One of the pioneering voices of American animation is in town tonight. Peter Hastings was one of the writers for "Animaniacs" — the beloved 1990s screwball comedy from Warner Brothers.
The series followed the adventures of three characters of indeterminate species — Wakko, Yakko, and Dot. In the imagined lore of Animaniacs, Wakko and Yakko were the eponymous Warner Brothers, and Dot was their sister. The trio was so out of control that they’d been locked in the iconic WB water tower, from which they of course escaped and proceeded to have zany adventures.
The series was executive produced by Steven Spielberg, which, as Hastings told The Show, gave the writer’s room carte blanche to try out all sorts of comedic premises. Hastings has maintained that expansive spirit in his work on modern projects like "Dog Man," the film adaptation of a series of children’s books by Dav Pilkey.
Hastings joined The Show to talk about all of this and more ahead of a talk he’s giving Monday night at Arizona State University's Media and Immersive eXperience Center in Mesa.
Full conversation
PETER HASTINGS: You know, these characters of Yakko, Wakko and Dot. I mean, really it was about them being, you know, kind of the Marx Brothers and being reckless people in the crazy world.
['ANIMANICS' THEME SONG CLIP]
But we've always had this kind of inside out thing, you know, like they're aware of being cartoons. We did it a lot, sort of, you know, what you would call meta versions of those things. And so, it played on a broad sense of, sort of, cartoon history, you know, because there are stories about them in the '30s and you know, and all this kind of stuff.
SAM DINGMAN: Right, that was something else I wanted to ask you because, one of the things that is so amazing about "Animaniacs" is, you know, as you were just alluding to, the episodes and the stories can be almost anything. You know, they can go back to medieval times and drop anvils on people's heads, and then in that world, there's also like a motorized truck that's carting the anvils around. They can go to the underworld and talk to a manifestation of non-existence and play checkers with him.
[CLIP FROM EPISODE]
DINGMAN: They can do all of these wild things.
HASTINGS: Right, and spoof classic movies and all that kind of stuff.
DINGMAN: Yes, yes. So when you as a writer, when you have a canvas that's that wide open, how do you decide what is canon and what isn't? Like, what has to be there and where your flexibilities are?
HASTINGS: Well, I guess you could use the expression "loose cannon" here. ... It was more like, you know, when you have strong characters, and you give yourself permission, you know, you can kind of take them anywhere. It's sort of like a great singer can sort of sing any kind of song, and it'll kind of work out. So it was just in the nature of these characters. And then I think there's a tremendous amount of stuff we did that normally, you know, studio might not want you to do. But when Steven Spielberg is your executive producer, then when he says, "I love this idea." You get to do it. So that, the power of that cannot be underestimated.
DINGMAN: Can you give me an example of one of those ideas that you might not have gotten away with and if it hadn't been for Steven Spielberg saying like, "Sure, give it a try."
HASTINGS: Well, we did, on "Pinky and the Brain," we did a spoof of the movie "The Third Man."
[CLIP FROM EPSIODE]
HASTINGS: He goes like, "It's pretty great ... most film students have probably never even seen that movie."
DINGMAN: Sure, sure.
HASTINGS: I'm still loving the phrase loose cannon though. One end. Thank you.
DINGMAN: Oh yeah, no, my pleasure, my pleasure. Well, I have to imagine being in the writer's room and working with animators must have been really different 30 years ago than it is now. Can you talk a little bit about that transition?
HASTINGS: You know, the old days, I mean, you're talking about the '90s, it was all still very paper-heavy. Everything was on paper, and when you were going to animate it, you would put all these storyboards and all these paintings in boxes and literally ship them overseas for them to make the cartoons. So a lot of technical things have changed, but at the same time, the fundamentals of storytelling and comedy and all that sort of stuff haven't really changed.
DINGMAN: Sure, sure. What about the range of emotions? I mean, I know that animated films have always had plenty of emotion in them, but it hasn't always been as feasible as it is now to capture something like human facial expression in animation. Do you feel like the emotional palette has expanded with the technological palette?
HASTINGS: Yeah, absolutely. And I think, you know, in, in 2D animation it takes a very particular artist skill to render emotions that we all register just from a look, with some simple lines. In 3D animation, you now have controllers over ... — it's like there are all these muscles. And you know, you have tons of muscles around your eyes that create expressions that we all can read instantly. So in CG (computer-generated) that has really stepped up. And especially in a feature film, you need to engage people emotionally to carry them through, you know, longer format — than a half-hour TV show.
DINGMAN: Well, I was reading a piece where you were talking about working on the "Dogman" movie. And how, yes, there was this ability to three-dimensionalize Pilkey's illustrations, but one of the things you also mentioned in that interview was that it was really important to you to preserve the presence of the artist's hand. What was important to you about that?
HASTINGS: Well, I think when you're watching a masterful 2D animated movie, you have this feeling of magic like, I'm watching an artist, I'm watching drawings move. And I think with CG's gotten so good, you don't really appreciate what the artist is doing because it just, it just flies by you. It just looks so real. In "Dogman" specifically, the illustrations are really simple in the books, and it's because the premise is that the books are written by two 10-year-olds. They're really written by Dav Pilkey, but, so they have an innocence and a charm to them that is really valuable to the appeal of the books. It's not just the story, it's this whole vibe of the thing. So it's really important to bring that whole feeling into the movie as well and to keep that, sort of, innocence and the hand of the artist. Which is like squiggly lines, which is, you know, uneven windows.
DINGMAN: You know, that's such a lovely answer, Peter, and I hadn't anticipated that that you would say that or thought about it that way before ... If I'm hearing you right, it's like you're saying that the technological advancements in animation — if approached the way that you're describing— don't erase the presence of the artist, they allow it to almost come to the fore in an even more celebratory way.
HASTINGS: Yeah, yeah, it's true. I mean, you know, it happened in music, you know, when when when things got digital. And there was a time when you know, there's, you can like you can identify '80s music instantly because it all sounds sequenced and there's Simmons drums. And all this kind of stuff and the sound of the synthesizers. And everything was hooked up through MIDI, and it has a kind of an artificial sound. When digital recording came around, as it advanced, then it was like, "Oh my gosh, my noisy guitar sounds so good." You know, so it's kind of like the handmade quality kind of you know, came back in.
