This week I sit down with veteran storyboard artist, Whitney Martin. In this episode we chat about how he went from Disney Feature animation to King of the Hill. We talk about his favorite moments working on episodes like Tankin’ in to the Streets, what it was like working at Film Roman and so much more. We also discuss Whitney Becoming a firefighter and then coming back to animation where he is currently working on the Simpsons.
Transcripts
Hey, guys.
That your host Julian.
This week I’m sitting down with King of
the Hill storyboard artist Winnie Martin.
In this episode,
we chat with those early days on
King of the Hill was like for Whitney,
his favorite episodes and some of his
fondest memories of working on the series
when he was a really great guy
to chat with his recollection of his time
working at film Roman and the unbelievable
time crunch they were all under.
Well for sure, Paint a picture of what
it was like growing up in the industry
on King of the Hill,
if you guys haven’t yet.
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Now on to the show.
Ladies gentlemen, welcome to my Head
podcast host Selena.
Today I’m joined by Whitney.
Whitney How are you, sir?
Hey, good. How are you?
Fantastic, man.
I’ve been really looking forward
to this one.
Ladies, gentlemen, we’re doing a more.
Not a more.
We’re doing more of King of the Hill
Deep Dives, My favorite adult
animated series of all time.
Like I told Whitney and everybody else,
I’ve seen the series so many times.
Whitney here. It worked on this one.
We got some great episodes
we’re going to talk about later,
but how I like to open these ones up
because I’ve always been fascinated.
Everybody remembers their first day
of any first day of high school,
first day at their first job,
you know, first day with whoever
they decide to marry
and anything like that, you know.
So what was the first day like with you?
I got to imagine you start at film, Roman.
Is that where you got your start?
That’s right. Yep. I’m Roman.
Thanks for having me, by the way. It’s
an honor.
Absolutely. Program.
Yeah.
Roman
First day I had to do a pencil, a test,
a storyboard test. So
I had come from Disney feature animation.
Stunning story there.
And then I had this opportunity
to take the test over a King
the Hill, and I went in
and they said, if if we agree with your
your test and the results,
then we’ll put you on as a revisionist.
So I went in and I did the test.
They liked it and I was off and running.
Do you remember what your pencil test was?
Oh, man, we’re talking about 25 years ago
or so.
So yeah, this was 99.
So I jumped in around season four
right at the beginning of season four.
And the pencil test was just some sort of,
you know, a couple of pages of script.
And just to try to see
how I was going to lay it out.
Of course, everything was analog.
It was all Xerox
machines, pencils and paper Scotch tape.
And they just had me sit in a little area
and do it.
And evidently it worked out.
And then they just started to cycle me
in on various
episodes
to, you know, just start doing revisions.
And once they felt
that I was up to snuff on revisions,
which probably took about five
or maybe four months, I guess they would
then roll me into full episodes,
which would come that I finally got.
Sorry, Go ahead.
No, no, no, you’re perfectly fine.
But go ahead, finish up.
No, I was going
to say that my first episode
was with Chuck Austin,
and that was episode
six of season four, and
I can’t remember what it was
called, though.
I had written written it down.
I’ll have to look that one up
to get the name of which show.
That was because I went to my IMDB
to to look back on which ones were on,
but then I
came up with the three that that I thought
were some of the most memorable ones.
But boy, oh boy, were they memorable?
Always going to like
I said, we’re going to build
a little bit of suspense
and we’ll get to those ones shortly.
So I’ve always been
I’ve always been really fascinated with
people that jump onto a show
that’s already established,
because I usually ask a question like,
Hey man, when did you guys know
this show was something I got to imagine?
And Four Seasons like,
I was hooked on this show
after the first episode,
the pilot episode,
I put that up there with I put it up there
with the regular show pilot.
Don’t know if you’ve ever seen that one.
I put it up there with the Dexter’s Lab
pilots, the Powerpuff Girls,
anything that I grew up with
and that I hold so close and near
and dear to my heart, I put it up there
as far as a mount Rushmore esque pilot,
it was fun. It was funny.
