Super ‘70s and ‘80s: “The Plastic Man Comedy Adventure Show”—Mark Taylor (Plastic Man—live action)

Introduction to series “Super ‘70s and ‘80s.”

Introduction to subseries “The Plastic Man Comedy Adventure Show” (including list of interviewees).

Getting to know Mark Taylor was one of the most moving aspects of this experience for me. I will not elaborate because you will soon see why, but I will say that during our actual conversation, there was a lot of “Wow,” “My gosh,” “You are an inspiration,” and the like from me. In transcribing, I have cut that out so you can mentally insert your own reactions as you read.

NOTE: Some of Mark’s turns-of-a-phrase in e-mail showed that he was able to snap right back into Plastic Man mode. My favorite was a time when he had to reschedule a talk:

“You have to be flexible if you’re going to deal with Plastic Man.”

How did you get the job on Plastic Man?

It’s coincidental. I was doing comedy in San Francisco and doing a little acting, modeling, commercial work. 

One of my agents [told me that there was] an audition for this cartoon character. My interest was not at all in doing in a children’s show. This was about an hour out of San Francisco. I declined to do it. Most auditions aren’t fruitful. And then I realized that on the weekday afternoon of that audition I just happened to have a lunchtime college gig in that area. I thought, well, I’m in the area anyway so it was convenient. I called her back and said let’s do it. They liked it and I got the job.

Do you remember what you had to do the for the audition?

I think I had to read script and see if I could get in the ballpark of that voice. They had a couple of different cartoon voices. I was looking for a voice similar to Don Adams’s Get Smart. I was a fairly trim fit guy and if they just added a little shoulder muscle they could make a superhero out of me. It didn’t take a lot of padding to make it happen.

How familiar were you with the character beforehand?

Not a whit. I knew Superman. I was a Superman fan. I didn’t know anything about Plastic Man. Since then I’ve done a little bit of research and other people have told me. It was a kind of cult following. An alternative to the hyper-serious Superman and Batman. A whimsical [character], a comic screw-up.

How long did you have the job?

In terms of the work, only about six weeks because that’s all we had to do it. Very short vignettes.

What challenges were involved in recording the show? (Related: do you remember any elements you or someone else wanted to include but which the network vetoed?)

There were a lot of challenges. First of all, you had to get it right on whatever time it was—22 or 44 seconds or whatever it was. I would have a clock right in front of me, and of course I had goggles. A lot of it was unscripted. I would have the idea that I wanted to do and I would try to get it in right. I thought [some of the scripts] spoke down to the kids.

Were you allowed to improvise/ad-lib?

[Producer/director] Steve Whiting was very collaborative. He was open to bringing some adult wackiness to it. So I wouldn’t ad-lib as camera rolled. I would go with an idea pretty well formulated.

Mark as Plastic Man:

What segment is your favorite?

What I really liked about the gig was that it was a blank slate. I could do almost anything within taste. Plastic Man—you can make him whatever. Sometimes we’d do things with the camera that would be different—moving the camera so it would seem like the Plasti-Jet was going up or down, turbulence, breaking, crashing. None of that was in the original scripts. Those were just Plastic Man speaking straight to the camera as traditional as you can make it.

One thing I remember is indicative of what tickles me, the silliness, the stuff that goes for both kids and adults—I said something about my family and I can’t quote you the exact dialogue. Something about “I’d like to intro you to my relatives, Plastic Cup, Plastic Fork, Plastic Wrap, and my funny uncle Aluminum Foil.”

How did the Democratic National Convention gig come about?

My friend Jeff Wachtel went with me to the DNC. Now he’s a Senior VP of Original Programming on USA. I don’t watch much TV but apparently he’s got several shows on USA that are pretty successful over the last 5-8 years.

There’s something called the Living Newspaper that was done in the 1930s. I think it was a WPA project. Actors would get together and give the news of the day in radio form. Around 1980, Jeff got this idea with another lady, I guess. He was living in New York and they wanted to do another form of Living Newspaper, revive it. They mass-mailed a lot of contacts and one of the people that responded enthusiastically was Walter Cronkite. He wrote back his fond memories of that effort.

Jeff sent that letter along with his application for media credentials and got a couple of media passes for the 1980 DNC. He wanted to do it again in 1984 (when he didn’t need Walter Cronkite anymore), with me, doing a little bit more zany and weird. He applied for the credentials again and got them. I had the character and outfit and he had the camera so [we said] let’s just do this ambush on the DNC and see if we can make something fun.

