by Emma Smith, Reporter
A group of freaks and geeks are gearing up to bring the freewheeling, counterculture hippies of the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers to the screen. ComicsOnline sat down to talk about the new project with show runners Allan Freeland and Allan Cohen and producers and voice talent Adam Devine and Blake Anderson during a roundtable interview at SDCC 2019.
What made you want to turn this comic strip into an animated show?
AF: The producers Mark Canton and Courtney Solomon were fans of it from the old days, as we all were, and thought we could modernize it by taking these freaks from 1969, have them smoke something that’s a little bit off kilter, and wake up 50 years later in 2019. And here they are.
AD: And it’s cool seeing the world through the lens of these guys from the 60s. Obviously the world has changed so much, and San Francisco has changed so much. It’s fully gentrified now. Everyone is super progressive. It’s the most woke place on earth, and to take these guys that are hippies from the 60s and put them in this world – the juxtaposition is just inherently fun.
BA: At the end of the day, it’s just a story about three broke friends who are just trying to get by and stay high. So …
AD: Aren’t we all?
AC: Did that resonate with anything you had done?
BA: Well we’ve since become very method, but it’s a new world to us.
[laughter]
AD: It’s cool. We did Workaholics for seven seasons, and when I found this property, Blake actually showed me the comic, and I was like these are incredible. This is so good. This could be a show. The producers reached out to us and it just happened so organically that we were reading the comics as they approached us. And I was like we know those archetypes – these three guys – we just came from a show that was three guys, three archetypes, and we know how to develop these stories. These guys have done such a good job writing the show with our voices.
Would counterculture hippies really be that different from current SF people?
AD: Yeah. [laughter]
BA: What’s weird is even if you go back and read the old comics, a lot of them still hold up. The things they are talking about are just “wow, we haven’t come that far.”
AD: It is cool to see how cyclical everything is. Like what they were rallying against – big pharma and the corporations – you’re like “oh yeah, that’s kind of what we’re still rallying against.”
Is the look going to be different than the old comics?
AC: We’re going pretty similar to that look as far as the character designs. The backgrounds are maybe a little more realistic. Gilbert Shelton like to have the backgrounds warped a lot – that sort of 60s psychedelic feel. We’re moving a little bit away from that background wise, but the characters themselves will look very much the same.
These are the same issues [in the show] we were fighting about then and we are still fighting about. Do you think we will ever get past this?
BA: You’d like to hope so, right?
AD: Until everyone 30 years from now, is like “wait, global warming is real!” And then we all die. But watch the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers in the meantime!
AF: As snot is running down our nose from the weather being 105 degrees.
BA: Our brains are melting.
AD: I just saw that the mayor in New York called a state of emergency because it was so hot there. There was a big festival there that they had cancelled. And they cancelled anything that was a public event outdoors.
AC: I saw the triathlon was cancelled, which of course I was going to take down. [laughter]
As you are working through the material and adapting it for the modern day, were there particular themes, besides general highness, that you wanted to bring to the forefront?
AC: Well, I think being anti-authority is really resonating. It seems like in the Obama years there was some progress. After any of that type of period historically, you have a backlash, which is what they saw after the 60s free love and counter culture, the backlash was Nixon. So, we kind of find ourselves in that place right now of “make a little progress, one step forward, two steps back” and then you have to try to make it again.
What are some of the challenges of adapting a comic strip to a cartoon?
AC: We’re not doing all the same stories. We’re taking the characters, which include these three main guys and their cat, and then we’re looking at situations that exist today. They live in SF, which is now basically an extension of Silicon Valley, and we have one episode where there’s a robot brothel, which we had read about.
AD: We’re right around the corner. [laughter]
AC: Silicon Valley guys are basically so anti-social they’d rather be with robots than real people. One of our guys, they have no idea what robots are, so he ends up dating one and not realizing it till halfway through the episode. And he also prefers it. So that was never in the comics, but that is sort of the same theme of these guys who were never really that good at connecting with women, and what’s our modern take on that.
BA: I think with anything, when you are adapting something that has a really cool and core fan base, I think the main goal is you just don’t want to piss off the day one fans.
AF: We kept all the characters true to who they were back then. Phineas is a conspiracy theorist, and that works back in the 60s and that works now.
AC: He was railing about Area 51 back then. Headline news now.
What is the appeal of doing voice character work?
AD: It’s so fun. It really is. Being able to – on a set, a move set or a television set you get a few shots at it and then you have to move on because the setups take so long and the lighting and all this other stuff that isn’t the acting – but with voice acting there’s no setup, they just record and you keep going. So you’re able to try different things and improve a lot and do all these takes. You’re able to get it exactly how you want it.
BA: Yeah, you’re able to make some really stupid decisions, and it’s fine. [laughter] Not everyone is pissed.
AD: They’re like “ just do it again, but don’t do that again.”
Are you using your own voices or modifying for the characters?
AD: There’ll be a little bit, but you’ll know it’s us.
BA: I think it’s impossible to not know my nasally tones.
When you saw the characters, did you call dibs on a particular one?
AD: Yeah, but we’re not saying who we are quite yet because we’re still arguing about it.
BA: We still have to fight.
AD: Fight to the death.
BA: Not everybody can be Freddy. I get it.
Why do you think animation has gained more traction in recent years?
AD: I think the streaming services have breathed a breath of fresh air into the whole industry because you’re able to do what you want. A more R rated or a more mature cartoon can’t be on Fox. You can’t go all the way on a network because they have to sell ads to Buick and whatever. So what’s great about streaming services is you are able to do whatever you want, and I think that bodes well for creativity.
Is FFFB going to be more R rated?
All: Yes.
BA: I also think with the generations that we grew up in, we were so immersed in cartoons. It’s not foreign to us. We want to watch cartoons, and the fact that they are now for adults is cool.
AD: I think people our age that are – we are adults now. And I think exactly what Blake said, we’ve grown up with it, and now we want to see cartoons that are more to our adult sensibilities.
BA: That show nudity. [laughter]
Has streaming media changed how you pitch projects?
AC: You have outlets now. You know broadcast networks, you look at the name “broadcast,” it has to be oriented to a broader group of people. With the streaming services, if you can pitch something like Big Mouth, they know that the audience for that will find it on Netflix. So it makes it easier to pitch something that is more specific like we have. There’s a lot of competition for that space still, so it’s not necessarily easy, but it is easier to have more specific and unique material.
AD: And I think that’s why there is such a creative boom right now, is that you are able to be more specific and that’s what works so well – specificity – in comedy.
What is one thing you want the fans to know about this show?
AD: I think people are going to laugh their ash off at this cartoon and I want people to know that. This is a safe space to come and laugh your ash off.
Where can we find Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers?
A: Details to come.
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Keep your eyes out for their announcement of what streaming service will bring this show to your TV/tablet/phone. You won’t want to miss it.
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