Original Pitch

This is the "pitch reel" that Dan Povenmire and Jeff "Swampy" Marsh used to sell to the Disney Channel. It is one of the bonus items included on the Phineas and Ferb: The Fast and the Phineas DVD.

Summary
Dan Povenmire and Jeff Marsh describe how they created Phineas and Ferb and how they sold it to the Disney Channel. Instead of selling them a script, they pitched a storyboard, which is a scene-by-scene visual breakdown of how the episode would look. When it came time to present it to the executives overseas, Dan edited the storyboards together into a film, adding music, sound effects and providing the voices for all the characters. Jeff notes that after seeing it, Disney realized that they didn't want Dan to be the voice of Isabella.

The show is inspired by Dan's summers growing up where his mom would encourage him and his siblings "to do something creative instead of sitting around bored." His mom would say, "Summer's short. You gotta make every day count."

Background Information

 * Jeff added "Swampy" to his name so that it would be fifteen letters long, "bigger than most other names", including Dan's.
 * Dr. Heinz Doofenshmirtz was originally named Dr. Heinz Meddleshmirtz. During the pitch reel, Dan pronounced it as "Middleshmirtz".
 * Mr. Slushy Burger was originally spelled Mr. Slusee Burger. Dan pronounced it as "Mr. Slushy Burger", however.
 * The pitch reel features some extended scenes and dialog that were cut from the pilot, Rollercoaster.
 * The title sequence includes lines spoken by Phineas that were not included in the final version:
 * Giving a monkey a shower. (Don't try this at home.)
 * Or driving your sister insane. (It's a short drive.) Phineas!

Differences from pitch to pilot
The pitch reel and the pilot episode have several differences of note.

The first is that Phineas has more of an adversarial role when interacting with others. Examples:
 * The sardonic "it's a short drive" comment that is in the theme song after "driving our sister insane".
 * After Candace points out that it's summer, Phineas says "Fine! You wait 'til the last minute then." "Fine!" is said with a bit of defiance.
 * When Isabella says she thinks that building a rollercoaster is kind of impossible, Phineas responds in a slightly annoyed fashion.

The second is that a plot point of creating androids was removed. This was later explored in I, Brobot.

Finally, some of the dialog was removed because they appear to be at more of an adult level than what you might typically expect from a Disney cartoon:
 * "I still don't know how they cleaned that up so fast. I mean, the poop alone should've taken..."
 * "Their butts are mine now."
 * "My, you can be awfully helpful when you are having a psychotic break!"

For a line-by-line comparison of the pitch reel to the pilot, consult the Pitch reel transcript.

Cast
Dan Povenmire as himself and all voices in the pitch reel Jeff "Swampy" Marsh as himself