Chris Salce | Nuke the Fridge
Thursday was my first day at Comic-Con in San Diego and it was a big one. One of the interviews I had that day were with none other than Kiss, for their new animated film Scooby-Doo! And Kiss: Rock and Roll Mystery. Yes, you heard right. Kiss teams up with Scooby-Doo to solve a mystery! In this roundtable interview with the Demon Gene Simmons and the Catman Eric Singer, we discuss how the project came about and the secret to being successful. So here you go, you wanted the best, you got the best…
Q: Kiss and Scooby-Doo, how did this come about?
Gene Simmons: We appeared on Scooby in the seventies and now that Warners has stepped up and proudly made the most expensive Scooby movie of all time, Kiss meets Scooby-Doo really breaks the mold and because what you’ve got is rock n’ roll, Scooby stuff, there’s a mystery, as soon as you think you’ve got it figured out within the first half hour, all of a sudden, rules aside, everything changes. They’re often space monsters, sci-fi, witches, all the cool stuff fanboys love. End of story.
Q: If you could craft a unique song for a Marvel or DC comics character, who would it be?
Simmons: Dr. Doom because the character is so defined and when you understand, here’s the important part, the pathos of it, in other words, what makes this bad guy not just a one-dimensional thing. When you saw King kong, you understood that he actually loved that little girl but he loved her, he would die for her. That’s what made King Kong unique and what makes Dr. Doom unique is that this is actually damaged goods. This guy’s got his face with all kinds of acid and stuff so he’s not fighting the world, he’s fighting himself. I could have written ‘Unholy’ about him.
Q: How much control did you have over the characters and the writing itself?
Simmons: We respect and admire the Scooby mystique and the iconic nature of it so much that all we did was take care of Kiss. We take care of Kiss, they’ll take care of Scooby.
Eric Singer: They’ve got it! When they wrote the script, let’s face it, whoever did their homework, did their homework and basically got the real gist of the individual characters, physically, how the moved and basically stylistically with how they talked.
Chris Salce: You guys are obviously a really successful band, you’ve been around for years…
Simmons: And good looking too [smirks]
Chris Salce: [Laughs] yes, and everybody knows who Kiss is. How did you guys become such successful businessmen? You have a football team, TV shows, tons of merchandise all over the place and now Scooby-Doo.
Simmons: There’s no excuse because all the information mankind has ever put together is really available for free [picks up phone], so when a guy walks up and says ‘Yeah man what’s up?’ that’s not society’s fault, that’s his fault for not taking the time to learn language skills, people skills and all the information you want is right at your fingertips for free!
Singer: Yeah it’s called the internet!
Simmons: What you do before was the library and I used to go to the library everyday. Read. Seek and you shall find. I didn’t create that and you didn’t either so, in my new book, [smirks] ‘Me Incorporated,‘ it actually goes in there! It’s your responsibility, you can always make more money. I guarantee you tomorrow, if you cut out all the bulls*** money you spend on today, you’ll make twice as much money tomorrow. Cigarettes, bars, going on vacation, you don’t need to do all that stuff. That’s the first step, lean and mean.
Q: What’s the next team up that you would like to do?
Simmons: I would like to team up with God.
Q: Why God?
Simmons: He’s cool!