Talking Simpsons - Talking Simpsons - The Jon Vitti Interview!

Episode Date: April 24, 2020

We just did a brand new interview with Jon Vitti that would normally just be for $5+ subscribers on Patreon.com/TalkingSimpsons! But we enjoyed so much our chat with the writer of Lisa's Substitute, Bart The Genius, Cape Feare, and much more that we wanted to share it with all of you! So listen to our chat with Simpsons legend Jon Vitti as we cover his career there and at SNL, King of The Hill, The Critic and more! And if you enjoyed this, subscribe at the Patreon to hear over 20 hours worth of our previous interviews with Simpsons luminaries! Support this podcast and get dozens of bonus episodes by visiting Patreon.com/TalkingSimpsons and becoming a patron! And please follow the new official Twitter, @TalkSimpsonsPod!

Hey, Egghead! Sing Fair Harvard! Fair Harvard, I... You, sir, have the boorish manners of a Yaley! Ahoy, hoy, everybody, and welcome to another Talking Simpsons interview. I am one of your hosts for this one, Bob Mackie. That name again is Bob Mackie, and who is here with me today? Crowd Harvard appreciator, Henry Gilbert. Hi! And today's interview is with John Vidi, a legendary writer of The Simpsons,

The Critic, King of the Hill, The Office, and so many more things. We talked with him about his work on The Simpsons and some other projects, too, because he was one of the original writers for the show yeah a perfect time to chat with him because we just did our 30th anniversary chat through season one and normally our interviews are patreon exclusive for five dollar enough subscribers at patreon.com slash talking simpsons but we wanted to share this one with you guys because it just is so cool and we've been chasing after john beatty for so long and i also think you know you listeners can get a preview of what you're missing out on on like the 20 other awesome interviews we've done in the past that are

exclusive to the patreon yeah we've talked to people like mike reese dan mcgrath dan grainy more than just dan's though david silverman mark k Kirkland, who else? I mean, Bill Oakley and Josh Weinstein, multiple times. Mike Scully, more than once as well. Jeff Martin, a contemporary of John Beatty as well. Jay Kogan. Jay Kogan, very recently. Like tons, tons of people who, they tell us stories about the early days, things we've never heard before. Like we learned a lot of new stuff in this John Beatty interview as well. There is shocking new information on this interview that I had never heard before. Like we learned a lot of new stuff in this John VD interview as well. There is shocking new information on this interview that I had never heard before. Yes. Yes. So I guess without further ado, let's go into our interview with John VD. And if you guys enjoy this and would love to hear more of our chats with tons of Simpsons veterans, please consider joining at

the $5 level at patreon.com slash talking simpsons uh well so hey john welcome i i guess i wanted to start with um the your comedy career i believe began at the the harvard lampoon and you know, with a bunch of future Simpsons writers on the staff like Conan and Al Jean and Mike Reese and Greg Daniels and George Meyer. Like, what was that like? You know, back when we were doing it, there was no expectation that there was going to be a career that would come out of this. Jim Downey was class of 1974 and he was writing for Saturday Night. But then this is an anomaly. We just thought we were fighting over our college humor magazine. And if you're thinking like, wow, I got to get

those magazines with all those people writing for them, we didn't really know what we were doing. College kids aren't really very good at writing comedy. But that didn't stop us from having really vicious fights over the direction of the college humor magazine and who should be elected and who should be president. It was, you know, looking back, it was an amazing group of people, but we were also college kids. It was, you know, I owe my career to that place, but it was intense in both good and bad ways. And we always like knowing this, even though it doesn't matter that much. What did you study at Harvard? You know, I actually want I hadn't I was an

economics major because I wanted to have a saleable skill that would help me get a job when I was out of college. And like halfway through, I decided I didn't believe in the Harvard economics program, which sounded like a good way to talk yourself out of writing a thesis. But it actually I guessed right, like within years after I graduated, the University of Chicago guys pretty much disproved or like made the Harvard approach, the Keynesian approach fairly irrelevant. So I was actually correct in that my economics education was fairly worthless. But I don't know to what extent I actually analyzed that correctly and to what extent I didn't want to write a thesis. Who was president of Utah in there? I know Conan was for a time,

but I'm not sure exactly where you overlap. Yeah, no, I just missed Conan and Greg. They were class of 84. I was class of 81. Actually, the co-presidents the year I was there were me and Mike Reese and the vice president of the IBIS, they called it, was Al Jean.

So we've just been together forever you know that it happened uh randomly that uh that mike and al and i were back in the same room together on the first season of the simpsons but yeah it was it was a strange feeling great you know it's fine we all you know and we'd you know we'd all grown up we all worked together just fine but it was it was a weird unexpected thing when it happened so you went from the Harvard Lampoon to SNL, is that correct? I know it seems like there was maybe a few years in between then. And I was just wondering... No, I had a regular job for three years.

It just wasn't a given that you would go from the dorm room to the rewrite room the way... I think by the 90s, that had started to happen a lot. And I've always been grateful for that, that I actually had a normal job for not that much money, including things like overnight shifts and working with people who had nothing to do with comedy writing. It kind of, it's a life experience you can draw on for the rest of your career as a writer. It just kind of gives you a better perspective on things like how lucky you are to get paid to write TV comedy. I think, you know, working a real job really helps with that. And how did you end up on's working a real job really helps with that. And how did you end up on SNL? And if you have any memories of that experience,

please let us know. Because all I remember of your experience, it's been like a matter of public record is one statement on a commentary saying you did not have a great time as part of that crew. Well, that wasn't it wasn't their fault at all. You know, I it's such a nice thing Jim Downey did. I got my job through the Harvard Lampoon. Not that you got hired, but you got read, which is always the hard thing for an aspiring writer. There were always big stacks of spec scripts that writers were asked to read if you had the time. And nobody did this article. He wrote that article. And one of the articles he liked was one of mine.

