Hey folks, Harry here... Mr. Beaks has been doing great work covering the split-tail out of THE ANIMATION SHOW. He's just been all over it. In this interview, Mike Judge begins to loosen up a bit about the possibilities regarding his next live-action project. Well, I got a peak at a DVD that Mike had put together to "inspire" one of the actors he's looking to work with. The DVD is mad comic genius, it is found programs that Mike Judge discovered available in the backs of non-porn magazines regarding a lifestyle... a lifestyle we can all make fun off that is out there in rural America... A strange, bizarre universe that I'm not going to get detailed on, because frankly... the comedy involved is something that could easily be stolen and abused... BUT - I promise it is easily as universally funny as two teenage retards in their basement or a suburban family or the crazed cubicle universe of Judge's previous work. The orgasm scene where this one guy jizzes his pants is blow-corn-out-your-nose funny, and it will OWN if Judge gets to do it. I see THE ANIMATION SHOW next Friday finally... I can't wait... and if Judge ever wants to see a ton of rare theatrical animation... I have an extensive ON-Film collection I can arrange for him to see next time he's back from L.A. and back in Austin... Anyone that is attempting to keep animation theatrically exhibited deserves access to everyone's collections on the planet. It is all about preserving the medium! Here ya go...
BEAVIS & BUTTHEAD, KING OF THE HILL, OFFICE SPACE, and, now, THE ANIMATION SHOW. Without further adieu, here’s my conversation with the 1971 number one draft pick of the Dallas Chaparrals, Mike Judge.
What was the impetus for THE ANIMATION SHOW, and how did you guys hook-up?
I met Don a couple of years ago when he and Bill Plympton were doing their show. It was called “The Don and Bill Show”. It was in Austin and it was only their films. I had known Bill for a long time, and the thing was sold out every night with a huge line of people trying to get in. I could barely get in. Sometime in the mid-90’s, someone from Miramax had talked to me about doing an animation festival of my own. It never ended up happening, but, then, when I was talking to (Don and Bill), because their show was put together by a promoter, and I was saying, “Man, you guys should start your own festival. Just your films playing together plays better than the ‘Festival of Animation’ has been lately.” Don, it turns out, had thought about it also, so we started talking about it. Both his parents and my in-laws live up in the Bay Area, and I was up there for Christmas, and we started talking about it again. We started getting more serious about the idea. That’s really how it started. I just love the way animation looks on the big screen, and I also really like animation that’s just done by one animator. There’s a lot of cool stuff out there that’s just one guy, or girl, doing their own thing. I wanted to do it partly just to have a good animation festival for me to go to, and have it be an annual thing. Also, talking to Don, he’s taken his stuff to places like Memphis where animation festivals have never played, and he sold out every night there. And that was in a mall somewhere. I really think a lot of people like this stuff like I do; maybe not in huge blockbuster numbers, but enough to play in more places than these things have played.
When I started out in the 80’s, there was THE ANIMATION CELEBRATION, THE TOURNEE OF ANIMATION, THE FESTIVAL OF ANIMATION… and I used to go to all of them. That was, really, the reason I started. When I realized that, wow, you could actually make some money just making your own animation film; you can make enough to justify doing it. I wasn’t thinking “get rich”, but… I wanted to go into comedy, and I was, like, “Well, I can’t make a movie; I don’t have enough money.” But an animated film, you don’t need so much money, as you just need to work really hard. That was the appeal to me. I think, right now, it would just be cool to have something like this out there so that someone in Memphis or Omaha, who’s like I was when I started… might be motivated to make a film where the might not have before.
Well, all that’s really out there right now is SPIKE & MIKE’S.
That’s about the only one, and that doesn’t play in that many places anymore.
When you started putting this together, what was your methodology on selecting shorts?
We wanted the stuff that we both liked. We’re not looking to make it, necessarily, a “sick and twisted thing”; we want it to just be good stuff that we like. Also, things that haven’t been seen, things that haven’t been overplayed, maybe. I mean, putting “Rejected” and “Billy’s Balloon” in there, that’s like when you go to see Aerosmith. You want to hear them play “Sweet Emotion”. Especially for the first year, since we’re playing in so many places that have never seen something like this, it would be good to put some of the “greatest hits” in there. Other than that, we wanted a variety, and just the best stuff we could find basically.
Were you trying consciously to go for a variety of styles?
Yeah. Also, some things, like that clip from MARS AND BEYOND, was just self-indulgent; I just wanted to see it on the big screen. That stuff was just beautiful paintings and cell work… there’s a lot of detail in there that looks better on the big screen.
Some of that detail reminded me of the stuff Miyazaki’s doing now.
