This is an iHeart Podcast. I turned off news altogether. I hate to say it, but I don't trust much of anything. It's the rage bait. It feels like it's trying to divide people.
If we got clear facts, maybe we could calm down a little. NBC News brings you clear reporting. Let's meet at the facts. Let's move forward from there. NBC News reporting for America.
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Valid in select zip codes, subject to driver availability. More terms apply. Uh This is Lee Habib and this is Our American Stories. From 1993 to 1997, Mike Judge captured the spirit of American adolescence, epitomized by two cheap and crummy animated cartoons. Here's Greg Hengler with the story of the highly popular television show Beavis and Butthead.
The stupid and ugly have one advantage in life. Teachers expect nothing from them.
So they can fly under the usual indoctrination that accompanies education. What's this crap? Thus, the stupid and ugly, if they aren't entirely stupid, have a greater chance of being original. They're allowed to speak the truth because no one cares what they say. Because they are stupid, they are free.
Beavis and Butthead, two supremely stupid and excruciatingly ugly pubescent males who lived somewhere in the Southwest, were the biggest phenomenon on MTV since the heyday of Michael Jackson. Their laugh. Low and breathy variations of superseded Wayne and Garth's not As the comic catchphrase, an album and a blockbuster movie were made, and their merchandising campaign swept across American malls. For like, uh, share. That's so like butt.
Is that true that you used to be like a Married to that Bono dude? Bono, sending bono. Is that that dude that's like a cop in San Diego? No, no, he was a Maripalm Springs. He's a wolf.
Yeah. Yeah, well, yeah. Yeah, well, kinda, yeah. Mike Judge is the creator of the television series Beavis and Butthead. and co-creator of the television series King of the Hill.
He also wrote and directed Office Space, the now cult film about IT workers that premiered in 1999. Here's Mike Judge. I'd been interested in animation since I was a kid. I took a cartoon class at the YMCA. At the time I didn't know what the signs of a junkie were, but now looking back, I'm pretty sure that my Cartoon teacher was a junkie.
Beefs and Butthead I had drawn in a sketchbook and I kind of had them lying around and there was this Sick and Twisted festival that Spike and Mike were doing. And I thought, I don't know if I'm going to have a career, but I may never have a chance like this again to just do whatever I want, get as out there as I want.
Sometime after I'd done the first two shorts, I thought, okay, what I should animate something with these guys. And I just went for a walk and. came up with the whole Idea for the short and the names and everything. I don't know, in probably like two or three minutes. I guess I was thinking about these just out-of-control 14-year-olds that I've known growing up.
That would be cool. Beavis and Bothead was tested in front of a focus group in 1992. Here's executive producer Abby Turkeley. We wanted to develop it as a series. We tested it.
It tested through the roof. I didn't even know what a focus group was. I remember Abby Turcoule calling me and saying, you know, we showed it to a focus group up in Chicago, and I've never seen a reaction like this. Best reaction I've ever seen. It was just funny to see because I'm hearing my voice going, you know, and then seeing these kids going, huh?
This said to be continued, you have the right to be able to do it. Would you like to see more? Yeah. In fact, one kid stayed after and said... Can I buy this out of the tape machine?
Would you like to record the tape for us? You want to copy the tape?
Okay. Here's Judy McGrath, former president of MTV Networks, turned member of Amazon's board of directors. And I thought, okay, I've been watching focus groups for, you know, 10 years. I've never heard anyone say, can I buy the tape? We tested it with women as well in separate groups.
And I think the women were cooler at first. Hated it. Absolutely. Hated it. It was irritating and irritating to look at.
I just thought it was awful. The first season. They were supposed to have twenty two episodes on march eighth and they had two.
So we went on the air with Two episodes. It was a show that was every day. And they were horrible. I mean, the first two episodes were awful. I don't know why anybody liked it.
We cobbled together an episode out of two of my shorts and a bunch of videos. It's not just about writing, it's about writing stupid, which I felt was a hard thing to do really. It's like you have to go back to the place where thinking begins and stay there. Do you think that's funny, butthead? Remember after the the first episode aired?
And I thought it was awful. And I was like, bury my head in the sand. And Abby called and said, We got a one last night. And what's a one mean? You know, and I said, well, usually, you know, that time slot is like a 0.6, 0.7.
