by Sandra Fu

It would be just about every kid's dream to be made into a cartoon. For one adult by the name of Brendon Small, that dream has already become a reality in a series called Home Movies -- currently airing on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim -- based on the directorial adventures of an eight-year-old auteur named, you guessed it, Brendon Small.

How exactly does one get lucky enough to be immortalized in animated form like Brendon? You start out at Berklee College of Music in Boston, grow disenchanted, take some writing classes, make the jump to standup comedy, get discovered by Dr. Katz producer, Loren Bouchard, and go nuts from there. And that's all before turning 25. Sounds easy, right?

Small is not only one of the creators of the show, but also a writer (with Bill Braudis), the voice of two characters (Brendon and Wayne), as well as its composer. After all, he knows and still experiments with his music. Plus, he performs standup, writes screenplays and has directorial aspirations of his own. In other words, he's got a closet full of hats, many worn at the same time.

Sandra Fu: I saw in an article you wrote that you're a self-proclaimed artist.
Brendon Small: Oh, that was kind of a joke article.

SF: You're a musician, a standup comedian and you do Home Movies. I'd call that being an artist.
BS: OK, sure, if you insist! I'm pretty inspired by film, not much by TV. Occasionally by standup or sketch comedy, anybody doing something different that usually gets a small audience. More independent or alternative things. At the same time, I like blockbuster films too. But right now, I'm going through a documentary phase. I'm really into documentaries, figuring how everybody edits these things. I'm reading a lot of editing books and it helps to learn how people put things together. I think working on Home Movies helps me realize that I can control a project to a degree, but once it leaves my hands and everybody else is working on it, it changes a lot. When an episode of Home Movies airs, I really notice how much it changed from the original perception of the show. But at the same time, all the beats are there, the story that you wanted to tell is there, but it's not exactly the same thing. Because the nature of how we do things is like improv.

SF: And it's always interesting and funny because the improv involves three precocious kids.
BS: Yeah, that's another thing. I mean, it's fun to have TV shows where kids are really smart and stuff, but the way we try to do it is that they're socially smart but not book smart. They might have a bigger vocabulary than most kids, but ultimately they're pretty dumb and they've got a lot of learning to do. I mean, they can be incredibly childish, but I think that they're pretty advanced socially. I play it almost like if I were me, right now, being an eight-year-old. The same things that go through your mind are fair game, so they just animate them as kids and, all of a sudden, they're smart. But they're not; they're as dumb as I am in real life.

SF: Well, you got this far, so you've got to be somewhat smart.
BS: Don't be so sure.

I am not a role model. "I think that people turn to Adult Swim not just because its animated -- though that's a big part of it -- but because it's funny and different. The animation is a good mask to allow people to be unique. Whereas if you're doing a traditional sitcom, you won't get away with half the shit that you're doing in animation."

SF: So how does Home Movies move from improv to the screen?
BS: This is going to be hell for you to wade through. When we get the script, we'll do a table read over the phone; me and Bill and Loren Bouchard and Melissa are always on the call and we'll double up on characters to make sure the story is tracking and it's funny. And if it's funny to us, then we usually go for it. Or, if we go too far over the edge (which we usually don't, since we know the logic of the show at this point), then we'll just rewrite it to our satisfaction. There's no network breathing down our neck. Cartoon Network is totally hands-off, especially because if they start looking at our scripts and getting nitpicky, it doesn't matter because we're going to improvise like crazy anyway. So then we'll get in the studio with all the actors in Boston and go through the scene a couple of times. We read the whole thing through and make sure it works. If it's a script I wrote, I'll go, "Guys let's make sure and hit this one beat because that's going to come up later on." Everything else we can fuck around with. So I'll make sure that whatever the story points are that they come through, and we'll just try and get the jokes how they were written originally. Sometimes they'll work and we'll get a good performance out of them; sometimes I'll realize the jokes that I wrote are kind of falling on their face. So we'll just go, "Let's take this wherever and turn the script over; you guys know how the scene goes now, so let's try and improvise there." Then usually we'll just go in some direction that it never was meant to. It's unusable sometimes.

