Critic Milo Miles

DATE February 26, 2001 ACCOUNT NUMBER N/A
TIME 12:00 Noon-1:00 PM AUDIENCE N/A
NETWORK NPR
PROGRAM Fresh Air

Interview: Glyn Moody discusses his book, "Rebel Code"
BARBARA BOGAEV, host:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Barbara Bogaev in for Terry Gross.

While Bill Gates was making billions of dollars off Microsoft's operating
system Windows, a group of renegade programmers were furiously working on a
competing operating system that, when completed, would be given away for free.
In 1991, a programmer in Finland named Linus Torvalds wrote the final piece of
software, a program he called Linux. Torvalds is part of what is known as the
open source movement. In addition to believing that computer software should
be given away for free, they also include the source code for their program so
that others can adapt and improve it.

Over the past 10 years as this free operating system has been rewritten and
refined, its been adopted by more and more parts of the industry, and it's
beginning to challenge Microsoft's dominance. There's a new book about Linux
and the open source movement called "Rebel Code." Terry Gross spoke recently
with its author, British journalist Glyn Moody.

TERRY GROSS, host:

What is Linux?

Mr. GLYN MOODY (Author, "Rebel Code"): Linux is, strictly speaking, part of
an operating system. An operating system being the main control software that
you find on computers. Most people, though, use the name Linux to refer to
the whole operating system, but strictly speaking they should be called
something like Gnu Linux because it's harder to say. People tend to shorten
it to Linux.

GROSS: And what is the Gnu part?

Mr. MOODY: Well, the Gnu part, if you like, is the other 90 percent that goes
to make up an operating system. But the Linux, if you like, is the heart,
strictly speaking, called the kernel and it sits, if you like, in the middle
of a great tapestry of software, and that whole tapestry consists of other
programs plus Linux, and the other programs have been written by a group of
programmers who subscribe to what's called the Gnu Project.

GROSS: And we should start with something really basic, which is: What is an
operating system?

Mr. MOODY: OK. When you get your computer, it's basically a piece of metal
with plastic and other sort of items in it, but it doesn't do anything until
you put some software on it, and at the most basic level you have to have an
operating system which acts as a kind of housekeeper. It looks after the
disks when they spin. It puts things up on the screen when you look at it and
it takes things from the keyboard. So all those basic tasks are handled by an
operating system. And then on top of that you will add what are called
application programs, which do more specific tasks like word processing or
accessing the Internet.

GROSS: What are some of the fundamental differences between the Linux system
and, say, the Microsoft system?

Mr. MOODY: Well, you can answer that on two levels. For example, the Linux
or Gnu Linux operating system is incredibly robust. Typically people switch
it on and leave it on for years and it never crashes, whereas anyone who's
used Windows will know that crashes unfortunately are a rather more common
experience. But there's a rather more interesting difference between the two
systems, which is that when you buy Microsoft Windows from Microsoft--in fact,
you don't buy it, you just get a license to use it. Moreover, you can't
actually see what that thing is that you buy. You buy a huge string of zeroes
and ones, those binary digits.

However, when you use Linux or Gnu Linux, you actually get the software to
keep. It's yours. And you can do what you like with it. Moreover, you can
change it. You can look at the underlying lines of programming code and you
can add improvements or you can convert it into something completely different.
So there's a fundamental difference in approach between what Microsoft does
and what the people who create Linux and other similar free programs do.

GROSS: Now this is what Linus Torvalds wanted when he created Linux. He
wanted to keep it a free system and he wanted people to be able to revise it,
to debug it, to improve it. Why did he want to keep it free and open to
people who wanted to make changes?

Mr. MOODY: Well, initially he just wanted people to use the program that he'd
created, and he was happy for them to do that without paying him. However, he
didn't want people turning it into a commercial product and getting rich when
he didn't, so he thought it was fair that he would give it away provided
everybody else kept it free. But the magic was that when he did that, and
people started sending him suggestions on improving it and he incorporated
those suggestions, his Linux started getting better and better and he realized
that what he'd stumbled upon was a completely new way of writing software,
which is that you throw it open in the most general way possible, inviting
people to submit their own improvements, and lo and behold, it does get
better.

GROSS: So what was Torvalds' approach to preventing other people from making
money on the system that he was offering for free?

Mr. MOODY: Well, his initial approach was fairly crude. It just said, `If
you use this software, you may not make money out of it.' And he had a very
kind of rough and ready license. But then later on, he adopted something
called the Gnu General Public License, and what this is is a rather more
formally thought out alternative licensing approach which was first created by
somebody called Richard Stallman, who is one of the other key figures in this
world, and he specifically wanted to frame a different kind of license that
instead of taking away the rights of users, actually enshrine them. In other
words--whereas when you buy software, as I say, you don't actually buy it, you
just buy certain rights which are very circumscribed. But with the Gnu GPL,
you are actually given rights; moreover, you have to pass those rights on, so
it's a kind of topsy-turvy license, and in fact, it's sometimes known as
copyleft in counterdistinction to copyright.

