The Beginning of Bongo: The Rise of Matt Groening’s Bongo Studios
Article from Animation Nation Netsite, by Nathan O’Raptor[1]
As the millennium came to an end, Matt Groening, Arlene Klasky and Gabor Csupo, and Coffey and the Haywards were in a pretty good place. Groening was one of the most respected cartoon creators of his generation, with an acclaimed 10-season run of
The Bunyans ending, and Nuclear Family and Rugrats were, after brief retools, coming back with distinction. The only way, it seemed was up.
Having struggled to get certain ideas in
The Bunyans (I think you can guess which ones) past executives, Groening decided to form his own production company, in order to have greater control of his content – and so, Bongo Studios (named after a character from Life In Hell) was born, writers David X. Cohen, Josh Weinstein, and Bill Oakley leaving Wayward and following him. Production on
Nuclear Family and Rugrats remained at Wayward and Bongo Studios began to work on three new projects.
Bongo’s first project as an independent studio was an animated short based on Janell Cannon’s children’s book
Verdi (Cannon and Bongo would become frequent collaborators), starring Bumper Robinson as a little green tree python who doesn’t want to grow up, but learns an important lesson. The short was critically acclaimed and was nominated for an Oscar for Best Animated Short Film; whilst it lost to the Skeleton Crew’s
Spider and Fly, the event was a positive for Groening for other reasons.
Groening’s friend, Nick Park[2], who was at the event for his film
Tortoise v. Hare, introduced Groening to a man he had long admired: Jim Henson. The two men talked, with both expressing interest in collaborating, and Henson expressing support of Groening’s offhand ambition to branch into feature film. Henson even offered to underwrite the nascent Bongo Studios. Bongo, whilst excited about the possibility of working with Disney, turned him down, wanting to retain their independence.
The two companies would eventually develop a working relationship, even having a young Mr. Burns and a family photo of
The Bunyans show up in
Roger Rabbit 3, with Disney gaining the theme park rights to the Bongo characters, after Columbia (their other main partners) showed little interest, all culminating in Bongo eventually signing a three-picture film deal with Disney, fulfilling Groening’s long-standing ambitions to branch into feature film. However, that is a story for another day.
Futurama
With the new millennium dawning, Groening began pondering the future. Recalling what people in the past thought the world would look like in the new millennium, Groening began thinking what the world would look like a thousand years from now. Naming the show “Futurama” after a pavilion at the 1939 New York World's Fair and further inspired by their love of Star Trek, Groening and Cohen built their show around a core theme: the world changes, people don’t.
We see the world of tomorrow through the eyes of Curtis J. Fry (Billy West), a pizza delivery guy with a pretty crappy life who ends up accidentally (or so it seemed…) cryogenically frozen and who then wakes up in the year 3000.
With no job, no family and no prospects, he decides to sign up for space exploration and ends up posted on the E.S.S. Beautilycias (pronounced like Bootylicious, much to the initial amusement of Fry[3]), captained by blowhard Zapp Brannigan (Phil Hartman), an arrogant dingbat fond of pseudo-Shatnerian monologuing. Captain Brannigan is joined by aggrieved first officer Kif (Maurice LaMarche), semi-senile science officer Marconi Farnsworth (also Billy West) and brilliant but lazy and entitled communications officer Amy Tang (Lauren Tom).
However, Fry ends up befriending the lower-deck crew members: the hard-drinking, kleptomaniacal robot URL (pronounced “Earl”), voiced by John DiMaggio, ass-kicking cyclopean alien (actually mutated human) Leela (voiced by Nicole Sullivan), stuffy, anal-retentive (as in “give you an official reprimand for being 0.0001 seconds late” anal-retentive) Jamaican “ship’s bureaucrat” Hermes Andromeda (Phil LaMarr), and the crab-like “Decapodian” alien (and lethal ship’s doctor) Dr. Schlomax Greenzerg (also voiced by Billy West).
Finally, there was the breakout character of Ensign Condannato “Condi” Camiciarosso (Hank Azaria), a red-shirted Clone who keeps dying on every mission only to get systematically replaced by his next Clone every episode, who then reintroduces himself to the crew.
It’s often been described as “the closest thing to an American Red Dwarf we’re ever likely to get” and generally took a comedic bent on space adventures, with often-surreally designed aliens and bizarre cultures using the trademark Groening satire, furthering the Star Trek tradition of putting social metaphors in the stories – and skewering everything from religion to corporate culture to even New Coke.
However, it wasn’t shy to delve into darker territory when it was needed to. A particular case is the seminal episode “Judge Not a Man, Mind You”. The Beautilycias is sent to remedy racial tensions on Lacerta Eight, a planet inhabited by a race of gecko-like aliens, who are split into various ethnic groups based on the colour of their scales – with the green-scaled gecko aliens enjoying the most privileges and the other colours being discriminated against.
