THE BIG ISSUE The Big Issue - 11 January 2016 | Page 22

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stories are done so the hero is the one that the viewer
would want to root for, that a viewer would wish he or
she was. It’s always the good guy versus the bad guy and
we hope the good guy will win.
Does he always have to win? If you make it too easy,
too obvious, people would get bored. The good guy also
has a lot of problems, there has to be a lot of surprises
and story twists but in the end it has to be written and
it has to be acted so that if a young person
were watching, they would rather be the
good guy – the hero – than anyone else.
was successful did you wonder when your stories
would also be told on TV? No, as a matter of fact I
never thought of that. All I thought about was, I hope
the books would sell so I would be able to keep my job.
I never thought about TV or movies until much later.
When was that? After we started getting real fan mail
from real human beings. Teenagers, people in college,
adults. They would discuss the stories the way anybody
would discuss a novel they enjoyed.
I knew we were on to something.
What was your role during the
Second World War? I wrote training
films, I wrote film scripts, I did posters,
I wrote instructional manuals. I was one
of the great teachers of our time!
Alongside Frank Capra and Dr.
Seuss… Would you believe it?
Also William Saroyan [the Pulitzer
Prize-winning author and dramatist].
He sat at my left elbow.
Stan Lee as a
member of the
US Army’s training
film division
Did you all work together in the same room? At a
time we did. Then later on I was shipped to various
camps wherever they needed someone like me. But in
the beginning we were all in one place. And I kept saying:
“Look all you guys, you’ve got to think of your own
stories. I’m too busy to help you!”
This month marks 50 years since the original
Batman TV series aired on television. When that
Does the world need superheroes
now more than ever? I know that I
need them more because it’s a good
living! The world always needs heroes,
whether they’re superheroes or not.
Since time immemorial there were
stories and legends about evil people
who had superpowers and some human
being had to find a way to conquer
them. It seems to be part of the human
condition.
Your characters are spread out among several
film studios. For the first time Spider-Man will
be appearing alongside other Avengers in Captain
America: Civil War. Do you think one day there
will be a film where more characters, like the
X-Men and Guardians of the Galaxy, all come
together? You mean all together in one film?
Yeah, probably. It’ll be the most expensive film ever
produced! But anything that the public want to see
you can be sure it will eventually be produced.
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THE BIG ISSUE / p22 / January 11-17 2016