August 17th, 2020 
Jackson Murphy 
Ben Hoffman is the creator of the new adult animated sports comedy series Hoops, premiering this Friday August 21st on Netflix. But it wasn’t initially intended to be an animated show. Hoffman shares his thoughts on that, his lifelong love of basketball and which NBA players he wants to guest star on future seasons.
Jackson Murphy: On the San Diego Comic-Con At Home virtual panel you did for the show a couple weeks ago, you said that Phil Lord & Christopher Miller (who are also EPs) told you that in order for the show to happen, it had to transition from being live-action to animation. How shocked were you when you first heard that news?
Ben Hoffman: I think I was more shocked that they wanted to make it in general. I loved the idea. I was shocked that I was going to get into animation, but the bigger shock was that I’ve been a fan of their work and they wanted to work with me.
JM: It’s paying off. Hoops is about high school basketball in Kentucky. The main character is Coach Ben, voiced by Jake Johnson. Was his name always gonna be Ben, Ben?
BH: It was! It was written years ago. I had a show on Comedy Central. It was written for myself before I understand how poor of an actor I was. And then by the time I wasn’t funny or good on screen, I cast my old buddy Jake in it. And we just got too lazy to change the name.
JM: The opening scene of the first episode is the ultimate “coach getting mad at the ref” scene. And you do a similar kind of thing in Episode 2 when Ben tries to keep making the last shot. How is it coming-up with those “cold opens”? Is it one of the trickiest parts of writing these episodes?
BH: Yeah, it’s a little tricky because they’re more joke based. So you really gotta have a strong premise. But I do think it’s weird… I don’t know if you’re a basketball fan, but sports seems like the one place where it’s, for some reason, socially acceptable for grown men to act like immature boys and scream like idiots. It’s kind of thought of as cool, almost, which kind of gives you some leeway. I hate to say it, but as crazy as Jake’s character acts on the show, it’s probably not the craziest you’ve seen a coach act. I’m from Kentucky, so I grew-up watching Kentucky basketball and a lot of college basketball, watching Bobby Knight throw chairs. So it didn’t seem that crazy for me.
JM: Oh yeah. When March Madness comes around every year, I watch the coaches on the sidelines. Did you watch a lot of high school sports movies… there have been a lot of classic films about basketball… in terms of preparation and inspiration for the show?
BH: I didn’t do it for preparation. In Kentucky, basketball was the king. I grew-up with a lot of those movies in my DNA. You had to watch Hoosiers growing up. I did not have to research basketball because I’m such a fan. It was kind of already there.
JM: That makes sense. I didn’t watch Hoosiers until about five years ago, and it blew me away.
BH: Holds-up, huh? I heard that new Ben Affleck one was pretty good. Did you see it?
JM: Yes, I saw The Way Back. It was actually one of the last films I saw in a theater before the major shutdown. And it is good. It’s a good, raw story and performance from him.
BH: Yeah, I was told it was the drama version of Hoops, so maybe I’ll have to check it out.
JM: Yeah. And I was thinking while watching these episodes: if you could get Gene Hackman to come out of retirement and voice a character if the show gets picked-up for Season 2, I think that would be amazing.
BH: I’d love it. I would say he’s on my wish list. My other wish list is that I want some basketball players to watch it. I want LeBron in it. I want Rex Chapman in it. I want all my basketball heroes in it. Let’s get Michael Jordan in it! Let’s go for broke!
JM: Holy cow, yes. Get Jordan. Get Shaq. And LeBron was so good as himself in Trainwreck that I’m sure he’d have a ball being in this. That’d be awesome.
BH: And he’s doing the new Space Jam, right?
JM: That’s right. He’s doing the new Space Jam, which they’ve been working on.
BH: I can’t wait.
JM: I know. I can’t wait, either. And “holey moley”, you’ve got the hilarious Rob Riggle on Hoops as well. He voices Ben’s dad. What percentage of his lines and the lines of the entire cast are ad-libbed v. what’s in the script?
