WTF with Marc Maron Podcast - Episode 1684 - Matt Groening

Episode Date: October 6, 2025

Matt Groening discovered the things that helped shape his artistic sensibility when he was 12 years old: psychedelia, the Grateful Dead, Catch-22, and of course cartooning. Matt explains to Marc how the road to creating The Simpsons started in Portland, Oregon and had stops in New York City, Los Angeles, the Licorice Pizza record store, the LA Reader and the office of James L. Brooks. They also talk about The Simpsons becoming a breeding ground for comedy writing talent and Matt reveals, for the first time, who was the real inspiration for Homer Simpson. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Lock the gate! All right, let's do this. How are you? What the fuckers? What the fuck, buddies? What the fuck, Knicks. I'm Mark Maren. This is my podcast. Welcome to it.

We're coming down to the wire here. Only a few more shows. I hope you all right. Are you all right? Today on the show, Matt Graining is here. He's the creator of the Simpsons, which means he's responsible for a global phenomenon

and an American cultural institution. I was on episode 653 of The Simpsons. That's season 30. He's also known for Futurama, Disenchantment, and he got him right under the wire here. He will be the last guest recorded here in the garage. I'm going to do one more, and that'll be me talking to you directly.

Just me. Just us. It's going to be just us. And then we have one more after that. This is the longest goodbye ever. but it's important. It's important. I have to go in the house now.

I think what is it with being sick and you want toast? You just want peanut butter and toast. Is that a childhood thing? I don't know. I hope it doesn't upset you that I don't talk for a really long time today. I will on Thursday, but I am under the weather and I have to go run around the fucking city of Los Angeles now and do Q&As at two screenings of my doc. Let's talk about that.

A couple of things. The special screenings is a documentary, Are We Good, around the country? They happen Wednesday, October 8th. It's currently playing in New York and L.A. I'll be at a screening at the Arrow here in L.A. next Friday, October 10th. You can go to Are We Good, Marin.com,

to see where else it's playing and get tickets. I'll be back at Dynasty Typewriter in L.A. for two shows, Saturday, October 11th, and Friday, October 17th. I'll be back at Largo on Tuesday, October 4th. 14th and Tuesday, October 28th with the band. You can go to WTFPod.com slash tour for tickets. Also, you guys, if I'm going to talk, certainly in the near future, I will do it on Instagram.

So you can go follow me on Instagram if you haven't done that. Also, our friend Brian Jones, who makes all the cap mugs I give to my guests, will be part of the Hudson Valley Pottery Tour this month. That's October 18th and 19th. Admission is free to all the studios. on the tour, go to Hudson Valley Pottery Tour.com to learn more. I've been doing a lot of work around the house, trying to make it funer for Charlie.

Make it more fun for Charlie when I have him locked upstairs. It's so dumb, waffling about what I'm going to do with this cat. Eventually, we'll move him into his own house out here. But until then, I put together, I was sick yesterday, And I put together a cat tree and I opened the window. I took a shade off with the screwdriver from, you know, screws out of wood and took that down. I want to take it down anyways. Then I screwed the window shut to make sure he couldn't fuck with it.

And now he can perch on his new cat tree and look out the window. Yeah, that's, that's what, it's so ridiculous. It's so ridiculous how much I tweak out about these cats. scrambled to the vet today. That was a whole other thing, man. You know, Buster's been acting weird, and you kind of feel like you know when they're sick and he was marking everywhere.

And I don't know. I thought it was Charlie and, you know, but it comes and goes and then I found like, you know when you're looking for pee and all of a sudden you're like, oh my God, there's way more pee than I ever imagine possible. Jackson Galaxy told me to get a black light I'm afraid to even use it

He just fucking peed All along the inside of the curtains All around the rooms I was like what the fuck And he's on Buesporin I'm on the Buesporin And I no longer pee on the wall around the house I mean why isn't it working for him

Yeah I was a big pier in corners No more It should be working for him But then I thought maybe he's got a UTI so I took him to the vet. I'm scrambling because I got some things to do out of town. And, you know, I'm scrambling to get everything. I brought Charlie to the vet to see if he might be fucked up with a pee thing

because he's peeing in the sink, but he's always peed in the sink. Then I took Buster in. They did tests. And, you know, she didn't think it was the UTI because he's marking. But Buster always pees vertically. He always marks. I've never seen him pee normal. Buspi the Bussporin should be working for that, right?

Anyway, so yesterday I get a, or the day before yesterday, I get a email from the vet. He's got bacteria in his pee. And I'm like, well, I got to go. So I drag poor Buster in there and get him, get him the shot. And I had all these errands to run yesterday and wasn't working out. This is not, none of it's important. We should be here kind of easing out.

But it's so weird. I know I've talked about this before, but when I get sick and my body just slows down, I can really tap into stuff. I can tap into vibes I felt a long time ago about places. I guess it's sort of like a deja vu of sickness maybe. Like, I think that when your body's sort of shut down a little bit and you're a little sick, it remembers other times you were sick. I keep thinking about college and about, you know, kind of walking through

always feeling exhausted and just feeling the fall in Boston and just sort of like kind of like totally tripping out on it. I guess the word now is vibing on it. And it's just almost like time travel when I get a little ill. I hope it doesn't get worse.

Kids got a bronchial thing. You don't want that, man. Keep it out of my chest. Please. Please keep it out of my chest. I know this is not the kind of thing you want to be talking about, you know, as we head into the last few shows. But this is who I am right now. And, you know, I'll say it again and again.

I'm so happy you guys hung out, man. I'm so happy you guys all hung out. A lot more people hung out than I even thought of. Every time I have a guest on, it's like I had, they're like so many people told me that they heard me. I'm like, oh, my God. But I'm glad you hung out. I hope I didn't get anyone sick. Ha, ha.

Oh, my God. Do I have to keep talking through the sickness? You guys are going to be okay until Thursday? That's a big talk. I just, oh, so much work to make one cat comfortable. It's so fucking crazy. It'll all level off. Everything is so important to me in the moment.

I do not have ADHD. What I have is, when I realize something is up, I have to do. deal with it immediately or else I'll forget it. But, you know, I got to give this cat thing a rest, God damn it. All right, look, this is the way I'm going out. Wow, today with only a few shows left. Sick and worked up about cats.

That makes sense. All right, look, Matt Graining is here. Season 13 of Futurama is now on Hulu. The Simpsons just began its 37th season. and the 800th episode will air in February. And this is me talking to the great Matt Grainning. What have you never mentioned? I've never mentioned the original inspiration for Homer Simpson,

and it was from a 1982 documentary on PBS. It was part of the Middletown series about Muncie, Indiana. And one of the episodes was called Family Business, and it was about a guy who had a Shaky's Pizza franchise, Yeah. And he was going nuts. He couldn't make his monthly due. And it was just about him trying to make pizza and have the straw hat on and playing the piano and running around and stuff.

And he had his kids working there. Yeah. And his kids loved him, but he didn't have enough money to pay his kids. Yeah. And one moment in the documentary, the kids just can't take it. And they go to a movie instead of coming to work. Yeah. And he's there by himself in the...

Of course, the camera crew is there documenting this guy going crazy. And I thought, this is a man, a sweet man who's getting kicked in the ass by life. I want to write about that. And that's where Homer came from. From that guy, from the Shaky's guy. Yeah. That's good information. Thank you.

And it's never been out there. Nope. That's the big news on this episode. Do you have an outline? I just have some little things if I want to mention something that I get the thing right. Really? Yeah. You did some work beforehand?

Well, there's a few, there's a documentary that I love that I want to mention. It's called Which Way Home? It's an HBO documentary from, God, I don't remember where. Which Way Home? Which Way Home? It's about immigrant children coming up from Central America and Mexico to the United States. And it is the most heartbreaking documentary I've ever seen. And I think it would change people's minds who have no empathy for immigrants if they could see this documentary.

