Sidwell Friends Horizon

Pancake Mountain Rocks!

Friday, December 17, 2004
By Greg Fong

It's 5:40 in the evening and I'm running late. Two Metro busses have sped by my stop for no apparent reason, leaving me in the freezing cold. I am incredibly apprehensive, mainly because I have no idea what I'm getting myself into. In five minutes I'm supposed to be in upper Georgetown interviewing Scott Stuckey, the creative genius behind DC's only local children's program, "Pancake Mountain". The show, however, is much more than that.

"Pancake Mountain" is one of those shows that manages to cater to both kids and adults at the same time. The jokes are simple, but there are often additional meanings to them that only a grown-up would understand. There are news shorts, comedic skits and cartoons. It's also the first kid's show to feature markedly adult music, from go-go to punk, and it works surprisingly well. There's also Rufus Leaking, an incredibly self-aware and culture-savvy sheep puppet who handles most of the show's interviews.

I arrive at Monkeyboy Studios, the home base of "Pancake Mountain", exactly a minute late. The office is pretty hip; there are old movie cameras lying on shelves with CDs, books, and vinyl records, a Sony Playstation 2 hooked up to a big TV, graffiti-inspired artwork on the walls and a gigantic prop pancake even taller than I am. It seems like Monkeyboy Studios employees might have as much fun at work as they do during their free time.

Scott Stuckey looks like a film guy. He's wearing black plastic glasses, a black pullover and dark pants. He's also grinning from ear to ear. After shaking hands we sit down in the editing room where I'm introduced to Jonah Takagi. Jonah is using Photoshop and Flash on a PowerMac G5 to manipulate footage of Rock Rogers, the official anchor for Pancake Mountain News.

I ask Scott a few warm-up questions about the story behind "Pancake Mountain". Fed up with the increasing consumerism in children's programming, he decided to start a low-budget, commercial-free, fun-oriented program targeted directly at DC kids. The team writes each episode together, although a few segments are improvised during recording. Slowly the conversation shifts to American pop culture, a subject about which Scott is quite passionate.

"Even just looking at mainstream TV," Scott says, "everything's either a reality show or a Law and Order/HBO type thing... it's always changing, but I think it's still really homogenized. It's sort of 'what would everybody like to watch?', and for me that's really sad." While becoming too specialized is always a risk, Scott is confident in his show. For the time being, "Pancake Mountain" has found a receptive audience. Surprisingly, the show's fan base isn't only in DC.

The proof is in the DVD sales of the show. "Of all the DVDs online, I think we've sold a few hundred, only a dozen have been local despite the fact that this is where we're known and seen" reports Scott. Almost the same number of DVDs has been dispatched to South Dakota since they became available. Neither Scott nor Jonah truly understands why. The program's media attention has come from national news sources yet the Washington Post has not even once mentioned the show.

So why base the show in DC? "I'd rather work here than any of the other cities I've lived in," says Scott, "DC is still one of the tightest communities where some of the most artistic and creative people pull together. I think that [there's creativity] here." Right now, Scott and the "Pancake Mountain" crew are preparing a second DVD with the next few episodes and trying to find a more regular schedule for the show, which airs on DCTV between 4:00 and 6:00 daily. Despite the difficulties that he's had to overcome and is facing in the future, Scott remains optimistic. "It makes us and hopefully others laugh," he says, "and I think that's what's important."