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John K's Cans Without Labels

Started by Weeping Prophet, June 23, 2019, 03:16:18 PM

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lazarou

Quote from: St_Eddie on June 26, 2019, 01:34:56 AM
I guess.  I'd almost feel sorry for him, if he weren't such a sexually abusive, albeit talented, cunt.  Luckily he is, so I don't.

Even before the sexual abuse scandals he was absolutely infamous for the insane working conditions and psychological abuse he'd put his staff through. Even when he still had plenty of fans, his name had been dirt in the industry for years.

Quoting some stuff from TV Tropes here as I cannot be arsed cross-referencing Sick Little Monkeys (the definitive source for the absolute horror-show Ren & Stimpy was to work on), but I believe all of this stuff has been corroborated by people who witnessed his behaviour first-hand.

QuoteMany of the artists working on the show noted how his directions were not only hostile but often vague, with Kricfalusi often frequently ripping up artists' drawings for no better reason than it wasn't exactly what he saw in his head and forbidding them from ever deviating from the layouts. When he tore up one background because he didn't like the bright colors, calling it "fucking candy cane lane," several artists decorated the studio with a sign that read "Candy Cane Lane" and drawings of Ren and Stimpy with candy canes up one another's butts as a form of passive-aggressive protest.

He pushed Billy West to his limits and beyond, with West even getting damage to his vocal cords from the grueling recording sessions, and would often give vague directions like "You're 98% there." West could also not be swayed by bullying (he had grown up with an abusive father), which drove Kricfalusi madder than he would already be.

Worst of all was John's complete lack of professionalism and willingness to make his baggage other people's problems, such as firing storyboard artist Chris Reccardi solely for dating John's ex-girlfriend Lynne Naylor. Kricfalusi also rewarded Bob Jacques for his hard work on "Sven Höek" by spending hours chewing him out over the phone for how "Disney like" the cartoon looked, and only began praising the cartoon when it became a fan favorite episode.

The day that most of the crew moved into Games Animation, he personally followed members around and verbally abused them to their faces.

Relationships between John K. and pretty much everyone else working on the show were so toxic that Bob Camp would often let co-workers come into his office and kick a section of his wall with a sign over it which read "John's Knees". By the end of Kricfalusi's run on the show, it had been reduced to a massive hole.

I've mentioned it on here before but the post-John 'Reverend Jack' episode is worth a watch for an impressively venomous take on the man himself from a lot of the folks who had to put up with his shit. I wish I could've witnessed John's reaction the first time he saw it.

buzby

Quote from: Weeping Prophet on June 26, 2019, 01:13:39 AM
You'd think, but it's clear he pissed away most of the Kickstarter money and would mostly work with young animators, out of college or younger. Even if he had made better use of the money, he's burned far too many bridges. The only people working with him don't know any better.
Yes, Spumco co-founder Jim Smith is the only person who has stuck by him. Most of the rest of the crew on this only started in animation after 2010. The only other people involved who had worked with him before are Eric Bauza, Gabe Swarr (both from the APC era) and Eddie Fitzgerald, and they only did voices in this. Both Smith and Fitzgerald were described as enablers by one of Kricfalusi's abuse victims though, so they presumably knew what was going on and decided they were fine with it.

idunnosomename

the plot of that load of shit is about the level of a Whose Line Is It Anyone improv. hahah a face-eating donald duck. how absurdly convenient and random!!!!

fucking insulting to the viewer really, even without the context of kickstarter thousands

buntyman

I hope that's not true that Jim Smith was complicit. I got him to do an amazing picture for me a few years back. He seemed like a really nice bloke and really put a lot of work into what was a pretty cheap commission.

The more I read about John K the more depressing it all is. I couldn't finish watching this clip of a dvd extra featuring one of his accusers https://youtu.be/ria8fqPqZe8



I remember reading his blog back in the day and he was pushing some young girl he was mentoring to the point of utter creepiness. Lot's of photos of him and Eddie Fitzgerald manhandling her about the place, lots of portraits of her with that big erect nips schoolgirl thing he does. Just yucky. Can't say I was surprised he got accused of noncing.

lazarou

QuoteThe more I read about John K the more depressing it all is. I couldn't finish watching this clip of a dvd extra featuring one of his accusers https://youtu.be/ria8fqPqZe8

As soon as you mentioned a clip I knew the one it was going to be. Seem to remember this set off major alarm bells for people even at the time. There were stories of him being an inappropriate creep but seeing it actually happening (and being something he was proud enough of to use as an episode intro) was genuinely nauseating. Watching it with what we know now it's almost impossible to sit through.