And so I was allowed to submit material to Saturday Night that actually I totally got my start at Saturday Night through the Harvard Lampoon People parody. Can you talk about anything that actually you got on the air there? Any memorable sketches that were yours from that time period that people might remember? You always have to be careful talking about collaborations. The thing that was best remembered, I was Robert Smigel's supporting writer on his Trekkie convention sketch where William Shatner told the Trekkies to get a wife. That's great. Ah, classic.

And I mean, in these days, probably there was no Internet back then. And Robert had never seen an episode of Star Trek. And I had seen every episode like three times. And so he needed somebody who knew the show to sit in with him. You know, it was, you know, the sketches were all written from midnight to dawn on Tuesday night. And so, you know, it's hopefully I was a positive part of shaping the sketch or being an audience for him as well. But it's totally his sketch. It's like, get a life was totally his phrase, but he needed a co-writer because he didn't know the show. And so that will always be my happiest experience there. it's something i learned on the simpsons too no matter

how many famous people we met you meet on this on the simpsons the most exciting people to meet are people who were stars when you were a kid you know like after all my whole career i was never more excited than meeting william shatner on saturday night and adam west on the simpsons there's nothing that compares to that and at at a certain point, do you pitch writing a thing for Adam West or William Shatner just for the thrill of getting to meet them? No, honestly, that was a big motivation in developing the story pitch for Mr. Plow, because I always liked the car show. I went there every year. And then I realized, well, that's the total act one set piece. And then I kind of had's the total act one set piece and then I

kind of had that breakthrough if the Simpsons go to the car show they can meet Adam West and if the Simpsons meet Adam West I can meet Adam West and then it became like a life or death thing to create a story around the car show and replacing the car that uh that Sam would buy after Saturday Night Live I believe you just had uh season there. Where did Army Man come in? And when did you become a part of that? Army Man was something George did from Colorado. He quit Saturday night. He was incredibly successful on The Letterman Show and at Saturday Night too. And he was done with comedy writing. He looked at a map of the United States, decided what was the best place to live in the whole country and picked Boulder, Colorado. And went out there and just, you know, with this incredibly low tech process by modern standards, started making this little newsletter and asked people to contribute.

And so, yeah, the hop from Saturday night to The Simpsons was A, because I worked with George on Saturday night. And B, because Sam Simon, I don't know even the connection, but just found Army Man and decided he liked Army Man. And started asking George, what Army Man contributors would you recommend as writers for my new show? It's hard to come across copies of Army Man today, but I've seen a few online and it's pretty incredible. Like this, you know, late 80s newsletter has a lot of this flavor of what I think of like online into alternative comedy today is like you do you feel like it was kind of ahead of the curve on that type of comedy? That sort of thing was was sort of out there. I mean,

you know, certainly there's an intersection between army man and what became the Twitter sensibility. If Jack Handy at Saturday night just, you know, sued Twitter and said, I invented Twitter with deep thoughts, you know, he actually, he wouldn't win the lawsuit, but he would have a pretty good creative claim. So that sort of thing was out there and there just wasn't any means to do it. And George kind of came up with one. And it was something you couldn't say no to because what, you can't come up with like a two line idea. And some people, you know, had a gift for it more than others, just like Twitter. But everybody tried it. It was always fun. And it was just and again, like the late 70s Lampoon, I don't think anybody was doing it thinking this is going to find its

way to Hollywood producers and we'll all start working in TV shows. It was just we had a lot of time on our hands and George had the idea and it seemed like fun. And it was like with all these things with comedy writers, trying to come up with something that George would think was good was always worth it, was always worth the effort. And that's always true. Trying to come up with a script that Sam Simon thinks is good is the best motivation you can possibly have as a writer. So, you know, Army Man had that quality. It was just a bunch of people. Your hope would be that they would like something as much as you liked what they were doing. It was a pretty pure and fun thing. So a fellow contributor with you

on Army Man was John Swartzwalter. And whenever we talk to a Simpsons writer or producer, we always love to ask about John Swartzwalder stories. I think we get new information about him with every interview we do. So what was it like to just be in the room with John? And what was it like to know him? Because he seems like a very mysterious man to us as Simpsons fans. You know, I think I had the hardest challenge in working with Swartzwelder in that I was the other story editor on the staff with John Swartzwelder on it. And I, you know, Saturday night had just been a tough thing for me. It's like, it's all written after midnight. I hate being up after midnight. I'm possibly the least funny person in the world after midnight. It's very pressure packed. It rewards people who thrive under pressure and I collapse under pressure. So,

you know, Saturday night had been tough. And then I got my first job on a staff as a story editor. And the other story editor was John Swartzwelder. And I had no experience. I just thought that's how good you had to be to work as a story editor in Hollywood. And 30 years later, John Swartzwelder scripts are still the greatest scripts I've ever seen anyone write, including showrunners. But I didn't know that. I just thought that was the standard I had to meet if I was going to have a career writing comedy. It was a very cruel joke that was played on me. But it was such a... I realize now that not that many people had the experience of being in the office every day with

Schwarzwalder because he very quickly graduated to that writing at home thing. But, you know, it was really amazing just to read his scripts, you know, like you really, you know, every, I wrote Bart the Genius at home by myself before I moved out to California. Everything else I did at the Simpsons was different for having read John Swartzwelder writing The Simpsons. On the script writing level, he just showed us that the show could get more into a half hour than we thought it could. And then from there, you took that challenge and you tried to put your own spin on it because you couldn't just copy Swartzwelder.

