Club Aquatica Interview - 29 Oct 2003
From Homestar Runner Wiki
In late 2003, Dan of Club Aquatica interviewed Matt Chapman about art changes, free time, Homeschool Winner, and much more.
The Club Aquatica site closed in 2004.
Contents |
[edit] Transcript
DAN: Give me a brief history of how you got started.
MATT CHAPMAN: Well, we were just looking around in a bookstore in the Children's book section, and we were kinda bored, we didn't see anything that we really liked, so we decided to make our own, you know, just as a joke to make fun of kids' books. So we wrote The Homestar Runner Enters the Strongest Man in the World Contest, and I think that that's still in the Museum right now.
DAN: Yeah, it is. {Audio starts}
MATT CHAPMAN: Yeah, so we just made ten copies of it at Kinko's and gave it to friends. And that's how Homestar Runner got started. That's where it came from initially, we didn't really do anything with it for like, four years, until we started messing around on the web, and learning flash, and since we already had the characters, we were like, "Hey, let's try to animate these guys." So we started doing that, it started out as a hobby, and something to show to our friends, and now we make a living off of it, somehow… It's pretty awesome.
DAN: I have all of your shirts right now, except the Teen Girl Squad shirt, plus a Homestar hoodie.
MATT CHAPMAN: Really? Awesome!
DAN: Yeah, I'm wearing the Strong Bad Mask shirt right now.
MATT CHAPMAN: Awesome, thank you for supporting us.
DAN: Yeah, no prob. I'm gonna get a Trogdor hoodie.
MATT CHAPMAN: Oh, well good. We were hoping people would like Trogdor, we thought he's pretty big.
DAN: Yeah, perhaps next introduce a Homsar hoodie?
MATT CHAPMAN: Homsar hoodie? Alright, we'll think about that one.
DAN: Okay. [shuffles papers] The storybook leads to the next question. How did you come up with the idea for Strong Bad and Homestar? I mean, their physiology alone is… strange.
MATT CHAPMAN: Yeah, they're not quite human, and they're not quite animal. One of the things that's never been a conscious thing; They first came up with the idea for the kids book. And they got "Okay, his name is Homestar Runner-"
DAN: Now, isn't that from a friend of yours who said Mark Lemke was the Home Star Runner For the Braves?
MATT CHAPMAN: Wha? How did you know that?
DAN: Well, word gets around.
MATT CHAPMAN: Well nice work! Yes, that was our friend Jamey Huggins who actually coined the Term Homestar Runner; Winn-Dixie was a grocery store, and he was making fun of their ad, but he couldn't remember it, it was like, "Mark Lemke: All Star 2nd-Baseman for the Braves!" And he couldn't remember it, he said, "Mark Lemke: Uh, Home-Star-Runner for the Braves!" And uh, so that's where that came from. And we figures that his name is Homestar Runner, so he didn't need arms. He's a Runner. And since it was a children's book, it seemed kinda "Hello Kitty"-ish just making him have no arms. Strong Bad, he was supposed to be a bad guy, and when we were kids, the epitome of a bad guy was masked wrestlers. So then, you know, to put the icing on the cake, we put boxing gloves on, so it was like was he a boxer or a wrestler? He's just bad. But it wasn't until we started animating him that it wasn't that he wasn't wearing them, but it was part of his physiology; we had originally planned to eventually put in lips and teeth, but it just turned out way funnier to keep it that way. It evolved just from trying to be weird, but it turns out that Homestar is actually the easiest one to draw, because he doesn't have arms, like the King of Town or Marzipan. A lot of people think we did that on purpose, but obviously, we didn't originally plan on animating it.
DAN: I can tell you from experience that Homestar is pretty easy to draw.
MATT CHAPMAN: Right, exactly.
DAN: And I've noticed that over time that Homestar gets taller, and Strong Bad gets the lens flare in the eye; was that conscious? At a set time?
MATT CHAPMAN: It's all sorta evolved; It's not like we say, "Let's make Homestar look like this next year." It all happens in one day. I think the current one happened in the fluffy commercial is getting his lines wrong. Mike had just drawn HS more angular, not more round in the JJ contest, and we just updated everything else to look like that. So its just that that little flicker looks cooler, and we're probably going to update it later on down the road, but there's no real master plan or anything.
DAN: The Jumping Jack contest and Marshmallow's Last Stand. Will you rerelease those?
