"It's very hard to choose the most despicable thing about this guy." "He's self-important, he's self-indulgent" "A bad family man." "A horrible provider." "Raunchy, rude" "He's got all these hang-ups and sexual issues." "Probably a sexual deviant." "A complete womanizer." "A backstabber." "Just not bright." "He's a horrible dad." "He's smelly." "He would park in a handicapped space." "Disgusting." "A liar." "Rude, crude, lewd." "He's corrupt." "He's dishonest." "Um, he's consummately selfish." "How can one person be so oblivious, insensitive, hateful, tactless, boorish, and ill-tempered to everyone he meets?" "It's a gift." "( jazz theme playing )" "I didn't, you know, set out to have any kind of preconceived idea to create a show like this." "I was doing some design work for Gabor Csupo at Klasky Csupo, and he was asking me, "Do you have any ideas?"" "Because he had" " He had just started The Simpsons there." "Well, you know, I'm working on this comic with this duck character, and so I brought it in and he liked it, and so we actually kind of started playing around developing the show idea before the comic was totally finished." "But I had a lot of the comic material and a lot of the stories were, uh, in place." "I originally based Duckman really on a working relationship between a good friend of mine and his assistant, and he was really very much like a Duckman kind of character, and his assistant was very much the steady hand that kept everything going," "and took a lot of abuse." "That kind of dynamic sort of started me thinking about coming up with two characters like that." "So I came up with Cornfed Pig actually in the same drawing." "So that was sort of the" "The beginning of the thing, and then, uh," "I added other characters as I went along, and I had this, kind of, detective dynamic going as a business, giving them a lot of ability to go a lot of different places." "If we go undercover at his art gallery we'll find the miracle painting." "Miracle shmiracle." "Klasky Csupo had been working with Everett Peck, and they own the rights to the comic, uh, Duckman." "And, uh, their lawyer, a fellow named Tracy Kramer, who used to be, actually, an agent of ours, uh, was the one to approach us with the material." "We hooked up with Jeff and Ron and we sat down and talked and, you know, they were really great, and totally, you know, got it right from the start." "They were the show runners because they came from that background, and I basically ran the art side of things." "At that time, I mean, it was still kind of old school." "From the first draft of the script to the final locked picture was nine months." "We'd come up with a script and then we would record it." "All the actors record their parts and we'd have to get everything timed perfectly." "It would be edited into what we call a radio play, which was essentially a 22 minute block of just audio." "Then they would start animating it." "They animated it to those voices, that timing" "Same time I'd be working with Jerry and the other artists to develop any kind of special poses we would need, or special expressions that the characters would need." "New characters" "Some episodes we had a ton of new characters to design." "Uh, an also the backgrounds." "How they would look, and the color and all of that." "All four seasons were done on cells." "It was much more, uh, a kind of complicated way of doing things, but that's how all four seasons were done." "And once we got the board together, and the special poses, and the timing worked out, that would all go overseas, and then in about six weeks we'd get" "Start getting some finished film back, and then we'd start the editing process." "First season, we actually had to edit it on an old flatbed with film, which was terrible because we'd all be huddled around this little dark screen, and then we'd do the music and the sound effects, and finish it up." "What the hell was I thinking?" "Partly by design, partly-- Partly through luck, we came up with a show and a character in Duckman that, um, you could do almost any kind of joke you wanted, and it was" " It was kind of this amazing find, and part of that was due to the fact it was animated." "EVERETT:" "I wanted this guy's life to just be as big a piece of crap at home as it was at work, so he got no relief." "And" "So he had this really dysfunctional family, and he had this really dysfunctional career, and, um, when we started the series it was Jeff and Ron's idea that instead of having him married, his wife was deceased" "and he lived with his sister-in-law, and that's how" "That's how that relationship came about." "He is a widower, uh, who, uh, due to circumstances of his wife's will, is forced to live with his sister-in-law." "There's a mild sexual tension, at least on his part, but what's on the surface is just complete disdain and hatred." "They're looking for ways to hurt each other." "Duckman!" "He's got Ajax, who is the burn out of burn outs, and he's got Charles and Mambo, who share a body with two heads, and then, uh, his old mother-in-law Grandma-ma, who communicates only through flatulence." "It's" " It's basically a typical