Steve Cuden: On today’s StoryBeat…

Tom Ruegger: I learned a great deal from Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera. I learned from them that, you know, cartoons can be as visually amazing as a Bob Clampett cartoon, but they also can be verbally clever, like the best of the Yogis and the Hucks. I really, ultimately, when I was writing animation scripts, I wanted the dialogue to flow almost like, not like poetry, but like music.

I ultimately learned that that’s how I wanted to make the cartoons. 

Announcer: This is Story Beat with Steve Cuden, a podcast for the creative mind. StoryBeat explores how masters of creativity develop and produce brilliant works that people everywhere love and admire. So join us as we discover how talented creators find success in the worlds of imagination and entertainment.

Here now is your host, Steve Cuden. 

Steve Cuden: Thanks for joining us on StoryBeat. We’re coming to you from the Steel City, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. My guest today, Tom Ruegger, is the 14 time Emmy award-winning producer and creative force behind many of the most popular and successful animated TV series of all time.

Tom began his career at Hanna-Barbera Productions working on such familiar cartoon series as Scooby-Doo, the New Flintstones, Casper and Godzilla. Later, as a story editor and producer, he worked on shows like Pound Puppies and Scooby-Doo and Scrappy Doo. Tom created and produced A Pup Named Scooby-Doo, the first Scooby-Doo series to be nominated for an Emmy after honing his writing skills, working at Filmation Studios on TV series like Black Star and Tarzan, Lord of the Jungle, Tom would subsequently join Warner Brothers Animation.

Where he went on to head up production on tiny tune adventures beginning a decade long, wildly successful creative collaboration with Steven Spielberg, spanning five hit series resulting in over 30 Emmy awards in numerous categories. In 1993, in collaboration with Mr. Spielberg, Tom created a cast of breakout characters for Anna Maniacs, the multi award-winning ZA poppin style cartoon show, starring the zany siblings Ko Wacko and dot Warner.

Tom served as the show’s senior producer, story editor, writer, and lyric. Tom was Chief Creative Executive at Warner Brothers Animation during its second Golden Age, along with Gene McCurdy. Tom Executive produced Tasmania and Batman, the animated series, other acclaimed shows Tom has created and or produced include Pinky in the Brain, Freakazoid, Hysteria, Road Rovers and the feature film Batman Mask of the Phantasm. Tom also co-wrote the pilot and served as a script editor of the Emmy Award-winning animated series Tutenstein. So for all those reasons and many more, I’m deeply honored to have the extraordinarily talented, highly influential animator, writer and producer Tom Ruegger joining me today. Tom, welcome to StoryBeat. 

Tom Ruegger: Uh, thanks Steve. Uh, goodnight everybody. It’s been great. Talk to you later.

Steve Cuden: Thank you for joining us. Yes, indeed. 

Tom Ruegger: I can’t top, uh, the intros. Uh, very nice and, uh, I really, it, it sounds 

Steve Cuden: like you may have done a few things. 

Tom Ruegger: Well, yeah, I forgot. Totten. Totten. Stein. Wow. That was with, uh, porch Light. 

Steve Cuden: Indeed. So, let’s go back in time just a little bit. How old were you when you first started paying attention to moving images and storytelling and animation?

Tom Ruegger: Uh, I was probably, you know, it would be television. I was four or five. I was five years old when, um, huckleberry Hound shell went on the air. And, uh, I, I would sit in front of the tv, uh, actually I would lay down on the floor and I, when I had like a drawing pad in front of me with crayons and as I would watch, I would draw whatever I wanted.

I mean, I didn’t always do this. Sometimes I was just riveted watching, uh, Huck and, and Yogi and, and the Mees and. Mr. Jinx, but I did draw and my parents noticed that I was drawing, uh, that I wasn’t tracing drawings of Huckleberry Hound. I was drawing, you know, huckleberry Hound. Wow. So they thought, oh, well he, he’s got something going on here.

So they gave me more paper and, and I, I did the same with the Yogi Bear Show and, and, uh, I watched the Disney, uh, on Sunday night, so. I loved cartoons very much. I love Bugs Bunny. Uh, uh, I was, I grew up in New Jersey, uh, New York area, and every day in the afternoons, uh, different hosts, Chuck McCann, Sandy Becker would have Warner Brother cartoons or any kind of cartoon.

I, I would watch it. So I love cartoons. The Flintstones came on, they were huge. I enjoyed drawing Fred ’cause, uh, the, the Hbar cartoons were fun to draw because Bugs was hard to draw. Mickey and, uh, Donald Duck, they were, they were much tougher. But the Hbar barrel lines were, uh, a little simpler and, uh, the shapes were a little simpler, more, yes.

So I like them a 

Steve Cuden: lot. Sure. So you, you, um, started out toward Hollywood to be an animator, is that correct? I, I did. 

Tom Ruegger: That’s correct. After college, I, I had an animated film and I, I 

Steve Cuden: came out here to get a job. But you didn’t wind up being an animator, but working in animation mostly as a writer and producer.

Have I got that right? Well, I started 

Tom Ruegger: as an assistant animator at Hanna Barbera. And many, many years ago, I started there and I was, uh, animating. Uh, the first day I was assistant animating Godzilla and Jana of the jungle footage and. Just trying to keep a job. I had been offered a job, but it was a trial period, so I had to, I had to survive the first month, so I was taking my work home every day.

And it was all about footage. How much footage could you turn out? And what we needed to be doing is following the rusts of the animators, and we had great animators there. We had, you know, Rudy Cataldi and, and, uh, bolus Jones. And, uh. Fabulous guys who had worked on, they had worked on Betty Boop and, and Donald Duck.

They’d worked on stuff from the thirties and forties, and then they were at Hanna-Barbera handing out the stuff to kids like me who, you know, we barely knew what we were doing, and each scene would have a little chart of where to put the in-between. And we had to, you’d get stuff from like Maury Redden who was one of the animators, and it was, it was just like, it looked like a bunch of scribbles, you know, it’s like, what, what am I looking at?

I’ve gotta, I’ve gotta draw Fred and Barney running through here. What I, I couldn’t even find the lines. And so we had to clean it up, put it on the model, and then move it. And, uh, quite honestly, I, I, I was barely capable of doing that. I was not the greatest of the artists that were there. Did you have animation training in college?

