WHAT CAME FIRST, THE 'RAD' OR THE 'RUN'?

"CHICKEN RAD"                                       "CHICKEN RUN"   

       VS   

Based upon the deluge of emails, letters and phone calls we have received at Duck, You Sucker! Central, it's become fairly apparent that we are not the only ones seeing a striking similarity between SKG Dreamwork's new animated feature 'Chicken Run' and our very own, not so new, animated classic, 'Chicken Rad'.  So the question remains, what came first?

Our 'Bruiser'...                            Their 'Bruiser'

Our 'Rocky'...                             Their 'Rocky'

Our 'Frisky Fryer'...                                          Their 'Frisky Fryer'                       

Well, after a bit of research, and a few strategic bribes (our usual fee, pizza and beer), our roving reporters discovered that the story of 'Chicken Run' began in 1995 when Peter Lord and Nick Park of Aardman Animations (and 'Wallace and Gromet' fame) had an idea to do a 'jail-break' movie involving a bunch of chickens.  Sound familiar?  You bet!  Not only had our very own, Dan & Mike Kubat thought of this same idea 3 years before, they had already animated, published, and showcased it to thousands of people!  Hello? McFly?!  Obviously someone didn't do their homework...  So, if any of you happen to be from the 'Chicken Run' camp, read 'em and weep, because you're about to get...

THE HISTORY OF CHICKEN RAD

Don Young (no relation to Don Henley, Don Juan, or The Last Don) is a rarity in the airline steward profession.  He's straight.  Even so, Don paid Dan and Mike a visit back in 1990 during the 'Flophouse' days, when Dan was designing sportswear and Mike was developing a successful drinking habit.  It was during the death-like throes of a particularly vicious hangover that Don was inspired to do a t-shirt design of his own.  With the artistic ability of a 5 year-old, Don drew a fat, pathetic, stick chicken riding a surfboard with the caption 'Chicken Rad is bad!'  It was pitiful, but it struck them all funny and Don's masterpiece found itself pasted on the Flophouse wall amidst all of Dan's other artwork, posters, etc.  A few months later, Dan was stuck for an idea.  Mike pointed to Don's picture and said, "Why don't you do Chicken Rad?"  It was a joke, really, but Dan seized upon the opportunity and within a few short minutes, he created this...

The first conceptualization of a hard-boiled motherplucker!

After the initial giggles subsided, both Dan and Mike realized that it was pretty stupid.  Funny, but stupid.  Chicken Rad was shelved.

1991. Dan was working in the animation industry on a variety of shows that were, for lack of a better word, crap.  Dan, being Dan, figured that he could do something better.  He got together with Mike and soon they were racking their brains, trying to figure out where they could scrounge up some money to get beer.  A cursory inspection of Dan's cluttered shelves, not only revealed a couple of dollar bills, but also the picture of Chicken Rad that Dan had drawn the year before.  "Ha ha!" they laughed.  "Wait a minute," they thought.  "This is it!" they exclaimed.  Dan grabbed a sketchbook, Mike grabbed a pen.  Realizing that they were still without beer, they dropped sketchbook and pen, ran to the liquor store, hurried back, grabbed sketchbook and pen again, and began developing.  It was a formula that would prove successful time and time again...

Original drawings and sketches from 1992 Chicken Rad pitchbook.

By 1992, Chicken Rad was developed and ready to pitch.  It was sent to a variety of studios and production houses, including MTV, Nickelodeon, Sunbow, etc.  Nobody wanted it.  It was deemed a little too 'quirky', 'edgy' or 'not specific to our demographic audience' (a term widely used by many studios and networks that generally stands for 'We can't sell any toys with this').  But the Kubat Bros. never give up...

Bona-fide rejection letter from Nickelodeon, dated November 14, 1992.  We'll show them!  We'll show the whole world!  HA HA HA HA!!! (maniacal brotherly laughter).

Hell bent on making a cartoon anyway (naiveity and cheap beer had a lot to do with it), Dan and Mike decided to do it themselves.  Calling on every favor, scrounging for every penny they could get, Dan and Mike started their own company.  By the summer of 1994, production for the very first 'Casting Couch Capers' cartoon commenced...

Look Ma, our own company!

An original 'casting call' for Chicken Rad.  'We're not looking for able minds, just able bodies...'

The desk.  The art.  The outcome?  Chicken Rad - The Movie!

After months of scourging through every sleazy Sunset Strip dive (and enjoying every minute of it) Dan came across these two.  Jimmy Iodine and Mr. Scooby Scooby - the musical mayhem behind the Chicken Rad soundtrack and 'Chicken Rap'.

