Talking Simpsons - Talking Futurama - The Peter Avanzino Interview

Episode Date: December 30, 2024

Howdy, free feed folks! In the spirit of the season, we've decided to gift you this bonus podcast. If you'd like to hear more, and support the Talking Simpsons Network, head on over to our Patreon and sign up. Once you do, you'll unlock 80 episodes of Talking Futurama, as well as the rest of our vast collection of miniseries episodes. Thanks for your attention—now here's the episode description: Good news, everyone: As a special holiday-style bonus, we're proud to present our interview with Futurama supervising director Peter Avanzino! Listen in as we talk to Peter about his long career in animation, directing on shows like The Simpsons, Duckman, The Ren & Stimpy Show, Disenchantment, and more. Plus, learn all about the secret season of television he worked on that never saw the light of day...

Once again, television has given me a reason to live. ["Santa Claus is Coming to Town"] Good news, everybody! It's a special Talking Futurama interview. I am one of your hosts, Bob Mackie, wishing you a Merry Xmas. And who is here with me today, as always? While hiding out from Santa Claus, it's Henry Gilbert greeting you. And yes, we decided to drop a little holiday gift under your tree because way back in September, mid September I believe, we interviewed the supervising director of Futurama, Peter Avanzino.

And of course, as Fry says, time makes fools of us all. And here we are two months later, finally putting it out there for you all to listen to and we think you're really going to like it. Yeah, we had an open Monday, so a perfect time to share with everybody and you know, you got a holiday break, so a great time to listen to it. And Peter is such a great person to chat with and he is such a giving man with his time

and his history in animation that it was such a great time chatting with him. Yes, we mentioned he is supervising director on Futurama to this day. He began that role with the Comedy Central era, but he has been with Futurama since day one. And of course he worked on The Simpsons and other shows we like like Raymond Stimpy and Duckman.

So he's got a lot of great credits to his name and a lot of great stories to go along with those credits. So without further ado, here is our interview with the great Peter Aventino. So Pete, just to get started here, we want to know where you came from in terms of your path to the animation industry. How did you get started? What were what was the first thing you worked on? Where did it all begin for you?

I'll start with the teaser. The first thing I worked on was Simpsons. But, you know, I I came out came out of high school, good at art and good at math. And counselor said, how about architecture? And I went, OK, because I didn't, you know, I didn't know. I was just kind of on autopilot going to college. I went there for a couple of years and loved learning design. And I had a comic strip in the paper and I liked everything the first two years.

And next year was let's design some buildings. And I was like, yeah, I'm not that into this part. So I wound up eventually trying computer science, some other things, and eventually going to Long Beach State for illustration. And I'm not a great illustrator. So I graduated from there. And I did take one animation elective,

which was offered like once every third semester where I did, you know, learned the basics. And friend and I really loved watching Looney Tunes and stuff. And he wound up transferring to Cal Arts. And he called me when you know, about a year after I graduated, and was not, you know, I was doing some computer page layout stuff. I, was not, you know, I was doing some computer page layout stuff. I, you know, I'm not a not the greatest artist illustrator, but he said, hey, they've, he had transferred to CalArts and said, hey, they've, there's flyers on the wall, the Simpsons are giving

out storyboard tests. So I okay, and I went up there and got one, or maybe just gave me the number and I called and took a test and I did not get the job. But you know, I Uncharacteristically in my lazy life called them back and said hey, you know, I turned my test in I was wondering if there's any news and this lady Pam said yeah We actually I meant to call you. They call, they wanted me to come in and talk about it. So they brought me in. And while I waited to

talk to somebody, they gave me a script and a storyboard. And at that point is when I could look at what a storyboard was actually supposed to be, you know, compare this. Oh, my God. And then Steve Moore, who was one of their storyboard artists and Rich Moore, who was a director came out and basically, you know, said there was something there. And they wanted me to try again. And so I took another test from Simpson and Delilah, you know, just it's a scene from an episode that hadn't been done yet with Homer presenting his ideas to Mr. Burns at a meeting and they hired me from that, you know. And I was at the right place at the right time. Like I said, I'm not a great finished artist, but I can draw. I have ideas. I can draw them quickly.

Storyboarding is just quickly putting your ideas down. It's blocking the show. It's making things funny. And at the time, The Simpsons was new, and they wanted it to look like a sitcom. And not many people in the animation industry wanted to do that. As you can tell if you look at that first pilot that

almost got the show canceled, which was the only professional director that they hired. You know, the other the main guys like David and Wes had never run a TV show. So they wanted somebody who had worked in television. And those guys they hired had a lot of habits from Saturday morning and whatever else that they put into that show. And these guys did not want that. So I think they were looking for people like me who could draw and could learn what they were looking for.

And it was great. And I immediately, you know, my skill level amped up, you know, 200% in the first week. And I just looked at what everybody else was doing. And it was great. And there were a lot of a lot of the other guys were from advertising or my friend, Remy was from he had been working in movies, you know, but he drew a lot. So he came in, he had cinematic staging. It was a good mix of people. Yeah, based on your first episode, it sounds like you must have gotten hired just as the show was exploding on television, just as it was the biggest deal.

No, because it was on first season was on a long time before I got hired on second season. And I had watched, you know, my tapes of the show 100 times, you know, that when that I watched the Tracy Almond show, I love that. First, you know, the Christmas special was great. And I think it was several months before the show started. After that, I just watched that tape. And then, you know, first season, I watched. I love that show. It was crazy. And I, you know, at some point, I guess,

I never even thought like, oh yeah, I should go to apply, try to apply to this. Tell a friend, say, hey, they're giving out storyboard tests. All right. Wow. So, so Simpsons was your CalArts then, like that's where you learned animation. That's so funny. Yeah.

