Page 7 - Pop History: Beavis and Butt-Head / Daria

Episode Date: April 28, 2020

We take a serious nostalgia trip as we cover the making of Beavis & Butt-head and Daria. La-la-la-la-la, support us on Patreon - patreon.com/page7podcast Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ to listen to new episodes of Page 7 ad-free.Start a free trial now on Apple Podcasts or by visiting siriusxm.com/podcastsplus. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hey, Beavis. What? Let's go. Let's go set something up fire. Shut up, Beavis. Oh, guys, are we in for a doozy of an episode? Sorry, I'm a bit more on the la la la la la side. And I think that this is, as we will find out in this episode, I think this is where the lines of delineation of the fact that you guys are even just a couple of years older than I am.

Yes. Really show. because I am a Daria 1,000% Oh dude, no I'm I think I'm the exact age that caught both Both of them, yes Yeah, you bridge the gap

I'm more on the Beavis and Butta's side Jackie's more on the Daria's side And Natalie perfectly bridges the gap Between the two which is great And so this is an exciting fucking episode Because honestly too, as much as I was more of a Beavis and Buthud dude Dude shithead fuckface bro

Uh Especially rewatching Daria I can't live in that world too long? No, because it definitely makes, man, does it put me back into a certain place in my brain? But I really appreciate it a lot. I mean, it's great writing, great stories. I spent, man, I spent days worth of time in Darya Land this week. It was wonderful.

It was the best part of, like, I did regress a little bit, but it was more in the sense of, like, getting butterflies when Trent would flirt with Dari. Oh, my God. That episode when they were going to all turn up. Palooza every time I watch. Oh my God. Every time I watch that episode, I'm just like, oh my God, I'm in love with you, Trent. I'm in love with you, Trent. So bad. And, but we are going, we've got quite a journey to get on today. Last night, Lexi and I threw on, Beavis and Budhead to America. I hadn't seen it since I saw it in the theater, but I saw in the movie theater multiple times. I think I rented it as well when it came. I'm sure I did. I loved that movie. So much. It is so good. It's still so funny. Yeah, it's so legitimately funny. Really solid production quality, I feel like. And also just captures a the grunge youth movement and makes fun of it so hard.

It is so nihilistic. It is so just. The 90s were apathetic. Yes. It was rough. And to be excited about anything was against the law back in the day. Unless it was destroying something. something someone

Al Deere. That was the only thing you could be excited about. It is the defining character trait of Gen X. I will say you're

welcome because MTV Unplugged you can get this app and it's got all of the OG, Beavis and Butthead and Daria

and pretty much anything, which now is like, uh-oh, bye-bye rest of my week because I'm probably going to watch some undressed.

I'm probably going to watch a lot of other reality shit that I shouldn't be watching. But as an adult now, Henry was

obsessed with Beavis and Butthead and it was always on and I think that that was just the right time of my life where I was just like, shut it off because I didn't want to watch it and I wanted to watch probably, I don't know, boy meets worlds or some kind of bullshit. There weren't any cute boys on Beavis and Butthead. This is the thing and I'm looking for pure sex. This is a horny 12 year old me and watching it now as an adult for the first time really sitting and watching it. It's not that I didn't enjoy it, but it really did make me feel like, I was just like, God, I knew those dudes. Those are the ones I weirdly, and I was in the druggie crowd, and I still stayed away from those guys.

And you bring up a good point, Natalie, that not only are there not cute boys on there, but everyone is like grotesquely stupid and, like the principal made me laugh so hard last night watching him again, because I forgot that he literally just goes like, oh, oh, he's just like, like, everyone. He's barely human. A nervous breakdown 24-7. Yeah, he's just, oh, boys, you know, like, he's just like, can't even be a person in the world. He's just a disaster.

That's what Beavis and Butthead does to adults. I don't know if it's because I loved it so much as a kid, but rewatching these episodes, I spent half of them laughing uncontrollably. I thought it was still so funny, but I was laughing like, I revert to like a Budhead laughing. I'm watching it. Yeah. But that was, this is what I said to Lexi last night,

or at least, did I say it? I definitely thought it was, this was like one of the first things that we could, that you could essentially make a boomer shake their head at. You know what I mean?

Your boomer parent, right? It was the first thing that your parent comes in the room, they look at what you're watching and you're loving the shit out of it, and they just like are completely baffled by it and against it. And it just helped us rebel Beavis and Butthead did.

Even weirdly enough, Darya did, because I remember my mom coming in me like, how do you listen to that voice? That voice goes right through my fucking ears. And I've got to talk about the voices because I think they're fucking incredible. They are spot on. And I think that we're going to gush as we go today, y'all, because we are starting from not only the beginning, but the beginning of the beginning, because we're going to talk about Mike, Judge, first as we rocket ship into this very interesting.

way of coming about a spinoff of the, of something that even the creator is like, this is gonna be the Frazier. And weirdly enough it is. Yeah, also, by the way, we are sort of putting out a brother's sister podcast this week with Wizard and the Bruiser and Wizard the Bruiser is covering King of the Hill.

So if you, this is your Mike Judge. But dad, I love King of the Hill. Mm-hmm. And that's the thing, that's why I don't want anyone to think that I'm against Mike Judge whatsoever just because I never got into beavis and butt head. Why do you eat my judge so much? I love him, especially doing this research about him, which I knew he was a nerd,

but I didn't realize how much of a nerd he actually is. I'm excited to hear about his young life, and I was trying to find photos of him as young as I could go, and he never has had a full head of hair. I can see that. Maybe that's where some of his weird nerdy anger comes from. Yeah, his hairline receded, probably in, I don't know, late teens. So Mike Judge spent his younger years in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where he spent some time working on a chicken farm.

I didn't get a ton on his younger life. Well, he was a nerd, just in case if you were wondering. He actually had, he says, I actually had a ham radio license. And he'd be in my garage with a dipole antenna on the roof and a Heathkit transceiver doing Morse code and talking to people all around the country. People throw the term nerd around loosely nowadays. I was a major nerd for my time because when he was really young, he grew up, he was born in Ecuador. He speaks fluent Spanish because his dad moved them around a lot.

I believe that he's in the Navy. And so he grew up in all these different places. So if you're going to be this kind of a nerd, imagine being picked up and put in to different places throughout your entire life. And so you just go into yourself and you're like, that's fine. I'm going to make whatever I'm going to make. And this is also when he learns he was like, like an expert trombone player. He learned to play the base.

The least sexy instrument. He's weird. Just kidding, guys, trombone players. I'm just kidding. I think that he's like an idiot savant. Yeah, probably. I would say so. And yeah, definitely, I would say the same, especially the way he comes off in interviews

is like both brilliant and also so simple and so... He's great. Relaxed. But yeah, so he ends up graduating with a Bachelor of Science and Physics because he's a nerd from the University of California, San Diego in 1985. And after that, he was... works very briefly at an engineering firm, but quickly became bored in the field of science.

However, he was building planes. He was like engineering planes, do it all that. It's like, he was in, like, it makes sense of where office space comes from. Well, exactly, because one person that he noticed there was this guy in the logistics department that no one would talk to. So, judge decided one day he'd just say hi to him, maybe even by accident, because sometimes you just like accidentally say hi to people, because it's just the monotonous, awful. everyday work life. I'm not digging up old memories of how shitty it was to work in an office, but this one guy, he says hi to, the guy responds with a rant that started with, they moved my desk one more time, I'm quitting. And Judge just thought, and it just goes

off from there. Just like, all he said was hello to the guy. And the guy just goes on a tirade about how his top he is and everybody in the office and stuff. And Judge just thought, in his words, he's not going anywhere. You could move his desk a hundred times. He's not going to quit. And I'm sure that he was right about that. He's still there to this day. And so, of course, that was the inspiration for Milton, who we get later in office space. But before that, he moves to Silicon Valley in 1987 to join Parallax Graphics, which was a startup video card company based in Santa Clara.

Of course, he ends up creating Silicon Valley on HBO later. I didn't realize he lived there before. Yeah, dude. And he becomes very quickly alienated by the culture at the office. referring to his co-workers as being like, as quote, being like Stepford Wives, which is a book and movie about an idealic Connecticut neighborhood run by happy husbands and their robot wives.

Judge said, for so long, I was wondering how I was going to make a living that wasn't going to make me miserable. That was my main concern in life. And so he quits in less than three months to become a bass player in a touring blues band, which is pretty groovy. But also, he goes to an animation festival

and realize, members that he really loved cartooning. He would draw pictures of teachers in high school and things like that to make fun of them. He really dabbles. He dabbles in many things. I don't mean to call him an idiot savant, but it's like, it's crazy.

It seems like everything he touches. He can teach himself how to do to the T. I mean, he never went to film school. He never learned how to write screenplays. You just kind of bypass all of this. And just because he liked to dick around in drawing with animation.

