MARCH 18TH, 2025 ~ INTERVIEW WITH RICK PERRY OF DIMENSION 20

00:02:25 Hannah Mitchell

Hi, how are you?

00:02:25 The Legendary Rick Perry

Hey. Good, how are you doing?

00:02:30 Hannah Mitchell

Good. It's so nice to meet you, face to face. Hi, I'm Hannah!

00:02:31 The Legendary Rick Perry

Rick.

00:02:34 Hannah Mitchell

Hi, Rick. Rick is good? We're not "Mr. Perrying" up in here?

00:02:38 The Legendary Rick Perry

[laughing] No, not “Mr. Perry.” Sorry, I was under my truck, I have dirt on my face.

00:02:41 Hannah Mitchell

Oh, you're totally fine. I've been teaching teenagers all day, so there's no telling what’s under my nails. Um – you don’t want to know, don’t worry about it. 

00:02:52 The Legendary Rick Perry

Oh, where are you located? 

00:02:53 Hannah Mitchell

I'm a little bit north of Atlanta.

00:02:56 The Legendary Rick Perry

OK, cool.

[ cut due to personal information ] 

00:03:28 Hannah Mitchell

It's really cool! Are you in LA or Washington right now?

00:03:34 The Legendary Rick Perry

Washington. I've been up here, I was in LA a lot this last fall and into the winter, but I've been up here for a couple months now. I’m freelance at Dropout, you know, so...

00:03:46 Hannah Mitchell

Okay.

00:03:48 The Legendary Rick Perry

…like a lot of us are. So when we're not making the show – we’re not doing the show, so right now I've been kind of doing a few things on this auction that we have going.

00:03:56 Hannah Mitchell

Yeah, for the minis, right? That's cool.

00:04:01 The Legendary Rick Perry

So my shop is like, full of carboard boxes…

00:04:02 Hannah Mitchell

I love it, that’s so cool. How's the auction going? I haven't even thought - I don't have auction money on a teacher salary.

00:04:12 The Legendary Rick Perry

Yeah, totally. It's going good. We just did close the first like wave of stuff and, we're - we have three waves, so we're like, almost halfway through now. And, and I mean, you know, we're seeing what we kind of normally see and we'll expect we’ll raise a good amount of money, you know, for a bunch of cool causes.

00:04:30 Hannah Mitchell

So yeah, I saw all the different causes that you guys are – it's like what, four big ones, right? And probably –

00:04:39 The Legendary Rick Perry

I think it’s five, now. 

00:04:40 Hannah Mitchell

Oh wow, that’s awesome!

00:04:41The Legendary Rick Perry

Yeah. So that's pretty cool. It's very interesting when we're trying to like, “What should we do this time?” You know? And we already – I think they'd already kind of committed to doing something for Palestine and it's like, “Man, the world feels like it's on fire. Let’s, like, try to, like, hit a few things.” I know that was kind of – like a goal, I think. And you know…

00:05:03 Hannah Mitchell

Yeah, it’s rough out there. It's rough - you know: being, I mean, you grew up in Texas, so you're a little familiar with the Bible Belt, at least. It’s – you know, Southern Appalachia. It's tough down here.

00:05:15 The Legendary Rick Perry

Yeah.

[ cut due to personal information ]

00:07:42 Hannah Mitchell

So what I love about Dimension 20 is that there's never any tokenism. There’s never any, like: I like to think of it as offering casual dignity to difference, as if though that were never something that had been threatened in the first place. And as someone who helps to physically craft these worlds, how do you approach that level of physical storytelling with all of that kind of stuff in mind?

00:08:21 The Legendary Rick Perry

Yeah. Well, I'm super stoked to talk to you, especially about this, and flattered, so thanks for asking me. So I, you know, I'm the production designer, and I'm responsible for all the visual stuff: the projections and the miniatures and props. But I also, I am a Creative Producer and I work with Brennan too, and our producing team, to, just to come up with a story – or at least big chunks of it, you know. So I guess my finger is in a few of the pies along the way, so to speak, and – I don't know. I mean, I guess we’re all kind of like-minded people, I guess. You know, in the sense that we – I think we kind of all share worldviews and we all value empathy. We’re all working on this show because we enjoy collaborating and making cool stuff and we take, I think – everybody on the crew but especially at the higher level – take immense joy from making stuff that is cool. So, in other words, we're in it for not – you know, money or what – you know, this is not just a job, it's a passion. I think also the, you know, the mandate comes from above, you know what I mean? It's like, Brennan and Dropout have very strong opinions about how inclusive and you know – just how things should be done, kind of. And we, you know, I think we all agree and we lean into that, you know, and reflect that, also. Like I, for me personally, beyond just representation in the story and in the visuals and stuff like that, it’s also about my team, you know, who I hire. And the space that we have there in the industry that has predominantly been cishet male, white male space. Especially model-making in particular, you know, is a really tough corner of already a tough industry. You know, I feel really proud that we have a lot of people that come back year after year who clear their schedule to come work on our show, you know? And we're - we don't pay the most, but we pay a reasonable, competitive amount of like, you know, whatever gigs. But we offer a fun environment that is safe – generally – and inclusive, and also the show puts the spotlight on the crew, you know? Like, they say my name, they say crew members’ names out. And they retweet us and they do stuff to really share and bring forward folks who – you know, even as a Production Designer, you really don't have a lot of visibility, and so they kind of put the spotlight on us in a way that – you know, as a creative person who largely sort of makes stuff and then you're just sort of throwing it into a black hole and it goes out? To actually hear stuff coming back and people being – finding you on Twitter and being like “That thing you made is so cool,” or, you know, “This got me through really hard time,” or whatever, like – It’s so powerful and meaningful as a creative person to get that feedback.

00:12:26 Hannah Mitchell

Oh, for sure!

