Interview with The Venture Bros. Creators Jackson Publick & Doc Hammer

Join Swimpedia in our conversation with The Venture Bros. creators Jackson Publick and Doc Hammer in honor of the recent 21st anniversary of the original pilot.

Note that this interview has been edited for clarity.

The Venture Bros. is a landmark Adult Swim television program that has impacted fans and creatives alike across its over 21 year run. Last week, Swimpedia had the opportunity to sit down with creators, writers, directors, and voices of The Venture Bros., Jackson Publick and Doc Hammer, to discuss the show’s pilot, their dream merchandise item, what it was like to release their film during the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike, and their unrealized plans for the season 8 premiere. They even spoke about their continued friendship, their influence on pop culture, the love at the center of the series that keeps people coming back, and much more. There’s plenty of great information here for old and new fans alike, so please sit back and take a look at our in-depth interview with Doc and Jackson—spoilers ahead.

Bryce: Okay, so Doc, Jackson, my name is Bryce. I'm with Swimpedia. My friend Daniel here is also with Swimpedia. And everyone here at Swimpedia is a gigantic Ventureroo. So, we have filtered out all the questions that ask about Kim or Scare Bear or like how long it takes to make the show. We've done away with those. And we've only got it down to the good stuff.

Jackson: You could ask Scare Bear, he's more interesting than Kim.

Doc: Not always.

Bryce: I think he's kind of the new Kim. He's the new character that the fans are going to like ask you about for the rest of your lives.

Jackson: Yeah, they were never intended to care about who he was, or what he was going to do after that.

Bryce: It feels so obvious.

Jackson: But, we made it seem like it was really important.

Bryce: Yeah. Okay, so we've condensed it down to about 13 questions, with kind of specific themes like the pilot, the making of like the show itself, and like legacy and the future. So, if you guys are ready to get started, I'm good to go.

Jackson: Sure. Doc, are you ready to get started?

Doc: I did my calisthenics that I do before interviews. You're aware of them. I did them beforehand. But this time I didn't use the goat which was, I'm just winging it now. I didn't have my yoga goat, didn't do it. Yoga goat.

Jackson: Okay. Did I tell you that my brother got me goat yoga for like my birthday this year?

Doc: Really?! I was just riffing; I didn't realize that I was going so close to home. Are you going to have...they have little hard claws. Like you don't want them standing on you.

Jackson: Yeah, I don't know how it works. And I seem to have lost the gift certificate.

Doc: Oh, fuck it.

Jackson: I gotta lie to my brother.

Doc: Oh, this is great. This is so cute.

Jackson: Make sure you edit that out. No, he’s not going to watch this.

Doc: No, our families don't watch this.

Bryce: Okay, so, on the topic of The Venture Bros. pilot, which just celebrated its 21st anniversary: Could you tell us more about the pilot and maybe how you would approach it differently? Like if you had to start over and you had to make okay, this is the first episode of The Venture Bros., what would you do differently about it?

Doc: Are you joking, man? That’s like the entire show, you can't...You can't do that. That's what it is. What would we do differently? Yeah, I can't think of one thing Jackson and I would not change for The Venture Bros. We learned so much. We did this for 20 years. We learned so much that to go back and like...

Jackson: Right. It was so defined by the moment and the process and the tools we had available to us and a little bit of money. You know, I would have written it a little better. I would have learned how to edit dialogue and rerecord things I didn't like. I didn't know you could do that. I thought you were just stuck with it.

Bryce: Like Sinterniklaas' voice when he's doing the ninja.

Jackson: Well, yeah. Which like, mutates across the thing. Like in the early scenes, he's doing a deep samurai kind of voice, which is what we were shooting for. And then by the end it's so high and just Ls and Rs and yeah, that was...I would like to repeat that.

Doc: His direction was “more off-putting, make him more racist, more racist, Michael, come on, make him more off-putting.”

Jackson: Yeah, that was like, not intended. I think we wanted to goof on the serious of like, seriousness of like, samurais and ninjas, not the people, you know. We would change that. I don't know. Yeah, I mean, it's so it's weird, because for me, and my personal internal hero's journey, that pilot is less the beginning of “The Venture Bros. phase”, then it is like the triumphant climax of the “everything before The Venture Bros. phase” of my life. You know, like, that was the culmination of everything I was trying to do, and get to get my own thing, and then a whole different world once we started making it, you know.

Bryce: Yes! So, another question about the pilot is, what do you remember the initial reaction to the pilot being back then? And how do you see the pilot today?

Jackson: I do not watch the pilot today, but I can't watch most of the old stuff. (Doc sighs) I mean, except what I have to for research, but I don’t have to do research anymore because we don't make the show anymore. We don't have to keep continuity in order. I don’t remember how it was received. Do you have like the numbers or something?

Doc: Jackson, do you remember that guy at the con who came up to our table, and he was really dour. He had never seen the sunshine, and he told us that everything passed the pilot sucks. (Jackson laughs) Do you remember that? And you and I were looking at each other like, what?

Jackson: No but isn’t he one of those like con standard guys like that guy? Isn't he like one of those like, “I'm back, guys,” one of those guys who keeps coming to the table. And like I know you've watched every episode...

Doc: But who would ever come up to me...I understand showing up at an event as the contrarian like, “I'm going to be the guy who doesn't blow wind up your ass”. But it's such a weird stance to take with a Flash made pilot. I got all my eggs in that basket. And ever since then you guys have been ruining it with your deep character development, ruining it.

Jackson: I mean, I could see where like one mode of comedy or one take on a thing is just not somebody's, you know. Obviously, I disagree because we evolved the show, but I can understand people and they're rare who were like, “I like season 1 the best” because it's like, okay, all right, you want the silly thing and you didn't want us to get this...that’s fine.

