Steve Rotblatt with some of the characters from Rubber Chicken Cards.
Name: Steve Rotblatt
Age: 55
Family: Married (Kristin). Children (Corey, 21, and Max, 15)
Home: Santa Monica, Calif.
Current Job: : Animator, CEO of Rubber Chicken Cards
Previous Jobs: Character actor on TV sitcoms, movies. Shaklee products distributor. Stage company actor and president.
Degrees: BA in fine arts from U.C. Irvine (1973); MFA from UCLA in animation (2000)
First job: Weeding Bertha Schneider's garden for 25 cents a day.
Hobbies: Reading, watching movies. Favorite animation: "The Incredibles" and Canadian short animations.
Over the 10 years he spent trying to land roles in movies and TV sitcoms, Steve Rotblatt had plenty of time to doodle. So, at the age of 45, he enrolled in UCLA's School of Theater, Film and Television to study animation. In 2000, he and Richard Zobel, a fellow stage actor from 20 years before, created an electronic greeting card company, Rubber Chicken Cards.
Zobel died of cancer in October 2005. Rotblatt (pronounced "wrote-blatt") continues to run the company, which has 13,000 subscribers and revenues of $300,000, up nearly 60 percent over a year ago.
Rotblatt recently spoke to Eons from his garage office in Santa Monica.
How hard is it to earn a living as an actor?
There are thousands and thousands and thousands of people competing for work, and only 2 to 3 percent of all members of the Screen Actors Guild ever make more than a couple thousand dollars a year. It takes a lot of going to parties, schmoozing, and self-promotion. I was never good at that. I averaged two roles per year for 10 years.
You had roles on "Cheers" and "Frasier." What were they?
On "Cheers," I played a grip on the set of a "Jeopardy" type game show that Cliff Clavin was on. My line was, "We're ready. Let's go! Five, four, three, two ... ." On "Frasier," I was a character at a bar who comes up to a J.D. Salinger-like character."
How did you get into animating?
In 1995 I decided to try my hand at creating greeting cards, so I sent out samples to 10 companies and got back two major contracts. I chose one of them and did humorous cards for them. After a while I noticed they were making a lot of money off my cards and I wasn't. So I went back to school (UCLA) to study animation.
How did the idea for Rubber Chicken Cards come about?
I was working on a class project and needed a voice for an angry cat. A mutual friend told Richard Zobel about what I was doing. I had worked with Richard at a stage company in Albany, N.Y., but hadn't heard from him in 20 years. He called and said, "I'll do anything - I love animation." I told him I needed a voice for an angry cat and said, "You're perfect for the part." Later he did some music for some more animations. He wrote great funky, funny music.
We enjoyed being together. After graduate school, I really didn't want to work for some other company. So we (Richard and I) said, "Let's put together some greeting cards of our own and see what happens." We started with 30 cards in June 2000. Now we have 430.
How did you and Richard divide the work?
I did the animation. He did the music and ran the business end of things. We both did the voices. When Richard died in October, Bruce Bouchard (a friend and associate from theater days in Albany) came on board to handle the business end.
What do you think is funny?
I like character-driven humor as opposed to gag-driven. "Seinfeld" is funny. "Friends," "Cheers," "Frasier." I'm a big fan of the old "Dick Van Dyke Show." In a good sitcom, the characters are fully developed. They're interesting and quirky.
How does that carry over to greeting cards?
We've created characters (over 60 of them): Good cop-bad cop, backwoods brothers, a singing cowboy and his talking horse, a woman having tea with her cat. Annie Cusack, the sister of John and Joan, is the voice of Ellen, the cat owner. I'm Winsor the cat. The same characters appear in different cards.
How do you go about creating the animations?
Richard and I would start out saying "What if we did this?" Richard might say, "I love to yodel. How about a singing cowboy who yodels? I say, "How about a talking horse that spits? We'll call him Spittoon." Then we improvise the skit and record it. I edit the transcript, write some new lines and then we record it. The audio becomes one track in the animation file (in Macromedia Flash).
Where did the name "Rubber Chicken" come from?
It comes out of vaudeville. When we were working in theater together, whenever anyone had a bad night on stage, we'd say, "If all else fails, there's always the rubber chicken and funny hat." It's guaranteed to get a laugh.
What's next for Rubber Chicken?
I'd like to see the company grow. We're licensing our characters to some corporate clients (Cisco Systems, Me.com, Classmates.com). We're getting into mobile cards, Spanish and Chinese language cards, and public service announcements. One is for a not-for-profit working on childhood obesity issues. And we just did a piece I really like on global warming. It uses humor as a way to get people to think about what they can do to save energy.
What do you think you'll do when you retire?
I don't want to retire. I can't see myself sitting and doing nothing. I'd be bored to death. If I'm in a wheelchair, they'll have to wheel me into the office so I can point and growl at everyone.
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