Talking Simpsons - Talking Simpsons - The Mike Reiss Interview

Episode Date: July 15, 2026

The Talking Simpsons Network is taking a week off, so to fill the content gap, we've decided to post a Patreon-exclusive interview from our archives! If you like this and want to hear more, head over to Patreon.com/TalkingSimpsons and sign up at the $5 level. Once you do, you'll have immediate access to all of our limited miniseries, covering animated shows like King of the Hill, Mission Hill, The Critic, and Batman: The Animated Series. That's over 200 bonus episodes to date! So visit Patreon.com/TalkingSimpsons and sign up today! Original podcast description: Mike Reiss has worked on The Simpsons for more than three decades, as one of the first writers hired, as a co-showrunner of seasons 3 and 4, and as a producer giving input to this day on both the series and the film. Not only that, but he co-created The Critic and has written for animated feature films and now has a new book all about his life, Springfield Confidential (buy it here). Bob and Henry chat with Mr. Reiss for a whole hour about his long career, and we learn many Simpsons secrets and fun insights from a comedy legend. Listen and enjoy! Note: This interview originally went live on June 9, 2018.

Your sales order says one thing. Your inventory says another. Your spreadsheet says good luck. O-Doo brings your business together on a single platform. From sales and accounting to inventory and marketing, visit Odu.com to book a demo. It's O'DOO-O-O-O-O-D-com. I heartily endorse this event or product. Ahoy, ho, everybody. Welcome to another interview episode of Talking Simpsons. I am one of your host, Bob Mackie, who is here with me today. Henry Gilbert, hello. And today we are talking to the one, the only one, the only one. only Mike Reese. So who is Mike Reese? He was with the Simpsons from the very beginning and he's been with the show until it's a current year. I think he was only gone for two years of the entire Simpsons program. He was a showrunner with Al Jean for season three and four was on the

original staff in the first year and now as he explains in his new book, Springfield Confidential, that he is kind of a one day a week guy. It's still the show he's on and a part of 30 years later. Yes. And of course he created The Critic with Al Jean, which we covered in our Talking Critic series, and he's also the creator of Queer Duck. He's written a lot of children's books, and this is his newest book, all about his time as a writer. This book is amazing, by the way. It covers his time on Alf, on the Gary Shandling Show, and on The Critic and his bad deal with a company he can't name. Yes, and even his work as a rewriter of children's cartoons, including Despicable Me,

if you like Kevin, Bob, the Minions, he named them. That was him doing that. And they're named after Simpsons writers, too. Yes. It's a great interview. Mike Reese was so kind to give us a whole hour of his time. Anything else we need to cover? I mean, I want to just get right into it.

Oh, no, let's just get right into it. But the book is Springfield Confidential. So, Mike, let's talk about your new book. Have you been planning to write this book for a while? Or did you just sort of recently come across the idea to write a book about your experience as a writer and on The Simpsons? It's really none of those. I fell into it by accident. If you want to hear the story, a journalist who I'd never met, I talked to him on the phone a couple of times, just called me out of the blue.

And he said, Mike, you and I are going to drive across country and you're going to give talks everywhere we go. And I'm going to record what you say. And that's going to be Mike Reese's America. And there's not going to be any Simpsons in the book at all, right? So here we are two years later. The book is coming out. It's 95% Simpsons. Me and this guy never drove anywhere.

We never saw any of America. And that's good. It's all to the good because if he had just called and said, why don't you write a book about The Simpsons? I say, no way. You know, it's presumptuous and it's the work of 300 people. Why should I be the one to write the book? It was like getting married.

I slowly was maneuvered into doing it. And I'm glad I did. I really enjoyed the book Springfield Confidential. It taught me a lot of things I didn't know about The Simpsons, even though we do an obsessive Simpsons podcast. But prior to The Simpsons, you talk about how you and Al wrote on some shows, including Elf, and I was curious.

I had heard some stories that that was a tense set at times. Like, did you see any of that? No, I really didn't. It's funny because the show would change every single year. And the first year, I know, I didn't work on the first season, and apparently the hours were miserable. I think there was a lot of tension there where they were just sort of finding what the show was.

And so at the end of the first season, everybody quit. And so I got a call to work on the second season of the show. And the executive producer of the show, Tom Patch, it said something, no showrunner has ever said. He said, I want you out of here early. I don't want any unhappy writers. Everyone's got to be out of here by 7 o'clock at night. And every other show I'd worked on up until that point.

We worked till 2 or 3 in the morning. And here was this. He was actually a big, scary man, Tom Patchett. He played death on an episode of the Bob Newhart show. He would come around at 6.58, get out of here. Everyone get out. And sometimes the work wasn't done yet. So this sounds like a joke, but we would shut off all the lights in the office and

finish the rewrite by flashlight. In fact, I say in the book, Al is probably the happiest show I ever worked on. I really loved it. And it was close to my house. and the food was good there. These are all the artistic requirements for a good job. Well, then you and Al wrote for The It's the Gary Shanley Show, which I was a huge fan of. I watched it before The Simpsons as a child, probably too young to really even get it.

But I love that show. And you guys ended up writing the last episode, which is two episodes after the finale. Like, how did that happen? That's a great question. First of all, all I do is meet guys like you who say, oh, I love that show. And yet it was the lowest rated show on television. And what was pretty funny is that almost all of the DNA of The Simpsons comes from its Gary Shandling show. I think five of the eight original writers on The Simpsons had just been working at its Gary Shandling show.

