Stan Lee Interview Transcript

by Steve Johnson
webdate: 1/1/97

Stan Lee: Hello?

Mania: Hello Mr. Lee, this is Steve Johnson from Mania Magazine.

Stan Lee: Well, good morning Steve Johnson from Mania Magazine. Good to talk to you.

Mania: Thank you! We're an on-line web-magazine that covers comics and toys and science fiction and stuff, and, of course covering comics, Marvel is on our lips every hour.

Stan Lee: Well, I should think so.

Mania: I would like to ask you first a question that they asked you in the Bullpen Bulletins about fifteen years ago, but they never asked you. . . If you could have one super-power, what would it be?

Stan Lee: Me?

Mania: Yeah.

Stan Lee: I think eternal youth and eternal life!

Mania: Sometimes I can understand that having just had my first child, which makes every succeeding year seem like ten. Well, I was wondering if you could tell me what's coming up in Marvel films? There's a rumor that Nicholas Cage is being talked to about Iron Man.

Stan Lee: Yes. It's not definite but we have talked to him and he has expressed interest in it, and, of course, we're working on a story now, and I think he'll really like the story and that will make him even more interested. But he's a fan of Iron Man, and do you know how he got the name Nicholas Cage?

Mania: I do not.

Stan Lee: I am about to share that secret with you. His name used to be Nicholas Coppolla, because he was related to Francis Ford Coppolla, and he didn't want to cash in on the family name so he looked around for a name to give himself, and we had a comic book called Luke Cage. .

Mania: Hero for Hire?

Stan Lee: Yeah! And he loved the book, so he took the name.

Mania: You've got to be kidding! Oh my Gosh!

Stan Lee: You're one of the few people on the Western Hemisphere who are privy to that information.

Mania: Now I can revel in the fact of being one of the few illuminated. I was also told that Wesley Snipes is a little bit further along in the progress for Blade: Vampire Hunter?

Stan Lee: Yep! He's going to play Blade the Vampire Hunter. And now something much more exciting than that, somebody else is going to be in the movie, probably a two minute role, but. . . ummm. . . I'm going to be in it.

Mania: Well, you know, we were wondering after Malrats if you'd actually be in another movie. Are you going to play yourself again?

Stan Lee: No. . I don't think so. I got a call from somebody at the production office, a couple of weeks ago, and they asked if I would take a small part in the movie, and I said, "Being what, " and they said that they'd like me to be a police man. I'll be the oldest police man on Earth, but maybe I'll be a police chief or something. I have absolutely no idea what I'll do or how, but all I did was say, "Yeah, I'll do it," and I'm waiting to hear from them.

Mania: Actually, this wouldn't have been the first time you've been someone else, although you really didn't have any lines in the Trial of the Incredible Hulk where he's tipping over the jury box.

Stan Lee: Yeah! They wouldn't let me talk. They wouldn't even let me yell, "OWWW!!" I'll tell you a funny thing about that. You remember when he tipped over that thing?

Mania: Yeah?

Stan Lee: When all the jurymen scramble out of the box because they didn't want to get crushed, I was not one of those scrambling out. They wouldn't let me scramble, and I said, "Why not," and they replaced me with someone else and said, "You had to be a stunt man to scramble out of the box." I said, "It's a one and a half foot drop. . . I could do that with my eyes shut." But I wasn't a member of the stunt man unit. So I just sat there during the scene, but when the scrambling part happened, they wouldn't let me scramble. I was in another movie called Ambulance and I had a little-bit larger of a role there, but I wasn't that good because I was acting a little too stiff. The director wanted me to act the way he thought a comic book director should act. He wanted me to wear a suit, and it just didn't feel like me. I actually had a lot of lines in it. It's on television all the time on cable.

Mania: Wasn't that a horror picture. Who was in it?.

Stan Lee: It was directed by Larry Cohen, who's a friend of mine. It had Red Buttons and James Earl Jones and Eric Roberts in it. It was a good movie.

Mania: And you played a comic book editor in it?

Stan Lee: Yeah! I wasn't myself in it, but I was a comic book editor in it. . I don't think I was called Stan Lee. But it was about twelve years ago, and was about a hero who worked in a comic book company, although most of the story took place away from the comic book company.

Mania: Then I definitely have to check it out. Black Panther. . anything happening there?

Stan Lee: No we're still working on the story for that.

Mania: How do you do that? Do you sit around and brainstorm or do you. . .

Stan Lee: No, we try to hire a writer and turn him lose and hope he comes back with something everybody likes. We haven't quite gotten the right story yet but we have a writer working on it now.

Mania: Well. . writers and deadlines. . you know how that works, having been on that side of the desk yourself.