BH: I don’t know if I would know a percentage. The bigger thing I would say is: we made sure to cast actors who had strong comedy backgrounds. We weren’t looking for Juilliard trained actors. We wanted people who are funny. And people like Ron Funches, who are stand-up [comedians] and know how to make people laugh. We would do a few lines as scripted and then go off… and a lot of times we would take the improv take. I don’t know the percentage, but it was quite a bit.
JM: One of the things that stood out to me in watching the second episode, “My Two Dads”, is that it features a reference to the true story that inspired the recent Natalie Portman movie Lucy in the Sky. It’s about the female astronaut who drove across the country in a diaper. Isn’t that story just crazy?
BH: It is crazy. I didn’t know it was inspiration for… what is this movie?
JM: This movie came out in October of last year and really didn’t make a lot of money in theaters. Everybody thought it would get Natalie Portman back to the Oscars, but it didn’t. And she plays a slightly fictionalized version of the woman who was the astronaut who drove across the country in the diaper.
BH: Oh, wow. I didn’t know about that movie. Now I got that and The Way Back. I got two movies to watch.
JM: She is good in it. I wish she got more attention for it. What inspired you to incorporate that into the second episode?
BH: It was actually a writer on the show, Annabel Seymour. It was her episode. I didn’t know the story, and she wrote it into the script. I thought it was really funny, and I said, ‘Where did you get this idea?’ And she had to explain to me that it was a real story. It was not part of my world, but I was happy to hear about it, and it was fun to animate, certainly.
JM: I’ve talked to a lot of animated show creators over the years. Some like incorporating the pop culture references into episodes. And some want to avoid them completely. How is it for you deciding how many and which ones to incorporate?
BH: Well because of the lag-time, especially with Netflix where you do all 10 at once, so it’s probably a year and a half or more of lag-time, I try to stay away from them. In my head, I do a “10-Year Rule” – if it’s still gonna hold-up in 10 years. I’m not gonna do a joke about that week’s news. But something about Michael Jordan/LeBron will go on forever. Not that we make jokes about them, I’m just using that as an example. We don’t do a weekly show, so I don’t like pop culture jokes.
JM: I’ve been watching a lot of Guy Fieri on the Food Network, and I think many people are during this quarantine. He voices himself in the second episode. How awesome was it having one of the biggest names in food and television?
BH: It was awesome. I’ve actually known him for a couple years. A couple years ago, I said, ‘I got an animated show and you’re gonna do a voice on it.’ And he said, ‘Okay!’ I think people are gonna be surprised that it’s actually him. It was fun to have him.
JM: You’re working with Bento Box, the team behind Bob’s Burgers. Gimme the highlights of working with them.
BH: They do a lot of great work. My favorite network animated show right now is Bob’s. To have that team and ask them questions about Season 1 of Bob’s is always a great resource. And to have the character designers from Bob’s come-up with these characters… you always wanna work with people smarter and more talented than you. So having them there was a plus.
JM: I was watching their SDCC@Home panel as well, and they’re looking forward to finally getting the Bob’s movie out there, in theaters, soon. You gotta be looking forward to that too.
BH: Yeah, I can’t wait. We lost a couple people from our team to that movie, but it’s probably for the best for that film. But I’m really looking forward to it. It should be great. Hopefully we’ll be able to see it in a theater!
JM: Yes. I hope so, too. It’s been five months since I’ve been in an indoor movie theater, and I’m starting to go a little crazy. And when it comes to Hoops, if you’re already thinking about Season 2, what do you think about this?: How would your characters react if all the high schools in the district had to play in a bubble for a short period of time, just like what’s going on with the NBA right now?
BH: Not a bad idea! The bubble’s working out pretty well for the NBA. I’m on the team of whatever they can do to make basketball happen. I’m happy about it. Come out on here and help us out with Season 2. I like that idea!
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