Why A Young Hatter Madigan Animated Series Could Be The Next "Avatar: The Last Airbender"
I don’t know what has happened but in the past five to ten years the popularity of anime has exploded. While you could argue that anime was always massive, it was more of a subculture consisting of those kids who Naruto-ran in P.E. and those who watched anime but didn’t talk about it because they didn’t want to be grouped in with the Naruto-runners. What was once nerd culture is now popular culture. And I’m here for it.
I’ll let you in on a little secret, too; I was always here for it. No, I was not a Naruto runner, but when Cartoon Network switched to Toonami came on, I was locked in. (Specifically, I liked Bleach.) I knew I was about to watch something different from what I had ever seen before. Everything was new and exciting - the art style, world-building, action, and the themes that were being tackled. Before I had seen anime it never occurred to me that cartoon characters could bleed if the artist wanted them to. It was mind-blowing, it still is. When I’m in a creative rut I’ll find an anime series I’ve never seen before because the creativity is so different. It’s like a factory reset for me.
In America, the most popular anime genre is shōnen. Shōnen is manga/anime with a target audience of 12 to 18-year-old boys (girls obviously love it as well because it wouldn’t be as popular without them). Some of the most popular anime shows that have ever existed fall into this genre, Naruto, Dragonball Z, Bleach, Attack on Titan, Full Metal Alchemist, One Piece, and Hunter X Hunter. I want to keep going because I’m afraid I will miss your favorite show and you will leave an angry comment I won’t read but I’ve already mentioned enough shows.
A common trope in anime is taking a known thing, be it a historical event, fictional universe, and/or real or fictional characters, and tailoring them to the author's vision. Take the character Franken Stein from Soul Eater for example. In the show, he is an amalgamation of both Victor Frankenstein and his monster and uses electricity-centric attacks. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is obviously the inspiration yet, in the show, Franken Stein is wholly unique. Taking characters, IPs, or historical events and using them as a jumping-off point to create your own story isn’t uniquely Japanese. A perfect example of that is in Frank Beddor’s The Looking Glass Wars series and the Hatter M graphic novels. Frank took Lewis Carroll’s world and characters and created a unique realm. This is why I think The Looking Glass Wars would be perfect for a “Western anime” adaptation. Specifically, an animated series following his Mad Hatter character, the Master Milliner and Royal Bodyguard Hatter Madigan.
Frank Beddor’s Hatter Madigan is not your tea-sipping, seat-swapping Hatter of old. He is a badass blade-slinging, hat-throwing, supersoldier. His story is perfect for an animated adaptation. In Frank Beddor’s The Looking Glass Wars series, Hatter Madigan is introduced as the royal bodyguard for Princess Alyss and her family. The Hatter M graphic novel spinoff series follows Hatter on his wild and action-packed adventures around the world in search of the missing Princess Alyss. This alone is enough for a show but the world of Wonderland that Frank created is so much larger than this. We haven’t even gotten into the Suit families and their political battles, card soldiers, the mysterious and powerful skills of Dark and Light Imagination, creative tinkerers, looking-glass transportation, and the Crystal Continuum. The world that Frank Beddor built is massive, unique, and detailed. To have this world brought to life through animation would blow everyone away.
The show would follow the young Hatter who was orphaned at four after his parents’ disappearance during a Millinery mission, Hatter and his older brother Dalton lived at the Millinery academy for years before Hatter was allowed to attend the school himself. Burdened by the shadows cast by his talented older brother and his parent's reputation, Hatter strives to be the best. Did someone say training arc? The Millinery is the secretive military force of Wonderland, where the best Milliners are tasked with safeguarding the Queen and her family. Hatter is determined to succeed at the academy and make a name for himself in his own right.
What specifically would make this show a “Western anime?” Or for that matter, what even is a “Western anime?” The term itself doesn’t mean that much on its own because a “Western anime” is just a cartoon. But, there is one specific show that I and many others agree is specifically a “Western anime” and not just a cartoon. That show is Avatar: The Last Airbender.
Along with its Japanese-inspired art style, Avatar also did something that not many other Western cartoons aimed at young adults. The show’s themes and stakes were serious. Characters got injured, were in peril, and had to make truly difficult choices. The show had depth, which is much more common in anime compared to Western cartoons. So, while there is no such thing as a “Western anime,” an animated series about Hatter Madigan could sit beside Avatar: The Last Airbender and become a show that people call a “Western anime.”
There are things about the Hatter Madigan series as well as The Looking Glass Wars that are reminiscent of anime already. Starting on the surface, let’s look at the weapons. Specific weapons and tools are a common trope in anime. Gon from Hunter x Hunter has his fishing rod, Mitsuri Kanroji’s whip sword in Demon Slayer, and the Death Note in Death Note. The reason for these cool, unique, and unorthodox weapons in anime is that they allow the viewer to gain a sense of who a character is just by glancing at them. Milliners are known for their signature hats. While stylish, they are sentient, deadly, thrown weapons. Along with their hats, Milliners also utilize many other weapons, from belt buckles with a series of J-shaped sabers to backpacks that seem to provide an unending supply of different blades. A vast majority of these weapons are imbued with magical thread made of caterpillar silk to make them even more powerful.
There is something “weird” about anime. Now, when I say “weird” (and I’m going to say it a few times) I don’t mean that in a bad way. I would argue the “weirdness” is a drawing point for many of the viewers. The “weirdness” is originality. Even when a show is an adaptation, there is always some form of “weirdness” that takes something we all know and turns it on its head. When one takes a step back, it is easy to see that weirdness isn’t unique to anime. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is weird and Frank’s adaptations are weird as well. Again, weirdness is not a bad thing, it just means that it’s something that has not been seen before or is an original take on something familiar. The Hatter animated series would have the perfect amount of weirdness, attracting audiences and keeping them locked in. Weapons imbued with caterpillar thread are weird and awesome. If you want to zoom out more, turning Lewis Carroll’s Wonderland into this amazing sci-fi/fantasy world is weird…and awesome.
Finally, there are the stakes. As I mentioned before, Avatar: The Last Airbender is accepted as a “Western anime” not because of its art style but for its themes. The main character, Aang, is the last Airbender due to the Fire Nation’s genocide of the airbenders. In The Looking Glass Wars trilogy and the Hatter M graphic novel series people get hurt, people die, and characters have to make difficult moral choices. This, of course, would translate to the show. Hatter Madigan is an orphan who grew up in the Wonderland version of Westpoint before attending said school. While I’m sure he would have some happy memories of his childhood, that does not make it a happy childhood. The show, of course, will have its fair share of fun and lighthearted moments, but these will be balanced with the drama. It feels as though in animated shows, it is often forgotten that kids can handle a lot more than just the happy or silly moments.
A Hatter animated show needs to be made. There has been a massive vacuum left by The Last Airbender that has yet to be filled. Given the rise of anime, it’s obvious that people want more and they are going elsewhere to get it. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is one of the most recognizable and successful IPs in history. People can’t get enough of Alice. So let’s give them what they want.
Meet the Author
Jared Hoffman graduated from the American Film Institute with a degree in screenwriting. A Los Angeles native, his brand of comedy is satire stemming from the many different personalities and egos he has encountered throughout his life. As a lover of all things comedy, Jared is always working out new material and trying to make those around him laugh. His therapist claims this is a coping mechanism, but what does she know?
All Things Alice: "Escaping Wonderland" Interview
As an amateur scholar and die-hard enthusiast of everything to do with Alice in Wonderland, I have launched a podcast that takes on Alice’s everlasting influence on pop culture. As an author who draws on Lewis Carroll’s iconic masterpiece for my Looking Glass Wars universe, I’m well acquainted with the process of dipping into Wonderland for inspiration.
The journey has brought me into contact with a fantastic community of artists and creators from all walks of life—and this podcast will be the platform where we come together to answer the fascinating question: “What is it about Alice?”
For this episode, it was my great pleasure to have Escaping Wonderland producer Pelle Hallert and writer Mårten Gisby from Cortopia Studios join me as my guests! Read on to explore our conversation, and check out the whole series on your favorite podcasting platform to listen to the full interview.
Frank Beddor Pelle Hallert and Mårten Gisby, welcome to All Things Alice. I’m excited to have you guys on the show. If you wouldn’t mind quickly introducing yourselves and what you do at your company, then we'll jump in.
Pelle Hallert Good to meet you, Frank; thanks for having us. I work in Sweden at a company called Cortopia Studios. We make virtual reality games and created an Alice in Wonderland fantasy called Escaping Wonderland. I have a background in films. I started out as a director of photography and directed a lot of commercials. Then, I moved over to computer games in 2016. I started making cinematics at Dice. I made all the cinematics for Battlefield. So I started doing that, and then I transitioned into producing and got into VR.
When I started at Cortopia, they had a former Alice game called Down the Rabbit Hole, which they created in this beautiful VR diorama setting with all of Wonderland coming to life. It was absolutely stunning. I was part of creating the sequel, Escaping Wonderland, together with Morton here, who is the lead writer. It was really one of those joyful experiences of taking our version of the IP and seeing how we could explore that further and have our own interpretation and meaning.
FB I'm excited to drill down on the way you approach that. Mårten, how did you get your start? You started a poetry society, right?
Mårten Gisby It was a long time ago. That was during my hipster days when I was living off noodles and falafels and just doing whatever I could. But yeah, I did start a poetry collective once, and I use it in my bio, I think, to sound cultured and pretentious, as Pelle would say. But I mostly worked in film, actually, for many years. I wrote a couple of books, and then two years ago, I got roped into Cortopia by Pelle to work on Escaping Wonderland. They had the foundation set, and I had the joy and privilege of writing scripts and directing the performers. This was one of the best projects I've ever worked on, so I'm really happy to be here to talk about it.
FB Thanks, guys, for joining me. It sounds like we have very similar backgrounds. I was a film producer, started writing novels, and was interested in gameplay. I'm interested in all creativity, but particularly with this one IP, Alice in Wonderland, in which you guys are doing games and writing in this space, and I've been writing in this space for 20 years.
Why don't we start from the beginning? I'll tell you a quick little story about how I came to Alice.My grandmother's name was Alice, and Alice in Wonderlandwas my mother's favorite book. So when I was 10 years old, I was really forced to read the book. They thought I would really enjoy it, but I hated it. Years later, I got my sweet revenge by writing The Looking Glass Wars. I wrote a book that I thought my 10-year-old self would enjoy. My favorite introduction to Alice in pop culture was Jefferson Airplane’s “White Rabbit.” Of course, The Matrix was another in terms of the movie side of it. Those were my influences and early introductions.
Pelle, do you have an early introduction? Why did you choose Wonderland instead of Oz, Neverland, or any other piece of pop culture?
PH The original choice of Alice in Wonderland was prior to my days at Cortopia, but since we started exploring it, the team fell in love with the IP very much. So when I came here and started discussing it, they were so intrigued and had such a huge knowledge of the IP. I knew some of the IP because we read the book in school when I went to an English school in Tanzania, but it didn't make an impression on me. To me, it came to life through Tim Burton. It really tried to expand on what Wonderland could be and how they could speak and whatnot. So when I came aboard the project, I basically had that vision, Tim Burton’s Wonderland, in my mind. But then you explore it, like you've done, and it's like, “Wow, what is this space?” There are all of these interpretations and we really tried to dig down into what it could mean to us.
I think Mårten really did a wonderful job of interpreting the humor in the novel and moving that into the game, which is a huge part of the experience. But we also lean into the heavy topic of depression. We're touching on it but doing it on such a scale that you get to laugh at it without discarding the seriosity of the subject. To Mårten's credit, he did a wonderful job in the writing and brings so much to this game.
FB The theme of mental health and madness is not heavy-handed at all. You have all the levity of the comedic elements. Mårten, when you were first introduced to the work, did you interpret it as whimsical or nightmarish? You have sort of a mix in EscapingWonderland. The trailer has a very funny moment when the Dormouse is exercising with the little trap. So tell me a little bit about your introduction and your interpretation of Alice and how you took that into writing this game.
MG We've definitely done a mix because we had the legacy of the first game that was more aimed toward family and children and had the whimsy and magic of Wonderland. We wanted to keep that with us. That’s true to Alice in Wonderland, but we wanted to add more psychedelic, surreal, and psychological elements as well as dark and nightmarish themes. What I really love, and what I tried to keep a lot of in the game, is this nonsensical wordplay that turns into world-building. There are a lot of examples in Alice in Wonderland where they play with the language and make that true in this world in a way that becomes allegorical. For example, at the beginning of the game, she literally falls down and hits rock bottom. That’s a metaphor for her psyche hitting rock bottom, and she has to work herself up from where she's fallen, using that kind of humor and allegory.
FB You chose to create a new lead character for the game named Molly. That's funny because I have a character, Hatter Madigan, whose daughter is named Molly. How did you approach her character, and what is her evolution of her psychologically? What space is she in before she hits rock bottom? Is there a story behind her mental state before the game? Because in Alice in Wonderland, self-identity is a big question. Which is a question for all of us through different stages - “Who am I?” Is that part of the journey for her, or was that explored in the first game?
MG It’s one of the first questions she asks in this game. There is this gameplay mechanic where the player gets three choices in both games and in the first game, you get to choose the character's name. You can choose Alice, but you can also choose other names for the main characters. In this game, the idea I think Pele pitched to me was that we want our Wonderland to be a dream world where lots of people can end up. It's a collective dream many people might be dropping into while they sleep, whether they remember or not. It could be they're in a coma because of a car accident, or they're in a catatonic, depressed state, or it could be that it's just a story a grandfather is telling the granddaughter.
We wanted to have the second game be a completely new character in the same world with the same secondary characters, but everything gets reinterpreted. In the first one, everything is reinterpreted from a story the grandfather is telling the granddaughter. In this game, someone is telling her story, and eventually, we find out that she is lying unconscious in a catatonic, depressed state. One of the big challenges was how to work with that without it getting too grim because we can't show the world outside. We can only give hints about it through the little easter eggs you find throughout the story. So we let the player interpret a lot of what the truth is outside, and we give little hints. You can create your own story about what Molly has been going through in the real world that caused her to fall down here and what it is that she has to rebuild her mental health and psychology in order to wake up and go back to her family.
FB How do you guys manage the intersection of story versus puzzle solving and exploration in terms of volume? Why don't you describe what you do in the game? We have the story. There are puzzles. You explore the world, but what are the obstacles you're up against, and how do you manage those aspects when you're putting the game together?
PH It’s a good question. We had this discussion where we said, “Okay, what type of game are we creating here?” We started off saying it was a puzzle, but then we started to look at what kind of game we wanted to create and what the first game was about. Then, we started to identify that the game was more of a narrative experience. By doing that, we labeled it as a narrative puzzle, which meant basically that the puzzles can't be that tough. They can be challenging but not too tough. The story is the main engine for our experience in the world. Like Mårten said, landing at rock bottom, you should have no idea who this person is. You should have the same knowledge as your character and rediscover her through herself.
So we looked at the puzzle mechanics and tried to align those with the story. Is there something we can interpret? What can we potentially do in this biome that sheds light on the narrative beats we want to fulfill? That was probably the biggest challenge, to align those two parts. When you do a game, you have all of these puzzle mechanics you want to do, but when the narrative came into play, we saw that some of these puzzle mechanics weren't really making sense. We had to rediscover, so there was a lot of back and forth with Mårten in the writing. How can we convey this to the player better?
What are the features we want to tell the player about regarding mental health, as Mårten was talking about? We put a lot of research into the game. First of all, drawing on our own experiences in mental health. We had a lot of tragedies within the team that we could talk about, and we took that and then worked with psychiatrists and psychologists to see if we were on the right path. Then, we realized some puzzles weren't making sense, and we had to redo them. Sometimes, the narrative had to be redone in order to fit the cohesive experience. If we had a very strong mechanic in a room, for example, then we potentially needed to tweak the narrative to fit that.
FB Mårten, did you lean into the Mad Hatter to show this mental health aspect, or are all the characters part and parcel of the mental health theme? Obviously, with the Queen, you know how extreme she is with the whole “Off with your head!” stuff. But Hatter seems to also be a character you could utilize. So tell me about the characters from Wonderland, the ones you leaned into, and then the secondary characters you focused on.
MG To describe the game for the listener, you're standing in this void, and you have the entire game as a 2D platform spiraling around you. So you lead Molly upwards through the game, and you turn because it's VR, right? So you turn and you see her. And when you've gotten a bit far up, you can look down, and you see all the levels you've climbed up through. So it's basically like you're in the rabbit hole, looking at the whole rabbit hole. As you go through the different levels, you meet a lot of the characters from Alice in Wonderland, like the Cheshire Cats, for example. We interpret all the characters to make them fit the narrative, and some of them have their counterparts in Molly's life in different ways, and they symbolize different things.
