Slimed!: An Oral History of Nickelodeon's Golden Age

by Mathew Klickstein

  VANESSA COFFEY: “You dumb babies” was about Angelica being jealous. Babies get a lot of attention and Angelica was jealous. She had her issues. She was raised by a mother who didn’t give her a lot of attention, because she was a working mom who was on the phone all of the time. Angelica was a complicated character. We needed her. She added a lot.

  STEVE VIKSTEN: I had to go through this every day for an hour if I got in there first. Eventually Arlene insisted that we take stuff out of it or she wouldn’t approve the script. I told Paul, “I’m taking this out, but I’m coming to the recording session and I’ll feed you the lines I took out. She won’t even notice it.” And that’s what we did for years. Gabor wouldn’t have cared—I don’t even think he listened to the tracks.

  PAUL GERMAIN: I never had any conflicts with Gabor. He wasn’t that involved. He would often back us over Arlene. I kind of felt sorry for her. It was humiliating for her.

  STEVE VIKSTEN: In defense of Arlene, she meant well. She just wanted her young kids to have entertainment that was really positive and helped people, but I wanted it to be funny. All of us writers were peas in a pod—there was a Harvard contingent and a UCLA contingent—and Paul was our quarterback.

  PAUL GERMAIN: Instead of approaching it through the back door and trying to make things nice, I would challenge her. There was a writers’ meeting where I said something ugly to Arlene, and for years I’ve regretted it. She said something that offended me, and I responded with something mean-spirited. After that, she just dropped out of the process. It was too much for her.

  JOE ANSOLABEHERE: Paul and Viksten had written a script in which some surfer character says, “Killer price on the stereo dude!” And Arlene said they couldn’t say the word “kill” or “killer.” Paul later said he didn’t even like the joke that much; he just wanted to fight with her. So he just screamed at her in that meeting, and she said, “Hey, look, I’m just trying to protect the children of America from you boys.” And Paul said, “Who died and made you protector of America’s children?” or something like that. And the look on Arlene’s face was like, I’m gonna kill you one day.

  MICHAEL BELL: As actors, I don’t think any of us got involved in that. We showed up for work and didn’t want to know what was going on behind the scenes. We didn’t care that much.

  CHUCK SWENSON: I left telling Arlene it was her studio and she should run it exactly how she wanted. I believe and still believe the essence of story is conflict, and she does not. She didn’t need me to fight with. My life’s too short and I didn’t need it. “Find somebody else.” And they did! Rugrats became quite successful. And I was quite happy.

  GABOR CSUPO: Arlene could be difficult at times. But then so could I, probably.

  LINDA SIMENSKY: Arlene was a talented, passionate individual. She yelled a lot. Gabor yelled a lot. There was a lot of yelling going on.

  CHUCK SWENSON: I think Vanessa was on the other end of the phone. We had gone through something contentious, I can’t remember what. But before the phone got hung up on our end—we were on speaker—Gabor said something like, “Fucking bitch.” She took it with goodwill and grace. English is not Gabor’s first language.

  GABOR CSUPO: Arlene had it in her mind that she came up with the idea for the show, and she was being very protective of it and the way she thought it should be.

  JOE ANSOLABEHERE: By about season three, it was like a war. And that was unfortunate because Arlene is not a bad person. She’s a really nice person. Her heart was in the right place. It’s just that she wasn’t thinking about what would make the best show. She was thinking about not wanting her kids to say a bad word or something.

  STEVE VIKSTEN: I think she honestly did what she thought was right, thinking she needed to be a good producer. I don’t have any bad feelings at all. In fact, the last time I saw her was just before the letter came out in the LA Times . . .

  CRAIG BARTLETT: After sixty-five episodes, production basically ended and everyone was cut loose and found other things to do. It got so popular in reruns, Nick decided to make a Rugrats movie and make new episodes to support that movie. So they geared back up. Without Paul. Paul’s feelings were hurt that he wasn’t asked to come back, and there was stuff about credit being due.

