Mike Judge Wants To Bring David Letterman Back Into The ‘Beavis And Butt-Head’ Fold

Mike Judge is not a writer who’s prone to resting on his laurels, although that’s probably at least partially because his creative endeavors have a tendency to develop cult followings as often as they find commercial success. Just as an example, while Judge may be well-known for such long-running series as King of the Hill and Silicon Valley, he’s also the guy who had to wait until well after the initial release of Office Space and Idiocracy to see their mainstream popularity come to fruition.

That said, there’s still one project from his back catalog that we haven’t yet mentioned, and it’s the one that remains his most popular, remaining successful enough to earn both a full-length film and a new round of episodes on Paramount+ 30 years after its inception: Beavis & Butt-Head.

Now five episodes into its new season, Mike Judge’s Beavis & Butt-Head is still bringing just as many laughs now as it did in its original incarnation, but it’s doing so with some tweaks to the original formula. Judge was kind enough to hop on the phone with Decider for a few minutes to discuss how these two dumbass characters came back to TV, and in addition to teasing some of the episodes we can expect as the season unfurls, he also provided a tiny update on the status of the King of the Hill revival, mused on the possibility of another season of Tales from the Tour Bus, and seemed to seriously consider our pitch to bring someone from the Beavis & Butt-Head Do America voice cast back into the fold.

DECIDER: First of all, I loved the new movie, and I’ve been having a ball watching the new episodes, too.

MIKE JUDGE: Oh, good! Good to hear. 

I know you’ve talked about this a million times, but what was the impetus for you jumping back into the Beavis & Butt-Head universe?

Well, it was a few different things that came together at the same time. I mean, partly it was because I was done doing Silicon Valley, and there was another show that I was going to do that ended up not happening, and this came along. I think I’ve said this before, but…I don’t ever do the voices in my free time or anything. [Laughs.] And I hadn’t done them in a long time, but I did this intro for the band Portugal the Band, who I’d met kind of right before they became huge, and… Well, anyway, I did it, and I just thought, “Wow, my voice… I think I still sound like Beavis and Butt-Head!” And it was fun to do, and I just kind of thought, “Why not?” Especially because Paramount+ really wanted to get behind it and made a big push, and they were willing to put in the money and resources to make it look really good, and they seemed to believe in it, so… Yeah, it’s been great!

In regards to bringing it back, what was the thought process involved in having the guys taking the piss out of not only videos but also YouTube and TikTok videos?

Well, in the original run, I probably… I don’t know, I probably did something like 900 videos or something like that. [Laughs.] Of them talking over. And the idea of actually watching shows and TikTok videos just seemed to breathe new life into it and just a whole new energy. One of the first ones we did was this college acceptance video or whatever they’re called, and that was just really fun to do. And then we did this prison tattoo ink thing that was fun, and…it just kind of felt right. We still do some music videos. It’s tough to clear stuff nowadays, so a lot of depends on what we can get ahold of. But I don’t know, it just kind of gave us something new to do with Beavis and Butt-Head.

The ASMR video is probably my favorite of the bunch so far.

[Laughs.] Oh, yeah! Yeah, that was fun. Yeah, that’s the thing. There’s a lot of YouTube videos. Like everyone else, I’m on YouTube way too much, and you see so many videos that are videos of somebody watching a video, and I feel like, “Well, I used to do that pretty well. Maybe I should jump into this game here!”

So whose idea was it to have Smart Beavis and Smart Butt-head look like the Watcher from Marvel Comics?

Oh, well, that, uh… [Starts to laugh.] I think that might’ve been Lou Morton, but…I don’t want to get anybody sued! Yeah, but we also sort of talked about Jack Kirby hands. You know, where every pose is, like, some version of a Greek statue or something. It just seemed really funny to juxtapose… I mean, they’re sort of like Beavis and Butt-Head with a thesaurus, you know? I like seeing a creature. You know, it was really fun for me to do that in animation, because a lot of my stuff I’ve done is very reality-based. Just to be able to see a flesh tone that’s not human was kind of fun for me! I enjoy looking at them every time I see them. 

