Slimed!: An Oral History of Nickelodeon's Golden Age (21 page)

JOHN KRICFALUSI:
When they ordered season two, they told me they wanted twenty new episodes . . . in the same time it took us to deliver
six
in the previous year! I told Vanessa that would be impossible. I tried to talk her into going down to at least thirteen—like a regular cartoon series—but no. Halfway through season two, Vanessa called me and told me they wanted to do a
Ren & Stimpy
movie. Normally this would be great news, but they were expanding too fast and it wasn’t realistic.

JIM BALLANTINE:
It was real tense. John would get really angry at the artists, and because they weren’t producing anything useful, he would want them fired. But he really didn’t like conflict, so he had me do it. That’s how I got the title Pink Axe. It was the first time I’d ever fired people. Many of the artists who were fired were relieved, because a lot of them would get blocked with their drawing. They
couldn’t
draw because they were so afraid John would criticize them. He had a problem when they would listen to music on headphones, because he thought it meant they were only using half their brain.

CHRIS RECCARDI:
I was so depressed and insecure all the time, afraid of failing, that I had trouble working. When I got my first storyboard done on time that was reasonably clear and well done, John added a lot of stuff and embellished it, but then he gave me an extra check in my envelope. It was a bonus for good work. He did have the ability to reward as well as to punish.

CHERYL CHASE:
Sometimes people buckled under the pressure because John needed things a certain way. He was a perfectionist, but he got what he wanted. Some could handle it, some couldn’t. I could handle it. I loved working for him. It was fun and creative. I dug it.

CHRISTINE DANZO:
Eventually, production fell behind and Nick’s—Mary’s and Vanessa’s—reaction was to impose stricter, more invasive controls on production. They were bypassing John and myself and going directly to Spumco personnel, asking questions and giving instructions, which caused major confusion and discord within the studio.

EDDIE FITZGERALD:
The second season started with John, right up to the middle of the season. Then in the middle—it was a horrible day—John was in Canada and I came to work. One of the PAs came over and said, “Hey everybody, you can put your pencils down, because we’re under orders to pack up and send the show to Nick.” It took me by
complete
surprise. A friend of mine, Mike Fontanelli, felt the same way. We were just there with our mouths open.

MIKE FONTANELLI:
Eddie found out Nick was trying to take the show away from John. What was happening wasn’t right. We called an infamous meeting in the basement of Spumco. It was informal. No one
had
to go and lots of people chose not to.

EDDIE FITZGERALD:
I said that because John was the brain behind the show and since it wasn’t drawn or produced like any other show out there, we should hold out. And I look around the room, and some people are looking at the ground. I didn’t understand why.

THOMAS MINTON:
Eddie was—and is—in love with the process of discovery and boundlessly optimistic, regardless of the circumstances in which he may find himself.

EDDIE FITZGERALD:
What I didn’t know is that half the studio knew about this for some time and had negotiated salaries with Nick. The people who knew about it were reluctant to talk at the meeting, and finally a girl stood up and said, “This sounds like McCarthyism to me. You’re saying we have to sign a loyalty oath to John or else we can’t work. And I’m against McCarthy.”

MIKE FONTANELLI:
Someone made a remark that I will remember until my dying day: “It sounds like you’re asking for a loyalty oath.” At that point, we lost control of the meeting. All of a sudden, Eddie and I were inquisitors at HUAC.

JIM BALLANTINE:
Nick pulled the plug. John called us all in a room and told us he had to shut down the show. Nick stopped paying Spumco.

BILL WRAY:
John burst into tears and had to run into the other room because he couldn’t compose himself. I’ve never seen him cry before or since. He said some pretty damning things to me after it happened, too. That he was relieved, it was killing him, hadn’t had a solid shit in two years. There was a lot of spin on his emotions to accept this devastating loss.

JOHN KRICFALUSI:
Of course I wasn’t glad to leave. I created these characters and a whole new studio system that allowed creative people to do their best work. It was a long struggle against all odds to make “creator-driven” cartoons happen. I had proven that my ideas and methods worked and expected to be rewarded for it. To clear up a misconception, the show was not taken away from only
me
, but from the whole studio.