  PAUL GERMAIN: I left Rugrats in 1992 or 1993. Right after that, I’d be looking for work and my agent would tell people he had one of the creators of Rugrats, Paul Germain. And she’d hear back from executives, “Oh, that’s not what I heard.” I was outraged because my name was on the screen as one of the creators. All of a sudden, I was getting locked out. For reasons that were never made clear to me, as the show was getting bigger and bigger, my name was not being mentioned in these articles written about it in the LA Times or whatever it would be. People were pretending I didn’t exist, and that was wrong. My entire writing staff had left by that time, and a bunch of them wrote a letter to the LA Times.

  CRAIG BARTLETT: Somewhere in there—we were in the first season of Hey Arnold! by then—all the writers on Rugrats wrote a letter to the LA Times defending Paul’s contribution to the series. There was a lot of pressure, and I signed it. All the writers signed it.

  STEVE VIKSTEN: Right before it came out, I saw Arlene in the parking lot and said, “Hey Arlene.” I walked up and I hugged her. We talked for a minute. The letter hit the next week and somebody told me she was furious about it. And she mentioned me. “I can’t believe the last time I saw him he actually hugged me.”

  JOE ANSOLABEHERE: The only reason anybody knew Paul’s name was it was on the credits. Rugrats had become this massive hit and he wasn’t making any money off of it, and that didn’t seem fair. It created this huge problem, because Arlene felt betrayed by us and then Nickelodeon was really mad at us. But we all felt like, “Okay, Paul gets credit for the show and Gabor and Arlene get credit for the show. And that’s how it should be.”

  STEVE VIKSTEN: The letter was not against her or Gabor; it was just to set the record straight. They were going off saying they were the creators of Rugrats, and they didn’t mention Paul. It was Paul’s show! He had a guy editing dialogue tracks in his office all the time. And Paul would usually direct the actors.

  CHERYL CHASE: I wasn’t working with Arlene and Gabor, because Paul was the voice director. We were working with Paul specifically.

  E. G. DAILY: He was very meticulous. He’d have us do it probably a zillion times. Kind of like George Miller, the director I worked with on Happy Feet. Paul had an insight on how to play these characters, which is why I think it was such a huge hit: He really understood the kids’ mentality.

  HOWARD BAKER: He could be a pain, but he just wanted every episode to be a success and that kept me on my toes.

  PAUL GERMAIN: I directed all of the voice actors on the first sixty-five episodes. It was my booth and I ran it. Sometimes Arlene or somebody would come in and quietly hand me a note, and I would either address it or not. What Rugrats was beyond “let’s do a show about babies” was mine. I came up with it. Arlene designed Phil and Lil and she designed the characters Boris and Minka, and Gabor had pulled the design for Chuckie out of a drawer, but they were characters based on my writing.

  LINDA SIMENSKY: I thought it was Arlene’s idea.

  GERRY LAYBOURNE: I will not take anything away from Paul, but it was Arlene’s idea.

  MARY HARRINGTON: It was Paul Germain’s, Arlene Klasky’s, and Gabor Csupo’s show. But Paul Germain and Joe Ansolabehere ran it. I supervised the first one hundred episodes.

  STEVE VIKSTEN: Any company like Viacom or Nick is going to be obsessed with controlling the press and protecting their brand. I understand that. But the truth is the truth. The letter was a recognition on our part, saying, “You have to recognize that a lot of the success of the show is based on the writing staff.”

  GEOFFREY DARBY: For the network to get involved in that, suddenly we’re pulled into that mess and we don’t want to be
, because then we’d have to pick a side. Instead, we would say to Gabor and Arlene, “What the frick is going on down there? And can you clean it up and get it out of the press?”

  JOE ANSOLABEHERE: Craig Bartlett kind of regretted signing it because of how upset Nickelodeon became. They didn’t want it to become another John Kricfalusi thing. John was on The Charlie Rose Show and Howard Stern’s show talking about Nickelodeon “screwing him over,” and Nickelodeon didn’t need any more bad press going on about one of their shows at the same time.

  PAUL GERMAIN: I have three Emmys on my shelf for the work I did on Rugrats. If Nick was comfortable with allowing this pretense that I wasn’t there and had nothing to do with it, that’s too bad they felt that way about the truth.

