November 6, 2025 • 20 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, in the early 1990s, cable television was changing fast. Then came two boys who changed it even faster. Beavis and Butt-Head, created by Mike Judge, appeared on MTV without warning and instantly divided audiences. Parents complained while teenagers quoted every line. The show’s humor was crude, but its insight was sharp. Judge understood how television reflected the chaos of real life, and he built a world that made sense of it through laughter. Beneath the noise and nonsense was a surprisingly honest look at youth culture in the age of screens. Our own Greg Hengler — along with Mike Judge himself — shares the story of the creation of Beavis and Butt-Head
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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.
From nineteen ninety three to nineteen ninety seven, Mike Judge
captured the spirit of American adolescents, epitomized by two cheap
and crummy animated cartoons. Here's Greg Hangler with the story
of the highly popular television show Behavis and butt Head.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Stupid and Ugly have one advantage in life. Teachers expect
nothing from them, so they can fly under the usual
indoctrination that accompanies education.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
What's this crap?
Speaker 2 (00:48):
Thus, the stupid and ugly, if they aren't entirely stupid,
have a greater chance of being original. They are allowed
to speak the truth because no one cares what they say.
Because they are stupid. They are free. Beavis and butt Heead,
two supremely stupid and excruciatingly ugly pubescent males who lived
(01:11):
somewhere in the Southwest where the biggest phenomenon on MTV
since the heyday of Michael Jackson. Their laugh low in breath.
The variations of superseded Wayne and Garth's not as the
comic catchphrase. An album and a blockbuster movie were made,
(01:34):
and their merchandising campaign swept across American malls.
Speaker 4 (01:39):
For like share, So, like, what is that true that
he used to be like, uh married to that bono.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
Dude, Bono Senni Bono? Is that that dude that's like
a cop in San Diego?
Speaker 5 (01:56):
No?
Speaker 2 (01:57):
No, it was a Marapom Springs.
Speaker 3 (02:00):
Yeah, yeah, well yeah, yeah, well kinda yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:05):
Mike Judge is the creator of the television series Beavis
and butt Head and co creator of the television series
King of the Hill. He also wrote and directed Office Space,
the now cult film about it workers The premiered in
nineteen ninety nine. Here's Mike Judge.
Speaker 4 (02:23):
I'd been interested in animation since I was a kid.
I took a cartoon class at the YMCA. At the time,
I didn't know what the signs of a junkie were,
but now looking back, I'm pretty sure that my cartoon
teacher was a junkie beav somebuddead I had drawn in
a sketchbook and I kind of had them lying around,
And there was this sick and twisted festival that Spike
(02:45):
and Mike were doing, and I thought, I don't know
if I'm going to have a career, but I may
never have a chance like this again. To just do
whatever I want, get us out there as I want.
Sometime after I'd done the first two shorts, I thought, Okay,
what sho I should animate something with these guys, and
I just went for a walk and came up with
the whole idea for the short and the names and everything.
Speaker 6 (03:03):
I don't know, in probably like two or three minutes.
Speaker 4 (03:06):
I guess I was thinking about these just out of
control fourteen year olds.
Speaker 6 (03:10):
But now I'm growing up. That would be cool.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
Beavis and butt Head was tested in front of a
focus group in nineteen ninety two. Here's executive producer Abby Turkley.
Speaker 5 (03:22):
We wanted to develop it as a series. We tested it.
It tested through the roof. I didn't even know what
a focus group was.
Speaker 4 (03:30):
I remember Abby Turcouli calling me and saying, you know,
we showed it to a focus group up in Chicago,
and I've never seen a reaction like this, best reaction
I've ever seen. It was just funny to see because
I'm hearing my voice going, you know, and then seeing
these kids going hood.
Speaker 3 (03:46):
Continued, would you like to see more? Yeah?
Speaker 5 (03:49):
In fact, one kid stayed after and said, can I buy?
Can I buy this?
Speaker 6 (03:54):
Out of the tape machine.
Speaker 7 (03:56):
Could you like to record the tape for do you
want to copy it?
Speaker 2 (03:59):
Okay, here's Judy McGrath, former president of MTV Networks turned
member of Amazon's board of directors.
Speaker 8 (04:07):
And I thought, okay, I've been watching focus groups for
you know, ten years. I've never heard anyone say, can
I buy the tape.
Speaker 5 (04:14):
We tested it with women as well as separate groups,
and I think the women were cooler.
Speaker 6 (04:19):
At first. Hated it and.
Speaker 2 (04:23):
It was irritating and adulating to look at. I just
thought it was awful.
Speaker 4 (04:28):
The first season, they were supposed to have twenty two
episodes on Mark Shape, and they had two, so we
went on the air with two episodes. It was a
show that was every day and they were horrible. I mean,
the first two episodes were awful. I don't know why
anybody liked it. We cobbled together an episode out of
two of my shorts and a bunch of videos. It's
(04:50):
not just about writing, it's about writing stupid.
