We started watching Disney’s Phineas and Ferb from the beginning back in 2007. Our oldest kids were 8 and 6 at the time and the show was creative, intelligent, and of course funny! Ashley Tisdale was a favorite in our household already from High School Musical, so being the voice of the typical big sister Candace was easy for us to get in to, not to mention a pet platypus, this has got to be interesting! I do have to say my husband enjoyed the show just as much if not more than the kids sometimes. Being a civil engineer, his mind works like Phineas and Ferb’s so it was enjoyable to all of us to hear dad belly laughing and nodding his head throughout the episodes!
It’s hard to believe that Candace has been trying to bust her brothers for nearly a decade to no avail. Years of attempts, and years of “but…but…but…but…” and Phineas and Ferb’s sister has one final chance to catch them in the act with mom as her witness. We spent the morning last Monday screening the final show and let me tell you it’s a fantastic ending to a brilliant show! I will not give out any spoilers other than it has a “Groundhog’s Day” theme to it, a cool -Inator thanks to Dr. Doofenshmirtz, and Easter Eggs that you might miss in a blink so make sure you’ve got your DVR set to record! Tune in this Friday, June 12 at 9pm ET/PT to watch the series-ending one-hour episode aptly entitled, “Last Day of Summer” on Disney HD to find out if Candace is successful in busting her brothers!
Following the screening, Executive Producers and Creators Dan Povenmire and Jeff “Swampy” Marsh sat down with us for a Q&A session discussing the end of an era. The men were genuine, honest, funny, and were brought to tears saying goodbye to Phineas and Ferb which in turn had me wishing I’d packed tissues in my purse!
Their inspiration for the show mainly came from their own childhood. This is where I see my husband in the creators, I’ve heard these stories before!
DAN: ‘Cause Swampy and I were both sort of creative kids and we had creative parents that would allow us to do ridiculous things and were always building…me and some buddies took sticks and flashlights one day and crawled all the way through our sub division in the drainage pipes that were about 4 ft. tall…and you’d see light ahead and you would come up….you look out through the drainage thing on the side of a curb and suddenly realize, oh wait that’s Overlook Church. That’s like a mile and a half from my house. We should go back.
JEFF: A lot of it was putting ourselves back as a 10 to 12 year old boy and thinking you could do anything and that’s pretty easy for us to do..‘cause we’re pretty close to that maturity level. I look at some of the go carts that we’ve built out of old wheels and stuff… [LAUGHS] it’s really amazing that I’m here and I have all my teeth, most of ‘em.
One of the ladies asked a real poignant question about the show inspiring viewers and here’s where the raw emotion of these guys truly came out!
JEFF: I don’t have a favorite [story], but you would be shocked at how many letters we get of people telling us you got us through a really dark time.
DAN: You inspire my kid to be more, more creative. Somebody sent us this letter…it was actually a letter to I think Gary Marsh the head of the channel just saying before their kid was watching Phineas they would sort of get through art class to go out and play and would never draw anything, would never do anything you know. She sent a picture that’s being drawn from before Phineas and it was one line on a piece of paper. And then a picture that he drew after he started watching Phineas and all the creativity that she saw coming out of him. [LAUGHS] And that makes me proud…
Some of them were things like, this is the show that got me through PTSD. This is the show that got me through chemo with my kid because it was the one thing that would make him smile. They’re all these kind of things. And I started crying like I’m doing right now. [audible sniffing going on by all the mom bloggers!]
Dan voices Dr. Doofenshmirtz and Jeff voices Major Monogram and during the interview I would laugh out loud when one would slid into their persona, as everyone in our family including my husband does on many occasions. It was asked about doing the voices in the ‘real world’ and around their own kids. What’s it like to be a famous Disney voice?
DAN: My 7 year old will sometimes lead on the playground with, “You know my dad created Phineas and Ferb” and she’ll show up with kids, “Daddy can you do the voice for them?”
JEFF: I had a guy who came up to me. I was doing a talk in Oklahoma at the University there. The guy comes up to me afterwards, this is gonna’ sound really stupid, but [can you] call and ask my dad to send me more money. [LAUGHS]…and I had a great conversation with him and Monogram’s voice…and apparently he did send more money. [LAUGHS] I think that’ll be forever…
What I really like is being in Disneyland and see I kid with a Agent P shirt on. Just in line behind you know. [I’ll do the voice] [LAUGHS] And inevitably the kid [says] “You do that really well.”
DAN: I was on a camping trip with my daughter’s 3rd grade class at Joshua Tree and one of the other dad’s there just happens to be Chris Sanders who created Lilo and Stitch and he does the voice of, of Stitch. And there was a Talent Night around the campfire. So he and I got up and did Black Bird by the Beatles as [Doofensmirtz] and Stitch. And one of the other dads videotaped it and just sent me the tape so I put it up on Twitter this morning which was a fun little thing.
I think my favorite part of the interview is how they responded to the question, “is there anything that you want people to know about this series, about this show? Anything at all about this show that maybe didn’t get out there?”
JEFF: The thing that I want people who are making programs to get out of this is that you can never go wrong over estimating the intelligence of kids. That’s what I hope people get. You can make poor shows that appeal to everybody from adults, to teenagers, to little kids, all the way on down without being mean, without having the shows filled with jerks and idiots and that you can put big words in and it’s okay. You can do classical music and jazz music and folk music, and rock and roll, and rap, and all of that and kids’ll get it. And if you can just stop people from dumbing down the subject matter that they feel they need to put in front of kids this whole thing will be a success…that’s what we fought for.
I’m for treating kids smart and clever and everybody that we started hearing from in the early days got that and that was so rewarding. It’s a show we can sit down with the whole family and they’ll feel really comfortable with my kids watching it and they’re inspired and I’m inspired.
DAN: Yeah we, we made a lot of choices early on about making sure that Phineas and Ferb are never disobeying their mom. They may be doing things that will get them in trouble, but they don’t know that they would get them in trouble you know. It’s like mom doesn’t say don’t build a roller coaster in the back yard. She says, “Stay out of trouble.” And Candace is not trying to hurt Phineas and Ferb she just wants fairness. “If I did this mom wouldn’t get mad at me. So I just need mom to see this.” Nobody’s ever motivated by meanness.
These guys are incredible, it makes me so happy as a mom to know how much they care about our children and Disney television has always been held high in esteem for us raising our children on their programming!
Following the interview Dan and Jeff joined our group for a picnic as well as Phineas and Ferb themselves!
Though viewers will ultimately miss the show the creators were proud of their accomplishment and are happy to see it end on a high note while it was still fresh!
You can still read about our adventure on social media through the #PhineasandFerbEvent hashtag and you can tweet Dan Povenmire (@danpovenmire) and Jeffy “Swampy” Marsh (@mmonogram) on Twitter and let them know how much you love the show. Don’t forget to tune in June 12 for the Last Day of Summer, my family has plans for pizza and popcorn, I can’t wait until we all watch it together. I’m sure I’ll cry again, but I feel like I’m at peace with the show ending now that I’ve gotten to know the brains and hearts behind the show! Thank you Dan and Jeff for memories!
Disney sent me on a 3 day all expenses paid adventure but all the opinions are 100% my honest opinion!