Doc: But it's like going to the Parks and Recreation panel and being like everything after the pilot stunk. (Jackson laughs) No, just no. It was weird. And I also remember, because we were young, and the internet was a confusing thing. And all I remember is any time somebody mentioned The Venture Bros. pilot, somebody would immediately jump in and go “more Korgoth [of Barbaria], more Korgoth.”

Jackson: Oh yeah forgot about that.

Doc: Yeah, and we just felt so defeated. Like hey we made a little thing. “More Korgoth.”

Bryce: We get tweets, about more Korgoth.

Jackson: I'll do you one better. When we were hiring timing directors for this special that we just made. One of them. On my first meeting with him to talk about how we were going to time whatever scenes we were giving him was like, “oh, so I watched some of them last night.” He had never seen the show. “You know, I watched a bunch from the first season and I watched some of the new ones to see where you guys like. I like the first season a lot better.” This is like a new guy coming to work for us.

Doc: Thanks. Hey, you got the job. Anything else?

Daniel: That's pretty extreme.

Jackson: Yeah.

Bryce: I'm going to pass it to Daniel for the next few questions. Daniel, you got this?

Daniel: Yeah, but just to add on to that. It's also like, we still get tweets about “oh, when's Aqua Teen coming back.” Even though Aqua Teen aired new episodes a couple months ago.

Doc: Like, it’s back.

Jackson: Yeah, well they’ve been asking that about our show, since before we were canceled.

Daniel: They’ve also been asking about Metalocalypse even though that's naturally concluded, like it never stops.

Doc: But yeah, at some point people stopped knowing when we had new seasons. Like, “are you making any more?” Yeah, like a month ago, they all finished coming out. You missed those; you know.

Daniel: Now you have a full season to get to. So, obviously, over the two odd decades of making the show you must have had a lot of crazy experiences. During the production of the show, is there any particular instance or two that stick out from that, while actually making the show?

Bryce: Like your favorite moments making the show.

Doc: My favorite moments are quieter, stupid moments when we used to record our dialogue and when we did it in Manhattan, you can't smoke. Jackson and I used to smoke like fiends so you can't smoke inside of a studio. So, we would go out onto a...

Jackson: Fire escape.

Doc: You would call it a terrace, but it's a fire escape and it's not meant to stand on and just remembering having like, Jackson, me, and you know, a celebrity, standing shivering on a fire escape. Like sorry we’re on a fire escape or sorry Bill Hader we’re on a fire escape. And those were fun. And because we're reading a script that we probably just wrote, and we would be going through the dialogue. And Jackson and I will be doing a lot in character because we had just done it in character and it's a very joyous thing to just sit with you like, you know, he's my closest friend. Have your closest friend in the cold on the fire escape, and talking in the character of the show that we love to make. Those are the kinds of moments that really stick with me, like I think that's where we came up with the Indian guy [Giant Indian] that goes “Oh” (Doc crosses his arms), and we just stood up our toes like that (Jackson laughs). That whole gag happened on a fire escape while trying to record another show.

Jackson: All the gags happened by accident while doing something else. So those are those are my favorite moments too, or just like weird 2:00 AM Astrobase accidental lightning striking brainstorms.

Doc: Yeah, or Astrobase not lightning strikes. The whole list that, Colonel Gentleman's list of women that need a smack, this weird list, came from us doing Colonel Gentleman’s voice for five hours, probably starting at 10 o'clock. (Jackson laughs) And we just kept reading lists of toys and games in the voice, it was just so fucking funny.

Jackson: Yeah, and some of the names have just kept going.

Doc: We never stopped being amused by it. If anybody or our girlfriends are in a room or something, three minutes would go by and they'd be like, I'm out of here. We would do it for five...hoarse voice. We're starving to death; we have to walk home. We just keep doing it.

Jackson: And we've done that with Hatred. We did that with Night Dick.

Doc: Night Dick! With Night Dick, we almost really made it so we needed a laryngectomy.

Jackson: We really made ourselves hoarse, for four hours.

Bryce: I love doing the Hatred voice.

Jackson: Spanakopita! came out of that, like just riffing on Spanakopita for a while making it like “You going to Spanakopita this year?”

Doc: Yeah, big fan of the Spanakopita celebration.

Daniel: And then are there any particular notes from Lazzo and/or the network that stick out to you regarding the show? Also, focus testing?

Doc: No, I mean...

Jackson: No, there was never focused testing. Thankfully we lived in the era before that. I don't even know if that happens now, but...

Doc: We were kind of feral. The notes that we would get... I mean, we famously talk about some of the notes like we wrote an episode that we really liked, the Ghosts of the Sargasso. And the note was, “they can’t all be winners.” You know what I mean? Like that kind of like...

Jackson: Yeah, and that was after rewriting it twice. Before that was kind of brutally shot down. And this would happen every season. Once we got to about the eighth episode, I would just collapse in on myself, because we'd be in full production with multiple episodes. But we'd still have like five more to write. And so that's when I would hit a wall. And so, Doc, like we were writing that one together. And then I had to keep calling him. “But I need you to write more of it. You have to write, you have to write the scenes I was supposed to write.” And so, he wrote, like, the lion's share of the first draft, and then it got torn apart by Lazzo.

Doc: Yeah, it’s stuff that fans would never know about...