And yet, you know, something that made us such a hit on Simpsons did not work at all. on Gary Shanling. And my guess is it was Gary Shanling. Oh. Who was a lovely, lovely guy. If you've seen the, I don't know what it is. It's like a three day long documentary Judd Appetel made about him. That's great. Very,

very nice, man. But the public did not love him. But very creative. It was everything we got to do on The Simpsons, which would be as creative as you can be and make it as different from every TV show as you can. So I forget the question now. Oh,

How did we kill, how did we end the show? The writers at the Shandling show, in fact, it was Gary Shandling and Alan's Weibel, the creators of the show, had an idea to end the series with Gary Dying. I think the Grim Reaper came. I mean, it's not so funny now that he really said. The show ended with the Grim Reaper coming for Gary,

and he had a celebrity funeral, and we're shooting this whole show to be the last episode. And while we were filming it, we realized this sucks. It wasn't getting laughs. It wasn't funny. And so we just had an addendum at the end where the network head comes in since that's no way to end the show. And so what they did is pulled our episode, which was a parody of driving Miss Daisy, and said, all right, that's going to be the ending of the series.

And then we just added a little post script to the show where Gary, who drives around a golf cart just drives out of the studio to sad music. And that was it. It just came out of pure need. It was sort of an emergency thing. And then I remember, I think People magazine said it was one of the ten worst shows of the year. It just was in no way kind of an apropos finale to the series. I watched that one recently. It almost feels like a proto-critic episode because it's like an extended film parody

where the show's protagonist is in just a lengthy driving Miss Daisy parody. And even Dan Aykroyd is there playing. the same character he played in the film. Yes, it's certainly, again, when I talk about the influence of Gary Shanlin show on The Simpsons, they did it first. They were the first show I can remember that would just do a feature,

dedicate a whole episode to doing a movie parody, which they did, it was, I think in the first season, they did a 30-minute parody of the graduate starring Gary Shanling. And so then here we are two years later, and we were doing a parody of Kate Fear, make a whole episode out of that one.

So your book really gets into the uncomfortable situation between the late Sam Simon and Maca Raining back in the very early years of the series. And you even talk about how Flaming Moes is sort of an allegory for their relationship. What was it like to experience that tension? And did you feel like it would affect the success of the series? It made it tough. I should mention, you know, when you do a book, you have to put the dirt in there. And candidly, in 30 years, there were only two dirt.

that there were only two scandals in the whole run of the show. And one is sort of the secret animosity between Sam Simon and Matt Grainning, which, you know, thankfully did not manifest itself in the show. But it may, and it didn't even pop up that often at work. It was, but Sam was very unhappy, not with Matt Grainning himself, but with the idea that Matt Grainning got all the credit for the Simpsons. when Sam was a very big contributor to the show. And really, the difference between what you see in a one-minute Simpson short

and the Simpson series was so much just the brilliance of Sam Simon. So he was just constantly bitter and angry. He was like Sally Erie and Hamadais. And so that would only manifest itself when Matt and Sam would be in the same room at the same time. And so very early on, Matt knew. not to walk into the room with him. So that was it. And it made, you know, for several uncomfortable afternoons

during the first two or three years of the show. And then Sam went off to develop other shows. And that problem went away. If anybody loves, like, the fourth season of the Simpsons and this is the season Al Jean and Iran. I think part of it was we had separated these two guys. And suddenly there was no tension and there was no friction at the Simpsons.

if we were able just to make a show that was pure fun. And I think that came across in the episode. And The Simpsons was the first animated series for many of the writers on there. Did that take some growing pains at first in the writer's room? The amazing thing, again, I realized this writing the book was, except for Al Jean and me, none of the other writers that first season of the show had ever written a script before. They were all sketch writers and joke writers. And, you know, here's everybody writing their own.

first script ever and they became these classic Simpsons episodes and set the template for the show, which just shows you, I think anyone listening out there who's taking a writing course, stop immediately. Nothing you need to learn to know how to write a good TV show except to work hard and make it a good TV show. In the book two, there's this great list you have of like several episodes you feel changed the series. Though I think I'd also add you and out, you and Tell Tell Head episode from the first season, because I think that's like the first one that really feels like Springfield as a town and as a mob really comes together in that one. Was that the feeling when you were writing it?

Not at all. There was nothing. I mean, it's a very historic episode, and we had no idea when we were writing it. It was just Al and me and Sam Simon, I think, just knocked it out in three days, you know, and they weren't even long days, but it happens to be the episode. that introduced Jimbo, Dolph, Kearney, Nelson, Apu, Chief Wiggum, Eddie, Lou, Mayor Quimby. I think they all make their first appearance in that episode. And yes, it's the first angry mob you would ever see on The Simpsons.

The only reason I didn't include it in my list of shows that changed the series is I hate to think about it because we wrote that script. We had a table reading of the script. And it was a parody, of course, of the telltale heart by Edgar Allan Poe. And at the table reading, it got about as many laughs as the telltale heart by Edgar Allan Poe. It just died. It just played so badly that I'm glad it turned into sort of remembered episode or a seminal episode. But wow, that was a really bad day at work. So what was the feeling like in the office as Simpsons Mania really took off in the early years of the show?

