Full transcript of “Jeff Nimoy's "Digimon: The Movie" Audio Blog (Parts 4-6)”. Click a timestamp to open the video at that moment. Need another video? Use the YouTube transcript generator.
0:00 digimon the movie the blog part four the puzzle pieces bob and i needed something to grab onto to tie all three parts of the separate movies into one coherent digimon the movie so we just kept thinking what do all three parts have in common that we can sort of grasp on to and there was one item that kept coming up over and over again a digi egg you know and it was the main point of the first movie and it was the central point of uh the third movie so we just figured let's uh use the digi egg to tie everything together but what would that story be we had no clue we really pitched each other a ton
0:46 of ideas and nothing seemed to make any sense but we knew we could edit the footage any way we wanted which was a great advantage to us we can do anything we wanted with the footage so we can tell our story through whatever shots we had we're pretty much re-editing it and scripting that new thing so we had the advantage to do that if we could find a good story and we couldn't and then finally one day we came up with a storyline that made sense logically so i would like throw something out here and then goes is that satisfy this to move the story into that direction you know like a screenplay does and does it make sense
1:31 logically and then we were like okay it's a story it is a complete coherent story a convoluted coherent story but it does make sense if you really want to pay attention to it [Laughter] you can hear my enthusiasm but the biggest thing i hated i mean you know i've written a lot of screenplays at this point at digimon the movie not so many but still i had screenwriting experience by the time i got to digimon the movie and it went against everything you know about screenwriting to introduce eight new major characters an hour into the movie it's just ridiculous
2:20 so again i call a meeting the director of digimon commands a meeting with the big wigs no i am this time he said his piece so it's just terry eric me and bob but eric and terry said we need to use all three films and i said again it makes sense but i don't think we should do it it's just a mistake so eric and terry said well noted but you have to use all three films so let's make it work end of discussion and that's it that was the story so we started editing and we pieced together the footage the way we saw it and when that was done that's called a locked picture picture
3:07 is locked this way all the departments have a copy and they can work off of that copy they know nothing's going to change time code wise so you give a copy to sound effects and you give a copy to music and foley and sound mixer when all that's done and all this good stuff but most importantly and firstly a copy for me and bob to write to because without that there's nothing there there's just a bunch of cut clips and all different orders that makes you know very little sense so we have to write a movie knowing the spine it's sort of like working backwards where when you write a screenplay you have the spine there are certain rules that every screenplay sort of follows and we had to create that
3:53 with footage and that's your spine and then you hang your ideas on that spine but they're in the order that the rules of screenplay writing happen so in this case it was a a little different we put together the actual images first and that's our spine and then we can write any dialogue we want within that to make it all make sense and uh it's it's very odd you know we we had a podcast at spago the wga the writers guild of america threw a party that year for all the writers of theatrically released movies that year and it was at spago and they were doing a live podcast now so this is like 2000 right the end of 2000
4:41 around uh it was it was right after the oscars were announced and we're hobnobbing with all these people who wrote uh pollock and traffic i was talking to the guy who eventually won the oscar for uh traffic in fact i let him go before me because he had just had his for his wife at his first kid and was home waiting for him to get home so uh i said yeah go go ahead of me sure and we were interviewed by like uh a famous oscar-winning screenwriter who whose name escapes me i'm sorry i had brain surgery a few years ago and i can't remember everything ah boy i encourage you to use your ailments as an excuse for everything as well by the way it gets you out of a lot of tricky little situations so what was
5:28 i saying oh yes digimon the movie the blog part five the writing the dialogue was probably one of the most fun times of my entire life it was also the most frustrating [Laughter] because for every joke you keep you've thrown away 15 you know and for every line of dialogue for that matter and also the biggest thing i was just hearing in the back of my head the whole time like no matter how funny this script is no matter how much they applaud our effort of you know combining three films into one this third film's footage is gonna kill it
6:15 it's just going to kill it but again i couldn't complain anymore i've already complained enough to everyone so i tried my best to do it but it was gnawing at me and i was a very different person back then i was a very angry person back then uh speaking of brain tumors the brain tumor sort of woke me up to a bit of what's important in life and people have noticed that i'm a much different person since the brain tumor that i am not and they say this i'm not angry anymore so you know i can understand that and back then i was really angry all the time [Laughter] and i let this decision from the top
