February 18, 2026 • 27 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, Butch Hartman shares the story of how one of the most influential animation careers of the 2000s came to be. While millions recognize the shows he created; The Fairly OddParents, Danny Phantom, and more, far fewer know the path that led him there. Hartman tells how his journey took him from the snowy shores of Michigan to the studios of Southern California, and how persistence, faith, and craft shaped a career that defined a generation of television animation.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories,
and we tell stories about everything here on this show,
including your story. Send them to our American Stories dot com. Again,
go to our American Stories dot com. As far as
animators and visionaries go, Walt Disney is probably the most
recognizable name in that space. But to kids who grew
(00:31):
up in the late nineties or early two thousands, some
of the members of this staff, another name brings back
a flood of memories. Butch Hartman created two of the
most well known cartoons of the last two decades, Fairly
Odd Parents and Danny Phantom. Here's Butch to tell us
his story and how we went from the snowy shores
(00:51):
of Michigan to the sunny coast of southern California.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
Very first memories I remember.
Speaker 3 (01:01):
I was in a kindergarten and our teacher and never
forget her name, was Missus Shelley. And Missus Shelley asked
all the students to draw a picture of her, and
I thought, okay, well, I was still like a kid.
I drew a picture of her and just forgot about it.
And then she started making a huge deal out of
my picture. Oh my gosh, this is the best picture
I've ever seen. And you know, she was raving about
(01:22):
it and basically humiliated all the other kids. I think,
but she's like, I'm putting this up on the wall.
This is just amazing, And she put my picture up
on the wall.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
I'll never forget.
Speaker 3 (01:30):
I thought, wow, drawing is a real great way to
get attention from adults. So I thought, if I could
just keep drawing and get attention from adults, because you're
a kid, right, you want all the attention. So I thought,
I just thought, I'm just going to keep drawing stuff.
So I just started drawing and drawing, and before I
knew it, I really liked it, and I really realized
that I had kind of maybe a little bit of
a skill for it, and just started training myself and
(01:52):
growing up. And I loved Saturday morning cartoons. A lot
of us today, maybe some of the older folks remember
Saturday morning cartoons, but when I was a kid, the
only place you could get cartoons was on Saturday morning
for the most part, And so I would get up
and have my big bowl of tricks or whatever sugary
cereal I could get and watch cartoons from six in
the morning. Till eleven in the morning and then go
(02:13):
outside and play. And you know, I watched Some of
my favorites back then were The Wacky Races by Hannah Barbera,
Scooby Doo Again by Hannah Barbera. Hanna Barbert pretty much
owned Saturday Morning, the Jetsons and the Flintstones, and Johnny Quest.
Johnny Quest was one of my favorites. Never realizing later
on in life i'd be I'd ended up working for
Hanna Barbara years later. But yeah, those cartoons really influenced me. Then,
(02:33):
of course Disney. I'd watch a Wonderful World of Disney
on Sunday nights, and I loved movies like Star Wars
and things like that, and just really got a real
fantasy mindset and a drawing mindset. And then I kept
drawing the whole time too. I wanted to draw superheroes
and animate I did that up until I did all
through high school. All through school, I do the cover
(02:54):
of the you know, the school yearbook and things like that.
And I ended up meeting a couple guys that didn't
go to my school. I've met him through another friend.
So these other two guys I met, they were a
little older than me, and they were animation nerds like me,
but they were better than I was. And one guy
was the oldest guy was particularly great.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
He was a senior.
Speaker 3 (03:10):
I was a sophomore, and this older guy was going
to a school out in California. Now I'm in Michigan,
remember I'm snowed in. He's going to this magical school
in California. It was called California Institute of the Arts
and it was founded by Walt Disney and it was
one of the only schools in America at the time
that taught character animation. And so I thought, wow, that's
(03:30):
pretty cool. How can I get there? He goes, well,
you got a practice. So for the next two years,
my older friend went to cal Arts first, then my
second oldest friend went to cal Arts after him. By
the time I was a senior in high school, I
was actually sending these guys drawings through the mail, and
they would kind of grade my drawings and send them
back to me through the mail. Again, I got, this
is what we're looking for here, here's what the school
(03:50):
really wants to see. I'd go to the Detroit Zoo
and the dead of winter because it was free to
get into the zoo and I would life draw. I'd
draw the animals or my sketch pad and stand there,
you know, he's and cold and my coat, drawing the
tigers and the gorillas and stuff. It's interesting when I
applied to cal Arts again. I'm a kid in Michigan
and no one in my family had ever even been
to California, let alone live there. And I wanted to
(04:13):
go to California and I just live there but make
a living there, and you know, work in the animation industry.
And my dad was an autoworker. My dad was a
my dad was a Detroit autoworker. He's like, he was
very supportive, but I had no idea how to support
me in this other than hey, i'll support you, and
i'll help you get financial aid and we'll go to
the school and all that stuff. So I was able
to do that, and I really want I wanted to
go to California ever since I was a kid. I
remember watching the show Adam twelve. This really dates me,
(04:36):
but I was watching the show Adam twelve. I'd be
sitting in Michigan in the snow, watching these cops in
California in the sun, with palm trees, going how.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
Do I get there? How do I get to that place?
Speaker 3 (04:47):
And I think I was dreaming in California as a kid.
So I get to cal Arts and I was probably
one of the best artists in my little town in Michigan.
And I ended up moving to a town in Michigan
called New Baltimore. So I was in New Baltimore. I
was probably the best artist in town that I knew of. Anyway,
I get to cal Arts. It was almost like going
(05:08):
to the major leagues of baseball. Everybody was amazing. I
got there thinking I could draw, that I was hot stuff,
and the people surrounding me were just amazing. And I
had a decision to make either I up my game
and get better and compete with these people, or I
go home.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
I was like, Okay, I'm going to keep going.
Speaker 3 (05:27):
And I'm realizing I'm not going to be as good
as these people doing what they do, but I'm going
to get good at what I do. You know, I
just started enhancing my skills, just started practicing more and
getting better, and now I was surrounded. The cool thing
was I was surrounded by a bunch of amazingly talented
artists and creative people. And this is back in the eighties.
I got to cal Arts in nineteen eighty three. So
(05:48):
all the people I went to college with ended up
going into the animation industry and the entertainment industry and
actually running the industry. We all ended up getting shows
and movies and things that started to influence the way
the culture was going. Little did we know at the time.
Don Bluth was pretty big back in the eighties. He
was an animator who had left Disney and started his
(06:09):
own animation company. He did a movie called The Secret
of Nim He did one of the very first animated
video games called Dragon's Lair, and he did Space Ace
that was another video game, and he did a bunch
of other great animated stuff, and they thought he was
going to be the next Walt Disney. He was hired
to produce American Tale, which was produced by Steven Spielberg
and one of my very first animation jobs ever. I
(06:30):
was at school up in Valencia, California, and a friend
of mine says, hey, you know, I hear they're looking
for in betweeners on this movie called American Tale, and
an in between her real quick lesson in animation. You
have someone who does the first pose in the last pose,
that's the animator, and the in betweener puts all the
poses in between those poses. That's how it was traditionally
done for.