MATT CHAPMAN: Those will be back on someday. We can't disclose why they're off, it's a personal reason. If all goes well, they'll be back on the site; we'd like to have everything we've ever done on the site, and it sucks we had to take them off. They'll be back on someday.
DAN: Do you think you'll make em into DVDs, like Yello Dello and King of Town?
MATT CHAPMAN: Uh, yeah, that's hilarious because everyone on the message boards just assumes that we took em down to do that, I don't know, maybe that's the sorta thing that if we're able to put them back up, we'll do some extra stuff.
DAN: What do you do in your spare time?
MATT CHAPMAN: Um, we really don't have too much. We mostly just hang out with friends. But because we do this for a living and we work at home, it kinda just takes over your life; we're always messing around with it.
DAN: But like, when do you start working on the next Strong Bad email or toon?
MATT CHAPMAN: We're actually working on it all week. We'll check out, like, one or two hundred emails in a sitting, and if one catches our eye, we'll plot it out kinda, but we really work best with the Strong Bad emails to do it all in one big shot over the weekend. We'd like to have, like, a backlog of Strong Bad emails. So the whole month is done and ready.
DAN: You know about the Tab button?
MATT CHAPMAN: Yeah, we're glad that that's out there, and we don't hate people who use that, you know, we have the secrets out there, we want people to see them, that's why we put it there.
DAN: I just tell my friends to use the tab button to find the funniest parts.
MATT CHAPMAN: {laughter}
DAN: The 'O' thing on the keyboard in Mile, where it shows Strong Bad rolling on the hill, what's that from? Wasn't that from an old intro?
MATT CHAPMAN: Yeah, that was an old intro, where it showed Homestar running up the hill, I think that's still in the Museum. And we just thought that it'd be funny to show The Cheat messing around with our old Flash.
DAN: That's Mike impersonating your voices, right?
MATT CHAPMAN: Yeah, and it's been fun, you know, being able to sit back and let Mike voice as The Cheat does more and more flash. And he does a really funny job of it too.
DAN: That was great when he said, "Halfway to go, I have to break through this brick wall!"
MATT CHAPMAN: That's MY favorite line too! There's just something about the way he says it, it sounds like The Cheat is reading his lines really badly and is screwing up.
DAN: So in Free Country, it's actually The Cheat doing the voices?
MATT CHAPMAN: Yeah, and that's funny 'cos, it's like, if The Cheat can do that, why can't he just talk? Well, that's just not The Cheat's voice. He speaks The Cheat, he can just do really good impressions.
DAN: Well, they're not really good.
MATT CHAPMAN: {laughter}
DAN: What were you two like as kids? Were you nerdy, or popular? Or on the football team?
MATT CHAPMAN: Heh, I don't remember being particularly nerdy or particularly popular, which probably means that we were really nerdy. I don't know, we fought a lot as kids, but we've always done stuff together, like made drawings and comic books and stuff.
DAN: If there's an argument, does that mean that there's no toon that week?
MATT CHAPMAN: Not really, I mean, we do fight over our personal issues, but it's rarely over the website. We don't disagree a lot; we tend to feed on each other.
DAN: It'd be kinda a waste of an argument, eh?
MATT CHAPMAN: Exactly.
DAN: What's your favorite toon?
MATT CHAPMAN: I was a big fan of Dangeresque and Personal Favorites, those were really fun to do. I really liked the Kids' Book one we did recently.
DAN: Beth looks like a Dude.
MATT CHAPMAN: That she does. And it's good that those are more recent, and at times we feel that we can't keep doing them as well as we used to, or that we're running out of ideas, but those are all pretty new and some of the better ones we've done, ever. So, it's encouraging to do new ones and feel that they're classics and can stand up to Trogdor or Spring Cleaning.
DAN: Or The Basics.
MATT CHAPMAN: Oh, you liked The Basics! Awesome!
DAN: "You gotta pull out something, not like organs or anything"
MATT CHAPMAN: {laughter} Nice.
DAN: I practiced, thank you. What's the theme for this year's Halloween toon?
MATT CHAPMAN: We're in the midst of finishing it; we're aiming to beat Charlie Brown, which comes on at eight, I think, and we're trying to get it up before then. We're actually putting the finishing touches on it right now. It sorta centers around Marzipan; She's trying to contact a dearly departed by having a séance with Strong Sad. It all revolves around that, really. You'll see.
