It’s rare for any television show, especially in animation, to have 25 years on the air and continue to grow. In your own words, what is that kind of “secret formula” for the success of SpongeBob?
I always draw a parallel to Looney Tunes. Both of our cartoons are shorts. They’re 11-minute cartoons, not full half hours. We use animation the way I believe animation should be used. If you get hit with a frying pan, your face takes the shape of the frying pan. If SpongeBob has to go on a crying jag, he becomes a lawn sprinkler.
With the gags and the jokes, a little kid gets it because it’s a colorful cartoon. An older kid says, “Oh, I get that reference,” and every age who watches the cartoon gets a different joke. It’s kind of like a parable where different people in different situations, at different ages, will get different things from it.
In that respect, there’s no age limit for this show. You don’t outgrow SpongeBob. The things that people at Comic Cons tell me—one of the first things they say to us is, “Thank you for our childhood.” That’s an absolutely wonderful legacy to be a part of. When I was first starting my career back in ’77 in New York, I just had a simple goal. I wanted to do something on a national level, a national stage. This turned out to be not only national but global.
To be a part of something that legitimately uses the word iconic is just a wonderful, wonderful icing on the cake of a person’s life. I will never stop being grateful to both Nickelodeon and the fans who give me and all of us this chance to be a part of this wonderful, wonderful thing that caused so much joy and laughter and good times for people’s developing lives. We are sitting in gratitude.
