Latest / Four Finger Discount (Simpsons Podcast) / Lemon Of Troy (with Brent Forrester)

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Lemon Of Troy (with Brent Forrester) · Four Finger Discount (Simpsons Podcast)

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Don't you get it, Springfield? It's over. You lose. Now,
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: if you'll excuse me, all this talk has made me hungry.
• 0:09
  Speaker 2: Four-finger discount, dude.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: The Simpsons The Simpsons.
• 0:27
  Speaker 3: Hey everybody, welcome to 4-Finger Discount, where this week we're
• 0:29
  Speaker 3: heading all the way back to Season 6 to review
• 0:31
  Speaker 3: one of my favorite Simpsons episodes of all time, it's
• 0:33
  Speaker 3: Lemon of Troy, and we're joined right now by the
• 0:35
  Speaker 3: writer of the episode, it's Brent Forrester.
• 0:37
  Speaker 4: How are you doing, sir?
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: Hey, so happy to be here.
• 0:39
  Speaker 3: We're very happy to have you. Now, I was just
• 0:41
  Speaker 3: telling Guy off right before we started recording, we released
• 0:44
  Speaker 3: a book about 10 years ago, a Simpsons book. and
• 0:47
  Speaker 3: I had my top five episodes in there, and I went,
• 0:48
  Speaker 3: I'm pretty sure I included this one in my top five,
• 0:51
  Speaker 3: and I did. This is in my top five Simpsons
• 0:53
  Speaker 3: episodes of all time. I love Lemon of Troy, and
• 0:55
  Speaker 3: I'm just so excited to finally get the chance to
• 0:56
  Speaker 3: talk about it with you.
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: Oh, thank you. I'm so flattered. It was a successful
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: episode at the time. Yeah, I was in my 20s
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: when I wrote it, and I love it when stuff
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: is still good 10, 20, even 30 years later. So,
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: I can't wait to talk to you about how this
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: film came together.
• 1:14
  Speaker 3: Well, I've just started watching the show with my kids,
• 1:16
  Speaker 3: sort of revisiting these odd episodes with my kids, because
• 1:18
  Speaker 3: I thought, I'm going to let my kids watch it
• 1:19
  Speaker 3: a couple of years ago. And then Itchy and Scratchy
• 1:21
  Speaker 3: came on and I went, oh, they're maybe a little
• 1:23
  Speaker 3: bit too young for this. But now they're just turned
• 1:26
  Speaker 3: eight and five and they love it. And we watched
• 1:28
  Speaker 3: Lemon of Troy last night. I rewatched it for this podcast.
• 1:31
  Speaker 3: My kids were just in hysterics. They thought it was
• 1:32
  Speaker 3: the funniest thing they loved. And I thought, isn't it
• 1:34
  Speaker 3: great that this show that I loved when I was
• 1:36
  Speaker 3: a kid, 30 years later, and kids now are still
• 1:38
  Speaker 3: enjoying it just as much.
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: I'm glad you said that. You know, this one in
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: particular has a nostalgia for childhood feel to it. If
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: you see in the episode, you know, it centers around
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: kids going on a mission and using all their gear
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: and all that stuff of like having camouflage paint and
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: binoculars and walkie talkies. And, you know, when you were
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: a kid, you know, nine, 10 years old, why did
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: you have that stuff? You were hoping to go on
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: some kind of adventure. And that's what this one is
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: really powered by that. energy.
• 2:11
  Speaker 4: Let's not forget the Baron Von Kostian disguise kit as well.
• 2:15
  Speaker 4: The MVP of this episode. By the way, Brent, who
• 2:17
  Speaker 4: would have thought that Christopher Nolan would have made the
• 2:19
  Speaker 4: second best exploration of Greek mythology that I've seen this year?
• 2:24
  Speaker 4: Well done you.
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: Thank you. Thank you. You know, the secret of this
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: episode was that I had discovered that the way you
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: got handed an episode. You have to understand in 1996,
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: when I joined the staff, I think it was 96,
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: your whole goal as a staff writer was to pitch
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: a story and have them choose you to write that story.
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: Then you would get to leave the writer's room for
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: a few weeks and write your episode. So there was
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: enormous pressure on us to come up with an episode
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: that would get chosen by the showrunner. And what I
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: had figured out was All of the stories on The
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: Simpsons were combinations of characters in conflict. So, you know,
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: this week it's Homer versus Marge in the A story
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: and Bart versus Lisa in the B story. And next
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: week is Marge versus Krusty in the A story and
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: Bart versus Grandpa in the B story. So you were
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: looking for these unique combinations. I was looking for a
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: combination that had never been done. My first year at
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: the Simpsons, I pitched Homer versus Patty and Selma. They
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: had never done Homer versus Patty and Selma. And I
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: recognized that Patty and Selma were like one character. They
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: always appeared together. And so when I pitched that, I
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: was assigned the episode. The following year, looking for a
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: new combination of characters in conflict, I thought, oh, I'll
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: do one better. I'll do Springfield versus Shelbyville. Town versus town.
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: And that is... where the origin of the show comes from,
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: is looking for a unique conflict that had never been done.
• 4:01
  Speaker 4: Brent, something I was thinking is this episode came along
• 4:03
  Speaker 4: at just the right time for the show and also
• 4:04
  Speaker 4: for the viewers as well, because, I mean, it feels
• 4:07
  Speaker 4: like the viewers of the show would be invested in
• 4:10
  Speaker 4: Springfield and its residents as much as those residents themselves are.
• 4:16
  Speaker 4: People watching the show would have as much pride in Springfield.
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: Well, that's well said. I hadn't thought of that. You know,
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: by this time it was season five or six, six,
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: I guess.
• 4:25
  Speaker 4: The end of six, yeah.
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: Right. So now this show was familiar to them. They
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: knew a lot of the lore. And so they would
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: have had a certain degree of patriotism for Springfield, too.
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: That's a really insightful comment.
• 4:38
  Speaker 4: There you go, guys.
• 4:40
  Speaker 3: You're teaching him things about his own episode.
• 4:42
  Speaker 4: Even a broken clock is right twice a day.
• 4:47
  Speaker 3: But you're right, though. This episode does capture that nostalgia
• 4:49
  Speaker 3: of childhood because every time I watch this, it reminds
• 4:51
  Speaker 3: me of school holidays. We call them school holidays. You've
• 4:53
  Speaker 3: got summer break or whatever where you're outside with your friends.
• 4:56
  Speaker 3: You're like, what are we going to do? And it's
• 4:57
  Speaker 3: like the idea of just crossing town and going to
• 5:00
  Speaker 3: another suburb where you shouldn't normally go. It's such an adventure.