That would be lame and it would be a disservice to everyone, including Swartzwelder. You had to do your own version of it. But he just, you know, in the early seasons, he just handed in a series of scripts that just took the bar to new levels. You said that you wrote Bart the Genius before you moved to California. It seems like a lot of the initial scripts were written in isolation or as not part of a writing team before you all came together. At what point of the part of the development process was there a proper writing room on The Simpsons? We all wrote our first script just working with Sam and Matt. And then Sam started to hire regular staff. And Jay and Wally, you know, were already on site physically. They were working for the Tracy Ellman show. And Mike and Al were working with Sam at It's

Gary Shandling show. So, you know, there was, you know, Sam had connections to everybody, but we were not in a room together until the show started to go into production. My first day at The Simpsons was the table reading for Bart the Genius, which was the second episode. They produced the first episode, which is the Babesitter Bandit show, which I think was shown 13th because of animation problems. That show, those guys did pretty much by themselves. And then it was a very strange, I moved to California three days later. My first day at the Simpsons was the Barth the Genius

Table reading. And then the first season was very different from the others in that Sam still had a part-time job working at the Tracy Ullman show. And so there were plenty of days where I'm sure there was production stuff going on. I was the only full-time employee at The Simpsons on the writing staff. There were plenty of days where I went in at 10 o'clock, sat down in my office waiting to see if the phone would ring. The phone did not ring and six o'clock came and I went home again. And I just was so petrified that something would happen and that I wouldn't be at my desk that I probably went in on a number of days that I didn't have to.

But it was done in a much more informal way because Sam was doing it part time. Jay and Wally were, you know, at the Tracy Ullman show two or three days a week. And Mike and Al had production obligations at its Gary Shambling show. So and,, you know, you can see it, the first season, of course, is such a beginning effort. And, you know, and part of the fact was that, you know, it was a part-time job for a lot of people. Yeah, I mean, looking back at the, just the writing credits on the first season, there's, like, on Crepes of Wrath, you're one of like four writers credited on it. Like how is that one written in such a way to have that many credited writers on it? The Crepes of Wrath was written in a way that no episode would be written today.

They just were out of stories and we needed a 13th episode. And Sam could do everything. And among the things Sam could do was write a script in the room with no first draft. He had done it on Taxi all the time. And so he just said, well, we need a 13th episode. Everybody come in. We're going to start writing. And The Crepes of Wrath was written start to finish just with Sam talking the script

with us in the room, tossing out ideas, hoping that Sam would like them. But it's an incredibly raggedy episode that I've never timed it. But that scene of Principal Skinner sitting on the couch with Homer explaining the premise of the episode, it feels like five minutes. It's like nothing you should ever do in an animated show, like have characters sit on a couch and talk for that long. It always surprises me when people remember that episode fondly, because it was written in such a crazy way that you should never write an animated episode ever again you know i think we just did that one in time that seemed to be like i think it borders on three minutes three minutes yeah oh okay yeah no it's it's endless and but you know it's like people would like you can always

pitch something for principal skinner talking to homer and it kind of all goes in and you know and you kind of get into that mindset well we have 20 minutes to fill and this all seems like it might get laughed so let's keep going it was a totally different process than when you were starting with a swartz welder draft and then building on that or you know as often happened when swartz welder really nailed one just doing a tiny little touch up and sending it to the animators well and and the Simpsons was your first half hour show and your first, you know, animated project like that. That had to be a lot of a lot of lessons learned in that time. Oh, yeah. I mean, there was so much that we, you know, we learned on the fly and, you know, and when we made mistakes, too, you know, I mean, something I remember really

clearly was, you know, Bart would swear in the first couple of seasons because, you know, and when we made mistakes, too, you know, I mean, something I remember really clearly was, you know, Bart would swear in the first couple of seasons because, you know, we thought, well, kids do. Let's be real. And so he would say, damn and bastard. And then, you know, it wasn't pressure groups of the networks or anything. Our friends and loved ones started calling us up and saying, you know, thanks. Thanks very much. My my young son is running around the house saying, bastard, bastard, bastard. You know, you know, thanks very much. My young son is running around the house saying, bastard, bastard, bastard. You know, you guys are the best. Keep it up. And so we realized,

oh, no, of course, kids are much too good at picking up swear words. You can't do that. And so like, and you'll see like around halfway through the second season when we realized what a bad idea that was, Bart stops swearing and he never stops again. Like we, we totally make made mistakes and that, you know, and that comes up now and then on parts of the show that are legacy parts of the show, because it was created in 1989 that, you know, you know, hopefully we did things that people liked and that were positive, but we, you know, we, we, we messed up all the time and, you know, and, and just because there were so many people and so many competent, and, you know, really talented people who came after us to do the show, it's, you know, it kind of becomes funny. But, you know, I, you know, something I talked about in

every Simpsons ever Twitter event was, you know, I was the creator, quote, unquote, of Lenny and Carl. And Lenny and Carl were created in like 10 seconds because I needed a couple of guys to be at the bachelor party with Homer and the Homer's night out episode. And they're so not thought out because behind on the script the whole time, and I had no time to think about who these guys were. If you had told me when I created them that Lenny and Carl would be on TV longer than Frasier Crane or Matt Dillon from Gunsmoke, I would have been sick to my stomach. You know, like if there are parts of the show that have lasted forever that got so little thought. And, you know, nobody who questions parts of the show should ever be called stupid because, you know, we, you know, we, you know, a lot of I, you know, I feel like Lenny and Carl became

much better characters when people started getting comedy out of the fact of what bad characters they were. Like in the softball episode, I think Schwarzwelder started trading on the fact that Lenny was a terrible character. And all of a sudden he became a much better character. There were only a few of us. We were mostly in our 20s and we had a lot to do. And hopefully Sam got some good stuff out of the fact that none of us had worked in 30-minute comedy before. But we also made mistakes that nobody else would have made.

