EDITOR’S NOTE — This story includes content related to suicide. If you or someone you know needs help, the national suicide and crisis lifeline is available by calling or texting 988 or visiting the online chat at 988lifeline.org.
In a world in which arts are consistently undervalued, Dan Povenmire told the Daily Egyptian staff he believes entertainment is “the most important thing.”
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“It speaks volumes…that and some illegal pursuits are the only things that really survived in, you know, the Great Depression and the recessions and everything like that…and I think that it’s because people need entertainment,” he said. “They need just the release you get from laughing.”
Povenmire, who has lived in Champagne, Illinois, is an animator, voice actor, producer, director and writer most known for his work on the Disney Channel animated series “Phineas and Ferb.” In addition to co-creating the show alongside Jeff “Swampy” Marsh, Povenmire served as executive producer and voiced evil scientist Dr. Heinz Doofenshmirtz.
Povenmire was the celebrity speaker for Southern Illinois University’s 2024 Family Weekend. On Sept. 19, in the ballroom of SIU’s student center, Povenmire spoke to the students, families and community members about his time in the entertainment industry.
At the event, Povenmire said he had a passion for drawing and filmmaking at a young age, doodling in textbooks at school to fuel his creativity.
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“Since I saw ‘Jaws’ and ‘Star Wars’ again, I was like, I definitely want to be a filmmaker,” Povenmire said. “Animation was something that sort of put those two together. I wasn’t trying to go into animation, I just sort of fell backwards into animation, and then just loved it.”
He also spoke about his first gig. While attending the University of Southern California, he worked at their newspaper, The Daily Trojan, making daily comics. He had decided to take his chances one day and went to the newsroom to share his work with the news editor.
Povenmire said, “He said, ‘These are really funny…I still can’t offer you a weekly strip, but if you want to do it daily, we can absolutely just budget that space, and that will be yours every day. We have to fill it. Can you do it daily?’”
It was this gig that helped him lean into comedy writing, Povenmire said. It felt like a solid step since he was able to make people laugh in only four panels.
Before the event, Povenmire took the time to meet with the Daily Egyptian, first speaking on his new season of “Hamster & Gretel” recently released on Disney Plus.
He said it’s his third show he’s created besides “Phineas and Ferb” and “Milo Murphy’s Law,” as well as the first one he’s worked on without close colleague Marsh.
The show is about a brother and sister duo who go on adventures with their Uncle gaining superpowers after a run-in with an alien.
“It’s one of my favorite things that I’ve done,” Povenmire said. “I think it’s a really great show with really great characters and it’s the same sort of sense of humor as ‘Phineas and Ferb’, but maybe more heart.”
It’s based loosely off his own family, Povenmire said. The dad in the show is based on him and the mother is based on his ex-wife. He also works with his daughter on voice acting and making songs for the soundtrack of ‘Hamster & Gretel.’
“We’ve recorded pretty much all of her for the first two seasons…but we have a great time together,” Povenmire said. “She’s sitting next to me, and she knows the program I’m using well enough that she can be like, ‘OK, ready?’”
When “Phineas and Ferb” first came to a close, Povenmire said it was at a time where outside sales like merchandise were going down and the show was only getting more seasons because of popularity.
“We (the crew) said, well, we don’t want to do that because we don’t want to have to try to find people who can do this show right again,” Povenmire said. “ It took us a lot to find the crew and the board artists and the writers that we had and so we said, if you are cooling off on it, we’re tired, we will just, you know, that’s OK with us.”
At the event, he said he was surprised to find out after all these years fans were still keeping the show alive on social media with trends. He even participated in some himself, he said.
“It’s cool to see that there’s a whole generation of people that still – that sort of still means something to them – because that was their ‘Scooby Doo,’” Povenmire said. “All the songs, like, the ‘Squirrels In My Pants’ – that big trend that was going on – I’d wake up in the morning and [see] like, oh, Lizzo is doing ‘Squirrels In My Pants’.”
He also shared a few stories with the DE about messages he has received from fans. One message came from a young woman shortly after he shared a post online about his history teacher.
“I had written him a letter that he said saved his life, that kind of thing,” he said. “And she wrote and said, ‘You’ve saved my life, too.’”
Povenmire said the woman had been the victim of a violent crime and was suffering from depression.
“She had started to sequester herself inside and hadn’t talked to people about it, hadn’t gotten the help she needed to get, and had become agoraphobic and suicidal, and had just gone down this horrible spiral of depression,” he said.