Speaker 6 (04:52):
But I thought I felt it was a hard thing
to do.
Speaker 9 (04:54):
Really, It's like you have to go back to the
place where thinking begins and stay there.
Speaker 10 (05:00):
Do you think that's funny? Butt head?
Speaker 4 (05:02):
Remember after the first episode aired and I thought it
was awful, and I was like to bury my head
in the sand. And Abby called and said, we got
a one last night. What's a one mean?
Speaker 3 (05:15):
You know?
Speaker 4 (05:17):
They said, well, usually you know that timeslot is like
a zero point six point seven.
Speaker 6 (05:21):
We had a one.
Speaker 4 (05:23):
Oh good. Then the next night it was one point two.
The next night it's the same episode airing over and
over again, and by Friday it was like one point eight.
Speaker 8 (05:34):
The first week it went on the air, probably the
third night, we got phone calls from five or six
movie studios saying, you know, let's go right into production
and make a movie. We heard from everybody. Retailers wanted
to sell the clothes, Winger was going to reunite and
go on the road. Warner Brothers wanted to make a
live action Wayne's World type movie. You know, right away
it was can you give me a beabs and butt heead?
(05:55):
So we literally put the brakes on everything for a while.
Speaker 4 (06:00):
First, I was thinking of just there're these two guys
who are just around each other all the time. They
don't have a lot of other friends or any other friends,
and so there's just these inside jokes that just keep
on going.
Speaker 6 (06:12):
To the point where they're just kind of laughing all
the time.
Speaker 11 (06:14):
Okay, Armstrong, here are mih faka yeah, butt Kiss? What's
wrong with you too? We've been in school over seven
months now, and every single day when I call Daniel
butt Kiss his name, you guys have Is it really
(06:35):
still that funny? Doesn't it ever get old? Are you
gonna laugh for the rest of your lives every time
someone says the name butt Kiss.
Speaker 2 (06:46):
Principal's office. Now here's head writer producer for beat Us
and butt Head Christopher Brown.
Speaker 9 (06:53):
They were clearly self destructive.
Speaker 12 (06:54):
You've had destructive impulses, right, uh no.
Speaker 9 (06:59):
But no matter how miserable their existence were, Let's face it,
they weren't living a great life. They didn't have a
nice home, they didn't have a lot of money, money, money, money.
Girls didn't respond to them, hey baby. Other kids made
(07:20):
fun of them and beat them up like Todd. But
they always managed to enjoy themselves. I mean, their laughter
came through everything. Even when Todd kicks there and they're going,
you know, oh this sucks.
Speaker 6 (07:34):
They follow it up with a laugh. Todd's cool, yea.
Speaker 4 (07:42):
They are trying to figure things out, and they sort
of in their own way philosophize about things, which is
what's really great to write like that.
Speaker 3 (07:49):
I bet they put all the stuff that sucks on
in the morning just to like get us to go
to school.
Speaker 12 (07:54):
Yeah, I think it's working.
Speaker 4 (07:58):
Usually I would start with thee and then do the drawing.
This one, I started with a drawing and I didn't
know what they would sound like, and I just drawn
on there. I started doing that laugh and I was
kind of like going, like, this is reminding me of something.
Didn't think about it untill probably two years into the
show that there was a guy at my high school.
He was really smart, stoned all the time, but he
(08:20):
would just you'd see him in the hallway and I
would always see him when the hallway was empty, and
he'd just start like, it's one of these guys that
he started going, hey, Mike. And so when I was
when I would do the voice, I would just kind
of do the and I would get I would be
doing it sort of to get into character, to get
the voice sounding right, and then I'd go, well, that
(08:42):
kind of sounds funny that he's just laughing all the time.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
Anyway, And you've been listening to the story of Beavis
and butt Head, with much of the storytelling coming from
their creator, Mike Judge, and he was interested in animation
as a kid. We learned and he drawn these two
characters in a sketch book and the first two shorts.
(09:06):
So he came up with the names and ideas to
those shorts when he was on a walk, tested in
front of focus groups. It tested through the roof. When
we come back more of the story of Beavis and
butt Head here on our American story. And we returned
(09:40):
to our American stories and to Greg Hengler and the
story of Beavis and butt heead and it's creator, Mike Judge.
Here's Judge.
Speaker 6 (09:51):
The Beavis laughter was a guy who was.
Speaker 4 (09:55):
It's actually calculus class, and it was a really smart guy.
Speaker 6 (09:58):
He's now nuclear engineer.
Speaker 4 (10:01):
I hope he doesn't figure out who he is that
I'm talking about him. But we had a hot teacher,
which was unheard of back then.
Speaker 6 (10:09):
She was a former Dallas Cowboys cheerleader.
