Paul Germain and Joe Ansolabehere first met in film school at UCLA, where Joe earned his Master's of Arts degree. A few years later, Paul and Joe worked together on Nickelodeon's hit animated series Rugrats which Paul co-created with Arlene Klasky and Gabor Csupo. After the show completed its Emmy-winning initial run in 1993, Paul and Joe decided to join forces. In 1996, they created "Disney's Recess" for ABC.

"'Rugrats' was about pre-school, and we wanted to talk about the next phase of childhood: elementary school," remembers Joe. "We started thinking about it, and one day, one of us just said, "the playground". You are seen a lot of stuff about school and it's always about the teacher and what's going on in the classroom, but most of what I remember from those days happened out on the playground at recess.

"We wanted to do an ensemble piece," Joe continues, recalling some of the great sitcoms of the 1970s. Many of those shows centered on the workplace, "where, as adults, you make your friends. You and they don't necessarily have that much in common, but because you share the same situation, you unite around people who complement your abilities and your skills and your point of view." For Joe and Paul, the playground presented a similar situation for kids.

To direct the series, Joe and Paul hired Chuck Sheetz, an animator who was just coming into his own as a director. "We were looking for a director on the series, and Chuck was recommended over and over by different people. We call people and they say, 'Do you know Chuck Sheetz?' And we call the next person, and they say, 'Do you know Chuck Sheetz?' Eventually he came in and we just immediately hit it off."

Taking on the role of art director was Eric Keyes, who had known Paul and Joe from the "Rugrats" days. "He had developed artwork for me on another project, and I just thought he was great," Paul remembers. "Luckily, he was available, and we brought him in to do this, and he did a fantastic job for us."

For their educational advisor, Paul and Joe relied on Dr. John Arnold of North Carolina State University. Unlike many advisors who advocate simplifying stories and overstating themes for what they see as the unsophisticated childhood mind, Dr. Arnold encouraged Paul and Joe to find new ways to help kids understand the world around them.

"John confirmed a lot of what we were thinking," says Paul. "To make a great show for kids, do the same thing you do for adults: tell great stories, and NEVER talk down to them."

The sophisticated humor and wild imagination of the program quickly set it apart from the rest of the crowded Saturday morning schedule. "What I admire about Paul and Joe is that they really respect both sides," says screenwriter Jonathan Greenberg. "We didn't want just bubble gum stuff. On the other hand, we also didn't want to have something that wouldn't appeal to kids. It was important to appeal to parents but also treat the kids with some respect. And I think part of the success of the show is the fact that these ten-year-olds have a world that's much more sophisticated than we as adults tend to realize."

That sophisticated world comes through in the style of the show. Since the beginning, Paul and Joe have tried to include in the "Recess" world a sense of "magical realism". Reality, but with a little something extra. "The style of the show has always been realistic," says Paul. "No one picks up a stick of dynamite and has it blow up in their hands, and their face gets sooty. If a kid falls out of a tree, he's going to break his leg on this show. On the other hand, we are tried to infuse the series with some magical influences that would take this realistic world and make it just a little bit fantastic. We tried to make the playground like we remembered it as kids. You know, everyone remembers that one kid who would come onto the playground kick the ball, and it would seem like it was going into the stratosphere. Well in 'Recess, when the kid kicks the ball, we cut to space and show the ball knocking an antenna off the space shuttle. In other words, the kid LITERALLY kicks the ball into the stratosphere."

"When we were first working on the show," Joe says, "our office overlooked a school, and we would sit there and just look at these kids, watching them play on the playground. And we always say, we don't want to do a show from up here, we want to do a show from down there. And having these fun, off-kilter things happen, that's part of that."

By its second season, "Disney's Recess" ranked #2 among all children network shows. The series received widespread critical acclaim, receiving consecutive Parents Choice Awards and earning placement on the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences And FCC's Honor Roll of Children's Programming. Its phenomenal success paved the way for the motion picture, and early in 1998, Paul and Joe began to dream up ideas for the movie with screenwriter Jonathan Greenberg.

Back to Groetky's Class