All pictures used have been lovingly lifted from Quinton’s Myspace
Audio
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Links
Quinton on Myspace
Quinton on IMDB
AdventuresInAnime.com
Interview by: Amanda Mack
Part 1 of 2
Strange things happen to the female species when you say the name “Quinton Flynn” amongst the right batch of video game or anime loving girls. There’s an immediate widening of the eyes, the release of that trademark fangirl squeal, and an exciting scrambling to tell about—and in great detail—her favorite, bad boy role of his.
I know this is how it happens because I’ve, more or less, just described myself upon hearing his name.
Voice actor/writer/singer/comedian Quinton Flynn, best known for voicing Reno in Final Fantasy: Advent Children and Crisis Core, Axel in the Kingdom Hearts series, and Raiden in Metal Gear Solid 2 and 4, is living the life most rock stars only dream they could. Convention and expo halls around the world pack quite quickly and tightly when Quinton with good friend, fellow jack of all trades, and partner in convention adventuring Jeff Nimoy grace the pages of a scheduled appearance pamphlet. And with Q’s sharp wit, abundance of natural charm, and 60’s era dipped vocals, it’s easy to assume it’s not far removed from the lifestyle the Ohio native would be living even if he was giving his soul to rock and roll each night and not lending his voice to hot heads and cyborg ninjas.
He does fortunately get to more satisfyingly scratch his writing, musical, and comedy itch with the web series he co-stars in with Jeff Nimoy called Adventures in Anime, an almost traditional shaky cam tour documentary with a quirky twist of sketch comedy spirit that chronicles their experiences in the beautiful madness of making their rounds on the Con circuit.
I recently (and finally) snagged some phone time with Quinton as he talked openly about the truth of being freelance in Hollywood, why he works better with no motivation, and what he’d like to see in the future for Adventures of Anime. He even took the time to drop some serious music knowledge on me that had me working overtime on Google and Wikipedia.
[Note: As always, this is only a partial transcription of the interview so, you're going to have to download and listen to the audio for the full glory of it. Also, I know I screwed up the name of Brendan Benson's band, The Greenhornes. Any other time I can remember their name...just not when I'm talking to Quinton, apparently. Sorry! To quote The Bravery: Don't look at me that way, it was an honest mistake.]
Amanda Mack: You’re primarily an actor but you write and sing and a little birdie told me that maybe you did some stand-up comedy at one point…
Quinton Flynn: It’s true. I have a background in stand-up comedy, improvisational comedy, sketch comedy. I’ve done some work on Jimmy Kimmel Live, a couple comedy sketches where I’ve been singing. I also did voice over sketch parody stuff for them. There was a show on Comedy Central called Crossballs a few years ago where [in British accent] I played Paul McCartney. A few years back, I tested for Saturday Night Live which was a dream come true. I’ve always been a huge fan of that whether it’s characters on shows like that or growing up–there were these impressionists that I used to listen to and watch on talk shows back when I was a kid. There was Rich Little, John Byner, Frank Gorshin, and Fred Travalena and those guys that did impressions were my teachers.
AM: Out of all the things I listed—like the writing and the singing and the comedy—is there anything in particular you’d like to do more of right now?
QF: Well, you know right now, I’m working on a web series with Jeff Nimoy called Adventures in Anime [AdventuresinAnime.com] and that’s where Jeff and I are doing a combination of everything we do which is writing, acting, performing, improvising. It has panels from different conventions we’ve done in America and Canada and Australia but those have yet to be [featured in the episodes of AiA] and also some original songs like the theme song that Jeff and I co-wrote and another song called “Dallas”. And we have another one that has yet to be released and it’s called “The Yaoi Song” and in parenthesis “We’re Not Gay” [“The Yaoi Song (We're Not Gay)”]. So, I don’t know if you’re familiar with any of that but…
AM: I’m familiar with all of it, actually! And I wanted to plug Adventures In Anime a little bit myself and say that I think it’s absolutely brilliant. I’ve been watching it from the first webisode and I love every second of it.
QF: Thank you.