We got a 1. Oh, good. Then the next night it was 1.2. The next night, it's the same episode airing over and over again. And by Friday, it was like 1.8.
The first week it went on the air, probably the third night, we got phone calls from five or six movie studios saying, you know, let's go right into production and make a movie. We heard from everybody. Retailers wanted to sell the clothes. Winger was going to reunite and go on the road. Warner Brothers wanted to make a live-action Wayne's World type movie.
You know, right away it was a, can you give me a Beabison Butthead?
So we literally put the brakes on everything for a while. At first, I was thinking of just they're these two guys who are just around each other all the time. They don't have a lot of other friends or any other friends. And so there's just these inside jokes that just keep on going to the point where they're just kind of laughing all the time.
Okay, Armstrong, here. Armijo. Faca, Butt Kiss. What's wrong with you two? We've been in school over seven months now, and every single day when I call Daniel Butt Kiss's name, you guys have to laugh.
Is it really still that funny? Doesn't it ever get old? Are you going to laugh for the rest of your lives every time someone says the name Butt Kiss? That does it. Principal's office now.
Here's head writer-producer for Beavis and Butthead, Christopher Brown. They were clearly self-destructive. You've had destructive impulses, right? Uh, no. But no matter how miserable their existence were, let's face it, they weren't living a great life.
They didn't have a nice home, they didn't have a lot of money. Money, money, money, ah. Girls didn't respond to them. Hey, baby. Other kids made fun of them and beat them up, like Todd.
But They always managed to enjoy themselves. I mean, their laughter came through everything. Even when Todd kicks their and they're going, you know, oh, this sucks. They follow it up with a laugh. Todd's cool.
Yeah, content. I think you like them. They are trying to figure things out, and they sort of, in their own way, philosophize about things, which is what's really great to write like that. I bet they put all the stuff that sucks on in the morning just to like get us to go to school. Yeah.
Mm. I think it's working. Usually I would start with the voice and then do the drawing. This one I started with the drawing and I didn't know what they would sound like. I just drawn ha ha ha on there.
Um I started doing that laugh, and I was kind of like going, This is reminding me of something. Didn't think about it until probably two years into the show that it was. There was a guy at my high school. He was uh really smart, stoned all the time, but he would just you'd see him in the hallway and I would always see him when the hallway was empty and he'd just start like he's one of these guys that he'd start going, Heh. And so when I would do the voice, I would just kind of do the...
and I would be doing it sort of to get into character to get the voice Sounding right, and then I'd go, Well, that kind of sounds funny that he's just laughing all the time, anyway. And you've been listening to the story of Beavis and Butthead. with much of the storytelling coming from their creator, Mike Judge. And he was interested in animation as a kid we learned. And he'd drawn these two characters in a sketchbook.
And the first two shorts, so he came up with the names and ideas to those shorts when he was on a walk. Tested in front of focus groups, it tested through the roof. When we come back, more of the story of Beavis and Butthead here. on our American story. Time for a sofa upgrade?
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Offers are subject to change and certain restrictions may apply. I turned off news altogether. I hate to say it, but I don't trust much of anything. It's the rage bait. It feels like it's trying to divide people.
If we got clear facts, maybe we could calm down a little. NBC News brings you clear reporting. Let's meet at the facts. Let's move forward from there. NBC News reporting for America.
To Aina. We all know that water is life. An average American household consumes over 300 gallons daily. 40% of Navajo families residing on a reservation the size of West Virginia struggle to survive on less than 10 gallons of water per day. Yearly St.
Bonaventure Indian Mission and School delivers over 1.5 million gallons of clean water to these families. You can help support St. Bonaventure's water delivery program by going to stbonaventuremission.org. Hear that? That's what it sounds like when you plant more trees than you harvest.
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APY equals annual percentage yield. America's Christian Credit Union is federally insured by the NCUA. And we return to Our American Stories and to Greg Hengler and the story of Beavis and Butthead. and its creator Mike Judge. Here's Judge.
The Beavis laugh, there was a guy who was uh I was actually in calculus class and he was a really smart guy. He's now a nuclear engineer. Hope he doesn't figure out who he is. I'm talking about him. We had a hot teacher, which was unheard of back then.
