WARNING: The following contains minor spoilers for Hoops, available now on Netflix.
The new animated comedy Hoops is the brainchild of Ben Hoffman, a producer and writer who's penned scripts for Archer and The Late, Late Show with James Corden. Now with Hoops, Hoffman's brought his own brand of adult humor to Netflix, with a show centered on Ben Hopkins, a loud, aggressive, potty-mouthed high-school basketball coach in Kentucky who is also often the most ridiculous person in the room. Coach Ben surrounds himself with friends and family who can be just as foul-mouthed as he is, from his estranged wife Shannon, to his long-time friend and the principal of the high school where he works, Opal. Hoffman brings those characters together in absurd and funny scenarios for a very adult comedy.
CBR spoke to Hoffman about Hoops' years-long journey from initial idea to Netflix, the show's humor and animation style, and whether Coach Ben will ever experience any character growth.
CBR: You and the main character of Hoops share a first name and have a fairly similar last name. Is there anything about the show that is inspired by your real life?
Ben Hoffman: It’s a common question…, one I’ve answered quite a bit and not a very illogical question. I had my own show on Comedy Central, and it's been a while -- these shows take forever to make -- but right after that show, my team of people were telling me to write a show for myself. So I wrote this pilot, and I just wrote it for myself, put my name in it and changed the last name a little bit. It was supposed to be a vehicle for me, and then I kind of came to the realization I wasn't a good actor and I wasn't that funny onscreen, so let's find someone talented to do it. And we just got lazy and never changed the name.
I mean the similarities are: I am from Kentucky, I grew up in a town that was basketball obsessed, so that is the similarities. I never coached a team, I never screamed at kids like this guy does, luckily. But yes, I mean, the heart of it, which is, I do love basketball and grew up in a basketball-obsessed town. And… LA, still, as long as I've been here, still is a new strange place for me, but what showbiz is to LA I would say basketball is to my hometown, which is kind of where the parallels, I guess, come in.
So how did the show evolve to become what it is today?
Well, sit down and get comfortable because that's about a one, two-hour story. But basically what happened was it got in the hands of Lord and Miller, Phil and Chris, who've done a lot of great work. They hadn't done a lot of that work at the time, because it was probably six, seven years ago when I wrote the pilot, at least. And they loved it and they went to -- I don't want to name all the places -- they went a lot of places each through different stages of development, and they eventually passed.
And then we made a pilot presentation for MTV. And that's kind of where this all started, which is we made a pilot presentation for MTV. They claimed they were getting back to their Beavis and Butthead kind of roots of just doing whatever you wanted, so I made a pilot presentation and [Coach Ben voice actor] Jake [Johnson] was in the booth. And I told him just go as dirty and crazy as you want. And he goes, "Well, this is MTV, you can’t even air this." I go, "Who cares? They’re not going to pick it up anyway, so just go as crazy as you want, since we're not going to get a pick up."
So what happened was we made an R-rated pilot for a PG-13 network, so they called us and said, "We can’t make this show. Why would you make a show with this kind of language for MTV? Are you dumb?" And I said, "Kind of." I said, "I'll take the pass." And what happened was that pilot presentation just kind of started being passed around town. And… when that was made there was no Netflix. So when Netflix came along, and [said], "We want to make this and we now can. We have the ability to make it the way you want to make it." So I think sticking to my guns and just doing what I wanted, not caring about sales or getting it on network ended up -- I want to say it was a plan but it wasn't, it just got lucky. A network had to be invented for this show to [be made the way it was].
The humor is very adult but at the same time it seems to be very careful not to attack anyone on the basis of things like race, gender and other traits that have been easy targets in the past. Was that by design?
Yeah. I mean, I don't know that it was a conversation we've had, but it's just not the kind of humor me or the room or Jake likes. It's always funnier to me when the crazy person is the bigger idiot… You know, I grew up, I got made fun of a lot and… I didn't think it was very funny so it's not something I wanted to repeat in this show. And certainly we didn't want to pick out any particular race or creed…. I think if you just stick to your guns, stick to what you think is funny, you can be happy with what you made. There was no point I was worried, like, who's going to be offended by this?
I've written for Comedy Central Roast in the past, quite a few of them, and… the job is to insult people. It always kind of left me with an icky feeling…. When I had the chance to be in charge, as I am on this, it's just not something I wanted to repeat.
I am going to give one caveat. I did notice that the heavy kid on the basketball team does tend to be the target of cracks about his weight. Did you feel like that was fair game, or was it just that he was a good-natured enough character to take it?
Well, to me honestly, that had more to do with the character who played that is a guy, Steve Berg, and Jake and him are old friends, and… I just like characters kind of playing themselves, and they kind of have that relationship. My thing is always if you can't say it to the person's face, I don't want to hear it. So Jake and Steve have that relationship where they can rip on each other, and I think Steve can give it right back to him. So if they're in the booth… again my rule is, don't say anything you can't say… to the actual person's face, and we felt comfortable saying that to his face.