And in fact, when you were talking about this, Holden, before, of how he just so easily gives interviews and can connect to so many different people. But then yet, I just read this quote of him that someone had asked him, like, did your foundation and science, do you think it serves as a function for your creative life? And what he says is, I don't think you need to know physics to do animation. But there's a thing called squash and stretch that you do in animation because the physics don't look right. In a weird way, there's some physics of motion in animation. In thermodynamics, you learn probability and statistics. And so sometimes when the studio is trying to pull one over on me about the statistics of a test screening, etc., I can just lecture them on how it really is and how unscientific they're being.

That's amazing. So he has all of this foundation that no matter what situation, he could be in and be like, actually. Actually, which is fucking awesome. That's amazing. And so going back to the animation festival, while there, he talks to an artist who gives him essentially the rundown for him, again, to teach himself how to animate. And so Judge ends up spending just $200 on a Bollex camera, a lightboard ink, and paper. And the result is his 90-second short film, Milton's Office Space, which was purchased by Comedy Central for $2,000 after gaining attention at probably the same animation festival, maybe it was a different one, but located in Dallas. It is in Dallas, yes.

Right, which convinced Judge that he could do animation full time. He quits all his everything and just puts all of his focus into animation. What I love to, he makes that, after buying the $200 camera, he didn't even know how to load the film. So he's tinkering with it. He makes the short film that he made. And then he says, the clouds parted. Even if I had a job I don't like, this is something I can do. Nothing can stop me now.

So in his brain, it was like, okay, this is like a side thing I can do then. Right. While he's touring, playing bass for a blues band. He's amazing. Yeah, we didn't even talk about the part where he got good enough at bass to perform in a blues. Yeah, when was this? Yes, to travel, be a traveling bass player.

That's like all so hard to do. Very difficult to do. So Judge ends up making another animation short called Frog Baseball. Oh, man. the very first appearance of beavis and butthead in which they do things to a grasshopper and a frog that Marcus described from his childhood growing up in Texas. Yes. Plus Marcus.

Very similar. Very similar to what he describes. Is he more of a bevis or a butthead? I think Marcus more of a bevis. Yes. Definitely more of a beavis. Yeah, I would agree with that. Yeah.

He's manning the ship for sure. MTV's animation showcase Liquid Television purchases the short and the network executives like it so much. they signed judge to produce 65 episodes. That's insane. From one. From one thing they take it, especially for MTV,

who are notorious for not paying for anything ever. So this is the thing, though. I think the reason why it was so much and so quickly was that MTV, they're just playing music videos, right? But the problem is you can't get Nielsen ratings unless you have actual, like, regular programming. Then you can get a rating,

and then you can get advertising. And also the reason why they did this is MTV purchased the characters of Beavis and Butthead. It wasn't just that they gave him a deal. They said, we are buying you and this. And so they are putting all of their effort into making their money worth it too. Whenever the merchandising comes up and all that, MTV is taking all of that. Which is, again, why MTV loves working with very young people. Yes.

Because they can basically rob them. Also, what's interesting is that in this time, and we will see this throughout this episode, this is the Wild West of programming. They are trying to find people that don't know what they're doing to kind of groom them and essentially suck as many good ideas from them

as they can to turn it into a profit, which I almost kind of wish that these things, like I kind of wish it was still the Wild West of programming because you can just have a nobody walk in and be like, this is a great idea. And they'll just buy it. I think that's sort of what YouTube has done in those sort of outlets. And Netflix even and streaming services because again now streaming services are back almost to square one where it's like, we just need a shitload of content.

Like we just need to have the most content to consume out of all of the other streaming services. Yeah. They take up the mantle of paying people poorly but then putting out a bunch of shows. Yeah. Shows, stand-up specials, like all that stuff. So MTV Vice President Abbey Turkle said this. They're perfect for MTV, referring to Beavis and Butthead. They like and respond to things that our audience finds humorous.

Maybe our audience can see a little bit of themselves in Beavis and Butthead. Very interesting what you're saying. Very interesting what you're saying, Vice President of MTV about your viewers. I'm not going to take offense to it, but I feel like maybe some people would. He meant offense, kind of, psychologically. So where did Judge come up with the voices and characters? of his bevis and his bod-hat.

Judge had this to say. When I was in college, a 12-year-old kid next door called himself Iron Butt. This story makes a thing, it's like, man, if I knew somebody at that age that called themselves Iron Butt, I'd be hitting them in their ass every second I could. He's asking for it. They all called him Iron Butt because supposedly you

could kick him in the butt as hard as he wanted, and it wouldn't hurt him. He was just a maniac, and his parents weren't around. His friend actually, we called Butthead, even though that wasn't his name. Then there was a kid in the neighborhood about three blocks away. His name was Bobby Beavis. However, he didn't really get the characterization from Bobby Beavis, just the name. He got the voices from other sources. Judge said about Beavis's voice that it came from this guy in my calculus class that

would sit in the front and always bite his lip and turn back and go, huh, that to me just turned into his laugh. Oh, that's butt. No, it goes, and Butthead for that voice, it was,

I had braces in high school and they'd just scrape your cheek. And you ended up talking like Butthead. That's how I got the voice for Butthead, just a guy talking with a mouthful of wires. So Beavis and Butthead live in the fictional town of Highland, which looks to be. somewhere in Texas or New Mexico Judge said I grew up mostly in Albuquerque

and I was in Dallas when I created it so I was thinking somewhere in between those like just one of those like a little town like Lovic Shout out to Lovic Marcus' hometown oh my god maybe he was writing about Marcus Not even his hometown just outside

of where Marcus lived even further away from humanity He didn't live in the big city of Lopjean or you know Portales, New Mexico. So that's where they got the area. And then, of course, the format of the show, so brilliant. And so sad that because of licensing issues, my favorite part of the show, you can't

really watch, right? We will get into that 1,000% with Darya, because I didn't realize why I didn't have the same punch. It's like, oh, because they can't use any of the music. Which is, that's ridiculous. It was on MTV. I just don't, I don't understand the government and what they do with the music. I don't get it.

Now at this point in time, it is the government's fault. It's the government's of all. So Mike Judge is drawing Beavis and Butthead too, and he admits openly that he is not a trained artist. Hence the schoolboy quality of a shaky line drawings of Beavis and Butthead. But what he says is that when he was seven, his mother took him to a cartoon drawing class at the local YMCA. But after just two lessons,

she canceled the whole idea on the way home because she had spotted the cartoon teacher hitchhiking by the side of the road and decided there was no money to be made in being an animator. He also said that he didn't understand the science back then, but he thinks that his teacher was probably a junkie, knowing what that looks like now. You see, all the things you learn in time. From YMCA.

Yeah, man. I love my Y, everyone at the YM is for Y. It teaches you about real life. Yeah, man, like drawing animation apparently, and I'm sure they did it in an empty pool of some sort. By golly, they were doing it. They were. It seems that his parents are very supportive, though, through all of this.

They're kind of just, I mean, I imagine he stowed some money away in having, like, big boy jobs to be able to do all these kinds of things. Well, he was going to just, what did he say he was going to do? He figured he mapped it out. He did the math on how to, like, essentially make enough investments with the money that he had to just retire super early. And, like, that was what he was originally planning to do. When do I get to be an adult? When can someone come in and do that with my life? Right?

He just like, did the calculations. Like, if I invest this much and I have this much, then I will be able to retire like very soon. Again, the benefits of being a nerd and knowing science. Yes. And this animation thing though just kind of just, he just took it and ran with it like out of no. Like it was a surprise to him. Like he was totally planning on just like whatever for the rest of his life, which is so funny to me. Sick, man.

But yeah, going back to the format, the thing that I was. I love the most about the show was when they would, of course, riff on music videos, kind of like Mystery Science Theater 3000, and I lamented that because they, because of the licensing, they can't do that. They can't put that out anymore, which is so sad. And also, though, it was amazing because if they reacted positively to a music video, they, the bands would receive like crazy. I mean, first of all, I was, I probably saw a tool music video for the first time,

White Zombie, like all these bands. I think I was probably about 11 or so when I started seeing this show and I was already sort of becoming a little degenerate. So I was drawn to it. But they definitely introduced me to so much music. It really was. It was like a child's version of like being introduced to metal. Right. And that was that way for a lot of people so much so that if they rocked out and said that the song ruled, bands would actually get a boost. One of the biggest examples is white zombie had only sold 75,000. copies of their album, Las Exorcisto, Devil Music, Volume 1, which we talked about on our Rob Zombie episode. Yes. In 1993, until the video for Welcome to Planet Motherfucker played on Beavis and Budhead

after which their sales quadrupled and the album ended up on the Billboard Top 40 chart. But then there's the other side of that coin, like 80s hairband winger, that can trace their massive mid-90s downfall in popularity to being mocked relentlessly on Beavis. and Butthead and subsequent Mike Judge projects. So they also worked out there doing harm as well. It's amazing. But like in a fun way. It's amazing. And yeah, Aerosmith

also, Aerosmith was referred to as quote, pretty cool despite being old. And Aerosmith's, judge said, Arrowsmith's management put pressure on MTV to take it out of there. And they would even, MTV would hit him up and be like, please don't shit on this band. We have a really good

relationship with this band. Please don't do this. Mike Judge, I will say. in doing all this research, he's not one that you tell something, tell him not to do something. Right. He seems to be a bit of a contrarian of sorts, but it's also because he's so smart that he knows ways around everything in very specific ways. I mean, you've got to respect that, man.

