Rand Unwrapped (14 page)

After several months of living in Hawaii, I bought a used VW Beetle for about $500. It was white with a red interior with a sunroof and as you can imagine, for that price, it was not in pristine condition and had a stick shift. I had driven a stick before but at that point in my life, it wasn't by best skill. My shifting was often accompanied with grinding and a popping the clutch. I figured I would get better at it as time went on. Also, if I hit anything, the car already had a collection of dents on both sides and back. The only part of the car that was without a dent or scratch was the front. I bought a parking pass from the university that entitled me to park in a specific lot on the campus. One morning I drove onto the campus with my sunroof open and up to a parking lot entrance manned by an attendant in a small booth. He controlled a small
up and down gate
with stripes on it that provided entrance into the parking lot. The gate attendant was having a long conversation with the person driving the car in front of me. I decided to patiently wait while the conversation took its course. However, as it went on longer and longer I was worried about getting to class late. As I recall, the class was Theories of European Theatre and I just couldn't get to that class late without it influencing my grade. I casually waved to the attendant to let him know that I was still waiting, he smiled and went right back to talking to the driver in the car in front of me. They were laughing it up and having a good time. I gave my VW horn a short beep that if it were New York would mean a gentle nudge. Nothing more. The gate attendant looked up again and went back to the conversation. I responded with one long extended VW beep which in New York meant, “let's move it!”

The gate attendant finally opened the gate and the driver in front of me went through. As I pulled up the little striped gate went back down. I apologized to the attendant but told him I had to get to class. He then coldly said to me that I couldn't park in the lot and that I would have to park on the street. I showed him the sticker on my front windshield that matched the name of the lot. He told me I was wrong. When I pressed it, he said, “No haoli's in this lot period!” When I heard that, I knew what was really happening and said something sarcastically like, “I'm very sorry I didn't know that this was a
No Haoli lot
. I'll remember that next time.” I figured I'd let it pass because I didn't want to get to class late. I popped my car in reverse, at least that's what I thought I did. It always grinded a bit when it did that and then hit the gas. Instead of going backward, the car sped forward crashing right through the little striped
up and down
crossing gate. I stopped the car, got out and picked up the broken piece of gate. I was going to hand it to the attendant but when he saw me coming toward him with the gate in my hands he took off. He left me just standing there all by myself holding this striped piece of parking gate. I didn't know what else to do and leaned the piece of gate against his little booth and drove away. I was pissed off, because I now had a dent in the front of the car. Needless to say, I was late for class that day. The next day I drove up to the same parking lot. The same gate attendant was there and the little striped gate had been taped back together with gray packing tape. When he looked at me square in the eye and smiled. A second later, the little striped gate limped upward to an open position. I looked at him right back, smiled and waved back as I drove through. Chalk up one bully for the universe!

As I recorded the first few episodes of a
The New Generation,
it became clear to me that the Invid were really a bunch of bullies trying to suck the life out of our planet. They
attempted to appear as we were but only as a means to destroy us. Once I had that image clearly in my mind, that's how I responded to anything they would throw my way. A choice I made early on in the recording of the
Robotech
series was that Rand also hated bullies and prejudice. In a larger sense, all of us making the series became, in our own way, part of a force that was greater than just an animated television series.

“Hey for being such a tough girl… you're pretty good at kissing!”

Hard Times - Episode 6

Rand fell head over heals for Rook the first moment he saw her even though he didn't show it in the conventional sense. Think about it, in
Episode 3 – Lonely Soldier Boy,
when Rand first arrives, Rook is in the middle of drop kicking a thug in the bar where Yellow Dancer is singing. As she dispatches the knife-wheeling thug with one kick, Rand just simply says,
“Wow…”
Then he in turn saves her from the knife of one of the other thugs. When she's finally free, Rand awkwardly smiles at her and says,
“Hi…”
This first meeting is a far cry from meeting someone at the mall, a club or on a blind date. Like most people meant for each other, their shared destiny was not readily apparent to them. Rook snaps at him when they first meet
“Why'd you have to butt in?”
Rand snaps back,
“I guess there's no pleasing some people.”
Rook walks off and doesn't even say thank you and that is the way they started out. After that scene, one would think these two, as a relationship, were going nowhere fast. However, by the last episode of
The New Generation
, the two characters had a deep admiration and respect for on another and yes, they were in love. Maybe not a Romeo and Julie type of love but they were going to be together.

