Transcript:Commentary:Space Pilot 3000

Commentary Participants:
 * David X. Cohen (DXC)
 * Matt Groening (MG)
 * Gregg Vanzo (GV)
 * John DiMaggio (JD)
 * Rich Moore (RM)
 * Note: Question marks (?) means I am not at present entirely sure who it is that is speaking.
 * Note: Three question marks (???) means I am not sure of whether the word I have suggested is the correct one.

Matt Groening: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the audio commentary for the pilot episode of Futurama. This is Matt Groening. Gregg Vanzo: Gregg Vanzo, co-supervising animator, director. John DiMaggio: John DiMaggio, voice of Bender and other characters. David X. Cohen: David Cohen, executive producer, head writer. Rich Moore: And Rich Moore, co-supervising director and co-director of this episode... with Gregg. GV: Oh yeah, I forgot about that. DXC: Oh, and Matt and I wrote this episode, also. MG: This is a tough thing, to get the show off the ground. And pilots in general probably are pretty tough for everybody. But to do a show where you're setting up a story that takes place a thousand years in the future, and what we tried to do, we tried to lay in a lot of little secrets in this episode that we would pay off later. [pause] Should we tell some of them or just leave them? DXC: Maybe we'll just point them out and let people figure them out for themselves, and say "secret!". There's a cool one coming up in a&mdash; just a few minutes. MG: What's great about this, and I – tip of the hat to Rough Draft, is how good this looks. The first episode is – the show have evolved a little bit, but it doesn't – you know – it doesn't look like a different show. DXC: Rough Draft are our animation studio, by the way. MG: Right. DXC: [I.C. Weiner note is shown.] That's my parents' home address; 405. Different street, but that's where the number comes from. ?: Wow! Everything is of significance! [Fry is opening his beer and making his mockery toast; so along with Fry] ... millennium. DXC: [Over the countdown montage] This idea came to me in the shower. I remember thinking about it in the shower one morning. MG: The fact that they are during the countdown for New Year's, all around the world, is a bit of a stretch, but&mdash; DXC: The idea that they are in different timezones&mdash;
 * [Nibbler's shadow appears.]

MG & DXC: Secret!
 * [Laughter erupts.]

DXC: That's gonna pay off in a few years from now. [Fry has fallen into the tube, and the days are starting to spin away.] Matt, I remember an early drawing you did that looked just like this. Your conception for this scene was in your mind early on. ?: And I have that drawing. MG: This is inspired by the – you know – The Time Machine.

?: This is great... JD: Is that another secret? Why that building didn't get destroyed? DXC: Err... sure. JD: A secret that you don't know! DXC: It is so secret, that there is not one person on Earth that knows the answer. The script changed a lot – really a lot – from early versions of this, but we finally decided that it was kinda filmantically??? important to end this. We want to end this cold opening at the moment Fry was in the future. It seemed like, that was the big change in his life. We decided that was the place to start the main title. GV: First shot of New New York – that was the first 3D shot that we animated. DXC: Oh really? So that was sort of an experiment whether you could do that or not. ?: Here is... the introduction of the theme song. I think, the funkiest, by far, on the air of any other show. Period. DXC: It's good. <!-- -Moore This opening sequence; when we saw it for the first time -- fully animated -- we thought; "this is too fast, you can't see what's going on, that's too crazy".

-Cohen Now it's like-- bring it on.

-Gregg Directed by Mike Smith.

-Moore Yeah, great animator.

-Gregg Fantastic job. Great.

-Cohen In one of the early drafts, when Fry was first woke up, he was immediately dragged to an auction, where he was bought by the Professor for spare organs.

[Matt laughs]

-Cohen Now there was kind of goal for Matt and I from early on, that they would have all this cool technology, like they have on Star Trek and Star Wars, but it was gonna malfunction like technology always does. So, you know, we show those sliding doors, but they hit you in the head.

-Moore I think this is the first time we see Leela.

-Matt Yes.

-Cohen You had, Matt. Another thing, Matt had early on was the idea that he wanted this one-eyed, beautiful character. Where did that come from?

-Matt Err... no, I just thought it would be really cool to do "sexy babe", err, you know, science-fiction style heroine and -- but give her one eye. And see if we can still make her... comely and attacktive.

