{"id":87898,"date":"2016-06-07T14:44:04","date_gmt":"2016-06-07T13:44:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/?p=87898"},"modified":"2016-06-07T14:44:38","modified_gmt":"2016-06-07T13:44:38","slug":"the-venture-bros-jackson-publick-on-the-evolution-of-a-cult-classic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/interviews\/the-venture-bros-jackson-publick-on-the-evolution-of-a-cult-classic\/","title":{"rendered":"The Venture Bros’ Jackson Publick on the evolution of a cult classic"},"content":{"rendered":"

Few shows earn such dedicated fans as The Venture Bros<\/em><\/strong>. Since it first aired on Adult Swim back in 2003, the animation from Jackson Publick and Doc Hammer has delivered a detailed, multi-layered, complex and hilarious riff on the classic comic books and adventure stories of the 50s and 60s, and it’s continued to develop. The characters have grown and the stories have grown with them.<\/p>\n

Well, Dean and Hank have grown. And Henchman 21 and Sergeant Hatred. Dr Rusty Venture and The Monarch are pretty much the same as they ever were, still trapped in a never ending cycle of thwarted dreams of success\u00a0and revenge.<\/p>\n

Now, the fifth season is finally airing\u00a0in the UK (along with the previous four seasons) on Spotify mobile, and we took the opportunity to talk to Publick at London’s MCM Comic-Con about how the show has changed over the years, the nature of Venture Bros fandom, and why having a David Bowie character was essential.<\/p>\n

How have you found the British Venture Bros<\/em> fans so far?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve only met one UK fan so far. Last night I was walking through Leicester Square and a kid came up to me with one of our t-shirts on and went \u201cAre you\u2026is your name Jackson?\u201d and he was with his mother and he was nervous. So he seemed pretty cool and he asked me some weird questions about an episode from three seasons ago that I couldn\u2019t answer, actually!<\/p>\n

Is “I have some very detailed questions” a fairly typical Venture Bros<\/em> fan encounter?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Probably more than most shows, yeah! Because we have such a deep continuity and it\u2019s clear we care a lot about our characters and pretend to know more about them than we do. We\u2019re constantly hinting at things that have happened in the past, or off-screen. You\u2019re supposed to just be aware that \u201cOh, these two characters have a history but we don\u2019t know what it is yet.\u201d So we kind of easter egg these ideas through it and people track them voraciously!<\/p>\n

Are you surprised by the extent to which the show has developed?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Oh, yeah. I knew it would evolve but I didn\u2019t know to what extent. Obviously it\u2019s very different to what we started with. It\u2019s not the snarky little parody show that it used to be and it\u2019s maybe not as concept-driven, it\u2019s more character-driven than it was. We were always invested in our characters, we always knew that we wanted to be the kind of show that cares about its continuity. We just didn\u2019t know it would get this\u2026heavy! [Laughs]<\/p>\n

\"Venture<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Has there been a conscious decision to be a bit more forgiving with your characters, to maybe not make their stories so emotionally punishing?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Not so much. Lately I think we started to think in those terms. I think it\u2019s just a natural result of liking them a little more, or just caring about them and wanting to be honest about who they are,\u00a0and what should and shouldn\u2019t happen to them. Not doing things just for the sake of a joke. This is not\u00a0a show where, if something blows up, it\u2019s back to normal in the next episode, that doesn\u2019t happen. If something blows up in our show, it\u2019s a smoking wreck in the next episode! So then I guess you have to be a little more careful about what happens to these people.<\/p>\n

Have any of the characters surprised you with the direction they’ve gone in? Henchman 21 has obviously come a long way!<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yeah, he\u2019s the biggest surprise. None of the henchmen had names or personalities for most of the first season, and then Doc Hammer wrote an episode where he said “I want one chubby henchman.” In fact, all the henchmen had the same character model, they were just supposed to be anonymous for the most part. And then one of them got Ray Romano\u2019s voice and another one was made to be chubbier and nerdier, so we could do a joke about the Star Wars kid from the internet! \u00a0Then we just liked the rapport between these two guys and then we started writing more for them, and then of course we just wrecked his whole life and we killed one of them! He\u2019s probably the biggest surprise.<\/p>\n

