Sitcom Toons, Part 1
When you’re asked to define a cartoon, your age will almost certainly dictate your answer.
If you grew up in the 70s like me, you’ll flash to Saturday mornings (Scooby Doo, Superfriends, etc.). If you grew up in the 80s, you’ll pick afternoon kidvid (GI Joe, TMNT, etc.). If you were a 90s kid, you’ll go to Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon. You probably won’t consider that rare air known as animated sitcoms, even though they’ve been in the mix almost since the beginning. The DNA of The Simpsons goes all the way back to The Flintstones, and doesn’t often stray very far from that chain.
When you look at the strata of the cartoon biz during a healthy period (as opposed to the shallow wading pool we’re in right now), you see four different layers: children’s shows, action/adventure shows, feature films, and sitcoms. Historically, sitcoms make up the smallest piece of the pie with the fewest productions. Why? Because they’re the toughest to find an audience for.
The Simpsons is the clear standout, and a handful of competitors got as close as they could. After that, there’s a steep dropoff into a chasm of one-shots and single-season experiments.
The first one I remember seeing was Wait Till Your Father Gets Home, a Hanna-Barbera series that lasted three seasons from 1972 to 1974. Inspired by All in the Family, it was the only animated sitcom between The Flintstones and The Simpsons to last that long. I was only 8 or 9 years old then, but was oddly intrigued by a series written for my parents that happened to look like the cartoons written for me. (I just found out it’s streaming on Amazon Prime; learn more about it here.)
Of course, I had no idea I would work on such a show 25 years later.
Maxine’s Christmas Carol, 1999
When I was hired at Sony Animation Studio at the end of 1996 (technically, a company under the Sony umbrella named Adelaide Productions), I was given the opportunity for one last taste of “the good old days.” By that I mean job security at a studio that put me under contract and found things for me to do. This was partly because I had a good, attentive agent at the start of my career, but also because I turned out to be a natural at the job and they saw value in keeping me around.
Thus, when my first Sony series came to an end, they had something else for me to jump to. Extreme Ghostbusters led to Men in Black which led to Godzilla which led to Dragon Tales. And plenty more. I was a steady Freddie for them all the way through Spider-Man The Animated Series in 2003. During that time, the “contract” employment model went extinct in favor of a gig economy where you could only count on work while your series was in production. When it went away, so did you.
While I was under contract, one of the things they found for me to do was my first sitcom cartoon. It was a one-off project for Hallmark in which their most popular character got her own direct-to-video holiday special. I didn’t know Hallmark had an actual character in their lineup, but they did: Maxine, a cranky senior citizen created by an in-house artist named John Wagner.
Maxine’s worldview is formed of equal parts sarcasm, ridicule, grievance, and snark. (I learned later that my mom thought she was “a real hoot,” which should give you an idea of the generation she spoke to.) She’d been a fixture on Hallmark cards since 1986 and someone decided it was time to get her on TV screens. The safest way to do that at the time (economically speaking) was to create a one-shot program for home video that could function as a pilot while also paying for itself with VHS sales. If it flew off the shelves, there was cause to consider doing more. And like a pilot, it would lay some track for a series to run on.
Maxine was new to me when Producer Richard Raynis pulled me into the project. Richard was a producer on The Simpsons from the beginning, and since that started with a Christmas special, he may have had the same thing in mind for Maxine. A script had already been written by then, and I was assigned as the director with a crew of one: myself. I would draw the entire storyboard solo. Designs were mostly done, and I had a month or so to crank it out. No problem.
Storyboarding a sitcom was not difficult at all after three years of action shows. In fact, it was incredibly easy by comparison. That’s the thing about sitcom cartoons; they aren’t meant to be flashy. The audience is assumed to be older, so the subject matter is more about everyday experiences and ordinary people. Thus, it calls for “ordinary” filmmaking techniques, the same camera angles you’d get from a live-action shoot. The visual humor comes from observation and expressive drawings. The “hyper” filmmaking toolbox required for action/adventure is not required. And I didn’t mind taking a temporary break from complex fight choreography.
One of the tools we need to draw a proper storyboard is a complete cast recording that gives us a vocal performance to tie into. It dictates facial expressions, body poses, and timing. The cast had already done their work, and the recording was given to me on day one. The finished animation was going to be released later in the year for the holiday season, so my work began in spring/summer. This gave everyone enough time to rethink earlier casting decisions. I thought the actor they picked for Maxine was fine, but someone must have gotten nervous because the next thing I knew I was in a recording studio watching veteran voice artist Tress MacNeille reread the part. I guarantee you, you’ve heard her work.
Maxine’s Christmas Carol was released on VHS in late 1999 in a standard and deluxe edition, which came with an artist interview (John Wagner, not me) and a framed print. I never heard anything further from Hallmark or Maxine after that, so obviously it did not lead to more. There was a live stage version in 2016, but I have no idea if it had anything in common with the cartoon. Which you can watch right here.