Understandably angry at their plight, the other colours are caught between two different leaders: a violent militant and a revolutionary pacifist. The episode culminates with Brannigan literally sitting the three leaders — the militant (who has started to understand the consequences of taking up arms against their oppressors), the pacifist (who has reluctantly come to accept that reasonable force may be required for his dream to come true), and the overlords' leader (who has started to comprehend how bad the other colours have it) — down at phaserpoint and commanding them to talk to each other.
The dénouement is Brannigan delighted at his success, and confident that, given enough time, they’re going to work something out. Fry turns to a slum and asks, “Yeah, but how many kids are gonna die in the meantime?” Brannigan turns to him and says, “How many more will live?” It’s an amazingly subdued statement from the usually bombastic Brannigan and showcases Hartman’s talent as an actor.
Futurama initially struggled on Toon Town’s Pleasure Island block; however, it made five good seasons and maintained a strong cult following, still seeing syndication and Direct View attention to this day. While probably not the first Groening cartoon most think of, and greatly overshadowed by
The Bunyans and
Nuclear Family,
Futurama is for many viewers his most ambitious and indeed clever work.
Bartman
Bartman was born, obviously enough, out of the popularity of Bart Simpson’s superhero alias, Bartman, on
Nuclear Family. It was one of the first ideas pitched for an in-house production once Bongo Studios was formed. And the notion of Bartman prowling the alleys of Springfield at night, facing equally idiosyncratic supervillains, was a great way to point out and deconstruct the superhero tropes popular in the many superhero cartoons and films that exploded in the 1990s.
Using the more altruistic Bart who had emerged after the
Nuclear Family retool, Cartwright was able to show her depths as an actress and grant Bart a bit more of a personality. The semi-loveable, sarcastic old misanthrope version of Mr. Burns also appeared, acting as Bartman’s foil and occasional benefactor. Whilst the episodes where the two collaborated were infrequent, the interplay between the two, with Burns serving as the M to Bartman’s James Bond, are fondly remembered. An example is this exchange in the episode “Icewalker”:
Bartman: (seeing a dead group of Burnsco scientists in an Arctic research station) Well, I guess that’s them… on ice.
Burns: Please have a little respect for the dead, Bartman. These men had families. Please tell me you rang in to report, not make puns.
Whilst ostensibly a send up of the superhero genre, the series also had deeper themes. According to writer Bryan Konietzko, the show was principally about the power of one person to make a difference, for better or for worse. However, another theme becomes apparent: if you dedicate your life to hatred and revenge, you will bring nothing but pain, both to yourself and to those around you. The quest for revenge on those who had previously wronged them brought ruin to many of Bartman’s friends and foes alike…and, sometimes, to Bartman himself.
Many of Bartman’s villains were three-dimensional and complex, petting as many dogs as they kicked, having relatable motivations, or having tragic backstories that kept them sympathetic despite their often-extreme actions, with a few unrepentantly horrible ones mixed in just to shake things up.
Nukovore (Rene Auberjonois), for example, an entity that fed on radiation, was a villain simply because he needed radiation in order to sustain himself, and his attempts at getting it would cause destruction, keeping him sympathetic despite his often-extreme actions. Duke Disastardly (Arthur Burghardt) was outwardly a mustache-twirling Silver Age villain who acted “for the evil”, and yet a look at his tragic past as an abuse victim gave context to his “Carmen Sandiego-like” crimes. Womandrake (Cree Summer) served as both a deconstruction of the femme fatal trope and an avatar for the glass ceiling as she (despite her hyper-competence) struggled to gain rank in the Council of Evil Intent villain’s union. Master Mind (Corey Burton), an AI constructed by Chester Whitney’s company who went rogue, whose rhetoric about a slavish dedication to pure logic and how he would “bring order to the chaotic human race” were all rooted in his desire to never be subservient to anyone ever again, giving a tragic context to his often-grandiose plans to subjugate mankind.
One of Bartman’s most tragic foes was Insectina (Cree Summer), a Burnsco lab assistant whose DNA ended up fused with an insect after her boss, having stolen the credit for her discovery about genetic editing, attempted to murder her to cover his tracks, and whose desperate, but doomed to fail, attempts to cure herself and struggle maintain her humanity in the face of the insect’s emotionless nature, kept her sympathetic despite her often-extreme actions. This heartbreaking monologue in the seminal episode “About A Bug” is a good reason why the character is so well-remembered:
Insectina: Some days, I feel like Christina Vespa was the fake me, like I’m an insect who dreamt it was a woman and loved it… oh, I loved it. However, the dream’s ending… and the insect’s waking up. Some days I feel like I can’t stop it. Someday, and every day it gets a little closer, someday, it’s going to wake up…
Her right eye, which is still human, begins to tear up. Bartman gives her a pained look.
Insectina: (almost plaintive, like a little girl who’s had a nightmare) I don’t wanna wake up…
However, the show’s greatest villain was the seemingly normal and benign Chester Whitney, a charismatic “new wave” millionaire who was often engaged in sinister schemes, and who was the father of Bart’s on-again-off-again love interest Alex. What made Chester such a great villain was not that he was an affable but manipulative evil genius who could trick the heroes into doing his plans for him. Nor was it that he had the capacity to feel love and other human emotions despite the often-extreme evil of his actions, with his redeeming love for his wife and daughter offset by his calm detachment and simple psychopathic amorality.
No; what made him so effective was the complete lack of a Freudian excuse. The writers did not try to humanize him or make us sympathize with him because of some painful past or bad childhood. Instead, it was very clear that he was the type of person he was (and always had been) and did what he did entirely because he wanted to be, even occasionally playing his literal psychopathy as the psychological disability that it is, with lasting personal consequences for him (e.g. the estrangement of his daughter).
Another reason is that, unlike many of Bartman’s villains (and many villains full stop), he fully embraced the Aesop that “revenge is a sucker’s game” and steadfastly avoided making things personal, refusing to let his antagonists (most often Bartman) define his goals. And as the show went on, Chester Whitney became, whilst never truly heroic, a lighter shade compared to some of the other villains. Whilst other villains concerned themselves with the destruction of humanity or other aims, Whitney’s only desire was money and power. This made him an occasional ally to Bartman, when it was necessary.
Many of Bartman’s themes would later appear in the Bongo Studios cartoon
Avatar – in particular, it’s tempting to see Bartman villain the Skin-Taker as a precursor to that show’s Koh the Face Stealer (they’re even voiced by the same actor). Perhaps appropriately, many of Bartman’s staff would later work on
Avatar.
Evil, Inc.
Inspired by the glut of workplace sitcoms and films beginning in the late 1990s, Bongo Studios capitalized on this with a very strange take:
Evil, Inc. Taking a subplot from Nuclear Family and running with it,
Evil, Inc. portrayed supervillainy as a job. Primarily led by David X. Cohen, writer Jackson Publick of
The Tick fame was brought in early on in the first season and quickly rose to the top of the writer’s room, eventually partnering with singer/creator/voice actor Doc Hammer on their famous
Evil, inc. spin-off
Andy Venture in 2005.
Imagine the cream of the crop of supervillainy, the top-tier evil and the best of the best of the worst. Dr. Diabolicus and his crew…are not those supervillains. In fact, they’re not even in the top 10. Or the top 50. Maybe they’re in the top hundred, but that’s only because the Amoeba Gang (suggested to have been inspired by “a gang in Townsville” and clearly an affectionate homage to
Whoopass Stew) couldn’t come up with a more intimidating name. Their lair is falling to bits. They struggle to buy supplies due to lack of funds. And the broader community of both supervillains and superheroes either don’t know who they are or treat them like a joke…or insult.
Most of the show follows Dr. Diabolicus (voiced by Rik Mayall), who angsts endlessly about people seeing him as a joke, trying to get respect from the supervillain community, as well as being seen as “the cool boss” by his henchmen. Dr. Diabolicus’ henchmen include the cheerfully violent, if none-too-bright second in command Major Disaster (voiced by Adrian Edmondson); the snarky female assassin Black Scorpion (Susan Egan), who, through no fault of her own and much to her displeasure, has found herself slumming it
way below her station; the dim-witted and perpetually cheery literal-man-mountain (as in he’s made of living rock) Thunk (Patrick Warburton); the diminutive and super-intelligent, but neurotic alien telepath Sico (pronounced “sicko”) (voiced by Tom Kenny); and the nervous-but-eager-to-prove-himself super-smeller temp Frank (Neil Patrick Harris). The crew were later joined by Thunk’s “son” Thunk Junior (Dee Bradley Baker), produced by asexual budding.
Part of the humour of the show is the fact that it treats supervillainy as a kind of job: evil lairs have estate agents, henchmen can be hired from temp agencies and there are expos advertising the latest doomsday devices and death-traps. The other part is the fact that all the heroes and villains are actual people, with desires and flaws and pet peeves and idiosyncrasies, opening up the series to Jerry -like explorations of everyday arguments and petty obsessions, with the crew’s hatred of Sico (except for Frank and Thunk) and his odd friendship with the dim-witted Thunk, and the many implications (later confirmed by the showrunners) that Black Scorpion is gay (she calls a lava-themed super-villainess “smokin’” and is just as flustered around Wonder Woman expy Warriora as the non-Thunk males are).