-Cohen Were there--?

-? And she is, I've seen her on the Internet. [laughter]

-Cohen So, Rich and Gregg, are there difficulties in drawing a one-eyed character? What problems did that cause?

-Moore Well, first we thought it would be difficult, but now, we've gotten used to it, so it's pretty easy to do. Right, Gregg?

-Gregg Yeah, it's--

-Cohen You used the hair; you cheated a little bit?

-Moore Yeah, learn cheats like the hair and the-- and again the expressions like a frowning brow is diffuclt, but once we get down--

-Gregg Like a sad eye and frown eye are a little tricky.

-Moore Yeah, hopefully, she never gets a front haircut.

-Cohen It was another long scene here in the pilot, actually which was even particially animated where we had decided to rewrite it, where this complicated device was hooked up to Fry's head, when they were studying him and we saw all these scenes from his past, including his birth and going up to college, Coney Island, guidance concellor.

-? There was a lot of stuff.

-Cohen We were very over amibitious in the beginning. We probably had 2 hours of material for the pilot and realised we could not possibly use it all.

-John Wasn't this the highest rated debut in Fox history? Am I mistaken in saying that?

-? I think it was.

-Matt I can't remember. It did really well. And much to the surprised of Fox, because they were very alarmed by this show-- this episode. David and I waited to pitch this thing and-- everybody got really excited and they ordered 13 episodes on the spot. And they said, "well, show us what you got" and all we had was some notes for this script and-- they couldn't understand. 'cause we said that we didn't want the people to be dark and drippy like Blade Runner, but we didn't want it to be blant and boring like The Jetsons. And the loved The Jetsons. And they said, "argh, it's the greatest!", you know and-- they couldn't understand how the future could be fun with a one-eyed alien woman and-- a crazy--

-Cohen And a suicide bo--

-Matt And a suicide booth, but they said, "why are people lined up to kill themselves on New Year's Eve if it's so great, hmm?"

-Cohen The decission we came to was basically that if we wanted to be able to do any kind of commentary on life today, then the future would have to have good elements and bad elements. It couldn't be a Utopia or a total Distopia.

-Gregg Yeah, you know, exactly, either way, a Utopia or a complete Distopia would be boring after a while.

-? John or Moore Yeah, that line was originally "JFK, Jr. airport".

-Cohen That's right.

-? John or Moore But unfortunately--

-Cohen It actually aired once with that guy saying he wanted to go to JFK, Jr. airport and then there was the tragedy with JFK, Jr. in the plane crash, so we decided, because it was a plane and an airport, we should change it.

-Moore This is our only Simpsons reference? Right?

-Cohen What was it?

-Moore Blinky, the three-eyed fish.

-Cohen Oh, that's right.

-Gregg That was a joke that went around and around with him coming out of the tube, that he was going to hit a mattress or [something] at the end.

-Moore Yeah, we didn't wanna kill him.

-Gregg Yeah, it was lots of different ways.

-John This is the introduction of Bender! Hey! There I-- [Bender voice] there's me!

-John Now, that's the first words, but-- you know what, I audienced for the-- when I audienced for this show, I audienced and I audienced for the professor as well. And I used that voice for the professor and I used that voice, and I also used-- [URL's voice] I also used URL's voice [normal] for Bender. So I did a couple of different things.

-Cohen It was actually a producer we worked with named Jason Grood(??), who came up with the idea that you should reaudience with your professor voice as Bender and that's what we went with. It was very hard to decide what a robot should sound like, we auidenced dozens--

-John Every robot in Hollywood. [laughter] David Duchovny was around, Kevin Causner(??) was-- no.

-Matt No, we did. Because how does a robot sound? I mean, if you're doing comedy, you don't want [mechanical voice] the robot to sound like this [normal], which most people did.

-Cohen There was another early version of the script, inwhich Fry woke up and went straight to Eller's Island and the Statue of Liberty for prossessing. And he fell out of the head of the Statue of Liberty and the statue moved and cut him. These are all the things you missed, viewers. [pause] Its weapons are great.

-Gregg We gotta bring those back.

-Matt Be quienup??? suicide booth was inspired by a Donald Duck cartoon, in which Donald Duck went to a museum of the future and he did all these quienup??? devices that injured him.