The love that Rand and Rook had for one another was not the result of just a superficial attraction. It was in many ways very much a
first love
which took on a deeper significance. What is a
first love
? You can definite it literally by stating that it is the first person that you personally have had a deep, tender, indescribable feeling of affection toward another person. I want you to think a minute right here and to close your eyes, think back and visualize the person that you would consider your first love. Okay, do you see them? Now remember the first time you saw them and knew that you were attracted to them. At that point, you probably didn't know why. Maybe it was the way they looked, acted or talked to you. Once you made that connection that you were attracted to them, what did you do next? Did you reach out and try to tell them how you felt or know them better or did you do the opposite? There's no one answer for this, it's truly personal. Last question about your first love. Did you ever get to have a relationship with them or was it something that eluded you for the rest of your life. Whatever, your answers are to these questions are, they all boil down to one idea that the loving of someone is a journey. We don't always get to
be
with the person we love. It's just the way it is. The characters of Rook and Rand are no different than us. Their relationship started out as a journey and by the conclusion of
The New Generation
, these two characters did it all. They argued with one another, fought off the Invid together, successfully completed their epic journey to Reflex Point and by extension saved the world. Their love for one another was the result
of a unique trust that grew over the length of the series rather all at once. By the last episode, when thinking about the future, Rand kicks back and says,
“I figure I'd go back to my home town and maybe start writing my memoirs” – Episode 25 – Symphony of Light.
Really, I don't think so. We all can sense that whatever he chooses to do, Rook will be right there with him.

Much of this energy between the two animated characters can be attributed to the wonderful voice characterization of Rook created by Susie London. Her choices for the voice of Rook were dead on and made it really easy for me to connect with her character when I was able to hear Susie's voice in the headset. However, I wasn't always lucky enough to have her lines already recorded when I had recorded Rand. In those instances, I had to develop an internal hook that connected me to the Rook character. When I voiced those sections of
The New Generation
that contained dialogue and action with Rook, I used two hooks. One was a bit of poetry I once read by Dante Alighieri and the other was my memory of my first love. Now, I don't want to you to think I'm going academic on you but you will see why I chose the writing of Dante as a means to understand the connection of Rand and Rook.

Dante Alighieri is probably best known for his work
The Divine Comedy (1308 – 1321)
that chronicles Dante's mythical journey through the Catholic afterlife. While I could draw a comparison of
The New Generation's
journey to Reflex Point as a similar journey, I will leave that to scholarly
Robotech
fans. But the hook I used in
Robotech
comes from an older lesser-known work called
La Vita Nuova (1292-1293)
meaning
a new life
that recounts the influence on Dante's life made by his first love – a young girl named Beatrice. It recounts Dante's first sight of Beatrice when he was nine and she was eight. At that moment, his instantly fell in love with her but could not express it because he felt he was not worthy of her perfection. It's also probably because he was only a kid but he carried within him a deep admiration that stayed with him for nine years when he saw Beatrice again. The second time he saw her, she was more beautiful than the first, dressed all in white she walked down the street between to older female chaper-ones. Without warning, Beatrice turned and smiled at Dante, who was still in the belief that he was not worthy of her gaze. His response was to look away from her toward another girl. Beatrice probably thought to herself,
“what a jerk”
and then went on her way. The next time Dante would see the love of his life would be on her wedding day in 1288. He crashed her wedding reception and stared at Beatrice endlessly until he was forcibly removed from the affair. It should also be mentioned that Dante was already married to a rich banking heiress by that time. The next time Dante would hear of Beatrice was when he learned of her death in 1290. The loss of Beatrice drove him into a deep uncontrollable depression in which he could do nothing. However, after a period of time, he vowed to achieve moral and spiritual perfection by studying philosophy. He believed that by doing so that he would ascend to heaven where he might once again gaze upon his beloved Beatrice. In 1292 he wrote of her in
La Vita Nuova
and vowed he would write about her what had never been written about any woman. It is not my intention to leave you in suspense because Dante did in fact make good on his promise. In his
Divine Comedy (1308 -1321),
he is lead from Purgatory to the gates of Heaven by the shade of the Roman orator Virgil and there waiting for him beneath the golden gates of paradise is none other than his beloved Beatrice. I sometimes can't believe that I have all of this stuff in my head but I digress. What does this have remotely to do with Rand and Rook in
Robotech?
The answer is that their love was a spiritual as well as physical one just like Dante and Beatrice.