Like it felt like if this wasn’t animated
that this could actually be real.
Like at that point in time.
I’m 1011 years old.
Whenever it was,
you know, I’d never been to Texas before,
but I have to imagine I’m like, man,
that that that’s what Texas is like, man.
You know?
So, yeah, I always had that
thought of like, this just seems real.
This seems down home.
This seems like,
like I could be a part of this world
if it, like I said, if it was real.
But when you coming
in four seasons into this,
did you have any
did you watch this show really before
or was this for your first introduction
when you started doing this pencil test?
Well, I had been a fan of Mike Judge
because I had always loved Beavis
and Butthead.
So when there was some rumblings
about Mike,
Judge is going to do King of the Hill,
there had been some things in the
in the papers
and people were looking
at different images
that were coming up from what
the first show was going to look like.
And it was definitely sort
of a derivative of the Beavis
and Butthead world.
So yeah, I had seen a few of them
and like I said,
I was at Disney feature
animation at the time and
I loved Beavis and Butthead.
So the idea of being able
to get into that world
and plus I’m from Texas originally like a
my family goes back into Texas
like four generations on my dad’s side.
So I was in
I grew up in Houston and a lot of the
a lot of the sort of humor and stuff
definitely sort of bring home with.
Yeah, my upbringing.
So so yeah, I was
I was following it and then it was
super cool to get the opportunity
to, you know, take that test when I did
and just jump right in.
And, you know, like many shows
that I’ve been on since that time,
I’ll have some familiarity with them,
but I’m not necessarily
always like a super fan
that was just like hardcore into it.
I just kind of get in and I
start to figure it out
and you know, it’s like.
Yeah, man, it’s a job.
At the end of the day, you know,
there’s, there’s this guy that I’ve had on
and he’s like,
he’s, he’s the guy that I always go to,
like whenever
I need to ask a question about animation
because I’m still I don’t want to say
ignore it in a bad way,
but I mean, I don’t think ignorance can.
I think ignorance can be used
both positive and negatively.
You know,
when it comes to the world of animation,
I really still feel like I’m
learning every day.
You know, I’m learning
new words, I’m learning new methods,
new topics, you know, new techniques,
you know, so I’m ever evolving
in my knowledge for animation.
So there’s this guy I go to whenever
I just feel like this doesn’t seem right.
This is seems like it’s fishy.
I go to this guy named Robert Alvarez,
you know, in July,
he’ll have worked 55 years in animation
and he’s he’s retiring and he’s
one of those guys that has no filter,
which I absolutely love.
I love when somebody cuts
the fat and gets straight to the bullshit.
He cuts all the all the
the maneuvering around.
And he just tells me as it is, it’s either
black or white.
You know, there’s
no there’s gray sometimes,
but he’s like, there’s black or white.
And he’s like, This is really
what you need to be looking for.
So he’s that guy going like, look for him.
And he told me he’s like,
You know, just because you work on a show
doesn’t mean you like it.
He was like, at the end of the day,
I need to make money.
And he was like,
You have no idea. And this is his words.
How many,
how many shows,
piece of shit shows I’ve worked on
or piece of shit productions
that I’ve worked on that
I did not give a shit.
I was just cashing a check
because I’ve got kids, I got to feed them,
you know?
So I always just thought it was weird.
He was like,
I’m a tell you something else.
If he’s like, If you only worked on shows
you liked, he was like, You’d go broke.
Really quickly because you go six months,
you know,
he’s like, you’re working on a production
for six months
and then you’ll be off for six months
because that’s just how the work goes,
you know?
So I always thought it was fascinating.
I’m like, Fuck you,
that makes so much sense.
And then I started implementing
that into my everyday life.
Now I’ve worked in a lot of restaurants
that absolutely suck.
You know, people have kept me around.
Sometimes the money has kept me around,
you know, good, bad or indifferent,
you know?
So it’s always fascinating to hear
you guys say, Yeah, man,
It’s like I’m
clocking in and clocking out.
Give 110% while I’m there.
But this isn’t me.
This is my whole life
doesn’t revolve around this one, you know?
But with something like King of the Hill,
I have to imagine this one
possibly was different.
I want to put words in your mouth, but
I’ve heard so many folks say like this.
The crew was so tight knit, like the crew
is what kept people coming back,
because it was one of those times
where everybody felt like a family.
Everybody was going out to lunch
or doing events when they weren’t and,
you know, when they weren’t working.
Did that feel like that to you
once you started to become
a part of this team, in this family,
that it feel like a family?
Yeah.
I mean, it’s
you know, I look back on those days
and showing up at that studio out there
and Simpsons was downstairs
and we were upstairs and and you get tight
with the people on our storyboard team.
Then they had a layout floor.
They had a whole bunch of guys out there
and they would all hang out together.
And we were on a separate sort
of a wing of the office
off this hallway
where the board teams were,
and we would get our own room
where the layout guys were all on a big
sort of open floor with cubicles,
you know, so they would mingle and talk.
And then when we would have our
our big meetings with Clay Hall,
we would all go out to the big main sort
of office center and have these meetings.
And a lot of times the
schedule was
such that
we were in that office with the door shut
cranking away, just trying to scramble
to make the deadlines.
And so I got pretty tight
with Bill Riling, who was my buddy
in office and
he’s a great guy,
and we spent many hours in there
just cranking towards these
these crazy deadlines and
Post-it notes flying and tape
flying and Xerox machine stressing out.
And we had boom boom boxes. And
and then we would go out
into the main area and
and hang out with people occasionally.
But mostly it was just it seemed like a,
you know, getting down to the grind
with with the board
work, from my experience, you know, sure,
people were cool and I enjoyed it. And
but I did
hear that there was a nice family
kind of thing going on with the layout
guys and girls in particular
because they were
in this big sort of open area, you know,
And I became friends with some of them
and I really enjoyed my time there.
Well, that’s cool, man.
It’s always interesting
and it’s always fun to hear that,
you know, you guys had fun
working on something because, you know,
I’ve always thought and I’ll go down
saying this for almost anything,
when you find something
that you love this enjoyable,
that you can just see that the people
that worked on it, whether it’s like,
what would I do for a living?
I cook.
You can tell when a kitchen sending out
shit and they hate fucking the plate, man.
When you when you see somebody
that just doesn’t want to be there.
It sounds douchey and corny,
but you can taste it in the food.
I don’t want to be one of those hokey
sentimental dudes,
but when somebody just doesn’t care,
you can taste that.
And then I think you can see that in
anything.
You can see it in movies,
you can see it in animation
when somebody just doesn’t give a shit.
You see that reflected on the TV screen
or on the movie screen.
And every time
I tuned in to watch King of the Hill,
it felt like everybody gave a shit.
So like I said, I’ve always appreciated
how hard you guys have worked.
And it wasn’t until,
you know, talking to Bill last week
that, you know,
he was like the deadlines were crazy.
He was like they were hectic.
It just seemed like,
you know, a week for this,
a week for that,
and then you’re on to something.
Next on he’s like, by the time he’s like,
I want to paraphrase, he was like,
I felt like when I was about to go,
he was like a script would
slide under the door and he was like,
I was like he was like,
I couldn’t do that, you know?
So I was like, Shit, man, that’s crazy.
Yeah.
And it hasn’t changed a whole lot, really,
since those days.
It’s kind of the same now, you know?
So, like, I’m on The Simpsons now
and it’s awesome show and I’m
going into my second season with them.
And yeah, it’s just it’s a fierce
kind of a schedule
and you have to get a lot done
and there’s so many layers
and so many different sort of things
you have to think about
as you are boarding
to try to,
you know, meet all these different needs.
And it’s challenging,
it’s exciting, it’s exhausting.
And you just got to try to
find the best way to, you know, figure out
how you’re going to manage to do it all
and I’m just grateful that I managed and
I know we weren’t
going to talk about origin stories,
but Will, I’ve been back in the game
only five years now.
I took a break and I left and I went
and played firefighter for a while
because I wanted to be a firefighter.