Speaker 2 (06:47):
Many many years.
Speaker 3 (06:48):
Basically, the in betweeners kind of the lower level animator
in training. And so we're like, okay, basically, let's go
take an animation test.
Speaker 1 (06:58):
And you're listening to Butch Hartman tell his story, learning
earlier that the gift of drawing drew attention from the
adults and pretty soon, well a childhood dream was about
to happen. He also learned he was walking straight into
the major leagues and needed to step up his game,
which he was more than willing to do. When we
come back, more of Butch Hartmann's story here on our
(07:22):
American Stories Folks, if you love the great American stories
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(07:43):
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the great American stories coming. That's our American Stories dot com.
(08:09):
And we're back with Butch Hartman's story here on our
American Stories and his journey to fulfilling his dream of
being an animator in Hollywood. When we last left off,
Hartman was studying animation at the California Institute of the
Arts and some friends were headed to the studio of
animation giant Don Bluth to auditioned to be in betweeners
(08:31):
or low level animators for Bluth and Steven Spielberg's nineteen
eighty six classic American tale, Back to Butch.
Speaker 3 (08:44):
And so we all drove down to Don Blue Studios
in Vannys, California, and this lady said, you guys here
for the test.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
We're like, yep.
Speaker 3 (08:51):
She gives us a folder and there's two drawings in
my folder. There's the first post in the last post.
All right, just put the in between's in. We'll see
you tomorrow. And my friends and I all got folded,
and we all went back to school and worked our
butts off all night, and we got up early in
the morning. I said, okay, let's go back down there.
So we drove down there and we handed our tests
in and then we wait for like ten minutes. She
(09:13):
comes out, Okay, here's a scene for you. Here's a scene.
And she basically comes out with animation scenes for us,
and they hired us to be in between ers on
American Tale, and so I got That was my first.
Speaker 2 (09:23):
Real animation job.
Speaker 3 (09:24):
And I didn't get credit on the film because I
didn't do enough footage to get credit. I did, like
I think you had to do like one hundred feet
to get credit. I did like ninety feet of film
to get That's all I did. I did like five
scenes in American Tell. But it was a great experience.
I really enjoyed it.
Speaker 2 (09:43):
I never graduated cal Arts.
Speaker 3 (09:45):
Actually I went three years, and it was a very
expensive school and I couldn't afford my fourth year. I
could barely afford my first three years. Got out of school,
left after my third year and began looking for a
job in the industry. And my first job I landed
was at Marvel Productions in Van Eys. Marvel had just
(10:05):
opened an animation studio here in the eighties and it
was in Van Eys, and I got a job at
Marvel Productions, and I thought, boy, this is going to
be great. I'm going to get to draw Spider Man
and Captain America and the Hulk. It's going to be
so cool. And my first job was on the original
production of My Little Pony. So I'm working on My
Little Pony and this was the really bad My Little
Pony that came out in the eighties. It was based
(10:27):
on the toys and I couldn't draw the ponies well enough.
But what they did they hired me to be a
character designer, and that's basically like you're basically drawing the
actors in the cartoon. But then they put me on storyboards,
which I'd never done for anyone else but myself before,
and I'm like, Okay, I can do this. But it
was a much harder, much more involved job. I ended
up getting fired off that job, off of My Little Pony.
(10:50):
It stuck with me for years that I would never
allow myself to get fired again. I would be able
to do any job that anybody threw at me. I
found another job at a company called Ruby Spears Productions,
and they're the guys who created Scooby Doo for Hannah Barbera.
They opened up their own animation studio and they were
doing shows in the seventies and I got hired there
(11:11):
in nineteen eighty six to work on a show called
Punky Brewster. It was the animated version of Punky Brewster
and then the animated Police Academy series and all this stuff.
Speaker 2 (11:19):
So started working.
Speaker 3 (11:20):
There, and during that time I started practicing storyboards and
background design and painting and all this other stuff just
to make myself a better artist and more valuable artist.
And the one thing I really started practicing more was writing.
Speaker 2 (11:31):
I wanted to be a writer as.
Speaker 3 (11:32):
Well, and a lot of artists they start off as
people who draw, but they don't realize that they can
write as well. I started writing. I would write on
my own, I would write scripts.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
On my own.
Speaker 3 (11:42):
I would write, you know, little things on my own.
Nobody would ever read them because I was just for me.
But eventually I started walking by the writer's room and
they would say, hey, you got any ideas for this joke?
And I'd say, what's going on? They would tell me
the story. I'd say, okay, you could do this. It'd
be funny if the dog did this or the cat
did this, and then it is funny and they would
put that in. So I kind of became like a
(12:03):
gag writer at Ruby Spears Productions. And then I started
working at Hannah Barbera, which became Cartoon Network because Ted
Turner bought it and turned it into Cartoon Network. I
started working there as an artist, but then I was
also doing storyboards, and I began writing on some other shows,
and I was just drawing on those shows.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
But then an opportunity came up.
Speaker 3 (12:24):
A guy named Fred Seibert was hired to run Hannah Barbera,
which was now Cartoon Network, and he offered everybody in the.
Speaker 2 (12:32):
Studio the chance to pitch their own show.
Speaker 3 (12:36):
And I thought, wow, this is cool, but I'm not
going to do it. I was terrified, but a friend
of mine said, now, come on, let's do it. So
I helped him pitch his show and it got sold,
and then I thought, this is kind of fun, so
let's come up with another idea. I'd always been a
guy who worked on other people's ideas but never really
worked on my own idea. And I'm like, I've really
(12:58):
got to start coming up with ideas. I really started
applying myself to working on my own ideas. You know,
characters and stories and that type of stuff. And that
was in the nineties at Hannah Barbera, and so I
worked on that. I ended up becoming a director and
a writer on the Johnny Bravo show Dexter's Laboratory as
a writer and a storyboard artist, Cow and Chicken.
Speaker 2 (13:17):
It was another show.
Speaker 3 (13:18):
As a writer and an artist, I did a lot
of stuff at Hannah Barbara and I worked with a
guy named Seth MacFarlane who was a young kid out
of Rhode Island. He came to Hannah Barbera and we
he and I worked together as writers on Johnny Bravo.
He ended up selling a show called Family Guy to Fox.
It was called Larry and Steve at first, and then
he sold it to Fox and he wanted me to
come over there and work with him. But right as
(13:38):
he sold his show, I ended up selling a little
show called The Fairly Odd Parents to Nickelodeon. And that's
kind of where my Nickelodeon journey began. Great opportunities are
very rare. They're like comments. I always say, It's like
Haley's comment, like, you know, it's really beautiful, it's really awesome,
but you're not going to see it again for a while,
so you better seize it while it's while it's here.
(14:01):
And I realized, this is an opportunity. I've got to
try this, you know, sink or swim. I got to
try this, and so seizing those opportunities. My first cartoons
that I sold weren't that great. They were fine. Certain
aspects of them were okay. Maybe the characters are really
good in this because I was a character designer, but
the timing was bad. So I'm going to time this myself.
I'm going to be the animation timing. I'm going to
write this dialogue myself. It's like I'm gonna start doing
(14:22):
this stuff myself, so I know it'll be what.