That’s why that clip from MARS AND BEYOND blows me away. It’s really ahead of its time in a lot of ways. Plus, it’s 1957, and they’ve got all of that acid-looking stuff in there. It kind of looks silly now, but that was 1957.
Did you consider drawing anything new for the show?
Yeah. I want to do some for next year. It’s just going to be some short stuff probably. I’ll animate stuff just because I really love doing it. KING OF THE HILL has, like, ninety people animating it, and I’m just writing memos. I don’t do much drawing for that anymore. And I miss just drawing little stuff. Some of those shorts in THE ANIMATION SHOW were actually from the mid-90’s when I was just animating something just to experiment. But what am I going to do with it? It’s just going to end up playing at an Austin Film Society thing playing for my friends. So, it’s cool to have something like this as a motivation to do something, but, also, if I want to animate some funky little thing, I can put it in here, and watch it play in front of an audience.
Who were your chief influences as an animator?
When I first started, I had wanted to try claymation for a long time, ever since high school, but I could never afford it. And, then, to do regular animation, I had always assumed that you needed a staff of 100 people, or something. For just animation style, the one that influenced me most was this thing by M.K. Brown called “Dr. N!Godatu”. It actually played on THE TRACEY ULLMAN SHOW at the same time “The Simpsons” did. And I just liked the style of it because it was ink-and-color-pencil looking. So, the first thing I animated was that “Milton” cartoon, “Dr. N!godatu” was probably the biggest influence on that. But I guess there’s a difference between influence and what you actually do. I was probably influenced material-wise by what was in NATIONAL LAMPOON back in the early 80’s. Those cartoons… I always used to think, “Man, they should be animated. That would be so cool.” Because animation was just Saturday morning crap, and I was always thinking, “Why doesn’t anyone animate this stuff?” And Harvey Pekar, too—
I was just going to say.
AMERICAN SPLENDOR. When I first did that “Office Space” cartoon, because I’d worked in cubicles, I wanted to do a series of office characters as if Harvey Pekar’s stuff was animated. That’s kind of what I was thinking when I started out.
That kind of dovetails into what I was going to ask about your influences as a comedy writer.
There’s a lot of them, and I always forget some of them. NATIONAL LAMPOON Magazine. When I was in high school, I really freaked out about Monty Python. But when I started trying to write stuff… I had a good friend in high school – and this was in Albuquerque, New Mexico – who went and got gigs, at seventeen or eighteen, as a stand-up comedian. And this was way before there were all of these strip mall comedy clubs. It was just a really odd thing that really inspired me, and I was like, “Let’s get a camcorder and start doing sketch comedy”. It’s weird, though, because all of these people I’ve known who were really funny, whenever they started thinking of ideas, they were always way too big. I was always saying, “No, the funny stuff is when you imitate your next door neighbors”. I wanted to do those small, everyday life things. That’s what interested me more than big broad stuff. So, stuff like Harvey Pekar… a lot of the comic book stuff was an influence.
Is there a wish list of shorts for the next ANIMATION SHOW? I know Harry mentioned in the preface to my review that he’d like to see the UPA “Tell-Tale Heart” short that James Mason narrated.
That’s another great thing about this. We’ve gotten all of these great suggestions from people who are better animation historians than I am. There’s enough to go on for years. I mean, we have to have brand new stuff every year, but as far as featured old things… I’ve never seen that one, but it sounds really cool.
It’s hard to track down, I guess. So, you’re going to keep mixing in a few vintage works, but stay focused on the new stuff?
I think it has to be a mixture of stuff like that. Also, there’s a lot of good new stuff, some Oscar nominees and things that made the second-to-last cut for the Oscars that we might play next year. And new stuff keeps coming in, especially from Europe. People are still making shorts over there because they can run them on public television as filler. There’s a lot of stuff from Australia, too.
I like the international flavor of it all. Now, do you buy into the notion that the growing mainstream dominance of CG animation augers doom, or at least relative obscurity, for these more traditional techniques.
Well, on one hand, when I look at something like SINBAD, I think it’s probably a good thing that that stuff is on the way out. I mean, you could say, “Would FINDING NEMO have made as much money, or been as popular if it had been in traditional 2D animation?” Probably not. But then you can also say, “If the SOUTH PARK movie had been done 3D CG style, would it have been as big a hit?” I don’t think so. Part of the charm of that is the way they move around. I think the same thing goes for the BEAVIS AND BUTTHEAD movie; if we had done that CG, it wouldn’t have done as well. I think what does need to die is that… HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME probably should’ve been the last one of those. The character designs just like a copy of a copy of a copy; they just look beaten to death. It’s like, “Well, this time let’s make the eye bigger on this guy, and his jaw bigger…”
They’re not very adventurous.