00:12:28 The Legendary Rick Perry

So the reason, I think, it sort of like snowballed into this awesome thing that just keeps going, you know? Um…yeah. 

00:12:35 Hannah Mitchell

I love it because it does seem, you know, like you said, “it snowballs.” It seems like it's, it's feeding on itself, but it keeps on growing in such a cool way. Some of the details I love – I haven't watched every season of the anthology: there are a few that I've missed – I’ve saved them for when I…

00:12:55 The Legendary Rick Perry

[Laughing]

00:12:55 Hannah Mitchell

…for when I really need something new. I just finished, um – I actually just finished Escape from the Bloodkeep, which I know was ages ago…

00:13:03 The Legendary Rick Perry

Okay, yeah!

00:13:04 Hannah Mitchell

…but I'm pretty up to, I'm pretty up on most of the newer things. I love the – the first one I watched was – actually I listened to it – and it was The Unsleeping City, and we listened to it on the way home from a vacation, and it was such a delight! And I said “Oh! What? Who? Who are these people and what are they doing and how have I not heard of them before now?” But I love all of your sets and your minis – I'm an artist… 

00:13:32 The Legendary Rick Perry

Cool! 

00:13:33 Hannah Mitchell

…and a writer, and I do – look, man. I'm like a husky in an apartment. 

00:13:37 The Legendary Rick Perry

[Laughing]

00:13:38 Hannah Mitchell

If you don't give me something to do, I will find something to do and it will become destructive. So like, I do wood-burning and basket-weaving and like…

00:13:46 The Legendary Rick Perry

Oh, nice! That’s cool. 

00:13:47 Hannah Mitchell

…hey, man, I live in Atlanta. If you don't find something to do with the kudzu, it's gonna eat you.

00:13:51 The Legendary Rick Perry

[Laughing]

00:13:51 Hannah Mitchell

So I – it’s “self-defense basketry,” I think. 

00:13:55 The Legendary Rick Perry

Uh-huh.

00:13:56 Hannah Mitchell

But all of your details in in the sets and in the projections that you guys have been doing for the past few seasons are all so phenomenal! All those thoughtful details: for example, in, in [Fantasy High] Junior Year when they were in like the…the haunted house set? And all of the little rooms had all the little things that acknowledge, like, Jawbone’s polyamory…

00:14:20 The Legendary Rick Perry

Uh-huh.

00:14:20

…and Kristen’s whole, “When you're queer, you’re family” vibe… 

00:14:22 The Legendary Rick Perry

Uh-huh.

00:14:22 Hannah Mitchell

…and all of these things: how do you and your team manage? I guess – you kind of answered this already, but – the inclusivity, I guess, just seems so effortless. It doesn't seem anything like tokenism. I guess my question for you specifically, as a creator is: do you talk to people in the queer community? Do you – I mean, there's tons of queer cast and crew, for sure. Is it – is it all that, or do you guys do any like external – I don't know, polling?

00:14:57 The Legendary Rick Perry

Yeah, well, so. On Brennan's side of things, he has – almost every season – reached out to different sensitivity consultants about different topics depending on… 

00:15:11 Hannah Mitchell

Yeah.

00:15:19 The Legendary Rick Perry

…the topic. Or like, I remember, for instance, when he was playing – oh, man, I can’t think of that character's name – Lou's [Lou Wilson’s] character from The Unsleeping City. Uh, he was playing Kingston… 

00:15:27 Hannah Mitchell

Yeah!

00:15:28 The Legendary Rick Perry

…he was playing Kingson’s family, right? And he's like, “I really want to do a good job, you know? I want to represent these folks, you know, these Black Americans, but I'm not Black, you know?” 

00:15:27 Hannah Mitchell

Right.

[Still quoting Brennan] “And I, so like, boy, I want to know about that!” Or whatever. I don't even know what his questions were, but I know that he sought that out and like that's, that's a continual thing, right? And it's so, it's kind of like, amazing, how easy and relatively inexpensive it is to work with a consultant like that! You know, it's just, it's so easy. It doesn't take that much effort and then you’re – and then it helps you reframe everything and kind of be like, “Oh, okay: this is kind of that perspective and this is how I can support that and not do this stuff I don't wanna do,” you know? So there's that part of it, you know, on that side. I mean, the biggest thing is like, because we're passionate about the material, that means that we know it well, right? Like, we know those things about those characters. So I know it, and my Art Directors know it, and then when I go to my shop, I can tell them about it and also like: my shop is full of queer people.

00:16:48 Hannah Mitchell

Yeah. 

00:16:48 The Legendary Rick Perry

You know, so. I’m not queer, but like, my shop is and so it's really easy to be like, “Well, Kristen's a lesbian – we should do, like, a pride flag in there,” or whatever.

00:16:56 Hannah Mitchell

Yeah. 

00:16:56 The Legendary Rick Perry

And then it's like: I don't have to send them research on that! Like, they got that. You know what I mean? We have the right people, you know, to help take the lead. And the other thing is, like: in our shop and just in this show, the amount of world-building and detail is way, way more than any one person – or even a handful of people – could do. So, what ends up happening is like: when we go from a battle concept to actually the person at their bench, oftentimes there are things where I'm like, “Look, this needs to be like this, this needs to be like this. Here’s the colors for these and these. That person, or those two minis, they should just look like high school students, like, dealer’s choice,” you know, or whatever, or “These should be that.” You know? And so that is a perk for the crew, because often they have a very, very granular, detailed plan that they have to follow on other type of shows, you know? So for us, it's like we're offering them autonomy to bring some juice to it. They're collaborating with us, you know? I've communicated what it's about or who those characters are – what’s happening, you know – and so they can take that and add their own stuff to it, you know?