American household." "I've decided it's time we did what other people who live in the same house do." "We're going to start planning things as a family." "How about separate vacations?" "( all laughing ) He is a private detective, and his partner is a very smart pig." "That's" " That's Duckman." "Your aura is a mystic reflection of your soul, okay?" "The essence of what is inside you." "( screaming )" "We really found a thing where we could write every kind of joke." "You know, every kind of humor." "And when you can go from silly, to outrageous, to irreverent, to really dark, when you can cover all those bases, you know, effectively, and have a character who can kind of embody all of that," "that kind of stands out." "RON:" "It was that rare situation on a show when the writers were hitting their stride and the scripts came in," "I was a fun of reading these things too." "EVERETT:" "They put together a fantastic team of writers." "I was always totally pleased with whatever they came up with." "What an experience." "I think this is something I'll always carry with me." "Not unlike a malignant tumor." "Our take was actually to do kind of a less intelligent Howard Beale from Network." "The thing that appealed to us, was that he was kind of a social observer, but, of course, it was filtered through his very, kind of, self-centered universe." "That's what John Q. Public wants." "That's what made me famous." "That's what got you a free ride on the Duckman gravy train." "And with exposure like this, that train's going all the way to the top." "His rants were just unique to him and sometimes he nailed stuff, and sometimes it was, uh, just off into the ether." "This world's depressing enough without a few insult slurs and good honest laughs at other people's expense." "A case like this you take for the principle." "And any favors, freebies, and groupie phone numbers you can throw my way." "I will say, on record," "I've never had more fun writing a show." "I knew I had 'em." "The answer's got to be in here." "Home movies." "In the pilot, we did a very conscious thing, where Duckman's home movies that he was going through took you through the various eras of animation." "Each era kind of represented a time in his life, which was really funny." "MAN ( on TV ):" "The winning numbers are 4, 11, 22, 51, and 88." "That's me!" "Whoo-hoo!" "I won." "D'oh!" "( screams )" "There's always that fine line about making too, uh, precise a reference to a contemporary event that then, after a year or two, becomes really, kind of, dated feeling." "So we were always kind of on the fence about that, but there are certain things, like the Ark of the Covenant, or that stuff, that are always good." "NARRATOR:" "Something called the Ark of the Covenant." "One of our favorite parts of the show, was that it was a social satire." "We'd parody mental institutions, stand up comics, military industrial complex" "We kind of had a really good time going after institutions and things, you know-- RON:" "Sacred vows." "And celebrity rehab." "All that stuff." "MAN:" "This special section is for celebrities actually addicted to checking into rehab clinics." "With this class of clientele, they run into scheduling problems." "JEFF:" "He was able to say so many things that maybe need to be said, about lots of the institutions." "She's a fake!" "She's taking your money!" "She's a bigger rip off than those talk-to-a-nympho-in-prison hot lines that double charge on your bill when they know you can't do a thing, because you can't tell anyone you called in the first place." "( chuckles )" "So I've heard." "JASON:" "I would never have thought to team" "Jeff and Ron with Everett, and yet they were able to adapt their vision and their sensibility to exactly what he had laid down as a ground plan, and then take a guy like me, who literally was just dropping by, you know," "I had no overview of the project." "And they were able to guide me through" "It was just remarkable." "They were truly the right guys at the right time." "I've had a talk with my family." "They know it's wrong to capitalize on something for extra bucks." "The guys always set a great balance between the parts of Duckman that are, you know, funny ugly, and this kind of innate sweetness to the guy." "I miss her, you know." "Tomorrow would have been our wedding anniversary." "I forgot." "I guess I blocked it out." "It's the first one I'll be spending without her." "That may explain the way you've been feeling lately." "( cries out )" "Every now and then, when he stops ranting and raving, and has a moment to himself, he realizes that he is a-- A failed life." "Duckman, according to your family, you're not an incomparable crime fighting hero, you're not special or unique, in fact, there's absolutely nothing memorable about you at all." "( cries out )" "That little window into his own despair and his own angst and his own sense of worthlessness," "I think" "As much as anything could." "redeemed him through all the ranting and raving and depravity that followed." "Never knew what to make of him." "Never knew what people would think." "I got to go out and tell my story to those