[Interview] Hit-Monkey Co-Creator Josh Gordon Is Serious About Comedy
If you had to take your pick of the world’s deadliest animal, what would you choose? A shark? A lion? Or how about the highly venomous Black Mamba? All of those would be perfectly reasonable answers. If you found yourself locked in a room with any of those animals, you’d probably be in store for a world of pain. But what if I told you the world’s most dangerous animal was in fact a gun-wielding and sharply dressed macaque aided by the ghost of an assassin?
Based on the 2010 comic book series, Marvel’s Hit-Monkey explores the seedy underworld of assassins and ruthless criminals. Unlucky for them, the expertly trained Monkey (Fred Tatasciore) and his specter sidekick Bryce (Jason Sudeikis) are always ready to take them on. The animated comedy debuted its long-awaited second season on July 15 on Hulu. Created by Josh Gordon and Will Speck, Hit-Monkey shifts its sights from the neon lights of Tokyo to the tough and unforgiving streets of New York City for an action-packed new season.
We sat down with Gordon to discuss the emotional impact of Hit-Monkey’s second season and the importance of honoring the spirit of the original comic.
Matthew Swigonski: There were three years between Season One and Season Two of Hit-Monkey. Can you describe the highs and lows in that time? Did you ever think that maybe Season Two wasn’t going to happen?
Josh Gordon: We found out about seven months after Season One aired that they were going to pick us up for a second season. So pretty much from that moment on, it was go go go! We got the writer’s room together pretty quickly, but then animation was a glacial process. Season One took almost two and a half years to do. This season only took a year and a half once we started the animation process, which was very compact. We were working the whole time, but I think being away for so long kind of helped us just think about the season and figure out what it is that we wanted to say and what we wanted to do with a little distance from Season One.
Matthew Swigonski: Can you talk about Season Two for the casual viewer who’s just getting into Marvel animation?
Josh Gordon: Yeah, well Season Two follows the two main characters, obviously Bryce and Monkey, who had this incredible kind of Yakuza revenge saga in Tokyo in Season One. Now they’re kind of freed of that initial kind of revenge quest. They go back to New York where Bryce is from. And the show is really funny and it’s violent and it’s got the action, but it’s hard.
It’s a kind of a rumination on the price of violence. It’s kind of a Western in that way, or a samurai film, where the gunslinger is never essentially allowed to live a normal life once they’ve gone on that sort of violent journey. And so it’s kind of unpacking all of the price that these characters are paying for the actions they take. And then in some ways, Season Two is richer and a little more melancholy in some ways and a little bit more emotional even.
Matthew Swigonski: You kind of touched on it, but most comedies have that bridge into drama. Do you feel like it’s easier that once you get the jokes out of the way, you can build more of an emotional impact for the viewers?
Josh Gordon: I think so. We have always admired tone, where humor and drama can coexist in the same space because that’s the way life is. Oftentimes people will use a joke because it’s too painful, and they don’t know how to cope, or to cut an emotional scene, but it tells you more about their character. So that was what we kind of did to achieve in this show. A sort of a balance. And sometimes even within a scene, where Monkey used to be making a sort of inappropriate joke that you know is just him fronting, and then the emotional or violent drama can come in. And then it can go back to humor again. So we kind of are agnostic. We don’t want it to be like, “It has to be a comedy, or it has to be a drama.”
Matthew Swigonski: Having the cast that you do has to help with that as well. How does it feel to be working with such talent?
Josh Gordon: I mean, it’s always a huge treat. That’s one of the great things about animation. That you can get people because the commitments aren’t about going off and making a movie for five months or something like that. You’re asking them to come in at their schedule in their pajamas and record in a booth. And so it’s an easier ask. And obviously, Jason Sudeikis was somebody that we admired and wanted to work with for years, and so getting to work with him on the show is just an incredible treat.