This was after, you know,
So I went and did that.
And then while I was doing playing
firefighter, all of the technology
was evolving in such a way
that it was leaving those analog skills.
And then when I finally came back around,
you know, circled back around
and said, hey,
I think I want to get back into animation,
I realized that I had to learn
all of this technological stuff
because I was
trying I was fooling myself thinking,
Oh, I can maybe get back in.
And, you know, just with my current
skill set and now
with everything
that had sort of combined and converged,
I realized that to to be able
to understand the pipeline the way it is
now, I’d have to go back to school,
which I did.
I went back to graduate school at NC State
in North Carolina, where I was living
at the time, and with the intention
of coming back to L.A.
and getting back into the business.
So I have this
I have this weird sort of L.A.
old school back in the day experience
that I had, you know, And then I left it
and I went raised a family in New Mexico
and I went out to North Carolina
and I did firefighter.
Then I came
back five year in 2018, and boy, was it a
you know, kind of a lot of similar stuff,
but very different to at the same time.
But one thing that’s remained consistent
is the.
The deadlines.
The deadlines.
And entity of it all.
So I’m just glad that I’ve managed
in the five years
to stay steadily
employed with minimal kind of
hiatuses, you know.
So because I know right now things are
tough with the writer’s strike and
situations and studios in general
are sort of changing and streaming,
working from home, COVID,
all these different factors
that have come into play
that are impacting this industry. So
and I know a lot of
people are looking for work right now.
I mean, Disney just laid off, what, eight.
Thousand 200 people.
It’s like 70 to 7500 people.
They’re talking about another 5500, too.
That’s huge.
So I have friends.
I know people that are looking
you know, I use LinkedIn all the time.
LinkedIn is like a has been a huge
game changer
for me in this industry
because we use it a lot.
You know, my wife is a nurse and works
in medical field.
She doesn’t use LinkedIn.
It’s not like really for every field.
But I found that it certainly is
one that we use a lot
and in this business,
you know,
and to connect with old people and
and stay in touch and sort of keep
abreast of what’s going on, You know.
I’m a firefighter
ever since I was really little.
That was.
Yeah. So my first command.
And then we’ll get right back
to King of the Hill.
But my first command on my first trip
I went to I was the first supply guy
that was able to try out for the fire team
on my first ship.
Oh, yeah.
So yet I was
I was one of the quickest people.
I was the quickest person in supply
that got dressed out so I could.
You had a commercial.
Donning and doffing the the,
the fire gear PPE.
Yeah, the fire gear.
So I would, I want to say
it was either 27 seconds or it was 24.
It was something very, very quickly.
And they go like that was really quick,
especially for a supply guy.
And I was like,
I was trying to change my rate.
I wanted to be a firefighter
because there’s this picture of me
that I’ve got somewhere in my house.
It’s me and my my grandpa Jim’s.
He was a volunteer
firefighter in Panama, Panama
City up in the Panhandle in Florida.
So he he had
he had all of the the rubbers, right?
So he had the helmet,
He had the suspenders.
So there’s a picture with me
and my grandpa Jim’s boots,
you know, the pants are so big
because I’m like four years old,
you know, I’m standing in them.
I, I still I’ve got one go left
and I know I’m going to achieve.
I know I can achieve this one
because I live
you know,
there’s firefighters
all over the place, you know, But
I’ve always wanted to ride on a fire truck
that, you know, wasn’t going to my house
because my house was burning down.
I want to ride on a fire truck so bad.
But that’s what I do, ride along.
Oh, I hope so.
And plus, if you have
you have the little ones now, you can
you can get them,
you know. Oh, I’m using them.
Yeah,
I’m using them as just chips and ploys.
I was like, look at my little kids.
They want to see a fire truck
and I’m just mushing my kids
out of the way
so I can get on the fire truck.
Yeah,
there’s just something very cool I love.
I don’t know shit about cars, but there’s
something so cool about fire trucks.
All the switches, all the levers,
all the lights.
He doesn’t so fascinated.
Big red fire truck, you know?
