Talking Simpsons - Sample Our Patreon-Exclusive Interviews With Simpsons Legends!

Episode Date: May 19, 2018

Are you still not a supporter at Patreon.com/TalkingSimpsons??? Lemme tell you, you're missing out on so much exclusive stuff, including our very in-depth interviews with Simpsons legends. To give you a taste of what you're missing, here are big chunks of our three most recent interviews out of the many currently available on the Patreon. That includes: Mike Scully - We chat with the season 9-12 showrunner about working on the series during seasons some fans found controversial! Dan Greaney - He's worked on the show for two decades and created the word "embiggen," so he has much to share about the writers' room! David Silverman - One of the most important figures in Simpsons history, this legendary animator takes us through his work on the shows formative shorts all the way to his episode in 2018! If you enjoy these, listen to the full interviews for all of them at Patreon.com/TalkingSimpsons for as little as $5 a month!! (And you get way more than just those interview for your payment!) This podcast is brought to you by VRV, the streaming network full of cartoons, anime and more. sign up for a free 30-day trial at VRV.co/WAC and help support Talking Simpsons! Support this podcast at Patreon.com/TalkingSimpsons!

Oh, an interview with Lord Michaels. Oh. Hi, Lee. Hello, listener. Reno's. It's Henry Gilbert here with a special surprise on the old free feed. So look, I know that we brag and promote and all the time tell you guys about all the cool interviews on patreon but we never really share them with you because they're exclusive to the

patreon well we decided to give you a little preview podcast of three of our most recent interviews that you folks are missing out on if you're not signed up at patreon.com talking simpsons why just in the last four months we chatted with folks like mike scully who had been an executive producer on the simpsons from season 9 through 13 but has been working on the show consistently since at least 1995 we also interviewed dan graney who's been working on the simpsons for 20 plus years as well and invented words like embiggen last but not least our most recent interview is with david silverman if you don't know david silverman is he is one of the mount rushmore of simpsons creative forces he has been working on the show since the shorts since it

began he has been a director on the show an animator for the show from the beginning. So many of the drawings and art you love on that show was all Mr. Silverman and under his guidance. And we talked to all of them about their work on the show. It's really great. So we're going to start with this clip from our Mike Scully interview, which includes Bob and me apologizing to mr scully for maybe not being the nicest of simpsons fans about his work back 20 ish years ago well yeah it was kind of unprecedented at the time for you to do four seasons after all the ones before you had done two. At least in the fan community, it was thought like, oh, that's never happened before. Was it seen internally as a big deal?

Or was it just like, Mike's doing a good job, he'll just keep going? Yeah, I don't think it was seen internally as a big deal. And we were also still talking. I remember talking with Matt around season 10. And it was at that time we were also still talking i remember you know talking with matt after season around season 10 and it was at that time we were still talking about wrapping it up and then we thought well maybe we should go to 12 but 12 will definitely be it like that's gotta be the end and so there was a part of me that wanted to be there at the end to not leave two two years before it finished so that was part of my decision also at the time,

not knowing there would still be another 18 years to go after that. But you do find yourself getting invigorated at times when you don't expect it to come along, or you find new life in the show that you didn't think was there. Like, you do

two or three episodes that you get on a little bit of a roll and you feel like, oh, gee, we never really explored this before. We didn't know we could do that. Or just try an experimental kind of a fun show like the Behind the Laughter or something like that, where you can break form a little. So we decided, what was the rush? Where were we all going to go in such a hurry? Well, Bill and Josh, who ran season seven and eight, they always say on commentaries, as a showrunner, your first year is great, but your second year almost kills you. You survived four years. Al Jean is now, I think, in his 17th or 16th year as a showrunner.

Did you make adjustments to the role just to survive? I'm just curious how the role changed over time as the production changed yeah it does uh the first year you know it's exciting it's fun you're you're starting with a clean slate you're not working on the past episodes from the previous showrunner because they're fixing those so you've kind of that first year you've just got like a big wall with 22 blank index cards on it. And it's all mine. And then when you go to the second year, you still have those 22 cards up that you still haven't finished from the previous year.

You're still working on them in various forms. But now you have to come up with 22 more new ones. And it does start to wear on you a little bit. But we had such a good staff and we had developed a good system. We pretty much had the hours from home talking about whether it was something, you know, with their kids or their wife or, you know, something else that went on in their life besides working at the Simpsons. standpoint and somehow we just kind of found fresh blood and figured out ways to incorporate a lot of the side characters into simpson stories which was an also thing and you try not to you try not to betray the characters uh that the audience loves or you may try and find new facets of them i know sometimes i get blamed for making homer stupid Like, apparently, the first eight years, he was a genius. But, you know, that comes with...

We found over the years that the bar keeps being moved for, like, when did the Simpsons jump the shark? You know? And there was people... When the Internet first started, and I want to say maybe around 93, 94, when there was like alt-TV Simpsons, and you were first kind of seeing the emergence of comment groups and things like that.

And it was amazing that immediately, like, the first comments were, it's time to cancel this thing. Put it out of its measure. It's like people went straight to the negative. Over the years, there's been so many episodes from not only from that point, but from to present day that people are still enjoying or episodes that they claim to hate the first time that now are considered classics. And, you know, I don't know if it's just the bar just keeps being moved or time and nostalgia or people getting older. I'm not sure what it is. When we did the marathon a few years ago on FXX, we didn't know what people's reactions would be, where they ran all the seasons back to back. And I anticipated like this kind of Twitter storm of hate coming at a certain point.