Speaker 2 (14:23):
I want it to be.
Speaker 3 (14:24):
At the end, when I pitched fairly on Parents, I
was about to get fired from again. Another firing was
coming up. I wouldn't say it was a firing though.
I was getting laid off because Johnny Bravo was ending.
I was working on Johnny Bravo and it was ending.
And at this point, this is nineteen ninety seven. At
this point, I already had one daughter, I was married
for five years and had another daughter on the way,
(14:45):
and it's like, well, I need a job. But I
really got tired of looking for jobs. I think everybody
out there gets tired of looking for jobs. I was
just tired of, you know, always having a job end
and go to another one. That's how it kind of
works in animation. So I thought, you know what I'm
gonna do. I'm going to make my own show. I
had Cybert who had left Hannah Barbera had gone to Nickelodeon,
and he was starting up a show called The Oh
(15:06):
Yeah Cartoon Show. And The Oh Yeah Cartoon Show was
basically a show. If you watched it, you'd watch a
half hour show and you'd see three seven minute cartoons
during that half an hour, and each cartoon was mede
by a different person. He said, I have one slot
left to have any ideas, and I said, yep, I
got an idea.
Speaker 2 (15:22):
I see if I'll see you Friday. And I hung
up the phone. I had nothing.
Speaker 3 (15:25):
This was like Tuesday, and I was like, I need
a job. So I sat down and said, I'm going
to come up with an idea that I love that
I could work on for twenty years. Just kind of
said that in my head, and I drew a little
boy named Timmy. I drew this little boy because I
know you always write what you know. I was a
little boy once, so I thought, okay, little boy, he
(15:45):
can go anywhere he wants. And I thought, maybe he
can do that with science. That'd be funny. He's a
science kid. But then Dexter's Laboratory was already a show.
I knew I couldn't do a science kid. And I
always tell people, make sure you do your homework. Don't
come into a company with a show idea that they
already have come up with a different idea. So I thought,
how about magic.
Speaker 2 (16:01):
That's kind of fun.
Speaker 3 (16:02):
Maybe he's a magic kid, and maybe he's got magic friends.
And so I came up with these two fairy godparents,
Cosmo and Wanda. Venus was her name originally, by I
changed it to Wanda, and Seinfeld had just revealed Kramer's
name as Cosmo on The Seinfeld Show. I thought, Cosmo's
a funny name. So I named him Cosmo and Wanda,
and they were his fairy godparents. And so I was
under contract to pitch that to Hannah Barbera. So I
(16:24):
pitched it and they turned it down. Cartoon Network turned
it down and so I ended up going to Nickelodeon
with Fred Ceiber and I said, hey, I got this
idea called The Fairly OddParents. He goes, great, let's do it.
So that became part of the OEA Cartoon show. It
was one pilot episode, seven minutes long, and we did
it and Nickelodeon liked it so much they gave me
like four more, and I did four more. Then they
(16:45):
liked it so much they gave me six more. I
did six more pretty much by myself. I had like
maybe two or three people helping me, and then they
focus tested those several episodes I did and they did
really well. It wasn't a hit at first. I mean
they only gave me six half hours at the beginning.
That took us about a year and a half, and
then Nickelodeon wasn't picking it up. They were like, okay, cool, thanks,
we'll start airing these you know, good luck, we'll see
(17:07):
what happens.
Speaker 2 (17:08):
And I'm like, all right.
Speaker 3 (17:09):
So I was actually formulating in my head, I've got
to go get another job.
Speaker 2 (17:12):
I've got to go get another gig.
Speaker 3 (17:13):
And they picked up the show in two thousand and
I love Nickelodeon don't get me wrong, but they had
not picked up the show, so like, oh, we need
more episodes of Fairly Odd Parents.
Speaker 2 (17:22):
I'm like great, I'm happy to do them.
Speaker 3 (17:23):
We premiered the show March thirtieth of two thousand and one,
and the show really took off like a rocket ship.
It did fantastic and we're.
Speaker 2 (17:31):
Like, whoa, this is us. This is so cool.
Speaker 1 (17:36):
And you're listening to Butch Hartman and he's walking us through, well,
what life is like when you just go out and
you try something and you give it your best. But
Butch Hartman's story, well it continues, and when we come back,
we'll hear the rest of his story here on our
American story. And we're back with our American stories and
(18:11):
with the story of Fairly Odd Parents creator which Hartman.
When we last left off, Nickelodeon had just picked up
the first season of Fairly Odd Parents. The showlot would
go on to run for ten seasons. One hundred and
seventy two episodes inspire numerous movies and video games, and
include voice talents such as Jay Leno, Adam West, Jackie Mason,
(18:33):
Gene Simmons, an even Olympic figure skater, and Gold medalist
Scott Hamilton. Back to Butch on creating the show.
Speaker 3 (18:48):
You know it says in the Bible, to who much
has given, much is required. It's in the Book of Luke,
and I'm like, all right, to who much is given,
much is required. I got to be the first one
in and the last one out every day. I got
to set an example because again, like I said, this opportunity,
I am not going to let this slip by without
giving it one thousand percent. Because I was at Nickelodeon.
(19:08):
I was watching people and they'd get a show, they'd
have a show picked up the network believes, and then
they're getting paid to make their show, and they would
never work hard on it. They would like, maybe take
a long lunch every day. They would It was almost
like the tortoise in the hair. They would wait till
the end of the race to finally try and catch up.
And by the end their show wasn't that good because
they didn't pay a lot of attention to it, and
I would see opportunities get missed. Like these guys, they
(19:30):
would think it was easy. Well, I sold one show,
I'll just sell another one. And it really isn't that easy.
It's very tricky in Hollywood to sell anything. So I
would watch these guys like kind of not pay attention,
and I'd be going, well, I'm going to do the
exact opposite of what they're doing. I'm going to make
sure I spent every waking moment on this show. And
my wife understood. I said, look, this is our big opportunity.
I've got to be there during the day as much
(19:53):
as I can, and at night I would come home,
I'd play with my daughters. I come home about seven
o'clock at night, and I play with them for two hours.
They go to bed, and I'd go back up to
my office at home, and I would work again till
like two in the morning, and then get up at
like six and repeat the process all over again every day.
I sold fairly odd Parents, and I was in pretty
good with the people at Nickelodeon who'd picked it up
(20:14):
because the show was a hit, so I knew they
liked me. I'm like, wow, I could probably get them
to maybe do another show if I play my cards right.
But I just got to come up with the right idea.
I thought, you know what, I just need a boy.
I knew they were looking for a boy's action show,
and I thought, man, this is this is awesome because
I love comic books. I love and one of my
favorite shows was Johnny Quest back in the day. What
a great name, Johnny Quest? If I can come up
with a cool name, I mean, just the coolest name
(20:36):
of all time, like Billy.
Speaker 2 (20:38):
Dynamite or whatever.