• 5:03
  Speaker 3: So you pack your bags and you get on your bikes.
• 5:06
  Speaker 3: And this episode just does such a good job of
• 5:08
  Speaker 3: capturing that vibe.
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: I'm glad you said that. It's interesting to note that
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: even in animation, which is artificial, we are looking for
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: real emotion to power it. And in fact, you really
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: had to, on The Simpsons, pitch stories, write stories that
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: were emotionally grounded, had something mature that they were exploring.
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: The show was created in part by James L. Brooks.
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: We remember Matt Groening's name. He's the illustrator and the
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: names of so many of the great writers and actors
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: on the show. But James L. Brooks was part of
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: the DNA of the show. And Brooks is the master of...
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: Character comedy, mature characters in relationships. He had done Mary
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: Tyler Moore, Taxi, Broadcast News, Terms of Endearment. And that
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: is in the show. So when you say, oh, I
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: felt stuff watching it, that's the influence of Brooks. And
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: what the writers had to do to get a story
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: successfully across was tap into some real emotion.
• 6:13
  Speaker 4: That seems to be a point of commonality with a
• 6:15
  Speaker 4: lot of guys you've worked with, though, it seems, Brent,
• 6:17
  Speaker 4: as well. I mean, I remember reading a bit about
• 6:20
  Speaker 4: when you were working with Judd Apatow, it might have
• 6:22
  Speaker 4: been on Undeclared, but he wrote a big thing on
• 6:24
  Speaker 4: a whiteboard saying it might have been something like behavior
• 6:27
  Speaker 4: over bits.
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: Well done, well done. It was behavior over banter. Yes,
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  Speaker 1: the tastemakers that I've worked with, they have this in common.
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: So Judd Apatow, Greg Daniels, who created The American Office,
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: all the best comedy writers seemed to really love a
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: kind of comedy which you could call behavioral comedy. This
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: is something I really explored as a student of comedy.
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: The secret of me as a writer is I was
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: not one of these people who were funny as a teenager.
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: I was a short story nerd, a very serious person
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: who sort of stumbled into the comedy profession and had
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: to learn it by watching others. And at first I
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: was very interested in comedy mechanics. How does this joke work?
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: How does this punchline work? And I discovered there was
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: a lot that you could pick apart like a scientist
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: of comedy. But ultimately I came to understand that there
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: was a deeper way of looking at comedy that the
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: tastemakers were interested in. Judd articulated it perfectly with behavior
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: over banter. And he did that when I was working
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: with him on a show called Love. I was the
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: head writer of the show. Judd was really into naturalistic, realistic,
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: grounded comedy. And we had a great staff of writers,
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: all of whom came from Parks and Rec, or at
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: least most of them, good comedy writers who had been
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: writing comedy in a clever, jokey tradition at Parks and Rec.
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: And We turned in some scripts. We put in our
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: first four scripts. We handed it to Judd, who had
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: been away directing Trainwreck. He comes back to the writer's room,
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: reads our scripts, and goes, no, no, no, no, no, no.
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: There's something terribly wrong here. And I was baffled. I
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: was like, these are funny. They're full of jokes. Everything's great. No,
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: the tone is wrong. He made us go back to
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: watching Larry Sanders, an HBO show well worth watching. The
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: tastemakers love Larry Sanders. And he said, look at the
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: style of this. It's not based on bits. It's not
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: based on cleverness. It's based on behavior. It's based on
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: the way the characters are acting, the things they're hiding
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: about themselves, the way they're trying to come across and
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: how they're failing to come across that way. And he said,
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: give me the comedy of behavior over banter. It became
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: one of the great mantras for me of my career.
• 8:51
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 8:52
  Speaker 3: The thing is with this episode as well, it's like
• 8:54
  Speaker 3: you're saying it's happened to the emotion. James L. Brooks,
• 8:57
  Speaker 3: you said he's the emotion guy. Was he the one
• 8:58
  Speaker 3: when you're trying to pitch a story? Is it like,
• 9:00
  Speaker 3: I know I'm pitching it to the room, but I'm
• 9:02
  Speaker 3: really pitching it to Jim. Was that the mindset?
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: Oh, absolutely. You know, the Simpsons, the season at the
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: Simpsons would always start the same way. with what was
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: called the writer's conference, the writer's retreat, you know, we
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: would go to a hotel in Santa Monica called Shutters,
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: a fancy hotel. They would rent out the whole top floor.
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: There would be tons of food and no one would
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: eat any of it because everyone was so nervous. This
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: was the day you were going to pitch your story.
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: And the writers were given like three days off to
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: come up with a story and get your pitch ready.
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: And this was the only time that you knew you
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: were going to see James L. Brooks. He would come
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: to the story conferences. And so he would sit there
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: and you would pitch to the senior writers, the head writer,
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: and Jim. And his laughter was what you were really
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: going for. I remember it. Everybody who's worked with Jim
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: knows his laugh. And by the way, you can hear
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: his laugh on famous sitcoms like... Taxi. If you watch
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: that show, everyone can hear James L. Brooks' laugh. It's
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: very distinctive. And it was the prize you were going
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: for in the pitches.
• 10:10
  Speaker 4: Was he an encouraging guy in that regard? I mean,
• 10:13
  Speaker 4: even if you had a pitch that was not quite there,
• 10:16
  Speaker 4: would he sort of, give an encouraging laugh or a
• 10:20
  Speaker 4: bit of a– not a pity laugh, if you know
• 10:22
  Speaker 4: what I mean, but would you be able to tell
• 10:23
  Speaker 4: if you'd really nailed something as opposed to being, say,
• 10:26
  Speaker 4: 70% of the way there?
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: Oh, what a great question. I'll be honest with you.
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: I don't remember James L. Brooks being famous for encouraging–
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: I don't think he was discouraging, but I think he
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: just had that kind of elevated taste where he was
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: going to react honestly, and if he liked it, you
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: knew it was good. He was one of those guys.
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: I'm an encourager. When I lead artists, I hear 70%
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: of a pitch, and I go, oh, you are two-thirds
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: of the way to a home run, my friend. Because
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: that's what I want as an artist. He's not the
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: only kind of leader there is. This is another... ongoing
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: monologue in my brain is how do we get the
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: best out of artists, in particular writers in a writer's room?
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: I feel like The Simpsons, when I was there, was
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: a difficult room. It was a cold room. It was
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: a room full of very, very intelligent, taste-making writers. And
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: certainly the young writers like me who were hired in
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: seasons five, six, seven, We were intimidated by that environment.
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: We pitched less because we were afraid of embarrassing ourselves.
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: And so I think that's a little less efficient. I
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: would rather have you pitch more in an environment where
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: you can't embarrass yourself. And I think that room will
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: beat the tough rooms any day of the week.
