Afternoon, geeks!
So after throwing countless pebbles at Jackson Publick’s window, holding a boombox over my head blaring David Bowie, he finally came out to the balcony and greeted me. We got to talk about his pants, VENTURE BROS, the writing process of a script with Doc Hammer, David Bowie, how he got into writing for THE TICK, and what he thinks about social media.
We also talked a bit about this sweet art book that was just released from Dark Horse Books: “Go Team Venture! The Art and Making of Venture Bros”, which is described on Amazon as “This oversized book is the comprehensive companion to the art and making of the The Venture Bros. and includes a foreword by Patton Oswalt!”
I hope to get my hands on a copy soon and share what I think about it with you guys!
BE:
How are you doing today?
JP:
Alright. We’re busy but stable. *laughs* I got my show pants on today!
BE
Is that like a pair of pants that you never wash?
JP:
Pretty much, yeah.
BE:
Alright, I think I’ll stop the questions about that there.
*both laugh*
So I understand that the new season is kicking off with a three part special, is that right?
JP:
Sort of. I hesitate to call it a special because people bitch that there are only seven other episodes. It’s really just the first three episodes forming a tripich together close the book on one storyline.
BE:
Okay, so that’s a little different from what you’ve done before with the other seasons, right? Because normally there is a whole one-off thing and THEN the season begins, or have those always technically been a part of the seasons?
JP:
You know ever since Season 5 we switched over to a ten episode season order, we’ve struggled to fit in everything we have wanted to say into those episodes. So I think on Season 5 we kind of dropped the ball and didn’t do a finale, but we had a finale-type story to tell so we opened Season 6 with it, made that into two episodes, slammed them together and called that a special. The same thing happened to Season 6 we ran out of episodes before we ran out of story.
BE:
So I’m sure you know that you’re running out of episodes as you come to it, do you guys just say “Forget it, we’ll just get it later”?
JP:
*laughs* That is what ends up happening. We’re working on it, and we’re like “Oh, crap!” Other stories pop up in the middle. When you’re writing the season, it’s kind of hard. You sort of follow your inspiration, and sometimes you have this big story you want to get to but you haven’t quite figured it out yet. You haven’t quite solved its problems, and you’re go “Okay, screw it let’s go on to one of these ones that we can get done. Because I just thought of this idea last week, and I’m super hot for it, and it’s really simple story. It’s all figured out, I can write this in two weeks.” So you do that one because you have to keep moving forward. These finales and premieres and specials, we want to write them together but we never find the time where we’re both on the same page because we’re writing separate scripts. If we both get both of our scripts done in two weeks, we can reconvene and write this one together, but then one of us isn’t done in two weeks and the other one doesn’t want to wait around so he starts his next script. So sometimes they get away from us, but we have another season so…
BE:
But so you guys do eventually get together, and so the two different scripts you were writing eventually do come together?
JP:
Yeah. In the case of these first three episodes we kind of tag teamed on them. I wrote the first part, he wrote the second part, and then we were supposed to write the third part together and I ended up writing it alone because of what exactly I’ve been describing. I was ready to work on another one, but the other was blahty-blah. *laughs* It’s not very exciting. We never physically write in the same room. We sometimes trade off scenes.
BE:
Are you guys typically in different parts of the country while this [the writing process] is going on?
JP:
We will be going forward. I just moved to Los Angeles last year right as we were finishing writing, we haven’t written a season as geographically apart as we are now but we always just kind of did our own writing at home, but we’d get together and kind of broadstroke--brainstorm and go off and write our own sections of scripts. We’ve never been a writing team who huddles over the same laptop at the same time.
BE:
What was the original intent for what the show was supposed to be, and how has that changed over time?
JP:
It has and it hasn’t. Obviously its initial inspiration was JONNY QUEST.
BE:
And it supposed to be a parody of JONNY QUEST?
JP:
Kind of, it was its own thing, but clearly a parody of the JONNY QUEST kind of world, and that blue-print. Which I realized was this kind of strange, non-existent genre: a little bit of sci-fi, a little bit comic book, a little bit of espionage thing, which are all things I am interested in. So it was a big umbrella to do a lot inside of. Just imagining--just being appalled at the way Jonny Quest was being raised and how it was similar to a lot of other boy-adventurer stuff from yesteryear. Just like this is the worst parenting. This is the worst danger. What if you grew up like this?