Stan Lee: Yeah! (laughs)

Mania: The X-Men Animated Series is ending.

Stan Lee: Well, it's going to go into syndication.

Mania: Right! Well, they've stopped making new episodes. What's next in animation for Marvel?

Stan Lee: Well, we're probably going to do. . in fact we are going to do the Silver Surfer, and that will be on the FOX network. And, you know, we have the Hulk on UPN. And we'll probably do a few more. We're trying to decide which one's they'll be.

Mania: It seem that you have a good, working relationship with the production companies to start bringing Marvel characters to animation, at least, fairly regularly. which is good. Because there are the Superman movies and the Batman live action movies, and everyone's wondering, "where's the Spider-man movie?"

Stan Lee: Oh man!! No one is more eager to see that happen than me. Well, you know, the man who will be doing the film when it's finally ready will be Jim Cameron. Of course you've seen Terminator?

Mania: Jim Cameron is the man!

Stan Lee: So you can imagine what Spider-man will look like when he's finished with him.

Mania: Is that the next thing you're working on?

Stan Lee: I hope so.

Mania: Is it one of those things where you're waiting for the next person to make the next move?

Stan Lee: Yeah.

Mania: Well, at least he's on that project.

Stan Lee: Well, actually there were some legal problems that didn't concern Marvel, and it had to do with old licenses and people who felt they had the rights to the video tapes of Spider-man. Others had the rights to the CD's, but, you know, all sorts of things. Until the lawyers can straighten it all out , we can't get started with the movie, but we're getting close to it.

Mania: And as soon as that happens, everyone will be ready to go?

Stan Lee: Well, I hope so. Jim Cameron has already written a story for the movie and it's absolutely wonderful. I mean, everyone loves it. For all I know, he may have already written a screen-play by now.

Mania: Can you tell me anything about the story?

Stan Lee: No, I'm afraid not. He'd kill me. But I'll tell you this; I think the man is a genius. He took a character that everybody knows and he didn't change anything, he didn't try to alter him in order to give him the Cameron touch, but he kept it the real Spider-man and, yet, reading the story, it is so fresh and new that it's like you've never seen this before. It truly is a wonderful story.

Mania: Well, Aliens and Terminator were both so incredibly intricately constructed. Everything that happened in the beginning became vital to the end, and it all made sense, especially the time-travel story, which is so hard to do sensibly. I am in awe of James Cameron. He's one of the few excellent writers who is also a director.

Stan Lee: You're absolutely right. Yeah, I'm his biggest fan. And he's also one of the nicest guys ...

Mania: When I saw him on the Dennis Miller show, he seemed really nice, not at all inflated by his evident genius.

Stan Lee: No. No, he's a regular guy.

Mania: We're hearing a few things about Lou Ferrigno and a possible return to the live-action Hulk. Is anything like that in the works?

Stan Lee: No, we're going to do a Hulk movie, which is being worked on at Universal, but I think they're gonna go in a different direction. Lou Ferrigno is a wonderful guy; I am an admirer of his, and we're friends, but as I say, unfortunately they're going in a different direction on the movie.

Mania: And that's coming out, when, '98, '99, sometime around then?

Stan Lee: Yeah. Lou is doing the voice of the Hulk on the animated show, y'know.

Mania: Which is much more than he ever got to say on the live-action show.

Stan Lee: (laughs) You're right.

Mania: Let's see ... how have comics changed since the dawn of the Silver Age? Actually, come to think of it, you were active in the Golden Age as well.

Stan Lee: Y'know, I'm not much of an authority on the colors of the ages. I like to think that anything I'm doing is part of the Golden Age. Comics have gotten today, much grittier. The women are wearing less clothes, the stories are a little more rugged, there seem to be a trend today where most of the characters are always snarling.

Mania: May I ask what you think of this trend?

Stan Lee: I think it's overdone. I think we need to go back to trying to tell stories a little better, rather than just having a lot of fight scenes with snarling faces, and bigger than life characters who we don't know where they came from or what they're trying to do but they're always in action. I think Marvel is the least offender in this particular area and I'm gonna try, even though I do keep busy on our movie, TV and animation projects, I'm going to try to get more involved in the comics again. One: because I miss them, and two: I think it will sort of be fun. I'm going to try to bring them back up to where we concentrate more on just telling great stories. With clear, interesting, attractive artwork.

Mania: Do you have any particular titles you want to start on or any ideas you want to use?

Stan Lee: I haven't decided yet but I think I'm going to try to find one or two of the magazines which aren't selling all that well and see if I can boost the sales up a little.

Mania: I suppose it's impossible to ask you what your favorite characters are?

