Chris Notarile
A Place To Hang Your Cape: Thanks so much for speaking with us. I wanted to start off just by talking about the series itself. How did it start? Why Deadpool?
Chris: That kind of started when I had done a Deadpool Christmas Special back in 2009. I’ve had a desire to do Deadpool for the longest time. Episode 1, I wrote years ago. I’ve been sitting on the script since 2006. But nothing ever really came to fruition from it. And then I met Damian and I saw what he was capable of doing and I said to myself you know what, screw it, let’s just finally go ahead and do this.
AP2HYC: So Damian, how did you and Chris first meet?
Damian: I was a fan of his when he started early on on YouTube. I watch more YouTube than I watch TV. So I became a fan of his films and I kept up to date on everything he had coming out and I always wanted to work with him in some way or fashion. Three years ago was actually the first time I got to meet Chris at a Comic-Con. He pretty much told me to keep in touch with him, maybe there’d be something, but I didn’t want to be too pushy. So fast forward another year and he’s like “Yeah, stay in touch with me man” and I kinda did. So my wife and I started a radio show [Nerd Herders] in September and Chris was the first guest that we had on the show. I became a little more persistent, stayed in touch with him. I saw him put up a teaser picture for the Deadpool webseries and I was like “Oh dude, my whole family is a huge fan, we’re a little Deadpool core family, so we’re all about it.” So we’re taking the kids out to see Santa Claus and my phone rings, and it never rings, and my wife sees it’s Chris and she goes “Well you better pick it up then!” And I did and that was pretty much the start from there. Chris pretty much sold me on the story right there and it’s been a hell of a ride ever since.
Chris: When I called him, I was actually headed to the store that day and all of a sudden I was like “Brain fart! I’m gonna call Damian” cause I had his number. So I’m just like “Hey buddy, you wanna audition for Deadpool?” And he’s like “Whaaaaaaaa?”
Damian: I was trying to play it cool on the phone, but in actuality I was freaking out on the other side.
Chris: So I told him to come on over at some point and we’ll make it happen and that was really it. His interest in the character and his knowledge of the character really helped make everything happen.
AP2HYC: So how was the decision made that Damian would play the physical body while Chris would play the voice of Deadpool in the series?
Chris: That really came down to the fact that cloning hasn’t been invented yet. I wanted to be Deadpool really badly, people said that I should be Deadpool, but I don’t have the body for it, and I don’t have the martial arts skills to do it. Plus, I’m a little bit more gangly. I decided to do the voice though because I wanted to have a stamp on the character. And as much as I love Damian, he doesn’t sound like Deadpool. He sounds like Damian. But he looks like Deadpool, so that works out.
AP2HYC: Having seen the first two episodes, I have to say you both seem to really own the character.
Chris: It got to the point where, the scene where Deadpool comes out of the bathroom and he’s shaking Weasel, I actually felt guilty voicing him over because he actually did a really good job and he was really funny. And I’m like “Aw man, now I gotta voice this” and I’m trying to match his pitch.
Damian: I got into that scene a little bit.
AP2HYC: So are you still filming?
Chris: Yes. We have not given up yet. We’re still filming episodes 3, 4, and 5 right now. We’re almost done with episode 3.
Andrea: We’re taking a mid-season hiatus because of this, so we’re gonna finish up to episode 5 and then we’re gonna call it quits for a month, kinda give everyone time to recoup. We’ll see how this blows over before we continue. Ultimately we’re gonna have ten episodes in the season.
Chris: After episode 5 we kinda pulled a Friday the 13th with like, a “new beginning”. So episode 5 completes the first arc of the story. Starting with episode 6, we wrap up episode 5 and then we move into a new portion in which the characters go in different directions, we introduce some new characters and a new bad guy, and we end the series with, of course, a bit of a cliffhanger to keep you wanting a season 2.
AP2HYC: Chris, you’ve made a lot of fan films in the past and just generally a lot of short films. Was there any particular reason why you wanted to do Deadpool as a webseries?
Chris: It’s funny. Every time I put out a fan film, everyone’s like “When is there going to be a part 2? When is there going to be a part 2?” And I’m like “Crap! Now I gotta conceive that.” So I said, “Alright, something tells me if I do Deadpool, they’re going to want more.” I can’t just wrap-up Deadpool in a ten minute short, I have to do something more with that. I figured this might kill two birds with one stone. So I decided to do a long story format and do a ten episode season. That way, people will get their fix and they’ll come back for more. All I hear now is “When’s episode 3 or 4 or 5 coming out, I can’t wait!” But I know it’s coming.
AP2HYC: Andrea, you play the Boss Lady in the show. Is that an original character or is that based on someone in the comics?
Andrea: Yes and no. The honest truth is we were trying to figure out a role that I could play and ultimately I don’t fit the usual genre for female superheroes or anybody in that kind of comic thing. It started off as a joke, as most of my roles with Chris are. We got into an argument the day we were starting to cast for the characters and he basically always says that I’m in charge or…
Chris: You’re the boss.
Andrea: …that I’m the boss and everything goes my way, whatever, whatever. He ended up making a joke about how… How did you explain me as Boss Lady when you were getting mad?