Speaker 4 (10:11):
Anyway, he would get really excited and he just like
he was biting his lip all the time and just
kind of going like like laughing at everything she said.
So I started out with that laugh and then I
just kind of made his voice sound like the laugh,
just like Rasby. You know.
Speaker 11 (10:29):
That's right, everyone, if we all work together and respect
one another's space, we'll get through this crisis with a
newfound sense of community.
Speaker 2 (10:38):
Street along there, Penny Waste.
Speaker 4 (10:40):
Mister Van Dreeson, that was probably that's probably my favorite
character other than Beavis, to do the voice for. When
I started doing that voice, I wasn't quite sure where
I was getting it from, and then I remembered I
used to be a musician and I played with Sam Myers.
And there's this guy from the Santa Barbara Blues Society
there and he was interviewing Sam. He just had this
way of talking, he said. I remember him saying something like.
Speaker 12 (11:03):
Sam, it must have been really wonderful for you, having
grown up in the Deep South to be able to
travel to Europe and experience some of their culture and
share some of your culture as well.
Speaker 4 (11:15):
I wanted to have this this hippie teacher who just
believes that teaching can solve any problem. That the only
the problem with teenager, it's all education.
Speaker 6 (11:24):
So it's always.
Speaker 4 (11:24):
Funny for me to see mister Van Dreesen just try
so hard and believe that they can be changed, and
that not only do they not learn from his lessons,
they usually learn the wrong lesson from what he's saying.
Speaker 10 (11:37):
Ooh boy, what I wouldn't give for five minutes alone
with those little stards that took mym over.
Speaker 4 (11:43):
Mister Anderson, There's probably been five or six people in
my life that talked like that. I grew up in Albuquerque,
New Mexico, actually, and it always seemed like every middle
aged authority figure had a Texas accident. I had a
paper out when I was a kid. My brother and
I had one. You'd go collect at the end of
the month the door. Back then, we went up to
the door and the guy looked at us, you know,
(12:03):
and so it was our first month collecting.
Speaker 6 (12:05):
He says, well, you ain't my paper boy.
Speaker 4 (12:09):
My brother said, yeah, well I know your paper boy
quit and we're the new paper boys.
Speaker 10 (12:14):
Well I know what my paper boy looks like, and
you ain't my paper boy.
Speaker 4 (12:18):
Finally, my brother said, okay, well if you don't pay,
you know, we're gonna have to cancel your cancel the paper.
And he said, oh, I'm going to get the paper
when the real paper boy comes. And finally he swallowed
his pride, and he phoned in a subscription and.
Speaker 10 (12:35):
By tell you what, Dusty, I felt like a one
legged cat trying to bury turns on a frozen pond
out there today.
Speaker 6 (12:43):
WHOA, it's Todd, I know, I know.
Speaker 4 (12:48):
Actually, I think Sam and Chris first suggested the idea
of a guy who beats the crap out of him,
but they think he's really cool.
Speaker 6 (12:56):
To me, Todd reminds me of this.
Speaker 4 (12:58):
We had a family down at the end of the
of our block when I was a kid, and the
dad was a truck driver and a couple of the
kids had gone to jail and they were teenagers while
we were ten and eleven, and the middle one would
just terrorize us. He'd come by on his motorcycle ride
on our lawn patch the lawn, just scare the shit
out of us whenever he could.
Speaker 10 (13:19):
I would like nothing more than to kill you both
with my bare hands.
Speaker 6 (13:24):
There was a band director in ninth grade.
Speaker 4 (13:27):
I'm pretty sure he was an alcoholic, and he would
just he smelled like liquor in the morning, and he
was just always there was this he was kind of shaking,
always angry, always wound up.
Speaker 6 (13:37):
There's just this noise coming out of him. He's ooh, oh,
what are you doing?
Speaker 2 (13:43):
Watch your my mouth, you little sons.
Speaker 6 (13:46):
Of Tray and Matt.
Speaker 4 (13:49):
The South Park guys, I remember them saying that Beavis
and butt Head to them was like the Blues, which
was a really high compliment to me because it's that
kind of thing where it's just it's the same thing
over and over, but it's good.
Speaker 2 (14:01):
Here's South Park co creator Trey Parker.
Speaker 13 (14:05):
I remember right before at south Park went on the air, Actually,
Mike took us out to give us advice because he's
just that cool of a guy, and he was sitting
there going, well, you know, don't let people take advantage
of you because they're dumb.
Speaker 2 (14:20):
Here's writer Larry Doyle.
Speaker 14 (14:22):
Mike can make almost anything sound funny. That's a very
hard quality to do. I thought that Mike could make
even the lamest line sound funny. He could say Bud
had saying, make it snappy, and there's just something about
the way he said it, and you know, it helped
a little bit that but Head is a little bit
of a lisp.
Speaker 3 (14:40):
You men want to date, Uh yeah, we want two
of them, and make it snappy.