GROSS: And tell us more about what the license says.

Mr. MOODY: Well, it basically tries to formalize the magic which people like
Linus and Richard Stallman himself discovered in this sort of open source way
of programming. In other words, if you release something under this
particular license, you have to provide the underlying lines of programming
code which, as I said, is not what was done initially. Normally you are
presented with, effectively, a black box when you get software. You can't see
inside how it works. But under the Gnu GPL you must provide the lines of
source code, as it's called, the programming code. And in a way that's
providing the keys to the magic, and it's letting people see how things are
done, and that was a real sort of breakthrough conceptually because it was the
antithesis of what had been done before.

Now paradoxically, you can actually sell this free software provided you also
make it available free as well. In other words, you have the freedom to sell
it, but you must also provide it free, and this really forms the basis of
the...

GROSS: Wait, wait. You have the freedom to sell it but you must also provide
it free?

Mr. MOODY: That's right.

GROSS: Well, explain that contradiction.

Mr. MOODY: OK. Well, in other words, you can package it in such a way that
people might want to pay you money for it. So for example, you could put it
on a CD. You could provide manuals with it. You can sell it through, I don't
know, computer magazines for example. But you must provide a copy somehow
that people can get hold of for free. And typically you would do that by
placing a copy on the Internet so people can download that copy. Moreover,
if they buy your program, they also have the rights to copy it and give it to
their friends, unlike what you tend to find in the commercial world.

GROSS: Now let's talk a little bit more about the open source movement and
another character in that movement, Richard Stallman, who is behind Gnu. Tell
us who Richard Stallman is.

Mr. MOODY: Richard Stallman is a very remarkable individual in that he more
or less started this singlehanded back in 1984. He was one of the gifted
young programmers at MIT during the 1970s, and he was happily sort of
programming away, when various events caused his, if you like, Eden of
programming to disappear in that all of the fellow programmers disappeared and
they went to work for companies, the machine that he was using was taken away
because it was getting old-fashioned, and he was so sort of deeply struck by
this particular event that he resolved to singlehandedly, if need be, create
again this paradise that he'd enjoyed.

And the way he was going to do that was by writing his own complete operating
system, which is what this Gnu is. And so back in 1984 he started piecing
together tiny part by tiny part this entire operating system. And what's
interesting is that he almost finished it, but there was one big piece
missing, which is the so-called kernel, and it just so happened that Linus in
Finland was creating just that missing piece in the early '90s. And when you
put those two together, the Gnu and the Linux, you get this complete, free
operating system that Richard Stallman has been striving for since 1984.

GROSS: Well, you mentioned a little bit about his motivation for wanting to
keep his system free. What were Stallman's other motivations for wanting to
keep the system free?

Mr. MOODY: Well, it's important to note that he uses the word free in the
sense of freedom, not in the sense of costing nothing, because remarkably, he
sees free software as an instrument of liberation. In other words, he thinks
that by releasing free software to people, he increases their liberty, and
really this is a facet of his very strongly held beliefs in terms of
empowering people. So he sees it almost as a political act.

GROSS: Is he concerned about people co-opting his software or...

Mr. MOODY: He was very concerned about it, which is why he invented the Gnu
GPL that we talked about earlier...

GROSS: Right.

Mr. MOODY: ...because this makes it impossible to co-opt. Because you're
absolutely right. That was the danger, that he would create this wonderful
software and somebody would come and say, `Thank you very much. I'm now gonna
sell this for $1,000.' So he spent a lot of time talking to lawyers and came
up with this truly innovative document, because as I say, in effect it turns
conventional licensing on its head to ensure that his creations would remain
free for all people for all time.

GROSS: When a system like Linux is not only free, but the source code is
available to anyone who wants access to it, does it make it easier for
somebody with the know-how to sabotage the Linux system?

Mr. MOODY: Well, there are two schools of thought on this. Those who come
from the more traditional software background indeed say that this makes it
extremely vulnerable to people infiltrating the software and to including
malicious programs. But those who are, if you like, more attuned with the
whole open approach point out that if the software is open, then you can more
readily spot any problems with it. And indeed, that's been shown the case
over the last few years when many commercial programs have been found to have
so-called back doors. In other words, hidden capabilities that nobody knew
about, and there was no way end users could ever find out about them.
Similarly, some of these free programs have had problems found, too, but
they've been found before they've been exploited.

BOGAEV: (Joined in progress) hear more of Terry Gross' interview with him
after the break. This is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

BOGAEV: Let's get back to Terry Gross' interview with Glyn Moody. He writes
about computers and is the author of the new book "Rebel Code: Inside Linux
and the Open Source Revolution."

GROSS: OK, so we've talked about two very bright, very creative people who
have made very important systems available for free: Richard Stallman and
Linus Torvalds. What do they do to make money?

