The Second Time Around: John Kricfalusi is excited about the opportunity to produce new episodes for the revived Ren and Stimpy. Courtesy of Spumco.

Martin “Dr. Toon” Goodman: First off, John, congratulations on the Ren and Stimpy revival; we’re all looking forward to it, but I was wondering...you’ve always said that whatever you do, you wanted it to be new, even down to not even drawing the same expression twice. Were you at all disappointed that Viacom approached you about reviving Ren and Stimpy rather than asking you for an original series?

John Kricfalusi: Well, if you look at the first couple of seasons of Ren and Stimpy, you can see that we did new things all the time. They’re the easiest characters I’ve ever written for. The whole show is designed to be experimental. They don’t live in one particular place; it’s just like the old comedies with the Three Stooges or Laurel and Hardy. You can do any kind of situation, tell any kind of story. You could do a philosophical story, a purely gag story, or a science-fiction satire. Ren and Stimpy are easy creatively — well, it’s not an easy production to do — but creatively it opens itself up to a million possibilities.

Dr. T: Are there any changes you’ll be making in the show?

JK: Well, there’s nothing to tinker with — it always changed. There really isn’t any formula to change.

Dr. T: Is the show still going to have that throwback look, with bumpers, “commercials” and closing bits?

JK: It’ll have some; it may not have quite as many because the stories are longer. They get longer and longer the more I do them. I tend to elaborate on everything. Every time I have a scene, something that’s not meant to be that important, we get all excited about it, come up with more gags, and it just gets longer. The stories are all half-hours now. They’re more intense than they used to be. More ups and downs.

Dr. T: It seems to be in your nature to enjoy proving people wrong whenever you can. Was that part of your motivation in agreeing to revive Ren and Stimpy?

JK: My main motivation was, I didn’t have any work. That’s always number one — putting food in my mouth. At the same time, it’s the best project I ever worked on, the most fun I ever had, the most creatively rewarding, and it put me on the map.

It didn't take long for Kricfalusi and his team to get back into the Ren and Stimpy spirit. All Ren and Stimpy images courtesy of Nickelodeon.

Dr. T: Well, good to see you have them back, then!

JK: Yeah, me too. I mean, it’s a riot. We’re having a great time. I’ve had to start a new studio from scratch, and it’s just a lot fun. Really exciting. We have all sorts of great talent and we have some of the best talent from the original series. Some of it is classic Ren and Stimpy, but some of it is all new.

Dr. T: Do you still have Richard Purcell, Robyn Byrd, Ben Jones and your other Spumco people?

JK: Well, Robyn Byrd and Ben Jones never worked on the original Ren and Stimpy. I do have Richard Purcell and Eddie Fitzgerald — they’re all on the new show and they were on the old one, too. We have new luminaries such as Fred Osmond, Katy Rice and Nick Cross, my genius find here up north, so we have lots of great new talent and some of the old talent, too.