DAN: You have any pets?
MATT CHAPMAN: Yeah, in the Website email, you see there's a picture of a cat on a football, and that's my cat, Mabel.
DAN: Aww, she's pretty cute. So how did you make the puppet's thing? Was that kinda spur of the moment?
MATT CHAPMAN: We have a friend who used to work for the Center of Puppetry arts in Atlanta, and he's really talented, so we became friends with this guy, we just asked him, "Could we hire you to make us some puppets?" And he made that Homestar one. And we were pleased, and we just wanted to do something with it, and we had never done any video on the site, so we gave it a shot. And it was really fun and we're hoping to do more video stuff in the future so..
DAN: Wasn't that a The Cheat plushie?
MATT CHAPMAN: That is, yes, those are in production overseas, those were prototypes. We were hoping they'd be done by Christmas, but we're thinking February, but they won't be, because they have to come over on a big boat and all that junk. They're going to be called, "'Kick The Cheat' The Cheat," and when you kick him, he makes one of four sounds. So the whole point is that you kick The Cheat and he squeals.
DAN: That's gonna rule. I've always wanted to kick the Cheat.
MATT CHAPMAN: And it's great 'cos he's about life size, like he's about a foot tall. So it's like you've got your own little The Cheat there with you.
DAN: The only problem is that he doesn't translate too well into 3D. You know, he's got the eyes on one side, like Homestar.
MATT CHAPMAN: Well, we realized that when we made the action figures, but he's still pretty cuddly as a 3D plush doll. He's like a flounder, you know? They only have eyes on one side.
DAN: I watched the G4 special and the guys at Homestar Rules Message boards noticed there was like, a The Cheat Statue or Cookie Jar behind Mike. Was that real?
MATT CHAPMAN: I think I know what you're talking about. Yeah, that was just a The Cheat plushie. The lighting was funky, so it may have looked it, but uh no, there's no The Cheat *heh* cookie jar or anything.
DAN: So what was it like to be on G4?
MATT CHAPMAN: Oh, it was awesome! It just so happens that I went to film school with this girl who works at G4. And they wanted to do a show on someone in the Southeast, and one of the guys there was like, "I think Homestar Runner is from the Southeast," so she was like "Homestar Runner?" And she went to the website and was like, "Mike and Matt Chapman? I know those guys!" So she got us. It was really cool, obviously, we like video games a lot, we watch G4 a lot because they play Starcade.
DAN: I loved that show when I was, like, 10 or 11.
MATT CHAPMAN: They were all really nice and it was all pretty cool. It was fun. It was our first TV publicity.
DAN: The Cheat's playing a Casio in the Puppet thing. Is that what you play?
MATT CHAPMAN: Yeah, that's where all of those cheesy tunes on the site come from. We have, like, a stack of five old Casios and almost all the music on the site comes from those.
DAN: They're really not half bad; for what you're working with, you do a pretty good job.
MATT CHAPMAN: Well, Thank you. It lends itself that it's sorta video-gamey; it's in the vein we created.
DAN: How much control do you have over what you sell?
MATT CHAPMAN: We have total control. We can keep whatever is selling well on there. And if we take stuff down, it's because it wasn't selling [well] or don't want to sell anymore. We try to make it so that we're only selling stuff that we think is cool or that we would buy ourselves.
DAN: Besides the Strong Sad shirts, what stuff do you think will make a comeback? Like, the coasters or tattoos?
MATT CHAPMAN: There's stuff like that but we wish we could make them cooler than just some one sided coasters, so we won't bring them back like they were, at least. But um, you probably wouldn't care, but I think that we're going to redo the Marzipan shirts, because the ladies have been demanding them.
DAN: It said late October...?
MATT CHAPMAN: Yeah, but that's not going to happen. We've been a lot busier than we thought we'd be.
DAN: Personally, I don't mind.
MATT CHAPMAN: Okay, well that's good. Mike designs them all, like I mean, we both conceptualize the designs, but Mike usually ends up doing the actual shirt designs.
DAN: So like the Homsar shirt was him?
MATT CHAPMAN: Yep.
DAN: Raised by a Cup of Coffee.