• 11:49
  Speaker 3: Was Lemon of Troy what you were leading with or
• 11:51
  Speaker 3: were there other ones that were turned down before? Was
• 11:53
  Speaker 3: Lemon of Troy like a backup or was this the
• 11:55
  Speaker 3: one you went in hoping to sell?
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: Yes. As I recall, I had only that one to pitch.
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: But it's a good question. I do remember David Cohen,
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: a writer I used to sit next to who goes
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: on to create Futurama. I remember David definitely pitched two
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: in a story conference and they were both great. Lisa
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: the Vegetarian and homer palooza and he didn't have time
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: to write both so they gave me one of them
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: i wrote homer palooza it was david cohen's uh pitch
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: but i think he was exceptional and uh most of
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: us would bring in just the one this is it
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: this is your shot you know and the pitch would
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: last like 20 minutes it was a an involved storytelling
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: process act breaks and jokes were pitched in the story.
• 12:41
  Speaker 3: Can you remember how you sold this? What did you
• 12:43
  Speaker 3: sell it on the basis of?
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: You know, you would always start your story with what
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: we call a set piece. And if you watch The Simpsons,
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: you can see this structure. There's usually a kind of
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: independent comedy event that starts the episode. And then that
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: kicks off into the story. So in this case, I
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: would have pitched it like this. Bart Simpson is cruising
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: the streets of Springfield on a skateboard, and he comes
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: across what every 10-year-old dreams of finding. Wet Cement. He
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: is going to write his name in Wet Cement, and
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: he's going to be famous forever. And we see his
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: fantasy of like thousands of years in the future where
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: people are looking at the Wet Cement. Who is Bart Simpson?
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: He's just delighted. He draws his name in the cement. Oh, God,
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: I'm the greatest ever. He gets busted. They tell his parents,
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: and he gets a lecture from Marge. Okay, and Marge says, Bart,
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: how could you deface your own town? Aren't you proud
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: of Springfield? Look around.
• 13:44
  Speaker 5: We have the Springfield Isotopes, our beloved baseball team. We
• 13:48
  Speaker 5: have the fishing hole where kids go and get their
• 13:50
  Speaker 5: fish every day. And we have the lemon tree where
• 13:53
  Speaker 5: kids are going to get lemonade for as long as
• 13:55
  Speaker 5: people can remember.
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: It's your town, Bart. You've got to love it. So
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: Bart goes off on a kind of patriotic walk through
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: town and sees the isotopes in the fishing hole and
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: the lemon tree. Okay, now this is the key, the
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: lemon tree. So what you're hearing right now is me
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: doing a replication of the actual storytelling process that you
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: would do in the story conference, right? It's an oral story.
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: I'm in the old kind of Mark Twain tradition of like,
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: you know, listen to a tale. And this one, you know,
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: I had just learned that was, you know, after two
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: years of being at the show, that if you could
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: kind of spin a yarn like this, this was how
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: you would sell the show. And I was aware that
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: I had a kind of... a fable on my hands,
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: because this is the way I pitched it. I said,
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: you know, Bart comes to the lemon tree where the
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: kids pick their lemons and they make their lemonade. This
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: is a very important tree to the economy of the
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: kids of Springfield. But this tree, it grows right on
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: the border between Springfield and Shelbyville, and the lemons fall
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: equally into either side. Okay, now that feels almost biblical, right?
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: You know, the lemons fall equally into either side. It's
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: kind of an Old Testament feel, and it recalls the
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: Garden of Eden, you know. It's just kind of a
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: storytelling vibe. Bart gets into an argument with his rival,
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: the Bart of Shelbyville, the bad kid over there. And
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: they yell at each other, you guys suck. No, you
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: guys suck. Our town is better. No, your town sucks.
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: And they throw lemons at each other and Bart gets
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: the best of them and walks away. But the next
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: day when they come back, the lemon tree is gone
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: and they see there's a trail that was dragged into
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: Shelbyville and they realize we've got to do what we
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: have never done before. We have to go into enemy territory.
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: We better bring our gear, our camouflage paint, our walkie talkies,
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: our binoculars, our little code charts that we got from
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: the back of a cereal box. We're going in boys
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: and we're getting that tree. So that would be like
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: act one. You know, that's how you tried to sell
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: these things. That's the story pitch.
• 15:54
  Speaker 4: And Brooks is like, Brent, you've done it again. And
• 15:59
  Speaker 4: Julie Kavner's going, who is this person imitating me?
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: Well, you heard me do Marge's voice, right? I discovered
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: that you had a better chance at getting jokes in
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: the show, getting your stories picked up, if you could
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: do a couple of the voices. So I learned to
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: do Marge and I learned to do Grandpa. So Grandpa
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: would sound like this. I used to be full of
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: piss and vinegar. Now I'm just full of vinegar.
• 16:30
  Speaker 4: Brent, this leads into something I wanted to ask about
• 16:32
  Speaker 4: real quickly. This is just a little bit of a throwaway,
• 16:34
  Speaker 4: but you mentioned the very, very start with the inciting
• 16:36
  Speaker 4: incident with Bart and painting his name with cement. I
• 16:41
  Speaker 4: love that in the future, there's one particular line that's said,
• 16:44
  Speaker 4: and it really seems to be emblematic of Simpson's voice,
• 16:48
  Speaker 4: which is sort of bled out into just general comedy tone.
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah.
• 16:52
  Speaker 4: Which is, you've got a character saying, what's normal to
• 16:54
  Speaker 4: him amazes us. Just the way that is said, I
• 16:59
  Speaker 4: know I've incorporated that into my everyday life of I'm
• 17:01
  Speaker 4: trying to crack a gag, and I know so many
• 17:03
  Speaker 4: people who have, both professionally and just personally. I mean,
• 17:07
  Speaker 4: was that the tone of voice that was used in the...
• 17:10
  Speaker 4: At Simpsons HQ at some stage, it's like, I'm telling
• 17:13
  Speaker 4: a gag and I'm telling it like this.
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: Yes, that's good. No, that kind of artificial voice that
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: you sometimes see in like old movies and, you know,
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: black and white TV shows, the phoniness. You know, there
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: were several writers who were great at that kind of material.
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: The one I'm thinking of is George Meyer.
• 17:33
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it's a very Troy McClure as well. Troy McClure, sure.
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: Phil Hartman.
• 17:36
  Speaker 4: It's like you've known me all my life.
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Phil Hartman. Phil Hartman was the master of the
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: phony guy. Almost all his characters, Lionel Hutch, the lawyer.