I had made an animated film in college, uh, to say that I was training, I was, I was doing it myself. A guy named Jack Zander gave me a few tips. He was a, he was doing commercials in, in, uh, New York. And I, I did go and visit him a couple times, but my professor in college was a fellow named Maury Rap. Who was one of the writers on Song of the South and uh, uh, he was an uncredited writer on Cinderella, so he had a Disney experience.

Um, but I, I made this animated film in college and, uh, it was really just a tremendous amount of work. It ruined my life for a couple years because it’s so much work. 

Steve Cuden: And, uh, but did you, um, know at that time that you were already pretty decent with story? Was that something that was part of your makeup at the time?

Tom Ruegger: No, I, I didn’t think that I was a story guide in college to avoid having to read books at full. We had to read so much in college. It was just, uh, almost too much for me. And I was an English major in college. And so to survive and to pass. Test to pass essays. We had to write a lot of essays and, uh, final, you know, big essays at the end of a, a term and, and, you know, your senior thesis.

So what I found myself doing, rather than accomplishing all the reading, I would, my papers would be literally fiction. I would write stories rather than these long essays. And I don’t know why these professors permitted it, but they, I think they enjoyed, uh. My writing. I, I know I did this whole thing about, uh, paradise Lost Milton.

Milton. Yeah. And, uh, for the final paper of that class, I wrote Milton coming back to Hollywood to experience the filming of Paradise Lost. And, uh, of course he’s, he’s blind, so he is, he has to just listen to it. But I remember I, I wrote a song for a sequence of that called, uh, purgatory. Here we come, land of Hate and devils glum where Fires will aspire into the night where Boulders, we smolder sizzling bride God and his cruel politics.

Sends us to the river sticks. Flames will be our crucifix of purgatory. Here we come. So, uh, I, so I passed the class and that song to, to prove that, uh, nothing is ever wasted. I use that in, in an maniacs like. 30 years later. So no, no waste. No. 

Steve Cuden: That’s amazing. That really is. And did you have it written down somewhere?

Did you remember it? I remembered 

Tom Ruegger: that one. I remembered that one. And I, there’s one, one thing I wrote in, in high school. I was in a, a class, uh, and it was about Russian literature and I used that on On Road Rovers, which was a cartoon show I made again 30 years later. But that was, uh, Russian names are kind of a game.

There’s a first and the last and middle name giving. The first name is the mom is Char, like Boris Alexander, or Fado. Last name comes from the family, like Kin, Bazel, or Porphyry, but with the middle name. Here comes the fund. The Papa gives his first name to the son. He adds an obit or a yitz to the end.

Here’s an example. So they’ll comprehend the papa’s name, a son of, now here’s the switch. The kid’s middle name is the son of a bitch. And so we, we only aired that one once because we got letters about son of a bitch. I bet you did. Couldn’t you have bleeped it out? Yeah, we should. Uh, so anyway, I had, I knew, I, I liked comedy.

Comedy was really what I, whether you say, oh, did you know you could do story? I was very much into, uh. Comedy in high school for, for final projects. Some friends and I would, would always do a little creative skits rather, rather than the papers we would do, uh, our own radio version of the Fall of the House of Usher.

We, we did a whole piece on American literature. We, we did a version of the Tonight Show and we, we actually filmed it on, on Super eight. It was just a tremendous amount of work. Uh, so I always like to do sort of the non. Serious writing versions of, uh, essays 

Steve Cuden: you were doing parodies way back when you were doing it way before you knew you would ever have a career, right.

That’s, that’s 

Tom Ruegger: absolutely true. And, uh, a friend of mine, uh, Alan Ook would go over to Alan Van’s house and do, uh, uh, I remember we did Devil and Daniel Webster at his house and his dad. He, he, he was a, a blind musician. He could play the piano like nobody was. He couldn’t, he could, he no longer could see. He would just score as we’re doing this dialogue, he would put these piano scores behind it.

It was just fantastic. We’d tape record the whole thing and, uh. Those were so much fun because we had a script, but then we were also goofing around. So there was some improv. It was fabulous. 

Steve Cuden: Well, so you just said something that I think is really key to having a career like yours, which is that you had fun growing up with this kind of work, and I have to imagine, and you correct me if I’m wrong, that your career was a lot of fun.

You had a lot of fun. Well, 

Tom Ruegger: thanks Steve. It’s absolutely, uh, I. Absolutely blessed and so fortunate to have a career that really, and then as I became sort of more like a supervisor, it was just the most entertaining career because I was surrounded by some of the funniest people on earth and. I mean, I don’t know if my job was to laugh, but in my job I laughed a great deal.

I bet. I mean, recording sessions were absolutely hilarious and you know, 

Steve Cuden: well you were working with some of the greatest voice talents ever. 

Tom Ruegger: Absolutely. I 

Steve Cuden: mean, 

Tom Ruegger: from Frank Walker to Rob Paulson, tres Mcg, Moola Marsh, 

Steve Cuden: and Rob Paulson. Yep. Absolutely, absolutely. 

Tom Ruegger: And, uh, just brilliant and Billy West. Billy West, uh, the, the voices that Frank and all those guys could do, I mean, they, that group could record almost anything.

I mean, whether it’s Sirius or Comic, I mean, the impressions that they do, it’s like they do dueling shatner’s and they do, who does the best? Woody Allen and I don’t know which one does the best. Uh, and of course, trusts McNeil can imitate almost anyone. Anywhere. So, uh, they are so entertaining and in between the dialogue lines, they’re cracking wise too.

So there was very, very much fun. 

Steve Cuden: Yeah. Brilliant, brilliant people. And when you’re in the, when you’re a writer, and I’m not telling you anything you don’t know. Well, when you’re a writer of animation and you go into the studio, you’re not sure what’s gonna come out from the page. And they always, at least in my case, they always plused what was on the page.

It never got worse. It always got better. 

Tom Ruegger: No, they, they found things that we didn’t know were there. That’s, that’s, that’s how brilliant these guys were. Uh. I don’t know if kids listen to your show and you can, you could cut this part out, but there was a, a moment in, in one of the ana maniac shows that, uh, it wasn’t gonna be, uh, a controversy.

