Genndy Tartakovsky’s Fixed may just now be hitting Netflix, but its conception stretches back to 2009, when Tartakovsky envisioned an animal road-trip comedy inspired by his real-life friend group. He originally wanted the core characters to represent all different sorts of animals, but as the idea took shape, he realised an all-dog ensemble would more than do the trick.
An animation heavyweight best known for creating Dexter’s Laboratory and Samurai Jack, Tartakovsky saw in Fixed a chance to let loose and make light of a process that’s all too familiar for pet owners. The story follows the dog Bull, who, upon discovering his owners are having him neutered the next day, hits the big city for one last glorious night of debauchery. It’s every bit as crude and unhinged as its concept demands, cramming testicles, buttholes, and puppy makin’ into every frame and making zero apologies for any of it. STARBURST caught up with Tartakovsky to talk the origins, evolution, and joy of Fixed, invoking his legendary career in animation and digging deeper into what makes him tick…
STARBURST: For readers who may be unfamiliar with the movie and its journey to the screen, walk us through what it’s about and what it’s trying to accomplish…
GENNDY: I mean, it’s trying to be funny really and be funny in an adult way. And my sensibility, it’s funny, I don’t think it’s as gross or maybe as raunchy as other people perceive it to be. I hope it was done in good taste, we tried to do it because we could make it really gross with all the details and nooks and crannies. But we try to make it in good taste. But it’s really a love story because it all started with my friends, my childhood friends, and basically I love the way they make me laugh. And so I love our dynamic and so I thought, well, can I translate that dynamic into an adult movie? And once I started thinking like that, I realised, oh yeah, movies like Superbad, Knocked Up, and 40-Year-Old Virgin, they were kind of doing a similar thing. And so that was the idea of it is try to do a well animated, raunchy rated R, heartfelt buddy comedy.
And it’s funny because I think in our very first act one screening, just in boards, so the just first act with the executives and we watched it and as soon as the first balls came up, everybody was laughing and it wasn’t even intended to be funny. They’re just there. You walk in the street and they’re there and you notice it. You don’t even make a big deal about it. You just go, that’s part of life. And then we had this whole half hour conversation about are we seeing too many butt holes and balls? And I said like, “Look, they’re going to be there. They’re just there, but just like in life you’re going to notice it. And I hope by the time we’re past the first couple of sequences, you’re not going to be thinking about it a lot.”
Was there any pushback on this raunchiness?
Well, the funny thing about the process was we initially were making it for somebody else. So Fixed was made for New Line, actually at Warner Brothers, and they were going to release it as a rated R, low-budget animated movie. Then we finished it, it was part of the big shelving that was happening at the end of ’23 and they saved it. They sold it back to Sony. Then Sony tried to sell it, and then finally of January of this year, Netflix bought it. So they bought it all done and finished. And I was kind of worried, like, okay, well, now they bought it. Are they going to want changes? Is it too much? Because we didn’t have to deal with that, but no, they really understood it and they embraced it. That was the greatest thing about what they did.#
Fixed is extremely different from what you did before your last project, Unicorn: Warriors Eternal, and it’s super different from what came before that, too. I mean, how do you stay fresh creatively? I mean, everything you do is so different from the last thing. Is that something that you consciously strive for or is that just kind of how your flow, your brain works?
I think it’s the way it works. I mean, it’s funny because Unicorn was a thing I was trying to get made for 20 years, and then finally it got made. So it wasn’t an original thought, so to speak. And so I think it just comes from wherever I’m creatively feeling like I have a story to tell or a different mood to tell, or something that I want to express or make the audience feel, or like an experience. What’s the next experience I want to try to create? And so that’s the way I think about it. And for me, generally everything is from a drawing. So I’ll be doodling something and all of a sudden, I hit upon something and it sparks an idea and that sparks another idea, and then it starts to develop. It’s very organic. I tend not to usually sit down and go, “Okay, what’s next?” It’s just this very organic process. And I love animation, it’s like I’m a fan of animation, but I’m not necessarily getting to watch what I want to watch, so then I have to make it.
What was that very first drawing for Fixed? What was kind the doodle? Was it Bull? I know that originally the main group was different animals. It wasn’t just dogs.