Speaker 6 (14:50):
Get the kite beat us cool?
Speaker 14 (14:55):
When I was doing this profile for Rolling Stone. I
remember that Patrick's Jean Luc Picard, was a giant fan
of the of the show, and he happily talked to
me not only for the article, but i'd say for
about half an hour afterwards about what episodes I had
written and what his favorite episodes were.
Speaker 6 (15:15):
Oh no, we kind of allow ourselves to think that.
Speaker 2 (15:19):
Here again, it's Trey Parker.
Speaker 13 (15:21):
The point of the show, you know, it was the
great satirical look at sort of where a lot of
teenagers in America were at the time. And it really was,
I think, very scathing, very harsh, and almost a very
open your eyes people. And you know, now I know
Mike enough to know that there was a lot more
behind it, you know, and Mike is a very good
(15:43):
guy and a very cool guy, and he actually, you know,
was trying to say something, you know, that that this
this is starting to be our youth, and if we're
not careful, this is going to be our youth.
Speaker 3 (15:55):
Start feeling, you know us, It doesn't get any better
than this.
Speaker 13 (16:01):
Something that's good. It doesn't matter how great, it doesn't
matter how slick it is. You don't need Disney, you
don't need these sweet graphics. If something's funny and something's good,
you can have it look that crappy. And it inspired
us in that way, just to go, let's just do
it ourselves.
Speaker 6 (16:14):
We'll do it a construction paper if we have to.
Speaker 13 (16:16):
It really got us into this conversation about satire and
how there was no good satire out there and we
wanted to do the same thing.
Speaker 4 (16:22):
Mike, I always reference TV I grew up on, because
that's still I guess it's whatever age you are, you're
gonna you know, the thing that really cements itself in
your head is the first stuff you liked on television.
Speaker 6 (16:35):
And I loved the Beverly Hillbillies. Leave It to Beaver
Andy Griffith's show.
Speaker 14 (16:42):
There's actually a line you could draw between Beavis and
but Head and Andy Griffith in terms of the style
of the way the comedy worked. Even though the topics
were very different, the character comedy was very much the same.
Speaker 5 (16:55):
I are Master Claver, aren't you supposed to be in school? Well?
Speaker 1 (17:00):
Gift though, But all I know is I'm plus to
come in here and buy some cigarettes.
Speaker 5 (17:04):
Hey, you wouldn't be buying these for Eddie, now, would you.
Speaker 2 (17:07):
Ke how'd you know?
Speaker 14 (17:10):
You know, if you look at it from a comedy
math point of view, it's really very old fashioned kind
of humor, even though at the time it was upsetting
people with the topics.
Speaker 6 (17:19):
That it was.
Speaker 14 (17:21):
I mean, they were just dumb guys, and that's a
real there's a real long condition of dumb guy comedies.
Speaker 9 (17:30):
You guys aren't drunk, you're just stupid.
Speaker 2 (17:33):
Here's former president of Viacom Van Tossin.
Speaker 7 (17:36):
I think it's really about being true to what you know,
teen boys do in the prism through which they see life,
and particularly innocent one innocent ones like those two. I mean,
they're really base and whatever they feel comes out of
their mouths. And I sort of was that when I
(17:56):
was a teenager. I'd said to say, but everyone knows
Beavis and butt Head, you could relate to it, animated
or real.
Speaker 6 (18:04):
They were part of your life at some point.
Speaker 4 (18:07):
To me, Beavis and Butdhead when it's good has that thing.
It's a ridiculous premise. Three stooges. It's the same thing
over and over again. But I can keep watching a
Cheech and Chong. I don't you know, you just kind
of want to be there with those guys, and I
kind of hoped that Beavis and Butthead would be in
that category.
Speaker 3 (18:23):
I'm just glad it's finally over, you know what I'm saying. Yeah, really,
at least now we can get on with our life.
Speaker 1 (18:46):
And a terrific job on the production editing and storytelling
by our own Greg Engler. And my goodness, you heard
from Mike Judge, from all kinds of folks, the creators
at South Park Studio executives about the remarkable story this show.
And let's remember this did not market test well with women,
even though women know well teenage boys. To this day,
(19:07):
my wife doesn't laugh at the three stooges, and I do,
and they've been with me well through all my life.
Speaker 2 (19:14):
Just as the South.
Speaker 1 (19:15):
Park guy said about Beavis and Butt, heead, it's like
the Blues, It's the same thing over and over again,
but it's good. And what Judge said, you just want
to be there with those guys again, the same thing
over and over again. But there's just something about them,
their companions through your life and laughing through your life
(19:36):
with your companions, that's the thing. There's also that great
point they made about not needing Disney quality animation. And
this is true. If the story's great and the characters
are great, the rest of that stuff can actually get
in the way. The story of Beavis and butt heead
the characters mister van Dries and mister Anderson so brilliantly caricatured,
(19:58):
the characters that seem to to.
