This post is for you. No, you. Yes… yoooouuuu.
Heyyyy everyone! I’ve been meaning to make a big status-update post for a while now, but I’ve just kept putting it off… and off… and off…
Weelllll here it is!
Obviously Spatula Madness has taken me waaay more time to complete then I originally anticipated. Most of the delay has been me simply underestimating the amount of work that was involved in making a movie like this. And the longer I work on it the more bored I get animating spatulas all day, and the less work I actually get done.
That hasn’t been the only delay though, I’ve also been sidetracked by a lot of behind-the-scenes stuff with Charlie the Unicorn. I have been contacted by no less than 20 different companies wanting to do something with Charlie. I wanted to keep this all private in case it fell through, and now that is all HAS fallen through I feel okay posting about it 
First up was merchandising companies. A few different groups wanted to turn Charlie into a “brand” and market the characters on thermoses, pens, balloons, fire hydrants etc etc. I was offered all sorts of money for this, but of course when the contracts came they were totally different than what was originally described to me. So, alas, you won’t be able to buy a Charlie the Unicorn Fun Thermos at Wal-Mart anytime soon. A great loss for the world.
Then there were the mobile phone companies wanting to charge people to download Charlie the Unicorn onto their phones. These were easy to turn down, as I would rather people be able to download the cartoon for free to any phone / media player / spy watch / virtual reality headset they own.
Then there were the people who wanted me to make a second Charlie cartoon to advertise their site / new show / fabulous kitchenware set. Have you seen the web series “Quarterlife“? Yeah. Someone wanted Charlie to advertise that.
Then there was Nickelodeon, who said they wanted to set up a phone interview with me and then never wrote back, and National Lampoon, who were interested in my ideas until I actually sent them, at which point they realized that all of my ideas are monumentally lame and retarded and stopped writing back. Dear Nickelodeon and National Lampoon: I have a great idea for a TV series that involves talking dolphin math professors. They do math… AND they’re dolphins! Two for the price of one! ISN’T THAT HILARIOUS?! Lets do lunch!
Then I got a call from the awesome Matt Harrigan over at Adult Swim, who was interested in hearing my show ideas. I sent him four or five small treatments for shows based on The Cloak, Bino the Elephant and other pilot ideas I’ve been working on, and the response was “So tell me about Charlie the Unicorn.” He had seen the short and thought it would make a funny TV show. Great! I have to be honest, I was so caught up in the fact that I was talking to Adult Swim about turning Charlie the Unicorn into a show that I temporarily forgot what a terrible idea a Charlie the Unicorn show would be. I mean don’t get me wrong, I think Charlie is funny, but if it got picked up we’re talking about 143 minutes of Charlie here. How the heck would that work?
Well that’s what I set off to find out. I called my friend Matt Books and over the next few days we tried to figure out how in the hell to take a 3 minute, 1 joke cartoon and flesh it out into an entire series. Eventually we got a basic feel for what we wanted to do with the show and I put together a 4 minute video pitch detailing what the show would be about. The video included Charlie talking about what a terrible idea the show was, and then a minute-long sequence of my dog running around with a paper cone on his head.
I uploaded it to my site and then sent it off to Adult Swim. Woo! So, the next day I hadn’t heard back and was kind of worried. Maybe I would have been better off explaining all the reasons they should pick up the show instead of the reasons they shouldn’t. Another day goes by, nothing. Then a week. Then another week. And then 3 months. Obviously my video pitch failed to impress.
Or not, almost exactly 3 months after I sent it I get a call out of the blue from Matt Harrigan. “Hey Jason, loved the video pitch, we want to go ahead and put this show through, can you get me a pilot script by Tuesday?” It was Friday, by the way.
Soooo Matt Books drives down and we spend the next couple days watching “Final Destination 2″ and eating at Denny’s at 3 in the morning because we couldn’t figure out what the hell to write about. I KNOW! The Blue unicorn and the Pink unicorn can say “tomato” because it sounds funny when they say “tomato”! GENIUS! Well okay that one was my idea, Matt Books wanted all of the characters to be murdered and dismembered, their bodies hung from trees in the jungle as a warning to other unicorns.
