#every time he mentioned lokar they spelled it as locar and I had to go back and fix that

[deanky]

Total - Andy Merrill Q&A

Total TV: You did the Space Ghost voice in your original demo for Coast to Coast, right?

Andy Merrill: The pilot, yeah.

What was your Space Ghost voice like?

It was just [in pompous radio announcer voice] "so tell me Denzel, what was it like being at the Oscars?" Kind of stupid. Just a dumb pious voice.

You were not destined to be the voice of Space Ghost obviously.

No, I wasn't, no. I just did this goofy little mock-up to put questions to interview answers from these sound bites of Denzel Washington. To this day I don't think Denzel Washington knows that. I mean we didn't like broadcast it or anything. The [Denzel] footage was from Showbiz Today, I just recorded it from that right before I put the thing together, so that interview could have been with anybody that was on Showbiz Today that day.

Right. Clay said he had a real thing about Zorak from back when he was watching the original show. Did you feel that way with Brak?

No, you know, I didn't even know Brak. I mean, I was familiar with the show and I watched it as a kid in the 70's when it was like Space Ghost Frankenstein Jr. And my brother and I used to watch it all the time, my dad would always watch cartoons with us. But I never like associated myself with the characters. We just threw the Council of Doom together from--there was about a six-part episode, it was like the last of the old Space Ghost made where the Council of Doom got together against Space Ghost. And we took the Council of Doom members, shy of one, that we didn't already have on Coast to Coast, and had them sing the "Twelve Days of Christmas." That's where Brak came from.

Oh really? That was Brak's first-ever . . .

That was the original Brak, that was my first time doing Brak and Lokar. Brak came out of the writers' meetings where we would like read over the script and take different parts. And I always took Brak's part and just said, [in quasi-subdued Brakian scream] "Hi, my name is Brak," and it made us all laugh, so that's kind of how I got to do it. I didn't get paid anything, so it was very cheap. And Lokar we were going to establish as this staunch snobby type person, so we were going to have him just sing out operatically. And so I kind of have some singing background so I sang his voice. And then we reprised the characters in the world premiere Toon In show and then it all escalated from there into Cartoon Planet.

It's kind of cool to have the dichotomy of Lokar the erudite and Brak, who's obviously at the opposite end of the spectrum.

I think it's fun they're just so completely opposite. One is completely devoid of a brain and the other one thinks he's like the smartest being alive, so he uses big words. It's really challenging to do Lokar, just because whenever we write his lines we'll thesaurize, we'll get a thesaurus and we'll like pick like the biggest words and the hardest words to say and like plug them in.

Did you ever expect that Brak would take off to become like a cult hero? He gets the most fan mail.

No, you know, I didn't. And he does.

And I've got to say, Brak is my favorite. I mean I love Zorak too, but Brak is just like. . .

Well, he's just lovable. He's me. [laughs] No--well, basically he is. There's a lot of me in Brak and a lot of little stories that we tell are taken from like personal experiences. Whenever Brak talks about school and stuff like that, a lot of that is real. But it kind of surprised me when we first went to Dragon Con, which is a comic convention here in Atlanta, and we showed the "Twelve Days of Christmas" segment like the first year we were there. And it just surprised me to hear that people were singing along with it and just doing Brak lines and stuff. I just thought that was just kind of weird. And they wanted my autograph and all that stuff.

Do you sign Brak or do you sign Andy Merrill?

I sign Brak a.k.a. Andy Merrill. I took that from Clay. Clay does that too, Zorak a.k.a. Clay Croker, Seymour Croker, or something like that. So it's still kind of weird and I'm kind of used to it now, but just to see all the websites that are out there and stuff like that, it's just crazy. I'm happy that people really, really like the character. I'm really happy about that. So many people, you know, are reaching out.

What I love is he's sort of got like this 4- and 5-year-old consciousness that's just so pure, and I'm sure you get a lot of fan mail from little kids as well.

All ages, pretty much, from little kids to parents. And since we're on at 11:30 Friday nights we have a major college student following and they watch us, you know, religiously. I even did an interview last week where the person brought to my attention that there was a Brak drinking game. I said, Well, I can't endorse that, but that kind of was flying around the Internet too, which is kind of a weird thing. So it's escalated to that point. When you drive people to drink.

Was it the character of Brak that really inspired the move into Cartoon Planet? Or was that going to happen anyway?

