"He really missed the boat on his first premises," Brown says. "A couple of them were lame."

But Brown says he saw some promise in one of Cohen's story summaries.

"It's a treat when you see a writer who has something really funny that you've never seen before," Brown says.

The story that caught Brown's attention was "Womyn," which Cohen faxed to MTV from his grandmother's house in Jerusalem and was his first script to be aired.

"'Womyn' was original--it struck a chord with me," Brown said.

In "Womyn," Beavis and Butthead go to a feminist rally to pick up "chicks." It was this show that got Cohen a foot in the door to becoming a regular freelance writer.

Cohen wrote "Womyn" and "Green Thumbs," which he sold in the fall, "on spec," meaning that MTV pays the writer only if the network plans to use the material.

"Beavis and Butthead" does not have any full-time writers other than Judge and Brown. Instead, the network relies on about a dozen freelance authors, according to Brown.

Brown says most of the show's freelance writers come to him through connections but are selected purely on the basis of skill. Brown says the show receives hundreds of story pitches and rejects than 75 percent of them.

"We don't put out an open notice for writers," Brown says. "There would just be too many."

The show used to have three other full-time writers, but they were phased out recently during the making of the "Beavis and Butthead" motion picture, due to be released in December, Brown says.

The Internship

Last summer, Cohen applied to be an intern working directly under Brown. According to Brown, no one had ever asked to be a writing intern before, and he did not have much for Cohen to do.

"He couldn't have gotten an easier internship," Brown says.

When Cohen asked to be his intern, Brown says (in Butthead's voice), "I was like, 'Uh, okay.'"