“I’m READY!! I’m READY!! I’m READY!!”: SpongeBob goes from the small screen to the big screen this month. All SBSP images © 2004 Paramount Pictures and Viacom International Inc. All rights reserved.

Tom Kenny, the voice of SpongeBob SquarePants, recently had a dinner date with a friend in a Los Angeles restaurant. Unlike most celebrities, in daily life Kenny doesn’t get the blank stare, the crowds of doe-eyed fans. He’s famous for his voice, not his face; so this was a normal night out, if anything even more pleasant than usual since his guest had absolutely no awareness of Kenny’s signature character. He was active with a charity, though, and Kenny gladly agreed to exploit his celebrity status by autographing some SpongeBob items for auction. No sooner had he taken pen in hand to sign the plush toys than the whispering began. A bus boy approached. “Hey, could you sign something for my daughter?” “Yeah, how old is your daughter?” “Fifteen months.” Then the Maitre D’: “I’m sorry to bother you, but could you sign something for my son? He’s five.” From the next table: “Could you sign something for my daughter? She’s 19.” A hip young couple: “Are you…who we think… we are? Could you sign something?” “Yeah, who’s it for?” “Well… it’s for us!”

At least then he didn’t have to explain SpongeBob’s appeal to his friend, Kenny says. “I said, `See? This is what I’m talking about. I just signed autographs for a 15 month-old, a five-year-old, a 19 year-old and a 30 year-old hipster couple.’ And I’ve gotten letters, literally, from people in nursing homes saying `Could you send a picture of SpongeBob to the woman in the room next to mine? She’s 93 years old and she really likes your show’.”

“When you finally get a chance to do your own thing,” says series creator Stephen Hillenburg, “it definitely is liberating. Creatively you can just think `Well, what would I do?’ and try to do it.” Hillenburg got liberated in 1996 when Nickelodeon took a chance and bought his idea for a cartoon starring a man-child who was not just endlessly enthusiastic but absorbent, yellow and porous. Since its 1999 debut, SpongeBob SquarePants has evolved from an under-the-radar cult item to a cross-generational financial juggernaut, spawning books, DVDs, bedsheets, videogames, and a talking doll named Babbling Bob. Happily, Hillenburg’s liberation has become his crew’s, and his audience’s as well.

SBSP creator Stephen Hillenburg directs Patrick and SpongeBob in the movie. Photo by: David Strick.

The nautical cartoon series is set in the undersea burg of Bikini Bottom, awash in the big friendly yellow, blue, and green shades of classic cartoons. Kenny stars as a friendly yellow sponge who lives in a pineapple with a pet snail named Gary. SpongeBob works at a burger joint called The Krusty Krab, owned by money-mad crustacean Mr. Krabs (voice of Clancy Brown), with cashier Squidward Tentacles (Rodger Bumpass), an uptight sourpuss squid who’d like nothing more than to stay home and play the clarinet.

SpongeBob’s best buddy is Patrick Star (Bill Fagerbakke), a deep-voiced, hot-pink starfish in swim trunks who shares SpongeBob’s adolescent fixations for ice cream and jellyfish hunting. Also in the cast are Sandy Cheeks (Carolyn Lawrence), a go-getting squirrel in a diving suit who moved underwater in search of a challenge; and Plankton (Doug Lawrence), evil-genius proprietor of rival eatery The Chum Bucket: a bottom-feeder intent on taking over the world.

In 2002 SpongeBob SquarePants shifted from being a popular series made by a relatively small crew to a prospective feature film made by, to everyone’s delight, the same small crew. “The team that made this movie is largely the team that’s been making the show for five years,” says Kenny. “They did the heavy lifting. And it is relatively small compared to a big DreamWorks feature with 30 writers and a zillion guys working on it.”