Knuckleheads, a new Canadian animated series makes its debut this Saturday, November 12th on Teletoon at Night. Based on the wildly popular Quebec TV and web series, Têtes à claques the show features off-the wall humor, innovative animation and a cast of quirky characters. Joe Cobden, who voices the majority of the characters on the show, recently spent some time to dish on Canada’s latest animated series.
SB: Tell us a little bit about Knuckleheads.
JC: Knuckleheads is a half hour show that follows a kind of crazy world of distinctly Canadian characters as they cope with the absurdity of their lives. They’re just crazy characters, even the Prime Minister. What we tried to do was use as many regionalisms as possible with the voicing and character traits to represent the entire country. It’s in line with The Simpsons or Family Guy as there is a huge ensemble cast of characters coping poorly with their lives in insane situations. The episodes often parody popular movies or genres, often more than one in an episode and there’s everything from a Robocop parody, to a biker gang parody to a hosers in the woods parody. There’s everything there and it’s really an entire universe of idiots.
SB: How many voices are you responsible for on the show?
JC: I do almost all of the voices myself. Sean Conn has done a couple and there’s another woman, Patricia Summerset who does Chloe, one of the kids. It’s a huge universe of insane characters and they do reoccur and crossover. It’s kind of in line with The Flintstones, The Simpsons, Family Guy and The Honeymooners where the husband and wife are always arguing. You’ll see them appear in different episodes. There’s a zombie episode and a vampire episode and they’ll just pop up and have a hard time dealing with whatever crisis the world of the show is dealing with. One of the fun things was trying to find inventive and edgy ways to inject local stuff with more universal material. It’s really a show for everybody. Kids can get off on the edgier humor with pratfalls and slapstick and then there’s subtler stuff for an older crowd.
The animation is done by this incredible team of animators in Longueuil. They’re all just so incredible and it’s a revolutionary style of animation that no one’s really ever done before. So what they do is they take my mouth and eyes and they would put grotesque and ridiculous looking teeth on each character. They’d then cut out the eyes and the mouth and slap it on the animation. It makes it come to life, giving it a human quality which is even more absurd. It’s a lot of fun.
SB: I’ve seen some of the episodes and it’s outrageous and pretty funny.
JC: Yeah, it’s ridiculous.
SB: Series creator, Michel Beaudet has developed a very interesting visual style for Knuckleheads. How has the animation style that you just described influence how you approach voicing the characters?
JC: Well it’s really interesting because of course I’m on my own, so as far as eye lines go I really had to respond and anticipate how to respond with different reactions to the eyes. You have to do everything with your eyes really. It’s tricky and it took me a while to learn how to it as it’s an original and inventive technique. I don’t think anyone has done it before and I don’t think any animation show has had a sole voice behind the characters other than Michel doing the French version and Mel Blanc doing Bugs Bunny. I think Mike Judge did some on Beavis and Butthead and there are shows where creators or leads will double down. Knuckleheads, though is unique due to the scope of characters and the fact it’s voiced by one person.
SB: The French version, Têtes à claques, has been around for 10 years and has won some awards.
JC: Yeah it’s a viral smash. I think it’s garnered 550 million views. They are a legendary success story in Quebec and what was important to us was to find a way to get those same kinds of local and regional characters to resonate with English Canada and the English world. I think part of their great success was they went global by going local and that’s what we tried to do on our side too. It’s also a really interesting thing with the translation as the show has been completely rewritten because a lot of the jokes and sensibilities are way different in the anglophone world. In anglo cartoons there’s a lot more meta theatricality where actors and characters will wink at the camera and audience now and then. When you look at edgier, newer stuff like Aqua Teen Hunger Force or what Adult Swim is doing they’re really pushing the envelope on the world they’re in and how they’re connecting with audiences. I think we are at the front, alongside them and are a unique offering in Canada for this edgy and new type of cartoon.
SB: Bruce Dinsmore has adapted the French dialogue from the original series into English. How closely do you get to work with him to help you with your performances?
JC: Actually it’s Bobby Theodore. Bruce was the original guy who voiced it when they did tests. I think they did a pilot with Bruce. He was the original actor but that was seven years ago. Bobby does the translations and Simon Parizeau directs everything. Simon is behind the camera and is really the powerhouse at Têtes à claques. He does everything from directing, to editing, to script punches, to drawing. The guy is a genius. I have two comedian readers, Eric Degras and Dave MacLeod, who read the off camera lines from the other side and together we all punch the scripts up on the fly. There’s a lot of improvisation, which is a nightmare for the editors but it’s worth it. You can get some funny outtakes that sometimes make it into the show and often produces a whole new level of comedy. One of thing I’ve noticed in animation lately, in a show like Rick and Morty for instance, is that they’ll even keep takes and animate around them where the actor breaks and laughs which has never happened before. If an actor corpses, as they call it, when they laugh when they’re not supposed to because the line is funny they’ll just keep that animation and we try to do similar things. If something happens that is kind of off but strikes us as hilarious we try to get it in there.
SB: You’ve been in feature films such as X-Men: Apocalypse, The Vow, The Aviator and on television shows like Fargo, This Life and The Art of More. How does working on those types of projects compare to the zaniness and ground breaking things that you’re doing on Knuckleheads?
JC: There’s some similarities, but few. It’s such an original way of performing and I’ve never had any kind of experience like this. The size of expression is so small that it’s really important to ground myself in the reality of the scene. The more I’m really in the scene the funnier it will be. The real challenge is in this really unusual and unnatural situation how do I find the human moments? If the joke is that the character is a lusty freak, how can I look off camera and try to get that going for real so that it’s funny when it’s finally animated. That’s the challenge and its been great. My fingers are crossed for a second season as we’re just going to get better and better at it. The season debuts on November 12th but the last ten episodes that we did are so great. It’s been an incredible operation and a real family kind of vibe in the studio and everyone is working their hardest to make the funniest and best show that they can. With any luck we’ll get to do another couple of seasons.
SB: And the fact that it’s all Canadian makes it really special.
JC: It’s really important to me. We initially thought that we might have to limit our Canadian-ness to try to reach a bigger audience. We decided in the end that it was super important to represent Canada and to get those original Canadian characters in there and hope for a similar type of global success or cross boarder success that The Trailer Park Boys have had. We’re really trying to follow that line of comedy in Canada. With everything from Bob and Doug, to Letterkenny and The Trailer Park Boys and all the shows that celebrate original Canadian characters, we feel that we fit into that cannon. I’ve never seen anything like that in almost any other Canadian animated show and we’re really proud of that.
