[lounge music] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ [Narrator] "On Story" is brought to you in part by the Alice Kleberg Reynolds Foundation, a Texas family providing innovative funding since 1979.

[waves] [kids screaming] [wind] [witch cackling] [sirens wail] [gunshots] [dripping] [suspenseful music] [telegraph beeping, typing] [piano gliss] From Austin Film Festival, this is "On Story," a look inside the creative process from today's leading writers, creators and filmmakers.

This week on "On Story," we're joined by Jennifer Flackett and Mark Levin for a conversation on "Big Mouth" following its eighth and final season.

- We had never done animation before at that point, but we really wanted to do something that was unique and taking advantage of the opportunities that animation creates.

- Our son was like 12 at the time and so we were like watching it all happen, right?

We were watching hormones like beginning to course through his body, which he would really be like, "They weren't coursing."

But in any case, Mark said, like, "Is there some way to personify this?"

And Andrew said, "Like a hormone monster?"

And we were like, "Yes, like a hormone monster."

[paper crumples] [typing] [carriage returns, ding] [Narrator] This week on "On Story," we're joined by Jennifer Flackett and Mark Levin, two co-creators of the raunchy animated coming-of-age sitcom, "Big Mouth" for a reflection on the show's 8-year run a conversation on their process writing the final season.

[typewriter dings] - Well, thanks for being here.

Thanks for joining us, like I was already telling you, I'm just very excited that you're here at AFF.

And congratulations on, I think it's the longest running Netflix, like non-children, whatever series.

- Yeah-- - What's the record?

What's the record?

- It's the longest running scripted show on Netflix, as we've been told, yeah.

- That's crazy.

- Yes.

- Which is exciting.

- Now Mark was really intent.

- I was very intent on like getting us to that record.

Yeah, I put a lot of effort into that.

- Whatever it takes.

- Yeah.

- You've had such like a wide background of doing all these different things.

I specifically love one of your first jobs was "The Wonder Years," which was also this coming of age story.

But how do you see your own place in the industry and what is your own particular sense of humor and taste that you've kind of brought with you throughout your career?

- It's funny 'cause we've always, this coming-of-age theme has been recurring for us over the years in different forms.

I started on "The Wonder Years" and then we made a film together called "Little Manhattan" in 2004, which is also a coming-of-age story.

And then "Big Mouth" is kind of, you know, exploring that theme even more.

I think that, you know, having heart in our stories is probably the biggest theme of having some kind of emotional connection.

- Or big emotions, I think.

Because when I think about that time of life, I think about how big those emotions are and how everything feels like it's the most important thing.

And we didn't even realize, I always say when we started "Big Mouth," I don't think we realized how emotional it was going to be.

And that really became, I think, our guiding light as we kind of went through the first season and then as we continued.

- Well, let's talk about "Big Mouth."

First off, you're two of four creators.

- Yes.

- How did you first meet Nick and Andrew?

- Well, Andrew was our assistant.

- We became close friends through that, but then he went on and became Seth MacFarlane's assistant after that, and then ended up being the writer's assistant on "Family Guy," - "Family Guy."

- and a member of the "Family Guy" writing staff.

And we were doing features.

We took a year off from work, and we rented out a house, and we just took a year around the world.

As we were returning, we reached out to our old friend now, Andrew Goldberg, it was 2014 or '13, and we said, "Hey, we're thinking of doing a television project.

Do you know of, like, who's the next young Andrew Goldberg who we might be able to collaborate with?"

And he said, "What about the old Andrew Goldberg?"

And we said, "Great, well, let's do something together."

- And we really loved working with him.

And then he came to us and pitched us a show called "Bar Mitzvah Boys."

It was about five guys at a Jewish day school and their adventures.

And Andrew left our office and I said to Mark, "I will never write that show."

There was nothing about that show I want to do.

And then it so happened through a weird series of events that we found ourselves in Mexico City with Nick Kroll.

We had known him very lightly through Andrew.

- Andrew and Nick grew up together.

- They grew up together.

- They were best friends growing up.

- They were best friends.

- And we said, "We're going to Mexico City with our kids."

He said, "I'm going to be there too."

And we said, "Great, let's get together."

And we came back from that trip having gotten to know Nick a little better.