And there’s no feeling. The characters don’t pop. There’s no *character* to the characters anymore in those things. I think if someone comes along and does something really original… something that you can’t describe why it works, but you just know it when you see it. The audience knows it. I don’t think it necessarily has to do with the style of animation. I mean, it does, but I think something can come along in 2D. Like Don’s stuff. People love it, and it’s stick figures.
It’s got such a cult built up around it.
Yeah, and the same thing with SOUTH PARK. It’s cut-outs. It wasn’t like the audience was saying, “Boy, I *really* want to see some cut-out animation!” But for big corporate manufactured movies, it’s probably not smart to say, “Let’s make another SINBAD”.
Well, if they’re stick with that kind of insipid storytelling. Now, to tie up a few loose ends: do you have any plans to bring back Beavis and Butthead?
You know, I almost have a couple of times. They put out a couple of DVD’s without telling me, which broke a contract with me, so we’re sorting that all out now. I was thinking about doing some shorts to put in front of movies, but I’m not so sure about that now. I do occasionally miss doing them. I’ve been looking through all of these episodes because we’re going to do a DVD – and, hopefully, do it right – and, boy, there were some bad ones. The first two seasons are rough. After that, I’m really proud of it.
But you were finding your voice. THE SIMPSONS developed in kind of the same way.
I don’t think they were as bad as these were. (Laughs.) I remember really liking THE SIMPSONS at the beginning. But that’s the thing about BEAVIS AND BUTTHEAD; I really like it a lot from the third season on. I like some of it before that, but it’s really traumatic watching these things. I’m going, “Oh, God, why did we do this?” On one hand, it kind of makes me want to do more just to up the average of what’s out there, but I do occasionally miss doing them. I turned forty recently, and, now, I’m thinking I might feel kind of silly doing this when I turn fifty. So, if I’m going to do it, I’d better do it pretty soon.
I have some friends who’ve been casually compiling a list of the best thirty films since 1990, and OFFICE SPACE seems like a shoo-in for the list as one of the favorite comedies in that period. The enthusiasm for that movie is pretty amazing.
Yeah, really. In the last couple of years, it’s really built up a following.
I read in the Entertainment Weekly article that they’d love to do a Special Edition DVD. Do you have any enthusiasm for that?
Yeah, I’d like to do something like that. The article almost made it seem like I don’t like the movie, which isn’t true at all. It’s just when you write something, and you cast it, and shoot it, and then you watch it a thousand times in the editing room… you just don’t need to watch it anymore. But, yeah, I’d like to do a new DVD. They haven’t asked me about that in a while, but I think it would be fun to do. I had dinner with Ron Livingston recently, and we were talking about it. There’s at least one or two scenes that I wouldn’t mind throwing in as extras on DVD. My favorite scene between Lumbergh and Peter, I cut from the movie. I think it might only be funny to me, but if I could put it on a DVD, that would be cool.
That’d be great. I think people would love to see that. They’re really beginning to clamor for a new DVD. So, I’ve got to ask: are you ready to make a new live-action movie?
About a year ago, I thought I was going to be making one in the winter, but it kind of fell apart. Then, I thought I was going to retire. (Laughs.) Now, I’m right back where I was a year ago; I rewrote this one that I was going to do, and I’m a lot happier with it now. I’m actually going to find out, I guess, in the next few weeks here. I would like to do it again.
You’re developing something for a studio right now?
This one is with 20th Century Fox. We might start making it in January. Maybe I’ll spend my forties making, like, five movies or so. That’s kind of a plan.
Are you going to make it a different universe from the stuff you’ve already created?
They’re not going to be spin-offs from anything I’ve done. This one that I’m thinking I’m going to make next, is one that I co-wrote with a guy I’ve worked with before, Etan Cohen. The other ones… I’ve got a couple that are kind of half-baked that I want to start working on. That’s the thing: the problem with a movie is that it just takes so long.
You live with them forever.
Yeah. You go, “Okay, this is going to be at least a year and a half of my life”.
You’d better love it a lot. But that’s great news that you’re going to, hopefully, get this going.
If I don’t do this one, I’ve got one that I might produce that’s pretty much ready to go.
And KING OF THE HILL is going to keep running?
Yeah, we’re almost done recording this coming year, and there will be one year after that. Basically, another two years of that show starting with this fall. It’ll at least go that long.
So, you know what to do. THE ANIMATION SHOW kicks off its nationwide tour Thursday night at Lincoln Center’s Walter Reade Theater in New York City. Everyone else is advised to check out THE ANIMATION SHOW’s website, find out when it’ll be playing near you, grab thirty friends, relatives and debtors, and run out to see what Mike and Don have put together for your viewing pleasure. Your emotional well being depends on it. I am not kidding about this shit.
Faithfully submitted,
