Dick and Paula Celebrity Special was a Soup2Nuts animated series that aired on FX from 1999 to 2000.
The premise of the show was that Dick and Paula hosted a talk show where famous individuals, usually deceased, talked about their work or what made them widely known. Examples of such guests include Charles Darwin, Marquis de Sade, Oedipus Rex, and Lewis and Clark, among many others. Accompanying the two hosts was a Paul Shaffer-esque keyboard player. This premise bears similarities with that of Steve Allen's Meeting of Minds.
The series, like Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist, the first season of Home Movies, and Science Court, was animated in Squigglevision, a computer animation technique that caused the edges of people and important objects to vibrate constantly. Also like those series, Dick and Paula utilized retroscripting for much of the dialog, in that a basic outline is given and the actors improvise the dialog. Later, the dialog is edited to a coherent script.
FX didn't have a big success with Dick and Paula Celebrity Special, and thus the series was canceled after fewer than a dozen episodes.
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“Science fiction writers, I am sorry to say, really do not know anything. We can’t talk about science, because our knowledge of it is limited and unofficial, and usually our fiction is dreadful.”
—Philip K. Dick (1928–1982)
“When I develop my recipes I always look for ways to create what I call the Big Taste. While I enjoy eating simple grilled foods, what interests me when I cook are dishes with a taste that is fully dimensional.”
—Paula Wolfert, U.S. cookbook writer. Paula Wolfert’s World of Food, Introduction, Harper and Row (1988)
“The star is the ultimate American verification of Jean Jacques Rousseau’s Emile. His mere existence proves the perfectability of any man or woman. Oh wonderful pliability of human nature, in a society where anyone can become a celebrity! And where any celebrity ... may become a star!”
—Daniel J. Boorstin (b. 1914)
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—Amy Laura Dombro (20th century)