Dan Harmon and Justin Roiland talk to us about ‘Rick and Morty’

 

Somehow I’m allowed to sit down with the people that make the shows we cover on this beautiful fucktacular of a website. I’m not sure how or why, but at New York Comic Con this year I was able to sit down with Justin Roiland (from Fish Hooks, Adventure Time, and Gravity Falls) and Dan Harmon (from Monster House, Community, and The Sarah Silverman Project) to talk about their new upcoming animated show Rick and Morty.

Let me just start out by saying that from the preview I watched (at their NYCC panel), this show is pretty hilarious. I mean, in my book, right off the bat you can never go wrong with a show that features the voice behind Lemongrab. Justin has some serious vocal chops and a mastery of crazy in his character portrayals that makes me jealous every time I lay ears upon them – it’s just good shit. The preview got a ton of laughs and kept everyone hooked during its entire playback, certainly a great sign. In case you’re outside the loop – the general jist of the show is a grandfather, who happens to be a ‘mad scientist’ inventor type, running wild with his helpless and easily spooked grandson dragged along by his side. Adventures will be had.

But how did this show get started you may ask? Or, were there any other ideas for shows that you tried pitching that didn’t work out? I asked things, here is things. Justin gave us the scoop:

“…this particular thing kind of happened very fluidly…Dan just called me one day and said ‘hey, Adult Swim wants to do a show with me – do you have any ideas?’ and I’m like ‘yeah, I have these two characters Rick and Morty [that were originally named Doc and Marty]’ and he’s like ‘I love those guys! Yeah, let’s talk’ and we just started developing it”

So it seems like Rick and Morty have been a long time coming; a passion project for Justin who has been tinkering with them for a while:

“…the original thing was just this short that I made for channel 101 which Dan created with Rob that I did in October of 2006, that was just me doing a horrible, offensive, shocking cartoon … I was just blowing off steam … [after] coming off a horrible job where I had got no creative input on – and I just wanted to make a ‘fuck you’ – something fucked up – something really fucked up”

If that’s not a great starting point chock full of bile and passion and awesome, then I don’t know what is. From here Justin explained how the show evolved to what it is today:

“we just figured out a way to adjust them (Rick and Morty), to heighten them – make them more intelligent and … sophisticated than what the original short was”

Take a great idea that really motivates you and then polish it into something you can begin to cajole into seasons of a show: this is the way I hoped things were being done – at least somewhere. For some reason once in awhile (which is probably true at least some of the time) I feel like shows are just Frankensteined together in a meeting room by unfunny people trying to cash in on “what people want”. I am pleased to see a show organically brought to life with creators that are excited about its core (the main characters).

Maybe I’m just a jaded fuck. Maybe I’m star struck. Hard to tell. Here is more things Justin said:

“I just really love doing these voices. Going into the booth [and tapping] into the original energy I did during the shorts. A lot of times on the show, I’ll just riff – do the two characters back and forth, and weird shit will come out of my mouth that I wouldn’t think to write – while still sticking to this very well crafted, structured story line.”

But what about Dan? Definitely he said words, what kind of words did he say? Well he helped shed some light on how his involvement/writing process of Community has effected his new show:

“I know that I’ve said the words ‘I know we were gonna do this thing for Community’ [when writing for Rick and Morty] but I’m afraid I can’t remember any specifics about that… it’s kind of stuff that we did do on Community – because when you’re in the writers room, your biggest problem is always ‘how is this a story?’ [regardless of which show].  A lot of time [we are able to draw parallels about] when we were breaking [a particular] story on Community. [We’re still faced with the] challenge [of] ‘how do you tell a story about someone that nobody cares about?’ – [and so] I’m able to save a lot of time [while writing Rick and Morty] by explaining how we fought these battles [while writing Community] previously”

This makes sense to me: lessons hard learned the first go round (at Community) were able to give him (Dan) the upper hand when facing the same struggles in a new venture (Rick and Morty) – that’s got to feel good. Dan went on to finish explaining that although some ideas have possibly bounced from one show to the other (in his head), there’s no real substantial crossover (my interpretation, not his exact words this go round).

So there you have it. Now you know the throbbing ooze that is Rick and Morty’s origin and driving powah. I’m hyped for it to start. Stay tuned.

@Achilles_Word