Free Rand Unwrapped by Frank Catalano Page A

meeting unless you know what it’s about.” I always thought that bit of advice made a lot of sense but somehow that morning it was of no comfort to me. When I arrived, I took an elevator up to the Harmony Gold offices I was met by the then marketing director – I think his first name was Stuart. We sat in his office a while and we just talked generally about the show. I still thought I might have been in some sort of trouble. I mean I really had no reason to believe I was in trouble but as I sat there and talked to him all sorts of things kept running through my mind. I thought, did I use foul language during one of the sessions and was it recorded? I often improvised my lines between takes and sometimes they were recorded. Maybe this was why I was there? Then I thought about a host of other things that I might have done wrong and when I couldn’t think of any, I started imagining things that I might have done. It was a downward spiral of self imposed guilt and I would have confessed to anything at that point. I would have said, “Yes! Yes! I did it! I couldn’t help myself but I did it!” When about half way through the conversation, Stuart mentioned something about going to New York City attending some sort of toy convention and playing Rick Hunter. What? Rick who?
    Now you fans will hate me for this, but I want to tell the truth. At that point in my life I only had a vague idea of who Rick Hunter was? Remember I went into the studio and just did my bits and walla . Rick Hunter to me was just another one of the many animated characters that were moving about on the screen. Most of the time, I was focused on the characters I was voicing. At other times, there were no tracks recorded for the other characters in the scene, so I would lay down my tracks without hearing them. But I had the feeling that I was going to learn who Rick Hunter was very quickly. After I met with Stuart I was taken into this larger office and had the opportunity to have a brief meeting with Frank Agrama the President and owner of Harmony Gold. I was led down what seemed to me a very long hallway, which ended with a set of oversized double doors. When they opened the large doors to his office I felt like Dorothy the first time she met the Wizard in Emerald City. I mean there was no fire and brim stone but this office was the Reflex Point of Harmony Gold and the driving force behind Robotech . There could be no television series without Frank Agrama. He was really nice and when we shook hands and told me that I would be playing the character of Rick Hunter in New York, I felt at that moment that everything was going to be all right. Over the next few days, I had several meetings with Bonnie (actually Carl Macek’s sister in law and Svea Macek’s sister) the costume designer for the show. She took lots of measurement and before I knew it, I was fit into the uniform that was worn by Rick Hunter in the series. I asked if a helmet and a cyclone went with the costume. It was really a joke, but no one laughed. I also asked, and was granted the ability to see some of Rick Hunter’s episodes so that I could get an idea of what he sounded like and how the character moved. Tony Oliver nailed the character and really captured the relationship with Minmei. I never really knew why Tony Oliver (maybe he was not available) couldn’t do the New York trip but after watching a few episodes, I realized that our voices had a similar quality. Of course, no matter how hard I tried, I still had a bit of a New York accent and attitude. But I tried as best as I could to capture the spirit that Tony had instilled in the character. As I understood it, my job was to greet the fans in New York City as Rick Hunter. Thisseemed easy enough at the time. But Harmony Gold had one more surprise for me.
    I had the opportunity to meet for the first time the talented Rebecca Forstadt aka Reba West who of course played Lynn Minmei. Rebecca was also