And for their dialogue, you tweak the delivery just enough to make them even funnier.

Yeah, I tried 20 different ways. [Laughs.] And I finally settled on something that I liked and that the people I’m working with seemed to like. We’re doing more of them, and we’re doing at least one episode that’s all them, back on their earth. 

I was curious about that, since this week’s episode featured the middle-aged Beavis and Butt-Head. I was wondering how many alternate-universe episodes you have in the pipeline.

Quite a few of Old Beavis and Butt-Head. And most of those have Smart Beavis and Butt-Head intros. But I think we’ve got something like six or seven. There’s one where they do jury duty that’s one of my favorites that we’ve done. There’s one where they go to a city council meeting. There’s one where Beavis needs a kidney donor, and we bring Stewart back.

Nice.

Yeah, and there’s also one where they get vasectomies, and one where they accidentally, without knowing it, end up getting married. So there’s lot of fun stuff coming up for Old Beavis and Butt-Head.

I was curious: is Mike Judge’s Tales from the Tour Bus officially canceled? Because I never actually saw a cancellation notice for it.

No, I mean, it sort of… Well, Cinemax kind of seemed to shut down. There’s still a possibility of it. I’ve been busy, but I’d really like to do more of those, one way or another. I think Cinemax said we could take it somewhere else at one point, but it’s just a matter of setting it up somewhere. But, yeah, we were talking about doing possibly a season about early hip-hop. Maybe one about blues. You know, a lot of that stuff has been covered by some great people, like Ken Burns, but…I don’t know, just because I’ve gotten such a great reaction to it and it was really, really fun for me to do – I mean, one of the most satisfying things I’ve done in my career – I’d love to do more of them at some point.

I know it’s been mentioned repeatedly that King of the Hill may come back. Is there any more forward motion on that at the moment?

It’s still in about the same limbo, but…maybe inching closer. 

Do have a vision for what it’ll be if it does come back?

Yeah, we’ve talked about it. I probably shouldn’t say what it is, but we’ve talked about a possible way to go that I think would make it interesting. I’ll probably wait to say it until it’s all confirmed, though. 

I mean, you could tell me if you wanted. But I get it.

[Laughs.] Yeah, but I don’t want to step on any toes. 

Can you say anything about Best Buds? Because I know the news about that pilot literally just broke a few hours before we got on the phone.

Oh, yeah, that just came out! I didn’t realize it. Sometimes you’ll be told that something’s official, and then you just assume that everyone’s working everything out, but… Yeah, that’s gonna be a fun one. That’s something where Greg [Daniels] and I are just kind of, like, putting teams together and kind of helping… [Hesitates.] I don’t know if you’d say “mentor,” but kind of guiding people through the process who are somewhat new to animation. You know, kind of pairing writers with animators. So that seems like kind of a good fit for us.

So you and Greg have stayed in touch all this time?

Yeah, I mean, we’re both doing other things, but we have weekly check-ins for a lot of projects, sometimes more than weekly depending on what’s going on. But, yeah, there’s a bunch of other stuff coming up that we’ll probably be announcing in the coming months.

Lastly, to bring it back to Beavis & Butt-Head, has there ever been any discussion of bringing David Letterman in to do a voice for the new show?

Oh, you mean Earl Hoffert? [Laughs.] That’s the name he used [in Beavis & Butt-Head Do America]. You know, I didn’t really think about that. It’s not a bad idea, though! His voice really kind of fit perfectly, doing a dumb guy that he used to do on his show. That’s what I asked him to do when he did that. “You know that character you do where he’s, like, watching something on the Nature Channel and says goes, ‘Them bats is smart. They use radar.’ That one.” 

I’m just saying, what else is he doing?

Yeah, isn’t he living out on a farm somewhere? [Laughs.] Yeah, I might consider that one.

Will Harris (@NonStopPop) has a longstanding history of doing long-form interviews with random pop culture figures for the A.V. Club, Vulture, and a variety of other outlets, including Variety. He’s currently working on a book with David Zucker, Jim Abrahams, and Jerry Zucker. (And don’t call him Shirley.)