It wasn’t gonna even be that funny, but Tres McNeil said something that just made it into something that’s now sort of, uh, hazardous to your health. But we had a, a gag with, with Yako. Uh. Just as Hercule Perro. And, uh, he tells dot and, and Wacko to look for clues. Uh oh. Uh, look for fingerprints, see if there are any fingerprints, and, and a few moments later dot says, uh, I found Princes, and you cut to dot.

And she is in her arms holding the, the artist, formerly known as Prince. The, the famous singer and, and Yako says, no, no, no. Fingerprints. Fingerprints. And the script says, the script says Dot just throws him out the portal, he throws prints out the portal and that’s the end of the gag. But. Trust McNeil, who has just arrived at this line in the script.

She had not rehearsed this. She got, she got to that point and she realized that Yakus had fingerprints and she said, oh, I don’t think so. And that line, that’s the line that wasn’t in the script. That now makes it kinda worse. Oh, I don’t think so. Like, she knows that what, what KO’s saying is horrible. And so, uh, somehow we left that in and it’s just, uh, to this day, it’s the most, uh, uh, horrendous line in the series.

Steve Cuden: But it’s still there, which I love. It is still there. It it, I assume it got past BS and p. It got past broadcast standards. Right. 

Tom Ruegger: They’re watching it, you know, they’re busy. They’re saying, oh, uh, fingerprints. Oh, oh, I found prints. Oh, uh, no fingerprint. Oh, I don’t think so. They’re, they’re, they’re probably busy with something else, and they hear that and they, it doesn’t mean anything to ’em.

Absolutely. It went through and we weren’t trying to pull anything really. I don’t think I really got it until it was on the air. 

Steve Cuden: So it’s such a double entendre, but it doesn’t you, it’s perfectly legitimate. 

Tom Ruegger: Yeah, 

Steve Cuden: yeah, that’s true. Which I love. Yeah. Alright, so when you started, you started at Hanna-Barbera and you started at Filmation.

What did you learn in those early days that held you in good stead for the rest of your career? Because that, that had to be your formative years. What did you learn from those folks? 

Tom Ruegger: I learned a great deal from Bill Hannah and, and Joe Barbera. Mm-hmm. I mean, bill Hannah, he was working there and he was in his, he was not a kid.

He was in his late sixties or early seventies. He was working there from like 8:00 AM to like 9:00 PM I mean, this guy worked. He worked and he had this book, or you know, this sort of like clipboard that he carried around. He, he knew everything that was going on at that studio. He had been making cartoons since like 1932, and now it’s literally 50 years later and he is on the job making cartoons now.

Did he love cartoons? I, the guy loved cartoons. The guy loved the process. He got cared. Yeah. Uh, I mean, he had made some of the greatest, uh, cartoons ever with, uh, Tom and Jerry. But then he and Joe, of course, you know, were the pioneers of limited animation for television. You look at, uh, the Huck shows, the yogi shows, they’re, they look very primitive.

They still read beautifully and the, the animation is so simple and they’re popping from pose to pose, but it really still works. And I learned from them that the voice work by Dos Butler and, and Don Messick and June Re and others, and Mel Blank, right? It’s like radio come to life with, with this limited animation.

And uh, they used all the great radio actors of, of, of the earlier era. And so I learned that. You know, cartoons can be as visually amazing as a Bob Clampett cartoon, but they also can be verbally clever, like, uh, the best of the yogis and the hux. So I, I definitely learned that dialogue matters. And I, I think when I finally started writing cartoons, uh, I was very mindful that, uh, yeah, I want something funny visually going on, but I, the dialogue is important too.

I really, ultimately, when I was writing animation scripts and I knew kind of what was going on and I knew what I was gonna see, I, I wrote the dialogue almost entirely for the entire script first, nothing else. ’cause I, I, in my head, I knew what was gonna put in there because I wanted the dialogue to flow almost like, uh, not like poetry, but like music.

It needs to sound. In my head, I want it to sound a certain way and I want it to build. So, uh, I ultimately learned that that’s how I wanted to make, uh, the cartoons. 

Steve Cuden: I often think of Rocky and Bullwinkle as being, it was not a terribly, well, beautifully drawn, animated, animated show, but it was. Absolutely brilliant verbally, and that’s what made that show work.

That’s what you’re talking about. 

Tom Ruegger: Well, now those shows, of course, uh, benefited immensely from the narration of Bill Conrad. Uh, you know, the Rocky Show had Bill Conrad really carrying almost the entire load. I mean, yeah, Boris bad enough would come in, Rocky and Bulling would have an exchange, but boy did Bill Conrad as the narrator carry stuff, and it shows that I ultimately was involved with, I didn’t have that narrator, so our, our characters had to carry it.

Steve Cuden: Mm-hmm. What do you think is more difficult writing comedy? Well, or uh, action. Well, 

Tom Ruegger: for me, I, I, pure action doesn’t really interest me as a, as a creative outlet. Comedy is, is what I really love and care about and, you know, aspire to, uh, even when I’m writing like a Batman, if one of my scripts goes out, if you see a Batman that I’ve written, if there’s no comedy in it, I promise you.

It was in the script, but it got cut out by the story editor because I, I, I don’t even like the dramas not to have light moments, and certainly in the cartoons that I love and care about, uh, you know, an maniacs, pinking the brain. Tiny tunes I’m most proud of, like, uh, the ones that make people laugh. 

Steve Cuden: What is it that you do then to develop your comedy chops?

Is there anything that you do? Is it something you study, somebody you talk to, or is it just so innate and natural that it just comes outta you? Or is there some, some process you go through? 

Tom Ruegger: Well, I think, uh, I was fortunate to grow up in a household, uh, where, you know, comedy, uh, was appreciated, uh, when I was a kid.

The stooges were important. Um, we would watch Ed Sullivan on Sunday nights, which was a, a variety show, years and years ago. And the highlight of those shows would be the comedian would come out, whether it’s Henny Youngman or Jonathan Winters, or Nichols and May. I mean, those were what we waited for.