No, Brak was going to be a very minimal part of Cartoon Planet. If you see any of the original shows--we kind of changed Brak over about a year's time. He got such a big response we wanted to put more of him in, and I would go into voice sessions and only last 20 minutes because I would just be in there screaming in a monotone at the top of my lungs and then my voice would give out. So he was stupid anyway so we kind of dumbed him up and gave him a lot more vocal range. I can go up and down and all that stuff. I can talk more normally now.

Right, otherwise your throat would never forgive you.

Oh yeah, it's terrible. It was awful. I would be out of it for like a day or two.

Well, I take issue with the fact that Brak is stupid. He's more like an idiot savant I think.

Yeah, Mike [Lazzo] always describes him as an idiot savant. And he was struck dumb, I mean he used to be this evil mastermind, so he's got some form of intelligence in him somewhere that comes out every once in a while. He's kind of like, you know, Jim Ignatowski of Taxi, you know.

Yeah, exactly, that's a good parallel, actually.

Like Jim goes to a party and plays the piano and stops in the middle, saying, I didn't know I could do this, and so that's kind of the parallel. He's stupid, but he's not. And that's part of the drinking game too. Whenever [Brak] says something intelligent, you have to drink. And he's into poetry and Shakespeare and stuff like that though he doesn't know it.

I love when Brak just goes off and starts to riff on stuff. Like when he goes on and on trying to find a highway number that works in "Highway 40 Unplugged," that bonus track on the Cartoon Planet Band EP.

Yeah. I can't remember why . . . we went in just to like record an extra track for the CD, and I just brought in my ukulele and played that. And played this old song, the other bonus track is "Put Your Socks On Mama." I made that up in college for my friend Paula 'cause I used to, over the summer, like send tapes to my really good friends--just goofy things, you know. That's where "Put Your Socks On Mama" came from. It's a song I made up. I'd forgotten about it for years but she, like, put this tape together of goofy stuff that I recorded for her and that song was on it.

Do you think there's ever a chance that the Cartoon Planet Band would make an actual live appearance?

I don't know. I don't know. You know, [writer] Dave [Willis] and I and Ann Susan [Brown] and Stuart [Shacklee] in programming played a street festival last year in May and we didn't sing any Cartoon Planet­type stuff, but we sang like Rolling Stone songs and stuff like that. So we can like put a little band together. But I don't know. We do a few conventions every year, like the Dragon Con and the Comic Con and I thought it might be fun to like get up and do a song or something. But so many people, when they come to like have you sign pictures are always trying to have me sing "Highway 40" or something. I always just kind of shy up on them, feel stupid, 'cause I don't have any music or anything like that. And some of them I can't--I mean it's nice that we have the CD and stuff so I can at least remember the songs 'cause some of these we recorded like two years ago. And you know you record them once and never perform them or anything, so it's like you forget the words and all that stuff.

So you never had an actual musical career before this? You just did like these goofy songs for friends every once in a while?

Yeah, I'd do goofy songs for friends and I always just--my parents were very sad when I left the house for college, just because I was always like making noise and singing and goofing around the house and stuff.

Do you think there was always a Brak inside you, like struggling to get out?

I'm sure my neighbor thinks I'm nuts just because I live alone with my dog and I'm always like talking to my dog or, like, singing stupid songs to make her wag her tail or something like that.

What's your dog's name?

Sage. But I call her Stinky or Dummy or stuff like that.

What kind of dog?

Black lab.

Ooh, nice. I love black labs.

She's funny.

I bet. Do you ever get to the point where you're starting to talk like Brak when you don't mean to talk like Brak? Or can you like turn that on and off? I mean, do you have Brak-ish moments in your normal life?

Every once in a while. Not too often. I'm always trying to think of where the present Brak voice came from and I just remember my friend Wally and I in high school just going around saying, [in goofy voice] "You be dawg, you be dawg, you're a dopey dawg," and it kind of came from that, but not totally. It just like came back years later, but I don't know. It's such a different voice, I don't really fall into it that much. But there's times when I'm in the car, like listening to Queen or something like that, you know--there's a lot of Queen songs that would be really funny if Brak sang them. I mean it'd be fun to, like, do an album of actual songs, it would be expensive but it'd be fun to like have Lokar and Brak do "Under Pressure." Or something like that. It just would be fun to do certain songs like "Bohemian Rhapsody" or Alanis Morrissette's "You Oughta Know."

That would be outstanding. Another persona that I love of yours is the guy in the goofy Space Ghost suit.

That's the Space Ghost Dancer. You know, we auditioned people for that, I called a number of dance studios around town to audition.

You mean like real actual dancers?