AM: I didn’t even know what Yaoi was until I heard that song [“The Yaoi Song”]. I’m so far removed from the anime culture, unfortunately, that I had no idea what that was.
QF: You’re not alone cause when Jeff and I went to our first convention, I think it was in 2006 at ACen in Chicago, we were introduced to it when a guy told us to go into—we were asking hey, where can we find some single ladies…over 18, of course, and he said go into the Yaoi Room and we’re like, “What’s that?” and he said, “You’ll find out.” And then we found out and as a result of fans writing things on the Internet, Jeff said, “Why don’t we address this and why don’t we address it through a song?” and so that’s how that came to be.
But, to answer your question of what I’d like to be doing more of now, I’d love to be doing an animated series and I’d like to be doing some more video game voice work and possibly some sitcom work or sketch comedy for television.
AM: I think I remember reading something about you actually trying out for The Daily Show.
QF: That’s right. I did. I tested for The Daily Show. They called me in for that and I auditioned for a correspondent position. They liked what I did but they went a different way. That’s showbiz.
AM: Yeah, unfortunately. I think you would have been amazing on there, personally.
QF: Thank you. Yeah, I do too…but, who knows what the future holds. That’s the interesting thing about this town [Hollywood]. There’s so many different people, so many different producers, writers, creators. It just comes around to the right people hooking up and the right people becoming exposed to what I do and…opportunities happen.
 AM: May is actually when Adventures in Anime launched with your good friend Jeff Nimoy. What gave you the idea to film this and do this web series?
QF: Jeff and I were originally looking at doing a one-man show for me locally in LA—a stage show. And then, after he’d seen a lot of the footage I had on video that I had been shopping around, he cut together a video demo and we conceived of a concept show—a sketch comedy show—that we could produce to be called In Like Flynn. And we started taking it around to the networks and pitched it at Comedy Central and unfortunately, people weren’t biting and around that time, we were invited to our first anime convention and after we had gone to that, we thought, “Look at this!”. We had no idea there were fans of our work in the voice over realm for acting and in Jeff’s case, acting, writing, directing, producing. So we thought, why don’t we start up a Myspace site and start inviting fans on board. And then we said, “Wait a minute, why don’t we shoot a series for the web?” because so many people do that and often times, it can develop into something for broadcast television, cable, or motion picture. It was like, “Well, if no one is saying yes to us why don’t we say yes to us and let’s do it ourselves.”
AM: Speaking of your fan base, I’ve been a lurker in your fan base for quite a while and to me, you have a very unique fan base. You have the people who kind of know you from your anime and Kingdom Hearts and Final Fantasy stuff and then you have the people who know you as Raiden in the Metal Gear Solid series. And I’m sure for a lot of them, the roles do cross over but for the most part, those group[s] of fans stay separate. Do you kind of notice that when you’re meeting people?
QF: Oh, absolutely. What we’ll do when Jeff and I sit on a panel and introduce ourselves, we’ll start to list our credits and we do this at every panel because there’s always people we don’t know yet. The ones who are the most rabid fans of particular characters will be the most vocal and I can hear and see who they are. You’re right, they do tend to kind of stay in packs. It’s almost like having a favorite band, I think, or a favorite singer. You know Jack White from The White Stripes, right?
[Note: Oh, they're only one of my favorite bands EVER.]
AM: Oh, definitely.
QF: Well, he’s also in a band call The Raconteurs with a guy I really like named Brendan Benson. Well, there’s a couple of songs on each album that I like but I prefer them individually in their own projects so to look at me and my voice acting that way illustrates what you’re talking about. There’s someone like, “Yeah, Quinton Flynn rocks as Raiden!” [and someone else like] “Well, yeah, he’s good as Raiden but I really love him as Axel!” There’s many different demographics. I think there’s a female cross over for Reno, Axel, and Raiden. But with the men…the men tend to stick more with Raiden than anything else.
AM: When you go to audition for a part, do you have any rituals you like to do before hand to relax or focus yourself?
