Celebrities were placed in a black room, facing a camera, where an ear speaker would pipe in the dulcet tones of George Lowe ( Space Ghost). In a 2012 interview, Andre told the Huffington Post, "I rented as many seasons I could get my hands on and did a Space Ghost marathon by myself in my house, just so I could absorb as much Space Ghost as I could."Īnd if you think Andre's treatment of celebrities is cruel and unusual, you should really get a load of the gulag torture chamber that is a Space Ghost interview. The limitations added to this unbearable feeling of nothingness-the constant hum of off-screen "space electronics" and the loud blinks of Zorak all muddled together to make a show that was as much lo-fi zine as it was Braque collage. Space Ghost himself couldn't have had more than four default movements, one of which was to "blast" his guest with his laser arms. The contrast between seeing (then) box office megastar Jim Carrey on a show that looked like it was made by propagandists from some dictatorship was palpable.
#Space ghost coast to coast tv#
The bronze age of TV sitcom and adventure cartoons of the 1960s was defined by horrid frame rates, plagiarized character design, tacky merchandising, and cost-cutting animation techniques (think the looping backgrounds of The Jetsons).Ĭroker, along with show's creator and producer Mike Lazzo, understood the parodic potential of all this- Coast to Coast looked cheap but that just heightened the trippy tension.
It was his idea to repurpose the one off villains of the original Hannah Barbera cartoon Space Ghost (1966–1968) as the shows erstwhile sidekicks. Instead there was this confused superhero asking David Byrne if he was "having trouble with his power bands"-with probing follow-ups like "what do you mean by 'it'?" Adult Swim was wild, it was radical, it was pure, and it was everything I wanted to do with my life.Ĭoast to Coast had punk sewn into its very aesthetic. There was no moralizing, and there was barely a plot. This animation block shifted something deep within me. For an hour or so, there was a little block of programs called "Adult Swim." There were only four shows- Sealab, Aqua Teen Hunger Force, The Brak Show, and the show that kicked the night off, Space Ghost: Coast to Coast.
My eyes were decidedly square.īut it was late night Friday's on Cartoon Network that entranced me. Already a TV junkie, I began to flood my life with back-to-back cartoons: Ren and Stimpy, Animaniacs, Courage the Cowardly Dog, etc. I was ten when my parents got swindled into getting Foxtel. It got me thinking on the legacy of Coast to Coast, and its impact on me and modern comedy. Croker was one of those cult figures who had a finger in so much of the great alt-comedy wave of the past 25 years. Recently, lead animator of Coast to Coast and voice of Zorak and Moltar, C.
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