  GEOFFREY DARBY: Paul Germain really was the inventor of Rugrats. Not Arlene and not Gabor. I mean, he was working for them, so the three of them get a “created by.” But he was the vision behind it. In story meetings and stuff, we could tell whose vision it was.

  CHARLIE ADLER: I always felt Gabor and Arlene were very much involved in everything. Everything.

  PETER CHUNG: Paul was much more involved in it creatively. Gabor and Arlene were running the studio, and they had to tend with Nick and their whole staff. They were doing The Simpsons at the time, and Gabor was very preoccupied by that while we were doing the Rugrats pilot.

  GABOR CSUPO: I would say that is a fair assessment.

  STEVE VIKSTEN: I read the letter a few years ago and couldn’t believe how badly written it was. Eight writers and we can’t fucking write a decent letter. We thought it would just be a minor thing. It was buried in a Saturday edition of the LA Times, but the crap hit the fan Monday morning. Somebody told me Herb Scannell spent the whole day on the phone, pacing in his office over this. I was worried about my job for about a week. I had no idea it was going to be that big of a deal. But they had a hit show with us. And nobody said anything. I never talked to Herb about it. It blew over.

  HERB SCANNELL: They were all good people, but couldn’t work together. And we continued to work with Klasky-Csupo. Paul went off and got a deal with Disney. A lot of productions have inner workings that are funky. Sometimes they work out and make good work. And sometimes they break apart. That one broke apart.

  E. G. DAILY: We were all blessed to be part of such a great show, and everybody played a part in making it what it was. From Paul Germain to Peter Chung to Gabor Csupo and Arlene Klasky and all those characters . . . it was a team show, which is why it was so good.

  BILL WRAY: John Kricfalusi was a great team captain. But he had a helluva team. And if he ever wants to do another great Ren & Stimpy episode, he’s got to re-form the studio. And that’s why another Ren & Stimpy episode will never be made. Because he’ll never do that.

  CHRIS RECCARDI: If something’s great, it can’t be stopped. “Man’s Best Friend” is on DVD now. As long as the world gets to see it, everybody wins.

  EDDIE FITZGERALD: When I hear stories about John being testy and saying these things, I’m sure he did. But honestly, who cares? We’re all so proud that we worked on it. For a while, together we glimpsed art in the truest sense happen right before our eyes. And we were all part of it.

  JOHN KRICFALUSI: Never in a million years did I imagine that any of the artists I trained and gave such great opportunities to would turn around and sell out the studio and the show that made them famous and restored their artistic pride. A few years after the creator-driven heyday started by Ren & Stimpy, everything turned right around again, and those same artists were thrust back into an industry that places artists on the bottom rung of the ladder. There are a couple exceptions left—like SpongeBob, where the artists still have some say in the creative process—but the show has not evolved in quality or technique in the way that old cartoons did . . . and the way that Ren & Stimpy had been evolving episode by episode.

  CHRISTINE DANZO: Everyone had the best intentions in the beginning but allowed some inexperience, mistrust, control-seeking, and lack of faith to cause production havoc and therefore the end of an inspired show idea. Remember: It’s only a cartoon.

  ALAN GOODMAN: They still throw slime around. But it’s very beautiful slime. Heavily art-directed slime. That’s what changed. Grown-ups took control of the slime and made it pretty.

  VANESSA COFFEY: Two words: Power Rangers.

  ALAN GOODMAN: The big change at Nickelodeon came after the vast success of Dora the Explorer and SpongeBob. Suddenly, there was exceptional wealth in licensed products. Billions and billions of dollars. Companies that get a taste for that want more and more. Before you know it, you are developing shows or acquiring programs that come with licensing attached. Like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

  ADAM WEISSMAN: Audiences are getting bored. Writers have to come up with new ways to keep them interested. In 1993, there were no iPhones, no Internet. What distracted them and what got them in trouble and what kept them entertained was different than today. The shows now have to reflect that. Now you have iCarly and she has a web show. Welcome Freshmen came from a simpler time. And you can’t go back to that.

  DEE LADUKE: If what’s going on now is not a golden age, it’s because the people at Nick don’t have to make it up anymore. They have a couple decades of experience to back it up.

