Too Religious for Nickelodeon: Why Butch Hartman Made 'The Garden' Cartoon

0:59 Oh, thank you. We started our own studio in 2018 when I left Nickelodeon. Okay. And it's called Butch Hartman Studios. They needed a guy named Butch Hartman. I auditioned. I was going to say, was that hard to come up with that? I got the job. No, but our first cartoon, I've been developing this Christian cartoon since like 2005. I didn't leave Nickelodeon until 2018. But I knew nobody would make a Christian cartoon. I'd have to make it myself. So my wife and I self-funded a couple episodes on our own. And it's called The Garden Cartoon. And then we actually got some investment for it. And now we have 20 half hours. It's on Angel Studios. You can see it on Right Now Media. You can see it. It's going to be on the YouVersion app very soon. We're excited about that. Well, I would love to put it in our platform. We can talk about that later. I would love that, yeah. But the Garden Cartoon, we have a Garden app that's absolutely free on the iPhone and Android. But Garden stars Lenny the Lion and Lucy the Lamb. They both represent each side of the Lord, Lion and Lamb.

1:53 And Lenny's a guy, Lucy's a girl, and they live in a garden where anything can grow. And the boss, God, comes down as a rainbow and talks to them every day and gives them a task. And sometimes they get it right. Sometimes they don't. But it's through a scripture or an original song. Every episode has a song. Do you write the songs? I wrote all the songs. So you're a musician as well? Yeah. I wrote the song. Do you play guitar, piano, both? I play guitar a little bit, but I'm more of a lyricist. I write the lyrics. I have some great composers who I've worked with. Because what I'll do is I'll write the lyrics and I'll go in my iPhone and I'll do a voice memo. It goes like... and then they'll turn it into actual music. And then we work through it together. But I grew up watching Schoolhouse Rock. Oh, yeah. Remember, I'm just a Bill, Conjunction Junction, all those things. That really taught me a lot. Yeah. I thought if I could have a song like that in every episode with scripture, kids can learn the scripture.

2:45 We have one song, this pirate character pulls up, he's a crocodile named Captain Snappy, and he wants to find treasure. And so Lenny and Lucy help him find the treasure. But he wants all the treasure at the end when they finally find it. And they're like, you need to share this treasure with everybody. He's like, I want all the treasure. So they talk about Luke 6, 38. If you want to be my first mate, go read Luke 6, 38. It's all about giving and that's pretty great. So we talk about how giving is a great thing. And so the pirate at the end learns how to give. And so that's the story of that one. How different from our culture today. That's the exact opposite of the message. Everyone's, you know, talking about, you know, love yourself, find yourself. And yet Jesus says, if you want to find yourself, in effect, lose yourself, and you discover that God's plan for you is better than your plan for yourself. But it's interesting, because studies have been done, and they have found that there's something they actually call a helper's high. There's a release of endorphins when you do things for other people. How about that? Well, it looks like the Bible had it right in the first place, right? Because he told us, Jesus said, it's more blessed or happy-making, you could say, to give than that it's received. But that's so counterintuitive to the cultural cues we're getting today. So I love that in the world of animation and cartoons. Do you think that Nickelodeon would ever run a show like The Garden or something like that? Because there's an audience for it though, isn't there? There is. But a lot of bigger studios, they want to kind of be down the middle, or they say they do anyway, but they don't want to do anything they'll call religious.

4:18 Now, if you're a real Christian, you'll know that Christianity is not about religion. It's about the relationship with the Lord. But no one wants to take time to learn that or understand that. And so our job, and I knew when I was making the garden, I'd have to do it by myself. I can't have a studio behind me. I had to start my own studio. So now we're making, we have 20 more pilots we're making at my studio right now. Some are straight up Christian. Some are just family. But the main thing is whatever goes on that screen, whatever I'm responsible for, parents don't have to freak out about it. Parents can enjoy it. They can trust it if Butch Hartman's name is on it. Absolutely. I'm not perfect. Back in the day, that was true of Disney. Oh, Disney, it's good. But it's different now. Very different. I mean, there are challenges everywhere. And I can't really comment because I don't run Disney Studios. But all I know is this. I want to put stuff out there that I can be proud of. That I can go like, look, at least when I leave this earth, I left people with something hopefully they'll grow from and learn how to be a servant.

