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In the final installment of their behind-the-scenes conversation about The Waldo Ultimatum, intrepid Waldo blogger Michael Liss, producer Brad Fox and director/co-writer Matthew Hoos explore the importance of fan art, and the role of open licensing in its creation today.

Michael: What does it mean that the Waldo brand is now supporting and encouraging fan art and helping to supply people with the tools to make it?

Matthew: When we first did this, I was like, somebody is going to shut us down. Either it’s going to be the Bourne people or it’s going to be Waldo, but somebody’s going to go, “You know what? We’re not having it.”

Matthew: The response to our video, and the fact that other pieces of Waldo art have popped up recently, are clear indications that this icon still exists in the collective consciousness. What’s happening now is the generation who were first introduced to it is being given a chance to reflect back. It’s only natural that the things that first kick-started our imaginations are going to come back to the surface in a different light. It’s those iconic things that for whatever reason mean something to a generation.

Brad: It can be a shared experience, too. No matter what country or language, it can transcend those barriers.

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Intrepid Waldo blogger Michael Liss recently met up with two members of the creative team behind The Waldo Ultimatum. The movie trailer parody was featured prominently on sites like Funny Or Die, College Humor, YouTube and MySpace, racking up over 6 million hits. In part two of the conversation with producer Brad Fox and director/co-writer Matthew Hoos, they go behind the scenes of producing the viral video.

Michael: When you developed The Waldo Ultimatum, where did the Bourne/Waldo connection come from?

Matthew: That came straight from the mind of Eric Toth, one of the guys in the sketch group The Imponderables, a long-time collaborator of mine. It just popped into his brain. He went to see The Bourne Ultimatum and I got a call about five minutes after he’d left the cinema. He said, “There’s a lot of running and hiding and stuff.” I’m like, “Yeah, it’s a good movie.” And he says, “Well, imagine if you took Bourne out, and put Waldo in.”

It was brilliant, hysterical. Because then you can explore the motivations behind the pictures in the book. Who is this guy, and why is he hiding? Or is he hiding? Is he being sought after? And the fact that everybody looks for him is a clear indication that he’s probably the most wanted man in the world. Why? Immediately, the hysterical notions started to flow. It was ridiculous from that point on.

Brad: You can take a character who’s a cipher and give him slightly different motivations, and then it’s funny, because those aren’t the motivations anybody would ascribe to Waldo in the books. But they work remarkably well.

Matthew: With our comedy in The Imponderables, we try to take things that people are familiar with and turn them on their end, force people to look at them through a bizarre lens. This was the perfect opportunity to take an iconic character, and a movie that people were very well familiar with, and mash them together to create this thing that was ridiculous, but has enough context that it makes sense. If you try to think of what a Where’s Waldo movie would actually be, odds are it would be somebody looking for Waldo, probably on a very grand scale. Which is essentially what we created.

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