Jackson: Because the show was new, [Mike Lazzo] was just starting to get animatics and stuff like that. And he was like, “I don't know if I like Dr. Venture’s voice. He's got a lot of monologues in this Sargasso episode. I don't want to hear this guy talk that long. The ghost that never stopped screaming doesn't read funny on the page.” and stuff like that. So yeah, I was at my lowest point, energy and mental capacity wise, but then I kind of rallied, and we tried to punch it up, and we added the butt stuff. And, you know, we tightened it up. And it was good, but he was like, “it's still not good.” I was like, trust me, it's going to be good. “Well, they can’t all be good”, but I was like, we’ve got to move on to the next episode. It's like people were waiting to draw the next episode and he was a little annoyed, that we're backing him into that corner. But we always say, to his credit, when he got the rough cut back for the first time, he called and said, “I was wrong. This is my favorite episode.”

Jackson: We didn't get any notes from him after the first script of season 2, other than general ones, he would call me up and go (Jackson imitates Lazzo’s voice) “there are 46 speaking characters in this script.” Where he would go “you’re getting a little too far up your own asses,” like he would be vague, general, and I appreciated that actually.

Doc: I felt redeemed, but I was so hurt by the Ghosts of the Sargasso thing because I believed in it. I'm like, you take the hero and you make him not do anything. And Hank has to do it and everybody else was thinking, “why would you take your good character, tie him up to a mast and make Hank, that nobody cares about, do stuff?” I thought it was great. And then he really hated it. So right after that, I wrote Tag-Sale — You're It!, which is like you want wall-to-wall funny, you want laughs. That's, exactly what happened. You want laugh riots.

Jackson: I'm just going by like production numbers in my head. How’s that possible?

Doc: That one was produced as eight, but it was written early. Yeah, it was written right after we did...

Jackson: I thought Tag-Sale was six and Pirates was eight.

Doc: No, Pirates is eight but Tag-Sale was written directly after Pirates.

Jackson: Because otherwise it would have been the one with testicular torsion would have been next.

Doc: That was not, there's no redemption in that one. Like, oh you want wall to wall funny, torsion.

Bryce: Thank you for that lifelong fear by the way. Like that forever changed 13-year-old me's brain and it’s just instant terror for the rest of my life.

Doc: It changed 16-year-old me’s brain because it happened. It was horrifying.

Bryce: Oh, that’s so awful.

Jackson: So testicular torsion is your spontaneous human combustion?

Bryce: Yes.

Doc: Yeah.

Jackson: Or your rat came out of the toilet?

Bryce: Yes.

Doc: It's not an irrational fear. This happens. It happened to my genitals.

Bryce: It's horrifying.

Doc: It can happen to yours.

Bryce: I do have a question about Lazzo. Have you guys kept in touch with him? And do you think he's seen the movie?

Jackson: A little bit. I text him once or twice a year. Maybe Merry Christmas or something? We did send him a Shirt Club just for this thing. Yeah, I don't know if he's actually seen it. I hope so.

Bryce: Yeah, because I always got the impression that Lazzo loved The Venture Bros. Like I always got the impression that he truly did love like your show.

Doc: He believed in us, I don’t know if he loved us, but he definitely believed in us. You know what he really loved...

Jackson: I think he dug it. But he's got that kind of job where like, for him if you're doing your stuff right, he doesn't have to think about you. You know?

Daniel: Yeah, that makes sense.

Jackson: I think that’s what he appreciated about our show. He’d be like, “I’ve got too many scripts on my desk that I don't want to read. You know, you guys, I’m not worried about.”

Doc: (Doc imitates Lazzo’s voice) “I got stacks of Squidbillies over here.” I think I talked to Lazzo at one time. And I got the impression that the show he really loved from Adult Swim was Moral Orel.

Jackson: Oh, sure.

Doc: Yeah, I think like not doing the production or dealing with Dino, none of that. But like the actual show that came out of that I think Lazzo was really into. As everybody should be, it a was a great show.

Jackson: I can believe that.

Bryce: So, our next question is, what's a moment, character, or joke in the show that you wish people talked about more?

Doc: I wish people would...I've never heard anybody come up to me go, “you got the guy from Fargo, Mike Yanagita, to do his voice again in a cartoon?”

Bryce: That's Mike Sorayama, right?

Jackson: Yeah.

Doc: Yeah, Mike Sorayama is Mike Yanagita. It’s really nice.

Jackson: I mean, that goes in my list of like, special moments from the making of this show. Especially in the early seasons, when we would get to do something, we never thought in a million years we'd get to do. I was like, “we should try to get the guy from Fargo. Oh, my God, we got the guy from Fargo.” He was like a superstar to us.

Doc: Yeah...

Jackson: He was a voice in our personal pantheon. And we got a few of those kinds of people.

Doc: Yeah, people don't talk about those that much. But our fans are pretty intuitive. When people come up and talk about what they love from the show. It's a lot of stuff that I'm like, “yeah, I agree with you.” I get “scuba” a lot. And I'm like, “yeah, I agree with you.” It was like a weird thing to have happen on a cartoon, the scuba, scuba.

Bryce: Right! So could you guys, obviously if you can't that's understandable, but, could you guys unpack the scene in season 7 with the Grover Cleveland Presidential Time Machine? Like what do you think that means for Rusty and Monarch’s relationship in the future? And do you think in a theoretical continuation would that play more of a role in any future plotlines?

Doc: Well, look, I'm going throw a caveat out there. They brought back Aqua Teen, who knows what's going happen to The Venture Bros., so I can't hang up that hat quite now and say, “here's all the secrets.”

Bryce: Of course.

Doc: But with that scene, I think I wrote it and I just was constantly either phone or text messaging with Jackson about, “I'm going to put this in can you put in anything?” He's like, “yeah, put in a finger.” Like, we had all these ideas of where to take it. We were loading up our...were you ever a Boy Scout? Do you know what the Pinewood Derby is?

Bryce: Yes, I do know what that is.

