An interview with Jeff ‘Swampy’ Marsh

Jeff “Swampy” Marsh is a writer, director, voice actor, musician, and lifelong doodler.
After leaving a successful career in marketing to pursue something he genuinely loved, he joined The Simpsons in its early years before going on to work on Rocko’s Modern Life, King of the Hill, and ultimately co-creating Disney’s hit series Phineas and Ferb. He has helped shape the childhoods of millions with humour, heart, and a signature musical flair.

Interviewer: So, you worked in marketing before animation. What made you change careers?

Swampy: I kind of fell into the computer business, kind of accidentally. I had somebody headhunt me while I was working at the banks during the early days of ATMs. I was servicing and doing everything for ATM machines for Bank of America, and somebody said, “You should come to work for me. I’m working with a computer distribution company.” I’m like, “Sure, great.” So I got into sales and marketing, and then leaned into the marketing side ’cause I could still sort of use my creativity, and I ended up working with Microsoft. I used to go party with Bill Gates, way back in the early days. Those are some stories. But I’d reached the point where I suddenly realised I didn’t care about it at all. I mean, I was successful. I was Vice President of Sales and Marketing for an accessories company, I had a nice house in Venice, and I just thought, “If I don’t stop now, I will be here at 60, still doing something I just don’t care about.” And that terrified me more than the thought of being homeless. So I quit. And it was a friend of mine who said, “Why don’t you get into animation?” And I’m like, “Okay, sure.” (laughs) He says, “I’ve seen your work. I’ve seen your drawings. Let’s get you a portfolio together.” So it was all by chance, and through the good graces of some good friends who helped me get a portfolio together. And two months later I had a job on The Simpsons, back in the second season. And that was the turnaround. I remember it was a huge pay cut. I’d been at the job one week, it was my second Monday, and I came in early—new guy, 28—with my cup of coffee, and I sat down at my desk and just started crying. And I thought, “Oh, great. All the people are gonna come in and think the new guy’s having a breakdown at his desk.” But I just realised somebody was gonna pay me to do this, and it was the coolest thing in the whole world. And that was, I was 28, and it was the late ’80s. 

Interviewer:  So were you sort of interested in drawing at school, or was it a hobby?

Swampy: I started drawing in the first grade, actively, consciously. There was a kid next to me who was drawing. I think he was drawing tanks or airplanes, you know, one of those things that first-grade kids draw. You know, guns and bombs and things blowing up. And I remember looking over and thinking, “I wanna do that.” And I started drawing, and covered up every book or book cover, random piece of paper. My mom’s got boxes full of my drawings. I used to draw on everything. And I also discovered later I’m one of those people that if I’m doodling, I can pay attention, I understand what’s going on. If I’m not, my mind is wandering. So it was kind of my tool to stay focused, and I just started drawing from there.

Interviewer: You mentioned The Simpsons. You did six seasons of The Simpsons, 

Swampy: Off and on, yeah.

Interviewer: What was that like, working on the show, arguably in its heyday?

Swampy: At one point, GQ magazine published a list of the ten coolest jobs in the world, and animation was up at, like, number three. We beat out race car drivers, astronauts and… So we were all walking around with our Simpsons letterman’s jackets, crew jackets, just like, “Yes.” It was phenomenally cool. It just felt like you were doing the best job in the world. And I think we were. We were really being allowed to push the boundaries of what we were doing. We were at a time where animation was still on paper, and we were still doing, like, two-thirds of the process. This is technical stuff, but we were doing character and background layout, which is kind of full-sized drawings in key poses. And that doesn’t happen anymore. So we were lucky. It was a great learning environment to figure out the whole business, and we got to work with some really encouraging, creative people. Rich Moore, David Silverman. These are the guys who kind of taught us the stuff that Dan and myself and lots of other people went on to build great careers with, because of what we learned at that time on that show. But it was really being part of a very small, what you thought was a very cool club. (laughs)

Interviewer: So you sat opposite Dan Povenmire, your partner on Phineas and Ferb and other shows. Did you click straight away?

Swampy: Yeah, it was probably within the first couple of days. It was one of those things where when you’re sitting across the aisle from each other, you do a lot of helping the other guy with poses. It’s as simple as, “Hey, stand up on one leg and put your finger in your ear.” (laughs) “Oh, great, thanks,” and you’d do a little sketch, whatever you needed. Or even just as simple as bending over and opening a drawer; you could get little sketches. And we used to help each other out. But it became clear that Dan and I were comedy brothers from another mother. We just… all the same reference points, including oddly enough in America, Black Adder. We suddenly realised we both loved that.