Mr. MOODY: Well, they are a complete contrast in that respect. Linus
Torvalds is very much a pragmatist and he actually works for a company which
makes proprietary devices. It's called Transmeta. It's down in Silicon
Valley. And interestingly enough, they've come up with a way of producing a
chip which is essentially compatible with the Intel chip family, and Linus has
been very involved with this. It's interesting to note that it's not directly
involved with Linux, and I think the reason for that is his primary motivation
for most things is the challenge, and he wants to do something that was really
quite different from what he'd already done in the preceding 10 years. So he
is an engineer. He has the standard stock options which have made him quite a
wealthy man. He is married. He has three children. He drives quite a fast
car. So he is sort of, you know, Mr. Normal in that respect.

Richard Stallman, by contrast, doesn't work. That's to say he devotes all of
his time to programming, to a lesser extent, and nowadays more to promoting
and evangelizing his ideas, and he's able to do this in part because he was
the winner of a so-called MacArthur genius prize some years ago which gave him
a sizable lump of money which he's invested to give him that freedom. So he
is the antithesis, in some respects, of Linus, who's much more worldly.

GROSS: A lot of our listeners will never have used the Linux system. What
kind of computers does Linux operate on?

Mr. MOODY: Well, the Linux kernel and the Gnu Linux operating system runs on
practically every computer that has ever been, from the mightiest IBM
supercomputer down to the Palm Pilot. Because one of the things that the
people who create this software really enjoy is a challenge, and one of the
greatest challenges is what's called porting, which is taking the Gnu Linux
system and making it work on new hardware. And therefore, there are people at
this very moment who are creating new versions of Gnu Linux to run on just
about any computer system you can name. However improbable, they regard that
as a challenge to be met.

GROSS: Do you think at this point in the history of Gnu Linux that the only
people who can successfully use it are people who really understand the source
code and who are computer experts and experts in computer language?

Mr. MOODY: I don't think you have to understand the source code, but I think
it is fair to say that you need to have a fair degree of computer expertise.
And the reason for that is the power of this kind of software derives in great
part from its flexibility, but as we know, flexibility can be a problem for
people who don't want flexibility. And I think that it's going to be a few
years before you see Gnu Linux systems turning up regularly on the desktop.

But it's important to remember that three or four years ago people said,
`Well, you'd never find Gnu Linux in business,' whereas the latest market
research indicates quite clearly that it is already the second most important
operating system after Windows. And just recently Steve Ballmer, the CEO of
Microsoft, said to an analyst meeting that he regards Linux as the most
serious threat to his company. So it has progressed from something that
nobody took seriously in companies to being the most serious threat to Windows
in companies. And I think the same will happen in due course, perhaps in four
or five years' time, on the desktop, too.

GROSS: Now Linux is a free system, but IBM and Hewlett-Packard are now
working with Linux. What are the relationships between Linux and these, you
know, very corporate, very profit-making companies?

Mr. MOODY: Well, it's certainly been a very interesting and important
development. Last year, IBM announced a massive vote of support for Linux,
and this year I think they've announced they'll be investing $1 billion in
support of Linux further. Now clearly they don't do this out of altruism, and
the reason they're doing this is because it solves a major problem for them.
If you look at the IBM line of hardware, they have supercomputers, they have
what are called mainframes--they've very big pieces of iron that do the main
sort of number crunching--they have mini-computers, they have PCs. And
hitherto, those have all been completely incompatible. It was very difficult
to get them to talk to one another. It was impossible to get one program that
ran on one to run on another.

Now along comes Gnu Linux, which they are porting--in other words,
transferring to--all of their hardware. What happens now? If you write a
program that runs on your PC running Gnu Linux, that same program will run on
a mini-computer. That same program will run on a mainframe. It will even run
on a supercomputer. You don't need to change the line of code. So at a
stroke it unifies their product line.

GROSS: Has IBM and Hewlett-Packard found a way to make money on Linux or are
they just using Linux to make their own operation easier?

Mr. MOODY: Well, they're certainly using it to make their operation easier.
They're also using it, quite frankly, for tactical reasons, because anything
that is a problem for Microsoft is clearly an advantage for them. But there
are sound business reasons why they should back it, because IBM in particular
was moving increasingly towards a service revenue model rather than producing
hardware, rather than producing just software. In other words, you
effectively give somebody the razor and then you sell them the razor blades on
top. And what this amounts to is giving them the software, in other words Gnu
Linux, and then providing plenty of consultancy, plenty of support. In fact,
all those things which hitherto Linus and all his brilliant programmers
haven't provided. So in fact, there's a wonderfully complementary
relationship between the open source movement and big companies like IBM and
HP and Compaq, who can now provide those things which were absent from the
early days of the open source movement.

GROSS: Like service, so that if something goes wrong, there's an expert you
can call in from a company, and they'll help you fix it?