And we said to Andrew, "You know that project "Bar Mitzvah Boys?

I think the time of life is right, but let's take out of the Jewish day school, let's not make it only about boys, five guys, let's focus it on you and Nick and also girls too and we can make it into a puberty story."

And that's kind of where that, so it kind of grew out of this "Bar Mitzvah Boys" idea and grew into a story about Nick and Andrew and growing up and all the pain and shame around puberty.

[typewriter dings] We had never done animation before at that point.

He had done animation, he had been working on "Family Guy," and we thought, "Well, this would be fun," but we really wanted to do something that was unique and taking advantage of the opportunities that animation creates.

- Our son was like 12 at the time.

And so we were like watching it all happen, right?

We were watching hormones like beginning to course through his body, which he would really be like, "They weren't coursing."

But in any case, Mark said like, "Is there some way to personify this?"

And Andrew said, "Like a hormone monster?"

And we were like, "Yes, like a hormone monster."

- The uterus.

I thought girls had vaginas.

- I thought that too, but I guess they don't.

- Maybe vagina is like slang?

[Monster] Did someone say vagina?

- Oh, no, no, no, not now.

- Get out!

[laughs] - Go away.

You are not real.

You're just some hormone monster my brain created.

- And the voice was immediately born first.

First words out of Nick's mouth was the voice of the hormone monster.

And then that's what we shared with Netflix.

We actually pitched it to a few different places, as one does.

And what we did is we made a two-minute pencil test.

Just kind of storyboards come to life.

We were inspired by one.

You can Google "King of the Hill" animatic pencil test.

And you can see that there's a little test, which was basically that... And that inspired ours.

And Netflix, at the time, it was 2015, they said, you know, we'll give you, from this little two-minute piece of crude animation, 10 episodes on the air, which is pretty rare.

Definitely was less rare then, 'cause that's how they were jumping into the business.

But, you know, we saw that as a great opportunity.

And Comedy Central said they'd do the same, but they had standards and practices, just like other places, but Netflix didn't.

- When we started, they had no production people.

They had practically no executives.

So they really just let us do whatever we wanted.

- The whole concept of Netflix in the early days was, you know, it's going to be artist-driven, creator-driven.

And we just, you know, want to like give you the space to do your thing.

- And so you can imagine after the first like week or so in that room, Mark and I like drove home, we're like, "Can you believe, I think we're making like the dirtiest show on television.

Like, how are we doing that?"

- But was it fun?

Like, was it freeing?

- Oh, it was amazing.

We always knew masturbation was just a huge part of the show, right?

The idea of the things that are unspoken, the things that you don't talk about.

We knew that like periods were like, that's how we pitched the show.

We pitched like in the second episode, there's gonna be a tampon that looks like Michael Stipe and he's gonna sing this song called "Everybody Bleeds."

And then there it was, we did exactly that.

But even in writing that very first season, I remember there was this book by Peggy Orenstein called "Girls and Sex" and we read that, right as we were starting the show.

And we realized, oh wow, the thing that she talked about, how boys get all kind of sexual pleasure stuff and girls are just periods.

That's what everyone talks about.

And we were like, wow, we did that too.

Like that's totally what we did in those first two episodes.

- Hey, Jessie?

- What?

- Oh, I think you sat in ice cream.

[dramatic music] - I also sat in ice cream.

We're the same.

- I've got to go to the bathroom right now.

- Wait, are you okay?

- And then we were really like, we've got to start talking about female pleasure, right?

And that, I remember the first time I felt like I had to take all the female writers like by ourselves and we all together had to kind of get up the... get up the strength to then bring that into the guys' room.

And the guys were all a little, we were all a little uncomfortable at the beginning.

But then over time-- - Then we made the world uncomfortable.

- What?

Then we made the world uncomfortable.

And over time, we all became much more capable of talking about all those things.

[typewriter dings] - One of the things I'm most curious about is, it's funny, it's outrageous, but it's also like, there's a lot of trauma and there's a lot of shame around what you're talking about.

Was there a process of like, having the room feel like a safe place?

- Very much, but it was pretty organic, I have to say.

I mean, we just wanted to only work with people that we loved and cared about.

