Animation Guild | We are 839 Digital Magazine
Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1521473
GRIMSBURG GIVES CLASSIC NOIR A WEIRD AND WARPED ANIMATION MAKEOVER. Crime noir is awash in tropes, from the femme fatale to the corrupt cop to the hard-boiled detective. The new FOX Entertainment series Grimsburg leans heavily on the latter, but that's not what defines this animated send-up of the genre. "There are definitely detective tropes that we hit, but we wanted to make sure [the show] was more about the character's take on those tropes versus the tropes themselves," says Showrunner and EP Chadd Gindin. The character Gindin is talking about is Marvin Flute, a pot-bellied, middle- aged man with a perpetual five o'clock shadow. This disgraced police detective is called back to service to solve a seemingly unsolvable gruesome crime: a decapitated teenage boy and his missing girlfriend. While Flute may have the brains and gut instinct to figure out whodunnit, he's clueless when it comes to his own estranged family. While there is a different crime in every episode, Flute's relationship with his ex-wife, Harmony, and son, Stan, is the throughline of the series. As the show was being developed, Gindin says, the creative team tried to figure out what degree of mystery was needed. Once they keyed in on that, they saw how the mystery could be the framework to tell personal stories. This approach is a long way from the idea that sparked the series—Grimsburg was originally conceived as a live-action spoof on Nordic noir by Catlan McClelland and Matthew Schlissel. As various ideas were shed along the creative journey, the biggest question became: "Can we take this and turn it into a Fox animated Sunday night show?" says Gindin, noting that this is the point where he came onboard. "The goal once I joined … was to take [a premise] that was meant to be live action and turn it into something that could take advantage of what animation allows television shows to be—which is very different." Gindin arrived at Grimsburg from an eclectic background of animation, live- action sitcoms, and even live-action horror comedy-drama. But he says that from The Cleveland Show to The Santa Clarita Diet, he feels all these different ways of telling a story refined for him what the core of all good storytelling is. "The hook doesn't necessarily matter at the end of the day," he says. "It's the story that's underneath it." With Grimsburg, it's the story of someone who's good at all types of things but who can't figure out his own problems and fix himself—something, Gindin feels, a lot of people can relate to: "The weirdness is the hook, but the story will make the show last forever." And weird it is. Flute is addicted to cough syrup and makes miniature mid-century modern furniture models in his spare time. Axe-throwing TV news reporter Harmony was raised by bears. Gindin calls the town of Grimsburg itself Fargo meets Twin Peaks Images courtesy of Fox Entertainment. this page: Detective Marvin Flute; opposite page (clockwise from top): Flute with his ex-wife Harmony; the "trainsion" setting for one of Grimsburg's many murders; cyborg Detective Greg Summers; Flute's son Stan and his imaginary friend Mr. Flesh. S T O R Y & V I S I O N 16 KEYFRAME