Interviewer: I’ve heard a lot of ’90s US comedy writers saying Blackadder bled across.

Swampy: Just transformational, and it informed a lot of what we did with Phineas, ’cause we realised you didn’t have to back away from smart stuff. And that’s kind of where Dan and I were. It’s like, “Why aren’t there cartoons for kids that are really smart?” When I got my job on Rocko’s Modern Life, where they were letting us write, my first call was to Dan. It’s like, “Dude, you gotta get over here. They’re letting us write stuff.” “These people are insane, they shouldn’t let us near the crayons, but they are. Come over.” My first writing partner was Steve Hillenburg, who went on to create SpongeBob. And we did, like, three episodes together, and then they reshuffled all the teams and they put Dan and I together, and the rest is history. We wrote our first episode together, which was Wallaby of the West. At the end of it, we wrote a song that nobody asked us to write and put it in the show. And it was at that moment, literally, where we went, “Okay, we need to create a show together and sell this so we can keep working together.” That was where Phineas came from.

Interviewer: It took a while to get commissioned, and in the intermediary you moved to England, to London, in ’96, I think?

Swampy: Yeah, I think it—no, no, I got to London in 2000. Cause I’d been working on King of the Hill, and somebody reached out from London saying, “I’m doing an animated sketch comedy series in London. Do you wanna come?” I’m like, “Mm, I really do.”  So I came here, I think it was 2000, early 2000, and we did ‘Aaagh! It’s the Mr. Hell Show’ for the BBC with Bob Monkhouse. And by the time we got done with the series, we’d worked with John Plowman, who did Ab Fab and all that stuff. He was great. But by the time we got done, there was a new head at the BBC, and they openly, apparently at some point said to John they just hated the show and didn’t want it. They put us on Sunday night between 10:00 p.m. and 1:00 a.m. Just sort of floating, so you never knew. They said, “We’re gonna run it, whatever we’re obliged to, and then we’re gonna kill it.” So they did. And I ended up moving around and doing Bounty Hamster, and I went up and worked on, like, Postman Pat and Engie Benjy up with the Manchester guys, had a great time. Then came back down and was running a studio here, BKN, when Dan called and said, “I think I’ve sold Phineas and Ferb. Do you wanna come home?” I do. Yeah. (laughs)



Interviewer: So your time in London, did that change your sort of humour at all as well?

Swampy: Completely. And there’s so much of that influence that ended up in Phineas and Ferb. It’s one of the reasons why Ferb and his dad are British. And the first time I worked with Richard O’Brien was here in London. Actually, he came out and auditioned for Aaagh! It’s the Mr. Hell Show before the BBC wanted us to hire Bob Monkhouse. And I’m glad they did, it was fun working with Bob, but we wanted Richard. And those two characters were kind of my way of bringing some of that British humour with me. And yeah, that was definitely all inspired by my time here.

Interviewer: So Phineas and Ferb is based on your childhood summers? Did you and Dan realise you had similar summers?

Swampy: We started talking about it, it came from one of those middle-aged guy rants where you’re talking about kids today, and we weren’t that middle-aged. I think at the time we were in our early to mid-30s, early 30s probably. We remembered every day of summer we used to go out and make things and build things, and probably dangerous stuff that kids shouldn’t be doing, like building go-karts and running them down hills, or jumping our friends on bicycles, or putting on full musicals and plays in our backyard, and making movies. We used to do this stuff, and we thought, “Kids shouldn’t be sitting there watching video games or cable TV. They should be out doing stuff.” And that was sort of the basis of it. And Dan did a lot of that where he grew up in the South, and I did the same where I grew up in L.A. And yeah, that was that: “Oh, your parents used to let you do dumb stuff too?” “Yeah.”

Interviewer: The show’s songs are iconic now as well. The musical element, how did that evolve?

