Dave Willis is the one of the men behind Adult Swim’s hit show “Aqua Teen Hunger Force”. Dave is the voice of Meatwad / Carl and also director/writer and producer on each episode. Besides “Aqua Teen”, David also is currently working on a new season of “Squidbillies” and has worked on various other series including, “Space Ghost: Coast to Coast”, “Sealab 2021” and “12 oz. Mouse”. Dave took out some time to chat with us at Movie Mikes to discuss “Aqua Teen” return for season 9 and also its recent name change to “Aqua Unit Patrol Squad 1” and also the upcoming season of “Squidbillies”.
Mike Gencarelli: When “Aqua Teen Hunger Force” started over 10 years ago, did you ever think you would be crossing the 100 episode mark with the series?
Dave Willis: Yes I did. I thought we thought we would be doing it in season 3 though not season 9. Yeah, there was no doubt in my mind and we are only a third of the way there. Let’s reconnect in 10 years when we are celebrating episode 250.
MG: Tell us about change of the name for the series starting season 9?
DW: It was more than a name change. We changed the show on a molecular level, everything about it is different. The only thing that is the same is that it is still 11 minutes long and we still use the characters names too. Other than that it is all about action, sex, mystery and intrigue [laughs].
MG: Since the series is going in a new direction, can we still expect cameos from some of favorite characters?
DW: There are new adventures and new villains also. In the opening, it has a number cameos of previous villains. It would be a fun thing to see if you could spot them all. Some of them are blatant. Frylok has a switchblade fight with Hand Banana [laughs]. Tonight….YOU! There are other characters that you see for a split second and then they are gone. I think it would be a fun game to see how many you can spot.
MG: You voice many characters but primarily Carl and Meatwad, do you find it difficult voicing them at same time?
DW: I don’t, no I really don’t. By that time anyway we have written the script and I have an idea how it is going to sound. I always do Meatwad before Carl because by the end of the Carl script he is either exploded or screaming at someone or just crying in agony. That just blows out my voice. I think Carl over the years has seriously dropped my voice like an octa
ve and a half. There is always like shredded pieces of skin that I end of coughing up after doing Carl. So yeah, Meatwad is always first.
MG: What was the most bizarre plot you came up with for an episode that never was made?
DW: We wrote an outline for one episode that I thought was really funny and we couldn’t make it due to union issues. We know Seth Green through “Robot Chicken” and the premise was where Seth moved next door to the Aqua Teens and Shake was constantly trying to hang with him. We find out he moved next door to Aqua Teens to study Meatwad because he is going to be playing Meatwad in the live-action movie. It would have been great but it wouldn’t be as funny if we couldn’t actually get Seth to do it. We are not SAG, so that is why we couldn’t do it.
MG: Do you have a favorite episode that you have worked on?
DW: It is tough to say, they are all like my children. I think I read that Glenn Frey said when being interviewed about The Eagles “Well Tequila Sunrise…Desperado…there are so many of them, they are all like children to me”. I like Broodwich. I like Dickosode, due to the absurdity and the ridiculousness. I love the original Mooninites and of course Mc Pee Pants. The third episode this season is called “Intervention” and I think that is just as funny as anything we have ever done. There are a few in this batch that I think really stand up against the best stuff we done. I am really excited about the new season and the new episodes. They are really strong.
MG: Whatever ever happened to “Spacecataz” series?
DW: I don’t know. I think it would have been a good show, I think. The way we made it was using it as opens for “Aqua Teen”. We had to make them work as opens but also as a whole. I think it was a fun idea and I think it could have had a good life. We got too busy with other stuff and it never happened. But I always liked it.
MG: What can we expect from the new season of “Squidbillies” this year?
DW: We got 10 episodes coming out and they are all great. I feel that they are really strong. We just wrote an episode called “The Return of Ga Ga Pee Pap”, bringing that character back. I am not sure about guest starts yet. We have been slowly getting new theme songs. There has been talk of us get to record with George Jones to do a theme song. It hasn’t happened yet so I don’t want to jinx it. Rusty and Early compete over a woman [laughs]. Rusty gets his first girlfriend and Early wants her for his own. So their is an episode of that. Early gets a rare form of head cancer from wearing a hat made by the American Asbestos Association.
MG: Besides the narrator, you don’t led you voice to the show, why not?
DW: It is not really a calculated thing. I will go in there if they need an extra or something. I feel like we have such a strong cast of potential characters. I do occasionally play Early’s office co-worker Glen. We are trying to make ‘Have a good one’ a catch phrase, since he says it in every episode. Let’s see if America catches on like we have.
MG: Comparing the two shows “ATHF” and “Squidbillies”, which is more fun to work on?
DW: They are both fun in their own way. It is a little more difficult with “Squidbillies” in respects just because, we are a little more story based in those and go back and do extensive rewrites. The animation is much more involved and is closer to a fully animated show that “Aqua Teen”. But “Aqua Teen” is still challenging and we are very much engaged. It is interesting since when we started with “Aqua Teen”, we had a core group of people who were all at the same place in their careers…just starting out. All these people have grown together and we tend to fill in the blanks for each other. We just have a great group of editors and After Effects artists and the same few animators from the beginning. So everybody knows their role a little bit more. We are still using the same animation from the year 2000 [laughs]. We add stuff obviously but we still go back to those same backgrounds and same shots. With “Squidbillies”, writer/producer Jim Fortier, and I came from the same home town and we can relate to the same sort of backwards dumb-ass redneck stories from our lives. “Aqua Teen” is maybe not as deep in that reality. It is though in another one, meaning whatever tends to be pissing me or Matt (Maiellaro) off that week will somehow find to make its way into the show.
MG: Anything you can tell us about the second “Aqua Teen” movie, “Death Fighter”?
DW: It is a mystery…surrounded in secrecy…surrounded by a cloud of intrigue. Let’s get this show reboot out of the way. We are going to change the title again after we are done with these 10 episodes. Then we will talk “Death Fighter”.