I wasn't sure if there was some sort of secret credit or something you worked on before the Simpsons, but you just jumped right into the Simpsons and was on a roll from there. I did. I did as a storyboard artist. I mean, I'm not, I'm by no means an animator. And even later when I was directing on shows that we did layout, you know, I,

and even now with storyboards, I expect everybody in that building to draw better than me. Um, everybody underneath me better draw better than me. Well, yeah. So you, you storyboarded on, on so many classic episodes. Like we, we could just, you know, we're, we're Simpsons, podcasters first, and we could just ask all about those. But like, do you have any particular favorites that you worked on in those days? I mean, you know, Simpson and Delilah was the first thing. They hired me and I think they used my test. And then the next one was Bart the Daredevil, which was incredible, you know. And which was incredible. And when I got hired, the producer said,

well, a professional can do an act of a show in two weeks. And I go, OK, I'll just work hard until I can do that. And that's really hard to do. And I think they redrew almost all of it, because the notes that came in were good. Again, I could learn from the notes. Like Sam Simon had great notes just about pacing, like this is ridiculous, don't show this yet.

You know, now is where you should show the gag. And I, my fondest memory of that is when Homer falls down into the cavern into the Gorge and they pull him up and they put him in the ambulance and as I remember it the script said the ambulance hits a tree and then I Another board artist might have suggested this but I'm the one who drew in, you know having the ambulance the stretcher come back out of the Ambulance go over the edge again and then just reuse the of the ambulance, go over the edge again, and then just reuse the scene of the kids

looking over the edge. And then later in a clip show, Wes then animated Homer falling down the gorge in the stretcher. That was in a later episode they put that in. But I love that one. Streetcar Named Marge I had a lot of fun with, staging the musical stuff.

Oh, yeah. I mean, staging a musical has to be so hard, right? Yeah, but it's fun. I pitched stuff to Rich. Rich Moore directed that. Most of the other stuff like the Maggie and the daycare center and the great escape, I would show my boards and he would just go, oh, that's great, and then redraw all of it. Yeah, you did send us some of your old materials and I wanna point out that you are the one who figured out how to cram a ton of Simpsons characters

into a four by three space in Bart's Comet. Yes, that was later I think when I was freelancing. I again, I would I would work the Simpsons storyboards were on legal sized paper and they had four panels on them. So each panel was like two inches by three inches. And you had to put Ned Flanders' bomb shelter with every character in Springfield into one of those panels. So eventually I started drawing on layout paper

and then Xeroxing stuff down. And I drew every, I put everybody I can think of in there. And then of course, David Soder like, that's not enough people. It's like a pile of heads if you look at it with some bodies coming off the bottom. But that's fun. So you started storyboarding in 1990. And currently you're supervising director of Futurama and you were for the Comedy Central years as well.

And I imagine you're looking over a lot of storyboards. Can you give us some insight as to how the storyboarding process has changed since the time you started? It's changed a lot because when I started storyboarding was a specific step in the production. We would story, like I said, you could storyboard a show in you know two people would take like a month to storyboard it because you're you're doing you just sketching each scene and each scene cut and only enough acting poses

To convey what the scenes about so if Homer's watching television and he has a line, you might just do one drawing. The producers would look at the boards and approve it that say, we want to see this here, we're going to see that there. And then it would go to another step called layout where, uh, like, like I said, a storyboard artist might do a whole third of a show and a layout artist is going to get, uh, each week, they're going to get assigned 12 scenes, maybe, or 12 to 20, I'm not sure, quite a few.

And they're going to do full-size drawings of the scene. They're going to draw the whole scene with a background layout artist, put everything on model, put BG on perspective, and act it out. They're going to list. When I storyboarded, I had the audio track. But now they have the audio track and they're sitting there with a cassette tape back in

the old days. Now it's a computer. But just listening and putting in again, as many acting poses as you need to convey that scene and an action scene is is out, running, football, they're playing football, they're playing hockey, whatever it is. So storyboarding back then was just kind of planning the overall act and working out a little bit of, I did like, working out a little bit of where the camera's going, enough to make it

clear. But they were not by any means, you know, fully acted out. Now we're working now, even Futurama does not have that layout step. Most shows do not have that layout step except The Simpsons has a hybrid type thing. They might not use layout for closeups and stuff anymore, but they do it for bigger scenes, but we don't. We just, we go full storyboard. And I started doing that even on Duckman, which was, you know, just too cheap. I mean, not too cheap, but they did not have the budget.

A layout department is, for each episode, it's 12 other people who work on it for two to three months. And that's an enormous amount of money to spend. So when Futurama, when we did the movies, we still had layout. But when we went to Comedy Central, by that point, we had done other shows without layout. And we said, yeah, we can probably do without it. And we were still on paper at that time. So, you know, but I'll just jump ahead to now.

We storyboard on Cintiqs using Storyboard Pro, which everybody's still drawing by hand with a pen, you know, a stylus on a Cintiq, but the storyboard program has the audio in it and you can just hit play and you can really watch, you can, it's the same as flipping your drawings, you know, you can just see how everything's playing, how everything's working, you can really act out the acting and again,

hit play, go, oh, I need another pose here, I need another pose there. So storyboarding now, people get less done page-wise because they're doing so much more. They're really having to do layout. You're just sending your boards to Korea or wherever you're everyday animated. So everything's gotta, you know, the angles have to be right.

The characters, you know, you fall into a trap of making them really on model, which we do. If you're smart, some shows, they send stuff really loose, which forces the animators over there to put them on model, which is smarter. Sometimes we send stuff that's too tight, they just they might trace it, you know, and I can usually tell who storyboarded something because the the drawings tend to look more, you know, they're on model, but they still have the pic-dillas of

each different artist. So it's become a lot, it's easier to do, but now you're having to do a lot more. In those early animatic days at Simpsons, were there any rough times where, you know, we've heard it from the writer side more on the commentaries of like, Oh, we, we changed this thing and it was a big bunch of work and the artists eventually told us, uh, can you please, uh, stop doing that? Have you been on the other side of, of that? Any, any rough times with that on Simpsons? Um, well, back when I was on Simpsons, I was just storyboarded, so I didn't, you know, once the show left my department and went into layout,

you know, I, no, I would, like, I never, I don't know that I ever met a writer or a producer. The directors did, and you know, Gabor and Sherry. I know that the show did, and Gabor and Sherry. I know that the show just got so popular and there's a common opinion among writers that, oh, it's animation, you can do anything. So when they start writing shows about monorails and shows where the whole town is chasing somebody

with torches. It's the same small crew that did season one, and there's not a lot more money for season two or three, but they're writing a lot more stuff. And then if they want to, so you do your animatic, like we would not do a storyboard animatic. They would just write notes on the board. They would make an animatic out of the layout drawings.