  FRED NEWMAN: Nickelodeon was kids playing in the sandbox at first. But once the lawyers get into things, it’s all, “Who owns that piece of music and how can we exploit it?” And none of that was there when I was doing Livewire. I even kind of shied away from other Nickelodeon projects because Viacom got so whoop-ass on stuff. I’m sorry, I don’t want to sound like a complaining old guy, but . . .

  DANA CALDERWOOD: The same is true in every industry. Not just TV. I was there last week, and there’s nothing but boardrooms. Hundreds of offices. They’ve become a company now. It used to be one floor and a couple of people coming up with goofy ideas.

  SCOTT WEBB: One of the things that happens within a corporate structure is your boss becomes the customer. You start thinking what’s gonna get approved or what’s the thing that they want, and you stop thinking about the audience. Play is extremely risky and, I have to say, for the most part, completely discouraged within corporations now more than ever before. I mean, there’s no playing happening at Nickelodeon now. I guarantee it.

  MARC SUMMERS: It’s not the fun, jovial place it once was. It’s all about the bottom line and thinking a billion dollars as opposed to good programming. Nick from ’86 until right before 2000 was great television. And then . . . they lost their way.

  BYRON TAYLOR: There was only so much airtime during the day when we could run the Nickelodeon shows. There was only so much budget. We couldn’t keep both Nick Studios Florida soundstages busy seven days a week to meet Universal’s demands.

  ANDY BAMBERGER: The final death throe for Nickelodeon Studios was—as always—a double-edged sword. We were now able to afford outside productions with bigger and better ideas . . . but they wanted to shoot their shows in LA and not come all the way to Florida.

  BYRON TAYLOR: We contractually had to have something going on on the stages every day when the park and tour were open. Sometimes there was legitimate production going on. But when there wasn’t, there was the necessity of creating the illusion there was. They called it “camera blocking.” They had all kinds of names for it. They had PAs down there moving things around, looking busy . . .

  ANDY BAMBERGER: In 2002, that was about the end of the studios. They sold off all the equipment, all the chairs, everything. I happened to be working on a show in Orlando at the time and went through there. They had Olmac from Legends of the Hidden Temple! I wanted to buy it, but my wife would’ve killed me.

  ADAM WEISSMAN: The difference I feel is just the success of the shows. I work on shows now where I’ve worked with these crew people for seven, eight years. The same ones! That kind of loyalty is not necessarily common with
in a network. These people are all nice, they work their butts off, we all make a living, and we’re proud of the shows.

  ANDY BAMBERGER: Now because of Clarissa and some other shows being successful, we were able to pay more money to get better shows. That’s when Brian Robbins came in with All That and those bigger and better shows. We could use DGA directors and AFTRA talent. But the people who created those earlier shows that led to this success? They didn’t get to enjoy it, because they weren’t involved in the shows that happened at the next level.

  MARK SCHULTZ: Too many of the original people had moved on, had felt the vibe changing. New people were in charge of the network, and new executives were coming in who had titles but not experience.

  MICHAEL KOEGEL: A lot of the people who stayed there were middle-management people who rose to the top. Not very creative, but people who show up to work on time and know how to write an e-mail.

  TIM LAGASSE: It’s true: If you want to get into television, go to Nickelodeon and start in the mailroom and you’ll be an executive in six months.

  SCOTT WEBB: There’s no real meaningful talent that exists within Nickelodeon, and there’s no real industry leadership that happens there either. They’ve squandered everything that this foundation of branding gave them. They threw out the logo. They’ve pretty much thrown out everything that allowed them to be a business that had a powerful relationship with an audience that could live on like the greatest love affairs of history. They decided that was not as important as having MBAs driving business with PNLs and seeing how much money they can make. One of the axioms Gerry gave us—and this was the key to the kingdom: “If it’s good for kids, it’ll be good for business.” Now, it’s, “If it’s good for business, then we’ll make it good for kids.”

  ANDY BAMBERGER: We were all shocked when Gerry left, because she was the heart and soul of the network. Herb is a very thoughtful person, a very creative person, but it was an impossible set of shoes to fill, because Gerry was such a big personality and had been there so long.