Home Movies
Home Movies is a dialogue-driven animated series about 8-year-old Brendon Small (voiced by the creator, head writer, and lead musician of Home Movies Brendon Small), who makes films with his friends, Melissa and Jason, in his spare time. He lives with his divorced mother, Paula, and his adopted baby sister, Josie.
Broadcast history
Home Movies premiered on UPN on April 26, 1999 but got pulled after five episodes before returning to TV two years later in Cartoon Network's Adult Swim late night lineup. It soon became one of Adult Swim's most popular shows. The brain trust behind this show is Soup2Nuts (formerly Tom Snyder Productions), the same people who created Comedy Central's defunct animated series Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist. In its first season, Home Movies utilized Soup2Nuts's patented Squigglevision technology to animate the show, but later abandoned that for cheaper Macromedia Flash animation, somewhat similar in style to that of South Park's animation production. Home Movies' chief gimmick (aside from the early Squigglevision animation) was its use of "retroscripting." Retroscripting is a process in which an episode's scripts are purposely left vague, and instead of exact dialogue, the plot of a particular scene is merely outlined, the rest of the dialogue is then created through improv by the actors. The use of retroscripting in Home Movies gives the show very casual, realistic dialogue with an often dry, sarcastic wit. It aired on Cartoon Network as part of its Adult Swim block in the United States, and in Canada on Teletoon as part of its Teletoon Unleashed block. The show was cancelled by Cartoon Network in March of 2004. The first season was released as a three-disc DVD boxset on November 16, 2004.
CharactersMajor recurring charactersBrendon Small (Brendon Small) - The star of the show and writer/director/lead actor in most of the movies.Jason Penopolis (H. Jon Benjamin) - Brendon's best friend who is noticeably more immature.Melissa Robbins (Melissa Bardin Galsky) - Brendon's other best friend, who is often more sensible than Brendon or Jason.Paula Small (Paula Poundstone, eps 1 - 5, Janine Ditullio, eps 6+) - Brendon's mother.Coach John McGuirk (H. Jon Benjamin) - Brendon's soccer coach, an overweight incompetent coach of an incompetent team, who is constantly giving Brendon bad advice.Erik Robbins (Jonathan Katz) - Melissa's father.Mr. Ronald Lynch (Ron Lynch) - Brendon's teacher.
Notable minor characters Duane - A metalhead of few words, who writes and performs the music for most of Brendon's movies.Walter and Perry, two hyper best friends who are a little too close for comfort.Shannon (Emo Philips) - A bully who beats up, and later befriends, Brendon.Fenton Mewly (Sam Seder) a spoiled, annoying character with the tendency to call Brendon "Bren-Bren."
External links Home Movies' Official Site The Home Movies Super Site Soup2nuts The creators' website.
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