Those were the, the moments that we, we love Jackie Vernon. I mean, uh. Art Matano dad, Jackie 

Steve Cuden: Mason. 

Tom Ruegger: Yeah. I absolutely love those. And then I would even steal their punchlines and put ’em in little comic strips that I would draw. Jonathan Winters I think was the one that my, my dad particularly loved. ’cause he was 

Steve Cuden: just so zany.

Well, by the time you got to an maniacs, you were really riffing off of the Marx Brothers and the Three Stooges. I mean, that’s definitely 

Tom Ruegger: was obvious by then. We had all had Jonathan Winters in on Tiny Tombs too. And, and, uh, Jonathan Winters, he was very much a presence in Toluca Lake where we would go have lunch at the, there was a, a ham, Honeybaked ham.

We’d go get our sit there and he’d get our sandwiches. Jonathan Winters would come walking down the block. Uh, this is true. He would come in the honey baked ham every day and go table to table and almost like he was the host and he wasn’t. He was just. And he would basically give you about five minutes at each table.

He would pick up the spoons or he would talk about your shirt, and I had a shirt like that. And so anyway, that was to me just the most amazing thing about working in this town. That, uh, then the next day Jonathan would be in the booth, you know, playing, uh, Hampton Pig’s grandfather. I mean, it was just wonderful.

Uh, or actually his father. So I, I think I’ve veered off the answer to the question, but I, I know that comedy 

Steve Cuden: was 

Tom Ruegger: really 

Steve Cuden: everything. Clearly that’s where your main focus has been, and all your, your truly great successes are all comedies. Um, was he allowed to improvise in the studio? Well, it was 

Tom Ruegger: impossible for him not to.

He literally, he, he, he’d sit at the, the mic and he would tell you about things that were going on in his life, or things that he recalled from his past that he wanted to share with you that day. And eventually you would say, could, could you read Line 17 now? And he’d go, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And he would read it, and then it would go on to something else.

So you couldn’t have the whole cast in there with Jonathan. Because you’d never get it done. It would never get done. 

Steve Cuden: Were, were you, were you able to 

Tom Ruegger: incorporate what he said? At times we would, I mean, if it was pertinent to the show or certainly, um, his inflections, his, you know, his, you know, weird laughter or weird, you know, here’s where you fall down on your head, Jonathan.

Oh, you know, he would, oh, my head is, you know, he would do stuff that would be pertinent. Tell, tell 

Steve Cuden: the listeners who Howie Morris was. 

Tom Ruegger: Oh, this is, this could be too long a story. Howie Morris was, uh, one of the, uh, original great members of the cast of something called your Show of shows, which was the Sidd Caesar show in the fifties, and it was imaging Coco Carl Reiner, Howie Morris, and for Sid Caesar.

And, uh, Howie did play was on, um, the Andy Griffith Show. And, uh, he did a, just a tremendous number of voices for Hanna Barbera. And, uh, he, he and Joe Barbera had a breakup. They, they were really working well together, but they, they ultimately, uh, had an argument about, I don’t know what it was, but so he, he came in and he did, uh.

I stinky Dalton. We were doing, John Luden and I were, had written something called the Good, the Bad, the Huckleberry. It was a long form. It was like tremendously long. It, it seemed like it never ended. It was like a two hour block, uh, in prime time, which is too long. But Howie Morris came in and, and Joe Barbera specifically told us.

Now, Tom, uh, I want you to, when you’re recording that Dinky Dalton’s laugh, is this. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. That’s his laugh. It’s always been his laugh. Get Howard to do that. Laugh. Okay. So, uh, of course Gordon Hunt’s the director, and I, I, you know, Gordon’s very busy, so I haven’t even told Gordon about it.

And so we record the whole show. And Gordon, uh, I said, Gordon, uh, Joe Burberry wants a specific, oh, tell Howie what he want. Howie we want, and Howie’s just, oh, he’s doing dinky Dalton. And, uh, Joe wants you to do Dinky Dalton’s laugh. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. And how he said, well then get Joe Barber to come in here and do it, because that’s the laugh on I’m doing that.

And, uh oh golly. 

Steve Cuden: It was just, he was just brutal. So. Alright, let’s talk for a moment about developing series. Okay. Which is a little different than developing a single episode When you get set to. Either somebody says, Hey, we’re interested in the development of a new series, or something occurs to you to develop as a new series.

Where do you begin usually with characters, the location? Where do you begin? 

Tom Ruegger: Yeah, I’d say it, it’s often, we need a show who has some show ideas, so I know for Road Rovers, I, I got a bunch of people together and I said, I wanna do a dog show. And we just started drawing dogs, lots of dogs, different dogs in different situations and.

Ultimately, uh, we put some dogs in some superhero suits and that evolved. Um, now Tiny Tunes for instance, that was the development of, that was Steven and Warner Brothers wanted to do, uh, they wanted to take bugs and Daffy and do sort of junior versions of them. So that’s where I was brought in to develop sort of kid versions.

So that had a great deal of. Obvious backstory to it. In other words, you kind of knew what that was going to be. Now, Adam Maniacs was completely, you know, that was where Freedom reigned because after the success of, uh, tiny Tombs, Stephen was now relaxed. He wasn’t worried that we were gonna ruin his career.

Tiny Tunes was a hit. So he basically said to me, Tom, what do you wanna do next? And I wanted to do new characters, brand new characters. And I, I already had some duck characters in mind, which were from my, my college years, the, the film I had made and I had three of them. And pretty soon we, I had a, a pinky in the brain idea.

’cause that, that was based on. Two guys in the next office. I wanted to do a variety show of a whole bunch of new cartoon characters, new teams of comedy. So Think In the Brain, were based on Tom Mitten and Eddie Fitzgerald, who were in the next office, who, uh, Tom was a very low talker and. I think you know, Tom Minton and, uh, Eddie Fitzgerald was a very loud, boisterous, goofy guy, and Eddie would literally, when everything, Tom would say something very loud and what do you think about that?

And that’s fantastic, Tom, nor. He said the word nerd in real life, which, uh, so I took for that and see here’s this. Shows get developed every certain, every which way. But, so Bruce, Tim, this great artist producer, had made caricatures of everybody in the studio. So I took Bruce Tim’s caricature of Tom Mitten and Bruce Tim’s caricature of Eddie Fitzgerald.

