For a vacation with eight days and greater than 16 other ways to spell it, Hanukkah as soon as featured extraordinarily restricted tv programming.
At the moment all the things from Spider-Man to Mickey Mouse, “The Nanny” to “New Lady,” and “Arthur” to “Phineas and Ferb” have had Chanukah and/or Hanukkah episodes, however for many years there was not a lot past Ed Asner’s 1973 Hanukkah PBS documentary and David Grover’s sing-along particular. Whereas 1996’s “A Rugrats Chanukah” is commonly pointed to because the half-hour that popularized Hanukkah children tv specials in America, Nickelodeon the yr earlier than had its first half-hour surrounding the Feast of Dedication, and it arrived from a particular place referred to as Weinerville.
Sure, there’s a “Weinerville Chanukah Particular.”
Throughout Nickelodeon’s experimental early ’90s, the kids’s channel greenlighted a present starring puppet-centric comic Marc Weiner on the helm. It was the results of an earlier recreation present pilot titled “That’s Not Truthful” for the Ha! Community (which later merged with the Comedy Channel to grow to be Comedy Central), primarily based on a bit from Weiner’s phase on comedy present “Random Acts of Selection,” and the check viewers skewed youthful than the channel’s desired demographic. This timing, nevertheless, occurred to coincide with Nickelodeon reportedly on the lookout for “the Soupy Gross sales of the ’90s.”
The pilot was dropped at Nickelodeon, which picked it up. “Weinerville” premiered in 1993. Persevering with Weiner’s signature look of his human head on completely different puppet our bodies (“Weinerettes”), the present was an episodic story of a metropolis of puppets filmed in entrance of a stay viewers, which additionally featured an opportunity for viewers members to compete in video games (after being “Weinerized”) and segments wrapped round basic older cartoons. Nothing concerning the present was standard on the planet of youngsters’s programming, even the time slot. Whereas most new children reveals would premiere weekday afternoons or Saturday mornings, “Weinerville” was given two hours on Sunday afternoons to air 4 back-to-back new episodes.
“Weinerville’s” second season noticed the present transfer to weekday afternoons, however by then the Nickelodeon demographics started skewing older and “Weinerville” was moved to weekday mornings earlier than faculty. Weiner recollects all the time desirous to do one thing for Hanukkah, initially pitching the thought of a Hanukkah PSA. “I went into a gathering with one of many executives, and he gave me a ebook a couple of Hanukkah story and it was simply weird. [He said] ‘It’s best to do a particular, however your spin on this story.’ I requested if I might do one in a ‘Weinerville’ type and he stated ‘OK.’” From there author Scott Fellows, who was the voice of Zip on the present, grew to become the driving drive behind the particular.
What resulted was some of the uniquely chaotic half-hours of youngsters’s tv within the ’90s. As a substitute of being in entrance of a stay crowd, the particular was filmed at a cabin in Killington, Vt., in October, roughly two months earlier than it was to air. Whereas the snow might have been principally pretend, “The Weinerville Chanukah Particular” — that includes area aliens and musical numbers — stayed grounded on a novel basis of actuality with the inclusion of then-popular hits from the B-52’s, Elastica and Gloria Estefan (which, in response to Weiner, was achieved because of Nickelodeon father or mother firm Viacom’s settlement with MTV over the networks’ use of licensed music) in addition to counterculture celebrities throughout comedy, music and even wrestling (WWF’s Diesel a.okay.a. Kevin Nash).
The plot follows two potato-pancake-esqe aliens — named Sektals “Latkes” spelled (principally) backward, one performed by actor Michael Gunst who recollects it being a “enjoyable gig” shot so as over mere days with a crew of about a dozen — who’re escaping their individuals’s evil overlord, Antidorkus (a riff on Antiochus), who’s been utilizing his Keerg (“Greek”) ray to make their individuals abandon their traditions and behave precisely like him. In order that they escape to the ski lodge that the “Weinerville” gang has rented out as they try to seek out sufficient oil to fly again into area. Although it seems to be like they might not have sufficient oil, Hanukkah magic occurs, Antidorkus is toppled and the day is saved. It ends with an enormous Halloween celebration and a quick punk rock music about all of the other ways to make a menorah that channels Ramones’ “I Wanna Be Sedated.”
Alongside the best way we get a music concerning the precise Hanukkah story carried out by proto-punk pioneer David Johansen (credited as Buster Poindexter) who performs sensible elder Gonsah Ok’nocker and sings an impressed unique music, “The Hammer Got here Down.” Weiner remembers working with Johansen: “I’m unsure who orchestrated getting him, however he was good in that.”
