“Corner Gas Animated” Q&A: Creator Brent Butt Discusses Season Two

We can’t wait to get back to Dog River

Brent Butt has solidified himself as an icon throughout Canada.  His stand-up comedy opened the doors for him to create one of the nations most recognizable television programs ever in the long-running Corner Gas sitcom.  Last year, Butt and his creative partners were able to transfer that same success into the world of animation.  When Corner Gas Animated premiered, it was an instant smash hit, having the most-watched premiere in the history of The Comedy Network.  Becoming one of the channel’s most popular original programs, Corner Gas Animated has been met with resounding positive reception and even managed to snag up a couple of awards over the break.

With fans gearing up for another set of episodes, it was recently announced that the animated program would be returning on July 1st 2019.  Canada Day of all days.  Airing two episodes back-to-back, the premiere episode promises one of the most significant guest stars to ever appear on Corner Gas.

As we get ourselves ready to return to the small Saskatchewan town of Dog River, show creator, Brent Butt talked with us at Bubbleblabber about what we can expect from the upcoming season, the big name cameos set to appear, and how Dog River felt about the Toronto Raptors winning its first NBA championship.

 

Jesse Bereta: Thank you for talking with us today.

Brent Butt: Oh my pleasure

We were lucky enough to chat with you last year during the release of the first season of Corner Gas Animated.  The popularity of the animated series seems to have picked up right where the original program left off.  Were you surprised at all with the reception that the show has received?

BB: Kind of, yeah.  When we first started talking about it, we were a little leery.  We knew we were taking something that everybody knew, and everybody liked and trying to turn that into, essentially, something else.  That can be a pretty tricky endeavour even if you have the best of intentions.

The first thing we did was we made a three-minute demo for us.  To see if it felt right, you know?  And it did.  It felt good, it felt right to everybody.  It looked like it could work.  So, that emboldened us a bit.  But, when you go into it, you don’t know how people are going to respond.  Especially when it is something that they have a strong feeling for already and have a tremendous fondness for.  Luckily, when I was traveling in stand-up, I would talk to people about the idea, and overwhelmingly people were keen on the idea.  But, they were also a little leery.  There was a real kind of “don’t screw this up” attitude.

Well, it worked out.  You recently won a Leo Award and a Canadian Screen Award.  Those are awards that obviously you were able to scoop up with the live-action version.  Was it unique or special to win one for the animated program?

BB: Yeah!  It felt good because for me personally, and my partners, it was the first time delivering an animated show.  So, we had a pretty steep learning curve.  Luckily we surrounded ourselves and paired ourselves up with a studio full of people who know what they’re doing.  And, we knew what made Corner Gas work.  We relied on the expertise of others in a lot of areas.  Just knowing how steep the learning curve was, we did take some gratification in the notion that we put forth a show that was good enough to get some nominations and some awards.

It was a long road to complete the first season, so, when making the second season was the process a lot smoother?

BB: Yeah, to the extent that we spent a lot of the first season creating the machine and creating the pipeline, establishing our roles, and our system.  In season two, that infrastructure was there.  So, we were able to put that behind us and just focus on the creative side.

Were there any adjustments or changes you made for the new season after seeing how the show performed on air?  Or did you try to stick to the same formula as much as possible?

BB: It’s pretty similar.  We made some technical changes.  I know that the animators wanted to add another pose in the character turnarounds, just to make that easier to maneuver and give us a little more options with where the characters heads would land.  Things like that.  Mainly, I think that any time with a second season you have to take a step up.  You spend the first season learning how to do it.  Even though season one was received really, really well, I do feel like season two is a step up.  Everything is smoother.  I think the scripts are better and tighter.  More jokes.  I just feel like the show has found its rhythm.

 

Last time we did talk, we discussed how the animated series sits within its own parallel universe from the live-action series.  Can we expect the lives of the characters and relationships to unfold in unique ways, or does each episode just kind of stand on its own?

BB: Yeah.  I’m a big believer that right from the get-go that this was a show where there are no arcs, nothing changes, no matter what happens in an episode it would return to ground zero every time, by the end of the episode.  That’s partly for practical reasons because it frees you up.  It frees broadcasters up, and how they distribute the show, they don’t have to do it in chronology.  But also, it’s kind of thematic in that the sense of these small towns are kind of resistant to change sometimes.  And, little things can cause big ripple effects.  Thematically I wanted it to be a show where things don’t change.

This year another major Canadian program, The Trailer Park Boys, released an animated season.  Do you think that is the future of Canadian media is in animation?  Or, is this more just a coincidence?

BB: I think it would be too much to say that that is the direction that Canadian media is going.  It might be a small mini-trend.  Might just be a coincidence.  You know it’s not the first time that a known live-action show has been transferred to animation.  It has been done before to varying degrees of success and failure.  But, I don’t know if we can read anything into it, really.

Season 2 of Corner Gas Animated is all set to premiere on July 1st, Canada Day, this year.  It has been confirmed that Michael J. Fox will be making a cameo.  Which is pretty big news.

BB: Yeah!  I would say that this is the first time that we have a really well-known celebrity, not just in a cameo, but doing a straight-up guest star- I would say this is more of a guest star situation.  He is in three scenes, and one of the storylines revolves around him.  It was kind of a big step for us.  He’s a really big star.  I was very excited to meet him because I’ve been a big fan of his since forever.

Absolutely, did you have him written into the first episode from the beginning?