RICHARD PURSEL:
I was sharing an office with Bob Camp when the whole split was engineered; I entered the office one day to see Bob and producer Jim Ballantine huddled around a speakerphone call with Vanessa and Mary Harrington, who were in New York. Bob went around the studio soon after, telling people, “You’ve got a job . . . if you want it.” Bob raved that things would be so much more fun without John telling us what to do, but when I told Bob I couldn’t in good conscience leave John for a job with him, he called me a traitor.

BOB CAMP:
John called me into his office and gave me his blessing to do the show and the feature they were talking about. I promised to make sure his unfinished shows were the best ones.

MIKE FONTANELLI:
Jim Ballantine tried to lure me to Nick’s Games studio with a pack of lies. I got a phone call from him promising me directorship and a 40 percent increase in salary just for starters. I told him I wouldn’t betray anyone, especially not a fellow cartoonist. So he told me John was on board. Ten seconds later, I was on the phone with John and it was news to him. I never saw Games. I never set foot in the place. My nose is clean.

JIM BALLANTINE:
I wanted to keep working and so did most of the people on the show. Anyone from Spumco who wanted to work on the show at Games was welcome to. I didn’t approach Mike Fontanelli or anyone else. Vanessa or other Nick folks may have.

MARY HARRINGTON:
We were a little removed from that. Jim Ballantine was on the day-to-day of the show, and he was more in tune with what was really going on. He weighed into the decisions.

VANESSA COFFEY:
Jim Ballantine and I would make lists, and he would talk to people because there were obvious loyalists. Mainly it was, “Here’s who’s coming, here’s who’s not.”

GEOFFREY DARBY:
It’s just business. And that’s not a negative. If I’m Bob Camp, I need to be able to do X-Y-ZED, and that’s a promise I’m making to the network. He needs to get people who are gonna help him
do
X-Y-ZED, not people who are going to throw themselves in Bob’s way.

EDDIE FITZGERALD:
In my opinion, it couldn’t have happened without the artists going over there, and I’ll include Billy West in that. I think Billy did a horrible, horrible thing. There’s another guy whose hand I wouldn’t shake. I’m disgusted by it.

BILLY WEST:
Everybody has been so misinformed for years and years and years. I just came to work. And there were a lot of people at work there. If I
didn’t
continue to go on, all those people might’ve been out of work.

MARY HARRINGTON:
When we took over the show and needed Billy to do Ren now, too, Vanessa and I were at a recording session with him and he was saying, “You should be ashamed of yourself! How can you do what you’ve done?!” He was pretending to be Ren doing John’s voice.

BILLY WEST:
That was not my war. That was between John and Nickelodeon. The only pressure I had was being able to scream and yell and perform the hell out of the characters. I came to know John, but it wasn’t like I hung out with him all the time. People tried to spin it like I was a bad guy who left behind some fallen comrade, and it wasn’t anything like that.

BILL WRAY:
John has always tried to spin it that if Bob Camp hadn’t been willing, they wouldn’t have done it. That somehow Bob stabbed him in the back. He had to blame somebody.
No, they fired you because you would not bend!

BOB CAMP:
It’s easy to try to blame the network for things going wrong instead of accepting responsibility for what went down. I’m on good terms with everybody except John. And frankly, I couldn’t care less.

EDDIE FITZGERALD:
Bob Camp, who led people away from the studio, later came over and talked to me at lunchtime, saying something reconciliatory. He wanted to shake hands, but I wouldn’t. I still won’t to this day. Bob had talent and was an interesting person to talk to, but he had a deep moral flaw. It was an immoral act to take John’s show away from him, especially in view of all the things John had done for him. Dante reserved the lowest level of hell for the person who did evil to his benefactor.

MARY HARRINGTON:
I would say three-fourths of the crew stayed, and the rest didn’t because it was too difficult for them to continue.