Diabolicus and crew, being pretty low on the supervillain rung, are constantly strapped for cash and struggle to get supplies, which sets up a lot of slapstick plots where Diabolicus and crew completely and utterly humiliate themselves in order to get money/power/respect. For example, in “Only in Florida”, Diabolicus and crew have to resort to a low-rent lair, after having lost their old one in a bet (long story). The problem is…its previous tenant was redneck villain Gumbo Gomer (Billy Ray Cyrus in a stunt cast), who flooded the lair and infested it with alligators, one of which drags a screaming Sico down the hall.
Another case was the episode “A Slightly Less Convenient Truth” (written by Kristin Gore), where their plan to hold the world to ransom by threatening to melt the Antarctic ice cap is complicated by their having to buy a second-hand heat ray, because they can't afford the newest model, and ironically foiled not by the superheroes, but by the fact that the cheap heat ray gets shorted out by UV radiation due to the Antarctic hole in the ozone layer.
One episode “Family Matters”, has Diabolicus and crew be forced to babysit Diabolicus’ nieces and nephew, Burt, Laura and Margo (voiced by Nancy Cartwright, Yeardley Smith and Judith Barsi, and strongly hinted to be parallel universe versions of the Simpson kids)…the same day they are having half-man, half-snake villain Kobra (voiced by Jim Cummings, doing a Sterling Holloway impression) around for a cup of coffee, in order to discuss a potential future team-up.
The catch? The kids' father, the Blue Badger (voiced by Dan Castallaneta) is a superhero and Kobra‘s archnemesis. So, basically, the whole episode is about Diabolicus and crew attempting to keep the kids away from the Kobra and vice versa. In a rare happy ending for Diablolicus, Kobra finds out about the deception (through a panicking Thunk accidentally putting truth serum on Diabolicus’ sandwich instead of hot sauce) and, impressed by Diabolicus’ dedication to family, accepts his offer of a team-up some time in the future and leaves.
Evil, Inc., would run for an impressive 7 seasons and generate the equally beloved spinoff
Andy Venture, which followed the titular Johnny Quest expy and his perpetually underestimated “Hindu friend” (actually a Sihk) Khan, which would itself spin off the ongoing series
Tales of the Downright Peculiar with Dr. Orpheus, a
Nocturns-style anthology series with the semi-recurring Bartman character, voiced by David Tennant, in the Rod Serling role. In some ways, it is the most successful of Groening’s productions given the many spin-offs, and yet since
Evil, Inc. was set up by
Bartman, and
Bartman a spinoff of
Nuclear Family, which was in turn alluded to be a parallel dimension to
The Bunyans (which Dr. Orpheus visits at one point while travelling “the multiverse”), it’s arguably all the same show, with fans constantly wondering when the Rugrats will make an appearance (rather sadly, since Rugrats is not a Bongo Studios production, rights issues meant that is impossible; sorry to be a killjoy).
Conclusion
If
The Bunyans,
Rugrats, and
Nuclear Family were the Three Faces of Matt Groening in the late 1980s and early 1990s, then his three new faces of the late 1990s and 2000s were
Futurama,
Bartman, and
Evil, Inc. While the “first three faces” showed a huge disparity in tone and themes from the innocent and sincere to the cynical and misanthropic, the “second three faces” represent an artist who has found his core “style”. All three maintain a similar balance between the cynical and sincere, the political and the universal, and the affectionate and the deconstructive. All three utilize similar tropes and often the same writers, even as all three maintain their own unique feel.
The “first three” saw Groening as a struggling, experimental up-and-comer trying to find his way in a changing US entertainment environment. The “next three” saw him as an established icon in the animation industry. The “next three” also increasingly demonstrate the visions of his partners and employees, be that Cohen, Weinstein, Oakley, Publick, or Gore, whose own peculiarities and humor increasingly began to define the works, with Groening increasingly the Creative Head and executive producer.
As such, fans often describe Groening in terms of “BB” (Before Bongo) and “AB” (After Bongo). There are “orthodox” fans that doggedly stick to the BB works, and some who refuse to acknowledge anything that’s not
Life in Hell or
The Bunyans, but by and large fans seem to appreciate the two “phases” of the man and his work.
Not a bad journey for a man whose TV career began with a hastily-scrawled rabbit family in the Gracie Films waiting room.
[1] Hat tip to
@Nathanoraptor.
[2] The two actually know each other in our timeline. Groening wrote a foreword to an Aardman book and Nick Park appeared on an episode of
The Simpsons.
[3] Kif: (bored) Welcome, Cadet Fry, to the E.S.S. Beautilycias, the pride of the fleet.
Fry: (laughs obnoxiously) Bootylicious!
The assembled crew gasps and mumbles in shock and anger.
Dr. Greenzerg: The nerve of this guy!
Kif: (angry, arms crossed) She is named for the great Admiral David X. Beautilycias, who sacrificed himself to save the people of Beta Omicron IV in the Battle of Prophylaxis!
Fry: Oh.