- Randall Lobb

The plan was to make it ourselves.

I wasn’t yet sure what “it” would be, but I would write, direct and produce and my partner Mark Hussey would oversee tech, A.D. and run the post on it, with me hanging over his shoulder.

All we needed a talented DP with the right gear to shoot it.

Isaac Elliott-Fisher, half our age but from the same rural area, proved that he wasn’t simply a skilled shooter - he could build anything, from cranes and mounts to props and set pieces.

He was also a lifelong Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle fan burning to shoot a doc to coincide with the 25th anniversary of the Turtles’ creation. And he wanted us to help him.

It was a terrible idea.

TMNT had been enormously popular, exploited in every medium, plastered on merchandise all over the world, generated billions of dollars and as such, rights would be a nightmare. Corporate entanglements, a rabid fan base, rumors of hard feelings and possible legal turmoil contributed to what would have to be far too heavy for us to handle.

Which made it the perfect idea.

At the very least, a low-budget, rights-cautious, fan-focused TMNT doc would appeal to a thousand hardcore pop culture fans, right?

On a very Canadian (read: slushy) day in November 2008 I reached out to the CEO of Mirage Studios, half expecting to hear “Cease and desist!”, but Gary Richardson didn’t say that.

He told me that, although Mirage wouldn’t help us, he figured they couldn’t stop us.

They couldn’t stop us.

He couldn’t have said anything better designed to spur us to action. The next two years found us juggling day jobs, shooting whenever possible, building contacts and connections and managing an ever-growing collection of raw footage, without getting any closer to an ending.

In fact, we found ourselves at a new beginning.

Mirage sold the franchise to Viacom and I had to learn very quickly how to negotiate the complexities of Paramount and Nickelodeon as they worked to develop this legendary IP.

So, while we pursued every shred of TMNT news and compiled yes, more footage, I wangled, inveigled and struggled to get these corporations to let us in, let us shoot and let us show them what we had, which I was convinced would add real value to the reboots we knew had to come.

Wouldn’t that be the perfect time to start writing for a brilliant Montreal director I’d been following on YouTube?

Patrick Boivin made brilliant, creative stop-motion animations (Iron Baby and Dragon Baby, for example), but he wanted to make features. Studios agreed, as they do, and he was invited to make the rounds in L.A., where he had a number of projects pitched at him.

Imagine my surprise when I found out he wanted to make one of my scripts instead.

He’d turned everything else down to work with me and a Toronto producer, tweaking and tuning Two Guys Who Sold the World for the Canadian industry at one budget level, then the U.S. at another, then the Canadian again, with me rewriting constantly to suit each opportunity as it appeared. And disappeared, as it does in that classic game of development.

In spite of Two Guys winning the Berlinale Talent Showcase at the 2013 Berlin Film Festival and having a great actor attached at one point, we just weren’t able to find the right company to trust our vision for Patrick’s debut feature and, more specifically, to trust that the geek culture audience we identified would come out for sci-fi/comedy. 

The Turtle doc was similarly positioned. I couldn’t make the business line up with the opportunity. People loved our teaser and couldn’t believe the material we had (Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird had opened their archives once we’d gained their friendship and trust) and we’d made something great, but we had to get it to the right place at the right time to treat it properly. 

Then Patrick met with Disney about a project for which he was perfect.

He loved it, but wanted a rewrite, and although there was no chance they’d agree, he wanted me involved. By now, he and I were in development on other features I’d written, we’d done more short pieces together, and we were talking about all kinds of possibilities down the road. Working on this project would be an amazing opportunity for us.

He asked me to help craft his approach documents, which was pretty cagey, and bore fruit when the work was well received. Incredibly, Patrick and I were contracted to rewrite the screenplay.

Whether it got to the screen or not, I was working on a Disney feature for my friend to direct!

Perhaps it was that confidence boost or just the universe listening in, but suddenly, in March of 2013, a friend, TMNT producer Galen Walker, helped get me in to see Marc Evans at Paramount. Marc was generous enough to watch our teaser and listen to my concept.