Stan Lee: Well, you could ask but it's impossible to answer because I really love them all.It use to be when I wrote them it would be whatever I was working on was my favorite at the time. If I ever have to give an answer I usually say Spider-man because he's best known and most famous. I think people expect me to say that. I also love the Silver Surfer. I use to like throwing all my own corny philosophy into his mouth to say a lot of the things I felt.

Mania: So, right now you're pretty much working on Marvel films full time? But you do think it will be possible to do comic work as well?

Stan Lee: Well, I going to try. I may go back to writing the Stan Soap Box column too. I just want to stay in touch with the fans. That's why I like doing these on line interviews. Anything where I can talk to people who are involved with Marvel.

Mania: Would this be something you will be doing this year, next year?

Stan Lee: Within the next few weeks, maybe. It will be mentioned in the magazines.

Mania: Have you been able to keep up with reading comics?

Stan Lee: Not really. There are too many magazines. I get most of them brought to me. I'll come into the office in the morning and there is, what appears to be a million magazines on my desk. But in between phone calls or whatever I'm doing I try to at least thumb through them, look at the covers so I know what's being published. Sometimes a cover will really attract me or I'll see a new title I haven't seen before. So I thumb through it to kind of get a feeling of what the book is like. However to sit down and read a comic, I wish I could.

Mania: Are there any inparticular you try to give a little more attention to every month?

Stan Lee: No, it's not an ongoing thing with certain titles.

Mania: You were involved with Timely Comics almost since the beginning, right? Timely became Marvel in the '50's or 60's. You and Jack Kirby started doing the Fantastic Four in 1962 but it was still called Marvel before then, was it not?

Stan Lee: Well, actually we've had many names. It started out as Timely when I first got there in the late 30's and at the time we changed to Marvel I believe we were calling the books Atlas Comics. I only changed it to Marvel because after I saw the Fantastic Four was selling well and The Hulk was selling well and Spider-man had caused quite a sensation. Then we were doing the X-Men, Daredevil and everything seemed to be catching on and I said, "Gee, we're not the same company we were. We ought to get a better, different, new name to identify us. Marvel just seemed like such a great name.

I'll tell you a funny story about that.....at the same time, DC was called National Comics and sometime later they decided to change their name too. They spent a lot of money hiring an expert in such matters and then had conferences, consulting with people on what kind of name to come up with and they ended up with DC and I felt that was about as terrible a new name as they could have come up with, National would have been better. DC is just two initials sort of meaningless. The thing is with a word like Marvel, I was able to come up with slogans, "Make mine Marvel," "Welcome to the Marvel age of comics," it's a good word to work with but what can you do with DC. I always got a kick out of that. Wow, they spent a fortune to come up with DC.

Mania: Sometimes consultants produce something worse than you might on your own.

Stan Lee: That's right. And I'm friends with most of the people at DC I used to rib them about it years ago.

Mania: I'm sure the publishers and writers weren't in on that anyway.

Stan Lee: No, I don't know who was in on it. Whoever it was I hope didn't get a bonus that year.

Mania: At the moment you have answered all my questions except for...

Stan Lee: You know we're also doing a Fantastic Four movie, a Daredevil movie, a Dr. Strange movie. F.F. will be produced by Christopher Columbus and when I say we're doing them, these are all in development, they haven't gone in front of the cameras yet. But we have producers, we're polishing up the scripts, hiring directors and so forth. In fact I am personally working on an Iron Man movie with the writer, we're doing the story together. In fact he's outside my office right now as we speak and I'm going to have lunch with him.

Mania: And who is that?

Stan Lee: A fellow named Jeff Ventar. He's a young brilliant guy, I'm very excited. It's been a lot of fun working with him. We also have the Silver Surfer movie in the works with Twentieth Century Fox.

Mania: Live action?

Stan Lee: Yes. All the ones I have mentioned are live action. There's an X-Men movie also with Twentieth Century Fox. I think it will be directed by Brian Singer, the guy who did, The Usual Suspects. Then we have a Venom movie in the works at New Line. So there's a lot going on movie wise.

Mania: I can definitely see why you keep busy. The norm, like all Hollywood things, some of them will work out and some won't .

Stan Lee: The reason it's taking so long is we're trying to make sure they are all going to be great stories, that we have the right directors and right producers and so forth. For once we won't let these things get out of control, I am going to be the co-executive producer on all our projects. So if I see someone is trying to change our characters too much or make foolish changes I will be able to say something. Which I wasn't able to do with our Captain America or our Punisher movies.

Mania: Well, I sure thank you for your time. And I certainly hope that all of your movies work out. I am anxious to see them all!

Stan Lee: Well, thank you very much. You're a wonderful human being. I enjoyed it and lot of luck with Mania.

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