Latest / Four Finger Discount (Simpsons Podcast) / How To Write A Simpsons Book (with Alan Siegel, author of "Stupid TV: Be More Funny – How The Golden Era of The Simpsons Changed Television

Transcript

How To Write A Simpsons Book (with Alan Siegel, author of "Stupid TV: Be More Funny – How The Golden Era of The Simpsons Changed Television · Four Finger Discount (Simpsons Podcast)

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Four Finger Discount.
• 0:01
  Speaker 2: Dude, Hey, everybody, welcome to four Finger Discount. I am
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: Brendandana joined it now by Guy Davis. Hello everybody, and
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: we are lucky to be joined today by the man
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: who has just written the best Simpsons book ever. Apparently
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: it's Alan Siegel. Hey doing Allen.
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: I'm great, Thanks for having me, guys.
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: And I say, apparently it is. I just read it
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: this morning, a lot of it this morning, and yeah,
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: it's fantastic. It doves into a lot of the Simpsons
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: issue that we've touched on many times in the past.
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: But I feel like you've found a way to find
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: new information, which is great.
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's funny.
• 0:44
  Speaker 3: I've wanted to write a book about the Simpsons for
• 0:46
  Speaker 3: like ten years now, and I could never quite figure
• 0:49
  Speaker 3: out the angle, you know, like because the show is
• 0:52
  Speaker 3: like an institution, especially in the States, really all over
• 0:55
  Speaker 3: the world, and it just was too big.
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: It was like too big to try to off.
• 1:00
  Speaker 3: But just focusing on the nineties is what I really
• 1:03
  Speaker 3: settled on because I sort of was like, this is
• 1:05
  Speaker 3: what we talk about, it's what we quote. It's really
• 1:08
  Speaker 3: like what the show, what the greatness of the show
• 1:11
  Speaker 3: and the joy of it is, and so that's really
• 1:14
  Speaker 3: what I wanted to focus on.
• 1:15
  Speaker 4: It's also I really give us an insight into the
• 1:17
  Speaker 4: people who I guess shaped the show and shaped its
• 1:19
  Speaker 4: voice very early on. I mean I really came away
• 1:22
  Speaker 4: from Radiant with a greater knowledge and even more of
• 1:26
  Speaker 4: a greater appreciation of guys like Meyer and Swartzwel and
• 1:29
  Speaker 4: Sam Simon, all those people. I mean, yeah, you really
• 1:34
  Speaker 4: capture their personalities very very vividly.
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: I think, thanks.
• 1:38
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I feel like I could have written a whole
• 1:39
  Speaker 3: book on Meyer and sports Wealth every I had so
• 1:42
  Speaker 3: much material on them.
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: Like my editor at one point was like, why is
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: this in here?
• 1:46
  Speaker 3: I mean I had like a whole long digression about
• 1:50
  Speaker 3: the script that George Meyer wrote for David Letterman, and
• 1:54
  Speaker 3: it was like a James Bond parody and the Simpsons
• 1:57
  Speaker 3: writers would like steal jokes from it, and you know,
• 2:00
  Speaker 3: and Meyer basically said like, oh it was funny, but
• 2:02
  Speaker 3: you know, Austin Powers did it better. Like this is
• 2:04
  Speaker 3: stuff that's like catnip for me, but yeah, it's hard
• 2:07
  Speaker 3: to like excize. You know, it's killer darlings, right, And
• 2:10
  Speaker 3: so there's just so much there.
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: Was your editor a big Simpsons fan like yourself.
• 2:14
  Speaker 3: So funny enough, My two editors were amazing, and they
• 2:18
  Speaker 3: were not the biggest Simpsons fans.
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: They were I would say moderate.
• 2:21
  Speaker 3: But what that helped me do was like calibrate the
• 2:24
  Speaker 3: book for like an audience that might not know the
• 2:27
  Speaker 3: show so so ideally when you're reading it, it's sort
• 2:31
  Speaker 3: of for for new new fans of the show, it's
• 2:34
  Speaker 3: sort of like an explanation of why it was so influential,
• 2:37
  Speaker 3: and then I think for the hardcore fans it's like
• 2:39
  Speaker 3: it gets into like how it was so influential, and
• 2:41
  Speaker 3: like those two things I think appealed to both groups.
• 2:44
  Speaker 4: It's a real why to walk, isn't it. I mean, yeah,
• 2:46
  Speaker 4: you want to you're sort of preaching the convert in
• 2:49
  Speaker 4: a lot of ways. I mean, I think Simpsons fans
• 2:51
  Speaker 4: are the ones who are more likely to pick up
• 2:52
  Speaker 4: a book called Stupid TV being more funny. But at
• 2:55
  Speaker 4: the same time, yeah, you gonna want to introduce more
• 2:57
  Speaker 4: people to the fold. Yeah, and those little nuggets that
• 3:00
  Speaker 4: you're talking about, I mean, there were so many that
• 3:01
  Speaker 4: I enjoyed in it, just little tip bits of information.
• 3:04
  Speaker 4: You're right in saying that that's catnip I mean the
• 3:06
  Speaker 4: way you talked about I never knew that Phil Hoptman's
• 3:09
  Speaker 4: nickname on SNOL was Glue for example. I mean, we
• 3:12
  Speaker 4: all love Phil and we get the feeling, oh, I
• 3:14
  Speaker 4: get the film that's the kind of guy he would
• 3:16
  Speaker 4: be like, but to actually learn that he was, Yeah,
• 3:18
  Speaker 4: he's the kind of guy who bons people together all that.
• 3:20
  Speaker 3: You know.
• 3:21
  Speaker 4: Uh, Dan Caslotta had to give up the Walton Mathow
• 3:24
  Speaker 4: voice because it was just too much of austray. It's like,
• 3:26
  Speaker 4: that's something I didn't know, and that's you know, that's
• 3:28
  Speaker 4: worth the price of admission as far as I'm concerned.
• 3:31
  Speaker 3: Well, thank you, And I think that is one interesting
• 3:34
  Speaker 3: thing that I learned. Basically that obviously, like these are
• 3:38
  Speaker 3: some of the smartest, funniest comedy writers in the history
• 3:41
  Speaker 3: of TV, but so much of this stuff was not planned.
• 3:44
  Speaker 3: Like you know, John Vitty, the writer talking about just like, yeah,
• 3:48
  Speaker 3: Homer needs friends, so Lenny and Carl and that's it.
• 3:51
  Speaker 3: Like he didn't expect there to be Lenny and Carl
• 3:53
  Speaker 3: action figures, you know, and limited edition action figures.
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: Like forty years thirty years later.
• 3:57
  Speaker 3: So there just was a lot that they threw against
• 4:00
  Speaker 3: the wall and like it was like a combination of
• 4:03
  Speaker 3: sort of them taking chances and also.
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: Their brains that really made it work.
• 4:08
  Speaker 4: It leads into something I wanted to watch because, I mean,
• 4:10
  Speaker 4: something I loved about the book and love about the
• 4:12
  Speaker 4: early writers of the show who really shaped the show.
• 4:15
  Speaker 4: They were shaped themselves by, you know, growing up watching
• 4:18
  Speaker 4: TV in all its fats. It's I mean, they didn't
• 4:20
  Speaker 4: have unlimited choice. They had what was on the four
• 4:22
  Speaker 4: channels or the three channels or whatever. So they got
• 4:25
  Speaker 4: the good, the bad, the weird, the dull, and they
• 4:27
  Speaker 4: knew what they liked, but they knew what they didn't like,
• 4:29
  Speaker 4: they knew what they didn't want to be, and The
• 4:31
  Speaker 4: Simpsons becomes the Simpsons as a result of that. I mean,
• 4:35
  Speaker 4: I think there's a line from swartswear really talking about
• 4:37
  Speaker 4: his target. Audiens said, well, I picture a smart kid
• 4:39
  Speaker 4: watching some he's talking about himself and he's talking about
• 4:41
  Speaker 4: the other guys.
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 4:43
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean I think that I've said before, and
• 4:45
  Speaker 3: I truly like believe this is that it's sort of
• 4:48
  Speaker 3: the good side of watching too much TV. It's like
• 4:51
  Speaker 3: you had these really really smart people watching, as you said,
• 4:55
  Speaker 3: the good, the bad, the ugly, everything in between, and
• 4:58
  Speaker 3: they like somehow manage to process that in their brains
• 5:02
  Speaker 3: like through a machine and spit it out into this
• 5:05
  Speaker 3: thing that transcended everything that came before it.
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: I mean a.
• 5:08
  Speaker 3: Detail that I am obsessed with that people have mentioned
• 5:11
  Speaker 3: to me is like their love of the original Batman
• 5:14
  Speaker 3: TV show. I mean when I was a kid, I
• 5:16
  Speaker 3: didn't I didn't understand that it was supposed to work
• 5:18
  Speaker 3: on two levels. And they clearly picked up on that
• 5:22
  Speaker 3: a long time before I would have, and like, you know,
• 5:24
  Speaker 3: to them that that was sort of the basis of
• 5:27
  Speaker 3: the show. It's like you have like silliness, tongue in cheek,
• 5:31
  Speaker 3: you know, jokes and like sort of anti authority, kind
• 5:35
  Speaker 3: of light anti authority stance, and then you mix that
• 5:37
  Speaker 3: with action and then you throw in like seventies influences
• 5:40
  Speaker 3: like All in the Family, Mary Tyler Moore, and that's
• 5:43
  Speaker 3: basically the DNA of the Simpsons.
• 5:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah, now you live through the initial crist You were
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: right in the target market as well when the show
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: first launched. Now we got the show a little bit later,
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: so we never truly experienced Batman. And now I was
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: still a little bit too young, So take us back
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: what was like to be a child during by when
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: it was originally happening.
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: So bart Mania is what led me to watch the show.
• 6:07
  Speaker 3: Like I sort of vaguely recall The Simpsons Rostik on
• 6:11
  Speaker 3: an open fire, like the very first episode sort of
• 6:13
  Speaker 3: being advertised just incessantly in the fall.
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: Of nineteen eighty nine, but it wasn't.
• 6:19
  Speaker 3: Until school, like in early nineteen ninety I think I
• 6:23
  Speaker 3: was in first or second grade. Just every kid had
• 6:27
  Speaker 3: shirts like Bart shirts, like ten different varieties of Bart shirts.
• 6:31
  Speaker 3: I'm from the Boston area, so they had all these
• 6:33
  Speaker 3: bootleg like Boston Red Sox, Boston Bruins, Boston Celtus is
• 6:37
  Speaker 3: Bart on them. So yeah, I mean there were there
• 6:41
  Speaker 3: are all sorts of inappropriate that were like pro Gulf
• 6:44
  Speaker 3: War bar I mean you've probably seen them on ebed, right, yeah,
• 6:48
  Speaker 3: I mean, but so that got me interested, and then
• 6:50
  Speaker 3: like my friends at school were into it.
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: And so the first episode I saw.