MATT CHAPMAN: We actually had little emblems for all of them. Song from Sixties, Pride of Peaches, and Raised by a Cup of Coffee. We were going to do luck of the draw, but then we thought people might complain, "I wanted this one!" We figured no one would complain about raised by a cup of coffee.
DAN: Everyone likes that. In fact, Homsar was actually my first purchase. I was going to buy Trogdor, but then I thought that Homsar was funnier.
MATT CHAPMAN: Awesome.
DAN: A lot of us back at the forums would love to see a Coach Z, Bubs, or Marshie shirt. Anything in the works?
MATT CHAPMAN: Bubs is probably the next shirt you'll see. And I'm glad to hear that Marshie is in demand. We wanted to do a Marshie shirt, but we weren't sure how much of a mass appeal Marshie has. But we really want to make a Poopsmith shirt.
DAN: I never have been much of a fan of the Poopsmith or the King of Town, because they're both pretty clichéd and don't have much personality.
MATT CHAPMAN: That's kinda their point, that's why we don't use them too much.
DAN: So the Poopsmith is the Bathroom joke personified?
MATT CHAPMAN: Yeah, he's just embodied into one character.
DAN: What about the Coach Z shirt?
MATT CHAPMAN: You tell me, we can't decide whether we want a green shirt with just the "Z" medallion on it or if people would rather have a picture of Coach Z on it.
DAN: We were thinking you could put Coach Z swinging his whistle around, and on the back, there could be the medallion or, "Great Jaerb!", or just homestarrunner.com.
MATT CHAPMAN: From now on, I think we may try, depending on what the shirt is, do not just a URL, but like, with the Bubs shirt, we could do something like "Come on By, we're always awesome!"
DAN: I always thought "D for Sale" would go nicely.
MATT CHAPMAN: That's a good idea. Glad you caught that joke. That's one of my favorites; I just flipped that in there when we were doing the flash.
DAN: I though that was really funny. My friend Richie says he won't buy a Strong Sad shirt until it says "I Don't Like Food Anymore" on the back.
MATT CHAPMAN: {laughter} That's funny, because we were actually talking about making a shirt like that.
DAN: That'd be great! That'd sell!
MATT CHAPMAN: We weren't quite sure, because that's a really new quote, we weren't sure if people considered that to be a good Strong Sad quote or not.
DAN: Everybody loves that one.
MATT CHAPMAN: The next you'll actually see will be the CD. It's done and it should be up in the next week or two, actually.
DAN: I was going to ask you when you were planning to release [the CD] and the DVD.
MATT CHAPMAN: The DVD actually has become a way bigger project than we thought, and it's still happening, it's just become a lot more work, so that definitely won't be until 2004. But the CD will definitely be up before Christmas.
DAN: What'll be on the DVD? Will it be all SB emails on one DVD and all the toons on another?
MATT CHAPMAN: Eventually, yeah, that's the way it'll work out. Actually, the Strong Bad emails are too big for one DVD.
DAN: Whoa.
MATT CHAPMAN: You can't even fit them on one DVD. So there may be Strong Bad emails Volume One and two. And we came up with a really cool way of incorporating all of the Easter eggs, so no Easter egg will be left off. And we're adding, you know, a bunch of new extra stuff.
DAN: Excellent. That sounds awesome.
MATT CHAPMAN: Yeah, we're pretty excited. We hope people dig it. And then the CD; we worked with a local band and it's probably half classic songs from the site that we rerecorded and expanded, and half brand new stuff.
DAN: Everyone wants to hear, "One time I saw Homestar punch a kitten in the throat."
MATT CHAPMAN: {Laughter} No, that didn't make it.
DAN: Aw, man.
MATT CHAPMAN: There's a plan that we're actually going to do in addition to what's on the CD, we're probably going to a bunch of other songs that are free for download on the site, and I'll have to put that suggestion. And that one was one that didn't quite make the cut.
DAN: I noticed that you changed it from 1800BADSONG to 1800SBSINGS was that because BADSONG was already taken.
MATT CHAPMAN: Yeah, some limousine service in NYC or something, and never paid attention to the fact that it was actually a valid phone number. Nobody actually asked us, but we got fans telling us, "Hey, I called that thing and some dude yelled at me."
DAN: Why would they call when they know it's not real?
MATT CHAPMAN: Dunno.
DAN: Is Marzipan really the King of Town's daughter?
MATT CHAPMAN: No, that's a horrible rumor.