Mr. MOODY: Exactly. You provide 24 by 7 backup. In other words, every hour
of every day somebody will be on call. And hitherto that hasn't been
available, and people have used that against open source saying, `Well, the
software's all very well, but what happens when it goes wrong? Who do I
call?' The answer is you call IBM, you call HP, you call Compaq, and they're
finding that there are good revenues to be made there.

GROSS: Do you think that the Linux system is a threat to Microsoft? Now I
ask that. I know the judge in the Microsoft antitrust case, Judge Thomas
Penfield, didn't seem to think that it was, and he said, `There weren't any
viable alternatives to Windows.' He also said that, `Linux was a fringe
operating system that's unlikely to challenge Microsoft.'

Mr. MOODY: Well, with all due respect to the judge, I think that was true
three or four years ago, but it manifestly isn't true now. I've already
quoted what Steve Ballmer said. I mean, if he says it is the main threat to
Microsoft, he's not a man who exaggerates. The market research reports make
it quite clear that the Gnu Linux system is rapidly catching up with Windows
in the server field. It's true that on the desktop, as I said before, Gnu
Linux still has a long way to go, but it will get there. It has this sort of
slow, steady progress. So I think it already is a very serious threat and
it's very interesting that just recently one or two Microsoft executives have
started suggesting that perhaps Linux has peaked and perhaps it won't be
around much longer. Now this is a dramatic change from their previous stance
which was that nobody was using it and therefore it didn't really matter. So
I think that their actions speak louder than words in a sense that they are
clearly worried.

GROSS: Would the Linux system be strong against that attack if it caught on?
Because wouldn't...

Mr. MOODY: Because everybody's Linux system is different.

GROSS: Oh, because people personalize it, right. They customize it.

Mr. MOODY: Everybody can tweak it--that's right. That's right. And also,
for example, you wouldn't just have one e-mail client. There is no Outlook
for Linux. There are sort of 10 different ones, and therefore when the virus
arrived on your PC run in Linux, it wouldn't know what to do because it
couldn't assume that you had one program.

GROSS: There seem to be two extremes in the software movement. On the one
hand, you have people who become gazillionaires because they write programs
that are so successful, and on the other hand you have the people in the open
source movement who write wonderful programs, but they think that the programs
should be free. Is there any middle ground?

Mr. MOODY: I mean, I suppose there is, but I think that contrast is
important, because personally what I see is that free software and open source
represent a contrast to the whole kind of dot-com philosophy that we've seen
over the last two or three years and which I think now a lot of people are
regarding as discredited. This kind of at-all-costs, get rich quick and just
worry about the IPOs. I think people are starting to realize that that
perhaps isn't what life is about, and the values inherent in the open source
and free software world, the values of sharing, the values of generosity, I
think, are gonna make a comeback. And in many ways my book is about the next
phase, if you like, within the computer world.

GROSS: Well, Glyn Moody, I thank you very much for talking with us.

Mr. MOODY: Yeah, it's been a pleasure.

BOGAEV: Glyn Moody's new book is "Rebel Code: Inside Linux and the Open
Source Revolution."

I'm Barbara Bogaev, and this is FRESH AIR.

(Credits)

BOGAEV: This is NPR, National Public Radio.

(Soundbite of John Fahey playing guitar)

BOGAEV: Coming up, Milo Miles remembers guitarist John Fahey, who died last
week. Also, the creator of "King of the Hill" and "Beavis & Butt-head." We
meet animator Mike Judge. Last night, "King of the Hill" celebrated its 100th
episode.

(Soundbite of Fahey playing guitar)

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Interview: Mike Judge discusses his career as creator of "Beavis &
Butt-head" and "King of the Hill"
BARBARA BOGAEV, host:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Barbara Bogaev.

There was a time in the mid-'90s when many parents considered Mike Judge
public enemy number one. Judge was the man behind Beavis and Butt-head, two
trash-talking, metal rock worshiping cartoon characters who were stars of MTV
programming and later of a hit feature film. After the "Beavis & Butt-head"
series on MTV ran its course, Judge pitched a new idea for an animated series,
this time to the Fox Network, about a conservative-minded, decent and utterly
uncool guy who lives with his family in a small town in Texas and faces the
bewildering twists of modern culture with the help of his trio of misfit pals.
"King of the Hill" premiered in January 1997. Over the course of 100
episodes, Hank Hill has had to deal with his wife Peggy's bid to become state
Boggle champion, his live-in niece's conversion to fundamentalism and his son
Bobby being picked by Buddhist priests to be the next Dalai Lama.

In 1999, the show won an Emmy for outstanding animated program. Here's a clip
from the hundredth episode of "King of the Hill" which aired last night.
Hank's wife, Peggy, has invited the new scantily clad, sexy young receptionist
Tammy from Hank's office to stay with them, much to Hank's dismay. In this
scene, Hank's friends are asking him about Tammy.

