No coding needed
Start now >>
Cartoon Network Interactive
Chunky Puffs! YUM! YUM! YUM!
OH RATZ! It's JERRY BRIAN REYNOLDS!
Ed, Edd n Eddy
1999-2009
January 8, 2016
JXP: How did you develop Perennial Pictures?
JR: My partner, Russ Harris and I started the company in 1979. We met working in a local television station, and decided to start our own company, originally doing commercials.
JXP: What was your first animation project?
JR: Our first work was a series of commercials for a local savings and loan. We produced a series of 13 :30 second of an educational nature for children. It was called "Scuddle Mutt. It didn't make much of a splash.
JXP: How did you develop the idea for A Mirthworm Christmas?
JR: We deicded we wanted to try doing a half-hour animated special and originally, the Mirthworm characters looked simple and. We kind of got carried away with the animation
JXP: Why mirthworms?
JR: We just liked the idea of the characters being small - like a secret society in a kids backyard.
JXP: For the Mirthworm movies, you basically used voice overs from the studio workers like yourself and Russ Harris. Why? Low budget or bad auditions?
JR: We came out of local television and so had performance experience. I had done 7 years as the puppeteer and voice of a local kid show called "Janie." We thought we were pretty good. LOL. We auditioned least 50 women for the role of Wormaline Wiggler before Miki Mathioudakis came in and nailed it. We, like a lot of studios, like to have a little pool of actors that we can always be counted on to give great performances.
JXP: How did you develop O. Ratz in Rat in a Hot Tin Can?
JR: We learned that Hanna-Barbera and Cartoon Network were doing a series of shorts so we pestered them, and eventually developed and pitched O. Ratz. Unless I am wrong, we had a thing called "Kick the Cat" that O. Ratz kind of grew out of it. We were fortunate that Hanna-Barbera liked us and trusted us enough to let us do it here at the studio.
JXP: What was it like working with Harvey Korman ("The Great Gazoo" on Flintstones) who voiced O. Ratz, and where did he record his lines at?
JR: Working with Harvey and Marvin Kaplan was fun. We read a lot of people here in Indianapolis, and Russ, who is our voice director, kept telling people that we were looking for someone like Harvey Korman's "Hedly Lamar" from "Blazing Saddles", but we weren't getting it. Then Fred Seibert, who was the President of H-B said, "why don't we just GET Harvey Korman?" "You mean we can do that?" was our reaction. They had Harvey in to read for the part and that was that. There was some talk of getting Tim Conway for Dave D. Fly, but he was out doing the dinner theatre circuit and was unavailable. I am the one who wanted Marvin. I loved him in "Top Cat", and "Alice". We recorded at Hanna-Barbera in their "B" studio, which by then was the only one they had. It was funny because we recorded all the lines first, and then had Harvey do a bunch of screams and "erks" "eeeks" "aaaah's, and so forth. After a few minutes of this, Harvey looked into the booth and said "four years of Shakespeare and I end up doing this." Nancy Dussalt was there for the woman who screams "It's a rat!"
JXP: How was it like to be on something like this with Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera?
JR: I had met Mr. Hanna more than once before this experience, but it was my only introduction to Mr. Barbera. I ended up going down to his office one day, and spent an hour or an hour-and-a-half listening to his stories. He had just published his book, and one of the first things I said to him was that I had read it, but he proceeded to regale me with stuff that was in it. I wrote Mr. Hanna when I was 14 and sent him some of my work. He sent back a very nice, encouraging letter and sent me a cel and background from the last season of "The Flintstones." He invited me to come to see the studio, but it took until 1971 that I got there. I am so happy to have been able to meet these people, and found them all to be so nice and encouraging.
JXP: How did you develop HandyCat in Bees Nees as Usual?
JR: We had, of course, done O. Ratz at Hanna-Barbera, so after Fred Seibert set off on his own, he thought of us as potential creators for a new shorts program for Nickelodeon. We were invited to pitch them some ideas, and we did. We narrowed it down to three at which time, they said, do the one you want to. Right or wrong we picked Handycat.
JXP: How did you guys feel doing your first Flash animation project with HandyCat and whose idea was it to have you guys do it in Flash?
JR: Several people converged on us at the same time, saying we ought to consider doing Flash. Fred Seibert, our good friend and Disney animator, Adam Dkystra, and Glenn Zimmerman, who is the resident animation guru at Paws, Inc. (the Garfield empire). Although I loved the traditional ways of making cartoons, things were changing. We had terrible trouble getting cels (the company that made them in the U.S.A. stopped because of enviornmental issues) that were any good. So, we dived in in 2004.
JXP: Why does the background music in HandyCat sound so Rugrats-ish like it was composed by Mark Mothersbaugh?
JR: No idea about this. The man that is doing our music for us now is named Pete Schmutte, and we've worked with him on and off since 1981. There was a period in the 80's and 90's that I was doing all the music.
JXP: What was it like to work with Rob Paulsen, who voiced HandyCat as well as Drillbit, and June Foray, who voiced HandyCat's first customer, and where did they record their lines at?
JR: Of course, I was a huge fan of June Foray. She walked in the door to the studio with a "hokey smokes, Bullwinkle" as the first thing out of her month. She got that out of the way quick and right into recording. Rob is my age-ish, and I wasn't as familiar with his work, so he just seemed like a nice, very talented man. I told him how good I thought he was, but that I was just just in awe of June. He said, "so am I!" We didn't read anybody else for the Old Lady. Larry Huber, who was a friend of ours since the O. Ratz days, suggested we get June for the part. Again, we said "You mean we can do that?" She was charming. One of my dear friends was Madelyn Pugh Davis who was one of the creator-writers of "I Love Lucy" and "The Mothers-In-Law, and one of the Executive Producers of "Alice". Of course, Marvin knew Madelyn from "Alice" and June knew Madelyn from "Lucy" and other things, so if was kind of fun to name-drop. It was just a great ice-breaker and it made me aware of how small the entertainment community was. Russ has directed our recording sessions from day one, but he got a little intimidated at Hanna-Barbera and Kris Zimmerman directed. By the time we did "Handycat", Russ didn't have any qualms about it.
JXP: What oversea studio did you use for A Mirthworm Christmas?
JR: We have never used any overseas animation. We did it all here in our little studio. We had over a dozen people during the '90's. Right now, Russ and I are back to our roots, doing a half-hour Crawford the Cat Christmas all by ourselves. It's kind of weird, and a little sad, that the building is kind of a warehouse and we're doing this show all in a couple of rooms. The one thing we can't force ourselves to get rid of, is our animation camera stand. Call it sentiment, because we'll never use it again.
JXP: Any advice for an animator / drawer like myself?
JR: Boy, that's a tricky one. One thing would be versitile as you can be because there are so many ways to render a show. There are probably more jobs in pre-production in television. They still animate features in the U.S., and that's all CG. I have no experience in the CG field at all.
JXP: I'm doing a short myself. Would you guys be interested in animating for it?
JR: Sorry to say that for a number of reasons, we don't look at outside submissions. It's all we can do to keep up with the projects we write.