Chris: You’re his money? No. His meal ticket.
Andrea: Yeah. Because he doesn’t fear anybody but the one person that’s in charge. So it’s kind of like a reference on being the real boss. So we’d been going to the store and we found these hair extensions, put them in. We found this jacket that didn’t go anywhere. We put it together and somebody ended up telling us that I looked like the character Victoria Hand. And we were like “What?” So we looked it up and it literally, to the T, if you look at her and me you could say that I was Victoria Hand. So we ended up kind of rolling with it but we weren’t gonna announce that, so it’s kind of on a hush-hush basis until the end.
Chris: We are still developing the Boss Lady character in terms of what direction we’ll take her in and what references we’ll make with her. We have a bit of a lid on it, but there are Victoria Hand elements to Boss Lady.
Andrea: It rolls together because of who Victoria Hand’s boss is right now. So we’re kind of thinking of how to incorporate other characters, so we decided to go down that route. It opens up the Avengers, it opens up other characters.
Chris: There’s room for expansion into the Marvel Universe.
Damian: I mean, that’s the cool thing with Deadpool. Like Chris said, Deadpool’s pretty much touched up on everybody in the Marvel Universe. It opens up windows and doors for so many things.
AP2HYC: Can you tell us any characters we might see later in the series?
Chris: We’re going to have Taskmaster make an appearance. Episode 8 is entitled “Go Home Taskmaster”. We’re going to be having a cameo from another Deadpool ally, but I’m gonna save that one as a bit of a secret. We’ll also be bringing in Dr. Ellen Whitby, so all the mania associated with that character will be included.
Andrea: Season 2 is also gonna broaden, crossing our fingers that we still make it to season 2, we’re gonna broaden a bit of Deadpool’s past and bring in other characters like Satana. She’s a very sexy character that we were thinking about incorporating. Death, that’s another one we’re thinking of incorporating in season 2.
Chris: It could go anywhere.
AP2HYC: Veronica, when I was talking to Damian earlier he described you as his “behind the scenes Pepper Potts”. Could you explain what you do a bit more?
Veronica: He mentioned that we have a radio show. With the radio show, in the end all he really does is co-host with me. I format it, I set up the event page, I talk to all the fans, I get them going before the show. Then the day of the show, I handle the switchboard, I handle the phone calls, he talks.
Damian: All I handle is the twitter feed and talk.
Veronica: All he does is talk. Also I’m one of the administrators of his wrestling fan page. And then on top of that, I do my own blog and my own vlogs. I try to handle his schedule as much as possible, but he doesn’t tell me half of his schedule.
Damian: On top of that, she was the one who put the group page together for the fan series. With her blog, she’s been super supportive and everything like that. Like I said, the Pepper Potts of everything. Pretty much just making sure everything is running. She makes a list of everything possible she can make for Andrea and Chris and sends it to them, keeps them informed on everything.
AP2HYC: So obviously I wanted to talk about what’s going on with Marvel. Can you tell us a bit about what happened with them and YouTube?
Chris: What happened was basically last week on Thursday, Marvel had pulled 14 of my Marvel fan films, all of them basically, off of YouTube, citing copyright infringement. The irony of it is, one of my videos, the Elektra: The Hand and the Devil video, Marvel’s YouTube channel had favorited it back in 2008 or 2009. They had it on their page where it got 267,000 hits because of them. And they yanked it, now saying copyright infringement. I think it had something to do with either a hater personally contacting them saying “We don’t like this guy, do something about it” or what, I really can’t speculate. I mean, I have all my conspiracy theories, but none of them are verified yet. Ultimately, the videos were pulled and we’ve just been fighting to get them back on. We have our petition and we have almost 800 signatures so far. People who have signed it, they’ve proclaimed that they love this series.
Damian: There’s even been web videos that people have done now in support too.
Chris: Yeah. It sucks that the videos were all pulled, but at the same time, it was nice to have all that fan support and people saying how much they love the series. It’s cool hearing that from people who are taking the time out of their day to make videos and write these wonderful statements. So it’s a trade-off.
Damian: The cool thing that’s been happening with it too is just people in general that might not have watched the series just really like the cause and what we have going on. They themselves have been jumping in and signing it. I have a lot of friends in the wrestling industry and a couple of them haven’t seen it, but they’re like “you know what, I think it’s great the way you guys are fighting for something that you believe in and we’re all about that so we’re gonna sign it too because of what it all stands for in the end.” It’s been amazing, all the support we’ve gotten.
Chris: The dark secret to fan films is that they will gain you exposure because they have built-in fanbases. I’ve been using fan-films for the last 10 years as a platform to get attention for myself. I have all these original ideas, but at the same time, no one’s going to pay attention to that unless you’ve done something mainstream. And the closest thing an independent filmmaker like myself can do to get into mainstream is a fan film. I do it for the fans as well. I love these characters myself. I only make fan films about things that I enjoy. I like Batman, but I have yet to make a Batman fan film, per se, because everyone’s done it. I do the characters that I really care about. And Deadpool being one of them. The Blue Beetle, Joker, Catwoman, Punisher, even Elektra and Daredevil, all characters that I want to see on film and do myself, I’ve made fan films for.