Speaker 6 (20:00):
Spring up in our own lives.
Speaker 1 (20:02):
Story of Beavis and butt Head here on, our American
stories
This is Lee Habib and this is Our American Stories.
From nineteen ninety three to nineteen ninety seven, Mike Judge
captured the spirit of American adolescents, epitomized by two cheap
and crummy animated cartoons. Here's Greg Hangler with the story
of the highly popular television show Behavis and butt Head.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Stupid and Ugly have one advantage in life. Teachers expect
nothing from them, so they can fly under the usual
indoctrination that accompanies education.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
What's this crap?
Speaker 2 (00:48):
Thus, the stupid and ugly, if they aren't entirely stupid,
have a greater chance of being original. They are allowed
to speak the truth because no one cares what they say.
Because they are stupid. They are free. Beavis and butt Heead,
two supremely stupid and excruciatingly ugly pubescent males who lived
(01:11):
somewhere in the Southwest where the biggest phenomenon on MTV
since the heyday of Michael Jackson. Their laugh low in breath.
The variations of superseded Wayne and Garth's not as the
comic catchphrase. An album and a blockbuster movie were made,
(01:34):
and their merchandising campaign swept across American malls.
Speaker 4 (01:39):
For like share, So, like, what is that true that
he used to be like, uh married to that bono.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
Dude, Bono Senni Bono? Is that that dude that's like
a cop in San Diego?
Speaker 5 (01:56):
No?
Speaker 2 (01:57):
No, it was a Marapom Springs.
Speaker 3 (02:00):
Yeah, yeah, well yeah, yeah, well kinda yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:05):
Mike Judge is the creator of the television series Beavis
and butt Head and co creator of the television series
King of the Hill. He also wrote and directed Office Space,
the now cult film about it workers The premiered in
nineteen ninety nine. Here's Mike Judge.
Speaker 4 (02:23):
I'd been interested in animation since I was a kid.
I took a cartoon class at the YMCA. At the time,
I didn't know what the signs of a junkie were,
but now looking back, I'm pretty sure that my cartoon
teacher was a junkie beav somebuddead I had drawn in
a sketchbook and I kind of had them lying around,
And there was this sick and twisted festival that Spike
(02:45):
and Mike were doing, and I thought, I don't know
if I'm going to have a career, but I may
never have a chance like this again. To just do
whatever I want, get us out there as I want.
Sometime after I'd done the first two shorts, I thought, Okay,
what sho I should animate something with these guys, and
I just went for a walk and came up with
the whole idea for the short and the names and everything.
Speaker 6 (03:03):
I don't know, in probably like two or three minutes.
Speaker 4 (03:06):
I guess I was thinking about these just out of
control fourteen year olds.
Speaker 6 (03:10):
But now I'm growing up. That would be cool.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
Beavis and butt Head was tested in front of a
focus group in nineteen ninety two. Here's executive producer Abby Turkley.
Speaker 5 (03:22):
We wanted to develop it as a series. We tested it.
It tested through the roof. I didn't even know what
a focus group was.
Speaker 4 (03:30):
I remember Abby Turcouli calling me and saying, you know,
we showed it to a focus group up in Chicago,
and I've never seen a reaction like this, best reaction
I've ever seen. It was just funny to see because
I'm hearing my voice going, you know, and then seeing
these kids going hood.
Speaker 3 (03:46):
Continued, would you like to see more? Yeah?
Speaker 5 (03:49):
In fact, one kid stayed after and said, can I buy?
Can I buy this?
Speaker 6 (03:54):
Out of the tape machine.
Speaker 7 (03:56):
Could you like to record the tape for do you
want to copy it?
Speaker 2 (03:59):
Okay, here's Judy McGrath, former president of MTV Networks turned
member of Amazon's board of directors.
Speaker 8 (04:07):
And I thought, okay, I've been watching focus groups for
you know, ten years. I've never heard anyone say, can
I buy the tape.
Speaker 5 (04:14):
We tested it with women as well as separate groups,
and I think the women were cooler.
Speaker 6 (04:19):
At first. Hated it and.
Speaker 2 (04:23):
It was irritating and adulating to look at. I just
thought it was awful.
Speaker 4 (04:28):
The first season, they were supposed to have twenty two
episodes on Mark Shape, and they had two, so we
went on the air with two episodes. It was a
show that was every day and they were horrible. I mean,
the first two episodes were awful. I don't know why
anybody liked it. We cobbled together an episode out of
two of my shorts and a bunch of videos. It's
(04:50):
not just about writing, it's about writing stupid.
Speaker 6 (04:52):
But I thought I felt it was a hard thing
to do.
Speaker 9 (04:54):
Really, It's like you have to go back to the
place where thinking begins and stay there.