I think Steve Whiting got the equipment. We had only two media credentials at a time so we had to swap off. Jeff lugged around 70 pounds of equipment and he’s not a big guy. Created this guerrilla piece mostly for the fun of it.

So that wasn’t with Steve?

As I remember it, Steve was there and Steve allowed it and made sure nothing blemished the character or image, but Steve wasn’t the instigating force.

Do you remember if you were there all day?

Maybe a couple days. I remember Jesse Jackson, Walter Mondale.

Did you get any hassle?

I don’t remember that. The trick was to get people to talk. I guess it’s become more and more common with the advent of cable—what I call ambush videography. Like the guy from Kazakhstan [Borat]—he did it brilliantly. I did a more lame version of what he did so well.

Because we had legitimate press credentials, and there was a cameraman and Steve and I think another person, it added a bit of legitimacy. Nowadays with the abundance of college kids and everyone else crashing events with videocamera, it would raise more suspicion.

What other public appearances did you do as Plastic Man?

I did an appearance on P.M. Magazine. Off the top of my head those were the only two. A couple years we did the NATPE (National Association of Television Programming Executives) Convention. Everybody who sells syndication and buys syndication get together and make their deals. I was in costume and always in costume and I posed myself as doing security. Of course [that means] I’m the most suspicious-looking in the place! I basically patrolled.

A woman had just moved to San Francisco and was doing temp jobs and one of them was filling positions for this convention. She got a gig hosting the booth of [movie reviewers] Siskel and Ebert, hosting the clients. Now she’s my wife of 25 years. She never saw me out of character [there]. I had a sidekick in a comedy troupe called Polyesterman and he broke character and said we’re a comedy team and she could see us at such and such venue and she ended up doing that.

So first time you met her was in costume?

Yeah, and for two days, I never left character.

Did you want to continue in TV or film?

I actually preferred stand-up because of the autonomy. As a writer, maybe you like it, too—[you] set your own time and subject. I liked working on Plastic Man because it was just Steve and me. Later, as a father with two small children, I had a stroke. So between the responsibilities of my family and the residual deficits of my stroke (poor speech articulation, decreased processing speed, poor fine-motor in right hand), I quit entertainment. I really don’t have any lingering regrets.

In fact, about the only nightmare that I have is getting on stage in a comedy situation like I used to do all the time. My nightmare is getting ready to go on stage and remembering I had a stroke and can’t talk the way I used to.

What are you doing these days?

Doing physical therapy. Several people in my family had AVMs (arteriovenous malformations). These are malformed blood vessels due to a genetic condition called hereditary hemorrhagic telangiectasia (HHT). Because we had that in the family, I tested and I had it. My neurosurgeon said I can fix this but apparently he opened me up and found it more intricate and in more important brain matter and didn’t want to remove it because would jeopardize too many of my abilities. But before he put my skull back he noticed I was hemorrhaging. So the surgery that was supposed to prevent all this kind of caused all this.

I woke up unable to speak and my right arm was totally flaccid. I couldn’t read, write, or spell “cat.” I did a lot of rehab.

Once I could speak, read, and write again, I went back to school for physical therapy. I was doing comedy up until this surgery. I just wanted the challenge. I wanted the challenge to get back and do comedy again. With a lot of help from my speech therapist, and for about a year and a half on a lesser schedule, I performed stand-up around the country. Maybe the late ‘90s.

But at the same time, I knew my performance career was totally over and I was very inspired by the therapists who helped me. I went back and eventually worked at the rehab hospital I was a patient at.

Still working at a hospital?

Still in PT realm. Now I’m at a retirement community where I help them walk, etc.

Can you drive?

I can drive. My walking is 100%. My arm, you can tell. My fine motor is affected.

What are your children up to?

I have a daughter who’s almost 22, junior at Chapel Hill. My son is 18, going to NC State.

What do they think of your time as a superhero?

Like a lot of parents [discover], my children couldn’t give a whit about what they’ve done. I never wanted to push my stuff on them. My wife more than me introduced them to that at an appropriate age. It was very unimpressive to them. (laughs) I try not to take that personally.

This 1994 birthday party for Mark’s daughter was likely
his last public appearance as Plastic Man.

Did you ever get letters from fans, and if so, do you still have any?

A little bit. It was hard to siphon through, get letters—a circuitous route: stations, etc. One guy in particular—I think he was maybe 14 and perhaps mentally or emotionally strange—and he was kind of stalking me with letters. He was very insistent with letters and photos. At first I would respond politely once or twice. But he was relentless so I had to stop.

Do you have any Plastic Man stuff?

I have the costume, which is deteriorating. I’ve got the pompadour wig, the glasses, the wristband communicator device. It was high-tech at the time.