5:14 Learn how to be someone who can help. learn how that it's not all about you. I was watching your Alice Cooper interview. He said something really great, and it's true. People in Hollywood and in the industry, they all wanna be their own God. Everybody does. And then that's why Christianity is so huge because you have to lay yourself down and lift him up. And then you might have to listen to Jesus and people don't wanna do that. And it's unfair in a way the way the world raises us because we're raised to be protective. We're raised to protect ourselves and trust only ourselves. And it's sort of a stacked deck in a way. And then you have to lay that down is a very big deal. I always tell people at our church, you can't become a Christian accidentally. It's a choice. You're not adopted accidentally. That's true. There's a process. You know, you mentioned that an organization like Nickelodeon or others, oh, we don't want religion in our cartoons or in our programming. Give me a break. There's religion in everything. It's just a different religion.

6:06 Absolutely. Whatever you worship, exactly. Yeah, it's a man-centered religion or it's woke ideology or they're presenting trans characters or gay characters. Well, that's a belief system, okay, that is coming through now. And yet, but we don't want your belief system when, you know, millions and millions of people around the world, and Americans, of course, identify as Christians. You think just on a financial basis alone, they'd say, this is an audience, let's market to them. I do see some breakthroughs, though, with organizations like Amazon. My friend John Irwin, who directed Jesus Revolution, has a series that Amazon has funded called House of David, and it's really telling the Bible stories. And so I do see that there's some doors are opening up, and that's so important because, you know, an idea I came up with a while ago was, I want to reach unexpected people in unexpected places with an unexpected message.

7:04 By that I mean, I'd like to sneak up on people, not in a misleading way, but just kind of enter their world. Not everyone's going to darken the doorway of our church, but if I could reach them, oh, maybe in a movie theater through Jesus' revolution, or maybe on radio or TV or some other way, I want to do that because, you know, Jesus told us to go into all the world and preach the gospel. He didn't say the whole world should go to church, but he did say the church should go to the whole world. He didn't say, build a building and sit there and let them come to you. He didn't say that, did he? No, he didn't. And what I think is awesome too, it's us becoming vessels for him. Because like you said, there's a million kids that won't go into a church ever in their life, but they will watch an iPhone and they'll watch a screen. So what can I put on that screen to at least tell them that there's hope for them out there? And by the way, when I do the garden, the garden has scripture in it, but it's funny too.

7:59 I mean, the thing is, we start with funny and entertaining. I like that. And by the way, there's a message in there too because kids aren't going to watch it if it's preachy they're not going to but i get from the i get parents going i like it more than my kids do so i you know i love that because you're reaching the parents too and if the parents like it they're the ones if you really think about it the parents are the audience because they're going to allow their child to watch it anyway right so we want to speak to the parents and the kids and you know i try and look at our stuff as uh the whole entertainment uh world is a giant refrigerator it's full of junk food, but we're the apple. We're the grapes. We're the healthy option. We're still in the fridge, but we're the healthy option. Yeah. Hey, everybody. Thanks for listening to my podcast. Before you go, I wanted to let you know about the important work we're doing here at Harvest. You know, we've had the same goal these last 50 years, which is simply this. We want to know God and we want to make him known. And we do that in a lot of ways. Documentary films, animation, radio, television, large-scale evangelistic events, and more. If you want to be a part of what we're doing to fulfill the Great Commission, you can support us with whatever you can give at harvest.org slash donate. Again, that's harvest.org slash donate. And thanks so much.