Chriddof

"All the guys who had to follow up on her scenes had to spend a lot of time in the bathroom."

Fuck off, John.

Petey Pate

There's a rumour that the Kickstarter money was mainly used for a trip to Europe and on facelifts. I've also heard that John K still owes money to the Carbunkle and Big Star animation studios for their work on Ren & Stimpy: Adult Party Cartoon, made 16 years ago.

Quote from: buntyman on June 26, 2019, 12:15:12 PM
I hope that's not true that Jim Smith was complicit. I got him to do an amazing picture for me a few years back. He seemed like a really nice bloke and really put a lot of work into what was a pretty cheap commission.

I'm wary of posting this cause it's all hearsay but Jim Smith apparently despises John K and left him for good during Cans Without Labels. He's credited but his involvement could have ended years ago, for all I know.

the

Quote from: buntyman on June 26, 2019, 12:15:12 PMI couldn't finish watching this clip of a dvd extra featuring one of his accusers https://youtu.be/ria8fqPqZe8

On one of the commentaries she also says that, as a kid, she copied Sven and made her own ball of used Band-Aids, and John suggests whether it was of "tampoons".

I wonder if he's got this idea that, as an auteur and a visionary, you've got free reign to have manic 'comedy' flying out of you at any given time, regardless of propriety. While I can think of many other examples where this is tolerated or lauded, where it goes into actual abuse is when it gets serious.

In featurettes and commentaries, Eddie Fitzgerald comes across as a very sycophantic crony of John's, which could align with the above suggestion of him acting as an enabler.

Billy West refused to do Adult Party Cartoon unless there was a mediator between him and John, which was declined. After release, at some convention he stated his distaste for the end result (particularly the gay jokes) and called John an 'inferior' person.

Petey Pate

Quote from: the on June 26, 2019, 01:36:45 PMIn featurettes and commentaries, Eddie Fitzgerald comes across as a very sycophantic crony of John's, which could align with the above suggestion of him acting as an enabler.

Fitzgerald is responsible for what I think is the worst DVD commentary of all time, him alone on the banned episode Man's Best Friend. There's unsurprisingly been no word from him at all since the revelations, to my knowledge.

His loyalty towards Kricfalusi is very strange. John fired him from the short-lived Beany and Cecil revival and later refused to hire him on Ren and Stimpy. He eventually did, but had other people routinely redo his work because he hated it so much.

Quote from: buntyman on June 26, 2019, 12:15:12 PM
The more I read about John K the more depressing it all is. I couldn't finish watching this clip of a dvd extra featuring one of his accusers https://youtu.be/ria8fqPqZe8

I had this on DVD, and if I recall correctly, these were non-skippable intros. They were part of the show. Possibly John's way of getting a final word in on a show that was not well received at all.

Edit: Okay, it says right there that it's skippable. Even so, it was an unusual DVD format to put these long intros right at the start.

Billy

What makes all this so bizarre for me is that, back in the early 2000s, I posted on a forum (Toonzone?) with various posts praising John K as this absolute god and hero of animation, being screwed over by the evil demons at Nickelodeon who "ruined" his show. Even Billy West was jeered when he refused to work on Adult Party Cartoon.

Then APC actually came out and everyone went "Oh."

Chriddof

Eddie Fitzgerald was responsible for what I think was the absolute worst one-off Cartoon Cartoon pilot: Tales Of Worm Paranoia

I know I said some stuff earlier in this thread about still managing to like R&S, but that DVD extra broke me. I'd not seen it before as I'd never owned that boxset.

