TELEVISIONARIES
by Nevin Martell
illustrated by Jeffrey Brown
November 19, 2010
When you’re a kid, the hours of the day after school and on Saturday mornings are sacred. It’s the
time when you’re allowed to drop everything and embrace the wonder of being young. You hunt
for treasure in the backyard, sled down the hill by your house, and build futuristic spaceships
out of blocks. You hit the sandlot, practice your free throws, and reenact improbable Hail Mary
football passes. Or maybe you plop down in front of the television, where you know you’ll find
good friends telling great stories that make you laugh, dance, and possibly even learn something.
The best of these kid-centric TV programs manage to impress both young and old audiences
with stunning visuals, cutting-edge music, and thought-provoking guest stars while delivering
life-changing lessons and real-world values. These shows want to engage, entertain, and educate
viewers of all ages in a way that doesn’t feel too indulgent or overt. Beginning with H.R. Pufnstuf
and continuing on to Fraggle Rock, Pee-wee’s Playhouse, and, today, Yo Gabba Gabba!, visionary
children’s television has always had the power to move hearts and change minds. The underlying
message of all of these shows is crystal clear: love yourself, love your neighbor, and love the world
around you. A simple notion, no doubt, but the creative forces behind these groundbreaking
ideas don’t ever want their viewers to forget the incredible power of positivity.
When brothers Sid and Marty Krofft debuted H.R. Pufnstuf back in 1969, there was
nothing like it on television. Combining their hyper-colorful puppets, lo-fi special effects,
psychedelic storylines, and live-action hijinks, the series immediately caught the attention of
kids, parents, and even The Beatles (who reportedly had reels of new episodes shipped over to
England each week). Though the show went off the air in 1972, it spawned a feature film and
homages have popped up on modern classics like South Park, The Simpsons, and Mr. Show with
Bob and David. The Kroffts went on to create more equally head-spinning material, including
Land of the Lost, The Bugaloos, and Lidsville, all of which helped put them at the vanguard of
alternative programming for children.
Jim Henson’s Fraggle Rock was an unexpected turn after his successes on Sesame Street and
The Muppet Show. Darker and more fantastical, the series tackled complex interpersonal issues
through the daily interactivity of different groups of inhabitants such as Fraggles, Doozers, and
Gorgs. And while it ran from 1983 to 1987, Pee-wee’s Playhouse was also blasting a hole in the
pop culture consciousness. Swerving from live-action to puppetry to animation to claymation,
Paul Reubens’ masterful series managed to appeal equally to audiences of all ages without
pandering to anyone.
Taking influence from the legacies of these shows, today Nickelodeon’s Yo Gabba Gabba!
carries on this tradition of entertaining both children and parents at once. A vivid cast of unique
characters created out of every color of the rainbow undertakes strange adventures to overcome
real-world hurdles. Along the way, they meet up with a dream list of indie-rock icons, including
The Flaming Lips, Band of Horses, The Roots, and Devo. The music is really what makes Yo Gabba
Gabba! stand out from the usual dross that passes for children’s television, which typically relies
on sickeningly simple ditties that have the power to drive you insane. By exposing young viewers
to quality alternatives to mainstream pop artists, shows like Yo Gabba Gabba! can turn kids into
discerning music fans and help develop their musical tastes for life. Danny Tamberelli, who
played Little Pete on Nickelodeon’s early ’90s series The Adventures of Pete and Pete, remembers
acting alongside musician guests such as Iggy Pop, Michael Stipe, and LL Cool J on his show. “I
was like everyone’s little brother, so they’d all keep feeding me mix tapes,” Tamberelli says. “I got
introduced to so much amazing music because of Pete and Pete. It was there I discovered some of
my favorite bands of all time.”
But for all their quirky content, catchy tunes, and inventive lessons, perhaps the most amazing
part about all of these shows is how they unite their creators, collaborators, and audiences across
space and time. No matter the viewer’s age, location, or even language, the progressive appeal
is universal. As Fraggle Rock artist Michael Frith says, “If you can change how kids view the
world, then you can change how they grow up and how they interact with each other.” Here,
FILTER speaks with the creators of four transcendent “kids’ shows” to explore what makes these
programs so uplifting, unforgettable, and undeniably life-changing.
There is no duo that has made more of an impact on children’s
television than the Krofft brothers. As the creative force behind such
groundbreaking, noggin’-twisting shows as H.R. Pufnstuf and
Land of the Lost, the Kroffts earned widespread acclaim for their
fantastical visions brought to life.
What influenced you as creators?
Sid Krofft: Every Saturday, my father used to take me to this
vaudeville theatre to see show after show. In 1939, he took me
to see The Wizard of Oz on opening day at the Majestic Theatre
in Providence [Rhode Island]. To this day, that is my favorite
movie. It made a huge, huge impression. Then when I was 10,
I saw 10,000 B.C. and I never forgot it. Swiss Family Robinson
made another big impression. Land of the Lost is a combination
of those two influences.
