If you're a fan of the anarchistic insanity that is Adult Swim's Mr. Pickles, I'm happy to tell you that Season 3 continues the madness in earnest. In celebration of the show's return this Sunday, February 25th at midnight--the appropriate witching hour for animated ritual sacrifices, of course--we chatted with series creators Will Carsola and Dave Stewart about everything from their creative inspiration, to how they find the show's fantastic musical score, to getting around Standards & Practices when it comes to animating sexual thrusting. Plus, they tease what's in store for fans in this brand new season!
If you're not familiar with Mr. Pickles, the super-NSFW series follows Old Town's cutest dog on his tail-wagging, flesh- ripping and head-decapitating adventures. This season also follows the Goodman family, and the eccentric residents of Old Town, as they battle bullies, zombies, and telemarketing plantation owners. This season also sees the title character face off against some of his toughest foes including memory hackers, ruthless television executives, and military footwear. Check it out this Sunday at midnight, and check out our chat with Carsola and Stewart below!
First of all, for folks who haven’t seen Mr. Pickles, how would you describe it to them?
Dave Stewart: I always like to think of Mr. Pickles’ family as a nuclear family from the 1950s, almost goody-goody, down-to-Earth, but the world around them is modernized beyond the family. They even think their dog is like in the realm of a sweet Lassie dog, even though he’s pretty far from that. They have no idea that their sweet, beloved dog is actually a murdering psychopath.
Will Carsola: The idea originally started as, “It’s Lassie, but the dog is a murderer.” And then it kind of just became its own world.
What was the original pitch?
Carsola: It was something like, “It’s Lassie if the dog was a murderer. He loves pickles and he gets them when he’s a good boy.” Something in that range.
Stewart: There was an idea, and I think we moved a little bit away from it, that he would actually commit crimes in order to solve them to get the pickle, but as the show became its own thing we moved away from that.
What was the process of going full-on with the murder and mythology of Mr. Pickles?
Carsola: Layers upon layers. We have a backstory to Mr. Pickles that we build things upon. We sprinkle in a little here and there.
Stewart: Just hints, here and there.
Carsola: Certain episodes allude to his backstory. We use that as the foundation, a rule book for what he can and can’t do. Then we’re just continually adding to that.
Stewart: We give away a little bit here and there.
Carsola: And we’ll continue to, but just a little bit. [laughs] When the time is right.
Is that something you guys would like to release sometime in the future? Sort of a Necronomicon of Mr. Pickles mythology?
Carsola: We joke around about making a Mr. Pickles bible, yeah. I like the idea of it; if it’s something the fans really wanted, I’d be into it.
Stewart: Yeah, I think that’d be cool.
Obviously there are some ‘Lassie’ inspirations here, but what other things inspired you for the look and the idea of Mr. Pickles?
Stewart: I always like to think that the things we make fun of in Mr. Pickles are things that we really hate. There are tiny, social undertones in our show, and it’s all influenced by really everything, from the people we see outside of work—we work right next to Skid Row—to the shows that we’re currently watching or a movie that we like, so it’s all over the place.
Carsola: A lot of Mr. Pickles stories come from being inspired by movies like The Shining and Evil Dead 2, that kind of thing. A lot of episodes are inspired by movies or genres of movies; sometimes we’ll have a Western-themed movie, in Season 3 we have an episode that has a zombie kind of feel to it. Aside from the Mr. Pickles storylines, a lot of the small-town stories are inspired, for me, by experiences I had growing up in a small town in Virginia, the people you meet and the things they do.
Is this cathartic in a way, to get to do insane things to people who maybe weren’t so great in your life?
Carsola: I would say it’s definitely cathartic. You get to make fun of people and personalities that maybe you don’t agree with or point out things about them that you don’t like through comedy, which is great. I think comedy … it’s a way of looking at something that’s right in front of your face but you’re so used to seeing it that it’s not so obvious anymore. When you see it in a different light, you’re like, “Oh yeah, that is ridiculous.”
What’s your production schedule like? And did that have anything to do with the delay of Season 3?
Stewart: We write for five months.
Carsola: Yeah, we write all the episodes first.