Quote from: Billy on June 26, 2019, 02:55:22 PM
What makes all this so bizarre for me is that, back in the early 2000s, I posted on a forum (Toonzone?) with various posts praising John K as this absolute god and hero of animation, being screwed over by the evil demons at Nickelodeon who "ruined" his show. Even Billy West was jeered when he refused to work on Adult Party Cartoon.

Then APC actually came out and everyone went "Oh."

John K's blog actually sort of discouraged me from getting into animation properly. I felt like he had to be right when he delivered all those endless tirades about how bad animation was now, and as someone who's never been able to draw very well I felt it wasn't worth pursuing. As a result I only ever dicked about with 3D CG in a meme-y "look how crap I'm being" sort of way.

Twed

Quote from: Chriddof on June 26, 2019, 03:06:41 PMAs a result I only ever dicked about with 3D CG in a meme-y "look how crap I'm being" sort of way.
Another good thing that John K has made happen, indirectly.

Petey Pate

Quote from: Chriddof on June 26, 2019, 03:06:41 PM
Eddie Fitzgerald was responsible for what I think was the absolute worst one-off Cartoon Cartoon pilot: Tales Of Worm Paranoia

It's certainly a bit too inspired by John K, in more way than one. It was probably the most expensive of the pilots Cartoon Network commissioned at the time, running way over budget and missing its original airdate.

bgmnts

Quote from: buntyman on June 26, 2019, 12:15:12 PM
The more I read about John K the more depressing it all is. I couldn't finish watching this clip of a dvd extra featuring one of his accusers https://youtu.be/ria8fqPqZe8

That's MENTAL.

sevendaughters

I enjoyed that Tales of Worm Paranoia despite being basically an R&S knockoff.

Phil_A

Quote from: Billy on June 26, 2019, 02:55:22 PM
What makes all this so bizarre for me is that, back in the early 2000s, I posted on a forum (Toonzone?) with various posts praising John K as this absolute god and hero of animation, being screwed over by the evil demons at Nickelodeon who "ruined" his show. Even Billy West was jeered when he refused to work on Adult Party Cartoon.

Then APC actually came out and everyone went "Oh."

Don't forget, lot of what we knew about the whole Spumco/Nickelodeon situation back then was filtered through John K himself, particularly via the anonymous magazine articles he wrote depicting his former colleagues as sell-out scumbags and himself as a heroic underdog beaten down by the system. There was a pretty well-known R&S fansite that purported to tell the "real" behind the scenes story of everything that went on, which followed exactly the same line that Kricfalusi was the victim and everyone who stayed on the show without him was a soulless corporate whore(it was so vitriolic against specific individuals I half suspect he might've been behind that as well). Without much contradictory information to go on I guess it's not surprising people bought into it back then.

Phil_A

Oh wow, I found the site I was talking about.

https://web.archive.org/web/20051124232000/http://victorian.fortunecity.com/russell/105/storyp.htm

"This is it folks, the complete true story of how John K. created Ren & Stimpy, founded Spümcø, sold R&S to Nickelodeon, how Nick lied and fired John K., how that big oaf Bob Camp stabbed John K. in the back and all kinds of other crap."

Poor Bob, he really didn't deserve any of that.

St_Eddie

Quote from: buntyman on June 26, 2019, 12:15:12 PM
The more I read about John K the more depressing it all is. I couldn't finish watching this clip of a dvd extra featuring one of his accusers https://youtu.be/ria8fqPqZe8

That video is deeply disturbing.  The man is shameless in his perversions.  The body language of Katie is extremely telling throughout.  Pay particular attention to her arms and shoulders; she's constantly lifting up the shoulder closest to John and keeping her arm away from him (going as far as to put it behind her back).  It's a subconscious defensive stance.

One moment in particular stood out to me; the movement of her body and micro-facial expression, as John leans in at and makes eye contact with her at 2:47 in the video.  These are not the reactions and body movements of a woman who feels comfortable around the man stood next to her, nor are they the reactions of a woman who's feelings towards a man are indifferent.  They are the involuntary reactions of a woman who feels threatened by his presence.

buzby

Quote from: buntyman on June 26, 2019, 12:15:12 PM
I hope that's not true that Jim Smith was complicit. I got him to do an amazing picture for me a few years back. He seemed like a really nice bloke and really put a lot of work into what was a pretty cheap commission.