Marty Krofft: Kids’ movies were never my thing. Butch Cassidy
and the Sundance Kid and Scarface is where I’m coming from.
How did H.R. Pufnstuf come about?
Marty: NBC came to us because we had done a kids show for
Hanna-Barbera called The Banana Splits Adventure Hour. We had
created the Pufnstuf character for Coca-Cola and they used him
at the World’s Fair in San Antonio, Texas, in 1968. The character
was originally a dragon called Luther.
Sid: That was our first show, and our favorite. When it became such
a hit, all three networks would wait each year to see what we would
offer them next. We made this beautiful, huge book with all the
characters from the shows we were conceiving. We would go into
the network and the executives would look at the pictures while I
told the story. That’s how they bought all the shows after Pufnstuf.
Over the years, there have been a lot of theories that
involve you being stoned out of your gourds when you
were creating H.R. Pufnstuf.
Marty: You can’t be a producer and be stoned; you end up with
gibberish. If we did as many drugs as people said we did, we’d
be dead. Chemicals were never my trip. Nothing about work
was ever mixed in with anything like that.
Are there any plans to do anything further related to H.R.
Pufnstuf?
Marty: Right now we are developing a Pufnstuf movie. Sony is the
studio and Dennis McNicholas [Saturday Night Live, Land of the
Lost] is writing it. Conrad Vernon is going to direct it, which will
make it his first live-action. He’s done a couple of small cartoons—
Shrek and Monsters vs. Aliens—so we thought we’d give him a break.
Ask someone if they remember Fraggle Rock and they’ll probably
sing a few lines of the theme song back at you: “Dance your cares
away/Worry’s for another day/Let the music play/Down at Fraggle
Rock.” The man who brought that magical place to life was Michael
Frith, a talented conceptual artist who also designed the Swedish
Chef, Fozzie Bear, and the Muppet Babies for Jim Henson.
Jim Henson and I were having a conversation about why The
Muppet Show turned out to be such an enormous success and he
said something that resonated with me: “No matter how cynical
the world may become; no matter how sophisticated people
may think they are; no matter what a person may seem to be
on the outside, inside there is an innocent place that wants to
be touched.” I really think that was what the work was about.
We spoke to that place. We did it with humor, insanity, and
characters blowing up and biting each other’s heads off. But it
was always coming from a good place and in the right spirit, so
that resonated with viewers. And the success of Sesame Street
and The Muppet Show made it possible to do the insane things
we did with Fraggle Rock.
It all began after The Muppet Show folded and Jim was
looking around for his next project. In the early ’80s, the world
was a chaotic place with a lot going on. You looked around and
wished you could do something about it. Jim, being the idealist
he was, thought he could succeed with the talent, experience,
and creativity that we had, and that we could make a difference.
If you can change how kids view the world, then you can change
how they grow up and how they interact with each other.
The basic premise for Fraggle Rock was that it would
involve a race of little furry creatures that lived behind the
walls of a house and stole things. As I started building upon
that notion, I found myself pulling in a lot of influences from
my background. I’m a Bermudian and on the island we have
these crystal limestone caves that go on and on. And there
are these deep, dark pools of water that go drip, drip, drip.
Fraggle Rock was a mouse hole that grew into this alternate
universe of life beneath our feet with endless caverns and
creatures that lived there. Not just furry mouse-like things,
but things from our imagination. I once said the caves from
Fraggle Rock were like the imagination itself—it’s all just
lying there waiting to be explored and the farther we go, the
more extraordinary things we discover.
One of the main messages of Fraggle Rock was to talk to kids
about how they could peacefully coexist in our world, despite
the differences in different cultures. A lot of television over the
last 10 to 15 years has become about a kind of divisiveness, rather
than about healing. It may be a cliché, but kids have to learn that
our similarities are much closer than our differences, and our
dependencies on each other are much more interesting than what
divides us and drives us apart. You don't need to create antitheses
in order to create excitement, have a hell of a lot of fun, and tell
great stories. In my experience, the more you can show how
characters can appreciate each other, the more kids will follow
them on a deep level. A lot of producers say the parents have
to be divorced in television storylines or the brother and sister
have to hate each other and be in constant conflict. My response
to that is, “No, that’s what kids will be expecting to be the norm
and that can be something that shapes their behavior.” Why not
start from the positive point of view? If there are problems in life,
you want to show the kids how to survive them and deal with
them themselves. Why begin from the viewpoint that shows
how really rotten life can be? I always wanted to accentuate the
positive and I find that’s what kids always respond to the best.
