Interviews/Buzz Dixon

This is a navigation hub for official and fan-run interviews for Buzz Dixon.

## Fan-run

A man I met due to learning about Roger Slifer's accident, here is Buzz Dixon:

Let's hear about his Sunbow experience:

**1. Could please introduce yourself?**

I’m a man of wealth and taste…drove a tank, held a general’s rank -- oops, sorry, ‘scuse me, channeling the Stones there. I’m Buzz Dixon, wit, bon vivant, raconteur.
**2. Could you please tell us how you contributed to two Jem episodes?**

Memory is hazy as to particulars after all these years. Suffice it to say I was on staff at Sunbow West as a story editor. We had several series running at once and so whenever one series was falling behind schedule, or another series had a production gap, we’d step in to help.
**3. How did you get hired by Sunbow?**

Steve Gerber was hired before me as story editor for G.I. Joe. Steve and I met & worked together at Ruby-Spears Productions on several projects, most notably Thundarr The Barbarian. When Steve left R-S he kept in touch with me for several projects, including G.I. Joe. I started out as a freelance writer for the series but when they realized my military background was of use in giving the series a more realistic (i.e., less fanciful) grounding they let Steve hire me as an assistant story editor. I story edited about 20-25% of the shows in the first season and all the shows in the 2nd as well as writing the script for the movie.
**4. You didn't write for Jem until season two. Was this because of all the work you had with both G.I. Joe and a few Transformers episodes?**

Yes. Those two were huge freight trains that had to be kept on schedule. We were producing 5 episodes a week for those 2 series so there was a lot of concentrated effort on them. Again, as we slowed down for various production gaps, we had time to work on others shows, and that’s when I got the chance to write for Jem.
**5. What was your main role with story involvement with G.I. Joe and Transformers (story editor) and what goes on in that process?**

Well, as I said I was hired mainly because I got give a somewhat realistic patina to the series. The first mini-series was complete nonsense from a military POV, with sergeants ordering colonels around, jet fighters swooping down from the sky to slice tanks in half, etc. Basically I provided technical advice on how the Joes would function as a military unit and frequently reigned in some of the more outlandish ideas re combat and weapons.
**6. Did you have as much of that process with the Jem episodes you wrote?**

I may have kicked in some ideas at staff meetings, etc., but nothing I could point to today and say “that was mine”. Christy marx was the creative lead on that show and boy, did she ever do a dynamite job!
**7. Let's start with "One Jem Too Many": This is where Clash impersonates Jem. Did you write this story from scratch, or were you told to use Clash and Danse, as well as the band members of course, in your episodes?**

In the early Joe and Transformer episodes we were told by Hasbro which characters to feature, but by the time Jem rolled around they realized we would uses all the tools in the box so they let us develop stories on our own. There may have been an occasional note along the lines of “we haven’t seen X’ recently but no orders to put specific characters in. IIRC, the idea basically came from looking at all the stories done to date and trying to figure out which angles hadn’t been approached yet.
**8. Would the story be different if you used different supporting characters besides Clash and Danse?**

Yes, but as to how different, I couldn’t say. Any change would have made some sort of difference in the final episode.
**9. With "Straight From The Heart", you wrote the single episode featuring a supposed doll for the following toy season named "Regine". These must have been desperate times for Hasbro's toy sales. Were you told to write a story with this character, or did you offer to write the story?**

Again, I don’t recall any specific orders from Hasbro re using specific characters in Jem, tho Christy may have had such communication (if so, she might have said something to me along the lines of “got anything for Regine?” and that would have sparked the story).
**10. Jina Bacarr wrote the other episode with a one-shot named Astral, a magician. Would the story about Astral be different if you wrote the story?**

Every writer brings a unique POV to a story, varying the basic idea in the execution. On the Joe series I wrote any number of premises that were then handed off to other writers; they took them in different directions than I would have but, hey, that’s what we wanted. Too much of any flavor becomes boring after a while.
**11. Let's talk Transformers. You co-wrote a story with Flint Dille called "Prime Target." What is co-writing; does it mean you share half the credit equally?**