So season two kicked off with Bart Gets an F, which to this date is the most watched episode of the show ever. So when you were on the staff at that time, did you feel like the phenomenon would be over very soon? Did you see it as a fad? Or did you have confidence that the show would last six or even eight seasons? You know, yeah. You know, I was just this Christmas at a Christmas party and Bill Odenkirk on the current staff asked me like, well, what was it like back in those days when the show was so huge? I mean, what did that feel like? And what I had to tell him is that it's like, you know, we never really felt that. There were a few weeks when the show first premiered and all of a sudden it was like jumping in the ratings week to week,

and it was in the top 20. But almost, you know, before we had any time to register that, because we were writing the second season, we found out that they were taking us from our beautiful little time slot between In Living Color and Married With Children and putting us on a night of programming that had never existed on the Fox network before on Thursday night against the Cosby show. You know, there's a lot we didn't know about Bill Cosby then.

It was incredibly popular. And, you know, we, you know, and as a show that had been such a formative thing for a lot of us was Batman. And so we just thought, OK, well, we're Batman. We're going to last two seasons and fight for a third. Wow. And that's it. We're done.

And, you know, we went from being, you know, we actually over the summer, our shows reran well and we actually got in the top 10 a couple of times. But before any of that had time to really sink in and become our routine, we were finishing second in the time slot to Cosby. And so, you know, looking back, I can see, well, the Fox network knew that we were helping to create a night of programming for them. And then 90210 came along and made that happen too. And so they got Thursday night out of that. And that was probably more valuable to them than us doing huge numbers between in living color and married with

children. But we didn't perceive that at the time. We thought we were screwed. We never perceived ourselves as being the writers of this giant hit show that everybody watched because it didn't really play out that long that way. Well, you mentioned Batman, and I love how much you can just feel the love for Adam West and just classic comic books in the show. We asked Jeff Martin this in our interview with him, too. But I get the feel that compared to other writing staffs back then, this was a more comic book reading, nerdier staff than a lot of sitcoms. Well, I think for sure we were nerdier. The comic book culture hadn't evolved to that extent yet i mean matt totally knew the comic stores and and you know in an assignment and a really

happy one when you started was to read matt's underground comics which are so interesting i think if any simpsons fan who hasn't looked at the really early life in hell comic it's it's really worthwhile because there's so much more judgmental and it's more where we were like, you know, because in your late 20s, you're fresh out of childhood. You've got, you know, all your childhood traumas are so fresh. And the fact that you can dump on your parents on national television is such an amazing, happy thing. So, you know, we were very much in that place. But yeah, you know, most of, you know, I don't want to speak for the whole staff, but something that was pretty universal. I think, you know, the shows that we really grew up on were that really spoke to us were Batman and Get Smart. And I really, Schwarzwalder and I would

talk about that sometimes, like, who do you write for? And I think Schwarzwalder said it and I immediately did. He said, like, I wrote, I write for like a 10 year old version of me. And he just, you know, and you try to, you know, who's the dead center target audience for The Simpsons. And we both felt you try to picture a smart kid, like around 10 to 12 years old, and you write for that kid, and you try to write it smart enough that adult can like it too. But yeah, I mean, a lot of my basic thought trying to, you know, push myself and get better at it would if I could be to some kid what Buck Henry and Lorenzo Semple were to me, that would be really cool. Because that was amazing. When you were a kid, and you turn on the TV, and you know, in these really smart, you know, like nobody was ever better than Buck Henry. And there's Buck Henry working really

hard to do a silly show that would make you laugh and be and respecting your intelligence. And it was so cool because so much TV doesn't. And, you know, and for us anyway, the original generation, I think that was our inspiration to try to do what those people did. So I definitely wanted to touch upon the episode Brother from the Same Planet, because when the DVDs for that season came out about, I don't know, 15 years ago, it was personally shocking to me that it was a disliked episode by Jim Brooks. And even he showed it to David Merkin before David became the showrunner and said, do not write episodes like this. I think it's a hilarious episode. Nothing seems wrong with it to me. So yeah, I just wanted to

know, what were your thoughts on that? You know, it's an interesting thing that you could teach in a comedy class. It was a hard episode for me me too i was not at all happy with that story assignment because the substitute teacher show had been a really intense very way too real experience for me like it's such a pure story episode and i and i really you know like i i was not thrilled with the assignment because you realized it wasn't a comedy episode. You really had to make the story work. You had to find something real and find what it meant to you and all this real writer stuff that I really wasn't comfortable with. And so when that was over, I really wanted that to be the one time I ever did anything

like that. But then if you look at it structurally, Brother from the Same Planet is exactly the same story. It's that Bart finds a replacement father figure that causes him to question Homer and creates conflict with Homer, leading to a resolution. And I was so unhappy that I had been given that story again, that I just wasn't going to go to that place again. And so I intentionally wrote it sillier. I think I just said I'm not doing Lisa's substitute anytime you ask me to. So I didn't get into the story in a real way. And if you look, there's a really shameful dissolve in Act Three that Homer and the Big Brother get, which implies the beginning of the process. And then there's a dissolve. And then when you come out of the dissolve, Bart has said goodbye to the big brother and made up with Homer, which are the two big scenes in Act Three of Lisa's Substitute.