SF: But you've probably also gotten some of your best stuff from it.
BS: Sometimes it's really good stuff. Sometimes we'll invent characters on the spot.

SF: Are you involved in any part of the animation? Conceptually, who came up with the characters?
BS: Conceptually, no. That was the production company, but nowadays when I am putting new characters into the show, I'll take a look at them to see if they look right. But, again, it's a pretty collaborative environment. There are a lot of animators really putting their two cents in, so a lot of the stuff you're laughing at is sometimes them on their own. They've gotten incredibly good at the acting of the characters. Up front, they were learning how to do it, but now their acting has gotten a lot better and funnier too, I think.

SF: Do you prefer this improvisational method?
BS: I think that most TV shows will basically do what we're doing, but they call them table reads or jam sessions. What we do is eliminate some of the table reads, because a script in an Everybody Loves Raymond-type show will go through like four to seven drafts. We go through two drafts, and then we improvise like crazy; we're kind of writing in the booth.

SF: Are you involved in the post-production?
BS: Yeah, sometimes they'll give me a trimmed-down version, so I can hear what they've done so far. And I'll have suggestions or lines. Sometimes its easy to lose objectivity in all these facets of production, as a writer, in the booth or afterwards. It's like, "Is this still funny? I don't know." I'll go, "Yo let's just get rid of that line" and everybody else will go, "Nooo, that's the favorite." "Oh really, I can't tell anymore. I don't know. Whatever; what do you guys want to do? If you can talk me into or out of something, if you have a good reason then great, but otherwise it doesn't count." You learn how to argue and pick your battles.

SF: So Home Movies was initially for UPN and then Cartoon Network picked it up?
BS: Right. We did five episodes for UPN and those were done with really loose outlines, no script or anything, so it was really hard on the editors. Then they didn't want anymore and people were shopping the show around. We were pretty sure it wouldn't get picked up anywhere, but Cartoon Network really liked it and they were just really cool. And the cool thing about having a show that you have five episodes of is that you've kind of proven yourself -- that you can do it already -- so people will kind of back off and let you do what you do anyway. So what's cool about Cartoon Network is that they leave us alone.

When you think big, think Small. "I think it'd be so easy and fun to do a movie. We could probably do it in a weekend. It'd be a real shitty movie, but it'd be fun."

SF: They have some pretty radical stuff on Adult Swim.
BS: Yeah, they have crazy stuff. Our stuff is pretty tame in comparison. I think our characters are probably the most sane; I think everyone else is insane. Like Space Ghost: as funny as he is, is not sane. There's nothing keeping him grounded. A lot of the shows on Adult Swim are really edgy, and I think it's fun to be surrounded by shows like that. Because Home Movies is probably least like the other shows, which is cool for me -- I like sticking out more. It doesn't follow the same tone or structure as the other shows.

SF: So what's new with Adult Swim and Home Movies? You've done three seasons, right?
BS: We've done three seasons and we're beginning a fourth, so there's another on the way. They've been completely hands-off and totally cool. I think I have more problems with the pacing and structure of the show than anybody else above us, the ones who give us money to do the show. I think I'm way more nitpicky than they are. The shit that they probably don't notice is stuff that drives me insane at times.

SF: So now that Home Movies is on Sunday through Thursday, do you know when we might see some new episodes?
BS: I think it's going to be awhile before you see some new ones. We're still finding out about the scheduling and there's a lot of negotiation going on right now about the future of Home Movies.

SF: Do you think Adult Swim is satisfying a demand for the growing popularity of animation, especially with the 18-and-over crowd? Do you think that people want to see this kind of adult animation?
BS: Yes, it seems like it. It seems like it targets a pretty specific group of people. Like a lot of college kids really like the show. When I do standup sometimes, I'll talk to a lot of people afterwards and they all seem to fit into the same demographic. Though a lot of Goth chicks like the show for some reason. I think that all the shows are funny and that people turn to Adult Swim not just because its animated -- though that's a big part of it -- but because it's funny and different. The animation is a good mask to allow people to be unique. Whereas if you're doing a traditional sitcom -- with the same writers and producers but with live-action actors -- you won't get away with half the shit that you're doing in animation.