It just blew my mind. The empathy deficit, I don't completely understand, but I've grown to believe that through massive pummeling by propaganda, that I think it creates a manic state. And I don't think they can see past it until they see people face to face. Well, it doesn't even get acknowledged that things to be empathetic about, you know, on the news. I mean, you know, everything is so narrow. and everything is replaced by the next thing,

the next thing, the next thing. Whatever the news is at this point. It's all about, yeah. I had that conversation with someone the other night about their parents, you know, getting, you know, brain fucked into Trumpism. And it's really because that generation, you know, your age a little older,

when they watch Fox News, they think it's the news. Right. And these are people that watched Cronkite, you know, for half their life. And they just don't make the adjustment. They're like, well, that guy's sitting there behind the desk, it's the news. Well, one way in which I'm not surprised by Trump

is that growing up watching television evangelists blatantly being crooks and con artists. Oral Roberts? Yeah, Oral Robertson. Billy Graham. Pat Robertson. When I was in the Boy Scouts, in the late 1960s, our scoutmaster volunteered us to be ushers

at a Billy Graham revival. Wow. in Portland, Oregon. Yeah. And we got on a bus and we drove over there. And on the way, I drove past something called the psychedelic shop, which is a brand new emporium. How old were you? I was 12.

Okay. So you're driving home from the... No, no, I'm driving on the way to the revival. To the Billy Graham Revive. And I see the psychedelic shop and I got to go there. 1960. 67. Oh, so early.

Early. Early. First psychedelic show. Yes. And I snuck out of the... of the revival after handing out, you know, tracks. Yeah. And I walked across the bridge,

across the river, Llamet River, to the psychedelic shop, and there's where I saw. The thing I remember most is that Grateful Dead poster with the skeleton and the roses. It's the best record. The best. It's like late 60s, right? So that's 67 live. Yeah, the very first,

grateful, the very first record I ever bought was the Grateful Dead record. Which one? The first one, the first album. What else did you see in there? Well, the only thing I can forward at the time was the first country Joe and the fish seven-inch EP. So it was a record shop, too. Records and posters. Right.

Yeah. So you got country Joe and the fish, which one? The rag baby EP. It's a seven-inch EP. Okay. But see, I had very hip parents, and my father was in advertising, and we subscribed to, we got free subscriptions to every general interest magazine in the country, and I had just read an issue of Ramparts magazine, which was this political.

Back when Horowitz was the other. other way. So, yes, exactly. Yes. Anyway, they talked about psychedelic music in this magazine, which I'd never heard. I just heard about. And so I wanted to hear what it sounded like. And it turned out it was rock and roll.

Sure. It was like, it's all kind of country-driven rock. Right, right? It's interesting Ramparts magazine that Horowitz, what's his first name, David? Yeah. That he went so dramatically the other way, that he was part of the Ramparts magazine, and then something broke in his brain, and he is cited as the mentor of Stephen Miller. It's crazy.

That story, like, I know his son. And I'm like, that's got to be a movie. The arc of that. Because Ramparts was an important, you know, lefty rag, right? Yes, it was. Yeah. And then this guy becomes the architect of the mindset that creates a Stephen Miller. Isn't that a fascinating movie?

Yes. Yes. But you know what other thing about Stephen Miller that I don't get? How could you go to Santa Monica high school and turn out like him? Because he was clearly annoying and hated. And it seems to me that the only way he could put. push back on it was leaning into it. And then he began to enjoy it.

Right. He liked being a fucking iconoclastic cunt. And it gave him in his own space, and they didn't like him anyways. Right. And then he locked in. Right. And this is what we get.

Right. A Jewish Nazi. Yes. I remember you said that on your special, which I just watched. I did. Oh, thank you so much. I, uh, you know, I, we met, right?

at the Zappa House. Yes. I remember that. Do you remember what year that was? Holy shit. Well, it must have been maybe maybe a year before she got cancer.

So you were, it was a party. It's a yearly Christmas party at the Zappas. I've been dating Moon for about 10 minutes. And I'd gotten invited to this very dug-in

tradition of the Zappa Christmas party. And I, you know, going over there was just mind blowing to me. That was the first time I'd been at the house. Oh, wow. And we only dated for like six months, but it was long enough to be

able to go to that thing and heard giving the tour of the Franks studio and then the new studio. And for some reason, Moby was there because him and Moon are friends, and he was dragging along on the tour, it ruined it. He kept stopping and playing every fucking instrument in the place. I'm like, dude, just

have some reverence to do. That was amazing. So you asked me to do your podcast. Then. Then. Yeah, and what happened. And I said, I'll think about it. And now you're doing the last one. This is the last one? Well, no.

The last one is also going to be an interview. And then the one before the last one is going to be me, just talking about the podcast. And then the third to the last one is going to be you. Wow. Yeah. I'm honored. So if you recall, at the time, I promised you that I would do your podcast and you would be the first podcast that I would do. Yeah.

And I kept that. Yeah. in my mind all those years. Yeah. But I did, I have to confess, I did two other podcasts. I did a Simpsons podcast because it was the last episode of the Simpsons podcast called Round Springfield.

Okay. By Ali Gertz and Julia Prescott. And then I did a Jay Kogan, who was a Simpsons writer. He had a podcast. So those are the only two I did. That's good. Save myself for you.

Because, you know, as long as you covered all that Simpson stuff elsewhere, then maybe we can have a good conversation. Yeah, who, yeah. Yeah, I don't want to talk about anything. Simpson related? Yeah. Well, I mean, it's interesting because like generationally, like my producer, who's, you know, a good deal younger than me, he's in his mid-40s, I mean, the Simpsons informed his entire existence.

There's a whole generation of people who the Simpsons, you know, it just gave them all the intellectual and comedic and, you know, cultural education that enabled them to move through the world. with a sense of humor and intelligence. I believe that. Wow. Do you believe that? Well, I have to be a little bit more modest. No, you know. Yeah.

No, but what I push back, and I'll push it away from me is say that one of the great things about The Simpsons. I always wanted it to be funny. Yeah. And I always thought it was going to be a success, but I didn't know that it would be that crazily successful.

And I didn't understand what the possibilities are. I thought there were boundaries and rules in animation that I knew in my head. And I was wrong. In animation. Not in. And comedy, whatever. Yeah.

And there were so many things I liked and so many things that influenced me from time I was a little kid. My father, Homer, was a cartoonist in the 1950s. Is that true? Yes. Oh, I don't know why I just said it like that. Like, you'd be lying to me about that. Well, let's go back to that then. So you grew up where?

I grew up in Portland, Oregon. So Portland, Oregon. You know, war-torn Portland, Oregon. Sure. Yeah. Where it's impossible for people to live there right now. The war is ongoing. Exactly.

I just talked to, I have friends up there. I just talked to somebody the other day. It's just, all that's ridiculous. But Portland for me, when I've gone there, I've always felt a seeping darkness. I mean, because it rains so much. Well, there's that. But it also felt ancient, not ancient quite, but maybe 1800s kind of darkness. Like I felt that there was something about that town and whoever discovered it and whatever

rules were put into place that made a darkness. Is that possible? Possible. Yeah. Well, you know, it was always rainy. Yeah. It was the town was named by a coin toss. It was a lovejoy and I can't remember the other guy and they tossed a coin.

And if one had one, it would have been Boston, Oregon. And the other one was Portland. Oh, we got Portland. That's when we got Portland. But the racial laws were kind of rough for a long time. Racial laws were very bad. Yes, in Oregon. Like literally there were no black people allowed.