And they're absolutely necessary scenes to the story. It's really bad of you as a writer to skip those scenes when you write the story. But I intentionally skipped them because I didn't want to revisit the two big scenes in Lisa's Substitute. So you're writing the story and not writing the story. And so Jim is actually quite correct that it's an incorrectly written story. But it was a weird situation where episode level honesty and series level honesty came into conflict. I just didn't want it. I never wanted to do a knockoff of the substitute teacher episode, even if it meant writing the Big Brother episode incorrectly. And so I mean, Jim is actually correct that that episode is written incorrectly, but I did it on purpose. Interesting. Wow. I never considered that as a

kind of almost sequel to Lisa's substitute. But wow wow, yeah. Well, I mean, actually what I would, you know, in terms of like, if I have friends who teach comedy writing classes in college, I would never attempt to do that. But I mean, something I think it really demonstrates in an interesting way is there are so many brilliant guys in the rewrite room and they always add so much to it.

But it's a good illustration of how much the writer's drafts still affect the tone of the show, even after everyone's done. Because that's the exact same story. And it's even written by the same person. But the first draft is written by the same person going to create two completely different effects. And after the rewrite and the animation, and everything is done, and everyone's contributed to it, and the actors have played it they feel you know i mean hopefully i mean that was my goal anyway they don't at all feel like two of the same thing because the first draft was written in a different tone than the first one you left the show uh basically in season four but you not in name but you do have credits on several clip shows and so i i was curious how you

you ended up being the clip show guy for for that era of the simpsons yeah i know i do those are less of a thing now that now that there's like streaming like they're so irrelevant but at the time they were really controversial i just so i i it was always passionate to me to say you know i never signed a contract agreeing to write the clip shows that was a result of there was just a like a contract problem with box that they had signed a lot of guys and blown the budget and then i came along and it was time for my contract to be invoked and fox didn't want to pay it but then the next thing that happened was they got football. And so they wanted new Simpsons episodes every week in the fall, which because it's an animated

show, they didn't really have the wherewithal to do. And so after a lot of discussion, the compromise was, well, if you write these clip shows, we will honor the contract that we should have honored anyway. And so that that's where the pseudonym comes from. And the first one was so hastily done. It's like just completely forgettable. And you know, I won't even say the name of it. I'm so happy that it's forgotten. The second one was written a couple years later for Bill and Josh, and they hated clip shows as much as I did. And it actually kind of became a fun thing for everybody, the 138th episode, that we kind of used it as a time to do our comedy history of the show. And like I was talking about, you know, kind of make fun about things about the show that we all knew hadn't turned out that well. And it was kind of a freeing thing.

And Bill said I wasn't in there for the rewrite. He said the writing staff all got in the spirit of making fun of seven years of our mistakes. And it was a very happy rewrite. Yeah, for being a clip show, the 138th episode spectacular is very quotable. Oh, yeah. Yeah. No, I did. Yeah, I love several of the things the rewrite room gave me. It was yeah, it was fun. It was, you know, I wrote it from my office at the Larry Sanders show in a couple of days. I never wrote another episode like that. And it was just, it just kind of happened. And everyone, it kind of, we kind of quickly found a handshake frequency that all of us were happy writing. And so that was a really happy experience.

I think, and like Bill said, it was one of the first things he said, I think, let's be honest about the fact that clip shows are really cheesy and that this is, this is a fairly pathetic thing we're doing and then try to make that a virtue. And so, I mean, I took that thought and went with it. And so did the rewrite room. And so, you know, hopefully, and, you know, and of course, we did the thing that we always did, you know, and I said this on Twitter, you know, when we needed to make something work, and we didn't know how to make it work, our solution was we called Phil Hartman. And, you know, and so we just we very quickly decided that we're going to have Phil Hartman tell the history of The Simpsons.

And that's what this episode is going to be. And, you know, to whatever extent that show works. And, of course, you're not obligated to love a clip show. But so much of that, like everything in The Simpsons that we did, you know, to whatever extent anything succeeded. It's so inextricably entwined with, you know, what the actors made of it. And, you know, and of course, with that episode, it's all aboutextricably entwined with you know what the actors made of it and you know and of course with that episode it's all about phil hartman so cape fear was the last episode produced by that original writing staff and it's a very crazy episode and based on the commentary you guys recorded a long time ago it seemed like the crew wanted to do every crazy zany joke they could

before they left the show to the point where maybe internally some people weren't very happy with how much the reality was being bended what do you remember about the writing process of that final episode with that staff well hey well good one knowing that that's been a mini crusade of mine that it was perceived of course when the show was broadcast as the second episode or the third of the fifth season and it in fact yeah it's the last episode done by the original guys and it is the way it is only because that's what it is. It's a reflection of that. It was the end of the fourth season. We had all done a terrible job of taking care of ourselves physically.