And that started with getting together with our longtime friend, Andrew, our former assistant, longtime friend, and his longtime friend for 30 years since he was a child.

Our relationship between us all, we have about 110 years of collective friendships and relationships.

So that made a very safe place because we all had each other's back.

We hadn't been in a writer's room really, and going back to "The Wonder Years," even that wasn't a real writer's room.

We didn't like write the script together around a table.

We talk about it, but it was a lot of the writers working individually with the executive producer to create their script.

And then we went off and did other things and did film.

And then this was our real first comedy writers room.

And it's kind of like we use the metaphor of putting together a baseball team, kind of you need a third baseman, you need people in the outfield, people can hit.

And that's exactly kind of the way it breaks down where you have some people who are great script writers.

They might not even be that dynamic in the room, but you know when they go out with their script and they come back that you're gonna have something that's almost ready to shoot or something that's very good.

Other people are story people.

They have great story sense within the room.

Others are joke writers or joke pitchers.

And you wanna have a good balance there.

That's just in terms of skill sense.

And then-- - And then it's points of view, right?

- Points of view.

- Like we knew that, we really knew that our, it needed to be pretty gender balanced, the room.

And I will say, while we had some diversity in the room our first season, there was not nearly enough.

And we knew that almost immediately.

And we were like, we've got to really change this.

So we brought in a lot more queer voices.

We brought in people of all different ethnicities.

And so that really, to us, that's now really how you build a room.

And so when we were building our mating season room, we had to, you know, we had learned all those lessons.

- Everyone's always very generous with each other.

and it was a place where, especially over time, a lot of the writers, five of the writers who were there in season one were there in season eight all the way through.

So it was, you know, a lot of that group really grew up together on the show.

In the first season, John Mulaney was a part of the writers' room.

John is obviously one of the funniest people around there.

So many of the people in the room are hilarious, but intimidating too from a comedy mind.

I mean, really, and raise the bar.

And Nick really ran the acting department in a way.

He really like put together the whole thing.

And when we did a record day and where Jen and I were directing, he would kind of within the booth have all of his friends coming through.

And it was like a party every time we would do a record-- - And a lot of improv.

- And we do a lot-- - 'Cause we really, it was a large UCB contingent.

And so we really used improv a lot.

- I'd say about, especially in the early days before COVID, about 15, 20% of every episode was just actors doing their thing, finding it in the booth.

And that made, brought a great energy to the show.

- And you know, Andrew had grown up on "Family Guy," so we really did the "Family Guy" model.

And then Andrew really said, "Well, I'd like you, Jen, in the room with me.

I want you to be there."

And what became really clear was that you needed a woman in the room who was as strong as Andrew.

Otherwise, I don't think that the stories would have necessarily been quite as emotional, and I don't think that the female point of view would have gotten across in the same way.

And he knew that.

He really understood that's what the show was.

- This is something that Nick brought into the room, where instead of just working on the scene, they would read each scene aloud, and Nick would read the characters that he does, and Andrew would fill in, Jen, Maya wasn't there, so Jen would be doing Connie, the hormone monster.

and we'd have different writers in the room all doing it, and we would hear the scenes for the first time, and then we would rewrite them and then hear them again.

And it was very-- - Constructive.

- Constructive, and that the energy of that really fueled the whole process.

[typewriter dings] - How early on did you realize that there was this responsibility that came along with talking about-- - Well, we realized it early on but we especially realized it after the first season came out.

Because one of the things we heard as much as anything was, "Wow, this is the sex ed we wish we had or we never had."

But then, after season one, we were already a hit coming out of season one, and then we felt an awesome responsibility.

We were always wanting to be honest and accurate, and we had experts that we would talk to about things to make sure that we were not being irresponsible in any way, but we weren't treating it with that level of responsibility.

But it became, at the beginning of season three, when suddenly we felt this responsibility, it got a lot less funny in the room all of a sudden.

- You first have to have the freedom of like figuring out what's a good story, and then you can figure out how to say it responsibly.

But if you bring a sense of responsibility before you even have that story, well, you're not gonna get something good.

And that's what we really found.

So after we kind of said, let's not worry about that right now, but we're gonna get there, and we're gonna make sure that we do it responsibly, Also, a lot of our writers, they didn't have kids when we started, and by like season four, suddenly they were all thinking like parents.

