You may not know the name John Kricfalusi, but you definitely know his work. John K., as he's better known, spearheaded the rebirth of classically created cartoons-- that is, cartoons written by the artists who drew them-- with his insanely popular (and just plain insane) cartoon series, Ren and Stimpy in 1990.
It's been 7 years since John K.'s split with Nickelodeon and Ren and Stimpy-- the kids' network didn't see eye to eye with the show's creator on its direction, so he and his company were fired. Ren and Stimpy continued to be produced by another company-- to Nickelodeon's specs and the fans' dismay-- until it finally died an ingnominious death.
Now John K. is back on television with two new cartoons, A Day in the Life of Ranger Smith and Boo Boo Runs Wild, which feature the classic Hanna-Barbera characters Yogi Bear, Boo Boo, and Ranger Smith. Kricfalusi's style-- his odd pacing and, most important, his funny pictures-- breathe new life into an old (and nearly forgotten) art form. (Don't believe me? Check out a video clip.)
Your TV Editor was fortunate enough to talk with John K. about these cartoons, about Ultimate Fighting, and why the movies are a torturous experience.
Why did you pick Yogi Bear? Did Hanna-Barbera come to you? How did it come about?
I love those characters, and ever since I was a little kid I have been drawing caricatures of the characters, and I've always wanted to do something that exaggerated what was already there, I just went a little further with it, so when Fred Seibert (sic) was running Hanna-Barbera a few years ago, he started a shorts program, and I approached him about doing some shorts with the classic Hanna-Barbera characters and doing my exaggerated take on them. So he said okay, and from that it kind of grew into one short (A Day in the Life of Ranger Smith) and a half-hour special (Boo Boo Runs Wild).
Are you going to do another one?
I don't think so.
Is Hanna-Barbera happy with them? Someone in here mentioned when we were watching it earlier that people might be upset by your different take on these characters. Because you know the old ones were pretty innocent, almost cornball.
Well, I love the old Hanna-Barbera cartoons, the ones from the 50s. They had to be a little bit subdued, a little bit conservative, but they're sure drawn great. They were designed by this guy who's a genius, Ed Benedict, who's my all-time favorite animated cartoon designer. They also have great voices, Jaws Butler, Don Messick, who were well--known radio personalities at the time. To me those cartoons have stood the test of time.
It's kind of amazing when you consider how they had to invent a limited animation style to be able to produce them for TV budgets, which is considerably less money than a theatrical movie budget. They were used to doing Tom & Jerrys with something like $35,000, for six minutes, and then they had to go down to about $3,000 for the original Yogi Bears. But the guys who made them, even at that price, made cartoons that just lasted forever, and were hugely popular all through the 60s. And those are cartoons that they made over a span of maybe one or two years. They just kept re-running them for at least a decade. When I was a kid in the 60s, that was the big thing-- Hanna-Barbera cartoons.
I saw a lot of them when I was a kid, in the 70s and 80s, but I haven't seen a Yogi Bear cartoon in years.
Well the really early ones are great. In the 70s they started bastardizing a lot of the classic cartoon characters-- not just Yogi Bear. Saturday morning cartoons kind of ruined cartoons. I mean, they did ruin cartoons. They got politically correct. Yogi Bear later ended up cleaning up the environment in an ark. That was really crazy. The whole concept of Yogi Bear is that he messes up the environment. My concept was to go back to what they had in the beginning, only do an exaggerated version of it. Caricature it.
What's your favorite character?
Favorite Hanna-Barbera character?
Favorite character, period. If you could do what you did with Yogi Bear with any cartoon character, which one would you pick?
Yogi Bear.
Really?
Yeah. I wouldn't do that kind of thing with Bugs Bunny or Daffy Duck, even though I love those characters, because Bob Clampett made the most exaggerated cartoons ever. You can't exaggerate any further than Bob Clampett already did, but the Hanna-Barbera cartoons were great ideas and great designs that kind of didn't go far enough. I just took what was already there and pushed it.
I was curious about the sound effects. They're just like the old sound effects are, and I wondered if you found a track somewhere with the old ones on it or if you had to re-create those sounds.
You can get CDs of the Hanna-Barbera sound effects library, and that's what we used. We also went out and found the original stock music that they used in the 50s. That was actually really tough. That was hard to find, because the library kept getting passed from one owner to another. And there were a lot of other problems with that because they had remastered it all, and kind of screwed up the sound, and done all kinds of weird things to it. But we managed to find it and just did the best we could with what we could find.
You know it's kind of interesting that sound technology today is supposed to be so much superior, but if you watch one of the old Hanna-Barbera cartoons the sound is a million times better. We used the same sound effects, the same music, with supposedly better digital technology, and we couldn't get it to sound as good as the cartoons they would do in a day in the 50s. It was way better then. They've since compressed all the sound and done all this weird digital stuff to it, and it kind of killed it. We had to really push to get the sound even to the levels that it is in the cartoons that we made. I was just watching some Yogi Bears last night from 1958 and the sound was way better.
That's a huge debate among audiophiles around the world, that old analog versus digital argument.
I don't know how there could even be a debate.
I know, I prefer the old stuff myself.
It's ten times better.
You're sort of famous for gross, sort of booger humor. I was reading about the problems you had with Nickelodeon when you did Ren and Stimpy, how they would make you take things out and change stuff. Is there ever anything that you wanted to put in a cartoon that you didn't because you thought it would be too much?
Oh, all the time.
Like what?