They would shoot them, put them on a light table, shooting through the layers of paper. So you have a limit on how many layers you can use, you know, six to eight. And so it's a pencil animatic and it's cut to the audio, but you know, no sound effects or anything. And, and they would rewrite quite a bit. I think, um, they rewrite a lot now. Like rewrites have gotten really heavy. I've been on shows where they just change writing all the time.

Like sometimes while you're working on something and that you can say, look, you know, we can't get anything like after the animatic, I could spend the next two months plussing everything, which, which I've had shows like that where I'm just, I can make it better, or I can redo all the new stuff that you've rewritten. And then, you know, it's, it's kind of, and then you're going to see it for the first time in color because you can't, you're not going to get a chance to even really see it. Insane in the main frame, I remember you guys commenting

on the lighting and stuff, it was a fairly quiet, nice episode and I just, man, I had time to just, like, when Fry is in his cell, there's one color when he's in there with Eddie and then the door opens and there's light on them. And then the box with Roberto covers the door so it's a little dim and then that opens up and he's flooded with red light. And you know, there's that, if you can have your animatic and then during your revisions, you know, if you have some rewrites and do them, but if that in that time you have some free time to plus everything, it's great. I think we got out of storyboarding. Sorry. No, no.

Well, okay. So also in those old Simpsons days we've we've had on, you know, we we've talked with like David Silverman before too and and also Wes and they there's some fun stories about you know that it sounded like it was a real it could be a wild time at the the the class key Chupo building at times and then when it turned turned over to film Roman like how would you compare the those the cultures of those two companies and the shifts from like three to four. Well the class key was a lot of fun. I mean, they literally they had bought like a building that had a travel agency in it and then just started cramming people in there. So,

you know, I'd be in a room like 10 by 15 with three of us, you know, they could just see how many desks they can squeeze in and all the layout rooms were in various size offices. squeeze in and all the layout rooms were in various size offices. I was in storyboards, so I would get laid off. We were laid off like Thanksgiving. And then the first couple of seasons, I'd have to call and go, hey, are we going to get picked up? We'd get picked up like in April. So, yay, I have a job.

The year it went to film, Roman, we knew it was picked up, but I called them a number of times, like for all I knew, they were going to use their own people, you know. I called them, they said, oh, we can find something for you to do. And they walked me around, they were doing like Garfield and Happy Acres, but nothing ever came of that. And so at that time, Ren and Stimpy was out and I wrote a script and drew a board and applied to there and I got that job. And so I later I freelanced boards at Film Roman, but I never really worked there. That year that it moved was when I shifted over

to Ren and Stimpy. And that was another unique place. Closer to Class D than to film Roman. We definitely want to get into that, Pete, because you directed one of my favorite episodes. It's the only one you directed. It is Stimpy's Fan Club. And according to the credits, you were an AD for the entire second season. That is an amazing season of television. But also, it was interesting production wise based on everything that's come to light and many interviews with people like Bob Camp and the crew.

Yeah. I mean, I like I said, I went on there like right at the start of season two. And I wrote a sample and they hired me and and I worked on Stimpy's First Fart and mostly Stimpy's First Fart and Stimpy's Fan Club with John. I'd get an outline, I'd store it. We did like what you see on Looney Tunes. We drew on a panel twice as big as the Simpsons panel that usually only had one or two characters in it and pin them up on the boards, you know? And there was no audio yet, no script. And so I would do that and then John would come in and go, eh, no, no, no, no.

Like if you look at when Stimpy tells Ren that he farted and the amount of back and forth like of Ren going like, let me get this straight. Something came out of you, you know, the, the amount of back is nothing I or anyone else would ever do. But John, John's like, these are the beats I wanted it, you know? And you know, and just to be able to say I got to work on Stimpy's first part was great. And then I storyboarded Wren's fan club with him and all that crazy stuff, you know, with the hands and, you know, I had to go watch,

I had never heard of Night of the Hunter or any of that stuff when I watched it. And I think John, you know, he's like, have you ever like been awake at night just with the sweats from doing too much like been awake at night just with the sweats from doing too much acid and like no and goes well how far are you willing to go for research was not but but so I I storyboarded that and then when the show moved to games and I went with it they needed people to direct I had never directed so they let me direct that one and it was great, I had a really great time. But then after that, they needed me to just storyboard and I was pretty unhappy about that, but I did it.

And I don't know why I have an AD credit, I really don't. I think I was just a storyboard artist. Okay, yeah, with Stimpy's fan club, you mentioned the psychotic Wren scene where he's fantasizing about killing Stimpy. I think that episode is notable for, it feels like a five minute scene of Wren just reading and writing letters. And it's incredible that you can sustain attention with just those simple actions. I love watching that scene just because all the things that are done with just a shot

of Wren reading and writing. Right. Yeah. Again, just his expressions. And again, that's John reading it too. So I had his voice. His audio was great. And I'm sure there was a lot of those storyboard poses in there, but then when to be able to take it through layout,