poor, unenlightened people who aren't yet lucky enough to believe." "The thing we" " We kind of settled on with Duckman was that he was kind of a fallen idealist." "Who'd aspire to be someone who's gotten the stuffing knocked out so many times the only reason he gets up in the morning is because either he's really stupid, or somewhere deep down inside beats the heart" "of a disappointed yet still hopeful idealist." "RON:" "He's a person, in our minds, who got up every morning and pushed the rock up the hill, and the rock would roll over him, and somehow he kept-- He kept getting up." "And it gave us, kind of, a pathos underneath, that Jason, when he came in, just nailed." "She's got a chance at a new life." "She shouldn't settle for me." "I wouldn't let her live." "I'd spend the rest of our lives holding her back 'cause" "I was afraid of losing her." "I had been doing a little bit of animation," "I was in the middle of doing Seinfeld," "I think we were maybe three seasons in, and my agent called and said," ""Something, something, animation, something." "Duckman, something, something, something."" "I thought it was for a guest thing." "I didn't know it was, like, for the title character." "And I ran down to Klasky Csupo, and I didn't even know the name of the show." "I didn't know anything." "And they hold up this character, you know, the duck, and they go," ""He's kind of angry and pissed off."" "We listened to about 70 different people, and, uh, I was kind of burned out, and I remember one day, I was standing in my office, and Marv Newland was there, who's an old friend of mine," "and an animator in his own right, and he was kind of helping out on the first episode, and I saw him look-- You know, "I can't" "I can't listen to these anymore."" "We were playing a few of them through and then we played Jason." "He goes, "There's your guy." "That's him."" "Amusing." "It's not without a certain understated omniscience." "( superhero theme playing )" "EVERETT:" "And so we, Jeff and Ron and I, talked about it and said to me, "Let's go with Jason."" "When the agent called and said, "Okay, um, you're Duckman,"" "and I went, "So what is it." "How many--?" "Is it one and out?"" ""No, the show is Duckman." "You're Duckman."" "Ha-ha." "I'm Duckman." "JEFF:" "Collaborating with Jason was one of the most fun experiences we've had." "RON:" "It's rare that you have an actor where you know when a joke is funny he will not only match it, but even, you know, make it funnier." "We were certainly writing to his voice, but he brought so much to it in the booth." "That was just, uh, just terrific." "And he just-- He just nailed it." "EVERETT:" "I mean, I can't imagine anyone else doing the voice." "He was great." "We're working for the biggest American dick ever." "( funky theme playing )" "Cornfed fell in place right away." "As soon as Gregg Berger did that, sort of, Joe Friday kind of voice, that was it, you know." "GREGG:" "And they handed me this image of a fantastic little pig." "Cornfed." "And I think scribbled in pencil was" "Was, "Just the facts, ma'am."" "And I grew up watching way too many Dragnets." "And so loosely based, but the same kind of direct look-you-in-the-eye, skinny tie, stingy brimmed hat approach." "While most people would go for the easy Jack Webb comparison," "I always considered Jack Lord my spiritual forerunner." "It's just a great, kind of, Jack Webb to the" "You know, the thousandth degree." "I'm Pig." "Detective Cornfed Pig." "GREGG:" "At least half of season one" "I was recording from Russia, where I was shooting for three months." "Duckman was in production, Ron and Jeff sent me to Russia with this little, tiny digital audio tape recorder." "They would call at the appointed time and in my hotel room, on a telephone connected to Klasky Csupo," "I would lay down tracks and they would listen until they were happy with what they heard." "So I was reading everything in splits from 9000 miles away in animation, not on camera." "Sometimes you can be in two places at one time." "I was." "( screams ) CROWD:" "Cornfed, Cornfed..." "Of course it was dangerous, mayor, but that comes with the territory." "( cries out ) ( moos )" "He did a lot of other voices on the show too, and I know in the-- In the live action on Papa." "M-O-W, M-O-W, I guess, he plays the drunk." "Duckman, there's a woman outside to see you and you'll be very proud of me." "I barely vomited on this one at all." "That wrote itself, and, uh" "( chuckles )" "On the tube everyone's a little bit bigger than life." "A little more glamorous." "And he just-- He was a great time." "He was a great-- He's a terrific guy." "And really good." "Gregg used to screw me up in the room 'cause I couldn't get through it." "Gregg is really the only one that had that part nailed in the first episode." "There was no, uh-- There was no growth needed." "He knew exactly who that character was." "EVERETT:" "I thought some of the best comic situations we had was when Duckman would mistreat Cornfed." "Who are you?" "My name's Cornfed." "Well, I'm Duckman." "Want to be my partner?" "Sure, if I don't die." "Ooh, that smarts." "He's got a lot of skills." "His