BusinessDallas ATTACK OF THE Killer CARTOONISTS

The snowman is … about to be run over by a snowmobile. No, a pack of wolves with full bladders is running after him. No, he’s looking that way because the AC went out. That’s it: He recognized one of his relatives in a Slurpee cup.

This summer was a real bitch for the guys at DNA Productions, the local animation studio perhaps best known (especially on the festival circuit) for the R-rated animated cartoon Norma & LU’ Puss Puss. Not that DNA cofounders John Davis and Keith Alcorn are complaining. The reason things have been so tough is that they’ve got about twice as much work to do as there are hours in a day.

Here’s how busy they’ve been: In May, they doubled their Staff (from 17 to 30) and drastically expanded their Cedar Springs offices. By early next year, they figure they’ll have to do the same thing all over again, only more so when the staff is expected to top 70.

LOOK OUT! DNA PRODUCTIONS IS MING THE ANIMATION WORLD DY STORM.

This time, however, the impetus isn’t a project from one-time corporate regulars like Mary Kay. Bonanza, or Chuck E. Cheese-clients who used to be DNA’s money-making bread and butter. No, these days, the high-powered honchos who are hot tor their product hail from such companies as Nickelodeon, Paramount, and Fox.

Not bad for a couple of oddballs who once spent their days creating dancing suntan bottles and animated fleas. Here’s the worst-case scenario as they see it: adventure series Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius on Nickelodeon.

That’s not too shabby-unless, of course, you consider the alternative: Within a year, they’re producing (for Paramount) the first American computer-animated feature film ever made outside Hollywood. Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius, followed by the Jimmy Neutron series on Nickelodeon.

What’s going on here?

Only the making of the Next Big Thing in animation.

Granted, getting to this point hasn’t exactly been a snap. Out there in La-La Land-home of the slowest fast lane known to man-planning a future can be a decidedly iffy business. Jimmy first burst on the scene (via a 10-second trailer DNA whipped up on a lark) back in 1995. The recently inked Jimmy Neutron deal (a one-year option on the film-which DNA will write, direct, and produce-with a commitment to a 13-episode series regardless) was more than two years in the making.

Good thing Davis and Alcom have a sense of humor. Considering everything that should have happened by this point but hasn’l, they’re remarkably composed. Not thai they’re sitting around, twiddling their thumbs, waiting for this particular Big Break to wash over them. As it turns out. they don’t have time to.

The thing is, as potentially name-making as Jimmy Neutron is, it’s but one of several potentially name-making projects that DNA has in the works. They’ve animated the upcoming Fox TV Christmas special Olive, the Other Reindeer-the latest project of Matt (The Simpsons) Groening’s Curiosity Company. Based on the popular children’s book by J. Otto Seibold and Vivian Walsh, the one-hour special, scheduled to air Thanksgiving night (with a second airing close 10 Christmas), features Drew Barrymore as the voice of Olive. Joining her is an equally heavy-hitting supporting cast, including Joe Pantoliano. Jay Mohr, Dan Castellaneta, Peter MacNichol, Ed Asner, and Michael Stipe. Considering Groening’s exalted status among animation aficionados, this show is all but guaranteed an audience.

Then there’s The Barnyard, a TV pilot about a bunch of farm animals who act like humans when humans aren’t around. It’s the brainchild of writer/director/comedian Steve Oedekerk. who is also the man responsible for getting Jimmy Neutron off the ground. DNA animated the five and one-half minute Barnyard pilot this summer, which Oedekerk (writer/director of Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls and Patch Adams, among other things) is planning to produce as an independent feature film. These days, Oedekerk is to the film-comedy world what Greening is to animation, so chances are good it will make it into production.

The list goes on.

There’s Jingaroo, a kangaroo video to be produced jointly with Beckett Entertainment, Weird Beard and His Merry Swabs, the swashbuckling tales of a bawdy pirate and his nemesis Captain Happy (this fall, DNA completed a short trailer, which they’re shopping around now); Sheila the Gila, the romantic escapades of a vain Gila monster who moves to Manhattan to find a husband and become a famous Broadway actress. And. of course, the adventures of Nanna and LU’ Puss Puss-the cartoon that first got DNA noticed-a raunchy, racy ogle at the world of an out-there grandma and her nefarious cat.