Additionally showing have been Denny Dillon, making a cameo as her character Toby from HBO’s “Dream On.” Trying again on the particular, Dillon appreciates its “great silliness,” including “I feel that’s why this system works as a result of you’ll be able to keep it up, you don’t know the place you’re going and there’s a dedication to the silliness.” Additionally showing was Laura Kightlinger, who was aware of how Weiner “was a comic book’s comedian and all people preferred him” and remembers filming her scene the place she’s holding actual applesauce being enjoyable and at this time appreciates how fast-paced it was, making it “good for proper now.”
Opening the particular was Nickelodeon icon and “Double Dare” host Marc Summers, studying the standard Hanukkah story and sharing the display with “Weinerville’s” most well-known character, Boney, a skeletal dinosaur who was the indignant ornery B-side to the then-famous purple dinosaur Barney.
“Boney might do completely something and it might crack me up,” Summers recollects. He describes Weiner as “a really non secular individual, and desires to unfold the phrase about Judaism and its traditions. It was sort of revolutionary when you concentrate on it.”
Again within the day, Summers says, Hanukkah would pop up now and again as a short phase, however no one would spend a lot time explaining what it was. However Weiner would do it with a viewpoint and humorousness. “Individuals are likely to stereotype all issues Jewish and what they don’t find out about sure holidays with what they assume they do,” Summers says. “So, you bought it proper from the horse’s mouth with the man who understood what he was doing.”
Together with the music and aesthetic madness, what makes “The Weinerville Chanukah Particular” stand out among the many three a long time of Hanukkah specials since is how Hanukkah is widely known with out having to be analogous to a different vacation. Christmas isn’t in any method talked about, everybody is aware of what latkes are and Hanukkah takes full middle stage. In an attention-grabbing coincidence, the identical week “Weinerville’s” particular premiered, Shari Lewis’ “Lamb Chop’s Particular Chanukah” premiered over on PBS. Two puppet-filled musical Hanukkah specials in the identical week after a long time of drought is a miracle in itself. Simply as shocking is the overwhelming essential reward “Weinerville” acquired.
The New York Instances raved it was “Wacky, little doubt. And completely charming.” Reviewing it for The Instances, NF Mendoza referred to as it “Enjoyable and Vivid.” The Jewish Week, whereas not fairly on the identical stage of enthusiasm, did give the correct and inadvertently engaging description “this pow! bam! sock! pie-in-the-face, ‘kick butt’ spaceage model of Chanukah is loud. Very loud.” Weiner’s supervisor Lee Kernis remembers, “Nickelodeon have been very supportive… I don’t recall there being any notes… Marc and other people used to joke that the present was put collectively by superglue and Scotch tape. It was not a high-tech present. I feel that was the appeal, it filtered again to Nickelodeon what Marc needed to do to make that present.”
Whereas “The Weinerville Chanukah Particular” aired a handful of instances in 1995, the following yr’s “A Rugrats Chanukah” (airing a month after the ultimate Nickelodeon “Weinerville” manufacturing “The Weinerville Election Particular from Washington BC”) grew to become the channel’s go-to vacation custom for generations to come back. Whereas absent from the airwaves, in December 2000 and 2002, “The Weinerville Chanukah Particular” was screened on the Museum of Tv and Radio in New York, and due to the arrival of file sharing and video streaming websites, the particular gained a cult following by means of the 2010s, typically the go-to alternative for a Hanukkah episode of Christmas podcasts. It’s a favourite of youngsters’s tv podcasts as nicely, the Nickelodeon-themed “Splat Assault Podcast’s” Manny Oramas lovingly displays “when the particular got here out, I knew nothing about Hanukkah, however this helped in refined methods. I contemplate it timeless.”
Weiner has stayed lively within the youngsters’s media world, voicing Map and Swiper throughout a number of “Dora the Explorer” incarnations. He’s additionally been making tote baggage from previous sails used on the Hudson River Sloop Clearwater (which he was on for 3 years within the ’70s) to advertise the Clearwater’s environmental work. His household’s additionally continued to unfold modern Hanukkah cheer: His eldest daughter, Rebecca, a chef and artist dwelling in Israel together with her husband, challah artist Idan Chabasov a.okay.a Instagram’s @ChallahPrince, this yr have collaborated on an illustrated recipe for making a challah menorah — a full-circle second as Rebecca is seen in “The Weinerville Chanukah Particular’s” closing montage displaying her personal environmentally-conscious “Recyclorah.” Weiner is planning to stream the episode in some kind this Hanukkah on his YouTube channel WeinervilleTV. Revisiting the particular 30 years later, it’s nonetheless spectacular to see a fast-paced, puppet-centric explosively inventive tackle Hanukkah — no strings hooked up.