(Soundbite from "King of the Hill")

(Soundbite of car horn)

TAMMY: Hang on a sec!

DALE: That Tammy's quite a dish. Frankly, though, I think my Nancy has a
nicer can. Hank, do you think Nancy has a nicer can than Tammy's can? Huh?
My wife's can vis-a-vis your wife's friend's can?

HANK: Stop it, Dale. It's bad enough I have to live with her now, running
around the house in those miniskirts. That pager never stops beeping and I've
had it up to here with her coming in all hours of the night.

(Soundbite of car door closing)

TAMMY: How do my girls look, Hank?

HANK: Oh, I wouldn't know.

(End of excerpt)

BOGAEV: Mike Judge, welcome to FRESH AIR.

Mr. MIKE JUDGE ("King of the Hill"): Thank you. Good to be here.

BOGAEV: What I really like about Hank Hill is that he's this conservative guy
trying to make sense of things and treat people with humanity in a world that
just has gone terribly wrong.

Mr. JUDGE: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I mean, that's what's fun is to have the
world be wrong and Hank be right, you know? Even though he's not king of the
world, he's maybe king of his block.

BOGAEV: Hank's pals are really a wonderful trio. One's an exterminator
consumed by conspiracy theories.

Mr. JUDGE: Yeah.

BOGAEV: Another's a barber in the Army with very low self-esteem, and then
there's Boomhauer, who you also supply the voice for.

Mr. JUDGE: Yeah.

BOGAEV: And he's sort of this rockabilly type and he's known for being
completely unintelligible.

Mr. JUDGE: Yeah.

BOGAEV: Can you do some Boomhauer for us for people who are not familiar with
his garbled speech?

Mr. JUDGE: Sure. Well--yeah, Boomhauer--I wanted to do an animated character
like this for a while whose accent was so thick that you couldn't follow him
'cause I'd known--there's a guy I knew in Dallas that--especially after he'd
been drinking you kind of knew what he was talking about but you didn't know
what he was saying. And it's also based on a guy who called to complain about
"Beavis & Butt-head" who left a voice message and...

BOGAEV: That got replayed and replayed around the studio.

Mr. JUDGE: Yeah, that I listened to many times. Yeah, and he was--I don't
know if you can say this on NPR, but you could bleep it out, I guess. He
thought the name of the show--for some reason he thought the name of the show
was "Porky's Butthole." I don't know how he got that out of "Beavis &
Butt-head," but his phone call, he was--I don't know what--he was saying,
`And I've been calling you-all about a month now about you-all every time that
damn "Porky's frigging old Butthole" come on. You-all been jiving them damn
commercials on, on and on everything like you-all do last time, you know?'
And I also was calling a guy for directions once in Oklahoma City and got a
Boomhauer kind of guy who's just, say, `Hey, you know, come on on that
overpass and, you know, coming off on the off-ramp and you turn right and it's
just gonna be right there, you know?' and so, you know, that sort of thing.

He's also like--Boomhauer, I think of him as--like if he'd grown up in
Southern California, he probably would have been a surfer for life, you know,
and he's one of those guys everybody likes. He doesn't say much but girls
like him and guys like him, you know? He's kind of good-looking guy, kind of
mysterious.

BOGAEV: How has the series changed or developed in a hundred episodes?

Mr. JUDGE: A lot of the characters have developed in a really good way. You
know, it's taken on a life of its own and it's all through just--you know,
it's a big collaborative process. There's writers and I think the voice
actors actually have a lot to do with it. Peggy has developed into one of my
favorite characters when in the beginning it was one of those things where I
wasn't quite sure, you know, like how do we--what do we do with her? And I'm
not great with female characters anyway and it just kind of
happened--something--it takes on a life of its own and it's just a grand sum
of all the people who are working on it really.

BOGAEV: Peggy is wonderful. She's a Boggle champion, she has a lot of skills
under her belt. She's a real feminist, too...

Mr. JUDGE: Yeah.

BOGAEV: ...self-actualized, even though she lives in Arlen, Texas.

Mr. JUDGE: Yeah. Actually when Greg Daniels came onto the project after I'd
done the first draft of the pilot, that was one of the things, you know,
saying, `Help me out with this. I can't figure this character out.' And what
he did, he started asking me questions about--he's, like, playing
psychologist. He said, `OK, describe your mother, describe your'--and my mom
was actually a Spanish teacher in high school and a substitute for most of the
time I was growing up. Then my grandmother, she actually--she had a degree in
Spanish, but she's from Montana, and she used to--she was always writing. She
got published, like, in Atlantic Monthly, but they were all very kind of
like--she got published as this mountain woman, you know, who's writing about
her--you know, they were homesteaders, you know, up in Montana, her family.
And so we just kind of started talking, and so a lot of that stuff made it
into the show.

