A brief question about Billy West, and John K. Is there a feud? I'm just curious because I've heard about West basically taking credit for creating both Ren AND Stimpy, and I did see somewhere that John K considered Billy West and Bob Camp his best friends. So I was just curious if anyone knew if they were at each others throats.
Can you dig?
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"The ironic thing is that West later went on to do impressive impersonations of Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd in the films "Space Jam" and "Looney Tunes: Back in Action" (the second of which, directed by Joe Dante, is actually pretty good). "
Actually, in "Back in Action", only Elmer is voiced by Billy. Bugs is voiced by Joe Alasky, who played Plucky Duck from Tiny Toons and Sourpuss in Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures. Interestingly, Bob Camp was one of the storyboarders of "Back in Action".
I like Eric Bauza's portrayal of Stimpy, but I feel Billy West's is lightyears better. It could be from childhood conditioning of being so familiar with Billy's Stimpy voice, who knows. However, I agree completely that Billy West's Ren was god awful. Just terrible. You hit the nail on the head depicting what I hear ("West was doing a bad imitation of the psychotic Chihuahua"). I wish West would have went with Spumco, what a shame. Still, he gets more sympathy from me than Bob Camp ever will.
In a fit of excellent judgment, the great Billy West, the voice and soul of Stimpy in his original iteration, decided not to return for this hideous desecration. Audiences and critics were similarly appalled by this rancid reboot, which lasted a mere three episodes before Spike TV decided to put their whole animation block on hold, leaving half of the show’s six episode run unseen until DVD, and who are we kidding, pretty much after that as well.share
This rightly reviled reboot fundamentally misunderstands Ren & Stimpy’s appeal. Spike TV labored under the delusion that people loved the show because it was so fucking filthy and violent and nihilistic and full of T&A and interspecies fucking. In actuality, people loved Ren & Stimpy because it was funny and had great characters and animation and managed to simultaneously be naughty and nice, innocent and winningly mischievous. Adult Party Cartoon desperately misses the innocence and sweetness Billy West brought to Stimpy and the discipline and restraint of Nickolodeon.
Left to his own devices, John K created something unwatchable and repellent, a bona fide, genuine childhood/legacy-ruiner.