DAN: It's just that it said that on the old characters menu.
MATT CHAPMAN: I DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT!
DAN: {laughter} So that idea was abandoned?
MATT CHAPMAN: Yeah, exactly, that was just something that we just toyed around with there briefly, but then decided that's not the way we wanted it to go. We just put that up, but most people don't visit the Museum, so hopefully it doesn't cause too much mass confusion.
DAN: Now why do you always dress Homestar up as a rock star? Or is that even conscious?
MATT CHAPMAN: No, it's just that so far he's been some kind of meter or figurehead, Kurt Cobain was a lead singer of a big rock group, Angus Young is the first thing you think of when you think of AC/DC, and uh…
DAN: Greatest American Hero.
MATT CHAPMAN: Greatest American Hero is obvious. This year he's not a rock star. You'll just have to wait and see.
DAN: What are the two characters in the back of the Bubs DANcer? There's Strong Glad and Homeschool.
MATT CHAPMAN: Not sure who Strong Glad is. We never made her, but there is Homeschool Winner, who was a joke character. Early on, one of our friends didn't know what the website was called and she's like, "What's your website? HomeschoolWinner.com?"
DAN: How about a sample of what Homeschool would sound like?
MATT CHAPMAN: Oh, I don't even know. We always thought he'd be a big nerd, so just imagine a generic nerd voice, with maybe a creepy edge to him. {in background} Yes Mike? {inaudible speech, returns to foreground} Oh, that's right. There is Strong Glad. Mike just pointed out in one of the sketchbooks, from the Museum; there is a Strong Glad in with the Strong Sad, with like, Yello Dello legs, sexy lady legs. So yeah, I lied to you there.
DAN : {As Bubs} Liar!
MATT CHAPMAN: {laughter}
DAN: Have you ever had any encounters with fans on the street?
MATT CHAPMAN: Not really. It's not like people recognize us, who we are, really, I mean, there is the G4 thing, but we're not really striking, you know. But we have had people here and there were they knew that the people from Homestar Runner would be there, and everybody was really cool, but it can be a little overwhelming sometimes, it's just me and my brother, it's not like you're in a rock band where you see the crowd every night when you play a show and stuff.
DAN: Well, maybe not in that respect but it has grown tremendously.
MATT CHAPMAN: Well, I mean, that's the thing where we get a lot of emails and such, but that's kinda all you see. But it's really cool to see and meet people in person. And it's really, just over this summer, last summer (2003) when we first started to meet people in person. But it's been really cool.
DAN: But even here in Indiana, I'd say one in every seven people have at least heard of Homestar Runner.
MATT CHAPMAN: That's where we're from you know.
DAN: Whoa, really?
MATT CHAPMAN: Yeah, we're born Hoosiers.
DAN: Really?
MATT CHAPMAN: Yeah, we grew up in Indianapolis.
DAN: I live in Carmel, which is a little north.
MATT CHAPMAN: Yeah, we actually have some friends that are from Carmel who live down here. One of the guys from the band that we worked on with the CD is from Carmel. All of the guys in that band graduated from I.U. (Indiana University).
DAN: My brothers at I.U. right now.
MATT CHAPMAN: Oh, okay.
DAN: [shuffles papers] Any plans to go mainstream? Like you guys were talking about maybe a Charlie Brown-like special.
MATT CHAPMAN: That would be ideal. We just don't want a TV show; it seems like so many things on TV get ruined when you commercialize it or put it in mainstream. We're as mainstream as I ever thought we'd be. I mean, the idea that some kid from Indiana is calling me, knowing what my site is is more mainstream than I ever thought we'd be. It's gone way beyond anything we thought it could. The Charlie Brown thing is always something we've liked, and if we had to, that's what we'd do for a TV special. We're not going to go out and try to do it though. We'll do stuff like make cool toys and stuff and start putting stuff on the DVD; so no real plans to go mainstream, no. Because everything gets ruined when it does that.
DAN: You turned down the Adult swim thing?
MATT CHAPMAN: {laughter} No, that's hilarious, because we know people who work there, and no one has ever asked us anything about a TV show, and it's funny that someone from Adult Swim claims that they approached us and we said no, I even read that somewhere, no one from Cartoon Network has ever asked us about that.
DAN: A lot of people from the Forums have suggested that Homestar become a TV show, but all of the older members say, no it'd get ruined. Frankly, I'd have to agree because I don't want to see Homestar sold in Hot Topic or the DVD in Best Buy. Your sentiments?