SF: Some of the absurd things you can get away with in animation you can't accomplish with live actors.
BS: Exactly. I think you definitely get away with some really absurd things that you just never would have gotten away with otherwise. I think the only show that got away with absurdity and still didn't have that big a following was Get a Life. I'm a huge Chris Elliot fan. For some reason, it was on Sunday nights, so the last thing you saw before going to school and hating your life was this absurd world where he got away with weird stuff.

SF: What animated programs do you like?
BS: There's some really cool anime or animation that's strictly a visual form of art. That's pretty awesome; the best thing I think you can do with animation is to have no voices whatsoever and let the visuals tell the story. That's what's cool about Samurai Jack. It's got so little dialogue, just a lot of cool storytelling just with images. I'm also a fan of old Disney; I love old innocent Disney films like Peter Pan and Pinocchio. But I think the coolest stuff that's animated on TV now is definitely on Adult Swim. I mean, The Simpsons are awesome, but I don't follow it much anymore.

SF: Do you -- like Brendon from Home Movies -- have aspirations to direct?
BS: Definitely. With Home Movies, you have 22 minutes, but with film you can tell a really big story. Sometimes Bill Braudis and I try to get in and find out cool, new things we can do with these characters to keep the show alive, so that five years from now no one's sick of it. You're still discovering things about these characters that you didn't know, so we're always trying to broaden the world but keep it small and simple at the same time. And we always envy filmmakers being able to do that in a film, while we have to sit and think about how six years from now Jason and Melissa are going to look at each other. But TV's also cool when used in an episodic format. If you watch what HBO is doing with The Sopranos, they treat TV like telling a gigantic story over five or six years. Animation doesn't really do that. I think everyone's always afraid of losing an audience that says, "I don't understand what happened last week." And even though you can recap, some always fear jumping into the middle of a season. Our show is set up so you don't have to know anything, but I always envied the people who were allowed to tell a huge story. But film is definitely the place to go; it's no mistake that Brendon Small is a film director. That's something I've always been interested in, and it's fun to explore a character interested in that. Even though he's a hack.

Child's play. "It's fun to have TV shows where kids are really smart, but the way we try to do it is that they're socially smart but not book smart. They might have a bigger vocabulary than most kids, but ultimately they're pretty dumb and they've got a lot of learning to do."

SF: Brendon's films often parody the things happening in his life, which is very clever.
BS: Oh, thanks. You know how it came about with him being a filmmaker? I was in the booth with Loren on the outside, and we were talking about kid stuff and what the character would do. So I started doing this improv where I was playing with toys and doing all of their voices. It was really funny and we got lots of laughs. So we thought, "How old is this kid supposed to be?" Because at some point you can't do that anymore as a kid, you're not allowed to. And then I thought about how I used to make movies when I was a kid, and you were allowed to do that forever. You could do that stupid stuff forever. Also, I love sketch comedy, the idea of having shorts with no ending that can be funny on their own, have their own kind of law and logistics about them. I also thought about how to get sketches into a show that's pretty much a family show. So decided to put a movie camera in and that settled everything. That's how the show ended up being Home Movies.

SF: Much of Home Movies' flavor comes from its music or songs like "Don't Kill Children, Don't Run Them Over," or "Don't Put Marbles in Your Nose." How does that musical process work?
BS: I've done different things. Sometimes we'll have a scene that falls flat on its face and so we'll go, "Let's get rid of the scene and we'll write a visual montage out. I'm going to write some music out and it's going to flow straight to the next scene." That way you won't know there was this terrible scene that sucked in the first place. I'll do it on the fly, grab my guitar or get on the piano, and just write something on the spot. One day, we were fooling around for the second episode, and I wanted to put some heavy metal stuff in. So I thought, "Why don't we have a kid play guitar so there's a film scoring guy around all the time?" So we created Duane -- that I do the voice of also -- who can play any kind of music. We also did a Kafka rock opera that the audience seemed to like. I originally wanted to do a rock opera based on the movie, Tron.