Right. Yeah, up until like a couple years ago, right? No, things loosened up. I did go to an all-white grade school. Oh, yeah? Yes. Was it called that? All-white?

It was called Ainsworth after Captain Ainsworth. Oh. In fact, you know, there's all these streets in Portland that I named characters after. Oh, really? So that's, yes. So, Lovejoy, Reverend Lovejoy. Yeah. Kearney, it's named after the Kearney Care Center,

where I used to work in high school. What you do there? Washing dishes? Okay. Yeah. What was it, the Kearne Care Center? It was for old people. Oh, so you were a nice kid.

I was, well, when I wasn't washing dishes, they tasked me with wheeling old people around the neighborhood. And I remember it was a couple of my dishwashing buddies and we were wheeling these guys. And they pointed up at this theater marquee of the movie theater on the corner. It was the stewardesses in 3D, which was a softcore porn movie. Oh. And we did, we coughed up our own money to take the old people. Oh, you brought them?

Yes. And did they enjoy it? Yes, they did. Was there any commentary afterwards? No. All right, so you're growing up in Portland. So your dad was a published cartoonist? Yes.

In little magazines, you know, pageant and Argosy. Single panel stuff? Single panel, you know, the prospect are crawling across the desert, looking for something to drink. Those kind of things. Guys on Desert Islands. Yeah. Oh, really?

Yeah. And he was also an advertising person? He got into advertising. But before that, he's got a really interesting story because he grew up in Kansas. He was first, he was born in Canada because his parents were Mennonites and they were pacifists and they didn't want him to be an American citizen. So they drove up to Canada so he would not be born in the U.S. And he would not have to serve in the military. Right.

And so he was born in Saskatchews. one and then they came back and lived in western Kansas where he did not speak English. He spoke German until the age of five. The family did not have a car. They had a wagon, a horse and wagon. Mennonites. And they made it to Portland.

They made it to McMinville, which is south of Portland, where I don't know. This part of the story I don't understand. But was it part of that wave of Germans and I think like some parts of Russia where they wanted people to come to farm the land in the Midwest because it was so hard? I guess so.

Okay. Yeah. Yeah. And my dad's mother was from Russia and her family escaped from Russia. And then they somehow hooked up, met in, got married in Kansas and then moved to Oregon where I don't know how this happened, but both of them became college educated. And my grandfather was a physics teacher at Linfield College. and then Lewis and Clark College for the rest of their lives

and my grandmother taught Russian. And these were ex-Mennonites. These are your mother's parents? My father's parents. He was a physicist? He was a physics teacher. A physics teacher. Yeah.

But I didn't understand. Where did he get the connection from being a Mennonite to Einstein? Well, I think that, you know, not unlike you walking into the psychedelic shop, somewhere along the line, his mind got blown.

Yes. And he's like, I'm got to figure this out. Yeah, so my dad was a stalwart, obedient kid who was obsessed by basketball, and he wanted to be a basketball player when he grew up. Yeah. And he just played basketball all the time.

And he realized when he got to college that he was never going to make it in the basketball. That's an important. Important realization. So he decided to perfect a basketball shot that only he could do. And so starting in college, he turned around, faced away from the basket,

to the other, looking at the other basket, and over his head he would shoot, and he moved out an inch a month for 30 years. Well, this explains how he got interested in physics. The answer's right there. That was the seed of it. The FBI came to the house

at the beginning of World War II and said, because my father had joined Red Cross. In fact, he taught life-saving at a Japanese internment camp in Southern California. I said, how could you cooperate It was such a racist thing.

And he said, yeah, it was racist, but I wanted to be good to the people that were locked up. Yeah. So I taught life-saving. Anyway, so the FBI came and they said that if my dad didn't join up, he would go to prison. Join up in the forces? Yeah, joined the forces. And my dad joined the Air Force. Ended up being a B-17 bomber pilot.

Come on. Yes. And then he gave me the book, Cat 22 by Joseph Feller. Oh, that's another. And I went, oh, my God, that's what it was like. He said, no. But it's a really good book. How old were you when you read that book?

12. This 12-year-old thing, this is where it all starts. That's right. That's exactly right. Yes. Grateful Dead. Grateful Dead. Frank, Joe.

Zappa at 12? Yes. Where'd you find Zappa at 12? That I found Freakout at the grocery store. At the grocery store in the record bin. They had a little record bin at the grocery store. Yeah, I bought Jethro Tull's Aqualong at Skaggs Pharmacy. They only had like one little bin of records.

And Freakout made it in there. Isn't that wild when the record companies, they try? Yeah. And that's a great record to have. Yes. And that was the beginning of your relationship with Zappa? I followed every album since that first one. All 900?

Yes. And they still, the amazing thing, like it's been gone since 1993, and they're still putting out new, fresh stuff, you know, a few times a year. Ahmed is doing such an amazing job. At keeping the archive alive? Yes. They find, I guess once they unloaded that house and went through that,

All those tapes downstairs, they're like, oh, my God. Well, when Frank was alive, he invited me over once, and he said, do you want to see the basement where all the tapes were? Yeah. And I said, yeah, he goes, well, you got to put on the spulunking helmet. And I had to wear a helmet with a headlamp on it and go down into the sub-basement. And there were just racks and racks and shelves and shelves. Did you spend a lot of time with him?

Yes. Well, yes, on a regular basis, a small amount of it. time every day, every week. Really? Every Friday. Yeah. And like, what did you guys talk about? Music and politics. Uh-huh. And he was, you know, I think he, I think he liked me because I, first of all, he was a big Simpsons fan. So that was, that was good. In fact, he

said, you know, if you want, I'll come down and mumbled into the microphone for you. And I never got around to it and he got too sick. Really? You didn't get him on? No. Did you have to approve me being on? No, by the way, thank you very much. Thank you very much. What's that? 2018? You we're on with Krusty the Clown. I interviewed Krusty the Clown. I think it's the episode 653 of The Simpsons.

Wow. That's my episode. Wow. I'll never forget Krusty's saying to you, that's off limits, soul patch. Well, I think in the tradition, like in terms of you're gravitating towards Zappa outside the music, I think that, you know, what's at the heart of what the Simpsons has become, is there's a healthy amount of fuck you in it.

Yeah, I would agree with that. And that, you know, that art with a healthy amount of fuck you is necessary, more so than ever. But it's kind of, it's hard to get to a broader audience with it, I think, now. Well, I learned, so I moved to Los Angeles after college in 1970. So wait, now let me just ask you, before we get there, because I watched, I've had this, I don't know if it's a catharsis, but a sort of a rewerews. Realization. I watched the documentary Crumb for like the second time recently. I saw it when it came out and I watched it again. And not unlike you, although I'm probably 10 years younger than you, you know, I went into, I had an experience with underground comics that changed my life. To completely reconfigure my brain. I was at a B. Dalton bookseller in Wenrock Shopping Mall in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in the humor section. And they had the history of underground comics. And in that, they was broken into categories like sex, violence, and a few other categories.

And I saw there's that one panel by Spain, Rodriguez, I think, with the two constellation of two people fucking in space. And then there's all the crumb stuff, all the fucking, all the fucking, just like, and I'm sitting there, you know, in this bookstore with a fucking boner, you know, wondering like, what the fuck is this? They didn't even know what they had. changed my life. So, because it reconfigured the possibilities of, of comics and of, you know, what you can get away with. But I watched the, uh, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the crumb documentary again, and I realized that if you look at everything through a crumb lens, you will feel better about life. Yeah.