Eventually we settled on a sort of middle ground between “tomatoes” and “dismemberment”, and sent Adult Swim the finished script early Tuesday morning. We tried to make it “Adult Swimy,” by which I mean we had organs falling out of bodies, a flower that wanted to be urinated on, you know. Mature stuff. I thought we had gone a little far… not because I thought we had actually gone too far, but because this was Charlie the Unicorn, a cartoon whose main fan base was 12 year old girls.
Adult Swim thought differently - we hadn’t gone nearly far enough. The script was, as they put it, “too kid-like” and needed to be made more R-rated. Also, they wanted each 11 minute episode to be multiple short Charlie cartoons instead of one long 11 minute one.
So at this point I’m working on developing a “mature audiences only” Charlie the Unicorn show for Adult Swim… and to be honest I didn’t think it was incredibly funny. A super-violent The Cloak, that would be awesome and hilarious. Charlie though? I wasn’t sure if it fit.
Regardless of all that, they wanted to go ahead and officially sign me on and get the production started. They asked what I would need to produce the show. Hmm. This is the list I sent them:
————————————————–
We’ll require the following items:
Dance Dance Revolution Arcade System (1)
Boa constrictor (1)
5 Gallons of Mint Chocolate Chip Ice Cream (5)
Half a kilo of cocaine (1)
Abe Lincoln’s skull (2)
Horse and Buggy with driver (must be Amish) (1)
125 pound rottweiler (1)
The hope diamond (1)
One fully grown redwood tree (1)
Timecop on DVD (1)
The full Van Damme collection (1)
A lock of Alyson Hannigan’s hair (1)
A lock of Andy Kaufman’s hair (1)
A dirigible, painted black (1)
Smokey the Bear costumes (2)
The gold spike driven into the ground by Leland Stanford that joined the east / west railroads (1)
————————————————–
The response:
“Awesome, I’ll get to work on your requests. The cocaine might be hard because we’re out of baggies.”
Hah, alright so I’ll be working on a show I’m not totally behind, but at least these guys are cool.
The contract for the show finally came in. It was 14 pages long. I have no idea if that’s standard in the industry or not. Here’s a few specifics:
I wouldn’t have final creative say (I assume very few people do in TV land.) I would be getting $2,500 for signing over the rights to the Charlie series. That’s less than I made in my CafePress t-shirt store that month. The real money would come from the actual production of the series, but of course there’s absolutely no guarantee the series itself would be picked up - all they wanted right then was a pilot. You see, they order pilots and then air them for executives and advertisers, and try to see which ones are likely to do well and make them money. It’s likely I wouldn’t know if the show itself had been picked up for at least half a year, and in the meantime I’d have to take down my CafePress store because they wanted full merchandising rights. This is, I assume, fairly standard in the TV industry.
Eh. I sent them back an e-mail with a few term changes. There were a couple legal things I wanted to be made clear in the contract, and I wanted the purchase price to be raised higher, so that my risk was less. They agreed to my terms, and sent me a new contract. A new contract that had 9 additional pages - masterful legal judo that removed all of my rights to everything, and then some. I’m not a lawyer, but to my untrained eye most of the contract seemed “not exactly in my favor.”
It was around this time that sales in my Charlie the Unicorn t-shirt store were getting higher and higher every month. I had e-mails coming in every two weeks from online companies offering me money to do cartoons for them. I even had a cool guy from Columbia Records wanting me to do a music video for a new band they had signed. I was getting less and less excited about the idea of doing a Charlie show. On the one hand, it was freaking Adult Swim, home of most of my favorite shows ever. On the other hand, I’d be making a show I wasn’t thrilled with for less money than I was making doing nothing, and not only that but I’d have to put the “Spatula Madness” feature on hold for another year while I worked full time on Charlie crap.
So, in a choice between “making a show I wasn’t excited about, in a way I didn’t think was the best way to make it, for less money than I could make independently” or “work independently and make whatever I want to make” I picked the latter. Had it been a Cloak show, or something I though had the potential to be great, I would have done it for almost nothing. But it wasn’t worth working so long and hard on a project I didn’t believe in, especially if I was going to take a pay cut.
Maybe in a year or two I’ll get the chance to make a show that I actually think could be great, but for now I’m staying independent.
