Free For All (TV Series) - Production/Development

Production/Development

In 1992, Free For All began life as an alternative comic strip published in college news papers. The comic became nationally syndicated shortly afterwords, but eventually ending in 1998. Brett Merhar pitched the show to Showtime in 2001 as an animated series, wanting to do edgier jokes than what he could do in the comic. He brought in a friend of his, Merriwether Williams, who was, at the time, the head writer for Spongebob Squarepants. She worked on the Free For All series as the showrunner and head writer while still head writing for Spongebob. The show had three writers: Jeff Poliquin (future writer for Comedy Central's animated sitcom Ugly Americans, and former writer for The Simpsons video games), Gil Ferro (who also served as the show's editor), and Williams herself; Brett Merhar also co-wrote the first episode, "The Deal", with Williams. The show had an all star cast. Jonathan Silverman, star of Weekend at Bernie's, was the voice actor for Johnny. Brett Merhar himself played the role of Clay Zeeman. The role of Clay was originally to have been played by Jeremy Piven of Entourage and The Larry Sanders Show fame. However, he either refused the role, or backed out of it. Dee Bradley Baker served as the voice of Angus. Juliette Lewis, actress known for films such as National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation and Natural Born Killers, played the role of Paula Wisconsin. Mitzi McCall served as the voice of Sylvia Jenkins, A.K.A. the grandmother. Sam McMurray was the voice of Douglas Jenkins, the drunk father. The shows animation was interesting, as it was a combination of CGI LightWave animation (cars/some buildings/panning backgrounds), and traditional hand drawn animation/backgrounds - drawn in pencil and ink on animation paper, then scanned into a computer and colored with Wacom tablets on ToonBoom Harmony. The shows animation was produced at Film Roman, the studio behind Family Guy and The Simpsons. Dave Marshall, a former animation director for The Animaniacs, was the series director. He would go on to become the series director of Nickelodeon's The X's and would also direct for Nick JR's Ni Hao, Kai-Lan. William Reiss and C.H. Greenblatt, two Spongebob veterans, worked on the show as storyboard artists. The two of them would go on to work on the Disney Channel hit series Fish Hooks, while C.H. Greenblatt would also go on to create Chowder for Cartoon Network, and is also currently creating a pilot called Bad Seeds for Nickelodeon. Both Fish Hooks and Chowder would become far more successful and MUCH, MUCH, MUCH more profitable than Free For All would ever become. The show was also one of the first Hi-Definition animated series broadcast on television. It was also the first, and so far, the only animated sitcom to air on Showtime. It is currently also the only traditionally animated, half hour sitcom to air on a premium network (HBO has had three different animated shows, however: The Ricky Gervais Show show was not a sitcom, and was animated on Adobe Flash using the puppet tool. The Life and Times of Tim, while it was a sitcom, was composed of two eleven minute segments, and was created digitally with Photoshop and After Effects, and Spawn was, while traditionally animated, not a sitcom, but rather a very dark and eerie serial drama). After the show was cancelled... Brett Merhar went on to create a web series titled "Beverly Hills Anger Management", which premiered on YouTube. Merriwether Williams went on to write for "Camp Lazlo" as the head writer. She also went on to work on Johnny Test, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic and Pound Puppies.