Especially with a lot of the censors, especially with the sensors, when they were trying to you know, get every, they were trying to say a lot of different swears and cusses and, you know, different slangs that they wouldn't, that censors wouldn't approve of. So they had to come up with all these new words. That's why bunghole and all that stuff, which is so funny. You mean he got creative with it. Now, there's one thing that it's glaringly apparent is that at this point in time, people are starting to really realize that the objectification of women was so flagrant in the, in the show, that the press started calling the network out for it. It really came down to there's not one woman represented in a way that is positive on the show. So this is like the beginning of especially the other controversies that he will see rise. So you were just talking about making up curse words to get around things. But there's also other things that they definitely came up with to get around the idea of they couldn't say the word fire anymore. And why couldn't they say the word fire anymore? Because in not in October, it's actually really trashed.

It's very upsetting. In October of 1993, six months after Beavis and Budhead started airing, a five-year-old boy in Ohio set his bed on fire with a lighter which quickly spread throughout the mobile home in which he lived. He and his mother made it out alive, but his two-year-old sister sadly did not. And the blame was very quickly placed on Beavis and Budhead by both the family and local authorities as the character Beavis was really into setting things on fire and which out fire, fire, fire, to the point of it being a bit of a catchphrase.

Can I do, I must say the accusation was later, disproved because when it emerged that the mobile home in question did not have a cable hookup. Meaning the child couldn't possibly have seen the show turning attention instead towards the mother who had left them unattended while she was out of the date. Of course! Even if he had seen the show.

He's five years old. Yes. Why is he watching Be Miss Impedited? Yeah, they weren't. The sentiment from Mike Judge was to me it's like going out and buying penthouse and leaving it on the coffee table and then complaining to the publisher that your kid was seeing naked pictures.

I always thought the show should go on late So I was happy when it did Because it was getting overexposed So at this point after this They had to start playing the show After 1030 p.m. Which actually made it cooler as a kid It was this cool late night thing now

Now it's even more rebellious It's you stay up late to watch it After your parents have gone to bed And you watch it in the dark You know what I mean And you just like ooh ooh you know what I mean? No, what are you doing? Are you masturbating to well I guess there's

a lot of big-titty girls on Meeves and but head. Oh, yeah, and the videos and stuff. She's my cherry pie. This is obviously a long-standing... It tastes so good like a grown-maid. Sweet cherry pie. No, we started it. You can't say sweet cherry pie and be not singing.

That music video, bro? That would have not Dingles Donglin. Hot for teacher, too. If your virgines smells like cherry pie, you probably need to go to the doctor. Yeah, man. Get the flower slugs drained out. This is like, of course, a long-standing tradition. with music and entertainment being blamed for violin acts.

But Beavis and Budhead's response to that, I don't know if you guys saw, they had an episode called Ben Franklin, I think it's just called, where they go out and they imitate, they want to go see if they can get a key on a kite to be electrified, and they're sort of making a statement about you can't really blame television for people doing stupid things,

or they can't watch a Ben Franklin documentary. Yeah, they blame Ben Franklin for getting electrified. In a news interview, yeah. Yeah, and they change all of the, every time and then Beavis says fire, fire, they have to go back and change it. So in very different ways, they would change it around like they change it to friar, friar in a burger world scene to add, I guess there's a fire inside of the restaurant. But what I love is that MTV banned any reference to fire on the show.

but then Mike Judge joked they can't fire me because of it because they're not allowed to use that word and then there was even more controversy after that another incident involving a death resulting from a bowling ball being dropped from an overpass which later oh no shit turned out

to be that the offender did not actually watch the show that put more pressure because the death was blamed on me as a butthead that put more pressure on the show by this watchdog group that came out so then MTV added to a disclaimer at that point that read, Beavis and Budhead are not real.

This was text before the episode. Beavis and Budhead are not real. They are stupid cartoon people completely made up by this Texas guy whom we hardly even know. Beavis and Budhead are dumb, crude, thoughtless, ugly, sexist, self-destructive fools.

But for some reason, the little wiener heads make us laugh. This was later changed to Beavis and Budhead are not role models. They're not even human. They're cartoons. Some of the things they do would cause a person to get hurt,

expelled, arrested, possibly deported. But to put another way, don't try this at home. What about America's funniest home videos? I feel like I saw way more actual people getting hurt in that show. It's because Bob Saget presented it as this wholesome thing and Beavis and Butthead were not quote unquote, you know.

They did the same thing with jackass too. They had almost the same disclaimer at the beginning. Ridiculous. We've got to do jackass at some point. But also anything else about the television show before we move on to the filmic experience of Beavis and Budhead. I would like to add, alongside the complaints about the violence on the show,

there was a behind-the-scenes documentary I watched about the making of it. And at one point during that time period, they got a big pack of letters from one middle school that it was very apparent that somebody at the middle school sort of coerced the kids or like kind of influenced the kids to write these letters to the creators of Beavis and Butthead that all those these kids, these sixth graders

wrote these letters to them that were like Dear the creators of Beavis and Butthead, I would like your stupid show to be taken off the air It makes me want to puke. All of the violence and all of the crudeness is not okay and if you don't

I'm going to get very angry and multiple of the letters at the end said If you don't, I have guns Even though I'm only in sixth grade. Jesus. The school all the kids in the school who were like rallying against the violence then threatened the lives of the creators

which is the ultimate irony and we're still living inside this now and now I'm depressed. That's so funny. No, no, no, no. We're still having fun. Never sees by, terrible. Oh, yay, so happy again.

Let's talk about one of my favorite animated films, actually, now that I've rewatched it again, I can't believe I didn't, I didn't even think about this movie for so long, but I was obsessed with it when it came out. I watched it multiple times in the movie theater. I mean, I was also at the perfect age to watch a movie multiple times in the movie theater because you had nothing else to do because I couldn't buy beer yet.

But, yeah, it really has great pacing, though. It's so funny. It makes so many great comments. It's such a great satire on America and American culture, especially at that time. Development began on Beavis and Butthead, Do America in 1993, which came about due to producer David Geffen's enthusiasm to get a movie made via Warner Brothers alongside MTV and my judge. Actually, David Geffen wanted to make an album as well, which did result in, and I remember listening to this album. It was really funny at the time. Again, something you could

take to school, put it on your walk man, or disc man, share it with people and giggle in the corner and be rebellious at school. The Beavis and Budhead experience was a compilation of music with Beavis and Bud had doing commentary over it, as well as skits in between songs featuring bands like Nirvana, Anthrax, Megadeth, Run DMC, White Zombie, Primus. Is this one Share? Is this the share video? Yes. Yes. That is the one where with Cher, they insult Sunny Bono, who did react kind of poorly to it. They sang, um, I got you, babe. I got you, babe. And they, like, trashed Sonny Bono and Cher like joins in on it. And it's so funny. And Sunny was like, I'm said she's stooped to that humor or whatever.

It's also when Cher had recently debuted that new look of hers that looked sort of like leather, all leather plaid. Oh, yeah. And yeah, it's fun. The song's very fun because during the chorus, they're going like, da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. I got you, baby. Now, this is around, so when they came to Mike Judge originally, MTV offered millions of dollars to originally turn the king.

of cartoon crassness into movie stars, but what they really wanted was to humanize Beavis and Butthead, just like the Flintstones and 101 Dalmatians did at the time. This would have been so bad. It would have been so bad. They were looking at David Spade and Adam Sandler to play, the infamous two. They were also looking at Mike Myers and Dana Carvey to play the two,

but then Mike Judge was so weirded out by the idea that he's like, but then it's just gonna be Wayne's World. Yeah, definitely. But, like, there's no, like, why would we do that? That doesn't make any sense. Although, Mike Judd said Johnny Depp had said to me he really wanted to play Beavis. He was doing that Don Juan DiMarco movie with Marlon Brando. And he said Marlon Brando used to imitate Butthead, and he would do Beavis.

And now that was one that he said, I would definitely have entertained that if that was on the table. Wow. Can you imagine Johnny Depp and Marlon Brandt? I would have loved if that was one of the last projects he ever did in his life. So luckily for Mike Judge, Paramount Pictures ended up purchasing Viacom, which is the parent company of MTV. And so there was a total changeover from Warner Brothers to Paramount for the movie deal. And that's when Mike Judge was able to convince the new executives on the project not to do this.