background in the Irish parliament doesn't hurt." "His history with long-leggy models doesn't hurt." "He was an Olympic judge, an air conditioner repairman, uh, a plumber par excellence." "But I think above all of them is he cares for this duck, and he's willing to do the work of two to make sure that they get out of whatever trouble the duck gets them into every time." "I think it's just an issue of co-dependency." "At the risk of sounding insubordinate, are you out of your ****ing mind?" "GREGG:" "It's phenomenal to be part of a team that is that buddied up on camera." "Nancy and Gregg and I got to do some stuff together." "( funky theme playing )" "Bernice and Duckman were always arguing or there was some bizarro romantic undercurrent going on, and it always worked far better when we were in the room together." "Nancy was actually someone that Jeff and Ron had worked with, and again, fantastic, uh, actor and just-- Just nailed" "Nailed the character." "Bernice is very opinionated, uh, very into her body, obsessed with exercising, obsessed with telling Duckman what an idiot he is." "Quiet, you worthless sack of stuffing," "I'm on the phone." "We looked at" "Bernice is just kind of the queen shrew of all time, and boy she rose to that occasion." "Duckman was unusual, because they wanted this really crass, hardcore voice." "( giggles )" "( as Bernice ):" "Bernice is this loud and obnoxious character." "Move your f... butt and f... get us a f... table right f... now!" "Living with this guy who all he cares about is sex, and dealing with him and" "Uh, and I think that kind of thing you just have to go for it and play it to the-- To the extreme." "( laughing )" "You are so cute when you're smarmy and repugnant." "What was exciting about it was that it was so wildly imaginative and not p.c. at all." "Pushing all the buttons you could push." "Going right up to the line of being gross and crass, sometimes crossing it, but always in a very funny, intellectual way." "Last week we converted the twins' stock dividends into singles and blew the whole thing at that live nude amazons bar by the airport." "I knew that ****er didn't quit smoking." "You know how tough it is raising kids with a role model like that feathered weasel?" "( funky theme playing )" "E.G. Daily" "You really got the comedy of that character." "She always took the character to a different place than I had a pre-conceived idea of what it would be like, and it was always great fun." "A sweater." "Who should we thank?" "You or the midget who left it at the bus depot?" "I just remember thinking, "Wow, that's really cool"" "that they're actually in a cartoon where you get to be any of those cartoons that are a little racy, or a little more" "That are really true to life, which is pretty funny." "JASON:" "She'd come in, she'd do the little squeaky voice, and then you go out to a rock club and see her Janis Joplin her way through some stuff." "You know." "Oh, my God." "They were trying to match up" "Charles and Mambo, and that's when they found" "Dana and myself." "( as Mambo ):" "Mambo's sorta like this." "( normal voice ):" "And everything-- Kind of reminds me of Jason in a way, but in boy form." "in that he's just sort of dry and cutting, brash, and so I just-- You know, I think that Mambo is not quite as smart, because" "That's what I think, because brash sometimes doesn't think first, so I'd have to say, even though I hate to say it, that Charles is smarter than Mambo." "Got any hobbies?" "It's speaking in a binary-based code only we understand." "How wonderfully adolescent." "100110001001." "( both laughing )" "( funky theme playing )" "Right before I started to do the voice-overs," "I remember having a conversation with Dana and I remember talking to her on the phone and her telling me about how the voice-over thing" "'Cause she had the boy thing like I do, and I remember that was a pivotal conversation." "She sort of, in a way, transformed that voice-over thing for me, so I have a lot of gratitude to her." "EVERETT:" "She was just a sweetheart, and, uh, again, just a terrific attitude, and very professional and never missed a" "Never missed a mark." "We'd been aware of medical issues all along the way." "You know, we really loved her." "She was just so sweet." "RON:" "Yeah." "Real sweetheart." "JEFF:" "Terrific and it was just sad." "RON:" "Or let it weight her down or anything, you know, and, uh, yeah, she was-- She was also, and, of course, just an excellent actress." "She actually came in and recorded one day and her energy was just" "Just very, very low." "And, um, she" "She, either that day or the next, went into the hospital and went into the coma." "They read people for the audition for Dana's voice, but I was just so familiar with the show" "I think that really helped me have an edge on them and they just said, "Will you please do it?"" "And to me, it was just a real honor to be asked to do that, because she was a really good friend of mine and to be able to carry on that character for her, you know, I'll always remember her." "E.G.:" "She was really good." "She was a brilliant actress, and, uh, I've really glad I got