And the fans really surprised me. It was very sweet. I was getting a lot of tweets from people, from guys who were in their mid-30s, mid to late 30s, telling me stories of how they remember watching a certain episode when they were 8 or 10 years old, and now they were watching it with episode when they were eight or ten years old and now they were watching it with their kids who were that age and what a great moment it was for them

to share that you know with their kids so people were coming at it from a slightly different perspective which was kind of fun and i found myself getting caught up in the marathon and it was like it was like watching my life kind of whip before my eyes. Because I was watching my own kids getting older during that time. Now, that marathon was a real magical couple weeks there, because it felt like everybody was experiencing The Simpsons at the same time on social media and online. But actually, you mentioned the online criticism thing. I did want to ask you about that first off i wanted to say like probably in my younger days i maybe said something not nice about you on on the internet me too i think i'm sorry i'm sorry too mike i think i've made a few uh cranky cranky mike scully post maybe 20 years ago on all tv simpsons but uh i hope you forgive us that That's called passion. We love it. Well, yeah. So, I mean, what was it like being kind of a lightning rod at times for passionate Simpsons fans like that?

Fortunately, for me, it wasn't so bad. I was hearing it more from other people. I'm kind of, I mean, I'm 61 years old. I don't, you know, my standard line was, gee, how did people make great television before the internet could help them? And I still feel that way to this day. I don't find a lot of the comments particularly helpful or insightful. But every once in a while, you'll get one and go, oh, there's something to that. That's an interesting thought. But the amount of personal insults that you have to sift through to get to that insightful comment, I personally find not usually worth the time. There was a point, I remember, we actually checked, I think Al Jean checked it out once. There was a site called nohomers.net that really, like, hated me with a passion. And we had checked it out because the show had gotten in the habit of checking them after every episode to see what they liked. And you never know how many people are actually in these groups.

And Fox had a way of, like, tracking it down to see how many people are actually in these groups. And Fox had a way of, like, tracking it down to see how many people were. Well, at one point, we found out it was 62 people out of the entire world. Wow. Like, well, why are we even looking at this? So I think, you know, at the end of the day, we got into this without the Internet, you know, on our own instincts and what we think makes a good story.

And I think there's an inherent danger when the Internet starts dictating, you know, stories and characters. And, you know, at the same time, I think if you're the type of show, which The Simpsons is not, if you're the type of show that commits to like a season-long story arc, like we're going to follow this one story all the way through this. These two characters are going to have a relationship. And this is what you're going to be seeing all year. And if the audience isn't buying it, I think there is some benefit in that, that there may be something you're blind to, that you're just not seeing, that the audience is seeing. But because of the nature of The

Simpsons is to kind of reset at the end of every episode, I don't think it's that kind of a show. And I also find myself like, and it could be age, I'm just too lazy to write in and say, you did this wrong, or I don't like this, because I know how much work goes into every single episode, whether it comes out great or awful. The same amount of work went in. Actually, the worse the episode, chances are much more work has gone into it, because you know during the process something's not right you're desperately trying to fix it you're running out of time and money you're trying not to take resources away from other potentially good episodes all to fix this one problem child you know so there's certain ones that i just like look at particularly you mentioned before the

commentaries uh going back to the commentaries was an occasional painful experience for me because it was a chance to relive a series of bad decisions on my part of just kind of go, oh man, or the worst case scenario of all, you're sitting there 10 years later and you go, I got it. I know how to fix it. Oh man. Well, Mike, I think one of the most polarizing moments in your seasons was definitely the death of Maude Flanders. I'd like to know just how that decision was made. And was there any internal debate as to whether she was the right character or whether any character could die? Because it was a big, like, there was a lot of promotion behind that episode, too.

Yeah, that was a moment. And I would love to say that it came out of like months of soul searching and a desire to shake things up. But it really, the honest answer is it came down to a contract negotiation between the studio

and the actress that played Maude. And it just wasn't working out between them for reasons that I will leave between them. And she made a, the actress made a decision that she didn't want to do the show anymore. And, you know, I talked to her personally and I told her to really, you know, think it over. I could tell, you can tell when the studio is still playing the game and when they're done. And I could tell they were done and they weren't going to budge anymore. And I knew she wasn't going to be happy. But you want to give the actress the opportunity to make their own decision

and determine their own fate. It certainly was not a case where she was fired or she did anything wrong. They just couldn't come to financial terms. So she decided to quit the show. So we had a decision to make, which was, did we bring in a new Maud Flanders, which we did try for a while. And then also it was, you know, or do we do something with the show? We've got Ned Flanders, this God-fearing,

you know, family-loving, you know, neighbor of Homer's that everyone loves, and do we actually do something in the show after 10 years and shake it up a little? And the decision was made quicker than I would have thought. I won't say who the writer was, but somebody said, let's kill Maud. And within a day or two, we had come up with this storyline of how she died and what the impact would be on not only on Ned, but Ned and Homer's relationship. And we wound up getting an episode that I think came out pretty well. I have one or two regrets on it, but you know,

