Jon Benjamin

The weekly, half-hour animated sitcom Home Movies was originally produced in the "Squigglevision" process created by Tom Snyder (Dr. Katz), in which eight frames of squiggly, zigzagged lines were "looped" over and over to simulate the character's mouth movements. This enabled Snyder and co-producer Brendon Small to produce the series at a rock-bottom price, and to allow the voice actors to adlib and improvise to their hearts' content, without worrying about matching the lip action on screen. Debuting April 26, 1999, on UPN, Home Movies was the story of an eight-year-old aspiring filmmaker who happened to be named Brendon Small (the series' aforementioned co-creator, who also supplied the character's voice). Inspired by the behavior of his high-strung mother Paula (voiced by comedienne Paula Poundstone) and his myopic kid sister Josie, and disgusted by the adult world in general, the nerdish, asthmatic Brendon vented his spleen by producing short autobiographical movies with the minicam that he carried with him at all times. Brendon's filmic collaborators included his best friend Melissa and his erstwhile enemy Jason. Although 13 episodes of Home Movies were filmed, only five were seen on UPN before the network yanked the series on June 7, 1999. The remaining eight installments would not be seen until the series was picked up by cable's Cartoon Network on September 2, 2001. Response to the series was positive enough to warrant a renewal in the fall of 2002, but several changes were made. For one, Paula Poundstone was replaced by Jennifer DiTullio in the role of Paula Small; for another, Tom Snyder had abandoned the Squigglevision in favor of a more attractive computerized flash-animation process (the dialogue was still largely improvised, however; precise lip-movement synchronization was never the series' strong suit). The Cartoon Network version of Home Movies remained in active production for three years. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide