Word: kricfalusi
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1992-1992
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Producer-director John Kricfalusi examines the storyboard for a future episode of The Ren & Stimpy Show. Beaming with satisfaction, he congratulates the staff. "This is it," he announces. "Not a glimmer of good taste anywhere...
...Kricfalusi knew. "I figured there had to be millions of kids out there as sick of Ducktales and The Flintstones and My Little Pony as we were," he recalls. "We" were his partners, Jim Smith and Bob Camp, and his girlfriend Lynne Naylor. All were in their early 30s and had served time on Saturday- morning cartoon shows. What the world needed now, reasoned Kricfalusi & Co., was the anarchic vulgarity of the Three Stooges and the comic timing of old Warner Bros. cartoons, plus a dash of Monty Python lavatory humor. In 1989 they formed a shoestring company called Spumco...
Just before the money ran out, they concocted some new gags for Kricfalusi's repellent cat and dog, and he pitched the show to anyone who would listen. "Watching John present an idea is like watching Robin Williams playing the part of Kirk Douglas," says an admiring Disney director. "He doesn't talk, he explodes, acting all the parts, doing the sound effects, falling down, jumping up, waggling his beard, drawing, singing, laughing, crying. He's animation's irresistible force of nature...
...aggressive thumbs-down, Vanessa Coffey, the cable network's V.P. of animation, saw something "uniquely bizarre" in Ren and Stimpy and helped develop scripts and concepts. "At all costs, we wanted to change the face of animation," she recalls. Actually, the price tag was about $300,000 a show. Kricfalusi voiced Ren as a deranged Peter Lorre; ex-standup comedian Billy West enacted Stimpy in a tone vaguely reminiscent of Larry, a founding Stooge...
...These episodes are designed to be refreshingly outrageous for at least 15 years," says Coffey. Which means the bloated sack of protoplasm will be eliciting laughter well into the 21st century. The thought fills Kricfalusi with equanimity. "I think we are destroying the minds of America," he concludes. "And that's been one of my lifelong ambitions...