Yeah, right. But when it became after that pitch, yeah, it was like this. I drew three dogs from their backs, and they each had an X on their butts, except Bull who had balls, and it was a dog in the distance chasing a ball, and it was like a little cartoon comic, a little panel, and the little dog in the distance was chasing a ball. And the thought balloon from Bull was like, “What an idiot.” So it was that like, oh, right, I’m going to do dog behaviour humour, raunchy humour, animation, physical humour, and then character-driven humour.
And Bull himself is a very relatable. He’s an every dog. He’s just your typical little chunky, but very lovable, little dog. I think that anchoring it around him just makes it like, oh, a lot of people can see themselves in that dismay, in that. I was surprised at how much it spoke to me, if that makes sense. It’s weird to say because I don’t share his experience at all. But it’s kind of this inevitability that he has to deal with, and we all deal with our own inevitabilities every day.
Yeah, and it’s funny you say that because in the beginning I had a lot of struggle selling it, for Sony to understand what it is. And I would have these arguments with the head of the studio where he was like, “Well, what is it? A metaphor? Is it the metaphor for getting a vasectomy or getting married?” And I don’t think it’s any of that. It’s more about just finding your self-confidence and believing in who you are. It’s not like a lot of people because he was like, “No guy is going to see a movie about a guy getting his balls cut off.” And I was like, “It’s not a guy. It’s a dog. And it’s a very normal thing for them.” It’s a good thing for them, arguably. And it doesn’t equate on that simple level.
Let’s zoom out a bit. They think that the animation industry in shambles and that creativity is being strangled out of everything. But you see all of this first hand. You’re part of it. You are interacting with it every day as part of your livelihood. And so what’s something that the public might be getting wrong or misconstruing about where the industry’s at?
I think everybody still loves animation, and animation is a viable business option. I think the issue is the industry has a tendency to chase rather than invent. So what I mean by that is like, okay, well this thing is a hit, so now let’s try to make this thing. When Spider-Verse came out, every other movie all of a sudden started to look like Spider-Verse. And then of course there’s the IP craze. People will only go see things that they’re familiar with, which is a crazy thought. And then what’s happening in the bigger part of the industry is now with the coming of streaming, people are leaving cable and so now they’re going into streaming. And so now cable is losing. So that used to be the biggest buyer, Cartoon Network, Disney Channel, Nickelodeon, those were the top three kid-producing channels, and now they’re not really making new shows or barely any. Where before we would have a studio of 500 people in the Cartoon Network heyday making 10 shows.
And so all that is gone. And that’s the one biggest thing that’s probably the darkest thought is the kids’ business as far as TV series, where it’s disappeared and they say, and we have this conversation all the time, is it in TikTok or YouTube or where did all the 6 to 11 kids that used to be the biggest part of the market, where did they go? And even Netflix I think tried a few years ago to do kids programming and they didn’t succeed for whatever reason. And so everybody’s given up on it. That’s the crazy part. So a show like SpongeBob, which is probably the most popular show in 20 years, and I would say, “If somebody pitched you SpongeBob right now, you wouldn’t make it?” And they’re like, “No.” Because they’ve surrendered. And they go, “Well, younger kids are watching their phones and they’re not going to tune in for programming even on streaming.”
Wrapping up: I know you probably can’t reveal a whole lot about what you’re working on, but you’ve been working on Fixed for a while, and now that it’s out, are you going to just take a huge vacation? What’s next?
Well, I was saying Fixed was done in ’23. I also finished this third season of Primal, which will be coming out soon and so I’m excited for that. And then for the new stuff, in a way, I’ve got some stuff that I’m in development on and pitching here and there. There’s always a movie that I’m developing and a TV show basically. But what I’m really curious about, and I think the subconscious is yelling at me, “Just wait, wait and see what happens with Fixed. Will it just come and go and have no impact? Or will it kind of open the door for me to do more adult 2D films or even adult CG films? Can there be more than this?” Because we should be making as many variety of adult animated films as there are adult animated TV series and now there could be a show, whatever, like Big Mouth, and a show like Arcane and a show like Primal, all those can exist. Why can’t we have the same in movies?
FIXED is now available to stream on Netflix.