Speaker 10 (05:00):
Do you think that's funny? Butt head?
Speaker 4 (05:02):
Remember after the first episode aired and I thought it
was awful, and I was like to bury my head
in the sand. And Abby called and said, we got
a one last night. What's a one mean?
Speaker 3 (05:15):
You know?
Speaker 4 (05:17):
They said, well, usually you know that timeslot is like
a zero point six point seven.
Speaker 6 (05:21):
We had a one.
Speaker 4 (05:23):
Oh good. Then the next night it was one point two.
The next night it's the same episode airing over and
over again, and by Friday it was like one point eight.
Speaker 8 (05:34):
The first week it went on the air, probably the
third night, we got phone calls from five or six
movie studios saying, you know, let's go right into production
and make a movie. We heard from everybody. Retailers wanted
to sell the clothes, Winger was going to reunite and
go on the road. Warner Brothers wanted to make a
live action Wayne's World type movie. You know, right away
it was can you give me a beabs and butt heead?
(05:55):
So we literally put the brakes on everything for a while.
Speaker 4 (06:00):
First, I was thinking of just there're these two guys
who are just around each other all the time. They
don't have a lot of other friends or any other friends,
and so there's just these inside jokes that just keep
on going.
Speaker 6 (06:12):
To the point where they're just kind of laughing all
the time.
Speaker 11 (06:14):
Okay, Armstrong, here are mih faka yeah, butt Kiss? What's
wrong with you too? We've been in school over seven
months now, and every single day when I call Daniel
butt Kiss his name, you guys have Is it really
(06:35):
still that funny? Doesn't it ever get old? Are you
gonna laugh for the rest of your lives every time
someone says the name butt Kiss.
Speaker 2 (06:46):
Principal's office. Now here's head writer producer for beat Us
and butt Head Christopher Brown.
Speaker 9 (06:53):
They were clearly self destructive.
Speaker 12 (06:54):
You've had destructive impulses, right, uh no.
Speaker 9 (06:59):
But no matter how miserable their existence were, Let's face it,
they weren't living a great life. They didn't have a
nice home, they didn't have a lot of money, money, money, money.
Girls didn't respond to them, hey baby. Other kids made
(07:20):
fun of them and beat them up like Todd. But
they always managed to enjoy themselves. I mean, their laughter
came through everything. Even when Todd kicks there and they're going,
you know, oh this sucks.
Speaker 6 (07:34):
They follow it up with a laugh. Todd's cool, yea.
Speaker 4 (07:42):
They are trying to figure things out, and they sort
of in their own way philosophize about things, which is
what's really great to write like that.
Speaker 3 (07:49):
I bet they put all the stuff that sucks on
in the morning just to like get us to go
to school.
Speaker 12 (07:54):
Yeah, I think it's working.
Speaker 4 (07:58):
Usually I would start with thee and then do the drawing.
This one, I started with a drawing and I didn't
know what they would sound like, and I just drawn
on there. I started doing that laugh and I was
kind of like going, like, this is reminding me of something.
Didn't think about it untill probably two years into the
show that there was a guy at my high school.
He was really smart, stoned all the time, but he
(08:20):
would just you'd see him in the hallway and I
would always see him when the hallway was empty, and
he'd just start like, it's one of these guys that
he started going, hey, Mike. And so when I was
when I would do the voice, I would just kind
of do the and I would get I would be
doing it sort of to get into character, to get
the voice sounding right, and then I'd go, well, that
(08:42):
kind of sounds funny that he's just laughing all the time.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
Anyway, And you've been listening to the story of Beavis
and butt Head, with much of the storytelling coming from
their creator, Mike Judge, and he was interested in animation
as a kid. We learned and he drawn these two
characters in a sketch book and the first two shorts.
(09:06):
So he came up with the names and ideas to
those shorts when he was on a walk, tested in
front of focus groups. It tested through the roof. When
we come back more of the story of Beavis and
butt Head here on our American story. And we returned
(09:40):
to our American stories and to Greg Hengler and the
story of Beavis and butt heead and it's creator, Mike Judge.
Here's Judge.
Speaker 6 (09:51):
The Beavis laughter was a guy who was.
Speaker 4 (09:55):
It's actually calculus class, and it was a really smart guy.
Speaker 6 (09:58):
He's now nuclear engineer.
Speaker 4 (10:01):
I hope he doesn't figure out who he is that
I'm talking about him. But we had a hot teacher,
which was unheard of back then.
Speaker 6 (10:09):
She was a former Dallas Cowboys cheerleader.
Speaker 4 (10:11):
Anyway, he would get really excited and he just like
he was biting his lip all the time and just
kind of going like like laughing at everything she said.
So I started out with that laugh and then I
just kind of made his voice sound like the laugh,
just like Rasby. You know.
