and your name's raven simone were you named after the girl from the cosby show yes oh my condolences oh so why are you calling raven oh i'm a filmmaker working on part two of a documentary about the honored palette of the tune maker's live action sailor moon pitch would you be free at all to sit down and have a chat about it oh say hi to my

37:15 wife huh my wife she's here she says hello uh hi okay all right anyways uh what do you need you want an interview yes it's been over 20 years what more is there to say about it oh you'd be surprised that the cult following this project still has there are so many people who are curious about the production of the series and its inception and they'd be more than happy to hear from you about this you know what i'll do it i'll tell you what let's set up a time and talk about it that sound good yeah sure that would be great 6 p.m tomorrow that sound good yeah that's fine um i i should be able to have all my questions ready okay raven i'll see you then bye bye now bye so um would you like to tell me a bit about your background as an animator before working with tune makers um

38:01 all right i'm gonna i'm gonna i'm gonna do it quickly so uh i graduated high school in june of 1980 10 minutes later i drive to hollywood and i get a job at a bank i was 18 years old of course i worked for a union bank in beverly hills because i was good at math and i succeeded at it and i'm not saying this to blow my own horn because i'm very humble i'm just telling you the truth so uh they put me in charge of the entertainment investment banking department and my clients were the cast of mash the cast of happy days ronnie howard bob hope groucho marx uh john belushi dan agra jane fonda dan aykroyd what yeah at 18 years old they were coming to me for investment advice and then one day i was working for charles keating who is the mastermind behind the lincoln savings and loan debacle in the

38:48 summer of 86 they were actually bribing me to lie to the customers saying that the investments were insured now who are my customers there on the hollywood boulevard branch michael chimino the director of the deer hunter robert de niro dustin hoffman uh yeah so after they started bribing me senator alan cranston who was the center of california that year he called me and i said senator cranston i've had enough of this you're bribing me to lie to good people so the story i always say and this is the god's honest truth i walk home and my wife at the time she said what's up i said i've had enough she says then just don't go back so we sat down and watched oprah winfrey a couple of weeks later i got a job as a delivery boy at dick a delivery boy

39:33 three years later i was production manager on the simpsons that's awesome so what happened was i started at deke animation and you know what was ironic is that all those years as a banker i never made more than five or six hundred dollars a week but as a delivery boy i was making 800 bucks a week okay and i and i've been an artist my whole life you know i can draw i went to art school twice i was on the simpsons for three seasons making 800 bucks a week and i went to my boss who was a good guy and i says mike i'm producing the number one show in the world and you guys can't pay me more than six seven hundred bucks a week and he says i'll do what i can so what happened was i got a phone call from jeff swampy marsh and dan povenmeier who created phineas and ferb we worked together on the simpsons and

40:19 that's where we met and what happened was swampy came to me and i said and i quote can you produce an animated feature film a two-hour animated film in russia for two million dollars and i said yes i can he said you're hired i said if i can get us a project will you and i and dan be partners and we'll do the project in russia and he said absolutely so a week later i got us a project for vice president al gore it was a 15-minute anti-drug and alcohol film for kids or that a dare you know like a dare to keep kids off drugs uh d-a-r-e and i don't know anyway i said hey swampy i got us the project how much do you love me now the more the money the more the projects kept coming in and then one day i said you know what effort

41:06 you know you know 18 years in new york 18 years in hollywood 18 years in asia i need a break and i came to the state and got a job working for the christian broadcast company and then uh what did i do with the christian thing there was uh there was a tv show with patrick duffy and suzane somers and a young actress named angela watson she calls me out of the blue and says i want you to write and direct and produce something for me and a man named gil cabot uh after taking it i took a year off because my brother died oh suddenly i had a two-year-old daughter who died and then i had a fiance seven months pregnant with my baby killed in a car crash oh my god i i'm sorry to hear about that um should i keep that in uh even with all that all those turmoils i went from delivery boy to head of a studio within