We probably, looking back, probably did do it too much but…, the audience doesn’t know it, but for us it’s just old pals goofing around. And if there’s a Season 2, it’s probably something we would… stay away from a little bit. It's an easy joke, too easy of a joke sometimes. And you know, I was not the most athletic kid and that is not something I would have liked to have seen. But it was all in good fun for us because, again, they're in the booth together and ripping on each other the way only people who’ve been friends for 10 years could.
Speaking of the voice cast, it is an unbelievable cast. How did you assemble it?
Couldn’t agree more. It was really just: who are the funniest people? I mean, I was just saying before how it was just kind of a natural thing. And once you get into development, it’s all this timing. I don't remember what Ron Funches' character's name was in the pilot but we were developing it right when Ron Funches' Comedy Central special came out. I said I love this special, I love this guy, I’d love him to play the part. And soon it became more, let's just change the character to be more Ron. And I wanted that voice in my show.
And, again, I've been a fan of A.D. Miles [who plays Matty] for years. So… I did get lucky that a lot of these people were interested, and it's nice to have someone like A.D. and Ron, who are funnier and better writers than me in the room, in the studio is nice to have. Someone like A.D. who was the head writer on The Tonight Show for years, I'm not going to over-direct him. I'm going to… ask him more questions than he's asking me, and same thing with the likes of Ron Funches, who makes a living making audiences laugh. It makes your job a lot easier….
So how much of the dialogue ended up being improvisation?
I don't know that I could put a number on it, but it was always a known thing that the actors could improv whenever they wanted. We had a very tight script and we always did a couple versions of the script. And I would say the only downside of improving is we have so many good improvisers that -- the show’s what? 27 minutes [per episode] -- we could have improv go on for 15 minutes and I’d seriously say, "Guys, that’s another episode, that’s not a line from the show..."
But for the most part, it made it fun because I was in the editing room, I could kind of choose whatever I wanted. But… it was definitely a free place to say whatever you wanted. And that's what I think is fun. Back to the offending people or not is, take it as far as you want, we'll cut it… if you go too far, we'll cut it back. Don't worry about going too far, this is a safe place, we'll cut it back later, we're not going to make you look bad, and we don't want to make the show look bad. So, go for it and we'll figure it out later.
There are actually several songs throughout the season, whether they're on the soundtrack or something Cleo King's character Opal sings. How did those end up being incorporated?
Well, my brother did the music for the show. He was in a band called Scissor Sisters.... When we created the show, we were starting to hire, I go... the best guy I know to do music would be my brother. So sometimes I would just go, "Wouldn't it be fun to have a song here?" My brother has a home studio, we just go there and make a song and they animate it.... And it was not my goal to sing on the show but, I thought it was funny and it worked and I love working with my brother and the cast seemed to like it. And we got Cleo and A.D. to sing here and there, so it was almost like when you got that much musical talent... why not use it?
Now how did you settle on this particular animation style?
Bento Box is the animation studio. They do Bob's Burgers.... But I grew up on Saturday morning cartoons, like a lot of people, and also grew up on Fox Primetime Sunday night shows, which Bento's done a lot of those. And I just always liked that style of animation. I love the idea of a Sunday night Fox show with kind of R-rated language. The cuter the characters, the funnier it was to me that they were talking like this. And I'd never seen a show -- I know like Family Guy and The Simpsons and Bob's even at times sometimes get a little bit of that adult humor in -- but to push it this far with kind of cute-looking characters was something I hadn't seen done a lot.
And I'm also trusting these genius animators I'm working with at Bento... I just like that clean Saturday morning look, it's kind of what I grew up with. Put it this way: I did not want to reinvent animation. It was just, I come from it from a comedy background, whatever is the funniest for me. And I thought Coach so crass, kind of the more Charlie Brown-cute he looks, the funnier it'll be. I remember a point had come up, "Why not give him a mustache and a beard." And I was just like, "No, we want this as cute as possible, and the funnier it'll be for these things coming out of his mouth."
If there is a second season, will we ever see Coach Ben grow as a person?
I don't know if this is a show about growing. I mean in my head, I'd like to see him -- I'm gonna say Season 7 -- I'd love to see him [evolve a little]. The goal of the show when I pitched it to Netflix was this is not a show where at Season 7 he's going to win the state championship. At the end of Season 7 he's going to realize that coaching a high-school team and living in his hometown isn't such a bad thing. That's where he's going to grow.
And again, you know, we'll see if that happens. That's kind of where I want him to end up... Will he get there? ...Let me put it this way: there's a chance he can grow in the very last episode of the series. But if this is the only season, he will not grow.
Starring the voices of Jake Johnson, Ron Funches, Natasha Leggero, Cleo King, A.D. Miles and Rob Riggle, the 10-episode first season of Hoops is currently available on Netflix.