Slimed!: An Oral History of Nickelodeon's Golden Age Read Online Free Page A

might question in retrospect—fat jokes about Lisa, and a certain amount that was probably over my head at the time in terms of what was tactful or funny. Probably not always the healthiest thing for kids.
    BOB BLACK: The fat jokes didn’t make sense with Christine McGlade, because she was
tiny
. It was like, “What the heck?” And Lisa was not a stick, but still . . . There’s just too much that’s happened in the world in connection with teenage girls being afraid of being fat, and I don’t think we need to add to that.
    KIRK BAILY: I did feel at one point, “Donkeylips is going to have another name we refer to him by, right?” As the counselor, they made fun of me—not for weight but for cluelessness. But Ug was an
adult
.
    MICHAEL BOWER: When you’re that young, you don’t realize you’re being made fun of, in a sense. In that moment, it didn’t really bother me.
    STEVE SLAVKIN: I wanted
kids
, and I wanted them to be as natural as they could be. I didn’t want them with a lot of makeup or combed hair. I wanted to see them fumbling; I wanted the lisp and the stutter and the weirdness. You embrace them for their kid-ness. Michael Bower just did it. There was no concern that would mess him up or that the other kids would make fun of him.
    HEIDI LUCAS: In the episode where Donkeylips had a crush on Dina, we were supposed to go to this dance together—the invitation was originally supposed to go to the character of Michael. There’s this scene where the girls are in their cabin and Telly and ZZ are basically telling my character that I
have
to go to this thing even though I really don’t want to. And I said something mean about his hair or his breath or what he was wearing . . . and in real life, it hit me:
I don’t know this person
. That’s not what I would have done in real life. You don’t make judgment calls like that. I wasn’t certain my opinion was the right one, though, and I was thinking at the time that we were getting paid to perform the script that people were getting paid to write.
    STEVE SLAVKIN: Michael Bower’s a really nice guy, and he’s a really talented actor. He actually sort of brought the character of Donkeylips to life. Kids get bad nicknames in their lives. I think this was one of the first times on TV when a weight-challenged child got a mean nickname. And a kid watching this would go, “This is real. We know kids like this.” Or, “That’s
me
and I can identify with that.”
Salute Your Shorts
wasn’t some sugarcoated Saturday morning sitcom.
    HEIDI LUCAS: The problem with that is at the end of the day, he has to go home looking like Donkeylips. And that’s a problem I didn’t realize until way later. I could have said something to make him feel better, but I didn’t have the mental capacities to, because I was twelve.
    TREVOR EYSTER: I did feel bad for him in many ways—and looking back now, worse—because he was being made fun of in a way that was not something he could change.
    MICHAEL BOWER: Now I want to get in better shape for my health, but when I was younger, I thought if I got skinnier, I would lose the extra income from acting. Since I was paying the bills and really supporting my family, I was nervous about it.
    MEGAN BERWICK: He takes care of his brother and dad. He was the person who pulled through for his family and had these responsibilities since the time he was
really
young. When I was eight or nine, I had an agent who told me I either needed to lose five or ten pounds to be the lead girl or gain twenty pounds to be the fat character actor. They say that kind of thing to
all
kids.
    KENAN THOMPSON: Shit like that, I wasn’t really paying attention. I was cool being me, because I was having fun. I knew I didn’t fit certain free shirts we would get, but I was like, “Just give me a bigger size or I won’t wear this shit.” It wasn’t like I was going to places and they were turning me down because of how I looked. If
that
was happening,