-Cohen I have to admit that we kinda let the idea of these chips fall by the wayside over the years, people kinda take the jobs they want to, we've dodged this issue. But it's an interesting idea.

-? No, they have chips.

-Cohen They have the chips.

-? We just don't talk about it.

-Cohen On the show, yeah. On the show we don't talk about it. They've come back once or twice, but turned out not to be that pevidible??? in their use. Olde Fortran is a joke on Olde English. And look at that, that's a critical thing in the background, there, that sign for Slurm.

-? Is that a stone? (???)

-Cohen Exactly

-John And that's a real belch, by the way.

-? What does it say, "drink"?

-Cohen "Drink", it's the alien language letters say D-R-I-N-K; "drink Slurm", elsewhere in this episode we showed a banner all in English, that said "drink Slurm". That was our clue to people, how to translate those *five* letters, D, R, I, N, K. Based on that, they translated all of the alien language within a couple of hours since this being on the air. We thought it would be more challenging than that, but people were pretty on the ball. So, we later introduced a second alien language, which is much hard to translate and people finally got it, but only after--

-Moore Did they get it?

-Cohen Yeah, they got it. Took a few months though.

-Moore Wow.

-Cohen We may have to do a third one, that's computational difficult to translate.

-John To master the Bender belch, by the way--

-? We worked hard on that alien language too.

-John Ah yeah, all you have to is go, is say "ai-". Just go "ai-", when you're belching and it's a Bender belch, just go "ai-". And it'll be a Bender belch.

-? That's it?

-John O oh, now there's gonna be kids Bender belching all over.

-Gregg And yes, we know the wrist banner is on the *wrong* arm.

-Cohen Oh, is it? She wears it on the right arm?

-Gregg Yeah.

-Cohen You kinda think it's the kinda thing you can get away with easily.

-Gregg Those people on the Internet, they're-- they're brutal.

-? Ah, the Head Museum.

-Moore Ah, having Leonard Nimoy coming in and do the-- do this, actually in this very studio--

-Cohen This room.

-Moore - was-- that was a real treat, that felt like an endorsement. Hey, we can't go wrong now.

-Cohen Yeah, that's was a truth reel??? for me.

-? Hot dog on a stick.

-Cohen Any specific place the heads in jars came from? The idea?

-Matt That was just a standard science-fiction cliché. [him] Yay!

-Cohen And there is Matt's appearance in series. [pause] I remember Matt just taking glee in the idea that so many years down the line, we could still make a living making fun of Richard Nixon.

-Matt I was so mad at Nixon, you know, as a kid growing up, he was just a jerk. To be able to-- if I could have known back then, in 1999, I'd still get to make fun of him. It would have cheered me up.

-Moore Actually, the nose thing, that was a-- that was a big thing to actually get the designers to draw her nose that big, because they thought it was hideous. That it-- that cartoon heroines must have tiny noses.

-Cohen How does the character designs differ from your original sketches, Matt? I know Bender had antennas that were like ears.

-Matt Bender is-- except for having little ear antennas, but that's pretty close, Bender's pretty close. Fry's definitely been cleaned up, but I have hysteria about animation design what makes memorable characters are characters that you can identify in silhouette. Look at the characters on The Simpsons and my comics Life in Hell, if you put them in silhouette, there're still very easily identifiable and I try to do the same thing on Futurama as well. So that's why Fry has those two fork things in his hair, Bender has a little antenna and Leela has her ponytail.

-Matt Oh and, Fry's wearing James Dean's outfit in Rebel without a Cause.

-Cohen What was the animation difficulties in making Bender speak? He is the only robot, for the most part on our show, that has lip sync.

-Gregg We tried doing a test where his mouth just lit up, you know when he talks, the syllables, I love the dialogue.

-Moore It just wasn't looking good?

-Cohen Less expressive for a major character to not have lip sync.

-John Let me ask you something, now you said it was James Dean's outfit from Rebel without a Cause. It's kinda funny, because we had the Greemer??? at The Griter's??? Park Observatory.

-Cohen That's right.

-John You know, I am-- on the planitarium screen -- which was really amazing experience -- but, you know, it was our little tribute to Led Zeppelin or something like that I guess. But it's kinda interesting that we just did that... and that night I visited Salminou's??? grave.