Speaker 3 (20:39):
Like, I was trying to get cool words that were cool,
like dynamite, power, thunder lightning, and somehow I ended up
on the word Phantom. I thought, Danny Phantom, that's a
cool name. Man, What could that kid do? So I
was going to actually make him like a Scooby Doo
type thing where he's got a bunch of friends and
he's got a pet owl and they fight go with weapons,
(21:00):
you know. But then I thought, now, let's make him
a superhero. Let's make him like he's he's a half
ghost kid. He can like go through walls and disappear.
And and then the exact sit. Nickelodeon about six months
later took me out to dinner because fairly odd parents
was doing really well. And this is one of those
Hollywood stories everybody dreams about, and it's kind of cool
(21:22):
that it happened. But we're sitting there at dinner and
these guys are like, hey, man, we love Fairly Odd Parents.
Speaker 2 (21:26):
We'd love to.
Speaker 3 (21:27):
Pick up more. I thought, great, that's awesome. And I
was like, hey, here's two more episodes. Great. And it's like,
do you have anything else? And I thought, wow, there
again there's an opportunity. What do you do when a
Hollywood executive says do you have anything else? Even if
you have nothing else? You say yes, like yes I do.
So I do this one thing. It's different than Fairly
(21:48):
Odd Parents, but it's a boy's action show. It's called
Danny Phantom. He goes, oh my gosh, that's great. Can
you have it done in three months? And I went WHOA?
Speaker 2 (21:56):
Of course? I said sure, why not?
Speaker 3 (22:02):
So when I left that dinner, I had more Fairly
Odd Parents and a brand new show called Danny Phantom,
and I really hadn't really thought much about it. I
came to work the next day I announced to my
crew we got more fairly odd parents. Everybody's cheering because
they get more employment. And then I said, now we
have a brand new show called Danny Phantom.
Speaker 2 (22:18):
Like what?
Speaker 3 (22:19):
And I'm going to pull some of you off of
Fairly Odd Parents to work on Danny Phantom too. My
work has been doubled. I have two recording sessions a week.
I have two writing meetings, two editing sessions, two storyboard pitches.
Everything doubled suddenly. But I was so down for it
and so into it. It didn't even seem like work
to me. It was so much fun. And I mainly
(22:41):
just said this to myself and I you know I
you know, I pray a lot, And I said, God,
you know what, you gave me this opportunity. I know
you're going to make time for me to do this.
You know that I'm diligent. You know I'm not gonna
let it. I'm not going to shirk my duty here.
I'm not going to let this slide. I had to
be a good steward over this. Danny Phantom Permiter is
a series in two thousand and four, and Fairly OddParents
(23:03):
ran all the way from two thousand and one to
twenty eighteen.
Speaker 2 (23:06):
It ran for seventeen years.
Speaker 3 (23:08):
And so during the Fairly I called the Fairly OddParents train,
other shows would kind of hop on and hop off.
Danny Phantom hopped on from two thousand and four to
two thousand and seven, and then from two thousand and
ten twenty thirteen, my third show, Tough Puppy hopped on.
And I always wanted to do a comedy kind of
a crime fighting show, and that's where Tough Puppy came from.
(23:31):
I wanted to do Get Smart with a Dog, and
so Tough Puppy came around, and that was one of
the funniest shows I ever got to work on. I went
in and pitched four shows that day. Tough Puppy was
kind of off to the side. I didn't even think
it had a chance. I kind of put it off
to the back of the room. I had these other
great ideas. I'm up there pitching these four ideas, and
these execs were looking at me like American Idol, Like
three people sitting there just dead pan faces, weren't into
(23:54):
anything I was selling. But then they were like, what's
that one over there? And I said, Oh, that one's
about Get Smart with a Dog and they were like, oh,
that's great, I love it. Do you have any more
on that? And I of course said yes I do,
and I ran up to my office and made up
the whole Tough Puppy show. In about two hours, and
I said, here's what it is, and it's about a
gang of good animals to find a gang of bad
animals in a whole city called Petropolis.
Speaker 2 (24:14):
Where only animals live. Pitch Tough Puppy. They loved it.
Speaker 3 (24:20):
We made it into a series and it lasted for
three seasons. My last show I did a Nickelodeon. Tough
Puppy was over. I was still doing fairly Odd Parents
and I pitched one more show and it was called
Bunsen Is a Beast. And I don't know where I
came up with that name. I just thought it was
a fun name cause I'm always sitting there with the
sketch pad, always writing down ideas, and for some reason,
Bunsen I wrote it down.
Speaker 2 (24:41):
Punsen is a Beast. That's really funny.
Speaker 3 (24:43):
So that show is about a kid named Mikey who's
trying to get through school without getting murdered. And then
Bunsen is this little beast. He's the first beast to
ever go to a human school and he doesn't want
to scare anybody. It's you know, it's it's beasts can
best interact with humans. And he goes to school. He's
this cues little beast cute as can be, and him
and Mikey former friendship. And there's this evil girl in
(25:06):
the school named Amanda Killman who hates Bunsen and wants
to destroy him, and so it's always Mikey and Bunsen
against Amanda. But around twenty eighteen, I said, you know what,
it's kind of it's time to go. I think it's
time to get out.
Speaker 2 (25:21):
I was.
Speaker 3 (25:21):
I was twenty years at that time, an idea. I
got there in ninety seven. I sold fairly aptparents in
December ninety seven and then started working there in ninety eight.
So nine twenty eighteen, I've been there for twenty years,
and I still loved my job. I still loved Nickelodeon.
I was always treated well there. They were just great
to me. I'd have nothing ever bad to say about
that place. But fairly apparents was done, and so I thought,
you know what, I think it's time to go for now,
and maybe we'll come back or something. I just kind
(25:43):
of started doing my own stuff. I started going into
YouTube and doing some streaming stuff. I look at it
in terms of who have I been able to influence?
I go like, were my shows an influence to people
in a positive way. You know, did I make them laugh?
Did I maybe help them through a hard day? Did
I get them through a hard test at school? And
(26:05):
did I give them maybe a line to quote later
on to their own kids. You know, I used to
love to quote movie lines all the time. I would
drive people insane. I would just quote movies from beginning
to end. And I thought, is there any kid out
there like me that wants to quote movie lines or
cartoon lines? And I'm hoping I'm giving them a little.
Speaker 2 (26:19):
Bit of that.
Speaker 3 (26:21):
And listen, I look at it as a huge responsibility
because we all influence somebody. Every one of us out
there has a circle of influence around us that we
probably don't even realize. So your attitude, your your projects,
the things you're putting out there will influence somebody in
some way, whether positive or negative. So it's up to
you to realize to figure out which way you want
to go. So hopefully I've gone the good way.
Speaker 1 (26:46):
And a great job on that piece as always by Robbie,
and a special thanks to Butch Hartman for just bearing
his life story to us and what a story of creativity,
matching and meeting commerce and from all that.
Speaker 2 (26:59):
Artists can do it whatever they want, and they can take.
Speaker 1 (27:01):
Something into somebody and if that somebody says no, they
take it to somebody else. Puch Hartman's story and my goodness,
fairly odd parents, Danny Phantom, Tough Puppy, and I just
love the story of that pitch. He made it up
on the spot, and sometimes we do that in our lives.