00:18:24 Hannah Mitchell

The collaborative process is something that I love so intensely. I – one of my main focuses for my research is collaborative storytelling and using collaborative storytelling to increase authentic engagement with high school English students. And the only way to be able to collaborate at that level is if everybody at every level has that kind of trust – that they trust their team. 

00:18:54 The Legendary Rick Perry

Yeah.

00:18:55 Hannah Mitchell

And what I love about Dimension 20 is that the performances each season vary so wildly from the silliest silly moments to the most tear-jerking, heart-wrenching depths. 

00:19:06 The Legendary Rick Perry

Yeah.

00:19:07 Hannah Mitchell

And your sets and your projections and everything always – you guys seem to have prepared for everything. So it's very clear in the quality of the work that y’all do that there is that amount of trust because no, you couldn't do it by yourself! You’re the infamous Rick Perry, but – 

00:19:27 The Legendary Rick Perry

[Laughing]

00:19:27 Hannah Mitchell

I know you can’t – I watched the documentary [The Legendary Rick Perry and the Art of Dimension 20, streaming on Dropout], getting ready for this –  

00:19:32 The Legendary Rick Perry

Oh, cool!

00:19:33 Hannah Mitchell

“The Famous Rick Perry” [sic] and – as cool as you are, guy? You – there's no way! 

00:19:36 The Legendary Rick Perry

I know, no. 

00:19:38 Hannah Mitchell

So can you talk a little bit about how you build that trust in such a diverse team?

00:19:46 The Legendary Rick Perry

Well, you know, like I said: there's a lot of people who have returned, so that certainly helps. I don't know. I mean, it's sort of a tricky question. Which is funny to me, because collaboration and creative rapport is the lifeblood of what I do. And I really can't do good work without it, kind of, you know? I just – it's super important. 

00:20:18 Hannah Mitchell

I love when a project becomes greater than the sum of its parts –  

00:20:21 The Legendary Rick Perry

Ooh, yeah! I think –  

00:20:22 Hannah Mitchell

It’s just – there's kind of magic there.

00:20:24 The Legendary Rick Perry

I think it's like – for me it’s like, if I'm trying to imagine building new rapport with a new person who is different than me that just came in, you know, I think – which, actually that happens all the time – I think it's like, you know, the combination of trying to get people up to speed 'cause it's a really high-context creative space, right? Like, the show has all this history, and even within the show, it's like: there's a battle map and there's all the – you know, people come as very skilled model-makers from like working on Star Wars, but don't know what D&D is –  

00:20:59 Hannah Mitchell

Right.

00:21:00 The Legendary Rick Perry

 – or they don't know what a battle map is, so there's a steep curve, you know? So it's trying to not overwhelm them, but like, show them how it works and kind of talk to them about how the stuff is being used and show them past stuff, and like: “Here was the design and reference for this, and here's how we, how it came together. And here's how they shot it in close-ups.” And it's sort of a lot for people to get all at once, you know? Which is okay, it can kind of wash over you and you can get it in waves. So I'm sort of like, trying to slowly inoculate them into this weird little corner that we're in. And then I'm also trying to whatever like, “So that's how they – that's the background,” and then it's like, “Okay, here’s the project we’re working on this week, here's this battle map. It's supposed to be like this.” And I try to invite people into the creative process. So like, “I'm thinking about some mushrooms here. I was thinking about these, but like, these are cool 'cause they have this whole life thing…” and I'm trying to excite them, right? To share the joy that I have about this thing or whatever, and get that – you know, you get that creative rapport! You're like, “Oh, yeah, we're on the same page!” And they're like, “Ooh, that’s cool,” or you know, whatever, and then I –  

00:22:12 Hannah Mitchell

And it just feeds, yeah!

00:22:14 The Legendary Rick Perry

– and then I'm kinda like, there's a lot of opportunities for people to offer stuff. There’s a lot of stuff that crew have to be able to do, you know: a good a good model-maker on our team is able to do a certain amount of design and genesis on their own because that's just – there's too much to do, so – as we said – so giving them stuff and being like, “Hey, can you come up with this?” or “Let me see five versions of this,” or whatever. You know, it’s sort of like a – it's a back and forth, you know? It's a dance, it's a bit like playing music, maybe? You know, where you're kind of playing the melody and then they’re like, “Okay, yeah.” And then they come back with a weird instrument in there, kinda not quite getting it – it's interesting, but it's like, not right. So you’re like, “No, no. It's kind of like this, you know?” and you sort of keep doing it until you sync up.

00:23:14 Hannah Mitchell

Yeah, harmony, countermelody. All that fun stuff? Yeah.

00:23:18 The Legendary Rick Perry

Yeah. And then the best is like, they know you so well, they’re like: “What about this?” Or I'm like, “I got a really interesting project for you ‘cause I know you’re really into this: build this thing.” and they're like, “Whoa!” You know –  

00:23:31 Hannah Mitchell

Oh, I love it.

00:23:33 The Legendary Rick Perry

– so it’s this kind of give and take.

00:23:35 Hannah Mitchell

Yeah. I mean – the great truth of life is “treat people like people,” I guess, right?

00:23:40 The Legendary Rick Perry

Yeah, maybe so. Yeah, I don’t know, it's funny. Just – that's just the interior way that it came to be from my own background, you know? It’s in the visual arts and I came up through the Art Department, you know, started doing every job – like, I was a Union carpenter and painter and props and greens and everything. Not that I know I'm an expert or anything, but I have a lot of experience in the field, so to speak, and so I can kind of lead by example a little bit, you know, or kind of be in the trenches a little bit. And so that's my style, I guess, is to, you know, jam with the person.

00:24:25 Hannah Mitchell

Jam, for sure. I love that metaphor of it being like music, 'cause you’ll hit some sour notes –  

00:24:35 The Legendary Rick Perry

Yeah!