-Cohen That above there was some alien graffiti, that was our test to see if they had translated the language, it says "Venusians, go home". And sure enough, they were able to translate it in one airing.

-? Wow. Old New York

-Cohen See this drawing here of Bender's angry eyes? One of our producers, Claudia ??? and I used to just laugh at avariciously??? when we watched this animation first came in. It's so funny about him for no reason to be mad, evil...

-Gregg I always love that shot.

-Moore The master of the lean in.

-John Yes!

-? Reveal!

-Gregg A lot of storyboard artist will ask on a Bender line boarding, "is this line-- should this line be a lean in?". [laughter] "Nah, just a regular."

-Cohen In the very early conception of the series, Fry wasn't even a delivery boy, he was a night watchman at the cryogenics lab. One very early one.

-Moore We went through a lot of editing to figure how we were gonna get this show off the ground, figure out what the premise was and he's a delivery boy in the future and what the whole series is about.

-Cohen We also considered making him captain of the ship at one point, instead of Leela, but it seemed more fun to have him be an underdog.

-Gregg Wasn't he in an early early version a soldier or something like an army man? I remember drawing you had--

-Cohen You're thinking of G.I. Joe.

-Matt You may be right, I can't remember. I can't remember, that'll be in the book. Copy table bar.

-Cohen That's his first appearance. That's really Dick Clark. Actually, there's a whole bunch of Dick Clark that we just could not use 'cause we didn't have enough time to get it on the air and it was very funny.

-? The heads of Shana--?

-Cohen The heads of Shanané???.

-Moore Dick Clark was a really good sport and he came in and he read the script and like after having it read'en it, he said, "I have no idea what I just said". [laughter] "I don't get it, but I take your word for it."

-Gregg I love this machine that seems to be the only use that it has is for people to--

-Cohen Nephew detector!

-Gregg Stick your fingers in and the detector relation--

-Matt With a little light bulb.

-Cohen This is -- if you compare the professor's voice hear to subsequence episodes and seasons, it really changed a lot.

-Moore This is the introduction of the ship?

-Cohen Yep, first appearance of the ship.

-Matt Notice the ship has an overbite, like all other characters.

-Cohen One of the interesting things about this ship and other parts of the shop is that certain things like that is done in 3D - computer graphics, but then blended in with the 2D, which is not easy to do and still make it look like a drawing.

-John Brick drop! Brick drop! The brick-- [laughter]

-Cohen Secret phrase comes to mind.

-Moore Fox didn't like that joke, either, did they?

-Cohen I doubt it.

-Moore Then use it in the promo!

-Cohen You reminded me of one other funny thing from Fox, from the very beginning when Fry is on the propulator, we had a note from the Fox censor, and I quote from betam???, "standard caution on the propulator". [laughter] You would never figure what that meant. Apparently, they had seen the propulator in many other episodes of other series and they had some standard...

-John By the way, URL is me in the morning, for any ladies who have the DVD, they'd be watching.

-Cohen You notice, they would say-- there's a joke there in the future, the French language is gone and they just speak English in France.

-Cohen That's a cool shot.

-Gregg That whole sequence, I think came out really good. I remember seeing it, and hoping, "god, I hope we can do this on a weekly basis".

-? Is that a speaker right there on the floor?

-Gregg [laughs] Yes.

-? Without it, you ??? on it.

-Cohen That was little improv by Billy West there, we left in.

-? Oh really?

-John Katey Saegal. Just felt like saying it.

-Cohen I love that...

-? It's great.

-Gregg Wow, it really has-- it's changed a lot.

-John [immittating the professor's voice and muttering]

-John By the way, Billy West and I do duelling professors, we David Bowie. The professor sings David Bowie. [professor's voice] Ground control to major Tom.

-Cohen So, Matt, what you think now looking back at the pilot? How does it hold up?

-Matt I-- we did a good job. I mean, everybody did. Great voices, great writing, and-- great music, Christen??? did great animation-- incredible animation. Unlike anything. I just gotta talk about the Curiosity Company, the-- production company with this thing, I use a clip of my father, called a study and ???, which he made in 1964 using that little bit [water drop sound effects] or water drop sounds. It's a tribute to my dad. That's reflection of a surfboard.

-John Ah, wow, secret... -->