• 6:55
  Speaker 3: Was Homer's Night Out, which is where Homer, you know,
• 6:59
  Speaker 3: is canoodling with Princess Kashmir the belly Dancer, and my
• 7:03
  Speaker 3: parents watched it and they were like, you can see
• 7:07
  Speaker 3: a little of this, like it's it's inappropriate. And they
• 7:10
  Speaker 3: kind of banned the show from that, like they were like,
• 7:13
  Speaker 3: you can't watch anymore. And I don't know what it was,
• 7:17
  Speaker 3: because like they're not you know, they're not very strict
• 7:19
  Speaker 3: with that stuff, or they weren't, and they kind of
• 7:21
  Speaker 3: just like let the groundswell like overtake them, and they
• 7:24
  Speaker 3: were like, all right, you can watch now. So I
• 7:26
  Speaker 3: would say, yeah, like nineteen ninety is when I really
• 7:29
  Speaker 3: got into it. I probably understood like thirty percent of
• 7:32
  Speaker 3: the jokes, which is like a lot of a lot
• 7:34
  Speaker 3: of kids my age at the time, but I eventually
• 7:38
  Speaker 3: like it's funny.
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: When I really started appreciating it.
• 7:40
  Speaker 3: Appreciating it was probably like fourth and fifth grade, so
• 7:43
  Speaker 3: that's like the you know, the gene In Rece years
• 7:46
  Speaker 3: and into the David Murkin years, and that's when I
• 7:48
  Speaker 3: was like really into it.
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: You said in the book that your parents understood the
• 7:53
  Speaker 2: greatness of that episode and how they touched on the
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: adult things of Homo really having in a fair but
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: March was jealous and whatnot. But then they still banned you. Anyway,
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: My mum banned me for watching The Simpsons when I
• 8:02
  Speaker 2: was four or three or four because it was treous
• 8:05
  Speaker 2: of horror One Bad dream House and they all go
• 8:08
  Speaker 2: into the kitchen get knives and whatnot, and Maggie got
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: a knife out, so little Brendan Dana went into the kitchen,
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: got a knife out of the drawer and that was it.
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: Simpsons was finished.
• 8:16
  Speaker 3: Wow, that talk about art imitator, like imitating art, right,
• 8:20
  Speaker 3: that that is wild. I mean that episode I remember,
• 8:24
  Speaker 3: like when Marge comes out to give her a little
• 8:26
  Speaker 3: speech about you know, if you have sensitive children, like
• 8:29
  Speaker 3: put them to bed like that scared the shit out
• 8:31
  Speaker 3: of me. Like that was that was absolutely terrifying, and.
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: It was scary.
• 8:36
  Speaker 3: I think that's what people don't realize, Like, you know,
• 8:39
  Speaker 3: the raven is the raven. It's like you know, from
• 8:42
  Speaker 3: the nineteenth century, right, so it's a little more antiquated.
• 8:45
  Speaker 3: It doesn't feel as visceral as some of the other
• 8:47
  Speaker 3: you know, like the Twilights don't parody like it's it's
• 8:51
  Speaker 3: pretty intense.
• 8:52
  Speaker 4: It's still pretty disconcerting. Absolutely, even if it's not explicitly
• 8:55
  Speaker 4: sort of scary, it's it makes a skin.
• 8:58
  Speaker 2: Crawl a little bit.
• 8:59
  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, we might be skipping over the timelines and
• 9:03
  Speaker 4: ears a little bit here, but right now you're You're
• 9:06
  Speaker 4: a senior staff writer at The Ringer, which is, you know,
• 9:08
  Speaker 4: one of the current epicenters of pop culture commentary. And
• 9:10
  Speaker 4: I'm wondering if the show was kind of if The
• 9:13
  Speaker 4: Simpsons has kind of created a common language or shorthand
• 9:17
  Speaker 4: for editors and contributors at a place like The Ringer.
• 9:19
  Speaker 4: I mean either obviously in terms of like one liners
• 9:22
  Speaker 4: or bits that you might drop or do, or just
• 9:25
  Speaker 4: in terms of a general sense of humor.
• 9:27
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I've said this before, but I think
• 9:29
  Speaker 3: there are like two kinds of TV shows. Like you
• 9:32
  Speaker 3: have water cooler shows, shows that you watch and then
• 9:35
  Speaker 3: the next day you talk about them at work, like
• 9:37
  Speaker 3: you think of Sopranos, Breaking Bad, all these sort of
• 9:40
  Speaker 3: quote unquote prestige TV shows from the last ten or
• 9:43
  Speaker 3: fifteen years. And then you have like secret handshake shows,
• 9:46
  Speaker 3: And that, to me is what The Simpsons is. And
• 9:48
  Speaker 3: it's like you bond, like someone tells a joke or
• 9:52
  Speaker 3: references something and like the Shinning or something like that.
• 9:56
  Speaker 3: I remember a friend of mine, like our eyes lit
• 9:58
  Speaker 3: up at college and we heard that and you start
• 10:01
  Speaker 3: to bond and it's funny. Like Sean Fantasy was my
• 10:04
  Speaker 3: first editor at the ringer, and I was trying to
• 10:07
  Speaker 3: pitch him some stories.
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: And I didn't know what to pitch him.
• 10:10
  Speaker 3: I had tried a few things that didn't quite work,
• 10:12
  Speaker 3: and so I had I just googled, like Sean Fantasy Simpsons.
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: And he was a.
• 10:17
  Speaker 3: Music reviewer at one point, and he referenced the show
• 10:21
  Speaker 3: in a music review and Spin magazine in a review
• 10:24
  Speaker 3: of Little Way of Lil Wayne, and I was like, Okay,
• 10:27
  Speaker 3: I know what to do.
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: So I pitched an article.
• 10:29
  Speaker 3: This was like twenty sixteen about Hank Scorpio, The Hank
• 10:33
  Speaker 3: Scorpio You Only Move Twice episode sort of about how
• 10:36
  Speaker 3: the show predicted like this benevolent tech dictator right that
• 10:42
  Speaker 3: you know we know all too well now and it's
• 10:44
  Speaker 3: a lot less funny now than it was. And the
• 10:47
  Speaker 3: art for that story has him driving a Tesla and
• 10:51
  Speaker 3: it's really bizarre. And this was twenty sixteen, so like,
• 10:55
  Speaker 3: that is what the show does.
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: It creates connections.
• 10:57
  Speaker 4: Yeah, well, you're right in the book that nineties kids
• 11:00
  Speaker 4: have become tastemakers and power brokers. How persuasive and influential
• 11:03
  Speaker 4: do you think The Simpsons is on pop culture right now?
• 11:06
  Speaker 4: In twenty twenty five, in terms of like inspiration or
• 11:08
  Speaker 4: even just plain imitation, and does does it still hold strong?
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: Do you think?
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah?
• 11:13
  Speaker 3: I mean there's like sort of obvious and subtle answers
• 11:15
  Speaker 3: to that question. I mean, just look at the dozens
• 11:17
  Speaker 3: of good animated adult television there is, I mean, not
• 11:22
  Speaker 3: everyone is good, but BoJack Horseman King of the Hill,
• 11:25
  Speaker 3: which the reboot is great.
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: I don't know if you guys have seen it.
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: It's we're doing a King of the Hill podcast and
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: we're doing in chronlogical order, and we had never seen
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: King of the Hill before, so do we want to
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: spoil the show for ourselves.
• 11:37
  Speaker 3: It's very specific and grounded and like slower in a
• 11:43
  Speaker 3: good way than The Simpsons, which which all this to say,
• 11:46
  Speaker 3: it's like, if you look at the shows that the
• 11:48
  Speaker 3: Simpsons influenced, that is a good example of it because
• 11:52
  Speaker 3: it's so different and so so you have that and
• 11:55
  Speaker 3: you have like just the comedic style of packing jokes
• 11:58
  Speaker 3: and site gags that you see like thirty Rock is
• 12:01
  Speaker 3: a great example, although that show came out twenty years ago.
• 12:04
  Speaker 3: But I mean if you look at the influence, to me,
• 12:08
  Speaker 3: like I think it created a worldview in people, like
• 12:10
  Speaker 3: a big criticism of The Simpsons in later years is
• 12:13
  Speaker 3: that it was sort of nihilistic, right, It was sort
• 12:15
  Speaker 3: of like everything sucks, and like institutions are broken, especially
• 12:20
  Speaker 3: in America, like the bureaucracy, the grifting, and that's one
• 12:25
  Speaker 3: way to look at it. But also like I'm sort
• 12:27
  Speaker 3: of cribbing something George Meyer said, which was you know
• 12:30
  Speaker 3: there the writer's point of view was basically like the
• 12:34
  Speaker 3: world is a punishing, unforgiving place, but it's still worth living.
• 12:39
  Speaker 3: And I think that really informs a lot of people.
• 12:43
  Speaker 3: And one thing I must say is like The Simpsons
• 12:45
  Speaker 3: is so good that there are people who watch that
• 12:48
  Speaker 3: don't seem to get it and still love it. Like,
• 12:50
  Speaker 3: you know Ted Cruz, Republican Senator, Like you hear him
• 12:53
  Speaker 3: talk about The Simpsons and he.
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: Is obsessed with it.
• 12:56
  Speaker 3: Yet you're like, did he watch the same show that
• 12:59
  Speaker 3: we did, because it seems to sort of be inn
• 13:01
  Speaker 3: opposition of everything he does.
• 13:04
  Speaker 2: Do you think there will come a time where The
• 13:05
  Speaker 2: Simpsons won't become irrelevant, will have just become sort of
• 13:07
  Speaker 2: forgotten to an extent because I feel like maybe my generation,
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: maybe the generation just after, were the last ones that
• 13:13
  Speaker 2: truly watched the Simpsons relentlessly. I've got two kids now,
• 13:16
  Speaker 2: who was seven and four, and if I didn't introduce
• 13:17
  Speaker 2: them to The Simpsons, they would have no idea what
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: the Simpsons is, whether it exists that kind of thing.
• 13:22
  Speaker 2: Do you think there will come a time where people go,
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: what's the Simpsons?
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: I think absolutely.
• 13:26
  Speaker 3: And here's the thing, though, what will live on are
• 13:29
  Speaker 3: like the way we speak quotes from the show that
• 13:32
  Speaker 3: people don't even know are from the Simpsons. I was
• 13:34
  Speaker 3: doing an interview about my book and about The Simpsons
• 13:38
  Speaker 3: and someone made a reference to a Krusty the Clown quote,
• 13:41
  Speaker 3: which is, you know, he oops, I said the quiet
• 13:44
  Speaker 3: part loud in the lab part quiet, and I stopped
• 13:46
  Speaker 3: the guy, who's a very smart interviewer, and I was like,
• 13:49
  Speaker 3: do you know where that's from?
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: And he's like, no, I don't know. And I was like,
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: that is a Simpsons And there are things.
• 13:54
  Speaker 3: That I'm sure that I have forgotten or from the show,
• 13:58
  Speaker 3: And I mean, like, how many shows can you guys
• 14:01
  Speaker 3: say it sort of Actually it's like inception or like
• 14:05
  Speaker 3: in our subconscious like the Simpsons. And I think maybe
• 14:07
  Speaker 3: that's why it's somehow underrated, because people don't realize how
• 14:14
  Speaker 3: sort of its seeped into our brains.
• 14:16
  Speaker 4: It's kind of a knee jerk reaction very much. I
• 14:18
  Speaker 4: mean I've said many times that you know, I'll go
• 14:20
  Speaker 4: to the supermarket, parking lot or whatever, and I may
• 14:25
  Speaker 4: be parked a little awkwardly, but I'll sort of look
• 14:27
  Speaker 4: outside the door and say, I'm in the lines. You
• 14:28
  Speaker 4: don't like it, go tell your mama. It just happens,
• 14:32
  Speaker 4: but it leads into something I want to talk about.
