If you’ve been looking for some heart and sweet family dynamics in your adult animation fare, you should definitely check out Joe Cappa’s new animated series Haha, You Clowns, which debuted on Adult Swim on Oct. 19. Cappa, who got a lot of attention four years ago when his acclaimed short Ghost Dogs debuted at Sundance, was also a social media hit with his 40-second TikTok creations. We had a chance to chat with Cappa in a recent Zoom interview to learn more about his kinder, gentler toon which centers on a recently widowed father and his three loving teenage sons.
Cappa, who was born in Chicago and raised in Oklahoma, worked in the advertising business, before starting out his own video production company when he moved to Denver ten years ago. “ I was hired by a band to make a music video, and that was the first time I really ‘animated’ something,” Cappa recalls. “I spent the next month in a dark basement shooting stop motion construction paper characters. By the end of that process I was amazed to discover I didn’t go crazy! I loved what I made and I was just excited to work on the next thing. That’s when I knew I wanted to focus on animation as a career.”
He also ended up teaching himself how to animate so that he could make his first animated short. “I was very nervous, but in the process of making the short (Ghost Dogs), which ended up taking two years to make, I went to a lot of film festivals and I gained the confidence to tell more stories.”
He adds, “However, no immediate opportunities came from it, so I just decided to make these little one-minute-long animated shorts and put them on Instagram. I had also made this short proof of concept of a show called Gabba Goblins, which featured these giant paper mache characters that looked a bit like the Teletubbies! That went viral on TikTok and got the attention of Dan Hughes, who heads up the Smalls [anthology program] for Adult Swim. At the time, I was kicking around an idea of three boys who just really loved their dad. They think their dad is the coolest guy ever. It sounded funny to me, and I was excited to explore that.”
That was a about a year and a half ago. “We then had a writers’ retreat with my brother (Dave Cappa) , who has been my co-writer on the show,” Cappa explains. “He lives in England, but we’ve been working remotely ever since. My wife [Kristen Cappa] also does voices on the show as well. During that time, we also had a kid, so it really helps that we are able to record in my home office in L.A.”
Haha, You Clowns’ production office and many of the other aspects of (storyboards, designs animation, etc. ) are all done at the Williams Street Studio of Adult Swim in Atlanta. The show’s animation is produced using Adobe Animate.
Cappa mentions that he loves the fact the show centers on simple slice of life stories. “In the original version of the series, in the early episodes, the characters are all just hanging out in a room pretty much,” he says. “With the quarter-hour shows, we can tell bigger stories. They still feel very intimate, and they’re about very small things that happen in life, but we were able to kind punch it up to sort of melodramatic state. I think that’s a lot of fun!”
One of the outstanding aspects of the show is the famous list of voice actors it has been able to attract in its first few episodes. The first episode, for example, features none other than 95-year-old veteran actress June Squibb, who provides the voices for Dory and Ruth. “I still don’t know why she agreed to it,” laughs Cappa. “At the time we were making the show, she just had a great movie called Thelma come out. I was a huge fan, and I thought she was fantastic, so I reached out to the director and told him I would love to have her on the show. She is such a pro…she’d come in and nail her lines on the first take. Her new movie Eleanor the Great is also doing very well in festivals this year.”
Not only is Cappa the writer-producer of the series, he also voices of all the main characters — the three brothers Tristan, Preston, Duncan and their dad. And the other voices include Instagram star Dax Flame and big names like Justin Theroux, Sean Astin, Cheri Oteri, Debra Wilson, and professional pool player Jeanette Lee, who plays the boys’ neighbor. “We were so excited to have all of them on board,” Cappa says. “They all brought a lot to their roles.”
When asked about the biggest challenge of adapting the show for its new Adult Swim format, Cappa mentions the production pipeline. “The old show was done in Harmony, so we had to change the process for the animation and make sure that everyone was on the same page,” he recalls. “Just being able to articulate my style was challenging. I thought it was easy to do, because I do it. But I really had to teach people, and it’s just a lot of educating involved. However, it’s been great to see the stuff coming back, and it keeps getting better as the season has progressed. Overall, I think we have seven storyboard artists and designers. At one point, we probably had 13 animators, lots of freelancers.”
Cappa has some good advice for newbies who dream of their shows being picked up by a major streamer or cable outlet. “I think the big thing — and it may sound a bit redundant — is that you have to really know who your characters are,” says the talented creator. “You also have to let the executives know that you really get these characters and that you can put these characters in any sort of situation and you would know what kind of comedic value they have, and how they would play off of each other in a rewarding way.”
When we spoke about his inspirations a few years ago, Cappa said Mike Judge’s animated shows have been a big inspiration for him throughout his career. “I also love the internet humor of Marc M. (Sick Animation) and Jarrad Wright (The Big Lez Show),” he said. “Their timing and reserved use of animation fascinates me. I think they are not so much masters of animation, but masters of using animation as a form of comedy and relatability. At least for me personally. If I had to choose an animated hero I guess I would say Finn and Jake. Adventure Time did a great job of teaching kids to be unique people, and the rest fell into place.”
In case you are wondering about the odd and hilarious accents the boys have on the show, Cappa says it’s just how he imagined they would all talk. “Sometimes, the words come of my mouth, and they sound Australian! But they are just marble mouths! I think with each episode, their voices get more and more distorted and ramped up!”
Haha, You Clowns airs on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim Sundays at 11:45 p.m. and streams the following day on HBO Max. The first season offers ten episodes of the 15-minute show.