41:54 what five six years uh so finally after taking a year off i went back to hollywood on valentine's day of 2009 took me a whole month to get a job on the tv show planet sheen for nickelodeon jimmy neutron got it yeah exactly and you know what i'm doing you a favor today so i want you to do me a favor and read two screenplays that i've written excuse me that's the end of my story and i i swear it's all the truth uh that's that's really awesome so do any memory stick out to you during your time at the animation studio or what about being on the side of the live action portion oh we did the live action portion of that project uh rocky solitov swampy marsh

42:40 and i formed a partnership and rocky and his cronies did the live action meanwhile they shoved my ass over to korea to do the animation part we kinda got screwed over i'm gonna be a hundred percent honest with you the animation is not so good and we got the best thing in the world on it yet the overseas studio in korea they kind of screwed us over because they said oh we've done this we've done that so i go over there i walk into this giant empty room and i said you told me you had a studio [ __ ] pardon my language that's okay and he says yes mr layman so uh when working on the toon maker series do you remember any of the names of the live-action characters like like their human names because a lot of people have

43:25 questions about it okay i know uh i don't know their names offhand but there were five girls there is the blonde girl who was good looking uh i actually took her to dinner she ended up getting a job on melrose place and the black girl ended up uh starring in the movie starship troopers with denise richards the red-haired girl moved on to something the other girl uh worked on saved by the bell with tiffany amber thiessen there the asian girl she went on to she she became a model it was like a like a playboy model but she did bikini modeling or something like that all five of them were very successful and me and rocky hand picked them all as a matter of fact so i've had a pretty great life that's really great to hear right for

44:12 sure uh how old are you um 29 so half my age i just turned 60 but you know i look 37 so that's you know so that's uh that's what's important yeah young jeans yeah you know do you know what i look like oh i was actually sent a photo of all of you guys just pull up my name google my name and then click on images you'll see what i look like um what happened my wife jesus christ she scared she scared me she just showed up right next to the car okay i only have a few more questions left but uh this one's uh kind of random uh you know the girl who was in a wheelchair on set do you remember if she was supposed to have an australian accent no she was uh not she was uh she was she

45:00 was from north hollywood and she could walk uh listen let me call you back later okay we got we got a big basket of groceries here we're in the parking lot okay sounds good all right uh can i call you tonight yeah that works how about we make an appointment it's uh one o'clock uh how about i call you at four o'clock all right i'll be here all right raven bye-bye bye oh no [Applause] as soon as raymond asked to call back at

45:45 a later time something in my soul felt very uneasy i waited until four o'clock that evening and as you could imagine i never ended up hearing back from him until some weeks later and that portion of the interview i unfortunately don't have recorded here for you today it was very brief and to be completely transparent whatever else that transpired in our follow-up interview were details that i felt only created more confusion and a sea of so much misinformation i couldn't believe it i now had a better understanding of ian's warning raymond was definitely one of the most eccentric characters i'd encountered so far the whole conversation was disjointed

46:32 grandiose and a little rude it felt impossible to decipher what was fact versus fiction while some things he had mentioned did seem to line up with what i had gathered from previous interviews much of his own personal story seemed way too far-fetched to be entirely true raymond seemed to take personal ownership over everything that went on at toon makers claiming to have been responsible for much of the management and production despite his role as animation producer he frequently fell off topic and name-dropped celebrities irrelevant to our conversation which almost felt like the stories were thrown in as a way to vouch for his character when asked specifically about the toon makers team raymond painted his colleagues as completely incompetent elevating his own work there was

47:18 definitely some resentment there and it was hard to say whether or not it was unfounded or rooted in some ugly truth raymond continued to tell me that even if he did retrieve the tape sharing the pilot would be impossible due to it being owned by renaissance atlantic but when i had mentioned that it would be likely renaissance atlantic president frank ward would give him direct permission to release it considering he himself had shared team angel some years back the conversation began to wane whenever a possible solution had been presented it was very quickly shut down and it was through these back and forths that i started to come to some pretty heavy conclusions perhaps the rumor of raymond being in possession of this lost media was in fact untrue and it was now