Well, because that's the thing. You have to remember, MTV owned Beavis and Butthead. So really at the end of the day, he was going to have to do what they wanted him to do. this didn't really have much of a choice on the matter. So what's great is that this happens or else you would not have been able to convince new people to go a different route with it. So Mike Judge co-writes this film

with staff writer Joe Stillman, staff writer from Beavis and Budhead, that is, who would go on to have a very solid career in screenplay writing, especially with the films, Shrek and Shrek 2. Never heard of it. Check out our Wizard on Shrek. That was a fun week.

Why do you say it with such acid? I'm just kidding. It was a lot of fun to learn about Strick, actually. And the film was also directed by Mike Judge. Judge, of course, voices are two protagonists, as well as their hippie teacher and the principal. God, that principal's so funny. Oh, oh, oh, oh, it's so funny. It's like he just can't be a person.

And joining him were notable voice actors, Bruce Willis, Demi Moore, Cloris Leachman, and Robert Stack, as well as a notable Texan director, Richard Linklater, all doing voices on the film. I forgot until the credits came up when I was watching this. And I was like, what? I knew it was Robert Stack, obviously, which I forgot about, but it was so exciting. And it's very strange he decided towards the end of his life to do more of this kind of stuff because he was also in basketball, if you guys remember.

Oh, I remember. Robert Stack's Unsolved Mysteries, right? Oh yeah, baby. Which is also all on Amazon Prime right now, and I'm going to say, I'm going to have a weird night. I'm definitely going to have one weird night. You're going to have a sex stream about it? Probably, but I'm also going to watch Unsolved Mysteries. He's the best.

A scene was deleted, however, I will say that, in which Beavis wipes his ass with the Declaration of Independence. Also, man, that dope hallucination sequence. It is so good. Which we talked about on our Rob Zombie episode. I believe because Rob Zombie animated it. What's fun though is that in the desert scene where Beavis and Butthead are hallucinating, you can hear voices in the background.

When the soundtrack is played backwards, Beavis and Butthead are heard speaking clearly, including phrases such as, everybody go to college, study hard, study hard. Of course, the soundtrack yet again is just banger for this movie. White zombie, red-out chili peppers, Roller coaster!

Oh, yeah. Rancid, Ozzy Osbourne, no doubt, butthole surfers and ACDC. The butthole surfers? A nominal soundtrack. Dude, I love butthole surfers. I did love the butthole surfers. I love butthole surfers.

They were on many 90s soundtracks, and I love all of their soundtracks, the film was released at the end of 1996 and got great reviews at the box office. Ladies, I am ready to talk about Darya. Do you have anything else on Beavis and Butthead? before we get a little bit smarter and a little more female.

Yes. I'm sorry they go hand in hand. I would recommend if you've never really gone down a Beavis and Butthead, whole. I said whole. It's very funny. The movie is really enjoyable still. And I mean, if you go in knowing

it's supposed to be obviously sexist and they're the ones who are getting the brunt of all of the punishment on the show. It's really fun to watch if you want to go through some of it. I forgot about Beavis's like emotional moment speech where he just talks about how like they're never going to get laid and they're never going to score. And he's just like, but it's true. We're never going to.

We're never going to score. There's another part in it where they're in the room with the woman. They're supposed to quote, do which is actually a like kill, but they think it's to have sex with is why they're there. and just the fact that it might happen, they are so infantilely or in. They can't handle it. Yeah.

They just start laughing, like doing their awkward laugh. Their eyes get all huge. And freaking out. And just like for a solid minute, they're just going like, huh, huh, huh, huh.

And so finally, it's just like, guys. I mean, I've definitely, weirdly enough, have hooked up with people like that before. They're like,

but you're the horniest person alive. How come you have, immediately get all weird and shy. Oh, you don't know what you're doing. Right. Okay, very interesting. Or we can all relate. We're all a little bit of a beavis.

I've never been. I've always been smooth. I've always been suave. Do you look at the pictures? Like Rico. Yeah, I'm just like Rico. Also, in the movie, what is his name? The guy who's essentially the precursor to Hank Hill. His name's Tom Anderson.

He is so. He is so funny. He's in the first episode. I think he's in other episodes, but I know he's definitely the first episode of Pevis and Butthead, too. And the second I heard, because as someone, I've seen King of the Hill

too many times, and I heard the voice. I was like, uh, I did the Tim Allen. Now, what in the hell? It's so funny, because he's just this, like,

God-fearing, America-loving, just, like, good America man. I hope that you say this on your King of the Hill episode because I think he's the best television, dad, I'm putting it out there.

He's great. He's great. But he's just so, gets so screwed over left and right. And the cavity searches all throughout. So many cavity searches. But then gets the cavity search and he's just like, did I just score? It's so funny, dude. I just honestly, dude, and it's only an hour and 20 minutes long.

So maybe that's why like I appreciate it so much. It was such a delight to watch. I had so much fun. Yeah. It's really fun, really well-paced, really, really funny. And I think it really does actually. hold up. All right. Well, here we go. Let's get into Darya. Um, ew, let's not do that. Let's talk about her. Oh, wow. I think you just have too much Beavis and Budhead on.

I'm trying to wash clean of Beavis and Butthead. Lynn's just like, so at the time, uh, the creator, creative director and senior VP at MTV, uh, we mentioned her before, Abby Turkle. She, she, she had this to say on, uh, about Beavis and Butthead after it got successful. We created Darius character because we wanted a smart female who could serve as the foil. And so they put her into the show.

David Felton said, Beavis and Butthead were very sexist. Women didn't like the show because all they talked about were boobs. Untrue, by the way. Women didn't watch the show. Even though the characters were so naive that they never had sex at all.

I don't think they would have known what to do if they had the chance to have sex. So she was written in by Harvard alums, Glenn Eichler and Susie Lewis. who balanced each other out really well as creatives. He was the bookish one. And I think also the Kermudgini one.

And she was the streetwise pop culture enthusiast. It's fun to read all their interviews too because the way they go back and forth is delightful. The show makes so much sense with the way the two of their personalities go against each other but also flow. Also, Mike Judge, by the way, did sign off on Darya and Greed that she needed to be.

be on the show. Like he was into it. Yes, but he does later on get a little bit butt hurt because of the people that they hired and how they went about it. Absolutely. He didn't love Eichler. He and Eichler were like two very different peas in this animation pot. But essentially Eichler had said basically Darya was the smart person who hung out with Beavis and Butthead to annoy her parents.

And she was on the show. They obviously called her diarrhea regularly. Yes. But they also kind of received. expected her in certain aspects as well. She wasn't just there to mock entirely. In fact, the name Darya Morgendorfer came directly from his real life because Mike Judge recalled a classmate named Darya who he had actually called diarrhea, giving rise

to Beavis and Butthead following suit. As for Morgendorfer, that's the maiden name of the mother of MTV writer David Felton. Where is that Darya now? Wow. Right? And I wonder if she is aware that she was the basis of the character. bed because I imagine if you were called diarrhea in school you have a very distinct memory of it.

Yeah, and then hearing that in the show, I feel like I would immediately start having flashbacks. I just demand them to give me money. I'd be like, if you don't want me to sue you, pay me. Also true. That or the fact that her appearance originally, it came about during a production meeting where character designer John Garrett Andrews grabbed a paper plate and made a sketch that would serve the basis for Dariah's look.

His inspiration, his high school girlfriend. A smart but shy teenage girl with a sarcastic wit named Lindy Reagan. So Lindy Reagan, if you're listening, also, you can't do anything about it now. But isn't that kind of fun? It is kind of fun. The character was voiced by Tracy Grandstaff. How did she get the gig? Grandstaff said, I was the only female writer on the Beavis staff at the time.

There you go. This is going to show where we're at. So I was the default voice for Darya. Janine Garofalo from Ben Stiller's show was a Darya influence for sure. as well as my own personal inter-dialogue from junior high in high school in Kalamazoo, Michigan. And Sarah Gilbert from Roseanne, probably more than anyone. Darlene. That makes so much sense.

And so they were really looking to give a role model and also to get ratings from women, which they definitely do. So this is what Mike Judge had said originally. He said, a couple of the producers told me they were going to possibly spin off Darya. and I thought it might be a good idea. Next thing I knew, they were just doing it. And I wasn't crazy about some of the people they hired. I think they were trying to show that they could do something without me.