Stewart: And since Will and I are involved in every process and every step, writing has to be done before we start production, which is another eight months, maybe nine or ten. [laughs]
Carsola: All in all, it takes about a year and a few months to make a full season, partly because we’re very hands on. We also take off a couple of months after each season to sort of reset.
Stewart: The reason it started airing a little later, I think, was due to the network’s positioning and marketing. It didn’t have anything to do with us or our production schedule. We had been done for months.
Speaking about the show’s animation for a second, I love all of the insane things that are happening in the backgrounds of certain scenes. What’s the process of figuring out what you’re going to add?
Carsola: I try to get the background artists and animators to add in as many background jokes as they can. Ultimately I’ll go through the episode in the very last stages and spend, usually, a day or two putting in my own background jokes: a funny store sign, this little detail here that connects to another episode, just kinda cram in as much background content as I can with a couple of days’ time.
Stewart: That’s like his fun time. Will also directs the show, which can be really hectic for him, but I feel like when he can do background jokes that’s like his reward. He nerds out for a few days and throws in a bunch of stuff. It’s fun for me to sit back and watch, it’s hilarious.
Have the writers or animators ever come up with something that surprised you or made you say, “This is too far, even for our show”?
Carsola: Lots of times. Animators come up with ideas that were never in the script or on the boards. We try to always promote anybody in any department on the show to make things funnier. The show wouldn’t be as funny as it is without that. Now, sometimes the idea will be too crazy, so we’ll tone it down or change it.
Stewart: Yeah, and then the writers room, I’m never really surprised by what comes out of here. We’re often having to tone down our own ideas a little bit. Make them viewable for TV.
Are you self-censoring, or do you have pushback from the executive level?
Carsola: By now, we kind of know what Standards & Practices will let us do, or what they’ve let us do in the past that we can do. We have an ongoing joke. If there’s ever anything having sex on the show, any sexual thrusting, you have to cover that up. Sexual thrusting is a no-no.
Stewart: So we’ll put a bush in front of it.
Carsola: There was an episode in Season 1 where Bigfoot was having sex with a deer. We had to basically just put a bush right in between them. They’re still having sex, there’s just a bush in front of them. That’s become the joke. “Ah, just put a bush in front of them.”
Stewart: So sex in the sky would be hard because a bush wouldn’t be there.
Carsola: A flying bush, maybe.
You could just have a nice, white, puffy cloud up there. Just chillin’.
Carsola: Oh! Put a cloud in front of it. We’ll have to give him credit for that.
Do you guys have fun coming up with ideas to getting around those limitations?
Stewart: Yeah. Mike Mayfield, our director of animation helps with some of those ideas, too. It’s fun to come up with creative ways to get around Standards & Practices.
Can you talk about your musical influences and finding the right sound for Mr. Pickles?
Stewart: For the intro, we thought it would be a good juxtaposition to what the Lassie intro was.
Carsola: Yeah, we just wanted the complete opposite of the easy-going Lassie song.
Stewart: We still have the nice, beautiful, small town … but then you have the car accident… As far as the music in the show … Will edits the show. I think music is one of the bigger things that he brings to the table, how much work he puts into songs when it comes to the library stage, he really gets to help create the scene. It has a lot to do with how our show feels and we get a lot of compliments about that.
Carsola: Music’s always been important to me to make any of these episodes. It’s one thing when something’s in a script, but when you actually need to translate that to storyboards, music can kind of dictate how a scene’s going to look. Usually what I’ll do is, to find the right song, I’ll keep looking and looking until I find the one that paints the right picture in my head, you know? You know when it’s right.
It’s the same thing as voice acting, whether we’re doing one of the voices or casting somebody. Sometimes we may not know exactly what we want, but we know it when we hear it. Once you have that voice, that character becomes alive. It’s the same thing with music in a scene; then the scene comes to life.
What are you most looking forward to fans seeing in Season 3 of Mr. Pickles?
Carsola: I’m excited about fans seeing what happens after the Season 2 finale. We get right into it, right where we left off.
Stewart: We did a whole thematic push this season: We have an 80s-themed episode, a Western one, a Zombie one. We pushed some things in different directions, almost more cinematic sometimes, and I think people are going to be really excited when they see it.
Praise be to Mr. Pickles, returning for Season 3 on Adult Swim this Sunday at midnight.