QF: That’s a good question. I like to read through the copy. They have a depiction of the character often times…well, all the time, there’s a picture of the character. So, what I try to do is get a sense of what they’re looking for and then come up with what I think will best fit the character and often times, I’ll even come up with a couple of back up options in terms of tonality of the character or a dialect in case they want one, a place and a register. I’ll read through it and sometimes I’ll mark it with a pen or pencil, sometimes I’ll highlight it and then I just kind of get into it and then when it’s time to roll, I just say, “Alright, let’s play.” and just do my thing and trust my gut and really try to get out of my head and get into my body and play the same way we all did as kids with “Cops and Robbers” or “Cowboys and Indians”. It’s about playing and using your imagination and pretending. When we were all kids in grade school or kindergarten, whenever a teacher said, “Okay, we’re gonna play a game now and I want you to do this and do this and do this. Okay, ready? Go.” Nobody said, “Well, what’s my motivation?”
AM: [laughs]
QF: [Or] “I don’t think I’m really getting what you’re saying.” Kids have that great reckless abandon and they just go with their instincts so I find as an actor the more that I’m free to do that, the better my performance is, the more authentic it is, and the better off it comes. And then, of course, the rest is just up to the powers that be in terms of what they’re looking for.
AM: Do you have anything that you’re especially proud of? Any possessions that you’re especially proud of?
QF: You mean just things I own in general?
AM: Something that you maybe earned or a fan gave you or something like that.
QF: Gosh, I’m drawing a complete blank. Well, first of all I’d have to say the kind of introduction you gave, the response from the fans. The feedback that’s out there really is the biggest gift that could be given because what we do, and Jeff and I have spoken of this in other interviews, we do in a studio and it’s kind of like being in a cave. We do the work, and then we get it done, and then it goes out and then we don’t know what it’s like. It’s different from stage acting where you get an immediate response. So, I would say the greatest gift received is the feedback that we’re very lucky to have because of technology and the Internet in which fans from all over are able to make comments and give us an input and thank us for things we’ve done and for me, I just have a lot of gratitude and it gives me a lot of humility.
AM: Do you have any guilty pleasure movies, TV show[s], or music?
QF: I used to buy into that expression of “guilty pleasures” but right now, I don’t. Whatever I like, I like and if somebody thinks it’s cool, that’s cool and if somebody doesn’t, they might think it’s a guilty pleasure. To me, in terms of music, the ultimate bands for me have always been The Beatles and everything that has been an output of that musically. This would sound like guilty pleasures to some of the fans. Like, there are bands from the 70s I really dig like Bad Company, Styx, and The Raspberries and The Electric Light Orchestra and then maybe bands in the 80s like The Smithereens and Rick Springfield or Journey and Foreigner in particular I really love. As far as movies go, I love all the Mel Brooks movies. I was young when those were being made and they had a lot of influence on my comedy. I’ve always loved Jerry Lewis… Anytime that I can sleep. I guess that’s a guilty pleasure.
AM: [laughs]
QF: Other than that, I don’t [have any guilty pleasures]. I’m sure one will come to me after the interview, though.
AM: Do you have a song or movie that you wish you would have written?
QF: If there was a movie I wish I would have written, it would have been the screenplay to the first Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory that starred Gene Wilder.
AM: Ah, that’s great.
QF: As well as Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein. And then as far as songs that I wish I would have written. God, there’s so many! My head is a circus of music. Well, I’ll give you a very obscure one with a band I grew up listening to in Cleveland that were very big in the 70s into the early 80s on FM radio called The Michael Stanley Band and they wrote a song called “Midwest Midnight” and it’s on one album called “Stagepass”which is a live album they did in 1977 and it might also be found on Michael Stanley’s greatest hits collection which I’m sure can be found on Amazon. That song is a brilliant song that I wish I’d written. And I think “Blue Morning, Blue Day” by Foreigner and I think that was written by, if I’m not mistaking, Mick Jones and Lou Gramm. “Last Train to Clarksville” by The Monkees…that would be one and actually, “Steady, As She Goes” by The Raconteurs.
AM: Ah, that’s a great song!
QF: Oh, “Behind the Wall of Sleep” by The Smithereens. And then “Up the Junction” by Squeeze.
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