Slimed!: An Oral History of Nickelodeon's Golden Age

by Mathew Klickstein

  ALAN GOODMAN: The fact is that Nickelodeon was really created between demographics. Personalities are built in, but it’s when you become aware of your own personality that your memories begin. That’s where that tween demographic kind of asserts itself: six to eleven. That’s where you’re coming into your own, becoming aware of your own personality. By the time you hit twelve, you’re kind of off into a new thing at that point.

  DEE LADUKE: When that hormone shift starts happening, that’s when you start to dream about separating from your family. Hey Dude being on a dude ranch was a romantic setting that most kids can only dream about, but that would still be a safe setting. Kids that age are just starting to be free: free to pursue relationships, free to have their first jobs. This was a show for eight- to ten-year-olds, not the older kids who were in it. It was an aspirational series for kids to think about where they’d be four years from now.

  RITA HESTER: We referred to our live theatrical work as “tween” entertainment, and we actually coined that phrase. We never heard anyone else say “tween” in the eighties. It was kids who were older but not yet in high school. It was skewed to kids who didn’t quite know who they were yet.

  MIKE KLINGHOFFER: And that’s the way almost all the Nickelodeon shows at that point in time came about: You need to find the group you are aiming at and then hope it is going to work “lower” and “upper.”

  MIKE SPELLER: I was still young enough where I could have fun with the kids on Welcome Freshmen during the downtimes but too young to try to be paternal, for sure.

  KIRK BAILY: Most of those kids were first-timers, so with me being an older actor, they vacillated between thinking of me as a mentor, a confidant, an older brother, or a father figure.

  ABBY HAGYARD: It was an absolute honor to work with someone like Les Lye. He was a legend and an unsung hero. Such a kind, sweet guy. And silly as hell. Over the years, my greatest joy—and it was hard to do—was to surprise him in something.

  MARJORIE SILCOFF: Making Les laugh was better than gold. Those of us who did that will take it to our grave. It was a real testament to him that he could appreciate the comedy of a teenager.

  JUSTIN CAMMY: Les Lye was a hoot even when he wasn’t on the set.

  BRENDA MASON: Les was in so many sketches that he often didn’t know all of his lines. You’ll notice he usually has a clipboard in his hand. His script was attached to it. I loved him and miss him.

  ABBY HAGYARD: The reason they hired an adult male actor and an adult female actor was because we provided the structure for the kids. Nickelodeon was doing the same thing for the shows it chose: providing structure to allow these producers of these crazy, unique shows to be a little more free-form and to take risks that they might not otherwise have been able to take.

  JUDY GRAFE: It felt like that’s what it should be. There was always in the back of my mind that Pete & Pete was obviously about the two boys, so I was always aware that I was there to be a straight man, sort of. But every once in a while it would occur to me, “Okay, yeah, they get their influence from whom? Oh, let’s see: Mom and Dad!”

  TOBY HUSS: Hardy Rawls is a sweet, regular, solid man. And a guy like my character, dancing around saying “pipe” all the time, didn’t exactly fit into his worldview. But he was pretty generous. Sometimes I’d work to confound Hardy. Hardy rolled with everything. He’s a supreme nut.

  HARDY RAWLS: Most of the time I would look at Toby and say, “What are you doing?” There was no problem for me to react to that as an actor. And when Toby says, “Hold me, son. Hold me!” he would add lines like, “You have cold hands for a man, Don.”

  CHUCK VINSON: Elizabeth Hess was always fun. Joe O’Connor, I think, had to understand that this was a kids’ show and that the main character was a kid. Joe’s a great actor, but after a while you kinda have to take a backseat and understand that it’s CLARISSA Explains It All, not The Darling Family.

  ELIZABETH HESS: Mitchell Kriegman told me after the second or third episode, “Elizabeth, I know you have a very big range as an actress and . . . you’re just not going to be able to use it all in this.” And I totally, completely understood what that meant. When kids tune into the show, no matter what happens in it, they know that the grounding in it is the mom. No matter how odd things get, Janet Darling will be there at the end of the day.