MATT CHAPMAN: Yeah, exactly. It just sorta bastardizes it and gives it the wrong feeling. It's not that we always have to be underground, it's just that I don't have any interest in people being able to go to a mall and buy stuff from our website. It's like, just go to our website and if you don't like ordering thing online, then don't worry about it. I think it takes the older crowd to understand that. The little ones just want it to be... SpongeBob.
DAN: {shudders} Yeah, I know. I have several ideas that aren't really T-shirts, like CGNU basketball jerseys.
MATT CHAPMAN: Whoa, that's pretty cool.
DAN: I was thinking it could say, like, "Dumple" on the front, and maybe "Homestar" in college print and a star for his number.
MATT CHAPMAN: Those'd sell well up there in basketball country.
DAN: Yeah It's a basketball hotbed up here.
MATT CHAPMAN: Exactly.
DAN: And Homestar Runner polo shirts. Like the patches from the hats could be sewn onto the polo shirts.
MATT CHAPMAN: We don't wear polos, and we don't really want to sell anything that we wouldn't wear. Because white-collar working guys just want to wear Homestar to casual Friday, and so there'd probably be people who'd buy 'em. If we did make polos, it'd probably be ThoraxCorp or Videlectrix.
DAN: I just revisited ThoraxCorp, and I thought it was alright last time, but this time I found it absolutely hilarious. Like everyone's faces are blanked out in one way or another.
MATT CHAPMAN: I was bored, I made that site like, three years ago, and I made it in a week, and it was just something to show to my friend at work. But we started linking to it from the website, and I guess more people saw it so…
DAN: I thought it was pretty funny. How about a 20X6 full length toon?
MATT CHAPMAN: Yeah, there's one in the works right now. So stay tuned. Maybe something in 3 parts.
DAN: When's your next full length toon going to be?
MATT CHAPMAN: There are two in production, but I'm not going to say anything yet for fear of I don't keep my word, and we're always way too busy so…
DAN: I always wondered that since Marzipan answering machines can't take too long, why don't you make more?
MATT CHAPMAN: Well, yeah, but there's only so many SB prank calls you can make, and we don't want it to get old. It would just get burnt out way quicker than Strong Bad emails.
DAN: There's always a new email, but not always a new conversation or prank call.
MATT CHAPMAN: Exactly
DAN: Do you watch a lot of TV? Like Seinfeld or Friends?
MATT CHAPMAN: We watch not a lot of TV, Mike had been watching a lot of Hang Time and Saved by the Bell, a lot of those old Crappy TeenNBC shows.
DAN: Saved by the Bell. Heh.
MATT CHAPMAN: But we watch a lot of stuff like Seinfeld and Simpsons and Friends.
DAN: I'm a pretty big Seinfeld fan.
MATT CHAPMAN: That's a good program.
DAN: How's Strong Bad type with Boxing gloves?
MATT CHAPMAN: Oh, why you little!
DAN: You knew it was coming.
MATT CHAPMAN: Yeah, it's inevitable.
DAN: Can I go ahead and ask an email while I'm on the phone with you?
MATT CHAPMAN: {laughter} Alright, but I can't make you any guarantees, just because you're delivering it in person.
DAN: How's The Cheat type with flippers?
MATT CHAPMAN: Alright, How does The Cheat type with flippers? I'll just write that under the The Cheat pumpkin stencil here…
DAN: How many emails does Strong Bad get every day?
MATT CHAPMAN: ...Mike says that The Cheat does not have flippers, he clearly has nubs.
DAN: Alright, then how's he type with nubs?
MATT CHAPMAN: {laughter, quotes from Mike:} Yeah, Bubs has flippers more than The Cheat.
DAN: Yeah. {Chuckle}
MATT CHAPMAN: Strong Bad gets a ridiculous amount of email, like Strong Bad gets between 5000-8000 a day.
DAN: {incredulously} 5000-8000?!
MATT CHAPMAN: We had to put a cap on it because we were getting too much and it was crashing the mail server. And a lot of it's crap, too, you know like it's a public address, and if people have to put their email address in, they put Strong Bad in. There are a lot of emails in there that are to Strong Bad and there are a lot of emails that are crap.
DAN: So that's 40,000 emails a week. How can you possibly sort through that?