That if you look at, if you look at people and then just crumb them, it humanizes everybody. Because it's just this, like, that slightly strange kind of caricature. that shows their flaws, and even if they're grotesque, they're more human than they would be. Right. And it's really helping me right now. Now, did you have experience with,

before you left, you know, when you were a kid with comics in general? Well, again, my dad was a cartoonist. Sure. So the house was full of cartooning books. Of how to? Well, how to, but also collections

from Punch Magazine and Saturday Evening Post. And, again, we got every magazine in the country delivered to the house. So I read, my job was to stack them up in piles in the basement. Where's Gahan Wilson factor in? Gayan Wilson was in Playboy.

Yeah. So, yeah. Where's he factor into your mental? He's definitely, he's definitely up there. Right? Yeah, yeah. How do you pronounce his first name? Gayan?

Gayan, okay. Yeah, yeah. Did you watch that talk? No, I haven't. There's a talk about him. Wow. Those ones, those ones killed me. And the crumb killed me?

Oh, my God. So I was at. Esquay Wilson. Do you remember Meltdown Comics? Sure. On Sunset Boulevard? I was in Meltdown Comics, Hawaiian shirt and shorts. Yeah.

And this guy came in and he said, are you Matt? And I go, yeah, he goes, do you know anything about Playboy? I go, yes. And he said, come with me. And across the street, there was an auction of all Playboy, old Playboy memorabilia from the magazine. Yeah. And I came over there and was all people much, much younger than me. Yeah.

And they had no idea what they were looking at, nor did the people who ran the auction house. And so I said, that's Gay in Wilson and that's, you know, so and so. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It was amazing. You know Esquay Wilson? His stuff?

I met him a couple times. I interviewed him. He's great. Can I do an interview? Ask me a question to S.K. Clay Wilson. So where did you come up with the checker demon? He was sick already? Yeah.

Oh, that's too bad. I met him. I interviewed all of the Zapp Comics cartoonists. The whole bunch of them? Yeah. They did a new issue and they came to L.A. So Spain, Robert, Esquay? Esclay.

Rick. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And when was that? I can't remember. Were you already doing The Simpsons? Yeah. No, no, that was before The Simpsons.

Ah. I think, yeah. But so when, like, when do you start, do you start doing cartoons before you come down here? Oh, yeah. I was doing cartoons. I was drawing from the first day of first grade. I was so bored in school that I just remember constantly drawing. Yeah, I did that too, but I didn't stick with it.

Well, I stuck with it, but I didn't think I was going to do anything with it. I just thought, I'm doomed to wiggle the pencil on the paper. What were your early styles? I would imitate Dr. Seuss and Charles Schultz peanuts. Oh, so that makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. So that's why my line is all curvy.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, there's definitely the peanuts that are in there, huh? Right. Dr. Seuss. And then later, when I moved to L.A., I hated it so much that I got a job working at a Xerox place, and I made my own little magazine. my own little zine called Life in Hell, and it was all about Los Angeles

and living here and how much I hated it. And that's one thing that I learned, that hostility only goes a little ways. Most humor has hostility in it, but you can't be so blatant with it. You've got to lure people in. So you had to temper your life from hell? Well, what I did was at first I would make

the little bunny rabbit that was the star of the comic. You just rant. Yeah. You just rant and rant and rant. And people didn't like it. Single panels? No, it was like a little comic book.

Yeah. Well, then I got a job at the Los Angeles reader, newspapers, a weekly paper. Yeah. And they let me have a comic strip in the back of the paper in the classifieds. Yeah. And I called it Life in Hell,

and I made it square. Yeah. Because that was the same shape as a record album. Yeah. And for the first six months, I just had it, was very angry and nobody liked it. And then I just made Binky, the rabbit, a victim.

Okay. And bad things happened to him, and people seem to really like that. So you switched it from just... Existential rants to a guy... Existential self-hating angst. Right, to underdog. Yes. Oh, and that changed everything.

That did change. But so when you... What did you study in college? I went to a college called the Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington. I know that place. No grades, no required courses. So out of patchouli oils, white kids with dreads? A lot of hippies, yes.

So what year was that? That was 73 to 77. So still pretty full hippie, 73. It was all hippies. Oh, really? All hippies, yeah. Were you political? Were you part of it?

Were you, like, what were you doing? Well, I consider myself pretty progressive, but back then I was, to them, I was, I was, yes. Right of center. Yeah. But what was the scene? Was there, did you do poster art or anything? I, I worked, I worked at the school newspaper and I ended up editing the paper and that's all I did. I just would do work on the school newspaper.

Do you have friends? Yeah, of course. Yeah. That's when you have friends. I mean, this is what I tell kids who are miserable in high school. I say, grow up, graduate from high school, go to a college and you're going to meet like-minded people. Right. You know, you know, it's, when you're crummy town and your crummy school that you're in now, get away.

Right. away and meet and meet creative fun. Yeah, you better do it soon before all the colleges turned into just exactly what your high school was. Yeah. When I was in high school, it was in downtown Portland, and it was during the anti-war protests and stuff. And the high point of being in Lincoln High School in Portland was that when the protesters

came up and surrounded the school. Yeah. And the principal freaked out, and he dismissed. school. Yeah. Immediately. And that meant everybody in the school was out on the street with all the protesters. It was fantastic. Yeah? Yeah. It was exciting. Yes. And it, it probably helped. It might have worked a little bit. I don't know about that, but yeah. Well, it's just, you got to do it. Yes. Of course. But it's interesting to me now that, you know, what is happening with the right in general, it's just, it's pushback that, you know, started just post the 60s.

You know, that, you know, and the New Deal, they're still trying to dismantle the New Deal and dismantle any sort of cultural progress that was made in the late 60s. And they're doing it very quickly. They're feeling their oats. Yeah. But they were, I mean, there was always, there was always this sort of right wing, you know, trying to, trying to worm their way in. And for the longest time, it didn't work, you know, and then it would work here and there. And, you know, I mean, in 68, you know, George Wallace ran for president. totally blatant right wing racist, Democrat.

Were you doing any art relative to that? I would attempt to do bad psychedelic art. Oh, yes. Yes. What form? You know, the psychedelic lettering that you can't really read. Sure. You know.

And then kind of art nouveau. With my friend Joe, who was my lifelong friend. I met him in the first grade. He was a kid that came up to me and said, smell my finger. Yeah. And not first grade. Kindergarten. First day of kindergarten.

Joe came up to me and said, smell my finger. I smelled it. It was a bad smell. Right? And then he stuck his hand down the back of his pants and go up to everybody else. That was his thing. Really funny kid. Yeah, yeah.

So then a month later, the kindergarten teacher marched us all down to the boys' restroom and pointed, said, who did that? And there was somebody had dumped in the urinal. Yeah, sure. Right? And we were shocked. We were kindergartners, except for Joe who laughed his ass off. And they grabbed him and took them away. And that was the last you saw of them. No.

The rest of my high school I spent with Joe, we had, you talked, asked about satiricalic posters. I did psychedelic posters for our band that never played. Oh. We had a little band. And I wrote the lyrics. Yeah. Funny, undulating, circling kaleidoscope, yellow omnipresent universe. Yeah.

Which is our version of losing the sky with diamonds. But that spells out, fuck you. Oh, see, the fuck you. Yeah. I'm right about it. The fuck you is there. Yeah. And the art wasn't cartoons per se?

It was, yeah, there were, it was cartooning. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. And Joe, did he let go of the shit angle eventually? Yes, he did. Yes, he did. And he became a fantastic guitarist, and he was a brilliant kid. And then in the height of hippiedom in the late 60s, he shaved his head.

And I said, why? He said, I want to be goonworthy. And I don't know exactly what that meant, but he would march around and put up, he put up posters. of cartoon robots saying obey and so on. And my senior year in high school, every month they would give the boy of the month award and the girl of the month award. And for the month that humor was the thing, Joe won. Joe won for humor. And he got up on stage and he said his joke.