Doc: Yeah, they give you a bag of crap and you make a car out of it. And for us that time machine was our Pinewood Derby, it was like a bag of crap. And then when we get to deal with the time machine, Jackson hit it almost immediately, like he got pretty into it, on one of the unproduced scripts. But it was supposed to be filled with things that we can take later, and move them to our wants and desires. So, it's not like we knew exactly what was going to happen. We knew kind of what was going to happen, and we knew the smell of what we wanted to happen. And that's what we put in the time machine.

Bryce: Was that ever going to be part of the movie...?

Jackson: I’ll tell you my version of the memory of how it came to be, because I remember you calling me and going, “is it too crazy to just do this?” Like it was a deus ex machina kind of non sequitur thing you wanted to do. And I was like, “yes, we should do that. But I've been trying to break a time machine story for the last four seasons. And I have this idea. Can you, yeah, make him be missing a finger? (Jackson laughs) And make him say or do...” Yeah, I had like two things that I needed you to do. Because I knew what my story was. I had just never broken it. But yeah, I did end up writing that script for season...so it wasn't intended as anything more than just a crazy joke about time machines and alternate bullshit. All those meta-multiverse things were starting to come out. So, it was kind of, but I did have a follow up for it that is written.

Doc: We make crazy jokes, then sometimes, that joke is real, and then we start doing things for it. So, there’s no...

Jackson: Yeah, we love to do things out of the blue and then go “let's make that work forever. Let’s find a continuity reason why that happened.”

Bryce: So, was the time machine stuff ever part of the movie? In like an early draft? Was that ever part of the movie? Or did you know that?

Jackson: No, that was going to be a one-off. The scripts I wrote for season 8, one of them would have taken place like 20 seconds after the ending of season 7. And then Doc was writing one, and it was going to be...

Doc: At the same time as yours in a different place is what...

Jackson: Right, right, right. Not dissimilar from what we did at the beginning of season 7. But yeah, because it involves the teleporters that were on Meteor Majeure and stuff like that and so you know. Where did everybody go?

Doc: Yeah.

Jackson: I think Phage’s disappearance got explained ultimately. And...

Doc: Yeah. Oh, the whole coma town thing was really fleshed out. We dip back in a little bit, for the special we did, but there was a whole logic to how that place worked. It was... I'm glad, maybe, that we got canceled. It was crazy. I think we were going crazy. We're writing crazy. Your script...

Jackson: That would have been great...

Doc: Your script spanned like what, hundreds of years?

Jackson: Mine?

Doc: Yeah, your first.

Jackson: Oh, the time machine one?

Doc: Yeah.

Jackson: No, no, no, I mean, what would have been episode 1 was like, you know, one night it was like an overnight thing.

Doc: It was like a nanosecond. In mine, it was a moment. But...

Jackson: Right and then my time machine scripts, yeah, went back to 1893 or whenever the time machine was built, and then also went all the way ahead to the Eloi.

Doc: Your time machine is still in my basement. And we never made a ghost window...

Jackson: Oh, a real one?

Doc: We never made a ghost window, it’s useless, we would have a ghost window to 2005. If we remembered.

Jackson: Yeah, we bought a time machine off the internet.

Doc: He bought a time machine off the internet because he could.

Jackson: I always meant to plug it in (Jackson laughs).

Doc: It’s in the basement, it’s a hunk of shit. But I still have it.

Jackson: It looked like I had to hook it up to your balls or something. It was like it looked like something you shouldn't do. But in the instructions, they're like with practice, you can, you know, figure out how to use this and you can travel through time. But if you plug it in the minute you get it, you will have a sort of, almost like a cheat code to get back to that particular time. It's easier than just learning the process.

Doc: It’s the ghost window, but we never did it.

Jackson: We would have had a direct connection to that day that you plugged it in, which I did kind of use in this story.

Bryce: So, what was it like releasing the movie during the strikes and not being able to talk about it with the fans in person? And how did you, Adult Swim, and Warner Bros. Discovery feel about the movie’s reception and sales?

Jackson: Well, I mean, it sucked and we have no idea, right? Nobody’s told us...

Doc: Well, I know that we sold out of physical DVDs, which is a rarity.

Jackson: I don't know, I think that just means they made too few. I think they underestimated us.

Doc: But they underestimated us. That's something. And honestly, who makes a lot of DVDs? DVDs, I mean, who the fuck is overproducing those? But the real problem is that we had our Comic-Con. Not only was it ready, it was our last Comic-Con. Jackson and I had got our tuxes. We were ready for this stupid thing. It was our last chance to like...

Jackson: We had to rent the tuxes.

Doc: Yeah, to be Jackson and Doc and go to an actual screening. Because we never get awards. We never go to screenings. Um, you know, we're the lowest form of celebrity and that was like (Jackson laughs), that would have been fun.

Jackson: Yeah, it had been what? It had been five years and you didn't even get to go to the 2018 Comic-Con.

Doc: That’s correct.

Jackson: It was going to be a victory lap and a reunion. And so that was really heartbreaking.

Doc: It was really heartbreaking.

Jackson: Because those were rough years in-between, frankly.

Doc: Yeah, a lot went on.

Jackson: We needed a win.

Bryce: Do you guys think there's any chance you could ever do something like that, even if it's not in connection with like a new Venture Bros. thing? Like would you ever do a screening or something? Maybe in like a New York Comic-Con type deal? Just like, hey, let's watch the Venture Brothers together, you know?

Doc: We'd be amicable to do a lot, but there's no way we're going to plan something like that. We're just not proactive horn tooters. We're doing our own thing, so to go back and be like, “hey, let's get a screening together and we'll get a haul.” Somebody has to do almost everything and then tell us that it's going to happen. That's how those things get done. So yeah, I mean, we're not shy and we like to be...

Jackson: I'm shy, but...