We just have to improvise Puch Hartman's story here on
our American Story
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories,
and we tell stories about everything here on this show,
including your story. Send them to our American Stories dot com. Again,
go to our American Stories dot com. As far as
animators and visionaries go, Walt Disney is probably the most
recognizable name in that space. But to kids who grew
(00:31):
up in the late nineties or early two thousands, some
of the members of this staff, another name brings back
a flood of memories. Butch Hartman created two of the
most well known cartoons of the last two decades, Fairly
Odd Parents and Danny Phantom. Here's Butch to tell us
his story and how we went from the snowy shores
(00:51):
of Michigan to the sunny coast of southern California.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
Very first memories I remember.
Speaker 3 (01:01):
I was in a kindergarten and our teacher and never
forget her name, was Missus Shelley. And Missus Shelley asked
all the students to draw a picture of her, and
I thought, okay, well, I was still like a kid.
I drew a picture of her and just forgot about it.
And then she started making a huge deal out of
my picture. Oh my gosh, this is the best picture
I've ever seen. And you know, she was raving about
(01:22):
it and basically humiliated all the other kids. I think,
but she's like, I'm putting this up on the wall.
This is just amazing, And she put my picture up
on the wall.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
I'll never forget.
Speaker 3 (01:30):
I thought, wow, drawing is a real great way to
get attention from adults. So I thought, if I could
just keep drawing and get attention from adults, because you're
a kid, right, you want all the attention. So I thought,
I just thought, I'm just going to keep drawing stuff.
So I just started drawing and drawing, and before I
knew it, I really liked it, and I really realized
that I had kind of maybe a little bit of
a skill for it, and just started training myself and
(01:52):
growing up. And I loved Saturday morning cartoons. A lot
of us today, maybe some of the older folks remember
Saturday morning cartoons, but when I was a kid, the
only place you could get cartoons was on Saturday morning
for the most part, And so I would get up
and have my big bowl of tricks or whatever sugary
cereal I could get and watch cartoons from six in
the morning. Till eleven in the morning and then go
(02:13):
outside and play. And you know, I watched Some of
my favorites back then were The Wacky Races by Hannah Barbera,
Scooby Doo Again by Hannah Barbera. Hanna Barbert pretty much
owned Saturday Morning, the Jetsons and the Flintstones, and Johnny Quest.
Johnny Quest was one of my favorites. Never realizing later
on in life i'd be I'd ended up working for
Hanna Barbara years later. But yeah, those cartoons really influenced me. Then,
(02:33):
of course Disney. I'd watch a Wonderful World of Disney
on Sunday nights, and I loved movies like Star Wars
and things like that, and just really got a real
fantasy mindset and a drawing mindset. And then I kept
drawing the whole time too. I wanted to draw superheroes
and animate I did that up until I did all
through high school. All through school, I do the cover
(02:54):
of the you know, the school yearbook and things like that.
And I ended up meeting a couple guys that didn't
go to my school. I've met him through another friend.
So these other two guys I met, they were a
little older than me, and they were animation nerds like me,
but they were better than I was. And one guy
was the oldest guy was particularly great.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
He was a senior.
Speaker 3 (03:10):
I was a sophomore, and this older guy was going
to a school out in California. Now I'm in Michigan,
remember I'm snowed in. He's going to this magical school
in California. It was called California Institute of the Arts
and it was founded by Walt Disney and it was
one of the only schools in America at the time
that taught character animation. And so I thought, wow, that's
(03:30):
pretty cool. How can I get there? He goes, well,
you got a practice. So for the next two years,
my older friend went to cal Arts first, then my
second oldest friend went to cal Arts after him. By
the time I was a senior in high school, I
was actually sending these guys drawings through the mail, and
they would kind of grade my drawings and send them
back to me through the mail. Again, I got, this
is what we're looking for here, here's what the school
(03:50):
really wants to see. I'd go to the Detroit Zoo
and the dead of winter because it was free to
get into the zoo and I would life draw. I'd
draw the animals or my sketch pad and stand there,
you know, he's and cold and my coat, drawing the
tigers and the gorillas and stuff. It's interesting when I
applied to cal Arts again. I'm a kid in Michigan
and no one in my family had ever even been
to California, let alone live there. And I wanted to
(04:13):
go to California and I just live there but make
a living there, and you know, work in the animation industry.
And my dad was an autoworker. My dad was a
my dad was a Detroit autoworker. He's like, he was
very supportive, but I had no idea how to support
me in this other than hey, i'll support you, and
i'll help you get financial aid and we'll go to
the school and all that stuff. So I was able
to do that, and I really want I wanted to
go to California ever since I was a kid. I
remember watching the show Adam twelve. This really dates me,
(04:36):
but I was watching the show Adam twelve. I'd be
sitting in Michigan in the snow, watching these cops in
California in the sun, with palm trees, going how.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
Do I get there? How do I get to that place?
Speaker 3 (04:47):
And I think I was dreaming in California as a kid.
So I get to cal Arts and I was probably
one of the best artists in my little town in Michigan.
And I ended up moving to a town in Michigan
called New Baltimore. So I was in New Baltimore. I
was probably the best artist in town that I knew of. Anyway,
I get to cal Arts. It was almost like going
(05:08):
to the major leagues of baseball. Everybody was amazing. I
got there thinking I could draw, that I was hot stuff,
and the people surrounding me were just amazing. And I
had a decision to make either I up my game
and get better and compete with these people, or I
go home.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
I was like, Okay, I'm going to keep going.
Speaker 3 (05:27):
And I'm realizing I'm not going to be as good
as these people doing what they do, but I'm going
to get good at what I do. You know, I
just started enhancing my skills, just started practicing more and
getting better, and now I was surrounded. The cool thing
was I was surrounded by a bunch of amazingly talented
artists and creative people. And this is back in the eighties.
I got to cal Arts in nineteen eighty three. So
(05:48):
all the people I went to college with ended up
going into the animation industry and the entertainment industry and
actually running the industry. We all ended up getting shows
and movies and things that started to influence the way
the culture was going. Little did we know at the time.
Don Bluth was pretty big back in the eighties. He
was an animator who had left Disney and started his
(06:09):
own animation company. He did a movie called The Secret
of Nim He did one of the very first animated
video games called Dragon's Lair, and he did Space Ace
that was another video game, and he did a bunch
of other great animated stuff, and they thought he was
going to be the next Walt Disney. He was hired
to produce American Tale, which was produced by Steven Spielberg
and one of my very first animation jobs ever. I
(06:30):
was at school up in Valencia, California, and a friend
of mine says, hey, you know, I hear they're looking
for in betweeners on this movie called American Tale, and
an in between her real quick lesson in animation. You
have someone who does the first pose in the last pose,
that's the animator, and the in betweener puts all the
poses in between those poses. That's how it was traditionally
done for.
Speaker 2 (06:47):
Many many years.
Speaker 3 (06:48):
Basically, the in betweeners kind of the lower level animator
in training. And so we're like, okay, basically, let's go
take an animation test.