There’s more, but you get the idea. And to think, not that long ago, you could find Davis and Alcom at Kroger at 4 a.m. shooting the produce section for a training video.

So how does a company get from Dairy Queen commercials and Harris Hospital promos to working alongside some of the biggest names in the entertainment industry?

By being good, of course. That’s a given. Technically, DNA’s 2D and 3D animation capabilities are every bit as good as the Big Boys. Pixar and Disney. In fact, what they’re doing with Olive– placing flat 2D-looking cutout characters against a complex 3D background-is unprecedented. Meanwhile, what they’ve accomplished with Jimmy Neutron takes the whole 3D process in a new direction, by melding a cinematic scope (and musical score) with an unapologetically car-loony feel.

Bui DNA’s real gifts go beyond (he technical. What sets them apart is two things: Davis and Alcom. To put it bluntly, ihese guys are nuts. {In the nicest way.)

As composer Mark Menza (who’s responsible for the scores of Jimmy Neutron and Jingaroo, more delicately phrases it, “Neither of them are afraid of their own eccentricities.” Both extraordinarily low-key by nature, they are at heart utterly outrageous–overgrown kids with incredibly active imaginations.

Consequently, they find humor in places most people never even journey to (or have long ago convinced themselves it isn’t appropriate to visit), which is one reason they’re so successful: Whether creating tor young kids or the perpetually young at heart, they take viewers on one wild ride.

Although they have certain similarities-the most glaring being that they were described by everyone queried for this story as “really nice guys”-each brings something different to the table. On the one hand, there’s Alcorn, the elder statesman (he’s 42 to Davis’ 37). A graduate of UTA who got through his too-serious life-drawing classes by adding goofy faces to his drawings, he’s the one skilled in the art of hand-drawn (2D) character animation. His gift is conjuring the details that define a character; he’s also great with a gag and at breaking down scenes in search of the perfect comic beat.

He considers The Simpsons the best TV show of all time-“It’s to animation what the Beatles were to music: it paved the way for everything to come.” Early on, he was influenced by cartoon kings Tex Avery, Bob dampen, and Jay Ward, and more recently by Ren & Stimpy creator John Kricfalusi (“I took one look at that and thought. ’God, this is so WEIRD; I haven’t seen cartoons like this EVER. I wanna do something like this!’”).

Davis, on the other hand, is the big-picture thinker. He’s the one most likely to oversee a project. He does much of the writing and directing. Unlike Alcorn, he isn’t trained as a character animator, although he’s a self-taught 3D animator.

From a young age. Davis was a stop-motion fan. By junior high. he’d decided to become a filmmaker. The impetus was a clay animation movie he’d seen at an animation festival. He got so excited he went home and started making movies and building sets in his parents’ game room. An ardent fan of Ray Harryhausen (the Sinbad movies. Jason and the Argonauts), he was also keen on sci-fi. Mad Magazine, and Star Trek.

Davis graduated from SMU in 1984 with a film degree. By that point he’d met Alcorn at a local film/video production house during an internship. They didn’t exactly hit it off. Alcorn was the company’s animation cameraman and art production person. Davis, the intern, was fascinated by everything he did.

“He was like a little kid,” remembers Alcorn. Alcom seldom carries on a one-on-one conversation-sit down with him and you encounter an entire cast of characters. “He’d always ask. (.shifts into an inquisitive student’s voice) ’What are you doing now?* Or ’How do you do this?’ (he shifts back to his voice). and other people started saying, (deep suspicious voice), ’Hey, I think he’s trying to take your job.’ (his own voice, incredulous) ’He’s trying to take my job?! Well, that’s not very nice!” (normal voice) “At the time. 1 was young and inexperienced enough to think. ’What if he COULD take my job?’

So I shied away from have and wouldn’t help him.”

Then one day, Alcorn stumbled upon Davis in the art department. working on a student film, listening to some music.

“I thought, ’Wow. this is cool! What is it?” And we started to talk about music. We”re both really into music; we both play music. And I asked. ’Can 1 listen to this?’ (Davis-like voice). ’Oh yeah, and take this and this and this.’ (normal voice) ’Wow, what a nice guy!’ I felt terrible. It was one of those lessons: Don’t believe everything you hear.”

A couple of years later. Alcorn’s job was eliminated, and Davis ended up getting him a job where he was working, at K&H Productions. Davis was his boss.

