- So a lot of great blasts from the past for me personally.
Because it looks so cool. When these shows were new,
I remember these were such a different thing
from the old classic Looney Tunes.
And now I watch this now and I'm like,
"Oh my god, these are like classics in their own way."
I didn't think of it that way.
I mean seeing the wonky buildings,
and seeing the paper look of it,
you know, it's just, it's refreshing.
If I hadn't said already, that's the word I would use
to describe the whole project.
So tell us about how this kind of came to be.
Did Nickelodeon, I don't really know anything about it,
did Nickelodeon come to you?
Or were you pitching to them?
- I got a call one day, I was working on the pilot
for my series I'm doing now, a PBS show,
and I got a call from Chris Viscardi,
and he said, "Would you be interested in coming back
"and doing a special?" It was the farthest thing
from my mind. It was not anything,
I knew that "Rocko" was starting to gain,
it actually had more traction as years went on
than it did when it was originally on.
So I called Martin Olson, who was one of the writers,
on the original "Rocko" and Doug Lawrence, you know Doug,
and they were like, "Yeah, you know
"I think it would be good. We could come up with something
"that's relevant now. Something that's modern life."
So I started thinking about it.
So I came up with this idea for the story.
And Doug and Martin and I kicked up the story a bit more.
And then when we did the storyboard,
Tom Smith and Dan Becker, who's here today,
they were storyboard guys, and Cosmo,
and we beefed up the story even more.
And these guys, Tom Smith is like, the biggest "Rocko" geek.
He knew more about "Rocko" than I did.
I would go to him and ask him questions about characters.
So if you guys notice, you might
have to watch it a couple times, there's like,
a gazillion inside jokes about the show.
- Fan service is the word there (mumbles).
- So yeah, that's how I went about it.
And Nickelodeon was great, and I really enjoyed myself.
- I love the story because I actually think
it's more modern and relevant even this minute,
than it was probably when you finished making the film,
because I'm thinking of things like
the fact that "The Lion King" is back,
all this stuff from the 90s is kind of coming back,
and then this like addresses that,
which is amazing to me actually.
- We're always at an influx of change, right?
And then we're always holding onto things
that we're familiar with, so it all
kind of conflicts with each other.
Sometimes really where we're addressing.
- I mean you've in your professional work,
in your career beyond "Rocko," because you've done
other series and shows and things, films beyond that show,
and your style evolved, and here you are,
again not to dwell on it, but you're throwing back to it.
So that's obviously the theme of the film.
What was it like being, getting back,
obviously you hired some of the old crew
and a lot of great new people to surround yourself with,
obviously at some point you were
in the thick of this movie, you know, you probably had,
I'm imagining you had the studio going,
and everybody's working on different phases and stuff,
and here you are back doing it again after all these years.
What was that like?
And of course later recording with some of the people again?
- Yeah, it was great. They all jumped right back into it,
and they're all amazing, Tom Kenny,
and Carlos Alazraqui, and Charlie Adler
(crowd applauds)
Linda Wallem, who does Dr. Hutchinson, we had to find.
We like, we lost track of her.
So we had to go search around and find her.
Adriana Galvez, who did backgrounds on "Rocko"
she came back to do it, and George Chialtas
who was also a timing director, he did the timing direction.
- So the lettering, is that your handwriting?
The lettering is all the same after all this time.
- Yeah at the end, the end credits is the same cell
that we used, I did that cell, and I had it in storage.
(crowd laughs)
- See you got to keep that stuff.
- I brought it out. Yeah I don't know where it is now,
I sold it on eBay I think.
(crowd laughs)
- This is so geeky, but on the big screen,
I noticed, it looked like a xerox line.
You know what I'm talking about?
Or is that just the way it is and I just don't,
the original show is done with cells and xeroxes.
Couldn't be, right?
- Did we pull that off? That's cool.
- You did, at least on the big screen you could see it.
- No, we tried really hard to make it look
exactly like the old. Cosmo Serguson who's the co-director,
he's sitting right over there.
(crowd applauds)
We were in Korea, and we wanted
all the animations done with pencil.
And we wanted to make sure that it was done with pencil.
And then we were looking at some xerox samples,
and Cosmo brought it up, that it doesn't look like
the way it was on the show, and can we get better xerox.
So all the backgrounds were all done in Dr. Martin dyes.
Jessica Yost who is here, she's our art director.
Or she was helping, she's a color stylist,
Paul Spence is our art director.
And we made sure that everything looked...
- You see it worked!
- I'm glad! We actually did put cell shadows
in like the fat head stuff. We put, and then, and then,
this is a funny story because we first got some film back,
I said, "What is wrong with this?"
And someone goes, "It's HD Joe."
(crowd laughs)
I had never seen "Rocko" in HD,
so I thought it was, so we dirtied it up.
(crowd laughs)
- I mean HD is just today's version
of what was in the old days 35 millimeter film.
And I remember you were original films,
and I remember seeing the show when it first went on,
this, you nailed it. You got it.
- Good, we did a good job.
(crowd applauds)
- The stuff at the beginning,
where he's looking very quickly at the changes that happen.
I particularly like that he went back
to the comic book store, although
there are still comic book stores.
- Yeah, change is hard for Rocko.
Heffer embraced it, and Filburt liked it.
I knew Filburt was going to be like a total technology geek.
He really loved it.
- So the doors, is the door open for more possibly?
- I think, yeah, I'm open to it.
And if anybody else is.
(crowd applauds)
The fans have power!
(crowd laughs and cheers)
- I think we're going to see how this does, you know?
I'm really glad it's on Netflix.
I think that's really great hope for it.
(mumbles)
- Well unfortunately our time is up.
So Joe, spectacular job really, seriously great,
and I can't wait to see what you're doing next,
and thank you for coming here today.
(crowd applauds)
Thank you all for coming tonight.