Yeah, to see if anybody was like interested in auditioning to be the dancing Space Ghost. And I had five guys lined up for the audition. Three showed up and did okay. No, actually two showed up, did all right, and then we had all this studio time left and Pete said, "Well, why don't you put the suit on and dance?" I said, "Well are you going to do it?" He said, "Yeah, I'll do it if you do it." So I put it on first and Pete never did put the suit on. But I just got up and danced around and we had that on a tape too. The actual muscular professional dancer in a Space Ghost suit was just too freaky. It's like really a scary thing to see Space Ghost actually dancing nicely. So we showed mine too, which was funny, and then we went in for a two-day shoot and shot a whole bunch of openings and closings

There were some openings we didn't use, like my favorite was really funny, but we couldn't use it for obvious reasons. Space Ghost starts to dance and then grabs his arm and falls over from a heart attack and just lays there dead the rest of the opening. And we couldn't use that. But last year, last May, Dave and I went out with my video camera and I put the suit on and we went out to Stone Mountain Park and ran around and shot some stuff and it was amazing to see how many people cooperate with that. Like, there were these four ladies playing tennis, and we just went up and sheepishly asked them if we could film me playing tennis with them, and I thought they would tell us to hit the road but they signed releases. And we played putt-putt and went to a place just up the street from my apartment, and shot Space Ghost getting his hair cut.

What's going to happen with Cartoon Planet? I know it's been a little bit on hiatus because there's so much emphasis on Coast to Coast, but I mean it's coming back, isn't it?

[hesitantly] I . . . I don't know. I . . . I hope.

Mike Lazzo said it was when I asked him yesterday.

[somewhat incredulously] Really?!

Yeah, he said absolutely, oh yeah, yeah.

[eagerly] You have that on tape?

Yes, I do have it on tape.

[triumphantly] Okay, then we've got him. [laughs] I hope, you know, when we're done doing this deal that we'll do more. I'm hoping. 'Cause I'd like to do more of some of the newer stuff we were doing like "Cooking [with Brak]." We only did like two "Tales of Suspense," which I just thought of, like, at the last session we did. So I'm hoping to take a little vacation in September. Hopefully we'll be done with 26 [Coast to Coast] shows by then.

Do you have the whole arc of how the 26 episodes are going to go?

How they're going to air? No, 'cause that kind of changes all the time, until the last minute.

Right. But I know you do start with "Pilot," and I just actually got a chance to see [the second episode] "Rehearsal." I love the ending where you see that big human hand come down and then you realize that it really is this little tiny miniature set . . .

The set being broken down. That was good, yeah. That's like three-year-old footage. That's cool because that's some of the original footage. The original footage of them tearing down the set, we've had that for years, we've just never had a reason to use it. So it was cool that we could use it.

Who were your favorite cartoon characters as a kid?

Um . . . boy . . . My dad would come down and watch cartoons with us all the time and we would watch Super Friends and Space Ghost. Space Ghost really wasn't my favorite, though. I always liked the Herculoids, and Tarzan, Lord of the Jungle was always my favorite. All those Filmation Tarzan, Batman, Lone Ranger, Zorro cartoons; Fat Albert was big.

So those were all contemporary cartoons that were running at the time?

Um-hm. But Warner Bros., I always liked Sylvester a lot. Sylvester was always my favorite. Even today, it was nice when I was in programming to be able to work with those Warner Bros. cartoons and actually see the birth of those cartoons and how they were developed and stuff like that. I just love, like, the original Sylvesters. There's one that's amazing where Elmer Fudd is trying to sleep and he's outside, like yelling and screaming and singing and stuff. It's just really, really funny.

On Cartoon Network, on the Tex Avery hour, whenever the last one was, they had the original Bugs Bunny episode with Elmer before Bugs really looked like Bugs.

Yeah. That's another thing I'll probably be working on after Space Ghost is finished. We're going to do more Toon Heads where we show the evolution of the characters and also pay tribute to different directors of cartoons, instead of just Tex Avery. I had the idea of doing a Chuck Jones show but that's probably later on in '98.

One reason Cartoon Planet has to come back is we've got to have Brak's Monday Ratings Report again. I really miss that.

Yeah. We were worried about that, actually. Mike was insistent on us doing a ratings report and we kept saying, we can't do that cause there's some FCC rule or something, you can't tell people how you're doing cause that just kind of screws up the rating system or something like that. I don't know exactly the laws or whatever. But Pete thought of this way to do it which is to just make them up.

And turn the charts upside down.

