Slimed!: An Oral History of Nickelodeon's Golden Age by Mathew Klickstein

Author:Mathew Klickstein
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Performing Arts, History & Criticism, Social Science, Popular Culture, Television, Entertainment & Performing Arts, Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780142196854
Publisher: Plume
Published: 2013-09-24T04:00:00+00:00

RICHARD PURSEL: This is the most loaded question of the lot. An entire book could be written based on this one alone.

BILL WRAY: We did a cartoon called “Man’s Best Friend.” Nickelodeon wanted twenty seconds cut from that. Maybe a little more. We were all stunned that John wouldn’t make the cuts, because Nick was giving him an ultimatum. “Nope, I’m not cutting one second from that cartoon. It’s genius.” Which it is, but this was when we were beginning to get a lot of success, and John was feeling it. “I am the most successful Nickelodeon thing. I’m giving my heart and soul to this thing. Don’t fuck with me!” And this was the highest-budgeted film we’d ever done. I heard rumors that we got close to spending $250,000 on it. A lot of money for a cartoon back then. Nick wanted their investment back, they couldn’t get it, and they had to shelve this expensive cartoon. I went to Jim Smith thinking he could reason with John, because I’d talked to Bob Camp and Bob wanted to cave, thinking Nick had a point. Jim was like, “Fuck Nick.” And that was the catalyst.

BILLY WEST: Nickelodeon loved the fact that Ren & Stimpy was delivering Christmas to them. It was raining gifts and presents and revenues. They loved all that. But I think they kind of wished that it wasn’t the content that it was.

JOHN KRICFALUSI: I don’t think Ren & Stimpy was too offensive. We introduced farts and boogers to cartoons, but kids fart and pick their noses and laugh about it all the time. Things that offend me are ugliness, slasher movies, and reality shows.

GERRY LAYBOURNE: The first six episodes were not that scary. What happened afterward was scary. When the show was a success—and it was a giant success right off the bat—I had dinner with John and he said, “Now that it’s a big hit, you have no right to tell me how much it’s going to cost, when I’m going to deliver it, or what the content is.” And I said, “John, you know what? I really don’t care what it costs. And I don’t even care about the delivery. But the content is important. I can’t let you do that.”

WILL MCROBB: John became fixated with George Liquor, who also ended up in “Man’s Best Friend.” Nobody at Nick wanted George Liquor. That created a lot of bad blood.

MITCHELL KRIEGMAN: There were massive storyboards brought in about George Liquor, who was not a character we had bought. When we originally saw Ren & Stimpy, there were sixteen to twenty characters. And we chose just those two characters. Doug had tons of characters, and they had to hone it down, too. If there are too many characters, you don’t know who to focus on. You can’t depart from the show you’d been successful with.

VANESSA COFFEY: John had tried this before. I had thrown one of his storyboards away: “Are you kidding me? You’re not doing that to Ren and Stimpy.

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