where we could have a drawing, you know, just add, add more drawings, add more drawings for every little like, hmm, ah, you know, and, and all the writing and stuff. It's, I, you know, I, animation's great. You, you go through your show, you get, all right, it's done. Now I can go and just really like, that's like you said, it's, I don't think it's five, but it's, you get all right, it's done. Now I can go and just really like that's like you said, it's I don't think it's five, but it's, you know, three minutes of somebody sitting there writing letters. And it's, it's just all in his face. So you just add as many poses in there as you can. Sometimes you read you some but then. Sometimes you read you some but. Yeah, that's such a great like dark episode to just seeing I mean to see that Ren Stimpy got away with a lot of stuff but to see Ren in bed

considering strangling Stimpy to death like on the kids show. My this the spec thing I wrote started at Stimpy's funeral and everybody was there and you know, like Stimpy's, uh, three nephews were there and, and, um, so Ren, then Ren goes home sad and then Stimpy's ghost shows up and goes, Hey, I'm here to protect you, Ren. And he, you know, he protects them until he winds up killing them. They're getting them killed. Oh, it keeps causing Ren to have accidents, so Ren can't slap him because he's a ghost. And eventually he does get Ren killed. And he has this, there's a great Casper cartoon

where he meets a skunk friend and the skunk dies. And there's a scene of Casper just walking towards the camera holding this ghost. He was my only friend. And I just, you know, I wrote it was a big rip off of that. Stimp, Wren gets buried and then of course his ghost comes out. So now they're happy again because he can slap the beat. But yeah, John was like, no, I don't think people want to cartoon or one of the characters is dead. Like, what are you talking about? I mean, they never did that one. I think they seem to die a lot over the course of the series.

They go right, they go to hell. I mean, you can end a cartoon with that you can start it with. Yes. One that had to be a big change to you. You're talking about the storyboard system and then you know, and I ran Stimpy. It's the storyboard first instead of script first. Um, I mean, I, I feel like I had a really well rounded education between the Simpsons and then I got to rent and Stimpy and you know, I never really thought about cartoons versus just animated shows and rent and Stimpy and I never really thought about cartoons versus just animated

shows and Ren and Stimpy is a cartoon. It's just there to celebrate action and comedy and The Simpsons is well done, but it's a scripted and those early Simpsons have a lot of nice cartoony stuff in them and people think they're all cartoony But they're not they're just little snippets that but that's what you remember but Renan Stimpy was You know the opposite of that and most of them hated the Simpsons Because that's not a cartoon

but after that like when I went on to Duckman and even in Futurama, like the stuff I learned just about focus and where you're putting the audience attention that from from Ren and Stimpy is invaluable. And I try to get you know, I work with a lot of young artists now who they've learned everything from cartoons instead of from cinema and life and even from primetime cartoons and I'm like, man, watch Looney Tunes. I just sent them to watch like Super Rabbit. Just got great pans. It puts information in front of you in a great way that you shouldn't say, we can't do this in Futurama because I'm not saying we're going to do everything that you're seeing in this, but there's some of this stuff is valuable.

So yeah, between those two, I felt like I had some valuable skills to use on Duckman. Well, you do want to zero in on Duckman, Pete, because we covered one of the episodes you directed, the Once and Future Duck, and we personally love Duckman. We feel it's underappreciated. And I want to know how you found yourself on the show. Were you drawn to another vulgar show with yellow characters, or did you just end up on it and find yourself enjoying the work? By that time, I had kind of left rent and stumpy. I left being in house and I was freelancing storyboards and also freelancing boards on the Simpsons.

I like rented an office and so I was doing them both, but I wanted to direct. And, um, my friend, Rami was on duck man and said, Hey, they're looking for directors. So it was at class key. I had worked at class key. So I went in and they were interested. I mean, it paid less than what I made as a storyboard artist. And I argued for a while, but eventually it was just like, I want to be a director. And so I took that job. And I had watched Duck Man a little.

But when I got on it, it was really, it was all scripted, but it had a lot of wackiness and it had great things to do, to figure out that once and future Duck was, I loved it. I mean, that last scene with them all coming in, I mean, it's only him and usually one character. It's just a parade of characters assaulting him from front and back. And I know I had some storyboard artists board it,

but I redid all of it, cause I could see it, just him being turned and the sneezing guy and him jumping at him and so that that show again it was class key was tried to do things inexpensively. That's why they hired me. They looked for people without experience who were looking to move up. They hired a lot of storyboard artists like that too. Anytime anyone got good enough and had some skills to earn some money, they would get a job somewhere else. We had a constant flow of new board artists, but it was great. I wanted to direct because sometimes I would storyboard stuff and then

it just would be different. It was someone else's show to direct and they did things differently than I pictured them and I wanted that part of it to be mine and it was great and it led, you know, it was a great show to be on the the writers were really Receptive of our input and I'm classing Chupa was incredible because they had They had a recording booth in the building They had so I could go in to the records. I could go in and sit in to the sound edit if I wanted in to the records, I could go in and sit in to the sound edit if I wanted. After the animatic, we they had a whole staff of the guys who did the sound effects, they did Foley there. I could go sit

in on the on the final mix. I mean, it was in it was incredible. I got to do, you know, just be a part of everything on that show, which has never ever happened again. Yeah, it doesn't sound like there was the same chat of wall like with with Simpsons in between animation. Even though Gabor had all that stuff, they still they did their stuff over on on the Fox lot. And when I went to Futurama, it was like that I would build the animatic, and then they

would do their edit over on Fox, send it back to us. I'd do the revisions. We'd get the color. We would cut it together and send it to them. And then I would see it on television. I would maybe get some color fixes that had to be done. But it was a little disappointing. And when I applied for

Futurama, a friend of mine, Mike Anderson, called me and just said, hey, there's this new show, Matt's doing that I think it'd be great on. And he was at Film Roman. And there was a question, who was going to get it? Film Roman or Rough Draft? And and he said I don't know who's going to get it You know, I'd love to have you here. But even if it doesn't come here, I think you'd be great on it and so I called them and they I was in a good position because I I had worked on Simpsons, but I was not working on it now because they could not hire any of those people and I had some directing experience and they could not hire any of those people. And I had some directing experience. And at the

same time, SpongeBob had started and a guy from Klaski, this guy Larry LaFrancis was producing that and they called me on that too. And I really liked that show. Wow. Wow. SpongeBob has a lot of or it started with a number of ex Ren and Stippy folks too. So you'd have been good company there. But that show was, you know, I really did. And I love the pilot. And but they they said you'd be storyboarding and or you'd be directing. But a directing director would just do the storyboard up to the animatic.

