June 16, 2006
FROM THE ADAM & JOE VAULTS
A&J’S AMERICAN ANIMATION ADVENTURE: RUGRATS (& BEING LET DOWN)
Here is the final episode of this series split into Rugrats part 1 and Rugrats part 2 together with some outrageous, self important over-analysis of its status as weakest of the series: I subscribe to the theory that you should leave the shittest ’til last in the hope that if people have built up an affection for something they will be more forgiving when it goes weak. Of course the other way of looking at it is that if people like a thing they’ll feel let down if it goes a bit bollox but personally I was always in the forgiving camp. For me this applies particularly with music.
Some people say they’re into a band and then go fucking mental when that band puts out an album that they reckon isn’t as good as an earlier one. “Have you heard the new album? It’s fucking dreadful! A disgrace! They’ve lost it!†In my experience that’s seldom the case. These people are usually spitting bullets because a band has tried something a little different and it hasn’t completely happened. It just seems joyless and disloyal to go around ranting abut how awful they are suddenly. Fair enough, if a band starts putting out one shit album after another, you bail out until you’re given notice of a return to form (though in Bowie’s case that it’s usually hopelessly optimistic hoobah, though the last one was pretty good).
In the case of the Pixies for example, people complaining that Bossa Nova or Trompe Le Monde weren’t up to Doolittle or Surfer Rosa seem to have just totally missed the point. Those early albums should make Pixies like your best childhood friends. They’ve proved themselves worthy of your affection for life! Watching them change is exciting and any faults they pick up along the way you forgive because they’re still fantastic company. You certainly don’t bail on them if they turn up wearing slightly gay clothes one day, or if they announce they’re into jazz. If anything you dress gay too and dig out some Be Bop, as long as it’s just a phase… Hang Wire, Blown Away, Alison, Subbacultcha, Motorway To Roswell, Palace Of The Brine, Alec Eiffel, they’re as good as anything Pixies ever did! I’m overstating my case a little but it’s Friday night and I’ve got beer. Back to this Rugrats based episode of Adam & Joe’s American Animation Adventure…
I seem to recall Joe and I were keen to revisit People Place, a regular item we had in the 4th series of The Adam & Joe Show which featured 2 daytime TV presenters who steamrollered members of the public with their ignorant bullcrap. As we didn’t know or care much about Rugrats we thought that might be a good way to go and it seemed to fit with the style of post Andy Peters children’s television presentation we were going for. That’s why Joe and I are called Andy and Peter you see? Brilliant. It doesn’t quite work though and the silly facts and figures bit at the beginning is lamer than most our People Place sketches. The line “Welcome to a place where dreams and drawings of those dreams come to life…and we’re here to find out what†makes me cringe and the stuff where Joe asks one of the animators if he’s always had a ‘long pencil’ just indicates that the pickings were a bit slim for this episode, no disrespect to Joe who was at least doing more to drive the thing than I! Of course the joke was supposed to be how nice and talented all the animators were and how horrid and shallow we were but it’s not that funny and comes off as a bit patronising somehow, especially as you can see that the animators really were an unusually odd and interesting bunch (checkout the bizarre variety of personal fashion styles on display in the offices of Klasky Csupo!) and we end up not so much pretending to steamroll them as simply steamrolling them.
Things pick up a bit when we get into the VO booth and the semi autobiographical rivalry kicks in. The whole thing of getting to do a cameo voice was based on those shows where a TV presenter gets to do a line in a big American animation as part of a show they’re doing to promote it. Offhand I can think of Jonathan Ross’s cameo as a bartender in Shrek 2, Vernon Kay as a robot extra in Robots and of course the daddy of the genre, Andy Peters as a camp British baggage handler, hilariously out of place in Toy Story 2. I’m pretty sure that’s what Joe had in mind when he was delivering his line “You guys next. Go under!†and it certainly makes me laugh.