Yeah, so, like, Mike Judge really had nothing to do with Darya once it became a show. Because he had started making King of the Hill, so he just didn't have time. I remember the fall that Darya and the Jenny McCarthy show was coming out on MTV because I was at an age. Talk about it. Very different. Yeah. But it was a time when I was. coming of age a little bit from being a child and being so amazed that there were two shows about girls coming on that meant a lot to me at the time and it was really that Darya was like

like Beavis and Butthead was a Gen X show and Dariah was sort of like the beginning of the millennials which is where I am I'm one of the elder millennials in that group and so I was like right in that gap you took you took the millennial staff from the from the Gen Xer and the Sarah I remember that. I remember, you have footage of that. The toss off. Yes.

Yes, you wore the cloaks and received the staff. I'm in fact to the high queen of millennials. Now weirdly turned off. That's a great segue, Natalie, because I was just going to say this, I didn't realize, because I thought,

you know, Total Request Live, that sort of programming, the reality stuff they were putting up. I don't know. Where was the last time I heard TRL said out like that? That was great. But,

but, which I want to do an episode on TRL at some point. Only dorks say it all the way. To me, I know, I'm such a dark. To me, that was the changing of the guard from a predominantly male-focused network to, but that's not true. Daria, it was Daria, which is what you were just saying, really was the beginning of MTV setting their sights on a stronger female audience and moving away from this male-driven audience situation.

And yet still, Eichler says, the thing that was so great about MTV in those days, and also so terrible, was that anything goes. Nobody was in charge. They had a lot of theories about branding, but zero theories about programming. Because there's no adults there. It's just them shooting in the dark of like, well, we need both girls.

Put a girl on it. Michael Liam Black had a lot of the same to say about MTV at the time when they were doing the state where it was just like nobody was in charge. And that's why so much fun stuff got on on the air. Exactly. And it's why it is fun, but it's got to be very,

difficult to actually want to move forward in a career. Like it's such a jumping off point for other people that it made sense of why Mike Judge left by getting a much better agreement, I'm assuming, with Fox and King of the Hill. Yeah, they offered him an actual paycheck instead of them to be like, you can do whatever you want. Here's $12 for the year. Oh, isn't that? A lot more money than he had and everyone's going, yes?

Yeah, there's a lot more. I can buy sandwiches this week. I love sandwiches. Voice of Darya Tracy Grandstaff said MTV was going through a phase where they were getting a lot of flack for not really representing women on the air outside of spring break

shaking them titus Yeah, no, yeah exactly Spring break wasn't necessarily the best representation of women Remember the show The Grind? Oh my God, I always want to go on that Of course you do hold it I wanted to go on a spring break

Our American bandstand It's our time's American bandstand Yeah but one you can masturbate to I actually did not like the grind Every time the grind come, I was like, great, I guess I have to find something else to do for an hour. It was just people, I don't know. I just enjoy just like watching people dance. I don't know.

Like, in that way, like, just like at the club. Like, I enjoy, I'll go to see the ballet, but I'm not going to like just watching someone just, like, grind up on someone else. All I just kept thinking about was how dehydrated them they must be. Oh, yeah, I'm sure. Oh, my God. With just rum in their systems, I'm assuming. Drugs, yeah, drugs and alcohol. I mean, maybe it sounds fun.

Here's a quote from producer John Garrett Andrews. We did five pilots with female leads. There was one called Sneeze Louise, which was a girl who would sneeze when people were lying. There was another one called Drack World, which was, and I feel bad that this didn't make it to air for your sake, Natalie, which was a kind of pre-Twilight vampire movie for young ladies, or vampire TV show.

There was one called Missy the Two-Headed Girl, who has two personalities in one body, and one called, just called Cartoon Girl. Wow, they're really trying, huh? Oh, yeah, baby. We were down to almost no more pilot money after the first four were shot, and I said to Abby Turkle,

why don't we spend Darya off to her own series? He was open to it, so I called Mike Judge, who said, I don't mind as long as I don't have to do anything. We had money left for a storyboard shot to a track, which was enough to get the point across. It was just a 15 minute long pilot because they had run out of all their pilot money. And in 1995 was when they made it called Sealed with a Kick.

And based on that pilot, MTV orders 13 episodes. Andrews said Darya tested the best out of the pilots. But MTV didn't like the fact that it tested the strongest with junior high kids. They were maintaining the fiction that their core audience was 18 to 24. But those people are in or just out of college. they're not watching MTV. They're busy actually having a life. They're out there fucking late, dude.

Yeah, they're not watching television. I watch MTV in high school. Yeah, I watched MTV in middle school too. It's so funny. This was back when MTV like legitimately wanted to be cool and not just make as much money as possible. Also, I'm getting so much of this from a phenomenal oral history that Vice put out,

which has so many people involved in the show talking about its making. Highly recommend, even though you'll probably read a lot of the same quotes you're going to hear today because it's so comprehensive and so well done. So yes, they bring in Eichler and Lewis as executive producers. Andrew said when they decided to do the spinoff, they offered it to Glenn Eichler, partly because he was a huge fan of my so-called life.

Oh my God, guys, we have two kids on my so-called life. Oh, please. He had a feeling for who this character would be if we built her out. Glenn was the polar opposite of Mike Judge, who came from Texas, worked everything out himself, taught himself animation and studied comedy, by watching Letterman. Glenn was a Harvard Lampoon guy. And to be quite honest, Mike wasn't much of a fan of Glenn.

So, yeah, really some stuff going on there with that. I imagine that Mike, Judge, and this is just me speaking from the hip here, I would assume that he felt a little slighted because of the changing of the times that I don't even necessarily think is his fault, is because Beavis and Butt had only had two out of the 44 riders were female. And only one female director. director out of nine. So Susie Lewis and Glenn Eichler

vowed to hire as many women as possible to work on Dario, which is also another reason why I think it speaks to women. So not that you necessarily need. That's another fun quote that I had read from Glenn Eichler that's like, you don't need to be a woman to write for women. You need to be a good writer. Sure.

But they needed this on MTV that they were trying, they were trying something brand new. So they put all of their efforts into hiring mostly women. and I imagine that my judge felt a little bit like he's being thrown under the bus of like see we're hiring women when I don't think he was doing that didn't seem like it was just doing it out of spite

it was. There wasn't women around. Grandstaff though did say this about Eichler and Darya. Darya really was a 40-year-old band living in Bloomfield, New Jersey. She's Glenn Eichler to the core but also you can't forget. Susie Lewis though did bring the other elements to the character

that you get, and especially a lot of the stuff happening around the character. She said, I feel like I brought in a lot of ipness to the show, because I was closer to the character's ages at the time. I also had seen almost every music video that had ever been on MTV because that was my job at Beavis, which is hilarious

that she, I guess, picked out the vids and stuff. That will come into play very much, so we are soon about to talk about the music of Darya. Yes. And Susie Lewis had a lot to do with that, which is just so cool. Because essentially what Beavis and Butthead did for metal music is what Darya did for all music and specifically female grunge bands. Yeah, let's get into it. Let's talk about it.

Dude, and a lot of bands that people hadn't heard of. And the reason why is because Susie Lewis was the one for Beavis and Butthead finding all of the music videos. So she had seen music videos from all across the board. She was trying to do any music except for music. that you would hear on like a pop channel essentially. And Dari's major themes included the very 90s concern of selling out, the subversion of stereotypes, body image, friendship, and identity crises, and Lewis chose tracks by girl-friendly bands that reflected the tone and feeling.

Julianna Hatfield, bikini kill, and varucca salt were sprinkled throughout. Yeah, and unfortunately, 99% of the music was removed due to licensing issues when it was released on DVD. Thanks government. You also had current tracks that, you know, getting jiggy with it was Will Smith's, you know, anthem, poetic, epic anthem that he put out. That was on a Dari episode just weeks after the song was released. Well, they also, they had tons of characters on the show that were representing the, like,

more mainstream kids. And so you would want that kind of music. Right. And that's why Susie Lewis definitely put the music more of what she said, since so much of me was part of Darya and Jane, I decided they would like the same kind of music that I liked. Who lists, says Lewis, who lists nine-inch nails, Bauhaus, and Love and Rockets, as some of her favorite bands. Other times, songs were used to try and capture the zeitgeist, which explains how a song like new radicals, you get what you give, ended up on the show.

In the end, though, Lewis was always looking for lyrics that would work perfectly for an episode or for a scene. The fact that the music was usually quite good was a nice boned. She handpicked every song for a reason that isn't Darya. And this is what is so upsetting because I don't have the DVDs. And you can't even listen to all of the music as a part of the episodes. But it took eight years after the show ended for the DVDs to come out because they were desperately fighting with MTV to try and get the rights to play some of the music. Did they? Did they get the rights? They got some of them, but not all of it.