Doc: Yeah, right. I'm not because I'm so shy that I learned how to be gregarious, so it's fake gregariousness. So it's aggressive shy. I'm aggressive shy. I'm not really, I'm not really shy, but I am. Okay, never mind, but we can't do something like that. And there's nobody sitting around going, let's screen a ten-year-old episode. You know, like who thinks like that? It's not going to happen.

Daniel: I do, we don’t mind tooting the horn for you guys.

Jackson: Yeah, I don't know about revisiting the past either, you know, just personally, present conversation aside.

Bryce: Yeah, that's true.

Doc: I would do it. It’s stuff we're proud of, you can get back and do stuff, I mean, I would probably be more interested in making more Venture Bros. And you know, Suede keeps putting out good albums, they wait five years in-between an album, they're so amazing. It can be done; you can still go back and do the thing. Lord knows how many times Ben [Edlund] rebooted The Tick, it can be done.

Bryce: So, one of my favorite things about the movie is I love Debbie. I think Debbie is like one of the best characters in the Venture-verse just in that short amount of time we got with her. And so, if you guys ever got the chance to do more Venture Bros., do you think you would do more with Debbie? And do you think Nina Arianda would be able to come back and do more as Debbie? Or is she just for like Radiant?

Doc: I can't speak for Nina, or Nina's schedule, like I don't know what she does. But Jackson and I fell in love with her on um...

Jackson: Goliath.

Doc: Goliath. She’s just...it's almost like she wasn’t acting, like did they just find a real person to be this character. She's so good, so natural.

Jackson: She's amazing.

Doc: Yeah, I can't pull out that voice from her. Would we write for her again? Yeah, probably. She's great, right?

Bryce: She's so good, she's like my favorite part of the movie.

Doc: Yeah, she's Force Majeure's daughter. So that's pretty impressive, you know, so how would you not write for her? Plus, we have such a small amount of women on the show. When we get one that we love, there's no way we're getting rid of her, we can't do that.

Bryce: Speaking of Force Majeure, as someone who's been thinking about that name since I was like 15 years old, finally seeing him drawn, and he's drawn kind of like Magneto, blew my fucking mind.

Jackson: Yeah.

Bryce: Okay, so I'm going to pass it back to Daniel for one of the merch questions.

Daniel: Yeah, so obviously one of the things with The Venture Bros. is just an extensive amount of merchandise over the years. And in particular, the recent Titmouse collection. And we're wondering if there were any future merch ideas, and if you had any dream merchandise items?

Jackson: Yeah well, we're going to keep putting...because now officially with Titmouse we got a license to do stuff. So, I'm sure we'll keep doing t-shirts.

Daniel: That’s awesome.

Jackson: Yeah, that's why we have a permanent collection now, instead of just the Shirt Club, like limited edition.

Doc: And then we do drops, we just did one on the 15th of a hoodie and two t-shirts.

Bryce: They just shipped, got my shipping notification.

Jackson: Oh, cool.

Doc: I just got my samples in the mail, like I've never seen these things. They're always a piece of paper to Jackson and I until we see them. But for...I had a point; I had a point...

Jackson: Dream merch, was it dream merch?

Doc: Oh, dream merch. I do have a dream merch. The Venture watch (Jackson laughs) now can be made.

Jackson: Right.

Doc: And I want someone to just buy the licensing. Do you remember when...Was it like the one company made those phasers and communicators that worked with your phone? You guys that geeky?

Bryce: Oh, um, yes, yes...The Star Trek, my dad's ringtone is the Star Trek communicator thing.

Doc: Yeah, but they made like a phone thing...communicator, mine's not charged (Doc show’s his communicator).

Jackson: What would be, like a Bluetooth patch with your phone?

Doc: It links to your phone (Jackson laughs), and it's, it's so cool. I want somebody like that to make a Venture watch straight from the original version from the show that functions nicely in that $200-300 range. Like an actual, I can wear this. It's not a big chunky piece of plastic, it's like a thing I can have. That's what I want (Jackson laughs).

Bryce: I would wear that every day of my life.

Daniel: Same!

Bryce: So have you guys noticed the impact your show has had on modern television in general with things like, Harley Quinn is the biggest one, I think, that is so very Venture Bros. But even in other things that are taking the same sort of approach to a realistic take on these comic book universes, like The Boys or Invincible. So, what do you think the impact of the Venture Bros. has been on television in general? And do you guys know about all the references that are made to your show? Like there's a Nickelodeon show [Henry Danger] that just has Brock Samson as a character in the background.

Doc: No, we’ve seen our show like in other shows. Someone will be watching TV and The Venture Bros. is on intentionally to give us a shout out. But our cultural impact, it's...we can't see it. It's like hearing your own accent. You know what I mean? You can't see it. You can't smell it. You think it derives from a different place. You wouldn't believe it if you did see it. It's your own accent. And to us, it's just, we just made something that some people like.

Jackson: I wouldn't credit us with stuff like The Boys or Invincible though, I think there's a direct line from, you know, like Watchmen and stuff like that to those that doesn't go through cartoons. But like Harley Quinn, I hear a lot of comparisons and a couple other ones, you know. I'm sure we're all watching the same stuff. So some of it's zeitgeist and some of it's “I think we had some impact,” sure. You know, the people know...

Doc: See, he can't hear his own accent.

Jackson: It can be serialized and it can be serious and weird and funny at the same time. And we can goof on all this pop culture stuff that used to be nerd stuff, but now it's mainstream.

Bryce: I'll just say, every time I watch, like my roommate knows this, like probably five times a week, we'll be watching something and I'm like, “this is just the Venture Bros., this is just like taking what the Venture Bros. already did.” But, so do you guys have...

Doc: Wait, wait, wait, I’ve got to stop you on that one. But also, you're watching it and going, but it doesn't have the heart, it doesn't have that like language fetishism. It doesn't have any of that stuff, right?