I mean, Peggy's from Montana in "King of the Hill" and she's a substitute
Spanish teacher and--I should probably be careful what I say here. My mom may
be listening. I mean, it's not--my mom's actually very different because she
pronounces Spanish perfectly, and Peggy Hill pronounces horribly. She's
probably closer to my grandmother.

BOGAEV: You have kind of an eclectic background. You were a physics major in
college. You worked as an engineer. And then you also performed in bands.
How'd you get interested in animation?

Mr. JUDGE: Well, I've always been interested in animation since high school
and I didn't--I guess I was just too much of a wuss to actually commit to it
ever and to really try to--you know, like I--in college I just thought, well,
you know, I don't want to waste four years of tuition on a film degree or
something, you know, 'cause it just seemed like back then it was all science.
You know, if you ever want a job, you've got to have a science degree, and
math and physics came fairly easily to me, and so I did that. But, you know,
I mean, in the back of my mind, my pipe dream was always to go into comedy in
some way. But I knew I couldn't be a stand-up comedian or anything, but, you
know, I wanted to write and do this and that, but you just--how do you do
that? I had no idea how you become one of the guys on "Second City TV" or
"Saturday Night Live" or anything.

And so I finally got the idea to do animation. I just thought--when I
realized that one person can animate like a two-minute short, it just takes
you like six or seven weeks to do, but then I thought, wow, this is something
I can do on my own. I don't need anybody. I don't need to get a bunch of
people together and try to do sketches or something. You know, I guess it
just took me awhile to realize that, but I'd always been interested in it and
I've always done imitations and done drawings since high school.

BOGAEV: So your first film was a short about office work.

Mr. JUDGE: Yeah, yeah. There was a--I did a short called "Office Space,"
this character Milton and his boss. I just shot it on my Bolex. I went to a
place where you transfer your home movies to video for, like, $14, and then I
put the sound on just on this You Edit(ph) video place in Dallas and just
mailed it out, just got numbers out of information like for Comedy Central,
MTV and just amazed. I started getting calls back. I didn't think it
would--I was thinking, God, I should have done this when I was 20, you know?
I was, like, 27 at the time.

BOGAEV: Were you writing from what you knew? What kind of office had you
worked in?

Mr. JUDGE: Yeah, that was sort of loosely based on a--I'd worked my first
engineering job--I only had two, and the second one didn't last very long, but
I worked at a--I was actually in San Diego. What was the place? It was
called SSAI. Great name for a company.

BOGAEV: Catchy.

Mr. JUDGE: Yeah. SSAI. And there was a guy there that I had--seemed like
no one ever talked to him. For some reason, I was bored, I just thought, OK,
I'm just gonna talk to this guy. I won't say what his name was. It was not
Milton, but it was something else, and I just said, `Hey, how's it going?'
And he just launched into this long thing about--he was saying, `If they move
my desk one more time, I'm quitting. I used to be over by the window. I
mean, they made me move three times already this year.' And he was just so
angry. Like this guy I'd never talked to, had never heard a peep out of and I
just said, `How's it going' and I got this long rant.

BOGAEV: Mike Judge is the co-creator and executive producer of Fox's animated
prime-time series "King of the Hill." He's also the voice of Hank Hill.
We'll hear more of our conversation after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

BOGAEV: If you're just joining us, my guest is Mike Judge. He's the
executive producer and co-creator of "King of the Hill," the animated series
on Sunday nights on Fox.

"King of the Hill" has an interesting look to it. It's not as flat or
two-dimensional as a lot of animated series, and sometimes looking at the
backgrounds, they do all look hand-drawn to me. Are they?

Mr. JUDGE: Oh, yeah. Yeah. There's this misconception out there that
everything's done on computers and it's not. I mean, even--well, "King of the
Hill" is all done hand inked and painted on cel and the backgrounds are all--I
think what you're talking about, what actually makes the show look
different--this was a decision I made early on was to use watercolors on the
background. I can't paint watercolor at all myself, but we--you know, that's
what we hire people for. And so, yeah, it's watercolored backgrounds with,
you know, nice shading. And even if a show is done digitally inked and
painted, is what they call it, still somebody has to draw it. Somebody has to
draw everything, unless it's something like "Toy Story," everything is--every
frame you see is a drawing. And especially on "King of the Hill" and "The
Simpsons" also, as well as "Beavis & Butt-head," are all hand inked and
painted on the cel.

BOGAEV: Do you write jokes for "King of the Hill," one-liners, gag lines?

Mr. JUDGE: Oh. Well, I personally don't like doing that, and a lot of times
we end up having that and I'm always the guy who kills it, you know? To me, a
lot of what--the reason a lot of sitcoms go bad is they kind of deteriorate
into every character becoming a smart-aleck, because I think that's just
easier to write than to come up with situations where the comedy comes out of
just, you know, the characters and observational kind of things, you know?
That's actually like my--I guess the thing that I--I don't know why. I just
don't like--I guess it's because normal people in everyday life aren't
constantly saying smart-aleck comebacks that it took a Harvard lampoon guy
three hours to come up with, you know? It just breaks the reality of it and I
just don't like that. I lose interest in shows where some, you know,
14-year-old hot-looking underwear model girl says, `Yeah, last time you
brushed your teeth there were five more communist countries in the world.'
You know, it's just like that--I just have no--I just don't care about those
kind of characters. So...