And they were really trying to hold out to get as much as. as they possibly could, but then it is. Watching the episodes now, there's just something missing because they had to overlay it with like generic music that they could get licensing to or come up with on their own. Are there- Is there more music on the DVDs then and if you stream it because-

Yes. Okay, I might have to get the DVDs because I watched them all on iTunes and there wasn't any of music. No, there's no of it there. So Susie Lewis was asked if there was a particular musical cue still resonates with her. And she says, it has to be the credit roll music

for episode 113, Misery Chick. Just a great example of finding the perfect song to the perfect episode. It was Pearl by one of my favorite bands Love and Rockets. Some of the lyrics were, this is no ordinary girl, I ain't got no jaded feeling, this is no ordinary girl. She jokes, she stares at the ceiling. So I watched that episode, and in the credit roll,

I played the song, and it does hit it so hard. Like, especially, it's such a good fucking episode. And she says, these lyrics along with the overall feeling of the song seemed to fit perfectly with a lot of the tone of Darya. And since they were one of my favorite bands in my most favorite episode, this stands out as a particularly moving. We have to talk about the theme song. Absolutely. You're standing on my neck. La la la.

Which is so, it's so perfect because it's such a 90s, just even that refrain is so 90s. It's like this angry, this like fucking angry, you're standing on my fucking neck, right? Right. And then, and then this very sarcastic, very whimsical, La La La, like that was the 90s. Especially because that was the era when bands like Babes and Toyland were coming out in more of the mainstream work, it's sort of mocking the good little girl image. Yes. By using that sort of sing-songy with the anger.

It resonated with me a lot growing up. And remains to this day, I'm fucking wearing pigtails right now. And I listened to garbage for like two hours yesterday. Oh, no. Was I'm glad you on moody? Oh, I've been feeling moody. Especially watching all this, Aria, and remembering all,

just like, ugh, that I felt. So, your standing on my neck was written and performed by the band Splendora, and it was actually, essentially, an audition to do the theme. They had a bit of an end because the cellist in the band

was a producer on the show, but they just submitted it. And apparently, Glenn Eichler wrote the line, You're Standing on My Neck, that specific line, which is also, of course, the name of the song. And, yeah, Janet Weigal was the vocalist and guitarist on the song,

and she said, there's a certain deadpan quality in the singing of the theme song. There was a motion, but it was very salty, sweet, and sardonic. It was a melding of two styles, because our band already had a bit of that. And just so good. I feel like that song is just perfect. It's great.

It's such a perfect song that just, it just captures the entire identity of that show. And I really think that it was one of the driving forces that kept that show popular because it's just, it just speaks to that moment in time so much. And it's still really fun to listen to. And I don't know if you got your quotes from this, but Billboard, a couple years ago,

put out a really fun article in interview with the two sisters who were the people behind Splendora. And yeah, it's a really good, fun look into, how they ended up with the show and where they went because they kind of just disappeared after. Yeah, it seems they fell apart. You would think because there's no band attached to it that that was maybe like a studio band that was put to make this song.

But it was an actual band of young girls who made that song because, again, they didn't want to pay people. Man, the 90s with the way that they incorporated music into things is so different. I was just saying about Pete and Pete and that, ah, yeah, yeah. That was like, it is summer. it is adventure.

That is such a good opening song to another amazing television show which we will be doing that television show. Well, Pete, they have a show on our network. Yes, so that's why we are a thousand percent are going to do it. The Adventures of Danny and Mike on LPN. We should at least get Danny on, you know,

to I'm sure he'd do the show with us, which would be hilarious. For sure. Eichler talked about in terms of the writing of the show how it was a little bit more complicated than Beavis of Budhead, obviously, because they weren't writing these short little animation bits.

They had to figure out how to write half-hour sitcom scripts, essentially. So they had to read a couple screenwriting books and essentially just learn as a staff as they went to figure out how to do this stuff. What's also fun is that apparently the writers got some of their teenage lingo from magazines. Darya writer Nina Bieber told the New York Times that while it was easy for writers in their 30s

to relate to the psychology of a disaffected 16-year-old, they sometimes pilfered language from sources they wouldn't normally pay attention to. She says, in the episode I just wrote, which was the Lost Girls, we used the word jiggy, Bieber said. And this sounds pathetically white bread and 30-something, but I think I found it on the editorial page of Jane Magazine and thought, huh, why not use that?

Whatever that is. Yeah, Tracy Grandstaff had similar things to say, saying the topicality of it was what I found to be pretty refreshing, even at the time. They're talking about corporate sponsorship in public schools when the vending machine pops up or the Jane Magazine takeoff where this hipster 30-something is trying to go into high school and establish trends for all the girls and trying to co-op stuff that young people are doing as her own trend setting. They weren't obvious topics in some cases, but they scratched the surface. They went a little deeper than let's just make Jane and Darya decide to go to a concert and meet guys, which I think is very true and very right on in terms of what made the show special. Absolutely.

The writing is so good. and they actually address things that weren't really talked about that much at that point for for young kids and young teens The first I think the first and second season are really good and then it gets a it dips a little bit, but then the last season's great and they really go into like mental health issues LB I'll be oh my god LG you're canceled Oh Oh Oh God no

You can't get bring the cancel police in Oh no Not the police Weo-wee-wee-wee-wee-W-W-W-W-W-W-W. LGBTQ issues. Like sex, and then Darya, like, actually having, like, a breakdown. Just, like, even towards the end, Jody, who's the one of the few black characters on the show,

she, her story arc gets a little bit broader towards the end, and she talks about how she doesn't like being the only black girl in a sea of white girls and, like, how she's having to deal with that. Well, she breaks the third wall a lot. in discussing the fact that she and her boyfriend are the token black characters on the show. And this is something that I wanted to speak to

just in general the character of Jody, which was a big step, especially for cartoons. And the fact that Darya really was, at least for me, one of the first cartoons where you could watch the characters evolve over time. The way that Quinn's relationship with Darya changes. The way Darya changes in the way in her relation to not only her parents,

but also to Jane with everything with that bastard Tom who I never like even though I probably would have kissed him but he's still a bastard. He's got beautiful eyes. He did have beautiful eyes. She should have just gone after Trent even though I know it would never have worked. Trent's so fucking hot still.

Oh yeah, yes. All right ladies, mop it up, okay? Let's talk about the voice acting for a little bit. Oh, you're allowed to talk about your masturbation and erections but we can't. Yeah, I played Dean. I play ding-dong ping-pong. Yeah, well, I play Slap the Taffee

when I'm looking at Trent playing mystical spiral. Oh, slapada-devi, slapada-ta-ta-ta-a-tevi, that's what I say. Yeah, if you hear that, don't come in. I won't. I did also, before we get into the casting of the show, I read this great article called

Nine Times Darya's Six-Sad World predicted your news feed. Six-Ead World so good. Six-ad World is, it's like, make that spin-off show. I will talk later on because Tracy Ellis Ross is going to be doing the reboot of the Jody spin-off of Dario, which I am very excited about. But where's Six-Sad World? And I think the reason why they can't do Six-Sad World is that it is our existence, especially right now. But there's things like they called Pizza Rat. Are bats sneaking into your neighborhood disguised as cute flying squirrels?

Rabid rodent rip-off tonight on Six-Sad World. The Bath Salts guy brought up. back from the grave by black magic, but no one taught them to cross at the green, the jaywalking dead next on Sixthad World. There's also one that, there's also one about the undead, deadbeat dads, which I really enjoyed. I love it. What amazing way to just slip ridiculous commentary of our society in, in just like,

10 second jokes. They're just so, so good at it. A couple more of them, Teggy. There's the selfie monkey. Can monkeys surf the net and corrupt our kids? Chimpanzee chat rooms next on Sixthead World. Meet the avant-garde obstetrician that's turned his cast-offs into artwork. Umbilical Cord sculpture next on Sixthead World.

And really, those Sixthead Worlds really spoke to me at a young age, too, where I was seeing a lot of blatant hypocrisy around the authority figures in my life, and I felt crazy because it didn't seem like anybody was making comment. Like, do you not see that there's all this? like bullshit happening with these quote-unquote authority figures. Slap it on a reality show because at this point in time, reality shows weren't doing that just yet. Yeah.

But man, do they evolve over time, baby? All right. The voice actors, for many, of course, this was a first ever voiceover gig, which totally makes sense because, of course, MTV cut against me as many corners they can't. They went with non-union voice acting. They always do. It was a first gig for many. Wendy Hoops, who voiced Jane Lane as well as Helen and Quinn Morgendorfer,

was actually a recent NYU graduate who sent a tape to NBC along with a note that showed a desire to do voices for Beavis and Budhead, but also mentioned, hey, you know it'd be cool? A smarter, female-driven version of this show. And so, you know, months later, she gets a phone call about doing this spinoff, and she said, I came in, we talked about several different characters, and I played around with voices for Quinn and Jane and Helen. I created these voices just sitting in a room with her,

hearing how she perceived these characters. I have to talk about Wendy Hoops for a second. I don't know if I'm probably saying her name wrong. Maybe. I look, I apologize if I am Wendy. Cancel police, cancel. Oh, woo, woo, woo, we'll put your hands by your back. We're going to put a cover in salami.