Homer feeling bad for Ned. I mean, cause Homer's such a jerk in the first half of that episode. Yeah. I mean, he's such a jerk. He literally is the reason she died. And,

but the second half, he's trying so hard to help Mel, move on with his life you know it's all shorthand it's it's all done in 21 minutes which is insane but overall um and i haven't watched the episode in a long time but i remember being pleased with homer's you know behavior and commitment to ned in the second half of the show. And also, I think it gave us a chance to explore Ned as a single dad, as the guy who nothing, you know, wrong seems to happen to with the exception of the Hurricane Neddy episode. The guy who seems to have it all together family-wise. And it gave us a chance to maybe shake Ned's confidence a little bit

and have him date and try some other things. You know, was it the right call? It felt like it at the time. I always had a theory on Ned. This is purely my own theory. It was never discussed on the show. But my personal theory was that Ned Flanders is who Homer would secretly like to be, but knows it's way too much work and he doesn't have it in him, you know,

because of, because of the way Marge sees Ned. And, and that Marge thinks he's such a good person and a good father and tries to do the right thing. Yeah. We've seen Marge loser cool occasionally with Ned, but more so actually with Maude. Maude was much more judgmental than Ned was, in my opinion.

So that was kind of like my little theory there, but the whole thing came out of a business decision. It was not... It did not start as a creative decision. How about the sobering up of Barney Gumbel? And I will say, we did delete a scene

from the show with the kid that I still have mixed emotions about, and I don't know if it's on one of the DVDs. We watched it. We had a scene of Homer telling Rod and Todd what had happened and why, and what's going to happen with their lives. And we ultimately deleted the scene because we found that comedically we couldn't dig ourselves out of that hole the remainder of the episode. It was just too difficult. And I look back on it now and it's whatever, 20 plus years ago. Some of that might have been my own immaturity at the time. It's one of those you think like you do these shows and you just move on and you forget them but every once in a while there's something that

just kind of sticks with you and you wish like you could go back and take another crack at something and figure out a way to to do it better and that's one of those for me well a similar change that was made during your seasons was uh barney changing He became sober. What was the intent behind that? Did you just run out of drunk jokes to tell, or were you looking for a different characterization of Barney, maybe one that wasn't so pathetic? No, that came in as I walked into my office one day, and there was a script on my desk written by Dan Castellaneta, who plays Homer, and Barney, among many others, and his wife, Deb Lacusta. They had written this script completely on spec, never ran the story by anybody. They're both very talented writers, and so took it upon themselves to write a script

and see what the reaction would be. And the idea was that Barney tries to get sober. And I read the script, and obviously very nervously, because I love Dan and Deb so much, and I wanted to love it, and it was terrific. They had put so much thought into this. Never talked to any of the writing staff about it. They were completely on their own. And we sat down and had a long meeting about it,

and we were trying to figure out what to you know how to tell the the story and particularly the ending of the story because if i'm not mistaken in their version at the end barney goes back to being an alcoholic and i think my memory of it is i thought it would be too sad of an ending if we see barney go on this whole, you know, journey, I hate to use that word, journey, but to do better himself, to overcome, like, what is clearly the biggest problem in his life, and then fail at the end, I worry that that would be a dissatisfying ending. And maybe Dan might have felt that the character was getting a little tired i but i i don't want to speak for him but that seems to come to mind so ultimately but we did

the episode where barney wants to get his helicopter's license he wants to make something of his life and i think it ends with if i'm not mistaken they get him hooked on coffee at the end that's right yeah mauve starts making coffee just to keep making money off of barney yeah yeah uh so but that was the beginning of kind of dan and deb writing episodes for the show and we did kind of over time start to miss the old barney like you didn't see him for a while and then we didn't know what to do with him sober. So we did kind of slip him back eventually. I think also part of that too, for me was I grew up with a lot of alcoholics in my family. So I think the failure at the end of him going back to be an alcoholic, although true to

my family, not my mother or father, but a lot of aunts and uncles. It felt just too sad to me. I think my personal feelings may have fought what might have been the better ending to the story. Haha, wasn't that fun? Haven't changed a bit have we next up is clips from me and bob interviewing dan grainy again if you don't know dan grainy started as a writer of the simpsons in season seven his first credited writing was on king size homer but he has given a lot more to the show than just that he has been in the writing room helping out with so many memorable jokes even if he wasn't the credited

writer of the episode, which Dan Grady explains to us here. In interviews and commentaries, I've heard that Oakley and Weinstein years, those were the longest hours, the staying till 3am to, you know, finally figure out that one joke you needed. Was that your experience there? It was my privilege to have that experience. I loved it. I was very, I was more than happy to

stay till 3am trying to get the right sign joke or the right name for Don Brodka, you know, the detective, which was one of those occasions where we the right name for Don Brodka, you know, the detective, which was one of those occasions where we stayed so late for hours. And yes, there was definitely some psychological problems that were producing that. But, you know, they're my kind of psychological problems. You know, I didn't want, if that wasn't something I was up for, I was in the wrong place in my feeling. And so I thought it was tremendously fun. And I remember one time, I forget which episode, but we were working on this line,

like somebody had painted us, we'd written ourselves into a corner with the setup, you know, men are from Mars, women are from Venus, you know, which was that popular book in the 90s about gender differences. And that was the setup. We needed something that was a punchline off of that we just could not get it and uh and at some point people started putting money on the table like whoever gets this line will get all this money and i think it was like one or two in the morning and there was like several hundred dollars in a pile on the table and george meyer uh pitched that homer somebody margaret said we go men are from Mars, women are from Venus. And then Homer says, fine, give us the one with the monsters. It was a good line.