48:05 being used as more or less something to keep people hanging on with so many other people questioning him about the pilot and with all the years he's been in contact with frank how is it that this conversation never came up if the community believes raymond has it he will continue to be a person of interest and his name will continue to circulate it was becoming all too much to dissect and i left that interview with a lot more questions than answers i felt as though i had to take his word with an absolute grain of salt and this only became more abundantly clear to me when some weeks later i would end up receiving an anonymous letter that only further highlighted my concerns about raymond good morning raven i first of all wanted to thank you for putting so much time effort in 90s kid heart into

48:52 your new sailor moon documentary and uncovering some very interesting new information about tomb maker sailor moon for our community along with personally thanking you i also wanted to connect with you to share some information you may not have heard about the production cells and raymond i've been a big fan of sailor moon since i was eight and over the past 20 years i've collected often on different collectibles from the show one of the most prized parts of my collection on my production sales both from toei and tune makers and on the tune maker side of things i own 46 production cells and 50 production sketches that were used in the making of the pilot i acquired the cells and sketches in october or november of 2012 when a fellow sailor moon cell collector named cutie bunny alerted and posted on sailor moonforum.com about hundreds of cells and sketches from the pilot along with the script for the animated

49:37 portions of the pilot popping up for sale on ebay they were mainly sold by ebay sellers kitty and charlie vintage junk star and a few others they also had production sales for sale at the same time from other projects raymond had worked on like street fighter 2 and dark stalkers as many of us were curious as to why all of these cells were mysteriously popping up from rayman iacovacci's private collection that's what the sellers had in their auctions on ebay we tried to do some digging when i personally reached out and visited one of the sellers he said that the reason these items were all popping up for sale was because raymond was arrested on charges of assault and battery on his male roommate he supposedly could not cover the costs of damages he needed to pay in court so he allowed all of the items in his storage locker to be sold off to cover the costs including all of the tomb maker sailor moon production

50:22 materials the ebay seller i messaged told me that he and other ebay sellers from there acquired their production cells and the script themselves at a swap meet in california they were confused at first as the cells looked like they were from sailor moon but they looked just a bit different they did some research into it and figured out that they had found something quite special and acquired the cells to then resell on ebay that same seller told me in our private messages that raymond pretty much lost everything because of those charges and court case when the tune maker sailor moon cells were first posted for sale on ebay he even tried to reach out to the sellers to get his baby pictures back as those were also in his storage locker however sadly those had already been thrown out by whoever first emptied the storage locker and brought the items of value to the swap meet that seller said the last they had heard raymond had become pretty destitute and

51:09 moved back in with his parents in florida this would be a very clear explanation of why you haven't been able to get a hold of him as he wants to stay out of the public eye thanks again for everything you've already done for us i truly appreciate it what i read in that email only served to support my deepest fears that had been festering in my mind ever since my interview with raymond it was beginning to look more and more as though raymond no longer had a copy of this lost pilot and that had actually been sold damaged or lost when the contents of his california locker were emptied and auctioned off back in 2012 perhaps we'll never know the truth surrounding the rumor of the tape in the philippines but i knew at this point i didn't have enough energy to continue speculating there was more work that needed to be

51:55 done sure raymond's testimony added a lot of confusion into the mix but there was obviously some truth sprinkled into his statements just how much i couldn't be sure i do appreciate though that he was able to provide more clues on the remaining cast members notably what came of the careers of some of the actresses that information would prove to be worth investigating further according to raymond after shooting the pilot dany had gone into modeling stephanie had appeared on an episode of melrose place and the unnamed actress who played sailor venus supposedly appeared unsafe by the bell as one of the bit girls a new detail about sailor venus's actress would surely help to narrow down my future search so in the end my time with

52:41 raymond was definitely important nonetheless and i do appreciate the time he took to speak with me as sporadic as that whole interaction was and at the end of the day there was still one thing left to do have my sit down with rocky and the mysterious man in red finally everything had been leading up to this very moment and perhaps my interview would serve to further connect the lost pieces of this very peculiar puzzle [Music] before we continue i'd like to ask that you please take a moment to like and subscribe to the channel these documentaries are the most creative and in-depth content i've been able to make so far and while they're rewarding and a lot of fun they do come at a bit of a cost they can be incredibly time