I mean, so, yeah, I went back and.
But you know what?
It’s never too late, man.
Like, I was telling you a little bit
earlier about some of the back story, but
I went in at age 40
and to the fire academy.
So, yeah, Mexico was one of those states,
but they don’t have the age cutoff.
Like California,
I think is 32 and Texas I think is 32.
But I think we’re the same.
I think
we’re the same as the. Hanging with the.
Yeah, yeah.
And they’re like, if you can hang
with the academy, welcome aboard.
You know, So there’s me on other day
there was over 40 and everyone else was 19
and I have no regrets.
It was awesome.
It’s part of my story and,
you know, I wouldn’t change a thing.
And it was
it was interesting
coming back to animation
because people were like, well,
you know, they’re looking at your resume
and get you out of the game for a while,
you know, what were you doing?
And I was like, Well,
I was firefighter Like,
that doesn’t really have anything
to do with animation, you know, but
got perspective.
It’s part of my story.
It’s just something that I wanted to do
and that I did.
And I’m glad for it.
And it makes it adds
to the storytelling abilities that I have.
And I bring it into my work
whenever I can.
Being on those teams,
having that brotherhood
living at the station,
you know, things that we see
and it becomes part of the fabric of
your of your background. So
I know you work on it.
Absolutely, man. I know you.
And we have we have that law is
the same are not law or guideline
whatever She’s 32 same thing in Florida
like same thing for military service.
I think it’s 32.
You can’t you can’t re-enlist or you can’t
enlist past 32 and I’ll be 34 in August.
Same thing with the fire part of the fire
department here in Florida, I believe.
I believe it’s 32 is the cut off.
Yeah. So or is it going with this one?
But there was, you know,
get it back to the king of the hill.
Yeah.
Did you get a chance?
I know it’s I tend to stay away from these
questions, but I’d be remiss not to ask.
And I know the fire department
was after King of the Hill,
but did you get the chance
to work on the episode
where they all joined
the volunteer firefighter team
and then they burnt down the fire?
Okay,
I was about to say, man, that’s that’s
I wonder if that’s where that bug started.
That fire bug started?
Yeah.
No, my I don’t want to jump the gun.
And when you get to what
my one of my favorite episodes
was, I’ll tell you which one it was. But
but yeah man you know that the setting
going back to the sensibilities of Mike,
Mike Judge
and the humor from Beavis and Butthead
when I was an undergraduate student
at Academy of Art up in San Francisco,
studying illustration,
they used to do the Spike
Mike Animation Festival
or the Second Twisted Animation Festival.
And so my wife and I were living up there
in the Bay Area and we would
go, you know, go to these
screenings.
And that was like when Frog Baseball
first came out and it was so great.
And you know, I’m from the area
where I era where I came up with MTV
and I used to just love that stuff and
it just cracked me up and it was stupid.
But there was something more to it,
you know, There was substitution going
on, some of the absurdity,
and it just really resonated with me.
And, you know,
I was telling you earlier,
I got to come full circle and last year
I was at Titmouse Studio
working on the Beavis and Butthead movie,
and then the first and second season
of Beavis and Butthead.
And like you were saying prior to that,
when you get those shows that hit
that sweet spot, you know, like always,
I always have a lot of gratitude.
But as I was telling you, just to be able
to continue to stay employed
and working at these different studios,
getting these experiences,
being with all these great people.
But yeah, you hit that sweet spot
once in a while, like King of the Hill was
or when I got on Beavis and Butthead
and you’re like,
Oh yeah, like you’re reading the scripts
and you’re cracking up.
And at that time, my
son, who
was at home during the pandemic, was sick.
We were sharing an office and I would
I would, you know,
tell him about some crazy thing
that I was working on
with Beavis and Butthead
and we both be cracking up together.
And that was kind of cool
because he’s gone now.
He’s a firefighter, by the way.
He’s gone and we’re empty nesters now.
But so I really cherish those times
when I was hanging with my boy and we were
able to, you know, crack up over Beavis
and Butthead.
Yeah.
