A reader points out that today (January 13) is the tenth anniversary of the series premiere of King of the Hill. In honor of this occasion, here's the original series pitch for the show. An animated series can't afford to do a full-length pilot, so (unless it's spun off from an existing cartoon, like The Simpsons), there's usually a short presentation reel created for the network. King of the Hill, instead of doing a scene from the pilot, did a pencil-test reel where Hank Hill pitches the show directly to Fox executives.
Note that most of the other characters, except for Mike Judge's two characters, have different voices (is that Tress MacNeille as Bobby?), since they hadn't been cast yet.
Judge did have the advantage of having Hank's character bear a very close resemblence to his Tom Anderson character from "Beavis & Butthead", so the Fox execs (or at least any who managed to watch MTV during the early 1990s) had a bit of a head start, instead of going in cold when they viewed the Hank Hill test reel.
ReplyDeleteThe Texan drawls were more apparent than they came to be, especially Peggy, Luanne, and Bill's voices. And Peg wasn't as fat as Kathy Najimny might've suggested in interviews.
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ReplyDeleteWhy is this called Pencil-Vania? I'm not sure I get it.
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