BB: We didn’t look at this episode as the first from the beginning.  But, when I wrote this episode, I did so, kind of stupidly on my part.  Because, normally when we have cameos written in for shows they are done in a way that, if at the end of the day, the person doesn’t agree to do it, or we can’t make the scheduling work, or whatever, the script can still survive without that person in it.  With this one, I had really written a script that was all about Michael J. Fox being in it.  By the end of it I realized “oh man, I’ve really painted myself into a corner here.  If we don’t get Michael J. Fox to agree to do it, I have to go back to the drawing board and write a completely new script.”  Luckily we were able to convince him to do it because it was kind of a stupid move on my part.  But, the end result is really good.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is also confirmed to make a cameo this season.  What was the experience like of working with the world leader?  The recording was done in his own offices, is that right?

BB: Yup.  We wanted to carry on- we had a bit of a tradition of having sitting Prime Ministers appear on Corner Gas.  We had two Prime Ministers appear in the live-action, Paul Martin, and then Stephen Harper.  So, when we started making this animated show, we thought it would be great if we could continue that tradition along.  The nice thing about animation is I can go to them.  Whereas Paul Martin was out in Saskatchewan on other Prime Minister duties, we were able to wrangle him to come spend a day with us.  Stephen Harper, he came to us in Regina.  But, all of that, there is a big expense for that and their time, and their security detail, all that kind of stuff.  With animation, I was able to say- when we talked to the Prime Minister’s office it was really like “if you give us 45-minutes, we can be in and out”.  And, we were really in-and-out of there in about 25-minutes.  It’s logistically easier for people to say “yes”.

 

You have a bunch of famous Canadians coming to Dog River this year like Chris Hadfield, Jann Arden, and Russel Peters.  Was promoting Canadian celebrities- the homegrown celebrities- always part of the plan?

BB: It’s partly that.  But, it’s also partly, if we feature U.S. stars or U.K. stars, we have to then make deals with fields and unions within those countries.  Then it becomes a case of tracking for residuals.  It becomes quite an administrative burden.  So, by featuring Canadians, where we have deals already with our district fields and unions, it just makes life a bit easier for us.  But, we do hope to expand that a bit.  We hope to find a way that we can use some big name U.S. celebrities and British celebrities.

You kind of answered this with the Prime Minister question.  But, is it easier to secure celebrities like Michael J. Fox to come do a cameo on an animated series compared to a live-action? 

BB: Yeah.  There are quite a few things that go into making it easier.  One, like I talked about, I could come to them, take up a lot less of their time.  So, you’re not asking them to uproot their schedule and them jumping to take two days of their time to come to work where we are.  For all of those logistical reasons it’s just so much easier to get somebody to go “yeah, I can do that.  I can give you 45 minutes in my backyard.”

Was there anybody that you wanted to get that couldn’t do it?

BB: Not for the animation, so far.  In the live-action, I always wanted to get Bob Newhart.  I had a story idea lined-up where Bob Newhart played the father of the Oscar Leroy character, so Brent’s grandfather.  He was the polar opposite of Oscar, he’s very laid back.  At the same time, you had that Oscar was reverting to teenage rebellion dynamic with his father.  I just thought it was funny to have the Oscar character say “get off my back dad!  Why are you bothering me?”  While Bob Newhart is the most laidback character, you can imagine.  But, we couldn’t get him on board.  That was my- in the six seasons of doing Corner Gas– my single regret.

That’s too bad, that would have been a good episode.  Since the release of the first season, recreational cannabis has now become legalized in Canada.  Does Dog River have its own dispensary now?

BB: Not that we know of.  But, there might be.  Not that we’ve seen or mentioned.  But, I wouldn’t be surprised if somebody…  One of our secondary characters, Zeke, he strikes me as a guy that might have a little something on the go.

How do you think Dog River celebrated the championship Raptors game the other night?   

BB: Right down the middle.  Half and half.  Half were super excited.  Half thought it was stupid.

Thank you for discussing the upcoming season with us.  We are super excited to see it.  Is there anything that you are excited for the fans to see this year?

BB: One of the things that I like being able to do, I started a podcast a while ago, and I thought it would be a good idea to do a video component.  I started a YouTube channel that was supposed to be a companion to the podcast, but what it ended up being was me making videos, either on the road doing stand up or behind the scenes doing Corner Gas Animated.  I shoot videos with recording the actors doing the voice records.  I do different behind-the-scenes comedy videos.  So, if your audience would be interested in seeing any of that, you can send them over to my YouTube channel, which is The ButtPod.

(Here is a link to the YouTube channel, and to The ButtPod website.)

You also have a stand up special being recorded live in Toronto later this week.

BB: Yeah, this Friday.  It’s my first full-length stand up special.  I’ve done somethings for a network up here in Canada before, but they weren’t quite full-length stand-up specials.  This is the first time.  I just decided to produce something myself and do it the way that I wanted to do it, and see how it turns out.  I’m very excited about it.

Any other projects coming up for us to look forward to?

BB: No, this was really occupying my time, the Corner Gas Animated.  We’re already starting to put stories together for season three, with just our fingers crossed that we’re going to get picked up for season three.  I didn’t realize that it was going to be a year-round thing, but it really has become a year-round thing.

Well, with The Simpsons just hitting thirty years, there is no end in sight.

BB: Yeah, that’s the beauty of animation, right?  You never get old.

Thank you again for talking with us today.

BB: Any time.

 

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. Corner Gas Animated Season Two Premieres on The Comedy Channel on July 1st.