BOGAEV: That's funny, though, to mention, you killing all these jokes. Does
your heart ever sink? At least I should leave one in?

Mr. JUDGE: Not usually. Once in a while, to me if it's funnier than it is
unrealistic, then it's OK. But on "Beavis & Butt-head" there was one--I
remember this, I guess, just because there was a journalist in the room who
wrote about it where somebody had written Beavis saying, `Yeah, that guy, he's
gonna have Beavis envy,' like a penis envy joke, and I just...

BOGAEV: Got it.

Mr. JUDGE: ...though, no, Beavis is not gonna--Beavis isn't that clever, you
know?

BOGAEV: Let's talk about Beavis and Butt-head. For people who don't
remember, they were a sensation on MTV, I think over seven seasons in the
early '90s.

Mr. JUDGE: Something like that. The seasons were--we'd do two a year
sometimes, so who knows? Yeah, early '90s to--went off the air in--I want to
say '97. Yeah, November '97.

BOGAEV: They were quite repulsive 14-year-olds who sat on a couch in front of
the TV and made fun of everything. They also ventured forth once in a while
to work part time at a burger joint. I want to...

Mr. JUDGE: Yeah.

BOGAEV: ...play this clip from an episode called "Blackout" because it has
one of my favorite made-up names for a TV drama series: "Asbestos in
Obstetrics" starring Melissa Gilbert.

(Soundbite from "Beavis & Butt-head")

BEAVIS: Hey, Butt-head, what is ostesbis?

BUTT-HEAD: Ah, it's like health food or something.

BEAVIS: Oh, yeah. Yeah.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Ms. MELISSA GILBERT: Tell the commissioner we need that helicopter. I don't
care what it costs. No, I'm not chipping in.

BEAVIS: This sucks!

(Soundbite of TV exploding)

BUTT-HEAD: Huh?

(Soundbite of laughter)

BEAVIS: Yeah. Huh? Yeah.

(Soundbite of laughter)

BEAVIS: Hey, Butt-head, what's wrong with the TV?

(Soundbite of laughter)

BUTT-HEAD: Ah, I don't know.

(Soundbite of laughter)

BUTT-HEAD: Let's kick it.

(Soundbite of laughter)

BEAVIS: Yeah, yeah, yeah, let's kick it. Let's kick it, kick it!

(Soundbite of laughter and kicking noises)

BOGAEV: That's from "Beavis & Butt-head," which aired on MTV in the '90s,
produced and created by my guest, Mike Judge, and Mike Judge also was the
voice of Beavis and Butt-head.

Who were these guys? Where'd you cull them?

Mr. JUDGE: It started out as drawings in my sketch book and I'm not sure
what I was going for. I hated being 14 and being in junior high. And I
remember thinking around that time that I drew them that there are
14-year-olds kind of looked the same then as--you know, this was like 1990 or
whatever as they did when I was in high school. They were still wearing AC/DC
T-shirts. And my high school reunion had actually just happened and a friend
of mine was talking about this guy I knew in high school who's actually very
different from Beavis and Butt-head--he was a straight A student--but he kind
of had a spastic laugh that was--it was a little deeper than Beavis. He was
always just--he was sitting in the front of the class kind of sucking up to
the teacher all the time and laughing at everything the teacher would say and
his laugh was kind of (laughs).

And so I'd made two attempts at drawing him. I actually tried to draw him
four times and none of them looked like him, but a couple of them became
Beavis and Butt-head. But I guess they're kind of like--I don't know. They
started out as being completely repulsive characters definitely. I mean, that
was the point. Completely moronic. The way I think of it in the beginning
anyway was I remember--I'm always struck by how out of touch it seems that
people in entertainment and in the news are, and I remember hearing one of
these statistics you always hear, like 80 percent of high school kids in some
town couldn't located the United States on a globe if it wasn't marked. And,
you know, the news reporter was shocked. I wasn't that shocked. I was--and,
you know, I mean, 'cause I remember junior high and I--and so to me they're
like that 80 percent, you know?

BOGAEV: The thing that a lot of people liked about Beavis & Butt-head was
that they were really stupid but they'd sit there and they'd watch TV. They'd
watch American popular culture and they'd know it was so stupid.