• 14:34
  Speaker 4: There's a line that I always use about pop culture
• 14:36
  Speaker 4: that it can be as dumb as you like and
• 14:38
  Speaker 4: as smart as you need. That's the best pop culture.
• 14:40
  Speaker 4: And that strikes me as really appropriate when we're talking
• 14:42
  Speaker 4: about the Simpsons, and particularly the right of the Simpsons,
• 14:44
  Speaker 4: who seemed like energized by folding deep emotional or psychological
• 14:51
  Speaker 4: or philosophical ideas into the show and punctuating with jokes
• 14:54
  Speaker 4: that are just playing dumb, yeah, and walking that balance.
• 14:57
  Speaker 4: I mean, when you meet guys like George Maya, for instance,
• 15:01
  Speaker 4: I mean, do they seem like a breed of pod
• 15:03
  Speaker 4: Do they seem like all these guys operating on a
• 15:05
  Speaker 4: whole different level, or are they just like some guy.
• 15:09
  Speaker 3: George, especially you talk to him, and it's like everything
• 15:13
  Speaker 3: he says.
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: I may even mention this sort of in the acknowledgments
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: of the book.
• 15:16
  Speaker 3: It's like everything he says either makes you laugh or
• 15:18
  Speaker 3: makes you think, and like, there are not a lot
• 15:21
  Speaker 3: of people in this world that are like that. And Swartzwelder,
• 15:24
  Speaker 3: who you know, he's a little bit reclusive.
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: He's not giving interviews.
• 15:27
  Speaker 3: Like the thing I heard about him was that he
• 15:30
  Speaker 3: liked to look at The Simpsons as a drama done
• 15:33
  Speaker 3: by stupid people, and like it takes a very smart
• 15:36
  Speaker 3: person to do that. And again, like, and a thing
• 15:41
  Speaker 3: that I love sort of hearing about was these rules
• 15:43
  Speaker 3: that the writers would make and then just break, you
• 15:45
  Speaker 3: know what I mean. Like the joke that I loved
• 15:49
  Speaker 3: hearing about was, you know, Homer imagining winning the lottery right,
• 15:52
  Speaker 3: and he becomes like jewel encrusted and he's he all
• 15:55
  Speaker 3: of a sudden grows taller and taller and tolerting and
• 15:58
  Speaker 3: he's a giant.
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: And John Vitty, the writer was like, sorry, I.
• 16:01
  Speaker 3: Don't know why I'm clarifying on your pod, Like people
• 16:03
  Speaker 3: don't know who John Vitty is. But John Vitty's like,
• 16:06
  Speaker 3: I don't get it. Why would winning the lottery make
• 16:10
  Speaker 3: you grow taller.
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: It doesn't make any sense.
• 16:13
  Speaker 3: But what that did was it caused the writers to
• 16:15
  Speaker 3: be like, we want to top that with our own
• 16:17
  Speaker 3: version of a joke. And you know, with Meyer people,
• 16:22
  Speaker 3: it was sort of like the class looking at Bart
• 16:24
  Speaker 3: and being like, do the line?
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: Bart? Say the line?
• 16:27
  Speaker 3: Because like he would, things would escalate and escalate and escalate.
• 16:31
  Speaker 3: And it was always Meyer who would have the best
• 16:34
  Speaker 3: like topper to the joke.
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: And I mean he may not have had his name.
• 16:37
  Speaker 3: On a lot of episodes, but he might have written
• 16:40
  Speaker 3: the funniest joke in like one hundred episodes.
• 16:43
  Speaker 2: People consider that the first nine seasons to be that
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: golden era, and my was a show running had Oakley
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: and Weinstein? What is your era? What do you say
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: as because my ear is Oakley Winstein. That's what I
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: was relentlessly watching The Simpsons when now in new episodes,
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: that's what I was finding that to watch the Simpsons.
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: But honest think that that's when the Simpsons looked its best,
• 16:59
  Speaker 2: at was its best it's best formula. I think when
• 17:02
  Speaker 2: Bill and Josh were running the show.
• 17:04
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I think they they had the maybe not an advantage,
• 17:08
  Speaker 3: but what was interesting about them was that they were
• 17:10
  Speaker 3: the first show runners who were true Simpson's fans, Like
• 17:14
  Speaker 3: they came in maybe ninety one ninety two, and you know,
• 17:18
  Speaker 3: the show had sort of started, but they like loved
• 17:21
  Speaker 3: the show, right, so that gave them this reverence, but
• 17:24
  Speaker 3: also like the desire to really push it forward with
• 17:27
  Speaker 3: things like you know, twenty two short films about Springfield,
• 17:29
  Speaker 3: Like they knew that they couldn't do the same stuff
• 17:32
  Speaker 3: over and over. And I'm digressing big time. But my era,
• 17:36
  Speaker 3: I would say, is like half a season two through
• 17:40
  Speaker 3: season nine.
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: Like I think season nine has some really good episodes.
• 17:43
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it kind of gets unfairly I think maligned a
• 17:47
  Speaker 3: little bit. I mean I was really really loving it
• 17:50
  Speaker 3: probably until season ten through season ten, which is like
• 17:54
  Speaker 3: my high school years, and I continued to watch through
• 17:57
  Speaker 3: maybe fifteen, and then I've come back and I've started
• 18:00
  Speaker 3: to enjoy it.
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: I think like a time away has helped.
• 18:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we' we're up the season twenty of the podcast now,
• 18:04
  Speaker 2: and honestly, I can count on my hand how many
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: episodes I genuinely just don't like, even because I always
• 18:09
  Speaker 2: say The Simpsons, even at seventy percent is better than
• 18:11
  Speaker 2: most shows on TV, and we're.
• 18:13
  Speaker 4: Definitely trying to accentuate the positive as well in terms
• 18:15
  Speaker 4: of like everyone's sledging on these later seasons. But there
• 18:19
  Speaker 4: are jokes in here that would slot imperfectly to a
• 18:22
  Speaker 4: season eight, a season nine. Not all winners, but there
• 18:25
  Speaker 4: are so Yeah, to use our term djure, there are
• 18:28
  Speaker 4: nuggets in there.
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: There are little gold nuggets in there. And it's interesting
• 18:31
  Speaker 2: because a lot of the people because the Simpsons lives
• 18:33
  Speaker 2: on through meme culture now the Facebook groups and whatnot,
• 18:36
  Speaker 2: and a lot of people on there always go on
• 18:38
  Speaker 2: the Simpsons died after season ten. I want to hear
• 18:40
  Speaker 2: about Simpsons after season ten. That's what they say. That's
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: their spiel. But I don't think many of them realize
• 18:45
  Speaker 2: just how many memes came from after season nine, like
• 18:48
  Speaker 2: the stupid sexy Flanders and that kind of thing. The
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: what is the quote about? The why can't I have
• 18:54
  Speaker 2: no kids in free money? Things like that get meaned
• 18:56
  Speaker 2: all the time, but they're not in the golden near it.
• 18:59
  Speaker 3: No, the one with it's like mister burns, like the
• 19:02
  Speaker 3: germs coming through the door. Yeah, Like that's why he
• 19:05
  Speaker 3: can stay not he doesn't get sick because the germs
• 19:07
  Speaker 3: are fighting to get through that. I think that was
• 19:08
  Speaker 3: maybe ten or eleven, I admit I don't remember, but yeah,
• 19:12
  Speaker 3: it's there's definitely like an adherence to that golden era
• 19:16
  Speaker 3: in terms of like what people want to talk about.
• 19:18
  Speaker 3: They kind of won't admit that maybe there's some good
• 19:20
  Speaker 3: stuff later. I mean, and again, like if you look
• 19:23
  Speaker 3: at early message boards, I'm talking like nineteen ninety two,
• 19:26
  Speaker 3: people were saying the show was going down the toilet then,
• 19:29
  Speaker 3: and that was like, inarguably the best stretch of TV
• 19:34
  Speaker 3: in the history of the media.
• 19:35
  Speaker 2: Well, Bill and Josh always talk about how that would
• 19:37
  Speaker 2: constantly go onto those forums and just see what people
• 19:39
  Speaker 2: are talking about, and you can kind of say that
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: maybe they cared too much about what people thought. But
• 19:43
  Speaker 2: then it's got to a point where they went, you know,
• 19:44
  Speaker 2: what is going to make the show that we think
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: is the best, and who cares what they think?
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 19:47
  Speaker 3: I love George Meyer's sort of line about like, well,
• 19:50
  Speaker 3: I never had respect for the audience what they think.
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's very you know, it's easy for him.
• 19:55
  Speaker 3: To say because he's so brilliant and the writers are
• 19:58
  Speaker 3: so brilliant, But I do believe like that kind of
• 20:00
  Speaker 3: becomes a cliche in comedy, right where it's like, oh,
• 20:02
  Speaker 3: we were just making our friends laugh, like that's what
• 20:04
  Speaker 3: we wanted to do. But if you think about The Simpsons,
• 20:07
  Speaker 3: like that's what made it great is that it was
• 20:08
  Speaker 3: this little hermetically sealed comedy bubble and there were no
• 20:14
  Speaker 3: outside influences really, and that's that was extremely rare for
• 20:17
  Speaker 3: the time.
• 20:19
  Speaker 2: This show is brought to you by the four Finger
• 20:21
  Speaker 2: Discount Patreon, where you'll find over one hundred hours of
• 20:24
  Speaker 2: bonus podcasts, including exclusive Simpsons reviews and commentaries, as well
• 20:28
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• 20:31
  Speaker 2: of Futurama, Bob's Pods, Speaking of the Hill, Talking Seefeld,
• 20:36
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• 20:39
  Speaker 2: ahead and join the family today at patreon dot com
• 20:42
  Speaker 2: slash four finger Discount.
• 20:44
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it's a real sort of interesting comedy ecosystem, and
• 20:48
  Speaker 4: I'm a real sucker for stories of like those creative
• 20:51
  Speaker 4: incubator sort of environments. I want to talk about the
• 20:55
  Speaker 4: way that you focus on the I guess the founding
• 20:58
  Speaker 4: fathers of the show in Matt Groening, amesel Brooks, and
• 21:00
  Speaker 4: Sam Simon. I love how much credit everybody gives Sam Simon.
• 21:04
  Speaker 4: Everyone agrees he knew the rules and structure of making TV,
• 21:07
  Speaker 4: but he was able to think outside the box and
• 21:10
  Speaker 4: had this great ability to recognize in mold talent. Yeah.
• 21:13
  Speaker 4: I mean the sensence really strikes him as of this
• 21:15
  Speaker 4: perfect storm of a willingness to take risks but also
• 21:20
  Speaker 4: color inside the lines, like you need rule makers, but
• 21:22
  Speaker 4: you need rule breakers as well.
• 21:25
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I think I want to steal that line rule
• 21:27
  Speaker 3: makers and rule breakers. But it really was like this
• 21:29
  Speaker 3: first that rather this perfect sort of alchemy or chemistry,
• 21:33
  Speaker 3: like you had the architect in graining creating this world
• 21:36
  Speaker 3: that was you know, both irreverent and grounded and real
• 21:40
  Speaker 3: and pretty diverse really, you know, like Springfield, his ideal
• 21:44
  Speaker 3: Springfield was full of like lots of different types of people.
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: You had James L.