“That’s another good lesson.” Alcorn says, shaking his head at the memory. “If you try to be nice to people in general, you’re probably going to be better off. And if you’re a jerk, like I was. you never know how it’s going to end up.”

Obviously. Alcorn took the lesson to heart. During their 12-year partnership, he and Davis have argued once-and that lasted two minutes. Theirs is the definition of a symbiotic relationship; in fact, it’s tough to imagine a more compatible pair. They’re both easygoing; neither seems driven by visions of artistic grandeur. If you ask, they’ll tell you who originated each DNA idea, but neither makes any effort to take his share of credit. Instead, they consider every idea everybody’s (and that extends to their staff) because everybody contributes something to each process. As Alcorn puts it, “It’s all about making it as good as it can be. U doesn’t matter whose vision it is; it’s just all about being good. That’s all.”

Likewise, the atmosphere at DNA headquarters is surprisingly mellow and congenial-especially for a roomful of artist-types. Things don’t get going until about 10 in the morning, although they may last welt into the wee hours during a tight production schedule.

Staff members maintain a fairly intense level of focus (you try watching the same 10-second stretch of animation 100 times a day), but there are lunchtime cartoon screenings (generally, episodes of The Simpsons), late-afternoon games of Hackey-sack, and the occasional staff Whirlyball competition.

The goal is not striking it rich. It’s having fun. “We started in 1987 with a $5,000 loan and have never borrowed any more money, says Alcom. “Our income has increased every year, and the last two years have been our best. Now, 1 look around at the hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of equipment and think ’Oh, my God. what have we done.” It’s a weird feeling, having 30 work stations and a payroll and health insurance-scary that it’s the largest office I’ve ever worked in. We used to feel that as long as we met our monthly nut, things were okay. Now we have to be responsible. We’re making a profit now even though our price structure isn’t as high as those on the West Coast.” “Don’t get me wrong,” Davis hastens to add. “We like money. We eventually want to make a lot of money. But that’s not the main goal. We’ve turned things down that were more money just because they weren’t where we wanted to go. We want to be able to make movies.”

Davis says the secret to his partnership with Alcorn is that “Keith and I work at different levels, so we don’t get in each other’s way. I’m looking at it from the story standpoint and cinematographer standpoint-blocking the actions, deciding where the cuts are going to be, what the camera’s going to do. And Keith will be looking at it from you know, ’The character would look better if he was posed like this’ and ’It would be funnier if he did this.” Which makes it real nice because we’re not agonizing over the same thing.”

After K&H closed its doors, Davis and Alcorn decided to venture out on their own. They set up shop in Davis’ duplex in October 1987. They called themselves DNA (Davisn’ Alcom) and wailed for work to arrive.

It was slow going, but “We didn’t really have anyplace else to go,” Alcom says. “I was 30 and John was 26. It wasn’t like we were 55 years old and (whiny voice), ’Ah gee, I don’t wanna start over now.’” But it was really hard. “Every couple of weeks, you’d call people and ask ’em, (eager voice) ’Hey! Do ya need any animation today? Can 1 interest you in some cartoons?” (Sarcastic voice), ’No. thanks.’ (Dejected voice) ’Oh. Oh-kay.”’

They didn’t have a clue what they were doing. For the first few years, work trickled in. Just barely, Alcorn adds.

“People always talk about (perky voice) ’Ah, those were the good old days.’ No. those were the HORRIBLE old days,” he says emphatically. “They were HORRIBLE. We didn’t know WHERE the next job was coming from or IF it was coming. And that part of it lasted a LONG time. We were five years old, and we’d think, (happy voice) ’Five years! We’ve done it!’ (panicked voice) ’Well, wait, where’s that next job coming from? Have we been lucky for five years? We haven’t done anything for two weeks!’ Then something would happen.”

Those were the days of the Kroger videos, the Dairy Queen commercials and the dancing corporate logos. To keep their sanity. Davis and Alcorn started producing animation projects for themselves.

“We’d always made films on our own and entered them in festivals and stuff like that.” Alcorn says. “So we thought, ’Why don’t we just do something we want to do? Where no one can tell us what to do.’ (Eager, boyish voice) “Hey! You know what we oughta do? This little cherub that lives in the woods, and all the other cherubs make fun of him because he doesn’t have any nipples. Wouldn’t that be funny?’ (Second equal]y eager, boyish voice), ’Oh. yeah! That’d be great!’”