Yeah. Like, "Hey guys, we're not doing very well." Just do it in a vague way, so we're not saying, you know, our ratings suck. They're all just kind of made up. So I don't know what's going to happen [with Cartoon Planet]. I know that probably scares people when I say that. But I'm sure, you know, when these 26 episodes are over, we'll need something to work on. I would like to do more. We would definitely like to do more. It's a fun show to do and it's pretty effortless to write.

Because you don't have to build it around the interview or anything.

Yeah. It's not as easy as it looks, but Pete and I have this good thing going and since we're the characters it's, like, easy for us I guess. I don't know. Some people try and write for Brak. every once in a while we'll catch some scripts on the Internet that people write. And they'll just make Brak stupid.

How many letters do you get a week?

Me? I don't know, maybe . . . Space Ghost gets a lot of letters.

They told me you got the most mail or rather Brak got the most mail.

Brak does, and a lot of them are addressed to Cartoon Planet, but if they're addressed to Brak, they get to me. I'm not good at answering mail because I'm a jerk. I'm not a jerk, but I just, you know, I let mail accumulate. I'm good at--I can answer e-mail. Usually I try to answer mail, but I'm just bad at it. As is everyone probably. [rummaging through some cluttered piles of papers and mail] This is a black hole. I got second place in most messiest offices.

Who got first place?

I think it was [TNT VP of programming] Phil Oppenheim. [rummaging some more] I can't find any pictures. I got a nice postcard of Amish people. [pulls it out] And it's funny, because Ohio's Amish country. I know this area very well. 'Cause a lot of my family grew up in Northern Ohio.

I'm from Northern Ohio, too. And I went to the College of Wooster, which is right in Amish country.

Really? That's like right next to Orville. My grandma lives in Orville, that's where my mom grew up.

And my great-grandma lived in Sugar Creek and that's where my grandma grew up, and my great-aunt and uncle live there and they have the Swiss festival every year and a lot of my family heritage on my mom's side is in Sugar Creek. And there's like some old historic pictures of like my ancestors and stuff like that. So it's like really cool. My dad grew up in Columbus. I grew up totally in Ohio. My parents still live in Ohio. My whole family like lives in Ohio.

Ohio builds good stock. Some great things came out of Ohio, like Chrissie Hynde . . .

. . . and Wayne Newton . . .

. . . and Pere Ubu . . .

. . . and Paul Lynde. [laughs]

Yeah. [laughs] So how did you get to Atlanta? You went to school here or something?

I went to school in Asbury College in Kentucky and my professor had a lot of connections. I, like, freelanced for ABC Sports a couple times and stuff like that through college, and I came down here for the National Association of Broadcasters conference with a group of students. This was, like, a month after I graduated in like March of '90. I came down here and visited CNN and thought, you know, I could work here. So I put in an application and didn't get hired, and just came down here after college and did an internship in sports. It's weird that they took me since I wasn't a student, but I did an internship in CNN Sports. I'm not a sports nut at all, I really hate sports. But it was like an easy internship, and I heard that if you had an internship and did a good job you were pretty much hired into the company. So I did an internship for like a few months and then the Gulf war broke out and there wasn't much to do in sports then. Before I went home, I put an application in at CNN one more time, and I was hired about two or three months later. I think my old roommate helped me out just to get the papers flying around. It was good to have somebody within CNN pushing your name around and stuff. So I got into CNN and I was there for a year and found the job here [at Cartoon Network], like, on the company bulletin board.

It doesn't sound like you were on this straight path of like 'I'm going into animation.'

Yeah, it's like, my mom always would bug me because I always watched too much TV and I never like read books or anything. And my brother and I would always make little recordings on the tape player and I would go out with my friend Wally in high school and make videos and stuff. And at the time I never thought it would amount to anything, till I took broadcasting in college and then it, you know, took me a year and a half to find the job at CNN. I did a lot of crappy work before that, working in a folding and binding factory making sure these machines ran and folded these stupid brochures and stuff. I hated that. I did that for three weeks and I believe I was fired from that job.

You didn't fold and bind correctly?

No. I was told to replace this guy at this one machine and the guy didn't like tell me what to do, he was like well, you just make sure these go in the right way. So I thought I was doing it right, and I guess I screwed up about like 400, 4,000, something like that, brochures. 'Cause they were folded wrong. So the manager brought me in his office--it was a temp job--and he said, "I don't think we're going to need your help anymore." So he signed my little temp form and I left. So you know that just was terrible. But I worked at a pizza place before I worked at CNN. That was like my big job.

