doudle beesechurger

Your husky isn’t “hyperactive”, it’s bred to pull sleds for 8 hours straight and you have it in a 400 sq ft yard.

Your English sheepdog isn’t “pushy”, it’s bred to herd sheep, and you have neither to space nor the herd to allow it.

Your terrier isn’t “nippy”, it’s bred to kill rats and your hamster looks a hell of a lot like one.

Your Catahoula isn’t “mean to animals”, it’s bred to hunt any and all animals smaller than it, and you didn’t acclimate it to your cat.

Your Lhasa Apso isn’t “yappy”, it’s bred to bark at any tiny noise and alert watchmen to intruders

Darth Maul was really, really hard, because all I had as a precedent was Darth Vader. I think, maybe for two years, I was trying to out-helmet Darth Vader, and I almost had a nervous breakdown doing that because you can’t. You absolutely cannot! It’s a perfect design — you know, skull and a Nazi helmet, it does not get better than that. So finally I decided, “All right, well, heck, take that darn helmet off. Let’s see what’s underneath.”

That’s when I started playing around with the face. I thought there should be some sort of connection with the face underneath and the machinery of the helmet, so I started putting things on the face. Patterns and things, which I intended originally to be circuit boards, or I would carve the face up and let it be light from inside the head that would connect with whatever it was. Just crazy stuff.

For my designs, I never just generically design a person and try to impose a design on it. The design comes from the personality. So I would get everyone in the art department to pose for me, and you just stare at them and say, “What kind of Sith Lord would you be?”

Gavin [Bocquet], the production designer, said, “Don’t make me look fat.” [Laughs] So I put a headdress that covered his chin and then I put a Rorschach pattern on his face, and George seemed to respond to that really well.

And then, and this is several years into it, the script shows up. And Darth Maul is described as “a vision from your worst nightmare.” That was all I needed, because that’s a very clear direction, and I know my worst nightmares.

I drew my worst nightmare, which was that face that’s peering in the window at you late at night, and it’s barely alive. Like a cross between a ghost and a serial killer staring in at you, and it’s raining, and the rain is distorting the face. So I drew that, a stylized version of it, red ribbons instead of rain, and put it in a folder, and at the meeting passed it over to George. George opened it up and went, “Oh, my God,” slammed it shut, handed it back, and said, “Give me your second worst nightmare.”

I tried to figure out what I’d done wrong in my thinking, because you don’t want less, ever. I started thinking, “Star Wars is not real life. It’s mythology.” So I looked for my first best mythological nightmare, and that’s easy, because that’s clowns. I was scared to death of Bozo the Clown as a kid. So I made my big scary clown, and I’d run out of faces to draw, so I used mine. I drew myself into a clown. The patterns became very stylized patterns of the muscles underneath the skin that give expression to the face.

I think that wonderful performance from Ray [Park], put into that makeup, with Nick Dudman’s awesome misunderstanding of my drawing — because I had given him black feathers, and he thought they were horns — is what created Darth Maul. 

Anyway, the running gag was that the king (an old Power Rangers knock-off doll) had absolute and unwavering faith in Evil Chancellor Traytor, who basically comported himself like a mix between Grima Wormtongue and Jafar from the Aladdin movies. Everyone was always sure that Evil Chancellor Traytor had something to do with the nefarious scheme of the day. The dude even carried around a poisoned knife called ‘the kingslayer’.

The additional twist on the joke, though, was that he never was behind anything. The king was actually right. Evil Chancellor Traytor was the most devoted civil servant in the entire Action Figure Dystopia. He spent his nights working on writing up new legislature to ensure that broken toys had access to mobility devices, was always on the lookout to acquire new shoeboxes for expanding city infrastructure, and drafted a proposal that once got half the ‘settlement’ in my sister and I’s closet moved to the upper shelf so that vulnerable toys were less likely to be snatched up by the dog.

The knife, as it turned out, was as symbolic as the ‘evil’ in his name. See, Action Figure Dystopia had a long history of corrupted monarchs getting too big for their thrones and exploiting the underclasses. The job of the Evil Chancellor was to always remain vigilant, and loyally serve a good ruler - or, if the regent should became a despot, to slay them on behalf of the people.

But since killing the king would be a terrible crime, the Evil Chancellor had to be the kind of person who would willingly die to spare the people from the plight of a wicked leader; because the murder would be pinned on them, in order to keep the ‘machinery of politics’ working as smoothly as ever.

Anyway, Evil Chancellor Traytor had a diary, in which my sister I would take turns writing out the most over-the-top good shit he’d done behind the scenes. Usually after everyone else had finished talking shit about him. I don’t know why but we got the biggest kick out of being like:

Barbie With the Unfortunate Haircut: Oh that Evil Chancellor Traytor! Why can’t the king see how wicked he is?!

Charmander From the Vending Machine: Char!

Jurassic Park Toy of Jeff Goldblum With Disturbingly Realistic Face: At least if someone puts a knife in the king’s back, we’ll know where to look!

Evil Chancellor Traytor’s Diary: Today I was feeding ducks at the park when I noticed another legless action figure sitting by the benches. I put a hundred dollars into his bag while he wasn’t looking. I really need to increase budgeting to the medical treatment centers. If only we had enough glue, I think we would see far fewer toys trying to get by without limbs… *insert iconic evil laugh*

Anyway, Evil Chancellor Traytor eventually fell victim to one of my mom’s cleaning sprees, and she decided he was too busted up to keep and tossed him out. My littler brother, who tended to follow my sister and I’s games like he was watching a daily soap opera, cried so hard that we had to do a special ‘episode’ where one of the toys found the Evil Chancellor’s diary, and so he got a big huge memorial and the king threw himself into the empty grave and then ordered the toys driving the toy bulldozer to bury him so that ‘Traytor’s grave would have a body’ (this seemed very important for some reason).