to work with her, because I had a lot of time with her there, and spent a lot of time with her," "just privately, you know, as friends and got to watch her and experience her on the planet while she was here." "I went into it a little nervous, because it was Dana's slot." "Charles seemed to be the head that had a little more sense, and, uh, Mambo the head that was, you know, a little more out there on the two-headed son." "Freudian!" "Jungian!" "( grunting )" "PAT:" "He obviously knew he wasn't gonna be getting far away from Mambo in this world, but I think he was maybe the more reasonable one." "Uh, maybe a little bit more sensible." "It became a real wonderful timing issue with E.G." "And that made it all the more fun." "BOTH:" "Eww!" "Fluffy and Uranus were characters" "I developed for the comic." "( funky theme playing )" "A friend of mine looked at the comic and he goes," ""Gee, you know, Duckman's so mean." "You need some nice people in there." "Nice characters."" "So I said, "All right, you want nice?" "I'll give you nice."" "Poor misguided Mr. Duckman." "You don't need to mutilate your body just to meet some faint standard of superficial attractiveness." "We look past all that to see your inner beauty." "Mm-hm." "Time to see your inner beauty." "( both yelp, thud )" "Pat was always scheduled right before me." "So I'd come in as she was polishing up the last three or four lines of her session, and then she'd come out and we'd chat about," ""Isn't this just the weirdest thing?"" "And, you know, giggle." "And then she'd go off and I'd go in." "So we kind of passed like ships in the night." "PAT:" "I remember meeting him." "Gabor Csupo had a big party at his house for all of us." "And, um, when I was there, uh, somebody introduced me to him, and the person said, "You know, she's" "She's Fluffy and Uranus." And he was like:" ""No." He said, "I had this vision of some weird little amorphous kind of alien sort of person doing it." "I said, "No, just me." "Just me."" "Be good to your bowels and they'll be good to you." "EVERETT:" "We wanted these two characters to be totally saccharine, you know?" "Ha-ha." "And she really contributed to that." "Heh." "They said, "Well, here's the deal." "They're little bears and he's" "We're thinking maybe he'll destroy them, you know, most of the time."" "And I was kind of going:" ""What?" "Ha-ha." "Wait, what?"" "And, uh, but they just really let me riff with it." "( both cooing ) What's that?" "Oh, it's a kitty cat we found on our way to work." "At 4th and Elm." "Uh, does that count?" "Uranus was, you know," "( as Uranus ):" "A little bit up in here, Mr. Duckman." "( in normal voice ):" "And, uh, sounded kind of" "Reminded me of, like:" "( as Uranus ):" "Somebody from the Midwest who'd had, you know, problems." "( in normal voice ):" "And then Fluffy was a version of like, a little tiny Marilyn Monroe, you know?" "( as Fluffy ):" "More like this." "( in normal voice ):" "So the two of them were the same but completely different." "Pat's fantastic and very talented and did other voice s for us too, but those two." "You know, Fluffy and Uranus were so much fun to write." "RON:" "The funny thing about Fluffy and Uranus though, was that we wrote them in such a way that you kind of wanted to see them get blenderized and Oster" "Just, you know, ha-ha, it was kind of in the design of the characters." "The thing I loved about both of them was," "Fluffy and Uranus just wanted everything to be perfect in life, and they were always significantly horrified with Duckman because, of course, nothing meant anything to him." "Mr. Duckman, we're gonna make you better than even you know you can be." "And, uh, so I think that's why they hung with him." "What can we do for you, Mr. Duckman?" "An impersonation." "Of what?" "Drowning victims." "( gargled grunting )" "The writing on that show, it was just sensational." "It was political, hilarious, rude, incredibly rude and raunchy." "It means an adult can sit back, and laugh themselves sick at a cartoon." "And that makes me really happy." "It's precisely when humor is offensive that we need it most." "Comedy should provoke." "It should blast through prejudices, challenge preconceptions." "Comedy should always leave you different than when it found you." "( funky theme playing )" "One of the ridiculous things that happened on the show was we had this character Grandma-ma who was basically comatose, but flatulence was the only way she communicated." "Grandma-ma's life-check mirror." "ALL:" "She lives!" "And so we-- We literally had a CD of all the various kinds of farts." "And we would listen very attentively to, you know, which one was a plaintive fart, which one was a more joyous fart, and choose the most appropriate fart for the scene." "You know, for the mood that was supposed to be expressed." "The funny part was that we would sit there, and listen to those takes as seriously as any line of dialogue that an actor's giving." "One of the things we always went for in all of the characters was someone who could give us emotion and deliver no matter how funny they were trying to be." "( funky theme playing )" "I did all this