FB So, it was the same way The Wizard of Oz did a little bit. Can you give a few examples of the different characters and how you've reinterpreted them? For instance, you mentioned the Cheshire Cat. How is the Cheshire Cat different in your game and your world?
MG The Cheshire Cat is actually one of the ones that are quite similar to the original. Molly comes to this place we named the Critter Glade, like the White Rabbit, and everyone used to live there, but the Cheshire Cat has chased everyone away because he wants to be alone. So he renamed it Bitter Glade. It's all cold and snowy and very beautiful and magical, but you can feel the isolation of this place. He just wants to be mean, so he belittles Molly. She gets angry and says, “Oh, shut up, you dumb cat!” Then she shrinks in size because she's literally being belittled. The Cheshire Cat says, “I'm sorry. I didn't mean to belittle you.” Then he pops away, and he keeps showing up and saying mean things, and Molly gets angrier and angrier. The lesson she has to learn is that she can't push people away like the cat has done. So that's what we did with the Cheshire Cat.
Then the Caterpillar shows up, and he's in this big, dark cave where he's sitting on some mushrooms and smoking his hookah pipe. We've rebuilt him very much as a mentor and a guide for Molly. He's quite funny. He hints at what he's smoking in this pipe. Children won't understand, but the moms and dads can laugh at it.
The Caterpillar is basically guiding Molly to conquer her different fears in this dark cave, and later, the player can find a cassette tape that you collect through these different levels. When you listen to the cassette tapes, you hear little splices from the outside world, and one of those snippets, for example, is Molly talking with her therapist. Then, suddenly, you get it. “Oh, shit, this is real.” This isn't a dream. This is something from the real world that you get to listen to. And the therapist sounds quite a bit like the caterpillar. So you can understand that maybe the Caterpillar is a dream version of her therapist who is trying to help her through this.
FB That's quite clever. I like that a lot.
MG The Mad Hatter is not a big character, but he shows up towards the end and is quite mean. He makes a lot of jokes that she has created this whole world just to try to get through her trauma, and he makes fun of that. So we've made him into quite a vicious, self-deprecating voice in her head that is telling her basically, “You're mad. You're as mad as a hatter.” She says, “Are you completely mad?” And he replies, “Well, isn't that the pot calling the kettle whack?” Then he starts laughing like a maniac. So we try to have fun with him, for sure, but he's quite a mean character.
PH We also introduced the player to face cards as they play along. That way, we can showcase what the Cheshire Cat, for example, was like in the real world. During the writing, we talked about what he could represent in the real world. For example, he was a bully from school and can potentially evoke those emotions in Molly at a certain stage in herself. So we had this hidden narrative all around. We thought about how we could translate all of the characters in our Wonderland into real characters and in what way we should convey that to the players visually. We do that through these trading cards. So there is quite a back story. The more cards you get, get more of a holistic view of what actually has happened to Molly and who she is.
FB So you can find these cards, do a deeper dive into the backstory, and put those cards together in like a little bit of a deck. That's very clever as well.
Tell me about Down the Rabbit Hole and the demographic that you found really enjoyed the game. Now with Escaping Wonderland, which is a little bit darker, though it still seems like a family game. You mentioned the comedic elements, like with Pixar, where there are two levels. There's the adult level and the kids level. What have you found? Who's coming to this game? Who's playing this game? Who are you after?
PH It's quite fun because, in VR, it's predominantly male. I would say the majority of players are 30-plus males. However, that did not translate to our games. Down the Rabbit Hole, the first game had almost 50% plus female players, which was very interesting, and this is the group we tried to tailor to. That was obviously pretty hard since there are so many males in this industry, and as a studio, we have a lot of guys in the team. But we really tried to diversify our team and hire women. We brought in a lot of female focus groups to dig into it.
But I think the main focus of our game was not to make it dark. We always had the discussion, “What should the feeling be when you play?” It's very tough in VR because you have these short spans in which you play. You have these core sessions that are about 20 to 30 minutes. Then you want to leave the headset. So if you are too rough on the edges, if you are giving the player too tough of a time, they will have a hard time returning. So that was quite a challenge. From the baseline, when you start off, it's pretty whimsical down there in Wonderland. We sprinkle the narrative throughout, but in the beginning, you don't really see it come through. It comes to life the more you play, and that’s really when it grabs you. But we really try to address the female player. That's why we have a female protagonist. We have situations in the game that are tailored toward the female audience.
But our publisher, the head of publishing, is female, and she was obviously scared of us as a male studio. Which was very understandable, right? Can we really do this? Can we pull it off? But Mårten has written two or three books with a female protagonist, so he has experience in the matter. Then, for us, it was the story. A good story is a good story, and it's relatable to any type of person. But we really wanted to have the female players because when you get them, they’re such a devoted fan base. So the more we try to lean into that, the better it is.
FB What's the difference between extended reality, virtual reality, augmented reality, and mixed reality? Because those are all game descriptions in the bio. Can you give us a quick tutorial?
PH Augmented reality and mixed reality are very similar. You see the world you're in, like Pokemon Go, for example. You see the world through your camera, but there are graphic elements in it. You can project stuff on surfaces and walls or whatnot. It’s a mix. We were thinking if it was possible to put this game in mixed reality because Meta is always asking for those kinds of game experiences. But we really wanted to immerse the player in VR so they’d put on the headset and embrace this lovely world of Wonderland. But that's the baseline. Mixed reality and augmented reality are a mix of reality and fictional elements.
FB How is Meta to work with?
PH Meta been supporting us all the way. They always had our backs. They're a good partner, and their feedback has been valid throughout.
FB Mårten, why do you think Wonderland still resonates? Why are we still using Wonderland as a jumping-off spot in 2025, almost 160 years after it was introduced? What do you think is the fascination? Can you pinpoint for yourself what resonates with this story? The original story, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, is very episodic. Alice has agency, but not the kind of agency we’re used to in stories with the reluctant hero, the Chosen One. In Alice, it's arbitrary, and the chapters could be switched around, so it wouldn't matter. But yet, we keep coming back to it. But do you have a theory on that?
MG I think you were onto it before when you were talking about the whimsical versus the nightmarish. There is something really original with this world, where you mix the real and the dream. If you think about David Lynch, he’s one of the people who has captured dreams on film in a way that feels like a dream because it doesn't make sense. I think Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass are for books in a way. They capture what it feels like to be in a dream, nothing makes sense. Everything's a little bit goofy and whimsical, but in a way that makes you think, “Is this creepy? I'm not sure. Is it just magical and wonderful, or is there something sinister under the surface?” That's my interpretation of it, at least. I think it’s this mix of whimsy and psychology. Everything feels like a very fundamental allegory for the human psyche and human dream state. In the Tim Burton films, they try to make her the Chosen One. They try to make it more like a high fantasy story, but I feel like that's not what draws you to it. You don't want Alice in Wonderland to be Narnia or to be The Lord of the Rings. It's its own thing.
FB Speak for yourself, my friend. You haven't read The Looking Glass Wars, apparently. Now, stepping into my territory, I might take issue.
MG Sorry, sorry. Well, I think it's a different thing to try to reinterpret Alice rather than do a traditional adaptation.
FB No, my point is there are so many ways to interpret Alice, but fundamentally, everybody is going to have their own ideas. Wonderland is a place to escape reality, where reality, fantasy, and fiction are all mixed up. If you look at politics in America, you'll see that facts are no longer facts. So, Alice in Wonderland was often referenced when talking in a political context. In gaming, I came across another game called Across the Wonderlands, which is a survival game. So you can take Wonderland and use that idea in any number of ways.
I was on the U.S. Ski Team for a number of years, and “Winter Wonderland” was thrown around all the time. So Wonderland was a magical, whimsical, beautiful place for us to go to. And “down the rabbit hole,” whether it's used in reference to the internet or politics, whatever “down the rabbit hole” is, gets used every single day. I'm sure you noticed that when you started writing in this space, you can't escape it. It's everywhere.
Has that been helpful in terms of having an IP to base the game on in terms of getting attention or in terms of Meta feeling like, “Oh, you have an IP already?” Look at what happened with Wicked, the musical based on The Wizard of Oz. We're doing the same thing with Alice in Wonderland in the game space. Has the connection to Wonderland helped?
PH Absolutely. It's a strong IP, and everybody knows about it. Everyone has their own impression of what Wonderland could be. Alice in Wonderland has massive appeal, and it helped greatly.
FB In which countries have you had the most success? I bring this up because Japan has the most editions of Alice in Wonderland of any country in the world. So, I'm wondering if you have a sweet spot in terms of countries around the world.
PH The U.S. is our main target. But I think it's also due to the platform. There are so many people who own a headset in the U.S., so I think that's why we haven't sort of dug any deeper when it comes to breaking out per user.
FB In terms of quantifying success, how does one do that with VR headsets? Is it based on how many people play or how long they play? How does one know if they're on the right track and if it’s making financial sense?
PH First of all, you see the amount of copies sold. Then there is the rating on the store, so you can see what kind of rating the game is getting. Escaping Wonderland is getting super, super awesome ratings. I think it's on a 4.8 out of 5. It’s really up there among the top sellers on the Meta store. The reviews have been through the roof, so it's absolutely perfect. We couldn't ask for more. However, the first game had a bit of a slow burn. Normally, in games, you used to see this; it’s sort of changing now, but you would have huge sales the first week or first days, but then it drops quite rapidly.
VR is somewhat different, especially in this game. So it's on a slow burn, but it's steadily growing, so people are discovering it. We get a lot of attention through podcasts like yours, Frank, and our voice cast. They are very well-known actors, and they committed so much to the story since the topic really spoke to them, as well as the mental health aspects. So they've been helping us promote the game a lot, just because they saw it and they loved it to that extent.
Plus, we are getting feedback from users, not just about the game and how it’s a fun experience but also about how it actually helped them in their real lives. Mårten and I were discussing a video the other day of a person who released this video himself, saying the game changed his perspective on life and really took to him. It was one of those emotional moments that you wouldn't wish for, but when you see it, it's really rewarding. It's really, really not just down to the sales at the end of the day. It's really down to emotions. If we can awaken those emotions, then we know we're on a good track and that the game will probably sell over time since it's a great experience.
FB I think what you're talking about is really, really important. As a creator, you’re not creating for the sales, you're creating to share something. I don't need to dig into what tragedies your team has had, but the fact that it’s fused with what you're doing, people feel that. When you have a response like you just described, people are reading between the lines and picking up on the feelings.
When that transfer of energy and creativity gets bounced back to you, it's a really profound, emotional moment where you think, “Okay, I've connected. What was in my mind has now gone out in this collective world and is coming back in terms of this feedback, and that feedback loop is why I do what I do.” Yes, it's great if you sell a lot of copies, but you are sharing something about yourself that's specific, and doing that is where the real work is, where the real joy is, and where the real satisfaction is. So I think that it's pretty profound that you're having that experience with your game, and kudos to you for sharing and for having that success. That's what artistry is really about, right?
PH I agree one hundred percent. But fingers crossed, sales will pick up.
But I think you're a hundred percent right when it comes to ingenuity and the take on the subject. But we're here fronting a team. Mårten obviously did a lot of the writing and did a nice job there, but there are so many stories being told through the art, the music, the puzzles, and then by everybody in the team. There's so much love in the space. It was really this passion project that you dream about being part of, where everybody has this holistic view of where we want to go with the project and the story we want to tell. So we're just two guys fronting what a team behind us has really been pulling through.
FB Games are a collective and it's a big team effort. Speaking of the art, how did you land on the art style? You wanted to stay close to the original game, but then you expanded. In Escaping Wonderland game, there's what looks like an engineering room, and you have the big clock. The Caterpillar design is really interesting and fresh, but the Cheshire Cat is a sort of familiar color palette. Was there an art director? How did you guys land on the art style?
PH Obviously, the art style had a legacy from the first game, Down the Rabbit Hole, and it was really fun because sometimes art-by-accident happens, right? When they started to create the first game, they had a bunch of 2D artists in the studio. They did not have 3D artists. So what that meant was figuring out how to facilitate those guys within the game creation. So they hand-painted each of these environments. That's why it very much looks like a theater set with props. It's very layered. There are not that many assets in it. There are some assets, here and there, that you can interact with, but it's mainly built as a stage with this very unique art style that is very appealing.
So, going from Down the Rabbit Hole to Escaping Wonderland, we wanted to keep that style. But then, like you said, “Okay, how do we expand on that? How do we expand on the characters and environments?” One thing that came into play, which we talked a lot about with the art team, was that when it came to environmental storytelling, we were always asking, Who has been living here? What does this room represent? What do we want the stories to say? How do we translate the story? If this is going to be an estate, what would happen? We have mice living here. How do the mice go about their everyday life? How can we translate that to the art on the wall? How can we spark some of that humor throughout the environment and, by doing that, still keep the whimsical stuff? That was also a big part of the storytelling when it comes to every artist having each room, how should we approach it? What is the status of the player coming into this? This is our low point. So it needs to be pretty dark. What do we showcase here? What kind of symbols could we potentially add here that add to that?
FB It certainly sounds like your background in movies and television would come in very handy when you're taking the environment and turning it into a character. It has to be a character because you're going to be hanging out there. You're going to be peeking around all the corners, so you're going to really have to think deeply and provocatively about how these environments are affecting the players.
Now that you've created Wonderland, do you have any aspirations to go to Neverland or Oz? Or, Mårten, the name of your book series is Alba and the Land Beyond. Is there any reason we can't go to Alba and the Land Beyond?
MG Every time we have an afterwork, I try to “inception” Pele so that they could make games out of my books.
FB So what's the holdup?
PH Nothing. He nagged me down, but my defenses are awesome.
FB Let's make a deal right here. Let me try and broker a deal.
PH It's a beautiful book. It's absolutely fabulous. But to your point, this is something that we have talked about. We have this very beautiful diorama mechanic, which is very intriguing. What other IPs could we pinch this on? And what other IPs could we explore in this same setting? There are really no limits to it like you said. We could go anywhere with this, but obviously, we're not that rich of a company, so it still has to be in the public domain. But it's still a possibility, and we're really looking into it. We just hope, like you were talking about, that as long as the game's doing well enough, then it makes sense for another one.
FB So Escaping Wonderland has been released.
PH Yes. It's out on the Meta store, and it has gotten a lot of use. We'd be happy to send you a copy, Frank, so you can try it out. Since you're so invested in the IP, we would just be thrilled to have you looking into it.
FB That’d be great. And folks interested in seeing the trailer can go to your website or Google it. And if they're interested in the game, they go to Meta.
PH Meta store for buying the game. If you have a headset, it's very accessible. If you want to know what it's all about, Google “Escaping Wonderland VR,” then it will pop up, and you can see some videos. There are also a couple of playthrough videos, so you can see other people playing and see how much they are enjoying it.
MG Check out some reviews if you don't trust me and Pelle. It's gotten quite amazing reviews, fours and fives everywhere. And we got an award a few weeks ago.
PH Yeah, for best storytelling in games. We aspire to be nominated for multiple awards.
FB Well, before we leave, if you were a character from Wonderland, who would you be, and why?
MG You know, when you come to a certain age, you always land on the Caterpillar, right?
FB Yes, as you get older, you lose more hair.
MG Also, your main character days are over.
PH I still feel like Alice.
FB You're still on an adventure.
PH No, I feel like I snap between the White Rabbit and Dormouse like I'm just stressing around, and then I'm just lazing on the couch, sleeping,
FB Speaking of the Dormouse, just tell me the inspiration for the trap as an exercise device.
MG I don't remember who came up with that. One of the puzzles is about finding four little mouse kids because their mother has yelled at them and they’ve run away, so you have to bring this mouse family back together. All the kids are doing something really dangerous. So you go to the gym, and the mouse kid is working out with this mouse trap and doing some Fast and Furious references like a gym bro. Then another mouse is building a sand castle with rat poison and talking about how it's making him feel like he’s flying. We've got one sunbathing in front of an oven, and another is walking a tightrope.
FB There's a lot of black humor, and there's a lot of whimsical humor. I know my very twisted audience and the Wonderland fanatics will be really interested in checking out your game. Thank you both for taking the time and congratulations to you both and the whole team for your trip to Wonderland and for bringing us along with you. Kudos to all of you for your creativity and sharing your world with us.
As an amateur scholar and die-hard enthusiast of everything to do with Alice in Wonderland, I have launched a podcast that takes on Alice’s everlasting influence on pop culture. As an author who draws on Lewis Carroll’s iconic masterpiece for my Looking Glass Wars universe, I’m well acquainted with the process of dipping into Wonderland for inspiration.