  GERRY LAYBOURNE: To work at Nick, you had to believe in what we were doing, you had to like to play, and you had to like kids.

  FRED SEIBERT: We were not kids. We didn’t have kids. I’m not sure we liked kids.

  MELANIE CHARTOFF: I don’t have kids, although all my friends act like kids.

  KATHERINE DIECKMANN: We were all in our twenties, so we didn’t know what kids were like. None of us had children. None of us had any idea what kids were like . . . except maybe our own childhood—which Will McRobb and I referenced a lot. Will would write a bully and we would be like, “Just like Donnie Young.”

  DANNY TAMBERELLI: Pete & Pete was sort of Will McRobb’s and Chris Viscardi’s idea of their unique childhood fantasy world. And that’s where Wellsville and all the quirky, left-of-the-dial humor came from.

  JOE STILLMAN: Will had a particular relationship with his father that had been a very informing principle for him in his life, some of it positive, some of it less positive.

  WILL MCROBB: My father and Mr. Wrigley have similarities. My father was ROTC, lots of stories of driving tanks . . . The perfect embodiment of these classic dad convictions. He was an outdoorsman and I was content to read in my room. At one point when I was younger, he became completely fed up with me farting as much as I did. It was a pivotal moment when I saw his sarcasm and humor come together in a perfect storm. “We’re going to build you a farting room.” He sketched the dimensions on an envelope. It was rewritten to become one of our “sixty-second” Pete’s, called “The Burping Room.” A lot of that dad stuff was an homage to my father.

  JOHN KRICFALUSI: I did the vein-popping stuff sometimes; my dad was like that when I was growing up. I always had to keep from laughing. And the more I snickered at his lectures, the more his pecs would twitch and his veins would bulge.

  BILL WRAY: John would tell all these stories about his dad. About what a horrible, horrible person he was. John had a famous story that we used later on where he had spent the whole summer drawing a cartoon book to give to his father for Christmas and then his father said, “You wasted a whole summer on this?” and tossed it in the fire.

  JIM GOMEZ: There was the story about John’s dad burning his comics and all that. Initially, John used to portray his father as an evil ogre monster who lorded over him and made his life miserable. I never met his father, but other people who met him said he was the nicest guy. And I know he was helping John out a lot.

  BILL WRAY: You meet him . . . and he’s the greatest guy in the world and has been supporting John all this time so John could endeavor to make cartoons. Are they guilt payments, or was John a storyteller from day one? Nobody knows.

  WILL MCROBB: There’s a cruel streak in John and some of the characters he had. John had some anger issues that made their way into Ren & Stimpy.

  JOE STILLMAN: Will always had a lot of edge in his writing, and I think Little Pete is kind of Will’s id coming out from his childhood to get revenge on his father.

  MICHAEL MARONNA: Chris, Will, and Katherine probably made the show and designed the show at the right time. They—in their twenties and thirties—were still close enough where they could still clearly feel that nostalgia and see what resonates, what is fake, what is being used by the next generation that doesn’t ring true.

  D.J. MACHALE: That was the thing that kind of separated Are You Afraid of the Dark? from a lot of other shows. A writer would come in and say he had an idea for something—maybe a haunted car that eats people. “Okay . . . but who are the kids?” It’s when we’re with those kids that we can find out about the ha
unted car. We had real kids with real, interesting stories that intersected with whatever the spooky thing would be.

  ROSS HULL: When they had callbacks was when D.J. came in, and I really remember meeting him, because he had this presence about him. It wasn’t intimidating. I kind of felt like there was almost this instant connection in terms of just getting what it was he was trying to do. And I think he read my personality.

  JOANNA GARCIA: D.J. MacHale wasn’t afraid to get down and dirty and hang out with the kids. He was just a fun guy to work with. We always felt really connected to him.

  JEFF FISHER: I’m still a big kid, you know. You never lose that. That’s what D.J. was like, too.

  ERIK MACARTHUR: Steve Slavkin was a big, soft kid. He’s just a good dude. Has some kids of his own.

