My Therapy Session with Dr. Katz

By Jodi Werner

When Jonathan Katz first approached me in the hallway of his Albion Productions office in Newton, Massachusetts, he shook my hand and said, "Jodi, you haven't changed at all." We had never met before. Though not wearing the signature yellow shirt and slightly more scruffy than his cartoon alter-ego, the comedian still appeared to be in character: I may as well have been interviewing Dr. Katz from "Dr. Katz: Professional Therapist," the Emmy and Peabody award-winning, Cable Ace honored Comedy Central cartoon. A brown leather couch was positioned along the back wall of his office, and until he motioned towards a chair closer to his desk, I thought I would be reclining on his couch like a patient.

Katz said people frequently think he is a therapist in real life, and I can see why: Often during our meeting I felt more like the interviewee than the interviewer. "So, where are you from?" he asked me a few minutes into our conversation. After reminiscing and toasting our beverages to my hometown, Teaneck, New Jersey (he had grown up on the Upper East Side of Manhattan and had dated a girl from Teaneck), I asked about Ben, Dr. Katz's son on the show, who is supposed to be an autobiographic character.

"In 1995, Ben started out at 24, and now in 1999, he's 25. Time moves in a very different way in cartoon world. I was very much like him when I was 35....no, 33. That's when my dad cut off my allowance. I had to learn how to live off my wits, literally."

Before becoming a stand-up comedian, Katz was in a band called Katz and Jammers. "Um, I was Katz," he mused. He is currently working on a CD compilation of the songs he has written over the past 30 years with the working title Easy Listening, But Not That Easy. "Music is, to a certain degree, my first love," he said, and I noticed a guitar resting on the side of the couch.

Katz worked music into the interview by using our meeting as a dress rehearsal for a talk he was giving the following day at the Jewish Museum in New York City. He asked me to pick a number between 1 and 24. I chose 11. He then played the eleventh track off his new CD, a song he co-wrote years ago with David Mamet called "This Heart is Closed for Alterations." The song was a country ballad, and the crisp voice of singer Bobby Bare was sad and steady. "We tried to write a parody of a country song," Katz commented, "but we did it too well." The next song Katz played for me was number four from his CD and one he had sung himself--"Louise and Mary." Katz's singing voice is low and melodic. It reminded me that there is much more to him than being a first-rate comedian.

"I think that everybody, to a certain extent, uses humor to hide behind, and I think Jews are particularly good at it," Katz said when I asked him about being a Jewish comedian. "I'm not trying to suggest that there is anything bad about hiding behind something for the purpose of comedy. I think it's a device to take us away from the pain of living...Ouw. People ask me if I think of myself as my comedy being particularly Jewish, because of course, I don't. I just think of being particularly me. I don't think of Jewish comics as being Jewish, I think of them as being funny."

Katz then asked me if I had ever laughed at a funeral. As I thought over a response to his question, he took out a tape of an episode called Mourning Person. "I think there is something about death and being Jewish that pushes you to a point. Well, I think the subject matter is more appealing to Jewish comics than other comics." The episode depicted Dr. Katz receiving a phone call at home about the death of a 92-year-old second cousin who was once or twice removed. After hanging up, Dr. Katz laughed hysterically, and Ben gathers from the laughter that it must have been a relative who had died. "There's something about, you know, one minute they're alive and then the next minute they're dead," Dr. Katz said, amid giggles.

The episode was actually made around the same time that Katz's own father was in the last stages of his life. "It was a very emotional time for me," he said, "because I'd go from laughter to tears in a second--which I now do at parties, but I used to do it at the hospital. Make a little note: Don't ever invite Jonathan to a party."

After watching the clip, I asked Katz about the animation. "Anything that's drawn I have nothing to do with. They make their own comedic and artistic contributions that have nothing to do with what I do, and everything to do with what I do."

Since I was curious about the Panda Puffs Cereal, the statues in front of Dr. Katz's office, and the now-famous Squigglevision, I called head illustrator Annette Cate. Cate has been at Tom Snyder Productions, which produces Dr. Katz, for nine years. She worked with Tom Snyder when he was creating Squigglevision. According to Cate, Snyder was trying to come up with a low cost, low fuss way to do animation. What resulted is a looped-based animation called Squigglevision which is created by making several different traced versions of each drawing and then flipping them. This flipping, also called "flicking" and "looping," makes the lines appear to be moving.

The animators made the background scenery consist of black and white shading so that the characters' colors would appear to pop. They thought withholding additional coloring would settle down the wiggliness. "Like New Yorker cartoons, they look washy and have a nice feel," said Cate. The statues in front of Dr. Katz's building were drawn to give an ominous feel to the place. "We thought it would be neat to have weird, gothic sculptures out front and to have vultures circling."

The animators believe the cartooning is just as important as what the comedians say: "We add to their jokes through the art. We enhance what they're saying." Cate pointed out that "big fat Ben" is the character the animators are most proud of because H. Jon Benjamin, the voice behind Ben, is a "little fellow in real life." They also thought it would be funny if Ben ate an animal-themed cereal, and eventually settled on Panda Puffs. "We wanted something yellow, crunchy, cerealy," she explained.

The interesting thing about Dr. Katz is that even though the show is a cartoon, it feels and sounds like a sitcom. Since there are only five main characters, I asked Jonathon Katz why he decided not to tape the show live. "You look at me, Jodi, and before you, you see an attractive 52 year-old man. But, I don¹t know how long this is going to last, these good looks, you know, and Dr. Katz is always going to look good."

"Dr. Katz: Professional Therapist" will kick off its sixth season on June 15, 1999 at 10:00 P.M. With guest appearances by Jeff Goldblum, Terry Garr, and many others, it appears as though Dr. Katz will look very good this year.

Jodi Werner is currently pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing at Emerson College.