The journey has brought me into contact with a fantastic community of artists and creators from all walks of life—and this podcast will be the platform where we come together to answer the fascinating question: “What is it about Alice?”
For this episode, it was my great pleasure to have educator, writer, and artist James Agee join me as my guest! Read on to explore our conversation, and check out the whole series on your favorite podcasting platform to listen to the full interview.
Frank Beddor A few weeks ago, somebody came on frankbeddor.com and wanted to buy every one of my books, 12 in all. So I asked my trusty producer Sarah who this person was, and it turns out they had read The Looking Glass Wars books 15 years earlier in high school, and now they wanted to have the entire collection. I said, “Sarah, I'm really curious about this person. Let's have them on the show.” So today, I have James Agee. He is not only a fan of The Looking Glass Wars but also an educator, writer, and artist. He works in technology and is a big reader of all things pop culture. He has a very diverse bio. It’s my pleasure to welcome James to the show.
James Agee Good morning. I'm glad to be here.
FB Since this is an Alice in Wonderland-centric, I'm going to ask you a straightforward question. When were you first introduced to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, either through the book or through some piece of pop culture?
JA I feel like I was always familiar with Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. From the time I was little, it was just one of those stories you hear over and over. But in terms of discovering The Looking Glass Wars, that happened when I was in high school. It took so long for me to find the books because, for years, I just was not interested in reading. I thought it had to be these prescribed readings from the school if I was going to read. Then, for whatever reason, I found out I could choose my own books. That's when I started loving reading because I could pick things I liked, and one of those was The Looking Glass Wars.
FB Did your parents encourage you to read when you were younger, and then you got these assignments in elementary and middle school, and it was overwhelming?
JA I never really disliked reading. My parents always read to me when I was little. But, once I started school, the majority of my time reading outside of class was reading something that had been assigned. Then, I got a Kindle for Christmas one year. That was when I started going through and finding all of these books that I had never given a chance to or even thought I would be able to get into. It started a lifelong passion for reading after that.
FB That's a very good parenting story. For those of us who have kids, sometimes you push too hard. Something similar happened to me. I wasn't doing a lot of reading, and my mother and my grandmother really wanted me to read Alice in Wonderland, but I just wanted to go outside and play in the woods. It really wasn't until high school and after high school that I discovered my love of reading. I was not a fast reader. The assigned reading in school took a long time, so there was no chance I was going to be reading in my free time. I lived on a lake in the woods in Minnesota, so I wanted to be outside.
JA I can definitely relate to that. I went to a smaller school in a rural area, and we had a school library, but it wasn't necessarily stocked with young adult literature. So I just didn't know it was there. But getting into reading happened when I felt like it needed to. At that point, I said, “I'd like to tell my own stories.” That’s what started me writing.
FB Was there a genre you read that you loved that you started writing in?
JA The first genre I fell in love with was fantasy fiction. There's so much of it, and I felt like it was this untapped world that I just didn't know existed. I'd always loved movies and television shows in that genre, so it was natural for me to gravitate towards those types of books.
FB What kind of movies, TV shows, or books did you start with that led you to writing fantasy?
JA Growing up, I was obsessed with the Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings series. I grew up with Harry Potter as they released the movies, so it was pretty neat. Ironically, I had never read books, so when I finally got around to reading them, I was like, “This is even better than the movies.”
FB So, while watching the movies, you were the characters' age. How old were you when you started reading the books?
JA I was pretty young when the movies started being released. I didn't actually get into the books until late high school, probably 11th or 12th grade. It just never occurred to me to sit down and read them because they looked so intimidating, the size of them. Now, the longer the book, the better. But at the time, it was one of those things that kept me from approaching them.
FB It’s so funny you say that because I was the same way with high fantasy. Some of these books, like Game of Thrones, are like 1,000 pages. I’d look at these tomes and say, “Nope, I'm not taking that on.” But it was Game of Thrones that got me into reading high fantasy. I watched the TV show and was like, “Okay, I want to read the book.” In reading the book, I was stunned by how well laid out it was chapter to chapter and how it matched the TV show. I get the idea of coming to the book after the movie.
Matter of fact, with The Looking Glass Wars, Harry Potter had been out for a number of years, and a lot of kids were the age of the characters and watching the movies or reading the books as they were growing each and every year. From a publishing standpoint, that's what they were really looking for. So when I came with my book, they said, “Oh, well, your book has a seven-year-old; nobody wants to follow a seven-year-old. Then she's 13, but then she quickly turns 20. So, you won't get any of the Harry Potter kids. They all want to read their age.” I said, “Well, I think there are more readers out there. There's more diversity than that.” It took publishing it in the UK for it to be successful and come back to the States.
What about you when you're writing? Do you write adult characters, or have you written anything related to when you were in middle school? How do you like to come up with your characters?
JA I've written characters all over the place in terms of age. Generally, I write what to read. I haven't gone into specific demographics. At the end of the day, I'm just happy to have these stories out there.
JA It's been going pretty good. The process isn't too crazy. I prefer to spend most of my resources in the writing phase. I've worked with some great editors to try and get the stories where they need to be. I've worked with smaller publishers in the past, and, at this point, I prefer self-publishing over the small publishers I have worked with because I feel like I have a lot more control over what I'm putting out.
FB That's one of the great things about being a writer. You get to write what you want. You can have an editor work on it, but it's your final decision. If you can get the book out there in exactly the form you'd like it to be, then why not? If you could make a couple of bucks, it's even better, but it's not easy for anybody to make money publishing. So, the process of writing and the joy of creating and then sharing, and hopefully, somebody will read it and absorb the book in the same way you thought when you put the words down on the page. You get this back and forth and it’s really satisfying if you can connect with the reader.
JA Absolutely. That's pretty much how I feel about it.
FB You discovered The Looking Glass Wars on YouTube. How did that happen? Was there an ad? Was it one of my trailers?
JA I believe it was actually when the whole BookTuber phase was starting. I had so many connections I had made through commenting on videos. I was reviewing a few books at the time on my channel and meeting people that way. The Looking Glass Wars was one of those books recommended by a YouTube connection. Once I saw the cover and some of the illustrations, I was immediately drawn to it. I think it was about the time that ArchEnemy came out. That was the first book I ever pre-ordered because I just couldn't wait for it.
FB That's a very nice compliment. Do you recall what art you were attracted to? Was it the covers? You mentioned the cover for The Looking Glass Wars. That was Doug Chiang, who works on a lot of the Star Wars canon. You can probably see some similarities between the droids in The Phantom Menace and my Card Soldiers. But the publisher really liked that book, and it motivated a lot of boys to read. They were reluctant readers who would read The Looking Glass Wars because they wanted to see how the card soldiers would unfold.
JA That was part of it. Seeing that cover and just reading the synopsis, thinking, “How's this going to work? How will this tie in with the Alice in Wonderland that I'm familiar with?” I loved it because, pretty much from page one, you had taken something that I was familiar with and fleshed it out so much more. That was what hooked me from the start.
FB It was fun to have a starting point with Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and then spinning everything. I took a lot of inspiration from Gregory Maguire and his Wicked series. Did you ever read those books?
JA It has been on my list for years. I’m probably going to do the audiobooks because I’ve heard so many good things about them. That's another thing I just recently went through for the first time. I listened to the audiobooks of The Looking Glass Wars series. It was like reliving it but in a different way.
FB Can you describe how experiencing the written word in an audio form impacted your experience? I'll just preface by saying that Gerard Doyle was so amazing. At times, I would say to myself, “I don't think I wrote that line. I wonder if he changed it.” I said, “Wow, this is so much better as an audiobook because of Doyle's voice.”
JA When I initially read the books, I had imagined things one way in my mind. Then, when I was listening to the audiobook, it wasn't necessarily that it changed, but I was able to sit back and relax a little bit more. He does the voices of the characters and everything so well that you don't have to question who's talking or what's going on because it brings it to life in a completely different way. I would encourage anyone who's read the books also listen to the audiobook because it is a different experience. Same story, different experience.
FB You also bought several Hatter M graphic novels. Have you been a fan of comics in the past? Or did you just want to complete the Hatter story?
JA I was actually a pretty big fan of manga a while back. I had read some graphic novels but was more towards the manga side of things. I didn't know Hatter’s side of the story even existed, but when I found out about them, it was definitely something I wanted to add to my collection. I wanted to know more about these characters. I love the fact that there's such a focus on Hatter because he's one of the characters in the original series that just kept me reading. The Cat was another one. I just love that concept because it's such a mischievous character to begin with. I just wanted to know more about what's going on in this world. Because the story of the trilogy is technically finished but there's so much left in this world to explore. I'm glad you're going back and doing that.
FB I am currently expanding the world. But the Hatter M graphic novels were inspired when I was in the UK promoting the book. I was at a school, and there were probably 100 kids, and one kid kept putting his hand up. Finally, I called on him, and he said, “Mr. Beddor, I'm very, very upset that you have not finished your first book.” I said, “I don't understand. What are you talking about?” He goes, “In your novel, you synopsize what happened to Hatter during his 13 years on Earth, and that was terribly frustrating because he's my favorite character. I really would like to know what happened during those 13 years.” This is a 10-year-old. I laughed it off, but I started thinking about it on the plane home. I thought, “I wonder if I could do a comic book filling in those 13 years?”
I wish I had the boy's name because I would have given him all the books for free and thanked him. I had a great time doing what now is six graphic novels in the Hatter story. It was fun to fill out what it was like for him in our world.
I'm really curious about your experience in teaching. I found doing school events and having the littlest impact really fulfilling. My favorite comment was hearing a kid say, “I read your book because you were a really fun speaker.” When you teach, how do you approach engaging the students so they can follow and absorb the lesson you want to communicate?
JA Keeping the student's interest is one of the most difficult things for every educator, especially when you have some classes that last hours at a time. At the school where I teach, I have students for half a day, and then the next group comes in for half a day. So keeping their interest for that long of a period can be difficult. But I've personally found that every group that I've ever taught is different. You have to take an individualized approach for that group to see what's interesting to them and what matters to them. The fact you've made your story so relatable is why students have such an easy time listening because there is something in the stories that they can relate to and connect with.
FB You don't have to entertain them the whole time, but you have to amuse them at least or make a connection so they can relate and understand why they should lean in a little bit. It's really a satisfying profession. Having done school visits, I thought, “Okay, I understand why teachers are teachers.” At the same time, as a country, we don't value teachers and how important and difficult it is to connect.
JA Absolutely. I'm currently teaching graphic design, which I've been teaching for the past year. The students tend to already be interested in it and have a drive to participate when they get there. The difficult part is keeping it throughout the year. I've freelanced in graphic design for years, so getting the opportunity to teach it to a group of high school students is fantastic.
FB You also teach at Marshall University, correct?
JA I teach part-time at Marshall University, and I also teach graphic design to high school students. For Marshall University, I teach instructional design to educators looking to get their graduate degrees. It’s a different approach to the design side of things, combining the instruction with the design, which I absolutely love and think is really fun.
FB You have a lot of right brain and left brain because you're a writer and very creative, but you're also heavy on the tech side. How did your parents prepare you growing up? I say this because I have an 18-year-old going off to college. I'm curious, from your experience, how your parents positioned what the world's like.
JA From about middle school, I decided I liked school enough to make this my career. I wanted to be on the other side of the desk teaching. I always had a bunch of other ideas for businesses and stories. Things would come up, and I would really want to do them. My parents supported me in whatever I wanted to attempt, whether they worked out or not.
FB Not everybody is inclined to stick their toe in and publish a book on Amazon or even start writing a book, let alone self-publishing and going out to indies. Also, having a really clear idea that you wanted to be an educator but then expanding and doing things that speak to you. I love that message for young people. I love the idea that, especially in your 20s, you should do everything you want to do. Whether you make money or fail or are super successful, push it because once you're a little bit older, you're gonna probably define where you put all of your energy, and especially if you have a family, then time is really precious.
JA I've noticed that a little bit more as I'm officially in my 30s. I have to allocate time a lot more specifically than I used to. Previously, I could do whatever I wanted when I came home from work—write, draw, or just relax. Now, I have to have a plan set out to manage time because things have gotten more and more busy over the years.
FB Do you do any of the illustrations for your books?
JA It's been a while since I did any illustrating for my books, but I design almost all of the covers exclusively. That's a really fun part because I feel like I know the stories pretty well, having written them. Getting to have that extra form of expression is something I always look forward to after I finish a book.
FB I need you to pick one book and give our audience the elevator pitch for the book, and then we will feature it.
JA One of the books I spent the most time on is Dead of Night. It's the first book of a series I wrote called The Blood CurseChronicles. I spent the most time on it because I wrote the book and then completely rewrote it. When I was working with the editor, it was such a process of going back and fixing every little thing we just got together, and we were like, “Should I just rewrite this whole thing?”
FB I know that story.
JA I spent the most time on that one, so I probably have the biggest connection with it. But it's the story of this family of vampires who live in a small Virginia town and own a funeral home. That’s their way of managing being vampires and getting the resources they need while providing a service to their community and fitting in. But the kids of this family find out that there is a way to break this curse that made them vampires. The whole series is about discovering how to break the curse and return to being human or just ending their eternal lives.
FB I like that. That's a very high concept. Very clean. You should go to Comic-Cons because I think people would respond to that. How many books are in that series?
JA There are four books. I would love to expand on that a little bit more, but I've never sat down and had a story that I felt was worth adding to it. Until that day comes, there are the four books.
FB You also like to work in multiple genres. What would be on the opposite side of a vampire story in terms of something you've written?
JA I wrote a memoir, I Once Knew Everything, about my life growing up. It was more of an exercise in putting my thoughts and memories on paper because I've found that the older I get, those little moments I like to reflect on aren’t as vivid as they used to be. I wrote that book more for myself than anything. It was a totally different experience than writing a story about vampires.
FB What were the challenges of doing that? Did you feel like you were tapping into a memory or an idea of a memory?
JA That was the challenge. I wanted to make sure it was as accurate as possible. How do you do that? How do you make it exactly like you experienced? I struggled more with writing that than any of the fiction books that I've ever written, simply because I wanted it to be as accurate as possible. But I also knew that, to an extent, it’s not even possible to have something be one hundred percent accurate to the events. We all experience things differently. We all remember things differently.
FB It’s very subjective, as well. How many books do you have available on Amazon?
JA There are currently 30 total. I was trying to do one to two per year for a while. A lot of that came from when I was working with a smaller publisher. They had more of a strict writing schedule. They wanted me to write as soon as I finished a book. They were like, “What's the next one?” Now, I'm lucky to write a book every two years but I enjoy the process a little bit more. There's no specific timeline for me to follow. It's finished when I'm done writing it.
FB What are you reading right now? Do you have anything interesting you're really into?
JA After I finished revisiting The Looking Glass Wars on audiobook, I thought, “What other stories that I really enjoyed from that time period are now available on audio that I'd like to go back to?” I'm currently listening to This Dark Endeavor and Such Wicked Intent by Kenneth Oppel. That’s another one of those series I love because it tells the story of Victor Frankenstein from a completely different perspective. It fleshed out the story more and gave more information, which is part of what drew me to The Looking Glass Wars. So I'm really enjoying going back and reliving a lot of those stories.
FB If you were a character from The Looking Glass Wars, who would you be and why?
JA That's such a tough question. I feel like I would relate to Homburg Molly the most. There was so much confusion with this character, but they wanted so much to be a part of this amazing story. You wonder for so long how she fits into this story, and then when she finally does, it all makes sense. I relate to her character so much because she's so in love with this world herself and wants to be a part of protecting the Queen that she's really willing to do whatever it takes. I love that about her.
FB That's great. Molly wants to be the hero, but she doesn't exactly fit in and doesn't know her father or mother. She has to come to terms with a little bit of the “Who am I?”. Then, when she finds out that Hatter’s her father, she's got to live up to that, which is a lot for her. So, you like to be the underdog?
JA Ideally, I would say Hatter, but realistically, I think it would be more Molly.
FB That's all of our fantasies. Could we really be a hero and a little bit flawed?
What was this trip you took with your students to France?
JA I’ve always loved France in general. It was my fourth time visiting, and it's something I offer to students locally. We live in a rural area, and I love offering them international trips, which I do about every two years. Also, I just love to travel in general. In about a week, I'm going to Ireland for a while and then to Italy for the first time. But this past time, being in France, when we went to Montmartre, I was thinking back to The Looking Glass Wars. There are so many real-world connections in those books that I had forgotten about from my first time reading them. I was actually thinking about The Looking Glass Wars when I was there because it's such a vivid part of the story. Having been there and seeing these things in person makes it so much more relatable.