The intent would have never been let’s just parody JONNY QUEST specifically, over and over. It’s neither mine nor Doc’s nature to just do parody or the sitcom thing that just resets every week with a villain of the week, and a joke of the week. So the way it has changed the most is that we broadened our influences and broadened our emotional palettes. We just dug into our own original characters and made them our own which was inevitable. We were starting to do by the end of Season 1. I would say it just grew organically as we’ve gotten older, and more mature, perhaps. It’s become less about shock humor or parody or the kind of 90s nihilism.
BE:
You could say the show kind of grew with you.
JP:
Yeah, the culture has too. We’re just growin’!
BE:
I think over the years it made for a better and better show. You definitely haven’t been disappointing any fans [that I’ve spoken to] with new episodes.
JP:
There are fans who tuned in for Brock beating the crap out of and pissing on mummies. Who have little by little, more and more disappointed with each season!
BE:
He’s still a badass! He’s still cool! I personally loved that part and haven’t been disappointed.
JP:
That’s good, that’s our perfect fan!
BE:
I heard that you originally had a planned ending for the show, but that’s in the past now, because you kept going. Do you currently have any planned ending for the show and will it be ending anytime soon?
JP:
I don’t. The idea of wrapping everything up in a bow is less and less appealing to me. Regardless of how long Adult Swim wants to keep making the show, how long we’re still creatively inspired to make the show: we still have gas in our tank and want to keep going. When the inevitable day comes, who knows what the ending will be at this point. I’ve leaned less toward tying things up with a bow, and more towards a kind of just saying goodbye to the audience and letting them know that the world goes on.
BE:
Because that’s real life.
JP:
Yeah, exactly.
BE:
Say you were about to start a new season, and you got the news that this is going to be your last season. Would you go ahead and end it like that, or would you try to make some things wrap up on the last episode of that season?
JP:
Sure, if we had any kind of outstanding mysteries or cliff hangers we left, we would probably wrap up anything we owe the audience for at least pay pay lip service to the idea that they’ll never find out. We would at least point the characters in a direction.
BE:
Do you have any other projects that you are working on that you would like to talk about?
JP:
Not really, I’m kind of all in on the VENTURE BROS.
BE:
It’s all consuming of your life right now, huh?
JP:
Yeah, do I kind of live in (what?). Although there is a lot of time between seasons for the viewer, there isn’t really much for us. Once we finish one, we start writing the next one, and we get as many scripts done as possible before we even start production. And production is all consuming. I have a couple of little small things I work on when I a free moment or a little bit of a break when a season ends. I blow the dust off of my notebook and go “huh, could I pull this together quickly and pitch it.” There are things with friends of mine we dreamed of making or doing, but we’re always too busy or crap like that. There are books I’ve read that I want to make into a movie or adapt this, and then you find out that the rights already belong to somebody else. One of those just came out this year, it was this thing I’ve been wanting to do for like ten years.
BE:
Let’s talk about past projects of yours, how did you get into working on THE TICK?
JP:
When I was in college I self published a comic book. It was like a superhero bizarro type of parody called “Cement Shoes”. I worked at a comic book shop at the time, and the owner of the comic shop funded it and created a publishing company to put it out. I was promoting my second issue at a comic convention in New York, I think this was January of ‘92. Ben Edlund came up to my table at the end of day. So we started talking, and traded actual snail mail letters for a while. ...I think THE TICK cartoon was just starting up… so while Ben was consumed with the show, they hired me to write a TICK comic spinoff called “The Tick: Karma Tornado”. And just in the process of discussing those stories I got to be better friends with Ben and I met him at his apartment. When the cartoon upped its episode order he was like “You want to write one of these?” and I was like “Sure!” And I started storyboarding for it and became a part of that team. I was still in college, it was the most amazing part time job you could have in college because I was so broke. One television animation script you could live off of a year the way you live in college. I moved to New York the next year. We did two more seasons and were writing what would have been the fourth season when it got cancelled. The four of us that worked on the cartoon got to work on the [2001] live-action version, and that’s where I met Patrick Warburton and that’s why he does Brock’s voice.