That's great. It was a great line. We were stuck in this little corner. And, you know, it would be fun. You get a little intoxicated, a little punchy in those late night sessions. So I loved it. Well, they had very high standards. And, yeah, I think in their first year, you you know they really had no ability to balance other things but

you know i didn't have a family whatever i loved it well do you remember what your first like your first pitched joke was that went in the show we interviewed mike scully and he remembered when he finally struck up the courage to pitch a joke in the room because he found it very intimidating. Do you recall what yours was? Well, I was pitching right when I walked through the door because these were people, Bill is like a buddy of mine, Josh is a buddy of mine. I felt very comfortable immediately and I've always pitched more than I probably should. So, like, one of my mottos that I've had to reiterate is, hey, they can't all be jammed. So I'm sure I pitched a hundred bad things before I got something in the script, and I think, having talked to some people who were there, they were pretty annoyed that

this new kid was coming in this guy coming in pitching all this bad shit not knowing it's bad and just being going on his merry way but eventually i didn't notice i wasn't getting things in the script uh and and so that became a concern and i possibly the first thing that i was like sure went in the script might have been the name of the video game Bonestorm. Oh, wow. That might have been. And then there was another thing that went in and came out that I so loved, which has been an experience of mine, but we needed a name of a country band. And I remember pitching a feral flag and the second helping boys.

I thought that was a pretty darn darn good name for for a jug pan well bloodstorm is great and i bet several video game companies are mad that you stole that because there have been games like bullet storm and blood storm they can't use bone storm now because it's a joke right but we built we beat them to it i think that like to be that bullet Bulletstorm they might've done anyway, but Bloodstorm, I don't think anybody would have gone that freaking psycho. Bulletstorm for sure, that's easy. But Bloodstorm, that's really wrong.

Well, so, you know, we just did an episode of our podcast on your first episode as credit writer, King Size Homer. I know you mentioned that on the commentary too that George Meyer put a ton of jokes in it and you were giving a lot of credit on there,

but I did wonder, what did you miss from your script that you wish was in there? Were there any cut jokes or plot points that you wish were in there? Well, one, I would say that George contributed a lot of jokes. The story and the take on Homer, the joyful, the joie de vivre, was Bill and Josh.

You know, the basic story was a Bill and Josh story, and it's very much Bill's sensibility that Homer would delight in this gaining of weight and all this. And so the fun, the whole attitude of it did come from Bill and Josh. And George pitched a lot of great jokes too, super important. But there was one line when Homer is wearing his muumuu and he sees himself in the mirror. In my original draft, Homer was like, I took Homer down further emotionally to a more emotionally dark place.

And Homer, looking at himself in the mirror, and the whole facade of jollity breaks up. And he goes, I feel bad about myself. And that line became George Myers' mantra for the next five years. Oh, wow. And so that was very gratifying. for the next five years. Oh, wow. And so that was very gratifying. It didn't go in the script,

but it had a life of its own, you know, so that was fun. I love that. I can just imagine Dan Castellaneta just very depressed and like, I feel bad about myself. You can hear it in your head. Yeah, it's great. I think that that maybe represented,

you know, if it were like a little bit of my own style and voice, there was a little bit starker, blunter, harsh tone that could sometimes come out, you know. So maybe that was like just not within. That jumped out to George because it was just not quite the tone that Joe had, you know. So Summer of 442 is a great episode, one that you wrote. How much of that did you pull from your own childhood, or was that just sort of an amalgam of kids who grew up in the 60s and 70s? No, that was a very personal episode for me, very much based on my life,

but it's also a very personal episode for a number of other people that were there. So it's like I wrote, that story I can definitely say is my story, and I wrote it, but other people so had lived such similar things that it be that they were also able to get right into those shoes you know and and pitch from their own experience so though I say yes this is what came out at the end was quite close to what I pitched it was also very much owned by some other people in particular I think of Steve Tompkins who who is one of our great writers, you know, who loved Steve more than most people in the comedy world was like novelistic or poetic

in his obsession with observed detail, you know, and he just loved to get stuff right. And so like, I just remember like, there's something about a decorative rowboat full of geraniums, you know, there's like little touches all throughout that, like, I just remember, like, there's something about a decorative rowboat full of geraniums. You know, there's like little little touches all throughout that were like Steve, who is also like me from Massachusetts, also went down to Cape Cod and just want and totally were trying to get everything right. And then I think Bill and Josh had gone to their summers to Maryland or something. And, you know, like these sort of of, like, porn, you know,

Homer buying pornography and everything, that's pure Bill loving, like, American graffiti and being that, you know. So I think that, and the dud and all that, that's kind of Bill. But the Lisa story, the Bart and Lisa rivalry, that was pure me.

But then it became owned by other people too, you know as because they had such they related to it and uh so and then the ending thing you know was i pitched that thing with the crab or whatever so you know the tone i think the tone and the take was i have some ownership of but it's jointly it's joint custody so uh that episode and also my sister my sitter have a uh they both feature a schism between bart and Lisa. Is that just a coincidence, or is that a dynamic that you like to write in your episodes? That's a coincidence.