Thus, The Adventures of Nippleless Nippleby was born. It was strange, crass, and a little gross. In other words, exactly what they needed to keep from losing their minds. Nanna and Li!’ Puss Puss followed shortly thereafter. Nippleby and Nanna became hits with Spike and Mike’s Sick and Twisted Festival. Nippleby was screened at the Dallas Video Festival. Weird Beard showed up on Comedy Central. The animation underground started to pay attention. A few television jobs came their way. Things began to get fun.

It way Mary Kay Cosmetics that catapulted DNA into the world of 3D animation. Hired to create a cast of dancing suntan lotion bottles for a conference presentation, Davis and Alcorn realized the Mac programs they’d been experimenting with weren’t up to the challenge. Newtek’s LightWave package was the only 3D animation system they could afford that was capable. Luckily, another local graphics company was already equipped with LightWave and gave Davis a crash course.

The first entertainment enterprise they attempted using LightWave was the Fox kids’ show AJ’s Time Travelers. When that ended, Davis began modeling the rocket ship for Jimmy Neutron (at this point, the character, whom Davis had dreamed up back in college, was called Johnny Quasar). He made the 40-sccond Quasar promo, which won Best of Show and Best Character Animation in the 1995 LightWave awards. That’s when Oedekerk entered the picture.

Oedekerk had seen a magazine article about the LightWave award (known as a Wavey) and called DNA. Can I see this Johnny Quasar bit? he wondered. Well. sure. At the time, Oedekerk was wrapping up Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls. He had yet to become a Hollywood tour de force (to wit: this summer, he was named to Entertainment Weekly’s It List of the 100 most creative people in the entertainment world), but he was on his way.

Impressed with what he saw, Oedekerk offered to try to sell the idea to a network. He promptly did to Nickelodeon. That’s when the official Waiting Period began. Meanwhile, Oedekerk, who runs a thriving production company called O Entertainment, found other TV work to occupy DNA. First, he hired them to create a host of 3D effects for his NBC special, steve.oedekerk.com. Then, in the spring of 1997, he asked them to animate a Christmas special for ABC, Santa v. the Snowman.

In doing so. Davis says. Oedekerk had thrown down the gauntlet. It was a great gig, no doubt about it. But there was one serious catch: DNA had three months to complete the 30-minute special, which was slotted to air that November. When it comes to animation- which eats up 30 frames per second-that’s barely enough time to get a computer up and running. Everyone knew it was a gamble.

“They had never done a full-length show before, but they’d never even done a full-length CGI (computer-generated images) show before,” Oedekerk says. “And we hadn’t seen much of their character animation. But from what I knew of them and from what John had done with Neutron, it just felt right to me. So we got together and decided, ’Yes, it’s possible; it’s incredibly tight, but it’s do-able.’ But it was very, very tight.”

To put it mildly.

“It was the fastest production I’ve ever heard of,” says Davis, who wrote the script and served as technical director (Alcorn, who designed most of the characters, was a producer). “We did all the animation in 10 weeks with only eight people. For three months I worked 100 hours a week, minimum. The animators worked between 75 and 80 hours a week.

“If it had been the kind of thing where it wasn’t fun to work on and we were going to be getting a lot of input from the network, it wasn’t going to happen,” Davis says. “Fortunately, Steve is in a position where he kept the network at bay and didn’t show them much of anything; he just trusted us. We had input up front, and then we just took it and ran with it.

“That’s what made it so much fun. It was like being in film school again: ’We’re making our own movie! ’ And everybody could participate. So they were all excited about it and just worked their butts off for three months.”

The process did take its toll, however.

“By the time that was over, I was spent,” Davis says. “For about three or four months, I couldn’t do anything; I couldn’t work AT ALL. It was WEIRD. I had never experienced that before.”

“After we’d finished, several production companies said, T thought you guys were crazy; I didn’t think you would pull this off AT ALL,’”Alcorn recalls. “And that was good and bad. It was good because we got a lot of recognition for that; it proved what could be done. But it set a dangerous precedent.

“For example, the people we did The Barnyard for knew that, if push came to shove, it COULD happen that fast. But animation is a laborious process. There are so many details, it’ll drive you insane. Plus, dealing with finicky computers, you have to get the balance just right, or they upchuck all over you. And we have that daily. You’re constantly battling your tools, which is frustrating.”