We were all completely broken and needed to stop doing it. And we're out of good stories. It breaks so many rules. Like you're not, you're never supposed to hang an entire episode on a parody of a single thing. I mean, you're supposed to do that for 30 seconds because you know, if somebody, if a viewer doesn't like that idea, then it only takes down 30 seconds of the episode. It doesn't ruin the whole episode for them. You know, you're just not supposed to do that. It's a bad idea, but we did it anyway because we were exhausted and we all knew we were leaving and we kind of

thought, what are you going to do? Fire us. And so I think in a way, it's a very pure place to come from creatively. Like the first season, so many of us assumed that the show was only going to run 13 episodes, but it didn't inspire us to not try. It just took us to a place of, well, make yourself happy with it because this is the only time you're ever going to write for TV. And I think similarly with Cape Fear, it was like, well, you know, we can't lose our jobs because we're all quitting. So and, you know, a 30 minute parody of Cape Fear isn't going to be a great story episode. So let's just have fun with it. And it really turned into, you know, one of my favorite experiences. I hated the fact when I found out that the last episode of the season was going to

be my script, I was so unhappy because the script, the week that your script was read at table and recorded was always a miserable week. I hated table reading week. I had very few writers enjoyed it. And so I really just wanted my last week, my last Get the Simpsons. And I was so unhappy when it went up on the board and there was a fear at number 22 but it wound up in such a magical perfect thing even to the extent that part of the rewrite was run by sam mike and al were writing the critic pilot and so they they couldn't be there all the time so for half of the pre-table rewrite it was actually you know there were new guys from you know conan was there and you know and jeff martin was there but it wasn't a completely a recreation of the first season room

but all of a sudden there was sam running the the simpsons rewrite room again it was really fun and yeah my last day at the simpsons was the record of cape fear and you know sam hung out with us and we had our champagne from our agents because we just got nominated for the animated Emmy. And so we kind of sat out on the front steps and drank our champagne. And then Sam took us to a bar in Century City. It was it was a fantastic last day. And so, you know, we had no expectations. I don't know if this survived to the DVD track, but it had a horrible table rating. You know, we didn't you know, we we didn't have Kelsey Kelly. It was always hard to get Kelsey Grammer. It was so wonderful of him to do that because he was always so in demand, you know, and I think by that point, and I guess Fraser hadn't started, but you know, he's always

had a huge part. Live body and shows are always working. Like even when you're not rehearsing, you're standing in place and letting the cameras take their marks from you. And there's always something to do. And so it was really hard to get them. And so we didn't have them for the table reading and it was just a horrible table reading. It was a complete failure. And so I did the miserable walk back from the table reading room back to the writer's room, certain that the last 48 hours were going to be a miserable 80% rewrite of Cape Fear and everybody was going to hate me. And that was going to be my last experience at The Simpsons. And then we all sat down and there was a long silence and Al sighed and said, it'll probably be fine when Kelsey does it, which he never did. Al never forgave a bad table reading.

And the one time he did it was Cape Fear because we were all so exhausted and nobody wanted to ruin our last two days at The Simpsons. So, you know, the script that went on the air, by any normal rules, would have gotten like an 80% rewrite after the table reading. And we just did it anyway. So there's so many levels of things about Cape Fear that never would have happened in any other situation

than the last episode that we did. And I have one last question about Simpsons before we move on to, we want to talk more about your other uh writing jobs too but do you have a favorite joke that you wrote in an episode that's not credited to you because i know everybody everybody writes on every script you know i don't really i it's always up to other people what's good i don't know i you know yeah i know i the one that was i was incorrectly credited to me for a long time matt

remembered it that i wrote the look at me i'm dv crockett joke in the treehouse of horror with and and it got a lot of play and all of a sudden i was getting credit for that joke and it was totally jay kogan's joke and so it's always been a you know a minor project of mine to make sure that uh jay kogan gets credit for that jay and wally are the most undercredited people on the original staff. I hope you've had a chance to get those guys on the show. That's so funny you say that because we just interviewed Jay Kogan last month and he mentioned the Davy Crockett joke is one of his favorites that he wrote. Yeah, no, good, good. He should work on that too, because that was such an unfair thing. You know, it's so hard, especially as we get older, you just, you know, in 1997, I like could have told you who pitched every line of every episode

that I worked on. And, and, and thankfully, you're like, you're a happier person when that happens, your brain lets go of that. And so, you know, you go from worrying about every little detail to just being incredibly grateful for the amazing group of people you got to work with. But as a result, it's harder to do retrospective interviews on the show because you don't have every line burned into your memory like that. So we want to move on to King of the Hill next, because you were a big part of that show. You wrote some of my favorite episodes like Dogdale Afternoon. And I really wanted to ask about your experience on that show, because I haven't seen a lot of interviews with writers of King of the Hill. There's not a lot of commentaries for King of the Hill. So there's

very little behind the scenes information about that show. And we love it. You know, it's a non random thing. Greg Daniels is just one of the best showrunners in TV history. And I think part of the reason why King of the Hill doesn't get discussed as much is because he then went and created the American version of The Office, including people from King of the Hill like Paul Lieberstein. And so people tend to talk about The Office and King of the Hill. But I kind of personally, I like that King of the Hill is more of a niche show, more of a cult show, just because we all got so, you know, part of us will always be uncomfortable with how big The Simpsons got. It was never really our expectation or our intention even. So I like that King of the Hill has a smaller audience that gets it and enjoys it.

And it's played so well in Adult Swim. But it was an amazing, it was a fantastic group of writers. You know, Norm Hiscock has had a terrific career. He went on to The Office World Shows, you know, Parks and Recreation and Brooklyn Nine-Nine. He's one of my favorite comedy writers ever. Paul Lieberstein, of course, fantastic comedy writer, you know, became famous as Toby, but on the short list of great comedy writers of my generation. There's just very few people better than Greg at casting a show and putting together a writing

staff. And he actually said once that he just, he said, if it pleases you to know this, all of you have the reputation of being pleasant to deal with. I've been in difficult writers rooms and life's too short and I'm not willing to do it. And all of you are known to be nice to work with. And it was so true. It was the happiest job I ever had. Oh, wow. It was such a democratic show. It's like the best idea carried the day, no matter who said it.