FB I wish you were a doppelganger who could keep splitting and multiplying because you've said so many kind things and mentioned The Looking Glass Wars as being part of all different of aspects of your life. Your life seems incredibly rich with your travel, your teaching, your writing, your tech work, and your art. You seem to have a very full and diverse take on the world. It’s been a real pleasure chatting with you. Thank you for supporting and sharing The Looking Glass Wars, which has been my life's work. I started the first book in 2000, so I'm coming up on 25 years of working in this world. I’m still looking to expand and fill in some of the blanks, and chatting with you is great motivation.
JA Thank you for writing these books because if it wasn't for authors like you, I don't know that I would have ever decided to write my own stories. I definitely wouldn't have jumped into reading like I did.
FB I'm going to check out this vampire story. It sounds like a very fun idea and also sounds like it could be a good TV show. James, enjoy the rest of your summer. Thank you, really appreciate it.
The Deck is Stacked: Alice and Wonderland in Card Games
Welcome back beyond the Looking Glass, where the many mad reflections of Wonderland and its denizens can appear anywhere and in any shape! You will be delighted to see many familiar faces appear in various trading and competitive card games that are quite popular on Earth. Some of these “visions” of Wonderland build off the fantastical interpretations of Lewis Carroll, while others are as strange and dark as the madcap reality of the Crystal Continuum.
“Alice In Wonderland” – Lorcana (Disney)
Leading the pack is perhaps the most obvious use of Alice in Wonderland- the Disney card game Lorcana. Set in a magical realm of the same name, Players wield “magical inks” to call on familiar heroes and villains from the Disney universe. Some of these characters and moments are pulled straight from established Disney lore, while others are transformed by the fantastical realm of Lorcana.
Players compete to be the first to collect 20 Lore, using their various cards to quest their Lore and challenge their opponent's characters. Character, Item, and Action cards allow a variety of play options and, while there are a variety of Abilities shared between different Characters and Items to shake up the basic rules of Lorcana, there is a unique spice to those that hail from Wonderland.
It should be said that in Lorcana, the first turn a Character enters play they cannot take any actions unless they have a special ability to do so. Following the White Rabbit, a majority of the Lorcana cards based on Carroll's Wonderland are focused on their ability to Rush, therefore skipping over that rest period so you're not late collecting 20 Lore.
In its early years and already possessing flavorful and fun mechanics, Lorcana provides a magical vision of Wonderland's madness. For those not too familiar with trading card games or the mad story behind the Looking Glass, this vision of Wonderland is an easy entrance for Players at any level of experience.
However, if mad-as-a-hatter gameplay is what you are after, then you should read on…
From the Japanese media giant Bushiroad, Cardfight!! Vanguard is set on Planet Cray, a nexus where many worlds overlap and influence each other, particularly with your world of Earth. Colliding realities and players using powers beyond imagining? Sounds quite familiar to anyone in the know regarding the wars beyond the Looking Glass.
In Cardfight!! Vanguard, Players call upon a “Vanguard” to fight their opponent's champion in a battle to be the first to inflict six damage. Your Decks are formed from a Normal unit and Trigger card types, at the most basic level of play, with additional types introduced with each new iteration of the game. While it would be a most intriguing discussion, the deeper realms of play will await those who feel the urge to card fight.
Hailing from the lawless Dark Zone of Planet Cray, we see a dark mirrored version of Wonderland in the maniacal Nightmareland cards. When choosing the grim forces of Nightmareland, your Vanguard's “soul” matters quite a bit. In Cardfight!! Vanguard, when a Player calls upon a stronger grade Vanguard, that new Vanguard is stacked on top of the previous Vanguard(s) and that stack is the Vanguard's soul.
The more powerful Nightmareland units benefit from possessing multiple units with the Nightmareland name while the supporting Trigger units place themselves in your Vanguard's soul to continuously power them up for battle. The deeper the cards are stacked, the greater your favor in battle. Here in Nightmareland, the Queen and her minions serve as offense while Alice and her companions focus on recurring resources and recovering damage.
Should the complexities of Cardfight!! Vanguard and the Gothic fantasy realm of Nightmareland not appeal, then perhaps a modern interpretation is what you're seeking in the Looking Glass.
“M∀LICE” Archetype – Yu-Gi-Oh! (Konami)
One of the original “Big Three” card games, the long-running Yu-Gi-Oh! franchise has paid homage to many imaginative worlds beyond its own. Now Wonderland is ready to duel! In the latest deck-building pack, the brand new “M∀LICE” archetype is set to take Duelists on a trip through a digital rabbit hole.
Before diving deeper, a cursory explanation of Yu-Gi-Oh! is necessary to appreciate the little touches done to bring Wonderland into this card game's space. Players (or Duelists) make their Main Deck with 3 different card types: Monster, Spell, and the often parodied Traps. Unique monsters typically played by using Main Deck monsters are stored in the Extra Deck. On the field, Players use monsters to do battle and Spells & Traps to change the flow of play in their favor as they try to reduce their opponent's Life Points from 8000 to zero.
In an appropriate portmanteau, this series of cards gets its unifying name from “Alice” and “malware,” adding a sci-fi cyberspace aesthetic to the M∀LICE cards. The monsters are themed after chess pieces, with the Pawns in the Main Deck and the Queen in the Extra Deck, and each monster takes on familiar names with hacker motifs. The Cat, the Rabbit, & the Dormouse all appear as Pawns with their own Suits, benefiting your Queen with protection from card effects or specialized ways of removing your opponent's monsters while on the field.
Presently, the cyberspace of “M∀LICE In Underground” has several Queens; “Hearts of Crypter,” “Red Ransom,” and the “White Binder” Queens rule. Each Queen can remove your opponent's monsters by cycling your own and you can add a M∀LICE Spell or set a M∀LICE Trap to further your control of the field. Aside from the pleasant theme of Pawns protecting the more powerful Queen’s moves, all M∀LICE monsters can take a trip down the rabbit hole.
In Yu-Gi-Oh! there is a concept called Banishment, wherein a card is removed from the game and sent to a special limbo zone that can't normally be interacted with. However, the M∀LICE monsters can move themselves in and out of Banishment, often triggering their effects to further confound your opponent. Just be wary dear Duelists, this is a dense game that contains many ways to counter-play your opponent and the Red Queen would be displeased to see you give Wonderland a bad name.
With the draw of a card you can unlock victory or suffer defeat, but along the way with some clever play, you can show your personality and creativity. That is the beauty of a card game: there are set rules and designs to guide you through the basics and once you've mastered those, the existence of cards that bend or break some of the rules gives Players the opportunity to have fun and express their skills. Who knows where Wonderland will pop up next? If you have seen through the Looking Glass, then you can expect to see more things Alyss in the cards.
Marco Arizpe graduated from the University of Southern California and The American Film Institute with degrees in filmmaking and screenwriting. His brand of borderland gothic horror stems from his experiences growing up in a small town where Texas and Mexico meet. Culturally steeped in a rich history of all things terrifying, Marco never fails to bring forward indigenous folklore in contemporary and fresh settings.
Watch Julia Stiles' Audition Tape for Wicked the Movie
Casting. One of the most important, frustrating, and frightening parts of the filmmaking process. If you’re an actor, it’s a constant state of vulnerability, being compared and contrasted to scores of other candidates, each being nitpicked on their appearance, experience, and performance. On the production side, you sift through an endless slog of headshots and self-tapes hoping to find that one person who fits exactly the character you have in your head. And the stakes? Just the entire production. The fortunes of movies, sometimes hundreds of millions of dollars, can be made or lost during casting.
Think of what life would be like if Burt Reynolds had played Michael Corleone in The Godfather instead of Al Pacino, or if Nicolas Cage wielded the Sword of Elendil as Aragon instead of Viggo Mortensen in The Lord of the Ringstrilogy, or if Mel Gibson and not Michael Keaton had donned the cape and cowl in Tim Burton’s Batman? Probably worse in all three timelines but, at the very least, pop culture would be entirely different.
It’s difficult to find the right actor even during the best of times, but when you’re an indie production trying to find a teenager who can pull off childlike, seductive, bratty, calculating, and lethal in a movie where she plays a character who murders her mother and has an affair with her father…it can feel nearly impossible.
That’s where the filmmakers behind the 1998 Sundance smash Wickedfound themselves at the beginning of the search for Ellie Christianson. It was a daunting task upon which rested the film’s prospects for success. Fortunately, there was one fifteen-year-old in New York who felt she just got Ellie. That was Julia Stiles. The teenage thespian began her career at eleven when she joined the experimental La MaMa Theatre Company. She made her TV debut in 1993 with the PBS children’s mystery show Ghostwriter and later guested on Promised Land and Chicago Hope. Stiles’ big screen bow came opposite Claire Danes and Jude Law in the romantic drama I Love You, I Love You Not and she subsequently played Harrison Ford’s daughter in the thriller The Devil’s Own, which also starred Brad Pitt. These early roles provided indispensable experience for the young actor, but she had never carried a movie before.
Below, watch Julia’s audition tape and read producer Frank Beddor and director Michael Steinberg remember the process that led them to the future star of 10 Things I Hate About You and Save the Last Dance.
(The following content has been taken from the “Wicked” Press Kit)
“The only condition Frank and I set in advance of making the picture was that we had to find the right Ellie,” said Steinberg. “I wanted an actress as close as possible to Ellie’s actual age. Ideally, she’s about 13 or 14 and I refused to have her played by a 26-year-old in pigtails.”
“I was very concerned,” remembered Beddor. “We didn’t have the time or the resources to do a national search for an actress to play Ellie. But luck had it that I was helping to produce a short film for acting coach Larry Moss and his DP recommended a young actress. This was the first I had heard of Julia Stiles. But based on this DP’s enthusiasm I sent a copy of the script to her new manager and Fed-Exed a copy to her in New York City.”
“A short time later we received a faxed letter from Julia,” added Steinberg. “It was hand-written and said she had read the script and felt she understood Ellie. She also sent an audition tape of herself with NYC background sounds running lines from the script with her mother. We liked her.”
“I flew her out to LA and she stayed at her manager’s house,” recalled Beddor. “Julia and I started improvising scenes for Michael and we knew - she was Ellie. She also had IT. Her hair and skin, everything about her, but especially her voice. Discovering new talent is one of the pleasures of low-budget filmmaking. I sensed I had an opportunity to help launch one of the world’s rare creatures - a real movie star. I again hired European fashion photographer, Eshel Ezer, who also shot Cameron Diaz for the There’s Something About Mary campaign. This would be Julia’s first professional photo shoot.”
Eshel recalled the shoot, “Flying back to Europe after photographing Julia I remember holding a Polaroid from one of the sets we shot and suddenly feeling overwhelmed with excitement. Looking at the picture I had shot just a couple of days earlier I was thinking about how Julia was just a kid but how strong her presence was and that she could really make it.” Beddor added, “People fell for Julia before seeing the film, this convinced me she could attract a crowd so I put her picture on the poster and her name above the title. I treated her like a star because I believed she would become one.”
Frank was right. Stiles is magnetic as Ellie. Her performance is a highwire act, a blend of strength and vulnerability that gives Ellie depth and lethality in equal measure. Stiles would go on to win Best Actress at the 1998 Karlovy International Film Festival in the Czech Republic and took Sundance by storm, prompting critic Joe Baltake to write that Stiles was “the darling of the 1998 Sundance Film Festival.” The heat generated by Wicked launched Stiles’ career, with lead roles in cult favorites 10 Things I Hate About You and Save the Last Dance complemented by scene-stealing turns in Dexter and the Bourne franchise. And it all started with a self-tape audition by a fifteen-year-old with her mom feeding her lines.
John Drain attended the University of Edinburgh before studying film at DePaul University in Chicago and later earned an MFA in Screenwriting from the American Film Institute Conservatory. John focuses on writing mysteries and thrillers featuring characters who are thrown into the deep end of the pool and struggle to just keep their heads above water. His work has been recognized by the Academy Nicholls Fellowship, the Austin Film Festival, ScreenCraft, Cinestory, and the Montreal Independent Film Festival. In a previous life, John created and produced theme park attractions across the globe for a wide variety of audiences. John keeps busy in his spare time with three Dungeons and Dragons campaigns and a seemingly never-ending stack of medieval history books.
All Things Alice: Interview with Ken Markman
As an amateur scholar and die-hard enthusiast of everything to do with Alice in Wonderland, I have launched a podcast that takes on Alice’s everlasting influence on pop culture. As an author who draws on Lewis Carroll’s iconic masterpiece for my Looking Glass Wars universe, I’m well acquainted with the process of dipping into Wonderland for inspiration.
The journey has brought me into contact with a fantastic community of artists and creators from all walks of life—and this podcast will be the platform where we come together to answer the fascinating question: “What is it about Alice?”
For this episode, it was my great pleasure to have Ken Markman, managing partner and CEO of KKM Global Brand Strategies, join me as my guest! Read on to explore our conversation, and check out the whole series on your favorite podcasting platform to listen to the full interview.
Frank Beddor Ken Markman, welcome to the All Things Alice podcast. I’m really appreciative and excited to have you on the show and to talk about your contribution to the vision that became The Looking Glass Wars franchise and brand. You’re the Manager Partner and CEO of KKM Global Brand Strategies and you've worked on some big movies. You worked on Empire Strikes Back and Scarface. You told me a couple of stories about Barbie when you worked at Mattel. You have all sorts of wonderful stories and you used these stories to help me see a vision for The Looking Glass Wars. But I cannot remember how we met or who introduced us.
Ken Markman I think I may be able to put a breadcrumb on the water for you. You were thinking that you needed to begin to put a corral around this omnibus piece that was sprawling outward and you wanted to be in the licensing business, as a lot of producers and IP owners did at the time. Around that period of time, I had been in very serious conversations with what was then the senior management of WMA. As a result of Edward Scissorhands and several filmmakers at the time who were turning pop culture storytelling into merchandise, the water cooler conversation became “Who's got your toy line? When is your t-shirt coming out?” It was no longer, “What Ferrari do you have?” Nobody cared about that. They wanted to know who had your toy line.
As a result of that, you reached out to a colleague of mine at what was then called LIMA, the Licensing Industries Merchandiser’s Association. You had spoken to a gentleman, I believe his name was Marty Brochstein and you were describing how you needed an entertainment guy, a merchandising guy, a marketing guy, all of that. Marty was very, very kind to have volunteered my name. I was thrilled that he did and I was even more thrilled that you picked up the phone and called. I remember sitting in your tobacco leather chairs in your office.
FB I love those chairs.
KM I love those chairs too and I have been wanting to get a set. My brother-in-law has a beautiful pair but he won't release them to me. But we sat there and I was completely mesmerized by the visual stimulus. That's a word that came out of Mattel. The visual stimulus is very often what we as the acquiring company would have to look at and how potentially toy-etic it could be, something you can play with. When I was over at Universal looking at Casper the Ghost, I turned to Mark Taylor, who was the Head of Development at Boy’s Toys at Mattel, and I said, “We got to pick this up. This is great. It's omnipresent. It's in culture. Every kid has a ghost story.” He goes, “Ken, how do you play ‘Ghost’?” I couldn't answer the question.
That was a telling tale of learning for me while at Mattel. Then when you and I talked, we saw all your card soldiers and Alice in Wonderland and the Mad Hatter and the magic mushrooms. It was a cornucopia of visual stimuli. You had spent an inordinate amount of time with the extraordinary artist Doug Chiang. I immediately fell into this immersive embrace of Alice in Wonderland, and in so doing, I think what percolated immediately into our conversation was not, “How do we play Alice?” but, “How could you claim this as your own?” Or was this just going to be another derivative story in a long merchandising tale? It became incumbent upon me to want to reinvent your story so that you, Frank Beddor, the author, could take control of what had been a classic story owned by somebody else and perhaps even other filmmakers.
That story then became the backstory or the real story, that was so compelling. I know when you told it at meetings at William Morris and CAA and others, invariably, somebody would lean over to me and say, “Ken, is that true?” I always responded, “If Frank said so, it has to be true.” So you became the legend, the mouthpiece, and the face of a new brand of a classic tale that had been mythologized and storied through folklore, which are the underpinnings of Joseph Campbell and the arc of the hero, and everything else from which you've learned and have excelled at.
FB I tried to answer all of the questions you had posed. It's funny for me to think back to 2002 when I met you because my book wasn't published until 2004 in the U.K. and 2006 in the U.S.
KM I knew her because I had been working on The Future is Wild with a documentarian from the U.K.