But that doesn’t mean I’m not still selling out! You should see Charlie shirts at Hot Topic soon. No, really. Hot Topic contacted me and wants to carry Charlie merchandise. Want to know something that will blow your mind? Hot Topic is the most reasonable of all of the companies I’ve dealt with over the last year. The contract they sent me was short, to the point, and exactly how they said it would be. They respond to my questions within a day, and have been a friendly and professional group to deal with. It figures that the store with the “Welcome to Hell” entrance would be the nicest most reasonable company out there.
In other news: I’ve taken some of my favorite bits from the Charlie pilot script and turned it into “Charlie the Unicorn 2″, which will be released soon on the web. I think it’s better than the first Charlie, and it’s totally kid-friendly too! I can save the dismemberment for my other cartoons. And there will be many more cartoons. In April I’m moving back to Orlando, and I plan to start releasing at least two cartoons a month on FilmCow. I’ll also be working to finally finish Spatula Madness and get THAT released. After that? Who knows! If any TV executives out there are interested in my hilarious idea for a math-dolphin show give me a call!
March 27th, 2008 at 9:04 pm
Awesome!! This blog made me happy.
March 27th, 2008 at 9:08 pm
Jason. You said one paragraph about Spatula Madness but about 25 about Charlie the Unicorn. And you havent even given a new release date. OR changed the SM website. AND youve made a whole short film ( Swiffer) but neglected Spatula Madness. I had faith in you man.
March 27th, 2008 at 9:25 pm
Jason, I’m so proud of you for not being a sell out.
I’m so proud.
March 27th, 2008 at 9:34 pm
Wow! This is pretty amazing. Thanks for filling us in.
March 27th, 2008 at 9:35 pm
I wet myself upon reading this.
No joke.
March 27th, 2008 at 9:39 pm
Samuel - the post was explaining why there hasn’t been much Spatula Madness news. Sorry for making you so angry!
Swiffer took me one night. Spatula Madness is obviously different.
March 27th, 2008 at 9:44 pm
that blog post was both the most awesome and most hilarious thing i’ve ever read.
i sure hope everything works out for you. it’s nice to hear that you’re sticking up for what you believe in. i wish you nothing but happiness in whatever happens in the next chapter of your life.
March 27th, 2008 at 10:45 pm
I’m glad you didn’t make Charlie into a show
March 27th, 2008 at 11:26 pm
this blog entry filled me with happiness! Keep us updated more!
March 27th, 2008 at 11:42 pm
Dude Jason thats so sweet! Any idea when Hot Topic will be stocking?
March 27th, 2008 at 11:52 pm
My head would explode if a “Cloak” show was reality.
March 28th, 2008 at 1:01 am
Jason, you should get metacafe to take all the unofficial uploads of ‘charlie the unicon’ down and just have your own account with it on there. You would get all of the charlie traffic so you’d probably make a fair bit of extra cash and you STILL wouldn’t have to do anything! It’d be like cafepress but easier to get foing because you wouldn’t have to make anything new.
March 28th, 2008 at 1:25 am
Funky Dragon - I have a YouTube Partners account. Which means I’ll be getting money for Charlie 2 on YouTube, similar to how you can make money on Metacafe.
March 28th, 2008 at 2:10 am
Awesome, awesome, and more awesome on the side. It’s a shame that the Adult Swim deal didn’t work out the way you wanted it to, but things are looking good nonetheless.
March 28th, 2008 at 12:25 pm
If the show would’ve been a huge success, how much money could’ve you made from it.
March 28th, 2008 at 12:48 pm
Dude! Hot Topic? Once those are available you can be sure I’ll be purchasing one. That’s one of my favorite places to shop. Though I may have to hit up the CafePress shop first. *heh*
Shame none of those other things worked out the way you were hoping.
Good luck with everything! (Swiffer video is awesome by the way. Just what I needed after a particularly mind numbing class)
March 28th, 2008 at 5:02 pm
thank jesus, an update. great job. and a good decision.
March 28th, 2008 at 6:07 pm
Nice.
March 28th, 2008 at 7:14 pm
This is crazy i was just about to e-mail you about SM and you have answered my questions. =) wait, is animation finished and you are now in post prod or what??? A CLOAK SHOW WOULD HAVE BEEN AWESOME.