My Sister, My Sitter was probably Bill Oakley's idea. You know, I think that was his pitch and, you know, the indignity of it. I think that episode's really about indignity. You know, like your older boy is being babysat by his younger sister. It's just infuriating. So that was really, that's much more Bill's episode.

I would say that for me, the themes of the summer one was like themes I related to of like, for personal repositioning and reinvention, sibling rivalry, certainly. The other thing that I thought was a little note that I've always been drawn to was sort of like Marge's desire to be Lisa's friend. And it's being a little sad.

You know, like the idea of the lonely mother that wants to be friends with her children or whatever, that is definitely something I have. I feel it, you know? What can I say? Well, in that summer episode, I think one of my favorite lines in that is when Marge just so innocently corrects Lisa about Gore Vidal

and is like, Girls, Lisa, boys kiss girls. Yes. And that's a room pitch, and God only knows whose that was. But yes, that was... Marge was nice where you could do things that are clueless but not mean, you know?

Like, I don't know. I think in another episode, I think Tom Gamble pitched a line when they're at Disneyland or something that Marge says, I hope I don't eat an elephant. Like, what is wrong with you? It's just your cluelessness. But if you've had, you know, known some clueless ladies, you know, you have to have a certain tenderness for them. So I've been listening to a bunch of commentaries to prepare for this interview. And one thing that came up a few times was the fact that there was going to be a Planet Hollywood episode. And not much was said about it other than the fact that it was never made.

Can you talk more about that? Like who wrote it? If the jokes ended up anywhere? I know nothing about that. Oh, wow. That's at a high management level beyond my experience. Okie doke. Now I just want to know like what it was all about.

It's that and the Prince episode. Yeah. Well, there's the Prince episode. There was an episode about a cult-like religious organization that I think ran into some bit of a minefield that never got produced. Yeah, the Movementarians one got kind of close to that, but that's not the same, though. I think there was another one that went much closer.

And that's too close. It went too close to the sun. I've gone a little bit in order here on your credited episodes. We did write the Genesis Tub segment in Treehouse 7, which did you pitch that one too? Or did somebody else say, like, we're going to carry this? No, I don't think so. I don't really recall.

I doubt it. You know, or maybe, actually, I think I did pitch it, but I didn't know that it had been a night gallery episode you know so i don't know it i feel like somebody shrinking is not you know it's pretty obvious right so so i don't feel like a great uh brainstorm uh to think of a shrink shrinking episode and were you aware that that Treehouse segment was then used in as an example of Simpsons Did It in the South Park episode about Simpsons Did It? Yeah, that was gratifying. And you've got to give those guys

respect for that episode. That's a courageous thing, a generous way to respond to that thing. But they did some great stuff that we haven't done. Well, you guys can't murder as many people on the Simpsons as they can. Can I, uh, mention one thing is while I can see that the credited episodes provide structure, you would interview and I get it.

Um, it's very interesting that there's a whole other side of the street, you know, like I would say that on the one hand, like of the street, you know? Like, I would say that on the one hand, like, my credited episodes, you know, overstate. If you said, oh, I wrote this or I wrote this, they overstate my contribution by the credit. Now, you've got to get into that and you correct that,

and that's great. But there's another thing, which is all of our participation in the total culture of it is kind of of not caught captured by that like in it i don't know if anything can capture it but like little motifs and ideas and concerns and takes i'm just saying if you're going to take all my episodes away from me which is fine fair you've got to give me a certain percentage of everybody else's episodes you got to figure out a method well i well i will say you had mentioned some of the stuff, like Bonestorm, but also in that episode, the Range Rover mom and Gavin. I do really love those pair because I think when that episode aired, I was a little bit of Gavin.

I was the spoiled kid who was mean to his mom. I think that is the first joke about a millennial ever put on television. I think so. Oh, thank you. Yeah, no, I saw that happening in the dry cleaner. I couldn't believe it, how terrible this kid was to his mother and how indulgent she was of him in return. And then I realized this is something that's going on.

So, you know, I thought it was funny we put it in, and a bunch of the writers loved it. I think Mike Scully thought this kid was so awful, he just wanted nothing more the writers loved it. I think Mike Scully thought this kid was so awful, he just wanted nothing more to do with it. Mike's so disapproved of treating your mother that way that he banished

the character. Well, I think he was the one family man at the time, or one of a few on the staff. Right, and I think he's a really good dad and I think he takes some of those issues more seriously than you know or you're weird seeing them from an outside perspective you know just look at this horrible family you you mentioned yeah what it's like to be in the writer's room and having to in just

contributing the whole thing like when when you get isn't it when you get assigned a script like you're kind of out of the room for for a little while right when you get assigned a script, like you're kind of out of the room for a little while, right? When you're writing a script, like, are there then some episodes like you didn't get to really put stuff in? Among my many list of grievances, my long list of grievances is the stuff that I didn't help write. It's so hurtful that they could do such amazingly great work without me. But let the facts speak for themselves chimpanzee to chimpanzee called like troy mcclure you know they stopped the planet of the ace i want to get off that wasn't because i was out on script it was because i think we were working in two rooms at that point and the other room did this amazing thing and it's like what i can't claim to be part

of it if i'd been in the room i could persuade myself that somehow I had been the person that got the ball rolling. There would be some way for me to argue myself into believing I had contributed. But I had nothing to do with it. And, you know, I just loved it. As soon as I heard it, it was truly painful. And I've seen that again and again. I've seen the show do good work without me.