Fun fact: when I’m in the VO booth with rollerskates on my hands and I bash them down on the floor then yell out in pain, I had just sprained my hand and was genuinely in pure agony which once again enhanced my performance as a miserable little git. Well I think that’s a personal record for unwarranted trivia and analysis! I’m getting another beer! Cheers baboon!
May 26, 2006
FROM THE ADAM & JOE VAULTS
A&J’S AMERICAN ANIMATION ADVENTURE: RIGHT TOON REPLY
Herewith Right Toon Reply part 1 and Right Toon Reply part 2the 5th of the 6 episodes of this groundbreaking classic comedy series (using the same made up criteria as those 50 Greatest shows.) A reminder once again that you can find out more about the series in the April 2006 section of this blog.
This episode features Seth MacFarlane, the creator of Family Guy, which is a show that divides opinion in the animated comedy fan world. I kind of like it, but sometimes its attempts at subversion are so predictable and smug that I am forced to switch it off and do some swearing. I heard that Matt Stone & Trey Parker, the creators of South Park took the piss out of it in a recent South Park episode, as did The Simpsons so I can’t be the only one who feels that way. And American Dad?! Fuck completely off.
Anyway, we don’t really get bitchy in this episode of our American Animation Adventure. Mainly it’s me doing a character called Louis Goitre who I imagined to be the father of my character Louise (who Adam & Joe Show fans may remember) and Joe being excellent as a channel 4 commissioning editor with an answer for everything. If you work in TV you’ll almost certainly have dealt with someone like that at some stage. The more wound up and passionate you get, the more creepily calm and unflustered they become. It’s a technique designed to make you feel as insane and stupid as possible. Enjoy!
May 16, 2006
FROM THE ADAM & JOE VAULTS
A&J’S AMERICAN ANIMATION ADVENTURE: GUNBOY
Here we have Gunboy part 1 and Gunboy part 2, the fourth of the 6 episodes in this series for your jaded perusal. In many ways this is my favourite, at least it’s the one that actually makes me laugh more than once when I’m watching it, despite the fact that it’s pretty straightforward stuff. Basically it’s me and Joe doing our bad cockney accents and swearing a lot at all the incredibly sweet and helpful people we meet in LA as we pretend to be two wide boy twats (Mick Knutz and Nick Knox) trying to cause an internet stir with our super-cynical, ultraviolent animation: Gunboy (“He’s got a shooter for a hooterâ€) The voice-over was supposed to be having a pop at the insane intonation surfing favoured by Lisa Ianson on shows like Ibiza Uncovered. In fact it comes over as being a bit annoying in itself. Of course that’s always the risk with the kind of razor sharp satire found in our work…
I forgot until I loaded it this morning that this episode also contains our weird spoof of Madonna’s What It Feels Like For A Girl, the original video for which was directed by Guy Ritchie and featured Ciccone driving around town, mugging, robbing and generally misbehaving in a profoundly risible fashion. The producer of Adam & Joe’s Animation Adventure, Gregor Cameron, had an ‘in’ with Boy George and somehow convinced ‘the gender bending pop sensation’ (as he was known when I was a totty) to take part in the Mick Knutz and Nick Knox version of the video which we called What It Feels Like For Boy George! Ha ha ha ha ha! Come on, it should have worked! Somehow though, it manages to be not that funny, but I’m still happy it exists. And I got to drive around Hampstead dressed as on old woman with Boy George! Heady days.
The denoument of Gunboy in the offices of I-Film used to leave a bad taste in the mouth because I remember being in a horrible mood the day we shot it and my final febrile attempts to steal the TV and subsequent use of the ‘c’ word came from a very real place. We parted on good terms with the chap though, and now I think it sort of works. The midget baseball thing at the very end makes me laugh too, it’s so fucking pathetic.