JOHN KRICFALUSI:
Only a handful of shortsighted fools went with Nickelodeon to help them form their own studio. Then they all fought among themselves and wondered why no one was loyal to each other. One of them very angrily told me on the phone months later how Bob Camp was a real backstabber. Duh! Surprise!

MIKE FONTANELLI:
John was supposed to fade away and be forgotten, and they were all to move on from
Ren & Stimpy
to even bigger and greater things. It didn’t work out that way, because the new Games cartoons were mean-spirited and ugly and more expensive. And they were as late as ever, if not later.

BOB CAMP:
We did the series, got them done on time and on budget.

CHRIS RECCARDI:
Censorship wasn’t so bad when we were at Spumco. It was harder at Games. John was very good at negotiating with them on that level.

WILL MCROBB:
In a way, Bob Camp’s era was probably grosser than it had ever been. But what had gotten John in trouble was his “dad issues” were working their way through characters. Bob’s episodes were tame in comparison to the psychosis John brought to George Liquor and to the “Anthony” episode. The father in that episode was the most psychotic character John ever made. Everyone who saw it said,
This is not what we want to show to kids
.

RAYMOND ZIBACH:
We always wondered what the hell Nickelodeon was thinking. Why did they want
Ren & Stimpy
and then censor it all to hell? We all hoped that Viacom would leave it on MTV; that pairing made the most sense and was hugely successful when they did that for a few weeks.

VANESSA COFFEY:
It was working on
our
network. Just because Viacom owns all the networks doesn’t mean we don’t still compete with each other. We were getting good ad sales off the shows. And kids loved
Ren & Stimpy
.

LINDA SIMENSKY:
It was
ours
! We liked it! We were a little territorial. We enjoyed the notoriety. It put Nick Animation on the map.

GERRY LAYBOURNE:
If Nickelodeon had been one year further in its development and stronger, I would’ve done the right thing. Which would have been to give it to my struggling little sister, MTV.

GEOFFREY DARBY:
We said yes so many times to John and there was a point where enough is enough. It was like being a battered wife—and I don’t understand battered wives, how they can do it. So we finally had to tell John,
NO
.

GERRY LAYBOURNE:
I really took it seriously. I read psychology books about what happens with these kids that have had a really troubled childhood, which he had had. How do you manage them? It was painful. And we had to fire him.

WILL MCROBB:
There’s a
Ren & Stimpy
DVD that came out that was from the season after John had been fired. He’s on the commentary track with all the “traitors” who took the show over. What sick person thought of putting John’s commentary on those shows?

HERB SCANNELL:
The issues that were there were about delivery and consistency. Unfortunately, it happened the way it happened. It was really tough for all of us. John made some great episodes. The best of the whole batch.

JACK SPILLUM:
You’d have to be naïve to think this kind of thing doesn’t happen all the time. Everybody should get their shot, but where do you draw the line? On
Doug
, we met every schedule and I don’t think we ever went over budget. But the creativity was there. And Jim Jinkins got to do what he wanted to do. That balance, that dichotomy, was what cartoon-making should be all about.

KEN SCARBOROUGH:
I was sad when
Doug
went on after we were at Nickelodeon and they didn’t keep Billy West. That was a big mistake.

WENDY LITWACK:
Billy decided he wanted more than everyone else in the cast. When you do a show like this, there’s a thing called “Favored Nation.” It’s very important that nobody makes more than anybody else. They’re all putting in the same amount of time.

BILLY WEST:
I don’t spend much time mourning the end of a cartoon. For me, it’s time for another door to open. But what did bother me was that they were gonna go to Disney and they were sending me these deal memos that I was ripping up and throwing away. They were outrageous demands. They wanted me to do upward of twelve characters for less money than I made on Nickelodeon. They also said that I would have to fly from California to New York, because I was getting ready to move to California. I would have had to go back from California to New York just to do
Doug
. I said this is a little much, and they kept sending these memos. And finally I said, “Look—all of you—I wish you nothing but the best, but leave me alone!”