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: But then look at him on Saturday Night Live, unfrozen
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: caveman lawyer. If you have not seen it, you are
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: in for a delight, people. Look at Phil Hartman in
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: that Jack Handy sketch. it's his wheelhouse the phony guy
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: nobody could do i'm phony and you can't tell right
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: now i'm putting whatever on you you don't know it
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: you know that was phil's wheelhouse.
• 18:05
  Speaker 3: Well not so i was a 90s kid and he
• 18:07
  Speaker 3: was this smarmy neighbor in so many movies during the
• 18:10
  Speaker 3: 90s where it was just this prick that you know
• 18:12
  Speaker 3: you knew he was the bad guy and he was
• 18:15
  Speaker 3: full of it but you just loved him anyway he
• 18:16
  Speaker 3: was just so good.
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: At it yeah yeah great I also think.
• 18:20
  Speaker 3: That the first act in this episode in particular does
• 18:22
  Speaker 3: a great job of just establishing the story. So many
• 18:25
  Speaker 3: story beats. It's things like the flying motorcycle, Roman numerals
• 18:30
  Speaker 3: at school. Things that are just occurring during the first act.
• 18:34
  Speaker 3: By the end of it, it all pays off.
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: Thank you for noticing that. The Roman numerals, I think,
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: is a real clinic in the disguised setup. So, you know,
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: the way you really get an explosive payoff is to
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: disguise the setup. So in this case, we needed an
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: example of Bart being just so bored at his life
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: being wasted in school so that when somebody goes, the
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: lemon tree has been stolen, he can go, great, I
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: can escape from this waste of life. And so I thought, well,
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: what's a thing you learn in, you know, elementary school
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: where you're like, I am never going to use this?
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: Roman numerals, perfect, right? So So he's learning Roman numerals.
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: And I think the teacher says, you're going to use
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: this one day. And he's like, sure. Right. And then,
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: you know, out he goes. And then the fact that
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: it's actually the thing that will save his life when
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: he's in a zoo and it's like, you know, room
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: 12 or something is is the one that that doesn't
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: have a tiger. And of course, The thing that really
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: makes you laugh in that scene is the so-called topper.
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: The topper is the joke on top of a joke.
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: So the joke is that, you know, Bart didn't learn
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: this in school because he thought it was useless and
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: now it's going to save his life. What he remembers,
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: wait a minute, Rocky 13, Adrian's revenge or whatever.
• 19:54
  Speaker 3: Rocky 7, Rocky 7, yeah, yeah.
• 19:56
  Speaker 4: Rocky 5 plus Rocky 2 equals Rocky 7.
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: So you think that's the joke, but then he tops
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: it with, they never even tried to teach us this
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: in school. That I thought was what took it over
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: the top.
• 20:10
  Speaker 4: But it's got a terrific bait and switch even baked
• 20:12
  Speaker 4: into it with Mrs. K saying, whatever, whatever. It's like
• 20:15
  Speaker 4: she doesn't even care. She's tapped out. You would never
• 20:19
  Speaker 4: expect it to come back the way that it does.
• 20:21
  Speaker 3: I love the gag about motion pictures as well. She says,
• 20:23
  Speaker 3: how will you know when motion pictures were made?
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: Oh, right. That's right. That's right. So the way the
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: setup is disguised is the setup looks like it's just
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: a joke. It's indistinguishable from any other moment of comedy
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: that's just a joke. And when you hear something go, oh,
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: I know why I heard that. It's not to set
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: up something later. It's just to amuse me now in
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: this comedy. That's how you disguise the setup.
• 20:47
  Speaker 4: Brent, I am very much the Milhouse in the Barton-Milhouse
• 20:50
  Speaker 4: relationship that Dando and I have. I was stoked to
• 20:54
  Speaker 4: see that this was such a Milhouse-heavy episode. It seemed
• 20:57
  Speaker 4: that way to me, at least.
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: Yes. Well, thank you for pointing that out. You know,
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: I remember when I was writing this episode, it suddenly
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: hit me that you could have internal arcs within the
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: larger arc, right? So the larger arc is get the
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: lemon tree back, But within that, you had all these characters.
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: So the Milhouse arc where he meets the Milhouse of
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: Springfield or Shelbyville. And then the Ralph and Wiggum thing,
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: the bully and the pick-up kid.
• 21:24
  Speaker 3: Martin and Nelson, yeah.
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: Martin and Nelson, that's it. Yeah, yeah. So all of those,
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: I was aware of the fact that I was creating
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: arcs within the arc. I felt very clever for having
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: figured that out.
• 21:35
  Speaker 3: I think some of my favorite Simpsons episodes of all
• 21:37
  Speaker 3: time are the ones where you see characters who wouldn't
• 21:39
  Speaker 3: normally hang out with each other hanging out with each other.
• 21:41
  Speaker 3: And that's what this one does so well. Like you said,
• 21:42
  Speaker 3: Martin and Nelson. I don't think we'd ever seen them
• 21:44
  Speaker 3: hanging out together.
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 21:46
  Speaker 3: They use that formula in that sort of that relationship
• 21:49
  Speaker 3: in future episodes because it just works so well in
• 21:51
  Speaker 3: this one. And Bart on the road when they go
• 21:53
  Speaker 3: for a joyride with Bart's fake license, they invite Martin
• 21:56
  Speaker 3: and Martin and Nelson to sort of become friends in
• 21:58
  Speaker 3: that one as a result. I think because of the
• 22:00
  Speaker 3: success of Lemon of Troy.
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: Oh, that's so interesting. As we're reflecting on it now,
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: I'm noticing that there's emotion in both of those little
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: mini arcs as well, right? Milhouse discovers that his enemy
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: is like him, and it's a sweet moment, right? If
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: played real, it's quite emotional. And the bully sticking up
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: for the picked-on kid and his joy in that is
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: also emotional. So it's not just jokes. There was some
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: drama in there.
• 22:29
  Speaker 3: I think it's the first time he's got a real
• 22:30
  Speaker 3: softer side of Nelson as well. I mean, he saved
• 22:32
  Speaker 3: himself by saying, I don't normally hang out with this guy,
• 22:34
  Speaker 3: but he still did the right thing at the end
• 22:36
  Speaker 3: of the day.
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 22:37
  Speaker 4: Well, yeah, they're true to the spirit of Springfield. It's
• 22:40
  Speaker 4: like you've created this wonderful dirty half dozen who are
• 22:42
  Speaker 4: these men on this mission. Yeah. And, yeah, characters you
• 22:46
  Speaker 4: normally wouldn't align with one another but work so well together. Plus,
• 22:49
  Speaker 4: I hope you're happy that you've given birth to a...
