Happy Happy Joy Joy: The Ren & Stimpy Story (2020) - full transcript

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Do you have to keep tapping like that?
You bloated sack of protoplasm!

- I will make him happy again.

You idiot!

Everything in his life is seen
through the lens of a cartoon.

That's all he lives and breathes is his
cartooning, you know, and it's all he knows.

John's personality
is so permeated in that project,

I can't imagine it being done
any other way than what it was.

He was very driven,
very ambitious.

He had this sort of
Rockstar status.

He's the best
drill sergeant you'll ever meet.

And drill sergeants do need
to be cruel.



But underneath it all was just
this very ugly undercurrent.

You know,
the whole thing is tragic.

It is like a Shakespearean play.

Ren & Stimpy was innovative
on every level.

It was an artist-driven show.

The drawings, the paintings,
the characters, the voices.

Why won't they leave me alone?

Ren & Stimpy was gorgeous, was hand painted
cells, hand inked. This was not done.

The influence of classic
animation was extraordinary

and it was being digested and spit out in a
way that none of us had ever seen before.

I thought it was like
Tom and Jerry.

If Tom and Jerry opened up
a portal to, you know, hell.

It was unapologetic
and disgusting

and you never got to see
that stuff on other cartoons.



It's not just, it's also like getting deep
into the experience of the characters.

Ren & Stimpy kind of opened the
doors saying to everyone out there,

yeah, no more rules.

This show built up a cult following
amongst both adults and children

and became America's most popular
made-for-cable series in television history.

We were the kings, we were
the bad boys of animation.

We were making the funniest
cartoon than anybody ever made.

In order to do what we did, it took intense
pressure and it all emanated from John.

But behind the scenes there were a lot of
things going on that were really damaging.

He called them beatings. Some
of it was torture, I tell you.

He said that I could
go fuck myself.

You know, I still have
nightmares about him.

Despite what he says, you know,

nobody else worked harder
to fuck it up than this guy.

It makes me sad because we were
changing animation forever

and it all fell apart
before it really got going.

Every single Ren & Stimpy
cartoon that was made

was made with a certain amount
of pain involved,

but that pain ended up in this creative
result that is the work of art.

A single sentence explanation
of Ren & Stimpy,

whoo, let's see,
where do you start?

Um...

Uh...

That's a really hard one.
How would you describe it?

I don't know.
Nothing else like it.

It seems to be about a dog in a cap,
but it's a lot more than that.

It's an animated show about two friends
who happened to be a dog and a cat,

but they live on the precipice
of insanity and...

And death.

He's dead!

Dead, you idiot!

You know what dead is?

Just like we'll be
if we don't get out of here!

Even though now looking back, of course,
there was stuff that adults would get,

it felt like something that was just ours and
it was weird but like you were part of it,

like you just got it.

It was ostensibly
a children's show.

You know, it wasn't a prime-time television
series, it was a children's cartoon.

What a good boy!

Who pees
in a children's cartoon?

I mean, like a children's cartoon where
you have a character named George Licker,

a children's cartoon where you have a ghost
that comes back alive

as a fully naked black man.

Man, what a blast!

What... What?

♪ Masked crusaders
Working overtime ♪

♪ Look around... ♪

My, I've got to pack.

You don't realize what the state of the world
of animation was in the '80s and early '90s.

It was a travesty.
It was an embarrassment.

Poorly animated shows mainly created
with the intention to sell a toy line,

but not with the intention to
actually entertain either the kids

or the adults who had to suffer through
watching their kids watch those shows.

The culture
was so conservative then.

One of our most important
freedoms, the freedom of speech,

was under attack by both
conservatives and liberals.

Demons and Wizards,
we will be burning that tonight.

We are going to keep on trying to
strengthen the American family

to make American families
a lot more like The Waltons

and a lot less
like The Simpsons.

All the censorship
that was going on in the world,

I think that is what John
was pushing against.

John's a great designer and he designed
a lot of the characters.

He was doing the stuff we'd all have thought
about doing but nobody had the nerves to do.

You know, he was sort of the Andy Warhol
of animation back then.

The guy that people were getting
around and people were thinking,

"Wow, this guy
is the new talent in town."

John's just
obsessed with cartoons.

I mean, the guy really
couldn't do anything else.

I knew him personally and socially,
aside from working under him.

He, he couldn't, you know, fix a flat, he
couldn't drive. He didn't do anything else.

It was like this thing, this
thing, and it showed, of course.

He's drawing all the time in his brains,
it's like he's got a pencil on his brain.

So, he meets you, he seems very intensive,
he's drawing you.

John K was really
talented and really funny

and drew funnier
than anybody around

and, uh, you know, to him, the funniest thing
in the world was Fred and Barney having sex.

Bob said, you know,
he's the next Disney.

We all kind of thought that... That
John was gonna be the next Walt Disney.

I gotta move this thing out.

I'll just try
to sit up straight.

So, remind me if I start slouching,
which is my normal position.

Sure, sure.

Did all the other, uh,
interviewees get to make up too?

This lighting
looks awful bright.

It... it won't be.

I look like a ghost.

First time I ever saw an animated cartoon, I
was floored. I just... I couldn't believe.

I was looking it because it was
drawings that moved.

And I was just shocked, like, "How
is this possible? This is magic!"

And that's when I was hooked.

And I think I was probably
about four or five.

I've had theories
ever since I was a little kid,

I'm always trying to analyze and figure out
how things work and why they do this or that.

So, when I saw the cartoon, I was
convinced that magic was possible.

I had friends
that I would give my theories to

and I told them the theory about
cartoons must be proof of magic.

One day I was out with my dad and he
stopped in a corner store somewhere

and I went straight
to the, uh, toy rack.

This long package with Huckleberry Hound
on it and I loved Huckleberry Hound,

I tug at my dad's jacket, "Dad, you
gotta buy me Huckleberry Hound.

Buy me Huckleberry Hound!"

He's like, "All right,
here is your goddamn 15 cents."

So, bought it and I took it home
and I opened it up

and there were these
long strips,

like film strips, of different
scenes with Huckleberry Hound.

So, I read the instructions and it
said "Cut these individual images out,

pile them on top of each other,
flip through them."

You know, this just seems crazy,
all right.

So, I'm flipping through it
and I see the animation.

I was like, "Whoa!" They all went flying.
I was like, "Eureka!

It isn't magic, it's science!"

So, then I had to call my... All my friends
over to show them the flip book, right.

Hey, I was wrong, this is
actually physically possible.

Oh, they all thought
it was crazy.

They just like
the funny drawings.

If I did a funny drawing,
they'd laugh.

So, then I thought,
"Well, make it even funnier."

So, I would exaggerate it more
and do crazier stuff with it

and I realized that's really the key to
cartoons is to make things so exaggerated,

so caricatured
that people laugh.

If you can make it funny, you
win, you get... You're popular.

I saw a postcard with a picture
of a Chihuahua in a sweater

standing next to, uh,
this woman's leg.

You could tell that the dog
hated the sweater.

It was humiliating to have
to wear this sweater.

So, instantly,
Ren Hook came to life.

From this, I kept drawing him

and he, eventually, morphed
into something like this.

It was kind of egg-shaped,
long ears.

Stimpy, I started drawing him and it
didn't really look at all like Stimpy.

Originally, it was just me
doodling from memory,

the cats from the Clampett
cartoon called Gruesome Twosome,

that had these cats in it
that had big bulbous noses.

I didn't really discover Bob Clampett fully
till I was an adult.

When I saw his cartoons, I was just floored
because they pulled you into them.

Come out!

The early cartoons were animated, drawn,
designed, painted by professionals,

people who had learned step
by step through the 30s and 40s.

I watched the decay of animation
which shocked me

because I didn't think anything
can make cartoons bad.

I was an idiot. I was naive.

I thought,
"Ah, we'll change it."

And somehow, I convinced a handful of
my friends that it might happen.

But I don't think they ever
really totally believed it.

I think Lynne did
because she had a lot of faith.

I was a huge fan
of his drawings.

He'd sit down and do these
incredible drawings

and, uh, they'd just sort
of toss them aside

and I used to just them,

like I used to steal them and put them in
files at one point, it was ridiculous.

And so, I geek out
over his creativity

and his ability to just get something
down right away like immediate...