7:02 about using the third film's footage i i let it ruin the joy of most of that experience back then you know the fun times were when bob and i nailed the joke and it is like the greatest feeling in the world you know like the andy griffith little uh barbershop scene we didn't care if anyone got it if you understood that it was in the andy griffith show fantastic if you didn't who cares you know maybe you'll like it for the first time it didn't matter to us we just thought it was funny but for the most part i let my own anger ruin that experience for me and now i can look back on it from a distance and see it and i must have been miserable to work with
7:49 at times at times i was a lot of fun to work with you know but uh poor bob poor terry they took the brunt of my of hurricane nimoy coming through town and uh i apologize to them now in front of all of you listening here's another reason i was miserable speaking i'm angry i was also working a lot so it was bob 20 hours a day six days a week half a day on sunday and uh all the while we're working on the movie we're working on the season digimon season two it was just an insane schedule especially when you're a cranky like i was at the time so it it didn't help the added stress and on top of it all my beloved new york
8:37 mets were in the playoffs that year which was rare it still is rare while we were writing i couldn't watch a game i i had too much time so i i had it on once just like during the dinner break and bob just like threw me out of the office i couldn't turn it off he was like go home and watch the game and uh it helped me calm down just a little more you know structure of a real life did calm me down a little a little bit um the mets lost that series eventually but uh i had much bigger problems you know i had this monstrosity of a movie to write so digimon the movie the blog part six the jokes first thing was since uh ty wasn't in
9:24 part three he couldn't narrate anymore so lara jill miller my old friend kari she got more dialogue just from that one decision so we set about to rate the gosh gang funniest anime movie of being released on october 6th we did write a lot of jokes we wrote so many jokes that we actually couldn't use them all which is good because a lot of our first choices for jokes were rejected and that's par for the course in show business but we did lose some funny stuff and i do want to share one with you that was particularly funny for me uh diaboromon
10:10 was in new york and in the movie is he says he's heading for the subway system and ty replies good that'll slow him down for sure eh you know it's okay it's an okay joke but in the first script i had a joke that i really thought was funny uh as he says uh he's headed to yankee stadium and ty says the yankees they don't need him they need pitching and i thought that was a great joke that was bob and you know when either bob or i had the right joke we just said it out loud you know when we pitched it to each other we both kind of knew that was the line you know whenever it happened but that was the first choice that they didn't like so maybe they were worried they're going to get sued by the yankees anyway we also had a ton of fun with the
10:56 new storyline we added to the movie that was not in the original movie for ty's mom played by my another old friend dorothy fawn daddy and bob and i we work backwards a lot uh so i i think a lot of writers do this we saw the punch line we wanted and then we went back to set it up so the punchline was izzy running to the bathroom with stomach issues and then we saw uh he kept ingesting things given to him by ty's mom and we we made her into not just a bad cook but a person with no clue of what's even edible uh and ty having grown up with her he knows that you don't eat a single thing she offers you but izzy he's clueless how could
11:43 someone be such a genius in one aspect of life and so clueless in nutrition so when he starts downing some disgusting concoction ty says izzy you're the bravest kid i've ever known i love that stuff so i love that all that stuff that leads up to him throwing up it's it's base but you know it's pretty funny coming soon digimon the movie the blog part seven oldies but goodies [Music] what about nfl films that was 20 years ago okay everyone i know there is gone or dead you just go back to anime you're a superstar in that world actor writer
12:30 director jeffy moy complicated i'm with geekcon we were wondering if you'd like to be a vip guest again i don't really do anime conventions anymore how does three thousand dollars sound wolf but it's definitely my favorite character of all time when he died i cried like a little baby i cried too when he died i was out of a job is this pretty much the way you remember it smells the same jeff nemo i'm your biggest fan oh you're right oh she's being serious how can you stay depressed around me because i can't i can't believe he wanted emmy in 1996. i wasn't even born yet what if i dressed like a priest and carried around a giant cross it would kill my dead jewish
13:16 grandmother this convention i'm famous and sexy back in l.a i'm george costanza all over the world [Music] arnold schwarzenegger as a short order cook that's right put down the short ribs what are you doing that's not barbecue sauce it's blood here's to adventures in anime [Music]