As I’m writing this a lot of quite good semi glamorous, name droppy memories are coming back to me about this shoot… That the last thing we did for this episode was the interview bit with Joe and myself on the veranda of this lovely house in the Hollywood hills that belonged to a record producer friend of our producer Gregor who was working with Gregor’s hot/talented girlfriend Amanda Ghost at the time. When we finished shooting Amanda and the record producer and all these very attractive LA types showed up and we had a party! A real sexy Hollywood party! At one point I found myself talking to the most beautiful woman I have ever actually had a conversation with. She turned out to be the record producer’s wife though. That sentence seems to imply that if she hadn’t been married she would have been begging me to join her for a nude Jacuzzi session. In fact I’m fairly sure she would because I was being very funny and charming I seem to recall.
At that same party the record producer said that he’d passed a copy of The Adam & Joe show on to one of the Beastie Boys who had watched it with Spike Jonez. Having watched our 20% Free prank (available on our DVD of course!) Spike exclaimed that this kind of homemade pranky stuff would make a great TV show. Mere months later they shot the pilot for Jackass! So you see, Adam & Joe single handedly invented Jackass! I’ve since met Spike Jonez and he didn’t deny it so it must be true! I mean, I didn’t actually ask him if it was true obviously because that would have been incredibly uncool but he didn’t deny it and that, in law is known as ‘lack of denial pointing to it’s true’ or something. OK I’m all name dropped out…
For more on this episode (more?!) and the series as a whole, proceed to the April 2006 section of this site. Next week: Right Toon Reply!
May 10, 2006
FROM THE ADAM & JOE VAULTS
A&J’S AMERICAN ANIMATION ADVENTURE: FANIMATION
This is the third of the six episodes that I’m uploading in a teasingly gradual kind of way as if you were a salivating banana junky and I was the banana king, handing out delicious, rare bananas whenever it suited me! Oh, who am I kidding? All you care about is looking at some pointless random shit on YouTube (although this is pretty flipping good.) Anyway, this episode of Adam & Joe’s American Animation Adventure is the parody of MTV’s Fanatic wherein we get to meet John DiMaggio, the voice of Bender from Futurama. Here’s Part 1 and here’s Part 2. For more on this episode and the series as a whole, proceed to the April 2006 section of this site. More delicious bananas soon!
May 2, 2006
FROM THE ADAM & JOE VAULTS
A&J’S AMERICAN ANIMATION ADVENTURE: PAVEL
Here’s the second of the 6 episodes of Adam & Joe’s American Animation Adventure that I’m posting over the next few weeks on this blog. It’s the Cal Arts episode, which features an embryonic Pavel, now one of the most successful and celebrated comedy characters in modern history of course, though Steve Bennet might argue. Once again it’s been split into Part 1 and Part 2 for easier download. For details of the episode and series see the related post in the April 2006 section of this site.
TECHNICAL NOTE
I got a letter last week from Pamie Dhanoa (thanks for the letter incidentally Pamie. Is that a real name or an anagram of something? Just wondering, no offence…) Anyway, Pamie was saying that she hasn’t been able to open the movie files on this blog and was wondering if I could make them Mpeg rather than MP4 files. Well, sorry Pamie but I deliberated with my computer guru brother Dave about this and we reckon that MP4’s remain our best bet for this site. They’re decent quality and about a quarter of the size of an Mpeg making them easier to up upload and download (for most people I hope) and they don’t put unnecessary strain on my bandwidth. Let’s face it; the last thing a man in my position needs right now is extra bandwidth strain. Frankly I can’t believe you asked Pamie. It’s the most insensitive thing anyone has ever said to me.
Seriously though, I’m VERY sorry if you aren’t able to view these movies. They are an integral part of this on-line ego cathedral and one of the main reasons I wanted to do a blog in the first place (ie. to show people work that would otherwise go more or less unseen). If my brother and I have missed some incredibly obvious and convenient way round the problem that keeps files small and watchable, do let me know, but for the time being I’m going to have to stay with the current system. Thanks again for the letter though Pamie, it was much appreciated though to be thanked while having your request frustrated must be a little bittersweet. I hope we can still be friends.