Jeff 'Swampy' Marsh
Sometimes shows break all genre boundaries and find a completely unexpected audience. That’s exactly what’s happened with Phineas and Ferb, Disney’s cartoon that’s proved not just a hit with kids, but those old enough to hold a mortgage too.
The show (about two step-bothers trying to make the most out of their summer holidays in ridiculous ways) has celebrity fans like Jonathan Ross, Selena Gomez and Michael J. Fox who’ve all done cameos for the show.
As he launches Disney XD’s Phineas and Ferb Aim High mentorship – offering one lucky kid the opportunity for a voice cameo in an upcoming Phineas and Ferb episode – we had a chat to the man they call ‘Swampy’ about the show, British comedy and the show’s host of celebrity fans.
So, tell us a little bit about the Aim High Mentoring programme.
It’s a programme that they started back in 2010. Dan and I got involved for the first time last year for the artist mentoring programme and it was really cool. So when they asked us to get involved again, we were pretty keen to do it, but this time it’s for voice over actors. It’s something that both me and Dan do on the show and we thought anything we can do to get kids to follow this path, we’d be happy to do. It’s a wonderfully fun gig.
Do you need specific skills for voice acting over the more usual type?
Well, I think the biggest skill is not being afraid to look like an idiot. If you can master that, the rest of it gets a lot easier. We need all different kinds of voices in this biz, so having one particular voice or another isn’t important. The biggest skill is losing your fear of taking risks and looking like a buffoon. Because that’s the job, to get into a booth and just be willing to do anything and say anything and make your voice do all different kinds of things. It’s a fun job, it really is.
Actors who haven’t done voice over’s before come in and done roles on the show always ending it by saying “Oh my gosh, that was so much fun. And I didn’t have to sit around in hair and make-up for hours! This is a blast, can I do more?” we’ve had some huge names from Oscar winners like Joel Grey and people as varied as Ray Liotta, Ben Stiller, Michael Douglas and Tina Fey. I mean, some really big folks who’ve come on and all have been amazed at how much fun we have doing this and how quick the process is.
What is it like when massive names like that want to work with you?
It’s hugely flattering. I mean, when you ask some of these dream talents, folks that are in your wish list to come in, not only do they say yes but then they come in and tell what fans they are of the show. It bowls you over. Some of these people are my heroes.
Recently Jonathan Ross came in and voiced for one of the episodes and he’s someone I’ve been a massive fan of for years! And then I find out that he watches the show with his kids and knows all the characters. It’s just amazing! I do get very, very giggly though.
Did you have any idea how big the show would be?
No. Both me and Dan if you ever meet you’ll find we have really good imaginations and we’re fairly egotistical (laughs) but there’s nothing that prepared us for the level of success of this show. We genuinely thought it was a good show, we really believed it would find an audience for all the right reasons, but in our dreams we thought if we get 52 episodes out of this, how great would that be? We thought that would just be fantastic.
So to be here with, after we complete this current order, 126 episodes, a TV movie, possibly a theatrical film, a couple of summer specials and a talk show? We are stunned at the level of success and grateful and ticked.
And to all the people out there that watch it; thank you, thank you, thank you because as long as you keep watching it, they’ll let us keep making it. And we really are having a fun time making it.
Why do you think the show’s so popular with adults as well?
Well, from the beginning, Dan and I were just trying to make a show that made each other laugh and didn’t have anything in it that would be inappropriate for kids. The animated shows we loved the best growing up were the ones that were written for everybody.
Shows like the Warner Brothers and Bugs Bunny stuff. We watched that years later and there were jokes that we didn’t get when we were kids and all of a sudden we did get when we were 16, 17 or older. The Rocky and Bullwinkle stuff always had references that only the adults in the room were laughing at.
We always believed that kids are a lot smarter than anybody gave them credit for. That has really proven true. Kids will get more of the jokes than you think and throwing stuff in there for the adults always gives the kids another level to learn about. If the adult laughs, the kid gets to turn around and say “Why was that funny?” They get to have a conversation and the kid gets a cool piece of information as to why that’s a funny joke.
Who came up with the platypus then?
You know, I genuinely don’t remember. Dan and I tend to sit in a room and just throw ideas and the great thing together is that mostly what we do for the other one in encourage the weirder ideas. Where somebody would usually say “No, you could never do that” we usually spend most of our time wondering how we could make it work.
So I don’t really where the platypus came from, but it’s probably something one of said to make the other laugh and then they said “Wait a minute, why not?”
