‘That Was The End Of An Era’: The Oral History Of Scooby-Doo On Zombie Island – /Film

The recording took place at the famed Hanna-Barbera studios on Cahuenga Boulevard in Los Angeles, which had been home to the cartoon company since the early 1960s. The recording sessions were, by all accounts, pretty brief.

Innes: This was the last recording, the last official recording at the old Hanna-Barbera Studios. Kind of ghostly. Everybody was gone, all Cartoon Network, everything had been moved to the Warner Brothers lot. This was it, there was nobody there. The lights were flickering down the hall, it was that eerie. And I’m walking the hallways, and I’m seeing papers in the hall where they’ve been throwing away stuff, old movie cels, cartoon cels, I mean, oh my gosh. And so I came up on this hallway at the end, and I popped my head in, and there sat Joe Barbera. Now you’ve got to understand something. This is a dream come true for me. That’s Joe Barbera.

And he said, “Come on in.” So I came in, I sat down, and he goes, “You’re the new Scooby-Doo. I’ve heard your work, I really think Don Messick would be proud.” I said, “Do you really?” He said, “Oh, absolutely.” I said, “Well, Don and I were friends.” And he goes, “Well then, we couldn’t have picked a better person to pass the torch.” So we talked for a little bit, and I said, “Well, I got to get back, we’re getting ready to probably start recording again.” So he said, “Well, go get them.” And as I was walking down the hall, I passed another room, and in there sat Iwao Takamoto, who created Scooby — he created the look. I walked in and I sat down with him, and he started sketching. He didn’t even really look up much, he was sketching.

And he said, “So I hear you’re the new Scooby.” I said, “Yep.” He goes, “Don’t screw it up.” And I said, “I don’t plan on it. I hope not.” And he still sat there, never looked up at me, he sat there and he was drawing. And when he got done, Scooby had a microphone and it said, “WYNK, Iwao Takamoto to Scott Innes.” I still have that framed in my Scooby room.

Falk: The funnest thing for me is the recording sessions. I love going to recording sessions. They’re a ball. And I go to scoring sessions, which are really fun because they use a real orchestra for those things, like a 30-piece or something.

Innes: It was really surreal. It was just an experience like no other. When we went to lunch the first day, we did a table read for four hours, and then we went to lunch. When we came back from lunch the first day, then we start picking up the script and we start going.

Barbeau: I do not remember doing a table read. I believe I was by myself. I can still see a very small recording studio or sound booth.

Innes: There were so many great lines in that movie. “Rog? Where?” And Scooby, every time you hear the word cats, you go, “Rats, ruck.” In fact, what’s funny is, we kept that bit going. When they wrote the other three movies, there wasn’t one spot in the movie where someone would say “dog” and Scooby [wouldn’t] go, “Rog? Where?”