  STEVE SLAVKIN: I wouldn’t go so far as to say “father figure,” but I was twice their age, so maybe they thought of me as an older sibling. I definitely looked out for them. Wanted to make sure they were happy. Games for them on set, tutors, making sure they were safe at all times. Made sure we covered all the laws we needed to. Took care of their parents, made sure they were comfortable, and included them in everything.

  JOE O’CONNOR: Once, later on in the show, Sean O’Neal was doing something in the hallway and I went, “Hey, Sean. Stop that!” And he turned around and went, “Hey, you’re not my father.” He got to that age where he was getting a little rebellious. But he was right.

  SEAN O’NEAL: It was very much like having a mom and dad on set.

  MITCHELL KRIEGMAN: I felt very protective of Melissa and was making sure she had money for clothes and that her guardian was taking care of her all right. It was my highest priority. She was like my daughter for those years, and I think about it a lot because my daughter is that age now.

  MELISSA JOAN HART: Mitchell looked out for me. He was worried about things. All the pitfalls of being a child star: where my money was going, how I was behaving . . . that kind of thing. He would always come down to Orlando and visit and take me to my favorite restaurants. He would get me great birthday gifts, cared about me, and took care of me.

  CHRISTINE TAYLOR: Our director, Fred Keller, was the father figure trying to help us navigate through it all, because our parents weren’t there. They would come in and out, but Fred was the real father figure to me at the time. And his wife was there, too.

  ROGER PRICE: I often told them something along these lines: “I am not your parent. I do not have to love you. I am not your teacher. I do not have to educate you or improve you or give you a second chance. I am a producer, and I have a show to make. You get some free drama training from one of the best teachers there is. You get selected for the show by doing your best to do what Carole and I ask you to do. I select from those of you that I believe will be best for the show, and these are not necessarily the ones I like best, or even like at all. What you or your parents want has nothing to do with it. What I want has nothing to do with it. It is all down to what is best for the show. If chosen, you will give up your time, do what you are told, do your very best, never give us any hassles, and get well paid for it. That’s all there is to it.”

  BOB BLACK: Every once in a while, I’ll see Simon Cowell in action, and he kind of reminds me of Roger. That blunt, to-the-point, British producer type. Although Roger was never as mean.

  CHUCK VINSON: I think Melissa did a Jell-O commercial with Bill Cosby when she was really young. So that was an ongoing joke. She would say, “I bet they didn’t do this on the Cosby set!”

  ELIZABETH HESS: That added element of having a guy friend come in through the window? Wow, how revolutionary is that?

  MITCHELL KRIEGMAN: I wanted this boy who was in Clarissa’s life to be her friend, and I didn’t want him to have to go up the stairs or through the front door and talk to her parents every time. It was a way to get him in her bedroom and start interacting faster. And it was also a way to show that they had this real friendship that wasn’t about anything sexual. They were friends, and I wanted to keep it pre-sexual. Which worked . . . right up until she was sixteen.

  CHUCK VINSON: Initially, they were just young as hell. Then the voice starts getting deeper and Sam’s hair started to be stylized a little bit more . . . It became an ongoing joke, like, they’re getting a little bit old here for having this guy using a ladder and coming up to her room. People understand they’re close friends, but the reality is she’s gonna be changing clothes more often . . . and these characters have to grow with the show.

  SEAN O’NEAL: We were definitely going through life at that point, so they included that in the scripts.

  DAVID ELLIS: The show started with Clarissa at thirteen and ended with her at sixteen, almost seventeen. We had to update her room every season as the show evolved. She had a pet alligator in a little wading pool in the beginning, and we had to get rid of him after a while. That might have also been pressure from the ASPCA, though.

  ELIZABETH HESS: I asked Mitchell why he cast me. I’m not like, you know, a commercial mom. And he said, “You know, all little boys want to fall in love with their mothers, and they want a sexy mom. You’re a sexy mom.” Well, that’s enough to flatter any actress!

  DEBBY BEECE: There was a term we used—URST: UnResolved Sexual Tension—when we were trying to develop tension between characters in our shows.

  GEOFFREY DARBY: Really, believe it or not, URST is all about the hair. I can’t say enough about the importance of hair.

