By Larry Nichols
PGN Staff Writer
© Philadelphia Gay News

RICK, STEVE, KIRSTEN AND DANA

Logo’s “Rick & Steve: The Happiest Gay Couple in All the World” is shaping up to be one of the most talked-about TV shows of the summer with an innocent- looking style of animation juxtaposed with a dark, razor- sharp and playfully crude comedic sense.

The show is the brainchild of Q. Allan Brocka, who has written for Logo’s “Big Gay Sketch Show” and written and directed feature films like “Boy Culture” and “Eating Out.”

The out Tacoma, Wash., native said the inspiration for “Rick & Steve” goes back to his early days as a filmmaker.

“It started out in my first year in film school as a homework assignment, which was to make a short video about relationships,” Brocka said. “I decided to do a basic gay sitcom. I wanted a basic family structure of a bunch of friends who are kind of related and what they would go through in a regular sitcom.”

But taping episodes for “Rick & Steve” is more complicated than taping a sitcom, or even most other animated shows, because the show makes minimal use of computers in its stop-motion production process.

“There are computers involved,” Brocka explained. “We build all the sets and all the puppets and shoot all the movements. Computers are used for the mouth movements. Everything else, almost 98 percent, is still [stop motion].”

Brocka said that even with an army of animators, it took a while to create the handful of episodes that makes up the show’s first season.

“We shot them all simultaneously so we had 16 stages going at once over the course of seven months,” he said. “An animator can do about eight seconds a day, so I’m not sure how long it takes to do one episode because they were all going at the same time and it was a madhouse.”

When asked if Logo had any reservations about the show’s edgy adult humor, Brocka said the network gave him a lot, if not total, creative freedom.

“For the first round, they kind of let me do what I want in the script process,” he said. “There are definitely issues. It’s a basic cable channel so they do have to follow basic cable rules. Initially, the baby in an upcoming episode learns the word ‘cunt’ and I couldn’t have the baby learning that word anymore so I had to change that. For the most part they were really encouraging in letting me go as far as I could and open to listening to me challenge what the rules were.”

Part of the outrageousness of the show is the slightly twisted characters that populate it, which Brocka points out are a little more real than people think.

“I think they’re really close to people,” he said of the main characters. “The relationship problems are based on my own experiences with relationships and friends that I’ve had. All the characters are a different part of me. If you could split me up into six personalities, it would be these six main characters.”

Whether Rick and Steve’s gay adventures continue, according to Brocka, depends on word of mouth and the almighty dollar.

“Logo isn’t a Neilsen-rated channel, so we’re just waiting to see and hopefully people will keep talking about it,” he said when asked if there will be a second season. “The only way they’ll know how successful the show is, is based on how much people talk about it, how much it sells on iTunes or the DVD sales.”

In the meantime, Brocka is keeping busy with any film and TV work he can fit into his schedule.

“I’m open to doing non-gay work but for what I’m doing right now, it’s all completely independent,” he said. “In everything I do, so much work goes into it before anyone gets paid. So to do that for something I don’t feel strongly about, I’m not going to bother.”

“Rick & Steve: The Happiest Gay Couple in All the World” airs on Tuesdays at 10 p.m. on the Logo Network. For more information, visit www.rickandsteve.com.