Michael Jai White and His 'Black Dynamite' Collaborators on Parodying Michael Jackson and Rewriting History

His live-action incarnation may only have scored one

big-screen outing, but blaxploitation badass Black Dynamite is still going

strong on the small screen in cartoon form. Premiering on Adult Swim in the

summer of 2012, the animated “Black Dynamite” — which features the

co-writer/star Michael Jai White of the 2009 cult favorite voicing the titular

hero, whose libido is almost as strong as his roundhouse kick — performed well

enough to get a second season pick-up, with a new batch of episodes scheduled to

debut in October.

With Season 1 arriving on Blu-ray and DVD July 15, White

and his collaborators on the show, including co-creator and co-writer Byron

Minns (who also voices Black Dynamite’s sidekick Bullhorn) and executive

producer/director Carl Jones, paid a visit to New York. There, they spoke with Indiewire

about animating a character who was already something of a cartoon and how they

plan to raise their game for Season 2.

How far along is

Season 2 right now?

Carl Jones: We’re

still in production, so most of the episodes are in various stages. We have one

episode that’s ready for delivery and we’ve got five that our fully animated

and are in post. Making each season is about a year-and-a-half process

altogether, so it’s pretty intense. We had generated some ideas for Season 2 episodes

when we were working on Season 1, but there was a small gap between seasons just

for our sanity.

When you look back at

Season 1, are there things that — knowing what you know about the process now

— that you wish you had done differently? And did that impact the way you

approached the second year?

Byron Minns: I

don’t feel that way. We hit some high marks in Season 1 and we’re endeavoring

to hit some high marks in Season 2.

Jones: It’s more

of an evolution; both seasons are one body that’s just evolving. We were pretty

happy with everything we did in Season 1, we just want to aim higher this year.

There was a lot of experimenting in the first season, partly because we were

still trying to find the right animation studio to handle the style of the

show. We were underequipped to produce the show at the level it needed to be,

trying to make sure we tell stories as cinematically as possible and that the

characters are drawn really well. Unlike a lot of other animated shows made in

the United States, the characters in “Black Dynamite” are real

people. It’s not like “Family Guy” or “Aqua Teen Hunger Force”

where the design is more cartoony and stylized. [Our show] takes a little more

understanding of the human anatomy and a lot of artists aren’t trained to do

that.

READ MORE: Watch: The Trailer for Adult Swim’s Animated Spin-off of ‘Black Dynamite’

Michael, on the

featurette that’s included on the DVD, you admit that, of the three of you, you

were the least familiar with animation going into the show. Have you learned

more on the job?

Michael Jai White:

Yeah. At first, it all went completely over my head. Early on, I was told by

[Adult Swim Senior Executive Vice President] Mike Lazzo that [my performance]

was some of the finest voice acting he’d heard, but it wasn’t until I saw that

married with the image that I understood what he meant. I remember getting an

animatic and it was like a stick figure drawing. Everybody was so happy about

it, but I was like “Okay… These are stick figures doing stuff.” Now

that I’ve see what Carl does, I understand that every little moment that’s not

necessarily funny to me on the page will become [funny] onscreen. So this time

I went in with the understanding that [the humor] is in the nuances and it

becomes really fun to find those moments. In live action, if you don’t shoot

it, you don’t have it. You can’t go back and add something later, like you can

here.

Jones: We’re not

supposed to go back and add shit. But we do it! All the time. [Laughs]

One of the primary

sources of humor in the movie was spoofing the low-budget trappings of

blaxploitation movies — mismatched cuts, cheap sets etc. etc. — and that

doesn’t really translate to the animated realm. Were you concerned about losing

that aspect of the original “Black Dynamite”?

Jones: Not really,

because in the movie, the characters were so great and the world was defined so

well so there was a lot to pull from already. If the characters were shells or

archetypes, that would be a little different. But they were actually the perfect

family. And that’s the biggest difference between the movie and the series;

here, we get to see them interact more as a group. It’s the main focus of the

show, to bring them together and create this kind of dysfunctional family. We

also tried to turn the ’70s into a universe, not really an era. We never say

what point in the ’70s a particular story is taking place; we just give you the

idea that this is a bizarre world that exists in the ’70s.

Minns: What we

miss in those specific jokes about continuity errors and such, we gain in being

able to expand the world, because in animation, we’re able to do things like

leave the planet. It was a good trade.

One thing that does

carry over from the movie is how there’s how there’s almost always a conspiracy

at the center of the plot of every episode.

