Rest In Peace, Larry Latham

LeHah

212 Squadron - "The Old Man's Eyes And Ears"
Bearer of bad news, Wingnuts. One of the best of our best has passed on.

Larry Latham was the producer on Wing Commander Academy, the 1996 cartoon series on USA Network that I'm sure we're all familiar with. Despite working a lifetime in animation it was one of his few Producer credits.

I hate to say that despite my own long interest in animation and passing knowledge in Larry's main credits (he won an Emmy for his work on Disney's Talespin), this post isn't about his work but the man himself, a man that I got to know very briefly over the last few years.

BanditLOAF had asked me to track down Larry in anyway I could, in an effort to archive anything from WCATV he might have. Remembering that a lot of the crew on the show originally came from Universal Cartoon series ExoSquad, this gave me a perfect excuse to start talking to Will Meugniot who forwarded me on to Larry. Originally, I got the feeling that Larry was a little confused why anyone was asking about a show that lasted 13 episodes for one year, but he was very welcoming and humorous in his exchanges. I sat down at my work computer one day to find he had added me on Facebook and left a wallpost...

"Justin, Will told me you were looking for stuff on the Wing Commander Acadamy show. I produced and directed it. I'll be glad to share whatever I know or have with you, just let me know."

We had many brisk exchanges (much of it not about Wing Commander, but don't tell anyone that) and he was a very pleasant, very knowing person. He was very happy to divulge production secrets and brief glimpses into the production process of the show. He understood I was a fan and was part of a group who wanted to help keep his work remembered; he seemed very flattered by the idea that someone wanted to give him a legacy of sorts.

A few months after our first exchange, he started responding less and soon revealed a cancer prognosis. You can all tell where this story is heading already...

His originally quick replies in email and twitter started to peter out, but he still took the time to reply occasionally. After claiming immense frustration with a personal project on a Facebook status, he left a comment "Damn it Justin, you're already a writer! Do the work!" which meant the world to me (and was the kick in the ass I needed).

As time went on, he updated occasionally - struggling with the prognosis but slowly winning - and still drawing his webcomic "Lovecraft Is Missing". His lack of communication became commonplace, and so his passing was a quiet one. Weeks of not updating turned to months... and then stories on his Facebook from former students and coworkers filtered in. Larry passed on November 2, but I and many others didn't know until after Thanksgiving. I get the feeling he wanted to be remembered by people who knew him instead of it being a "public event".

Larry was the captain of a ship that added to the greater WC canon and he even defended the product from some people who wanted to turn it into a cheap cash-grab. He gave us a lot with those thirteen episodes (along with Adam Foshko as a creative producer) but more importantly - he was a really good guy and a good friend for the three years I knew him.

His obituary (which was the first news most of us got) - http://www.tulsaworld.com/obituarie...cle_4258017c-3a4e-5cc8-9f6a-cf4644033b1e.html

The announcement from his wife on his webcomic - http://lovecraftismissing.com/?p=8553
 
Thanks for pulling this together, LeHah. I've added this and a few more thoughts to a post on the front page. I also noticed his old Earthlink site is still up: http://home.earthlink.net/~larry.latham/index.html Old websites are interesting time capsules in general, and these old school web 1.0 sites are a great window into someone's personality at a point in time. It's telling that in his first section "About Me," he chose to highlight his efforts to help school children appreciate art.
 
:( Every creator in the WC series is appreciated. Their works and legacy have touched us all. My world is brighter for the works he helped create. Thank you sir.
 
This is pretty terrible news. I didn't know him personally but I've really enjoyed the webcomic "Lovecraft is missing" . Even without knowing his Wing Commander connection he managed to influence me greatly over the last few years.

He shall be missed!
 
Hey guys!

I just wanted to add something to this story. I've talked about it before, but it should go on the record in this thread.

Back in 2011, I was contacted by Universal with a polite, informal cease and desist -- we own Wing Commander Academy and you have episodes on your site, blah, blah, blah. I wrote back that of course we would take down the episodes immediately (and politely let them know we actually posted them with their permission... it was just given twelve years earlier before anyone thought streaming full TV episodes would be a thing.) I mentioned in my note that we loved Wing Commander more than anything and that we very much wanted to help spread the word. Was there, per chance, a home video release in the works? The woman who had politely threatened to sue me wrote back. Her entire job was writing these letters to people, and none of them had ever replied nicely or offered to help with anything. She was so grateful and promised to write me back as soon as she could say something.

Almost immediately, I got a phone call from a fellow at a publisher called VEI. He'd just licensed Wing Commander Academy, and the rights search had been at his request. He was going to put the entire series on DVD, and wanted to make sure the marketplace was ready for it. We spent several weeks going back and forth; I provided him several gigs of key art from the series, wrote box and ad copy, suggested some extra material for the discs and so on. Then, he wrote to tell me: they'd received the raw footage from Universal and for whatever reason about ten seconds were missing from one episode.

Oddly, I knew exactly which episode it was going to be: On Both Your Houses, which had a strange, glitchy original airing. No one had any memory of the issue, but there was some trouble with the production somewhere along the line. But ten seconds of the episode were missing, and did I think he could get away with having a disclaimer? No, I said, we're going to find those ten seconds. I provided raw copies of the show and my highest-possible-for-a-teenager-at-the-time off-air dubs from 1996. But the result was pretty low quality, and obvious.

That's where Larry stepped in! I contacted him to ask if he had a clean copy of the show. Sure enough: he did! And he was willing to ship his personal BETA tape off to Canada for VEI to work from. Then, everything fell silent for a few weeks. Did it all get resolved? I wrote to Larry to ask. Actually, he replied, he kept trying to ship them the footage but he wasn't getting any response when he asked them to send him a mailer. I contacted VEI directly and found that the producer who was SO EXCITED about Wing Commander Academy had been fired suddenly and that his projects had been taken over by someone far less interested. I explained the situation and convinced him that we needed to do this even if it was "just" ten seconds. But of course the discs were being mastered the next week so it had to be done RIGHT NOW. Larry was game, we overnighted his tape to them and the episode is complete!

Anyway, long story short: you can see the brief 'lower quality' footage in the episode. That's Larry's tape, shipped off with no payment or other reward just to make sure that Wing Commander fans got to see the whole story. He was a genuine, stand-up guy, and we're poorer for having lost him. Larry sent me a package of Academy sketches before he died, which I'll try and get scanned and online as soon as possible.
 
Thank you for the wonderful story, LOAF. Did you ever find out what happened to the poor VEI chap who got fired? I wonder if he knows his efforts weren't for nought.
 
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