FB She wasn't a traditional agent. She was a book packager so she she knew all of the publishers. We went in and met all the different publishers and we took the approach that you do in the movie business. You go to the highest possible person and then trickle down. Turns out that in publishing, editors don't like that. Editors want to find the writers and then bring the writers to the publisher, so there was a bias against my book. It wasn't until I went to Egmont, where the publisher had just been given that job and she was previously the lead editor. She said, “You're going to be the last book I edit before I become the publisher.” The combination made it okay for her. Everybody else passed until I worked with Cally Poplak at Egmont and the book became successful.
But I want to go back to the point of our meeting in my office in Hollywood. One of the things I learned from working as a producer was the power of visuals, the visualization of the world. But I couldn't figure out in my mind how the card soldiers could unfold and march and be compact. I just didn't see it. So I asked Doug Chang, who had worked on Star Wars, to do that sketch. (Doug’s Card Soldiers Sketch) That was the first sketch I put on the wall. I loved it so much that I asked him about who he worked with on his movies that did environments. Then I hired Brian Flora, who did the Valley of Mushrooms and the Chessboard Desert. It became a little bit of an obsession for me to visualize the world while I was writing it, as a kind of collaborative effort between artist and author. Then you came into the office, one of the first people who came in who had a business perspective. It was sort of audacious to think, “I need some kind of branding or I want to build a franchise.” I knew I wanted to do that but I didn't have anything ready yet. Your reaction to the world and to what was already created was really inspiring. I thought, “Okay, I might have something here.”
Then you wrote your proposal, which started off with the perspective of branding mythology and pop culture. Then you wrote, “Cultural myth, storytelling, and reoccurring themes bond culture.” I was like, “Okay, what is he talking about?”
KM My wife is still asking me that same question.
FB Then you said, “The multi-generational social condition is called the Cultural Evolution Theory.” I would like you to explain to our listeners what your job is when it comes to branding stories in culture and trying to catch the zeitgeist and make it your own because basically, that's what you were telling me to do. Give me some examples.
KM You’re quoting some phraseology, which are the cornerstones of a book I have long tried to write, which I've shared in bits and pieces with you over these many, many, many years. It's called BrandCulture, and it comes from the multiple disciplines of my career, which are marketing, media, communication, corporate identity, design, and licensing. I just happen to be on the cusp of this epoch of culture right now, which we are living in thanks to the movie industry and other media that preceded it, where we're kind of losing words. Once they were the poetic juice of a culture and right now we're living in an experiential culture which is experienced visually. It's no wonder that social media has captured the next generation.
I was often asked by my students at UCLA, “How'd you get into the business?” And I said, “I love design. I love the expression of storytelling. If I could be in a business painting on the largest canvas in the world, putting words and pictures together, and make a living doing it, I would be very grateful, and that's what I did.” So as an English major on one side and a graphic design wannabe on the other, it was natural that logos, iconography, type, faces, messaging, hidden or overt, would become part of what I wanted to express in a brand.
Then along comes a gentleman from Sarah Lawrence College named Joseph Campbell. Many people who may be listening to this have read his books, such as The Hero with a Thousand Faces. If they haven't, they ought to pick it up or Google it and drill through some of his things. There's a wonderful book, The Power of Myth, authored by Bill Moyers of PBS, where he interviews Joseph Campbell and he gets right into the arc of the storytelling and arc of the hero.
These stories that are hardwired into our culture are expressed and handed down, interestingly enough, as memes. Not the memes we think of in the 21st century today, but memes that are passed on from one person to the next, as they were religiously. The Catholic Church was the biggest organization of theater 1,500-2,000 years ago. The equivalent of that theater today is no longer the Orpheum in Manhattan, nor is it Radio City, where it once was maybe in the 1930s, 40s, and 50s. Now it's the fandom that happens at a football stadium, where the collective catharsis of that experience is handed down. “Do you remember last year? It was fourth and three…” They remember it religiously and it gets passed down and it goes from father to son to grandson, all the way through.
We rode that wave through Hot Wheels, interestingly enough. I was at Mattel during the twenty-fifth anniversary and it was just at that time when dads were beginning to have sons. Just like my son-in-law had two sons and my two young grandsons, who are five and three, have now inherited my set of fifty Hot Wheels that I collected. What I'm saying is that memes are stories. Some of them are wildly exaggerated, and some of them are very explicit. Folklore becomes a mythology that gets passed on for hundreds and hundreds of years. Then if it's connected to iconography, whether it's a signature or a voice, a dance, a sound, or a musicianship that then gets placed against twenty-four frames a second, and turns into a motion picture or a theatrical play, this is what we're dealing with today
The experience economy is the expression of story. One of the things we learned through the study of human psychology is that people don't remember facts. If I gibberish to your audience today and say, “Well, you know, seventy-three percent of albinos never reach the age of fifty, it’s going to go right over their head.” If I said to them, “Have you ever seen an albino cat land on their feet after falling off a thirty-foot-high roof?” They'll remember the story. They're not going to remember the fact. So the very beginning of mythology and meme storytelling, which becomes legend and then expressed and changed over time and modernized through technology and media, is the art of storytelling. That's where you began with one of the great stories of all time, Alice in Wonderland.
One of the things I want to amplify about branding is that you begin with the story, and we wanted you to own your story. We wanted to carve it out as unique and separate. This happens whether it's BMW or Nike or Coca-Cola. If you and I were in Atlanta sipping a Coca-Cola in their corporate headquarters, and I said, “Wow, that was a great meeting with the management at Coca-Cola, wasn't it Frank? They got it right away.” If we went back and did a post-mortem and we asked Coca-Cola, they'd say, “Well, was it the meeting that was so good? Was it Frank's presentation? Or was it the Coke that we shared because we enjoy Coke and Coke is life?” That's how ingrained it has become over the last 120 years.
Advertising helps that to a great degree with BMW. “BMW, the ultimate driving machine.” It doesn't get any better than that. There's another axiom that falls into branding, and we talked about this early on, in order to own a brand, you want to be able to own a slice of the consumer's mind. You want to own a word. You want to own a phrase. You want to own a color in their mind. Red, indelibly, boom, Coca-Cola. Nike with the swish. It's simple. It's straightforward. It gets right to you. So when you think about BMW, “the ultimate driving machine,” it couldn't be any better than that. The axiom here is, you want to take the ordinary and make it extraordinary. That's what BMW did. It's an automobile. Starbucks, it's coffee, man. But the reality is, they've taken the ordinary and turned it into the extraordinary, and that's what branding is all about. You can take that experience and own it.
FB You tasked me with that when you simply said I should come up with a different spelling for the name Alyss, so I can own Alice. That was the moment I started thinking about broadening out from the names that Lewis Carroll had created and Disney had made familiar. So I changed the spelling of Alyss and the Mad Hatter became Hatter Madigan. Another thing you did that was also very, very helpful is you were posing this question of, “How do we suspend disbelief in this world, in this reality of a fantasy world?” Because The Looking Glass Wars is set both in Wonderland and Victorian England, that gave me a little bit of balance. I also was mindful of creating a Wonderland where people could suspend their disbelief. That was something you kept saying, “We need to be able to suspend disbelief so we can land and live.” As if Jurassic Park is actually in Hawaii, or Wonderland is just up the Five. If you drive long enough, you'll find yourself in Wonderland,
KM Exactly. How could you refute the simplicity of the idea that in a grain of amber, there was a mosquito that contained the DNA of a dinosaur? Only Michael Crichton, with his scientific background, could create it. He created the myth and he turned it into a story that became irrefutable. It's so believable that how could you not want to believe it? That's where metaphors and storytelling become this immersive fabric in the consumer's mind. That's how we started our story. There’s enough believability in the past to shape-shift, to use one of your words, shape-shift some of this so that you can take ownership of it and it becomes irrefutable.
FB You wrote, “A new reality for a new generation, borrowing from the past and making them their own, a form of branded history with its own images indelibly marked in the minds of a new global audience.” So I tried to convey that in a less Professor-ish way
KM I can't get away from myself.
FB That whole idea of creating a new reality, telling a story in a different way but taking ownership of it, I found when I started to go out into the marketplace with The Looking Glass Wars, that was happening. People felt grounded in the world and the story because, the premise of Lewis Carroll getting it wrong was easy enough to go, “Let me just turn my perspective on history and what I think I know.” The other thing that was really important was, that you said, “You have to change their perception of what they think Wonderland is right off the bat. You have to have the meta-story, the story behind the story.” So suddenly I had more work to do.
KM I remember that. It's really true. There are a couple of axioms that have always found their way into my thought process when working on a movie or any branding objective. You do want to suspend disbelief, which is what entertainment and storytelling do. You want to find the universal truth in a message that is not so far out of reach that you can not believe it, it's just beyond my grasp of reality as I know it. By penetrating your world, you're going to show me how I can conclude that reach.
To get back to Coca-Cola for a moment, If you ask Coca-Cola, they want to be, the refreshing drink at the end of your reach. They want their product, their brand, to be at the end of your reach, no matter whether you're at home, the movie theater, or a baseball stadium. A great storyteller and filmmaker does just that. You suspend disbelief. You can almost break through the fourth wall, but by sliding into that world, you will take me magically to a place heretofore I've never been permitted to go. So you become my guide, my sherpa, and through your storytelling, you're telling me how to survive, how to succeed.
That leads me to the universality of it. I was making a presentation to a number of licensees in Los Angeles and California. I was working on a show when I was at MTM called The Blanket Show. There was this Rastafarian sheep who would sit down and unfold a blanket that looked like a book and he would invite all the animals in the woods to sit around while he told a story. It was basically a practice and a runway for parents to help their little ones get off to sleep. At that time in the industry, you had to have 22 or 28 half-hours to be able to syndicate something so that the repetitive nature of viewership would incline a purchase decision for merchandise. I decided I couldn't do that because Bill Melendez, who famously did the Peanuts animated specials, was our animator. We couldn't afford to do 22 or 28 half-hours with Bill, so we decided to do one, but the one was going to be the reprise and the kickoff every night for The Blanket Show at home. So we started off with the Rastafarian sheep. We're jamming and the kids would be dancing the putting their jammies on. “What are we doing now, boys?” “We're going to go brush our teeth and comb our hair. Then we're going to put the music on and then Mom's going to come in and read the book and then Dad's going to shut off the light.” So my pitch to the licensees was, “Here's the universal truth, would you like to be in a business that happens in every household in the world, every night? That's a big business. Or you could take a risk and hope that Batman 47 is going to be as successful as the first two or three?” No, I'd like to be in the bedtime business.
So the book was born and the night-lights and music were created. We had everyone from Rosemary Clooney up and down the ladder singing nighttime songs and the universal truth was irrefutable. You don't want to be in a business that happens in every household around the world at least once a day? We had 35 licensees signed by the end of our first six months based on one half-hour. It was unheard of in the business, an absolute breakthrough.
The first question I invariably asked you was, “Why do you want to tell this story?” Whether you're talking to Alan J. Pakula or Steven Spielberg, both of whom I had the highest regard for when I worked with them, “What's the story you want to tell?” Then I get into that conversation with them, and I say, “What's the promise and what's the takeaway?” It becomes really simple. The promise may be a little abstract. If you ask Christopher Nolan what his promise was on his many movies, it would probably be a very esoteric and dense response, but nonetheless very curated. I then say, “What's the takeaway?”
I put it down to this, your audience just saw your movie in a theater. As they're leaving the theater, the lights and the smell of popcorn are going to hit them in the head. What is the thing they're going to say to their significant other or the person they just shared that experience with? What is that football fan going to tell his son? What's that boy going to tell his dad he just saw in the Viking game? What's the fandom response? That's the takeaway. That's your job as a filmmaker. What do I want them to say, and how does that correlate with the promise I'm going to give to them, so they can enter the sphere of my chapel, my theater of communication, and over the next hour and a half I can take them on the ride of their life? Whether it's at a theme park, in a church, in a synagogue, in a baseball stadium. Your job becomes, what's the takeaway?
FB I remember you posing that question and it was very challenging to reduce it to something personal. That was another aspect of our working together, I started thinking about the power of imagination and the power of getting back to your inner child, where you have wonder and curiosity and anything is possible. I thought, “I'm writing this book because of that. Then you asked, “How do you play imagination?” Then it became about good and evil and Joseph Campbell stuff and you're pivoting to, “What kind of mythology am I creating? What myth do I want people to walk away with that's different than good and evil?”
Now in this culture, as I think about what I'm working on, I think about what's real. Is this real or is it not real? That's powerful with Alyss, because people tell her that her backstory is not real, and she loses her belief in her history. The world is so divisive right now. Facts are no longer facts. With respect to Alyss, I thought it was a really powerful idea that people want to understand that this is real and they can hold on to this. It's not going to be pulled away.
KM That reinforces the etymology of “looking through the looking glass.” At what end of that am I seeing reality? Is it closer to me or further away? Is it giving me the right optics? There's subliminal messaging in that statement that you could run and almost code the brain to be able to say, “I'm looking through this lens. Which media am I experiencing today? What's truth, what's not truth?” If I'm sitting in a football stadium, I'm sitting with 100,000 people who believe in the same thing I do - the “Fandom of the Exalted Play.” We're going to be warriors and win this year's season. This cathartic experience economy is not new. It has lived for over 3,000 years. It's tribal. It's part of our DNA. We're hardwired to it. It's just that it has evolved as technology has evolved and as we have evolved ourselves as we need stories to survive.
FB When you were asking me, “How do you play imagination?” you went to Barbie and the playability of Barbie and how Barbie evolved. You were talking about the different ways you could manipulate the clothing and then the kinds of Barbies. I remember that it was about the playability and how successful Barbie had been and then it tapered off and they had to reimagine it. Now, with the movie having come out, it must have come full circle.
KM Barbie is a portal. She's like a magic wand. They can cut her hair. They can dress her, and once they take off her clothes, they’re impossible to get back on so you have the use-up rate, as we used to call it, in the cosmetics business. Barbie has a usability rate and it wasn’t about how long a girl plays with Barbie. It used to be from the ages of two to eleven, but that has diminished greatly. Eleven-year-old girls are gamers now. They don't play with dolls anymore. The compression of age and the acceleration of adulthood for young kids has grown exponentially. But what has also grown is the number of Barbies. There’s a Barbie astronaut, Barbie policeman, Barbie fireman, Barbie whatever. She's the portal for play. She has costumes, just like the characters in any one of your stories. That all enhances it. Then you have Barbie's house, Barbie's car, and Barbie's friends.
I wanted to give an homage to Hot Wheels for a bit, knowing that you have little babes in your family now. Have you ever noticed a Hot Wheels car just about perfectly fits the width of a little boy's hand?
FB I did not.
KM Do you know that General Motors and all the car manufacturers give Mattel a royalty-free agreement? If you want to do Jeep, if you want to do Corvette, royalty-free. Why? Because that's the next generation. “I'm playing with the Ferrari, Dad! Look at me! Look at me!” When your big sister or big brother is telling you what you can play with and what you can't play with, and your mom and dad are telling you what to do. I have no control over anything but I do have control over these big machines that make loud noises. I can control this. It’s the sense of empowerment and wonderment of imagination. That's how toys work.
FB I wanted to go back to the Jurassic Park story because Michael Crichton came up with that amazing universal premise and then with Steven Spielberg, they took ownership of dinosaurs to the point that nobody is ever going to take dinosaurs back. Do you agree with that?
KM One hundred percent they own dinosaurs. When I was at Mattel, we were looking at this secret property from Steven. We wanted to encourage Steven to do some color configuration so the dinosaurs could be branded. What that means is, that when Mattel did Mermaid Barbie other companies would go out and do a slightly smaller version of a mermaid and dump it into the Targets of the world and whatever. Meanwhile, we would be selling Barbie for $12 or whatever and they were selling theirs in a bin near the checkout line for four bucks. We were being cannibalized.
So mermaids, dinosaurs, puppies, all generic. But you can own it. And Steven looked like he was by the popularity and the size and the sound of his dinosaurs and the maturation of his technology, which he fused into his filmmaking brilliantly. We wanted a color distinction. I remember being in the meeting, going around with all the engineers, must have been in a boardroom of 25 people, and they convinced me we would not be able to go beyond a generic dinosaur and therefore we were afraid we would be cannibalized and our investment in the toy line would never pay off. Hasbro, smartly so, picked it up and made gazillions of dollars. That all down to the power of Steven Spielberg, the storytelling, the sound, the sensation. The rapture of that story was incredible.
But to your point, you want to own a character. You want to own everything about that and close it off so nobody can cannibalize you up and down the toy line by size, material, or channel of distribution.
