The animated special The Venture Bros.: From The Ladle To The Grave - The Shallow Gravy Story is a 15-minute documentary-style parody of Behind the Music. The special follows the meteoric rise and the equally meteoric fall, and the decidedly un-meteor-like comeback of Shallow Gravy, a band featuring Hank Venture, Dermott Fictel and H.E.L.P.eR. robot.
From The Ladle To The Grave premieres Sunday, August 28 at midnight (ET, PT) on Adult Swim. The Venture Bros. is created and directed by Jackson Publick and written by Publick and Doc Hammer, both of whom also provide voices for the series. The Venture Bros. is being animated by Titmouse, Inc.
In an interview, Publick and Hammer discussed the animated special as well as Comic-Con, season five and how they record dialogue for the show.
Nancy Basile, Animated TV for About.com: I talked with you, Jackson, about four years ago, right before the second season started. What is the difference between now, after four seasons and coming up on your second special, and then when you had finished the first season and the first DVD was coming out?
Doc Hammer: The process has changed but our lives have become slightly more complicated. I own an apartment now.
Jackson Publick: That was a long wait between the first and second season to find out if we were going to get to make more. Much bigger audience. The process of the show is basically the same, but our attention to detail or our quality standards go up every year.
Doc Hammer: We have a bigger cast and we have a larger mythos and it becomes more exciting and slightly more complicated.
Jackson Publick: Every once in a while we do something to make it easier or better. We get better artists and then we say, now we can do even bigger better stuff.
Animated TV: The "Jacket" song has been stuck in my head for a couple of days now. Thank you.
Doc Hammer: It's insidious! You're welcome.
Animated TV: Talk a little about why you decided to do a Behind the Music mock- umentary with this special.
Jackson Publick: It was an expansion of the idea that we wanted to make a music video for the "Jacket" song because we had just put it in the finale. And we said, let's finish the song and put a music video on a DVD. And then we found out that nobody can really afford to full animate a beautiful music video just for a DVD so they said, well, turn it into something we can put on air and we'll buy it. Voilá!
Animated TV: My favorite scene is the Christmas home video when poor Hank first gets his bass.
Doc Hammer: I love that shot. Let me give you a little insider dirt on that. The whole "Jacket" song I wrote and performed and played all the instruments. Jackson can't play any instruments. When Hank is playing bass? That is actually Hank playing bass. That is Jackson pretending to be Hank playing bass. And the strange, awkward part with him looking at the strings? All real.
Animated TV: The scene has a real feel to it, especially the looks on everyone else's faces while he plays.
Jackson Publick: It's hard to watch that kid with his new, very loud toy. It puts me in mind of all the little skits you performed at Thanksgiving and Christmas for your family.
Doc Hammer: It was really that Brock didn't have a gift for him so he just gave him his old bass.
Animated TV: You two were at Comic-Con this year. Did you judge the costume party?
Jackson Publick: We did. We judged and distributed the prizes.
Doc Hammer: We really deliberated. People complained that we were taking too long.
Jackson Publick: We had more prizes than we had contestants. We had to figure out what we were giving them a prize for and come up with categories.
Animated TV: Wait, I'm confused. From the photos it looked like there were lots and lots of contestants.
Doc Hammer: Yes! But I think there were 23 contestants and 26 prizes.
Jackson Publick: They were beautiful prizes. They were real production layout drawings from the show.
Doc Hammer: They were gorgeous. It wasn't lack of attendants. It was over-preparedness on the part of Adult Swim.
Animated TV: Are you working on season 5?
Jackson Publick: Yes, we're writing.
Animated TV: When will we be seeing the new epsiodes?
Jackson Publick: My best guess is this time next year. We probably won't start actual production for another couple of months.
Animated TV: That's a pretty long lag between season 4 and 5. Any particular reason why?
Doc Hammer: We set up a production company. We also have to get a lot of scripts ready to go before we go into production.
Jackson Publick: And we needed a break after a sixteen episode season that was not the easiest one to make.
Doc Hammer: It was bigger, longer, bit of a delay in the middle, and then we both filled our downtime with a lot of other obligations. We meant to get back to it sooner than this.
Animated TV: What are your plans for season 5? Any big surprises? New characters?
Doc Hammer: That's all we can tell you. Surprises and new characters. And old characters revisited. Regular characters changing. And pterodactyls.
Animated TV: Do you have any plans for guest stars or is there someone you're looking forward to working with?
Jackson Publick: We do those as they come to us. We write a new character and go, oh, you know who would be great for this? We don't plan that kind of thing.
Doc Hammer: Or we write a character for someone we have. Nathan Fillion had a guest spot, we want to flesh that out.
Jackson Publick: Sometimes we find out somebody we like is a fan of ours or a friend of a friend. We keep that person in mind. Then if the right character pops up for them, we do it.
Animated TV: How do you find out when someone wants to be on your show?
Jackson Publick: I don't think we've ever found out someone just wanted to be on our show. We just got a sense that somebody might be game. Either because they tweeted about our show or talked to somebody we know. We just call our agent or tell the producer to find out if that person would do it. And we've been turned down many times.
Animated TV: Aw! I wish we could talk about those people, but I know you won't.