The more I read about John K the more depressing it all is. I couldn't finish watching this clip of a dvd extra featuring one of his accusers https://youtu.be/ria8fqPqZe8

The girl in that video is Katie Rice who he had been hitting on her since she was 14.

On the Jim Smith front, unfortunately just after the Kricfalusi story broke, this thread appeared on Twitter too.

A couple of years ago, Thad Komorowski (author of Sick Little Monkeys, the book about the history of Ren & Stimpy mentioned earlier in the thread) did an interview with Bob Camp & Bill Wray. to mark the 25th anniversary of the show. Wray had refused to be interviewed for Sick Little Monkeys, so this was the first time Komorowski had got to talk to him. At the end of the interview, he asked them if they were involved wirh the proposed new R&S short that was supposed to be shown with the Spongebob movie (which inevitably never made it past the storyboard stage). He gave this answer:
Quote from: Bill Wray
I can't speak for Bob because he's got more issues with John, I mean I've got mine. But I actually would, because I love the characters more than the feud. But he's not going to have me. He likes to work with young, inexperienced kids and train them, that's his thing. But a new Ren and Stimpy cartoon is still cool, and it'll be cool in some way if he gets it finished.
Although it obviously wasn't referencing what happened with Robyn Byrd and Katie Rice, it seesmto be a common M.O. for Kricfalusi, 'grooming' young, impressionable people both professionally and personally rather than having to deal with peers of similar age or experience who might have different ideas or opinions to him. The full interview is here ,and is well worth a read.

One of the other things that comes up in that interview is Kricfalusi's relationship with Lynne Naylor, his girlfirend and one of the co-founders of Spumco. She left after they split up (there's long been rumors that he mentally and physically abused her too) just as R&S was getting underway and she then started seeing fellow Spumco employee Chris Reccardi, who Kricfalusi then fired in revenge (Bob Camp asked her to come back and do some work on the show in the Games era, and she later did some work on APCtoo)

They mention that she was the best at drawing 'sexy girl' characters and that it was something Kricfalusi had trained her to draw. This seems to be a common theme amongst the women he preyed on - in that skin-crawling DVD intro linked above with Katie Rice Krickfalusi mentions that she draws the best versions of his 'Sody Pop' wank fantasy character. It's almost like getting his victims to repeatedly draw this sexy underage character was part of his grooming/normalisation routine.

SavageHedgehog

Quote from: Petey Pate on June 26, 2019, 01:59:13 PM
Fitzgerald is responsible for what I think is the worst DVD commentary of all time, him alone on the banned episode Man's Best Friend.

It would take some going to beat Kricfalusi and Fitzgerald (and some young apprentice and presumed victim) on Wackiki Rabbit on the third volume of the Looney Tunes Golden Collection DVDs. He got commentaries on the first three DVDs, presumably on the basis of being the public(ish) face of classic animation fandom. He was not invited to participate on the remaining three.

Petey Pate

Quote from: SavageHedgehog on June 27, 2019, 07:49:46 AM
It would take some going to beat Kricfalusi and Fitzgerald (and some young apprentice and presumed victim) on Wackiki Rabbit on the third volume of the Looney Tunes Golden Collection DVDs. He got commentaries on the first three DVDs, presumably on the basis of being the public(ish) face of classic animation fandom. He was not invited to participate on the remaining three.

I'd forgotten how bad those commentaries were. They also did some for the Popeye DVDs which were even worse. Telling that they weren't invited to participate again and I think there were even different commentaries recorded by other people for the same shorts. The young girl (and presumed victim) was Kali Fontecchio, who as I recall, was supportive of the Buzzfeed article when it came out.

The Man's Best Friend one is truly awful though. It's nothing but nauseating hero worship and 'whoa look at that!' the whole way through. He says nothing about the troubled history of the cartoon and why it was banned, and not a single artist other than John K is mentioned.

Quote from: buzby on June 26, 2019, 10:48:50 PMOn the Jim Smith front, unfortunately just after the Kricfalusi story broke, this thread appeared on Twitter too.

Had no idea about this. Disappointing.