She was a former Dallas Cowboys cheerleader. Anyway, he would get really excited, and he was just like, he was biting his lip all the time and just kind of going like, Like laughing at everything she said.
So I started out with that laugh, and then I just kind of made his voice sound like the laugh, just like raspy, you know. Yeah. That's right, everyone. If we all work together and respect one another's space, we'll get through this crisis with a newfound sense of community. Get out of the street, you long-haired panty waste!
Mr. Van Driessen, that was probably... That's probably my favorite character other than Beavis to to do the voice for. When I started doing that voice I wasn't quite sure where I was getting it from. And then I remembered I used to be a musician and um I played with Sam Myers and there was this guy from the Santa Barbara Blues Society there and he was interviewing Sam.
He just had this way of talking. He said um I remember him saying something like Sam, it must have been really wonderful for you, having grown up in the deep south, to be able to travel to Europe and experience some of their culture and share some of your culture as well. I wanted to have this hippie teacher who just believes that teaching can solve any problem. The problem with teenagers, it's all education.
So it's always funny for me to see Mr. Van Driessen just try so hard and believe that they can be changed and that not only do they not learn from his lessons, they usually learn the wrong lesson from what he's saying. What I wouldn't give for five minutes alone with those little b- That took my mower. Mr. Anderson, there's probably been.
Five or six people in my life that talked like that. I grew up in Albuquerque, New Mexico, actually, and it always seemed like every middle-aged authority figure had a Texas accent. I had a paper out when I was a kid. My brother and I had one. You'd go collect at the end of the month, door to door, back then.
We went up to the door, and the guy looked at us, you know, and he and so was our first month collecting. He says, Well, you ain't my paper boy. And my brother said, Yeah, well, I know your paper boy quit, and we're the new paper boys.
Well, I know what my paper boy looks like, and you ain't my paper boy. Finally, my brother said, Okay, well, if you don't pay You know, we're gonna have to cancel your Cancel the paper. And he said, Oh, I'm going to get the paper when the real paper boy comes. And finally he swallowed his pride and he phoned in a subscription and Boy, I tell you what, Dusty, I felt like a one-legged cat trying to bury turds on a frozen pond out there today. Whoa.
It's Todd. Actually, I think Sam and Chris first suggested the idea of a guy who beats the crap out of him, but they think he's really cool. To me, Todd reminds me of this. We had a family down at the end of our block when I was a kid, and the dad was a truck driver, and a couple of the kids had gone to jail, and they were. Teenagers, while we were 10 and 11, and the middle one would just terrorize us.
He'd come by on his motorcycle, ride on our lawn, patch the lawn, just scare the s out of us whenever he could. I would like nothing more than to kill you both with my bare hands. There was a band director in ninth grade, I'm pretty sure he was an alcoholic, and he would just. He smelled like liquor in the morning, and he was just always, there was just, he was kind of shaking, always angry. Always wound up, there was just this noise coming out of him.
Here's, what are you doing? Watch your mouth, you little sons of prince of Trey and Matt, the South Park guys, I remember them saying that Beavis and Butt had. To them was like the blues, which was a really high compliment to me because it's that kind of thing where it's just. It's the same thing over and over again, but it's good. Your South Park co-creator, Trey Parker.
I remember right before South Park went on the air, actually, Mike took us out to give us advice because he's just that cool of a guy. And he was sitting there going, Well, you know, don't uh don't let people take advantage of you because they're dumb. Here's writer Larry Doyle. Mike could make almost anything sound funny. That's a very hard quality to do.
I thought that Mike could make even the lamest line sound funny. He could say Butthead saying make it snappy. And there's just something about the way he said it, and it, you know, it helped a little bit that Butthead is a little bit of a lisp. You men want a date. Uh, yeah, we want two of them and make it snappy.
Yeah. Get the kite, Beavers. Cool. When I was doing this profile for Rolling Stone, I remember that Patrick Stewart. Jean-Luc Picard.
was a giant fan of the Of the show, and he happily talked to me not only for the article, but I'd say for about a half an hour afterwards about what episodes I had written and what his favorite episodes were. We cannot allow ourselves to think that. Here again, it's Trey Parker. The point of the show, you know, was the great satirical look at sort of where. A lot of teenagers in America were at the time.