Swampy: Well, Dan and I had written a song for almost every episode of Rocko’s Modern Life that we worked on, even when they specifically asked us not to. (laughs) They didn’t just not ask us to write one, a couple of times they said, “Please stop,” and we couldn’t. But we were both in bands that gigged around L.A. for years, and we both basically had failed music careers that the industry never noticed. So the secret to success in the music industry is to quit the music industry. That’s what we’ve discovered. But we couldn’t help ourselves, and when we got to Disney, there was this weird thing. They said, “Show creators and showrunners don’t write songs. We have music people that do that.” And we’re like, “Yeah, but we do. Clearly, we have a body of work.” So we didn’t listen to that, and the first episodes that we pitched to the executives, we’d written the theme song, Perry’s Theme, which we wrote in a gas station, waiting to get gas for Dan’s car. And we decided to go ahead and write the song for “Pop Star: Gitchee Gitchee Goo.” And we just thought, “What are they gonna do, fire us? I don’t know.” (laughs) And we played that, and one of the other executives, who was one of the heads at the time—Adam Bonnett—was there, and at the end of it he went, “That song was awesome. Who wrote that?” Dan and I went, “We did,” quietly, like, We could get in trouble now. And he went, “Those are fantastic. Can you guys write a song for every episode?” We’re like, “Sure. No problem. Will do.” (laughs) And that’s how it started. So we kind of broke the rules and regs, and now all kinds of creators on different shows at the channel are writing their own material.

Interviewer: You voice Major Monogram on the show as well. What’s it like writing for a character that you also perform?

Swampy: It’s really funny. Some of the best stuff that’s been written for Monogram, I had nothing to do with. And it was kind of fun to watch what other people are doing with the character. Like, the whole thing about Carl, we didn’t write any of that. One of the guys who was storyboarding for us just did this little gag where there was a chyron on the bottom of the screen that delivered some meaningless information, and at the end of it he went, “Carl, the intern, is still writing this at the bottom of the screen,” and it turned off and you go, “Thank you, Carl.” Somebody just made up Carl, and so it evolved, the whole thing about the academy and his wife and Taco Tuesday. We didn’t have anything to do with it. So I kind of stay away from writing for him, because it’s more fun to watch what other people do with it, and I enjoy that. And it’s the same now in the new seasons. Somebody decided that this weird little character that I do called Dink Winkerson is like my version of a cheesy radio disc jockey or TV personality “He’s got that very Dink Winkerson voice” and we just used him as throwaway gags. People started writing for him, and now they’ve got him coming in and out of prison (laughs) and all this weird stuff. And I kind of don’t want to write for him, because I’m having much more fun watching what other people do.

Interviewer: Is there a particular moment, sort of in the writers’ room or through fan mail, where you realised the show was really something, really special to a lot of people?

Swampy: We’ve had…. (Swampy starts to well up)

Interviewer: I’m sorry

Swampy: No, it’s okay. We have had some of the most amazing letters and social media posts come in that absolutely let us know that what we’re doing really means stuff to people in ways I cannot imagine. And it is really emotional.
But I remember one of the first things that happened was somebody posted—

*Someone starts to hoover around our feet for about 5 minutes*

Swampy: That’s a good way to cut the emotion. (laughs) The first time we’d seen somebody post a picture of a Phineas and Ferb tattoo. And the first comment was, “Oh, God. Who would do that? Who would put this weird, strange… why would you…?” And I started reading the text below it, and it was a mom who said, “While my child was going through cancer treatment, that’s what they used to watch every day to bring some joy back in.” And you’re like, “Okay.”“Yeah.  And that was the first time you really thought, “Okay, be aware that what we’re doing may seem like a funny, frivolous little cartoon, but you don’t know who out there really needs that.” And now we get to hear how it’s what families bond over. And I think that, to me, is the coolest thing. In this world where parents and kids are often completely divided in their lives, so many times we hear, “This is the one show that the whole family comes together on.” That’s awesome, and it happens all over the world. So I feel lucky every day I get to wake up and say I do this for a living.

Interviewer: Yeah. It must be quite odd as well to balance that sort of duality of getting to laugh all day and make something really silly, and then have this really profound, heavy reception as well.

Swampy: It is. (laughs) It’s really cool. I said to somebody the other day, it’s weird when you kind of realise. I think most people hope that they get through life and have made some sort of positive impact on the world. And I don’t know if most people ever really know if they have or haven’t. And a while ago, I got to be aware that at least I’ve left a positive impact on the world somehow, and that is kind of very enlightening. You’re like, “Oh, yay!” (laughs) “I haven’t been a terrible burden,” you know?

Interviewer: Yeah, sort of a nice, uplifting legacy as well.