53:27 consuming to piece together and even staying away for more than just a few weeks and not posting can severely affect a person's visibility in the youtube algorithm if you're enjoying the tales of the lost series and want to help keep it alive your subscriptions and channel support can make all the difference i'm currently trying to reach 100 000 subscribers in the next couple of months and a higher view and sub count could help to bring in more sponsorships that can in turn support these higher quality documentaries that being said if you'd like to go a step further than just liking and subscribing it would mean a tremendous amount if you joined my community over on patreon pledging as little as a dollar a month you'll not only be helping to support myself and my work but a pledge will also grant you special access to our discord server where you can meet and connect with other members of our lost

54:13 media and gaming community you can hang out in the general chat share artwork and memes and even suggest lost media topics that you'd like to see covered in future documentaries patrons will receive early access to videos previews and more behind-the-scenes content if you'd like to pledge or read more information you can head over to patreon.comreymona or click the link provided in the description box below thank you so much for your time love and support and now back to part two of the western world of sailor moon [Applause]

55:00 the weeks that passed since our initial contact had seemed to have flown by and shortly after my encounter with raymond the day of my big interview had finally arrived not only was i going to have a chance to sit down with rocky solitov himself the ceo of toon makers and the executive producer of sabon moon but also an entirely new lead the producer of live action the personal overseer of everything that took place on set when shooting the live-action portion of the pilot episode surely being this close to the project he would have a ton of new stories to share and maybe even still be in possession of some keepsakes from the show and now we find ourselves back at the start where i sat in my chair gleefully and in awe of the message i

55:47 had received from the man in red a couple of months prior after reaching out with the help of lynn walsh i had finally heard back from the son of her mentor a man by the name of steven wiltzbach daytime emmy award winner and film producer stephen wiltzbach who worked on classic films like the iron giant osmosis jones space jam and fern gully the last rainforest a man with so many notable works in his film catalog i never would have guessed would have had a hand at producing the lost live-action sailor moon pilot there was a good chance that in less than a few short hours many of my deepest questions would finally be answered i had high hopes for my interview with rocky and steven maybe they would be able to help me fill in the gaps with all these new leads i

56:33 uncovered maybe this whole thing could be wrapped up into a nice little package and much of this mystery could finally be laid to rest so many untold secrets and stories regarding the project straight from the minds of the most major part of saban moon's production i couldn't let go of the possibility that finding this lost media might be closer than i realized someone here must know something and our time together went a little something like this [Music] i wanted to start off by saying thank you so much for sitting down with me and having this conversation i'm sure you guys probably get a lot of questions about sailor moon on a regular basis it's just that there's a lot of people out there that are really eager to hear what both of you have to say about your time working on this project well it's

57:19 odd it's really odd that there's like a cult with this thing it's very strange yeah it's really grown into its own sort of thing i think because it's become such an anomaly among fans because there's already such a large cult following for sailor moon in general so anything that's ever been connected to the project people just soak it in yeah because my company's name appears at the end of the footage that you've got i get two three calls a month really yeah some people even did their own research to find the new phone number and they always ask you have a copy of the whole thing and my answer is no and even if i did i don't own it i always worked for hire so was steve we got the project and our job was to take it and run with it we both did while we were both working yeah working at a place called bear animation that's b-a-e-r and dale bear

58:04 is considered one of the best animators that ever lived and we were both working in just a little independent place a commercial house and that's where we met rocky and i i was raised in animation and i wasn't a live action guy my dad was a disney animator or assistant actually so both rocky and i were both animation folks i was an animation camera operator and rocky was a production manager i saw you both had a very large backlog of films whether it be fivo goes west the little mermaid it seems like you guys have both been deep within the animation community for a very long time do you happen to remember what the first project was where you both met each other well i've been working a lot before my time at bear animation i started when i was 18 years old so we'd both been in it for around 30 40 years something like that he means