Jones: Within the

black community there’s always conspiracy, but usually those conspiracies are

true! They didn’t come from nowhere; we didn’t just wake up one morning

thinking the white man was trying to destroy us. This was how the country was

built. I think the ’70s were probably the birth of that awareness, when people

started to be more conscious of what was going on in their communities. So they

wanted to point the finger and figure out who this unseen hand was and a lot of

conspiracies come from that perspective. What we usually do for the show is

take an incident from the ’70s involving an iconic figure where we know there’s

a story that everyone is familiar with and then we play around with it. Like,

we know what Bill Cosby is like today, but we can present him as he was in the ’70s

according to us. We can rewrite history in that way.

You’ve already based

episodes around such deceased ’70s celebrities as Michael Jackson and Richard

Pryor. Have any of their surviving family members contacted you to complain

about the way you presented them?

Jones: Just Joe

Jackson! No, I’m playing. I don’t know any of the Jacksons, but for Joe, [that

Michael Jackson episode] was kind of a good look for him. Because Joe’s always

been the villain and he wasn’t that time.

Since you’ve already

tackled Jackson and Pryor, which famous people will be cameoing in Season 2?

Jones: Mr.

Rogers, Bob Marley, Melvin Van Peebles, Don Cornelius, Dick Clark and Woody

Allen. A guy named Jonathan Kite does Woody. He’s on “2 Broke Girls”

and does literally about 60 different voices. In terms of voice actors, we’ve

got J.B. Smoove back, along with Sam Jackson, Mel B, Erykah Badu, Chance the

Rapper and Tyler the Creator.

Even though you’re

playing around with stereotypes that are rooted in blaxploitation, do you ever

worry about taking those caricatures too far?

Jones: I don’t

think we really worry about that too much as long as we’re honest. The goal is

not to caricaturize the ’70s or the black community or anything like that. We’re

just trying to tell stories that are honest, and hopefully they resonate with

people who aren’t even familiar with the era. I always say that I don’t think

the show is even a blaxploitation show, because I don’t think we exploit black

people. I think it’s more white-spolitation show if anything. Like, we did an

episode about Elvis and another about a giant albino gorilla named Honky Kong. We

play into a lot of stereotypes across the board and have fun with them, not

just black stereotypes.

Which cartoons

inspired the look of “Black Dynamite”?

Jones: The look

of the show was inspired by anime director Takeshi Koike and his 2009 film “Redline,”

but I think there’s a little bit of everything in there. I was a huge Chuck

Jones fan growing up, as well as Bob Clampett and Hanna-Barbera. Ralph Bakshi

was also a big inspiration, with films like “Coonskin” and “Cool

World.” I look at everything from anime to “Aqua Teen,” because

if it’s good, it’s good. I have an appreciation for the different kind of

aesthetics you find in animation. For example, “Ren & Stimpy” is

an example of very cartoony limited animation, but we can implement some of the

same ideas because those characters have really good expressions and strong

poses. That’s half of storytelling.

Michael and Byron,

are you also cartoon addicts?

White and Minns [in

unison]: No. [Laughs]

Minns: I approach

the series in the same way as making a film in terms of character. That, to me,

is what it’s all about. So I’ve learned working with Carl for these last few

years what animation is and should be and the intricacy of creating all this

stuff, which I’m amazed by.

White: I can’t

contribute a damn thing. I just know what Carl can do and he continues to talk

over my head about Takeshi somebody. [Laughs]

I’m not in that world. There are certain things I can grab onto; like one thing

I can say is that almost any frame of our show looks like a film poster. You

can freeze frame anything and it looks like a blaxploitation poster.

How do the recording

sessions work? Are you able to get the cast together in one room?

White: I’m

usually solo, because I’m in and out of the country and state so it would be a

nightmare to have all these busy peoples’ schedules line up. It’s not like a

situation where we’re primarily voice actors and that’s it. We’ve got all these

different stars, so scheduling gets tricky.

Jones: We did one

session at the end of the first season and it was horrible. There were a lot of

very funny people in the room together with a lot of energy. It was basically

like being with a lot of kids! It was hard to get the work done and took twice

as long. But [our recording sessions] are usually very collaborative…

Minns: …after

Carl gets what he wants. [Laughs]

If you could pick a

favorite single Season 1 episode that best represents the show, which would it

be?

Jones: Michael

Jackson. I thought it was pretty smart and took a very different approach to a

Michael Jackson episode. It was really funny and weird.

White: To me, it’s

absolutely Michael Jackson. We satirized the most famous person who ever lived

and if we’re not going to get backlash from that, it speaks volumes. Sometimes,

when something like that works, it doesn’t get the recognition as it would if

it were negative. But the fact that we were able to do that is a great

representation of what we can do.

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