00:24:35 Hannah Mitchell

– and we never wanna hit that note again! [Laughing]

00:24:36 The Legendary Rick Perry

Yeah, ooof.

00:24:35 Hannah Mitchell

Like, “I don't what that was, but I know it was wrong!” 

00:24:40 The Legendary Rick Perry

But that's interesting!

00:24:40 Hannah Mitchell

Yeah, we'll log that away for later in a totally different context. Another thing that I'm – that, that's one of my – I have sort of like, two primary research focuses, because my doctorate is a Doctor of Arts. It’s not a PhD and it's not an EdD, so it's not a Doctor of Education. A Doctor of Arts program has more pedagogy, which is like ‘the teaching stuff’ than an EdD, but it has more content stuff. Excuse me – more pedagogy than the PhD, more content than the EdD. It's like a little unholy child of the two. 

00:25:18 The Legendary Rick Perry

Mm-hmm.

00:25:19 Hannah Mitchell

So I get to do the English stuff and the teaching stuff, which is what I wanted. 

00:25:22 The Legendary Rick Perry

Nice!

00:25:23 Hannah Mitchell

So I'm also – one of my research focuses is transformative works, adaptation theory, spectral theory, which is like ‘What's not there? Where are the blank spaces and why were they excluded?’ kind of stuff. But I love looking at adaptations, because every story is an adaptation – to a point, right? We make stories out of bits and pieces of experiences and ideas and other stories. Everything is a little bit Frankenstein-ish. When you're setting stories in universes that are already established – you know, like Fantasy High, going back to the John Hughes films and still having the high fantasy element like Lord of the Rings – or Burrow’s End with Watership Down – or Misfits and Magic with the Harry Potter franchise. I love how Misfits and Magic has – the way that everybody [in the cast] leaned into the complex relationships that everybody has with their favorite book as a kid and, and the direction that it's gone: you know, this simultaneous ‘love letter’ and ‘bitter call out,’ all in one. What's your process for unpacking those worlds and still – I mean, you craft the set and the minis with such obviously clear dedication and collaboration. How much of it is ‘love letter’ and how much of it is scrapping it and introducing something new? How much of a hand do you have in the adaptation, having your hands in the visuals?

00:27:09 The Legendary Rick Perry

How – what was the last question? How much what?

00:27:11 Hannah Mitchell

How much of a hand do you have in the level of adaptation?

00:27:18 The Legendary Rick Perry

Yeah. I come on the season very early. Sometimes there'll be a couple of season ideas and they’re sort of still figuring out, but usually Brennan and the executives at Dropout and Carlos [Luna] have, like, figured out, “Okay, this season is going to be this,” you know. So then they'll spin me up and pitch it to me, kind of. And I'm gonna just talk about that creative process there a little bit – the development process – 'cause I think it answers your question. So, you know, GMs [Game Masters] are all different, too. But they're all kind of all the same in the sense that, like: they come with like some little beautiful, glowing ember of a idea. Right? Like, “This is gonna be Candy Land meets Game of Thrones,” you know? And, “There's going to be a battle inside of – there's going to be like a jousting battle,” or this and that, or “There’s gonna be little gummy knights,” or like, they come with these little crystallized, pure forms of the idea, you know? That they're seeds that germinate into the full world and everything, but all that stuff doesn't exist yet. And then it's kind of just talking about it, right? Just kind of like, having conversations. It’s like, “Ah, I love, you know, in those type of political fantasy things, it’s like big ensemble and they're all related somehow.” And like, you know this and you're sort of working through the things that you notice about it, right? It's this conversation and you're sort of creating a rhythm, a melody together, right? Where you're voicing and acknowledging things that you notice and like about a genre, and also trying to make sure to laugh, right? Thinking about the funniness of this idea, right? Brennan is so good at coming up with that, with season concepts that have a joke built into the DNA of it, you know?

00:29:38 Hannah Mitchell

Yeah!

00:29:38 The Legendary Rick Perry

Like, where you can just easily keep it, it’s just like a joke generator, right?

00:29:44 Hannah Mitchell

[laughing]

00:29:44 The Legendary Rick Perry

Keep doing stuff! So then, so we have these like, twelve meetings, you know. And then I go away, and then I'm like, “Okay, I'm gonna re-read – you know, I’m gonna watch Game of Thrones or I'm gonna reread some book or – I’m big on research, like, I go down rabbit holes and Wikipedia holes and stuff where I'm trying to understand. I think I went back and, like: the beginning of fantasy literature, you know, where did it come from?

00:30:17 Hannah Mitchell

Yeah!

00:30:17 The Legendary Rick Perry

Why do they start making – so like, why is it set in the medieval ages generally, or – all this sort of stuff, for me, is juice. Which, you know, there's really a great wealth information available and you can be like, ‘Oh, a novel like this uses these structures and it does these tropes,’ you know, and here's these things, right? And I'll go out and read all that stuff and find stuff that's really exciting to me, or somehow feels like it is really important to this conversation that I start to have. And then I'll bring it up and I’ll be like, ‘Did you know, blah-blah-blah?’ And then they’ll be like, ‘No!’ and Brennan will be like, ‘Wow, that's cool, you know, it's like this thing.’ And I'm like, ‘Yeah, you know, all these books!’ Like for instance, in that season in A Crown of Candy we were coming up with all these battles. We had mapped them all out and I was like – man, you know, I was looking at the Game of Thrones RPG series, right? There’s a name for it – 

00:31:21 Hannah Mitchell

Mm-hmm.

00:31:23 The Legendary Rick Perry

And in the RPG, it starts in their homeland and they are making a journey to a capital city or to a place much like in the Game of Thrones series. And they get attacked, right? And it's sort of like they live in this paradise-utopia, in a certain way, troubled as it is. And then the bubble gets burst and like basically it's over. And that's the beginning, right? That’s that kind of greet. 