Was there only one costume?

Yeah.

What about collectibles?

Friends over the years have given me miniature Plastic Man things, like part of a chess board game. And other kinds of kids’ six- or eight-inch tall figures.

Had you seen any of your episodes since they went off the air?

I hadn’t but I had a second brain surgery summer of 2008 (first one was 1995) so I had time off and I wanted to get my tape work onto DVD. So I was able to watch some of them. I didn’t care to watch all of them. Some of them crack me up still in part because I know the difficulty of the time pressure. We didn’t have weeks to write this stuff. I was pretty much jamming. I was so stoked. I couldn’t sleep. I’d get up in the middle of the night “How about this bit, how about that bit?” It was a fertile time.

Has anyone else ever interviewed you about Plastic Man?

I got a lot of features as a comic written in newspapers. I have several things [that are somewhat] of note in my past, Plastic Man being one of them. Maybe he’d get a paragraph but never the focus.

Memory can be deceiving!

Examples of other things of note?

From New Haven (Yale ‘70-‘74), I rode a bicycle across the country for half a year, didn’t know what I wanted to do. I departed from New Haven July 4 and I arrived in San Jose about December 23. It was old school: cut-off jeans, suede sneakers, no helmet, no sunglasses, and in my backpack I hauled the I Ching to help with my decision-making. Worked my way to California: bike mechanic, sold flowers on street corners, pumped gas, sold my blood, sold souvenirs, etc. 

Frankly I hated Yale and wanted to get as far from reading and writing and that kind of lifestyle as I could. I think I borrowed $20 from my girlfriend and took off. They had kind of a media event when I returned home to San Jose.

How did they find out about what you were doing?

I think my mom talked to them. San Jose was kind of a smaller town then.

Other examples of note?

Once I was named one of the ten most eligible bachelors of San Francisco, around 1982, just before Plastic Man. I was a Playgirl centerfold once (11/80). I was married on the island of Bali. On a cliff at sunset with the full moon rising in 1986.

What does your wife do?

She’s recently unemployed [as of mid-2010]. She was managing graphic artists for a financial institution—signage, PowerPoint.

How do you look back on your time on Plastic Man?

It was a small little thing. Just a little blip.

But I really liked it. It was very much a challenge. Most people wouldn’t have seen it was a creative challenge as well as physically and verbally. It was an intense period that used my creativity to the max. You see it and say, “That’s not Einstein, not genius,” but when you consider the time constraints…I came to this in my mind almost without a script, scripts were just a backup.

Where do you live now?

Charlotte, NC.

Did you move from San Francisco straight to Charlotte?

[After college], I went to Santa Cruz and got involved in a comedy troupe, the Screaming Memes. Went to San Francisco with that troupe. I split off into a comedy team at about the time I did Plastic Man. Shortly thereafter, we split the team up to do solo stand-up and I went to Los Angeles to try for the Big Time. I don’t like Los Angeles and never did. I said to my wife, “I’ll make you suffer only for five years, make or break it.” After five years, I didn’t make it and we had two very small kids and we wanted to be as close to family as possible. My wife had family in Charlotte and it had affordable housing. My family was in California but I couldn’t afford to raise a family anywhere there where I wanted to be.

Have you ever participated (i.e. signed autographs) at a comic convention? If not, would you be willing to (if the convention paid your way)?

I haven’t and would be open if anyone figures I would be of interest.

Anything else about the experience I didn't cover that you'd like to add?

Not about superheroes per se, but about a life change of a man who played a superhero. It was interesting and humbling and traumatic that I went I went from a Yale grad, superhero, centerfold comic to a speechless bald man with countless staples in his skull. Half my face was drooping, mouth constantly drooling, right arm totally flaccid. I sat mute in a hospital bed as my social worker told my wife and me that I could be retrained for low-challenging jobs (Walmart greeter, etc.). My daughter was trying to teach me words again. Going from having it all to not having it all was…well, the words escape me, but it was transformative. Ironically, despite the losses, I feel like I have it all again.

Christopher Reeve had his accident the same year.

As I recall there was a lot [about him] in the media when I was in the hospital.

His accident was end of May [1995].

I was June 15. I was down-to-Earth enough to know I wasn’t all that, but when you have certain qualities that are pretty good and then you lose those qualities that are pretty good…I don’t think I’m better for it. (laughs) A wiser person than me would say, “I learned a lot.”

How long did it take you to learn to speak again?

