Transcript:Commentary:Space Pilot 3000
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| Transcript of commentary for | |
| "Space Pilot 3000" | |
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| Transcribed by | Svip |
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- Note: Question marks (?) means I am not at present entirely sure who it is that is speaking.
- Note: Three question marks (???) means I am not sure of whether the word I have suggested is the correct one.
Matt Groening: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the audio commentary for the pilot episode of Futurama. This is Matt Groening.
Gregg Vanzo: Gregg Vanzo, co-supervising animator, director.
John DiMaggio: John DiMaggio, voice of Bender and other characters.
David X. Cohen: David Cohen, executive producer, head writer.
Rich Moore: And Rich Moore, co-supervising director and co-director of this episode... with Gregg.
GV: Oh yeah, I forgot about that.
DXC: Oh, and Matt and I wrote this episode, also.
MG: This is a tough thing, to get the show off the ground. And pilots in general probably are pretty tough for everybody. But to do a show where you're setting up a story that takes place a thousand years in the future, and what we tried to do, we tried to lay in a lot of little secrets in this episode that we would pay off later. [pause] Should we tell some of them or just leave them?
DXC: Maybe we'll just point them out and let people figure them out for themselves, and say "secret!". There's a cool one coming up in a— just a few minutes.
MG: What's great about this, and I – tip of the hat to Rough Draft, is how good this looks. The first episode is – the show have evolved a little bit, but it doesn't – you know – it doesn't look like a different show.
DXC: Rough Draft are our animation studio, by the way.
MG: Right.
DXC: [I.C. Weiner note is shown.] That's my parents' home address; 405. Different street, but that's where the number comes from.
?: Wow! Everything is of significance! [Fry is opening his beer and making his mockery toast; so along with Fry] ... millennium.
DXC: [Over the countdown montage] This idea came to me in the shower. I remember thinking about it in the shower one morning.
MG: The fact that they are during the countdown for New Year's, all around the world, is a bit of a stretch, but—
DXC: The idea that they are in different timezones—
- [Nibbler's shadow appears.]
MG & DXC: Secret!
- [Laughter erupts.]
DXC: That's gonna pay off in a few years from now. [Fry has fallen into the tube, and the days are starting to spin away.] Matt, I remember an early drawing you did that looked just like this. Your conception for this scene was in your mind early on.
?: And I have that drawing.
MG: This is inspired by the – you know – The Time Machine.
?: This is great...
JD: Is that another secret? Why that building didn't get destroyed?
DXC: Err... sure.
JD: A secret that you don't know!
DXC: It is so secret, that there is not one person on Earth that knows the answer. The script changed a lot – really a lot – from early versions of this, but we finally decided that it was kinda filmantically??? important to end this. We want to end this cold opening at the moment Fry was in the future. It seemed like, that was the big change in his life. We decided that was the place to start the main title.
GV: First shot of New New York – that was the first 3D shot that we animated.
DXC: Oh really? So that was sort of an experiment whether you could do that or not.
?: Here is... the introduction of the theme song. I think, the funkiest, by far, on the air of any other show. Period.
DXC: It's good.