00:31:47 Hannah Mitchell

Yeah. 

00:31:47 The Legendary Rick Perry

And I was like, ‘So we should have a battle at the beginning, where…’ 'Cause he [Brennan] was gonna start them in the capital. But then we were like, ‘You know, they have to start at home and they have to…’ So it's like, this is a big genre thing, like, ‘You need to do this and the first battle be on the road,’ you know. And anyway, that's kind of how it works. So we figure out the battles and the kind of – they're like some major bones in the structure of the thing and they're concrete in certain way. And they can kind of sometimes swap places. Or, you know, change a little bit, but they're sort of these major pivot points of the story and then – but that's only maybe 40% or less of a season. And even the meaning of the battles and who they're fighting and all that stuff, Brennan kind of generates that on his own or with a team or whatever, and sort of injects it back in. But for me, that's how the genre is. Like, I just do a deep dive on it. You know, I'll spend like a week or whatever spread out in between meetings, just trying to steep myself in the material and to research and to find my own joy in the subject matter, ‘cause sometimes it's a topic that I honestly didn't start out that interested in, you know, and so I have to find it. I have a saying:  ‘Find a way to love it.’ It is like, in other words – we did this season, that was Mice and Murder, right? Which is like, Wind in the Willows meets Clue or something. 

00:33:27 Hannah Mitchell

Mm-hmm.

00:33:27 The Legendary Rick Perry

I’m like, well, I mean –  

00:33:29 Hannah Mitchell

Great Mouse Detective vibes, yeah.

00:33:31 The Legendary Rick Perry

Yeah! But I'm not – I'm not that – it’s just, I’m not excited, you know? 

00:33:34 Hannah Mitchell

[laughing] It’s a little twee.

00:33:38 The Legendary Rick Perry

Yeah! If I had to pick one, it wouldn’t be the one I’d pick. So then I went down this rabbit hole and I got really excited when I figured out that like, that genre is actually this pastoral thing that is written in the wake of the Industrial Revolution and how all these people were working in these horrible factories and dying and there was black smoke. And I was like, ‘Now that's interesting,’ you know? And so that led me to feel stoked about the – to be able to do the job, essentially.

00:34:02 Hannah Mitchell

That's cool. I'm waiting for D20 to do a vampire-based season because I'm gonna scream up into the heavens because the – my research class had us find an unknown poet to research –  

00:34:19 The Legendary Rick Perry

Wow!

00:34:19 Hannah Mitchell 

– and I found a guy who – his name is John Stagg – and he's the first person to write a vampire story natively in English, not as a translation. And it’s –  

00:34:27 The Legendary Rick Perry

Wow.

00:34:27 Hannah Mitchell

– it's a poem called “The Vampyre.” It’s literally his only piece of poetry that has survived. I have some of his books that I bought at auction that are ‘from-1790-kind-of-books’ – and the way he describes a vampire in 1810 is ‘like a tick,’ almost? 

00:34:48 The Legendary Rick Perry

[a long groan of disgust]

00:34:49 Hannah Mitchell

It's not sexy at all! And I'm just like, ‘Somebody needs to make a story about this!’ Somebody needs to take this.

00:34:54 The Legendary Rick Perry

That’s very cool. 

00:34:54 Hannah Mitchell

I'm fixing to –   

00:34:56 The Legendary Rick Perry

We kind of did a vampire-esque season. Our vampire (sorta) season was Coffin Run with Jasmine Velar.

00:35:04 Hannah Mitchell

It’s one of the ones I'm waiting on! I was holding back on Coffin Run. But you know, I'm gonna, I gotta! [In a confessional tone:] I've never played D&D!

00:35:13 The Legendary Rick Perry

Oh, really?!

00:35:15 Hannah Mitchell

 On – not on purpose, no! All my friends played it growing up, but I've always had, like, two-and-a-half jobs at a time. 

00:35:23 The Legendary Rick Perry

Oh! Yeah. 

00:35:24 Hannah Mitchell

Like, I was a stage manager and I was a librarian's assistant, I’d do – I, again: husky in an apartment. I can't –

00:35:13 The Legendary Rick Perry

Yeah. 

00:35:25 Hannah Mitchell

I can't have free time. I – the most I've ever played is, I've walked on as a bit character NPC or I've subbed in for somebody and it's – they've written it into the story like, ‘Yeah, [the character] got hit on the head and were crazy for a day or a trip or whatever,’ and I get to play them however I want, but I just have a lot of – Dungeons and Dragons is like my ‘interest-in-law,’ kind of.

00:35:51 The Legendary Rick Perry

Uh-huh.

00:35:52 Hannah Mitchell

I have a lot of friends who are very into it and I know a lot about it, but I don't – I have never actually been in a campaign, which is tragic.

00:36:01 The Legendary Rick Perry

That's cool. Well, you know, it can be really tricky to find the circle of people or whatever. I mean, that was my experience. I was forbidden from playing it when I was a kid, but then I –  

00:36:13 Hannah Mitchell

Oh no, was it ‘satanic panic’?

00:36:15 The Legendary Rick Perry

Yeah. 

00:36:16 Hannah Mitchell

Ugh. Yeah.

00:36:17 The Legendary Rick Perry

It wasn’t even – my parents are not even that religious, they're just real fearful, kind of, like –  

00:36:20 Hannah Mitchell

For sure! [In an ominous voice:] ‘It might have something…’ I mean, I remember being in 6th grade and reading Harry Potter and my mom taking the book away and being like, ‘I have to read it first. I just have to read it first.’ And then you know, three days later she gave it back to me all humble and was like, ‘Just bring me the next one when you get it.’