Mr. JUDGE: Yeah. That's what was really fun was to have, like--also I think
when you--sometimes if you free your mind of intellectual matters, a lot of
truth can come out that just comes out from some gut level, and that's fun,
you know? And it was also--like, actually very early on when MTV first bought
it, they showed my original shorts to a focus group and sent me a tape of it,
and right before mine, the tape had--you know, it, like, a one-way mirror.
You're looking at, like, 14 mall rats just sitting there watching stuff, you
know? It was really funny. They'd show them something like "Beyond
Flux,"(ph) which is this really intricate Japanese animation style, real--you
know, they'd show them really artsy stuff and these kids would just go, `Well,
that was dumb,' you know? And there's something really funny about that, you
know? Everyone's efforts, you know, making these videos and all these kind of
high-concept things and just the reality that the real audience is a couple of
14-year-olds just going (laughs) you know? So by the way, that wasn't the
Butt-head laugh. That was my own laugh right there.

BOGAEV: Thanks for clarifying.

Mr. JUDGE: That was my own dumb laugh.

BOGAEV: You do a lot of the writing and you're doing the voices on "King of
the Hill," but you're pretty affluent by now after all is said and done. Is
there a place you go, like the local bar to, you know, keep your ear fresh?

Mr. JUDGE: Well, I can always go to Home Depot, hang out there, get some
inspiration. I still have a thing about grocery stores. I like going to the
grocery store. Grocery stores are, like--it's like when I saw "Breakfast at
Tiffany's" and she's talking about how nice it is in the jewelry store, I
thought, yeah, that's how I feel about grocery stores. You know, it's all
this food, they try to make it a nice environment, and it really is. So the
grocery stores in New York always smell like rotten meat, but down here in
Texas and LA, I don't know, somehow they manage to make them smell nice. But
I got sidetracked there.

But I actually--the neighborhood I live in in Austin is--yeah, it's pretty
affluent but no so much that--it's one of those typical things that's happened
in the suburbs where there's, like, brand-new houses and then the old
hillbilly guy who's lived there forever lives right next door to me. And so I
still--you know, I put gas in my car. I go to the grocery store. I go to
Home Depot. It's not like I'm in a castle somewhere. And Austin is--although
it's not a typical Texas town at all, parts of it are, you know? Parts of it
are--you know, there's also lots of artists and filmmakers and musicians but
there's also regular people there, too.

BOGAEV: Which character on "King of the Hill" is most like you?

Mr. JUDGE: Probably Hank. I mean, friends of mine have said that Hank's
probably the closest of all the stuff I've done, including "Beavis &
Butt-head" to me, although my roommate in college insists that Butt-head is
the closest to me.

BOGAEV: Mike Judge, co-creator and executive producer of "King of the Hill,"
Fox's prime-time animated series. It just aired its hundredth episode last
night.

Coming up, Milo Miles remembers guitarist John Fahey. This is FRESH AIR.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Profile: Guitarist John Fahey dies at 61
(Soundbite of John Fahey playing guitar)

BARBARA BOGAEV, host:

John Fahey, a unique contributor to American guitar music, died last Thursday
following heart bypass surgery. He was 61. Over the course of his career,
Fahey inspired New Age music and noisy rock bands with his combination of
blues, folk, Indian ragas, musique concret and outright free improvisation.
Our music critic, Milo Miles, has this tribute.

(Soundbite of Fahey playing guitar)

MILO MILES reporting:

John Fahey thought of the guitar as a time machine, a spaceship, a thing that
makes noise, anything but the tame guardian of folk culture that many of his
peers preferred. Fahey sometimes indulged his blues scholar side or noodled
around with electronic experiments, but his best work sought the mysterious
beauty and the lurking fear and rage of the old blues and bluegrass records he
heard in the 1950s. He started a whole school of solo acoustic guitar that he
liked to call American primitive, though his most famous disciple is the
virtuoso Leo Kottke.

Fahey made a Christmas record called "The New Possibility," which remains a
reliable seller, but most of his albums stayed in the fringes of music where
Fahey felt as comfortable as he could anyway. After an unhappy childhood in
Takoma Park, Maryland, Fahey ended up in and around Los Angeles in 1964. In
that period he helped rediscover country blues masters Skip James and Bukka
White. He was already playing his own unclassifiable music for his own
independent label, Takoma Records. Fahey would get on stage with a quart of
Coca-Cola, a fifth of whiskey and sometimes a big tortoise he would let crawl
around, and the hippies wouldn't know what to make of him.

Fahey sold Takoma in 1981 and was laid low for years by illness and alcohol.
He rebounded in the 1990s with a fine introductory collection the "Return of
the Repressed." He was embraced by the outsider culture of indie rock and his
last albums are too loosy-goosy avant for their own good. Still, nobody
balanced form and phantasmagoria like Fahey when he was on in albums like "The
Great San Bernardino Birthday Party" and "Death Chants, Breakdowns and
Military Waltzes."

Fahey is best understood as a type of American religious ecstatic, and his
finest albums transcend the death that always obsessed him.

BOGAEV: Milo Miles is a music critic living in Cambridge.

(Credits)

BOGAEV: For Terry Gross, I'm Barbara Bogaev.

(Soundbite of Fahey playing guitar)
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