And you have to understand Lincoln High School is made out of brick. Yeah. Okay. So he got up on stage and said, why is Lincoln High School so red? Yeah. Well, if you had eight periods a day, you'd be red too. Wow. And that got him kicked out of school.

That was it. And by the way, so my 50th high school reunion, I told that joke via video because I couldn't make it. And the kids I went to high school, oh, no, don't say it. They knew what was coming. And did they all knew Joe? Yeah. Oh, yeah. And did you play music then?

No. I wanted to, but I have no skill. But you were a big music fan. I was in a band. I've been in a band with Stephen King and Dave Barry and Amy Tan and all these other writers. Yeah. The Rock Bottom Remainters. Sure.

We were called The Reminders, but it turns out there was another band called The Reminders. Yeah. So we were the Rock Bottom Remainters. So how far out, did you have a huge record collection? Yes, of course. Yeah? Yeah. Did you ever, where'd you start collecting?

Well, I don't know if collecting, they piled up. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, from the time I was, you know, in high school. Yeah. Just kept coming? You used, you know, I think I had incredibly good luck at guessing by album covers, what was good. And you just kept up. I kept up, you know.

Do you like your jazz guy? Yeah. Are you a weirdo music guy? Yes, yes, yes, yes. Who are your favorite weirdos? Well, how weird do you want to get? Like residents weird? Oh, yes.

I know the residents. Yeah. And I wrote a little bit about them back in the day. Yeah, the residents, let's see who else. That universe? That universe of weirdos. Obviously, Frank Zappa, Captain Bfart, the Bonzo Dog Band from England.

Uh-huh. And then classical music and avant-garde classical music, like Stravinsky, not so much, avant-garde, but pretty amazing. John Cage? John Cage, George Crum, Toru Takamitsu, Olivier Messian.

I don't know them. Terry Riley, yeah. Terry Riley, yes, of course. Great, yeah. All right, so you graduate with a degree in hippie? Yes. And you moved to L.A. for what?

I was either L.A. or New York. And so... For cartoons? Well, to be a writer, basically. Okay, so to be a writer. Because I never thought, you know, nobody was saying, hey, your cartoons are great. Okay, so you moved down here to be a writer.

Well, I went to New York to see what it was like. Yeah. And I, and there were hyperdermics on the stairwell of the apartment I was staying on. I said, eh, I'm going to L.A. And what's your, what's your mom do? She was a school teacher, and then she raised five kids. Five of you? Yeah. Are you all weirdos?

No, I'm the weirdest, but yeah, they're all weird. Yeah. And by the way, they're, you know, so I have a sister Lisa and a sister Maggie, the characters in the show are named after him. And my father's Homer, obviously, and my mother is Margaret, but I charted at the Marge. I was slightly funnier. And I do have an older brother named Mark. Yeah. And, but I was afraid he'd hit me if I named Mark, Mark. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. But so your parents were okay with your choice of life? No, no, no. They, when I went to Evergreen, they said I was throwing my life away. They were very unsupportive. They don't recall.

They don't remember it that way. But from my recollection, they thought I was wasting my time. In fact, I sent them the newspaper that I was editing, the campus newspaper. They showed it to journalists at the Oregonian in Portland. And they said he will never get a job in journalism in the Pacific Northwest. And my parents said, you know, we've never considered disowning you, but this might be it. But they were progressive people-ish. They were, but it was like the weirdest thing.

because, again, my father was, my father made movies, surfing movies in the 60s. He was very hip and very adventurous, but he had this military backbone that was kind of harsh. Yeah. But he was an artist. Yeah, he was.

And he was a cartoonist. But I didn't understand. Well, one thing he said it, he said, you can't draw. He said that, yeah. And then later, later the Simpsons takes off, and my mother says, look, look, you did exactly what we told you to do and look how it turned out. Yeah, of course.

And I said, you didn't tell me, you didn't tell me to do this. You told me, you told me that I should drop out of school and enroll in a community college and learn a trade. Yeah. She goes, no, we didn't. I said, you told me to learn how to run a lathe. Yeah. And my mother said, no, we would never do that. You'd know you're clumsy.

You'd slice your hands off. They want to take credit. Yes. So when you got here, you were miserable. You worked at the Xerox Place. Yes. Where else did you work? Shortly after that, I got a job at Lickrish Pizza,

a record store right across the street from the Whiskey Agogo. So that must have been a life changer. What year was that? 77. So that was the beginning of punk. Yeah. Yeah. So I wait.

When there were 500 people at Tower Records down the street, there would be five people at Lickish Pizza. And you guys are selling most of punk records? No, it was, yeah, there was a punk corner. And that's where I put Life in Hell my little magazine, and the punks used to rip it up, which I felt was like a badge of honor. An honor, yeah.

So that's where you were doing the magazine at the Xerac store, and then you kept going? We also sold drug paraphernalia. Sure. Bongs. Bongs and little Coke vials. Yeah, yeah. And toy footballs that they made into bongs and all this stuff.

Yeah. And like a jerk, When people would come in and buy 500 vials, I'd say, what do you do with these? What do you do? Yeah. So that was the place. Yeah.

The dealers used to come. And I just thought it was so obvious that that's what it was in. Sure. But you never did the drugs? No. You know why? Two reasons. One, I was afraid of losing control.

But the other reason was Frank Zappa said not to. Yeah. You know? And I said, okay, that's good enough for me. And I liked his stuff. He didn't mind eating cigarettes, basically. Well, yes. He was totally into.

nicotine and coffee. Yeah. Yeah. In fact, one time he had to go back east and he was flying private and they asked, would you be willing to go with him because nobody in the family wanted to be on a plane with Frank across the country while he smoked incessantly? In the back, I remember that. And I said, yeah, I'll do it.

But then he got too sick and he didn't know. Oh, that's so sad. Yeah. And did you hang out with Beefheart? Very little. Yeah. Very little. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. And I bet you knew all the kids and everything, Gail. Yeah, I love all the kids. Yeah. So when do you make the break? I mean, when does it start taking off? It was Life and Hell, right?

Well, Life and Hell, I published, self-published the book Love is Hell in 1984. And it was the size of a record album, because again, that's where I thought, oh, they could stock it at record stores. Yeah. And it was called Love is Hell. And then I did a book called Work as Hell in shortly thereafter. And they sold so well that I got the attention of Art Spiegelman of Mouse fame. I know him. And he introduced me to Pantheon Books.

And Pantheon books published Mouse and my Life in Hell books. Yeah, Spiegelman's like a comic savant. Yes. Yeah. Like he's a history of comics. Yes. He knows it all. And he's got a lot of opinions.

reference it and everything. Yes, he's brilliant. Yeah, he smokes a lot, too. Yes, he does. Yeah. But now it's, whatever. The vape? Vape, I think.

Oh, my God. I think he was smoking those camel straight. Speaking of Crum, yeah. Crum was supposed to come to L.A., and I was supposed to interview him on stage. Me too. Really? Here, yeah.

Oh, they asked me ask for. No, not on stage. No, okay. Anyway, I was supposed to interview him on stage to promote the book, the biography by Dan Nadell, and Crum backed out. Bailed. Bailed.

And then Art Spiegelman said, I'll go. And Art Spiegelman came out. How was that? That was amazing. Did you know? Because as you said, he was, he's the, he got comics, history. Yeah. Yeah, amazing, right?

Yes. What do you make of Ralph Bakshi? When I met Ralph Bakshi, he said, you've got to get out of this animation thing. It's a complete rut. It's a, it's, you're wasting your time. Yeah. You know, and then I went, oh, okay, okay. and then like the next day he was announcing a new movie.

