Rocko modern life dog
The network commissioned John Kricfalusi to produce The Ren & Stimpy Show (about the demented relationship between a screeching Chihuahua and a dimwitted Manx cat), Arlene Klasky and Gábor Csupó to produce Rugrats (the adventures of a quartet of precocious tots), and Jim Jenkins to produce Doug (the trials and tribulations of an early adolescent in a green sweater vest).
#Rocko modern life dog series
She invited him to develop a series for Nickelodeon, sharing with him the channel’s vision for cooler, hipper, smarter shows for young audiences.Īfter years of children’s television being dominated by low-quality animated product churned out by large studios, Nickelodeon was backing and investing in auteur creators. Linda Simensky, a Nickelodeon executive at the time-and now vice president of children’s programming at PBS-approached Murray after seeing his animated film, starring a proto-Spunky, called My Dog Zero. He made greeting cards, a couple of children’s books, and, on the side, started making his own independent animated films. But I really wasn’t.”Īfter taking business and public-speaking classes from Dale Carnegie, Murray started his own illustration business, drawing ads for Apple Computer, IBM, Hewlett Packard, Activision, Hyatt Hotels, the San Francisco Giants, and the San Francisco Chronicle. All these characters I had to deal with felt like exaggerated cartoon characters. “And I just felt like everything I had to adapt to was like I was in a cartoon. “My mom was a single mother, and when I graduated, I was kind of forced to be out on my own, in the real world,” said Murray. His father, an IBM company man, didn’t approve, but his grandfather, an eccentric and anti-authority type, was a more encouraging influence, publishing the 11-year-old’s cartoons in a newspaper he printed and distributed himself.īy the time he was 18, Murray was essentially turfed out of home. Joe Murray grew up in San Jose in Northern California, and wanted to be a comic-strip artist from as early as he could remember. “But every step of the way they would say, you know, ‘We like it, let’s move forward.’ ‘Oh. “I was able to say, I’m going to do what I want to do on television, and they’re not going to like it, and then they’re going to reject it, and that’s going to be fine.” “The reason Rocko turned out the way it did is that, every step of the way, I could take it or leave it,” he explained recently, in interview in New York. ( Twilight-era Kristen Stewart appeared to be a fan, fondly name-dropping Rocko at Nickelodeon’s Kids’ Choice Awards two years in a row.) The show’s effervescent lunacy appealed not only to the network’s ostensible target audience of 6- to 11-year-olds but the adults and college kids who’d been tuning in to Ren & Stimpy. Its fever dream of an opening sequence was accompanied by a theme tune written in the campy style of the B-52s from the second season on, it was performed by the band itself.
The animation style was Salvador Dalí meets mid-century mod, all zig-zags and odd angles with a boisterous palette. The series, which premiered on Nickelodeon in 1993, centered on Rocko, a long-suffering wallaby with an overbite and a loud shirt his dog, Spunky and Rocko’s friends: a bloated steer named Heffer, and an anxious turtle named Filburt. There was an incident involving a gun and an executive.ĭespite-or partly because of-this chaotic atmosphere, the team behind Rocko’s Modern Life managed to create one of the most significant and enduring television series of its era. One writer frequently left the office to find his VW Bug had been picked up and carried to a different parking spot. Staff members would return from vacation to discover everything in their office covered in fake cobwebs, or wrapped in aluminum foil, or strewn with dozens of Twinkies. system, accessible by anyone, was used primarily for comic monologues, non-sequiturs, and insult contests. One writer worked in his pajamas in a foldout bed. Baby carriages were raced knives were hurled. The animated series ran for four seasons and 52 total episodes.There were handstands in the hall and gym socks in the coffee filter. The following is a list of episodes of Rocko's Modern Life.
From bad-tempered vacuum cleaners to repulsively sloppy roommates, Rocko does his best to manage his modern life-with a little help from his dim-witted best friend, Heffer, and his faithful mutt, Spunky. but imagine what it must be like for a wallaby. Ah, what we must contend with in modern life: Pesky neighbors, raunchy relatives, laundry-the list goes on.