FB As this podcast is called All Things Alice, what do you think the reasons are that Alice in Wonderland has lasted for so long in culture but hasn't been centralized in the way that Jurassic Park centralized dinosaurs?
KM You can't deny the story is ever present in culture. It's a little like Madeline. She kind of weaves in and out of culture. I think you have made it more accessible across media, which is what's necessary, as opposed to being a classic novel from an English writer steeped in a bygone era. But Alice has captured the imagination of adults and young children. If we can remember going back and saying, “What's real? Is it under my bed? Is it in my closet?” So I think Alice has the potential of wonder, fulfillment, of tripping the light fantastic. Of what is real and what is not? What is make-believe or not? Where does our imagination begin or end? It’s very tribal, watching the flicker of a fire in a cave and acting out the hunt of the day. These are truth serums that flow through our bloodstream. I think that is what has made Alice in Wonderland last for so long. It is a classic tale.
FB What was your first introduction to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland? Did you read the book? Did you see the movie?
KM It was reading the book, not watching the movie. I had, and have always had, a literary bent, whether it was Charles Dickens or Edgar Allan Poe. I was drawn to that period of dark things and things. I was always drawn to that sort of Nether World. With Alice, I identified with this unknown of possibilities.
FB What's under the bed?
KM What's under the bed? There were several toy lines I reviewed that were everything from dust bunnies to “What's under the bed?” You know, this mythology of “Who's in the shadows?” It plays to our deepest fears and grandest imaginations. We're hardwired to it.
FB This is a part of entertainment and culture that people don't really understand and you've done a really beautiful job of articulating it and the two aspects of your interest in life, literature and art. I can only encourage you, for all of us listening and out in the world, to finish that damn book of yours. Where are you on this book?
KM I have been talking about it relentlessly and just when I don't think I have anything to say about something that supercharges my jets, a conversation with somebody such as you ignites that fuse. I know there's something. I know storytelling and myth are part of our culture and have made what we have come to know as modern life for the last 3,000 to 5,000 years. I'd like to comment on it, to develop a rationale as to why people react a certain way. I've seen it and I know it to be the truth. That's why Alice is a perennial. She's not going away. It's beautiful and you will own imagination however you wish, to define it by color, by shape, by sound, by musical note, soon to be. Through your literary prowess, you will be able to turn these cards over, like your tarot cards, for the public to be able to penetrate the World of Imagination, as you want people to see it, because they may not recognize it by themselves. You are our Sherpa. You are our wise man at the fire telling us the story of Alyss, and that's the takeaway.
FB Well, we need your book. We need your book so all the storytellers can have their roadmap and we can leave the breadcrumbs behind for our audience. What was really enlightening about the conversation was the way you contextualized your experiences and contextualize how other artists have taken their ideas and brought them into pop culture, going all the way back to your story about being in a cave and telling the story of the day’s hunt. All of that is really a powerful road map for creators to own in their own stories. It doesn't have to be a franchise. It just needs to be you expressing your truth and that comes through the writing and the process. That's what you helped me to clarify. You asked strong questions, which helped me make strong choices.
KM Tell me, Frank, if you can give us a pre-teaser. Fragrance is one of the most powerful branding tools in the quiver, because of where the brain senses smell. It's in the center of the brain. It’s very, very powerful. So is music, and you seem to be on the cusp of something rather extraordinary because you could own a sound, just like Mission Impossible. It doesn't have to be an entire orchestra. It could be three notes, whatever.
Are you hoping that your musical will be able to bring a new audience to your franchise and the storytelling of Imagination? I wish I could have front-row seats. I can't wait. I want to be humming the song. Sammy Cahn has one of my favorite quotes. He was once asked, “What is one of the happiest things as a songwriter?” He said, “When I'm walking down Fifth Avenue and somebody is whistling one of my tunes.” I share that with you because you're not too far away, my friend.
FB That’s a great quote. My fantasy was that somebody would dress up as one of my characters for Halloween. When I was first writing my book, I didn't realize what a broad and beautiful world cosplay is and when I went to Comic-Con and people showed up in costumes based on my book, not a movie or a TV show, that was a highlight. But to answer your question, it’s timely because today I received a video from my composer, lyricist, and book writer, and they sang a little song to me, saying, “We're starting!” So, the process of The Looking Glass Wars musical has officially begun today.
KM Bravo. Congratulations.
FB Fingers crossed. I've been thinking about this for a long time because I was friends with Gregory Maguire and I went to see Wickedin San Francisco in 2003 and thought, “I wonder if I could do that with my book.” So I've been thinking about it for 25 years and here we are.
KM I was working on Curious George with Universal for a couple of years and the next up on their hit list they wanted me to undertake was Wicked. Then there was a management change and NBC spun off so the rest is history, as is often the case in Hollywood. But I would have loved to have gotten my hands around that.
FB My understanding is that Wicked was not even on their books. It was a miscellaneous item because originally it was developed as a movie. They couldn't make it as a movie and then they made it as this musical. Now, many, many years later, it’s one of the most successful musicals of all time and apparently, the movie is quite good from reports that I have heard. I'm excited to see it and maybe it'll rub off on folks thinking that The Looking Glass Wars and Alice in Wonderland could be the next.
KM We don't have to own the genre. We just want to participate.
FB Thank you so much for hanging out with us on the show today and sharing your wonderful stories and, most importantly, thank you for your contribution to my work that you initiated and so kindly imparted in 2002 and continued on through all these years. It has really helped me to create what I've created to date. So thank you, Ken.
KM That warms my heart. That has the most meaning. H.L. Mencken, the journalist, was once asked, “Why do you write?” And he said, “I write first, to make a living, and secondly, and more importantly, to win the respect of those I respect.” So your comments are very dear and important to me. Thank you so much.
The Cast of "Wicked" the Movie Talks Inspiration and Approach - Part 3
Wickeddebuted to rave reviews at the 1998 Sundance Film Festival, with John Cooper calling it an “exhilarating hybrid that continuously surprises and amuses” in the festival’s program. The thriller is a twisted tale of murder and incest with noir sensibilities and biting dark wit. The driving force behind the film is its stellar cast, who deliver complex, compelling, and sometimes shocking performances.
Directed by Michael Steinberg and produced by Frank Beddor, Wicked was Julia Stiles's breakthrough film. The then-16-year-old is electric as Ellie Christianson, a troubled teen who despises her mother and has an unhealthy obsession with her father. Stiles won Best Actress at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival in the Czech Republic, and her performance as Ellie led to her being cast in the teen classic 10 Things I Hate About You.
William R. Moses delivers a nuanced performance as Ellie’s father-turned-lover, Ben, while Chelsea Field is an excellent counterpoint as his doomed wife, Karen. Vanessa Zima exhibits uncommon depth for a child actor as Inger. Newcomer Louise Myrback is captivating as the Christianson’s au pair, Lena. Grammy-winner Linda Hart brings humor and soul as nosy neighbor Mrs. Potter, while screen veteran Michael Parks seems to step out of the ‘40s as the Bogart-esque Detective Boland. Melrose Place baddie Patrick Muldoon is a serial scene-stealer as quirky next-door neighbor Lawson Smith.
We recently digitized a treasure trove of onset interviews in which the cast discusses everything from their characters’ psyches to how they think audiences will respond to the incendiary subject matter.
This is Part 3 of a three-part series that will be a fascinating look at an actor’s process, how they handled the challenging material and the fulfilling experience of working on Wicked. Read Parts 1 and 2.
*Interviews have been edited for length and clarity.
On His Character Lawson Smith is an ex-football player. He has a knee injury and can't play football anymore. His wife leaves him and takes his son with her, and he happens to be having an affair with the next-door neighbor, Karen Christianson. Then Karen is murdered, and Lawson is definitely a suspect in the murder, as are many of the people here in Casa Del Norte.
What Attracted Him to Wicked It’s a throwback to Hitchcock but funny. It’s a very unique script. There’s a lot of cutting-edge stuff in it. Ellie and Lawson are the two outcasts in the film. She really doesn't like me too much, but we get to know each other better when I happen to be playing a nice game of night golf, which tells you a little bit about how strange my character is. It’s scary. It’s a dark comedy. It's really weird. And it's kinda bitchin’.
Working with the Cast Most of my scenes are with Julia, and she's incredible. What's so odd about her is that she's so mature for being 15 years old. She's much more mature than I am, and she's much more mature than my character. This works great in the script because her character really owns my character. So she's been fabulous to work with.
Chelsea Field and I had one scene together, and it was a blast. She was really helpful to me. Bill (William R. Moses) and I had have one big scene where we got to do a lot of improvisation and we both really went for it. We didn't rehearse much on purpose, and everything came out great. Michael Parks is my favorite. He's the veteran of the bunch. He plays the straight-and-narrow cop, and, of course, we're all suspects. I enjoyed working with him, and I learned a lot.
Working with Michael Steinberg Michael Steinberg is a fabulous director. He’s a pleasure to work with and keeps a happy set. He knows exactly what he wants, but he's also open to suggestions. It’s a real creative place to come to work, and he makes it that way.
Wicked Compared to Melrose Place It's totally different. You could say Melrose Place is a dark comedy, too. But it's two different kinds of things. The characters I play are totally different.
How Audiences Will Respond to Wicked The audience will know right away that it's a comedy. That gives you license to get away with stuff. That’s the part of the movie that's so edgy. When I read the script, I was like, “Wow, man.” I saw how it could work, but the way Michael has done it, he's really nailed it. It's better than I even imagined.
On Her Character Inger had a period of change when her mother died, and her whole earth was shattered. Inger is a weird girl who is very into her own world. She's a pretty cool person. Inger is a tag-along to Ellie and wants to be her. There's a lot of tension between her mother and father. Inger gets a lot of attention from her mother, but her father doesn't pay that much attention to her. She wants both of her parents to love her the same and not have favorites. She likes Lena, the nanny, a lot. Lena is Inger’s second favorite to her mother.
Coming From a Family of Actresses My other two sisters are actresses, too. My older sister, Madeline, has been in The Hand That Rocks the Cradle, Mr. Nanny, and The Nanny. She's been in almost every “nanny” thing. All three of us did a student film together. That was fun. We got to kiss a boy and bury our dad. My younger sister, Yvonne, is a recurrent on ER and she was in The Long Kiss Goodnight with Geena Davis and Samuel L. Jackson. She’s also been in Heat, ‘Til There Was You with my other sister, and Bed of Roses.
Her Audition My sister and I both read for the part. I went into the audition first, and I thought I did really great. Then my sister went in, and I heard these belly laughs. I was like, “Oh, man, she got it because they didn't laugh at all for me. She took another role from me!” When she came out and told me the story she told them, I could’ve killed her because it was a really embarrassing story. But then, a couple of weeks later, I got the part. I rubbed it in her face, and then she felt bad. But now we’re even.
Working with the Cast William’s really nice. He's always playing practical jokes on everybody. He's really a fun guy. Julia's very intelligent and really fun. She's a lot older than me, but she's like a real sister to me. She's really cool. It's a family off the set and a family on the set, too.
Working with Director Michael Steinberg That's been great. He's really fun. He takes a lot of angles, and he has to have them perfect, but otherwise, it's great.
The Transformation Her Character Undergoes Through the Film I start off dressing really cutesy, and then when my mother dies, I become this funky girl with mismatched socks and clothes.
How Audiences Will Respond to Wicked Shocked. I think they will like it. It's a very artistic film. It's gonna be great.
On Her Character Karen is like every American mother trying to parent an unruly teenager. I was interested in this script in the first place because I think it’s everybody's story. Both daughters go a little further than the average teenager or average 10-year-old. They act out what a lot of kids don't act out, thank goodness. But all of the characters are based in a lot of truth. Karen is going through the frustration of walking the line between being a good mother and wanting to strangle her teenager. It can be really painful for both a 14-year-old and a mom of a 14-year-old.
Working with Michael Steinberg It’s been really great. He's one of the most artistic directors I've ever worked with. He really goes for what is there in the moment and what all the actors are bringing to it with our different tones; he really embraces all of that. It’s great to be in that environment.
Working with Julia Stiles She's great. Julia's a lot of fun to work with. Even in our first rehearsal, I could tell the sparks were there. She looked at me, and I looked at her, and I thought, “Okay, the war is on.” She's really a lot of fun. I love her. She's a very professional, very talented actress.
Karen and Ben’s Relationship Ben and Karen are on different pages. Karen's over it. They’re together physically, but she's moved on mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. She's given it as many chances as she can. She's hit her breaking point.
Karen and Ellie’s Relationship Karen and Ellie can’t get along for the same reason most teenage girls can't get along with their moms. It's part of their growing and establishing a separate identity. A lot of mothers misinterpret that adolescent time for a girl. I can remember being that age and just fighting horribly with my mom. One minute saying, “I hate you. I hate you. I hate you.” Then, the next minute, “I love you. I love you. I'm sorry.” My poor mother. I don't know why Ellie takes it one step further than everybody else; you'd have to ask Julia. But from my perspective, she's just being a typical teenager.
The Prevalence of the Electra Complex I think it's much more common in our society than we acknowledge or give any attention to. I believe a lot of girls have that. I had a really strong relationship with my father and a sort of love affair in some ways.
The Importance of Comedy in Wicked Wicked’s a little bent. It has to have a little bit of the lighter edge, the comedic relief because the issues it’s dealing with are so close to home. I don't think a lot of people are going to be able to deal with it without that little bit of goofiness.
How Audiences Will Respond to Wicked To me, it's a crapshoot. I have no idea. It's beautifully shot, and the production design is amazing. However, the material may be more than what people are comfortable with because it hits on many issues that are very uncomfortable for many people.
Even people who have not actually lived through something like this have somehow experienced those feelings. Just having those feelings can be shameful or hurtful. Part of the problem in our society is that we're not paying attention to the fact that those kinds of feelings come up in people, and it's the act of acting on them or not acting on them that should be addressed.
All Things Alice: Interview with Mary Pat Matheson of the Atlanta Botanical Garden
As an amateur scholar and die-hard enthusiast of everything to do with Alice in Wonderland, I have launched a podcast that takes on Alice’s everlasting influence on pop culture. As an author who draws on Lewis Carroll’s iconic masterpiece for my Looking Glass Wars universe, I’m well acquainted with the process of dipping into Wonderland for inspiration.
The journey has brought me into contact with a fantastic community of artists and creators from all walks of life—and this podcast will be the platform where we come together to answer the fascinating question: “What is it about Alice?”
For this episode, it was my great pleasure to have the President and CEO of the Atlanta Botanical Garden Mary Pat Matheson join me as my guest! Read on to explore our conversation, and check out the whole series on your favorite podcasting platform to listen to the full interview.
Frank Beddor I’d like to welcome Mary Pat Matheson to the All Things Alice podcast. She is the President and CEO of the Atlanta Botanical Garden. Mary Pat, so nice to meet you.
Mary Pat Matheson Nice to meet you too, Frank
FB I understand we both spent some time in Utah.
MPM Yeah, I lived there for 30 years. What took you to Utah?
FB I was on the U.S. Ski Team and I lived there for about five years. I had a condo in Salt Lake City and I drove up to Park City and Snowbird.
MPM You can't live in Utah and not ski. It’s a long winter. We were in Park City for about 11 years before we moved to Atlanta.
FB Wow. I bet that was a big adjustment.
MPM It was changing climate, culture, geography, flora, fauna, you name it. It was a big change, but I was I was ready. I'd been at Red Butte Garden and Arboretum in Salt Lake for 20 years and my husband and I talked about it and decided it would be a good thing for my career. Atlanta has turned out to be such a great city. We really love the city and the diversity. My husband is retired now and we have a farm in Athens, Georgia, where the University of Georgia is, so he gets to stay there all the time and I go back and forth. We need that outdoors. We don't get the mountains and the snow in Atlanta.
FB That's a nice combination. I sort of stopped skiing when I moved to Los Angeles but then I had kids and I had to teach the kids to ski so I fell back in love with it. I drive up to Mammoth a lot. I really miss the mountain life. Sun Valley was one of my favorite places. Park City has exploded.
MPM It's nuts. We kept our house for three years after we moved here and then we decided it was too hard to deal with the rental and we sold it. Now we look back and go, “Well, that was a dumb idea.” But I don't know if I would be happy there anymore. Most of our friends who stayed in Park City have left. It's just exploded. Park City Mountain Resort was owned by a family for all those years and then somebody forgot to renew their lease with the U.S. Forest Service and Vail Resorts and signed up for the lease immediately. So the family lost the resort and it's now owned by a huge conglomerate. It’s just not the same as it once was. And I do think after 11 years, eight or nine months of winter gets old.