St_Eddie

Quote from: Petey Pate on June 27, 2019, 11:58:20 AM
Had no idea about this. Disappointing.

This comment below the tweet is quite something...

QuoteWas it a deliberate attempt at 'flashing' or was he just running late and didn't have time to get dressed?

Putting clothes on; that notoriously time consuming task.

idunnosomename

Quote from: Petey Pate on June 27, 2019, 11:58:20 AM
I'd forgotten how bad those commentaries were. They also did some for the Popeye DVDs which were even worse. Telling that they weren't invited to participate again and I think there were even different commentaries recorded by other people for the same shorts. The young girl (and presumed victim) was Kali Fontecchio, who as I recall, was supportive of the Buzzfeed article when it came out.
My dad has those Popeye DVDs and I remember watching them when they come out but I don't remember the bad commentaries. But I just had a look at the Sindbad one and it is pretty rubbish. Fitzgerald doesn't seem to know it's got a real model background (setback) and Krisfalusi is just going WOAH at every close-up while swiping at Disney, and the young girl of course gets to say about a sentence. I suppose the techniques were covered in other extras but it does seem rather amateurish.

Goes to show how big his cred was back then that this lot got to do BOTH the Two-Reelers (this and Ali-Baba).

buzby

Quote from: Petey Pate on June 27, 2019, 11:58:20 AM
I'd forgotten how bad those commentaries were. They also did some for the Popeye DVDs which were even worse. Telling that they weren't invited to participate again and I think there were even different commentaries recorded by other people for the same shorts. The young girl (and presumed victim) was Kali Fontecchio, who as I recall, was supportive of the Buzzfeed article when it came out.
Fontecchio was Kricfalusi's girlfriend at the time, after Byrd had left him and Rice spurned his advances and eventually quit Spumco after Kricfalusi threatened to rape her and she found child porn images on his computer. She is the 'ex-girlfriend' mentioned in the Buzzfeed article who corroborated Rice's story about the child porn images (which Fontecchio allegedly discovered a long time before she decided to leave him).

Alos Gabe Swarr features prominently in that Buzzfeed article, and says he started distancing himself from Kricfalusi in 2002 when Rice told him he started hitting on her when she was 14. He obviously didn't distance himself that much if he agreed to do voice work on this pile of shite.

The Giggling Bean

Quote from: Phil_A on June 26, 2019, 06:51:40 PM
Oh wow, I found the site I was talking about.

https://web.archive.org/web/20051124232000/http://victorian.fortunecity.com/russell/105/storyp.htm

"This is it folks, the complete true story of how John K. created Ren & Stimpy, founded Spümcø, sold R&S to Nickelodeon, how Nick lied and fired John K., how that big oaf Bob Camp stabbed John K. in the back and all kinds of other crap."

Poor Bob, he really didn't deserve any of that.

I read through all of that and, to be honest, it made me annoyed. I hate it when people talk to you in a matey twee sort of way. It makes me think you're covering something up. They say theres 3 versions of truth. Yours, the other persons and the actual truth that falls somewhere in between. This seems like a proper whitewash job...more so now knowing what we know about John K. There were probably faults on both sides but I'd be interested in hearing a rebuttal against that essay from someone on Nickelodeons side.

Petey Pate

Most of the text from that site is cribbed from an article that John K wrote anonymously in a magazine that was, for all intents and purposes, a Spumco propaganda front. You can read scans of the original here:

https://wck-01.blogspot.com/

In the same magazine, John K also wrote negative reviews for the Games-era Ren and Stimpy cartoons under a pseudonym - despite receiving thousands of dollars in royalty payments for each cartoon produced without him.

the

Quote from: Petey Pate on July 05, 2019, 01:06:40 PM[...] John K wrote anonymously in a magazine that was, for all intents and purposes, a Spumco propaganda front. You can read scans of the original here:

https://wck-01.blogspot.com/

Wow, never seen that before, thanks.

I haven't read any of the text, but my word there are some great images in there, the paintings and sketches particularly.

This still from Sven Höek caught me by surprise and had me cracking up:


     


Also on the next page, I've got the photo of Ren and Sven in the whelping box framed in my bedroom. :)