And our kids were grown by that point, so we didn't care.

But they really, you know, so it was like, it was a really interesting evolution as you watched everybody change over those eight years.

- I wanna go back quickly to the working with sex experts or psychologists.

- Yeah.

- Well, can you talk more about what that process was like, and were there any ideas or scenes that specifically came out of that that you're really excited about, or you were excited about?

- Well, the Gratitoad who came in season two, that really came from our therapist.

And he came in and he really talked about gratitude and that being a way to combat anxiety.

And Nick said, I think even right in that room, "Oh, like a Gratitoad."

Nick loves like an animal pun.

- Whoa.

- Nick?

[gasps] You're a ghost.

- Technically a lost soul, but yeah.

- Ooh, how about an introduction, little red?

- Nick, this is the Gratitoad.

- Oh.

- He's got this, like, goofy Southern drunk on moonshine vibe, but most importantly, he's really helped me with my anxiety.

- Pleasure to meet you, Nick.

Really liking your wisp.

- Oh, okay.

Well, nice to meet you, Mr.

Toad.

- Oh, please, Mr.

Toad was my daddy.

He was known for taking wild rides.

- I was thinking maybe he could help you, too.

- Thank you, Jessie.

Look, I know I've been a [censored] to you, and I'm... I'm really sorry.

- Pretty wonderful to have a friend who knows how to say the big S, I'll tell you that.

- Wow, you're right, Gratitoad.

Nick, I'm grateful for your apology.

[Mark] In season two, we wrestled with shame.

- And we talked with an expert about how do you combat shame?

And so much of that is like talking about things and not keeping it inside.

- Who are you?

- Who am I?

Andrew, I'm the shame wizard of ghosts.

[eerie laughter] - The shame wizard?

- The shame wizard!

- Oh.

- Yes, Andrew, and I've been waiting for you.

- You have?

- Oh, yes.

- Oh, God.

- Surely, you knew I was coming.

- I didn't.

I would have-- - Now, come with me, young man.

I'm taking you to that new mac and cheese restaurant.

- Really?

- Nope.

[gavel bangs] - Uh, where am I?

- All rise.

Shame Court is now in session.

- What?

- The Honorable Shame Wizard presiding.

- Shame Court?

- Silence!

- We were very conscious of wanting to make sure that we had the writers in the room to tell the stories that we needed to tell about these kids authentically.

And so that we could, so that we could relevantly just be part of the culture.

- Can you talk a little bit more about the responses that you were getting?

Like beyond just the, this represents me, but like, were people, how were they?

- I mean, I remember the night before it dropped on Netflix, Mark was like lying in bed and he said, "It's a show about kids for grownups.

I worry we've made a show for nobody."

And I was like, "Oh yeah, that could be the case, right?"

And then I remember it came out the next day and this is when Twitter was still, to me, a wonderful place.

We like looked at it and it was like, "Oh my God, everybody got it."

Like they totally got it.

It was like the most amazing feeling in that moment because we really didn't, we had no expectation at all.

- Zero expectation.

- We had no idea how people would feel about it.

And for everyone to embrace it exactly as we made it was, you know, it was an amazing thing.

- My favorite comment from Twitter at that time was Big Mouth gives zero [censored.]

And it wasn't necessarily the attitude, but we were only thinking about what's funny to us in this program.

We were not thinking at all about the responsibility-- - I remember one which was, "Girl, get yourself a guy that watches 'Big Mouth.'"

And I like, that made me really happy.

- Yeah.

[typewriter dings] - So once you started realizing the show had legs, can you talk about, like, actually like the long-term thinking of making characters grow into something and then being able to use that growth to find new stories?

- Well, it was interesting because we started talking about whose model are we gonna change, right?

Because in animation, they just have one model.

They basically have one set of clothes.

And you can change the clothes for like, if they're going to a fancy party, but if they're at school, they're always wearing the same clothes.

And we said, "Well, we think we should change Missy's model."

[Mark] And that came from character.

- That came from character, 'cause Missy's identity was something that we both struggled with and we loved investigating.

- I'm sorry Devin said that stupid [censored] about your hair on the bus.

- Yeah, it was not 100.

