By March 14, 1998, we were in our second year doing the "Saturday TV Funhouse" cartoons with Robert Smigel for Saturday Night Live. Robert sent over a Schoolhouse Rock parody called "Conspiracy Theory Rock" and I was juiced to dive into this one. There hadn't been a lot of SHR inspired parodies done, and we could do it better than anyone else because we could resurrect a lot of the crew that actually had done it with us in 1993 ! The brilliant Bill Peckmann designed the piece and also created the storyboard, and Vinnie Bell was head animator - both SHR veterans !
The final result is incomparably spot-on.
Now the fun part... throughout its production, I asked Robert several times whether this cartoon was really going to air. It was ruthlessly coming down upon the corporate/network realm and its control over information - especially SNL's parent company NBC.
Finally, it aired live in the east/midwest time zones, but then we later heard it was mysteriously absent from the west coast feed that night. Considering that the cartoon actually depicts itself being yanked, it was a chilling reality... Bill Moyers did a segment on PBS and dubbed it an example of "Network Self-Censorship" and The Nation also did an article on its being yanked by NBC. It was very hard to find online for a long time (except on our studio reel) until it finally popped up on the "Best Of Saturday TV Funhouse" DVD in the mid-2000s. Later, Mark Maron also posted it as a favorite of his...
All that's missing is an introduction by Rod Serling...
All the production artwork for "Conspiracy Theory Rock" from 1998. Conventionally hand drawn/animated but digital ink & paint and compositing, gorgeous boards by Bill Peckmann.
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