- Born
- Birth nameMichael John Kricfalusi
- Nicknames
- Raymond Spum
- John K.
- Height5′ 11″ (1.80 m)
- Canadian-born cartoon cartoonist Kricfalusi began his career by working on low end Saturday morning cartoons like The Jetsons (1962) revival and Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids (1972). In 1987, Kricfalusi's mentor, Ralph Bakshi, saved him by hiring him as supervising director on his show Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures (1987). The show was canceled after a scene where Mighty Mouse sniffed a flower to get superpowers and some people thought he was using cocaine. Soon afterwards, Nickelodeon bought his twisted brainchild The Ren & Stimpy Show (1991). But after continuous battles over script content and control, he was fired from his own show in 1992. After he was fired, he furthered his fight for creative freedom by founding a website where he sold dolls of his other characters. He then hired some of his old Ren and Stimpy co-workers and produced the first 'made for the web' cartoon series The Goddamn George Liquor Program (1997). He also created and produced "Weekend Pussy Hunt" another 'made for the web' series. Other work includes directing a Yogi Bear short for Cartoon Network, directing a music video for Björk. And in 2001 he returned to TV with the Saturday morning cartoon for Fox Kids called The Ripping Friends (2001), which he created and produced. By 2019, he released the cartoon by Kickstarter Cans Without Labels (2019).- IMDb Mini Biography By: C. Allen Smith Spaz13_88@email.com
- Parents
- Abstract expressionist backgrounds
- Makes references or tributes to the cartoons from the 1940s-1960s
- Almost always has his cartoons set in a retro or modern retro era
- Uses public domain music for the soundtrack of most of his work.
- Grotesque closeups
- Nearly sued Trey Parker and Matt Stone, because the South Park (1997) character Mr Hankey was similar to his cartoon short, "Nutty the Friendly Dump". It was eventually proved to be a coincidence.
- Billy West refuses to work with him ever again, citing having a bad experience with him on and off The Ren & Stimpy Show (1991). In particular, Kricfalusi demanded West quit the show alongside him in order to force the network to hire him back even though West needed the job and could have been blacklisted alongside Kricfalusi had he done it and failed.
- In March of 2003, it was announced that the TNN cable network had hired him to re-start the series "Ren and Stimpy" with new episodes (He had been originally fired from the project when it ran on Nickelodeon due to production and budget disagreements). Since the resurrected "Ren and Stimpy" series will be on prime-time and NOT on the child-friendly Nickelodeon, there will be greater creative freedom in the show's writing (and presumably, content). Kricfalusi has promised his fans that "Ren is still an asshole and Stimpy is still a retard."
- When approached by Nickelodeon to do a cartoon series, he gave them the characters Ren and Stimpy because he didn't want to risk losing the rights to his original two characters, George Liquor and Jimmy the Idiot Boy (Ren and Stimpy were originally the two characters' pets). In fact, he was right-- after 'Ren and Stimpy' was a big hit, Nickelodeon fired him and kept the show.
- He based the voice of Ren from The Ren & Stimpy Show (1991) on Peter Lorre. While that of Stimpy (voiced by Billy West) is based on Larry Fine of The Three Stooges.
- (The censorship of his work on the "Nickelodeon" kids network): "The main thing is that they never understood the show. Even the basics. I'm not talking about the outrageous stuff. Just talking about things like "Well, we'd like to do a cartoon with Ren and Stimpy in space." The response was, "What do you mean in space? How could they get in space?" Well, I'd say, "They're just in space in this cartoon." "That doesn't make any sense," they'd reply. "How will the kids understand it?" Well, I'd ask, "Haven't you people ever watched cartoons before? Sometimes Bugs Bunny's in space, sometimes he's a caveman, sometimes he's in a forest. It's a cartoon." They never quite got that."
- Saturday mornings were hilarious in Ottawa because we didn't get Saturday morning cartoons until years after they were started in the States. So the poor kids growing up in Ottawa, man, you know what we got on Saturday mornings? We got Bowling for Dollars (1972). We got The Bingo Show - there was a show about Bingo! You would watch people sitting at a table filling out Bingo cards, but it had the coolest title sequence. It had all these balls going down the video tubes, flying around everywhere. It was mesmerizing. I think the best show on Saturday morning was wrestling. It was the Canadian wrestling. It had the Vachon brothers from Quebec - Mad Dog Vachon and all that. (Edouard) Carpentier, the French guy who did all these flips and things. He was always teamed with a guy who later changed his name to Andre The Giant, but I think he was called something else. I don't remember who he was.
- I just knew at the regular networks there was no way in the world they would buy my stuff undiluted. So I diluted it. I hid the Ren and Stimpy characters, surrounding them with a bunch of kids in a show called 'Your Gang.' And I made up a bogus pitch about it being socially conscious.
- The Ripping Friends (2001) is about the world's most manly men, four guys who go around the world kicking ass and taking the law into their own hands and making the world a safe place in which to be manly. They're kind of the opposite of what men are brainwashed into being these days. They're like old-fashioned men, before political correctness. You ever see young guys now, where they're all hugging each other and shit like that? Trying to convince the girls that they're sensitive so they can get laid? Pile of crap.
- People deserve to have cruelty inflicted upon them, but animals don't.
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