The Way We Live Now: Questions for Genndy Tartakovsky; The Big Draw
Q: 'Dexter's Laboratory,' your first series, was an almost instant hit. For those who don't know him, or just think they do, who is he?
Dexter is a dork. He's part of everybody: the little kid who just wants to do science but who's frustrated. It's what everybody deals with. That's what makes it funny. If you have a character who wins all the time -- well, if you have a character that loses and wins, it makes him more alive. Bugs Bunny, for example, didn't always win.
Dexter speaks with a Russian accent.
He considers himself a very serious scientist, and all well-known scientists have accents.
Come on. He's an outsider who speaks Russian-inflected English with a Russian accent. Your family emigrated from Moscow when you were 9. Isn't Dexter your Mini-Me?
Definitely that was a big part of my childhood: wanting to fit. As an immigrant, you talk funny, you look funny, you smell funny. I wanted to do nothing but fit in and talk English and sit with everybody else. The one thing about Dexter, if he doesn't fit in, he'll start his own club. He's not afraid to be an outsider. He's much more confident.
So, O.K., an upgraded fantasy version of your boyhood self. And it's hard not to notice that Samurai Jack, the character in your new series, looks an awful lot like you as an adult.
Someone else told me that. I definitely don't think he looks like me. But as an artist, sometimes you can't help yourself. If you're a tall guy, everything is lengthy. If you're short and fat, you draw things that are squat.
What's the secret to reaching kids? How do you avoid condescending to them?
One of the things I hate about TV, and TV for kids, is that it talks down to them. If you go back in animation history and look at Bugs Bunny, for example, they were made for adults and were shown before theatrical movies. They were still cartoons, so they had to be childlike, to a degree: slapsticky, Three Stooges, physical humor. A good cartoon is always good on two or three levels: surface physical comedy, some intellectual stuff -- like Warner Brothers cartoons' pop-culture jokes, gas-rationing jokes during the war -- and then the overall character appeal.
Funny you mentioned Bugs Bunny. Your approach to storytelling is so far from the typical Saturday morning fare. It's practically deconstructed. How did you conceive that approach?
Animation has repeated itself for the past 40 years. The technical side has improved, but not the storytelling. Usually you tell stories A to B to C. 'Samurai' is not an animated show like you would normally watch on TV. We tell the stories from a different perspective -- backward, very nonlinear. It treats it more seriously as an art form. I'm not trying to sell the 'Samurai Jack' action figure.
You would say no to marketing?
There might be a 'Samurai Jack' action figure. Those things will happen; it's not the intent.
With 'The Simpsons' and all its spinoffs, countless animated feature films, a cartoon network . . . is this a particularly fertile moment for animation? Or does it just seem like that?
Animation used to be the dregs of the industry. Now the idea of the creator-driven cartoon is becoming more accepted. It didn't happen right away. Now with Cartoon Network and even Nickelodeon, they're letting the creators make the cartoon and fulfilling the animator's vision. Dexter is my joke, and here I am telling it, and if people like it it's because we made it that way.
You admit that you love television. Many educated people would think that's sacrilegious.
When I came to America and I saw how much different programming there was, it was like candy: there's 'Wonder Woman,' 'Dukes of Hazard.' And I was a 'Three's Company' fanatic. In Russia, there's only the news; here TV's a culture. I just got hooked, and that made me learn English much faster. There are things out there beyond PBS that are smart. You have to give it a chance. If you're snooty, you're snooty. When I grew up, if I had a free moment, I watched TV. And I turned out fine.
Thelma Adams