That's what happens. That's what the cancel police. You're canceled from the cancel. police. That's a problematic arrest procedure from the kids. She continued on with

acting jobs, but she's not done, I've looked at her IMD at least. She's not done a lot of voiceover work, but I was my mind was shook when I saw that she did all three of those characters. And Mary, if you don't mind, could you play a little bit, just a couple lines from each of Jane Lane, and then Helen

and Quinn Morgendorfer? I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed, By madness. Wait a minute. My generation has no best minds. What about Christina Aguilera? Oops. Spoke too soon.

Oh, Jake. I think something bad is happening. And she's already had one disappointment. Oh, no. I was dreading this day. I know. Who knows what she'll have on at the barbecue? Banana clips.

Yeah, it's a big variety. It's so good. She fucking killed it. You cannot tell that's done by the same person. And she didn't do a lot of voiceover after that, which is really shocking to me because she killed it. Yeah, absolutely. So then you have Julian Rebelletto, who did the voice of Jake Morgendorfer. It was his second audition ever, but he had a mature sounding voice since he was 20, and that's what landed him the role.

He also didn't get it at first because he went in and tried to do a Jimmy Stewart impression, and they very quickly like, let's go in a completely different direction and he was like, oh, oh, and then had to fully pivot. Because again, he's not really experienced with auditioning because all these people are super green and super like, have no idea what to do. It's like wild west of programming.

But what he did with Jake Morgdorfer is great and it's super funny. Yeah. Yeah. It's so funny to think because that's totally an audition gaff that I could see myself doing. You know what I mean? I'm like, oh, this guy seems like a Jimmy Stewart type. I'm going to just do an impression of Jimmy Stewart,

which is like a terrible idea. And instead, Jake Morgendorfer is a manic throughout the entire show. He's a dad who's just like completely not able to handle being a father. And he's like hysterical half the time. Right. You also have Mark Thompson. He did the voice of Kevin Thompson, Mr. DeMartino, and Mr. O'Neill. He said, Darya was my first voiceover job.

There was a posting on the cork board at NYU saying MTV was auditioning for a cartoon about vampires. That was probably that Twilight pre-Dwilder. highlight show. Drac, whatever it was. Draco women or something. I'd have to go back and look it up. It was Drac World. Drac World.

They had a phone number and you literally were supposed to audition on a voicemail. That show didn't go into production, but they said, hey, why don't you also audition for this too? And that's where we got to that. And those are great characters, all of them. Absolutely. Early on, they felt Darya's voice wasn't deadpan enough and actually got Tracy a vocal coach that normally works with Broadway actors.

Grandstaff said, Tracy, Great Stavs said, they'd have me do 10 takes in a row just to get it a little flatter, a little more even, a little more monotone. And Andrews said the producer, even the acting coach was like, what are we trying to do? Make it sound like she's on Kwayloot? It's crazy because even when she's upset, she's still deadpan. It is very difficult to do that. And listening to just Darya's void, like Grand Staff's voice for it, you have to be, like, she must have had to just completely relax. her face, but also having to pronounce everything properly.

I can't even imagine how difficult that was to do. She did express emotions through it, too, like you said. Like, she isn't just always apathetic. She does get upset. She does get, you know, overwhelmed and stuff. It's the same with Jane's voice. And the fact that they were very similar, but also the way that they could characterize their voice changes so differently

that even though both of them were fairly. monotone. You can hear from another room which character is speaking. Definitely. And also, I always appreciated the fact that they allowed Jane to be the horny one. Oh, yeah. Just because you are a wallflower doesn't mean

you'll still lay people that you don't want to talk about. I always felt like I was a combination of Jane and Daria. Because I was super awkward like Daria, but definitely boy crazy as fuck. Oh, yeah. And not as smart as Daria probably. I've been doing this like fantasy

cast list because I'm just obsessed with the idea of doing like a live action version of this, like how fun that would be. And I've had the hardest time trying to find somebody that I like that would be cast as Darya because they don't really put girls and women like that in parts. Like the closest one that they have in modern history is always, they always compare to Aubrey Plaza. But she's just such a unique character and there's not a lot of people. Although did you watch the college humor trailer that? Yeah.

I think that Aubrey Plaza would be the perfect, Darry. I know, she's too old now. Now she's too. Oh, yeah, but unless they do a grown-up version, which is like, how many things that I looked up? And everyone's like, don't you want to see what Daria would look like now? I don't know why this is such a huge thing. If you're going to make the spin-off show, make the spinoff show,

but I don't want to just stare at many articles about what she would look like. Now, I get it. I get it. She would live in Hell's Kitchen. I understand. Even though I don't have Darya. Yeah, at least listen. Okay, Jane, Zendaya.

Yeah. Then Daya, yeah. Does I say it wrong? Yes, but that's okay. Oh, God. Canceladdle. Canceles. Cams!

Cammie! Cimmy! Cimami! Throw her in the milk pool. And the only other one I'll say is Trent Bill Scarsgard. Ah. I could, yeah, I could see that.

See, okay, go watch the movie villains and then come back. Okay. He's fucking perfect for Trump. All right. I mean, I do love Trent, and I think that we would be remiss. We must speak to Mystic Spiral, which is Trent's band. As someone that was, I was so obsessed with Trent.

He was exactly what I wanted. Darya co-creator Susie Lewis told Nerdus that when she was young, she developed lots of crushes on guys in bands. She said a lot of them were really hot on stage, but when you talk to them, it was completely different, and it was such a bummer. So Dari's other co-creator, Glenn Eichler, took that concept and ran with it,

adding in some pop culture touchstones, particularly Jordan Catalano. The Bruton is way cooler than fucking Jordan Catalano. The Bruton Crush Object played by Jared Leto on the 1994-95 Calt Series with So Called Life, and he says, he was his real dreamboat, right? But whenever he talked, he was kind of a moron. Rounding out the recipe,

a first name taken from Trent Resner of Nine Inch Nails, and the appearance of Dave Navarro, guitarist for Jane's Addiction, and the red hot chili peppers. So Mystic Spiral is obviously, it's Trent's band and Eichlitz says he has a very vague memory of performing bass of the mystic spiral song freaking friends due to budgetary constraints which is a great song daria also had a crush on Trent which helped shape the music of mystic spiral he says having a crush on Trent was something

she could not control she knew it was silly but she couldn't help herself after all he wasn't the brightest bulb so what would they ever talk about so his songs and his lyrics had to be even more ridiculous with no depth or intellect to them so while Lewis handled music selection for the show. It was Eichler who shouldered the load as Mystic Spirals' Xeracist. If we were going to include an excerpt of a spiral song, which was usually just one or two verses,

I like to write the lyrics myself just because it was fun. So this is Eichler writing just bullshit lyrics to a ridiculous band. Umbridge! I put down my umbrage card. Oh no! I don't think Trent is an idiot. There are idiot characters on that show, but it

actually, he draws out Darya because he's able to like, when she's spitting out her, her sarcasms, he understands what she's saying and kind of converse with her in that. And she's not used to people reacting to her sarcasm with anything but like, duh. And he actually allows her to kind of come out of her shell a little bit. I don't think he's that stupid. I think he's a burnout and he's lazy. And that's different. Whoa. Kind of like skater boy and clueless. Yeah. No, he's actually very stupid. the guy. No, he's just stoned.

Yeah, he just like, remember because he gets clean and he still does not. Yeah, and he's still. Well, you know, he's cute though. But he's nice. He's helping the less fortunate. He's a nice guy. So the animation had a rough start

until they got rough draft involved. For the first two seasons, sketches would be drawn, which would be painted in, then put under a camera and shot on film. And after that, they would cut it on an ancient editing machines with tape and stickers,

like they did in the old days. And then they would send it out to Rough Draft Studios in Seal to fill in the gaps with the animation. Rough Draft Studios, by the way, Jake and I talk about that on Wizard of the Bruiser in our Renan Stimpy show episode because RuffDraft Studios was founded in a garage in Van Nuys. Los Angeles and ended up working on the Renan Stimpy show. Nikki, who one of the co-founders, approached creator John Kirk Felucci of Renan Simby Show and outsourced said, hey, why don't we outsource the animation to Korea? and that is when Nikki went and founded Rough Draft Korea, which would later produce animation for shows such as The Simpsons and Beavis and Butthead, among many others. Supervising director Karen Disher said, if you look back at the first two seasons,

you can see dirt flickering on the cells or the color levels shifting. It looks awful because of the technology back then or lack there. I like the look of it. Me too. And also Karen Disher says, I guess it's flatness by way of stylistic choice, but also ability. because she definitely was going into territory that she was not used to because originally she was just a 24-year-old layout artist

for Beavis and Butthead and then got bumped up to an animator and she was just kind of shooting from the hip. I think it's why it appeals to young girls is like it looks like a drawing you would put in your folder of what you wanted to look like. Oh my God, the style.

