Interview with Ren & Stimpy Creator John Kricfalusi

John Kricfalusi is one animation's weirdest success/tragedy stories. After creating Ren & Stimpy for Nickelodeon and causing a strange sort of gross-out Renaissance, Nickelodeon fired him from his own creation and took charge of the show themselves before, as most fans would attest, ruining it forever. But the crazed cat/chihuahua couple recently received a reinvention on the Spike TV network with John K. back at the helm. Now the original Ren & Stimpy episodes are back on DVD, and everything comes full circle. John K. took some time to talk without about Ren, Stimpy, what went wrong, and what went right.

Gamestar: Where did you come up with the idea for Ren & Stimpy?

John Kricfalusi: It's not really an idea. It's two characters. Just two funny looking characters with funny personalities that are opposites but have to somehow get along. Ren is based on real Chihuahua personalities. Chihuahuas are insane little monsters that would love to tear your throat out if they only had the strength. That's Ren—he would murder and torture everyone, if he could get away with it. Luckily for humanity, he is frail and helpless. His voice is based on Peter Lorre it's me doing a bad impersonation of Peter Lorre.

Stimpy is basically an inspired retard, an idiot with flashes of moronic inspiration. Originally he was a very shallow retard, but we developed his personality in the series as we wrote the stories. Billy West based his voice on Larry Fine of the Three Stooges but he and the rest of us all added shadings to his personality.

GS: Can you talk about the DVD medium and what it's allowed you to do from a creative standpoint with the Ren & Stimpy DVDs?

JK: Well nothing. The cartoons were all done 11, 12 years ago. We didn't make any direct-to-DVD cartoons, although we should. I'm sure they would sell great. But I did restore some of the cartoons that were originally cut by Nickelodeon. Sven Hoek has scenes never before seen by the audience. Dog Show has a couple extras and we‘re including the infamous BANNED EPISODE.

There is also a great supplemental side that has interviews with artists (me too) yodeling, lots of original art and storyboards and commentaries by the artists over some of the cartoons.

GS: What role do you see mature-oriented cartoons, including Ren & Stimpy, playing in pop culture today, especially in the wake of the big screen emphasis on computer-generated animation?

JK: I don't see any role being "adult" or "kids" plays in pop-culture. Adults can be just as immature as kids and still have strong underlying philosophical themes-like Ren Seeks Help, Altruists, Man’s Best Friend or Stimpy's Invention. Other cartoons we did were just silly fun.

I don't see that the computer-generated cartoons on the big screen are adult at all. They seem like little kids' cartoons as most feature length cartoons outside of Ralph Bakshi's have been.

GS: Twenty or thirty years from now, what place do you hope Ren & Stimpy has in the history of animated entertainment?

JK: I hope some day the best things about Ren and Stimpy finally influence animated entertainment. The best thing Ren and Stimpy did was to make animated cartoons do what only animated cartoons can do and to use as much skill doing it as possible under the restricted budgets. That doesn’t seem to have influenced anything at all.

Classic cartoons from the 1930’s to the 1950's did that. They were magic. They were limited only by imagination and the skill of the artists.

The main influences of Ren and Stimpy- and there are many have been pretty superficial. Edgy content—gross stuff, dirty stuff, bad words. Thick lines around characters. Splotchy backgrounds. Specific expressions Stimpy made once or twice are used all the time now.

I hope that 20 years from now we are still making new episodes of Ren and Stimpy and they continue to be experimental and unbound by primitive mortal reason.

GS: Besides working on additional Ren & Stimpy DVD compilations, what are you up to these days?

JK: Making new Ren and Stimpy's for Spike, God damn it!