ST. JOHNS - When Chris and Shane Houghton were kids the five acres of land their family's house sat on just south of St. Johns served as their own personal playground.
The nearest neighbor was a half mile away, but a creek running through the property provided hours of entertainment. They built make-shift dams and tree forts, played with the pigs and chickens on the property and ran through the wooded area behind their house.
"Our mom, whenever she got sick of us, she’d just say ‘Go play outside,'" Chris Houghton, 30, said. "We were outside country boys for most of the summer."
Both brothers say their rural Clinton County roots left a life-long impression. It stayed with them until graduation from St. Johns High School, through college, and a move to Los Angeles. It also inspired a comic book series, "Reed Gunther," about a Grizzly Bear-riding cowboy who fought monsters in the wild West.
Now it's become the springboard for "Big City Greens," a new Disney Channel cartoon the brothers created. It's based on their family, friends and community members in St. Johns.
It premiers Monday morning on Disney Channel and has already been picked up for a second season. The Houghton brothers are among its executive producers, with Chris Houghton providing the voice for main character, Cricket Green, a 10-year old from the country who moves to the big city with his family.
Just how much of the Houghton's childhood can you see in the show?
Just enough, Chris and Shane said, to make its creation and production a surreal experience for the entire Houghton family.
“We are the Greens,” Shane, 32, said. "We’re trying to showcase what we love about the country and what we love about people who live in the country. It’s who we are. It’s our family, it’s our neighbors, it’s our community growing up.”
Writing what they know
In the opening credits of the series premier of "Big City Greens" Cricket Green and his sister Tilly sit in the backseat of their father Bill's red pickup truck as he steers it from their country home to the big city.
The culture shock the Greens experience when they get there mirrors Chris and Shane Houghton's own when they left St. Johns. Today both brothers live in Los Angeles, but they said it was their pitch to create a cartoon series that drew from their childhood in the country that Disney loved.
“We took the advice of, 'Write what you know,' and ran with it,” Chris said.
The brothers began developing "Big City Greens" in 2014. In 2016 production started at Disney.
Every character was created from real life. While Cricket is based on Chris as a boy, his father, Bill is based on Chris' own father-in-law. Tilly is "an amalgamation of some of our neighbors, and a bunch of 4-H girls that we knew growing up," Shane said.
And Cricket's grandma draws from the Houghton brothers' own grandmother Alice, who died a few years ago.
Noel and Rick Houghton, who still live in the century-old house where Chris and Shane grew up, said their sons drew from moments spent setting off forbidden fireworks, relishing Christmas mornings and sitting by campfires to craft the characters and their adventures.
"Good storytellers need to know the story before it can be told, and Chris and Shane know this story," said their father Rick.
"We’ve been watching it evolve since the first sketches were shared with us two years ago," Noel Houghton said.
'It comes from the heart'
The first season includes 30 half-hour shows, with each show offering two cartoons. The show has a staff of 50 people, who do everything from writing the dialogue to working on the story boards.
Guest voices in the show's first season include Jon Hamm of "Mad Men" fame, Raven-Symoné and Busta Rhymes, lending his voice to a "wise fish."
“We wanted to follow the Greens moving in and having no community,” Shane Houghton said. “They don’t know anybody. They feel very alone and kind of isolated at the beginning, but as the series goes on they meet people and make friends. They develop relationships with their neighbors.”
Viewers get to watch them put down roots in a strange, new place.
The message to kids watching is simple, the brothers said — anyplace is home when you have friends and family around you.
“It comes from the heart for both of us," Shane Houghton said. "It’s very true to who we were growing up, and who we are today.”
"Big City Greens" premiers at 9:30 a.m. Monday on on Disney Channel, DisneyNOW and Disney Channel VOD. Get previews and watch the first episode at https://disneynow.go.com/shows/big-city-greens.
Contact Reporter Rachel Greco at (517) 528-2075 or rgreco@lsj.com. Follow her on Twitter @GrecoatLSJ.
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