I put big mouse ears on them. I put little red noses on them and. I had the des the designs for Pinky in the Brain. 

Steve Cuden: Oh, that’s hilarious. 

Tom Ruegger: And uh, they were always sort of in there and I was, what? It’s like they’re plotting. It’s like they’re plotting to take over the world. And so that’s the evolution of that.

And then to sell it to Steven, I wrote a little jingle and uh, I went, ’cause I always liked to write the little jingle. So on Saturday morning with Jean McCurdy and Cherry Stoner, we went to Steven Spielberg’s house and we pitched them Yako dot. And many, but we pitched them all these different segments and so for Pinky in the Brain, I held up their drawings and I, and I said the same lyrics that are in the main title, but I didn’t have the tune yet, so I sang it to Singing In the Rain.

They’re Pinky in the Brain. Yes. Pink in the Brain One is a genius. The other’s insane. Their laboratory mice, their jeans have been spliced. They’re dinky, they’re Pinky End The Brain and Spielberg’s looking at me and he goes, sold. Wow. So 

Steve Cuden: that’s, that was not a tough sell. Wow. That must have been a landmark moment for 

Tom Ruegger: you.

Yeah, it was great. So he had already eliminated Minan buttons who are members of the On main cast. He said, we have too many, we have, you know, we have Rita and Run, we have Pink in the brain, we have the Warner. We don’t need another duo like Mindy and Buttons. So at that point. Steven’s wife and a whole parcel of their kids come into the room and, uh, one of the kids, a toddler like two years old, toddling up to, we have all these standups of all the different characters and it goes up to Mindy of Mindy and Buttons who’s been tossed.

I like her, and Steven looks at us and says, Mindy and Buttons are back in the show. So that’s how Mindy and Buttons got in. 

Steve Cuden: The idea of you pitching a cartoon show to Steven Spielberg all by itself is kind of awesome, let alone to get us sold on just one quick pitch and on a sat, it 

Tom Ruegger: was on a Saturday morning at his house eating milk and cookies.

I swear to you. That’s what we were doing there. 

Steve Cuden: Bizarre. That has that is, that’s a phenomenal story. Fun. Fun. That is a lot of fun. Alright, so now you have sold Pinky in the Brain, or an maniacs or whatever you’ve sold to Spielberg, the studio, whoever. Where’s your next step? Is it the development of those characters?

And you 

Tom Ruegger: see, you realize, of course, because Steven endorses it, Jean McCurdy then just calls up. Margaret Les over at Fox and says, so Steven wants to do this thing. Rugers got called Anna Maniacs Un we’re in, you know, it was, it was that, it was that simple. And Warner Brothers, fortunately had a whole bunch of money thanks to the success of the Batman features.

So, uh, they could afford to finance these things. And Steven insisted, you know, it needed to be the full orchestra, so. We were, uh, recording the music at the Eastwood stage there at Warner Brothers. So the next thing, uh, yes, we would spend with, with Sherry Stoner and Paul Rug and, uh, John McCann, Peter Hastings, uh, Deanna Oliver, uh, just a whole bunch of really talented, funny people, and also the artists like Rich Aarons and his entire crew.

We would develop all these characters. Now, we’d already done. Drawing development. ’cause we had pitched, when we pitched it to Steven, we had these beautiful drawings of all the characters. But now we had to like, put them to work, put the characters to work, have the characters. Uh, we had written a bible for, uh, all the characters that, you know, we basically came up with catchphrases and things that they do, and.

And I would say maybe 50%, not, not nearly a hundred percent of the stuff in the Bible got into the series, but you know when something starts working that’s in the Bible that you are using and you’re putting it in and oh yeah, that works. Some of the other stuff just gets 

Steve Cuden: dropped. Explain for the listeners who don’t know what is a Bible and how important is it.

In this case for 

Tom Ruegger: the writers, uh, it proved to be very important. The Bible is, uh, hopefully not terribly long document that explains what the, the premise of the show is. Explains the personality of each character, uh, what they like, what they do, how they behave and perform. Like what’s their funniest thing that they do.

What’s the physically, what do they do? You know, it’s sort of like a full biography of the character. Like, uh, what’s their flaw? What’s their weakness? What’s their, what do they live for? And for the Warners, I mean, their job in the show, I mean, in real life, they, they are just trying to have a good time and invariably they run into, uh, kind of stuffed shirts, uh, people.

Pompous people who are full of themselves that sort of get in the way. And, uh, the Warners, you know, deflate those blustery people. And that was sort of the premise of the Warner, if they’re just out their kids out to have a good time. Of course, pinky, the brain’s premise was that each night they would make a new effort to conquer the world.

Uh, and he had these elaborate plans each time and there were absurd plans that couldn’t work and didn’t work, but they would leave their Acme lab cage and, and try out a new plan every night. Mindy and Buttons was based on, uh, this little girl that lived down the street from our studio. Deanna Oliver would, would walk to the studio every day, and there was a little girl who was.

On a, on a harness, like a dog would be on a harness strapped, not strapped to a tree, but she was on a leash that was hooked to a tree. Oh, and my goodness, uh, Deanna would walk by and the, and the old girl would go, hi lady. Hi lady. And Deanna would go, hi. And that’s where Mindy came from. And so we, we had Mindy’s mother, you’d see her now and then and said, Mindy, hi lady.

No. Call me mom. I’m your mother. Yeah, okay lady. So anyway, there was a dog named buttons in the yard and Mindy would get out of the harness and go off like sweet pea wood in an old Popeye cartoon and walk. Walk on a construction site. And buttons the dog like Lassie would save Timmy in the old Lassie show, uh, buttons would save.

Mindy, Rita and runt were two strays cat and cat and dog, who, uh, were looking for a home. And those were, uh, centered around the voice of, of Rita, uh, Bernadette Peters, who would sing, uh, a beautiful sort of Broadway song in each episode. Um, but the Warner’s had nemesis on the lot. They had, uh, the guard and the psychiatrist and anyway, lots of different elements.