SF: Really?
BS: It was fun for me, because this was early on and I got to have a big conference call with all these lawyers. We were wasting all this money, and it was fun to waste money -- it's not my money, what do I care? I asked, "Hey, can I parody Tron?" and they said, "I don't think you can. Disney owns it and we don't want to get into a fight with Disney." The truth was I was parodying or satirizing rock opera, not Tron, but they said if we could find something in public domain then we could write a rock opera about that. Someone mentioned Kafka and I had read "Metamorphosis" years ago, but I wanted to not do any research and write a rock opera about what I kind of remembered because that's what a kid would probably do. Skim the real story and fuck up a couple of things along the way. So we sandwiched it into the episode.

SF: So when you and Bill come together, do you think of sections where you can integrate music?
BS: Yeah, he'll write some lyrics sometimes. He doesn't play music or anything, but he'll come to me with an idea and ask me to come up with an acoustic thing. But ultimately, I went to music school and he didn't, so he can't tell me what to do.

SF: Because you're always going to right.
BS: I'm always going to be right. I know everything about music. I went to college for it.

SF: So if you could be a rock or a movie star, which would it be?
BS: I think movie star. You usually get a longer career, and I think you can always do music at home. I don't think you can act at home. You can sit in front of the mirror and pretend you're somebody else for a while, but I think people will think you're insane.

SF: Has there been any talk of a feature length version of Home Movies, Power Puff Girls style?
BS: Internally, we've talked about it, and I think it would be a lot of fun. I don't know if we have a market big enough to warrant it. I think the show has the kind of exposure that I think it should have. Like someone has to tell you about it, which is kind of fun. I think that people feel like it's their show. It's kind of hidden, an underground thing. But I think it'd be so easy and fun to do a movie. We could probably do it in a weekend. It'd be a real shitty movie, but it'd be fun.

13 March 03

Sandra Fu has published articles on everything from bulimia to pissing while standing up for Melt Magazine, Migente.com, drDrew.com, drKoop.com and more. She's currently finishing her first novel, Sycamore Circle.and rifling through a shoe collection than would turn Imelda Marcos green.

GET	MORE	MORPHIZM
The Greatest Show on Television Now that we've watched whiny brats complain about living together, gold-diggers chase alleged millionaires and celebrities literally turn into puppets, how can we redeem ourselves? By watching Adult Swim, the only show on TV brave enough to push the envelope and take no prisoners . . . . MORE	Spinning the Body Horror Web From flies to twins to mugwumps and now on to spiders, David Cronenberg has mastered the art of taking the mind and body apart. But that primordial split is more destructive and understated in his latest release, Spider. Which is why it may just be the best film he has ever made. . . . MORE	Thirteen Ways to Prepare for War Egged on by CNN and Fox News and entranced by war drums from the hawkish White House, you're probably wondering how you can ready yourself for the imminent war with Saddam Hussein and Iraq. Here's a hint: step on the gas and pray like hell . . . MORE

Name That Regime! They've greedily sold chemical weapons with but one purpose in mind: to kill as many humans as possible at once. Plus, they've imprisoned thousands of their citizens up without due process. So exactly who are these civil liberty party animals? . . . MORE

Something That Makes People Think From handily winning DJ throw-downs to jazzing with Herbie Hancock and Blue Man Group, Rob Swift has been spreading the turntablist ethic far and wide. But with the release of his latest solo effort, Sound Event, he's topped even his own tougher-than-leather standards. The interview awaits you . . . MORE

From Electric Cars to Demon Weed Did media mogul William Randolph Hearst really initiate the criminalization of dope to save his own skin? Are Bush and Cheney destroying consumer demand for hybrid? The answers can be found in the first installment of the Conspiracy Corner . . . MORE