You were part of Alf, which also had a similarly huge explosion at the beginning. beginning, but it kind of faltered after that. Were you worried that The Simpsons would suffer the same fate? We weren't just worried. We were certain of it. We were certain the show would do what any show that a lot of kids watched would do, which was sputter out after the second or third season. I mean, it was certainly Al, which was a top 10 show by year two, was canceled and dead

after season four. And I think a show is like The Incredible Hulk, things like that that I watched as a kid that were gone. You know, every kid loved it. than was gone in two years or Batman. So we just presumed that was going to happen. We had no illusions the show would last more than four years. And I tell the story all the time that before the series came on the air,

I was sitting in a trailer with the other writers. And I have to mention it was a trailer because Fox didn't think we were worthy of having an actual room. So the writers worked in a trailer. And I thought, if the show fails, they're going to back the trailer up to the ocean and drown us all. So I said to the other writers, how long do you think this show is going to last? And everybody said the same thing, six weeks, six weeks, six weeks. And the only optimist in the room was Sam Simon, who said, I think it's going to go 13 weeks.

But don't worry, no one's ever going to see it. It won't hurt your career. I think you guys mentioned that you were a really close-knit group at the start of the first series, like you're going to even see the Batman movie. together. Was there a real feeling of camaraderie, just among the writers at least? Yes. And again, it was the idea. I think we thought nobody would see this show. Everyone thought it was just a summer job. I remember writing it in the heat of summer. And we were all friends. A bunch of us had gone to college together. And we had made friends with guys like

Jay Cogan and Wally Walladarski many years before. And it was just a tight group of very undiverse people. We were almost all single white guys in our late 20s. And we were just a little pack. We were a little gang and we would work together. And yes, we would go out to see whatever big, dumb movie was coming out that night. And it was, it was pure fun. And I think that's always been the secret success of The Simpsons. We thought no one was going to watch it. So we made a show we wanted to see on TV instead of the kind of show we were seeing on TV. So one mystery we have yet to solve And it's come up on commentaries It's come up on other interviews

It's the caramel on the ceiling of the writer's room And we are still trying to find out who put it there I think our theory is it was Conan O'Brien Do you have any answers for us That is, you know I'm sorry I had no idea anybody knew anything about that That's so one of the strangest things

We used to get out tell the whole story Unless it's been discussed At length on your podcast before. No, we just have questions about it. Yes, it was, you know, one of the only benefits of working in TV is all the free food. And especially, you know, Butterfingers was a sponsor. So we got endless, all the butterfingers you could eat at working on the Simpsons. And it used to be my favorite candy bar. And now I won't go within 50 feet of a butterfinger. But we also, for some reason, had caramels. And they were always sitting there and no one would eat it. So I think it was Conan

and just took out a bunch of caramels, like six cubes, and rolled it into this beautiful ball. And then he didn't know what to do with it because he wasn't going to eat it. So because he's very tall, he stuck it to the ceiling of the writer's room. And it just sat there on the ceiling of the writer's room for a year. And then Al Jean said at some point,

if that's still up there in a year, I'm going to take a bite of it. And sure enough, it was up there a year later. And Al took a little baby bite. from the caramel and it may be the most disgusting committed thing we've ever seen on the show who is taller

Conan or Al Conan is very tall but it was a huge staff everybody everybody but me was in 6-2 George Meyer Al Jean Schwarzweiler

and then Conan came in and sort of towered over everyone else and I looked I sort of looked like everybody's pet I was the mini me of the staff.

You announced it over the show after Sam's exit. Like, was that during season three or was it officially starting in season four? And what was it like going from, you know, a staff writer position to running the entire show? It was the scariest moment

of our collective lives. Al and I had never run anything bigger than a dishwasher and suddenly were running this hit show. We didn't know how to do anything. The plan was to sort of groom us to do the last two episodes of season two.

And that would have been fine. But one of those was the Michael Jackson episode, which just we had tremendous pressure on us to do an episode with the biggest star in the world. And, you know, one of the quirkiest. So that was, that's how we started. And then the next episode we worked on is the one where Flanders is losing the Leftorium

and Homer comes in to save the day. And the animation came back. back from Korea. And the way we do this, we get finished animation back, and we sit in a room and watch it. And this is the first time the animator said, you're going to have some problems here. For whatever reason, there were hundreds of mistakes in the episode. I mean, literally, you know, the moon was out during the day. And I remember Lisa and Bart's heads sort of came slowly drifting off their bodies. And everything was wrong with that show. And luckily, the show was going to come on, I think, in September, and we had gotten it in July.

So we had the whole summer to fix it. But that was just petrifying. It just looked unfixable. So we did those two. And then we did Mr. Lisa Goes to Washington. I got to say, it was never, ever easy. Writing for The Simpsons is so much fun. And running the show is probably the worst experience I ever had in my life.

Wow. You know, that actually makes me wonder about what's the rule on retakes, like, do you, what is the bar you set for retakes? How many can you do? And like, were there some, or some scenes you couldn't do a retake of because you're like out of budget or whatever? Yes, we, you know, the technology is improved in 30 years, which you would hope. And our budget is improved. And in the old days, we were just stuck. We were stuck with whatever we had. And we could sort of build new animation out of old animation, but it always looked very stiff. We'd pull Homer from a other scene and he'd be standing very still and we'd just animate his mouth and put new lines in

it. So it was tough to make fixes on those. So there are, you know, watch those early episodes really closely and I'm sure people do. There's a lot of mistakes in there. So in your season, season three and four, there's a feeling that the series started to get wackier in a good way. Did you arrive at this choice naturally or was it a, was it sort of a something you did intentionally? Almost every kind of time we change the Simpsons or broaden its reality, it's always a baby step. We'll say, all right, let's make this a little crazier and see if anyone objects. And we would just keep pushing it. I think it would just build and get a little nuttier every season.