• 21:48
  Speaker 3: Brooks as sort of like the Godfather, Like you hear
• 21:50
  Speaker 3: the writers talk about him and it's like, you know,
• 21:54
  Speaker 3: God walking through the door. You know, he was this
• 21:56
  Speaker 3: romantic comedy guru who always knew how to sort of
• 22:00
  Speaker 3: insert emotion into the show when the writers were like,
• 22:03
  Speaker 3: we're gonna go crazy and do all sorts of zany
• 22:05
  Speaker 3: stuff and Simon was not only was he like Jeff Martin,
• 22:09
  Speaker 3: the writer was like, you know, he just was really
• 22:11
  Speaker 3: good at TV.
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: He was really good at TV.
• 22:13
  Speaker 3: And he also had a chip on his shoulder and everything.
• 22:16
  Speaker 3: Everything was a fight, right. So Simon was just convinced
• 22:19
  Speaker 3: because he was so jaded by TV. He's like, oh,
• 22:21
  Speaker 3: we're gonna do these thirteen episodes that was the first
• 22:23
  Speaker 3: order of the show and be done. And so he
• 22:26
  Speaker 3: just told his writers like, yeah, just try stuff. Every
• 22:28
  Speaker 3: episode should be different than the last. And the writers
• 22:32
  Speaker 3: like took it to heart and they like, he was
• 22:34
  Speaker 3: like the best coach, right. I mean he could be like,
• 22:36
  Speaker 3: you know, he could have an acid tongue, but they
• 22:39
  Speaker 3: wanted to please him so badly and that worked.
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 22:43
  Speaker 4: The other thing is, i mean, you guys are relative
• 22:46
  Speaker 4: spring chickens. I'm an age of Generation X stops and
• 22:49
  Speaker 4: I'm we tend to romanticize the eighties and the nineties
• 22:52
  Speaker 4: and yeah, but when we do that, I think we're
• 22:53
  Speaker 4: looking at maybe three or four shows that run take
• 22:55
  Speaker 4: me because there was a lot of garbage. Yeah, I
• 22:58
  Speaker 4: mean it's great that The Simpsons was a response to
• 23:01
  Speaker 4: that and a push back against that.
• 23:03
  Speaker 3: In so many ways, yeah, and I mean it's funny
• 23:06
  Speaker 3: because yeah, like you said, like Cheers is one of
• 23:08
  Speaker 3: the best shows in the history of television.
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: Like it was incredible.
• 23:11
  Speaker 3: I mean, and you know Bill Cosby obviously, like when
• 23:15
  Speaker 3: things came out about him, it showed of changes the
• 23:17
  Speaker 3: tenor of thinking about this sort of wholesome show.
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: But that was a very funny show.
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: Oh, I mean, it was huge.
• 23:23
  Speaker 3: But the thing with the Simpsons is like the writers
• 23:26
  Speaker 3: are really obsessed with kind of pushing the form forward.
• 23:30
  Speaker 3: Like I kept hearing these writers be like, you know,
• 23:32
  Speaker 3: TV was so stage bound. It was like, you know,
• 23:35
  Speaker 3: I'm not sure this made it into the book, but
• 23:36
  Speaker 3: George Meyer like talked about going to a sitcom set
• 23:39
  Speaker 3: and noticing like, oh, that's why there's no ceiling on
• 23:44
  Speaker 3: you know, there's no ceiling because there's lights up there.
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: Like it felt so confined to him.
• 23:49
  Speaker 3: And they were like, let's do some stuff that you
• 23:51
  Speaker 3: can't do on family ties or family matters or whatever,
• 23:55
  Speaker 3: like let's have Homer jump the Springfield Gorge like that
• 23:59
  Speaker 3: that's just something you couldn't do on any TV show.
• 24:02
  Speaker 4: Well, that's the origin of tree House of Horror as well,
• 24:04
  Speaker 4: isn't it. I mean they've sort of had We've yeah,
• 24:07
  Speaker 4: we've got this creative within this format. Yeah, let's go
• 24:10
  Speaker 4: crazy Broadway style essentially.
• 24:13
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like there would be no other show doing
• 24:15
  Speaker 3: and a full adaptation of an ed Ground Poe poem.
• 24:18
  Speaker 3: Right like that just seems like like I'm imagining now,
• 24:21
  Speaker 3: like you know, even like a like a Netflix executive
• 24:24
  Speaker 3: being like, I don't think this is for Quadron.
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: I don't think this is gonna work.
• 24:27
  Speaker 2: But and also a k to that success too. I
• 24:29
  Speaker 2: don't know whether you can actually do all these things
• 24:31
  Speaker 2: without the famous James L. Brooks no notes element to
• 24:34
  Speaker 2: the contract. Now you've mentioned that people have misunderstood this
• 24:37
  Speaker 2: thing over the over the years. Why have we misunderstood it?
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: So?
• 24:40
  Speaker 3: I think I misunderstood it. I basically thought, you know
• 24:43
  Speaker 3: that because James L. Brooks basically negotiated Maybe I don't
• 24:46
  Speaker 3: know if it was in his contract, but it was
• 24:48
  Speaker 3: sort of known that the executives at Fox, the creatives execs,
• 24:53
  Speaker 3: would not interfere with the Simpsons at all. No notes,
• 24:57
  Speaker 3: no comments, nothing, And you know the cliche is that
• 25:01
  Speaker 3: you know the notes were horrible, right, like the executives
• 25:04
  Speaker 3: didn't know what they were talking about But Jeff Martin
• 25:06
  Speaker 3: was really smart and he said to me, this writer
• 25:10
  Speaker 3: like he's like, you know, I'd like to flatter myself
• 25:12
  Speaker 3: and think that none of the notes I ever got
• 25:14
  Speaker 3: on in my TV career were good. But he said
• 25:17
  Speaker 3: it was not that there were good notes and there
• 25:19
  Speaker 3: are bad notes, but the no notes rule what made
• 25:22
  Speaker 3: it so important was that it it saved them time.
• 25:26
  Speaker 3: So any note, good or bad was a time suck
• 25:28
  Speaker 3: and they would have to be a back and forth
• 25:30
  Speaker 3: with the executives to try to address it. And so
• 25:32
  Speaker 3: without that kind of meddling good or bad, it just
• 25:36
  Speaker 3: allowed the Simpsons writers to focus on the show and
• 25:39
  Speaker 3: like like they could spend twelve hours, thirteen fourteen hours
• 25:43
  Speaker 3: just like working on one joke, and they didn't have
• 25:46
  Speaker 3: to worry about, you know, executives being like, you know,
• 25:49
  Speaker 3: how come this character, you know, like Marge needs more
• 25:52
  Speaker 3: friends or Bart needs you know, Bart needs to like
• 25:55
  Speaker 3: let's letting up Bart a little bit.
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: He's too too reverent. You know, they didn't need to
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: deal with that.
• 26:00
  Speaker 4: I'm glad you mentioned the work that went into the show,
• 26:02
  Speaker 4: particularly in these early years. I mean reading about it
• 26:06
  Speaker 4: in your book, I was reminded of the movie Whiplash,
• 26:08
  Speaker 4: just this sort of relentless the cost of the relentless
• 26:11
  Speaker 4: pursuit of greatness. And there's that great quote that from
• 26:14
  Speaker 4: Kennan O'Brien. I think that opens one of the chapters
• 26:16
  Speaker 4: where he's talking about, oh, yeah, you remember the magical
• 26:18
  Speaker 4: time of making the Simpsons, and really it was full
• 26:20
  Speaker 4: of fried food and crabby computers and fear and loneliness
• 26:23
  Speaker 4: and second guessing. Now everything's great in hindsight, I mean
• 26:26
  Speaker 4: twenty twenty. Hindsight is twenty twenty, of course, But I
• 26:29
  Speaker 4: mean the writers that you spoke to and the people
• 26:32
  Speaker 4: you spoke to about the show, how do they feel
• 26:34
  Speaker 4: about that grind in retrospect? Do they kind of like, yeah,
• 26:37
  Speaker 4: it was worth it.
• 26:39
  Speaker 3: I think they think it was worth it, but it
• 26:41
  Speaker 3: was sort of the best experience they'll never want to
• 26:43
  Speaker 3: have again.
• 26:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: I mean.
• 26:45
  Speaker 3: Bill Oakley had a really good line that there were
• 26:48
  Speaker 3: times when he and Josh are running the show where
• 26:51
  Speaker 3: he just wanted to do anything else because it's sort
• 26:53
  Speaker 3: of like the anxiety of expectation, Like you're running this
• 26:56
  Speaker 3: behemoth of television and you don't want to grew it
• 27:00
  Speaker 3: up right, and Rich Moore, who's an amazing, amazing animation
• 27:05
  Speaker 3: director who like went on to make Zutopia, these big movies.
• 27:09
  Speaker 3: He's like, the Simpsons took years off my life, Like
• 27:11
  Speaker 3: it was like a total joke.
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: But he's like, that was our Vietnam.
• 27:15
  Speaker 3: It was like there were times when people sort of
• 27:19
  Speaker 3: ask about that time and it would feel like fuzzy
• 27:21
  Speaker 3: in his mind because just so so much work went
• 27:25
  Speaker 3: into it.
• 27:26
  Speaker 4: Yeah, But at the same time, I Rickole is in
• 27:28
  Speaker 4: the book where you know, so why'd you do it?
• 27:30
  Speaker 4: Because I loved it?
• 27:32
  Speaker 3: It was awesome, Right, they were so proud of their work,
• 27:36
  Speaker 3: and like we're still talking about it today, which is
• 27:38
  Speaker 3: not something that you can say about a lot of
• 27:40
  Speaker 3: creative work.
• 27:40
  Speaker 2: And who doesn't want to have the Simpsons on their resume.
• 27:45
  Speaker 3: I mean, I I writing a book about it. It's
• 27:48
  Speaker 3: you know, even tangentially. It's like I've said this before,
• 27:51
  Speaker 3: but it's like I think I'm spoiled because if I
• 27:54
  Speaker 3: ever write a second book, I don't think I'm going
• 27:56
  Speaker 3: to be able to find a topic that is beloved
• 28:00
  Speaker 3: and that this like that I love so much.
• 28:04
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I just wanted to say it is in the
• 28:05
  Speaker 4: straining as well. I don't know whether to be hot broken.
• 28:07
  Speaker 4: I'm proud that the term that really drilling down on
• 28:10
  Speaker 4: the jug until it texted that you know, ten or
• 28:12
  Speaker 4: eleven hours to actually get it rot is called a gallipoli.
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: Oh my god, that story was incredible.
• 28:18
  Speaker 3: So yeah, Greg Daniels told me this story that he,
• 28:22
  Speaker 3: you know, he's like a genius TV guy who's made
• 28:24
  Speaker 3: like Parks and rec and King Hill and the American
• 28:28
  Speaker 3: Office that you know, a he had a term for
• 28:32
  Speaker 3: these like little tiny jokes that felt like a waste
• 28:34
  Speaker 3: because in the nineties, you know, like people didn't see
• 28:37
  Speaker 3: all these cutaway gags and psch gags because you had
• 28:40
  Speaker 3: to pause the television and if you didn't tape it,
• 28:43
  Speaker 3: then you couldn't see it. And he called it a gallipoli,
• 28:45
  Speaker 3: which is basically like a battle not worth fighting, and
• 28:49
  Speaker 3: it's it's you know, and you know the Peter Weir movie, right, am?