Swampy: It feels really good. Yeah. So yeah, I’m just glad they’re letting us continue to do this for a living.

Interviewer: We’re almost at the end of season five, which is the first new season for almost a decade. Was it daunting coming back to the world and the characters?

Swampy: It was equal parts thrilling, exciting, and terrifying. Because I don’t care what anybody says, there isn’t anybody who comes back to something like that and doesn’t sit down for a minute and think, “Oh God, I hope we can still do this.” And we’re pretty cocky and fairly confident, so I was relatively sure we could. But yeah, there was definitely a moment. We had a great writers’ room, and we brought in some of the old guys. We moved some of our storyboard artists into the writers’ room, and brought in some new people, all of whom grew up with the show. So that’s also weird, being in the writers’ room with people who go, “Yeah, I used to watch that when I was little.” God, we’re old. But it’s made the process really easy. And we’ve always said, creativity isn’t a well, it’s not gonna run dry. It’s a muscle. The more you flex it, the more you use it, the stronger it becomes. So we’ve found whole new areas that we didn’t even think of. It’s been much easier than we thought, and much more fun, and much less terrifying. (laughs)

Interviewer: What would you hope that kids and adults take away from your work?

Swampy: That it’s okay to be smart. And it’s okay to be creative. And it’s okay to be kind and inclusive. (laughs) And sing. Every so often. Just, even if it’s for no damn reason, sing. And maybe even dance.

Interviewer: What do you think has changed the most about animation since you started?

Swampy: Well, we started in the world of pencils. We were doing storyboards on little 3" x 5" sticky notes, with pencils and photocopy machines, and real cameras taking pictures of the cels and… cels. All of that’s gone. And we still draw, but as we say now, we draw on glass. It’s all Wacom tablets and you’re drawing right into the software. And the other thing that’s changed is it’s really easy now for people to make animated films at home, on their computer, in their room, on their phone. That is really cool. So filmmaking, especially animation, the door’s been opened to anyone who really wants to do it. And that’s good and bad. There are also some people who probably shouldn’t…… but how do you know until you try? That’s really, really cool. And it hopefully has demystified the industry. I didn’t know I could be in animation till I was 28 and somebody said, “Come on over, you should do this.” And I thought, you know, if I couldn’t draw Bugs Bunny in 24 frames, him moving, then there was no place in animation for me. And once I got in, I realised there was a bazillion jobs in there that I could do. And now kids are coming into the industry with much more experience actually doing the things that are required in animation, ’cause they’ve got programmes on their computer that can show them how to do it, and they can make their own films. That’s fantastic.

Interviewer: And lastly, you wear so many hats; animator, writer, director, voice actor, musician. Which one gives you the biggest rush?

Swampy: I think some of the most fun that we have is writing songs.
Because at the end of the day, it used to be every Friday, we knew we had a show that we had to write a song for. And it’s just a bunch of idiots in a room with guitars, maybe a keyboard, you know, a kazoo. And we could pick any style we want and write a song. And that’s just bonkers fun. We’ve said, “We can write a song about almost anything, in almost any style, in about an hour.” And we’ve pretty consistently been able to do that. And then we can get some amazing artists to come work with us. I’ve gotten to work with Elvis Costello and Diana Krall and Chaka Khan and Clay Aiken, and Michael Bublé, we found he’s a big fan of the show. He wanted to come do a song. We got to write a song for him, people that we couldn’t believe. Kate Pierson from the B-52s came and sang a song for us. And so that’s bonkers fun. But as far as just regular play, doing voices, being in the room is also like being a kid. It’s a game of “let’s pretend.” You get in a room with a microphone and just do dumb stuff and laugh. And it’s a whole day of, “Let’s see if we can make people laugh.” And we get to do that with some of the biggest stars in the world who, for whatever reason, every time we ask, seem to say yes. (laughs) But again, we talked about it earlier, as far as the filmmaking and the storytelling, that’s more of a slow burn. You don’t get the benefit of that until you read a social media post and find out what that meant to somebody. The amount of fighting we had to do to say the word “divorce”. We found out we were the first show on Disney Channel to say the word “divorce”, and what that has meant to people. You don’t find that out till later. So it may not be the most fun part at the beginning, and sometimes involves some arguing and tenseness and days where I thought I’d gotten fired. But then later, when somebody tells you how much that meant, there’s the payoff for that.