“Help Wanted” was an eight-minute introduction to the world of SpongeBob SquarePants.
Here’s the story of how it came to be.
Few people go into their first day thinking they are settling in for a quarter-century run of a lifetime.
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The following interviews were edited and condensed for clarity.
TOM KENNY:I had worked onRockos Modern Life, a Nickelodeon series created by Joe Murray.
I was doing stand-up at the time.
I was trying to break into voiceover, especially animated voiceover, which was my dream job.
Carlos Alazraqui, the voice of Rocko, was also a stand-up comedian.
Joe Murray said, Is there anybody funny that would be good for [Rocko character] Heffer?
And Carlos said, Yeah, theres this guy, Tom Kenny.
So I met with Joe, and he hired me to be Heffer.
Then, on that show, the creative director was Steve Hillenburg.
Joe Murray put together this amazing crew of guys just getting their feet wet in the animation business.
Thats where I met Steve and a lot of the other SpongeBob builders.
CLANCY BROWN:I had been working in voiceover a little bit.
I had sort of put my toe in and decided that I really liked it.
I had done a couple of series that didnt last very long.
But I knew I liked doing it.
It was a good gig.
I got a call: Would you come and do this thing?
I said, What kind of voice is it?
And they said, Its this kind of a character voice.
And he goes, I know its going to be good.
KENNY:Steve was ready to pitch his own show.
He was kind of working on this thing in his spare time.
He invited me to his small rented apartment in West Hollywood and showed me the show bible.
It was all there.
He showed it to me, and I just fell in love with it.
He was like, I want you to be SpongeBob.
He intuited all that stuff from knowing me.
So I had the gig from the get-go, which is very unusual.
He said, Oh no.
You laugh like him, you think like him, you cry like him.
Its not going to be anyone else.
BILL FAGERBAKKE:Coachhad ended in 97.
I was figuring out my own career.
I kind of wanted to stay away from sitcoms.
Animation had started for me around 94 or something like that.
I think [Hillenburg] heard some of my work onBeethovenandGargoyles.
I think that just opened his mind to me reading for Patrick.
RODGER BUMPASS:WhenSpongeBobhit, it was just another cartoon, another audition.
And then you got the job.
I got the job.
BUMPASS:We did the pilot.
So I just let it go and said it was just another cartoon.
Then I saw the snowballing reception we had from our fans.
I was a little surprised.
Pleasantly so, you might say.
BROWN:I was just trying to make sense of the pilot.
I couldnt quite grasp what was going on.
The problem was, of course, that it was very obvious what was going on.
The key to SpongeBob, generally, is that the simpler, the better.
We went to the studioit was a big room.
Stephen started out in the booth.
Id never had a creator or a director sit in on the recording.
In terms of having fun, it really did stand out.
But the pilot itself, to me, was very strange.
When we finally got it animated, and it was going to air, they gave us a videotape.
She was mesmerized by it.
She wanted to watch it again.
And she wanted to watch it again.
And she wanted to watch it again.
And I was like, Okay, I guess this thing works.
FAGERBAKKE:I didnt really understand it.
I was kind of dismissive of it.
I thought it was like preschool stuff.
I thought it was just going to be one [recording] session because you never know.
Youre just trying to book one thing and do your best.
It was really weird because there were anchovies in that episode.
We had a tank of helium in the recording studio for us all to be the anchovies.
I thought, This is the craziest $600 Im getting here.
The people were cool.
I just thought it was for little kids.
I was happy to do it but I forgot about it.
And then 10 months later, I get sent a VHS video.
It was so great.
It was every bit as funny and charming.
Theyre just regular folks, you know, blue-collar people.
And my dad said, Thats a really cute show.
I think thats really got a chance.
FAGERBAKKE:By the time we hit Tiny Tim, my mind was shattered.
BUMPASS:It was genius using Tiny Tims music in the show.
It fits our atmosphere and our energy so well.
BROWN:[Tiny Tim is] the perfect soundtrack.
Rest in peace, Tiny Tim.
Part of his act was that he was just so guileless.
I love to believe that Tiny Tim was the person who we saw on stage.
You know, because he would always bow and be so gracious.
He was just as simple and sweet as SpongeBob is.
At first, I was like, Thats a strange choice.
And then I realized that it was really the only choice ever.
Of course, SpongeBob and Tiny Tim are the same.
But only Steve would have seen that.
Only he would have connected those dots.
I opened for Tiny Tim as a stand-up in the early 90s.
So yeah, crazy.
There are two degrees of separation between me and anybody in the history of the job.
Ive been around a long time.
Like an Orchestra
Why does SpongeBob still resonate 25 years later?
The cast credits the vision of Hillenburg, who tragically passed away in 2018 from complications with ALS.
BROWN:[Hillenburg] was always trying to pull the complexity out of it.
He didnt want any outside references.
He didnt want a whiff of anything that was current.
You know, he was like the anti-Simpsons.
You just dont want any of that stuff in there.
You want to keep it as simple as possible.
The pilot is about a young man applying for a job for the first time.
He doesnt know that hell be particularly good at it, but it turns out he is.
He wants it bad enough, and he gets it.
I mean, its really that simple.
BUMPASS:That was the cool thing about Stevehe had the concept.
He had everything in his mind.
And when the right execution came out from his actors, he knew it right away.
Its like Mozart; he didnt have to write the thing down and then change things.
He knew what he wanted.
Fortunately, we all were what he wanted.
KENNY:Steve knew exactly what he wanted.
Im just an instrument in his orchestra and I want to play what he wants me to play.
Steve was such a dedicated music listener.
He cast the show tonally.
Its like an orchestra.
Its like Peter and the Wolf, you know?
I had never run into anybody who cast a show that way.
Obviously, you want people with voices that fit the drawings.
But it was also tonal as much as anything else.
FAGERBAKKE:Its really something where you just get lucky.
You dont know that Tom Kenny is going to be this wizard whos also like a machine.
Same with Rodger Bumpass.
My god, the screaming!
The discipline of that is what always impresses me.
Man, he just does that.
He does things that I cant do without hurting myself.
And its really hard.
So, one of the keys has been the ability to sustain that essential innocence of SpongeBob.
That is the commandment of the show, and I think that its why people respond to it.
BUMPASS:I am so grateful to be a part of something so iconic in peoples lives.
People always tell us, Thank you for our childhood.
So, gratitude is the main thing on my mind.
KENNY:Its been nothing but a beautiful, beautiful road.
I cant believe its been 25 years.