It’s a long process. Day by day. I was I think functional within a few months and then it got better. Even to this day if I get tired, stressed, nervous, it deteriorates momentarily and then fluctuates back. The frustration is felt daily, hourly, almost by the minute. But what I don’t think I clearly articulated was the wonderful work “fate” has led me to. I’m now blessed to be able to help people who are afflicted like my mother and I were. Many people have told me that this is the work I was meant to do. With complete peace of mind, I agree. It’s not Hollywood, but it is Super-work.


Next: Superman (1988 cartoon).

Super ‘70s and ‘80s: “The Plastic Man Comedy Adventure Show”—Steve Whiting, producer/director

Introduction to series “Super ‘70s and ‘80s.”

Introduction to subseries “The Plastic Man Comedy Adventure Show” (including list of interviewees).

How did you get the job of packaging Plastic Man for syndication? Don’t the big companies like Ruby-Spears typically do that themselves?

Arlington Television was a divisional offshoot of Golden West Television which at the time was owned by Jeff Simmons. I had produced and directed many TV shows for Jeff in the five years prior to Plastic Man. When Arlington made the deal with Ruby-Spears to repackage Plastic Man, Jeff Simmons told them he had just the guy to create the shows.

I got a call from Simmons in which he said, cryptically, “Son, Plastic Man looms large in your future” and I said “Who?” I had about three days before my interview with Ruby-Spears to create a show using wraparounds to introduce the library of cartoons. I figured who better to introduce the cartoons than Plastic Man himself. I’d been a fan of Captain Satellite, a character who hosted cartoon shows on a local San Francisco Bay Area station when I was a kid. I think I finalized the idea for the pitch on the plane to LA and I’m sure I heard some of the ideas for the first time as they came out of my mouth during the meeting.

[At the offices of] Joe Ruby and Ken Spears, I pitched them my idea of a live Plastic Man hosting the show from the Plasti-Jet and talking directly to the young viewers as friends. They bought the creative concept on the spot. I got the gig with full control to produce it in the San Francisco Bay Area.

What does packaging for syndication typically entail? Shortening the running time?

Re-packaging for syndication usually entails changing the format and structure of the show. They wanted to go from once a week to five days a week. That meant they need 130 half-hour shows, which is five days a week for six months, and then it starts again. A re-packaged show is actually a new entity separate from the original, but containing some of the same content. We edited some of the cartoons and segments to fit time frames.

Did you ever have to ask for new animated material?

Not really. We just edited animated material that already existed into our show format. That’s how our live Plastic Man has conversations with the animated Chief. We used inter-cuts and editing of phrases the Chief spoke to Plastic Man in the cartoons to have her speak to our live-action Plastic Man.

What was the process like to get approval from DC Comics?

I have no clue. Ruby-Spears handled all of that. I was never asked by DC Comics to change anything.

How did the budget work—did Ruby-Spears pay for the live action segments? If so, how did you convince them to take that risk? If they did not pay for the segments, who did and how did you convince them?

Arlington Television paid for the production of the live action segments as part of their partnership/licensing deal with Ruby-Spears. As such, the newly packaged and assembled shows (with live host) became new product which belonged to Arlington (Simmons), as long as they remained intact. Some years later, Simmons assigned the rights to me.

Did you hand-pick Mark Taylor or did you have an audition process? If auditions, how many showed up? Any funny stories?

I didn’t have time to set up a full casting call to find my “Plas” on short notice, so I hired [a] company to help with the talent search. Soon thereafter, [someone from the company] saw Taylor Marks [his stage name] doing stand-up comedy in San Francisco one night and called me the next day to say, “I’ve got the guy. He’s perfect. He’s even looks like Plastic Man.” I auditioned Mark and said, “Look no further. That’s him.”

Mark Taylor and Steve Whiting

This newspaper article was too big for one scan.

How much of the segments were scripted versus ad-libbed?

Simmons gave me two writers, [both of] whom I’d worked with on previous shows. One was Steve Arwood, who wrote for Riders in the Sky out of Nashville, and the other was Rick Sanchec. Jeff gave Rick just enough of an advance check to come to California, but no money to get home until the shows were all written. He lived in the music room at my house and wrote day and night. We had the synopses of all the cartoons in written form, but we’d not seen all of the cartoons themselves. They also weren’t available for us to view. No home VCRs in those days.

Anyway, we wrote specific introductions and gags to most of the cartoons and then generic intros and gags that could be used as filler. For 130 half-hour shows, it was a lot material.

Then on the set, when we were taping the intros, outros, segues, and random bits, Mark and I would first look at each script and if it felt like it worked, we’d go with it. If it didn’t we’d use it as a springboard to ad-lib. A lot of the ad-lib stuff is among some of the best. We taped intros, wraparounds, and closes for about 3-4 weeks.