BE:
You seem to be a big fan of David Bowie. Would you say he has had a huge influence on you and your work?
JP:
I mean, yes and no. Obviously we put him in the show. You can’t grow up in the 70s and see that strange creature on your television and not be affected by it. He’s in the pantheon of strange, wonderful, and colorful things that you saw at an impressionable age. Along with a bunch of movies I saw as a kid, there were just things that stick with you and he was always so mysterious and strange. That’s why we made him the king of super villains. This guy is not human, he was something special and wonderful and weird.
BE:
It was revealed at the beginning of Season 6 that The Sovereign of the Guild of Calamitous Intent had passed away, and it seemed almost too coincidental that Bowie had just passed away in real life, even though The Sovereign was revealed to not be Bowie. Was that deliberate?
JP:
You know, there is never a perfect time for David Bowie to pass away.
*both laugh*
BE:
Of course not! But what I mean is did it just work out that way, or did you work that in?
JP:
No, I think by that time we decided that he wasn’t [The Sovereign], because David Bowie was a real man walking around in the world. There’s only so much you can use of a real person before we had to go “No, he’s not actually David Bowie.” He’s a shapeshifter who took on this persona of David Bowie because of course! He is the coolest guy in the world!
BE:
Thank you clarifying that for me, you’ve settled some arguments. Changing gears, have you changed the way that you use social media in light of the recent scandals that have been happening? Like how Dan Harmon had to leave Twitter recently, or James Gunn?
JP:
I have very little social media presence, it hasn’t interested me that much. Basically I crawl out of the woodwork every two years to say “Hey, watch our show!” or “Hey, buy some T-shirts!” I follow people, but I don’t check these things religiously. I’ve never related to the compulsion to post my thoughts to the world. I respect and admire people who do it well and regularly. There are comedians I follow and I love, but I’ve never wanted to go “Here’s a funny thought, let me share it.” Because I’m desperate to come up with enough funny thoughts to put into a TV show, and package that the way I want to.
I’m actually relatively ignorant of a lot of the controversial stuff that’s been going on. Like, I get wind of it. Everybody is so angry about so many things. So righteously, some not. It just seems like a nightmare, the internet right now. You can’t post a nice thing without somebody saying something horrible back to you or telling you that it’s “not nice enough”, or “what about this”. It seems like a weird time to want to open your mouth about anything. We’re all pretty sensitive right now.... Everyone’s a bit touchy, and flaring up. There have always been horrible people on the internet, but it just seems like they’re not ashamed about it anymore. Some of the things people say, like oh my God.
BE:
It’s easy to be a dick behind a screen.
JP:
It always has been. I’ve never understood the desire to go on the internet and comment about anything.
BE:
But you lurk pretty hard?
JP:
Sure? Like “Oh, I just saw a movie and I gotta tell people it sucked.” Just why? Who cares what you think!
BE:
Well, apparently it’s my job now to talk about movies that suck.
JP:
*laughs heartily*
BE:
I probably wouldn’t go out of my way to tell people that if this wasn’t my job.
JP:
Honest criticism is one thing. It’s like any passing comment on anything--people seem to think their opinions matter. People think they need to voice their opinion about everything. It’s variably ugly. You just have to take like two days of Psychology 101 and it’s so obvious what people’s insecurities are, and their strange need to lash out at things to make themselves feel better and puff themselves up. You know?
BE:
I wish I could say I 100% agree with you on that, but I’ve found in my own experience that you can present someone with facts and information and explain [psychology] to them in several different ways, but it still doesn’t necessarily sink in for them to get it.
JP:
Oh, sure. Because what about her emails?!
BE:
Yeah, what about them?!
*both laugh*
Chatting with Mr. Publick was delightfully weird, and I hope to speak with him again in the future. I’ve been watching the VENTURE BROS since my early years in High School, and I’m pretty pumped for the next season! Things are working out for Doc, Brock finally found love, but will he be able to keep it? Hank met a girl and Dean is working on college. According to teasers, Dr. Orpheus and The Order of the Triad have returned! Where is it all going?
Find out on the premiere of VENTURE BROS Season 7, this Sunday on Adult Swim!
~Big Eyes