for you." "When we were schoolchildren together it was you who taunted me, who humiliated me." "It goes without saying Tim was terrific." "JEFF:" "Because he almost always had another part to play." "that eventually became King Chicken in disguise and so he got to play a couple different things, you know, usually along the way." "Allow me to introduce myself." "Ah!" "King Chicken!" "You remembered." "He is the strangest, funniest charming guy." "Egad, but you're an imbecile." "( laughing )" "And, you know, I was always in the room going:" ""I'm in the room with the Rocky Horror guy."" "( crowd clamoring )" "Squeal." "Look, I got his autograph." "This to the person was just, you know, just a bunch of really, really nice people." "It was just a completely enjoyable experience all the way through." "I think we were the two assholes." "Yeah, yeah." "Basically." "But we were just doing that to break it up." "Yeah, you had to." "Can't all be nice." "Duckman was always kind of a funny show, because we've always had a very loyal sort of following" "You could say a cult following." "There's Duckman T-shirts, Happy Meals, condoms, tequila suppositories, and aluminum siding." "We were on an odd sort of network." "USA Network, which was just starting out at the time." "And it was never really" "It never had a steady timeslot or anything and" "And so it was difficult for viewers to find us." "Audiences are stupid." "You gotta force them to like the right things." "And USA was really great about letting us do what we wanted to do." "Pretty much anything." "And there's only one movie that can tell them what really happened out there:" "Mine!" "On USA." "We made so much fun of them." "USA?" "Are they on at night?" "Are you kidding?" "Dozens of people watch USA." "Duckman had a unique voice." "He was written uniquely and Jason, you know, just delivered it uniquely." "JEFF:" "We're happy with 90 percent of what we did on the show." "We think it really kind of nailed it all the way through as far as what we wanted to do." "I finally plugged into the true American work ethic:" "Raking in loads of cash without an ounce of actual effort." "( funky theme playing )" "EVERETT:" "I've always liked the scenarios where they would go someplace." "They would go on a road trip, or they would go on an adventure of some kind." "I would like to think that Duckman is, you know, in some kind of fulfilling, lasting relationship with probably a Taiwanese masseuse." "I see Corny and Duckman in West Palm Beach, Florida running a senior-rights advocate center." "Or on a 40-foot yacht off the coast of South Palm Beach, Florida on the money that they made in a high-end restaurant serving fatty foods to wealthy people." "Or cleaning the kitchen of a restaurant and living the good life and washing other people's dishes." "They can't still be in any kind of advocacy or law-enforcement." "Nah, there's no way." "I have to assume they're into Internet porn." "All right." "( scatting )" "What the hell are you staring at?" "!" "Wait, this isn't fair!" "You just took a bunch of comments out of context and strung them together to make me look rotten." "Snappy editing though." "You know, I get letters from all over the world asking me," ""Everett, how do you draw Duckman?"" "Well, I'm gonna show you right now." "[***]" "Start with a straight line, add the front of the head, then the bill." "Eh-- I mean, the bill go" " Heh-heh!" "Wait a minute." "[CLEARS THROAT]" "Back of the neck, the hair..." "[SIGHS]" "Okay, I can do this." "Wait a minute, now." "Let me" " There's the hair, front of the head, bill..." "[SIGHS]" "[***]" "I started doing actually a series in the East Bay Express which was kind of a, you know, little free tabloid paper up in the San Francisco area based on Duckman." "And then I started compiling some stories and approached Dark Horse Comics with it, and they liked the idea." "So I began working on the comic." "I started playing around with this duck character, and I've always liked kind of animal-based characters." "I'm a waterfowl." "I'm not a TV show!" "Really, he was a duck only in design." "I mean, he's a guy that just happens to be a duck." "I'm Duckman, private eye." "I'm here to investigate the, uh" "You know, the, uh, thing that needs investigating." "That was true with all of them." "We didn't really get into, uh, the fact that they were animals." "And" " And I intentionally would do some characters that were strictly animals, some that were strictly humans, and some that were sort of hybrid characters or combinations of both." "Uh, and that's the fun of animation, you know." "You can have characters that are completely unrealistic, but if you treat them in a realistic manner, you" "You buy that they're a-- You know, a real person." "Where was I?" "Everett has this" " This fantastic, you know, kind of universe of "manimal" characters." "And there were times when it just behooved us to have a human character for a" " For a part, you know." "Whenever Duckman went after a female, it was always a female." "It was not a female bird or dog or fox." "He's man first." "Absolutely." "He's all Duckman." "Man first." "Yeah." "He's