When I thought about Rand's relationship to Rook, I felt it would be appropriate that they would have to become friends before the could be lovers. We treat our friends different than our lovers. We relate to them with less reverence which reminds me of the line from the movie
When Harry Met Sally (1989)
. Harry says, “…
men and women can't be friends because the sex part always gets in the way. Because no man can be friends with a woman that he finds attractive. He always wants to have sex with her.” When Harry Met Sally
is a perfect model for Rook and Rand. I don't know if you have ever seen this film but it plays a lot on television and can be downloaded easily. It's the story of two people, Harry and Sally who have a plutonic relationship over a long period of time. At first, they don't like each other, then gradually over the years become friends and then become best friends until they have sex. It is at that point that there friendship ends and their true relationship begins. The fact that Rook is extremely attractive to Rand from the first moment, would set the two of them on a course that would only doom any hope of a relationship. However, the Invid and to a certain extent the driven nature of Scott Bernard come to the rescue here. The overwhelming sense of their mission prevents Rand and Rook from having a traditional type of relationship. The circumstances they find themselves in force them to relate to one another in a way that they would not have done in a normal situation. They simply had no time because they were busy trying to save the world. Any time they might even think of something outside of their mission, Scott Bernard was always there to put them back on track. Their friendship would evolve along with the progress of the mission to find Reflex Point. And within that journey they would constantly be thrown together in ways they could not imagine. What was at first a cold, almost hostile beginning slowly evolved into a mutual respect and admiration. You might be asking, did Rand and Rook ever have a physical relationship? From my perspective, not during the episodes of
The New Generation
because it just wasn't there. However, the physical love, might have taken place sometime after. With that said, it would have been a part of the character's lives that would be purely personal and private. While the personal side of their relationship was not fully explored in the episodes of
The New Generation,
I did use one personal connection in Rand's relationship with Rook. The choice I made was that she was Rand's first love and that took me back to someone I knew named Caitlin Burkowitz.

Well, I will confess here, that's not her real name. I'm withholding that to protect her privacy and to avoid her getting pissed at me for writing about her. But like Rook, I saw Caitlin for the first time at dance at my elementary school gymnasium at a school dance. She was a ten year-old Norman Rockwell portrait with blonde, hair pinned by a butterfly clip and glasses awkwardly standing alone in a yellow satin dress. Caitlin Burkowitz was in fifth and I was in fourth grade and the difference between those two grades could have very well been a universe apart. The record player cranked out a slow song (Bryan Hyland's
Sealed with a Kiss
) and I wanted to ask her dance. I walked toward her slowly and actually got right up to her. Just as I did, she turned toward me and smiled. But I just couldn't get the courage up to ask her to dance. I just pretended she wasn't there and walked right past her. That's the kind of thing you did when you were in fourth grade. But one thing I did know that I was in love with her. Pure
first love
just like Dante felt for Beatrice except I didn't know anything about Dante yet because I was only in fourth
grade. It was the kind of first love you feel only once in your life. But I just couldn't do it.