Um, the center of it was the Warner’s lived in a water tower on the Warner’s lot and they would escape every day. And that’s it. 

Steve Cuden: That was the show. So, so, so you drew a huge amount of character work from various real life things. Is that correct? 

Tom Ruegger: Uh, safe to say. Yeah. I mean, I would say our show had definite, uh, there needed to be a reality to the characters for them to play.

They can’t just be complete fantasy characters. So it was all, it was set in our world. Even though characters, we could have a character, we could have a segment go, go back a century, but we always came back to the Warner lot. But we would do, you know, the, the Warners would meet Einstein, the Warners would, would meet Michelangelo, uh, pinky, the brain would be there at the dec signing of the Declaration of Independence.

So we could go anywhere but. Maniacs as a cast were all these zany characters in the main tall, you’ll see them marching along on the stage, so it’s like they all work on the same show. There’s a real, uh, breaking of the fourth wall. I’d say that’s, uh, evident in many of the segments. Mm-hmm. We touch base with the audience saying, yeah, I know you’re watching a cartoon show.

We know we’re we’re in this show, and. We like that. 

Steve Cuden: Well, it’s, it’s again, and let me go back a step. Uh, it felt, it feels very much like the way the Marx brothers did it, where it’s, they’re in a real, a real situation that they’ve made up. But everything is breaking the fourth wall and craziness and, uh, over the top stuff, and then verbal language at the same time.

That’s what this felt like to me, which I think is. Uh, because I, I grew up with those guys and I, I still love them. And so that’s what makes that show your show great. Is that it felt like a cartoon version of that. 

Tom Ruegger: Without a doubt. Without a doubt. Uh, prior to like writing our first scripts, we, uh, spent a couple days watching all of the Marx Brothers just, we all got together and we watched all of them.

We also watched, uh, a movie Hella Popin. By Olson and Johnson. The first 20 minutes of it is among the, it’s maybe the funniest 20 minutes you can find, and it takes place in hell and there’s like dancing and singing. It’s just fantastic. And then, uh, the remaining 60 minutes of the movies, you can just throw it away.

Uh, but just, and, and you can find in, in our show in aime, there’ll be references to Za poppin, uh, just like lines, uh, that we, we borrow. But Marx Brothers huge influence, especially Yako, uh, Yao’s, very much. Uh. If the very first Yacko recordings, Yacko almost is doing an impression of Bracho and, and Rob Paulson, uh, smartly, uh, developed the character’s voice so that, that, that became less and more Rob.

So by going with the Mark Brothers as sort of your, your home base, uh, where you know where you’re starting from, can you imagine a better place to start? No. For comedy, that’s, yeah. There’s no better place. 

Steve Cuden: That’s as good as it gets. Where did the idea of basically riffing on Orson Wells for brain come from?

Tom Ruegger: This is truly a, a serendipitous thing. When we went into re, uh, to audition to do auditions for the brain, we literally did not know. Uh, we had no idea what the brain’s voice would be. We didn’t know, by the way, we didn’t know what, uh, wacko’s voice would be that Jess Harne came in and started doing Beatles.

We said, oh my gosh, that’s really interesting. So we’re doing auditions for Pinky in the Brain. Maurice Lamar comes in. Now Maurice Lamar, we’ve been working with him for years on all sorts of different shows, including tiny Tunes where he was dizzy. Do. Now, Maurice Lamar has memorized in his life because he wants to do this, ’cause he likes it.

He has memorized this series of, uh, recordings about Orson Wells doing commercials for a producer. Radio commercials about peas, peas. Pea grow there. Uh, don’t, don’t you wanna get off the, the field? ’cause the snow peas grow there. What, what are you doing people? So, as Orson Wells doing this, these commercials, and he’s really having problem with the engineers as there’s a gunk.

And what’s a gunk? You know, I can’t do this, you know, I, I take direction from one person, but from two, I just won’t have it. So, Orson Wells is really going off during this commercial. So or so, Maurice Lamar, no matter what show he’s recording, no matter what cartoon character he’s playing, when he comes into a studio and gets behind the mic, his warmup exercise had been for years and continued to be at that point.

Him doing Orson Wells Peas commercial and, and you know, this is Groton’s fish sticks. And so as normal, he was just there and he was just warming up. He was doing, uh, you know, ask two, you know, he, he’s doing his Orson Wells stuff and, and he is got the copy in front of him. I said, and we just said, Maurice, just what you’re doing right there, just start reading the copy.

Same voice. And that’s how, that’s how Orson wells, uh, Maurice Lamar’s, Orson Wells voice became the brain. Well, that’s just 

Steve Cuden: one of the brilliant fines of all time. 

Tom Ruegger: It really worked, didn’t it? Yeah. It’s just like, ’cause Orson was such a character and, and, and Maurice loves 

Steve Cuden: doing it so much. Well, there’s a specific lilt to that voice in a way that he delivers and it’s very specific and it’s so good in that part.

And then counter pointed with by, uh, uh, Rob Paulson, uh, doing Pinky as, uh, just this. Wacko guy. It’s just perfect. 

Tom Ruegger: Fabulous, fabulous, fabulous. And here’s, here’s something else about Rob, uh, Rob doing, um, Yacko, we had all sorts of people coming in for auditions for an maniacs and so, but we really wanted Rob and he, we knew there were gonna be some songs and we knew Rob really was a great singer.

And, uh, we sent 10 auditions to, to Steven for him to. You know, maybe he would like one of those 10, but we numbered them. We didn’t say this is, you know, this is this actor, this is that actor. We just numbered them 1, 2, 3, 5, and we, we put Rob Paulson auditions like at number two, number four, number seven, and number 10.

So he was stacked. It was, it was Rob Paulson stacked and, uh, he picked the Rob Paulson voice, which is 

Steve Cuden: we a great thing. Well, I, and well, you should be, I can’t imagine the show without him. Yeah. Yeah. He Rob Paulson. Um, did a ton of stuff that I wrote in my time doing writing animation. So, uh, I, I was always grateful for his performances.

There are always there, there was never a false note in any of his performances. 