  SEAN O’NEAL: I had been in New York before, but this was above and beyond. We arrived at the audition and I saw Melissa, who I believe was eating a bagel. I was there for a few minutes, possibly had read the scene, and then Mitchell asked me to leave the room. Before I stepped out, though, he told me to mess up my hair. I was a nutcase when I was in school and a little bit of a class clown, so I always used to rub my heavy-duty cowlicks, which made my hair stand on end. When I left the room and messed up my hair, I came back in and Mitchell said, “Yeah, you’ve got the job.”

  GEOFFREY DARBY: Since boys mature slower than girls, we were thinking more about young girls. This is in any of the psychology readings we were going through back then. URST, more than anything, was about affection and not so much about sexuality and that when young girls are getting older, they go from having affection for their girlfriends to boys in their classes or wherever they may be. So by having longer, more feminine hair for some of the boys—and you can see this every few years with teen idols or whatever—the girls can transfer their affection. And it’s unattainable, that’s very important, too; it’s gotta be unattainable affection, because they’re on a TV show—to the boys that they’re watching on the shows. And then as the girls continue to get older, they start reacting against the good-boy, more feminine look, and that’s when the boys’ hair is cut to make them look less feminine.

  SEAN O’NEAL: As Sam got older, he got a little bit less—like everybody, I guess—cutesy and more manly.

  SARAH CONDON: We did a fair amount of cutting his hair and dealing with his clothes to turn him into the character that we wanted him to be.

  ROGER PRICE: Teenage girls seem to like young and girlish boys for their sex fantasies, for that is the basis of pop star worship.

  SCOTT WEBB: Slime was also a big part of how we perceived URST. It’s, “When I go out and get messy, I’m doing something I know my parents don’t approve of. But man, it feels good.” And sex is like that. That was the other way we used slime.

  DEBBY BEECE: Green slime was not an example of URST. Everybody had their own takes on things. It could be a real free-for-all at Nickelodeon.

  ALISON FANELLI: We were all really close, and it was really hard for Michael Maronna and me when they started writing the romantic stuff on Pete & Pete. The kisses were absolutely horrific for us both. Both times, we avoided each other for the entire week. It was pretty difficult. As soon as they’d get their take, we’d be emba
rrassed for a couple of hours after. Michael asked Katherine to shoot the kiss scenes early in the week so we could get them over with. In the marching band episode, they did that very last, so we were tortured the entire week. We got over it fine.

  SEAN O’NEAL: Melissa and I were old enough and had a boyfriend and girlfriend when we did the date scene. I still remember the tie I wore and the fact that the set was that little Italian joint. We were comfortable with it.

  MICHAEL BOWER: There was the episode where I was the fat guy trying to get the girl. Dina. I don’t think Heidi wanted to be a part of it. A part of me in any way. Whether it was because of BO or whatever, she was not happy getting ready to dance with me. She did not want to rehearse. She shied away from me. I had to make this joke while eating pizza, and I kept doing it because she literally couldn’t stop laughing.

  HEIDI LUCAS: When Michael as Donkeylips was trying to tell me a funny joke and he had pizza in his mouth, he was just trying to be personable. But I thought I was going to lose it . . . and I did!

  MICHAEL BOWER: She was so nervous. It was embarrassing because it was sort of a love scene and she was a young girl. She was not ready to deal with that.

  HEIDI LUCAS: There’s one outtake of me just absolutely losing it. You can hear the director in the back: “Heidi! Get your stuff together!” “I’m sorry! He’s really funny!” “I know! He’s supposed to be funny. Pull it together!”

  MICHAEL BOWER: The director, Peter Baldwin, was like, “C’mon! We gotta do this! He’s making you laugh. Get your shit together!” She finally came through in the end, and the result was great.

  MEGAN BERWICK: With the episode where ZZ falls for Budnick, I think the writers just watched us, and I don’t think anybody missed the fact that I thought Danny Cooksey absolutely walked on water. He and I never dated. He was much, much older than me. He never took advantage of his big brother thing over me.