AP2HYC: Have you been in touch with Marvel at all?
Andrea: That’s my question. We’re in touch with Marvel, we’re contacting them about rights and to get further answers about why one was pulled and not the others. We will constantly say that one of our problems that we’re trying to get out there is if we did something wrong, we will always take credit for it. If we crossed a line in this, we will say “You know what, we’re sorry, if you give us another chance we will fix it” and move forward. But our problem is, we haven’t. If you compare ours to other related videos, other Deadpool series that are still out there, it’s the same.
Chris: We’re trying to ascertain permission from Marvel, basically. We want them to give us the thumbs up, say, “Okay, we’re sorry, we may have overreacted. Here are your videos back. Strikes have now been removed from your account. You’re A-okay in our book, keep making these movies.”
Andrea: Or specifically take out everyone else’s. Don’t do one over the other.
Chris: Either all fan-films are okay or none of them are okay.
Andrea: Honestly, it’s as simple as ours is given permission to do it again or we take everyone else’s down. There are thousands of videos out there put up daily, not necessarily on that one character, but so many people do it. It goes down to copyright infringements is what they’re trying to say. But how is it copyright infringement when anyone can portray a character on a certain day of the year, or at a certain convention, or at a party that they attend. How is it that all these people have rights to portray a character for no money, and how is it different that we can’t portray a character for no money?
Chris: I remember when I was a kid, I heard a story of a grade school that had painted images of Disney characters on their walls. It was a kindergarten class that had painted like Mickey Mouse and Winnie the Pooh and Tigger all on the walls. That school got a lawsuit, a cease-and-desist order from Disney saying “You are in direct copyright infringement by having our characters on your walls.” It’s like, are you kidding me? They’re kids. It’s a public school. Why are you cracking down on them? And it’s the same principle here. If you go to Comic-Con, you want to dress up as your favorite character, you don’t want them to remove the costume from you. You don’t want them the take the Spider-Man mask off your kid because he’s walking around on Halloween dressed like that. Fan films on YouTube are essentially the same thing. The only difference is, some of them, instead of shooting it with a home video, you’re shooting it with a prosumer camera. I’m not making any money off of this, I’m doing this because I love it. And to have that taken away from me is the equivalent of saying “Damian, give me your comic books, you’re not allowed to show them to people.”
Veronica: This time it was Blinky with Marvel. But no one remembers that Black Friday a bunch of Star Wars fan films were taken down. It was a really hush-hush thing, but it was still a buzz on Facebook and Twitter that these were taken down. I’ve been a fan of what Chris has done for a long time, so much so that I started doing my own Resident Evil fan film. I’ve started writing it, but after hearing what’s been going on with the removal, I don’t even want to finish writing it. I don’t want to make it and put it up. No one should have to be afraid to make a fan-film.
Chris: It’s a blow to the ego when you find out that the content owners will stop at nothing to squash you. You really try hard, you put in everything you can. And as a fan, a lot of fans want to have this validation that what they’re doing matters. That at least it’s being looked at and it’s being respected.
Andrea: Especially when you’re not getting money in return for it. When you’re going into the negative trying to do something, and putting all your time and effort into doing this, it should be something that you get looked at and get appreciation for, not get looked at as you’re doing something wrong.
Chris: I can relate to fan-films on a different level because I put out Methodic in 2009. That was my first horror movie. And I’ve had Methodic fan-films surface. I’ve seen them all, they’ve been sent to me directly. Anyone who messages me and says “Can I do a Methodic fan-film?” I always go “Absolutely! Please! I’d love to see it when you’re done with it.” I’m honored, and I embrace that kind of thing. Another example of a fan film that was a success, believ it or not, was Len Wiseman, the director of the Total Recall remake. When he was 15 years old, he did a Die Hard fan film. And then twenty something years later, he directed Die Hard 4. It’s like, you want that kind of embrace. You want that success. You aim for it. That’s why you do the fan film in the first place, because you have those hopes and aspirations. When you hear a story like that, you’re like, “that’s really cool”.
Damian: Everybody is looking for a break. We all love the characters, but maybe it’s an opportunity for Chris’ work to finally be seen and get discovered like he should have been years ago. And also some of the actors and actresses that we have. Thankfully through my wrestling, a lot of fans that I have just decided to watch it, and they’re not fanboys, they’re not comic book readers, and they were instantly like “I’m going out tomorrow to buy merchandise and buy comic books.” Only the companies stand to win at the end of the day.
Chris: Without getting onto a pedestal, we’re essentially trying to defend freedom of speech. We’re trying to defend artistic creativity and bunch of other things.
Damian: Save one to save many.
AP2HYC: So where do things stand now?
Veronica: Damian checked the petition while you guys were talking. It’s up to 752.
Damian: It’s going pretty cool.
AP2HYC: And your goal is to get to 1,000, right?
Chris: 1,000 would let us sleep a little better.
Damian: Chris and I are already on the same page on this one. If it hits 1,000 we’re a little more comfortable.