Immediate results.

At some point, Lynne and I made these
presentation art and story Bibles.

Somehow,
I don't even know how I did it,

I got meetings at each of the
Saturday morning cartoon networks,

which were NBC, CBS, ABC,
and Fox was still fairly new,

but they all had Saturday
morning cartoons.

So, I went in there
and pitched the cartoons.

I had never seen anyone take me
through a storyboard like John did.

This... He was possessed.

He performed every part.
He did every voice.

He would show you the board
but you didn't need it.

No one had cared for so long about cartoons
that he was saying,

"Wake up, I'm telling you a story that isn't
like that other crap that you're seeing.

Here's this new thing.
So, wake up."

Nobody pitched like that.
It was explosive.

Screaming and like acting out
all the lines.

He would roll around on the floor, he
would get up, he would smash things.

I always like horrified, I have never seen
anything like it ever.

His glasses hit somebody
in the head once.

Okay, beep, watch out,
the glasses are coming.

That was John, and you walk
out of there like wow.

Like if I was an executive,
how could you not?

You'd have to... You'd have to.

How do you not hire that guy
to do that?

You lousy.

Shut up!

The executives in those
days were mostly like moms.

The... the cartoons were full of morals and
dumb stuff and they were completely bland.

So, all of a sudden, I come in
with all these specific ideas

and making fun
of morals and things.

Well, that didn't go over well.

In fact, one of the networks had a
security guard come and escort me outside.

We read the Nickelodeon was looking for
new Saturday morning cartoon ideas

but they didn't want to go
to the big studios.

Didn't want to go to Hanna-Barbera, Disney,
or Warner Brothers

because they thought they would
just get the same stuff

that you see on Saturday
morning cartoons

and they wanted
something original and fresh.

The first initial pitch with
Vanessa went very differently

than the same pitches I gave to all these
Saturday morning cartoon networks.

They... She didn't throw me out.

He pitched me
a project called Your Gang.

One of the kids in the project had a
dog and a cat called Ren & Stimpy.

I didn't like any of the projects he pitched
me but I did like those characters.

She just focused in on who are these two
characters here, these Ren & Stimpy.

There was an emotional element to Ren &
Stimpy that was unlike any other, not...

I'd never seen anything like it.

It was edgy.

It was probably a little bit
above our demographics.

And Nickelodeon
was afraid of it.

They weren't gonna do it.

So, I called Gerry Laybourne
and I begged her.

I begged.

She was hesitant but I talked her
into six episodes.

My relationship with Vanessa right
from the beginning was like this,

we were two peas in a pod.

I was attracted
to that passion and craziness

because I have a lot of passion
and I am probably crazy, too.

If Vanessa wasn't in charge
of the new animation unit,

it never would have happened.

I don't think she analyzed anything,
she just knew what she liked,

which is extremely rare.

It was just natural for her
to do what she felt was right.

But, you know, which made her
a perfect executive.

Ren, you... You're angry?

You're darn-tootin', I'm angry!

I have never been this angry
in my entire life!

Hey!

I feel great.

I love being angry.

Thank you, Stimpy.

Happy to be of service.

Ren is as dysfunctional
a character as you can get.

I'll challenge you to identify with this
character because he's a complete ass.

What do you mean
you don't agree with me?

Do you know
who you're dealing with?

But somehow, you're...
you love him.

And if you get that out
like from the very beginning,

you just set the tone, this is who
this guy is, he's a piece of shit.

And I kind of want him to win,
too.

Oh, yeah, it's great.

Great for you.

People always love
the stupid one.

But nobody ever loves the jerk.

Everybody hates me.

Casting for Ren, I tried all kinds of
actors and I had all these people come in,

some really good actors
and stuff

and, uh, nobody quite could get the intensity
of the insanity that I wanted to get into Ren.

I tried everyone.

So, I finally just went in
and I recorded it myself

and said I wanted to be like this
and I acted it out and stuff.

Then I listened to it
and I hated it.

But Nickelodeon said,
"Well, you should just do it."

Do you have to keep tapping
like that?

You bloated sack of protoplasm!

John's voicing on Ren
is to me, astounding.

Wax paper.

There's episodes I can't believe how good
and how emotional

and, he... he's just, you know,

he wouldn't... Why... Why... Why should he
be good at voice acting, he's a cartoonist?

I have had this ice-cream bar
since I was a child!

People always trying
to take it from me!

Why won't they leave me alone?

In the beginning,
Ren was basically just...

He was Peter Lorre,
he's a psychotic.

You... you imbecile,
you bloated idiot!

You fat bloated idiot!

You worm!

He... he was frail and tiny
but couldn't control his rage.

You broke it. You broke it.

My voice material possession.

Stimpy was an abject retard
but with a good heart.

Happy, happy, happy,
joy, joy, joy.

I did Stimpy, which was based on Larry Fine
from the Three Stooges.

What's the matter with him?
I'm still in one piece.

His voice was so sublime.

Everybody could do Moe and everybody could
do Curly but nobody could do Larry.

No one even cared about him.

But I went nuts
the little that he said.

We gotta help him.

He'd say like, you know, "Hey Mo, you
put too much tinsel on the tree."

And... and John said to me,

"I don't want him to sound like
a depressed old Jewish guy."

So, we pitched him up and he
became very high-pitched and he...

And he could hear better to the parameters
of a cartoon universe, you know,

where he'd be like, you know,
"Will you button me, Ren?"

Will you button me, Ren?

Sure thing, pal.

- Good night Stimpy.
- - Good night, Ren.

You know, Stimpy was like
really innocent and pure,

totally naive and he seemed
to believe in everything.

Well, guess what the mailman
brought you today...

Nothing!

This letter is for me!

Vanessa never liked Ren.
Ren was abusive to Stimpy.

Stop hitting Stimpy.

You know, I called John,
"Stop hitting Stimpy."

How about that?

To me, that was integral.

That was the core of the show
is that Ren slapped him around.

Love.

It says love.

Stimpy.

I would always have scenes where you'd feel
sorry for Ren, even though, he's the asshole.

There's no... You shouldn't feel
sorry for him.

Oh, Stimpy.

I'm so ashamed.

I didn't know that that would
translate into heart.

I didn't set out to do "heart",
in fact I was...

I was physiologically opposed
to it.

And Vanessa loved that part.

I think any great story brings out
some emotional component.

Ren & Stimpy's particularly,
was funny and emotional.

It was emotionally compelling
usually because of Stimpy.

There, there Ren.

There, there.

Stimpy loved Ren.

No matter how much he was abused or
treated badly, Stimpy loved Ren.

They're just as real and... and as fucked
up and as messed up as normal people

and they have real problems
and insecurities

and... and they drive each other
crazy all the time

but they're absolutely inseparable
because they need each other.

Pal.

Buddy.

It's their relationship, you have this person
who's really angry at the world, upset,

should be like this or like that, he
thinks he's a genius, maybe he's not,

and then you have this really sweet other
person who's sometimes an enabler.

You stupid.

Idiot!

It's kind of stylized toxicity,
you know,

and there's a...
there's a yin-yang to it.

People always ask me if I identify
with either of them.

Well, I'm not gonna say that I
identify with... with an idiot,

um, but I... I... I guess I do
identify with an asshole.

So, Ren is the one
I identify with more.

John is clearly Ren.
And Stimpy was Lynne.

Never angry, just always heart first,
feeling first.

For me, in the beginning of Ren &
Stimpy was a mom-and-pop shop.

It was John and Lynne
and, you know,

everyone else was support
for that, you know,

'cause they were... They've been together
for 13 years or so.

And she could draw
just as well as he could.

While I was at Sheridan College,

one of the assignments we had was to take
a famous cartoon character and draw it.

So, I chose Merlin the magician
from The Sword in the Stone,

which was one of my favorite
Disney movies when I was a kid.

There was this really cute girl and
I saw her put her drawings down

and Merlin the magician
was one of them,

but I saw it had
this really unique style

that didn't look like
what other people were doing.

And I think I kind of fell
in love with her right there.

In 1979, I moved to California, to L.A.
I was missing Lynne.

I said, "Why don't you
come down, man?"

Sneak across the border
like I did. I told her how.