Sammy, 2000
This project was even more sitcommy than Maxine, because it was conceived from the start as “the next Simpsons.” I always shake my head in despair when I hear that phrase. “The next ______.” It always invokes something that broke ground by being unique and progressive. By definition, then, “the next Simpsons” or “the next Spongebob” can only be an imitator. The actual “Next Thing” is completely unpredictable. If I were elected king of Hollywood, that’s the first phrase I would ban. But I digress.
Sammy was conceived by SNL alumni and comedy actor David Spade (and his writer friends) as a semi-biographical version of his life. The main character was David himself (renamed James Blake), and Sammy was his absentee, freeloading father (real name Sam Spade), who wormed his way back into James’ life after he became successful. Based on a true story. The scripts all revolved around family conflicts with that dynamic at the core.
It was picked up by NBC for broadcast in 2000, and Sony/Adelaide got the contract to produce the animation. This was going on while I did my bit as the Supervising Director of Dragon Tales, and when my show wrapped production in fall ’99 they transferred me over to Sammy to direct Episode 12 (of 13). Supervising Director Bob Hathcock was happy to have me (we’d previously worked together on Extreme Ghostbusters), and I was happy to have a new work family to spend time with.
The downside was that I also suddenly had a commute, since Sammy‘s production office was in a different location. Prior to that, I’d found an apartment so close to Sony Studio I could bike there in 5 minutes. Now I had to drive clear across LA through the worst traffic (at least an hour each way) to get to work. Being there was great. Getting there was torture; the exact lifestyle I’d worked to avoid. Fortunately, I only had to put up with it for about three months.
The show itself was funny. I liked the scripts. Character design was by Everett Peck, well known at the time for the Klasky Csupo house style on Nicktoons like Rugrats. The voice cast was loaded with top shelf comedians and actors. It seemed to have everything it needed to attract an audience.
There were no hidden lessons on the drawing side, but there was a big one on the writing side. Live-action sitcom writing, for a variety of reasons, is in constant motion. All words are subject to modification. Rewrites happen right up to the moment an actor is on camera. No script is considered finished until shooting wraps.
With animation, that approach doesn’t fly. Production itself drives the bus. Animators need time to draw the scenes, and the script has to be locked before they can start. Getting live-action writers to understand this was an uphill battle that seemed to last for the entire production, because they were still struggling with it when I was brought in for Episode 12. In my first script meeting, one writer asked a question I will never forget: “Don’t you guys shoot coverage?”
“Coverage” in this case meant capturing a scene from multiple angles so you can make editing choices later. Again, with animation, that approach doesn’t fly. Unless you’ve got three times the normal budget and time to work with, you can only afford one camera angle for every shot. It was antithetical to the way a live-action sitcom is written, and it drove them nuts.
That said, there’s still a certain amount of pliability when you get to editing. Lines can be rewritten and re-recorded in a process called ADR (After Dialogue Replacement), but you’re still limited to the timing and camera angles and mouth movements on the screen. It’s a series of increasingly narrowing options.
While observing this, I kinda got the feeling that you need hot-wired brain chemistry to survive as a sitcom writer, since you’re constantly looking for ways to rethink what’s on the page. If you end up with material that’s actually better (and not just different), that’s great. But if you’re just constantly rewriting because you get bored with the script or lose confidence in what you wrote yesterday, it edges into ADD. And you make everyone else’s job harder.
All that aside, I enjoyed working on my episode, came up with some stuff they liked, grumbled over rewrites that killed my favorite jokes, and finished on time.
The series debuted in August 2000 and lasted just two episodes before NBC pulled the plug.
That reads like a punch line 24 years later, but it was stunning at the time. A lot of people worked really hard on the series and put up with a ton of conflict (mainly from the writers) to get it done. I only got a small taste of the trials they had gone through, and even I could tell this was an intense experience for everyone. We got paid, but having an audience see your work on screen is worth way more than that. If all you have to show for the effort is a bank balance, you’re missing a critical part of the payoff.
Many years later, someone in possession of the finished episodes passed them over to someone else and now all 13 can be seen on Youtube. Thanks to them, my episode can be seen below. Enjoy.
PS: My happiest memory of Sammy was, ironically, the final day of work. Laboring together under adverse conditions on a difficult show can be incredibly bonding for a crew. Even though I arrived close to the end, I felt it just as much as they did. Group lunches happened almost every day. And when we all went out on our last day together, we didn’t want it to end. After a big dinner we all went to a dumb comedy movie. Then we all went somewhere for drinks. To this day, I’ve never worked with any of them again, but I’ll never forget how good it felt to be one of them.
See all 13 episodes here
Read more about the series here