Well, as you were telling us before, the fact that your name is on an episode just means you wrote that first draft or the first script for the episode. What are misconceptions? I just want you guys to find a way to reflect the other side of the point. That we give

and we give and we give to other people's episodes and have, you know, it's like you're an ingredient in a soup. That's all I'm saying. I'm an ingredient in the soup. Do you get a lot of misconceptions about what being a Simpsons writer is like? Like people think you write for a certain character

or that every word in the script is yours. Do you hear just a lot of, I mean, people approaching you not really knowing how a comedy writer works? Well, the misconception I'm encountering right now is that you think anybody cares about

The Simpsons. Oh, we do. You do, and Cognoscenti do, of course, and we love that, and we try to still, you know,

produce episodes that you would like, but it's not as cool as it once was, I'll say that. You know, like, what you tend to get i'll say that you know like i don't like what you tend to get these days is you know oh are they still making new ones of those

it seems like 50 of the time that's truly innocent you know from some regular person and 50 of the time it's a sneaky little jab by somebody who knows perfectly well that they're making it ouch i i also know you did do the Everything's Coming at Millhouse line, which I've seen get used a lot by folks in the Simpsons fan community or just online by people making jokes. What do you think of that type

of fandom, or I guess shitposting is the term for it, of just people who make goofy posts using Simpsons lines and making some kind of fun turn on it? Well, you know, God bless him. I feel like, you know, the culture of ownership of ideas and ownership of things is a little overstated. You know, like when even everything come up Milhouse, obviously the phrase everything's coming up roses preexisted. So I added one word. And even everything come up Milhouse, obviously the phrase everything's coming up roses preexisted.

So I added one word. So, you know, I can't be too precious about it. And I like the recombinatorial element of our culture. And when I see the obverse argument being made that you can't appropriate things, you can't use things, I feel like that is, you know, suffocating creativity. I'd rather people make it their own. So that's fine with me. But I will say that I much prefer the people saying or doing things that showed that it had some meaning to them as what I originally intended. You know, I've met somebody who had a tattoo that said everything's coming up Milhouse. I knew a bunch of artist people that are now in their late 30s, and that had a certain resonance for them of the poor kid, the loser,

whatever, getting his day in the sun, and the generosity of it had some meaning to them. And that was gratifying to me. Then they can wreck it, sure, fine, go ahead. I know I would say in Simpsons fandom there's probably more Milhouses than Barts, for sure. Oh, it's fandom, there's probably more Milhouses than Barts. Oh, for sure. Oh, it's pretty much a room full of Milhouses right there.

Written by Milhouse. We asked this of Bill Oakley, and I'm just curious if you had any input on this. Were there any ideas or jokes you really wanted to make during your run there that just couldn't make it that couldn't be fleshed out no i don't think so i mean i've had episodes that i've pitched that got rejected that were giant catastrophes like pitching and and eating it hard was certainly not fun and the episodes themselves i think were good you know like so they were me, at least, they were somewhat realized. When I pitched it, I had it, it was all there, you know. And so that they didn't say yes to it is hurtful, but I don't feel like it was something that was, like, left undone.

I feel like, well, I did it, and they just didn't want it. And lastly, from our interview with David Silverman, he shares with us some incredible details about how the shorts went into production back then, what the first years of The Simpsons were like, and even how they tried to keep the shorts going on Tracy Ullman once the show began in 1989. So was there any thought about continuing the shorts on Tracy Ullman after you got picked up for a season? Well, you know, they tried, actually. Matt had it in mind

that I would like supervise and direct another animator or two. And we actually did an MG49. I actually, I think on Twitter,

I posted some storyboards on it that I still have. Wow. That was, I forget what it's called. I know it's called Bart's Nightmare. It was called something else.

But in any case, and we had this animator do it and he animated the whole thing and it was, I forget what it's called. I know it's called Bart's Nightmare. It was called something else. But in any case, and we had this animator do it. And he animated the whole thing. And it was really bad. It just looked awful. And the timing was bad. And it was sort of like, it seemed like it was made by something. You could tell it was just not made by Wes and myself. And it didn't have the same rhythm.

It didn't look right. And it just felt wrong. So I think Matt just kind of shrugged and said, no, we've got enough to do. Or Matt and Jim, I don't know who made the decision, but clearly it was terrible, and there was nothing I could do about it. They didn't blame me, thankfully. But he realized that it was sort of interesting. In a way, I said, well i guess that that speaks well

of wes and myself and it hadn't been the first in the tracy ullman show maybe it would have gotten as far as it did uh i but anyhow that's what happened i had always assumed it was just well yeah we're working on the half hour now so we can't do the shorts anymore but wow pretty much pretty much i mean that was that was sort of the real thing that gave us in that direction. But we gave it a shot. And it didn't work. At all. Well, man.