After my pitch, he nodded - “It makes sense” This didn’t mean I had a sale, but the sense of vindication, and the tantalizing potential in his assessment, was empowering, because it made sense to me too!

Paramount was going to release Michael Bay’s TMNT, so why wouldn’t they also want to own and release the definitive history as well? Dynamic synergy! Crossing silos! Building brand! Fan service! Marketing strategy! I wasn’t throwing these terms around idly, I believed in them.

It was both exciting and addictive to be put into the position of focusing simultaneously on the micro and macro of the Turtle project. Of course I had no choice, not if I wanted to sell the doc, but I learned I really enjoyed the challenge of figuring out the mechanics of the studio.

This duality of thinking (micro/macro) turned out to have an effect on my writing for Disney.

My drafts were getting better, more layered and constructed with greater sensitivity to what I thought of as “handles” for different studio interests, and at the same time, my efforts to sell the doc were getting bolder and more complex as I tried to work the handles there as well.

I tried to build press, plaguing Darby Maloney (then at KCRW) to interview me (which she did), seeking exposure through nerd blogs, film blogs, and podcasts. We made goofy behind-the-scenes videos (Chasing Turtles), that were designed to put faces to names, to build a useful destination for studio folk and possible fans seeking us on the Net. We wanted them to see who we were, what we were, and how we did it -- to look in on our process and see the passion.

I sought interest at other studios as well. Why wouldn’t some other company want a doc that could draft nicely off whatever marketing ecosystem was implemented for the TMNT feature?

Maybe some other company would like to announce that this scrappy little documentary had the definitive history of the “classic” Turtles and the blessing and encouragement of Eastman and Laird, along with so many other key players from TMNT history. What fan wouldn’t want that?

Eventually, it came down to business, and Paramount made it clear they wanted the doc. I knew they were most likely buying it from pure defense, and as such, it might never get released, but that didn’t bother me at all. We had made something special, and once it was in the studio, somebody would see it and realize it was good, whereupon it would find its way out to the fans.

And then they could decide if it was good, as we’d been planning from the start.

In May of 2014, after weeks of post-production chaos, we delivered a final cut, literally days after shooting a powerful new ending. We were privileged to join Peter Laird and Kevin Eastman at the site of their most famous creation, at their first meeting in two decades, as they talked Turtles on the vacant lot where their old house was torn down.

We scrambled to get that ending into QC, surpassed all their expectations, and that was it. (except for all those rights nightmares I’d worried about five years earlier…)

Months later, after speaking at a packed panel at San Diego Comic Con, and scant weeks from the DVD and digital release of Turtle Power: The Definitive History of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, we got to sit in on the final QC screening of the DCP of our documentary.

Halfway through, I had to get up and rush over to Disney for a meeting about the latest draft of that script.

I went quietly, hunched out way to the door and slipped into the hall. Our tech spec guy followed me out. I’d told him I had another meeting, but I was still worried he’d be pissed.

He wasn’t.

“Hey, before you go I wanted to tell you… It’s really good, you know. It has a lot of heart.”

“I hope so.”

“I’m serious. It really does. You guys did a great job.” He furrowed his brow at me. “Where’s your meeting, anyway?”

“Disney.”

He looked surprised, then laughed. “Not bad for a high school teacher.”

I nodded, turned around, walked through the lot to my rental, and drove to Disney.

***

When we started making Turtle Power, I would never have allowed myself to consider the possibility that anything like this could happen. For five years, I forced myself to focus solely on how amazing it was to be able to make it at all - and I nagged my partners to do the same.

We had to simply be in the moment and enjoy what we were doing for its own sake. It turned out to be a useful skill.

Patrick’s and my project at Disney came to an end, and although we were disappointed, we were grateful to have been given the opportunity, period. And who knows? We may some day get another shot.

In the meantime, I’m not sitting around waiting for anyone to call up and invite me back to L.A.. When I’m not at school, I’m pitching other documentaries, Patrick Boivin and I are developing something new, and at FauxPop Media, we’re already deep into production on another feature documentary on spec A Riddle of Steel: The Definitive History of Conan the Barbarian.

Not bad for a high school teacher.