Meaning that you produced all the segments in 3-4 weeks? After that, no more Plastic Man shooting for the show?

It could have been up to six weeks of shooting. After that we went into post-production to integrate all of our live stuff. Each show had to time out to precisely 28:30, with the black holes for commercials built into the masters. That took several months.

How long (in pages) was a script?

For the live segments, the script was only about two pages per show.

Who made the costume?

Oh, wow, a stage costume designer based in San Francisco.

Were there ever characters besides PM in the segments? If not, did you want guest stars at any point?

There was no time to develop those kinds of elements. [However], Plastic Man did refer and bring out his relatives, including Plastic Wrap, Plastic Foil, Plastic Container, and others.

Any funny stories about shoots that went wrong? Accidents? Embarrassments?

Many. We had a great comedian playing a superhero in a leotard [among] grizzled old pro tech guys on a closed set. Funny stories aplenty. I’d have to run back the memory tapes with Mark and some of the crew that are still with me to decide the best that are also mentionable ones.

Were all the segments filmed on one set? Did you ever travel to film a segment?

All were done on a single sound stage.

How long did it take to shoot a typical segment?

There were no typical segments. The straight forward introductions and segue throwaways went quite quickly, and we could do two or three of those in an hour. When we were shooting shots that we knew we were going to manipulate in post-production using what was at the time very advanced DVE (Digital Video Effects), it took a lot longer. Stuff we did on green screen at that time was very precise and difficult to make work at all convincingly. Some introductions with effects and rigging by our gaffers and effects guys would take two or three hours to set up. When, on camera, our Plastic Man transforms from a tire to himself and moves right into an introduction, for example, it took about two hours to set up. It still stands up today…so to speak. Some great stage and video edit technicians put their heads together to make that work impressively for its time.

How did you get PM to join “security” for the Democratic National Convention?

At the time, I was not an unknown producer/director in the market and I used my access to get Plastic Man the credentials he needed.

You said at one point that the segments had generated $4 million. Do you mean in ad revenue?

Our PMCAS was sold into syndication as a first-run off-network series. What I was quoted as saying in terms of revenues referred to the ADI market sales figures. What the ad revenue figures actually were could only come from the stations themselves. It’s my understanding that the local stations [did] quite well with the series from their spot-ad revenues.

Have you done any other superhero projects since?

No, except for working with superstar athletes, musicians, and politician.

Have you ever been interviewed about PM for a comics-related publication?

I’ve done several interviews and been quoted with varying degrees of accuracy.

Do you still have any memorabilia related to the segments—scripts, promotional material, merchandise?

Yes, suppose I do. A portion of my personal tape archive vault is devoted to good old Plas. In a warehouse, I have some of the hand-painted set backdrops, props, T-shirts, fan photos, and who knows what all else.

What do you think about a live-action PM movie? Or should it be entirely CGI?

I feel the wife in The Incredibles was a total rip-off of Plastic Man. I think Plastic Man could be a tremendous live character concept outside of animation. I know exactly how it could and should be done…but I’m not telling.

Next: Mark Taylor (Plastic Man—live action).

Super ‘70s and ‘80s: “The Plastic Man Comedy Adventure Show”—introduction

Introduction to series “Super ‘70s and ‘80s.”

Back Issue #3 (4/04) included a photo of the first (and still only) live-action Plastic Man, who hosted the syndicated version of the Plastic Man cartoon of the early 1980s.

That caption called him an “unidentified actor.” I wanted to get rid of that “un.”

A simple search revealed that he was Mark Taylor, but that did not automatically make the task easier. There are approximately 700,000 people in America named Mark Taylor (and by “approximately” I mean “random guess”).

Faced with such a generic name, I have found that the best option in minimizing the search time is this: forgo looking directly for the person in question and rather find someone (with a less generic name) who knew the missing person. That is not always easy either, but in this case, it worked as desired. 

Easily found online, the producer of the live-action Plastic Man segments was a Steve Whiting—not only is “Whiting” a less common surname than “Taylor,” but it turned out that Steve had a site...and was still in touch with Mark.

Mark turned out to be a gem well worth the hunt. He bravely shared one of the most touching and inspiring stories to come out of this entire series. It was apropos that Mark demonstrated how much some people need to stretch to save a life—including their own.

Images courtesy of Mark Taylor and Steve Whiting.

I got permission to post all images; if you want to repost, please do the same and ask me first.

Interviewed (2 parts):

Steve Whiting, producer/director
Mark Taylor (Plastic Man—live action)