Two of the hallmarks, I would say, the years Al Jean and I ran the show is the Simpsons watch a lot of TV. We're just always cutting to some TV show. you see a lot of Nick Baines and a lot of itchy and scratchies. And I think that's Al and my sensibility. And that's how we went on to create the critic where half the show was watching something else. So that's one thing we brought to the show. The other thing we brought is we just loved having animals running around. So I remember there being a moose in the Simpsons living room.

And Marge, there's a deer eating off the living room carpet. And Sam Simon didn't like that. but he had already moved down to other things. And I think if we'd stayed in charge of the show, it just would have been pure animals by season eight. You also talk about the mysterious man that is John Schwarzwalder in the book. And he's never done a commentary.

I think Mike Scully tricked him on being one once for like a minute. But have you like hung out with him? Or is he just a bit of a separate person in his way? It is really funny. And, you know, for diehard fans of the show, the chapter on Swartz Welder is worth buying in four because I demystified the man. But the whole thing is just he's endlessly amused about this sort of mystique that sort of kind of been created around him because you meet the guy, he is the most regular guy we ever had on The Simpsons. I mean, he writes very strange things, but you meet him. He looks like one of your dad's friends.

He's a big, sturdy man. He's conservative. He dresses conservative. He's the last smoker in Southern California. He's such a regular guy. And he'll only talk about things your dad talks about. He'll just talk about baseball and old Westerns. So he's so normal.

He just doesn't like the spotlight. He doesn't want to do commentaries. He's never come to Simpsons parties or anything like that. I didn't realize this until the premiere of the Simpsons movie. He's 17 years into the run of the show. And there's John Swarthwelder, finally coming to a party. And I realized my wife has never met him. She's never met the guy in 17 years of my working with him.

But that's it. He has a weirdly creative, wonderful mind, but inside a very regular guy body. Your sales order says one thing. Your inventory says another. Your spreadsheet says, good luck. Odie brings your business together on a single platform. From sales and accounting to inventory and marketing, visit odu.com to book a demo. It's ODOOO.com.

So looking at the timeline of your career, it seems that you and Al must have been developing the critic towards the end of Simpson season four. Can you describe what that was like to be killing yourself as a showrunner and also developing a new sitcom at the same time? Yes, I think we were tailing off our responsibilities on The Simpsons. Like, you know, we always work about six or eight months. in advance. So I think all the heavy lifting had been done on The Simpsons when we started creating the new show. Now, mind you, the new show we were creating was a Krusty the Clown show.

It was Matt Graney came to us and said, I want to do a spinoff of Krusty the Clown. And Alan and I just kicked it around and we thought of, oh, let's have him be a single dad in New York. And he'll have a crabby makeup lady and his boss will be a Ted Turner-like tyrant. And we pitched this to Matt Graney. And he said, no, I changed my mind. I want to do a Krusty show that's live action. We're going to put Dan Kasselanetta in clown makeup, and we're going to have him work on a tuna bode or deliver a baby. It was going to be sort of a reality show starring Krusty the Clown.

So that didn't happen either, but a couple of years later, when we were trying to think of the critic, we said, wait, we got all these great ideas left over from the Krusty the Clown show. So we just took out Krusty and put in John Lovett. And that's how we came up with the critic. On top of our Simpsons podcast, we did a full episode by episode going through the critic as well. Your book details how it went from a live action show to being animated. But did ABC really know what it was getting into with primetime animation at the time?

Yes. I think ABC knew exactly what was happening here because we all came up, Jim Brooks and Algene and I came up with the critic. It was animated at that point. And Jim Brooks off the success of The Simpsons had a deal with. where anything he brought to ABC, they had to accept, and they had to give 22 episodes to, and they couldn't say no. So we walked in, we said, we want to do an animated show about a critic starring John Lovitz,

and they said, no, they just smelled trouble. They just knew it wasn't going to work on their network. And God bless them, they agreed to do 13. They changed the deal, and they said, we'll do 13 of these. And they never interfered with the show. They were very nice and supportive, and we put it on the air, and it got very good reviews. And two days later, my secretary walked in with a big box, and I said, what's that? And she said, this is hate mail.

We've got two more boxes of hate mail in the hall. And that was it. Whatever the show was, it was not for the ABC audience. So we got pulled off the air after six weeks. That prediction that The Simpsons would last six weeks came true with the critic. and they pulled it off the air and I remember meeting with the president of ABC

and he had the whole schedule of ABC on his wall he said where on this wall do you see the critic fitting in? I said on Fox after the Simpsons and that's where it wound up going

the next year we went on after the Simpsons. Did ABC really understand what they'd be getting from you because if you watch the Dana Carvey show documentary it seems like the exact same thing happened to them a year later

and that they were put after home improvement or before home improvement, and the tone was way off, and nobody wanted to watch that before home improvement. Yes, as I say, they knew it. We were the ones who didn't know it. And we thought, you know, it was very funny in that we toned it down. The critic in that first season was much tamer than The Simpsons,

and yet it's super outraged the ABC audience. And I remember there was a line that was in the pilot right up to the last minute, and we cut it out where the critic goes, he's dating this beautiful girl. He goes, even my orgasms feel better. I'm thinking, yeah, that probably wouldn't have flown with the family audience on ABC. So then we moved this shocking, outrageous show to Fox. And the only complaint we got out of Fox was one of the executives said, it's not

foxy enough. Can you fox it up a little? One thing I loved about the critic, especially in the first season, was like, how dark and mean it could be. Like, there were constant jokes about Jay being a manic depressive or this loser. that people bestook for a hunchback as well. Like, why was there a conscious decision to get a little darker after the Simpsons when you started on Crick? When we were creating the critic, Al and I thought we didn't want to look like a rip off of the Simpsons. And so everything the Simpsons did, we said, let's do the opposite.