But there’s Olivia Munn, who we’ve done several projects with. Ally Maki, who’s amazing. And then George Takei in Season One. But also, this season was really amazing to add Leslie Jones and Cristin Milioti. Even some of the supporting roles like Rob Corddry and Jim Gaffigan. And everywhere you look it’s like, “Oh my gosh, that’s somebody that I have this huge admiration for.” So it was great.
All these people who are really good and smart comedians are also good drama people as well. You know what I mean? Like you have to be. And so when you ask them to then downshift and deliver into something emotional or dramatic, it’s an amazing thing to watch. Because you’re used to seeing them just be funny and then they’re breaking your heart with a monologue. Like Leslie Jones in the eighth episode of the season is talking about the mistakes she’s made in her life. And it’s just these amazing kinds of moments that were great to watch.
Matthew Swigonski: Yeah, I feel like it always catches you off guard when it’s a comedy and you’re just laughing and laughing and then all of the sudden it’s like, “Wait a minute, I’m not supposed to be crying here.”
Josh Gordon: I was always aware of what we were trying to achieve.
Matthew Swigonski: So Hit-Monkey, for many casual readers and viewers, may have been under the radar for a while. How does it feel to possibly bring the show closer towards the mainstream audience?
Josh Gordon: This is the biggest platform that Hit-Monkey has had. It’s always been a hit among some people. There’s a bunch of fellow directors that we know who have always had a love for Hit-Monkey. You know, kind of big, interesting directors. And so I think there’s just something in the tone of that original limited run that obviously stuck. I mean, there’s this sort of an absurd humor to the idea that it takes itself seriously. And so that was always our way in. It has to take itself seriously. You can’t forget how absurd it is.
You can have characters talk about how ridiculous it is, but the core tone and the filmmakers have to treat this like, “No, this is legit.” And so we always wanted to make something of it and pitched it to Marvel every chance we got. So every time we go into a movie [pitch] we would go, “You guys really need to make Hit-Monkey.” It got to the point where they were like, “We get it. You like Hit-Monkey.”
And so the TV people bit and said, “Okay, let’s do it as an anime kind of inspired animation.” And immediately Will [Speck] and I realized that’s the way to do it. A live-action version of it would have been incredibly expensive and the pressure of that might have brushed away what’s weird and unique about it. This just allowed us to kind of honor the original tone and ideas of the comic and also build out this whole world in these exotic locations.
Matthew Swigonski: So do you think that was the biggest challenge of adapting the comic to the TV series? To keep that tone, that original feeling?
Josh Gordon: I think so. It’s like when you read something that you love, you want to honor it because the last thing you want to do is kind of, you know, mess it up. And it’s a hard thing to achieve because it takes being fully committed. The natural thing to do is just to tear it down and to make it fun all of the time. Instead, that lynchpin that holds the thing together is just like, “No, no, this is legit and real and you should take this seriously.” And so that just sort of takes commitment from every writer and animator. Everybody just has to kind of commit to that idea. But once we did it, I think it worked and it unlocked the whole thing.
Matthew Swigonski: If it was a live-action, would it have been a CG monkey or someone in a costume?
Josh Gordon: The way we sort of discovered it was in 2011. Marvel was going to do live-action sort of short films before the features that we’re going to sort of explore a very little-known corner of the Marvel Universe. Almost like what Pixar did with their shorts before their features. I think this was just to build out the universe. They ended up kind of doing this more at the end of their movies. What happened was that the budgets couldn’t work and so the whole program kind of got killed. But we spent a couple of months searching for the comic that we would most want to adapt. And we found Hit-Monkey and they were like, “Cool, that’s a great one.”
At that time, we talked about doing it as a very sophisticated CG live-action world. And then when we talked to the film division about maybe adapting this at one point they were like, “You know, first of all, it’ll be years and years and years before we could produce this.” Also going to Tokyo, shooting the level of action and on the scope that it deserves. And then having a CG character at the center of it. That’s a $150 million movie minimum. For such a small character, the pressure was just too great. So in a way, again, the animated process allowed us this huge creative freedom and was clearly the right way to go.
You can check out Season Two of Hit-Monkey now on Hulu. Read our review of season two here.