FB My friends who lived there all had to move down to Salt Lake City because they couldn't afford to live there anymore. It’s like with a lot of the ski resorts where all the big money from out of town comes in and then all the locals don't have anywhere to live and have to commute 45 minutes or an hour. It's nothing like it was when I was there, which was in the 80s and 90s.
MPM You were there in the heyday. Even better snow then, too.
FB It was amazing back then. I also was there at the start of the Sundance Film Festival, before it became such a big market. It was very, very charming.
MPM Before it was Sundance it was the U.S. Film Festival and they sold it to Robert Redford five years after it began. But a friend of ours, Lori Smith, ran the independent part, which is what took off, of course. It's not even a shadow of its former self. We loved it when it was like it was when you were there.
FB I'm always interested in folks who are exploring Alice in Wonderland in all the different mediums. When I first started writing my book, The Looking Glass Wars and I started looking into how deep Alice runs in pop culture, I was amazed. When I came to Alice in Wonderland gardens it surprised me. It seemed like an outlier. Yet, here I am talking with you about this big exhibit you have in Atlanta and the New York Botanical Garden is doing its own Alice exhibit.
Your exhibit at the Atlanta Botanical Garden is called Alice’s Wonderland Returns. When was the first incarnation?
MPM That is a very good question. This is the second iteration of it with some new work, the Singing Flowers. I believe it was on display in 2019 and into 2020. We've done work with Mosaiculture, out of Canada, going back to 2013 when we did another imaginary world show with giant cobras and then we did one with a big dragon. Alice is the newer one.
What we found when we did it in 2019 and 2020 is Alice has a cult following. Whether you're a little tiny kid or an 80-year-old woman, you have a story about Alice in Wonderland. You have a special place in your heart for Alice. It touches almost all dimensions of life. I was out in the garden during the first show and I saw this woman. She was about 50 years old and had a little dress on, and she was holding the map. I said, “Can I help you?” And she said, “Well, I think I've seen the entire show, but I'm looking at the map because I flew here from Denver to see the Alice in Wonderland show and I don't want to leave in case I miss anything.” Then she said, “See, I wore my Alice dress, and she twirled around, and her dress had Alice in Wonderland all over.” It was hilarious. She hadn't missed anything. I walked her through the whole show but that's the way this show touches people in a way no other show we've ever done has touched people.
FB People like dressing up and doing cosplay with Alice. Do you encourage and invite that?
MPM Every Thursday night from May to the end of September is “Cocktails in Wonderland”. We encourage people on Thursday night to dress up so that's really worked with the cosplay people. Even people who don't know much about cosplay still dress their kids in Alice in Wonderland stuff.
FB Is there a signature drink?
Mary Pat Matheson
It’s the “Queen's Gambit,” a spiced apple Margarita.
FB That sounds lovely and delicious. Might have to try that.
I saw the photograph of the singing flowers, and I'm a big fan. I've used the singing flowers in a number of story elements in my work. So tell me about coming up with which kind of flowers you're using in this installation.
MPM We work with a creative partner in Montreal. The art form you’ve seen images of is called Mosaiculture. Horticulture and mosaic together. Some of the older instances include manor houses in 19th century Europe would have a clock on a hill all planted with plants. That’s where this concept of mosaic and plants came together. In the late 1990s, the City of Montreal wanted to do something really special that was very green for the millennium, for two the year, 2000 and they came up with the idea of creating a nonprofit.
Lise Cormier became the head of this new nonprofit, Mosaïcultures Internationales de Montréal, which worked with the province and the City of Montreal to create a major international competition. Cities around the world picked symbols of their cities or heritage or mythology from their countries and created big, beautiful images out of this topiary work. Most of them were made in Montreal but the concepts were created in different parts of the world. The show started in the summer of 2000 and I think they had 3 million guests. It was huge. Now they do shows in Canada every couple of years. I had already told them I wanted to be the first garden to showcase their work when they were ready to do something in the United States.
Lise is the creative, inspirational person behind it all. She has a phenomenal team but she is the artist who takes the Alice story and turns it into these figures. When we told her we wanted to do Alice in Wonderland, Lise dove into the movie. She dove into the book. She studied, studied, studied, and she came up with the Singing Flowers, which flowers to use, and even what music to play based on what she got out of the book. I talked to her three days ago and we are going to do the show again next year, because it is so popular, and the Singing Flowers have some references in the book to an understory of blue flowers. So she's encouraging us to look at a blue tapestry under the Singing Flowers next year. That's the kind of detail Lise gets into. She's just so talented. Then we turn her concepts and the frames over to our horticulturists, and she has horticulturists who give us a plant list. What will grow in Montreal versus Atlanta is very different, of course, so we evaluate the plants beforehand so we know what will work here. Our horticulturalists have done this enough that they know what varieties of wet plants will do better here than they will in Montreal and vice versa. So we pick plants that will be as close to what they recommend so that the pieces look the way they're sketched out when we’re designing the show.
FB I really encourage listeners to check out the website and take a look at some of the photographs because these oversized books are so gorgeous. The Cheshire Cat installation is one of my favorites. The chessboard and the card soldiers are another spectacular exhibit. But tell me how a visitor would experience the Alice in Wonderland story walking through the exhibit. What story elements do you emphasize?
MPM We have interpretive signs that talk about some of the pieces and a lot of people want to know what the plants are. But then we have a cell tour, so you can hear from horticulturalists talk about the pieces. But we do a very light interpretation because we don't feel like it's our job to interpret the book because everyone has different perspectives on what it means and what it meant to you as a child. We want you to bring your imagination. Often people go home and reread the book after they've seen the show.
FB That’s pretty inspiring. I bet a lot of English teachers are happy with you. You have the original text but you brought up the Disney movie. Are you talking about the Tim Burton version or the animated version? What parts of either of those are in the exhibit?
MPM The book is really the inspiration for most of the show. But we all have been touched by those two movies. Everyone's seen them. The good news is a lot of guests are still reading the book to their children. It's timeless and that's really great. Not everything in this world we live in, especially with books, is timeless.
It's a trio. It's the two movies you mentioned, Tim Burton and Disney, as well as the book itself, and then just all the iterations of it. We've got a really creative visitor center manager and he and his team have done this really beautiful fan of playing cards over the Alice in Wonderlandtable in our gift shop. It's just filled with all this stuff like the Red Queen and the White Rabbit and, of course, the Cheshire Cat. There's so much you can buy that's Alice-driven too. It's a real opportunity for retail. But I just think it's the trio that really has made this so inspiring to other people. But it's the book that inspired the creation of our show.
FB Why do you think Alice keeps reemerging as an important cultural touchstone for people after all these years? What are the ingredients that make this story last?
MPM That's a really hard question. I think there is a part of the book that touched people as children without a doubt. The book is pretty idiosyncratic.
FB Extremely. A lot of interpretations. You can think of it as a whimsical story or you can think of it as a horror story.
MPM It’s like we're terrified and infatuated with snakes because they're interesting, but they are scary. Alice is not a snake, but Alice is interesting because it is beautiful, mystical, and charming. Who doesn't want to shrink and meet the White Rabbit, right? But do you ever get out and do you ever return to your life? Then there's the whole layer of, “Was Alice really about drugs?”
FB That came out of the 60s and 70s, for sure.
MPM I do not doubt that some people come here because they're interested in that.
FB Are there magic mushrooms in this garden?
MPM All your listeners should not come here looking for mushrooms. People do eat a few before they arrive, I wouldn't be surprised. That part of it comes back when you're in your 20s or 30s. It's a generational thing. When you're a child, it's all beautiful imagery and you don't understand it, but you're enthralled. Then when you're older you’re thinking about it and you're not really sure what the meaning is. It's got a lot of depth to it, and that's part of the interest.
FB It always surprises me how much Alice is in culture. People forget when they say something like, “We've stepped into a looking glass, or we're down a rabbit hole now and there's no logic, and facts are not facts.” Alice keeps coming up in every conversation and people just don't realize this has all come from this original story.
MPM Wasn't it Jefferson Airplane, “Go ask Alice, When she's 10 feet tall”?
FB I love that song.
MPM You can't help but love that song. It’d be hard to figure out another book that has had that kind of an impact on us as humans. What about Wizard of Oz?
FB Have you ever thought about doing The Wizard of Oz? That seems like a possibility.
MPM I'll tell you the dream of ours. This is not a promise to your listeners, because we have a lot of work to do, but we would love to partner and do Where the Wild Things Are. The Maurice Sendak book is so important, so fanciful, so uplifting. He cared about literacy and children, which we care a lot about, we do a lot of reading programs in the garden. But also because Where the Wild Things Are would be such a good way to interpret the work that we do in Plant Conservation and Biodiversity. We have 35 scientists working in our Center for Plant Conservation doing work all over the southeastern United States, in the Caribbean, and worldwide to try to save magnolias in parts of the world like Asia and South America. But telling that story to guests is hard. Biodiversity and why we should care about plants is a hard concept for people to understand, because plants are everywhere, right? They're not going to be everywhere. They're disappearing and, as they go, so go the insects and the birds and the animals. If we could do Where the Wild Things Are, you'd have another story that has multiple stories to go with it, but that one hits squarely in the mission zone. That's our fantasy right now. We'd like to do that one day.
FB That's a really strong choice. We'll put our collective energy towards that happening because people don't realize how many plants we're losing every year just as they don't realize the number of animal species we're losing. Obviously, those things go hand in hand.
MPM When we were little our parents would drive to Florida or California for vacation, every three or four hours we'd stop for gas, and my dad would get out and clean the windshield because of the bugs. When was the last time anybody had to clean bugs off a windshield? Where did the bugs go? If the bugs are gone, what are the birds eating? Well, let's see, 9 billion birds have disappeared. A lot all those things are pollinators for plants. So there go the plants. That's the simplest way to understand that web of life and the importance of biodiversity.
FB It’s really important and it's great that you're doing this for children because it's their generation that's going to suffer. They're the young folks who need to really stand up for climate change and the difficulties we're facing. We just had a heat wave here and all these plants shriveled up so quickly. I hadn't seen that before in a matter of a couple of days. There are so many places on the planet where we're losing all of this diversity.
MPM Your sequoias are totally endangered. All those little plants, like little orchids in the rainforest that we're losing, it’s a big loss. And you're right, the kids are going to have to inherit the mess we leave behind.
FB The important thing is, people can't take all that on, so you need to entertain and show them the beauty of what’s at stake. That's why I want to encourage people to go to the exhibit. If it's not this year, then go next year. There's so much creativity infused in this thing, the fairy tale aspect within the context of looking at these iconic characters and seeing the plants that make up the stylistic choices. It’s mind-blowing you can do this combination of the mosaic and the plants and create so much beauty. Then when you're looking at that beauty, someone's listening and you're talking about where these plants are disappearing. People can hear that because they're having it coming in. When I do school events and talk about my books, I spend so much time getting the kids on my side and I do not talk about writing and the difficulties of writing until the very end. So the teachers are happy with me but they're already on my side. So they can hear you, and that sounds like what you're doing.
MPM That's so true. Years ago, we did some branding work and, as a part of that, we wanted to analyze whether we could lead with the environmental message. What we learned is that people care about that message but they don't come for that. They come for social experiences with family, friends, and loved ones. But once they're here, they want to understand more. They don't want to have it drilled into their head but they would like to learn more. That's what we can do with the magic of this show.
We have the largest orchid center in the United States. There are orchids from a quarter of an inch big to eight feet big that are just spectacular with these incredible flowers and unique mechanisms for pollination. They're just as wonderful as the Mosaiculture Alice show. So we get you here for the bigger exhibit but then the experience is much deeper than that.
When we talked a minute ago about what to do about all these challenges and biodiversity, I always like to lead people with this idea. I know you probably don't have a lot of lawns in California, right? But we certainly do here. But for people who have lawns, planting pollinator gardens and not spraying herbicides and pesticides, you can still have a lawn with a little bit of messy weeds in it if you mow it often and really encourage wildlife to come back and insects to thrive. That's something anybody who rents or owns a home can do that can make a big difference in the world we live in today. I want people to think about what they can do without feeling like we're just beating our heads against the wall and can't make a difference. We can in our own small way.
FB It's really true. Last year, I got married in my backyard so I ended up planting and I put in a little water feature. To your point, I'm shocked by the number of butterflies and dragonflies showing up. Insects are all over the place and now the neighborhood raccoons, skunks, and deer are coming. I can really feel what you're talking about. It happened within a very short time, 12 months, but it has a lot to do with those instincts.
Being president and CEO of the Atlanta Botanical Garden, what are some of the things you do day in and day out that excite you? What are the challenges of running this organization?
MPM Number one, I love nature and I love plants so I get to run an organization that's driven by that. If I'm having a hard day or there's an issue, I can walk in the garden. Yesterday I went to see the Alice show and went to look at the orchids. You can't come back to your office feeling bad after you've done that. You just can't. The same is true for everybody else who's listening. If you can't walk through a botanical garden when you're having a hard day, just go for a walk in the park. Go for a walk in the woods. It lowers blood pressure, stress, and anxiety, and we know our children are suffering from that at huge levels.
When gardens were started hundreds of years ago, some were started for wealthy manor houses in Europe. In fact, in the 1700s and 1800s, the really wealthy and royalty in England and other places would send orchid thieves to South America. That was where the orchid rape happened, and they stole them out of the out of the rainforest. If they took a million orchids on a ship back to England, they would be lucky if 100 survived. Terrariums were finally built so they could keep the orchids alive. So some gardens started with wealth. Some started as medicinal gardens, particularly monasteries that needed medicinal plants to help people heal. Then a lot of gardens started with universities as science collections, all of which are good, and many of those are still here today.
But today, public gardens exist for lots of reasons, not just a narrow few. Forty-five years ago the big gardens would have lots of guests, but not all gardens have that. But because the world we're in today is disconnected from nature, and the globalization of our populations, we have more people coming to botanic gardens now than at any time in history. So this is our century. The bad news is that it means the environmental issues have gotten so severe that people do want to come for other reasons. But the good news is we're the havens for our community. That was proven in 2020 during Covid. People flocked here. We were the only cultural destination in Atlanta, along with the zoo, that was open. We had to limit numbers through the front door but we were the place where people came to preserve their sanity and feel safe. So I love that this is a time when gardens are thriving and more important than ever.
I also love to raise money and build so we're in a $150 million capital campaign. We want to build another eight acres of gardens that will be connected to the ones we have now. But the real catalyst for this is that the new front door for these gardens is going to be on the Atlanta Beltline, which is a 22-mile connected loop around the city for walking, biking, and scooters that will be done in 2030. It's changing the way we move through our community. We are going to be the cultural destination on the Beltline. So my comparison is, that it's like the Whitney Museum in the High Line Park. We're going to be the Whitney on the Beltline. We're going to have one garden and two front doors. One for people arriving with cars and one for people on foot or biking. That is great in terms of looking at sustainability and how we get our guests here. We're very excited about that. I think we're right at about $120 million raised and we'll break ground next year.
FB How do you go about raising that kind of money?
MPM I love to raise money and I love America and its philanthropy. We are unique in the world in that our tax system was set up a long time ago to benefit people who wanted to support nonprofits and, as a result, we have some of the most successful nonprofits in the world. You look at Atlanta, where there is really no public funding, very little from the city and the count, and none from the state to speak of whereas other big cities like St. Louis, San Francisco, and New York, have public money for nonprofits and cultural institutions. We don't here but we have a vigorous, wonderful cultural community of museums and the garden and the Center for Puppetry Arts, which has the most famous puppets in the world.
All of that is because of the generosity of this community and America's culture of philanthropy. So we have big foundations, generous individuals, and very generous corporations that support the work that we're doing. That's number one. Number two is to raise the kind of money that we're doing right now. It takes a bold vision. Everyone in this city knows how important the Atlanta Beltline is to changing the city. The first two miles that opened, eight or nine years ago, there was immediately $4-5 billion worth of development along it with apartments, condos, and restaurants. Our section will be the green section because it goes through Piedmont Park and then to the garden through a quiet part of the city and it connects neighborhoods.
I think you have to have a bold vision that makes sense for the community. That it's more than the nonprofit. It's about, how you make Atlanta a better place to be for the people who visit here or live here. Then you have to deliver on the promise and those are really the key things in fundraising, at least in the cultural community. I think it's much harder in social services.
