[NB] So, that would be a fun "fly on the wall" experience.
[Christopher McCulloch] Possibly! [Laughs.] And I'm a terrible improviser. It's awful. I get such stage-fright. If somebody said, "Hey, do the Monarch's voice for me," I would just panic. Because I'd have to think of something to say as the Monarch. Whereas, if I'm just hanging out with Doc, we're yelling at each other as the Monarch all the time.
[NB] It almost seems like a two-man show. Almost like you're cutting the film and painting it in and doing it all yourselves.
[Christopher McCulloch] Sometimes, almost, yeah. [Laughs.] There is a good 20 to 25 people here at Noodlesoup who do a lot of work. And, of course, a bunch of people in Korea. But, I've had something, like, 5 days off in the past year, including weekends.
[NB] Wow. So is there a reason The Venture Brothers is not computer-generated or more streamlined? Or is it just because you yourself want to keep control over it?
[Christopher McCulloch] It's a little of that. It's a little of a control-freak thing. But it's also that we have a pretty low budget. I think we do a really good job of hiding that fact. I think you'd be surprised to know what other shows cost the same amount that ours does. Because I think we just look like a regular, fully animated cartoon and, in fact, it's very low budget and one of the ways to do that is to wear a lot of hats.
[Laughs.] We have some tricks, here and there, but they're ones I can live with, thank God. Every once in a while, a guy will get panned through a shot, you know he's not being animated walking. [Laughs.] So you can spot the little cheapy moves here and there. And this season we'll look actually a lot better than last season did, so I'm pretty pleased. It's just been murder getting it to this point. It's so much harder than the first season, I don't really know why. We lost some really strong talent that we had here, actually. Like one guy went to Pixar, so you know he was good. [Laughs.]
[NB] Did you have less time to prepare for this season?
[Christopher McCulloch No, we probably had more time. And our system and our schedule this year was a little better. It was more a shortage of people. I mean I would love more time. If I have to do all this stuff then I wish I had more time to do it. Because I have to work, like, 16 hours a day, for like a year, which is pretty rough. It got that bad last year, but not for as long of a period of time. I think I might have had more energy, I was a little younger, and I didn't smoke as much. [Laughs.] Yeah, I think we didn't have enough people and a couple of the key people that did go onto other things, really had a bigger impact than I thought, on the show. Because it's those areas that were the most in trouble in the production this season that I had to do the most work in. "Oh yeah, that's what that guy used to do!" [Laughs.]
[NB] What can we look forward to in this second season, is there anything special that your psyched about?
[Christopher McCulloch] There's so much! The stuff that I can talk about without ruining it, just a lot of characters that people like are returning. Oblivously, The Monarch is coming back. He's pretty much a big deal. The Phantom Limb, who was in it last season becomes a bigger player this year. Dr. Venture's brother, that came out of his body in the last season finale, he becomes a character. Bunch of new villians all over the place. A little peek into the backstory of a lot of our characters.
[NB] That will be fun.
[Christopher McCulloch] Yeah, we get to see Brock when he was a young agent in training. We meet all sorts of mysterious people from these characters past and it will all culminate in a pretty chaotic season finale, which is why I was late getting on the phone with you. [Laughs.]
[NB] With Brock, which came first, the character or Patrick Warburton?
[Christopher McCulloch] The character. The character came first and then I met Patrick when I was working on The Tick. And I actually didn't even connect it. It was a while before I went, "Hey, you know who would be great for Brock? Patrick!" Which seems crazy because he was right under my nose and I had already started pitching Venture Brothers at that point.
[NB] Patrick Warburton has "that" voice, so I thought because of your relationship with him from The Tick that you had created the character for him.
[Christopher McCulloch] He's that perfect for it. [Laughs.] He's meant to play that character. And if we ever made a live-action movie I would still want Patrick to play the character. He's good. And even James Urbaniak would be good in the Dr. Venture role. It's funny how "on the nose" these two guys are. I think James is just as made for Dr. Venture as Patrick is made for Brock. I can't imagine him any other way.