As the designer of the puppets on Pee-wee’s Playhouse (and the voice
of many of them), Wayne White helped take a streetwise underground
comic sensibility and turn it into mainstream success. He went on to
art direct Peter Gabriel’s seminal “Big Time” music video and The
Smashing Pumpkins’ “Tonight, Tonight” before turning his talents
to painting.
How did you first get involved with Pee-wee's Playhouse?
I was living in Manhattan, working as a cartoonist and illustrator,
but I had also been doing my own crazy-ass puppet shows, just as
a lark. I’d do them at house parties, gallery openings—anywhere
anybody would let me. Based on these performances, a friend
in Nashville got me a job designing a kids’ show called Mrs.
Cabobble’s Caboose. So I left New York and went to Tennessee
for four months and that became my first professional job doing
puppets. When I came back to New York in January of ’86, I
heard that [Paul Reubens as] Pee-wee Herman was going to be
doing a kids’ show for CBS. So I took my brand-new portfolio
over there, showed it to them, and that’s how I got the job.
What was the rest of the show’s creative team like?
Everybody involved was not your regular Hollywood hack;
we were all new to showbiz. We were a bunch of sculptors,
painters, cartoonists, and artists who had never done a TV
show before. So it really was an art project and that’s what
gave it its power and its edge.
How did your career as a cartoonist and an illustrator
influence your work there?
I was used to sneaking adult realities into a child’s medium
and the Playhouse was really just an underground comic
come to life. It was the first time the underground comic
sensibility was brought mainstream, so I was totally in my
own environment. I was handed crazy stuff to create, and
then I handed back even crazier stuff and they liked it. That
was what was so great about it—[there was no such thing as]
too crazy with that show. Paul was just one of the greatest
creative bosses I’ve ever had. That’s been my luck in my
career: I’ve had good bosses. I’ve had people who let me do
what I want to do and that’s what every artist is looking for:
somebody in power that lets you do your thing and doesn’t
give you too much shit about it. I wish I could say I proposed
crazy stuff and it was shot down, but I was just hanging on
and going along for the ride. I was just trying to keep up with
everybody else.
Do you remember your first time meeting Paul Reubens?
I was very surprised when I first met Paul, because he was
very low-key, very low-energy. Nothing like his character at all.
That’s a common Hollywood story, though; it’s all an illusion.
What was the highlight for you?
Being hired as a performer on the show was one of the first
big thrills. Even though I’d been doing those crazy puppet
shows on my own, I didn’t have the confidence to think I
was worthy of doing it professionally. So when Paul hired
me as a performing puppeteer and when I first heard
my voice on television, that was a huge thrill. It gave me
confidence across the board; it helped my artwork, it helped
everything. Getting to meet these heroes of mine—Todd
Rundgren, Mark Mothersbaugh of Devo—was also a high
point. And to see the impact the show had on the wider
culture was incredibly thrilling. We knew it was going to
be big, but we weren’t quite sure how big. When it started
breaking, it was a real life-changer and it opened up all
these other doors for me—it still does.
In your mind, what is the show’s legacy?
Pee-wee’s Playhouse brought the art world into television.
I don’t think it’s ever been repeated, except maybe with
Adult Swim. It brought art to television—and not in a
pretentious, “Let’s visit the museum” kind of way, but in a
real, straightforward, “This is how art works” kind of way.
It was a downtown New York art project that happened to
get on national television. That’s why it was so fresh, blew
everybody away, and stood alone.
There is nothing else on television quite like the joyous and melodic
celebration that is Yo Gabba Gabba!. The show’s exuberance
and cool factor can all be attributed to creators Scott Schultz and
Christian Jacobs, two musician fathers who created the show out
of their frustration over the shallowness of kids’ television. Their
kaleidoscopic, music-driven vision for better programming led them
to create Yo Gabba Gabba! in 1999. The show didn’t take off until
it went viral, ultimately landing the pair a deal with Nickelodeon in
2007. Since then, they’ve helped open young minds with healthy doses
of characters such as DJ Lance Rock, Foofa, and Plex, as well as a
slew of cooler-than-cool guest spots from the likes of Biz Markie, The
Shins, and MGMT.
What kids’ shows influenced your creation of Yo Gabba
Gabba!?
Scott Schultz: We’re super-huge fans of kids’ television shows,
even the ones we didn’t grow up on and bootlegged later in life.
For me, it was The Muppet Show and Sesame Street, both of which
ultimately got me wondering about creating something both kids
and their parents could watch—something super musical and
still funny. Those shows inspired me to make a show that was so
colorful that it should be a cartoon, but instead it’s live action.
Christian Jacobs: Fraggle Rock was amazing because it was
punk rock. It was indie. It was Jim Henson going against
the grain and saying, “I’m going to make this show about
diversity, getting along, and world peace. I’m gonna do it and
I don’t care what anyone says.” That’s pretty awesome. Even
as a kid, when I watched that show I could feel that there was
something about it that made it stand apart and gave it more
heart and emotion. There’s real purpose to Fraggle Rock.