It was beautifully produced. Greg really worried about the technical production aspects and how to not make himself a bottleneck. And so it was he delegated and layered things. So we were always working on something. There was never the stop and start nature of it that plagues almost every show. It was, comedy writing is never easy, but it was such a pleasant thing to do. And it was so different creatively because Mike really didn't want this show to be a Simpsons knockoff. And he was actually quite uncomfortable with how many Simpsons writers were in the vicinity. And he was very quick to let people know when the show was getting to Simpsons.

And you never felt more evil than when you drifted over the line and set off the mic alarm and said, this is why I'm not happy with the number of Simpsons writers on my writing staff. And so, you know, it was but it was a great experience in that it was such a different show, you know, and, and it was such a, I always kind of feel like the best I ever was as a writer was on King of the Hill because I had done the Larry Sanders show. And I learned so much from Gary Shanley about writing comedy. And so I, and I was still in my thirties 30s and you know like then shortly after that i was writing movies but i was in my 40s and that's they get quickly get comedy quickly gets harder when you get past 40 but i was more i finally gave up on some of the directionlessness

i would just go anywhere for a joke writing the simpsons episodes and you know sometimes that's sort of fun but it also leads to crazy raggedy stuff. Like if you watch Mr. Plow, nothing happens in Act Two of Mr. Plow. It's an act-long montage of snow plowing jokes. And you're really not supposed to do that. But, you know, and sometimes you would discover good things that way. But finally, after doing Larry Sanders, I accepted that forward drive and dramatic tension are fairly important to comedy, not just drama, but to comedy as well. And so I think I was a more disciplined writer at King of the Hill. And it was actually kind of a happy thing in terms of the pace and the tone in that I feel like King of the Hill

is closer to the first couple of seasons on The Simpsons than like, you know, by the time The Simpsons got into the later episodes, it was packed so tight, moved so fast in a way that was right for The Simpsons. But it was actually really fun to go and write for something that moved about the pace of a second season Simpsons episode. So one very specific question I wanted to ask you about King of the Hill is that one of your episodes is called John Vidi Presents Return to La Grinta. That seems like an inside joke. And I really want to know the story as to why you are credited in the title of the episode. Why did that happen? Yeah, that that that is if you're wondering what the punishment is for not being in on the rewrite of a script

you wrote, that that is the punishment. I was on an overall deal at that point. And they were just Fox was being kind of insistent about getting a pilot from me on time with the result that I wrote the first draft for that episode, which the title was Luann's Presence. It was a very straightforward one. Sometimes I like doing that. I didn't feel like there needed to be a pun in every title. But so that was my title. And then I had to say, sorry, guys, I'm, you know, the big company is insisting on a script. I can't be there the week you rewrite it. And so, you know, they big company is insisting on a script. I can't be there the week you rewrite it.

And so, you know, they, it was, it was a really nice, it was, you know, it was respectful. I liked everything they added, but the one thing they did that, because I wasn't there and I, I never would have voted in favor of that was they changed my really bland title to a title that had my name in it. And so that's how that happened. And it was obvious if you complain about it, the answer is obviously, well, show up for the rewrite next time and you'll have something to say about what the title of the episode is. So I never made an issue out of it. And it was just a joke. And it was, again, we didn't really anticipate the streaming era and none of us anticipated the long life and syndication these episodes had.

We're so grateful for all of that. But, you know, I don't think anybody in the room that day anticipated that 20 years from now, I'll have to explain why I put my name in the title of the episode, even though I didn't. I'm glad the answer is finally out. Yes. Now you can share it with the world update your wikipedia's listeners well yeah and you're king of the hilltimes i especially your episode i i noticed like how much the show felt like ripped from the headlines or just like oh this was a a weird news story or this was a a moment in history like not just you know

swimming with dolphins going awry or like, you know, the Texas Sniper episode, Bob's favorite one, the Dogdale Afternoon. Like how much did you guys work to have these, you know, real life starting points for episodes? Well, you know, one of the many things Greg did well, and he had the show operating so smoothly, and he had a big staff full of good writers you could split that staff into two rooms into three rooms and every room would be a good room and so he would send people out on days occasionally just okay put you know you four people just talk about things we're not doing with Peggy that we could be doing that you know

what would that woman be like what would be funny about her that we're not doing right now and you know and there would just be like overview days which shows never have the time to do and they never have the manpower to do it because all the best writers have to be in working on the the line that we're rewriting right now and it was just such a well-written show and he had and greg is so great at the big picture in the overview that there were good people who put serious time into what are we trying to say here? And what are we trying to say with the show? What are we trying to say with this person? What are we trying to say with that person? Because, you know, we had, we knew, and we had such fantastic actors. I mean, there's nobody better than Kathy and Jimmy and Steven

Root. And so if you're not doing good things with them, you're, you know, you're really not living up to your obligation as a writer. And so we had, we were not just encouraged, you're, you know, you're really not living up to your obligation as a writer. And so we had, we were not just encouraged, you know, you would be sent into a room with three or four people. And it was your job today to think big picture and to think general avenues for the show to explore that we're not exploring yet. And I really feel like that paid off. It was, it was, you know, it's, it's hard to hand out the credit equally. It was a beautifully, perfectly run show. But part of what was so perfect about how Greg ran the show was he put together a terrific bunch of people who had the time and the ability to show how good they were.