The BeltLine, to their credit, is doing a lot of work on affordable housing to make sure that it's not all these really expensive apartments and condos. I think private equity owns about 40% of the real estate in Atlanta and that's really driven up housing prices here and in every city in the United States. But the Belt is doing a really good job as is the city. We have a mayor who's all about affordable housing to try and turn that around. That's not our focus or our mission but we want to make sure because you have to pay admission to come into the garden or you can be a member. You could buy a dual membership for $120 and come in for free year-round. But we're also going to do free programming outside the enclosed area in a courtyard garden that we're building, where we can do Tai Chi, or we can talk about pollinator gardens. We can let people take an herb garden home to their little apartments. We want to do things that are about equity as well.
I love the Huntington. When I first saw the Cactus Garden as a young horticulturist, I think I cried. I was just so moved by it.
FB To your point, certainly, during the pandemic, it was a safe place to socialize but I've also noticed that even on weekdays, when I would expect it to be quiet, I show up and the parking lot’s completely full. It’s such a spectacular garden but it's also just a place to get away and have a walk. I was recently reading the biography of Steve Jobs and he talks a lot about going on walks with friends or co-workers to talk through problems and to get away from it. That's the amazing thing about going on a walk and then if you're in nature, things come into your mind that you just don't expect because you're looking one way, you're thinking about something else, and then you see an animal, a plant, or a cactus. You're like, “Wait, where did all this come from?”
MPM When I go there, I never go inside. I just stay in the garden the entire time. It's so well maintained and so beautiful and so diverse but it's interesting when you were talking about taking a walk. I hope your listeners all know how walking out in nature can help you solve problems and de-stress, and we need to get our kids to do that more often, or just go play. But we forget that human beings are animals. We're an elevated animal and so being in nature, where we are hearing animals and smelling things, that's what we're supposed to do. That's what our bodies are craving. We've just forgotten that in our busy lives.
FB If you combine that with Alice in Wonderland, you're combining nature and what it was like to have a childhood imagination and wonder, which is one of the things you were talking about earlier. So you’re bringing those things together, the wonder of story, the wonder of character, the wonder of whimsy and fantasy. Bringing it back to the Alice’s Wonderland Returns exhibit, can you bring us back to your exhibit and highlight some of the areas visitors really admire and talk to you about the feedback you're getting so we can have our little walk through our Alice in Wonderland on this podcast?
MPM When you walk into the garden from the visitor center, immediately, there are two books and they are 18 feet tall. These are huge and they're made out of steel with fabric and soil and then they're completely planted. The letters are the only things that are metal. Everything else is a plant that makes the binding of the book and the front of the book, and that starts you off. Everyone wants their picture taken in front of that because when you go home with your photos and show them to your family, you begin with the story, which is Alice in Wonderland.
Then you go into the show and you walk over where our restaurant, Longleaf, is, and when people are walking somebody inevitably will look up to the left, and on top of a stone wall when you're coming around a curve, is the Cheshire Cat. He's just up there looking down on you like he should be. It’s usually a child who finds it because they're always looking. Moms are talking, dads are talking, friends are talking, and then they all stop and they all have to have their pictures of it. Then you come to a water feature, which is at the end of a grand alley of crape myrtles, and in this water feature is Alice herself, and Alice is spinning because she's going down the rabbit hole.
FB Oh, that's spectacular. And you have some teacups right near her as well, right?
MPM There are two reasons for that. One is the reality of the book, you have to spin to go down the rabbit hole. The other is more practical. It's a 360-degree fountain. The reason is, that she's planted. There are trees here and sunshine on the other side. The plants all enjoy the sunshine in the shade. Otherwise, on one side of her, the all plants would get long and lanky in the shade and the sun is nice and tight and beautiful. So we had to turn her for photosynthesis. It's both the science and the art.
Everyone stands and looks at her because the teacups are there and she's got cards on her and then she's falling down the rabbit hole. It's just so funny. I saw a Chinese couple there this spring when we had just put it in and they were so excited. Then you go over to the Red Queen, who is probably 20 feet tall and pretty intimidating as she's supposed to be. But what is she doing? Croquet. Remember what the croquet ball is? It’s the hedgehog.
FB That's very clever. That's fun.
MPM The hoop is one of the card soldiers. They have to bend to the Red Queen’s will so they have to bend over so they create a hoop for the hedgehog. Now you're just laughing. You're absolutely delighted. You're seeing details you never expected to see in the show. Of course, every moment is a photo op for family, friends, or whoever you're with. Then you go around another corner and you can hear music, or sometimes it's quiet, and the music doesn't come on until you trigger it, because it's triggered by movement. That's where the Singing Flowers are. They're 15 feet tall, and they're 12 of them, all along a linear pathway. They're singing this wonderful song to you like little cherubs and you're more mystified than anything. “Where did the music come from? What are these things?” It’s so delightful.
Then you end up in the Skyline Garden, which is wonderful because you've got this really beautiful urban view of Atlanta. You're above a huge water feature in a courtyard and looking down is the White Rabbit. The White Rabbit is about 25 feet tall and he is sitting in an umbrella, and he’s all white with a pink nose and whiskers. He's got his top hat on and there's a clock on him because he's always keeping time for when she has to leave. He is just awesome. I should note we keep the White Rabbit for the holiday light show so he gets lit up during the holidays. He is just a charming part of our holiday light show, which, last year, ABC News declared the best light show in America. We won the Light Fight competition. It's a fabulous light show.
We have a canopy walk in our woodland and it's 45 feet off the ground with a 120 or 140-foot deciduous tree forest, we hang 1,500 light strands from nets in the trees, and they're all choreographed to music. It's fabulous. Then next to the White Rabbit on the lawn is the chess set you talked about and they're all the playing cards and the horses and the knights of the chess set. There's a great photo op in front of it and we have so many wonderful photos of families and children and friends together. People spend a lot of time there because there are so many pieces on the chess set. The lawn is a checkerboard lawn. It's a delightful show with the whimsy, the humor, and the delight from the book. And whenever you blow scale up like that, it's so surprising to people. They love it.
FB I imagine these kids coming through. They're looking up and their necks are arching back, looking all around them at all these huge exhibits and characters. It's pretty remarkable.
MPM I love it. Some of them come so many times. They lead people around because they know it so well.
FB Having this conversation with you and you describing the exhibit was so compelling. It is very clear to me why you're the president and the CEO, and why you've raised $120 million of the $150 million. I want to get on a plane and come see that right now based on the way that you described it and the love, creativity, and care that is communicated through you in terms of the work that you're doing in this incredible exhibit. I really appreciate the time and your sharing your passion for Alice in Wonderland and this beautiful garden you oversee.
MPM It's my pleasure, Frank. Come anytime you want. We'd love to have you.
FB So, let me just ask you a question, if you were to describe your husband as a character from Alice in Wonderland?
MPM He can be really funny or kind of introverted when he wants and he's very creative sometimes. Right now, he works in the garden with the speaker tied to his waist to listen to the Braves games. Maybe he's the Mad Hatter.
FB He'd have to be for being such a Renaissance person.
Thank you again. It was a terrific conversation. Thank you.
Amazing Alice in Wonderland Pumpkin Carving Ideas for 2024
Halloween, aka the Met Gala for people with Jack Skellington tattoos, is right around the corner. With the 31st fast approaching, we must prepare a few things. First, we single folks need to come up with the PERFECT costume. Personally, I believe in striking a balance between funny and attractive. If you lean too hard on either side, you look like you’re trying far too hard, and the opposite actually happens. That’s right, going as any character portrayed by Johnny Depp is uninspired, and we all know you did it just to be hot.
Second, you must get candy for the kids lest you suffer the wrath of an egging. I guess egging houses doesn’t really happen anymore. I blame TikTok for stealing the joy of ovum-based vigilante vandalism from our youth. Without egging, how will houses that hand out fruit learn to stop pushing their hippy ways? Finally, and most importantly, you have to decorate your house. Whether you like to go all out and create a full haunted house or prefer the minimalist approach, there is one decoration that will always appear: the jack-o-lantern.
Frank allows me the privilege of coming out of his basement on one condition. I carve the pumpkins. Naturally, since we are talking about our glorious leader, Frank wants his jack-o-lanterns to be Alice in Wonderland-themed. If the designs please Frank, he allows me the privilege of eating those fibrous sodium bombs known as pumpkin seeds that everyone shoves in their faces around this time. This year, I wanted to show you all my favorite Alice-themed jack-o-lanterns I found while researching designs for Frank. These designs may inspire your pumpkin carving as well.
Card Suits
Maybe you want to be subtle with your Alice in Wonderlandjack-o-lanterns. You love Alice and want to show the world, but you only want people in the know to recognize your Alice-related easter eggs. Or maybe you don’t have the best pumpkin carving skills and want something easy. Either way, this first pumpkin is perfect for those who prefer subtly, and it’s easy enough for an Alice-obsessed kid to make. The card suits are a trope that has been in every Alice iteration from the very beginning. Why not give the card soldiers the love they deserve?
Card Suits Plus
No, Card Suits Plus is not a streaming service for poker. Well, it actually might be. But as you can plainly see in the accompanying picture, this is the upgraded version of the card suit jack-o-lantern previously shown. This jack-o-lantern has the four card suits, but what’s so cool about it is that poking out of each suit is a giant Alice holding the “Drink Me” bottle. I love that the person who made this took a simple idea and elevated it.
Here Kitty, Kitty, Kitty!
Pspspspspspspspsps. Those who have owned cats know what this means. While researching Alice in Wonderland-inspired jack-o-lanterns, I was inundated with Cheshire Cat designs. This makes a lot of sense, as cats, specifically the black variety, are synonymous with Halloween. The design can be simple enough for most people to pull off, and the idea of the Cheshire Cat is actually a little spooky. Eyes and a mouth surrounded by darkness is a horror trope that has been used for as long as the genre has existed. I pulled some of my favorites I found online.
Of course, we have the Disney Cheshire Cat jack-o-lantern. Cartoons are naturally quite easy to execute in the art of pumpkin carving due to the necessity of the designs being simple enough to be hand drawn repeatedly.
Okay, now let’s make it scary; it’s Halloween, after all. Adding jagged teeth to the traditional Cheshire cat’s smile amps this pumpkin to a new level.
Now, this one is actually a twofer. We’ve got the March hare from the Alice in Wonderland Disney cartoon, which is incredibly detailed and executed perfectly, and we’ve got a more realistic-looking Cheshire cat’s smile. If you want to take a crack at a more complex design, this one seems like a fun project.
Off With Your Head!
Of course, the Red Queen would make it onto a pumpkin. The decapitation-obsessed matriarch is perfect for Halloween. I wonder if she is friends with Ichabod Crane. Well, I guess they wouldn’t be friends since Ichabod was a recipient of the head removal that the Red Queen is so crazy about. But I digress.
Though this design is quite complex, the person who carved it gets an A+ from me. I didn’t know you could do shading on a pumpkin.
Since the previous design was complex, I wanted to add something that might be a bit easier, though it’s also not technically a jack-o-lantern.
This gourd sculpture of the Red Queen from the Disney movie is perfect for an Alice-themed Halloween decoration for two reasons. First, it’s obviously the Red Queen, so there is the Alice portion. Second, it kind of scares me, especially the weird gourd arms.
Doorknobs and Drink Me
I’ve been struggling to come up with a fun title for these jack-o-lanterns, so if the title is not as inspired as the rest, it means I gave up, and the placeholder is now the title. But, just because my creative energy is lacking here does not mean these designs are.
I especially like the "Drink Me" pumpkin because there is something inherently spooky about a potion bottle with no description that reads “Drink me.”
Alice, Cheshire Cat, the March Hare, and the Blue Caterpillar, on a Pumpkin
This pumpkin is one of my favorites. It’s the perfect Alice in Wonderland jack-o-lantern. It’s straightforward and executed perfectly. Plus, it’s got the famous quote, “We’re all mad here,” carved into it.
The Jack-o-Lanterning Glass Wars
If I did not include some jack-o-lantern designs inspired by Frank Beddor’s Looking Glass Wars novels, I would be forced to sit in the mistake box. So, here are two blueprints (Orangeprints?) inspired by The Looking Glass Wars and the Hatter M graphic novels.
We’ve got this simple yet elegant design of the Looking Glass Wars logo. It features the four card suits that, if done correctly, would look like a stained-glass window on a jack-o-lantern.
And now we’ve got a design that, at first, was a bit confusing to me because if you follow the directions as written, the part you cut out would also have the design on it, and that wouldn’t really work because you would just have a hat-shaped hole in your pumpkin.
BUT, I realized if you place the hat cut out back into the whole with the scraped rind, then you would have a really cool outline of Hatter Madigan’s top hat.
Ok…So…This is Just Art…
Do you fancy yourself a pumpkin artist? Do you walk around on Halloween scoffing at the amateur jack-o-lanterns these plebeians proudly display because they don’t know any better? Do you understand the “rule of thirds?” Well, then, do I have the Alice designs for you. This jack-o-lantern is carved in the original art style from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. So much detail is carved into it, including the blue, well in this case orange, caterpillar.
Hey, I’m Not Good at Carving Pumpkins, but I Love Alice in Wonderland and Halloween
If the previous jack-o-lantern made you doubt your skills or made you want to give up because you’re carving your first pumpkin, worry not, for I have the simplest Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland jack-o-lantern that literally anyone can make.
Step One: Cut a circle into a pumpkin.
Step Two: It’s a rabbit hole.
I hope this collection of Alice in Wonderland jack-o-lanterns inspires some whimsical creativity at your next pumpkin carving party. Happy Halloween, everybody, and for those who were not born on October 31st, Happy Unbirthday!
Jared Hoffman graduated from the American Film Institute with a degree in screenwriting. A Los Angeles native, his brand of comedy is satire stemming from the many different personalities and egos he has encountered throughout his life. As a lover of all things comedy, Jared is always working out new material and trying to make those around him laugh. His therapist claims this is a coping mechanism, but what does she know?
Wonderland: Curious Nature - An Alyssian at the New York Botanical Garden
Alyssian Reporter-at-Large and Defender of Imagination Lynne Henderson recently took a trip to Wonderland via the Bronx. Here is her full report on the New York Botanical Garden's magical Wonderland: Curious Nature. For more information on this enchanting exhibit, check out my interview with NYBG VP of Exhibitions and Programming Joanna Groarke on the All Things Alice podcast or visit their website.
“Alive, but not talkative, quelle dommage…”
Running through October 27, Wonderland: Curious Nature at the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx is an exhibit you can glide through one “golden afternoon” or evening and easily imagine yourself in Wonderland. Spread throughout NYBG’s 250 acres; the immersive displays guide you through a cornucopia of Victorian flora with an Alician twist. While on a recent “staycation,” I took the Metro North commuter railroad 20 minutes from Manhattan to the NYBG and wandered through this gorgeous expanse of rich greenery and colorful flowers. The dirt and noise of the city seemed a world away as I lost myself in the quiet and beauty. I almost forgot I was in a city and not the countryside.
I certainly got my steps in for the year as I wandered the grounds. White Rabbit footsteps and meter-high color cutouts and ground decals of the Tenniel engravings usher you to displays that delight the mind as well as the eye. A lovely topiary garden has giant floral playing cards and caterpillars. In the center are giant mushrooms from FoldHaus that light up in different colors at night. Nearby is the Victorian-style Enid A. Haupt Conservatory, with a display inspired by the verdancy of the Oxford Botanic Garden, which Lewis Carroll and Alice Liddell probably lost themselves in on many a day. To the Victorians, flowers were not only valued for their beauty but used as a coded language to convey messages to friends, lovers, and even enemies! More Tenniel cutouts are hidden among the plants to surprise and delight (I even saw the White Rabbit scurrying towards his hole!).
The LuEsther T. Mertz Library near the Garden’s entrance has a wonderful collection of Alice in Wonderlandmemorabilia that shows the impact and influence Alice had on her society as well as ours. The Victorian Era was one of great changes and exploration in the United Kingdom, especially in science, and much of the collection explores the medicinal and recreational properties of plants common to Brits in the 19th century. Various editions of Carroll’s stories and art, traditional and surreal, showcase how Alice inspired and continues to inspire imaginations (the Heart Crystal still lives!).
Of course, no foray into Wonderland would be complete without food and drink. The Garden’s food venues offer a delicious range of treats from al fresco food trucks to a full afternoon sit-down tea (if you’re lucky, you may be joined by the Hatter or White Rabbit). The obligatory gift shop has various editions and interpretations of Carroll’s stories as well as magnets, T-shirts, and other collectibles such as invitations and cocktail menus. I bought a set of “flash cards” with ideas for an Alice-inspired celebration.
Even though Fall is here, the days are still warm enough to comfortably enjoy wandering the grounds and losing yourself in the quiet and serenity of nature for a few hours. If you live in or plan to visit New York between now and the end of October, come up to the Bronx and enjoy the magic of Wonderland in our world-famous garden.