Oh, well. I mean, everybody goes through those early jobs.

Which is good. It's a good experience, it's good to go through all that garbage before you get to a point in your life where everything's cool.

What do your parents think now? Do they think that that was time well spent? All those hours in front of the TV?

My mom, you know, doesn't say, I wish you would have read more. My parents have always been really, really supportive of everything I've done. So they've always been, you know, very encouraging. I have a really good family and I talk to them all the time and so they're always really supportive of everything I do.

Do they like the show? Are they fans?

Yeah. Mm hmm. My grandma watches Cartoon Planet.

Really? That's neat.

She was happy that they finally got Cartoon Network in Orrville. And yeah, they watch it all the time and whenever we have new shows I make sure they know. So whenever they see something new they'll call up, you know, laughing and stuff like that.

That's pretty cool.

Yeah, it's nice. My brother doesn't have cable. Well, he has cable, but he has, like, the worst cable company in probably ever, like the cable company in Versailles, Kentucky. They're just terrible, they have like two of every network channel, NBC, ABC, Fox. And like hardly anything else, other than like American Movie Classics. It's just terrible. And my sister doesn't have cable.

But your grandma watches in Orville.

Yeah, and whenever my nephew's at my parents' house, when he was like younger he would always see me dancing on the screen and he'd dance along.

Oh, with the Space Ghost Dancer?

Yeah. [chuckles]

What a great uncle to have. I mean wouldn't you have liked to have had you as an uncle?

Yeah. I did have a couple really great uncles when I was growing up, but yeah. My brother and sister are both married and I'm the middle child so I just feel kind of like, okay, I'm stupid, I'm not married. I was feeling like that for a while, but when they finally had kids, both of them, I thought, well this is great, you know, 'cause I can at least have this.

And that's the best role, uncle. You don't have any of the father responsibilities.

[wistfully] Well, you know, I would at least like a girlfriend. But I like going to toy stores and buying all the cool things that are out there. And I like playing with my nephew and stuff, and my brother just had a child not too long ago, and it'll be cool to see him grow up too. It's just an amazing thing, you know. Just an amazing thing, just kids. I just . . . I like kids, I get along with kids.

I'm not surprised.

You know, once my nephew started to be able to talk, my sister would call me on the phone and she would say, he's got something to tell you. And I'd hear the phone being exchanged and I would hear this [in little-kid -trying-to-be-superhero voice] "I'm Superman." [chuckles] You know, it's just so . . . it made me laugh.

Has he ever given you any material you've used for Brak?

Um, no. He thinks he's Batman. No, not really. I really haven't touched that. We did do one thing with my nephew--we had like a contest or something or other here, not really a contest, it was just kids, send in your picture and we'll put your picture on a ghost or a scary vampire or something, and scare Scooby Doo. Something like that. It was around Halloween. And so when my nephew was pretty much an infant, you know, I had this one picture of him that I like gave to them, this one [shows picture of gnomish newborn]. They put his head on this vampire. [laughs] It was funny.

That's cool. What's your nephew's name?

Schuler.

What a neat name.

My other nephew is James. Schuler is named, I guess, after a family friend. Schuler James, and then there's James Robert. But James is just tiny, tiny. I saw him like a week after he was born, that's the youngest [baby] I've ever seen. I didn't even see Schuler that young, so it's kind of cool to experience, you know, a week-old relative of mine.

Yeah, that is cool. Back to Space Ghost Coast to Coast--do you think there's anything on the show that even those of us who think we are like the hippest aficionados may be missing? Some other level it's working on?

I don't know, I don't think there's anything . . . I mean, there's nothing cerebral about the show. I mean, we're all just a bunch of geeks writing for the show. There isn't much hidden stuff in any of the shows, you know. Cartoon Planet and Coast to Coast get mixed up all the time. I don't understand that, how people mix up those two shows, 'cause they're so different. One is completely written and strict to the script, and the other one, Cartoon Planet, relies more on not just the script but ad libs in the studio and stuff like that.

Right.

But I don't know of any hidden stuff, any deep things.

I sometimes see stuff when I see episodes over again that I didn't catch the first time.

You catch different things when you watch our shows, like more than once, but I think that's the case with a lot of shows, you know. Simpsons, it's more so just because they're able to animate their characters and there's a lot of visual comedy and stuff in The Simpsons that you can see but you don't see it the first time. Here, with us, we're just so limited in animation, it's almost like the opposite. You have to, like, watch it twice to hear certain things for the first time.