Loonier Toon Tales

By Stefan Kanfer

Producer-director John Kricfalusi examines the storyboard for a future episode of The Ren & Stimpy Show. Beaming with satisfaction, he congratulates the staff. "This is it," he announces. "Not a glimmer of good taste anywhere."

When the animated series debuted on Nickelodeon last August, there were only half a dozen episodes. Vice presidents at rival networks snickered. The adventures of a rabid Chihuahua and a bulbous cat? Drawn in retro '50s style, with garish backgrounds and gags based on bodily functions? Who knew that Ren and Stimpy were on the cusp of celebrity?

Kricfalusi knew. "I figured there had to be millions of kids out there as sick of Ducktales and The Flintstones and My Little Pony as we were," he recalls. "We" were his partners, Jim Smith and Bob Camp, and his girlfriend Lynne Naylor. All were in their early 30s and had served time on Saturday- morning cartoon shows. What the world needed now, reasoned Kricfalusi & Co., was the anarchic vulgarity of the Three Stooges and the comic timing of old Warner Bros. cartoons, plus a dash of Monty Python lavatory humor. In 1989 they formed a shoestring company called Spumco.

Just before the money ran out, they concocted some new gags for Kricfalusi's repellent cat and dog, and he pitched the show to anyone who would listen. "Watching John present an idea is like watching Robin Williams playing the part of Kirk Douglas," says an admiring Disney director. "He doesn't talk, he explodes, acting all the parts, doing the sound effects, falling down, jumping up, waggling his beard, drawing, singing, laughing, crying. He's animation's irresistible force of nature."

Irresistible to Nickelodeon, anyway. After all three broadcast networks and Fox gave aggressive thumbs-down, Vanessa Coffey, the cable network's V.P. of animation, saw something "uniquely bizarre" in Ren and Stimpy and helped develop scripts and concepts. "At all costs, we wanted to change the face of animation," she recalls. Actually, the price tag was about $300,000 a show. Kricfalusi voiced Ren as a deranged Peter Lorre; ex-standup comedian Billy West enacted Stimpy in a tone vaguely reminiscent of Larry, a founding Stooge.

) Initial responses were mixed. A reviewer for the Austin American-Statesman griped, "I don't remember ever seeing animated retching before, and hope to never see it again." Campus critics took a different view. Ren's constant bleat -- "You bloated sack of protoplasm!" -- began to replace Bart Simpson's "Eat my shorts!" as their put-down of choice. Frank Zappa joined the fan club. So did Robert De Niro and pop singer Matthew Sweet. Dormitories at Yale, the University of Michigan and U.S.C. staged viewing parties, where undergraduates displayed their new Ren & Stimpy T shirts.

For several months MTV, Nick's older sibling, added the show to its Saturday-night lineup. Boosted by the attention, R&S went through the roof. It has now doubled Nickelodeon's ratings for its 11 a.m. Sunday slot. Result: a viewing audience of 2.2 million households -- even though the same six episodes have been recycling all season long. Nickelodeon has just agreed to underwrite 20 new episodes of its hottest show.

But anyone who expects a refinement of style or substance should rent 101 Dalmatians. One of the new adventures visits the men's room of the White House, where the President has a painful encounter with his fly zipper; in the same episode, the Pope (voiced by Zappa) gets lost in Antarctica. In another show, Ren and Stimpy play their favorite board game, Don't Pee on the Electric Fence.

"These episodes are designed to be refreshingly outrageous for at least 15 years," says Coffey. Which means the bloated sack of protoplasm will be eliciting laughter well into the 21st century. The thought fills Kricfalusi with equanimity. "I think we are destroying the minds of America," he concludes. "And that's been one of my lifelong ambitions."