Well, I’ve got a
I’ve got a 13 year old that’s hitting
that stage where I’m like,
I know I was like this at 13.
You can tell me if you want.
And there’s days where I’m like, Dude,
I can’t wait till you’re 18.
And then there’s other days where
he’ll come up, you know, give me a hug,
you know, and oh, yeah,
if I can say I love you, man.
Or I, he’s like,
Thank you for what you do.
And I’m like, Man, you’re all right today.
Look at that.
And I was like, You do have a heart.
Well, North,
we moved to North Carolina
at Chapel Hill to raise our boys
because we were moving around time
and we did a stint out there to try
to get him in a good public schools.
And that was primarily why
we were out in Chapel Hill at that time.
Yeah, again, when I’m in new grants,
it was a great place
to have those boys at that age.
In that environment, you know. These care.
Like obviously we know these characters,
we love these characters.
You know,
we like each one for different reasons.
What were some of those characters
that you absolutely loved
to draw, work and write stories for?
What were those characters
that felt like a comfortable pair of shoes
you could slip right into them
and subsequently, what was the characters?
You probably had a hard time
slipping into dealer’s choice.
You get to pick
which one you want to talk about first.
Sure.
Well, I got to say, I gravitated towards
Hank and Dale, probably more and
some of the others.
Bill I like to draw a lot too.
I thought Bobby was hard to draw because
of his design, but he was fun, you know?
But yeah, probably right.
Yeah.
Hank and, and, and Dale
were two of my favorites to act stuff
out with them together, you know?
And we would have these old school
audio tapes that we would
listen to the dialog on and just play it
over and over and over again.
And yeah, they just start to work
their way into your head. And,
you know, I remember
there was a line
in the taking it to the streets where
all three of them are at.
I storyboarded the section where
Bill passes out
inside of the tank and Hank’s
the block captain, and he come down.
He says, I’m
going to go investigate or whatever.
And he gets up on there
and he knocks on it.
And he’ll walk out and.
They’re like,
Oh my God, it stinks, you know?
And they see Bill in there.
I boarded that whole act down and,
you know, and then later
Dale pops up from underneath
a sewer cover, you
know, and then he climbs up on the tank
and then they all start
arguing with one another about who’s
going to drive the tank now.
And Hank right away.
SOBs Well, I’ve been driving,
you know, Bob tail trucks for about
but by, you know, and then
and then Dale had this hilarious line
that I saw was quoted
by some of the research about Oden.
You know. Yeah, I remember him.
We were talking about Putin back and
he’s been the president.
You know, we’ve been talking about him
this.
Long, a years? Yeah.
And he goes in and then Dale actually
says something in Russian
because he sits down inside of the tank.
And I remember we had to, like, work out
how are we going to make it look inside
of the tank while they’re all in there,
you know, And so we’re researching this.
Of course,
we didn’t have Google and stuff yet then,
so we were I don’t remember
how we were getting our pictures in.
Magazines and pictures.
We virtually gagged
combing through magazines
or finding videotapes or something.
And and they all says,
well, wouldn’t it be great?
Or he says, Yeah, that’s I’ve studied the
manual and Russian amendment and Putin.
And then he goes, Putin.
And then we had to draw the Putin part.
And I remember
that was important to get that right.
And Jeff, I was here with Jeff Myers,
who was a story supervisor,
I believe, on that one.
And yeah, Monte Young was the director
and that was just it was it was so funny
because, you know, later
they run over plans,
big brand new car
areas.
You’ll be they run over.
And then one of the most hilarious parts
for that whole episode was
when they go to the little kiddy park and
in the sandbox
goes and Bill’s all bummed out.
I was just big old paint load or whatever.
And, you know, the army fooled me
and then and goes,
he said, I tried to look up the quote
and I couldn’t find it.
But he said something like,
I know you’re disappointed in yourself,
Bill will or
or you’re I know you’re disappointed
with how you turned out.
Bill We. All were. Or something like that.
Yeah, it’s that’s how. It went like that.
That kind of writing.
