“That is exactly who I was and who I am,” laughs Jinkins. “I will play out all
scenarios… [Executive Producer] David Campbell would say, ‘Jim, you walk
around a problem.’”
“I think Doug was his avatar,” West says of Jinkins.
But if Jinkins was the character’s head and heart, West was Doug’s soul.
Known for his early work on The Howard Stern Show on WXRK and
eventually for his roles on Futurama and Ren & Stimpy, West identified
with Doug, adopting a “higher, kind-of genderless voice” meant to signify
the eleven-and-a-half-year-old hadn’t quite hit puberty yet. “I was that
kid, too,” says West. “I loved Doug.”
Initially, Doug struggled to realize its place. It didn’t land in the way Ren
& Stimpy did. West, who voiced Stimpy, recalls that show’s immediate
reaction among college kids in the East Village, who hosted viewing
parties at local bar Telephone. Likewise, Rugrats was a critical hit, but West
says reviewers didn’t know what to make of Doug at first. And that made
Nickelodeon nervous, Jinkins says.
“I was put in a co-production with [Ellipse Programmé] out of France for the
second season and was basically told, ‘You’ll either do this co-production…
or bye-bye,’” he explains. “It was not a love-fest like it is now.”
Like his ever-stressed hero, Jinkins struggled with the tension of running a
show, but he found the actual creative process exhilarating.
“The way I remember it is: one day you were in slow-motion, tripping
through a field of flowers, birds are landing on your shoulder singing. And
the next day: we’re all gonna die!” says Jinkins. “People yelling at each other:
‘You’re an idiot! You don’t know what you’re doing!’ Not people inside our
company—although that could happen—but with the parent company or
co-production. I’d go home and see my lovely wife Lisa, who was so patient
and supportive, and go, ‘I don’t know if we’re going to make it.’”
But Doug survived. Buoyed by a time slot change—from Sunday mornings
to seven in the evening on weeknights—the show began to attract family
audiences. People began confessing to Jinkins that they’d watch Doug
over their dinner.
46
FLOOD