200 Words with Paul Dini #32 – There Will Be Sandwiches, Part One

“Jeffrey Katzenberg is meeting with potential producers for a new TV project,” warbled the assistant over the phone, “And he’d like you to join us here at Dreamworks for a meeting tomorrow night!”

I received this call a few years back while still at Warner Bros. heaping abuse on Daffy Duck’s head. I thanked the caller but said I had heard through the animation grapevine that only writers from The Simpsons and Seinfeld would be considered for the new show. “But Jeffrey wants the producer of Batman. The assistant stammered. I tried to explain that Bruce Timm was the artistic producer on Batman and that I was one of the writer-producers. Perhaps our names had been confused by mistake. “No, no mistake,” the assistant fluttered, “The producer of Batman, Jeffrey was quite insistent…” Then, she added with a tinge of hopeful desperation: “There will be sandwiches…”

Oh well, sandwiches! Why didn’t she say so? That sure beat coaxing me over with something lame like, I dunno, money. I told her I’d be there. Besides, I had never been in a meeting with Mr. Katzenberg and I was curious to observe his working methods for myself. And hey, free sandwiches.

Paul Dini is the Emmy and Eisner Award winning writer of Batman: The Animated Series,Superman: The Animated Series, Detective Comics, Countdown among many, many other things. You can find him online at either kingofbreakfast.livejournal.com or http://www.jinglebelle.com/.