I Talked to Crispin Freeman Today

In the event you don't know him by name but by roles www.imdb.com/name/nm0293342/ here he is.  Find the one you know him for.

Well as it turns out he is also an academic and scholar of Anime and the philosophies that come to tie into it.  And you know how Bulma in Dragon Ball Z Abridged said all scientists know each other?  teamfourstar.com/video/tfs-abr…  Well, it would seem that all academics in the same field all know each other as well.

So this week we are studying Night on the Galactic Railroad. www.amazon.com/Galactic-Railro…  Reading it form this book. I advise it specifically because it is the one I read. Well part of class is to read the source story, then watch the movie.  So we watched the movie and I got irritated with two things: One- The movie has many contemplative moments and those got fast forwarded though. Two- The class laughing at moments I don't understand how they laughed at that moment.  This is why I basically never share what I like with others.  I always seem to find the people who will ruin it for me.  Then I got to watch it alone to get that to go away.  But back to pleasant things.

So when the movie was over the teacher got to trying to set up another Skype call with someone in the academia that they know.  The last two have been English and with crappy mics.  Yeah, imagine being American and trying to understand an accent you ain't used to over bad audio feed.  So I'm expecting that again.  Well the teacher talks to the computer a couple of times trying to get the feed to work after he had disconnected it to keep the secret, and once it worked it was like "OOP! I'll be darned! That's Crispin Freeman! And he has a REAL mic that has good sound quality! AWESOME!"  And then the talk started.  Well it wasn't a moment to geek-out, he was here to talk philosophy and story writing and telling the story of how the version of the film we just watched got dubbed and how he had to write the adaptation over night after begging the director to let him do it for two weeks and not getting a yes.  Then he tells them something they'd not been aware of and it is like "How fast could you do an adaptation of the script" and he was like, probably not to his face, "You bastard! How long did I beg you to let me do this and now you want me to do it overnight!?"  Well it seems like he got more time than "overnight" but he made it seem like he had to rush to do it.

Then we got to Q&A and I even got to input a question that got him on a five minute response and I was proud of that.  I'll spare some of the details because to save spoiler, but it was great to have this intellectually stimulating conversation as a class with someone I have a modicum of knowledge about.  Now I will tell a story to show you how they all know each other.  From what I've gathered is that there are lectures that happen at Cons and that is how they all seem to meet.  Well on the topic of the contemplative moments of the movie, Crispin was talking about those moments from a cinematic analysis stand point and he says "Which I'm sure Mark (our teacher) fast-forwarded through" and the class lost it!  We laughed so hard, and I laughed hard enough to make my stomach hurt.  I had to force myself to stop so that I wouldn't interrupt class.  All and all this was a good class.  I felt like I came away from it with an experience I will really be happy to keep.  It was fun and I liked seeing the side of a familiar voice actor that isn't the "Work in the industry" or "Behind the Mic" part of who they are.  I like talking to him for academic and scholastic reasons.  I like to flex my intelligence, and I got to.

Today was a good day, Watchers!  Talk to y'all later!