Equally frustrating, DNA’s first brush with the big time didn’t go as planned. The Christmas special-a clever, unconventional story about a lonely snowman who swipes a flute from Santa’s workshop and finds himself at war with St. Nick-got great press but no viewers. What’s more, Neutron was still in limbo.

However, something more important had happened: DNA had found a valuable ally in Oedekerk, a master in the art of the Hollywood deal.

When the Neutron negotiations began, Davis says, he and Alcorn were “pretty green” about the business side of the entertainment world (when asked how green, Oedekerk merely laughs- heartily). Thanks to Oedekerk, they’ve picked up a thing or two.

“I’ve learned a great deal from Steve about the workings of Hollywood,” Davis says. “He taught me what it takes to write a script mat’s going to be read well. And about the whole principle of the business: It’s all about selling. You’re constantly selling, and he taught me how you do that, down to the minutiae.”

Oedekerk’s skill in die fine art of waiting has also come in handy. “If you don’t know this business-and I’ve learned this the hard way-it just freaks people out,” Oedekerk says. “Decisions take SO LONG, and deals that are going well take SO LONG. And SO LONG means months and months. Maybe even a year clicks by as it’s GOING GOOD, and yet you just don’t get the final answer. And it’s maybe one more thing that needs to be negotiated, but all the agents are negotiating 50 other things, so you have that sort of waiting, too.

“For John and Keith, out of the gate, it was really tough. Because it seems like it’s going well, but NOTHIN’S HAPPENIN’. It can make people go COMPLETELY stir-crazy. But you just learn to concentrate on whatever you’re doing creatively and let this oobie-doobie, weird, slow-motion thing take its course. Sometimes it’s surprising. Sometimes things happen really, really fast. Other times, like in the case case of Jimmy Neutron, it starts going SO WELL that it bogs down. Because everyone wants to reach their hand in.”

Both Davis and Alcorn are quick to acknowledge Oedekerk’s role in their snowballing success.

“Steve has been instrumental in our development,” Alcorn says, “because the dot-com project gave us some national visibility, as did the Santa special and Jimmy Neutron, even though it hasn’t aired. Within the community it’s opened a lot of doors for us. We go out to California now, and people are pitching US stuff based on seeing Jimmy and Santa v. the Snowman.”

Oedekerk, meanwhile, downplays his role.

“Anything that’s incredibly strong, if you just keep doing it, one way or another it works out,” he says. “If I had not stumbled across John Davis-who knows what the timeline would have been?-but the cream always rises to the top.”

It’s easy to see why so many people are so interested in Neutron: There isn’t anything else out there quite like it. The look, for one thing, is eye-poppingly original. Highly stylized yet, hyper-real, it’s an explosion of acid colors and patterns dotting futuristic and retro-hip imagery. The characters, with their exaggerated features (Dad’s honker of a nose, Jimmy’s sky-high cowlick) and claylike modeling, meld the blatantly cartoonish with the tangible to create a sort of walking, talking world of clay images come to life. The soundtrack, featuring a theme song by Atlanta surf-lounge band Man or Astroman? is cool enough to interest jaded teens, yet appealingly familiar to Boomers and frenetic enough for overzealous toddlers.

The storyline is simple enough-a kid runs away from home and has an adventure-but it takes one unexpected turn after another. That combination is no accident. “Most kids’ programming falls into one of two areas,” says Davis, who .shares Alcorn’s habit of lapsing into one character voice after another. “It’s either kooky, wacky, zany stuff-where it’s just a gagfest-or it’s like (Darth Vader voice) Battle Tech! (normal voice) and everything is just (Vader voice) DESTROY! I AM THE OVERLORD OF SO AND SO!’ (normal voice) and it’s just WAY too heavy.

“What we want to do is play the middle ground where it’s funny but it’s also an adventure-a really different kind of adventure, not a shoot-’em-up kind of thing. It’s like (Neutron voice) ’HEY! Somebody stole the Earth; we’ve gotta go find it!’”