And it really was, I think, a very scathing, very harsh, and almost a very open your eyes, people. And, you know, now I know Mike enough to know that there was a lot more behind it. You know, and Mike is a very good guy and a very cool guy. And he actually, you know, was trying to say something, you know, that this is starting to be our youth. And if we're not careful, this is going to be our youth.
I'm starting to feel it. You know, Beavis. It doesn't get any better than this.
Something that's good, it doesn't matter how great. It doesn't matter how slick it is. You don't need Disney. You don't need these sweet graphics. If something's funny and something's good, you can have it look that crappy.
And it inspired us in that way just to go, let's just do it ourselves. We'll do it with construction paper if we have to. It really got us into this conversation about satire and how there was no good satire out there. And we wanted to do the same thing Mike did. I always reference TV I grew up on because that's the That's still I guess it's whatever age you are you're gonna You know, the thing that really cements itself in your head is the first stuff you liked on television and I I loved The Beverly Hillbillies Leave It to Beaver Andy Griffith Show.
There's actually a line you could draw between Beavers and Butthead and Andy Griffith. in terms of the style of the way the comedy worked. Even though the topics were very different, the character comedy was very much the same.
Well, hey there, Master Cleaver. Aren't you supposed to be in school?
Well, I guess so. B but all I know is I'm supposed to come in here and buy some cigarettes. Hey, you wouldn't be buying these for Eddie now, would you? Gee, how'd you know? Yeah.
You know, if you look at it from a comedy-math point of view, it's really very old-fashioned kind of humor. even though at the time it was upsetting people with the topics that it was. I mean they were just dumb guys. And that's a real there's a real long tradition of Dumb guy comedies. You guys aren't drunk.
You're just stupid. Here's former president of Viacom Van Toffler. I think it's really about. Being true to what you know teen boys do and the prism through which they see life, and particularly innocent ones like those two. I mean, they are really bass, and whatever they feel comes out of their mouths.
And I sort of was that when I was a teenager, I said to say, but everyone knows Beavis and Butthead. You could relate to it, animated or real. They were part of your life at some point. To me, Beavis and Butthead, when it's good, has that. Thing, it's a ridiculous premise.
Three Stooges, it's the same thing over and over again, but I can keep watching it. Cheech and Chong. I don't. You know, you just kind of want to... Be there with those guys, and I kind of hoped that Beavis and Butthead would be in that category.
I'm just glad it's finally over. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, really. At least now we can get on with our lives. Mm-hmm.
Oh. Uh And a terrific job on the production, editing, and storytelling by our own Greg Engler. And my goodness, you heard from Mike Judge. from all kinds of folks, the creators of South Park. Studio executives about the remarkable story of this show.
And let's remember, this did not market test well with women. Even though women know well teenage boys, to this day, my wife doesn't laugh at the three stooges. And I do. And they've been with me, well, through all my life, just as the South Park guys said about Beavis and Butthead. It's like the blues.
It's the same thing over and over again. But it's good. And what Judge said, you just want to be there with those guys. Again, the same thing over and over again. but there's just something about them.
They're companions through your life. and laughing through your life with your companions. That's the thing. There's also that great point they made about not needing Disney quality animation. And this is true if the story is great and the characters are great.
The rest of that stuff can actually get in the way. The story of Beavis and Butthead, the characters Mr. Van Driesen, Mr. Anderson so brilliantly caricatured, the characters that seem to spring up in our own lives. Story of Beavis and Butthead here.
On our American stories.
Okay, only ten more presents to wrap. You're almost at the finish line. But first. There. The last one.
Enjoy a Coca-Cola for a pause that... refreshes. Toa Ina. We all know that water is life. An average American household consumes over 300 gallons daily.
40% of Navajo families residing on a reservation the size of West Virginia struggle to survive on less than 10 gallons of water per day. Yearly St. Bonaventure Indian Mission and School delivers over 1.5 million gallons of clean water to these families. You can help support St. Bonaventure's water delivery program by going to stbonaventuremission.org.
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