Yes, co-written by me and the Blasting Company. It really does sound like those marching band football bleachers tunes from high school. What’s your favorite song from the series?Īn unsung favorite of mine is the marching band theme “Halloween Halftime.” It just sneaks into my head sometimes and hangs around. The music in Over the Garden Wall is remarkable. I likely asked his opinion on other things too along the way, but I really don’t remember. I think he may have done some boards for Episode 5 as well, but I forget. I was having trouble finding full-time storyboard artists for the show because it was such a short-term job, so Pen was one of the pals who saved us by coming in and storyboarding/writing at the last minute. You’ve worked with Adventure Time creator Pendleton Ward for a long time, did he contribute to Over the Garden Wall ? I’d learned all the important ins-and-outs of running a show, so although Over the Garden Wall was quite a difficult show to make, the production was actually pretty smooth sailing. I guess the most important thing I got from AT was confidence. It’s hard to even start listing all the things I learned on Adventure Time. What did you learn from Adventure Time that helped you make Over the Garden Wall ? “When we did our first casting call for Wirt, we mostly just got Woody Allen impressions.” I told my casting director (Linda Lamontagne) that I’d imagined him having more of an Elijah Wood type voice, and she said, “Well then let’s just ask Elijah!” So we did, and he said OK! Kind of amazing. When we did our first casting call for Wirt, we mostly just got Woody Allen impressions. How did you get Elijah Wood to work with you? Once I realized that we could write whatever we wanted, that we didn’t have to stay chained to a specific set of tracks, the story began to bloom.īeatrice (Melanie Lynskey) with Wirt and Greg's frog. That small change made the show so much stronger, in my opinion. It was around this time that I realized we could move our first episode - which (spoiler alert) originally involved Wirt and Greg in their hometown on Halloween night - to the 9th episode spot. It’s much better to let the story and characters live and breathe. So I stopped stressing so hard about trying to structure everything “the right way” and I finally let the instincts kick in. I realized you can write whatever you want. Whatever was exciting or interesting or satisfying. It felt like they were writing whatever felt right for that moment of the show, and for the characters. As I watched the show, I started to realize that they weren’t really trying to set up huge plot points so that they could later pay them off - it felt more organic. I think the final season of Breaking Bad was airing around the time that we were halfway through our writing process, and I was catching up on the show to get my mind off the daily stresses of production. How did Breaking Bad inspire Over the Garden Wall? The show Breaking Bad also ended up being a surprisingly big influence. One of the initial inspirations for the show’s visual style was a rather obscure book called The Complete Optimist. What stories or pieces or art inspired Over the Garden Wall ?
WATCH OVER THE GARDEN WALL SERIES
"I actually did pitch Cartoon Network the idea of doing a series of Fred the Horse horror shorts, but nobody was especially inspired to invest the millions of dollars it would take to make that." Cartoon Network This interview has been edited lightly for brevity and clarity.
In a long and winding conversation with Inverse, McHale reveals how Over the Garden Wall was inspired by the final season of Breaking Bad, what he would have done with an 18-episode season, his idea for a “spiritual successor,” the spinoff idea that Cartoon Network rejected, and the surprising backstory to one fan-favorite character.
Six years later, Over the Garden Wall is an annual Halloween rewatch for many (myself included), while any Comic Con event across the country likely includes at least one cosplayer inspired by the series. While presumably meant for children, Over the Garden Wall became a cult classic thanks to its folksy soundtrack, retro animation, and some genuine frights. The story from Adventure Time creative director Patrick McHale follows two brothers, Wirt (Elijah Wood) and Greg (Collin Dean), who are lost in a mysterious woods called “The Unknown.” Joined by a talking bird named Beatrice, Wirt and Greg struggle to find their way home while encountering witches, monsters, and a demon called The Beast. Originally airing in 10 chapters from November 3 to 7, 2014, Over the Garden Wall was Cartoon Network’s first original miniseries.
The best spooky story of the last decade wasn’t released until three days after Halloween.