March 28th, 2008 at 8:26 pm
Um, why not just make your math-dolphin show yourself? More freedom. That and it can sort of act as a pilot for anyone watching the net
March 28th, 2008 at 8:37 pm
Jason, thank you for not selling out to a station that didn’t fight of fox and keep futurama on their channel.
When i was reading this i thought it would be great for you if your stuff got merchandised at somewhere like Walmart because i think it would be great if i could give you money! But being under aged, and having morals, i can buy your stuff online at cafe-press(yet) or steal my parents credit cards! But I’ll try to talk them into because i totally need a bumper sticker for a car that i don’t have!
Also want to post a link to the adult-swim pilot if you have no already?
March 28th, 2008 at 8:40 pm
Hullo. I think you made the right decision. Big TV companies like that often try to screw artists with shitty deals, not realizing that artists aren’t dependent on them for success any more. I’m looking forward to the day that everyone stops falling for it. Maybe we’ll finally get some quality television then.
March 28th, 2008 at 9:12 pm
Jason- I’m sorry for sounding like such a jerk. I actually thought that Swiffer was hilarious and so did my friends. Please dont hate me.
I AM SORRY
March 28th, 2008 at 9:14 pm
Sorry to sound like such a jerk. Swiffer was actually hilarious and I loved it. Than you for the fill in.
I AM REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY SORRY!!!
PLEASE DONT HATE ME
March 28th, 2008 at 9:25 pm
It’s no problem Samuel. Of course I already ordered 1000 “I Hate Samuel” banners to spread around town…
March 28th, 2008 at 11:03 pm
A charlie show would not have been very good, not going to lie. I would have watched the pilot, but afterwords, no. The cloak show is much more adult swim. and abe lincoln’s skull is encased in concrete
March 29th, 2008 at 2:05 am
Wait a second?
They thought that The Cloak wouldn’t make a good show, but Charlie would?
Did they even SEE The Cloak? I mean, seriously. If anyone had watched The Clack they would see it’s defiantly Adult Swim material.
March 29th, 2008 at 5:03 pm
Wow, this must have been a crazy year for you. Awesome news!
I agree, The Cloak would make an awesome series.
March 29th, 2008 at 9:08 pm
DOn’t make a CHarlie TV series. That would kill the hilariousness of Charlie The Unicorn
March 30th, 2008 at 5:44 am
i think you should make a few charlie shorts and put them on the web and then make some more that are only on the dvd. so loads of people would buy it. like me. and then i could glue the charlie dvd case and the spatula madness dvd case together to make one amazing jason filled dvd
March 30th, 2008 at 8:28 pm
Hey Jason, you make one of these posts everytime I decide not to use the internet for a few days. Grr. Is it possible to watch the video of Charlie saying how crappy the show would be, or is that going into your “failed movie” database?
March 30th, 2008 at 9:04 pm
Awesome news update! I’m glad you didn’t make Charlie into a show (it wouldn’t be as good with all that mature crap you mentioned, it’s fine how it is). I have always thought that The Cloak would make an awesome Adult Swim show though. It’s sort of Aquateen-ish, but it’s got it’s own style and humor, and it’s animation style is so perfect for an Adult Swim show! Ah well, maybe in the future. Stay cool, Jason!
March 31st, 2008 at 1:56 am
Wow, that’s exciting. I might actually enter - even buy something from - Hot Topic now!
March 31st, 2008 at 6:37 pm
Well done Jason! It may seem like you turned down a dream with adult swim, but with ur talent im 100%ly sure that something even greater is just around the corner…. and i feel that spatula madness the movie will have something to do with that! if not Charlie 2
Keep up the good work Jason! Your fans will stand by ya for the long run 
March 31st, 2008 at 8:56 pm
Thanks for the great news, Jason! I’m happy you didn’t ruin Charlie the Unicorn’s reputation and are staying independent. I love your stuff way more than stuff I see on TV (except South Park, which is pretty close). And this also explained the whole Spatula Madness thing. I’m glad you’re being successful!
March 31st, 2008 at 11:31 pm
I’m glad you didn’t make the pilot for [as]. To tell you the truth, the parts with the organs and urinating flowers kinda…sucked.
I also agree with you on the Cloak. That would definately make for a good show, and you could’ve just submitted the short (of course, unless [as] wanted a new one).