I hope I don't go to jail for this.
Luckily, I'm a citizen now.

I pictured it to be completely
different like Beach Boys, the beach

and, you know, Hollywood and fine
and I thought that was all golden

and... And crystal
and sparkly and it wasn't.

And getting a job
was really tough at that time.

I had trouble trying to
get my style into the business.

You know, when they looked at my
stuff, they liked it but they said,

"Hey, but it's like too Looney Tunes.
It's... been done before."

Then after a while
I called, uh, Jim Gomez.

We both went to Sheridan College and I met
John there and the union had gone on strike,

the animation union had gone on
strike the day we had showed up.

It was the first strike
in four years.

So, I ended up working
at 7-Eleven.

We didn't have any money,
so we had to rent one place.

It was a bachelor apartment, there
was no bedroom, it was one room.

There was four of us in there.

It's 112 degrees out in Los Angeles,
you know how it is here,

sometimes it gets unbearable,

there's no air-conditioning, there's
roaches all over the place.

You know, sometimes we'd stay up
all night just killing roaches.

John had bought
all these roach traps

which we called Muhammad Ali roach
traps, had a picture of the champ on it.

It was one of his more
dubious business deals.

And they couldn't get rid of the damn bugs,
they're everywhere.

I was like,
"Oh, my God, it's crazy."

I remember there's big jar
of pickles in the fridge.

It was like big pickles.

I think John liked
big pickles, too,

so, there wasn't anything to eat, like,
there wasn't... We're really hungry, so.

Whenever I met somebody in the business
who I thought was really good,

I would take them over to John.

There's not a lot of these, you know,
super specific people

that have the ability to translate
their personality or what they believe

and what they feel through
the pencil onto the paper.

But whenever I found somebody like that,
I would totally latch on to the person.

Lynne was one.
Jim Smith was one.

Bob Camp.

Bob and I had a good chemistry.

We'd go everywhere together.
We'd laugh together.

It was a perfect partnership.

We'd listen to music on John's
record player and watch cartoons

and we would, uh, share theories
about animation.

I've had people say to me
I can draw in any style,

which basically means
they can't draw very well

because nobody can draw in
every style except for Bob Camp.

We had the audacity to call
ourselves big shots

because John's always using
that term, you know,

"Someday we're gonna be
big shots."

We had this naive expectation that
we were gonna make great cartoons

because after all nobody was,
so they would buy them from us

because clearly,
nobody knew how to do it

and so, if we offered them great cartoons,
naturally, they would get made.

Those guys did have like a real
punk... punk mentality.

They were like if we... if we sort of
set the tone how we want it to be,

it'll turn that way.

That's a trip. That's a lot of... that's a lot
of hubris, a lot of, um... a lot of balls.

And, you know, at some point I
realized we need our own studio

just so we can do what we
were put on Earth to do.

And I think Bob came up
with the term Spumco.

Where are we going, Bill?

We're going to see the creators
of Ren & Stimpy at Spumco.

The Spumco offices were kind of gross,
these weird little dank rooms.

The best way I can describe that studio was
it was a shithole.

Like it or not.

Spumco was this horrible old building
that had been supposedly a brothel for...

For Paramount and it was like covered
in ugly white tile,

looked like a giant urinal,
basically.

It was so much fun.

We all were like, you know, having a good
time waiting for somebody to kick the door

and drag us out in the street and tell
us to get the hell out, you know.

It's... it's weird
that they let us do it.

We all were being
the bad boys, you know,

being the Rolling Stones
of the animation industry

and, uh, we pissed people off and we
were kind of bunch of rude jerks.

It was John, Bob, Vincent. Vincent
is just like Mr. Cool Calm.

And then Bob's intensity, so Bob has
the intensity between John and Vincent

but they're all demented.

If an alien spaceship landed

and took everybody
that was hanging out there,

it would be a really bad
sampling of the human race.

Lynne.

Okay, okay.

I think the excitement was like, "Oh, we really
get to do this. How do we do it?", you know,

just wanting to get everything
in there.

Lynne was the heart, you know,
and John was the brains

and we were all just, you know,
playing different instruments.

Spumco was probably
the greatest collection

of talented artists,

not just animators, not just character designers,
not just background artists... artists.

It just stunned me
like how good everyone was.

I mean, Jim Smith was the best draftsman
that I have ever met probably in my life,

if not for Chris Reccardi, too.

And Bill Wray.

He's an extraordinary artist.

I walk in and there's Bill Wray
painting these paintings

that I think should have been
in museums.

This was a cartoon
and these were the backgrounds

that were gonna be in the cartoon
that we're making here. Oh, my God.

We would use sponges to do dot pattern
effects. These are makeup sponges.

And when you're trying to get, uh, a transition
of dark to light, you press it on there.

I've said for many years
and I believe this,

there should be a coffee table book of all
Bill Wray's backgrounds from Ren & Stimpy.

I mean what a book
that would be.

He started doing abstract splashes of color
to heighten the emotion

and that's everybody's
stealing that today.

John knows what he wants, you know,
and he knows what works

and he knows what doesn't work and he knows
what he likes. And I think he made all of us...

He certainly made me a better artist,
better color stylist for sure.

John's got a ton of charisma
and his magic

was able to bring really multi-talented
people together in a unified force, you know,

that... that had conviction
and belief and stuff.

If anything could be
called genius, that's, you know,

being able to mobilize people to come
together to produce something great.

It's not rare to find people
who have unique personalities.

It's rare to find people who can tap them
and put them on paper.

A lot of the stuff was just based
on our emotional experiences

which we definitely
tried to relive

and make sure you felt whatever it
was we were feeling at that time.

When I was growing up, my mother
was a Jehovah's Witness,

I was forced to go out
and go door-to-door.

And you never know
what's gonna open that door.

The Nipple Salesman episode,

there's a moment where Mr. Horse clearly
is being portrayed as a sexual predator.

But I'll tell you what though...

Do you have any rubber
walrus protectors?

Call the police.

And, I mean, God knows
how that got through.

Quick, man! Cling tenaciously
to my buttocks!

Both of them?

You know, John,
there would always be something

in the cartoon
that he wanted to slip by.

Their process was to bombard me
with the most intense stuff

and, I mean, they did sneak
some things through.

There is a very powerful supercharged
vacuum cleaner and... and he says it can...

This vacuum cleaner can suck a monkey
through 40 feet of garden hose.

It can suck a monkey
through 30 feet of garden hose.

You hear that line, I was like,
"Oh, my God, how did that get in?"

John used to hide little bits
of drawing under the storyboard

and he would send a copy
to Nickelodeon.

He'd show it to me and he'd go, "Dan,
look what we got away with,"

and pull a Post-it back in.

They just didn't
catch it, you know,

and then they were furious
when they saw it.

And we were like,
"Look, it's in the storyboard."

Man, that's pretty.

We were constantly adding stuff,
a little innuendo there,

a little something
in the background there.

And Nickelodeon would we say, you know,
"Don't... Don't, we can't do that."

And we'd go, "Okay."

What can I do for you, Officer?

Like the glass coffee table
collection.

And see, and I say that to some people
and people don't get the joke,

- so, I'll just leave it there.
- I got it.

There's also a great shot where people are
throwing hats in the air.

If you DVD slow frame
through it,

there's an intestine that flies up and a big
turd shoots out the side and flies off screen.

There... There are things I look at
now going, you know, "Where was I?"

You can string the dingleberry
garland.

I never knew
what a dingleberry was.

Everybody was laughing
at dingleberry garland

and I'm like, "Oh, my gosh, why
are you laughing? It's so sweet."

And everyone's like, "Okay."

That one they got...
They got on me.

John was never more vulnerable than
when he was pleading for me to...

to get them to pass some jokes that he
thought were necessary for kids to see,

when I would say,
"Look, uh, did what I could,

but they're not gonna let Ren
eat his own vomit."

There would be
this long silence on the phone

like he just couldn't
fathom it, you know,

he'd just be like, "I mean... I mean,
it's not like they're fucking."

If you were outside the studio,
it seemed like a cult.

And if you were inside
the studio, it was like cult.

It's not a cult.
Oh, John, John, John.

Yeah, I could see where people
would think it's a cult.

At that time, there really
wasn't anybody older

who was really doing anything
good like what he wanted to do.