And then it would go to Steve and his partner and they would rewrite it all and then it would be time like that directing to me was even less of it was just like a first draft of the storyboard. It was me and another storyboard artist, and they would call me the director and I was like, you know, I liked the idea of the primetime thing a little more. So I have one burning duck man question before we move on to all the awesome Futurama stuff, which is, you also directed another my favorite ones, that is haunted society plumbers, the the hope and Crosby one. And that's a

great episode I could ask you million questions about it, but the episode ends With Homer Simpson in a cameo which shocked me When I saw it new I was like wait, that's really him and it's really Dan Kessler and I doing it So and that's me Over the credits, that's me You're the one directing him that's me over the credits, that's me Okay Homer, it's just what the hell are you staring at? Okay take 38. What the hell you looking at? I mean staring don't Okay, good good, but could we try one where you say, what the hell are you staring at?

Take 39. What the hell are you looking at? Don't! Staring. At. Close, very close. Okay, show 4457, take 40. What the hell are you looking at?

Don't! Staring. Terrific! I, uh, you know, I will say I wasn't familiar enough with the Hope and Crosby and I think Martin and Lewis too, that they would have a guest star like that at the end. And so I was like, what is this? I don't even get this. Why, you know, but I believe they just called.

I think you guys didn't you research it? They called Matt and he agreed to it. I had to assume Matt was the conduit for it. It seems like he'd be the one, just because it seems like not everybody at the Gracie offices likes Claskey Choupo, but it seemed like Matt would still want to make the deal. Yeah. I mean, I don't know the workings of how they finagled that. But I'm, you know, either they called him or they just called Fox and Fox said, Okay, you know, but wow,

have happened that he hasn't been too excited about. But this one kind of worked in a, within the show as a, as a parody of a show that often had some kind of mystery guests would show up. But that show was a lot of fun too. We got, I got to go to the Emmys for that. Didn't win one but Well, thank you for answering our Duck Man questions, Pete. Now let's move on to Futurama. You were with the show from the beginning. You directed the second episode of Futurama. It sounds like you were in on the ground floor.

What was that like and how much input did you have in just the design of the show and how it moved and how it looks? By the time I came in, it was designed. And Rough Draft had already, you know, Rich Moore and Greg Vanzo and I think Brett Holland and the crew that had been there like on the max and doing other stuff had. They had done like a little pilot clip to try to get the show. And when I called, they were waiting to see if they were going to get it, you know, was between rough draft and film Roman and the people at Fox did not. in rough draft and film Roman. And the people at Fox did not,

they were not excited about a studio that had never done a prime time TV show getting it. Somebody told my boss, Claudia, like I know you would do an A, but there's a 5% chance you wouldn't be able to get it done. And I would rather take 100% chance on the other studio. And so they were really gonna, so I was, I had called Claudia, I was calling her every week, just like, Hey, did it got the show yet? No, we don't have it yet.

You know, it was taken forever. And I had, I think, finished, I had worked on the Wild Thornberrys at class key, and I'd kind of finished and I knew I was gonna go either to Futurama or SpongeBob. And so I had kind of already left there without knowing exactly what I was gonna do. And I was just on pins and needles. And as soon as they got picked up, they hired me and whoever else they had lined up.

And we went in and we started story. I was gonna do show two, but I was there. So I storyboarded on show one. And by then, I think Brett Holland and Greg were doing turnarounds of all the characters and they had already pretty fairly well designed. They had a pack with a bunch of Bee Gees, but we had to start doing production Bee Gees, you know, views of every conference room, the ship. So I wasn't there, you know, Matt and David had been designing it for close to ten years prior to that, And they used a lot of Simpson's designers. And I think they've talked about how overdeveloped it was when they went to pitch it.

Yeah, the premise of the show kind of goes out the window in the second season, but they end up having a lot more fun expanding from that. Yeah. season, but they end up having a lot more fun expanding from that. Yeah. Yeah, no, we talked a little with, uh, with Bill Morrison about his, his work in the early days, uh, helping with designing it too though. Yeah. You're the, the second episode you do is almost like a repilot of it, not a repilot, but, uh, that it's like, it, it introduces all of the secondary characters in it. So it's about as important as the pilot. Yeah. More so I say no. Pilot is almost like a pitch piece pilot.

And yeah, I don't know why they they just couldn't squeeze Amy and Hermes in, you know, I think maybe Matt wishes he had just had a scene where they walk past them in a room because there's something good about having those characters in the pilot. Legalized I'm not sure what it is but huh. Well it's interesting too you mentioned the the rough draft thing I because there definitely we've heard in our research that like there was you know Fox seemed to be you know wavering in their commitment on the show and in time slots and everything but even from the beginning it sounded like there were were doubts on Rough drafts, you know doing their first

show Matt, you know Matt I'm trying to be you know I'm trying to be, you know, not Matt, Matt, I think wanted us to have it wanted rough draft to have it. But he was but Fox did not want an on they did not want an unproven studio to be doing their show. And, and he said, Look, this can't be I can't have a fight like this right out of the gate. So he was kind of willing to go with them. And then Rich and they were all sitting around playing Nintendo or something and Claudia goes, we got to do something. And they spent two weeks and made this, you know, just a little one minute thing of the

conference room with a big screen with Friagin, you know, just something with the characters in it and it wasn't even the actual planet express ship, some flying scenes and they sent it to Matt and he was like, I think when they got him on the phone he was about to agree to give it to, they were about to call Film Roman and give it to him and this just led to another delay of that. And I think Film Roman, you know, they did their own test. And somehow, you know, I think Film Roman is great and everything. But I'm glad Rough Draft got it.