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: I right about that? He was the one who directed it, Yes,
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: And and it's sort of true. It's like it's funny.
• 28:59
  Speaker 3: I don't think these writers thought that there would be
• 29:02
  Speaker 3: like sites like Frenkiak where you could like go and
• 29:06
  Speaker 3: pull screenshots of any episode at any time. Like they
• 29:10
  Speaker 3: just thought they were making funny stuff for themselves, and
• 29:12
  Speaker 3: the fact that an audience got to enjoy it thirty
• 29:14
  Speaker 3: years later is like not what they expected.
• 29:16
  Speaker 4: It's kind of the origin of that acronym of iyk
• 29:20
  Speaker 4: yk or was it? If you know? You know, yeah,
• 29:22
  Speaker 4: because I mean there's a great sense of very nerdish pride. Yeah,
• 29:26
  Speaker 4: maybe watching the show for the first time, or watching
• 29:28
  Speaker 4: an episode for the first time and recognizing I think
• 29:31
  Speaker 4: that might be a lift from Citizen Kane. I think
• 29:33
  Speaker 4: that's oh yeah, just getting some really esoteric reference. I
• 29:36
  Speaker 4: mean you just feel this weird sense of prisee like, eh,
• 29:39
  Speaker 4: did you get that? Do you know about that?
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: Of course?
• 29:43
  Speaker 4: I mean it makes people hate you as well.
• 29:44
  Speaker 3: But yeah, right, I mean there are references that I
• 29:47
  Speaker 3: put this in the book because I was almost embarrassed.
• 29:49
  Speaker 3: Like in Mister Plow, there is a reference to a
• 29:52
  Speaker 3: movie called Sorcerer from nineteen seventy seven William freaking got
• 29:56
  Speaker 3: buried by Star Wars. It's an incredible action movie, and
• 29:59
  Speaker 3: there's like a for shot parody of Mister Plow that
• 30:02
  Speaker 3: like totally does not need to be in there. And
• 30:05
  Speaker 3: like in nineteen ninety two, No One knew that movie.
• 30:07
  Speaker 3: No one was watching that movie, but it's it's you know,
• 30:11
  Speaker 3: rich more. I think called it like a one percenter.
• 30:12
  Speaker 3: It's like for one percent of the audience. I didn't
• 30:15
  Speaker 3: see Sorcerer until I was thirty nine years old, and
• 30:18
  Speaker 3: then I rewatched mister Plow when I was working on
• 30:19
  Speaker 3: the book, and I was like, holy shit, yes, exactly.
• 30:24
  Speaker 4: I imagine fantasy at the Ring I made you it was
• 30:26
  Speaker 4: kind of an induction process.
• 30:29
  Speaker 3: Yes, it was definitely an on board joining a frat.
• 30:32
  Speaker 3: You know, if you're a certain male of a certain age,
• 30:35
  Speaker 3: you need to watch Sorcerer.
• 30:37
  Speaker 2: Are you the Simpsons guy at the Ringer?
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: I am? Yeah that.
• 30:40
  Speaker 3: Like when I first started there, I wrote a lot
• 30:43
  Speaker 3: about the show and then I sort of branched out
• 30:45
  Speaker 3: a lot more, but I was sort of the Simpsons
• 30:48
  Speaker 3: guy at the beginning. It's just like so much to mine,
• 30:51
  Speaker 3: you know, it's endless, and I think like in a
• 30:54
  Speaker 3: way that helped me get the job.
• 30:56
  Speaker 2: What have you learned working for the Ringer? What? I
• 30:58
  Speaker 2: mean some of the best takeaways from being a seniorata
• 31:01
  Speaker 2: at the ring.
• 31:03
  Speaker 3: People love nostalgia, people love looking back on things, and
• 31:07
  Speaker 3: I think a lot of people sort of do nostalgia coverage.
• 31:11
  Speaker 3: They look back at movies, music, TV, but you kind
• 31:14
  Speaker 3: of have to do it in a way that pushes
• 31:15
  Speaker 3: the story forward, Like I I My Cup of Tea
• 31:20
  Speaker 3: is sort of learning the stories behind the story, right,
• 31:24
  Speaker 3: like learning how these things were made and helping people
• 31:26
  Speaker 3: appreciate movies and music and TV in a way that
• 31:28
  Speaker 3: they hadn't before. And I think that that is what
• 31:32
  Speaker 3: I hope it.
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: Will be my niche forever, right. I mean, we have
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: whole podcasts like the Rewatchables.
• 31:37
  Speaker 3: Of people you know, rewatching the movies and like reliving
• 31:42
  Speaker 3: it and it's funny. We did a Simpsons like Fantasy
• 31:45
  Speaker 3: draft for Noah with Fantasy and Mina Kaimes and Charles Holmes,
• 31:52
  Speaker 3: and it's so funny because I vowed when I went
• 31:56
  Speaker 3: into that, I was like, I am not just going
• 31:58
  Speaker 3: to quote the show, not just gonna do Simpsons quotes.
• 32:01
  Speaker 3: Everybody does that. And then as the thing went on,
• 32:05
  Speaker 3: everyone was quoting the Simpsons. Everyone was laughing, and it
• 32:08
  Speaker 3: is like impossible not to do that, and that is
• 32:10
  Speaker 3: what people love, and that is a sign of how
• 32:13
  Speaker 3: damn good the show is that that is what people want.
• 32:17
  Speaker 3: They don't necessarily want my behind the scenes anecdotes, which
• 32:20
  Speaker 3: I love, which I wrote a whole book about. But
• 32:23
  Speaker 3: it's like, yeah, they want like quoting Lionel Huts and
• 32:27
  Speaker 3: Krusty and Marge, and it's like it's infectious and like
• 32:32
  Speaker 3: that that was a good lesson for which is.
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: Given what they want. Oh and I should do that
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: more now.
• 32:39
  Speaker 4: And you're clearly well versed in the Simpsons, you know,
• 32:42
  Speaker 4: not just the show but also what goes on behind
• 32:44
  Speaker 4: the scenes. But I mean, what do you say would
• 32:47
  Speaker 4: be maybe your favorite discovery in either researching the book
• 32:51
  Speaker 4: or conducting interviews. And we talked about while some of
• 32:53
  Speaker 4: my favorites earlier, but yeah, what sort of leapt out
• 32:55
  Speaker 4: of you is like I didn't know that. I'm so
• 32:57
  Speaker 4: glad I do now.
• 32:59
  Speaker 3: So this is a very small one, but I will
• 33:02
  Speaker 3: go with Conan. So I had written a story about
• 33:05
  Speaker 3: the mono rail episode, and Conan O'Brien said that he
• 33:08
  Speaker 3: got the idea for the monorail episode from looking up
• 33:11
  Speaker 3: at a billboard, yeah and seeing like a monorail train
• 33:15
  Speaker 3: and it just said monoail and he thought it was
• 33:17
  Speaker 3: very funny. What I didn't know was that LA in
• 33:20
  Speaker 3: the late eighties excuse me. In the early nineties had
• 33:25
  Speaker 3: a true mono rail PR campaign. They wanted to build
• 33:29
  Speaker 3: a monorail and it was insane how sort of similar
• 33:33
  Speaker 3: it the paralleled the show, Like there was this big
• 33:37
  Speaker 3: PR push for it and then it died on the vine.
• 33:39
  Speaker 3: Of course they didn't build it, but I love that.
• 33:42
  Speaker 3: It was sort of like that episode was based on
• 33:44
  Speaker 3: something real and that's like my favorite. Yeah, I'm gonna
• 33:48
  Speaker 3: say nugget again. I mean those my favorite nugget of
• 33:50
  Speaker 3: the book.
• 33:51
  Speaker 2: May be wrong, but was Georgia Kaive supposed to be
• 33:53
  Speaker 2: a guest on that episode because he was he had
• 33:55
  Speaker 2: something to do with the montoarails. I don't want to
• 33:57
  Speaker 2: bad math monorails or something. Yeah.
• 33:59
  Speaker 3: He he apparently had like a PR deal with the
• 34:02
  Speaker 3: San Francisco Board of Transportation. He didn't want to bash
• 34:05
  Speaker 3: public transportation. And he had been on you know, he
• 34:07
  Speaker 3: had been in an episode as a Kira the sushi
• 34:10
  Speaker 3: chef before and then they got Leonard Nimoy and so
• 34:14
  Speaker 3: it was like so much better. He outranked you know,
• 34:17
  Speaker 3: Spock outranks Zulu like we need him.
• 34:20
  Speaker 4: Yeah, Ellen, you're right. In the book, unlike a lot
• 34:22
  Speaker 4: of dumbed down sitcoms. The Simpsons trusted us to be curious.
• 34:26
  Speaker 4: It's a great line. It's one that I really like
• 34:29
  Speaker 4: today in popular culture. I'm sorry, oh Man, shakespeastic cloud.
• 34:32
  Speaker 4: That's the kids say that everything seems kind of algorithm driven,
• 34:38
  Speaker 4: kind of pre programmed, data driven. You might say, I mean,
• 34:42
  Speaker 4: do you think that we currently have the kind of
• 34:44
  Speaker 4: creative slash comedy ecosystem that would enable a show like
• 34:48
  Speaker 4: The Simpsons to to be born and to thrive.
• 34:52
  Speaker 3: So one thing I think that's not talked about to
• 34:55
  Speaker 3: answer your question is like what the Simpsons had going
• 34:58
  Speaker 3: for it was just in an enormous audience, like thirty
• 35:02
  Speaker 3: three million, thirty million, twenty five million people were watching
• 35:05
  Speaker 3: The Simpsons in its heyday, So you had this like
• 35:08
  Speaker 3: thing that was spread across the entire country or world.
• 35:12
  Speaker 3: Right that now the audience is so fractured that even
• 35:16
  Speaker 3: the the very best TV, animated or otherwise is just
• 35:21
  Speaker 3: viewed by such a small audience. Like a show that
• 35:26
  Speaker 3: I love, I think you should leave right, Like, we
• 35:29
  Speaker 3: don't really know. I don't know if you guys watch
• 35:30
  Speaker 3: that show, but it's a very funny sketch show, and
• 35:34
  Speaker 3: I just assume the audience is a fraction of what
• 35:37
  Speaker 3: the Simpsons audience was.
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: And I quote that now.
• 35:40
  Speaker 3: As much as I do the Simpsons, but it's just
• 35:43
  Speaker 3: not as shared a language as the Simpsons. And I
• 35:45
  Speaker 3: think like maybe maybe it's less about like sort of
• 35:48
  Speaker 3: the lack of creativity and the algorithmic drive of a
• 35:52
  Speaker 3: lot of pop culture, and more like we don't have
• 35:56
  Speaker 3: the same wide like monoculture. You know that's a cliche,
• 36:00
  Speaker 3: but it's it is gone.
• 36:02
  Speaker 4: You know, it's funny that you're talking about. I think
• 36:04
  Speaker 4: you should leave. I mean, I've only seen one or
• 36:06
  Speaker 4: two episodes, and I've not seen this specific episode, but
• 36:09
  Speaker 4: I can tell you exactly what is meant by Tim
• 36:13
  Speaker 4: Robinson in the Hot Dog. So he's saying, we're all
• 36:14
  Speaker 4: looking to the guy who did this. You know, I
• 36:16
  Speaker 4: know what that means now because of meme culture, but
• 36:18
  Speaker 4: you know, I don't necessarily know what it means in
• 36:21
  Speaker 4: the wider context of the show. So yeah, it's really interesting,
• 36:23
  Speaker 4: isn't it.
