Matt Senreich ’96, one of Wesleyan’s most successful alumni in the entertainment industry, spends a good part of his day playing with toys. Well, dolls and clay figures, to be precise. It’s all part of his job as a producer, director and writer for “Robot Chicken,” the stop-animation series he co-created with Seth Green. Senreich also helped create a new animated series, “Titan Maximum,” which currently airs Sundays at 11:30 p.m. on Cartoon Network. If you like robots, robots, cartoons from the 80s, and robots that come together to create even BIGGER robots (Zords, anyone?), you should check it out. You won’t regret it. I’ll stake my mint-condition red Power Ranger action figure on it. Recently we spoke with Senreich about everything from his unconventional foray into entertainment to his memories of the University.
Argus: I read that you actually started in journalism after you graduated from Wesleyan and then transitioned to the entertainment industry. You were interviewing Seth Green for Wizard magazine and a friendship grew from that.
Matt Senreich: Yeah, I actually bribed Seth for his friendship. For those people who don’t think bribing works, it works. I was working at Wizard and I read in Entertainment Weekly that he was a big toy collector, and I’m like, “Oh, I’m a toy collector. This would make for a good article.” Out of the blue, I just decided to call his publicist – and I thought I had no shot – and five minutes later Seth called back and was like, “Oh my God, I’m the biggest fan of your magazine. I’m looking for these toys, and they are so hard to find, and I don’t know how to get them.” And he had, like, three toys that he’d always wanted, and I had two of them, so I sent them to him.
Argus: So now he’s just sort of tolerating you.
MS: Yeah, exactly. He’s sitting literally four feet away from me and rolling his eyes at me.
Argus: When you first got involved in television, did you ever find yourself star struck by Hollywood and the celebrity culture, or was it an easy transition?
MS: It depends on the situation, as far as being star struck goes. I’m very shy, which people don’t believe, but I do think that I am…I like to stay behind-the-scenes as opposed to being in front of the camera. So when I get to meet these people – at first I met a lot of them in a social scenario through Seth. And for me, originally, that was a little bit more difficult because I just had to remind myself that these were normal people like we are. But, when I’m at work, it’s so fast-paced and we have a job to get done, that the celebrity aspect really doesn’t even hit me until it’s over…I was really nervous meeting George Lucas for the first time because, for me, “Star Wars” is what made me want to do this in the first place. When I got to meet him – Seth had met him before so they had a rapport, but for me, I had no idea what to expect. I always saw him as the guy in the plaid shirt who was really quiet…and he walked in, and he was so quick-witted and with a sarcastic sense of humor that I just was caught off-guard completely. And Seth and him went back and forth, back and forth so fast, and I was just the bumbling idiot the first time. It took me until, like, the third or fourth time of interacting with him where I could just be calm, cool and collected and talk to him like a human being.
Argus: You get a lot of major celebrities to do guest voices on “Robot Chicken.” How do you convince them to come on the show when it’s not in a primetime slot and has more of a cult following?
MS: I think it’s because it’s cult that people just want to do it. It’s slightly off the main path and I think it gives people the opportunity to play things they would never normally play. The first season was hard because no one knew what our show was, and it was a matter of calling in a lot of favors. Seth asked a lot of his friends to come in and really just help us out. And I think that once word got out there and people starting seeing it, it turned into something else. Because in the first season, we got Burt Reynolds and Dom DeLuise in, and Seth had just done a movie with Burt Reynolds, and we got Sarah Michelle Gellar and Freddie Prinze, and Ryan Seacrest, and just, you know, all these types of people. And they all came in and helped us out, and then once we had that under our belt, I think people just started hearing about it and seeing it and really getting more excited to take part. Christian Slater actually stalked one of our writers, quoting the show, asking him over and over when he was going to be on it. So, immediately upon going into production he was the first person we called to come in for the second season. We probably have about 60 to 90 voices per episode, and we only have a budget to bring in a few people, and then we have to pick out the best voices for them to play, which always makes it fun. It’s a good time trying to see who we can get and where we can put them. We just get random people. We’d just sit around and be like, “Hey, I just saw so-and-so in this. Should we try to get them?” And then we try to do that.