As Kipling wrote, “There are nine and ninety ways of constructing tribal lays…” IIRC, I had developed a story on my own about a big game hunter that had nothing to do with Transformers. We needed a show for Transformer, I mentioned my idea to Flint, we took the basic concept and kicked a new plot around to incorporate the Transformers, and then I started writing it. Once I was done I handed it over to Flint who then edited it.
**12. What was the co-writing formula, you wrote part 1 and Flint wrote part 2 or vice versa? Maybe you both shared thoughts within the story?**

See above. We have have written alternating parts of the two parter but again my memory is unclear.
**13. How did you get to "Carnage in C-Minor"?**
At this late date, your guess is as good as mine!

**14. Onto G.I. Joe, "Twenty Questions" is one of my favorite episodes. This is where there's an accident involving laughing gas. How did you turn a war environment into a laughing matter?**

War isn’t funny, but it can be absurd. “Twenty Questions” was basically a satirical look at Geraldo Rivera, whom I thought was a terrible journalist and about as complete an idiot as one could hope to find. The idea that Hector Ramirez would be so stupid that he’d actually cause Cobra’s plan to backfire on itself was a nice little twist, so we ran with it.
**15. "Haul Down the Heavens" was a more serious story. Did the mood change when writing?**

IIRC, “Haul Down The Heavens” was the first script I wrote for Joe. It was the first syndicated show I had worked on and after the severe censorship on network TV we all tended to blow out all the repressed violence and conflict that had been building up in us creatively. Once we purged ourselves, however, we tended to look for other, more original story concepts.
**16. "Lights! Camera! Cobra!" is another quirky episode with Dreadnok action. Did you love writing stories involving the Dreadnoks?**

Yeah, writing idiot characters can be fun, especially when they have access to heavy machinery and high explosives.
**17. "The Traitor" was surprising even till the end. It involved Dusty pretending to be a Cobra until the plot is revealed. How did you write so suspenseful, yet made the story so kids can understand it?**

The sick mother angle made it possible for kids to understand the moral complexity I was getting at, that not all actions can be viewed in purely black and white terms. Yes, in the end Dusty proved to have been secretly working for the Joes as a double agent, but that wasn’t something to spell out early on. Once our audience bought into the idea that a nominally good person could do something evil for apparently good reasons, the rest of the story flowed easily.
**18. Let's talk about Season 2. You wrote "Arise Serpentor". Was it your idea to utilize DNA, or were you instructed to?**

There’s a long story behind that; grab a cuppa & I’ll clue you in…
When season 2 was ordered, there were originally no plans for another mini-series. The hint of a Transformers and/or Joe movie were wafting in the air, but nothing solid had been laid out. The original plan for season 2 was just 25 episodes.
We got 2 scripts started right away. IIRC, Mike Hill had pitched an idea for season 1 that was accepted but never developed as a script; we added some new characters & vehicles and let him go ahead with that. And Tom Dagenais finally delivered a script he’d been assigned in season 1; Tom was in the terminal stages of cancer, so nobody at Sunbow begrudged him failing to turn the script it. We were surprised and delighted that he finally managed to finish it and, with a little editorial tweaking, it went into production, too. (Tom, alas, did not live long enough to see it air.)
IIRC it was on that script that either Tom Griffin or Joe Bacall asked me to include the character of the Cobra Emperor.
And I said, “Excuse me?”
And they said Hasbro had added a new character to the line, an emperor figure who would be over and above Cobra Commander.
And I says, “Un-huh. And where has he been all this time?”
“Oh, he’s always been there, we just haven’t seen him.”
And I said no & explained why that would be A Very Bad Idea Indeed (i.e., simply dropping him in w/o explanation, not the character himself). If we had been told to allude to the possibility of someone above Cobra Commander, we could have had plenty of vague, non-specific reference sowed in the first season to build off of; instead, we had always treated Cobra Commander like the top dog and originator of Cobra.
So Hasbro asked me to come up with an explanation for Cobra Emperor. I gave them two ideas, one weak, one strong. The strong idea was that Dr. Mindbender, ticked off at Cobra Commander’s failures, decides to create the ultimate warrior from the DNA of famous conquerors; the weak idea was that Cobra had been secretly funded all along by a shadowy organization.
What that shadowy organization would be, I had no idea. I gave Hasbro a place holder idea, Cobra-la, a secret kingdom in the Himalayas because I figured their legal department would stop them from directly ripping off Lost Horizon, the most famous lost civilization novel ever.
Boy, was I wrong…
Hasbro called back & said they loved the idea. Which one, I say. Both of them, they said, even though the two ideas were mutually exclusive. They liked the idea of Cobra-la for the movie but wanted to use the DNA story for the series. At that point they added “Arise, Serpentor, Arise!” a 5-part mini-series to the production schedule, giving us a total of 30 episodes for season 2.
Knowing the feature would be coming down the pike, I salted in enough allusions to a bigger, vaster secret behind Cobra to let the two ideas co-exist.
To this day I apologize for inflicting the name Cobra-la on the world...
**19. Did you feel the story writing changed overall when Cobra's Commander became Serpentor and the original commander just his lackey?**