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 36:25
  Speaker 3: I think that's sort of the genius of a show
• 36:27
  Speaker 3: like that or The Simpsons, is like you can take
• 36:30
  Speaker 3: images from it or jokes from it and put them
• 36:33
  Speaker 3: in a completely neutral context and people will know what
• 36:36
  Speaker 3: it is without any other background, and that is really impressive.
• 36:41
  Speaker 2: Getting back to the no notes deally we're discussing earlier,
• 36:44
  Speaker 2: did you ask does that deal still existes that still
• 36:46
  Speaker 2: in the contract?
• 36:48
  Speaker 3: I think that it still does in some form. I
• 36:52
  Speaker 3: think again, like the Fox was not Fox is not
• 36:56
  Speaker 3: like this scrappy underdog anymore. So I think that The
• 37:00
  Speaker 3: Simpsons doesn't quite have the leverage that it did in
• 37:02
  Speaker 3: nineteen eighty nine, nineteen ninety, nineteen ninety one. But yeah,
• 37:06
  Speaker 3: I think that they operate on their own independently.
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: Still.
• 37:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, do you see the future of The Simpsons being
• 37:13
  Speaker 2: a Disney Plus exclusive series? Do you think it will
• 37:15
  Speaker 2: remain on TV or it will make that migration to
• 37:18
  Speaker 2: streaming because at the moment, they're starting to do shorter
• 37:21
  Speaker 2: seasons and some Disney Plus exclusive episodes, which I think
• 37:23
  Speaker 2: is their way of just testing the waters see where
• 37:26
  Speaker 2: people will respond to it. I think it will eventually
• 37:28
  Speaker 2: end up being a Disney Plus exclusive. Where do you
• 37:30
  Speaker 2: see the future of The Simpsons.
• 37:32
  Speaker 3: I see it staying on Fox at least for the
• 37:33
  Speaker 3: time being. Again, it is impressive that they've kept these
• 37:36
  Speaker 3: really long seasons for the people that make the show.
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: It gives them more work. It's more lucrative. But I
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: don't know.
• 37:42
  Speaker 3: I mean, it's interesting when you watch the show now,
• 37:45
  Speaker 3: like the voice actors are aging.
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: Like you hear Julie Kavner.
• 37:49
  Speaker 3: It's this brilliant actress and she kind of sounds like
• 37:52
  Speaker 3: when she was playing Marge's mom in the nineties, and
• 37:55
  Speaker 3: it makes it it's bittersweet, right, Like I think, Okay,
• 37:59
  Speaker 3: here's one thing I've been thinking about. It's like we
• 38:02
  Speaker 3: want our athletes to retire on top, right, like the
• 38:05
  Speaker 3: winning championships. Like we don't want to see the aging athletes,
• 38:10
  Speaker 3: you know, you know, on the field like as a
• 38:13
  Speaker 3: shell of what they used to be. But you know what,
• 38:14
  Speaker 3: with the Simpsons, I don't even care. They should be
• 38:17
  Speaker 3: able to go out on their own terms. And I
• 38:19
  Speaker 3: hope that happens, you know, God forbid. I if somebody
• 38:22
  Speaker 3: passes away, if one of the main cast passes away
• 38:25
  Speaker 3: or wants to retire, I think that's when you have
• 38:27
  Speaker 3: to end it.
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: I just don't know if it's actually gonna happen.
• 38:30
  Speaker 3: I mean, you hear stories about AI and sort of
• 38:33
  Speaker 3: licensing voice rights and stuff like that. I have no
• 38:35
  Speaker 3: insight into that, but I hope it doesn't get to
• 38:39
  Speaker 3: that level.
• 38:40
  Speaker 2: So you wouldn't be for the AI of the voices
• 38:43
  Speaker 2: if they were to pass on, if they gave their
• 38:45
  Speaker 2: thumbs up for it. I think if they agree for
• 38:47
  Speaker 2: it to be allowed to happen, I'd be okay with it.
• 38:49
  Speaker 2: I think as a Simpsons fan, ensuring that the Simpsons
• 38:52
  Speaker 2: can go on, I don't think I want a replacement.
• 38:54
  Speaker 2: I think it's either Dan's voice or it's nobody's voice.
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: Right, or it's done.
• 38:58
  Speaker 3: I mean, I admit AI part of it kind of
• 39:01
  Speaker 3: creeps me out because the whole thing about The Simpsons
• 39:04
  Speaker 3: is it's humanity, right, Like, you want the depth of
• 39:08
  Speaker 3: that voice, even if it can be recreated with a computer.
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: I just I don't want to see that happen, but
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: we'll see.
• 39:15
  Speaker 2: I wonder if you could get an actor to act
• 39:17
  Speaker 2: the scenes but then just change their voice to dance. Well,
• 39:20
  Speaker 2: that's it's it's getting creepy. But I don't know, It's
• 39:23
  Speaker 2: just it's a weird thing. It's gonna have to happen eventually.
• 39:25
  Speaker 2: The decision is going to have to be made at
• 39:26
  Speaker 2: some point.
• 39:27
  Speaker 4: And it's interesting when you talk about voice acting, because yeah,
• 39:30
  Speaker 4: you primarily think of those Oh, it's just the voice,
• 39:32
  Speaker 4: but no, it's acting as well. It's not just the
• 39:34
  Speaker 4: sound that that Dan or Julie are inbuing with the show.
• 39:38
  Speaker 4: It's the creativity of their thought processes that their acting
• 39:42
  Speaker 4: agility as well, which yeah, I might be able to
• 39:45
  Speaker 4: quite un quite replicate, but yeah.
• 39:48
  Speaker 2: But legendary voice actor Jess Haa, now he has said
• 39:51
  Speaker 2: that voice acting is lower case V capital A. It's
• 39:54
  Speaker 2: all about the acting, and that's what people tend to forget. Yeah,
• 39:57
  Speaker 2: good point.
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: Yardley Smith, who's you know Lisa.
• 40:00
  Speaker 3: She told me this great story about recording for Lisa's substitute.
• 40:04
  Speaker 3: She's like a classic emotional episode and she's like the
• 40:07
  Speaker 3: tears were real, like you know, she got into that
• 40:10
  Speaker 3: character and with her it's interesting because her voice is
• 40:13
  Speaker 3: Lisa's voice, so there is like a singularity there that's
• 40:16
  Speaker 3: maybe different than some of the other characters.
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: But she is not holding back.
• 40:21
  Speaker 2: Not at all, and that's the that's Dustin Hoffman. Is
• 40:24
  Speaker 2: that samitic for me? Personally? I really liked that episode,
• 40:30
  Speaker 2: but I don't love it as much as others.
• 40:32
  Speaker 4: Guy.
• 40:32
  Speaker 2: He's example of that is Cape Fear. He's just not
• 40:34
  Speaker 2: huge on the right gag. Are there any gags of
• 40:36
  Speaker 2: the Simpsons from that original era, the Golden era that
• 40:39
  Speaker 2: everyone seems to love that you just don't quite get
• 40:42
  Speaker 2: it on that level.
• 40:44
  Speaker 3: I am not the biggest Ralph Wigham fan. I think
• 40:48
  Speaker 3: he is so one note. I think he's made me laugh,
• 40:51
  Speaker 3: but like the next time I hear like Super Nintendo Chalmers, like,
• 40:55
  Speaker 3: I just don't. I don't find it that that funny,
• 40:59
  Speaker 3: Like he is kind of easy to rely on in
• 41:01
  Speaker 3: a way that other characters maybe aren't. Although you know
• 41:06
  Speaker 3: the Valentine's Day episode I Chew You Choose You like
• 41:08
  Speaker 3: that that is a very classic episode, and like when
• 41:11
  Speaker 3: they use him correctly, he can be funny.
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: But I would say he's maybe my least favorite character.
• 41:16
  Speaker 2: I think that's why it's disappointing when you see what
• 41:18
  Speaker 2: they turned him into, because we've seen what you can
• 41:20
  Speaker 2: do with the character with I love Lisa.
• 41:23
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean he he again is like such easy
• 41:25
  Speaker 3: comic relief, which I sort of get, like it's it's
• 41:29
  Speaker 3: you know, not not every character is as nuanced as
• 41:31
  Speaker 3: it's like Krusty the Clown or Sycho Bob, like it's
• 41:35
  Speaker 3: gonna you know, you need a Ralph Wigham.
• 41:36
  Speaker 4: True, but the same could be said for Homer as well.
• 41:38
  Speaker 4: I mean, you know, initially he's this sort of gruff
• 41:40
  Speaker 4: family man the writers send to realize we like it
• 41:43
  Speaker 4: when he's dumb, but then I also like intercutting that
• 41:46
  Speaker 4: with occasional moments of like sophistication or intellect, where like
• 41:50
  Speaker 4: I won't stand by that vassa bashing young lady or
• 41:52
  Speaker 4: something like that, which is just marvelous and the last
• 41:55
  Speaker 4: thing we expect coming out of Homer's mouth. But it
• 41:57
  Speaker 4: does seem like in yeah, late season, certainly that's like, now,
• 42:01
  Speaker 4: let's just really dumb down on the on the stupidity,
• 42:05
  Speaker 4: not just in terms of inla but also emotionally as well.
• 42:07
  Speaker 4: And it kind of I think Daniel and I about
• 42:10
  Speaker 4: that it a bit bit off footing was jarring.
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's like the what do they call it?
• 42:14
  Speaker 3: The jerk ass Homer where it's like where I think
• 42:17
  Speaker 3: they've dialed back on that. But there definitely was a
• 42:20
  Speaker 3: moment like a story that I love. I think it
• 42:22
  Speaker 3: was like on a on a round table with Codin
• 42:24
  Speaker 3: O'Brien once where he talked about, you know, there's like
• 42:28
  Speaker 3: a joke where Homer like is like by a rendering plant,
• 42:32
  Speaker 3: and the joke is that, like it's Homer, not the
• 42:34
  Speaker 3: rendering plant that smells bad, and like George Meyer, I
• 42:36
  Speaker 3: guess was walking by and is like, I guess Homer
• 42:38
  Speaker 3: smells now, and it's like just like truly making him
• 42:41
  Speaker 3: a pig, you know, And it could be really funny,
• 42:44
  Speaker 3: but but that sort of sets like a a precedent
• 42:47
  Speaker 3: that moved in a direction that like, wasn't that great.
• 42:50
  Speaker 4: There's nothing wrong with a blunt falced trauma kind of joke,
• 42:52
  Speaker 4: but eventually at least a concussion, right.
• 42:57
  Speaker 2: This show is brought to you by the four Fingered
• 42:58
  Speaker 2: Discount Patreon. Well, you'll find over one hundred hours of
• 43:01
  Speaker 2: bonus podcasts, including exclusive Simpsons reviews and commentaries, as well
• 43:06
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• 43:09
  Speaker 2: of Futurama, Bob's Pods, Speaking of the Hill, Talking Seiefeld,
• 43:14
  Speaker 2: the One About Friends, and so much more. So go
• 43:16
  Speaker 2: ahead and join the family today at patreon dot com
• 43:20
  Speaker 2: slash four finger Discount. I think for us too, watching it,
• 43:23
  Speaker 2: you can see that there were always repercussions for Homer's
• 43:27
  Speaker 2: actions in the original era, where if he did something
• 43:29
  Speaker 2: wrong he'd eventually learned his lesson by the end in
• 43:32
  Speaker 2: maybe i'd say about season fourteen onwards, when that joke
• 43:35
  Speaker 2: ass Homer era really starts. He's doing all this really
• 43:38
  Speaker 2: bad shit and margin are just not holding him cannibal
• 43:40
  Speaker 2: for it anymore. And that's where it gets annoying.