Bryce: Exactly, that's why I don't like it as much.

Jackson: There've been one or two things that like, I'll see somebody compare it to us and so I'll check it out and I'll be like, “oh, how dare you? How dare you?” (Jackson laughs)

Doc: I've had that too, and I’m like you're kidding me. (Doc laughs)

Jackson: Yeah.

Bryce: Do you have any specifics or you don't want to name them?

Jackson: I don't want to trash anything, publicly. (Doc laughs) I'll tell Doc after this.

Doc: Thank you.

Bryce: Do you guys have any like favorite Adult Swim shows that aren't your own?

Doc: Um Baby Blues, I'm kidding. (Everyone laughs)

Bryce: Such a deep cut.

Jackson: I mean, I never watched much of it back in the day. I don't now, but we did really love Moral Orel. And I dug Metalocalypse and...

Doc: All the stuff that wasn't us had this thing that I was always a little jealous of because we don't make that kind of thing. Like the timing in Harvey Birdman...

Jackson: Oh yeah, Harvey Birdman.

Doc: Was really, really good. And we couldn't do that because we have a script that's six pages over, (Jackson laughs) and we're just barreling through it. And that's great. And that's our style. And people can't do that. We do. But you would watch something like Harvey Birdman and go, oh my god, that 12 seconds of silence is so precious, it's so beautiful. So, I would have those experiences where I'd be not jealous, but in kind of awe of what the other creators were able to make. And I did love Moral Orel. Aqua Teen Hunger Force, I was always amazed how much funny they could cough out in an episode. I was just constantly laughing. The episodes meant very little, but just the comedy, it was really impressive. But for the most part, we were so wrapped up on our own show, we didn't have a lot of time to watch it.

Jackson: Right. And we're probably not big watchers of cartoons.

Doc: Not really.

Jackson: Or other people's comedy.

Doc: No, we don't watch it.

Jackson: Yeah, we watch hour-long dramas and stuff. But yeah...

Doc: We like history dramas.

Jackson: Yeah, or The Bureau. Stuff like that. But also, yeah, 11 minute shows bothered me too. I was like, if you're not going to invest the time to make it a half an hour, then it's not worth my time, is it? That was a little bit of a barrier to me trying to get into some of those.

Doc: I didn't have that. I thought it was...

Jackson: I did. It was like you're telling me it's ephemeral.

Doc: Yeah, they’re immediately going, don't worry, you don't have to carry any of this with you. And The Venture Bros. goes, I need you to unpack a little bit. Get your bag a little open because we're going to stuff it with shit that's going to haunt you for the rest of your life.

Jackson: I need you to care about my wound.

Doc: Yeah, carry that around.

Bryce: How did that Robot Chicken sketch come about with the puppet Monarch and Gary at the end of whatever the last season of Robot Chicken was [season 11]?

Jackson: Oh, we're just chummy with those guys. Every time we would see them at the Upfronts or Comic-Con we’d be like, “oh we should do something together.” So, it was kind of a...Yeah, it was just a goof.

Doc: Yeah, and they helped us with, or their studio helped us with the Spanakopita, Harryhausen stuff.

Bryce: Oh yeah!

Doc: That was them. I did the comps, thank you.

Bryce: So, if you guys were going to continue the show in some form, what do you think that would look like? Do you think it's more likely you do like a comic, or another movie, or another special, or more episodes? What do you think more Venture Bros. would look like at this point?

Doc: Well, obviously it would be a live, interpretive dance. Have you seen Mummenschanz? (Jackson laughs)

Bryce: I have not.

Doc: I'm joking. I don't know. If I redid it, I would like to do it just as a cartoon, like the way it was always done.

Jackson: Yeah.

Doc: And just make it better, a bigger budget maybe. And that would be nice. And The Venture Bros. has a look, and being loyal to that look, I think is important. There's something about when creators take something and go, “oh, here's my director's cut. He was a robot the whole time.” Like there's something in the geek in me that just bristles. And I want to never give somebody that experience. I want them to turn on The Venture Bros. and go, I know I'm going to love it. I don't know what it is, and whatever difference it is, I'm going to relax and let it in, and I'm going to love it. I'm going to love it. It's like the album from your favorite band. When it comes out, you're just like, relax, it's not going to be the old one, it's going to be a new thing. They might've gotten into funk, it's okay, let it happen. You're going to love it in two years.

Bryce: One of the biggest things about that from the movie for me is in the amazing intro, when you see Hank and Dean do the classic Go Team Venture with the theme behind it, that always makes me a little bit emotional because even though the show has grown and become one of the best things on television, and it has become this gigantic world filled with all these characters and stuff. At that core, it's still just about...It's still just that show where the kids do the Go Team Venture. It's still that show with the guys talking about Anne Frank versus Lizzie Borden and stuff. That heart of Venture never, ever leaves and you feel it in every second of that movie.

Jackson: Wow, thanks.

Doc: In the movie? Good, I'm glad. Yeah, I think there is something that Jackson and I do exclusively when we work together. When we work apart, not so much, but when we work together, we inhabit this unified brain and we have these very specific goals that are...It's just what happens when we work together. When I watch The Venture Bros., I see that. I go, that's Jackson and I. When I watch his episodes, I just go, I understand everything in it. And when he watches mine, he understands all of it. And very little communication went on making those (Jackson laughs). We were really just kind of under a time crunch and getting them out as quick as possible, but we would leapfrog over each other. I mean, write a script and then next person's turn, you're picking up some of the pieces and you're trying to make a coat with it. And some of them you're like, that's ridiculous. And Jackson always had a little shiv that he would do of like, “oh, that never happened.” And that was part of the fun of making that show.