all man." "He's all man." "He does very few things that are really duck-like." "You know, he's rarely floating around a pond, he's rarely flying." "We always thought of Duckman really as an adult show for adults, and-- And not really a kid's show." "[BOTH SCREAM] Ow!" "[***]" "[DUCKMAN GRUNTING]" "Whew!" "I would have scraped my knee if I hadn't landed on this gun-wielding maniac." "We always tried to keep that in mind with our storylines and the jokes." "And there's a lot of double-entendres and things that" " That, uh, you know, were really designed more for an adult audience." "I hate to prick your balloon." "Duckman, I believe the phrase is "burst your bubble."" "I know." "I just like to say "prick" whenever I can." "Prick." "Prick, prick, prick." "Prick, prick, prick, prick , prick." "He also was a big smoker in the comic." "I mean, he always had a cigarette in his mouth." "And we tried to maintain a little bit of that in" "In the series, and we actually have a few scenes." "But we always had a lot of resistance against him smoking." "You've been smoking." "I can smell it on your breath." "I was not smoking." "You can't accuse me of something I wasn't even doing." "Our thinking, of course-- 'Cause in the comic he did." "Smoke cigarettes." "Cigarettes, I'm sorry." "was that this was a show that aired at 10:30 at night." "Hi, Dad." "Whatcha doing?" "Throwing my life away on an overpriced marketing phenomenon that'll leave me bedridden, tumorous and politically incorrect." "OSBORN:" "You know, kids seek out animation." "And, uh" " And we-- We definitely, uh, took the cigarettes away after the first season." "Right, like my cigarettes are really hurting anyone." "When I began drawing him originally, he was a much taller, thinner, kind of gangly character." "And when I began to kind of refine him for animation," "I decided, since I had to clean the line up, uh, and I wouldn't have the kind of fuzzy line," "I" " I could make him look a little more interesting by changing his" " His proportions, his silhouettes." "So I, uh" " I squished him down a bit more and kept his head a little bit bigger in relation to his body, shortened his arms and legs, and that's sort of how he began." "The earlier version of him had a little bit longer bill, and as we realized, well, this, you know" "The shorter bill works better." "I want a bill job!" "Had to be." "The rest is perfect." "PECK:" "Basically, he became squatter and a little larger head, smaller body, as we progressed." "Ahem." "Fine-looking honker, Duckman." "Oh, you noticed, huh?" "We had a lot of dental work done second season." "You know, we had to work out things like how his mouth would work and how we could do, uh" "You know, make him look like he's talking with a bill." "RENO:" "We had to work out what happened to the teeth." "And he'd pronounce certain words with his bill." "There's some actual mouth positions where the teeth actually disappear and then pop on again." "Fellas, fact is some of my best friends are brain-dead, bread and water-eating scumbags." "[MEN MURMURING AGREEABLY]" "From the beginning, how characters should look, how they should move, how they should look when they're angry versus when they're happy." "I mean, all of that was covered by Ian and overseeing the artists at Klasky Csupo." "Jerry Richardson was my main character design guy on the show through all four seasons and, uh, a personal friend." "And he was very helpful in working with me to turn Duckman from a kind of a rough sketch-drawn character into an animated character." "I used to teach illustration and animation, and Jerry was a student of mine, um, a long time ago at Otis-Parsons School of Design in Los Angeles." "And we remained friends." "And then when we started the series, he had been working with Klasky Csupo and jumped on board to help me refine Duckman into an animatable kind of design." "And, uh, he was great that way." "He put together a beautiful series of do's and don'ts, and as we got further into the series, we had a book this thick of-- Of all kinds of special poses that he did based on the characters." "Duckman, I feel like a new woman." "Me too." "Unfortunately, I'm about 10 bucks short." "As we went into the second season, we learned a lot more about, you know, how the character worked onscreen, and some things that worked well and other things that didn't." "So we did, uh, a lot of, uh, yes and no kind of drawings." "And so we would get a lot together, then ship it off overseas to Korea." "And, you know, there'd be a whole room full of" " Of people working on this thing." "And in a month or two, we'd get, uh, a bunch of" "Of finished film back." "PECK:" "Jerry was great enough to go over there and spent at least a week over there, just showing people, okay, do's and don'ts." "And I wanted it to be, you know, richer, with more, uh, modeling and kind of rendering in it." "I gotta say that the overseas studios did an amazing job of, you know, following through on all that stuff." "There's nothing special about me, nothing unique." "I'm just one more duck detective who works with a pig and lives with the twin sister of his dead wife, three