• 43:44
  Speaker 3: It's kind of like the writers like threw up their
• 43:45
  Speaker 3: hands and they're like, Oh, this is Homer now, and
• 43:47
  Speaker 3: we're just gonna like, we're just gonna lean on that.
• 43:49
  Speaker 3: I mean, the Homer's Enemy the Frank Rhymes episode is
• 43:54
  Speaker 3: a really interesting I don't know if it's a turning
• 43:56
  Speaker 3: point or an example where it's like, oh, this is
• 44:00
  Speaker 3: what Homer, this is what reacting to Homer would really
• 44:03
  Speaker 3: be like like in real life. And the end, you know,
• 44:06
  Speaker 3: Frank Rhymes he dies and Homer just.
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: Like doesn't give a shit and you lough at that.
• 44:13
  Speaker 3: And it's funny, and I mean it's sort of an
• 44:15
  Speaker 3: evolution of you know, things that you saw in early seasons.
• 44:20
  Speaker 3: Like a good example of that is like it's like
• 44:23
  Speaker 3: when Homer eats the poison blowfish, right, I think it's
• 44:25
  Speaker 3: it's season two, and he has this like tour through
• 44:28
  Speaker 3: his life where he's like both making amends and spending
• 44:31
  Speaker 3: quality time with everybody in his family, and it's like
• 44:35
  Speaker 3: you think he has a new lease on life, and
• 44:37
  Speaker 3: then the next day he's eating pork rimes on their couch,
• 44:40
  Speaker 3: and it's like that was so relatable, right, It's like
• 44:43
  Speaker 3: you forget so fast, But in later seasons it's sort
• 44:45
  Speaker 3: of less charming.
• 44:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 44:47
  Speaker 4: Well, I'm reminded of the Gimes O Brooks line where
• 44:49
  Speaker 4: he talks about this is the the American family in
• 44:52
  Speaker 4: all its horror. Yeah, and I think it means like
• 44:54
  Speaker 4: quite in a complimentary sense, because I mean the sacred
• 44:57
  Speaker 4: source of the sentience, recognizing the good and bad, add
• 45:00
  Speaker 4: the light and frustration that can all coexist under one roof.
• 45:03
  Speaker 4: In fact, they can they do.
• 45:06
  Speaker 3: Yeah, And I mean the show like it is a
• 45:09
  Speaker 3: like I don't know how much Johnny Carson you two
• 45:11
  Speaker 3: have watched in your days, but I mean, hi, Carson,
• 45:15
  Speaker 3: Carson said, you know, like the Simpsons seems like a
• 45:17
  Speaker 3: more realistic family than the Cosby's, Like this was a
• 45:20
  Speaker 3: true typical American family, which is like basically live paycheck
• 45:25
  Speaker 3: to paycheck. You know, it's kind of miserable. You're always
• 45:28
  Speaker 3: trying to make ends meet. And of course you know
• 45:30
  Speaker 3: back then you could afford a house, but I don't.
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: Know if you could do that anymore in America now.
• 45:34
  Speaker 3: On Homer's salary, it's like Greg Daniel said, it's like
• 45:38
  Speaker 3: it's like the episode where they go to India and
• 45:40
  Speaker 3: Greg Daniels like, wait a second, We've established that Homer
• 45:43
  Speaker 3: makes two hundred and forty dollars a week, Like like,
• 45:45
  Speaker 3: why yeah, how can he do that? It doesn't make
• 45:47
  Speaker 3: it doesn't make any sense. I mean again, Brooks wanted
• 45:52
  Speaker 3: to show a family and its struggles and also like
• 45:56
  Speaker 3: the humor.
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: In that, and I think like that was again, like
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: you said, the secrets.
• 46:00
  Speaker 2: Do you think it's still is relatable the family dynamic
• 46:04
  Speaker 2: in twenty twenty five of The Simpsons, because you'll say
• 46:06
  Speaker 2: that's one of the chims go people hoopd on the
• 46:07
  Speaker 2: show was it's just like watching us on TV. Do
• 46:10
  Speaker 2: you think people still get that vibe when they watch
• 46:12
  Speaker 2: it in twenty twenty five do they? Does it still
• 46:13
  Speaker 2: come across as relatable or is it aspirational? Man?
• 46:17
  Speaker 3: I think it's not quite as relatable just because it's
• 46:21
  Speaker 3: almost as if the Simpsons became celebrities, like so the
• 46:25
  Speaker 3: guest star quotient like went skyrocketed, like you have like
• 46:29
  Speaker 3: Lady Gaga and episodes like I'm not saying that's necessarily
• 46:32
  Speaker 3: a bad thing, but the show is so famous, the
• 46:36
  Speaker 3: characters are so famous that they like sort of ceased
• 46:38
  Speaker 3: to be like a normal family anymore, even though, like
• 46:42
  Speaker 3: there are episodes now that that really have tackled, tried
• 46:45
  Speaker 3: to tackle like modern issues, like Lisa. There's an episode
• 46:48
  Speaker 3: where Lisa has anxiety and it's it's very touching in
• 46:51
  Speaker 3: a way that that is relatable. But also you know,
• 46:55
  Speaker 3: in another episode it's like, oh, the Rolling Stones are
• 46:57
  Speaker 3: here or whatever. Any any kind of any celebrity now
• 47:01
  Speaker 3: it means you've made it if you've been on The Simpsons.
• 47:04
  Speaker 2: Sure, a lot of the time the guest stars when'tre
• 47:06
  Speaker 2: in that original run, a lot of the guest stars
• 47:07
  Speaker 2: were voicing characters, right, and then it got to the
• 47:09
  Speaker 2: point where the guest stars were just the guest stars.
• 47:11
  Speaker 2: Hey it's Britney Spears. Hey it's so and so.
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Like my favorite random ones are like I love tennis.
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: It's like Pete.
• 47:18
  Speaker 3: Sampras and Andre Agassi, like Serena Williams. I mean it's
• 47:21
  Speaker 3: like it's a little weird. I mean, like Meryl Street
• 47:23
  Speaker 3: played Bart's girlfriend, Like imagine that today, it's like the
• 47:27
  Speaker 3: most famous actress on the planet actually, like isn't playing herself.
• 47:33
  Speaker 2: What are your favorite memories of just watching The Simpsons.
• 47:36
  Speaker 2: We touched on Home as Enemy before, and one of
• 47:37
  Speaker 2: my favorite memories of watching as a kid is my dad,
• 47:40
  Speaker 2: who we know we have good relationship, but I've never
• 47:42
  Speaker 2: really heard my dad laugh out loud all that often.
• 47:44
  Speaker 2: But that end scene where he says change the channel March,
• 47:47
  Speaker 2: my dad was just uproarioushly laughing, and I remember looking
• 47:50
  Speaker 2: at him and smiling and feel like connection that the
• 47:52
  Speaker 2: Simpsons brought us. But we were able to watch the
• 47:53
  Speaker 2: show together. So that's one of my favorite memories of
• 47:55
  Speaker 2: watching the show, seeing my dad laugh at that moment.
• 47:58
  Speaker 2: What are some of yours?
• 48:00
  Speaker 3: I remember Lisa the Vegetarian, like, you know, you don't
• 48:02
  Speaker 3: make friends with salad. Like when they were singing that song,
• 48:05
  Speaker 3: I was, I think I was in seventh grade.
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: I was like crying with laughter.
• 48:10
  Speaker 3: There was that that episode Homer's Phobia, which is another
• 48:14
  Speaker 3: one that was like really ahead of its time with
• 48:15
  Speaker 3: John Waters. You know the steel mill scene, which maybe
• 48:19
  Speaker 3: in eighth grade, I there might have been some latent
• 48:22
  Speaker 3: homophobia sort of mixed in a little bit, which I'm
• 48:24
  Speaker 3: not proud of. But that episode is so brilliant and
• 48:27
  Speaker 3: like very you know, progressive in a lot of ways,
• 48:31
  Speaker 3: and that killed me at the time.
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: And also like it's not really a watching the show.
• 48:37
  Speaker 3: But when the episode guide came out, you know, I
• 48:39
  Speaker 3: think it was ninety eight, we at summer camp. We
• 48:42
  Speaker 3: would read from it and just like go around in
• 48:45
  Speaker 3: a circle and read jokes, and we were like the
• 48:47
  Speaker 3: show wasn't even we didn't have a TV at summer camp,
• 48:50
  Speaker 3: but it's what like we were in hysterics, which again
• 48:54
  Speaker 3: is a sign of how good the show was. Like
• 48:56
  Speaker 3: we didn't even see a lot of those on rerun yet.
• 48:59
  Speaker 2: That Things You Miss section on the side of every
• 49:01
  Speaker 2: episode was like, ah, loved it. It's like catnet for me.
• 49:05
  Speaker 2: And my son is just turned seven. He's just learned
• 49:08
  Speaker 2: to properly read, like read chapter books and whatnot, and
• 49:11
  Speaker 2: he's just properly started watching The Simpsons as well, because
• 49:13
  Speaker 2: I sort of how back a bit because I know
• 49:15
  Speaker 2: I wasn't ao to watch it till I was six,
• 49:16
  Speaker 2: and I look at it, and I go, this is
• 49:17
  Speaker 2: genius scratchy cartoons pretty full. Bought my kid watching it.
• 49:21
  Speaker 2: So he's just started watching the Simpsons now, so he
• 49:23
  Speaker 2: now sits there with this episode guy, and he goes,
• 49:25
  Speaker 2: I want to watch this one, you know, And it's
• 49:27
  Speaker 2: just I'm watching that's the actual book I had when
• 49:29
  Speaker 2: I was a kid, and now you're reading it and
• 49:31
  Speaker 2: you're discovering this show that I've loved, you know. It's
• 49:32
  Speaker 2: just it's amazing that the show can bring us all together.
• 49:36
  Speaker 3: Yeah, there's like a weird flattening of it that Disney
• 49:39
  Speaker 3: Plus has, which is not a bad thing or a
• 49:41
  Speaker 3: good thing. Like my best friend has an eleven year
• 49:44
  Speaker 3: old and he finds the same enjoyment out of episodes
• 49:48
  Speaker 3: from twenty twenty one as he does from an episode
• 49:51
  Speaker 3: from nineteen ninety one.
• 49:52
  Speaker 4: Great.
• 49:53
  Speaker 3: I think that's just it just like a product of
• 49:56
  Speaker 3: having it all at your fingertips, which I think has
• 49:59
  Speaker 3: its The discovery process is a lot easier, but it's
• 50:03
  Speaker 3: still joyful.