Speaker 1 (06:58):
And you're listening to Butch Hartman tell his story, learning
earlier that the gift of drawing drew attention from the
adults and pretty soon, well a childhood dream was about
to happen. He also learned he was walking straight into
the major leagues and needed to step up his game,
which he was more than willing to do. When we
come back, more of Butch Hartmann's story here on our
(07:22):
American Stories Folks, if you love the great American stories
we tell and love America like we do, we're asking
you to become a part of the Our American Stories family.
If you agree that America is a good and great country,
please make a donation. A monthly gift of seventeen dollars
(07:43):
and seventy six cents is fast becoming a favorite option
for supporters. Go to our American Stories dot com now
and go to the donate button and help us keep
the great American stories coming. That's our American Stories dot com.
(08:09):
And we're back with Butch Hartman's story here on our
American Stories and his journey to fulfilling his dream of
being an animator in Hollywood. When we last left off,
Hartman was studying animation at the California Institute of the
Arts and some friends were headed to the studio of
animation giant Don Bluth to auditioned to be in betweeners
(08:31):
or low level animators for Bluth and Steven Spielberg's nineteen
eighty six classic American tale, Back to Butch.
Speaker 3 (08:44):
And so we all drove down to Don Blue Studios
in Vannys, California, and this lady said, you guys here
for the test.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
We're like, yep.
Speaker 3 (08:51):
She gives us a folder and there's two drawings in
my folder. There's the first post in the last post.
All right, just put the in between's in. We'll see
you tomorrow. And my friends and I all got folded,
and we all went back to school and worked our
butts off all night, and we got up early in
the morning. I said, okay, let's go back down there.
So we drove down there and we handed our tests
in and then we wait for like ten minutes. She
(09:13):
comes out, Okay, here's a scene for you. Here's a scene.
And she basically comes out with animation scenes for us,
and they hired us to be in between ers on
American Tale, and so I got That was my first.
Speaker 2 (09:23):
Real animation job.
Speaker 3 (09:24):
And I didn't get credit on the film because I
didn't do enough footage to get credit. I did, like
I think you had to do like one hundred feet
to get credit. I did like ninety feet of film
to get That's all I did. I did like five
scenes in American Tell. But it was a great experience.
I really enjoyed it.
Speaker 2 (09:43):
I never graduated cal Arts.
Speaker 3 (09:45):
Actually I went three years, and it was a very
expensive school and I couldn't afford my fourth year. I
could barely afford my first three years. Got out of school,
left after my third year and began looking for a
job in the industry. And my first job I landed
was at Marvel Productions in Van Eys. Marvel had just
(10:05):
opened an animation studio here in the eighties and it
was in Van Eys, and I got a job at
Marvel Productions, and I thought, boy, this is going to
be great. I'm going to get to draw Spider Man
and Captain America and the Hulk. It's going to be
so cool. And my first job was on the original
production of My Little Pony. So I'm working on My
Little Pony and this was the really bad My Little
Pony that came out in the eighties. It was based
(10:27):
on the toys and I couldn't draw the ponies well enough.
But what they did they hired me to be a
character designer, and that's basically like you're basically drawing the
actors in the cartoon. But then they put me on storyboards,
which I'd never done for anyone else but myself before,
and I'm like, Okay, I can do this. But it
was a much harder, much more involved job. I ended
up getting fired off that job, off of My Little Pony.
(10:50):
It stuck with me for years that I would never
allow myself to get fired again. I would be able
to do any job that anybody threw at me. I
found another job at a company called Ruby Spears Productions,
and they're the guys who created Scooby Doo for Hannah Barbera.
They opened up their own animation studio and they were
doing shows in the seventies and I got hired there
(11:11):
in nineteen eighty six to work on a show called
Punky Brewster. It was the animated version of Punky Brewster
and then the animated Police Academy series and all this stuff.
Speaker 2 (11:19):
So started working.
Speaker 3 (11:20):
There, and during that time I started practicing storyboards and
background design and painting and all this other stuff just
to make myself a better artist and more valuable artist.
And the one thing I really started practicing more was writing.
Speaker 2 (11:31):
I wanted to be a writer as.
Speaker 3 (11:32):
Well, and a lot of artists they start off as
people who draw, but they don't realize that they can
write as well. I started writing. I would write on
my own, I would write scripts.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
On my own.
Speaker 3 (11:42):
I would write, you know, little things on my own.
Nobody would ever read them because I was just for me.
But eventually I started walking by the writer's room and
they would say, hey, you got any ideas for this joke?
And I'd say, what's going on? They would tell me
the story. I'd say, okay, you could do this. It'd
be funny if the dog did this or the cat
did this, and then it is funny and they would
put that in. So I kind of became like a
(12:03):
gag writer at Ruby Spears Productions. And then I started
working at Hannah Barbera, which became Cartoon Network because Ted
Turner bought it and turned it into Cartoon Network. I
started working there as an artist, but then I was
also doing storyboards, and I began writing on some other shows,
and I was just drawing on those shows.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
But then an opportunity came up.
Speaker 3 (12:24):
A guy named Fred Seibert was hired to run Hannah Barbera,
which was now Cartoon Network, and he offered everybody in the.
Speaker 2 (12:32):
Studio the chance to pitch their own show.
Speaker 3 (12:36):
And I thought, wow, this is cool, but I'm not
going to do it. I was terrified, but a friend
of mine said, now, come on, let's do it. So
I helped him pitch his show and it got sold,
and then I thought, this is kind of fun, so
let's come up with another idea. I'd always been a
guy who worked on other people's ideas but never really
worked on my own idea. And I'm like, I've really
(12:58):
got to start coming up with ideas. I really started
applying myself to working on my own ideas. You know,
characters and stories and that type of stuff. And that
was in the nineties at Hannah Barbera, and so I
worked on that. I ended up becoming a director and
a writer on the Johnny Bravo show Dexter's Laboratory as
a writer and a storyboard artist, Cow and Chicken.
Speaker 2 (13:17):
It was another show.
Speaker 3 (13:18):
As a writer and an artist, I did a lot
of stuff at Hannah Barbara and I worked with a
guy named Seth MacFarlane who was a young kid out
of Rhode Island. He came to Hannah Barbera and we
he and I worked together as writers on Johnny Bravo.
He ended up selling a show called Family Guy to Fox.
It was called Larry and Steve at first, and then
he sold it to Fox and he wanted me to
come over there and work with him. But right as
(13:38):
he sold his show, I ended up selling a little
show called The Fairly Odd Parents to Nickelodeon. And that's
kind of where my Nickelodeon journey began. Great opportunities are
very rare. They're like comments. I always say, It's like
Haley's comment, like, you know, it's really beautiful, it's really awesome,
but you're not going to see it again for a while,
so you better seize it while it's while it's here.
(14:01):
And I realized, this is an opportunity. I've got to
try this, you know, sink or swim. I got to
try this, and so seizing those opportunities. My first cartoons
that I sold weren't that great. They were fine. Certain
aspects of them were okay. Maybe the characters are really
good in this because I was a character designer, but
the timing was bad. So I'm going to time this myself.
I'm going to be the animation timing. I'm going to
write this dialogue myself. It's like I'm gonna start doing
(14:22):
this stuff myself, so I know it'll be what.