• 22:51
  Speaker 4: I don't know if it is a meme or not. Yeah,
• 22:53
  Speaker 4: I was going to touch on this. So the sour face,
• 22:55
  Speaker 4: lemon face meme. So have you seen this lemon face
• 22:59
  Speaker 4: meme that this episode has spawned?
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: We're the tow truck driver of Shelbyville... eat the lemon
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: or is it who's eating the lemon in.
• 23:06
  Speaker 3: The meme it's the father of Shelby yeah he says
• 23:09
  Speaker 3: I'm getting hungry and he bites the lemon and instantly
• 23:11
  Speaker 3: regrets it but he's so trying to save face that
• 23:13
  Speaker 3: he just sort of gets that sour lemon face right
• 23:16
  Speaker 3: that's become merchandise now are you getting any royalties.
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: From this no i have not seen a penny of
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: that but you know i i am interested in in
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: when when stuff is successful and you know i'm still
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: really an analyst of comedy so what i see in
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: that meme is there's two things going on there's what
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: i call comic irony and what i call the core
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: comic contradiction all right this is me as professor uh
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: Professor Beethle. Comic irony, when you attempt to do something
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: and you accomplish the opposite, when something backfires, it's always funny.
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: So in the attempt to eat a satisfying lemon, he
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: accomplishes the opposite. He makes his mouth pucker, right? Trying
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: to get the joy of eating, he gets the opposite.
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: That's always going to be funny. But the thing that
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: takes it over the top is the core contradiction. In
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: the attempts to seem one way, you seem the opposite.
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: It's behavioral comedy, okay? He's trying to maintain that he's
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: not suffering. And that's what we're laughing about. In your
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: pitch of it, you pointed out, it's the behavior of
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: trying to save face. You know, as a joke analyst,
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: it was at the Simpsons that I discovered so often
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: when something makes you laugh, There were two or more
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: dynamics happening at the same time. So, you know, I
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: teach classes, as I promised I would mention, at BrentsForrester.com.
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: You can find my, you know, four classes a year
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: that I typically teach. In the classes, I talk about
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: how I figured out at the Simpsons this idea of
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: what I call stacking. And it was the stacking of
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: comedy mechanisms to get a laugh. So I mentioned comic
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: irony when things backfired, the core comic contradiction. Puns, visual gags.
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: There are a lot of different distinct dynamics in comedy.
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: But when you pile them up, you typically get a laugh.
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: All right. That's what stacking is. I promised I would
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: nerd out a little on comedy for you guys. And
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: there it is.
• 25:15
  Speaker 3: I love that you just sort of broke down the lemon,
• 25:17
  Speaker 3: because all of us just know it's just lemon face meme,
• 25:19
  Speaker 3: but you've made it. There is psychology to this lemon face.
• 25:24
  Speaker 4: Something else you should point out, though, is that in
• 25:26
  Speaker 4: many a cafe and coffee shop around the world, you
• 25:28
  Speaker 4: will find a tip jar that says, here's a tip.
• 25:31
  Speaker 4: Put a pinch of sage in your boots and a
• 25:34
  Speaker 4: spicy scent will be your reward. I think you need
• 25:37
  Speaker 4: a cut from these tip jars.
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: That's great.
• 25:41
  Speaker 3: I also, too, were talking about how the town of Springfield,
• 25:43
  Speaker 3: they're proud of their town. But I've read that, you know,
• 25:46
  Speaker 3: you have to make sure that you sort of tidied
• 25:48
  Speaker 3: up Springfield, sort of to get that message across that
• 25:50
  Speaker 3: Springfield's a nicer place compared to Shelbyville, right? What I
• 25:54
  Speaker 3: think this episode does well is that everyone thinks, for
• 25:57
  Speaker 3: some reason, everyone thinks that their hometown's no good, for
• 25:59
  Speaker 3: the most part. We see the worst of it, right?
• 26:01
  Speaker 3: But if you're not from there, you better not put
• 26:03
  Speaker 3: it down. And I think that's what this episode does.
• 26:05
  Speaker 3: It's like, you know, everyone's, you know, Bart's hating on Springfield,
• 26:08
  Speaker 3: and then Marge makes him realize, no, it's a good place.
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: And how.
• 26:11
  Speaker 3: We're allowed to badmouth Springfield. How dare that Shelby badmouth Springfield?
• 26:14
  Speaker 3: We have to get him for it. That's what it's
• 26:15
  Speaker 3: like in real life. You can put your own town down,
• 26:18
  Speaker 3: but if someone else from outside your town puts it down,
• 26:19
  Speaker 3: how dare you?
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: Oh, I love it. That's so cool. To me, what
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: that says is there are elements in the storytelling that
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: people respond to personally, even if the author didn't intend it.
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: Because for me, that's not what I was connecting to,
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: although I kind of get it as a story. And
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: you can see I wrote jokes in that realm where
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: the Shelby Villers are also patriotic, and they say, that's
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: why we beat your sports teams almost 50% of the time.
• 26:47
  Speaker 3: So, you know.
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: I understood the points you're making, but I feel like
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: you actually feel it, you know, for your town, which
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: is so cool. Yeah.
• 26:56
  Speaker 3: And this episode also, getting back to the Roman numerals,
• 26:58
  Speaker 3: I still have a vivid memory of being at school.
• 27:01
  Speaker 3: And when the teacher was starting to start introducing Roman numerals,
• 27:04
  Speaker 3: I knew what they were because I watched this episode.
• 27:07
  Speaker 3: I remember my teacher, Mrs. Price said, how did you
• 27:10
  Speaker 3: know that, Brendan? I learned it from the Simpsons and
• 27:12
  Speaker 3: she was gobsmacked.
• 27:14
  Speaker 4: My favorite saying, you had fun, you learned a little
• 27:16
  Speaker 4: something too.
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: That's so cool.
• 27:20
  Speaker 4: I love that Shelbyville was just founded by this degenerate. Yeah.
• 27:25
  Speaker 4: And you actually have a town statue celebrating his degeneracy.
• 27:29
  Speaker 4: Jebediah Springfield has got the noble spirit in beginning even
• 27:32
  Speaker 4: the smallest man. What's his name? Shelbyville Manhattan is just
• 27:36
  Speaker 4: cavorting with these two chicks.
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: Yes, yes, yes. Well- Before I got there, that original staff,
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: they were so comfortable being subversive. And so it's all
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: through the cartoon. And I think actually because the cartoon
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: is a somewhat more innocent medium, you can get away
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: with more mature material sometimes. Watching Conan O'Brien's monorail episode,
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: a couple of days ago and, and just marveling at
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: how good it is. And there's a joke in there
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: where there's a, a monorail comes to is built in,
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: in Springfield. Maybe you've seen the episode. They built a
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: monorail and they have, they have a, a like red
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: carpet opening of it. And so it's like a red
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: carpet opening. Well, what celebrities have showed up for the
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: red carpet? Look, it's Krusty the clown coming out of
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: a limousine and Krusty steps out. And immediately a woman
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: runs up to him with a baby and says, Krusty,
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: you've got to acknowledge our child, right? It's so dark.