When you get those types of shows
where you’re
you’re cracking up at the writing,
you know,
because it’s working,
you just like, yeah, that’s right.
And you know, you hit those sweet spots
and it’s just so much fun.
Did you
get to do any of the old school
like I call it old school now?
Well, everybody calls old school,
but did you get to do any of those
old school storyboard pitches
for some of these episodes?
Well, the way we did it and
from the you know, when I first started,
there was we would have an all day jam
session in a in a storage room with John
Rice was the head story supervisor.
And then Jeff Myers at the time that I was
there was the co supervisor, story
supervisor.
It was the two of them.
And then we’d go in there
with the director and my boards
after we’d worked on them for
I think we had
I don’t know if Bill verified this.
When you talked with Bill
about how much time we had
to actually do the roughs versus
the clean, it was. Like a week.
It was like a week each.
I think he was saying he was like,
I could be off by a little bit.
But he’s was like,
it felt like it was a week for each thing
thumbnails
the boards to clean ups and revisions.
It was crazy though, because we had like
14 pages of script or something
and then you’d have basically
a week to just sort of jam
it all out into rough form
and it was insane amount of stuff
to cover.
And then, yeah, then you clean up after.
But, but the midpoint
was this story meeting.
So we would just have mole on the table.
We would sort of go through them together
and Post-it notes
would be flying with Sharpie markers
to sort of make adjustments.
So it was a few steps away from the old
I believe you’re referring to Disney,
you know, had the court building the.
Whole walls and shit.
Stick and yeah,
you see, you’ve seen Joe Ranch do it
on the Pixar videos and stuff,
which is really cool.
And that’s how I learned how to do it
while I was still at Disney feature.
I didn’t do it in any official capacity,
but I trained there at Disney Feature
with the intention of trying
to get into their story department.
But things took
a different direction for me
and yeah, so we would have
them all on the table and just sort of jam
and you’d have to take all kinds
of crazy notes and,
and then you go back and implement
all those notes into your clean ups
for the next I guess was two weeks.
Yeah.
Yeah I know he said it was a very,
very quick turnaround.
It was one of those things
where he’s like,
Holy shit,
I don’t know how to get this done.
He was like, The stress alone
was was palpable, you know, all the time.
You know, taking it to the streets.
I love this episode because, you know,
we talked about it before we hit record.
You have some of the best detail lines
in here of all time,
the whole the whole thing with him.
He’s like, have you read, you know,
the Abrams tank manual back and forth?
And he’s like,
Have you Hank and Russian? Putin Yeah.
And that’s when he goes into that one.
And it’s just that.
And then when he gives you
the statistical breakdown of
what’s in a sandbox, he’s like 30%.
It’s fecal. Matter.
Yeah.
Yeah.
No he’s and then he says and etc.
at the end. Yeah,
yeah, yeah.
And then I remember we were like when Bill
pukes, we’re going to have a run up
and he’s going to go hit
one of those little
silly kid bouncy things.
It’s on a big spring, you know,
and it’ll, it’ll do this after he,
after he bumps into it. So we tried it.
We would think of all these little things,
you know,
that would hopefully enhance and get a
laugh.
Yeah, I guess there’s just so many,
so many scenes in here.
And the one, the one that comes to mind
is, is that whole sequence
leading up to what you what you boarded
on, you know, with Hank up there.
This is Hank Hill.
BLOCK Captain, You know, he’s just like,
no, you guys are army doing
what are you supposed to do?
And he’s opens it up and it’s like, man,
it smells like somebody dead down there.
And you look and it’s full.
He’s like, Oh, it’s just Bill,
you know, he’s passed out in there.
Nobody’s worried about him because,
you know, it’s Bill doing bill things,
but the whole sequence before
Hank running out,
when Dale sees it’s a fucking tank,
he’s like, Oh, no, they
they know that I came and I took pictures
of their, of their files and shit.
So he goes to the safe room, which is
just a closet, ladies and gentlemen.
And then he’s like,
Nancy, don’t let them take you.
And then he closes the door
and then it opens back up
and you see that hand run back up.