And you can see it. When people watch the show, you can see the love letter. Other shows don't have that, they have a stench of corporate around them. I mean, I don't want to be miserable, but you can smell it.

Bryce: But, you’re right!

Doc: But The Venture Bros. does not have that, it doesn't seem corporate at all. It seems so real. Some fan told me once that the most realistic show they've ever seen was The Venture Bros. (Jackson laughs). I’m like that’s so amazing. It's a cartoon with time machines and shrink rays, and a misunderstanding of hydrocephaly. Like, I don't understand what that is apparently. But the way they speak to each other and the way they conduct their lives, I think is so realistic. And when a fan responds to that, I feel really like a proud papa.

Bryce: Yeah, that's why it's my favorite show ever because I do feel that love that the characters have for each other. And it's a warmth not many TV shows have. It's that warmth between the characters that you just feel because you're invested in this world for so long.

Jackson: Yeah, even when they hate each other.

Bryce: Even when they hate each other, yeah!

Jackson: It's warm and earnest.

Doc: Yeah, there's always a misunderstanding behind their hate. Yeah, I don't know, a lot of people don't feel indebted to hope. You know what I mean? That they have no problem selling horrors and it's prevalent in our society that people have no problem making unchecked negative nightmares. To me, if you're a creator of something, find out why you do it. And if you're not doing it to, I don't want to sound big pants over here, but try to fucking better the world. I mean, try to make the world a better place. Try to spread the little things that you've learned and the love that you have, and Jackson and I have this very distorted idea of, you know, we grew up weird and we're doing our best to just spread our version of love. Which is trying to find out who we are, which is why we stumble upon these things that would be called toxic masculinity. When we started doing that, that wasn't a term that we thought about. If we even knew it, it was really like, Jesus, why is our dad?...And for Jackson and I, our dad is not just our father, but the media we consumed, and James Bond, these are all our dad. Like, why are they such assholes? (Jackson laughs) You know?

Jackson: Right! Yeah, you know, a lifelong aversion to macho things too. You know?

Doc: Yeah, yeah. And being able to see it for what it was, enjoying the coolness, but also going, there's something wrong with Ecks vs. Sever. There's just something wrong with that (Doc laughs).

Jackson: Oh, Dirty Harry seems like a douchebag.

Doc: He's like a really bad person.

Jackson: I would hate talking to that guy. Yeah.

Bryce: So, have you guys been working on any personal projects since the movie wrapped that you'd like to talk about? Like not Venture Bros. related.

Doc: I put out a record that’s not Venture related. I put out Romantic Tales of Paraplegia. What an enjoyable record that does touch upon my paraplegia. And just how events like that, losing something that big, having any tragedy befall you, right? It could either destroy you or be this pivoting moment for you to rebuild yourself, it really tests who you are. And for me, that experience, I wouldn't give it up. I'm in pain 24/7, I would not give up that experience. I think it was a very important thing, it immediately changed who I am and focused who I was. I love it. But I made a rock record about it. There you go.

Bryce: Has your relationship with each other changed now that you're not actively working on The Venture Bros.?

Doc: Well, yeah, we don't see that much of each other because we don't have to, but we try to stay in touch. Jackson has an open invite for me for whatever he comes up with, he goes, “do you want to build a tree fort?” I'm like, “where are we putting it?” I will always work with him forever. He’s...most relationships, like marriages, don't last 20 years. (Jackson laughs) Do not bear the kind of children that we made.

Jackson: Right.

Doc: We endured so much, through good and bad, so we're bound. We have a kind of sexless art marriage that we couldn't walk away from. And even if we did, we'd still have to hear about each other and like you know...

Jackson: We're on opposite coasts now, too.

Doc: Yeah.

Jackson: We check in and we go on jags where we're texting more or less (Jackson laughs).

Doc: Yeah, it depends. We’re at a point now...

Jackson: As often as possible if I happen to look at my phone and it's 4:20, I text him (Jackson laughs).

Doc: Yeah. Which is...

Jackson: Because we're so, we hate marijuana culture so much.

Doc: It's a little goofy (Jackson laughs).

Jackson: We think it's so corny and douchey. If just magically, I happen to look at my phone and it's 4:20. And he does the same thing, we're like, “4:20, dude, spark up.”

Doc: Yeah, or intentionally awkward, like “time to take marijuana.” It's a lot.

Jackson: “Time to blow doobies.” (Jackson laughs)

Doc: Yeah, it's just a little thing we do, but for the most part, we're always going to be connected. And we go through spells that we're busy and we don't have to talk. And we're there when we need each other. And while we're separated, we're not.

Jackson: When Ken Plume makes us do a Christmas song.

Doc: Yeah. The problem is a lot of people when they separate, they start brewing bad blood. You know, like I haven't talked to you in a while. And you start going, why not? When we separate, it's fine, and when we come back together, we're okay. Underneath it, we love each other and we don't need to obsessively check in. Everything's fine, it's fine.

Jackson: Also, I think, personally, our relationship was the best it's ever been when we were doing the special.

Doc: Yeah. It's a real fucking shame.

Jackson: Our work dynamic was respectable and smooth and cool and generous and you know.

Doc: Real shame, because we finally learned how to work, not only long distance, but true collaboration. And then the show's over (Both Laugh). We really had this kind of an oiled thing of getting each other's pages to each other on time. And, “hey, you change this, hey, you change that.” Where before, when we were younger, we'd be like, “nobody change anything.” (Jackson laughs). And we just enjoyed crafting together. And then, yeah, that was it. We got good at doing the Zoom shit too, we talked to each other more on Zoom than we did in person.

Jackson: That's true.

Doc: In person, when we got together, we just spent all our time goofing. Like, it was just...we’d get some good gags out of it. But for the most part, we're just goofing.