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: Deadbeat dad clown, right? By the way, they top the
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: joke with a visual where they zoom in on the
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: baby and the baby's crusty bozo hair. It's such a
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: wonderful visual joke. But I was struck by how you
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: can get away with darker humor in a cartoon because
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: it's so intrinsically innocent as a medium.
• 29:08
  Speaker 3: And it's also not so on the nose that kids
• 29:10
  Speaker 3: won't get it anyway. Because I watch these with my
• 29:12
  Speaker 3: kids and jokes like that in particular, I sit there
• 29:14
  Speaker 3: and I go, Don't ask me about that one. Don't
• 29:16
  Speaker 3: ask me about that one. And they don't. They sort
• 29:18
  Speaker 3: of chuckle or they just go straight over their heads
• 29:20
  Speaker 3: and move on to the next bit. It doesn't even
• 29:23
  Speaker 3: enter their minds. And I think that's what's great about
• 29:25
  Speaker 3: The Simpsons is they would throw these dark jokes in,
• 29:27
  Speaker 3: but they're not so dark that kids are put off
• 29:30
  Speaker 3: by it.
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: Yes. Yes. You hit it on the head. you know
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: when when comedy writers try to figure out what their
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: tone should be uh They, you know, they're adults, smart adults.
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: They want to do adult material. But in America, we've
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: for a long time had what's called primetime TV. And this,
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: by the way, was pushed by the Christian right in
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: the early days of television. They said there's got to
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: be time where the family can sit down and not
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: hear about anything they don't want to explain. You know,
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: and I am no.
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: Christian i'm a militant atheist but but when i had
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: a daughter i did not want to explain sex to
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: her you know ever so the key is you can
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: do jokes about sex you can do jokes about anything
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: drugs um as long as it goes over the kids
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: heads it's okay and and so yes you see tons
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: of that and that's the way you entertain adults and
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: kids simultaneously.
• 30:26
  Speaker 3: I forgot how much Marge and Homer got down in
• 30:28
  Speaker 3: the classic era because I'm watching it with my kids
• 30:30
  Speaker 3: and I'm just like, Jesus.
• 30:34
  Speaker 4: Brent, one of my favorite things about doing Four Finger
• 30:37
  Speaker 4: Discount and the other shows that we do on the
• 30:38
  Speaker 4: network is we'll revisit episodes and I'll find that there
• 30:41
  Speaker 4: are bits of business or lines of dialogue that are,
• 30:44
  Speaker 4: as I said, I've incorporated into my sort of everyday vocab.
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 30:49
  Speaker 4: It's like, oh, this is from that. And this happened
• 30:51
  Speaker 4: in Lemon of Troy. I mean, this is not necessarily
• 30:54
  Speaker 4: a ba-dum-bum-ba. punchline kind of gay, but Milhouse just seething.
• 30:59
  Speaker 4: It's like, Oh, they're always eating candy and Shelbyville. They
• 31:01
  Speaker 4: love the sweet taste. Like, why do I love that
• 31:04
  Speaker 4: so much?
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: That's George Meyer. I remember him, you know, pitching that line.
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: That was George. You know, he was a genius for
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: plucking these phrases out of the ether. Like I say,
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: often it was from old movies, you know? Okay. Okay.
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: When a news reporter would flash a picture in The Simpsons,
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: they go, there's your shot, boys. You know, what is that?
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: And only George was able to, that kind of stuff,
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: you know. And so they love the sweet, sweet taste
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: would have been George putting old timey language in a
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: modern kid's mouth.
• 31:43
  Speaker 4: I think we've had that more than once. The Bobo episode.
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 31:48
  Speaker 4: Where Mr. Burns is playing with Maggie and the bear
• 31:52
  Speaker 4: in the sandpit.
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 31:54
  Speaker 4: Old time paparazzos are looming over there. What a scoop.
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 31:58
  Speaker 4: For some reason, just absolute tickles me.
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 32:02
  Speaker 3: Was it, was it always a lemon tree in this
• 32:05
  Speaker 3: one here? Because obviously it rhymes-ish with, with Helen, but
• 32:08
  Speaker 3: it was, was lemon, a lemon tree always what this
• 32:10
  Speaker 3: episode was going to be about?
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: Yes, it was. Um, My mom, when I was growing up,
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: had a big lemon tree in the front yard and
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: it kind of implanted on my brain. It was always
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: that lemon tree in my mind. You know, it was
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: associated for me with being a kid. So there was
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: some kind of, you know, subconscious connection there. I got
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: lucky with the title, honestly. I made a lemon tree
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: and then, oh, Lemon of Troy sounds like Helen of Troy.
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: So that was just pure luck in the title, honestly.
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: If I had chosen a grapefruit tree, we would have
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: a very poor title.
• 32:42
  Speaker 3: Was this the most enjoyable episode of The Simpsons for
• 32:44
  Speaker 3: you to write because it took you back to your
• 32:46
  Speaker 3: childhood in so many ways?
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: It did do that for sure. It did do that.
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: I remember there was a moment where I had a
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: kind of almost like psychic flashback when I wrote the
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: joke of Bart looking at the Shelbyville kids through binoculars
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: with Milhouse. Do you remember this moment? And he's looking
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: at them and Milhouse says, I thought you said you
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: could read lips. Bart says, I assumed I could. That
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: to me is just remembering being a kid, hearing about
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: lip reading for the first time and just instantly going, oh, yeah,
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: I'm sure I could do that.
• 33:25
  Speaker 4: How hard could it be?
• 33:29
  Speaker 3: And isn't that the moment where David Cohen said that
• 33:31
  Speaker 3: that's the moment that reminded him of his childhood as well?
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: I remember David praising me for that feeling. And that
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: was the line that he pointed out.
• 33:39
  Speaker 4: Yeah. It really does have a very stand-by-me kind of feel,
• 33:43
  Speaker 4: this episode, I've got to say. I mean, there are
• 33:45
  Speaker 4: so many influences and inspirations that come through, but yeah,
• 33:47
  Speaker 4: that was one that came through when I was revisiting it.
• 33:50
  Speaker 3: Well, saying earlier, too, that I love the ones where
• 33:52
  Speaker 3: it incorporates relationships that you don't normally see, but also
• 33:54
  Speaker 3: just ones that just incorporate the town in general.