No, Rough Draft. Well, yeah, I mean, we in 90s in pre-Futurama cartoons, when we cover like where Rough Draft, well yeah, I mean, we in 90s in pre Futurama cartoons when we cover like where Rough Draft or Rough Draft Korea is the overseas studio, we're always like, boy, this is usually the best looking one or like they were very consistent and good even on you know, 11 minute or Saturday morning shows and not sitcoms, but they were out of the gate like so such a quality studio. Well, I mean, you know that that's Greg Van Zyl owns Rough Draft here and his wife, Nikki, owned Korea Studio and he, you know, he helped her set it up. And I think they kind of got people off

the paid being paid, paid per foot for their animation animation so they were cranking it out and shifted them you know put them on salary and expected good work out of them and I don't know what other studios were doing that but it was it did it did make rough draft a little unique in that regard that you could expect a little more out of them we know these days Futurama is a show that cannot be killed but back when originally launched Fox seemed to hate the show they ordered. And we heard a lot of the drama behind the scenes. Also, Matt Groening was very upfront in the press from the beginning saying how Fox was

mistreating the show. Were you on the animation side feeling that? Or were you all just too busy getting episodes done to worry about time slots and delays. I know, especially with production season four, some of those episodes didn't air for maybe two years after they were done. Yeah, I've heard you guys saying that. I don't, I honestly don't remember that part, but I do know, you know, we were busy, but we were maybe a little unique, more than the Simpsons in that, you know, we really helped develop the show. We were really integral to it. So we were, Claudia was part of those discussions with them. And it was really, I remember just sitting down at seven instead of eight and

then turning the TV on and football was on and going, God, Jesus. I'm being very disappointed that my shows weren't on. That first season was great. We had a premiere party for the first one. I had a party at my house for the second one. We went places to watch episodes. The crew was really excited about it. I remember doing that on The Simpsons too. We would go to sushi place to watch one fish, two fish, red fish. We'd want to get together to watch the shows that we all made. And I remember just being really disappointed that when it would not be on, and who knows when it would be on. And I don't remember, it's a long time ago, I don't remember that so many shows waited

that long. I must have been working on something else, you know, because the show had been canceled already and we were all put out to look for other work. Well, yeah, it's it's it's darkly comic on some of the commentaries where they're remarking that like, they're doing a commentary that for an episode that still hadn't aired yet in the US, which is normally not that is normally it's like aired at least a year before they do the commentary.

Yeah, Yeah. And Pete, you directed two of the Futurama direct-to-video movies. It sounded, based on what Rich Moore has said on commentaries, like a big massive crunch. Can you explain your history with working on the movies and what that was like compared to production of the TV show? The movies were basically like four episodes per movie. And I know we had an accelerated schedule. I didn't do one episode and then do the second one. And then we had to come up with like a we did storyboards. And I think we built storyboard animatics for those movies

because we just wanted to make sure that, you know, they were to time because if each one of them's two minutes too long, suddenly, you know, you're 10 minutes too long overall and there was a tight budget on them. I remember it was very crunched, but it was, again, it was very crunched, but it was, again, it was fun. Dwayne did the first one, then I did the second one.

We had a storyboard crew layout. We did layout on all of them. When you do layouts, you have a scene folder for every single scene. That show had four shows at once of layouts in my office was crazy. We had to come up with like Five digits scene numbers. So you knew which you know scene one from movie four from Scene one from part four of movie two, you know, you couldn't just have seen one and you didn't want to number them One all the way to the end of four movies. So it was a big Ordeal and they were I think at that time we were allowed

to make them widescreen. Like the seasons one to four, we were digital, but they just did not wanna do anything widescreen. So those are all the three, four ratio. These ones we switched over that was that was a shift. Well, yeah, also on the technical side, yeah, like not just, you know, Futurama was a digital show before a lot of shows went digital, like, like fully digital and then the

shift to HD and widescreen like did did either of those feel like a big jump on a technical level? Like one going to digital, and then two going to HD and widescreen? The first, so the first four seasons were digital, yes, but we drew them on paper, and Rough Draft, they did their animation on paper.

It became digital where you would normally go to ink and paint. They would do a really nice cleanup on the paper so that they could scan it. And from that point on, it was digital. They colored it and composited it all digitally. But I mean, everything we did, all of the pre-production was still on paper and still hand-drawn.

But when it came back digitally, it was great because you could, I think Susie was talking about it. I mean, if, you know, when I did the Galapagos Islands scene with all the robots going crazy, you know, that scene came back and when we stored, you know, it was every robot in the world going crazy. So it was storyboarded, looked great, but a storyboard is black lines on white paper. It came back and in that scene, there's, you know, 100 robots and as soon as they start running, suddenly it's just empty background, you know, so digitally, we could just go through every other scene, find every robot we could and just layer them in the back. Like she

said, you could fix pans when I was on Duckman, if a mouth was wrong, you would have to write up a note, send it back, they would have to refilm the whole scene, Duckman or any other film film scene. Anytime there's a fix, they got to re-film that whole scene. And every time they do that, the cells get dirtier. They get scratched. So boy, the greatest part of the digital stuff is on the end.

You could add color, adjust colors, darken things, pull character from other scenes to put them in. The shift to HD, suddenly, the main thing is like, on a piece of paper, if you want to, the classic scenes they always do are they start tied on something and then they whip out. And on a piece of paper, the camera can only go in so far before that drawing looks bad.

