Early life and start at Disney
Janson began his career as an in-betweener at the Walt Disney animation studio, the entry-level role of drawing the frames that fall between an animator's key poses.2 By 1965 he had moved into story work, with an early screen credit on the Warner Bros. Road Runner short "Boulder Wham!"2 It was around this period, in the animation classes taught at the Chouinard Art Institute, that the pixilation technique he would later make his name with first took hold among the young artists there.5
Partnership with Chuck Menville and the live-action shorts
Janson met Chuck Menville (1940 to 1992) early in his Disney years, and the two became creative partners.6 Janson later described the bond simply: "Chuck and I were partners for more than twenty years. He was like my brother."5
Their first joint work was a series of independent live-action comedy shorts shot in pixilation, a stop-motion technique in which live actors are photographed one frame at a time so that human movement becomes jerky and surreal.5 Their best-known short, Stop, Look and Listen (1967), is a roughly ten-minute color comedy that the pair wrote, produced, directed, and starred in. Filmed largely in the San Fernando Valley, it builds its gags around motorists who drive invisible cars by scrambling along the street on foot, contrasting a careful driver with a reckless one. The film was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Subject at the 1968 ceremony.3
The duo followed it with further pixilated shorts, including Vicious Cycles, a motorcycle-gang parody.5 Clips of their work brought them commercial and television assignments, and by the end of the 1960s their reputation moved them into the animation industry full time.
Career in animation
Beginning around 1969, Janson and Menville wrote, story-edited, and produced for the major Saturday-morning studios of the era, chiefly Filmation and Hanna-Barbera, before later working for DIC Enterprises. Across the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, Janson's credits as writer, story editor, producer, or supervising producer included a long list of network animated series.1 Highlights outside Ghostbusters include:
- Star Trek: The Animated Series, writer on two episodes (1973 to 1974)
- Shazam!, associate producer on 15 episodes (1974)
- Tarzan, Lord of the Jungle, associate producer on 16 episodes (1976)
- The Smurfs, story editor on 62 episodes (1981 to 1982) and writer on 28 episodes (1981)
- The Condor, writer on the TV pilot (1986)
- Tiny Toon Adventures, story editor on 7 episodes (1990 to 1991)
- Land of the Lost (1991 reboot), producer on 8 episodes and writer on 6 episodes (1991 to 1992)
- Sonic the Hedgehog, supervising producer on 26 episodes and writer on 5 episodes (1993 to 1994), a series he helped develop for ABC, plus later work on Sonic Underground
The partnership ended with Menville's death from lymphoma on June 15, 1992.6 Janson continued in television afterward, with one of his last credited animation jobs coming on an episode of "Gadget and the Gadgetinis" in 2003.1 In later years he turned to writing prose fiction.
The Real Ghostbusters and Slimer!
By the time the animated Ghostbusters franchise reached DIC, Janson and Menville were veteran show-runners. When DIC owner Jean Chalopin initially sought story editors for The Real Ghostbusters, Janson and Menville declined the assignment because they did not want the combined workload of both the network and the syndicated episode runs; Chalopin then brought in J. Michael Straczynski, who handled the first two seasons.7 After Straczynski's departure, Janson and Menville took on the story-editor role from Season 3 onward. From that point Janson held several overlapping behind-the-scenes roles as the show moved through its later seasons.
His season-by-season production credits, as listed on the home-video releases, were:4
- Story Editor: Season 3, Season 4, Season 5 (except the prime-time special The Halloween Door), and Season 7
- Producer: Season 4
- Supervising Producer: the Slimer! series, Season 5 (except The Halloween Door), Season 6, and Season 7
Episodes written for The Real Ghostbusters
Janson, generally writing with Menville, is credited on the following episodes:4
Ghosts R Us; Killerwatt; Mrs. Roger's Neighborhood; Janine's Genie; Baby Spookums; It's a Jungle Out There; Once Upon a Slime; Big Trouble with Little Slimer; The Joke's on Ray; Follow That Hearse; Something's Going Around; Jailbusters; Trading Faces; Transcendental Tourists; It's About Time; Ghostworld; Spacebusters; Stay Tooned; and Not Now, Slimer!
Slimer! segments written
For the Slimer! shorts, his writing credits include "A Mouse in the House," "Out with Grout," "Show Dog Showdown," and "The Not-So-Great Outdoors."4
Other appearances
Janson appears as an interview subject, and is seen in archival production footage, in the documentary Slimer Won't Do That! The Making of The Real Ghostbusters.8 He is also credited as a commentator on The Real Ghostbusters DVD box set.4
References
Some content on this page was researched using the Ghostbusters Wiki on Fandom.
-
"Len Janson," IMDb, accessed 2026-06-13, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0418116/bio/
-
"Len Janson," Wikipedia, accessed 2026-06-13, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Len_Janson
-
"Stop Look and Listen (film)," Wikipedia, accessed 2026-06-13, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_Look_and_Listen_(film) The film was released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer on January 1, 1967, and was nominated for Best Short Subject, Live Action at the 1968 Academy Awards.
-
The Real Ghostbusters: Complete Series DVD Box Set. Time-Life Entertainment, 2008. Production credits as listed on home-video releases; commentary track and Slimer Won't Do That! The Making of The Real Ghostbusters documentary included.
-
The Animation Guild, "Chuck Menville, Len Janson and the Joys of Stop Motion" (April 2007), http://animationguildblog.blogspot.com/2007/04/chuck-menville-len-janson-and-joys-of.html Len Janson: "Chuck and I were partners for more than twenty years. He was like my brother."
-
"Chuck Menville," Wikipedia, accessed 2026-06-13, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuck_Menville Born April 17, 1940, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana; died June 15, 1992, in Malibu, California, of non-Hodgkin lymphoma, aged 52.
-
J. Michael Straczynski extended interview, bonus disc, The Real Ghostbusters: Complete Series DVD Box Set. Time-Life Entertainment, 2008. Straczynski recounts that Chalopin told him the story editors he had originally hired, Janson and Menville, did not want the combined workload of the network and syndicated episode runs, and that Straczynski was therefore being asked to story-edit both simultaneously.
-
Slimer Won't Do That! The Making of The Real Ghostbusters (documentary, 1990). Directed for ITV/Rolf's Cartoon Club; covers story writing, sound recording, and animation production. IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1366345/ Spook Central archive: https://www.spookcentral.us/sclib/the-real-ghostbusters-slimer-wont-do-that