They're suburban, let's make this urban. They're a family. Let's make him a divorced guy. They're middle class. Let's make him upper class. You know, they're kind of dumb. Let's make him too educated. And as a result, the Simpsons was a hit, and we were the opposite.

We were an instant flop. And that's where I learned the good lesson that if you want a hit in TV, take another hit and just change it a little. So the critic got canceled, again, very quickly, I think after six episodes on Fox. And we wound up being replaced with King of the Hill, which is really just. The Simpsons, except it moves so slow, even people from Texas can follow it. So you mentioned in the book about the critic that the art styles varied on the show because the character designs would come from multiple artists with their own styles. If you were doing the show again, would you have a more consistent style like The Simpsons has?

Yes, I would absolutely do that. We, you know, we had a competition. We had many different artists submit ideas, including, I think, the guy who came the very, closest was Brad Bird, you know, Mr. Incredibles, Mr. Ratatouille. And we liked a lot of what he did. But what we wound up doing, which was just a major mistake, was we had six different artists contributing stuff. And we wound up saying, well, let's use this guy from this guy and this character from here. And we'll take him. But with that guy's hairline, and it was a real Frankenstein approach to the show. And as a result, the critic actually literally looks like Frankenstein.

It's a flat square head. It's a very, very hard thing to do. When you're creating a new show is to tell your artist, give me something I've never seen before, but make it feel like something I've loved for years. It's just an impossible thing. This is why Matt Grainning is such a genius.

He created that. Nothing ever looked like The Simpsons, and they seem sort of weird and deformed, except you accept them instantly. And that I'm afraid to say we didn't even get close to on the critic. Well, on season two on the critic, there's a real, like, kind of rounding of the edges on characters. And they definitely are a little, like, cuter and shorter.

It was, was that an attempt to kind of unify the style more? Absolutely. Yeah, that was, if we did nothing else, we sort of filed down the critic's head. Because his head came to a sharp point and then it became a blunt point. We did everything just to soften up the show a little, including giving him a girlfriend. And, you know, it helped. It was a very, it was a much more charming, I think, appealing show that second season. And then the story, which I tell in the book is that we put it on Fox and the ratings were great. We were the biggest hit. They tried eight different shows

to follow the Simpsons. Nothing worked. Everything would lose and squander the audience the Simpsons had until the critic came on. We were very successful. But during the time we were developing the show, Fox changed network presidents. And the new president in the network just came in and hated the show. And it didn't matter to him that it was a hit. He just, he would tell us on a weekly basis how much he hated the critic. So he finally, again, after six weeks of very high ratings, he canceled the show and replaced it with the show called House of Buggin.

So I guess that was the problem with the critic was not enough bugging for this guy. Clearly. It was low on the bug in. Now, I also remember as a viewer that other nights it was replaced with like a Ned and Stacey rerun, which I was just like, I didn't, I don't want this. I am here for cartoons. Yeah, very strange. I mean, I'll never understand it. And yet I feel when I see Roseanne go through this right now, I have the perspective of saying the critic got a second chance. You know, we got a second chance and then we got canceled. I think for really unfair reasons. But most, most, most. shows don't even get a second chance. And it's the same thing with Rosanne. She got a second shot at it and then she blew it, but at least she had a second shot. So speaking of that, so the critic had three shots. So ABC Fox and the web series from the year 2000, would you ever consider bringing it back for like a limited release thing, like a four episode Netflix thing or four

episode Hulu thing? Or do you think just the loss of both Doris Grow and Charles Napier would really not be a great thing to write over? It's, it's been. very tempting. I know I really believe we could walk into Netflix and say let's reboot the critic and they'd do it. John Lovitz, I should mention, he never wanted to do the critic.

We pitched it to him right at the time a league of their own came out and he said, I'm not going to do TV, I'm a movie star. And that was the reason we made the show animated. It was going to be live action, but John thought he would be too busy shooting

blockbuster movies. So the last creative decision we made on The Critic was to do it as an animated show. Anyway, here we are 20 years later. Now, John Lovis would love to do The Critic again. You know, he hears about it every week. And he would love to do it live action. And part of the problem is Al Jean and Jim Brooks are busy with The Simpsons every day. And I just feel the ship is sailed.

You know, there are no more TV critics. It's not a thing you see anymore. And then as you mentioned, yes, I think not just two, but three of the most beloved characters on the show are dead. It's the boss, the makeup lady, and this lovely young woman who played the son on the show has also passed away. They're sort of, I feel like there's some plague affecting the critics. No, I mean, he could come back as a YouTube movie reviewer. How about, eh? Yeah.

No, I actually, I said that to Jim Brooks. I said, what if we make him like Mark Marin? and he's doing criticism out of his garage as a podcast, and nobody got excited about that idea. And I think it's because there was this undercurrent of sadness to the critic anyhow. And then to have the critic brought low as sort of tragedy square, which is sort of a bad way to start off a funny cartoon show. We interviewed Reed Harrison as well,

and he mentioned writing a script for a, you know, the third season of the critic were it to have had. happened on Fox, but like how far along did production go until the before the curtains fell? I think we commissioned, we had money to do nine more scripts. And so there are nine full, beautiful scripts written for a third season of the critic that never happened. I remember one was a parody of that movie quiz show. It was Marty the Sun was going to be on a quiz show and be fed the answers in advance. There was one about just. Jay Sherman buying his favorite old movie theater and restoring it.

