From: johansen@nyx.cs.du.edu (John Hansen)
Subject: Interview with John K.
Organization: Nyx, Public Access Unix @ U. of Denver Math/CS dept.
Date: Thu, 12 Nov 92 04:29:56 GMT


	They following is the article as taken verbatim from the 
NY Village Voice November 17th edition.  

	It is copied without permission, and is copyright (C) 1992
VV Publishing Corp.

	Any spelling gramatical errors were induced in the transcription
process. (by me!), and word or phrases in *'s are meant to be in
italics.



	YOU FILTHY WORMS!

BY: RICHARD GEHR

LOS ANGELES --  With the season's hottest show palpitating in its hands,
and a merchandising tsunami about to flood shelves with the usual crap, 
Nickeldoeon busted an extremely odd personnel move in September.  Complain-
ing of missing deadlines, broken budgets, and offsenive material, the cable
network informed animator John Kricfalusi (pronounced KRIS-fa-loo-sy)
that he would no longer be needed to product The Ren & Stimpy show, which 
Kricfalusi created but never owned.  Most of the studios 30-odd staffers were
tossed into the street, but directory Bob Camp and a few other Spumcoids
accepted Nick's offer to set up shop elsewhere and continue to work on the
series.  Spumco loyalists now refer to the new production outfit as
"Shameco", "Knifeco", and "Stabco".

	There is more of a Ren Hoek in John K (his usual onscreen credit)
than just the asthma-hour Chihuahua's Benzedrine-in-haler voice.  A
manly guy of thick graying hair and barely suppressed rage.  Kricfalusi
is noted for his quick hands and outrageous sensibility.  On his chest, a
bleary eyed Ren passes Stimpy a huge spliff; the bootleg T-shirt commemorates
a Detroit fraternity's annual Hash Bash.

	Over a Caesar sald of Hollywood perfection, Kricfalusi related 
his version of the events that led to his dismissal and subsequent rehiring
as a "consultant" to the show.  "My approach to consulting is, leave it
the way I did it." says John K. "Let me finish it." Mostly, he laments the
fate of the season's remaining cartoons, which left Spumco in various states
of production.  "You can't just give an unedited cartoon to a milkman and
have him finish it for ya," he rails.  "The directors got to finish it.
But what they've got over there is a pile of milkmen trying to figure out what
my cartoons are about."

	John K feared that his then-unaired minimasterpiece "Sven Hoek" would
epitomize this loss.  When Ren's moronic Scandinavian cousin, Sven, comes to
town, he and Stimpy play a disquietingly intimate game of "Circus" in Stimpy's
closet.  Stimpy's enthusiastic "I'm a sword-swallower!" is followed by a
gulping sound, "whooops," and nervous tittering.  But thats nothing compared
to the murderous intentions of Ren's extended threats when he returns home
from work to discover the two have bubblegummed his opera records to the
wall. "I think Nick'll just murder that." Kricfalusi predicts.  "The professed
reason they're going to cut it is because Ren is acting like a drunken father.
I can't belive the leaps they make."  (When "Sven" actually aired this past
Saturday, the "sword-swallowing" was cut entirely, and the line "I'm gonna 
gouge your eyes out" was removed from Ren's threats among other cosmetic 
changes)

	"Magic nose goblins," armpit licking, euthanasia humor, and 
evisceration gags were all deemed unacceptable at various times by Nick
execs.  But it is Kricalusi's George Liquor character that caused them the
most consternation and, according to Kricfalusi, led to the outright 
refusal of two complete episodes, "Man's Best Friend" and "Dog Show."
(Nickelodeon denies rejecting the shows, and has scheduled them to air.)
In fact, Kricfalusi says, the web felt so threatened by Liquor that it 
returned its rights to the creator. "All the women at Nickelodeon hate 
George Liquor because they take him seriously," complains Kricfalusi. 
"They think he's like this real live Republican guy, with weird ideas
about discipline, who's posing a real threat to them and their politically
correct mind-sets.  One of them thought his name mean `lick-her` --
which is why you see it onscreen  so many times.  Somebody else used the
word 'vile' to desribe 'Man's Best Friend.' But its not violent.  It's
slapstick.  There's nothing you can't see in Tex Avery's Bugs Bunny
cartoons.  I had to keep explaining to them that *its a cartoon,* it's
not really happening!

	"Watch the other stuff thats on Saturday night at prime time.
It's worse than what we do. *Ren & Stimpy* is nowhere near as bad
as *Liquid TV*.  That's got sexism in it and real bloody violence.
Our biggest mistake is that we do our risque material cleverly.  The 
notice it more because our show is a hit.  It's hypocritical."

	All Nickelodeons complaints about missed deadlines and budget
problems, according to Kricalusi, are rank hypocricy.  Kricfalusi says
that Nickelodeon was consistantly late in approving his scripts, stories,
layout, and all other aspects of the show's production. "We have a record
of how many times we had to redo episodes; and we have a record of every 
promise that was reneged on."

	These days, Spumcos offices look about as empty as Stimpys head.
Except for such items as a wall-mounted display depicting the critters 
being renamed by candy canes, little remains to remind the visitor that
such animation masterpieces as "Untamed World," "Powdered Toast Man,"
and "Stimpy's Inventions" we cobbled together here under a painstakingly
old fashioned studio system Kricfalusi modeled on the Warner Bros. shop
dominated by Tex Avery, Chuck Jones, and Bob Clampett.  The best Ren and
Stimpy cartoons are minimasterpieces of comic acting.  For Kricfalusi 
"the acting is what really makes all the other stuff work -- the boogers,
the wild ideas, the abstraction, the strange enviornments.  They work because
the characters are so believable."

	Wrenching Ren and Stimpy away from Kricfalusi is like taking away
*Twin Peaks* away from David Lynch and Mark Frost and handing it over to 
Quinn-Martin.  Yet Kricfalusi claims he could have turned the whole thing
around, if only the network had heeded his suggestions regrading simplier
stories, faster approvals, and time-saving bumber material.  So why didn't
they take him up on it? "I'm the wrong person to ask about why anyone
would interfere with Christmas.  The whole relationship we had with MTV
and Nickelodeon was basically, I would bring them a giant plate full of
money, and they'd throw most of it off and burn it so that nobody else 
could have any of the money.  It's like I had to beg to give them success."

	Or as John Kricfalusi says with utter seriousness, "They didn't
really deserve *The Ren & Stimpy Show."*

O
be