It was just miserable. Well, so comparing working on those shorts to the music videos, you worked on Deep, Deep Trouble. I believe it was Brad Bird oversaw Do the Bartman. How did those compare? Yeah, Brad Bird not oversaw. He worked like crazy. I think he was in Hungary or somewhere animating it. He went overseas to supervise it and follow it up

and make sure it was great you know he did a terrific job i mean they originally wanted me to do it but i couldn't do it i was doing five episodes i couldn't do a music video on top of that i'd have a heart attack um as it was i think at one point i said you know guys i'm gonna flop on the floor like a fish and i did i mean i just joked but i think they thought oh david's cracking up so but i was just joking around but it wasn't a lot of work that was the strangest part of my life is that i was getting you know you know like this was 19 this is 1990 i guess like two years earlier i just was you know mascara animator working on the tracy ellman show and then david silverman line one michael jackson for david silverman line one, Michael Jackson for David Silverman, line one.

Like, what's going on here? You know, because Michael wanted me to do the video, and I was like, well, I'm going to work on it, Michael. We'll get to it. That's when Brad assumed the duties, and he worked really hard on it. But it came out great. That was D. LaBart. And that was another great sort of revelation to us about, you know, directing and shots and angles and so forth. Yeah, I think in both of those you can really tell there's such attention to detail

and it has, you know, fuller animation, I guess you'd say. There's a lot more like in-jokes packed in. It's just they're amazing to look at even now, I'd say. Yeah, and Greg Vanzo handled Deep, Deep Trouble. And I can't remember my involvement. I know that I storyboarded a number of things in it that he followed very closely. I've got to give it to Greg on that one.

Greg Vanzo did a great job on that. That's great. I had some input in it, you know. That was about it. So The Simpsons transitioned from Klasky Chupo to film Roman after season three. Can you talk about what that was like as an animator, as a director? It was fine. I mean, I can't speak to the situation between Gracie Films and Klasky Chupo. They just weren't getting, they weren't really getting along,

let's put it that way. They weren't having a good business relationship. So that was the point of the move. In many ways, again, no slight to anybody, but it was better for us as animators. The facility was better. It was a bigger space. I would say Phil Roman ran a really great studio. He was a great guy. Really, really cared deeply for his employees and his animators because, you know, of course, he was an animator and an animation director himself and came up through the ranks so he had much uh respect for everybody and uh it was in many ways i would say was an improvement just in the in the way uh things were run and things were were managed they were managed better there's a better production staff and as a director i found that there was more assistance from the production team oh great that's good well you around that time not to say that all the episodes didn't look great because they always did back then i love them all but i would say that your treehouse of horror 4 to me is the best looking like best animated

episode of the series like what what came together was there anything particular about the production on that one that that you think yielded those results i don't know i know i did a lot of animation on it i don't know how i had the time to do it but i did i i guess in some ways at that point as a supervising animator i was able to i'm sorry supervising director i didn't have to do as much. I don't know, I worked out and I was able to do a lot of the animation on it myself. I don't know how I had the time. I think it's no secret that the scene, their dogs were playing poker. I animated, I basically animated it completely in between after in between. It's because I was very much into that reading. And there were other scenes that I had a lot to do. I remember I really just wanted to get that transition of Bart from vampire boy into a bat, you know, just right.

So I kind of animated that more or less. Yeah, I was going to say that one. Like, when we rewatched it for the podcast, like, I was just freeze framing every shot of that transformation. Like, oh, my God. Yeah, it was fun. And it just worked out. Partly, too, I don't know.

We just had a great time. I really enjoyed doing the Chernobog version of Flanders of the Devil. Oh, that's great, yeah. And it was fun doing the Devil. I was able to do a lot of personal stuff with it. I designed the Gremlin character. Well, it wasn't hard designing the devil flanners, just flanners and horns.

But no, there were a lot of great things. I had a lot of great artists working on it. Mike Anderson was a layout artist for me. He's a great, great animator. This fellow, Isvan Myhorns, who's from Hungary, he's an incredible draftsman,

incredible cartoonist. So I had a very strong team as well. Although Mike always chides me that one of the first things I gave him to lay out was this scene where it was an animation background in the kitchen, where you go from one shot, then we animate and reveal the kid. He said, thanks a lot, David. Well, I appreciate it. No, I love that show, too. I think it came out really well.

Oh, I think of the other thing, too. I was a big fan of the night gallery, so I really wanted to get that right. The vocal readings were so much fun to work with, and I also had fun designing the paintings, you know, the Magritte painting and some I just sort of came up myself with the Picasso-esque Lisa on the saxophone. It was a lot of fun. I love Homer's little elbow movements when he goes, Super fun, happy slides!

That's great. Oh, yeah. And that was Brad. Oh, wow. Nice. Because we were all fans of Humphrey Bear in the great Disney shorts of the 50s. That's right. And that was sort of a Humphrey Bear move.

Brad also came up with that great little movement of Homer popping on his toes in the Land of Chocolate sequence. That was his suggestion as well. I remember he was saying he used to do that. So I ended up, I animated partly, well, as you know, I animated Homer at the beginning, the skip and all that sort of thing and the chocolate bunny topping and animated that part

and that little bit too, that was Brad's great suggestion Yeah, that Homer skip ended up showing up in Black Widower too with Bob and was it Patty or Selma? Selma Yeah, so I think you guys must be a big fan of that animation cycle. Yeah, I kind of reworked it in that, in fact

when I was doing, when we did the Hollywood Bowl in 2014, I really got a call like in January that they need something for the flyer right away. And I said, okay, I can do it over the weekend. He said, well, can you do it tomorrow? I go, okay. Well, thanks for the notice.

