Zoinks! Like, it's Matthew Lillard!

By: ARNOLD T. BLUMBERG
Date: Tuesday, June 11, 2002

This summer, Matthew Lillard gets to be one of the greatest animated icons of the last two generations - a tireless crusader against evil, a dedicated crime-fighter who swings into battle with the utterance of a single battle-cry... "Zoinks!"

Well, so Shaggy isn't exactly Batman, but then neither is his long-time compatriot Scooby Doo. Together with Fred, Velma and Daphne, the two friends stick by each other through all manner of seemingly supernatural capers, only to find it's Old Man Williams under that sheet. We've seen them through several cartoon incarnations, but now the Scooby gang is coming to life in a feature film adaptation - and Lillard is the go-to guy for the Scooby snacks! In fact, he's been preparing for this all his life, from the days when he watched ol' Scoob on the tube after school.



"I grew up with it," says Lillard. "I had a weird kind of relationship with it. Like many kids who were latch-key kids, I would come home from school and I'd turn on the TV, and you know, that's our other relationship."

With that relationship came pressure to be the best Shaggy he could be.

"We all grew up with the cartoon and we didn't want to be the guys who screwed it up," says Lillard.

Lillard has also practiced communicating with animals, but no real live dog is quite as gregarious as Scooby.

"I talk to my dog all the time," says Lillard. "Unfortunately, she doesn't talk back like Scooby. She doesn't have nearly the dance skills that Scooby has, but yeah, we're pretty tight. [Her name is] Mirth, as in joy and happiness. Freddie calls her girth [laughs]. She's a big dog, God bless her heart. She's happy."

"Freddie" is, of course, co-star and pal Freddie Prinze Jr., who takes on the role of Fred in the Scooby team. He was also responsible for getting Lillard involved in the project as well.

"We were working on SUMMER CATCH," says Lillard. "It was the opening dinner, and one of the executives had flown out to North Carolina. There they were, talking at one end of the table about the upcoming slate for the summer, and he said, 'You know, we're doing SCOOBY DOO and we'd love to talk to you about that.' Freddie actually leaned down to the end of the table and said, 'Dude, that's Shaggy right there,' and I was at the other end of the table because I was playing Brubaker in the film."




Before he knew it, Lillard was getting ready to don the green t-shirt and unkempt locks of Scooby's closest buddy.

"Six or seven months later, we went off to Australia to make the film," says Lillard. "One of the reasons that it took so long to bring this franchise to a movie was the computer generated images. To have your title character be completely CG is a real challenge. I mean, it's one thing to run from a raptor, [but] it's another thing to create a character that is funny and dramatic and personable and is a movie star."

While Lillard settled into the role of Shaggy, pal Prinze was getting used to his new blond 'do. Lillard admits that the change in hair color also altered Prinze's attitude.

"He was very demanding [laughs]," says Lillard.

Well, perhaps not really, but Lillard was certainly born to play the Shaggy role - just listen to his dead-on Casey Kasem impression (the original voice of the cartoon Shaggy) and you will believe.

"I think that very few times in life a part comes along that you say to yourself, quietly, in your own silence, 'I think that I can do that as well, if not better than anyone else around,'" says Lillard.

Is it because he has all that experience with pot?

"[Laughs] Yeah, being a recovering crack addict," says Lillard.

Hopefully, Lillard's memory is sharp enough to remember the shooting of SCOOBY DOO, particularly since fans would like to know if there were any bits and pieces that were cut out of the finished product.



"Through testing the film, they found that the franchise is such a big franchise for Warner Brothers that they had to protect [it]," says Lillard. "You have a responsibility to the generation of kids that have grown up with the show. So they found that at certain points, they came to a fork in the road in that you can either make a movie that's geared towards adults and our generation, or you can make a film that's skewed towards family, and I feel like they made the right decision."

Of the cut material, Lillard has a favorite moment that might not even turn up on DVD one day.

"This is a process that actors go through all of the time," says Lillard. "It's always hard to get used to, because you put your heart and soul into every little scene and then, when you're losing these gems, you're like a little piece of you dies. I think that my favorite scene that we lost is a scene where Velma does a torchlight song and starts singing and ends up coming down to her skivvies. They just found that it was hard to explain to the parents. That's funny to kids. It wasn't that risqué."

Besides analyzing the relative merits of a Velma striptease, Lillard also weighs in on another role played by his Scooby co-star, Sarah Michelle Gellar, AKA Daphne. Recent reports indicate that Gellar is not interested in playing Buffy the Vampire Slayer in a feature film when the TV series comes to an end, and Lillard thinks he knows why.

"For seven years, she's been doing a character," says Lillard. "So to take it to a feature length version, she has to ask herself - you know, the great thing about being an actor is that you continually get to play different parts. So, go on and do something else. It's had its life."

That doesn't mean Gellar doesn't give it her all - Lillard saw her dedication on the set of SCOOBY DOO as well.

"The thing is, as we went off and shot certain sequences, she left for a month and worked with the Hong Kong wire team to shoot [a] sequence," says Lillard. "It was amazing what she did."

Or as Shaggy might say: "Zoinks, Scoob, that was like, far out!"

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