Great insight into the fantastic world of business and binding legal contracts and selling out!
April 2nd, 2008 at 1:27 pm
lol Jason, that last reply to Samuel almost killed me.
And thanks for taking some time to post some news, it’s been quite a while (no that wasn’t meant in an ironic kinda way), so lookin forward to the Charlie the Unicorn 2, just too bad about the dismemberment not getting into this one, it really cracked me up when I read it (but then again, maybe it’s funnier in writings than it is as an actual movie).
also pretty cool you earn more than 2500 dollars a month not doing anything, that’s just like me, except it’s not dollars, it’s DKK, and I get them cause I’m on the dole, but hey, free money
April 3rd, 2008 at 7:49 am
It’s nice to see that people with this amount of creativity and sense such as Jason still exist. Yay.
April 3rd, 2008 at 2:43 pm
It’s amazing how successful charlie is. Alot of the kids at my school know about it. Hopefully you’ll make a show for TV someday, look forward to CTU2
April 3rd, 2008 at 3:38 pm
That would be awesome if the Cloak was a show! I’m glad Charlie isn’t going to be a show, it would ruin it.
YAY JASON!!!!
=D
April 6th, 2008 at 8:52 pm
SOOOOOOOOOOOOO glad you didn’t sell out!!!!!! glad your smart enough to actually READ your contracts!!! Any way sooo cool about Hot Topic can’t wait till that stuff gets on the market! Can’t wait till you make charlie 2
April 7th, 2008 at 10:04 pm
Sounds like you need a lawyer Jason. Although you seem to really know what you want and what to look for in any contract, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to have a professional consultant make sure your not ripped off. (especially with all the big names asking to steal/market your ideas)
April 8th, 2008 at 3:29 pm
Shame about the Adult Swim contract. Still, it’s good to know you have a head for business… and that you’re actually still alive and not rotting on the floor of your kitchen.
April 10th, 2008 at 7:08 pm
Hey, Jason! I’m really happy for you, man! Although it would’ve been awesome for you to work for Adult Swim, I think the Cloak should’ve been selected instead of Charlie.
P.S. Can we ever expect to see the cloak back in action???
April 11th, 2008 at 9:07 pm
Thats pretty cool man!
I is be very excited.
To bad that you sold the rights…
April 11th, 2008 at 9:33 pm
Watermelon64 - Huh? I haven’t sold the rights to anything.
April 12th, 2008 at 11:45 am
Jason. If you’re after a cash, here’s a few suggestions:
KEEP THE RIGHTS!! Make sure you have full ownership of all your media.
If someone wants to make merchandise, don’t make it a “One-time payment”, have it based on something like a percentage of each item sold.
Hire a lawyer to negociate contracts and such with you. It means if there are any legal matters, the lawyer will be fully up to date.
Don’t rush your current productions, keep them slow n steady. Once you get Spatula Madness done, phone up some of the companies again and try and market it.
Well that’s it. Contact me if anymore info is needed.
April 12th, 2008 at 5:26 pm
Alex - unfortunately there aren’t any instances in which I could get any kind of development contract and keep the rights to the media I’m being paid to produce. Not even Matt Groening owns the rights to The Simpsons or Futurama. If I’m making a show or cartoon for someone else, they’re going to own the rights to it. The best I can do is negotiate royalties and creative control in my favor (and even that is hard to do when you’re a newcomer.)
As for merchandise, obviously I know not to enter into any merchandising agreement that doesn’t pay on a per-sale royalty basis, that’s just good business
April 12th, 2008 at 10:45 pm
wowzer! lotsa stuff going on!
April 13th, 2008 at 4:55 am
Be sure not to fall for that old trick of getting “a percentage of the net profit”. Hollywood productions NEVER make a net profit, thanks to fancy accounting. Always go for a percentage of the overall gross.
April 14th, 2008 at 4:24 pm
That’s awesome! Can’t wait for Charlie 2. All I want is a release date.
April 14th, 2008 at 5:47 pm
Hey Why dont you work the cloak into charlie like as someone they meet on their way some were and if you do please add the floating head of Robert Mitchum
April 17th, 2008 at 1:35 pm
Interesting time you’ve had there. I think that charlie would make a bad adult swim show, but it’s still pretty cool that they contacted you in the first place.