So, it was like recruiting young people
that were fresh and training them.

So, I was one of a handful
of those people.

Coming into
the industry I felt like,

"Oh, there's only certain things
you are gonna be able to do,

so, here's where you should set
your heights," you know.

But then with John, it was like, "No, no,
set them way over here."

And for RAs for 18, 19, 20, that was what
we were looking for.

When I first started working
there, I, uh... I had this...

I have a really distinct memory
of going,

"I can't believe I'm here like this
is exactly where I need to be."

We were in the
place we needed to be

and we were working out primally
how to make the best cartoons.

It's like all of a sudden,
I'm like 18, 19

and I'm working on a show that is,
obviously, revolutionizing TV animation.

And I was so enamored
of this personality.

But in working at Spumco, I realized that
it wasn't just John.

John was really good
at being a driving force.

But behind that driving force came all
of these people that made you care.

You know, the... the drawback with
cartoons is they take so long to make

'cause you have to...
You have to animate it

and, you know, you can't get
the cartoon up and running.

Unless you're South Park,
you know,

you're gonna have to spend a year
to get a season figured out.

Oh, man.

Yeah, we will.

As much as I talk about
how much we, uh, screwed around,

you still had to spend a lot
of times indoor sitting down

drawing hundreds
and hundreds of drawings.

It's the nature of... of animation,
all those drawings have to be done.

It's madness. It's cra... It is a mad
medium in that 24 frames a second

even if you break it down.

So, we were doing first episode,
Stimpy's Big Day.

You could see the pressure
from the very beginning.

Everyone was there trying
really following John K's notes,

trying to redraw, very intense.

And all I could think of is,
"This is not gonna last.

It's either gonna drive...
I'm thinking of Lynne now...

"You're either gonna go nuts
from this

or you're gonna go further and
further down this rabbit hole."

But then, see, I was with John for
a while, um, as his girlfriend.

So, uh, we broke up, so I left.

It was kind of like mom's going and, uh...
And we're left with psycho dad.

But we have two psycho dads.

We've got John and Bob, two alpha males
who are highly overly opinionated.

And this is like before we even finished
the first episode of the series.

We were all trying to live up
to John's idea of quality.

John was, you know, willful
and he was, uh, eccentric,

creatively volatile,

hard to deal with, nasty,
but he was the artist.

If he wanted to sort of jump
to the next tier of quality

and he sort of expected his
artists to follow through on that

and when we didn't,
he would call us out.

I've been called a dictator.
I disagree with that.

He was the hardest director
I ever worked for.

You know,
he had a sadistic edge.

I was screamed at... screamed at,
at least three times in public.

The artists that worked for me
had more leeway

than they ever had in cartoons
they worked previously

and the cartoons
they worked on afterwards.

There were two factions. Some people
thought he was a crazy person,

um, but actually John, um, had a
razor-sharp vision of what he wanted.

And he really does see things
nobody else can see. That's true.

John could be really tough. I would
sit in there and I'm just like,

"Okay, you're gonna say
one more thing

and I'm gonna take this fist and double
it up and knock you off that stool."

And I swear to God, it's like he
had a psychic meter in his head

for when that place was with me
and he would instantly go,

"But you did a really
good thing right here

and that's really nice and blah blah."
It's like, "Ah, okay."

You know, it was a hard job because his
standards were so, so high.

It was an enormous amount of pressure
but we'd all signed up for that

and we'd all signed up
for like no sleep

and really long hours
and coming in on the weekend.

I know in my case and a lot of people's
case, we just had that side of us.

They wanted to be attached
to something really cool.

There was a lot of talk about like how
could you work for this guy and da da da,

he is such a jerk.

And you work for jerks
in your life.

But if you work with somebody who
actually cares about what they're doing

and maybe take some pride in it,
that is rare actually.

So, I'd much rather work for the jerk
who has pride in what he's doing.

He's like a cartoon character himself. I
mean, you... You go eat dinner with him

and he orders a salad
and he goes,

"Queer times,
what the hell is that?"

And he'd pick them up
and throw them across the room.

You know, he's badly behaved,
you know, but... But funny.

John's secret is, if he doesn't get it
the first time,

he'll try ten more times and if that
doesn't work, he'll try a hundred times.

He will do something
until he gets it.

He obsesses
over getting it right.

And if you're doing the thing
right, uh, it's never easy.

It's all about,
if you can't stand the heat,

get out of the kitchen
and everything is fair game

and you pick on everybody
and everybody picks on you

and, you know,
you don't hold back any punches.

It was like that
at Ren & Stimpy.

And, uh, I think if John K were normal,
the show would be more normal.

My hands... dirty.

The dirt won't come off!

Ahh!

A lot of people think that Ren
& Stimpy is sho... shock.

To me, it's not...
It wasn't shock at all.

I... I really believe that it was
characters expressing just emotions

that are kind of horrifying
to look at

or people are scared to look at of
depression and mental problems, delusions.

It's psychological and John
was a master at transferring

what was here
directly into your mind.

The one thing I noticed early on is the characters
were assuming the shape of their emotion.

If they were depressed, they
were kind of flattened down.

If they were real happy, they
were stretched and... And lively

and, you know, it was... It was almost
you were looking at symbols of emotions.

And then when you had
the expressions on top,

it just made it
that much stronger.

The characters emote, they change,
they squash and stretch.

They express themselves
in visually grotesque way.

We got to know who Ren & Stimpy
were in their heads.

We got to see psychologically
what was going on in there.

-Hey.

It's happening again, my brain!

I think John really tried to... to get
expressions that are kind of based on life

and trying to do a cartoon take on
something that's very specific,

something complex and not just like
something out of the Preston Blair book.

There were a lot of studios and cartoons that
had a very formulaic use of this is what,

you know, their lip-sync chart
looks like this

and, you know, that people would just kind
of plug it in and John was like, "No."

While you were drawing,
you had to make the expression.

So, if Stimpy was smiling, you were smiling
while you were drawing.

Or, you know, if he was angry, you had
to really put it into the cartoon.

So, we had to study acting.

Takes a long time to become
a good animator

just like it takes a long time
to become a good actor.

You know, back then,
laserdiscs was a big thing,

so, John and I would get all these laser
discs so we could freeze frame them.

We studied a lot of the sort of classic
Hollywood actors that actually overacted.

Kirk Douglas was a favorite.

Dirty pictures
you put there today.

Dirty pictures?

Yes.

Kirk Douglas, the amount of crazy
expressions that goes into his face

for one expression
is like staggering.

If you were to look
at all the drawings

and see what went into, you know,
one of Ren or Stimpy's expressions,

it would be like, "Wow."

One of the things I love about Kirk Douglas
is he reminded me of my dad

and he reminds me of men, in general,
maybe not the man of today.

But, traditionally, men try
to keep their emotions inside

but they can't ultimately
because it builds up.

The more you keep it inside, you don't cry
and you don't yell,

it's just churning
like lava inside you and...

I used to watch my dad, whenever my dad
was chewing me out or lecturing me,

I'd see him like... he's doing
this, "Listen Johnny..."

and I could tell
what his feeling is,

"I don't want to kill the guy but I have
to somehow get through... through him

'cause he's such a damn moron."

So, he's holding back all those violence
and I'd see his face twisting and boiling.

I was like, "Oh, shit."
But it was entertaining.

You know what it's like when you're a kid
and you're having dinner

and you're supposed
to be in good behavior

and the more you're trying
to be on good behavior,

the more you hear
your friend snickering.

And then you can't look at them,
right, and you start to snicker.

And then you watch your dad getting
madder and madder, you know,

until he breaks
the fork in half.

I was scared shitless.

But I... You know, whenever I saw anybody
doing some kind of extreme emotion,

going through an extreme trauma, it's
like a movie camera went off in my head

and I'll just absorb it.

I wouldn't even be paying
attention to what was being said

or what the meaning of it was, it's
just a turmoil that I was watching.

It's a man trying to be like
a normal conservative, you know,

Leave It to Beaver-type dad to make
me become a normal conservative,

a clean-cut boy, you know, they can be
proud of with his friends and brag about.

That was never gonna happen.

I spent most of my time
in the basement just drawing.