You lived over here in the UK for six years. Has the British style of comedy been an influence to you?
I was a big fan of British humour long before I moved over there. I lived in the UK for a year back in 1980 and then came over in 2000 to work on a show for the BBC, but I’ve always loved British humour. Dan and I used to watch all the Black Adder series together and listen to all the Monty Python records when we were working together originally.
Living and working over here kind of reinforced that and gave me so many new voices in my head that I use when I’m creating new characters. That’s the other great thing is that there’s been a list of people I’ve become a massive fan of from the UK that I’ve had the opportunity to work with since on the cartoon. We’ve gotten Jane Horrocks, who I think is just genius, and David Mitchell came and did ‘Big Mitch’ for us. Jamie Oliver, who I’m a fan of for his work, came and did a voice for us. Nick Frost came and did our pirate for us.
These are people who I had to explain who they were often to the executives out in Hollywood but they were kind enough to say “whatever you want is fine.” Damian Lewis came and did the James Bond bit for us, which was just hysterical. It’s been great. Recently we had Phil Jupitus come in. These are all folks whose work I’m in deep admiration of from living her and watching them on the tele every day. It’s been great that they’ve worked with us.
What’s it been like having the show’s music nominated for four Emmys?
Both Dan and I are failed rock and roll musicians, we both had rock bands growing up. Dan, up until quite recently, they’d never made it big so once we made the decision to quit music and embrace on being animators, we have two records on the charts! It’s pretty rewarding. Although I think the lesson is if you want to be a success in the music industry, quit playing music.
That’s one of the most joyous parts of the production process for us, sitting around in the evenings with guitars and writing songs. Paying homage to all those pop music songs that we grew up with, the songs you remember from The Archie’s. I come from a musical family; my grandfather was a professional musician, so for me it was great to write songs in his genre. He was a big band musicians we’ve gotten to write some big band songs as well.
Phineas and Ferb’s ‘projects’ are so over the top, what was the craziest thing you ever did as a kid on your school holidays?
I remember one year, back when Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Jesus Christ Superstar came out, to get all the kids in the apartment building I was living in to agree to creat our own version of Superstar. We did it around the pool and we got all the parents to come out and watch. That was pretty cool!
You’re doing a crossover with Marvel! How did that come about?
I know! We got a call from the Disney execs and they said “We’re now in business with the Marvel guys, do you think you’d want to do a cross over?” and we rattled it around and though “That could be darn funny.” As well as cool, Dan and I, along with most of the crew grew up with the Marvel comics and I remember learning how to draw by tracing over Jack Kirby’s drawings of Iron Man. It’s really part of our artistic DNA. So the chance to play with them was intimidating and exciting.
We talked to them at length, and how to get humour out of the characters and ironed out where the difficult things might be. We’ve come up with a really funny story, that’s very much Phineas and Ferb and also has Doctor Doofenshmirtz having a good time with the super villians and at the same time stays true to who those characters are as well.
It’s been a very long and difficult path at times, but the stories that we’ve got at the end are terrific. We’re finishing them off now and you’ll see them next summer and I think everybody’s going to like them.
So, I’ve got to ask, where did the nickname come from?
That came from when I was living in the UK in 1980 from some of my friends back in Exeter. I was working at a place called The Timepiece and people either started calling me ‘Swampy Marsh’ or ‘Boggy Marsh’ and I reallydidn’t like ‘Boggy’ and I made enough of a fuss about it that people just started calling me ‘Swampy’.
Then my friends in the States heard about it and when I got home, everybody was calling me ‘Swampy.’ When I got into the animation business, David Silveman who ran The Simpsons decided I should my credits as Swampy and I’ve been that ever since.
So what’s in the pipeline for you then?
We’re going to be working on finishing this season for probably at least another couple of years. They’ve also been talking about doing a spin-off and we might have a feature coming.
I know the one thing that both Dan and I said we want to do is that we’ve gotten a lovely offer from the guy who wrote Avenue Q and helped write the music to Book of Mormon, a very talent songwriter called Bobby Lopez who’s written a few songs with us and he’s said we should do a musical together. I know Dan and I are pretty keen to work on him on a musical, so maybe that’s what we’ll do next.
Phineas and Ferb creator Jeff "Swampy" Marsh is mentoring for Disney XD’s Aim High programme, which you can get involved in by visiting www.disneyxd.co.uk/aimhigh
FemaleFirst Cameron Smith