Speaker 2 (14:23):
I want it to be.
Speaker 3 (14:24):
At the end, when I pitched fairly on Parents, I
was about to get fired from again. Another firing was
coming up. I wouldn't say it was a firing though.
I was getting laid off because Johnny Bravo was ending.
I was working on Johnny Bravo and it was ending.
And at this point, this is nineteen ninety seven. At
this point, I already had one daughter, I was married
for five years and had another daughter on the way,
(14:45):
and it's like, well, I need a job. But I
really got tired of looking for jobs. I think everybody
out there gets tired of looking for jobs. I was
just tired of, you know, always having a job end
and go to another one. That's how it kind of
works in animation. So I thought, you know what I'm
gonna do. I'm going to make my own show. I
had Cybert who had left Hannah Barbera had gone to Nickelodeon,
and he was starting up a show called The Oh
(15:06):
Yeah Cartoon Show. And The Oh Yeah Cartoon Show was
basically a show. If you watched it, you'd watch a
half hour show and you'd see three seven minute cartoons
during that half an hour, and each cartoon was mede
by a different person. He said, I have one slot
left to have any ideas, and I said, yep, I
got an idea.
Speaker 2 (15:22):
I see if I'll see you Friday. And I hung
up the phone. I had nothing.
Speaker 3 (15:25):
This was like Tuesday, and I was like, I need
a job. So I sat down and said, I'm going
to come up with an idea that I love that
I could work on for twenty years. Just kind of
said that in my head, and I drew a little
boy named Timmy. I drew this little boy because I
know you always write what you know. I was a
little boy once, so I thought, okay, little boy, he
(15:45):
can go anywhere he wants. And I thought, maybe he
can do that with science. That'd be funny. He's a
science kid. But then Dexter's Laboratory was already a show.
I knew I couldn't do a science kid. And I
always tell people, make sure you do your homework. Don't
come into a company with a show idea that they
already have come up with a different idea. So I thought,
how about magic.
Speaker 2 (16:01):
That's kind of fun.
Speaker 3 (16:02):
Maybe he's a magic kid, and maybe he's got magic friends.
And so I came up with these two fairy godparents,
Cosmo and Wanda. Venus was her name originally, by I
changed it to Wanda, and Seinfeld had just revealed Kramer's
name as Cosmo on The Seinfeld Show. I thought, Cosmo's
a funny name. So I named him Cosmo and Wanda,
and they were his fairy godparents. And so I was
under contract to pitch that to Hannah Barbera. So I
(16:24):
pitched it and they turned it down. Cartoon Network turned
it down and so I ended up going to Nickelodeon
with Fred Ceiber and I said, hey, I got this
idea called The Fairly OddParents. He goes, great, let's do it.
So that became part of the OEA Cartoon show. It
was one pilot episode, seven minutes long, and we did
it and Nickelodeon liked it so much they gave me
like four more, and I did four more. Then they
(16:45):
liked it so much they gave me six more. I
did six more pretty much by myself. I had like
maybe two or three people helping me, and then they
focus tested those several episodes I did and they did
really well. It wasn't a hit at first. I mean
they only gave me six half hours at the beginning.
That took us about a year and a half, and
then Nickelodeon wasn't picking it up. They were like, okay, cool, thanks,
we'll start airing these you know, good luck, we'll see
(17:07):
what happens.
Speaker 2 (17:08):
And I'm like, all right.
Speaker 3 (17:09):
So I was actually formulating in my head, I've got
to go get another job.
Speaker 2 (17:12):
I've got to go get another gig.
Speaker 3 (17:13):
And they picked up the show in two thousand and
I love Nickelodeon don't get me wrong, but they had
not picked up the show, so like, oh, we need
more episodes of Fairly Odd Parents.
Speaker 2 (17:22):
I'm like great, I'm happy to do them.
Speaker 3 (17:23):
We premiered the show March thirtieth of two thousand and one,
and the show really took off like a rocket ship.
It did fantastic and we're.
Speaker 2 (17:31):
Like, whoa, this is us. This is so cool.
Speaker 1 (17:36):
And you're listening to Butch Hartman and he's walking us through, well,
what life is like when you just go out and
you try something and you give it your best. But
Butch Hartman's story, well it continues, and when we come back,
we'll hear the rest of his story here on our
American story. And we're back with our American stories and
(18:11):
with the story of Fairly Odd Parents creator which Hartman.
When we last left off, Nickelodeon had just picked up
the first season of Fairly Odd Parents. The showlot would
go on to run for ten seasons. One hundred and
seventy two episodes inspire numerous movies and video games, and
include voice talents such as Jay Leno, Adam West, Jackie Mason,
(18:33):
Gene Simmons, an even Olympic figure skater, and Gold medalist
Scott Hamilton. Back to Butch on creating the show.
Speaker 3 (18:48):
You know it says in the Bible, to who much
has given, much is required. It's in the Book of Luke,
and I'm like, all right, to who much is given,
much is required. I got to be the first one
in and the last one out every day. I got
to set an example because again, like I said, this opportunity,
I am not going to let this slip by without
giving it one thousand percent. Because I was at Nickelodeon.
(19:08):
I was watching people and they'd get a show, they'd
have a show picked up the network believes, and then
they're getting paid to make their show, and they would
never work hard on it. They would like, maybe take
a long lunch every day. They would It was almost
like the tortoise in the hair. They would wait till
the end of the race to finally try and catch up.
And by the end their show wasn't that good because
they didn't pay a lot of attention to it, and
I would see opportunities get missed. Like these guys, they
(19:30):
would think it was easy. Well, I sold one show,
I'll just sell another one. And it really isn't that easy.
It's very tricky in Hollywood to sell anything. So I
would watch these guys like kind of not pay attention,
and I'd be going, well, I'm going to do the
exact opposite of what they're doing. I'm going to make
sure I spent every waking moment on this show. And
my wife understood. I said, look, this is our big opportunity.
I've got to be there during the day as much
(19:53):
as I can, and at night I would come home,
I'd play with my daughters. I come home about seven
o'clock at night, and I play with them for two hours.
They go to bed, and I'd go back up to
my office at home, and I would work again till
like two in the morning, and then get up at
like six and repeat the process all over again every day.
I sold fairly odd Parents, and I was in pretty
good with the people at Nickelodeon who'd picked it up
(20:14):
because the show was a hit, so I knew they
liked me. I'm like, wow, I could probably get them
to maybe do another show if I play my cards right.
But I just got to come up with the right idea.
I thought, you know what, I just need a boy.
I knew they were looking for a boy's action show,
and I thought, man, this is this is awesome because
I love comic books. I love and one of my
favorite shows was Johnny Quest back in the day. What
a great name, Johnny Quest? If I can come up
with a cool name, I mean, just the coolest name
(20:36):
of all time, like Billy.
Speaker 2 (20:38):
Dynamite or whatever.