And then somehow later, he’s
in his mercenary merchant
gear crawling out from the street.
You know, it’s just there’s so many scenes
in here that are just so fantastic.
Any time he was on the screen or cotton
here was on the screen,
those two are my favorite characters
of all time.
I loved Bobby
because I felt like Bobby as a kid, man.
I was that chubby, weird kid
that always tried to use,
you know, fucking humor
to get out of stuff, you know?
So I felt like that awkward
Bobby kid, and it was just like
he was the soul of the entire show.
But you are not Dale.
Excuse me, Dale and Cotton Man.
Any time those guys were on the screen,
absolute, you know, scene
stealer, show stealers, man.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, there’s
only one of the one of the episodes,
if you recall, where it was Hank’s
half brother from.
You know, it was a two parter
when they went shopping.
They went to Japan. Japan? Yeah.
The Hill Brothers.
I’ll tell you what it did.
Yeah, I got to work on one of those,
and I think that was Anthony Leroy
that was directing one of those.
He’s coming on later.
Yeah. Yeah.
And that was a lot of fun to do
to do that one.
But you know, you mentioned you
mentioned Cotton and Hank
and that was one of the funniest kind of
Hank had this brother that was a lot
like him, this,
you know, half-Japanese brother
that looked like him and, uh.
Yeah, down to the narrow urethra.
It was fantastic, man.
He had he had a Japanese narrow urethra.
And I actually talked about this
with I had Allen Jacobson on.
Yeah.
Only a couple of weeks ago.
And you know, he was talking,
we were brought up and talked
about Cotton Mill,
and I was like, I think without him in
I don’t get into World War Two
the way I am, I’m an absolute World
War two buff.
Like I love it.
I got to see you know,
I got to go into Pearl Harbor where the,
you know, the Arizona and yeah, you know,
the ships are down there
and you get to go see the memorial.
And then it’s one of the most chilling
and haunting things
I’ve ever been a part of.
Man, You know,
you’re literally coming into the harbor
and then your ship is literally passing
by where at that time
it’s like fucking 60 years ago or whatever
it was 70 years ago.
At that point, I can’t remember.
It was like 29.
And it happened,
you know, December seven, 1941, you know,
so roughly, you know, 68, 69 years prior.
And then, you know, you’re having to hold
and render salutes the entire way.
There’s no Wake zone.
You’re going three knots, which is latest
jump, three miles per hour,
you know, but ship terms,
if you’re going very, very slow
to not disturb anything
because you can still see the oil
and the gas coming up from the ship
because they never rose it.
You know, and just knowing
that you know, something bad had happened.
Right.
So you could have been there
if you were born 70 plus years ago.
At that point, you know, you’re
sitting there, you’re holding salute.
And I didn’t
I didn’t realize, but I started crying.
I didn’t understand why.
And I’m like looking around afterwards.
Obviously, I’ve seen everybody else cry.
It was one of the most surreal experiences
I’ve ever had in my life
when I was in the military,
just going over where
such a mass casualty happened
and just the epitome
of what brought us into the World War
ever since.
Like I said, Cotton Hill, in a sense
blown off.
He’s a, you know, a world War two.
He killed 50 men, he Comanches.
You know, he just.
Ignited that love for World
War Two history, man, you know.
So you being in the Navy,
I can see how that would have,
you know, how that would have struck home
for you, too, to go out there
and watch it, Right? And.
Mm hmm. Yeah.
That’s an it’s an impressive memorial
for sure.
Yeah, it is, man.
And getting to go there
when there was a World War Two survivor
there, like we pulled into Fort Island
where it happened, there’s still bullet
holes in the hangar base that are there.
You know, they don’t
they didn’t do really anything
as far as construction or reconstruction
goes.
Yeah, rehabilitation, whatever, whatever
where you want to use, you know.
But yeah, a lot of that has to do with
what was Cottonelle.
And I told Alan that, you know,
I was like, without that show,
I don’t know
if I’m into World War Two the way I am,
you know, another, another episode
you had brought up.
And like I said, I all three of
these men I absolutely loved.