sons on two bodies, and a comatose mother-in-law who's got so much gas she's a fire hazard." "It was visually amazing." "Very striking right off the bat, that was straight from Everett's comic book." "And" " And, uh, really, the colors, it was so vibrant and so" "It was dark but-- But cool at the same time." "It was just really a-- A great look." "As we started talking about it, we realized, you know, there was this fantastic start for a character." "He was kind of a bit more basic than what you saw later." "He was an angry duck, basically." "He was angry." "He had issues." "Well, it's time someone made it work better, then." "Took on the system, stood his ground, no matter what the cost." "And I'm just the duck to do it." "The comic, it's sort of an organic process." "When I'm drawing, I just sort of naturally write with it." "And so that" " That was-- That flowed out pretty easily." "It's" " It's, uh-- I'm fairly comfortable writing for a comic, but that's" "That's a very different kind of dialogue for television." "That's, of course, where Jeff and Ron came in." "On the tube, everyone's a little bigger than life." "A little more glamorous." "They had had the experience." "But I learned a lot from them over the four seasons." "Wait a minute." "You're saying that I'm a TV show?" "Not that an adult series about a certain verbal and rakish drake wouldn't be fascinating viewing, maybe even get well-reviewed in papers like Newsday and the Wall Street Journal, then make a few top-10 lists and get an Emmy nomination." "We rejiggered the family a little bit." "In the comic, Duckman was married to Bernice." "Help!" "Help!" "Help!" "We made that his sister-in-law." "The snarling behemoth in the seat next to me is not my wife." "A little back-story was that Duckman was responsible for his late wife's death, accidentally." "Remember staking out that vendor at the parade the day you accidentally caused my death?" "One guilt at a time." "Which we thought was a little more darkly funny, but we could also have more dark fun between Duckman and Bernice if they weren't husband and wife." "Terrific." "I bust a tail feather trying to protect this family, and what do I get in return?" "Exactly what you deserve." "Also, you know, he was very ?" ", in our mind, and so it allowed us to" "To not feel queasy when he would come on to clients who came in the office." "Watch a master at the top of his game." "[DOOR OPENS]" "I'm Fantine." "Hee-hee-hee!" "And I'm Cosette." "[***]" "We've been celibate for a year, and we need you to go out with us." "Everett just created something so cool, but I think-- I think he would agree that it was-- It was rather two-dimensional." "He was pretty much an angry duck who kind of swore a lot." "And what we needed to do to bring him to life onscreen," "I think, was find that underneath, find the foundation, why he acts the way he does." "Are you listening to me?" "!" "I'm invisible, Corny." "I'm falling through the cracks." "What are his attitudes toward any number of things?" "What the hell are you staring at?" "!" "What about you?" "You seem to have something to share." "From women to social institutions to politics to everything." "Yeah, I do have something to share." "Duckman, didn't you schedule a colonic this afternoon?" "In fact, I have a miracle to share." "It really was kind of just figuring out a guy from the ground up." "It's a miracle you moon-eyed zombies fall for this Mother Mirabelle." "She's a fake!" "She's taking your money!" "RENO:" "He becomes not only visually three-dimensional, but" " But as a character, becomes three-dimensional too." "We toned his anger down, made him more verbal." "My past, my whole past is in this attic." "What a pigsty." "Oh, uh, figure of speech." "We came up with a show and a character in Duckman that you could do almost any kind of joke you wanted." "Everyone loves a little good, clean, semi-legal pornography." "It was kind of this amazing find, and part of that was due to the fact that it was animated." "This world's depressing enough without a few insults, slurs and good, honest laughs at other people's expense." "You could go crazy with language." "No inskie-outskie." "Ha-ha!" "No buffarina!" "He could be as silly or outrageous as we wanted one minute" "Never nail the hammer on the head." "Woo-hoo-hoo-hoo!" "Hee-hee-hee-hee!" "and we could do intellectual parodies." "What's he doing with that pink stuff?" "That's Crisco." "He's our greatest wrap artist." "We found out we could kind of go anywhere with this thing, because the rules for characters are sort of different in animation." "You're not stuck with sort of the realities of a live-action character that you have to adhere to as much." "In fact, you look like a million other duck detectives." "It's not like you stand out or anything." "It's an honest mistake." "No hard feelings." "We are kind of the godparents or the caretakers, and it was our job in realizing this, you know, to still kind of remain true to the soul of the characters." "I don't need this kind of treatment from some cheap jump-on- the-reality-show-bandwagon schlockumentary." "[***]" "There you go." "It's easy."