True to its coveted late night slot on Adult Swim, Mr. Pickles is a morbidly delightful cartoon show aimed at the kind of stoners, metalheads and weirdos who stay up late ripping bongs and chuckling over fucked up shit. The show recently kicked off season three, following the Goodman family and the eccentric residents of Old Town in their most off-the-wall escapades yet. This season Mr. Pickles faces off against some of his toughest foes including memory hackers, ruthless television executives, and military footwear. To celebrate the new season, Adult Swim has thrown the Mr. Pickles Thrash-tacular, a 13-city metal tour. Veteran thrashers Exodus and comparatively newer thrashers Municipal Waste have been shredding their way across the country, reveling in the strangely symbiotic relationship between heavy metal and animated stoner comedy. This week the tour comes to a close and the show’s creators Will Carsola and Dave Stewart talked with us about how it came about, what we can expect from the new season of Mr. Pickles and more.
Where did the idea of the tour come from?
Adult Swim pitched us the idea of a tour and we immediately thought of Municipal Waste. From there Municipal Waste invited Exodus, which we were very excited about.
Are you personally a fan of Exodus and/or Municipal Waste?
The guys from Municipal Waste are old friends of ours from Richmond. We started making videos in Richmond around the same time they first started playing shows. We made their first music video “Unleash the Bastards” and produced a live DVD for them as well. We’re fans of both their music.
How does their music lend itself to the image and vibe of the show?
There’s definitely some metal-like imagery when Mr. Pickles kills his victims and even more so down in his evil lair, but it’s more borrowed from horror films and the occult world, the same place a lot of imagery in the metal world is influenced from. But more than anything we think our show has a metal/punk vibe not just because of music but because of the spirit of how we make our show, in that we do if for ourselves because it’s something we love, knowing it will never appeal to a mainstream audience. We make no apologies to anyone who is offended by Mr. Pickles or anything else we create. In fact we openly invite all those offended to shower in the blood that pours from the horror that is Dave’s uncircumcised dick.
Are fans of Mr. Pickles generally also into metal?
Some are, some aren’t. We don’t see the show as necessarily metal. At first, it was just a fucked up version of Lassie to us, which is why we wanted the intro to be metal so that it was the complete opposite of the original soft and comfortable Lassie theme. Often episodes don’t have metal music in them at all aside from the intro and outro, but each episode usually has a specific theme, which means that the bulk of the music in any given episode could be anything from western music, to action music. One thing that is usually a constant in each episode, some more than others, is horror. At its core, Mr. Pickles is a horror show, so it make sense that metal fans would be into Mr. Pickles because metal and horror go hand in hand.
What kind of Mr. Pickles shenanigans can people expect to find at these upcoming concerts?
Adult Swim has put together some Mr. Pickles video teasers they play each night before the bands go on. There is also a photo op where you can sit on a real life replica of the throne that Mr. Pickles sits upon in his lair. There’s some limited edition merch up for grabs, too. We’ve also heard that after the show every night, the members of Municipal Waste and Exodus get together and sacrifice a goat. Then they get naked and rub the goats blood all over each others bodies before having a pillow fight. After the pillow fight they pig out on ice cream and tell each other secrets under the covers on their tour bus.
You’ve had musicians do guest voices on the show before.
Yeah, in season one Iggy Pop did a voice for us, Rob Zombie was in season two, and in season three Henry Rollins does a voice. We’ve had a lot of fun working with singers because we usually have actors yell and scream into the mic more than I think they’re used to. With singers, they already used to it.
What can people expect from the new season of the show that will be different?
Every season, we try to change things up in one way or another. We’re always getting deeper and deeper into our main character’s lives and furthering the story between Grandpa and Mr. Pickles, but we’re also aways further exploring the characters of Old town. In season three, Linda, our door to door trash selling weirdo, gets her own episode and we get to see where she lives and get a little more insight to who she really is. We explore Sheriff’s character a lot more this season and there’s even entire “Cops” inspired episode called “Sheriffs” which follows Sheriff around for the day. There’s an 80’s themed episode about a special pair of shoes that Tommy meets, a western themed episode, Mr. Pickles meets some animals he can’t seem to control, Tommy goes to school for the first time, and so many more things that we’d love to talk about but don’t want to spoil it.
How do you maintain the energy going into your third season?
We find energy going into a new season with three simple steps. 1: Keep things fun. 2: Always change things up. 3: Put super sour candy balls in your ass (or as some call it “Shovenpucker”).
Has it gotten harder to come up with new scenarios as you get deeper into the series?
Mr. Pickles is a hard show to write, but I think that’s because we have so many scenarios and characters we want to explore, and a limited amount of time and episodes to do that in. I think it’s gotten easier for us to come up with scenarios over the years, but harder for us to decide which new ideas we’re going to turn into an episode.
Have there been any fucked up scenarios or images you’ve nixed because it was just too much?
No. We’ve never had to cut an idea because it was too crazy, we’ve only cut crazy ideas because we couldn’t find the right story to tell it. For instance, in season 1, we both kept joking about a character called the Cheeseman which at the time was just a horror character made of cheese. Nobody in the writers room liked the idea much because there wasn’t a story that fit it right yet. But for months we kept pitching the cheeseman in various storylines and some of the writers were even a bit annoyed that we kept bringing it up. But eventually, the idea of a killer made of cheese found the right story to make it work and to this day, the “Cheeseman” episode is one of the most favorited episodes we’ve ever done. You just have to keep pushing an idea around and around until it finds it’s story, sometimes it happens, sometimes it doesn’t.
Mr. Pickles Thrash-tacular Tour Dates:
Mar 07 – New York, NY – Irving Plaza
Mar 08 – Philadephia, PA – Theatre of Living Arts
Mar 09 – Richmond, VA – The National
Mar 10 – Atlanta, GA – The Masquerade
One Response
I do agree. It was wonderful singers such as Jeannie Robertson who inspired me as a young singer. And many a time I”d hear anecdotes about her humour, character and spirit. But it seems that nowadays, we just don”t see as many lassie singers with such brass, liveliness and strong-mindedness. Are we silently being telt how to behave? Just yesterday I viewed a video on Facebook of an all-male folk band recording their album. They were recording a section where they were clapping along to beats and it was captioned “Have you got the clap. It was recieved on Facebook with several “likes and “laughing face emojis. Now excuse me, but if a lassie did this, then it would be completely unacceptable and lewd and the girl would get a trashing. I”m not saying that this behaviour is acceptable and professional from both sexes, but it certainly feels that the lads get off with so much more of this “craic than the lassies do.