Tom Ruegger: Yes. He always brought so much more to it. Yeah. He goes around the country now with Randy Rogel doing an maniacs in concert and he sings, you know, the United States, Canada, Mexico, Panama, Haiti, Jamaica, Peru, this really long song, the Countries of the World, every Country of the World.

And when we recorded that, he showed up, you know, and you send the, the copy and the guide track to the actors, you know, a couple days before. And sometimes they’ve listened to it. Sometimes they have. Rob came in and had it memorized already. Wow. He is that good. And he also knew this song. This is gonna make it.

And he, he was right. It really kind of made the show it that first week it appeared and it was being played in boardrooms around the country after Honest to God, it, it was just like hot. Yeah. 

Steve Cuden: Yeah. And his performance in it is memorable and that’s why it works. Oh yeah. I don’t know of anyone 

Tom Ruegger: that 

Steve Cuden: can really do it.

And he has to wrap his tongue around all those words. And it’s, uh, to, and you can understand every word, which is a miracle by itself. And it speeds up. Which is 

Tom Ruegger: brutal, 

Steve Cuden: you 

Tom Ruegger: know, he’s, he’s got there and by the end 

Steve Cuden: Oh 

Tom Ruegger: my gosh. 

Steve Cuden: So, so what is your take on, sort of off the comedy topic for a moment on something somewhat serious, which is pitching?

I, I would love to hear from you, you’ve taken thousands of pitches and you’ve given hundreds, if not thousands of pitches. What is your advice for those that are trying to sell something as to the best way to think about pitching and, and to pitch stories? 

Tom Ruegger: Well, this is, uh, of course, uh, one of the great mysteries of life, isn’t it?

The, the whole, the whole pitch thing. Mm-hmm. I’ve written a little thing called, uh, like Tom Rug’s pitch guide, you know, and, uh, I have to pull it out ’cause I haven’t looked at it lately. Um, just so you know, to take advice from me on this is. Potentially, uh, a mistake because, you know, while I’ve had some wonderful successful pitches, I, I, I had, uh, one at Warner Brothers where, you know, I walk in, I pitch something, this is, uh, you know, since I, I left Warner bro, and the guys sitting there and he says, we’re making this show.

And it was like, wow. You know, that’s the kind of thing you wanna hear in a pitch. Uh, they didn’t make the show by the way, but. You know, you can’t win ’em all right. Um, but just so you know, I’ve, I’ve done pitches where, uh, the, to whom I’m pitching, I think it was a cartoon network, and they call my agent and they, they literally said, that is the worst pitch we have ever heard.

Don’t ever send him over here again. So. You know, you can’t win ’em all. Uh, spike and Tony, who do a lot of the, the, uh, uh, stuff at Warner Brothers now on Duck Dodgers and things that they had the same experience where they went and pitched something and they said, you know, worst pitch ever. And, uh, the people there were told, well, these guys are really talented.

They can just, oh, oh, oh, okay. So that’s one thing about the pitch. Make sure you are pre-sold. Make sure that the people sitting there. Know good things about you. If there are bad things about you, don’t, you don’t want ’em to know that. They don’t tell ’em that. But if, if, if, uh, whoever’s sending you in can, can prime them with how wonderful and talented and great you are to have the receivers of the pitch, uh, be, uh, beholden or, or feel positive about you.

Really good. Uh, the more you know in a pitch, the more you know about the person to whom you are pitching. The better. Even if, you know, maybe you and a friend went to the same school or something, or you know, just, uh, or you worked at the same company, maybe know some of the same people. Anything that, that endears you a little bit to this, 

Steve Cuden: uh, person.

So it’s, you need a, you need an edge, a leg up of some kind. Yeah. 

Tom Ruegger: Well, that would be great if you can get it. I mean, they’re getting so many, you know, so many pitches per, I mean, often when you’re pitching, it’s like their pitch day and you’re wedged in there somewhere. On their day where they’re getting a bunch of pitches.

So to uh, stand out nowadays is very tricky. ’cause you can imagine they probably hear, heard every sort of pitch. I mean, there was a point, uh, this is probably five years ago, where I know that at Disney they were getting, uh, musical instruments that have come to life and pitch like every day for like months.

It was in the zeitgeist and I don’t think they ever did anything with it, but. I think you wanna be, you know, you want your one minute pitch, you want your three minute pitch, you want your five minute pitch because the one minute pitch, it needs to go into the next bit. ’cause they can cut you off. Boom. We have a show just like that.

We’re not gonna take the pitch anymore, you know what I mean? You can get cut off real quick. So you do wanna have, when you go in for a pitch, I think you wanna have three things that you’re really comfortable pitching. Also, uh, practice the daylights out of the pitch before going in. Do not wing it. I, I really, I can’t say that enough.

Don’t wing it. ’cause I, I remember, I, I went on a, to, into a pitch with Rob Schneider once who was, uh, Saturday Night Live comedian, and he wanted to wing it. And I said, oh, please, let’s not wing it. No, we’re gonna wing it. We’re gonna wing it. And, and, uh, I, trust me, don’t do it. Don’t do it because there is a certain order.

Uh, if you plan your pitch out, there’s a certain order of of how you want to present the information. In other words, you wanna hold their hand, bring them into your universe, and then start topping yourself and, and holding their interest. And if you see, you’ve lost them at the beginning. Tragic. 

Steve Cuden: Yeah, that would be, uh, I find pitching very unnerving.

I think a lot of people do. It’s always uncomfortable for me because it’s, you feel like you’re in the spotlight in a weird way, and you want to please them. You want to sell. Uh, but it’s very challenging. So I, I, you know, I thank you for s saying what you just said about preparation and, and especially about not winging it as some people try to do.

Well, I’ve been having just a fun, fabulous conversation for almost an hour now with Tom Ruegger, and we’re gonna wind the show down a little bit, and you’ve already told us this huge number, just fantastic stories. I didn’t know we were gonna get so many great stories, but do you have any other stories that are either weird, quirky, offbeats strange or, or just plain funny from all your experiences?

If you, 

Tom Ruegger: if you’ll, uh, permit me, and this’ll probably go on too long, but how I got my first job in, uh, in Hollywood, I, I drove out from New Jersey and, uh, this is many years ago, and I, I, I pulled into a, a, a shabby cheap, uh, ’cause I didn’t have hardly any money, uh, motel on Sunset Boulevard. And I checked into a, like, room number six and there was a phone booth out front and.