We had, we have nine scripts just sitting there. It's a little sad. Is there any way to like release that? Everyone, that's been great. But, oh, you know, well, we can talk about the Critic Simpson's crossover. You definitely go a bit into that. I was curious, too, how in the first season of the critic,

the Dial M for Mother episode, I believe it was, the Simpsons even appear on screen for a few seconds. Like, what kind of negotiation was that to get a, Fox Fox is like Ground Jewel on ABC for several moments. It was, yeah, it was about three seconds.

And they were, I think the critic was watching the Simpsons. And I don't even think we had to bring in the actors to record anything because we just pulled audio from the show. So I think Homer steps on a rake and goes dough and Bart goes, I carumba. That's writing for you.

So I don't know. They were good sports about it. They certainly, the cast agreed. Fox was fine with it. In the book, you talk a bit about the tension behind the Simpson's Credit crossover, and we already spoke to Bill Oakley about that. We heard his side of things.

What was it like being on the other side of that argument? I've got to listen to that episode. He was very diplomatic. Okay, well, I always say this, after the kind of initial animosity between Matt Graining and Sam Simon, the show just sailed along. There was

no problems for the next four years. And then this is the only bump in the road. And people talk about it. It was Antietam at the Simpsons. It was sort of the biggest civil war we ever had at the show. And I would say it lasted an afternoon. It just was not that big deal in the scheme of things. And after that happened, sort of nothing exciting happened for the next 25 years. It's been a quarter century of everybody getting along. But it was when the critic was coming to go on Fox after The Simpsons, James L. Brooks said, well, let's do a crossover episode. The Simpsons meet the critic. And this is something he'd done on his shows a lot. He created these shows

Mary Tyler Moore and Rhoda and Phyllis and characters from the three shows were all dropping in on each other series. And it was a TV staple at the time. So we go to the Simpsons and say, hey, look, the writers of the critic are going to write and produce an episode where the critic comes to Springfield. And the Simpsons writers said, no way, we will not allow this. And, you know, maybe if some strangers had walked in, but we had just been running the Simpsons the year before. We knew what we were doing. And the writers who complained the most were all friends of ours and people we hired, including Bill Oakley. I think that was what was really shocking to us was all this resistance coming from people that we just given the job to. And maybe the loudest

mouth in the room was a guy who had just been hired at the show two weeks before was going, we cannot allow this. And I thought, who are you? And who he was was a guy who got fired about six weeks later. But anyhow, they put up this big fight. And I went to Jim Brooks. I said, the current staff does not want to do this episode. And he said, when did this become a democracy?

And so we just bulled ahead and did it. The critic staff wrote this episode, this crossover episode, which came out great. And partly, I think we worked extra hard to make it great because there was so much resistance. But, you know, it's the episode that has Boor Burns in it. Boo-Werns. It's a classic Simpsons joke written by a guy who never wrote for the Simpsons. It was a guy named Tom Brady who worked on the critic. So that was it.

That was a dark afternoon in The Simpsons. And since then, there's really been nothing of note to talk about. And I should say that's sort of the lesson I learned writing my book. People always want to know, what's the secret of the Simpsons? Why is it runs so long? And part of the reason is it's a happy place. Everybody gets along. There's no friction.

The writers all like each other. We love our cast. We trust our animators to all. always make the show better than what we gave them. And it's a place, you know, even after 30 years, I love going into work every day because it's so much fun. Your sales order says one thing. Your inventory says another.

Your spreadsheet says, good luck. O-Doo brings your business together on a single platform. From sales and accounting to inventory and marketing, visit O-D-com to book a demo. It's O-D-O-O-O-D-com. Oh, yeah, what was that running a satellite Simpson's office? like not just in that season for Round Springfield and the Credit Crossover, but also in seasons eight and nine, I believe it was. You guys also ran a side room.

What was that like compared to running seasons three and four? It was easy. It was easy and fun. You know, it was sort of the model of new TV. I mean, one reason suddenly every show on TV is great when every show used to be rotten. In the old days, you had to make 22 episodes a year. And you can't make 22 great shows a year. But the modern model of TV is take a year, make six really good ones, take another year off, make sure you got six more good ones.

And so that's what happened at The Simpsons. Al Jean and I would come in and just do two or three side episodes of the show. We had all the time in the world. We were able to reject any idea that wasn't really good. And so we were able to make, you know, a couple of very fondly remembered episodes that way. And we have it sort of going right now. Instead of poor Al Jean, who runs the show having to crank out 22 episodes a year, he does 18 of them.

And Matt Selman, sort of the second guy in charge at The Simpsons, produces four episodes. And as a result, Matt's episodes are always very, very good. And Al Jean, I think, is making better episodes than ever, just because his burden's been lifted a lot. So it's been very nice in this past season. This is our 29th year where anyone who's still watching the show goes, hey, that was a really good year. And I'm impressed when I go home and watch them too.

They're really jammed with cleverness more so than in many years in the past. I think we're hitting our stride yet again. I wanted to jump back a little to the end of season four. So between seasons four and five, the staff was mainly basically like 80% difference. What did you and Al think leaving the show, along with so many other writers during that time period, did you feel like the show would thrive? Were you worried about the show? It was so funny.

