Exclusive: Celebrate The 20th Anniversary Of “Home Movies” With This Excerpt From Our Upcoming Book

Home Movies is celebrating it’s 20th Anniversary (April 26th, 1999) and we decided to give you guys a sneak peek of our upcoming untitled book about the history of adult animation. This is our chapter for Home Movies which will be included in the hard copy release coming soon to a store near you!

Instead of watching yet another primetime animated series get canceled from broadcast only to find it getting renewed interest that would see it become a phenom elsewhere ala Family Guy, Adult Swim became the new home for the Brendon Small/Loren Bouchard creation but not without a few changes. The broadcast take on Home Movies featured the Squigglevision production method which is far more expensive and difficult to produce than the eventual computer animated-Flash seasons that would follow on the basic cable network thereafter. As a result of the change, an OK series had become an excellent one.

That said, all four seasons of Home Movies could possibly be classified as four entirely different series in terms of premise had it not been for the characters. The show’s first season was a bigger-budget Squigglevision production that debuted on UPN and revolved around Brendon, an eight year old kid who likes to make short movies about his life that are usually a slight departure from reality and showcase a kid’s wildest imagination.

By the show’s second season Home Movies would move to Adult Swim, switch to a Flash-animated production, and introduce more compelling story arcs that exasperated any sort of continuation from the season one finale and would include the likes of Brendon kicking of a budding romance, his mother looking for a job after getting fired, and Brendon dealing with his dad finding new love.

By the show’s third season, Home Movies would turn into a more paradoxical and crass series, possibly befitting more of a cross between South Park and Family Guy in terms of its execution. A lot of the arcs set up in the show’s second season really became second-hand in favor of ridiculing of feature films and more of a focus on newer characters like Dwayne, Fenton, and even Brendon’s step mother Linda.

Sensing a final bow, Home Movies would straight up do sillier takes on popular films all the while revolving around premises that sees Brendon taking his filmmaking a tad more seriously with contests, completing movies for a deadline, and that oh so heartbreaking finale.

Home Movies would become an important launching pad for numerous animation notables that would go on to have fruitful careers. Creators Brendon Small and Loren Bouchard would go on to create excellent follow ups like Metalocalypse and Bob’s Burgers respectively, in fact, years later Loren would often get questions at Comic-Con concerning a potential crossover with Home Movies and Bob’s Burgers. Coach McGuirk voice H. Jon Benjamin would enjoy a career that would see starring roles in both the aforementioned Bob’s Burgers as well as Archer.

Also read: 10 Reasons Why Home Movies is one of the most underrated series of all time.