Argus: What happens when you ask a sort of old-time, established actor about it? Do they know about the show? Do you ever have to beg?
MS: It depends on who it is. I mean, we’ve been turned down by a lot of people. There’s a reason George Clooney isn’t on the show. We’re still after Harrison Ford – it’s an open invite. But then there’ve been some of the greats we’ve brought on. We had Don Knotts and Pat Morita before they passed away, who were so humble and so wonderful.
Argus: On a similar note, what exactly is the writing process like for irreverent parody shows like “Robot Chicken” and your new show, “Titan Maximum?” Is it just a contest for which pitch makes the writers laugh the hardest? Or is there more of a method to the madness?
MS: “Robot Chicken” and “Titan” are two completely different writing styles. For “Robot Chicken,” we have about eight of us in the writers’ room, and we pretty much spend all day just coming up with as many ideas as humanly possible, putting together, like, paragraphs of just pure ideas for sketches. And around 4 o’clock, we collect all the ideas, we pass them out to everybody, we spend however long reading them…and say yes or no. So you can end up spending, you know, six hours thinking you have the most brilliant idea of your life, and then very quickly, in the room, people will just say no and you move on to the next thing. And it is heart crushing. You have to have very thick skin to sit in the writers’ room, to accept the fact that what you think might be brilliant, everyone else will just roll their eyes at. And it’s hard. And some things that you think are the dumbest things in the world end up getting in, and you’re just like, “How? What?” You may have spent five seconds on it, and people say yes to it. And then once the idea is firmed up, it’ll go to script, and what we do is whoever came up with the idea will do the first half of the script, and then it will go [to] the writers’ room for touch-up. And then “Titan” is a little bit different…We sat in the room, we broke all the stories, we came up with all the different outlines, and then once we did that…[we] split up who scripted the episodes.
Argus: Where did the idea for “Titan Maximum” come from in the first place? When I saw the pilot, it just reminded me of, like, “Power Rangers,” and then a little bit of “Team America: World Police.” How did that all come about?
MS: For us, it’s one of those things where we watch stuff like “Venture Bros.” and think it’s a great take on “Johnny Quest” and some of that old stuff…We grew up in the day and age of “Battle of the Planets” and “Voltron” and “Robotech” and giant robot shows. We just love the idea that in each one of these shows, the universe would always trust its biggest, most dangerous guardian robot to a bunch of idiot teenagers. We find that concept completely preposterous, and we just wanted to exploit and do our own take on if, God forbid, that actually happened and people like Paris Hilton were given the opportunity to control a giant robot.
Argus: As I’m sure you’re aware, Wesleyan is known for its film studies department and for the many alumni who have gone on to work in entertainment. Do you have any advice for aspiring filmmakers, screenwriters or television producers?
MS: If it’s any consolation, I was a history major. So, it’s really learning what you want to learn and knowing how to interact with people and following your dreams. It sounds cliché, but the best thing you can do is learn the best you can from the best people.
Argus: What are your fondest memories of your days at Wesleyan?
MS: I have way too many. It’s everything from when those tunnels were opened under the Butterfields – that was very entertaining. It was just fun to explore down there…We were first in the housing lottery for sophomore year, and it was the most exciting thing because we ended up getting these giant rooms with balconies and all that sort of stuff in this posh, posh dorm at the time. So that was very exciting. As silly as it sounds – and people will probably mock me for this – I was on the Student Judicial Board, and I found that fascinating. It was interesting to see student life through that because, in essence, you’re judging your peers and seeing what they did and trying to understand why people did what they did when they got into trouble.
Argus: I hate to do a total 180 here, but I have one burning question: the Argus recently published an imagined Death Match showdown between Luke Skywalker and Neo from “The Matrix.” Both sides presented very good cases, but there’s been some debate about who would win in a death match. As the masterminds behind the “Robot Chicken Star Wars” saga, do you care to weigh in on the match-up?
MS: I’d probably say Neo since he can control pretty much everything, but Luke Skywalker has more midichlorians.
Want more of Matt and Seth? Become a fan of “Titan Maximum” on Facebook and follow @TitanMaximum and @cyborgturkey on Twitter. And don’t forget to tune into episode three of “Titan Maximum” this Sunday. That’s an order from Admiral Bitchface!
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