And once you go to HD, it can go in less far before it looks bad. And now on whatever they call it now 4k, you can you can barely move in on it before it starts to look bad. So it limits what you can do without having to take steps to insert new drawings on these. It makes it more difficult. Like when we did the movies, they said, yes, you can go widescreen, but they still wanted it to be protected for the

three, four. So we had to make sure we didn't put anything important on the edges. So if you have two characters in a scene, they're both in the middle of the frame. I think eventually we might've started just kind of forgetting about that. But they wanted to be able to just crop the sides off for people with regular TVs. And that was, that was a little frustrating. Well, with the new reboot of Futurama, can you detail any other production changes that

have happened in terms of how you did it before on Fox or on Comedy Central? It feels like there are, it has been, I guess, 10 years since it last aired on Comedy Central. So there have must have been some improvements there. We, you know, I guess, I think in Comedy Central, I'm trying to remember when we started using Cintiqs to draw. I think Comedy Central, we were still on paper. No, no, we were we were working digitally

then, you know, still hand drawing it but on a Cintiq. The probably the biggest thing is that you know, the once the we came back, the writing staff got smaller. They used to have a dozen guys, you know, so that you would all you would get more rewrites back then. Because anytime they watch a scene, if there's 12 guys in the room, somebody can come up with a new punchline or something. And so they, you know, the tag, the tail end of the scenes, like in Insane in the mainframe mainframe when

Bender pulls it was he pull a baby out of his chest at the very end, or human heart. Human heart, yeah. Originally it was a banjo, then it was a baby, and then it was a human heart. You know, it's just like, you could bet, you could count on the punch lines at the end of a scene to change like every time, after the boards, after the animatic, and after the color.

But now they've got less guys. So they write a script and and it's really solid, and they stand by it. And I'm not saying it's better or worse, but we get less rewrites. If something's not working, yes, they'll fix it. Or if we do something wrong, we'll fix it. But in general, those punch lines kind of stay. And it's a

much smoother, it's pretty, quite a bit smoother process on the revision. So one thing that has happened is our schedules maybe haven't gotten tighter, but they haven't expanded much. Like they when we did disenchantment, the schedules were expanded because the production of that was a lot more difficult with the backgrounds being painted and there was an expectation of armies and stuff. So when Futurama started up again, and I found out we only had like seven weeks to storyboard with two people as opposed to nine weeks with three or four people.

I was like, what is this? I was told like, that's what our schedule has always been on Futurama. Man, but we make it work. On Futurama, yeah, you made it all the way to, you know, supervising director from just, you know, a main director to supervising director and even the director on one of the finales, the Comedy Central finale, Meanwhile. And I'm curious, do you have a particular favorite episode of Futurama? I like Meanwhile a lot, of course. I like reincarnation with the three animation styles. I did that one, the anime and Fleischer type black and white, and then

eight bit. I love the late Philip Fry. That's awesome. A lot of you know, parasites lost. I love a lot of you know Parasites Lost. I think I've mentioned in the comments that if you listen to those commentary tracks it just seems to be the artist going like oh my god a lot about how hard everything was but it was hard but man that like Parasites Lost had so many challenges that were that I that I love working that kind of stuff out. Those zoom-ins to the little miniature characters, like you start in the conference room and then zoom down to the table where they are. That's a bunch of, you have one drawing,

and then when you zoom in, you go to another drawing, and then I think that had like four or five drawings. Zoom, like the professor has miniature people on his finger. I think that we zoom, or he puts somebody on there, and then we zoom in, and then he walks in. I mean, and then it had a sword fight and fried's brain, and we had really great animators that I loved. I

loved working on that stuff. And I love the Comedy Central years had a lot of great stuff too, like, you know, street racing and a murder later and freezing, you know, time freezing. And the new shows have a lot of that, a lot of great stuff too. I love shows that, you know, they've got some heart to them and humor. And then I like a technical challenge

of how are we gonna show this? You know, a lot of times you storyboard artists, you know, you get something that hasn't been shown before. And it has to be there. You can't just draw what's written. You got to like draw it. How is the audience going to recognize what this is? It's you mentioned the Fleischer thing. Were you also part of the, was that on one of your movies the Fleischer opening on Tutoramitu? That was great. I like that one. And then I then later, you know, they had the third of the show where which was Fleischer and they were both, we did different design. I think we used the

same Fry-Lila and Bender, but different but they had different gags, so different designs. And we built a, Matt always talked, he loves old animation too, and we always talked about those 3D backgrounds that Fleischer did. The something, I forget what they called them, the turntable. Oh, the process, yeah, yeah. And so if you look at that, when Frye goes down on the on the comet, and there's a lot a

scene of him kind of skipping and we built the 3d turntable of a diamond dilium that that's kind of rotating behind them. And I and we built it's built in the shape of a wedge, so that it's just rotating so you can see the center diamond mountain just kind of, it's just kind of turning while the foreground goes. And, um, I, in the animatic, it was kind of a long scene. And I said, just, you guys just leave it long. You'll be, you'll be happy when you see what it is. So again, there's still gives you a thing, you know, opportunities to do

stuff like that. TITLE CREDITS We talked about Ren and Stimpy and The Simpsons and Futurama. Is there anything that you worked on you'd like to highlight here that is maybe not as popular or might get overlooked compared to these bigger shows you're part of? TITLE CREDITS Simpsons, Ren and Stimpy, Duckman. You know, I had a rough draft in between the cancellation of Futurama and the Comedy Central shows. I went back to freelancing on The Simpsons, so I storyboarded like seasons eight, nine, and 10. And I tried to, you know, do... It was not as good money as directing. And then I did enjoy one of your favorite shows, Drawn Together, which has questionable, you know, it's crude. I guess I'm curious why you dislike

it so much. I know it's tasteless. For us, it was, I love the idea of the eight cartoon characters of different styles. And again, it was a challenge to get them working the way they were. Spanky was hard because we couldn't do them in Flash, but we tried to make it look like that. But I enjoyed that. The way I started supervising was like in season

three of Futurama, we did a season of baby blues. And Suzy Dieter actually brought us like the last five episodes of that from Warner Brothers, the writers were pretty unhappy with what was being done there was a little too cartoony. So she brought it to us and I directed one of those. And then when it seemed like we might they were going to wanted to do another season, I just I walked into Claudia and go, if you're looking for someone to supervise on that, I'd, I'd like to put my name in and she I think she said,