“They don’t go for the most obvious laugh,” says composer Mark Menza. “That’s what I’ve learned from working with them: What you think is going to happen in the next moment and what is the most predictable Hollywood treatment of that gag, they’ll suddenly make a right turn on it. When we were doing Jimmy Neutron, I might have done a scene purposefully very funny. But John would look at it and go, ’No. that’s the idea, but take it in JUST the opposite direction.’ So you get this whole other twist to it. That way, the viewer doesn’t know 35 seconds into a scene how it’s going to end because the music is directing you someplace else, and then it turns on its heel and you go. ’Oh wow! THAT’S fun!”’

Olive, the Other Reindeer is one of those “other” projects that was brought to DNA. They probably wouldn’t have committed to the show if not for a few key reasons: the on-hold status of Neutron, the opportunity to work with Matt Groening, the hour-long running time, and the envelope-pushing aspect of Olive.

“Olive is sort of an oddity, which is why we were interested in it. even though we’re more of a service bureau,” says Davis, who is animation director of the special. “’But we liked the look of the book and the script so much. Plus, it gives us the ability to create some imagery that hasn’t really been done. It’s kind of like a living popup book: The characters are all flat, and they look like they could be cell-animated, but they’re not: they’re 3D. And while they’re flat, the environment they’re in is dimensional. So they sort of look like cutouts walking around in this dimensional environment.”

Working on Olive, however, provides a daily reminder that DNA’s days of doing it all themselves-from recording the voices, composing the music, writing the script, animating the characters, directing every frame, and overseeing the lip-sync-are history. (For example, Groening, who’s executive producer, is directing the voice talent-a key element.)

Thai shift from small guys to big business has been a bit of an adjustment for the two.

“We were such a small company for so many years that we”re used to doing everything ourselves,’” Davis says.

“So it’s been kind of hard to try to NOT do everything. Bui we’ve spent the last two or three years sort of weaning ourselves away. The Jimmy Neutron pilot was probably the last thing I’ll be animating on.

“But that was something I couldn’t resist.” he adds with a smile, betraying his owner’s pride. “I had to animate that one.”

Meanwhile, DNA’s days of turning down entertainment opportunities may be on the upswing. Oedekerk doesn’t think they’ll be able to animate The Barnyard project, which would be a shame since it’s right up their alley: Extremely music-oriented (with gospel-singing hens and a Bobby McFerrin-like mule), it is sharp-tongued, lightning-paced, and edgy (the pilot features a rapping pig and a earful of cows that hotwire a car and take it on a joyride).

Unfortunately, “They’re going to be really busy with Jimmy Neutron-like, busy busy,” Odekerk predicts. “I think Jimmy’s going to be a bit more overwhelming than it appears to be. But Keith so loves the world and the characters, and John has such a handle on the overall visuals, that they’re a perfect fit for The Barnyard. So we’re going to try to keep them involved, even if they don’t have quote-unquote production time available.”

No matter what happens, don’t expect the guys at DNA to head to Hollywood anytime soon.

“I would HATE to live there,” Alcorn says. “It’s fine for four days, but I just don’t like it. It’s too crowded, and the whole time I’m there, I’m thinking about earthquakes.”

If things got really busy, Davis says, they might open a satellite office on the West Coast and link the two together.

“Bui we’d always stay headquartered here, if possible,” he adds. “LA’s a nice place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there, ’cause there’s a lot of BS that goes on. Sure, there’s an energy there, and everybody’s out there. But you can’t get a straight answer out of people. We say what we mean and we mean what we say, and we expect other people to treat us the same way. But it ain’t necessarily so.”

Not that Hollywood wouldn’t welcome them-especially if Jimmv Neutron makes it to the big screen sometime soon. Consider this: So far, there have been only three American studio features that are all computer-generated: Toy Story, Antz, and A Bug’s Life. Two of those are from the same computer Goliath, Disney (one in conjunction with Pixar); the other is from another Goliath, Dreamworks SKG (in conjunction with Pacific Data Images). Jimmy-the work of a computer “David” from Dallas-could be the fourth.

Reminded of that, Davis seems momentarily awestruck himself. For the first time, his words are slow to come.

“It’s funny,” he says, finally, as if suddenly cognizant of just how great a distance DNA has traveled. “We don’t necessarily think (deep, important voice) ’WE’RE TRAILBLAZERS! WE’RE GROUNDBREAKERS!” (Normal voice), “But then, occasionally,we’ll stop and think, ’I guess we really are.’”