MATT CHAPMAN: We can't. That's what I'm saying. We go through several hundred every time we sit down to go through them. But that's only scratching the tip of the iceberg.
DAN: What about really long emails?
MATT CHAPMAN: No, that's generally a no-no. We'll edit emails that were too long that got to the point already. But if it's like four or five sentences, then when you're staring at 40,000 emails per week, you kinda just move on to the next one. Here's a little inside secret: we may do something like "How to not get your email picked." We may put it on the website, or the DVD, or both. We think that what we put in the emails is enough though. Like, obviously don't ask him how he types with boxing gloves...
DAN: Don't call him Stong Bad.
MATT CHAPMAN: Yeah.
DAN: [to himself] Stong Bad. {chuckle}
MATT CHAPMAN: But people don't seem to get the message. Usually if Strong Bad answers an email one week, then the next week everyone is like, "Hey Strong Bad, why don't you do another Monster Truck show?" or, "Why don't you do a BMX show?" or, "I liked your Monster Truck show, why don't you do... something like a Monster Truck show?"
DAN: So no repeats?
MATT CHAPMAN: Well, it's just pointless. I mean, we've already done it. It's fine, we're glad you like it, but it's just that we're not going to do another one two weeks in a row.
DAN: You think you might come out with a 1936 shirt?
MATT CHAPMAN: We always wanted to, we never know if people would dig it or not. We love it, but it seems like the little kids just don't get it.
DAN: Well, I'm not a huge fan of 1936 toons, I liked "It's the Sneak," but, I would still buy a 1936 shirt.
MATT CHAPMAN: Good, because we figured we could do a shirt with the whole gang, because it'd only be, like, four colors, because it's all gray and black and white.
DAN: Is there a 1936 version of Coach Z or KOT or Poopsmith?
MATT CHAPMAN: Yes, there's definitely Coach Z, he's the football player in the Ballad of the Sneak. And the King of Town, he's the Kaiser, and he's the Devil, and the Poopsmith has just shown up as a little demon so far. But those aren't the official 1936 versions.
DAN: So it's like: They look like them and you had them in mind when you made them, but they're not the official counterparts?
MATT CHAPMAN: Yeah, exactly. I mean, maybe they'll be official versions and maybe we won't even bother.
DAN: Is Pan-Pan supposed to be Pom-Pom?
MATT CHAPMAN: Yes. But I mean, for the 20X6 version, it's not like there's going to be a doppelganger for every character, but yeah, Pan-Pan is supposed to be Pom-Pom
DAN: Guess that's it for now.
MATT CHAPMAN: Awesome, alright, well, we're going to get this new toon up, keep checking back tonight for updates.
DAN: You bet.
MATT CHAPMAN: Take it easy, Dan.
DAN: Thanks, bye.
MATT CHAPMAN: Bye.
[edit] Interviewer Comments
"Upon relistening and re-reading the transcript, I've got to say I'm a little embarrassed. First, I was still a freshman and my voice hadn't quite matured. The Interview was intended to get some quotes and topic ideas for a special on Homestar Runner my High School newspaper was running. I afraid when I e-mailed them they were under the impression that I was a writer for a professional newspaper, because I remember Matt being sort of startled when he heard my squeaky voice. I admit being awfully nervous and ended up being a tad on the rude side, in large part due to my anxiousness and desire to 'make friends' with Matt, per se. As I worked my way through the list, you can tell that the interview kind of devolved into a conversation. I also remember that a lot of the questions I asked were questions that were straight from the HSRules message board, as I had asked the forum members to give me some good questions to ask TBC."
[edit] Fun Facts
[edit] Explanations
- This interview touches on the absence of A Jumping Jack Contest and Marshmallow's Last Stand toons from the website.
[edit] Trivia
- Jamey Huggins was a member of the band of Montreal; The Brothers Chaps directed a music video for them in 2006.
[edit] Fast Forward
- Dan's enjoyment of the "I have to break through this brick wall!" line in mile would be recalled by Matt in that email's DVD commentary.
- The forthcoming Halloween toon Matt describes would be released later that day as 3 Times Halloween Funjob.
- Dan asked if they were doing a full-length 20X6 toon. The next 20X6 cartoon would be Under Construction, released in April of the following year.
[edit] External Links
- Read the Club Aquatica interview (mirror)
