As we've mentioned on the site before, one of the coolest
things about this year's Comic-Con was the filming of a mockumentary
(or, as director Mark Hamill prefers calling it, "…a documentary
unencumbered by facts") called Comic
Book: The Movie. Utilizing the Con as a backdrop
for an improvised story of Hollywood greed versus the real passion
of fandom, Hamill called up several of his friends from the
voice-over industry to star. You know their voices, but you
may not know their faces.
Except for one, because he has a cult following outside
of his recent popularity as the voice of Sponge Bob Squarepants.
Before becoming an animated sea creature, Tom Kenny worked
as a brilliant stand-up and a cast member/writer on the immortal
(to us here at Fanboy Planet, anyway) Mr. Show with
Bob and David. Unfortunately, he and his talented
wife, Jill Talley, will not be on the Mr. Show
tour.
In Comic Book: The Movie, Kenny plays Derek Jensen, a long-time
comics fanatic and publisher of a famous fanzine with his
partner, Donald Swan. Kenny sat down with us on the first
day of the Convention, unsure of exactly what he would be
doing in the movie and only knowing that after talking to
us, he was having dinner with Stan Lee.
Also, you should note that on this first day of filming,
everybody referred to Comic Book: The Movie as only a tentative
title. It looks like it's going to stick, but at the time,
no one knew that for sure, not even the production company,
Creative Light Entertainment. And we thank Dana at CLE for
setting us up with Tom and a whole host of other cast members.
Derek McCaw: What do you think of the Convention?
Tom Kenny: It's all the stuff that we care about.
We come here and…
DM: Everybody is like us.
TK: It's almost like being a born again Christian
guy, and going to the Promise Keepers convention, at like
a big stadium where there's a group of people going (shouts
quietly) "Jeeessuuusssss!" It's sort of like that.
I mean, that's how those people must feel, (in Gomer
Pyle voice) "Wow! There are other people like us!"
DM: I don't know who's better or worse
on that…
TK: Hey, whatever gets you through the night…
DM: Tell me about your work on this film,
this improv piece…
TK: Yes. The working title for this thing, at least,
oh, geez, I had to look at the poster behind me, is Comic
Book: The Movie. I wasn't even supposed to be down here
or involved in this, and then on Sunday, Mark Hamill, or Luke
Skywalker as we know him as, called me at home and said, "I'm
doing this fake documentary about comic book people and using
the San Diego Con as a backdrop. Do you and Jill want to mess
around with us?"
DM: So Jill is in this. I saw her and she
walked away…
TK: Yeah. She's playing…uh, it's amazing how little we know
about this. I guess that's what's fun about it. He just said
"come down, we're sort of making it up as we go along, somebody
gave me some money, and we're just shooting a 'Guffman'-type
fake mockumentary that takes place at Comic-Con."
And I guess we're basically playing who we are. Jill's playing
the long-suffering spouse of a comic book fanatic.
DM: You're playing a fan?
TK: I'm playing a fan. But I actually am in real
life. Not of everything, but I do have my certain areas of
obsession.
DM: Tell me one. What's your favorite?
TK: I'm an old newspaper strips guy. (On the way
to sit down for the interview, Tom had been distracted by
a booth selling what looked like classic comic strip art,
but wasn't.)
DM: What's your favorite?
TK: Thimble Theater.
DM: Popeye.
TK: Right, Popeye. Smokey Stover. Bill
Holman, I like all the weird thirties screwball stuff.
Krazy Kat I like a lot.
DM: Smokey Stover - that would be the saying
"Foo," right?
TK: Foo. Wow. See? The people at Dark Horse just
informed me that Smokey Stover was the worst-selling statue
in the history of their company. And I bought two. I bought
two Smokey Stovers, just because I was so thrilled that anybody
was doing anything with Smokey Stover.
DM: Yeah, I discovered that character on
Archie's T.V. Funnies…
TK: Archie's T.V. Funnies! Yeah! And it was
sort of crappy and everything, but when you look at the (original)
stuff it's just so…retarded…it's just so wonderful, so screwball.
You don't see anything like that anymore. Completely illogical,
weird gags all over, every panel is crammed full of stupid
puns and corny gags. It's like vaudeville, like a burlesque
show or something.
DM: Is there anybody modern that you read?
TK: I like, well, like everybody I like Eightball
and Dan Clowes a lot. I still like Pete Bagge a lot…
DM: You should like Tony Millionaire…
TK: Yes! I know Tony Millionaire very well. Yeah.
I love Sock Monkey. In fact, I did a cover blurb for
his kids' book. As the voice of Sponge Bob, I guess my name
has some cache in the children's publishing circles. Tony's
great.
DM: You and Jill started out in improv
groups? Actually, I've only seen a couple of bare bones biographical
paragraphs about you.
TK: That's all there is. We're sort of mysterious.
DM: And you want to keep it that way?
TK: Duh. Yeah. We're under subpoena. There's people
looking for us.
Actually, Jill's a Second City person. That's how she knew
Bob, from Second City Chicago. And then I was a stand-up comedian,
so I knew David from the stand-up world in Boston. So Jill
and I came in to Mr. Show from different doors.
DM: Did you meet on Mr. Show?
TK: No.
DM: That would be too romantic.
TK: No, we met on a sketch show called The Edge
that was on Fox back in the early nineties. It was on the
same season that Ben Stiller was on, on the same network.
If they had combined the two shows they would have had one
super-great sketch show.
Jill and I were cast members on that, and then it was Wayne
Knight, Jennifer Aniston and Julie Brown, and then us.
DM: I first saw you as Binky in Shakes The
Clown…
TK: SHAKES! Yeah, talk about coming to a place that
gives you a skewed perspective on the world, a lot of people
here have seen Shakes The Clown.
That would never happen anywhere else on the planet Earth.
You know what I mean? I mean, there's very few people that
have seen Mr. Show. Then there's a smaller subset of
people that have seen Shakes The Clown.
DM: I feel very honored, then.
TK: (laughs) Before that I did stand-up and
all that. I don't really do stand-up too much anymore.
DM: Well, now you've got quite a career
as a voice-over guy, obviously.
TK: A lot of animation, a lot of voice-over, a lot
of commercials. It keeps me in comic books.
DM: I gotta get something like that.
TK: Oh, yeah.
Page Two of the Tom Kenny Interview...