How do you balance the needs of your young audience
with those of your adult viewers?
Jacobs: A lot of people try to project things into the show, especially
adults who don’t have kids. But the people who have kids get that
we are doing something sweet and sincere that’s honest, colorful,
and fun. We want to keep kids young and for as long as they can be.
In a lot of ways, we’re still longing to be kids again, because that’s
the best time—it’s the time of discovery. If anything, Scott and
I have to rein ourselves in when it comes to some of the creative
elements. We have such free rein to do whatever we want to do that
we really have to keep checking ourselves and making sure that it’s
going to translate for the kids and engage them.
Schultz: We don’t really want the show to be subversive. We
honestly want our kids to watch this and we want to watch it
with them. We’re just approaching the issues that we, as dads,
have to deal with.
Yo Gabba Gabba! has had some phenomenal musical guests
over the years. Who has been your favorite?
Schultz: I had an amazing moment with The Flaming Lips,
Wayne Coyne in particular. You go to Flaming Lips shows and
it’s such a feel-good vibe and Wayne seems like a cool guy. But in
person he’s twice that—he’s the awesomest guy ever. He really
gave the extra effort to help out on set and make it special. I’ve
kind of become friends with Wayne and he’ll send us pictures of
the Lips having 20 DJ Lance Rocks dancing off to the side of the
stage at their shows, which just blows my mind.
Jacobs: It’s hard to narrow it down to one amazing experience,
because there’s been an endless stream of them. A childhood
dream came true when I was directing Devo. We have themes
on set and it was Pirate Day, so the whole crew was dressed like
pirates. And there I was directing Devo in their energy domes in
front of light boxes like it was the Freedom of Choice era.
Do you have moments where you forget you’re at a job?
Jacobs: It’s funny because you’ll be trying to do something
incredibly serious and everyone’s dressed up like vampires. It’s
weird, but it keeps a really great energy on the set. A couple times
a week, I’ll just stop and take a step back from what we’re doing
and think, “How did we get here?” This is seriously the greatest
job ever and it’s almost criminal that we’re getting away with it.
There’s such exuberance to your show. How important is
that optimism?
Jacobs: It’s ironic that we come from punk and hip-hop
backgrounds where there have been such dark periods, but
we love championing the positive. When you have a family,
you don’t even care about yourself anymore. You put yourself
away and you’re totally focused on nurturing your child and
helping them become better than you in this world. Both Scott
and I gravitate towards more positive things. We need more
champions of light, color, and truth. We want to be a part of the
positivity in this world.
Flaming Lips frontman Wayne
Coyne has the distinction of
having appeared on not one, but
two classic children’s television
programs: Yo Gabba Gabba! and Pancake Mountain. Plus, he wrote a song for The SpongeBob
SquarePants Movie. No doubt your eight-year-old nephew thinks
Wayne is just as cool as you do.
The Yo Gabba Gabba! set is such a wonderful place because it
looks great and everyone there is so into it, which makes all the
difference in the world. Sometimes you’ll see fantastical things
somewhere, but when you are exposed to the behind-the-scenes,
you’ll find a bitter bunch of people who hate what they’re doing.
But with Yo Gabba Gabba!, we got the feeling that everyone loved
what they did. I don’t want it to seem like it’s a bunch of hippies
on ecstasy; it’s just a reminder that working hard doesn’t have
to be a miserable experience. I like to do things with people who
give a shit and when the Yo Gabba Gabba! folks show you around
and show you all the things that they make and all the weirdos
that are involved—and how much care is put into it—you really
want to be a part of it, because you know they care.
[On Yo Gabba Gabba!] we did a song called “I Can Be a
Frog.” I sing that “I can be a frog,” “I can be a bear,” and “I
can be a bat.” But it’s not meant to be a children’s song; it’s
talking about a woman who can take on all the characteristics
of these dynamic creatures. We got to pick our own costumes
and be absurd, all of which can be embarrassing for a rock
group, but the Yo Gabba Gabba! way of presenting it makes it
feel fun and cool.
Obviously, I normally do very adult things with The
Flaming Lips. But we also want to remember the simple things,
like being kind to animals, liking your friends, and embracing
that people are all different. Those may sound like stupid
and simple-minded lessons, but they’re not. I don’t try to be
optimistic; it just comes out eventually because of the way I am.
We’re all drawn to that sense of believing that things are gonna
work out. Maybe it’s contrived to have a message that says these
simple things, but also says, “Come on, there are challenges.
And there’s not a right or wrong answer.” The people who make
Yo Gabba Gabba! are like that. They remind us to ask ourselves,
“Why do we have to stop believing in these good things, because
we all know the world is full of death and horrible, evil people?”
All these things can remain true. One doesn’t negate the other,
and that’s the good news. F