Oh, yeah. Who's the other guy who liked? What was that guy's name Vaughn Vond Bodie? Von Bodie? Von Bodie or something like that. Yeah, that guy, Cheech Wizard. Yeah. This is the greatest.

That's wild. Right? Yeah. He was great. Yeah. So when he come down here, when he start to take off as a cartoonist, do you meet other cartoonists?

Outside of Spiegelman or did you have contemporaries? Well, I started, I was on the fringes of the punk scene. Yeah. scene and there was a there was a newspaper called slash yeah flash magazine and uh there was a comic strip in there called jimbo by by gary panter Gary panther's great yeah peewey's guy yes yeah and so I Gary wrote me a letter in this scrawled handwriting and I thought because of the style of his work and everything I thought he was a Japanese punk yeah again the way his letter also a great painter yeah a brilliant painter yeah

And then it turned out he was a very sweet Texan. Yeah. And we became really good friends. And we used to hang out together and we used to scheme. Like, how are we going to break into pop culture? Yeah. And we'd sit at Astro Burger on Melrose and split a burger because we had so little money. Yeah.

And scheme. And then he caught Peewee's Playhouse, you know? Yes. And it was like, oh, my God. Yeah. That was unbelievable. Did you go see those things earlier? Oh, yeah.

Yeah. before they were the show. Yeah, when it was at the ground links. Yeah. That was great. Did you see those? No. Oh, that was before your time.

Yeah. It's great. Yeah, it's great. What about Linda Barry? Linda Barry. Linda Barry met in college. Oh, really? Yeah.

In Portland? No, in, well, in Olympia. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I met her because I found out there was another girl in the dorms who had written to Joseph Heller who had written and gotten a reply from Joseph Heller. So I had to track down the girl who had corresponded with the writer of Cat 22. Yeah. And I tracked her down, and it was Linda Barry.

Wow. And she was unbelievable. And what she had done is she had written a fan letter to Heller and written on the return address, Ingrid Bergman. Because she thought that way he would actually open it up and read it. She proposed marriage to him. Did he read it? Yeah, he replied to her, and he said, I don't think there's room for the both of us in your dorm. So we became friends.

And she surfaced as a very good comic artist. Oh, she's the best. Yeah. She and I have gone around the country and into India and to Australia talking together. And I'm the straight man. Yeah. She is so funny. Yeah.

That's great. Yeah. All right. So the books come out, all the in hell books. Yes. And you're starting to make a living? Yes. And you like L.A. better?

Right. And how does, when did the Simpson panel start happening? Well, what happened was Pauly Platt, the movie producer who used to be married to Bogdanovich. Yeah. Brilliant, underrated. Yeah, apparently wrote most of his stuff. Yeah. So, yeah.

So she bought James L. Brooks an original piece of art by me called the Los Angeles Way of Life or something like that in it. And it was very dark. Yeah. And he had me come over to Paramount where he was located at the time to see if we, there was something we could do together. And at the time, I lived in a little apartment house across the street from Paramount. Yeah. And my car had been towed away. Yeah.

So I had no car. So I walked over to Paramount. Yeah. And they wouldn't let me on the lot because I didn't have a car. Right. Right. And they said, go get your car and we'll let you on. And go, I don't know.

Oh, that's hilarious. They tore it away. They tore it away. This is the meeting that's going to change your life. and you're at the gate and you can't get in. That was in 85. In 87, the Fox Network started, and they hired me to work on the Tracy Elman show.

But 85, did you have the meeting? Yeah, I had the meeting that it didn't go anywhere. Okay. You know. Who was it with? James L. Brooks. So it was the first meeting with Brooks? It was the first meeting with Brooks.

Yeah. Yeah. But it didn't go anywhere. Well, I mean, you know, took two more years, and then he had a new show, the Tracy Elman show. And you remembered you? Yes. Well, that's something.

It did go somewhere. Yeah, exactly. No, I thought to Jim Brooks. And you did the interstitials. Yes. And first I went into this meeting and they said, can you do two-minute cartoons every week? And I said, no, two minutes. That's too short.

What can you do in two minutes? And then I said, well, I'll try. Oh, I've left out a part of the story. They wanted the life and hell characters. But I found out that if I signed a deal that I would lose control. They don't know. They don't know. And so I made up the Simpsons in the...

waiting room to meet Jim Brooks. At Paramount. No, at Fox. Oh, so the second meeting. Yeah, the second meeting. And, yeah, the Simpsons was, and what do I do? I drew humans. I used to only draw animals.

Yeah. And my dad, my mom, you know. Where did the inspiration for Bart come from? It's a combination of my older brother, Mark, and me. Yeah. Yeah. And Joe Vermilia, the guy Joe, the kid with the finger up his butt. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. But the way he looks, you just, you just, Well, that was based on this idea that I had that the most identifiable, the most memorable cartoon characters are cartoon characters you can identify in silhouette. Yeah. So if you look at The Simpsons, they're all identifiable in silhouette. And in fact, that's all what I try to do. Yeah.

I heard somewhere that, you know, you pulled from that picture by Diane Arbus. Oh, yes. Yes. So there's a picture of Diane Arbus With a kid. I was just looking at that last week. I said it. I literally, I had no idea.

And I sent that picture to a photographer friend of mine to make sure she had seen it because I was going through that book, that first Dion Arbus book. And that kid is so memorable. It's a very skinny kid in Central Park with wearing shorts

and with one strap kind of down. And he's holding a toy hand grenade. Yeah. And his hands are kind of... And he's got that face of like... He looks very agitated. Yeah. Okay, so I said in an interview

that it was based on that. Kind of a goof. Yeah. Yeah. And I got a letter from that kid. Come on. Yes. Obviously, he was a grown-up.

Yeah. And he wrote, he said, thank you. That was me in that photo. I grew up. I became normal. I'm a, you know, I'm a fine person. And he goes, the reason why I was making that face and I was so unhappy is because I had just lost my G.I. Joe doll.

And so that's why. So there is, there's the rest of the story. Isn't that something? Yes. But was it true that you had seen that? Of course. Were you a Diane Arbus person? Of course.

The best, right? Same as Crum. If you look at everybody with a Diane Arbus one, it's a little sadder than Crum, but there's a humanizing element there. Do you know the photographer Vivian Meyer? Of course. Unbelievable. Unbelievable. Unbelievable.

A nanny who took photos in her spare time. My late partner loved her, Lindid. And, you know, and she had bought all the, I have the book. you know, she introduced me to her. Right. Yeah, I studied a lot of photography. I do, it did have a profound impact on me. Taking pictures became too complicated.

You don't take pictures? Well, at the time when I was into it, it was before digital. So, like, if you wanted to take pictures and process them, there's a lot of math to it in a way. Yes. You know, apertures and chemicals and papers and film speeds, and it was too much for me. Now, I've been told I should just get a little light,

and just go for it. Yeah. You shoot? My iPhone. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, but learning about photography had a profound effect on me. Photography's great.

That Richard Avedon book, The American West? Yeah. That's a killer. Right. But all those, Arbus is great. Nan Golden, too. Uh-huh. I love her.

Right. All right, so you've got your Bart, you've got your family, you've doodled it, waiting to see Jim. They say, I come in, they say, can you do two-minute, cartoons for the Tracy Elyleman show, and I'm thinking that's impossible. But of course, I say yes.

And then they call me up and they say, by the way, it's not two minutes. It's one minute. I go, oh, no. And then they say, oh, by the way, it's not one minute. It's a 2.30 second cartoon. So it's basically an animated single panel. And then, yeah, and then they cut it even more. They said it's four 15 second cartoons.