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 33:58
  Speaker 3: I just love that where... My favourite episode of all
• 34:00
  Speaker 3: time is 22 Short Films, because it just feels like
• 34:04
  Speaker 3: That is the closest to spending a day in the
• 34:06
  Speaker 3: life of Springfield, being a fly on the wall of Springfield.
• 34:08
  Speaker 3: That's what it feels like for me when I watch
• 34:09
  Speaker 3: an episode. And you actually wrote a segment for that
• 34:11
  Speaker 3: one as well. You wrote the Krusty Burger scene, correct?
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: I wrote two bits in that one, but they were
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: not Krusty Burger. One was Burns and Smithers on a
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: tandem bike.
• 34:24
  Speaker 3: Oh, with the B? Okay, yeah.
• 34:25
  Speaker 4: Yeah, with the B.
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: And the other was Homer... has groceries in one arm,
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: Maggie in the other. He goes to buy paper at
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: a kiosk, sets Maggie down, gets the paper, closes the kiosk,
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: baby's in the kiosk.
• 34:41
  Speaker 3: That killed my kids. My kids thought it was the
• 34:42
  Speaker 3: funniest thing of all time. When he rips their clothes off,
• 34:44
  Speaker 3: they had to pause it.
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: I'm so glad. Yeah, I was very proud of that
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: as a physical comedy joke. I remember just going, oh,
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: this is great. It works perfectly. It seems naturalistic, but
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: then it results in such a That one, by the way,
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: if you look at the way the Simpsons would write jokes.
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: So I wrote that gag, a physical comedy gag where
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: Homer's like, oh, my God, I've locked my baby in
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: a little glass cage and I can't get her out.
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: And another writer pitched the topper where the baby rolls.
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: Maggie rolls the newspaper up like a blanket around her
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: and reveals a headline that says deadbeat dad be dead.
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: It's just clever, you know, and of course, I get
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: credit for that. It was my segment, but I did
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: not write that joke.
• 35:35
  Speaker 3: Was that, I mean, obviously, I'm probably wrong, but was
• 35:38
  Speaker 3: that in some way a reference to Dumb and Dumber
• 35:41
  Speaker 3: when Jim Carrey left his wallet in the newsstand?
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: No, not at all. I feel like I wrote mine
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: before he wrote his. I hope so. I certainly wrote
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: that before. Hopefully, they stole it from me. You know,
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: copyright are very into originality. And to redo a joke
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: that you've seen elsewhere is completely unacceptable for comedy writers,
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: at least most of them. I've heard that there are,
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: I don't want to say the name of the show.
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: There's a multicam show that a friend of mine worked
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: on and he called me and he goes, oh, the
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: showrunner's like, they did that on the old new heart show.
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: Let's do it. He couldn't believe it. It was the
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: first time he'd ever heard a showrunner comfortable with redoing
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: old material. For the most part, we rigorously disallow it.
• 36:30
  Speaker 3: What have you taking Homer's advice and getting an existing
• 36:33
  Speaker 3: product and putting a clock in it?
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: I don't remember that. What was that from?
• 36:37
  Speaker 3: So that was when Herb does the baby translator and
• 36:40
  Speaker 3: Homer says, I don't know, Herb, people are afraid of
• 36:42
  Speaker 3: new things. Why don't you just take an existing product
• 36:43
  Speaker 3: and put a clock in it?
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: Oh, that's great.
• 36:45
  Speaker 3: So, so, so, Even if the idea is, all right,
• 36:47
  Speaker 3: they've done this somewhere else, we can put our own
• 36:49
  Speaker 3: spin on it. Also, no, it's got to be a
• 36:50
  Speaker 3: completely original concept. You can't do that either. Is that
• 36:53
  Speaker 3: what you're saying?
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: Well, certainly when I was coming up as a young
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: comedy writer, I had come from the Ben Stiller show,
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: which was a sketch comedy show on Fox, which was
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: all tastemakers. It was Ben Stiller, Judd Apatow, Bob Odenkirk
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: was our head writer, Jeanine Garofalo, David Cross. These were
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: the alt comedians of Los Angeles in the you know
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: 1995 or whatever and there was such a rigorous uh
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: discipline of originality you would never copy somebody else's joke
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: if you discovered that the joke you pitched had been
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: done somewhere else that's it we're not doing it so
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: you know that's that's the discipline i grew up with
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: it's a good one to to to employ because it
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: just means you require originality and originality is going to
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: make people laugh a lot more than derivative comedy but
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: it was it was always more than that it was
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: it was considered a sort of ethical um orientation towards
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: comedy creation.
• 37:53
  Speaker 4: It's kind of a double-edged sword though isn't it brent
• 37:55
  Speaker 4: because i mean when the ben stiller show came out
• 37:57
  Speaker 4: admittedly you're having sketches like Let's make a Lassie movie,
• 38:00
  Speaker 4: but Charlie Manson will be Lassie in it. You're going
• 38:03
  Speaker 4: to get maybe 10% of the audience is going to go,
• 38:05
  Speaker 4: this is the funniest thing I've ever seen, the most
• 38:06
  Speaker 4: original thing I've ever seen, and 90% going, I think
• 38:09
  Speaker 4: we're going to cancel this after six episodes. But admittedly,
• 38:13
  Speaker 4: you know, 10, 20, 30 years down the line, people
• 38:15
  Speaker 4: are going to go, Ben Stiller Show was one of
• 38:17
  Speaker 4: the funniest and most original things ever. I mean, you
• 38:20
  Speaker 4: have to be sort of cognizant of that. It's like,
• 38:23
  Speaker 4: you've got to be Marty McFly. Maybe you guys aren't
• 38:25
  Speaker 4: ready for this yet, but your kids are going to
• 38:26
  Speaker 4: love it.
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, well, you're totally right. And the people that I
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: came up with, these great talents like Odenkirk, you know,
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: Judd Apatow for sure. I mean, Judd had such an
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: influence on me. His attitude always was, we're probably going
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: to get canceled. Statistically speaking, if you get a show
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: on the air, they're going to cancel it. So let's
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: go out with quality material. That helps our careers because
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: the industry will think better of us, even though this
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: show is dead. And he was totally right. I mean,
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: you look at Freaks and Geeks. That show was canceled.
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: But Judd just kept on making great stuff like that
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: until the industry caught up with him. So, you know,
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: the Ben Stiller show was definitely that way. Super low rated.
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: It was, you know, we were up against 60 minutes
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: at the height of that show's popularity. So that was
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: the number one show on TV. We were ranked, I think,
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: I think we were ranked 100.
• 39:26
  Speaker 3: It's almost better for the show's reputation if it doesn't
• 39:28
  Speaker 3: become a huge success. because then later in the track
• 39:31
  Speaker 3: it's like you feel like you're part of a club
• 39:33
  Speaker 3: if you do enjoy it and you do find it.