Speaker 11 (10:29):
That's right, everyone, if we all work together and respect
one another's space, we'll get through this crisis with a
newfound sense of community.
Speaker 2 (10:38):
Street along there, Penny Waste.
Speaker 4 (10:40):
Mister Van Dreeson, that was probably that's probably my favorite
character other than Beavis, to do the voice for. When
I started doing that voice, I wasn't quite sure where
I was getting it from, and then I remembered I
used to be a musician and I played with Sam Myers.
And there's this guy from the Santa Barbara Blues Society
there and he was interviewing Sam. He just had this
way of talking, he said. I remember him saying something like.
Speaker 12 (11:03):
Sam, it must have been really wonderful for you, having
grown up in the Deep South to be able to
travel to Europe and experience some of their culture and
share some of your culture as well.
Speaker 4 (11:15):
I wanted to have this this hippie teacher who just
believes that teaching can solve any problem. That the only
the problem with teenager, it's all education.
Speaker 6 (11:24):
So it's always.
Speaker 4 (11:24):
Funny for me to see mister Van Dreesen just try
so hard and believe that they can be changed, and
that not only do they not learn from his lessons,
they usually learn the wrong lesson from what he's saying.
Speaker 10 (11:37):
Ooh boy, what I wouldn't give for five minutes alone
with those little stards that took mym over.
Speaker 4 (11:43):
Mister Anderson, There's probably been five or six people in
my life that talked like that. I grew up in Albuquerque,
New Mexico, actually, and it always seemed like every middle
aged authority figure had a Texas accident. I had a
paper out when I was a kid. My brother and
I had one. You'd go collect at the end of
the month the door. Back then, we went up to
the door and the guy looked at us, you know,
(12:03):
and so it was our first month collecting.
Speaker 6 (12:05):
He says, well, you ain't my paper boy.
Speaker 4 (12:09):
My brother said, yeah, well I know your paper boy
quit and we're the new paper boys.
Speaker 10 (12:14):
Well I know what my paper boy looks like, and
you ain't my paper boy.
Speaker 4 (12:18):
Finally, my brother said, okay, well if you don't pay,
you know, we're gonna have to cancel your cancel the paper.
And he said, oh, I'm going to get the paper
when the real paper boy comes. And finally he swallowed
his pride, and he phoned in a subscription and.
Speaker 10 (12:35):
By tell you what, Dusty, I felt like a one
legged cat trying to bury turns on a frozen pond
out there today.
Speaker 6 (12:43):
WHOA, it's Todd, I know, I know.
Speaker 4 (12:48):
Actually, I think Sam and Chris first suggested the idea
of a guy who beats the crap out of him,
but they think he's really cool.
Speaker 6 (12:56):
To me, Todd reminds me of this.
Speaker 4 (12:58):
We had a family down at the end of the
of our block when I was a kid, and the
dad was a truck driver and a couple of the
kids had gone to jail and they were teenagers while
we were ten and eleven, and the middle one would
just terrorize us. He'd come by on his motorcycle ride
on our lawn patch the lawn, just scare the shit
out of us whenever he could.
Speaker 10 (13:19):
I would like nothing more than to kill you both
with my bare hands.
Speaker 6 (13:24):
There was a band director in ninth grade.
Speaker 4 (13:27):
I'm pretty sure he was an alcoholic, and he would
just he smelled like liquor in the morning, and he
was just always there was this he was kind of shaking,
always angry, always wound up.
Speaker 6 (13:37):
There's just this noise coming out of him. He's ooh, oh,
what are you doing?
Speaker 2 (13:43):
Watch your my mouth, you little sons.
Speaker 6 (13:46):
Of Tray and Matt.
Speaker 4 (13:49):
The South Park guys, I remember them saying that Beavis
and butt Head to them was like the Blues, which
was a really high compliment to me because it's that
kind of thing where it's just it's the same thing
over and over, but it's good.
Speaker 2 (14:01):
Here's South Park co creator Trey Parker.
Speaker 13 (14:05):
I remember right before at south Park went on the air, Actually,
Mike took us out to give us advice because he's
just that cool of a guy, and he was sitting
there going, well, you know, don't let people take advantage
of you because they're dumb.
Speaker 2 (14:20):
Here's writer Larry Doyle.
Speaker 14 (14:22):
Mike can make almost anything sound funny. That's a very
hard quality to do. I thought that Mike could make
even the lamest line sound funny. He could say Bud
had saying, make it snappy, and there's just something about
the way he said it, and you know, it helped
a little bit that but Head is a little bit
of a lisp.
Speaker 3 (14:40):
You men want to date, Uh yeah, we want two
of them, and make it snappy.
Speaker 6 (14:50):
Get the kite beat us cool?
Speaker 14 (14:55):
When I was doing this profile for Rolling Stone. I
remember that Patrick's Jean Luc Picard, was a giant fan
of the of the show, and he happily talked to
me not only for the article, but i'd say for
about half an hour afterwards about what episodes I had
written and what his favorite episodes were.