Drawing and copying characters
out of comic books

and... and that my dad
thought was... that was nuts

and that reading comic books was
destroying my mind. I think he was right.

But I had to hide them under my bed
and stuff, but he'd always find them.

Man, he'd would blow up, start kicking
the comic books all over the room.

But, yeah, and there was... there
was never any question in my mind

that I was going to be a cartoonist,
come hell or high water.

My dad will get mad at me
and then,

"Only one in a million will
make it in Hollywood, buddy.

You think you're gonna be
that one?"

I'm like, "Yeah,
I think I'll be one of them."

At last I have control
of your TV set.

Are you receiving me?

Welcome to our secret
headquarters.

Thousands of miles
below the Earth's crust.

Shut up, you fool!

How do we know
we can trust them?

I realized that Ren & Stimpy was a success
on a Monday

after the first episode aired.

I mean everybody knew.
Oh, it's working.

Every week, the audience would get bigger
and bigger and bigger.

Think about this, you're working
for another studio,

the shows are airing and all the artists are
running into a room to watch the shows.

We had a bet and, uh, I bet
that we would get to a 4.0.

I was told it's impossible.

And I don't know, I believe it was the fourth
airing of the first episode of Ren & Stimpy,

we got a 4.0.

It was first time
in cable history.

Ren & Stimpy
was just this weird show

that people were talking about
in the animation industry.

And then, all of a sudden,
bam, it was like a hit.

- So, you guys have been Ren & Stimpy, you're going in?
- -Yeah.

All right, I'll see you.

Golden Apple, a comic book store
down the street,

was having signing
with the Spumco artists.

We expected a few hundred people. We got
a couple of thousand people showed up.

We're driving down Melrose
like, "Oh, wow!"

And the line went literally around
the block to get in to see us

and talk to us
about Ren & Stimpy.

Cartoons
weren't fucking cool then.

These were like sexy
young people, you know.

These guys are the best animators walking
on this planet, no lie.

It's like, you know, suddenly, we had like
girls following us back to Spumco to...

To look at the studio.

I drove down to Golden Apple and they were
running Ren & Stimpy cartons on a monitor.

I walked in right as it was
playing Space Madness,

playing the part
about the ice-cream bar.

Everybody in the audience
was chanting along with it,

they've memorized
the damn speech.

I don't know the exact date but it
was shortly after the show aired.

My dad, he called me and said,
"Oh, you did it.

I was wrong. You pulled it off.
I don't know how.

It's pretty weird stuff but
seems like everybody likes it.

But don't do the space ones.
The space ones are stupid."

Did you do
any space ones after that?

No.

I'd gotten so used to obeying
my dad, following his rules.

Vanessa faxed me
a bunch of fan letters.

So, people not only did
they like it and laughed,

they were kind of
obsessed with it.

I was way into Ren & Stimpy
when I was a kid.

So, I started drawing Ren & Stimpy, I
took animation classes at a kid's museum.

And then when I was 13,
I started writing to John K.

I had built him up in my mind
since I was 11 or 12 years old.

You know, he had this sort
of Rockstar status in the '90s.

I had always wanted
to work for him.

And just thought that the... the drawings
were just like really cool

compared to anything I'd seen on
TV and I wanted to draw like that.

I just... I liked intensity
and things.

Ren's going insane and Stimpy's
tone looks really gross

and so, you know, it's perfect
for that age of kid.

I remember one night, I was just sitting there
in my living room and feeling really bad...

sorry for myself and I was flipping
channels and Ren & Stimpy was on.

And I thought I was having
an acid flashback.

I didn't even know
what the fuck it was.

I literally just turned on a TV
and I saw it and I was like,

"Oh, this is mine."

Loved Ren & Stimpy.

Yeah, I mean,
it kicked so much ass,

it was so influential and it was like
disgusting, hilarious, and sexual.

I mean, it's all clean, there's no bad
language, there's no pornography,

it's just that you can feel the
throbbing energy behind the art.

That's it,
you're in our secret club!

It felt like something that was
just ours and it was weird

but like you were part of it,
like you just got it.

My name is Scotty and I'm just a
regular schmuck like anybody else

but I just have a massive affinity for
this cartoon and its merchandise.

These are all new things
like toilet paper and calendars.

These are all the, uh, comics.

These are all the factory direct ones.
Little plushies here.

The Ren & Stimpy slippers that they sold at
Spencer's and they sold them just like this.

You had... had about like one
clubfoot and one skinny foot.

So, I bought two pairs just so I had a
pair of each I could wear, you know,

a pair of Ren
or a pair of Stimpy.

I've always been into cartoons

and I've never had a cartoon just
grab me by the sack and said,

"You're coming with us."
This one did.

I was, you know, young,
just under 20

and, you know, I'd started
smoking weed at that same time,

so, they were quite a fucking
combo, I'd tell you that.

They were playing them all back
to back on a Saturday or Sunday

and a buddy of mine recorded
on it... on his VHS recorder

and I watched that thing
until it was...

I mean, it almost obliterated,
the tape was just so worn out.

You would play... play it on slow
and you would just hit a button

and it would just take you
frame by frame by frame by frame

and there was a different
picture in every frame.

It was...
I mean, it was un... Unreal.

Whenever... Whenever you see perfection,
recognize it.

And they had
their perfect moment.

You know, in 1994, I think the
merchandising for Ren & Stimpy

was like four billion dollars
or something insane like that.

No one had ever seen
anything like that, you know.

This was creator-driven
cartoons.

That whole created
by that being new.

That turned it
into an auteur form.

Before, it was, uh, by committee
toys steered the show.

It had to be a pre-existing
something.

But who... who created that,
you know.

Who created
the Transformers cartoon?

Who created He-Man?

You have to go way back to get
Hanna-Barbera or Chuck Jones.

Ren & Stimpy with, created by John K,
brought that back.

I wanted the world
to know who did it.

So, I elevated the top artists like
Vincent and Bob and Jim, Chris Reccardi,

but I had to fight to be allowed to do it because
they didn't like the idea at Nickelodeon.

Well, Stimpy,
what's on TV tonight?

Oh, joy!

Hey, Ren, it's Commander Hoek...

People tend to think that like if you have a
good character, you come up with Bugs Bunny.

Wow, it's gold.

But look at how many times they've
tried to revive Bugs Bunny

with different people doing it.

None of them ever come close to the
success of the original Bugs Bunny.

It's not Bugs Bunny that is the, uh...
That is the... the golden property.

It's the artists.

I think a lot of great art
hides in kids' cartoons.

What Ren & Stimpy had that other shows
didn't have were these close-ups.

So, you'd have like Ren & Stimpy doing
something and then something disgusting

and they would have this like
weird jarring music like...

and it would be a close-up of just very
detailed topographical look at someone's skin

or a booger.

And you never got to see
that stuff on other cartoons.

It was unapologetic
and disgusting.

If we're gonna show a still, it better
be great. It better be amazing painting.

It better be this great painting
we can hold on, you know,

and be disgusting, you know,
as dis... as... as gross

and we're gonna make you sit on it 'cause it's
so beautiful but, yet, it's so, so gross.

I didn't think of myself,
"Oh, I'm gonna push boundaries."

I was more about like,
"How do you get quality?"

Ren & Stimpy was an anomaly in its time.
He did not want scripts.

Script-driven shows were like
anathema to us and to John.

He didn't want to have to follow
someone's script.

He wanted... He felt like cartoonists
were funnier than writers.

And to a degree, he was right. I mean,
for this show he was right.

He felt like it was important for
him to convey to me my uselessness.

You know what I mean?
It's like...

And I was... I said, "What... We...
Didn't we just have waffles and chicken?

Now you're telling me
I'm just... I'm nothing?"

People who aren't cartoon writers are
not very good at writing cartoons.

It's just like you try to write a music score
without knowing how to read music, without...

Or never playing an instrument
and try to describe it in words.

John's legacy is that he reset
the clock on animation,

that he reestablished
the storyboard artists

and the artists, in general,
as the king of animation.

You had to be
constantly moving forward.

There's a lot of, "Oh, this part
of the drawing is working.

I'm keeping these eyes
but they're too big,

so, I'm gonna size them down
on the Xerox machine

and then I'm just gonna work
on the body a little bit."

And then you cut
and paste into it.