00:36:39 The Legendary Rick Perry

[Laughing] That’s awesome!

00:36:40 Hannah Mitchell

My mom’s cool. I like my mom. I do make, I've started – one of the reasons why I'm able to make fun things for my friends is because more people are playing D&D because of D20 and Critical Role, and it's become a cultural phenomenon instead of shorthand for ‘loser,’ which is what it was when I was growing up. In, you know, the early aughts in high school, if you played D&D you were – you were untouchable, you know, a pariah. But I started making, like – putting some of my useless skills to work by like, you know. I’ll sit in class – I’m online all the time – I'll sit in class listening to lectures while wood-burning, or making the tiniest baskets. Like – here, check this – [holding up a tiny woven basket] This, this is not the smallest I've gotten them, but it's very close.

00:37:29 The Legendary Rick Perry

Whoaaaa! That's cool! Beautiful!

00:37:30 Hannah Mitchell

It's solid too. If a fairy came and borrowed it –  

00:37:32 The Legendary Rick Perry

[laughing] That’s cool.

00:37:34 Hannah Mitchell

– she would have – she could fit maybe a whole strawberry in there. So I sit and do stupid stuff like that and I have I have a great time because I don't sell any of this stuff. I don't have – like, my dad wants me to have a storefront and like – my dad’s an engineer, so everything is – everything is at the bottom line, kind of? But he's also an artist. 

00:37:57 The Legendary Rick Perry

Yeah.

00:37:59 Hannah Mitchell

So when I show him like: I made this dice tray from when the Dungeons and Drag Queens Season 2, this is from – Jujubee said it during an Adventuring Party. It says, “I give grace to my curiosity, sweetie!”

00:38:13 The Legendary Rick Perry

That’s cool.

00:38:13 Hannah Mitchell

And it's just wisteria and all that stuff. I was like, ‘I just am in love with that phrase!’ So I actually made this dice tray and then I went, ‘Well I guess I have to learn how to play a game.’ So my husband and I are learning how to play Ironsworn, 'cause you don't need a DM for that. It has an oracle. 

00:38:30 The Legendary Rick Perry

Nice!

00:38:30 Hannah Mitchell

So it's just. Anyway.

00:38:33 The Legendary Rick Perry

Yeah. Yeah, Ironsworn looks cool. I’ve definitely looked at it before. I've never played it, but I – it’s like, I came across and was like, ‘Oh, that's really interesting,’ you know like – 

00:38:44 Hannah Mitchell

Yeah. I'm more interested in the story element, both as an English teacher and a writer than in playing it for myself. But I love learning more about it and I love watching people play it. And I love watching stories grow collaboratively because I think that that's so inherent to human nature: that part of the joy of watching Dimension 20 or Critical Role or any of the other live play shows is, it scratches some itch in our brain that we don't get when we're not sitting around a campfire telling stories with each other anymore, you know? But I could talk about creative stuff all day; I'm here to ask you about queer culture at Dimension 20! Working in – I know you said you're freelance for Dimension 20, but you spend time in LA. You’re familiar with the industry.

00:39:43 The Legendary Rick Perry

I was there for like, thirteen years.

00:39:45 Hannah Mitchell

Yeah, so – well, okay: then what positive changes have you seen, and how far do you think we still have to go? I mean, D20 is a shining light: mental health and supporting their staff. I haven't heard – like, I looked, before I asked for this interview! I looked for, like, disgruntled interns and stuff, but I couldn't find anybody! [laughing] Everybody was like, ‘I love it here!’ So you know. Where do we have to go, and how far have we come since you started?

00:40:25 The Legendary Rick Perry

Yeah, I mean, I worked in the industry. I started in New York City, actually. I worked there for a few years, I worked in Texas for few years. And then I worked in LA and even now, I – even though I do a lot of work up here [at home in Washington State], I work mostly in LA and the work is tied to LA. So I – you know, coming up, I definitely worked a bunch of, like – it's an exploitive industry, right? In the sense that in order to make a thing – a piece of media – you need a herculean, impossible, concerted effort of many different things, all being in one place at the same time, in order to just get a shot right to get your piece, get your film made or whatever – much less it actually be good. So it's this tremendous – it's just one of the creative mediums that really requires a tremendous amount of resources. And usually that is in the form of money, you know? It’s a key one, right? So that also means that because of that, things get made in shady ways, right? Where it's like, ‘Well, I'm gonna pay this person $50 a day’ or ‘They're gonna pay in experience,’ or ‘I'm gonna ask him to do this dangerous thing,’ or ‘I'm gonna put them in this uncomfortable situation but they are really desperate to get in this industry,’ blah blah. So you know, it kind of is an exploitative industry and it still happens all the time. Although in general, it seems like it has gotten better – I don't know, anecdotally? – in the twenty years that I worked in it. I also, you know, don't work the entry level positions anymore. So my perspective is probably a little skewed from that, you know? But it does seem like it was less of a ‘good old boy’ type of industry than construction or something by far, but it sort of still had that, in a way.

00:42:42 Hannah Mitchell

Sure.

00:42:47 The Legendary Rick Perry

And you know, just like, ‘This is the way we do it,’ you know, just kind of ‘suck it up and do it our way’ or, you know, ‘this is the way it's done’ kind of thing, which goes a lot to who you would even consider hiring or a voice that you would consider listening to, you know? It seems to anecdotally have changed over the years and I hope – I think it's still got a long way to go. At the same time, you know – before even I started working industry, you know – already, big corporations basically had slowly been eating up the industry in the sense that: it used to be you had studios that were run by creative executives who were exploitive in their own ways but also provided opportunities and a kind of whimsical, creative type of perspective on projects. And then now you have corporations that are – you know, have shareholders – and it’s much more about like, ‘Well, let's do a remake’ or ‘Let's do these things that are really much more about producing profit,’ you know. And again, it's a really difficult field to – it's difficult to make the thing, right? So, they're lowering their risk and they're also using all the exploitative stuff – that apparatus that was already there – and kind of caring less – or not caring – in a very systemic kind of way, because it's easier for a corporation to have that facade and sort of close people out. So I see that as well. It's definitely – the industry's hurting right now from all that stuff that's been happening between this kind of change and all the streaming services. Well, it's like: the whole industry is in turmoil and I'm sure people that are marginalized are suffering more frequently and more than other folks because of that. Dropout is definitely the least evil production company I've ever worked for, you know?