• 50:03
  Speaker 2: What Disney Plus, I say, is probably the best thing
• 50:06
  Speaker 2: to happen to The Simpsons in a long time. For
• 50:08
  Speaker 2: that reason, because The Simpsons was so hard to find,
• 50:11
  Speaker 2: particularly new episodes. You didn't know what channel was going
• 50:13
  Speaker 2: to be on, what time it was going to be
• 50:14
  Speaker 2: airing in Australia anyway, and it just it just sort
• 50:17
  Speaker 2: of got lost in the shuffle. And now we know
• 50:19
  Speaker 2: every Wednesday after it's and in the States we're getting
• 50:21
  Speaker 2: it two days later. It's great.
• 50:22
  Speaker 4: I'm trying to recall. Forgive me, you might fail me
• 50:25
  Speaker 4: out with this the expert here, but you know, one
• 50:28
  Speaker 4: of my favorite gags is very throwaway gag of Homer
• 50:31
  Speaker 4: same may I played Devil's advocate for a moment and
• 50:33
  Speaker 4: then cutting to him playing the Devil's advocate Pinball. I
• 50:35
  Speaker 4: don't know what an episode that it actually it's a
• 50:37
  Speaker 4: teen ear and when it came out, but I I
• 50:40
  Speaker 4: just recall, well, first of all, that just makes me
• 50:42
  Speaker 4: laugh to this day. But it was also the thing
• 50:44
  Speaker 4: of like, wait a minute, you can do that. It's
• 50:46
  Speaker 4: like with pulp fiction. You know, when during the opening
• 50:50
  Speaker 4: credits the they changed the song on the radio and
• 50:52
  Speaker 4: the song changes minstream. It's like, wait a minute, you're
• 50:54
  Speaker 4: allowed to do that in the movie.
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: And yeah, it's like this weird mix of diegetic sound.
• 50:59
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and even then in the Simpsons, like I'm telling
• 51:02
  Speaker 4: a gag cut away to this other gag wait a minute,
• 51:06
  Speaker 4: and it turns out to be the funniest thing I've
• 51:08
  Speaker 4: ever seen. So I love that rule breaking aspect of it.
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, like the Monarel episode with that starts with the
• 51:14
  Speaker 1: Flintstones parody rate of you know, Homer leaving the plant
• 51:18
  Speaker 1: and driving into a chestnut tree, Like there was no
• 51:21
  Speaker 1: reason for that to be in the episode, but it
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: was funny.
• 51:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there are so many things. That's why twenty two
• 51:25
  Speaker 2: Short Films was born. Obviously, as you talk about in
• 51:28
  Speaker 2: the book where they had the Flanders little cutaway bit
• 51:31
  Speaker 2: at the end of was it Homer and a Pooh?
• 51:34
  Speaker 2: Or what was on an early episode of The Simpsons,
• 51:36
  Speaker 2: And then Bill and Josh said, let's make a full
• 51:38
  Speaker 2: episode where it's just short bits. And that's my favorite
• 51:40
  Speaker 2: episode because I think that it captures a day in
• 51:43
  Speaker 2: the life of Springfield. And I love the episodes that
• 51:46
  Speaker 2: truly incorporate as many of the side characters as possible.
• 51:49
  Speaker 2: But what about what's a What do you look for
• 51:52
  Speaker 2: in a great Simpsons episode? Do you want as many
• 51:53
  Speaker 2: towns people? Do you want emotion? What are you looking for?
• 51:56
  Speaker 3: So I want like a combo of all those things,
• 51:59
  Speaker 3: and and I would say a good example. I'm sort
• 52:02
  Speaker 3: of wasting my material for later maybe, but mister mister
• 52:06
  Speaker 3: plowed to me is a great example of this. So
• 52:09
  Speaker 3: it's like something you couldn't do on a live action
• 52:12
  Speaker 3: TV show, which is like Homer and Barney, you know,
• 52:16
  Speaker 3: rival plow drivers. There are all sorts of weird pop
• 52:19
  Speaker 3: culture references. Linda Ronstadt is a guest, you know, Adam
• 52:23
  Speaker 3: West is a guest, right, and then at the end,
• 52:25
  Speaker 3: you have this really emotional bond between two friends that
• 52:30
  Speaker 3: like is sort of the heart of the show. And
• 52:32
  Speaker 3: you also have like Homer sort of this profundity that
• 52:36
  Speaker 3: he shouldn't have, Like he's like, you know, if two
• 52:39
  Speaker 3: friends put their heads together, like even God can't stop
• 52:42
  Speaker 3: us or something like that. And it's like that is
• 52:44
  Speaker 3: a good combo of everything. And yeah, that's what I
• 52:47
  Speaker 3: would say, is like the quintessential episode.
• 52:49
  Speaker 2: Now, we usually ask our guests, I've sent you the email.
• 52:52
  Speaker 2: We always ask our guests for their marathon. So it's
• 52:56
  Speaker 2: it's nineteen ninety eight. Fox have asked you, Allen put
• 52:59
  Speaker 2: together a Simpsons marathon on a Friday night, five episodes.
• 53:02
  Speaker 2: What are you putting on.
• 53:04
  Speaker 3: Okay, So I think you have to start with Lisa's Substitute,
• 53:10
  Speaker 3: which is a very good example, an early example of
• 53:14
  Speaker 3: the show. It's sort of its emotional best and it
• 53:17
  Speaker 3: has great Lisa Homer bonding, which to me is the
• 53:21
  Speaker 3: most interesting relationship in the show. It's an amazing contrast
• 53:24
  Speaker 3: of like the OAF and the genius, right, and they
• 53:28
  Speaker 3: they oddly like have these really sweet moments in a
• 53:31
  Speaker 3: lot of episodes, and so, okay, so I start with that,
• 53:34
  Speaker 3: and I think I would go to Itchy and Scratchy
• 53:37
  Speaker 3: and Marge, which is, you know, these are these are
• 53:39
  Speaker 3: episodes in the first two seasons, and that's the episode
• 53:43
  Speaker 3: where you know, itch and Scratchy is basically canceled for
• 53:46
  Speaker 3: being too violent and Marge goes in this campaign against it.
• 53:50
  Speaker 3: I like it because it's sort of an early example
• 53:52
  Speaker 3: of like really sharp social commentary, right, and again that
• 53:57
  Speaker 3: that sort of represents like the Sam Simon era. So
• 54:00
  Speaker 3: then I would do Mister Plow, which is all the
• 54:04
  Speaker 3: things I just explained. It's sort of the quintessential you know,
• 54:07
  Speaker 3: you can't do this on live action TV, and it's
• 54:09
  Speaker 3: sort of again one sign of the show's growth in
• 54:12
  Speaker 3: you know, with Mike Reese and Algen as the showrunners.
• 54:16
  Speaker 1: Then after that it's really tough. So I think you
• 54:18
  Speaker 1: move into the David Murkin era and I think you
• 54:20
  Speaker 1: do Deep Space.
• 54:21
  Speaker 3: Homer, which was kind of a controversial episode because Homer
• 54:26
  Speaker 3: becomes an astronaut with Barney or they train, you know,
• 54:29
  Speaker 3: like the right stuff, and Homer becomes an astronaut, which
• 54:31
  Speaker 3: is completely ridiculous and is not an idea that they
• 54:34
  Speaker 3: would have done in season two or three. But it's
• 54:38
  Speaker 3: so funny and it works, and it's a great example
• 54:41
  Speaker 3: of Murkin, who had this knack for sort of cinematic
• 54:46
  Speaker 3: touches like the two thousand and one parody. Right like
• 54:49
  Speaker 3: he wrote the episode, he was the showrunner. Amazing episode.
• 54:53
  Speaker 3: And then I would finish so is that is that four?
• 54:58
  Speaker 3: And I would finish with the Itchy and Scratchy and
• 55:01
  Speaker 3: Pucci Show because to me, I think it would make
• 55:05
  Speaker 3: for a perfect series finale of The Simpsons. Right. So
• 55:07
  Speaker 3: it's an exploration of the fans response to the show,
• 55:12
  Speaker 3: and it's sort of a look at like, you know,
• 55:16
  Speaker 3: like who does a show belong to?
• 55:18
  Speaker 1: Like who does pop culture belong to?
• 55:20
  Speaker 3: Is it the fans? Is it the writers? Is it
• 55:23
  Speaker 3: something in between? And it really, sadly was like a
• 55:27
  Speaker 3: sign of things to come with fan interaction with pop culture,
• 55:31
  Speaker 3: like just people sort of acting not psychotic, but like
• 55:36
  Speaker 3: crazy about the pop culture they love and like thinking
• 55:39
  Speaker 3: that they own.
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: These things and like they needed to go their way.
• 55:42
  Speaker 3: And again it was a good sign of like like
• 55:47
  Speaker 3: The Simpsons was aware of these things happening a long
• 55:49
  Speaker 3: time before other shows weren't.
• 55:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm voting on rotten tomatos before you've actually seen
• 55:53
  Speaker 2: the product.
• 55:55
  Speaker 4: Who is the who got riped into doing the ask
• 55:57
  Speaker 4: me anything with the with the fans and he's like, okay,
• 56:03
  Speaker 4: but yeah, there are certain questions that I just win answer.
• 56:05
  Speaker 4: And the first question is what make is Lisa' sex boys?
• 56:07
  Speaker 4: That's the shit I'm not.
• 56:08
  Speaker 2: Answering it was.
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: It was, Yeah, it was. It was Mike Scully, that's right,
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: is a great dude and really funny.
• 56:14
  Speaker 3: And so he took over season nine and that was
• 56:17
  Speaker 3: tough because again like all these writers had left, and
• 56:21
  Speaker 3: he again so he agreed to do a Q and
• 56:25
  Speaker 3: A with with this site, and he basically was like,
• 56:27
  Speaker 3: can you screen the questions, because like I really want
• 56:30
  Speaker 3: to get I do really want to get into how
• 56:31
  Speaker 3: do I make the show?
• 56:32
  Speaker 1: How how is this show made?
• 56:33
  Speaker 3: But I can't do the minutia because it's just exhausting,
• 56:37
  Speaker 3: like and it's fine for fans to talk about it,
• 56:39
  Speaker 3: but it's not. It doesn't make for fun conversation, not
• 56:43
  Speaker 3: at all.
• 56:44
  Speaker 2: Well, thank you so much for your time. Allan's been
• 56:45
  Speaker 2: absolute pleasure to talk to you and make sure you
• 56:47
  Speaker 2: get Allen's new books, Stupid TV being more funny. And
• 56:49
  Speaker 2: if you do like Simpson's books, they want to get
• 56:51
  Speaker 2: al Simpson's book that came out a easy ago, Haven's
• 56:53
  Speaker 2: Honesty and the biggest Simpson's God.
• 56:56
  Speaker 4: Daniel's being very generous when he says he calls it Alice.
• 56:59
  Speaker 4: This was actually kind of and by the former girl
• 57:01
  Speaker 4: host of four Finger Discount. I'm not going to take
• 57:02
  Speaker 4: credit where credit.
• 57:04
  Speaker 2: Is not due, but yeah, stupid TV be more funny.
• 57:07
  Speaker 2: It's been called the best things this book of all time.
• 57:09
  Speaker 2: It's true and not just by Alan s No. But
• 57:14
  Speaker 2: thank you again, Alan for your time. It's been been great.
• 57:16
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much.
• 57:17
  Speaker 3: I really appreciate And I wanted to end with my
• 57:19
  Speaker 3: favorite Simpsons quote of late which changes all the time,
• 57:24
  Speaker 3: which is doctor Nick and it's the most rewarding part
• 57:26
  Speaker 3: was what he gave me, my money.