And I actually have a cell of Homer skipping in the Land of Childhood. I look actually have a cell of Homer skipping in The Land of Chocolate. I look at that and said, okay, I'm just going to take this image and put a conductor's uniform on him. Give him a baton and do a sort of thing

of the Hollywood Bowl and how do you guys like this? Okay, good. Yeah, I'm really clever. So when you meet fans of the show, what would you say is the most common misconception they have about the production of The Simpsons? because you don't want to hamstring the performances, and you want to be inspired by the performances and inspire not only physical performances,

but hearing them, you know, once they're recorded, you start thinking about, it sort of even helps your staging a little bit. I also, oh, the other misconception is, oh, it takes you about a week to do an episode, right? I said, yeah, it takes you a week. Would you believe six months of actual production? I mean that's like yeah that's a fast one right six months it's six months when i when i say six months i mean from the point of storyboarding to

the point of getting the first back in color but really takes uh more like nine months when you think about you know well take example the episode that i that I wrote, co-wrote with Brian Kelly. But I came up with the idea. I came with the idea and pitched to Al in March of 2017. And it airs, you know, just aired a year and a month later. Now, we didn't start it right there. That was when the idea was pitched. We started writing it, I guess, around August. It was around June of last year. Al really liked the idea and he kind of fast-tracked it,

which surprised me. I just pitched the idea to say, I have this idea. Maybe you want to do this. And he looked at me and said, you want to write it? And I was like, well, I don't know. I haven't written an episode of The Simpsons.

And so he suggested, well, you might want to pair up with a writer. I said, that'd be great. So I asked Brian Kelly if he liked the idea. It was awesome. Yeah, so the production of an episode, as you know, takes more like nine months from the time that you start writing it

and the time that it's finished. It may not air exactly when you're done, but although we are getting the last retakes in just before the wire, which we can these days. Yeah. retakes in uh uh just before the wire oh wow we can be safe yeah no i i think they're all i think they're all in now because when i saw that your episode was airing tomorrow i was like well oh man does david even have time for this interview today like geez oh no no i'm done and if anything actually i after i'm going actually on monday i'll be going to uh

stuttgart for the animation festival there's nice i gotta prepare for that you became you mentioned becoming supervising director did that position exist in the first seasons of the show before like who who was it before you or was there there not? Were you the first? I was more or less the first. I think Dabra Chupo was nominally supervising director. But they wanted me to do that. They really liked my episodes in the first season. So I think it was probably coming from Jim Brooks. They wanted me to be supervising director.

Or Sam, actually, I remember. Probably had something to do with it as well. And I sort of did that in the second season sort of looking uh over the shoulders of uh jim reardon and and mark kirkland but they didn't need too much you know they were they're they're great and so but that's uh that's that's how that happened you know yeah i did more and more of that as by the third season they said okay we want you supervising more and directing less. And I said, okay, fine with me. I think that was the other thing, too. Because of that, I was able to do more animation.

And that's what I ended up doing a lot of the time. Or I would help people out, like doing the Blue Daniel sequence for helping Carlos Baez out on the Deep Space Homer show. Or even Bob Anderson doing the See My Vest sequence. Two Dozen One and Greyhounds was a pretty difficult show. Oh, wow. Well, yeah, you also, in the I Didn't Do It Boy episode for Bart, there's definitely some crusty poses in there that I'm like, that looks like a David Silver.

Yeah, I seem to remember doing a few things in that one. I think I did the scene where it's like, hey, kids, here he is, but he's really depressed or something like that in that episode.

I think that's in that one. Mark Kirkland had me, wanted me to do the, or maybe I said I really want to do the scene with, you know, with Homer

in the Power of Sugar episode. The great speech, you know, I can't live the button-down lifestyle like you i want it all well what is there a lot of saying of simpsons quotes within the simpsons team as well because i know like in for fans we do that constantly oh i think yes we we often get into uh like little catchphrases and from the show would come into our conversation with sort

of ebb and flow, depending on what episode tickled us more than the other. It's hard to recall now, but I just remember that happening from time to time. I wish I had a better story to tell from that. But the answer is yes. We would do the exact same thing.

I'll tell you one thing that we would always do. We'd always say, I don't know. Great confidence. You did that in this interview, actually. By the way, that was one of my favorite stage directions that made me laugh out very loud. Because when I read that episode, you know, it was in the Blood Feud episode. And it said, okay, Mr. Burns, what is your first name? Homer.

Confident. I don't know. That word confident really killed me. It's so funny. So boom, there you have it. Three of our most recent interviews. We have tons more exclusive content on patreon.com slash talking simpsons where you can hear all of those full interviews right now for just five dollars a month you can also hear our other previous interviews like with mimi pond the

writer of the first episode aired of the simpsons the christmas special our chat with paul provenzano one of the executive producers of classic simpsons video games, who has a ton to tell us about making games like Bart vs. the Space Mutants or Virtual Springfield, as well as Bill Oakley, one of the executive producers of this season that we're going through right now, and Reed Harrison, the writer of the X-Files crossover episode. You can hear all of that as well as our patreon exclusive talking futurama series all of talking critic as well that's a patreon exclusive our community podcast for bob and me go over our favorite comments that month the season wrap-ups the entire first season of talking simpsons so many things available to you right now if you just sign up for five dollars a month

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