So the beginning of The Simpsons was all based on 15 second little interstitions. And they're like one exchange. Yeah. Yeah. And I realize the only way to make people remember what they're, were seeing as if it had very, very heavy mayhem, slapstick, physical, you know, so that's why Homer strangles part. And what was the experience in working with moving pictures? That was a blast. Did they just set you up with an animator? Like with a, how did it work?

Well, we went through the motions of contacting various animation studios, and it turns out that they chose the cheapest one. Right. And that was Claskey Chupo in Hollywood. And they had they were struggling and they hooked me up with three animators David Silverman he ended up creating the rules for how to draw the characters

Oh, okay. You know, so I didn't know I would draw a bunch of spikes and David Silverman said, no, there are 10 spikes. Yeah, right. Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah. Was it always 10 even though you didn't know? I didn't know. Well, it is, I think it is now. Yeah. I don't count.

So that's interesting. So he was the he created. He made the rules. So from that, what's the next turn? Auditioning. So I was assigned Dan Castlenetta. You said, you have to work with Dan Castleneta, and you have to use Julie Kavanaugh, who were members of the cast of the Tracy Elman show.

And then so that only left two people to cast, and that was for Bart and for Lisa. And I think we saw maybe 10 people total, and Nancy Cartwright came in to audition for the part of Lisa, but she was Bart. So she became Bart, and Yardley came into audition for Bart, and she was Lisa. Okay. So that's it.

Yeah. And they've been fantastic ever since. Forever. Yes. When did they say, like, we want to do a full show? They would show, as the Tracy Elman Show went on, they would show these little short cartoons to the audience at the Tracy Elman Show while they were filming it on Friday nights. And they were a hit with all the people sitting in the bleachers. Yeah.

And the Fox executives were there going, hmm, this is actually getting laughed. Yeah. And so they said, would you like to do a special? And Jim Brooks and I said, no, we want to do 13. Yeah. And they said, how about four? Yeah. And the reason we were opposed to doing just one, because if it was successful, it would be another year before we'd have another one.

Oh, exactly. But if we had 13, and they greenlit the show without a pilot. Yeah. So there you go. That was really. And what was on Fox at the time, that was before, it was just. starting to do programming, right? Really?

Yeah, they were not in the entire country. Yeah. There was a lot of forgetful Beans Baxter, I think, was one that's only one that they think of. And then married with children. That was a huge. Yeah, that was huge. Yeah.

Yeah. And so in the early kind of developmental meetings about 13, did Brooks bring the sitcom sensibility to it? Jim was brilliant from the very beginning, and he basically said, okay, our mission is to make people forget they're watching a cartoon. To go for moments of real emotion.

We know it's going to be cartoon-y, but let's go for, we're moments of real, real emotion. And I agreed with that. That was a great idea. So that's what our mission was. So the assignment was emotion. You brought the fuck you.

Yeah. Yeah. The underground snarer. Right, right. I mean, like, but like, were you a malcontent your whole life? No, no, I was, I was, you know. When you were a kid, did you get into trouble? I did get into trouble, but if there was another class clown in the room, I was fine. Yeah.

But if there wasn't, then I had to take that. Yeah. Did you do any other performing? You know, yeah, you know, little things. Oh, yeah. But nothing that. When I was in, at the end of high school, my friends and I created a political party. We ran for office. What was the platform? It was, we were called the teens for decency.

Oh. And our slogan was, if you're against decency, what are you for? And because at the time, there was a Christian group called Young Life, who had just started at our high school, and they're going around telling all the Jewish kids they were going to hell. So we created this parody group to make fun of them, and we all won. Okay, that's good. Yeah. So, okay, so where did Simon come in? Sam Simon was, Sam was, uh, was, uh, was, uh, was, uh, was, uh, was, uh, was, uh, uh, was, uh, uh, was a, uh,

one of the writers and producers of the Tracy Elman show, and he was the only one who had experience in animation. He had worked on the Fat Albert animated show. Yeah, I interviewed him when he was sick. Oh, you did? Yeah. Oh, I haven't heard that one. Yeah, it was good.

Okay. I interviewed him when he was, you know, pretty sick. He was incredible. One of the funniest, smartest guys I've ever met. He and I butted heads eventually, but at the first. About what? partly because of the amount of attention that I was getting. Yeah.

I think that really bugged him. Because he was functioning as head writer? He was the showrunner, yeah. And he was great, and he knew everybody. Yeah. And brilliant. And he and I, but he and I used to be really good buddies. We'd go to the Lakers together.

Yeah. You know, and then. The ego thing. Yeah. But he was also very cynical about the show. about the show. So while we were doing the first 13 episodes, every day he'd say, 13 and out, 13 and out.

He was absolutely sure the show was going to fail. And he, and by the way, his judgment was probably astute and correct. Yeah. The idea of it working was, you know, unlikely. Why? Well, because there had never been an animated show in 25 years on in prime time. Right. And that everybody said this can't, you know,

you can't have animation in prime time. Yeah. Except for Garfield. specials, right? Yeah. But I think one of the reasons why The Simpsons got on the air is because there were finally TV executives who were young enough to have remembered the Flintstones and the Jetsons and Johnny Quest. And so they said, oh, there can be animation at night. Sure. Yeah. And were you aware that you wanted to cross lines? Yeah. And push the envelope? Yeah. Yeah. Of course. A little bit. Yeah. You know, I wanted to be friendly enough so, but that people would watch.

But I figured that kids would watch. I knew that we called it an adult show because if you called something. You wanted kids to watch. Well, we knew kids would watch no matter what it was. But if we called it a show for adults, then we could get away with more wild jokes. Yeah. But back at the very beginning, it was amazing how uptight,

even a network is as loose as Fox was. We had a line, I think it was in the first episode, one of the early episodes, in which Homer says to Marge, Hey Marge Tonight we wear your blue thing with the things Yeah And they said you can't say that

We said well what does it mean They couldn't they couldn't say why Yeah and so did it have to be cut? No it didn't Oh good Yeah so we got there are hilarious sensor notes That we Did you keep them?

I have a file of them And they make great jokes reading on stage Yeah have you done that? Yes Yeah Yeah Yeah Bart cannot hold a shotgun up to the Easter bunny and say

in five minutes either your eggs or your brains are going to be in this basket. Yeah, he can't say that. You can't say that. Yeah. He did. How much did the lampoon have an effect on you? Huge. Huge.

Yeah, when I was in high school, National Lampoon started and... That just reminded me the dog cover. Oh, yeah. Buy this magazine. We'll shoot this dog. Yeah. National Lampoon and Monty Python I was only aware of in the form of record album. Yeah.

So, yeah. But the Lampoon, because I kind of got hip to that in high school, too, and I was like, what is happening? This is where it's at. The Lampoon was amazing. And before the Lampoon, of course, there was MAD. Mad magazine, sure. Mad magazine, but even before that, Mad Comics by Harvey Kurtzman.

Sure. Unbelievable. Yeah, they're great. Yeah. But, like, Mad Magazine, Al Jaffe. Yep. And Don Martin. Right.

The best. The best. Erigoneys did. He, like, his were really good. Yeah, he was great. Like, you know, he was dark. He was good. He was the best, he's the best drawer in the business.

What was the name of the strip? In Mad, he did these little things in the margins. Yeah. And then he did other stuff. He actually, he actually did Simpsons comics at one point. He did? Yes. Yeah, he, oh, you think he's the best, huh?

I think he's the top, yes. Oh, wow. As far as drawer. Yeah. Were you Al Jaffe guy? Yep. He visited the Simpsons. Yes.

Yeah. That was a big day. That was huge. Yeah. It was huge. How did The Simpsons become sort of a training ground for all these amazing comedy writers? Again. Was that Sam?