Well even these cartoons are a lot milder than what I would do if left to my own devices. I don't think there's anything particularly censorable about them, because I was real careful not to put anything in that you could censor. There's nothing in there that you couldn't see a more extreme version in The Power Puff Girls. Power Puff Girls is violent, there are a million dirty jokes in them. So I didn't put any of that stuff in there. I did have a fight scene in the cartoon, and whether it's made it into the final cartoon, I won't know till tomorrow night when I see it. I have a feeling that that might get cut.
You haven't seen the final cut?
No. You probably haven't either.
No, I just watched it right now.
But you may have seen the cut version.
Maybe I can tell you if it was cut. What were you thinking might get cut?
There's a big fight at the end between Yogi and Ranger Smith. It lasted about a minute. Was there a head butt in there? Yogi gave him a head butt?
I think there was a head butt in there. And then they roll around back and forth for a while.
Yeah, then you saw the uncut version. I hope that's the one they run.
I thought it was funny.
It's an interesting coincidence too, because Ultimate Fighting is on Pay-Per-View the same night as Boo Boo Runs Wild premieres, and the fight that's in there was totally inspired by Ultimate Fighting. Ranger Smith is an expert in Brazilian Jujitsu, and he's using a defense position on Yogi. Yogi's on top of him but Ranger Smith has his legs wrapped around him, which is actually a Brazilian Jujitsu position called the guard. That's what you do to defend yourself, you can do all kinds of things; you can get your opponent into an arm bar, or a triangle, all kinds of things. So it's actually a well-studied fight scene in there, based on reality.
You're pretty big on the Ultimate Fighting, huh?
It's the best show on TV.
On our site we have a lot of wrestling coverage. It's really popular with the kids.
Oh yeah?
You dig pro wrestling?
Not very much. I like the real stuff. Ultimate Fighting is great. It's the real thing.
They're trying to get it off the air, right?
Well TCI already won't broadcast it. They tell pay-per-view that they won't let them broadcast it, which is crazy-- I mean, it's pay-per-view!
So do you watch it on the dish or something?
I dumped my cable company. The second they kicked it off cable I went and bought a satellite dish. That takes care of that.
Do you watch any of the other cartoons that are on now, like The Simpsons, South Park, stuff like that?
I don't even get those channels! I get the Cartoon Network. I don't get the regular network channels because I have the satellite, and I'm not interested in too much stuff on network TV. My favorite show right now is All in the Family on TV Land.
That's classic stuff.
Yeah, I love that, it's great.
They're putting a lot of new cartoons on Fox lately. It seems like every new show they put on is a cartoon, they've got The Simpsons, Futurama, King of the Hill...
Yeah, those aren't really cartoons though. Those are just sitcoms disguised as cartoons.
Yeah, but Fox seems to be interested in doing animation. Do you have any interest in doing another TV series?
I'd love to do it if they'd let you do it. If they'd let you make a cartoon. But I have no interest in making a pseudo-cartoon. All of the prime-time cartoons, they don't have anything to do with animation. There's no reason to do them in animation. In fact the live action shows that they imitate are much better. All in the Family is a thousand times better than any of the prime-time animated shows. Because at least in All in the Family not only do you have written jokes, you have great performances by great actors. Which you don't have in any of the cartoons.
Archie Bunker-- Carroll O'Connor-- is way more exaggerated in real life! You just watch his expressions and gestures and things, they're a lot broader than any of the animation characters in any of the prime-time cartoons. It's making absolutely no sense, because you can go a lot broader in a cartoon than you can in live action. If you're going to imitate live action, why would you do less than live action? You should do more. It doesn't make sense to me.
So what are you going to do next? Do you have any plans?
Well, we have a website (Spumco.com-- check it out!) where we make cartoons online. We also have a lot of behind the scenes stuff with Ranger Smith, like pencil tests and so forth.
So you're going to keep doing those Shockwaved cartoons?
Oh yeah. To me that's the whole future-- animation is going to be online. We're starting an online cartoon network.
When's that going to start?
Real soon. We have the domain name-- it's called realcartoonnetwork.com. It's not up yet, but we're building some cartoons for it, and we're soliciting sponsors to directly sponsor the cartoons, like they used to do in the 60s, when a sponsor used to attach itself to a show. Like Kellogg's would do the Hanna-Barbera cartoons-- "Kellogg's presents The Huckleberry Hound Show." I think that's the way you're going to see advertising and content partner up online, just like the old television shows.
Do you have any interest in doing short cartoons to run in front of movies, like they used to do?
Oh, I'd love to do that, but nobody will buy them.
I find that very surprising.
I don't know-- to me, going to a movie nowadays is a torturous experience. You have to sit there through that stupid slide show-- that's like punishment. You have to listen to that George Michael music? Oh my god! You want to kill yourself!
And the trailers are just as bad. I can't sit through all the trailers.
They have you sit there for half an hour before the movie starts! You might as well run a cartoon during that time. Why don't they be nice to people?
There is a theater here in San Francisco, The Castro, that does that sometimes, they run old Tom and Jerrys sometimes.
That would be great. I don't know why they don't do that everywhere. People would love it. Maybe that'll come back when all the theaters go digital.
Why is that?
Because right now, just to get something distributed you have to go through a big movie studio, and they don't have any interest in promoting cartoons, they just want to promote their features, and ace everybody else out. So I think once theaters are more independent, and they're not reliant on the huge distributors, they'll just buy things directly from producers and each theater will probably be more competitive with the theater across the street. So in order to get somebody into the theater they'll say, "Well, not only will we give you a movie, we'll give you a cartoon with it." And it'll be very easy to distribute, once you can just send it over your computer.
Sofcom note: No Australian screening times yet available.
