Celebrity's Second Skin
The Life of a Hollywood Awards Show Escort

Blood Sport
The Stunt Master on "Buffy, The Vampire Slayer"

Cracker Jack
Gag Writer for "You Don't Know Jack"

"I studied film at NYU for undergrad where I did two years of live action filmmaking. In my fourth year, I realized that I couldn't really work with real people. So I started animating. I worked in college on some films, locked myself in a basement for a whole year -- no windows, no light. My work now actually isn't so different, it's like being in a basement on the 31st floor."

"One show is supposed to take three weeks, working ten hours a day. Last week I had a shot that took 10 seconds and it took me from 11 in the morning to about 6:30 at night. And that's pretty typical. You get into a certain kind of mind state. I met a friend for lunch and I was totally incomprehensible."

"I'm one of 18 or so animators. Every day we show up, look at the storyboard, and we get a character. We go to the person whose title is the Puppet Master. I don't know if you've ever seen any of the Puppet Master films -- she's not some hunchbacked snaggle-toothed old man, she's a wonderful person, but she's still the Puppet Master. So she gives us our puppets and props, and we have lines for the characters to read. If one of them is supposed to say, 'Sorry that's incorrect' then you get four sheets of paper that have different mouths you use. The characters have removable mouths. You listen to the track over and over, and act it out. It's like someone's instructing you to play music with a certain inflection.

"Sometimes I feel like I have a creative role, but that's mostly when there's the time for it. It's generally very planned out by the creator of the show and the director. Usually if everyone is under the gun it becomes formulaic. It's all to get it in by the deadline."

"I'm right out of school. I've been told by friends and colleagues that any price they give you, anything they tell you is a pack of lies that you'll graciously swallow. But the starting rate for an animator should be $1100 a week -- that's not me, though. Still, the pay is not bad, but the tradeoff is that you have no life."

"You would probably think we all listen to metal music. But it's more like Billie Holiday. I think if we listened to anything like we were animating, we would all die in a week. So it's usually very mellowed out, soothing, instrumental. Because, well, they're beating the hell out of each other, but they're doing it two frames at a time, for like ten hours."

"I was a ticket-taker at a movie house, which was great. All the free movies I could see and all the attitude I could throw out. I also do my own comic book, it's called 'Sticky Buns.' If there's anything I've learned here, it's that you can take something you do in one form and transform it. I can take characters from my comic and make models with them."

The Down Side:

"I always get weirded out working anywhere that's 'cool'. There's a lot of people walking around that are really psyched to be working at MTV. I don't get too bugged by it, it's more funny than anything else. Producer's Assistants in thigh-high boots. You're just like, 'Where are you going?'"

"I think I've gotten over my fear and loathing of real people. I'd like to do more live action short films -- that combine live action and animation, maybe puppetry. Unfortunately there's not much of a market for that kind of thing."

"I got to do the animation for the Beastie Boys. They fought the Backstreet Boys in a giant robot. I couldn't help thinking, 'No one is doing anything to combat the fact that I think I'm still eight years old."

"And then there was the time [professional wrestler] Captain Lou Albano came to visit. He just stopped by, he was proceeded by clouds of Brut, I guess he came to bless the place with the spirit of good wrestling. He's a big fan.

"Marilyn Manson really likes the show a lot. Lucy Lawless (Xena the Warrior Princess) called in once and said that when she saw herself on birthday party hats and cups, she was flattered, but when she saw herself on "Celebrity Deathmatch," she knew she had made it. It's flattering, but in a weird way.

"And after our very first show Kathy Lee Gifford started to defame MTV, because it depicted her in a negative light. We paired her up with Howard Stern and he ended up dissolving her with a fart. I'm sure she was upset."