Other than him, I personally have fallen in love with Hank and I like tracking where he goes. He\u00a0doesn\u2019t really change so much but he\u2019s just fun to write for and it was fun to realise what his personality is, what his role is, that he\u2019s a little bit crazy and that things just roll off of him. Dean carries everything inside of him and he gets upset and he gets messed up by everything, and Hank just goes \u201cThis is cool!\u201d Hank\u2019s just watching the show, you know?<\/p>\n

It’s so much fun to see where they’ve ended up, I guess that started with removing Dr Venture’s ability to keep cloning them?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Right, that was so necessary to the continuation of the show. We knew that before the end of Season 1, that these boys can\u2019t be these idiot ciphers of \u201cAw shucks\u201d 1950s,’ 60s expressions and stuff. And we realised that the information was there. We had already given Dean a bit of a love interest and we had already given Hank some pretty strange obsessions. And he\u2019ll constantly drop pop cultural phrases that just shouldn\u2019t have been part of his childhood at all, and you wonder \u201cWhere did he hear that, where did he get that idea?\u201d So we realised alright, Hank\u2019s a little crazy! And Dean\u2019s the emotional one; he\u2019s the more sensitive. So from that we just extrapolated and deepened everything going on with him, made the divide more and more clear.<\/p>\n

\"Venture<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

And on the other hand, Dr Venture on the Monarch are caught in this self-perpetuating cycle!<\/strong><\/p>\n

Right, Rusty Venture is the best example because he\u2019s a victim of the world he was born into. Sometimes he tries to escape it a little bit, but lately we\u2019ve been having him double down on it. In our newest season he sort of re-commits to it.<\/p>\n

And the same thing happens to the Monarch. Things go badly for a while and instead of giving up they decide to double their efforts to get back to where they think they should be. Like, \u201cWait a minute, I\u2019m the Monarch! It\u2019s time to chase Dr Venture!\u201d We\u2019re constantly taking that away from him, too. Like \u201cOh you\u2019re not allowed to chase Dr Venture around.\u201d And we still don\u2019t know why he hates him so much but that\u2019s what drives him and that\u2019s the purity of his character and his mission in life.<\/p>\n

And Dr Venture\u2019s has gotten muddled by failure and the loss of his fortune and everything but once in a while we give it back to him, we give him a sad little victory! Sometimes he\u2019s proud that he\u2019s Rusty Venture. Other times he\u2019s running away from his past.<\/p>\n

Do you have a favourite character to do as a voice actor?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I probably like doing The Monarch the best although it can tear me up after a while if he\u2019s yelling a lot. They\u2019re all a lot of fun. For some reason I had a lot of fun doing Dr Z, which is probably why, he came back. There\u2019s never any big plan to what we do, it\u2019s just \u201cI like doing that voice, let\u2019s write more for him because we know that I can show up.\u201d<\/p>\n

There have been some great voice actors in recent episodes, like Aziz Ansari, Nathan Fillion and Kate McKinnon.\u00a0How do you go about finding the right voices for these characters?<\/strong><\/p>\n

We were rarely able to get anybody in the earlier seasons. Nobody had heard of us, we weren\u2019t paying well and we had no connections in Hollywood at all! But every once in a while you\u2019d write a new character and you\u2019d go “I really want somebody special for this,” or “I want to hear somebody who isn\u2019t me or Doc doing this,” because I know our limitations. Or sometimes you underwrite a character and you realise this character\u2019s only going to be interesting if we find somebody to play with it and do something fun with it.<\/p>\n

Kate McKinnon was just kind of an accident. She was friends with Mike Sinterniklaas\u00a0who plays Dean, she wasn\u2019t on SNL yet and he said “My friend Kate is great,” and we got her in to do a character who was just a normal human being. Those are the tricky ones, they\u2019re not super powered, they don\u2019t want to rule the world, they\u2019re not a mutant. She basically created a character where there wasn\u2019t much of one. She did that a few times for us.<\/p>\n