From that phone booth, I could see, uh, the Chuck Jones offices, uh, in a, in a tower, uh, down the street. And in another direction, I could see the back sheet, uh, tower where he was working. I mean, I, the addresses. So I got into that booth and I made some phone calls and I called, uh, to see if I could drop my portfolio off.

And anyway, so this phone booth was, uh, controlled. If you’ll. I’ll allow the word by Women of the Night. They, they, and it wasn’t night, it was day, but it was controlled by, uh, a group of young women who, uh, who used this phone, uh, to uh, get. Jobs, they would, phone would co come in, oh, you go over, uh, get on this address.

And they would go scurrying up. So there are several women that hovered around this phone booth and didn’t want me clogging it up with my little phone calls to different studios. So I called Hannah Barbera and they said, who, uh, from this booth? And they said, who would you like to speak to? And I, I was like, oh yeah, I don’t know anybody.

Uh, bill Hanna. ’cause I didn’t know. And they connected me to Bill Hanna’s office and, uh, his secretary. Was very nice. But she said, well, uh, okay, I’ll take your name. I don’t know if he’s gonna call you back, but I, I’ll take your name and, uh, give me your number. And back then is a long time ago, the phone number was actually on the booth.

You could, you could call. So I gave him the number and the, the girls are there, are like, oh gosh, get away. And I said, okay, but listen, if a phone call comes in for me, would you go get me at my room? What? Yeah, Tom Ruger, I, I might get a call. So, uh, I go to my room and like an hour later I get, you know, yeah.

Are you Ruger? Yeah. Well, come on, there’s a phone call for you, but hurry up. We got some lines coming in. We got business to do. So I go running out to the booth and it’s, uh, please hold for Mr. Hunt and uh, click, you know. Oh, this Ruger said. Yeah, Mr. Hannah, I’m out from New Jersey. I’m an animator. I’m looking, we’re really busy over here.

Get over here right away. Click. Wow. We’re really busy. We’re busy. So I, I drove, uh, I got lost on the way. There were several Kabul of. I get to Hanna Barbera, I get into Bill Hanna’s office. I have left my portfolio at Bhes. So all I have is my portfolio now on slides. I got it on slides. So Bill Hanna is up at the window looking at a slide.

Said, what the hell is that? So, well, that’s a dog. That’s not a dog where I come from. Alright, listen, Ruger, I’ll give you a one month, uh, trial period. Uh, start Monday. So that was my first job at Wow. And I, and I survived. I 

Steve Cuden: survived the trial and, and, and beyond. Uh, if that’s, that’s amazing. I don’t think that would happen today, do you?

No. I that and 

Tom Ruegger: I tell my kids, I have sons. They like to work on certain things. I tell them, just call the place up. And they say, are you out of your mind? Uh, but back then I called the place up. How about that? They were busy. Bill, uh, it turns out Joe Barbera had sold like 20 different shows. So they were just beyond their, out of their minds busy.

They, they needed people. They needed bodies 

Steve Cuden: holding pencils, bodies holding pencils. That’s the way the industry worked. Well, one thing that I know from my time in the business is that. The animation industry, unlike the rest of the industry, tended, I don’t know if it still does or not, but tended to be more open and friendly and welcoming to young people trying to get in.

Did, did is that was your experience, obviously. 

Tom Ruegger: And, and I, I agree with you and I think, uh, that’s still true because it’s a very specific, you know, niche. Uh, you know, we’re all in one group. We all care about the same stuff. While, uh, a lot of the other, uh, areas of expertise in our business are, you know, uh, a lot of unions involved.

Uh, just it’s tricky to even get on a set, you know what I mean? Totally. Whether you’re a best boy or you’re an electrician, I mean, it’s, yeah. Tough. 

Steve Cuden: Very, very difficult. And animation tends to be a little friendlier and warmer and more inviting. Um, alright, so last question for you today, Tom. Um, you’ve given us a tremendous amount of advice throughout this whole show, but is there a single solid piece of advice or a tip that you like to give to those that come up to you and say, how do I get in?

How do I work, do this? How do I work in the industry? What kind of advice do you give folks? 

Tom Ruegger: Well, uh. I know, I, I, I find myself dealing mainly with people that, uh, uh, like animation and wanna be involved in animation. And I encourage those people to, uh, and I guess it would be true of other creative types, work on your own stories, work on your own characters, come up with something original rather than derivative, because derivative is, uh, we’ve seen it.

So the more original your stuff can be, I think you have a better chance. Then when I get a little deeper into it, I, I, I suggest, and I don’t think it’s that easy when you’re doing sort of cartoon comedy, I think we tend to, uh, go with cliches. We tend to like use material that maybe have seen before. And, uh, I say that if, if you’re gonna do that, you gotta come up with a topper.

You gotta. Take it to the next level, which hasn’t been it, where it hasn’t been taken before, because you don’t wanna just redo Chuck Jones’ best stuff, but you wanna, uh, at least top it or, or, or make it significantly different. So don’t fall back on, uh, the cliche. 

Steve Cuden: I, I think that that’s extremely sound advice.

Be original, be unique, and uh, hopefully that will carry the day. Uh, Tom Ruegger, this has been so much fun to me, for me to talk to you today, uh, about all these wonderful stories you’ve had, and I’m sure we could go on for hours more. I’m sure you have many many’s tales to tell from your time in the trenches in the animation industry.

I can’t thank you enough for your time, your energy, and especially for your wisdom. Thank you so much, Tom. Thank you, Steve. It’s been a pleasure. Uh, anytime really 

Tom Ruegger: a, a treat.

Steve Cuden: And so we’ve come to the end of today’s StoryBeat. If you like this episode, won’t you please take a moment to give us a comment, rating, or review on whatever app or platform you are listening to.

Your support helps us bring more great story beat episodes to you. Story Beat is available on all major podcast apps and platforms, including Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Spotify, iHeartRadio, tune in and many others. Until next time, I’m Steve Cuden and may all your stories be unforgettable.