He continued: “And she had friends that were sort of staying with her on what she called ‘suicide watch,’ like somebody was always in her place, staying with her, and she hadn’t left her house in like a year and a half. And a friend came in and made her watch ‘Family Guy,’ and she said she laughed out loud for the first time in a year and a half and felt human.
“She felt part of humanity again, and she started living every day to get to nine o’clock at night when ‘Family Guy’ would play on Adult Swim. And the first episode that she saw was one that I had directed, and so she always counted me and the writer of that episode and Seth [MacFarlane, the creator of the show] as the people that saved her life.”
With the rise of social media, the messages have only proliferated.
“I get lots of stories of people who say that ‘your show is what got me and my kid through chemo.’ ‘Your show’s the show that got me through my parents’ divorce.’ I get that all the time. And I think that – that’s just the people that tell me that – I think that people are all going through things all over the world and need the escape of entertainment to do it,” Povenmire said.
He said he shares the stories with a lot of friends who are also comedy writers, as they often like to downplay their work.
“We’re not doing anything real,” he said. “We’re not out there saving lives. We’re not a doctor…but I think we’re touching more lives sometimes than we know, because people need that.”
Povenmire said receiving the messages often make him cry. In the Office of Student Engagement, he teared up when telling the Daily Egyptian about the day he was allowed to announce that “Phineas and Ferb” was ending.
“I was at jury duty…and I’m sitting with a friend of mine’s wife who happens to be there at jury duty, and I get the ding,” he said. “They’ve announced it, and they said, ‘you guys can do it.’”
He went on Twitter and Instagram to make the announcement. While at the courthouse, waiting to go in for selection, he decided to check the responses. He said it was pages of similar testaments.
“I started crying like this, but much worse, and like, ugly crying, not like sniffling,” he said.
He added, “You forget how much power TV and entertainment has until you get those kind of stories thrown at you a lot. And I’ve heard that hundreds and hundred of times…and that’s what you try to do. You try to lighten people’s lives.”
At the event, many students were excited to hear that “Phineas and Ferb” is getting revamped. Povenmire told them that fans should expect a fresh feel with the characters they know and love.
“[You want it] to feel like the original show, but you also sort of wanted to be a little bit like it’s a step up,” Povenmire said. “You want it to feel like you were watching the fourth season, and you just started in your fifth season. You wouldn’t even notice it [stopped], but you want it to feel fresh.”
Povenmire said he expects some of the new episodes to be new fan favorites.
As for why Povenmire chose to come to SIU, he mentioned to the Daily Egyptian how much hearing from other professionals in the industry meant to him when he was young.
“I always like to come and talk to students, because I like to hand down that kind of stuff,” he said.
He shared the first time he had an encounter with a professional creative. It was 1979, he was a teenager, and he went to a science fiction convention in Biloxi, Mississippi.
“It was a very, very small convention, but they had this guy who had just won the Hugo Award for his first novel, and he was reading a short story, and I got to hear somebody reading – like an actual author – reading their story,” he said. “And I was just transfixed by him.”
After the convention, he had dinner with the author. For years after that, Povenmire said the author had stayed in his mind, serving as inspiration. But he could never remember his name.
“I was like, ‘I wish I had written down his name, because I can’t look him up to see if he has made it, if he’s been able to continue to write for his life, and I hope he has.’”
Fast forward to 2017, he went to watch the total solar eclipse in Oregon with a friend. He said he was telling the friend about how seeing a total solar eclipse is a “life-changing experience.” He also said he related it to a show he had started watching, “Game of Thrones,” because the eclipse reminded him of “a big medieval kind of thing.”
Povenmire said, “And he [his friend] was like, ‘Well, you know, that’s that guy we met’…It was George R. R. Martin, the creator of ‘Game of Thrones.’”
He said as soon as his friend told him that, the images came flooding back.
“The eclipse makes you feel connected to the universe in a weird, like, really visceral way,” he said. “And then I’m also connected to George R. R. Martin in some way. And I was really loving his show, and it all just sort of came together in this wonderful way.”
The best advice Povenmire could give to aspiring animators is to continue to draw with it, helping to set a good foundation for the future.
“They need people to tell the story visually, and the people who understand animation intrinsically from drawing it all the time make better 3D animators, I think,” Povenmire said. “The hardest thing in the entertainment industry at all is getting that first gig, the first time that somebody pays you to do something creative. Then that gig gets you the next gig, which gets you the next gig.”
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