00:45:07 Hannah Mitchell

[politely holding back silent laughter] 

00:45:08 The Legendary Rick Perry

Dropout is still a company and they do a really good job at what they're doing. I think personally from my perspective, Dropout comes – part of the key to their success is that they're run by creative folks whose goal is to sustainably make great work. You know? I don't think anybody over there’s goal is to enrich shareholders – or, you know, there's no shareholders – but in the sense of like, their goal is not to make money necessarily. Their goal is to make enough money that they can live comfortably and make cool stuff and – with their friends and other collaborators and cool people, you know – so I think that goes a long way, that kind of mindset. They're definitely way into ‘sustainable growth’ which is not our contemporary American capitalist view. You know, the idea is like you just grow and grow and grow –  

00:46:05 Hannah Mitchell

Yeah, yeah.

00:46:08 The Legendary Rick Perry

– until you go bankrupt. You know?

00:46:10 Hannah Mitchell

I can't wrap my head around it, like, ‘We don't have to grow like a cancer! We can grow like a tree, it's fine! They'll last a lot longer!’ Anyway, nobody listens to me. I love that you brought up remakes. I wasn't – this isn't on my list, but being someone who studies adaptation – I'm presenting at the College English Association's national conference next week and what I'm presenting on is, is adaptation theory –  

00:46:38 The Legendary Rick Perry

Oh, wow. 

00:46:39 Hannah Mitchell

– and  the difference between a remake and an adaptation.

00:46:45 The Legendary Rick Perry

Yeah.

00:46:48 Hannah Mitchell

And how – did you see, when Disney first started doing their live-action remakes, they did Maleficent first. Did you ever see that one?

00:46:57 The Legendary Rick Perry

I didn't, and I really haven't watched a lot of Disney. 

00:47:01 Hannah Mitchell

I have! I have two little girls and it's all Disney all-day-every-day at my house. I have an eleven-year-old and a seven-year-old, and it's just a lot. For years, it's been a lot. The eleven-year-old’s getting into Percy Jackson and Lord of the Rings now. She's, you know, fifth grade. She's moving on. The one who's –  

00:47:23 The Legendary Rick Perry

We have a nine-year-old and an almost-six-year-old, here.

00:47:26 Hannah Mitchell

Ooh, those are fun ages! And those are not, that's not far off from mine. Mine is actually, technically still six: she’ll be seven on April 1st and the 11-year-old just turned 11 on the 13th. So we're – it's a lotta Disney up in my house, is all. Anyway, Maleficent was an adaptation. It was a completely different lens of what the plot of Sleeping Beauty was. And then, you know – what, like a decade later, they come out with – have you seen the previews for the Snow White movie?

00:48:59 The Legendary Rick Perry

No!

00:48:00 Hannah Mitchell

It looks like a nightmare. Don’t watch it. 

00:48:03 The Legendary Rick Perry

[laughing]

00:48:03 Hannah Mitchell

It'll stunt your creative growth. It's very ‘uncanny valley.’ It’s very – and it looks like a shot-for-shot remake and remakes are so boring! But an adaptation can be so much more than that. An adaptation can be a complete re-imagining, and I think that Dimension 20 does that really, really well.

00:48:26 The Legendary Rick Perry

Thanks!

00:48:27 Hannah Mitchell

I don’t have a question involved in that. I just wanted to say, you guys are doing a good job – keep it up!

00:48:32 The Legendary Rick Perry

I mean that – yeah, I don't know. That's – that's what we're up to. I – you know, nothing comes from nothing.

00:48:38 Hannah Mitchell

Right.

00:48:38 The Legendary Rick Perry

It all comes from – particularly our thing is kind of mash-ups anyway, you know. It's just a fun way to operate. I feel like it's very, you know, kind of fast and dirty – which is great for improv, which is a lot about kind of picking and making decisions. But – there was a point I was gonna make – but anyway, thank you. I appreciate that.

00:49:09 Hannah Mitchell

No worries! One more question, if you don't mind: what piece of advice would you give to young creators aspiring to work in film and television, particularly young queer creators? Since you work with and have a lot in your shop and in the crew.

00:49:26 The Legendary Rick Perry

Um – 

00:49:27 Hannah Mitchell

Not that they're ‘collector’s items’ or anything, just – you know what I mean?

00:49:32 The Legendary Rick Perry

Yeah. I think it's a tough business. I mean, I actually talk to young people who are trying to get into the business about once or twice a week. People reach out to me and I talk to them about it, whatever, and it sort of depends on what they're up to. But I think it's a tough industry. It’s a really rewarding industry, in the sense – maybe not so much in the money, necessarily, or the life stuff, because it will really chew up families and all 'cause it's like that, you know – but if you are a particular kind of crazy that really enjoys, like, intense, collaborative, clandestine art projects –  

00:50:24 Hannah Mitchell

Oooh!