Other times we\u2019ve written a character where we know this is a powerhouse character and we know we just need a cool voice for this. “We need Ian McKellen!” We can\u2019t get him of course but we have a deeper Rolodex than we used to and we have an agent who helps us sometimes and we get some pretty cool people. We got Clancy Brown this season, which we\u2019re pretty excited about. Jeffrey Wright, also, that was maybe the closest I came to actually writing a part for somebody.<\/p>\n

\"Venture-Bros.-Sneak-Peek\"<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Did you always have James Urbaniak and Patrick Warburton in mind for Rusty Venture and Brock?<\/strong><\/p>\n

You know what, sort of. \u00a0James was a mutual friend of a cartoonist that I\u2019ve known since I was 20-something and I had seen him perform in a strange sketch comedy thing in a basement in New York in like 1994 and I just remembered him. So when it came time to actually cast the pilot, of course I went and asked Patrick if he would play Brock because he was just perfect for it, and I wrote to my cartoonist friend and said \u201cDo you still know that guy who played that weird little part in a skit that you did at the Knitting Factory in 1994?\u201d and he said \u201cOh, that\u2019s James, he was my roommate.\u201d<\/p>\n

I went and showed him my pitch book for the cartoon and as soon as I turned to the page with the Doctor Venture drawing, my friend just went \u201cThat\u2019s who you want James for, right?\u201d I was like \u201cYep!\u201d<\/p>\n

Has your working relationship with Doc Hammer changed much over the years?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Not really, if anything it\u2019s worsened! We used to spend a lot more time together. When we started we shared the Astrobase, that\u2019s our working studio, and we both spent a lot more time there back then because I lived with a roommate in a small apartment and I needed a place to go work, and we were constantly in one another\u2019s orbit. Now we see each other only when we need to work. It\u2019s changed a little because we don\u2019t naturally have a lot of goofy conversations by accident anymore.<\/p>\n

Everything\u2019s a little more structured but we pretty much write everything the same way, we joke around and riff on something until somebody says, \u201cOh, you should write that down.\u201d And then once in a while we actively write a story together. But mostly we get together at the beginning of a season and talk in broad strokes about what the arc will be, and throw a couple of ideas at each other, and then we kind of just write on our own and check in with each other once in a while.<\/p>\n

Which is not always the most efficient way to write a television show. But if you know anything about us it takes forever for us to make our show and that\u2019s probably half the reason!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"bowie-venture-bros-2016-billboard-650\"<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Finally, I have to ask: what was it about Bowie that made you want to write him in as The\u00a0Sovereign?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I mean, he\u2019s David Bowie! That\u2019s all there is to it. He\u2019s not one of us, or he was not one of us, or whatever. Clearly a god among men. Mysterious, strange, supercool person who must be a supervillain or part of the Illuminati or something if there\u2019s any justice in this world. So yeah, how could you not be fascinated by him and go \u201cMake him the guy!\u201d<\/p>\n

Adult Swim now has a dedicated UK home<\/b> <\/b>for FREE on Spotify mobile.<\/b><\/p>\n

Catch seasons 1-4 of The Venture Bros.<\/i> for FREE now on Spotify mobile, with all-new episodes from season 5 currently rolling out every Friday!<\/b><\/p>\n

Click the link below to enjoy The Venture Brothers<\/i>: https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/show\/62rEiLp41nSORn1Jy1eoWK<\/span><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We talked to Jackson Publick about how The Venture Bros has grown<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39,"featured_media":87900,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"MSN_Categories":"Uncategorized","MSN_Publish_Option":false,"MSN_Is_Local_News":false,"MSN_Is_AIAC_Included":"Empty","MSN_Location":"[]","MSN_Add_Feature_Img_On_Top_Of_Post":false,"MSN_Has_Custom_Author":false,"MSN_Custom_Author":"","MSN_Has_Custom_Canonical_Url":false,"MSN_Custom_Canonical_Url":""},"categories":[1718,7,207],"tags":[4274],"acf":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/venture-bros-post1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87898"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/39"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=87898"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87898\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/87900"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=87898"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=87898"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=87898"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}