Right. Yes. Sam hired so many of them, you know, and he recognized talent. And Jim Brooks was encouraging of new talent. And, you know, I don't know. How did we get Conan O'Brien? How did we get Greg Daniels? How did we get all these guys?

Dana Gould. Danie Gould. John Schwarzwolder. Just unbelievable. Rob Cohen? Yes. Yes. And David X. Cohen, who went on to do Futurama with me.

Yeah. Yeah. So many. I actually thought, you know, I'm going to try to mention as many writers as I can. It's going to be boring. But I'll mention their names. And then I looked it up. There's 142 Simpsons writers.

I think one of the reasons... So I can't do it. ...is not unlike what's going on, I think, in horror films today, is that it provided a... space for them to to really take it out there. Like, you know, when you have to have humans talking and you're confined to what's possible with humans on a sitcom, you're fundamentally limited. No matter what you can do, even if it's an elaborate sitcom like Seinfeld, where you can

change sets and you have all this money. But with a cartoon, I mean, you can literally do anything with jokes. Right. So why wouldn't they want to do that? I mean, it's like the best thing in the world for a right. Right. No, it's amazing because, you know, if you actually filmed a Simpsons episode in live action and just depicted what we depict in animation form, you couldn't do it. It would be hundreds of millions of dollars. Yeah.

Yeah. So all these guys must have been living their best lives. No, it's the greatest thing. And also, very early on, we realized that this was a forum for different comedy styles. So there's all sorts of, there's puns and parodies and. Yeah, you can do whatever. do whatever. We can break our own rules all the time. Yeah. All you got to add is a little self-consciousness to it.

Right. Yeah. That's interesting, right? And it keeps going. So in Futurama came when? Around 2000. And they're doing more of those now? Yeah, we're on our, in the middle of our next season, whatever. And you're still actively engaged with all of it? Well, you know, you can't be in more than one place at one time. So I get to tell the people at the Simpsons, I'm going to work at Futurama. Right. And then vice versa. And then I just go home. Yeah. So, yeah. But Jesus, it's like, so South Park is getting there as well.

But it just... Hundreds of episodes. Yeah. Yeah. With South Park? I think with South Park. Yeah, certainly with Futurama and Simpsons is almost 800. It's crazy.

It's crazy. 800. Yeah. That's too many. But you don't... But it's not, what I like about it is it's not a ghost ship. It's not, it's not, it's not, it's not, it's not, I love the office. I love Seinfeld, but like, yeah.

There are no new ones. There's no new ones. There's no new ones. Yeah, but sometimes they become zombie ships before they're over. That's true. That's true. And sometimes you recover.

Or the zombies come back. That's what I'm going to stick to. But how much do, I mean, it becomes difficult for a group of writers to make sure that something hasn't been done before when there's 800. Oh, my God. It is impossible.

Yeah. Yes, we do inadvertently repeat ourselves. Yeah. Yeah. It's really hard. And what do you, are you in, kind of tapped into what the audience is now, or is it just? No. I'm, I'm, as a parent, I am, because I have all these little kids.

How many little kids you got? I had, well, I have a, I have a couple of adult children. Yeah. And then I have a 12-year-old. I have two, nine-year-olds, and two seven-year-olds. So I have two sets of twins. That really kicks the number up. And then I have a five-year-old, three-year-old, and a one-and-half-year-old.

How many total? 10. Really? Yeah. With how many different women? Two. Oh, okay. Yeah.

So, and everybody gets along? Do your cats get along? Not right now. No. No, by the way. Just one bad one. I have my friend Colette who follows the story of your cats and is very proud that you're making a special home for Charlie.

Out here. Yeah. Yeah, I was going to give him to somebody else, but then I realized like, well, I guess he could live out here. My friend Colette wanted me to tell you that she has pigs. She rescues pigs, and that's what she did with her pigs. And so she thinks that you should treat your cats the way she treats her pigs. Separate them.

Yeah. All right. Well, you know. I also have three cats. Uh-huh. Yeah. This one just went bad on me. I don't know what that'll happen.

He was okay. Right. And then he just started beating up on the old guy. And it's just like, there's no stopping it. He's just beating up on this old cat. He's not even that old. He's nine in Charlie's three. And fucking the old guy's got, he's nine, he's got one kidney, he's a sweet guy.

And Charlie just can't not think about beating the shit out of him. It's really hard to herd cats. It really is really. No, they're fucking monsters. I got two good ones. The one I thought was a moron turns out to be the best cat I have. I had these three cats that were all rescues. And one was a gray tabby named Frosty, and he spent a lot of the time out.

And it turns out he was going over next door and eating other people's food. Yeah. He grew enormous. Just really big, you know. And then I got a call from the Perina Katchow Company and they said, do you have any cats? We're doing a Perina Katchow celebrity calendar. And I said, yes, I do. And they came over with a photographer.

And I hid the other two normal looking cats. Yeah. And they didn't want to do it. You know, they had to have a consultation. And so they did it. And they posed them on the kitchen counter in front of a frame portrait of Bart, you know, trying to hide his body. Right. It did not work.

It was, and if you look at the calendar, you see all these beautiful cats. Yeah. And then you see mine, and everybody bursts out laughing. And then the other thing was they asked me to write a little bit about my cat. And everybody else wrote, Mittens is more than a cat. Mittens is my best friend. Sure. And I wrote, we try to keep Frosty on the.

diet, but it's really hard when he sleeps inside the cat food bag. They wouldn't print that. It's so funny that there's a beauty standard with cats, too. Well, and then, okay, so, right, your cats are beautiful and wonderful, and they should be famous, right? Well, I got a call a few months later saying, we saw your cat in the prina cat calendar. We'd like to use them as a model for an ad. And I said, fantastic. You know, it's about time, but yes.

and they said, well, before you say yes, we just want you to know, it's an ad for diet cat food, and he's the before picture. Did you let him use them? Yep. Of course. You got to get the cats their star time. Well, what's the big plan now? What are you doing with your life?

I spend most of my time trying to make sure that my kids, you know, know, know I'm there and, you know, take them to school every morning. Okay. I line them up in front of the garage every morning and take their photo, so I've got their entire lives documented. So it's like eight that are still in that? I'm only taking six to school. Okay. Yeah. That's crazy. How did you get two pairs of twins? The magic of fertility drugs? Yes. Yes. And they're a blast. They're so much fun. Yeah. And they, you know, like who wants to hear about other people's kids? Well, you know, they're great. I don't have any.

They're great. Yeah. They're great. Okay. They're, they're, um, I, my three-year-old went through a phase where he just was saying, why, why? Why? To everything, any answer, say why. Yeah. And so finally, I learned to say, why not? Oh, good. And that stopped him. Throw the wrench in.

Right? Yeah. Why not? And he just, like, pondered that for a while. And then later I said, why'd you throw your milk on the floor? And he said, why not? Well, it's great talking to you, Matt. Thanks, man.

You feel good about it? I do. Cool. So, you're quitting. Yeah. So I did my life in Hellstrip for 32 years. Yeah. For, you know, and it was such a relief.

Yeah. To stop. Yeah. to not have that one extra deadline. Yeah. And you think, oh, I'm going to lose everything. No.

You get time. Yeah. And I just got to not be afraid of it. No, don't be afraid. It's going to be great. Okay. You can honestly do it again. Sure.

I'll take your word for it. Yeah, I mean, I do not feel regret about it. Right. Thanks, ma'am. Thank you. Wow, there you go. Futurama, season 13, is now on Hulu. The Simpsons airs Sundays on Fox and streams on Hulu.

We're back on Thursday No guest I'll make up for what I didn't talk about today I think I'll feel a little better And now just the guitar It's just sort of like It's all falling apart now Good timing

There's monkey and Lafonda Cat Angels everywhere