Speaker 6 (15:15):
Oh no, we kind of allow ourselves to think that.
Speaker 2 (15:19):
Here again, it's Trey Parker.
Speaker 13 (15:21):
The point of the show, you know, it was the
great satirical look at sort of where a lot of
teenagers in America were at the time. And it really was,
I think, very scathing, very harsh, and almost a very
open your eyes people. And you know, now I know
Mike enough to know that there was a lot more
behind it, you know, and Mike is a very good
(15:43):
guy and a very cool guy, and he actually, you know,
was trying to say something, you know, that that this
this is starting to be our youth, and if we're
not careful, this is going to be our youth.
Speaker 3 (15:55):
Start feeling, you know us, It doesn't get any better
than this.
Speaker 13 (16:01):
Something that's good. It doesn't matter how great, it doesn't
matter how slick it is. You don't need Disney, you
don't need these sweet graphics. If something's funny and something's good,
you can have it look that crappy. And it inspired
us in that way, just to go, let's just do
it ourselves.
Speaker 6 (16:14):
We'll do it a construction paper if we have to.
Speaker 13 (16:16):
It really got us into this conversation about satire and
how there was no good satire out there and we
wanted to do the same thing.
Speaker 4 (16:22):
Mike, I always reference TV I grew up on, because
that's still I guess it's whatever age you are, you're
gonna you know, the thing that really cements itself in
your head is the first stuff you liked on television.
Speaker 6 (16:35):
And I loved the Beverly Hillbillies. Leave It to Beaver
Andy Griffith's show.
Speaker 14 (16:42):
There's actually a line you could draw between Beavis and
but Head and Andy Griffith in terms of the style
of the way the comedy worked. Even though the topics
were very different, the character comedy was very much the same.
Speaker 5 (16:55):
I are Master Claver, aren't you supposed to be in school? Well?
Speaker 1 (17:00):
Gift though, But all I know is I'm plus to
come in here and buy some cigarettes.
Speaker 5 (17:04):
Hey, you wouldn't be buying these for Eddie, now, would you.
Speaker 2 (17:07):
Ke how'd you know?
Speaker 14 (17:10):
You know, if you look at it from a comedy
math point of view, it's really very old fashioned kind
of humor, even though at the time it was upsetting
people with the topics.
Speaker 6 (17:19):
That it was.
Speaker 14 (17:21):
I mean, they were just dumb guys, and that's a
real there's a real long condition of dumb guy comedies.
Speaker 9 (17:30):
You guys aren't drunk, you're just stupid.
Speaker 2 (17:33):
Here's former president of Viacom Van Tossin.
Speaker 7 (17:36):
I think it's really about being true to what you know,
teen boys do in the prism through which they see life,
and particularly innocent one innocent ones like those two. I mean,
they're really base and whatever they feel comes out of
their mouths. And I sort of was that when I
(17:56):
was a teenager. I'd said to say, but everyone knows
Beavis and butt Head, you could relate to it, animated
or real.
Speaker 6 (18:04):
They were part of your life at some point.
Speaker 4 (18:07):
To me, Beavis and Butdhead when it's good has that thing.
It's a ridiculous premise. Three stooges. It's the same thing
over and over again. But I can keep watching a
Cheech and Chong. I don't you know, you just kind
of want to be there with those guys, and I
kind of hoped that Beavis and Butthead would be in
that category.
Speaker 3 (18:23):
I'm just glad it's finally over, you know what I'm saying. Yeah, really,
at least now we can get on with our life.
Speaker 1 (18:46):
And a terrific job on the production editing and storytelling
by our own Greg Engler. And my goodness, you heard
from Mike Judge, from all kinds of folks, the creators
at South Park Studio executives about the remarkable story this show.
And let's remember this did not market test well with women,
even though women know well teenage boys. To this day,
(19:07):
my wife doesn't laugh at the three stooges, and I do,
and they've been with me well through all my life.
Speaker 2 (19:14):
Just as the South.
Speaker 1 (19:15):
Park guy said about Beavis and Butt, heead, it's like
the Blues, It's the same thing over and over again,
but it's good. And what Judge said, you just want
to be there with those guys again, the same thing
over and over again. But there's just something about them,
their companions through your life and laughing through your life
(19:36):
with your companions, that's the thing. There's also that great
point they made about not needing Disney quality animation. And
this is true. If the story's great and the characters
are great, the rest of that stuff can actually get
in the way. The story of Beavis and butt heead
the characters mister van Dries and mister Anderson so brilliantly caricatured,
(19:58):
the characters that seem to to.
Speaker 6 (20:00):
Spring up in our own lives.
Speaker 1 (20:02):
Story of Beavis and butt Head here on, our American
stories
Host
Lee Habeeb
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