Well, it certainly added a new dynamic to the villains’ side of the story. Cobra Commander pointed out his value to Serpentor as a scapegoat, thus keeping him in the loop while at the same time he schemed to regain control;.
**20. "Into Your Tent I Will Silently Creep" was the last seasonal episode. Did you have a gut feeling to tell a great 22 minute story?**

I always have a gut feeling to tell a great story. Whether the story I tell is actually great is another matter!
**21. Please describe your work with the G.I. Joe movie.**

The first draft was written by Ron Friedman, who had done the first two G.I. Joe mini-series as well, Ron is a wonderful writer, but military action was not his strong suit (see above re my being brought in to add some verisimilitude to the stories). Hasbro decided to do a different take on the story, dropped everything Ron wrote with the exception of Nemesis Enforcer, and had me write the script (due to contractual obligations with Ron, he got screenplay credit while I got story consultant credit; the final work is mine, however).
I wrote the script and helped out with the voice recording sessions (got to meet Sgt. Slaughter and Burgess Meredith!).
**22. 1987 was the end of Sunbow. Did the G.I. Joe movie, last episodes of Transformers, and knowing you only got to work on two Jem episodes, make you sad Sunbow was closing?**

Yes, but nothing lasts forever. We had a good run. I remember as a young sci-fi fan reading about EC comics’ fabulous bullpen and hoping that someday I’d get to work is such a fun, creative environment with wonderful, creative people. Guess what – I did!
**23. It seems the last season of Jem utilized a plethora of writers. Was this Christy Marx's idea, or was Sunbow in a rush to finish the season's episodes before the doors closed?**

Actually, the story editors wanted to use freelancers because they were more likely to come up with ideas we wouldn’t come up with because we were too close to the material.
**24. What have you done since Sunbow?**

One or two small, scattered projects. I was the creator and initial story editor on G.I. Joe: Extreme but scheduling conflicts forced me to bow out.
**25. Has the internet been a tool for you to keep in touch with Sunbow co-workers; who do you keep in touch with?**

The Sunbow crew was plugged into the Internet long before most people, so I’ve stayed in first or second hand touch with just about everybody.
**26. Any kind words to compliment Christy Marx, creator of the Jem series?**

Nothing but kind words! Christy is one of the vastly underappreciate creative people in both comics and video games. Her amazon warrior series Sisterhood Of Steel is probably the single best take on the amazon concept ever. She’s a great writer and she’s continuing to plug away.
**27. Any final words to say to the fans?**

Yes – thank you! I sincerely appreciate all your loyalty and support through the years!
We dedicate this interview to Roger Slifer in hopes for a successful recovery.