'Chicken Rad' was originally conceived to be an 11-minute opus.  A jail-break movie centering around the 'biggest, baddest, meanest motherplucker of them all - Chicken Rad!'  It is the story of Chicken Rad's escape from the Chicken Ranch, a penitentiary-like facility where the inmates faced their inevitable death penalty in the form of a giant cooking contraption called 'The Frisky Fryer'.  Chicken Rad is pursued by The General, a crazy old codger who was saving Chicken Rad for his last meal before going to that Great 8-Piece Bucket In The Sky.  With Chicken Chasers hot on his tail feathers, Chicken Rad manages to evade the bad guys and drive his Chicken Ranchero into a victorious, post-apocalyptic sunset.  THE END.  Amidst the thunderous applause, and not a dry eye in the house, Dan and Mike would go down in history as creative animation geniuses.

One day, Oscar, you will be ours.  Oh yes!  You will be ours...

Well, it looked good on paper.

Chicken Rad suffered from a fate not uncommon to many people with a head full of ideas and a wallet full of Hamburger Helper coupons.  They ran out of money.

It takes a lot of these...                       to make one of these...

During this same time, Chicken Rad was being published as an ongoing comic strip in an anthology magazine called Anvil.  Both the magazine and the cartoon were to make their major debut at the 1995 San Diego Comic Con.  Without a finished cartoon, everything could fall to pieces.  An executive decision was made.  Dan and Mike would use the best bits of existing animation and construct a short 4-minute trailer of what would eventually be the big shebang.

Chicken Rad promo page from Anvil Anthology magazine.

With nary a feather to spare, Dan finished the cartoon on the opening day of the San Diego Comic Con.  Continuously running on the big screen in the Anvil Anthology booth, the cartoon was seen by thousands of people.  It certainly helped that Mike's wife and her friend were standing in front of the monitor all weekend administering fake 'Chicken Rad' tatoos to anyone who wanted to spend a couple of minutes having that sort of thing done to them by two hot women with their ass hanging out of their shorts.  Okay, it was a cheap ploy, but it worked...

Carole & Bobbie risked all to brave the sweaty arms, thighs, buttocks and breasts of geeky Con dwellers desperate for a Chicken Rad tatoo!

Dirty Nellie and Danno fall prey to super-vixen Julie Strain's merciless whip.  The Con's never hurt so good!

In spite of their grandiose efforts, and the encouragement of hundreds, if not thousands of people who viewed the cartoon, nothing ever came out of the San Diego Comic Con for Chicken Rad, except a few outrageous bar tabs and the hangovers to prove them.  Determined as ever, Dan and Mike continued to push Chicken Rad onto any studio that would take him, with the same discouraging results.  Too 'quirky', too 'edgy', too 'bla bla bla'...

"Whatsa madda wit you people, huh?!"

By 1996, Chicken Rad had developed a cult-like following, even though, for all intents and purposes, our fine-feathered friend had to be shelved for Dan and Mike to work on other projects.  Still, Chicken Rad continued to evolve during the following years.  More characters were developed.  Stories were drafted.  Chicken Rad's world became bigger and better defined.

The original Chicken Rad line-up featured Paqharatt, Jacque, Ivar Dragonovich, and the loony 'Bug Lady'.

New line-up, including The Chupaca Bros., The Mothia, and Eli Van Dervulture.

With the proliferation of cable networks and the advent of internet animation, it became quickly apparent that Chicken Rad might actually find a new home.  Saturday morning cartoons had become nothing more than 22-minute toy commercials, and shows like 'The Simpsons', 'Beavis & Butt-Head', and even 'South Park' have proven that there is an audience for 'quirky', 'edgy', and 'no hope in hell of ever landing in a McDonald's Happy Meal' cartoons.  Is this the right time for a bad-ass motherplucker?  We'll just have to wait and see...

"HI-YAAAA!"

In the meantime, Chicken Rad continues on.  Currently, the folks at Duck, You Sucker! are putting together a Chicken Rad comic book that should be hitting the stores fairly soon, and look for The Chupaca Bros. appearing in their own show, right here on our website in the future.

'Fleabag' spinnin' discs...

For all the Chicken Rad news, all the time, stay tuned to Duck, You Sucker!  We'll keep ya posted...

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'Chicken Run' characters and images are © 2000 SKG Dreamworks and Aardman Animation LTD. All rights reserved.  All other text and images are © 2000 Duck, You Sucker! Productions unless otherwise noted. All rights reserved.