The Duck Factory

The Duck Factory
The Duck Factory cover
Created by	Allan Burns Herbert Klynn
Starring	Jim Carrey
Country of origin	USA
No. of episodes	13
Production
Running time	30 min (per episode)
Production company(s)	MTM Productions
Distributor	20th Television
Release
Original network	NBC
Original release	April 12 – July 11, 1984

The Duck Factory is an American sitcom produced by MTM Enterprises that is perhaps most notable for Jim Carrey's first lead role in a Hollywood production.

The show was co-created by Allan Burns. The premiere episode introduces Skip Tarkenton (Carrey), a somewhat naive and optimistic young man who has come to Hollywood looking for a job as a cartoonist. When he arrives at a low-budget animation company called Buddy Winkler Productions, he finds out Buddy Winkler has just died, and the company desperately needs new blood. So Skip gets an animation job at the firm, which is nicknamed "The Duck Factory" as their main cartoon is "The Dippy Duck Show".

Other Duck Factory employees seen regularly on the show were man-of-a-thousand-cartoon voices Wally Wooster (played by real-life cartoon voice artist Don Messick); comedy writer Marty Fenneman (played by real-life comedy writer Jay Tarses); artists Brooks Carmichael and Roland Culp, editor Andrea Lewin, and business manager Aggie Aylesworth. Buddy Winkler Productions was now owned by his young, ditzy widow, Mrs Sheree Winkler (Teresa Ganzel), who had been married to Buddy for all of three weeks before his death.

The Duck Factory lasted thirteen episodes; it premiered April 12, 1984. It was directed primarily by Gene Reynolds, Rod Daniel, and Victor Lobel, who each did three episodes. The show initially aired at 9:30 on Thursday nights, directly after Cheers, and replaced Buffalo Bill on NBC's schedule. Jay Tarses, an actor on The Duck Factory, had been the co-creator and executive producer of Buffalo Bill, which had its final network telecast on Thursday, April 5, 1984.

The show changed timeslots in June, moving to Wednesdays at 9:30. The last original episode of The Duck Factory was broadcast on July 11, 1984.

In 1995, two VHS videocassettes were released in the United States, one containing the first three episodes, the other the last three episodes. The two volumes were released in the United Kingdom in 1997 (Pictured above), slightly expanded to the first four and the last four episodes of the series (which had never been broadcast in the UK). A full-season VHS or DVD set has yet to be released.

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