The title of this forthcoming Ren & Stimpy episode is "Stimpy's Pregnant." Think of the implications. © Spike TV.

After "What Pee Boners are For" we're going to show "Stimpy's Pregnant." This is another historic event from Spumco because it's the first full, on-screen live animated childbirth. The 600 people in the Egyptian Theater will be the first 600 to witness this event. Then we're going to have a break with a question-and-answer period. By the way, Jerry Beck is going to be part of this, and John Gibson is helping us put this on, too. We're trying to lure Leonard Maltin to come in and do guest disclaimers for some of the cartoons.

After the question-and-answer period, for the real die-hard fans who want to stay to the end, we're going to run "Ren & Stimpy - Altruists," the Ren & Stimpy episode that has more jokes in it than any Ren & Stimpy in history. They're trying to help a poor widow and her handicapped child. It's a throwback to the Three Stooges; they would help people once in a while.

It was funny because you'd watch Moe just beat the crap out of Larry and Curly for five minutes and then they would hear somebody crying, and it would be some widow that's about to have her motel foreclosed. So Moe all of a sudden gets a heart! "Come on fellas, we gotta help this poor lady out!" They do something nice but Moe continues to beat the crap out of everybody! It's hilarious. That's what "Altruists" is about.

So that's the end of Night Number One. I really hope people don't miss the second night because that really showcases some of the most fun cartoons ever made. All made by cartoonists with no executive interference and they all scream with pure joy. I'll show all the classic cartoons, but we'll run a couple of Ren & Stimpys. I'll have a print of "Big House Blues," the uncut one that is the real pilot for Ren & Stimpy. That one was fully animated between Spumco in L.A. and Bob Jacques' and Kelly Armstrong's Carbunkle in Vancouver. It was inked at Bardel Studios in Vancouver.

It's got some of the best animation you'll ever see in the series because it wasn't really made for TV, it was just made for all of us to prove ourselves. That cartoon is full of influences from Bob Clampett, and I'm then going to explain what I ripped off for "Big House Blues."

DT: Do you want to talk about that now or save it for the show?

Shots of Stimpy in "The Altruists." © Spike TV.

JK: I could tell you now. One of the main things you see in Ren & Stimpy is that all of a sudden the backgrounds disappear and you get these weird, blotchy backgrounds. That came from Baby Bottleneck, a Clampett cartoon that has practically no backgrounds. Once the story gets going there are only color cards. There's a scene where a machine hits Daffy Duck on the head with a tiny hammer and his head warps and starts bouncing all over the place. As it's doing that the background cards flash different colors. I was amazed - that's the first time I'd ever seen that done and I thought, "I've got to steal that!" Then I took it further by adding weird spots to the backgrounds.

That sort of evolved through the Ren & Stimpy series. When a character experienced different emotions we would change the background. Visually we would follow the characters' emotions to where the designs would change in the cartoons according to what they felt - not just they way the characters looked but the way the backgrounds looked.

After that, the cartoons I really want to show are the classic cartoons, because to me the cartoons made from the 1930s to the 1950s are the best ever made. So, in rough order, I want to show a couple of early Fleischer cartoons. Swing You Sinners (1930) is a Bimbo cartoon. It's exactly what a cartoon should be. The story is just, Bimbo's in a graveyard, and all the spooks come out. The music just builds and builds — there's a great momentum to the cartoon that keeps building until it gets completely insane at the end. When you look at Sinners you've got to compare it to what you've seen from Walt Disney in that time period.

It's beyond me how Mickey Mouse or Walt Disney ever became a success. Disney must have been the blandest human on the planet, it's like he was from another century. When you look at Disney's early cartoons they're the blandest things in the world. Then you see what Fleischer was doing, it's just leagues ahead of Disney.