Bryce: So, one question that I've been wondering about is, you guys mentioned a lot on both movie commentary tracks and the little special feature you have on the Blu-ray about a scene with Wide Wale and Sirena. So, would you guys be able to kind of tell us more about that scene? Or do you want to just keep it in the vault forever?

Jackson: Bryce, I can pull it up and read it to you.

Bryce: Would you?

Jackson: Doc has like a six page fight scene we had to cut out.

Doc: That was good, I’m keeping that for myself.

Jackson: I had a Dean and Sirena scene. I had a Wide Wale and St. Cloud scene. I forget what else. I missed the Dean and Sirena scene, I wish I could have figured out how to keep that in, just to give her a little bit of something instead of just throwing her under the bus, reducing her to an off-screen thing that happens.

Doc: We couldn't put everybody we wanted. Obviously, we wanted to play with Scare Bear, we wanted to do all this stuff.

Jackson: Right, Scare Bear had a beat, yeah.

Doc: In the beginning, [the movie] was basically piloted entirely by Force Majeure and Night Dick, so you don't get any of that (Both laugh).

Jackson: A lot of this story, though, when we were planning season 8, yeah. Those were the two, although neither one of us wrote a word about them. Those two things got us really excited about writing the next season. But none of the scripts I wrote, or was even in the process of writing, had them in there.

Doc: They're awful. I still have one of them.

Jackson: I had like maybe a nod to how...I think I had some Easter eggs for Force Majeure, but that was it.

Doc: For what? The season or the special?

Jackson: The season.

Doc: Well, when we were first talking about the special, we were literally thinking of having him as a narrator, as this kind of private detective narrator. It didn't last long.

Jackson: Oh, before we ever even outlined it.

Doc: Yeah, when we were just going, what are we going to do here?

Jackson: Oh, okay.

Doc: Yeah.

Jackson: But the lost scenes are the ones we had outlined...

Doc: Oh, we wrote them.

Bryce: So, what was that Wide Wale and Sirena scene?

Jackson: We wrote the first quarter of the outline, and it was well over two-thirds of what the page count should be for the whole script. So, we were like, yeah, we need to pare down this thing. Wide Wale would have had a major...he would have been the second big bad.

Doc: Yeah.

Bryce: Wow, really?

Jackson: Yep.

Bryce: Also, Matt Berry as Force Majeure, insane. I can't imagine how that would have happened.

Daniel: Yeah, perfect casting.

Doc: Who leaked that? Did we say that out loud? How do people know that?

Bryce: Yeah, you said that on the commentary.

Jackson: We must have said it out loud then.

Doc: Did we?

Bryce: Yeah, I've been thinking about it every day since July.

Doc: It was in my head.

Jackson: We were just talking about what we would have done in season 8, If he had actually returned, whether it was in flashbacks or in reality. Once we hit on the idea of Matt Berry, it was like, oh, I know who this guy is. Very easy to write for. It's so good. Without necessarily stealing any of his existing characters. That attitude of knowing what that guy can do.

Doc: Yeah.

Bryce: I think that's pretty much all the questions we have. Daniel, do you have any other questions you want to ask Doc and Jackson?

Daniel: I do have one quick question. So obviously, the TV landscape when the show started versus where we're at now, completely different. So many different mediums and methods of how shows get released nowadays. Do you prefer the week by week dole out of episodes or would you want a full season to be released onto the masses at once?

Doc: I just want to be properly compensated (Jackson laughs) and be able to do what we do; I don't care how it's released. I'm not a fan of cable, I think it's a very outmoded medium. Weekly episodic is very difficult for me. I like the idea of bulk consumption. I'm a big binger. So I would personally, I would rather release an entire season as a bingeable event.

Jackson: I would rather watch an entire season as bingeable.

Doc: But you don't want to make one?

Jackson: But yeah I mean, the weekly, I don't know. I like the old-timey, we're putting on a show-ness of a weekly release. And because I always loved publishing, I loved working for my college newspaper.

Doc: The deadlines!

Jackson: The comic books and stuff. And I like that there's an event at a time that everybody's watching the thing at the same time. And it’s sad that that’s gone.

Doc: Yeah, I just think that that's not how the world works now.

Jackson: Right. And also, if it affects too many shows, you know we love stringing continuity together and doing callbacks and stuff like that. And having a seasonal arc. But we also did certain kinds of one-off things that, like, you want a thing to still feel episodic.

Doc: That's true, we had a modularity.

Jackson: Everything starts to become, like, is this a nine-part fucking cartoon about you know... magic warriors, no? Hit me with a story with a beginning and end that’s fun and I go “remember that episode,” as opposed to...I don’t know, we always danced on the line between the two things.

Doc: Yeah, it’s a tough line because the novelized form of TV is great and the serialized form is great. And it’s a tough call to make, I love both, we tried to do both. Maybe that was stupid.

Bryce: Thank you so, so much, I cannot express to you how much of a dream come true this is to be able to conduct this interview with you guys.

Daniel: Yeah, thank you both so much.

Doc: Not a problem, I’m glad to have met you in the flesh. Yeah, so now when I see your icon or your comment on my whatever the hell, I’ll go, “I know that guy, I personally know him.”

Bryce: We hope to see more Venture Bros. one day, I’m always going to hold out hope in my heart that there could be more Venture Bros.

Doc: Yeah, you should, why not, what’s the point of...what, it took eight years for Star Trek to come back, who knows (Jackson laughs).

Bryce: But until then, just Go Team Venture guys, Go Team Venture.

Jackson: Thank you (Jackson does the Venture hand sign).

Doc: Go Team Venture.

Bryce: Go Team Venture.

Doc: Yeah, we love you guys, take care. Nice meeting you.