So now you've got like three or
four or five different elements

and then you're using liquid paper and
so you've got this like just mess,

and your pencil would go...

over all these, you know,
levels of paste and liquid paper.

Any other cartoon production,
they would look at...

at our storyboard and say,
"That's a mess."

It didn't matter.
The goal was to be funny.

Ha!

The one episode that I really still think
about today is Toothache.

John was always like grabbing
somebody to go to lunch.

He... he hated being alone.

So, there is this Roscoe's
Chicken N Waffles, world famous.

He came up with the whole idea of Ren's
toothache with the... the nerve endings

and the stink and he's like,
"Yeah, so anyway, you know,

teeth fall out and the stink's
coming out and then,

and there's flies eating the shit in the
fucking cat pan and it stinks so bad.

And there's this giant black guy behind them,
turns around and goes, "Hey, hey, hey.

I'm trying to eat here.

I don't know what you guys are talking
about. It's just disgusting."

Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey,
we are trying to eat here

and you stand here, airing out
your stinky old gum holes.

Whoo!

The genius of Ren & Stimpy was how
far it went in being outrageous.

It was the fact that, uh, an outrageous
show could also have so much heart.

And with that heart, you know, you suddenly
had shows that had a balance to it.

Yeah, that was a great episode. Um, the
name got changed to "Son of Stimpy,"

but it was originally called
"Stimpy's First Fart."

That drew a lot of criticism,

like, people were like, "Alright,
you're really hitting bottom."

And I remember John saying, "Oh, no, no.
This is... this is high art."

And you're very sympathetic for Stimpy
and his situation, you know.

And he's heartbroken because
he lost his fart, you know,

but still, it kind of
makes you want to cry.

I hate pathos. It drives me crazy
because it's... it's contrived.

It's just like shoving it
down your throat.

Vanessa encouraged me, "Can you do more
scenes in your cartoons with heart."

Stinky!

You know, as I say, I was totally opposed
naturally to it,

so, instead, I came up
with a way of making fun of it.

If I'm gonna make people cry, I'm gonna make
them cry over the most ridiculous reasons.

I thought
I'd never smell you again.

And I actually enjoy doing it. Once I got to
the point where I could make fun of pathos,

I thought, "Wow,
this is a great ingredient."

Most of it came from Vanessa,

but she didn't urge me to make fun of it,
she urged me to make her cry.

It's so good to have you home.

Come in and sit by the fire.

If your mentality, like John's
I think sometimes was,

is let's see how much
I can get away with.

After a while, that kind of becomes
self-defeating how much I can get away with.

It just becomes
an end unto itself.

You know the idea was let
them bring as many ideas,

but then pull it back because it's still
television and it's still storytelling.

It's not just gags.

It's not just being outrageous for the sake
of being outrageous.

If it was left up
to just letting it go,

there's no way
it would have been this good.

Hey, let's just hang somebody.

Oh, my God!

Then he goes, "Yeah, we hang nobody in a
long dang time! But who we gonna hang?"

Really with John, you know, probably the... the
person who dealt with him the best was Bob.

He didn't draw on my style
before Ren & Stimpy,

but once we started hanging out,
he just picked it up overnight.

I didn't have to give him all the theories
about maintaining guts and all that stuff.

He just did it.

We were missing more
and more deadlines

and I, uh, approached Donna and
said, you know, "Let me direct."

Bob was the perfect extra director.
He wasn't as obsessive as John.

Bob just wanted to be really
funny and that's it.

Just funny, funny drawings, funny
gags and John could do his craziness

and... and pushing the envelope.

When John and I worked together,
we made magic.

Stimpy's invention
which some would argue

was the ruination of the entire
Ren & Stimpy franchise

just because it took so long
to make,

maybe it was all worth it
just to have that one episode

just in terms of something that
gets you on every single level

and deserves in my mind to be in
the pantheon of great cartoons.

Hey, what is this thing?

Get it off of me.

It's the happy helmet, Ren.

Now you'll always be happy
and this is the remote control.

Free!

Hey, it works.

Hey, what's happening to me?

I think John succeeded in conveying what a
cartoon nervous breakdown would be like.

Ren's having his mind controlled
and it's tearing him apart.

It's part horror story, you
know, part comedy, part cartoon.

Can't lose control.

Will strong, body weak.

For Stimpy's Invention, we've got these
storyboards that were really broad and hilarious

and it was a Bob Camp storyboard and it was one
of the funniest storyboards I'd ever read.

A lot could be learned from comparing that
storyboard to the layouts that were done,

particularly, the ones
that were done by John.

It was like doing graphic
things that were really unusual.

Ren is wearing the happy helmet
and he does this bit of dialogue

and he says the word "go" I believe
the letters "go" are in his mouth.

Hey, must go do nice things.

And I just, I remember
that kind of blew my mind

like that the level of interpretation
was getting really right-brained.

One of the things about John
was that the bar was so high,

every time it passed on the
next guy, it had to be plus,

starting from the story moving forward
all the way to the final.

On Stimpy's Invention, John would fix
drawings after they had been shot.

The scene was done,
it was finished.

And John would grab the scene
and start to redo drawings.

John decided to take the show, all the
elements that we had into his office,

he locked the door and wouldn't
let it go out of the studio

until he reviewed the whole show
and did his thing on them.

It was incredibly horrible emotional time
for about 6 months there

when we were just skidding
without delivering a show.

Nickelodeon came to me and said, " Ren & Stimpy
is so successful we want to do 20 episodes now."

Yeah, that's normally an
exciting thing in the TV world,

but the reality for John was like who's...
who's gonna create all this stuff?

I can barely deliver with the
crew we have now.

I said, "Well, we'd have to multiply
the crew by 3 and some."

And they said, "Go do it."

And here's what we get back to what
executives, network executives,

think makes a good cartoon.

They think it's the idea.

Once you have the idea, then you can just fill
a studio with bodies to do all the drawings.

It's... it's a crazy idea.

He kept going, "Well,
I have to train all these guys."

I said, "No, you don't.

Hire people that know
how to do it."

So, I knew that was going to be a problem
and frustrate everybody

because I'd have to split
my time now into three.

My big job was
schedules and budgets

and getting us on track
and we were way off track.

Shows were delivering
months late,

so that's why I originally
had been brought on.

I think in my first interaction,
you know, with John he said,

"Oh, so you're the studio hat that's
been brought on to, you know, watch us."

We weren't even very
far into season two,

we were already hundreds of
thousands of dollars over budget

and months behind schedule.

I mean, we missed the air date for
the very second week of Ren & Stimpy

and we had to rerun
the first week cartoon

that pissed off the advertisers
big time, you know,

because John couldn't
let the cartoons go.

He told me one time, he was
quite sad about it and he said,

"You know, I wish you would just
come in here, punch me in the face,

and take the work and give it to him,
just physically take it from me."

The whole secret in animation is to get
the director to sign off on that stage

whatever it is that storyboard,
that layout.

If John wouldn't approve one drawing,
then that footage is sitting there.

What are you doing?

John, he was obsessing up on way too much
and being the bottleneck in production.

And it ended up creating
some great cartoons,

but then, again, I know the cost of those
cartoons and it was not just money.

You know, he was really struggling
under all the pressure of it.

He became aggressive. I noticed how
he started abusing his artists.

We would leave at like midnight after
doing all of our scenes and stuff,

but John would stay up.
The man didn't sleep.

And he would stay up
going through everyone's work.

You just have to know
that people were so punished.

I mean, they were punished trying to
get John's approval for a drawing.

You would like slave away

and like you might be really happy
with your scenes that you'd done

and then they go to John and he was like, "This
isn't a drawing. You got to redo this, you know."

There wasn't a single layout
I did that didn't have,

at least one drawing
that he would throw away,

you know what I mean,
at least one drawing.

The artist would finish the scenes,
bring them back to get them checked

so they preserved storyboard expressions,
did they push it further,

or did they tone it down.

Well, if they toned it down, they'd
get what people called a beating.

Literally, like throwing the layouts
out on the floor like, "Look at these.

This is not acceptable!"

He had all the
qualities of somebody who's like

borderline like a Hitler type,
you know,

like just total intolerance for
anything weak or unsatisfactory.

So, you know, like,
you draw like a fag.