I have to say, I mentioned how hard it was running The Simpsons. I mean, I don't know if I said this already, but I mean, I gained 70 pounds during the two years. I ran the show. and the work was so hard that I was actually praying for a heart attack, just hoping it would get me a week off from work. So I know when I left The Simpsons, I just said, well, good luck, suckers. Good luck, God, carrying on with the show.

And what happened was remarkable, because they brought in David Merkin, who hadn't worked on the show before, and they said, you're in charge now. And he had virtually a whole new staff. And the one funny thing he did was he went on a buying, spree. You know, we'd done the show with about eight or nine writers for years, and he just took everybody. He had at one point 27 writers on the show, and they all worked in this gigantic

room, and as a result, everybody was afraid to pitch. He had 27 comedy writers, and nobody would say anything, because if you pitch the joke and nobody laughed, you would just bomb in front of 27 writers. So he had a very hard job, and yet, when I look back, on those shows. I think the Dave Merkin years may be the funniest. They're just packed with great big jokes. He's a very, very funny guy and he did the impossible. And he, as much as anyone, is responsible for the Simpsons running and running and running. He showed that you can change over the entire staff and still keep the product consistent and still keep it funny. And I believe he works with him and many, many, many, many other people on the, on the Simpsons

movie, you mentioned in the book, 166 drafts. I mean, how does that compare to the production on other animated films you worked on, like the Ice Age movies are despicable me? It is the norm in movies. I think when we all signed on to make the Simpsons movie, it was sort of seven or eight, I forget the number, seven or eight of the very established writers on the show. I think everybody would run the show before was there on the writing team. And it was so professional. But I think we all presume, this is going to be like making a long episode or this will be like making four episodes in a row

to do the movie. There's a schedule to that. And that's what I thought. Every Simpson script goes through eight complete rewrites. And so that's what I thought the Simpsons movie would be like. But now we made, instead of making the Simpsons movie like a long episode, we made it like a movie. And movies are made by just constantly changing it

right up to the last minute. You can't change it anymore. So just writing and writing and writing and we throw out the script every single day. And as I said, we made we did 166 drafts in the script. And every day we'd print up 200

copies of the script. And at the end of the next day, we tread them all. I think for a movie with an environmental message, we wound up killing every tree in Canada to make it. And that's one reason. You know, the Simpsons movie was a big surprise. hit to us. We, you know, none of the writers wanted to make a Simpsons movie for years because we go,

what can we give the fans that they can't see on TV three times a day? And the answer turned out to be Bart's penis. But on top of that, we just didn't know if anyone would ever pay to see the Simpsons movie. And they did come. The fans were happy. The critics were happy. And so it's been 12 years and we said, let's never do that again. So how close did you come to making a Simpsons movie before The Simpsons movie. I remember on a commentary, you and Al both talked about how James L. Brooks wanted to make Camp Krusty the Simpsons movie in 1991. That's correct.

He watched Camp Krusty. He said, this would make a great movie. And I agree with him in theory. What he didn't realize was what he had seen was actually the shortest Simpsons in history. You know, Simpsons at the time had to be 22 minutes long. And that thing was 17 minutes long. It may be one reason he liked it so much

He thought it really flew by So he's thinking we could stretch it into a movie And Alan I thought we can't even stretch this Into a decent episode But he wanted to do it then I don't remember the idea coming up for another decade And then it was Fox came to us I think after season 15 just with market research

Saying people want to see a Simpsons movie More than anything else More than another Star Wars movie More than another Star Trek movie. So we made the deal. We said, art, we'll try it. We'll try it. But if at any point we feel like this is not working out, we have the right to pull the plug on it. That was it. And the amazing thing, too, was just after putting off trying to make a Simpsons movie for 15 years, we all met, I remember, on a Sunday afternoon. And we sat down and within three hours, we figured out the

whole movie. It just came out of this meeting and everything you see in the movie, the pig, the dome, Alaska, all came out of this meeting. We go, wow, this wasn't so hard after all. Were you working on the, you must have been working on the film while doing some of the commentary tracks for the DVDs. I was, what's it like to record one of those and have all the staff around to record it and even bring in some folks who aren't working on the show, I haven't worked on the show in a long time or even were just a freelancer on the episode? Like, what is, is it like doing those commentaries? It's, I think it's very telling about how writers think and that the way you get the writers

in to do these DVD commentaries is that they give you a really nice lunch. You don't get paid, but they put out this beautiful spread that they don't feed us with the rest of the year. And so we all come in on our lunch hour. It doesn't even take away from the work of that day. You spend your lunch hour eating a nice lunch and watching your old. episode and it's all sort of fun. I mean, you get to unload all these stories and it's fun hanging out and remembering the minutiae of a certain episode or mistakes you made that nobody caught,

but you can show to the audience. And it's a good way to unload. I mean, because once you do those commentaries, you never think or obsess on an old episode again. So next season, the Simpsons Wellender, it's 30th season, and it's about to be owned by Disney. And we're just curious. What do you see as the future of Springfield? I sure don't know. I've got to say this is the biggest curveball that's been thrown to us in three decades, just because we've always just been part of Fox, made by Fox Studios shown on Fox networks, syndicated on Fox stations.