00:50:25 The Legendary Rick Perry

– and you can really work, you know, for long hours with a tight group of people and make some really hard-to-even-describe stuff so that it gets filmed, and then you just all disband and go away and, and no one can really – like, that experience is sort of singular and it's hard to even express it. If you like little ventures like that, that’s very much what filmmaking and the industry is like. I don't know. I think it's hard to get in. It has this thing where nobody hires people until they've already worked with them, and so there's like, this catch-22 kind of thing of trying to get hired. But! But people still get hired! New people get hired all the time, so it's really just about persistence and staying in there. And then the other thing is you gotta, you know, you need to live in a production hub place, you know. You gotta be in Atlanta or LA or New York or wherever: somewhere where the opportunities are in order to take advantage of the opportunities. There's a bunch of stuff but there’s – there’s a couple of quick ones. 

00:51:29 Hannah Mitchell

That's awesome. Thanks so much. I’d love to sit and chat with you for ages because you're deeply cool and I – 

00:51:37 The Legendary Rick Perry

This was good!

00:51:38 Hannah Mitchell

I love looking at – when I was watching, I was – I promise I was researching and not, like, creeping. I wasn't stalking, I swear! But when I was watching The Legendary Rick Perry on D20, it's just like, the dream of having this farm away from everybody! I mean, my husband and I are big hikers. I'm a forager and a wildcrafter and a gardener. I do all of this stuff and we've talked for years about just running off into the woods and have never done it. And I was like, ‘Man, if Rick Perry needs a teacher for his kids on the Island, I'm ready. I’ll go.’ 

00:52:17 The Legendary Rick Perry

Yeah, there's a ton of like, all that kind of, you know: wildcrafting and – I forget the name for it – but there's just a lot of people up here that are – and even in the region, you know –  

00:52:29 Hannah Mitchell

Yeah.

00:52:17 The Legendary Rick Perry

– that are really like, that kind of ‘back to the land,’ like sort of primitive skills, like…

00:52:34 Hannah Mitchell

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, we even did – we, for, for a long time, we were even – we trained in primitive stealth and survival training, and no-impact hiking and things like that. 

00:52:45 The Legendary Rick Perry

Yeah, that’s rad!

00:52:47 Hannah Mitchell

And it's wild.

00:52:47 The Legendary Rick Perry

Yeah, what's that – what’s that show – is it Alone? 

00:52:52 Hannah Mitchell

Is it Alone or is it Naked and Afraid, because I think there's two.

00:52:55 The Legendary Rick Perry

I think Alone is what I'm thinking of, yeah.

00:52:58 Hannah Mitchell

Yeah, where they just drop you off somewhere? 

00:52:59 The Legendary Rick Perry

It's a reality show where they drop like, whatever, 12 people off in a different little areas of like, Patagonia or wherever. And then they have to stay there, you know, as long as they can, until they tap out, kind of. And the winner… 

00:53:11 Hannah Mitchell

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:53:13 The Legendary Rick Perry

…gets like a hundred thousand dollars. But anyway, there's three different people from Lopez Island who have been on it!

00:53:19 Hannah Mitchell

Rad! That's awesome! Yeah, my mom was telling me that we should – that David and I should try to do it. I was like, ‘I've, I've got work! I have to teach the kids.’ But I was up in the Pacific Northwest last fall to visit some of my friends who live in Portland, and I'd never been to the West Coast before. It’s just – y’all got some trees! All of our trees were clear cut in Georgia about 100 years ago, 200 years ago. So all of our – most of our trees we have left in north Georgia are less than 200 years old.

00:53:50 The Legendary Rick Perry

Oh, man.

00:53:51 Hannah Mitchell

Which is a tragedy, but, uh – we got a lot of kudzu! 

00:53:55 The Legendary Rick Perry

Well, we – I grew up in rural, like, Central Texas, you know? And – very close to land and stuff – and I had never come up before I started dating my wife, and like – it's like another planet.

00:54:04 Hannah Mitchell

It’s another planet! It's very, it's very weird, but – I mean beautiful! Not, not alien, but…

00:54:12 The Legendary Rick Perry

Almost like it is! So different, yeah.

00:54:14 Hannah Mitchell

Very different. Even the light: the quality of the daylight seems different, and I don't know if that's – if I'm just terminally southern then I'm too far north, or what, but…

00:54:22 The Legendary Rick Perry

Well, no. Yeah, we, in the winter-time, the sun doesn't come up till like 9:00 and it goes down like 4:30 and then in winter, the sun comes up at like 4:00 AM. It's up till about 10:00 PM, you know, so.

00:54:36 Hannah Mitchell

Yeah, that – I love it. I think it's - I love anything that's different. I'm a xenophile, a little bit. I love learning about different things and different people in different places and all, all sorts of stuff, but – thank you!

00:54:51 The Legendary Rick Perry

Well, thank you for reaching out and your interest. It was fun chatting. I hope it's useful to you, in your paper, your project, but...

00:55:00 Hannah Mitchell

Thank you! 

00:55:00 The Legendary Rick Perry

It was a blast.

00:55:02 Hannah Mitchell

If I have any further projects that might need your input, can I shoot you an email? Holler back? 

00:55:12 The Legendary Rick Perry

Absolutely. That’s rad. 

00:55:13 Hannah Mitchell

Thanks so much! 

00:55:14 The Legendary Rick Perry

Cool. 

00:55:14 Hannah Mitchell

It was lovely to meet you. I hope you have a delightful – it's early evening – it's what, 5:00 for you?

00:55:18 The Legendary Rick Perry

Yeah, it’s about 5:00, yeah. 

00:55:19 Hannah Mitchell

I hope you have a lovely evening! 

00:55:23 The Legendary Rick Perry

Likewise.

00:55:23 Hannah Mitchell

I'm – it's 8:00 for me, so I'm gonna go find out where my children are! [laughing]

00:55:26 The Legendary Rick Perry

[laughing] All right. Have a good evening! Nice to meet you. 

00:55:27 Hannah Mitchell

Bye! Thank you, nice to meet you too.