- Sure, 100.

- It's just that I'm really struggling with my racial identity right now.

My mom's white, my dad's Black, I'm voiced by a white actress who's 37 years old.

Ah, it's all very overwhelming.

- Yeah, I-- - And so once we made that decision, you know, I'm trying to think of like, we changed Matthew's model, but the big change of course, and it was only in our final season, was that we grew Nick.

And that I think was really painful for Andrew.

Like it was really like, oh God, you know, but Nick is smaller than Andrew, just like in real life.

Andrew was always taller than Nick until Nick hit puberty in ninth grade, just like in the show.

And he shot up over Andrew and Andrew felt it was really unfair.

And it all went into the show, but it really was, it was a show about people changing and growing.

and we just felt like, you gotta do it.

It's hard and maybe that means that it doesn't run forever, but that's okay.

"Big Mouth" is really serialized when you look at it.

I don't even think we realized necessarily how serialized it was, but it really is.

Like, you're really following stories over, you know, like Jessie's parents' divorce and how she deals with all of that.

- I know everything.

- What?

What do you mean?

- I know you're cheating on Daddy with Canardina!

- Okay, Jessie, let's just take a deep breath.

- This whole time you guys have been, what are you, you're like a lesbian now?

- I, I, I, I don't know.

I'm still figuring things out.

- But what about you and Daddy?

- Your father and I have been struggling for a long time.

- Do you even, do you even love him anymore?

- I don't know.

- [coughs] Whoa.

That's heavy.

- Now I can see that the family's having a particularly tense moment.

So it's the perfect time for a speech from Mom and Dad.

- That's like a long-term story.

And you don't even realize you're telling it when you start.

You know, you're just kind of telling a story and then, oh, well, we've got to keep following this character along.

And there is something also really fun about not worrying about that and just being able to finish a story and then start fresh on the next episode.

[typewriter dings] - Well, let's talk about the last season.

At what point did you know that eight was going to be the last one?

- We always knew that puberty is a finite period in people's lives.

And it wasn't really framed around 7th grade, 8th grade, 9th grade.

It wasn't, that's not the story that we were telling, we were telling the story about people who were going through this period of life and then entering their next.

And that gave us the framing device for the final season.

- Yes.

And I will also say, it's a great thing to be able to know that you're ending something, right?

I mean, it would have been very upsetting to not really be able to really take our characters through their final season and for us to be able to leave them as we wanted to leave them.

- We were wrestling with the idea of how do you end a story about characters whose lives are just beginning?

So it wasn't, you know, these kids were kids and they were just starting out their lives and at the same time we were ending their story.

So that was kind of the challenge that we've met in the writers room.

- And then we settled on this idea of the future and this kind of void that's coming towards you and how you can't know what that is, and how it's hard to go into that and to trust that you're gonna be okay.

And once we found that metaphor, 'cause so much of our work on "Big Mouth" is figuring out, you know, the personification of the metaphor, and once we figured that out, that really led us through.

- In the final season, we wanted to steer the boat back to the core five, or now it was really seven kids who we had grown up with.

- But it's funny because in the very final episode, Maury becomes Nick's hormone monster.

And we weren't going in that direction.

And we were really casting about who is it?

Is he going back to Connie?

Is there going to be someone else?

We knew it couldn't be Rick.

And then when we realized, well, of course it's Maury, right?

And of course, it's Maury because Andrew will feel jealous.

And of course, because Andrew's sort of ending puberty too soon.

And so like it's all those things where you don't have the ending in mind, and yet when you happen upon what the ending actually is, well, that sense of relief.

In all writing, I kind of tend to think when you find that thing that answers your question, the sense of relief is so great.

- Friends forever?

- And ever.

Wait, I didn't wash my hands after I- - Neither did I, buddy.

Neither did I.

[both laughing] [typewriter dings] [Narrator] You've been watching "Inside the Final Season: Big Mouth," on "On Story."

"On Story" is part of a growing number of programs in Austin Film Festival's On Story Project, that also includes the On Story radio program, podcast, book series, and the On Story archive, accessible through the Wittliff Collections at Texas State University.

To find out more about On Story and Austin Film Festival, visit onstory.tv or austinfilmfestival.com.

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