And, you know, that kept it all simple and tight. But now I think different entities of the Simpsons may be owned by different studios. I don't know, you know. I don't want them to do a solo with the Simpsons. I don't want them to crank out four Simpsons movies and four years and suddenly everybody's sick to death of the Simpsons. But the big answer is we don't know. This is for the first time, we don't know what the future holds for us and for our nice, comfortable jobs. I don't know if it was more you or Al Jean on your episodes, but there was definitely some, there was some animosity towards Disney in some of your stuff.

in the old episodes, like, is that, is that weighing on your mind now? I'll tell a secret for anybody who buys this book. Towards the end, there's a chapter about where I went to work for a studio. I had a three-year deal with a studio and it creatively crushed me and the product was terrible. And that studio was Disney. And it used to say Disney all over the book. And then while I'm writing the book, Disney was about to become my new bosses. So now it's just an unnamed studio.

It could be any studio. Let's call it the Malt-MISney Company. But that's who I'm talking about. So the answer is, do I regret some of those jokes we made? Maybe. I think Dave Merkin might have had the best slash worst Disney jokes in the series. And it was funny because we all sort of love Disney. I mean, we love to make fun of it.

And, you know, when there's a lot of scholars who try to analyze the Simpsons. And the biggest mistake they make is that when you make fun of something, something, they think it means you don't like it. And very often, no, we make fun of Disney movies because everybody knows them and everyone loves them. Al Jean and I, the last script we wrote together was our Mary Poppins episode of The Simpsons, the Sherry Bobbins episode. And although we were merciless to Mary Poppins, we love that movie. I still just am so amazed how great it is. So there's no real animus involved. Well, so I guess that's it. But if, obviously, you want to, you want to promote your book, but also, is there anything else you want to promote?

I do hope people buy the book. You know, I finished the book November 1st. And since that time, I've done a lot of lectures. I've met literally hundreds of Simpsons fans. And anytime they ask me a question, I go, oh, it's in the book. Oh, I covered that in the book. So literally, if you buy that book, you never have to hear me talk again. And that's one reason my wife bought the book.

So I do hope you'll buy the book. If you're listening to this podcast, it's a book you will really like. If you're too cheap to buy the book, at least follow me on Twitter. It's at Mike Reese Writer. I promise to give you one good joke a day, just like the Jimmy Fallon show. No, we both read the book and we both loved it. It is for us and our audience, so we hardly endorse it. Great.

Now, your book taught me that Fallon is no laugh backwards. You're not real. It's a good mnemonic device. I say that in my speeches and nobody ever laughs at it. But I like it. So that was our interview with Mike Reese. Thanks again to Mike Reese for giving us his time. After hearing him on the commentaries for so long, it was like, wow, I'm actually talking to Mike Reese.

And you know what? He's exactly like how he is in the commentary. He's this very genial, jokey guy. And that really comes through in his book, I think. You can actually hear Mike Reese reading it to you through the pages. Which I think he's doing an audiobook version of it as well. But it's so... He was very much the Mike Reese I wanted to talk to.

It was like a commentary came alive. And I also like how he didn't shy away from the dirt, but he also is, I feel being honest, of like, there's not a lot of dirt on The Simpsons. Yeah, I mean, the book gets into all of it, but I love how in the book, spoilers, he talks about the bad deal the critic went through. And he does name check that Fox president roughly 30 times in like one paragraph. John Matoa. Yes.

As with all our interviews, I recommend you reach out to the person we interviewed Mike Reese on Twitter. Follow him and let him know you enjoyed this interview because all of our guests really appreciate that and that lets them know people actually listen to us. So please follow Mike Rees Writer. That's Mike, M-I-E-E-R-E-I-S-S and then the word writer. So Mike Reese writer is his Twitter account, but he's also very funny on there too. So if you want to hear some classic Mike Reese humor about the news of the day, that's where to go. I love following Mike Reese on Twitter. Yes. No, I do too. He's, I've been wanting to do this. We've been wanting to do this interview for a long and it gets also checks off another on our box of Simpson's showrunner interviews.

We are now at 50% of living showrunners. I guess if you count Sam Simon as one, we'll never be at 100 plus. But we have now done Mike Reese. We have done Bill Oakley and we have done Mike Scully. What is left is Josh Weinstein, Al Jean, and David Merkin. I think when we go to L.A., I'm just going to wander around town with a big net looking for David Merkin. He's a very unique looking man, so I think I'll be able to find him. I think we'll spot it.

But yes, thanks again to all of you patrons out there. These are Patreon-exclusive interviews, and we can't do them without you. And spoilers, behind the scene stuff. I think we've been kicking this interview around or kind of playing phone tag, as you say, since the beginning of the year with Mike Reese. Oh, more than that, actually. Yeah, yeah, like 2017, maybe. Yeah, well, shout out to our friend of the show, Eric Nagel. Yes, thank you.

He helped me reach out to Mike Reese over a year ago, and I asked him like, hey, would you like to do an interview? He's like, well, let's wait until my book is done. And that was when I found out he was doing a book. Now the book is done. It's out. And he was chatting with us. So I definitely want to thumbs up to Eric Nagel getting the ball rolling on this as well. Yes, and it should go without saying, if you like our show, check out his book.

It's really good. Some of the stuff you might have heard before. But there's actually new Simpsons information and new critic information I never knew in that book. That has never been told before on a commentary or an interview. It's definitely worth having to have all that info in one place. Yeah. Don't not buy it just because there isn't the caramel story. That's me and Bob's own mania.

Yes. But we tracked it down. We solved the case of the caramel. The case has been cracked. Yes, finally. So thanks so much for listening, folks. We'll see you on our next interview or next podcast. Later.

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