58:50 to say we don't look old i don't know what we were working on when i first got there do you remember rocky we were working on oh i know it was prince and the popper oh that's the mickey mouse movie right yes and some scenes from little mermaid yeah on our resumes you'll see a lot of movies because as camera operators we shot a lot of different stuff we work for lots of different independent studios and then things like filmation and hanna-barbera so sometimes you get credit on these sometimes you don't depending on if they're a union house or not then we both moved after bear i started working for warner brothers in feature animation i was head of scene planning on quest for camelot and then the iron giant ah the iron giant yeah i love iron giant that's uh probably my favorite movie i've worked on and then osmosis jones and then i became the

59:36 associate producer there and we did eight crazy nights looney tunes back in action and the spongebob squarepants movie wow so i was just associate producer and then afterwards i went off to tv for one year i figured both rocky and i were mostly featured guys but i wanted to do tv for one season so i went to work on a discovery kids show known as tuttenstein and we won an emmy for that one i hired a bunch of out-of-work feature guys so for a while they had the best crew in the freaking world for about a year because they were all out of work yeah well what we've always said is we hire our friends then we hire friends of friends and then we hire people that can actually do the job so while we were there rocky and i got the sailor moon pitch so we did it on the side and he asked me if i wanted to do live action and i said sure what the heck i'll try it i had done a little bit

1:00:22 in cable and i was between animation jobs so i said yeah i'll try the live action so we just teamed up and did that it was fun it was kind of fun we had a lot of very gifted people who pretty much put it together on the way home from their day jobs yeah everybody was working on the side did we work weekends at the sound studio we shot on the weekends because that way we didn't get a whole day to shoot the live action but i had a studio on chandler boulevard and just up the boulevard was film roman where they were doing the simpsons so a lot of the guys dale hendrickson swampy marsh dan povenmeier and a couple of the other guys the pilot was on the way home they'd stop by do some drawings pick up some drawings and then the next day they'd come back and give us what they had but all that stuff was done freelance we had a budget of like uh a dollar for what they wanted they wanted

1:01:07 a lot and i had been with saban for like five years and i got 250 hours of television and i was the guy that every time they had a brilliant idea they'd ask oh rocky actually knows by animation maybe we should give it to him there wasn't an animator there not one great artist but nobody animated so many times something had to be done especially something they hadn't done before i wound up doing it and it was great fun and i met more great people basically we're migrant workers with pencils plus there was a great pub across the street we had a lot of production meetings there oh yeah and a nearby golf course where it could kill an afternoon so first we'll just kind of touch up on the show we had international call outs for actresses to play the five parts and we rented an apartment across the bowling alley by the park and the day of the first audition they were wrapped

1:01:53 around the block whoa sailor moon was pretty well known at the time and of course we had every ethnic group and they had to be young though they have to be over 18 so they don't have to deal with 16 year olds you know all the child problems so they had to be over 18 but look 16 you know or something like that and that was hysterical i don't remember how long we did that for maybe a week there were thousands of them and we found our five i think we had a pretty good crew actually the girls were good the girls were great yeah didn't one of them go off to be pretty well known was it tammy adrian george we had one that went on to do starship troopers yes that was tammy adrian she had played sailor jupiter beautiful girl they were all really pleasant she was skilled we had a good crew no it was a great bunch of people and like i said we did it all on a shoestring budget but we worked really

1:02:40 hard we had a director who thought we had a star wars budget for the live action was that my friend what was his name i don't remember i think i was trying to remove him from my mind good-looking dark-haired guy right yeah and a pill actually what was it that made you guys decide to turn it into a live-action hybrid with animation was that something requested by toy a or was that a concept of your own that was a request whether it was toei or frank or heim saban it just came down that this is what we want and we said okay and in the script we had to make sure that when they would do their twirl they would twirl into animation so we had a special effects crew and we'd have to go back and forth from live action to animation and we also have to remind ourselves we went through with sag really bad because we hired sag actresses that this one's not

1:03:25 for air this is literally a proof of concept so we just wanted to buy them out so there would be no residuals you know if the pilot sells then hopefully you girls will be available to come back but there's never guarantee this is a one-off and not to be seen by anybody

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