The style, the colors, the layout, Like, it really appeals to a young, like a tween. I've definitely tried to dress like Daria and I don't pull it off properly. That's a nice way of saying it. The show aired on Monday nights at 1030s starting in March of 1997 and got some pretty solid reviews. A New York Times critic wrote, as far as MTV and Beavis and Budhead are concerned, Daria is an indispensable blast of fresh air. Eichler said when the show first aired in the first year,

there was a lot of rab. There were a lot of rabid fans. The minute Darya showed any vulnerability, some people declared that she jumped the shark. Tracy Grandstaff said, toward the end, Darya started to see through Trent, which was heartbreaking. She got over the crush.

Trent was cool, but not cool enough for her. It's because she grew. And that's, again, another reason why I'm obsessed with Darya is the transition of going from being a freshman in high school to being a senior. And it's also the first show that I had, ever seen with is it fall yet and is it college yet that shows what happens in between the school years.

Uh-huh. Because I feel like so many shows that surround themselves in a school year very rarely show the summer time and just kind of pick back up where the last year ended, which never happens. That's where all the fucking drama starts. Right. Because you take away the structure of school and then it's sort of like a no man's land or, you know, open waters.

Yeah. Most shows wouldn't want to deal with that. That's what I love is If All Yet, Daria gets sent to be a counselor at the, It's Okay to Cry, Corral. And it's amazing. And it's, so they did these two TV movies. Is It Fall Yet was before her senior year. And is it college yet was after her senior year.

So, and then Is it College Yet was the last episode. That's where it ends. Yeah. And it's such a, I mean, I know that there's like the forward moving ones. I mean, of the OG Daria, this is where it ends. Yeah. There's also the specials Daria behind the scenes, which is a making of, and I love to tell this, look back in annoyance, a look back highlight show.

And the finale aired in January of 2002. I think it was really interesting in Is It Fall Yet. They put in a side story of Jane being hit on by a girl at her art camp because the lesbianism was still really not discussed that much at the time. And if it was, it was sort of usually a cliche version of what they thought a lesbian was, which was like basically somebody who looked like a trucker. And I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that. But I think that them addressing sexuality in that way and making this bisexual woman very flawed and making it almost just like a normal relationship issue where Jane is kind of being almost coerced into sex. And she's like, am I gay?

I'm not sure. kind of trying to work through those feelings. That's not something that ever happened at that point in time. Yeah. No, and I didn't get to finish her earlier I was discussing with Jody, where she was outspoken with the fact that she was the token black girl on the show, and that she also came at Darya in communication to have the discussion of,

you are always complaining about how your life is so hard and everything. You'll never understand what I go through. You'll never understand that even when I'm being my best, best, I'm still not good enough, which is something that would, like all of these boundaries that were definitely, I mean, I know it's still an issue to this day, but she was trying so desperately to be the best at everything. And yet still, she's going to have so many more hardships than Darya is ever going to have. And is at college yet, the very last part of Darya, Jody has a whole arc where she desperately wants to go to an all-black college. She doesn't want to be a part of

She doesn't want to be the token black girl. She wants to be around other people that maybe she can connect with more. And her father wants her to go to a very prestigious, mostly white college so that she can have a foot in the door. And he's looking out for her best interests in certain ways, but she doesn't want to do that. She doesn't want to go down that path. And she feels pressure from her parents to go down this, again, very white road when she doesn't really want to. And so that's really, I think that was really cool to put in there, even though she's still a side character, of course. Yeah.

Also, I think we're at the point where we can share a few notable episodes. I'll start. I think a perfect representation of the show, the one I would probably recommend to even start with, is arts and crass for me. The one where they do the art, they're kind of forced into this art competition to do a poster about school life and they do anti-bulimia. ad essentially or like it's it's you know a beautiful girl staring in the mirror with a little poem at the bottom about how she goes and throws up every night to maintain her appearance and the principal and everybody they force they they change it against their will and what I love to I think my favorite sentiment of it is just like what you're doing is wrong and terrible and you're you're a bad person but

whatever I don't even care but just take it out of the you know it's just like just take it out of the archive, take our names off of it. Showing hypocrisy of authority figures. While at the same time giving the least amount of a shit as humanly possible as the other part though, because they're just like, whatever, what you're doing is dumb and wrong, but just take our names off of it

and keep the stupid thing. You have to put your name on it and how Darya's mother goes to bat for them. But the whole time they're like, whatever, but also you're wrong. Right, yeah. So funny. Yeah, do you guys have any episodes in particular

you want to highlight? I mean, the invitation is to, I think it's only like the second or the third episode, but the way that they introduce all the characters at, I think I also, what I know that I also love specifically about that episode, the invitation when Brittany invite, like, Darya gets invited to the high school party that everyone's going to. She brings Jane with her. Jane ends up hooking up with some dude in like the bathroom. But what I liked about, and what I will always love about the show, is that it never had the like, I think I always think of clueless as well, where there were the popular people and there's all the different factions of high school experience. And I think at the time,

there was so much in media that was showing that like, that popular people were all bullies and everyone out like that none of the groups in high school ever communicated with each other. They were always at odds. And yes, there are many clicks in high school. But I feel like it was more that they just ignored each other rather than actually bothering their existence with acknowledging each other's presence and I think that they did a really

great job of opening that up in the invitation where she invites her because she's there and you know it's like new kid whatever and it's not like a you invited the weirdos to the party no one gave a fuck everyone's getting hammered

I had a different experience in high school than that but I totally get what you're saying And I agree with you that it's cool I'm not saying that all popular people Weren't bullies What I'm saying is all popular people weren't bullies There are some

A thousand percent But there's also some druggies that are bullies There's also people of other cliques that are bullies Oh absolutely Oh for sure 100%. I was going to say I I really liked that they did a lot of fantasy episodes

And a lot of bottle episodes That were sort of just contained within maybe Darya's mind because I think at that age you are kind of role-playing a lot trying to understand the world, trying to understand yourself, trying to be like all these confusing things are happening

and so there's a lot of episodes that take place in different time periods or just like have these weird fantasy elements to them and it really is cool and fun and spoke to me a lot at that age. Hell yeah. Like the Darya the musical episode in the thousand years I never would have seen

coming. Yeah, I know, so weird. But they lead in and it's great. Yeah, yeah. All right. Well, I don't have anything else on Daria or Beavis and Budhead. If you guys have anything else, I just think what contrasting shows, what a brother's sister ridiculously contrasting set of shows.

And also absolutely the story of the changing of the guard from a male-driven network to a female-driven network in terms of audience and everything. After this, we've got all of the... Now, I mean, MTV is a network for young girls, for really... In a very negative way a lot of the time. Considering teen mom is one of their most popular. Yeah, for sure. Because right after Darya ends, the MTV animation kind of implodes.

Reality TV just took over MTV because it's very cheap to make. It's just so much cheaper. Animation's very expensive. So the networks came in. Changing of the guard happened in that sense as well. And yeah, they were just like realities where it's at. And it just shows the absolute worst of humanity most of the time. You said there is a spinoff in the works right now?

It was announced last year and hopefully it still is. But it's Tracy Ellis Ross is going to be not only the executive producer, but also the voice of Jody. And it's going to be following her journey after, is it fall, is it college yet, after she goes to the historically black, college and follows her journey in changing from just being the token black person in a very white town to learning what it is to be in a society of all black people in her college. I hope that happens.

You do? Yeah, dude. I want to watch the fuck out of it. It's still supposed to be animated, right? Yeah, that's great. Awesome. Well, there you have it. Thank you so much for joining us for our Beavis and Budhead and Daria episode. Packed a lot in on this one.

and we greatly appreciate you listening to Pop History. Check us out on Patreon. Patreon.com forward slash page seven podcast. You can also check me out. I stream with Jackie every Friday at 6 p.m. on my Twitch channel, 6pm ET. That is Twitch.tv forward slash Holdenators Ho. What y'all got to say about it, ladies?

I apologize for getting so excited about this and shouting through this entire episode. How dare you be excited? How dare you be excited during the Dari? episode. As a typical woman, I am apologizing for my behavior. Cancell, please. You're canceled from canceling. You're canceling. Throw her at the hot dog festival.

Oh my God, yes please. What? I want to be canceled. I wanted to let everybody know that we are actually going to put out an episode of Trollville every week starting this week. And you'll find it on the last podcast on the left YouTube, which is a fun, fun little web series that Henry and I made along with our friend, Sena Gisnavi. Awesome. Yeah, and then you can find us at page 7 LPN on TikTok and Instagram and me at the Natty Jean.

Jackie. Hey, and I'm Jackie Zabrowski. Find me on Instagram at Jack That Worm. We love you guys so much. Thank you for joining us this week, and we will see you next week. Mini kisses. Go watch Dorias on Hulu. La la la.

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