like, you think you could do that? I think so, you know, and so that was like my first supervising gig and, and we were still in production on Futurama. So we took a, you know, people who not even storyboard artists, some timers, just an assortment of people, some ADs and five people, we did like 13 episodes and that show was, I really liked it. It was great. And it got shelved. Like when UPN or I think we did it for the channel five or 13 or it just got, when

the sh net, when that network folded, they just took, wrote it off as a loss. And, um, okay. Actually, since you mentioned that, yeah, I had read that baby blues had like an unaired season that really happened. Wow. And it came back in color. I mean, it was in color. We we it was everything was done except, you know, final

sweetening and I you know, they still did tell us any back then because it was on film. And I really liked them. They were fun. And I ever I tried for a few years to anytime I heard somebody was there, I'd email them a you know, there's these cartoons sitting there. Wow. But I don't even call. This is a call to our listeners. We must free the Baby Blues Season 2 tapes. We gotta find them. You know, I have animatics and stuff.

I know I have color of it. I still work in the industry. I get nervous about dumping stuff, but I'd like to show some animatics or something. Man, that's, I will say say about, uh, drawn together. I think you guys, the, you guys are tasked with like, you know, this, the, the conceptually you have to do all of these different cartoon characters hanging out together and they all have to have a distinct style and still work together. And I think on a technical level, you guys pull that off so well.

I, I, yes, personally, I, I, I'm not the biggest fan of the scripts, but what you guys animated, you guys did a very, very good job, especially on like a Comedy Central budget. I think so too. Yeah. Yeah. It was pretty low budget. And then they eventually did a movie that was so low budget, we couldn't even be part of it.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It was, you know, there were certainly people at the studio who were a little less than happy with it too, but. Oh yeah, I don't want to insult any of the hard work you guys did on animation. We like the animation, that part's fine. All right.

Yeah. Nope, you know, we did Napoleon Dynamite. That was kind of fun. Like six episodes of that. Oh, I'm just shocked. I'm still reeling from like learning the baby blues. There's like lost episodes of baby blues out there. Just like that. And then Warner did a write off for that, like all the way back then. Like that's man. Yeah, like a full season of color that

had been returned. I'm surprised it hasn't like shown up on, you know, whatever, not adult swim, but just overnight stuff. Well, yeah, it did. Because that was like where they put, you know, Mission Hill and the oblongs and some baby blues. So I would have figured they would have just played it all on adult swim. So yeah, that figured they would have just played it all on adults with him. So yeah, that's even more surprising. Yeah.

It was good. But really good show. So Pete, as of this recording, we are towards the end of the second run of Hulu, future episodes, there are more on the few in the future. We know you can't say when those are coming. Can you tease anything? Can you let us know what to expect from that show or anything you're working on right now? I can tell you exactly when they're coming, probably.

Nowadays you do 20 episodes. So we did 20 episodes. They aired 10 in 2023, right? In July. They're airing the second 10 of that 20 now and Starting in July so I would I can't say for sure But my guess is the next 10 will air in July of 2025. Those are the ones we're working on right now I'm directing the tenth one as we speak and my storyboards on it, so those will, those are, you know, half of them are in Korea already being animated, they'll come back. Well, those 10, we will probably be finishing as

they're airing. And then the, we're about to start on the second 10. And those will be done shortly after that, but they won't air till 2026. And who knows if they'll, we'll do another 20 after that. You know, what can I tease? It's got Zaps in it. Oh boy. Will there be robots in upcoming Futurama's? There's a robot in every single episode. I can hear that.

He's not breaking an NDA, I don't think, by telling us that. Yeah. No, yeah, this new season has been a lot of fun. We really loved the, we did a whole episode on the Amazon, or Mamazon episode. That was a very fun one. So you guys are on the Comedy Central ones now, right?

Yeah, we just started covering the Comedy Central ones. I think we're gonna be doing Lethal Inspection next, and then I believe the late Philip J. Farai comes right after that. Oh, good. Yes, back then, see, we did 26 episodes, and they aired them in seasons of 13, and now we're down to 20 that are seasons of 10,

and next it's gonna be six episodes, and there'll be seasons of 10 and I, you know, next it's going to be six episodes and there'll be seasons of three, I guess. Some shows there's some live shows do eight, I guess everything's gotten smaller. Yeah. The, the 10 where we're used to it now, like, Oh 10, but it's, but it's 20. And then that's why we had to double check when the news came out, like, okay, Futurama got renewed. But, and we're like, wait, this is a real renewal, right? It's not just the next head and yeah, yeah. And last year, the, you know, the writers, uh,

writers and actors strike kinda, I don't know if we would have got picked up earlier. So we, you know, we started this run in, in January, like the, like both strikes ended, I guess, in September, October, something. And then people just needed time to get their wits back together. So we started up in January. You've been there from episode one to now and it's been new and tough. Yeah. I mean, I've told people I'd be happy to finish my career, just doing future almost. And I'm getting pretty close to there. So you'll do another finale

on the show and then maybe also another direct, another, uh, return season too. Yeah. Uh, I'm doing, I'm doing the finale of what we're working on now, which for us is season 10. I have no clue what it is on Hulu. It's very confused. Those numbers are always wrong. We love production season numbers. That's our holy Bible. But I don't know, like where would you see production numbers if they're not selling

DVDs anymore? I guess they're always buried at the back of the episode usually. I think they still include those in the Hulu ones. Right. 7ACV something or other. And we don't skip the credits, right Henry? No way. We're looking at all the storyboard artists. Yes. Yes. Writing down names. But no, but Peter, thank you. I could, I could ask you a million more questions about specific Duckman jokes as well. We are in disenchantment as well, but we really appreciate all of your time today. No problem. Yeah, thanks so much, Peter. Appreciate it. Thanks for having me. Thanks for watching!