An Interview with Duane Poole

Hi everyone! To celebrate the site and blog's seventh anniversary, I have a very special surprise for you all. I had the incredible opportunity to interview Duane Poole, the writer of some of the first season of The Scooby-Doo Show and Scooby Goes Hollywood., as well as a story editor on The Scooby and Scrappy-Doo Show.

My conversation with Duane is below:

1. What inspired you to get into scriptwriting?
When I was a kid, my parents bought me a tape recorder and I taped a Dick Van Dyke Show -- a series I loved and to which I give credit for whatever sense of humor I may have. I listened to it over and over and then thought to type it out on a toy typewriter I had. My first script. Stolen, but we all start somewhere. So I was always interested in writing...and when I discovered live theatre I thought *that* was where my interests would take me. One of my stage musicals was seen by a couple producers at Hanna-Barbera who invited me down to write animation. And a television writer was born.

2. What was your process of writing an episode of Scooby-Doo from start to finish?
It pretty much always started with the ghost/goblin/monster of the week. That inspired the setting, the setting inspired the gags, and the characters did the rest. There were, of course, stock bits that had to be in every episode. The eating gags, the chases, the "those pesky kids" reveals. So much of it was looking for variations and the setting (a lighthouse, a haunted graveyard, an old castle) dictated much of that.

3. What was the most rewarding part of writing for Scooby-Doo? What was the most challenging part?
The best part, considering many of the primetime shows and movies I've done, was that in animation, Scooby never said "I won't say that line". So there was a freedom -- a freedom that extended to the story as well, since live action projects often come with budgets that limit number of settings, etc. With animation, the artists could give you anything you could dream up. You want ancient China? Done. A city on Mars? Have at it. So Scooby and the gang could go anywhere without limits. (Well, obviously not ancient China and Mars, but you get what I'm saying.) The most challenging part was coming up with those fresh takes on the stock gags. I hate duplicating something I've already done, but sometimes it had to happen, the same sort of gags in different settings. Still, we all tried to keep it fresh.

4. Though you mostly only worked on season 1 of The Scooby-Doo Show (according to IMDb), season 2 had a noticeably darker tone. Do you know if there was any creative reasoning from the writers' room behind making the second season darker than the first?
No idea. And there really wasn't a "writers' room" back then. The producers usually worked as story editors as well and assigned the various stories -- sometimes created in house, sometimes pitched by the outside writers.

5. What memorable responses have you received for your work on Scooby-Doo?
I think sitting in that first big, live-action Scooby movie and hearing the crowd boo Scrappy -- which I had a hand in creating -- was perhaps the most memorable response. But to be fair, I've always found him annoying as well.

6. Was writing an episode of The Scooby-Doo Show a lot different than writing an episode of The Scooby and Scrappy-Doo Show, and why?
As I mentioned, we were always trying to keep the show fresh. The addition of Scrappy, for better or worse, gave us all another color to paint with, metaphorically speaking. So there was a little fresh energy added with that change.

7. How did the idea of Scooby's All-Star Laff-a-Lympics come about? What inspired Hanna-Barbera to create a "battle of the network stars" type TV series with all of their most famous cartoon characters?
Money, I'd guess. It's the same reason shows do crossover episodes and shows like the one you named. "What's another way we can use our characters and encourage an audience to tune in?"
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8 The final episode of the first year of Scooby and Scrappy-Doo, "The Ransom of Scooby Chief," features Shaggy, Scooby and Scrappy visiting New York, while Fred, Velma and Daphne appear very minimally. Given this was the last episode to feature Fred, Velma and Daphne for three years, do you know if this episode was intended as a "backdoor pilot" of sorts to test the waters for the 7-minute Scooby and Scrappy-Doo shorts that came the following year?
It could have been. I have only a vague memory of this one -- though I think I still have the storyboard in a box in the garage.

9. When adding Scrappy-Doo to the series as a main character, did you or any of the other writers at that time feel there was any sort of risk that viewers wouldn't like him?
I'm not sure any of us was prepared for the negative reaction he got. At the time, we thought he would just help expand the world and the comic possibilities.

10. Scooby Goes Hollywood was truly a one-of-a-kind film. What was your creative logic behind writing this film? What inspired you to make the gang stars of their own mystery-solving TV show? Were you trying to hint that all of the gang's past mysteries were just part of a TV show?
You've overthinking, sorry to say. We just figured it was a good concept for a Scooby special, the fun of parodying movies giving us a fresh background to explore. I really wish I had a better answer for this for you.

11. I know from another interview you did that you love musicals. Was this part of what inspired Scooby Goes Hollywood to be a musical?
I really pushed for it to be a musical. It didn't go as far as I'd have liked, but yes, the musical element was really important to me.

12. In your interview with A Podcast Named Scooby-Doo in 2018, you mentioned that there were talks of a live-action Scooby-Doo show in the 1970s (in which you played Shaggy for the screen test!). Could you share more about this show? Was any plot or aspect of the series developed before it was scrapped?
The talks were just that and never went much beyond -- certainly never a script or a real concept. HB were merely exploring the idea using their big-headed park costumes and had me play Shaggy. This (I believe) was even before I was working on Scooby-Doo. Still that young kid writer from Seattle they were trying to find work for.

13. Do you have a favorite show or project that you’ve worked on?
Animation-wise, Dynomutt and Blue Falcon. We could really go wild with the comedy there. Live-action, I was pleased to have written/produced the final two screen appearances of screen legend Katharine Hepburn. It's been a good career and I've been incredibly lucky.

14. You also worked on Dynomutt, Dog Wonder, which aired around the same time and crossed over with Scooby three times. How did these crossovers come to be? Were the multiple crossovers with Scooby an attempt to make the audience more intrigued with Dynomutt and Blue Falcon by including a familiar character?
Much like the crossover question above, yes, it was to get a bigger audience to discover Dynomutt. How I wish that series had a longer life than it had.

15. You worked on Goober and the Ghost Chasers as well as Scooby-Doo. This isn't a Scooby question, but I've always been intrigued by the fact that ten of the sixteen episodes included guest stars in a major role, eight of those times being The Partridge Kids. What was the inspiration behind making Goober such a guest-star driven show?
Again, not so much inspiration as crass commercialism, figuring the guest stars would bring in bigger audiences. It was a kick to work with all those 'star' voices, though.

16. Do you have any advice for anyone who is looking to go into the world of scriptwriting?
Write and write and write some more. Learn the craft and learn your television and cinema history. (Nothing is more frustrating to me than contemporary writers who don't know the classics.) And knock on a lot of doors. All it takes is for one right door to open and the rest will follow. A hard business to break into, but so gratifying.

17. What projects are you working on currently?
I've been doing a lot of the Hallmark Christmas movies lately while focusing my spare time on live theatre. I've had four shows play in New York -- nothing on Broadway yet, nothing you'd have heard of, nothing with a long run -- but that's my next goal.

Thank you so much again to Duane for taking time out of his busy schedule to answer my questions. It was truly an honor getting to talk with him, and I wish him the best of luck with his current projects!