It was really a terrific writing experience. Yeah, we just revisited the first season for a podcast series. It's been fun to see characters like Peggy, who started out as a fairly naive mom, grow into one of the most unique characters on television. No, she got strange. And in a way, I really thought was always consistent with her character. I mean, that was the thing. They really, you know, they really explored the character. One of the many really smart things Greg did, He intentionally created the Bill character to absorb the dumb jokes, because as a former Simpsons writer, he knew how complicated it had gotten trying to defend

Homer's character from all the dumb jokes we came up with for him. So he intentionally created a character he called Bill the Heat Shield. And Bill would be the repository for every dumb joke the room came up with and thus would not be assigned to Hank and make Hank dumber. He's such a smart guy. Jeez, we could ask a million more questions, but I guess, you know, you did write for The Critic as well. I just was curious, like, were those, was that more of a freelance thing or were you in a writer's room? And also, you know, you wrote probably the most remembered episode of the show, the Siskel and Ebert episode. So, I mean only part-time the first year. I was closer to full-time the next year because my other show that I was working on wasn't there the second year. Yeah, well, the Siskel and Ebert thing is just partially it's nice, you know, when you

get that assignment, because a lot of, you know, something that would happen would be, you know, that was always going to be a special episode and everybody on every level was going to give it a special level of attention. And when they turn to you and point to you and say, would like to write that i mean that's a cool thing because you just like it's nice when the people who run the show feel that you're competent enough to get that assignment it's not like your your script will be untouched but the fact that they're they picked you because you you really want somebody to not screw up the sims the cisco and ebert episode and when you get picked to do the episode that they don't want screwed up, it's like, that's, that's a nice thing. I didn't get to meet them. It was,

it was always a fun thing. And some of those people were so good. Charles Napier, who did the voice of the boss was such a cool, funny guy. He drove in from the desert in this beater car and had that amazing voice. And it done, you know, this really strange, cool career. He was the guy who got his face ripped off in Silence of the Lambs. He was in the Space Hippies episode of Star Trek. He had just, he'd been around forever and did so many cool things. And he was such a genuinely funny guy. I mean, it was, you know, people like, you know, Charles Napier and Rip Torn. It still surprises me sometimes, like so much stuff happened, like occasionally now I think, oh, that's wrote for rip torn i wrote for charles napier that happened i didn't dream that you know like it was it was such a

fortunate career and in the in the 25 years since that cisco episode aired it's it's become a uh you know not by design but it's become a touching memorial to the two men now that they've both passed it's it's very it's very sweet now if you watch it again no it's it's nice and i you know and i guess it wasn't uh you know, thanks to the found footage, guys. I guess there's some footage, you know, attesting to the fact that they didn't always love each other that much. But, you know, they, of course, were like a huge part of our culture. And, you know, I mean, to this day, I mean, Rotten Tomatoes is so descended from Siskel and Ebert. I mean, they changed the culture.

There were so many. I think the problem was they lived in Los Angeles. One of the coolest things about The Critic was that a lot of people were recorded in New York and it was just before people were being remotely recorded like we're doing now. And so I would be the guy who would be flown to New York in this crazy, like do an overnight flight,

record Jimmy Breslin and then get on a flight and fly back that day. I was so messed up when I got back to Los Angeles. But I met Jimmy Breslin that way. I met Bob Costas, Queen Latifah that way. It was one of the coolest jobs I ever had. Yeah, that's nice, man. We could ask you a thousand more questions,

but our time is up. But thank you so much, John. This is very great. I finally got the answer to my John Vitti presents question i'm saving it to the end sorry about it yeah it's like it's you know you work with all these amazing writers and you're grateful to so much they do and and you just have to be a good sport about stuff they do that you wouldn't have done and that's one of them and it wasn't done maliciously just as a little thank you for sticking them with the rewrite and you just and you just accept it as you know part of the amazing experience of getting to

work with those people yeah so mystery solved and do you do you have any upcoming stuff you'd want our listeners to know about no no i'm i'm very happy i always intended my my last movie i i actually i mean i'm in the happiest position of all. I won't get a credit on it, but I have a movie coming up that I don't have to work on because I worked on it for a year in 2012, and then it got shelved, and then the director got it made six years after the fact. So I have no idea how much of the stuff I did will show up on the screen,

but it's nice to have a movie coming up, but the price for that always is that you have to work and you have to come up with good stuff and writing such a miserable thing. So I actually, for the next year or so, I have the happiest situation of all, where I have a movie coming up, but I don't have any work to do. That's amazing. That's nice. But I'm pretty sure I won't be credited, so it wouldn't be proper for me to say what it is. But it's a perfect way to be retired, to have something that you can say is in the future tense, even though my career is in the past tense.

Oh, well, thank you so much, John, for all your time. Yes, thank you. Yeah, no, and thank you for what you do. You know, sometimes we get busy, and some of us, the post-career people, will be traveling a bunch. But we are eternally grateful for the time that people have spent watching the show. I mean, everyone who started out on the show thought that it was going to be a one summer job and then we would have to go and get real jobs after the show got canceled. You know, I saw the death of the show when the first episode came back's a terrible animation. So I don't think any of us have ever gotten past

being grateful for the time people have spent watching the show and discussing the show and even the stuff they didn't like. So thank you to you guys and really to everybody out there. Why? Sir, you locked my office and I wanted to get my Harvard mug.