I mean at one point, I did kind of lose it
and I quit and I said, you know,

this kind of criticism doesn't do anything
to make me better, it just, you know,

makes me hate you and I went home and...
and, of course, he was really apologetic

and said, "No, no, no. Come back.
You're really important."

So, there was, you know, there was a lot of
psychology at play with it...

With the whole thing, you know.

It was Bob Camp
who I remember the most.

It was like John was really
treating Bob poorly.

He was rejecting
all of his drawings.

He was complaining to him that this is no good,
that's no good, and it was really affecting him.

Please God, please.

Mm...

Mm?

John did that
to a lot of people.

Trying to make
a good quality show

with all these handicaps we had
in the second season,

you know, I was on the verge
of insanity, I think.

And they would add these obstacles of
throwing whole storyboards out after the...

The story had been approved.

And we got...
Our notes got way longer.

That was the most frustrating
thing about the second season.

That was hard for me
because I got a lot of pushback.

Initially, John and I would work together and
it was just a give-and-take and it was fun

and he would listen
and then it was over.

Hello, I'm George Liquor,
American.

We had been working on the boards for,
uh... It's called Man's Best Friend,

I think, the first show of the
second season that never got aired.

John pitches this idea, we do the boards,
they get approved

and I go, "Wait, what?"

I get him alone in a room,
he's never lying to me.

I go, "John, are you sure
they've approved this board?"

He goes,
"Yep, yep. They did it."

Now, come on boys, attack!

But you are my kind
and beloved master.

I can't.

But I can.

Man's Best Friend, I didn't like it.
It was extremely violent.

No!

- It's discipline that begets love.
- Ouch!

Nickelodeon is making an
investment in kids' programming.

You must learn your place.

And that's to say, when we saw it,
I was just like...

I mean, it is up there
with Samuel Beckett,

it's one of the best things
ever made but it's not for kids.

The executives at Nickelodeon thought
George is me.

This is absolutely not.

He thinks he's doing you good.

Today's lesson is discipline.

Now in order to learn discipline,
you must learn to misbehave.

Now you see this over here?

This is a couch.

Now a couch...

After he tells them
don't get on the couch, he says,

"Well, what are you waiting
for get up on the couch?"

Come on, make me mad. Make me mad
or I'm going to be really mad.

What did I tell you
about sitting on my couch?

- Are you afraid?
- It's twisted logic.

It's... it's logic
of authority figures.

It's my dad.

George Liquor is the first character that
ever just popped into my head instantly

and I knew almost everything
about him.

He's a moral god-fearing man
who believes in being tough.

Tough love that's what it is,
it's tough love.

That's a good boy.

It's discipline
that begets love.

In the cartoon, you take real-life emotions
and you exaggerate them.

I identify with almost
all the characters

and I try to put something
into them that I feel myself.

George Liquor, I don't identify with
personally,

but I identify with having
to, uh, yield to authority.

He called me to give me feedback
on my notes that I was giving him

and he said, um,
that I could go fuck myself.

That he wasn't
gonna take notes anymore.

That he made the network
and he is the star.

He sent a note to the network saying,
"I can no longer be held responsible

for budgets or deadlines,
sorry."

When I read that
I was like, "Oh, my God!"

And I got the biggest marker I had and I
drew a giant pair of balls on his door

because like, clearly, he had
the biggest ones in Hollywood.

We failed at working together after that.
It just failed.

You know, "I'm going to do
whatever I want to do

and it's going to cost you
whatever it costs."

And as an executive for a company
that, you know, I was beholden to,

it didn't work that...
It doesn't work that way.

And I just walked down the hall
and tell Gerry Laybourne

that I had
an out-of-control train

and that I had an episode
I couldn't air.

And I have, you know,
outlaw artists on Ren & Stimpy

which I loved but it was hard.

They approached me and they said, "Look,
we want you to finish the show."

People within my studio,
they were plotting behind Spumco

to, uh, take... Start a new studio
and take it over.

The network was talking to me
about it and saying, you know,

we don't know if we're gonna
have to fire John or not.

We're gonna have to close the studio and I'm
trying to talk him out of it and everything.

Bob was smelling blood
and, uh, he's like,

"Yeah, fuck John, you know,
he's abandoned his duties.

Dereliction of duty, you know."

When, you know,
we do it without him.

You know, he started talking
in that... that way.

Nickelodeon,
behind my back, would tell them,

"You're the backbone
of the show, you're the brains.

We don't need John.
And we'll triple your salary."

Everybody was angry and I... I told them
that I had talked to John.

I was shocked. I said, "If you do this,
you're gonna be right back

to where you were before Spumco

where you have no creative say and you're
screwing all the people who built this up."

But they went because
they thought of the glory.

Well, boy, now I'll be the big cheese,
even though, I'd made everybody.

All the top people big cheeses,
but not big enough.

I remember
the final conversation with him.

I mean, he was just like, "Please,
you know, don't do this."

And I said, I have...
I... I can't not do this.

We have to...
We have to do this.

You're the one who created it.

You created this mess,
we didn't.

And he denied it,
but there was no choice.

Yeah, actually he called me. Yeah, and
he said, "Guess what? I've been fired."

And... and he actually said this.
"I'm actually kind of relieved."

It was really sad. I was crying.

John was almost crying.

We gathered everybody
into one big room

and said we... we have to give
you guys two weeks' notice.

We don't have any more money,
they're not paying us anymore,

so, it was... it was horrible.

The hardest thing really was just the
fact that we were having so much fun

and doing such great work that it was
a real shame that it had to stop.

The artists had to make
a decision about stay with John

or come with me and Nickelodeon
and produce at Games Production.

We created a new studio, in about three
weeks, we put... Put it together.

And it was just Bob saying, "You know,
you have a job if you want it."

You know, he would say
to a lot of people.

I said, "You know, Bob, I'm
not... I'm not going to Games."

And he says, "What?
Traitor. Fucking traitor."

You know, just all in my face,
spitting mad, you know.

And I'm like... And then Vincent, you know,
was like, "Whoa..."

And he goes... "I am not going either."
He goes, "What?"

It was devastating.
It was horrible.

And I knew that it would make me
look bad in some ways,

but I knew I had to do it, you know,
because otherwise, the show would die,

or worse, they would give it to
someone who would candy coat it

and make it into something that
wasn't what it should have been.

John and I were the best of friends and... and
I haven't seen him since that day in 1992

and I don't know
if I ever will again.

You know, I was burnt.
Who wouldn't be burnt?

You build something
over years and years

and it's taken away overnight for
somebody else to build something.

These are characters that you
developed for years that you loved.

You're losing your kids,
basically.

It broke my heart. I loved the characters.
They were my babies.

It just was a car accident for
me and it... it... I struggled.

I really, really struggled.

We really did try to make the most we could
out of a very unhappy situation,

but, you know,
we did get death threats.

I mean we had to put
surveillance up.

They sent this card with this bag
over this German Shepherd's head

with a hole in the bag

and its snout coming out and a gun down
the German Shepherd's mouth

and it said,
"You're gonna die bitch!"

And that was one of many.

Is there anything you would
have done differently?

We're back to that one.

That's an impossible question
to answer.

- No, it's not.
- Yeah, it is.

There's nothing I could have
done about how it turned out.

It was fate or something.

It's like, I would, you know, if I
was gonna change something I'd say,

"Let's not do 20 episodes."

That's not my Ren.

Not my Ren. No...

Yeah, it's funny
when people say,

"Oh, you stole Ren & Stimpy from John
Kricfalusi or the network stole.

Well, the network owned
the copyright.

He didn't bring
Ren & Stimpy to us.

I picked Ren & Stimpy
out of one of his properties.

This idea
that he brought us a show

and, you know, we took advantage of him and took
it away, it's just not that... It's not true.

He didn't pitch us a show called Ren &
Stimpy until we developed it with him.

And the one thing that he wanted back,
like, his fight at the end, you know,

give me the character
George Liquor back."

I'm like, "Take it."

The last thing we want is that character.
It's a horrible character.

It's abusive, bully, horrible,
insane character.

You know, later I left, so it was
just unbridled, left unchecked John.

I mean, there's a reason
why there's a difference

from the original Ren & Stimpy
to Ren & Stimpy Adult Party.