Speaker 3 (20:39):
Like, I was trying to get cool words that were cool,
like dynamite, power, thunder lightning, and somehow I ended up
on the word Phantom. I thought, Danny Phantom, that's a
cool name. Man, What could that kid do? So I
was going to actually make him like a Scooby Doo
type thing where he's got a bunch of friends and
he's got a pet owl and they fight go with weapons,
(21:00):
you know. But then I thought, now, let's make him
a superhero. Let's make him like he's he's a half
ghost kid. He can like go through walls and disappear.
And and then the exact sit. Nickelodeon about six months
later took me out to dinner because fairly odd parents
was doing really well. And this is one of those
Hollywood stories everybody dreams about, and it's kind of cool
(21:22):
that it happened. But we're sitting there at dinner and
these guys are like, hey, man, we love Fairly Odd Parents.
Speaker 2 (21:26):
We'd love to.
Speaker 3 (21:27):
Pick up more. I thought, great, that's awesome. And I
was like, hey, here's two more episodes. Great. And it's like,
do you have anything else? And I thought, wow, there
again there's an opportunity. What do you do when a
Hollywood executive says do you have anything else? Even if
you have nothing else? You say yes, like yes I do.
So I do this one thing. It's different than Fairly
(21:48):
Odd Parents, but it's a boy's action show. It's called
Danny Phantom. He goes, oh my gosh, that's great. Can
you have it done in three months? And I went WHOA?
Speaker 2 (21:56):
Of course? I said sure, why not?
Speaker 3 (22:02):
So when I left that dinner, I had more Fairly
Odd Parents and a brand new show called Danny Phantom,
and I really hadn't really thought much about it. I
came to work the next day I announced to my
crew we got more fairly odd parents. Everybody's cheering because
they get more employment. And then I said, now we
have a brand new show called Danny Phantom.
Speaker 2 (22:18):
Like what?
Speaker 3 (22:19):
And I'm going to pull some of you off of
Fairly Odd Parents to work on Danny Phantom too. My
work has been doubled. I have two recording sessions a week.
I have two writing meetings, two editing sessions, two storyboard pitches.
Everything doubled suddenly. But I was so down for it
and so into it. It didn't even seem like work
to me. It was so much fun. And I mainly
(22:41):
just said this to myself and I you know I
you know, I pray a lot, And I said, God,
you know what, you gave me this opportunity. I know
you're going to make time for me to do this.
You know that I'm diligent. You know I'm not gonna
let it. I'm not going to shirk my duty here.
I'm not going to let this slide. I had to
be a good steward over this. Danny Phantom Permiter is
a series in two thousand and four, and Fairly OddParents
(23:03):
ran all the way from two thousand and one to
twenty eighteen.
Speaker 2 (23:06):
It ran for seventeen years.
Speaker 3 (23:08):
And so during the Fairly I called the Fairly OddParents train,
other shows would kind of hop on and hop off.
Danny Phantom hopped on from two thousand and four to
two thousand and seven, and then from two thousand and
ten twenty thirteen, my third show, Tough Puppy hopped on.
And I always wanted to do a comedy kind of
a crime fighting show, and that's where Tough Puppy came from.
(23:31):
I wanted to do Get Smart with a Dog, and
so Tough Puppy came around, and that was one of
the funniest shows I ever got to work on. I went
in and pitched four shows that day. Tough Puppy was
kind of off to the side. I didn't even think
it had a chance. I kind of put it off
to the back of the room. I had these other
great ideas. I'm up there pitching these four ideas, and
these execs were looking at me like American Idol, Like
three people sitting there just dead pan faces, weren't into
(23:54):
anything I was selling. But then they were like, what's
that one over there? And I said, Oh, that one's
about Get Smart with a Dog and they were like, oh,
that's great, I love it. Do you have any more
on that? And I of course said yes I do,
and I ran up to my office and made up
the whole Tough Puppy show. In about two hours, and
I said, here's what it is, and it's about a
gang of good animals to find a gang of bad
animals in a whole city called Petropolis.
Speaker 2 (24:14):
Where only animals live. Pitch Tough Puppy. They loved it.
Speaker 3 (24:20):
We made it into a series and it lasted for
three seasons. My last show I did a Nickelodeon. Tough
Puppy was over. I was still doing fairly Odd Parents
and I pitched one more show and it was called
Bunsen Is a Beast. And I don't know where I
came up with that name. I just thought it was
a fun name cause I'm always sitting there with the
sketch pad, always writing down ideas, and for some reason,
Bunsen I wrote it down.
Speaker 2 (24:41):
Punsen is a Beast. That's really funny.
Speaker 3 (24:43):
So that show is about a kid named Mikey who's
trying to get through school without getting murdered. And then
Bunsen is this little beast. He's the first beast to
ever go to a human school and he doesn't want
to scare anybody. It's you know, it's it's beasts can
best interact with humans. And he goes to school. He's
this cues little beast cute as can be, and him
and Mikey former friendship. And there's this evil girl in
(25:06):
the school named Amanda Killman who hates Bunsen and wants
to destroy him, and so it's always Mikey and Bunsen
against Amanda. But around twenty eighteen, I said, you know what,
it's kind of it's time to go. I think it's
time to get out.
Speaker 2 (25:21):
I was.
Speaker 3 (25:21):
I was twenty years at that time, an idea. I
got there in ninety seven. I sold fairly aptparents in
December ninety seven and then started working there in ninety eight.
So nine twenty eighteen, I've been there for twenty years,
and I still loved my job. I still loved Nickelodeon.
I was always treated well there. They were just great
to me. I'd have nothing ever bad to say about
that place. But fairly apparents was done, and so I thought,
you know what, I think it's time to go for now,
and maybe we'll come back or something. I just kind
(25:43):
of started doing my own stuff. I started going into
YouTube and doing some streaming stuff. I look at it
in terms of who have I been able to influence?
I go like, were my shows an influence to people
in a positive way. You know, did I make them laugh?
Did I maybe help them through a hard day? Did
I get them through a hard test at school? And
(26:05):
did I give them maybe a line to quote later
on to their own kids. You know, I used to
love to quote movie lines all the time. I would
drive people insane. I would just quote movies from beginning
to end. And I thought, is there any kid out
there like me that wants to quote movie lines or
cartoon lines? And I'm hoping I'm giving them a little.
Speaker 2 (26:19):
Bit of that.
Speaker 3 (26:21):
And listen, I look at it as a huge responsibility
because we all influence somebody. Every one of us out
there has a circle of influence around us that we
probably don't even realize. So your attitude, your your projects,
the things you're putting out there will influence somebody in
some way, whether positive or negative. So it's up to
you to realize to figure out which way you want
to go. So hopefully I've gone the good way.
Speaker 1 (26:46):
And a great job on that piece as always by Robbie,
and a special thanks to Butch Hartman for just bearing
his life story to us and what a story of creativity,
matching and meeting commerce and from all that.
Speaker 2 (26:59):
Artists can do it whatever they want, and they can take.
Speaker 1 (27:01):
Something into somebody and if that somebody says no, they
take it to somebody else. Puch Hartman's story and my goodness,
fairly odd parents, Danny Phantom, Tough Puppy, and I just
love the story of that pitch. He made it up
on the spot, and sometimes we do that in our lives.
We just have to improvise Puch Hartman's story here on
our American Story
Host
Lee Habeeb
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