Generations of TV viewers have watched Scooby-Doo and the gang solve many a mystery with a wide variety of guests ranging from the Harlem Globetrotters to the Addams family, but they team up with a legendary rock band in Scooby-Doo! & Kiss: Rock & Roll Mystery, which is now available on Digital HD and comes out on Blu-ray and DVD July 21st from Warner Bros. Home Entertainment. At Comic-Con, Daily Dead caught up with Scooby-Doo! & Kiss: Rock & Roll Mystery screenwriter Kevin Shinick.
When did your love for Scooby-Doo begin?
Kevin Shinick: I can't pinpoint where it started, because my interest in it has been around for so long, and it's the same thing with Kiss. I remember being in elementary school and loving Kiss and loving Scooby-Doo. Subconsciously I've been working on this screenplay for decades and now I've finally had a chance to put it down onto paper.
That was a staple. You come home from school, you pop on Scooby-Doo. Kiss was such an imprint on me, they are many things. They are a rock band, but they're also superheroes to us. When I was a kid, I was like, 'He's breathing fire for crying out loud!' Everything about it was just so over the top that I loved it.
That's what's kind of funny about these two icons in a sense, because some people ask, 'What could possess you to bring them together?' And my question is, 'How have we not done this before?' These two share the same world so perfectly that it was just very cathartic to bring them together on the screen. If he can run into Don Knotts, then he can run into Kiss.
When writing this film, did you try to capture the same fun, wacky flavor of those Scooby-Doo crossovers from the ’70s?
Kevin Shinick: Always in the sense of the flavor being that they're just running into people that we know from other parts of our lives. There's so much to wrap your mind around in this movie that we want to just take one step at a time. The fact that Scooby-Doo is running into Kiss is one thing to wrap your mind around, but then we go off the rails with this movie. We've just pushed the limits and it's very trippy, it's everything I wanted it to be.
I write for comics, I'm a big fan of comic books. Co-director Tony Cervone is also a big fan of comic books and we wanted this to have a Jack Kirby-esque feel to it at some points. I'm not going to give anything away, but there are different parts where they can go to areas where it would have that look to it. We wanted to tap into that.
Has your previous work in the comic book industry helped you transition into films?
Kevin Shinick: I keep joking that I've turned my midlife crisis into a career, because people are paying me to do what I've enjoyed doing for so long, which is insane. I've spent most of my time in humor and comedy. When I got into comics, one of the first comics I wrote was Deadpool / Spiderman, which was a nice foray into it because it couldn't be very funny, it couldn't be Robot Chicken-esque, it couldn't be Mad—the things I've done—so it was a nice transition.
Then once I got into more of that, I took on things like Superior Carnage to show that I don't have to be funny. There will always be humorous moments, but I'm not the one-joke guy.
I've tried to make that leap not so drastic, but definitely ease people into it. We do the same thing with this movie. When it starts, you feel like you're in a Scooby movie that you know and then more things happen, and you're like 'Oh, wait, there's Kiss,' and then more things happen and you're like, 'What's going on?' It's kind of like when you wet a sponge, it grows and grows and grows.
What was the band's reaction to being in a Scooby-Doo movie?
Kevin Shinick: "This is the first time that the entire band has been in a Scooby movie, let alone a feature, so they were very excited about it. They've been fantastic from the get go. Just jumping ahead a little bit, when they asked me to write this, I write everything I do as if I'm a fan. I take myself out of the writer position and think, 'Well, what would I like to see if I'm watching this or reading it, whatever it is that I'm doing. So I didn't hold back, and I used a lot of their classic songs in the movie and I thought, 'Well, let's hope we can get the rights to these, because I'm really laying a lot in here.' Then when it was over, we asked them and they said, 'Everything's good, whatever you want.'
They were great. Then I also had an opportunity for another song to be in there and I thought, 'Well, Kiss probably won't record this, but you know, we'll have a song represented,' and they were like, 'No, we'll record that, too.' They recorded a new song for this movie. They were just fantastic to work with, all of them."
Was it challenging to write the dialogue for Kiss and portray them realistically to diehard fans?
Kevin Shinick: I told my wife it was all for research purposes, but I had read all their biographies prior to doing this movie because I had been a fan, so now I just had an excuse to buy more memorabilia, more merchandise and say 'Honey, it's for my work. In getting to know these guys, and even just reading about them and knowing them growing up, they do have distinct personalities and they do have interests. Paul is also an artist and I tried to work that into the movie. Gene is definitely an entrepreneur. I tried to work that into the movie. There are little personality traits that I tried to work in there, knowing how well I know these guys and enjoy them.
Do you have any personal favorite crossovers from Scooby-Doo history?
Kevin Shinick: I loved when they teamed up with people that I knew. Back then it was people like Sandy Duncan and Don Knotts but when they teamed up with Batman and Robin, I lost my mind. That sticks in my mind as one of my favorites.
Are there any plans for another Scooby-Doo / Kiss crossover?
Kevin Shinick: I know everybody involved in this had a really great time. Kiss would be interested in doing another one. I'd be interested in doing another one. Whether that happens or not, I have no idea. It's so weird because I said the other day, it's like I found the Holy Grail so I didn't think past that. I'm just soaking in this moment. There are no other Scooby-Doo plans for me at the moment.
Do you have any projects on-deck that you can tease for our readers?
Kevin Shinick: I will tease a little bit that I am working on a project with one of the members of the Kiss band. Another animated thing.
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Raised on a steady diet of R.L. Stine’s Goosebumps books and Are You Afraid of the Dark?, Derek has been fascinated with fear since he first saw ForeverWare being used on an episode of Eerie, Indiana.
When he’s not writing about horror as the Senior News Reporter for Daily Dead, Derek can be found daydreaming about the Santa Carla Boardwalk from The Lost Boys or reading Stephen King and Brian Keene novels.
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