It's because he lost
a lot of the people

that gave those characters heart
and feeling and appeal.

After losing the show and losing
that expression and I wasn't there,

and I lost all contact with them, but
I think, in real life, you know,

that's when his behavior
got really bad.

I had always imagined what
it would be like to meet him

because I wanted to work
for him so badly.

To the girls that were in charge
of the library and the fan club,

they brought me this big thick binder
from one particular fan named Robyn Byrd.

I was amazed that somebody
16 years old could write so well

and could express
her emotions so clearly.

Some of the things she conveyed was
that she was lonely and depressed

that nobody understood her.

She used to call me Mr. Faluci,
which was very cute.

She also sent a videotape of her sitting on
the floor in her room talking to me directly.

That did it.

He responded to me.

I was... Had just turned 14 when
I first heard back from him.

I was falling in love with her letters
and I knew that probably is not right,

but I was just so smitten by
her personality in her letters

and then when I watched the
videotape, it's like, "Holy cow!

This girl is amazing."

It had developed into this weird
sort of romantic thing

over the time that I had
been talking to him.

In some of her letters, she would, uh, put
double entendres about sex and things.

This is the guy who's been like saying,
like, dirty stuff to me for two years

and like talking to me on the
phone and only at late at night.

The first year of that,
really as a little kid,

when I was 14,
I was still a little kid.

And then her mom sent her out for a summer
after I visited them

and, you know, she, uh, was an
intern at Spumco for a while.

And then, um, when I was 16,
I moved in with him.

I thought
I'm getting offered a job.

I'm getting offered
an internship.

I... There's someone
who can take care of me.

So, I... I just...
I went with it because it's...

It's what I had always wanted and
what I thought I still wanted.

Well, she was too young
and I freely admit that.

It was a bad decision...

but she was so convincing.

My entire adolescence,
so, 14 to 21 was owned by him.

His work was so wrapped up
in his life.

That was his life,
so it was my life, too.

So, it was just like you lived
in the kingdom of John

and, you know, I still have
nightmares about him.

I was isolated
from everyone I knew.

It was almost like there was
this mandate not to talk to me.

I was sad all the time.

He blamed me for that.

"I'm making you happy.
Why aren't you happy?"

talk about women's
bodies all the time.

I would cry at work and he would tell me
how inappropriate that was.

Indoctrination-type stuff, Bertrand
Russell's essays about non-monogamy.

What are you trying to tell me?

You know he just really had
no response to actual feelings.

He's gross, he's weird,
he's eccentric, he's sick.

And there was a brief break in there where I
went and worked at a couple other studios

because I just needed
to have my space

but I came back to him and when I
came back, Katie Rice was there.

Hey, this is Katie Rice.

She is one of the young artists I was
telling you about who sought me out

- because she grew up watching Ren & Stimpy, right?
- Mm-Hm.

He had, literally, flown her out like two
days after I moved out of his house.

He just started
hiring kids, you know,

because they're gonna have
that devotion to him.

Katie is the princess
of sexy girl artists.

I had matured a bit.

I could tell that, you know, this stuff that
has been going on for the past five years

is not normal and so I left.

I ran and I thought I can't go
back to L.A.; no one will hire me.

That... that 16-year-old me that could
do anything was just... just squashed.

You read the article, I assume.

I read parts of it
and then I had to put it down.

The parts that you...

See, I don't want to like
complain about...

I don't want to get into details because
then you have to drag other people into it

and, you know, it's just more people
getting mad at each other.

You know, I don't know
what he's been up to, lately,

except I have names of lots of girls he's tried
to get with 'cause they've talked to me.

Well, I've officially retired,
not exactly by choice,

I still have tons of ideas, characters
and things I would love to explore.

So, all that's gone.

It's my own fault for not being
smarter or more responsible.

John didn't just turn into this... John has,
I think been this person for a long time.

He would have us over to his house for
parties and he got drunk enough, you know,

he would talk about young girls
being, you know, the hottest.

I talked to his most recent assistant and
she was... she was crying and sad about it

and she's like,
"That's not the John I know.

Uh, he never... Yeah, I mean, he would say
inappropriate things

because he's kind of
a man-child."

That whole male locker-room thing, I didn't
take it seriously enough.

I'm making no excuses,

it's just like it never occurred to me
that a guy would actually pursue that.

I think that his abusive nature
and his God kind of thing,

I just wasn't surprised.

I was also really,
extremely angry.

It hurt... It hurt that he used,
um, Ren & Stimpy that way

to, um...

lure girls into his fold.

It was upsetting.

Um...

So, that made me sad.

I got a message this morning that made me
almost cry because of the way she put it.

She was like, "You are, um, protecting
all of the little girls

who never put
their crayons away."

She came out.
She said she's hurt.

It was very... She felt like
she was taken advantage of.

Knowing that is how she felt,
what would you say to her?

I would... I would definitely
apologize to her

and... and explain that I didn't see things
the same way that she did and I should have.

I would admit to what I shouldn't have done
that I did do.

Explain how guilty I feel about it,
especially when she says now

how... how hurt she is by it.

I really feel awful about that.

And I'd ask her to forgive me and
try to explain that, you know,

I always had ultimately
her best interests.

What I... From my point of view
were her best interests at heart

and I never wanted to lose
friendship with her.

I think with that two words,
"I'm sorry" would that be of...

Well, didn't I say that?

I would definitely tell Robyn
I'm sorry.

Really, really sorry, because I
didn't realize how affected she was

until that article came out.

And it just made me feel
complete shame and guilt

and felt like the lowest
creature on Earth.

So, I really would love tell...
I'd love to tell Robyn in person.

If she watches this,
give me a call, please.

That created by moniker,
you know, is John's legacy,

but, in the end,
it's what stains the show.

Oh, Vincent said, "Now the characters
are covered in shit paint," you know,

and that's heartbreaking.

Basically, this show's a bastard child and
it's fucking always gonna be.

And it's still, you know, right up to
now, it's easy to blame John for that.

It's like, well, clearly, you know,
nobody else worked harder to fuck it up

and than... than this guy
despite what he says, you know.

People have sent me pictures of their comics
in the garbage can and stuff like that

and I'm not gonna tell them
not to do that.

But if someone is really
conflicted about it,

then I would say, "Look,
just don't think about him.

Think about how you were happy
when you were a kid

and you would watch Ren
& Stimpy, draw Ren & Stimpy."

I don't really find anything
good in it for me anymore,

but I don't see why someone would have
to pull out a part of their childhood

just because of what's in him.

The show is the show

and there were a lot of creative people
that, uh, contributed to it,

so, whether you like me
or hate me,

I would hope that that wouldn't
color your enjoyment of the show

because, you know,
there's Bob Camp and Jim Smith

and Lynne Naylor
and Chris Reccardi

and on and on, all these talented people
that contributed to the show.

You know, people don't know all the
different people that came together

to create created by and that's
how you get a SpongeBob.

That's how you get a South Park.

That's how you get everything
that followed, you know,

none of that would have happened without
Ren & Stimpy and that created by cart.

The current day examples of shows that I
think were influenced by Ren & Stimpy

are all of the shows.

It's ongoing
impact is the way it affected

and changed the way people who worked
on cartoons, looked at cartoons,

and you know did cartoons
afterwards.

It's all there, you know, from character
design, to expressions, to timing,

you know,
it influenced a great deal.

It has much validity as a Eugene O'Neill
play as it does a Daffy Duck cartoon.

It's all about addressing
the human condition.

And I think
a lot of us somehow do feel

a sense of gratitude
towards John, you know.

This group of people,
this thing, you know,

I would never take
that credit away from him.

Some of my favorite artists and
musicians and actors, comedians,

some of the most talented ones just tend
to be the ones that suffer the most

in terms of interfacing
with reality.

It's not necessary for someone to be
like that to create great art.

You can have that going on in your
head and you can use it to make art.

In fact, you can work
through it with art.

That's what a lot of artists do
with their pain.

Pain does create great art.
I do believe that but, um,

you don't have to keep inflicting pain
to create great art.

You know, when you make something
that people really like,

they sort of expect you
to... to be perfect.

And once people know you for real,
a little of the magic is worn off.

"Oh, he's a human
like everybody else."