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: You're so right about that yeah I totally agree Um, and,
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: and this one was, um, for the, the comedy hipsters, the,
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: the Charlie Manson, uh, Lassie one that, that Bob Odenkirk did.
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: I've watched that recently. It really still holds up for me.
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: And the genius of Odenkirk, I mean, that guy was,
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: and is one of the greats. Like he, he was
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: famous as a sketch writer, um, Before he was on
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: the Ben Stiller show, you know, people would become famous
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: as writers in the writing community. Conan O'Brien was one
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: like that. You know, everybody knew his name. Everybody knew
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: he was great. Bob was one of those. Robert Smigel
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: was one of those. And you see Bob there doing Manson.
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: He was just starting really to discover acting. Him early
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: on as an actor, he's so good in everything he does.
• 40:28
  Speaker 4: It feels weird to say this as someone who... is
• 40:30
  Speaker 4: just a fan but there's a great sense of sort
• 40:33
  Speaker 4: of pride you feel when you buy stock in someone
• 40:35
  Speaker 4: early and it pays off down the line i remember
• 40:38
  Speaker 4: writing this article about uh when better course all started
• 40:40
  Speaker 4: saying it is weird that i'm proud of bob odenkirk
• 40:43
  Speaker 4: a person i have never met and never will yeah
• 40:46
  Speaker 4: but i knew that there was something there and he's
• 40:49
  Speaker 4: it's paid off in space because he's so good in
• 40:51
  Speaker 4: everything he's done and i mean watching him on mr
• 40:53
  Speaker 4: show i'm sorry i'm We'll probably.
• 40:55
  Speaker 3: Have to put a language warning. You've opened the floodgates,
• 40:57
  Speaker 3: go for it.
• 40:58
  Speaker 4: We're going to have to put a language warning on this,
• 41:01
  Speaker 4: but watching Mr. Show back in the day, it's like,
• 41:03
  Speaker 4: no one says what the fuck like Bob Odenkirk. It's incredible. Yeah,
• 41:08
  Speaker 4: but the people that you've worked with, I mean, I
• 41:12
  Speaker 4: don't know, is there a commonality to the sort of
• 41:13
  Speaker 4: people that you have chosen to learn from or have
• 41:16
  Speaker 4: maybe taken you under the wing? I mean, learning that
• 41:19
  Speaker 4: your first mentor was Susan Harris, I mean, we're golden girls, guys.
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 41:24
  Speaker 4: But working with Jim Brooks, working with Judd Apatow, working
• 41:28
  Speaker 4: with Odenkirk, working with Cross, what do you derive from that?
• 41:30
  Speaker 4: Do you derive a little bit of something from everyone?
• 41:33
  Speaker 4: Or is there an overriding comedy philosophy that you've sort
• 41:36
  Speaker 4: of maybe gleaned from these people?
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: There are commonalities for sure. And, you know, I really
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: did feel like an outsider coming into comedy. I was
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: a short story writer, so I had some confidence in writing.
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: In truth, it was... Fake confidence. I really did not
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: know what I was doing, but thought I did. And
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: so I did.
• 41:56
  Speaker 4: Welcome to writing.
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I was writing short stories. They're not funny.
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: And they're prose and they're language heavy. And in fact,
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: in comedy, you're writing for performers. You're writing the way
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: people talk, not the way they think. A lot of
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: stuff I had to learn from others. But the common
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: denominator of so many of the titanically successful people I've encountered,
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: I would say the number one thing is this unshakable
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: conviction in their own taste. It would astonish me. They
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: all had it. You know, I would meet, you know,
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: I met Judd Apatow at 24 and, And he knew
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: what was funny and he knew what was not funny.
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: And I was like, how do you know? And they
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: all did. Odenkirk, you know, Odenkirk was so enraged at
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: much of what was successful out there. And some of
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: it that was acclaimed and successful, he couldn't stand it.
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: And he never doubted his taste. This was true of
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: all of them. Janine Garofalo. When Janine Garofalo laughed at something,
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: you knew it was funny. Just period. She wasn't going
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: to laugh at something that wasn't funny. And if she
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: did laugh, it was. And I envy these people. I
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: was like, how did you get that? And over time,
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: you know, I've tried to develop it. And I think
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: to some degree I have and that we all have it.
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: It's really just starting by going, don't pretend you like
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: this if you don't. Even if people tell you it's good,
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: don't pretend you like it. If you laughed out loud,
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: even though you shouldn't have, take note of that. That's
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: your real response. So if you hone in on that
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: as a discipline, you can develop that skill.
• 43:32
  Speaker 3: How did you first handle being told or realizing that
• 43:34
  Speaker 3: something you thought was great wasn't great?
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: Well, you know, we do road test our stuff in
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: comedy and nobody knows, even the greats don't know for
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: sure if their stuff works. This is why, you know,
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: stand-up comedians are essentially testing their material all the time
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: and they're going up there thinking this is going to
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: be funny and they know that they don't really know
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: until they've tried it. So there's just a subjective element
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: to comedy for sure. But there are, you know, principles
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: that we learn over time like, what Susan Harris taught me,
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: silly isn't funny. You learn that one the hard way
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: like twice and you never again risk putting your silly, crazy, zany,
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: hilarious material out there because you do. And just watch
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: what happens when a serious group of comedy fans sits
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: there and they go, what are you doing? What is this?
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: You're being ridiculous. It's what bombing is. Trying to be crazy.
• 44:33
  Speaker 3: So you learn....
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: That you want to start in a tone that's very serious.
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: And if you start bombing, you're like, bombing? I'm not bombing.
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: I meant to be serious. This is very serious material.
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: It's in fact tragic and grave. And that's the energy
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: that you're feeling for me because I'm comfortable with that.
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: And that's the kind of story I'm doing now. Like
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: you get into that tone and you're safe. And then
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: you can start, you know, getting playful and funny again. So,
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: you know, tricks that you learn over the years.
• 45:05
  Speaker 3: How did the vibe of The Simpsons Room differ from
• 45:07
  Speaker 3: others that you'd been in at that point?
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: The Simpsons Room was uncommonly challenging for me and really
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: everybody in it. The Simpsons had an elite writing staff.
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: In seasons one through four, it was all Harvard Lampoon writers.
• 45:26
  Speaker 3: Kogan, Reese, Gene, yeah.
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, for the most part. Conan, Greg Daniels. George Meyer,
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: John Schwartzwalder, a genius, a true genius. And so the
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: sort of mental firepower in that room was intense. And
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: the standard that they had brought to comedy was so hot.
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: So after season four, half the staff leaves to create
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: other projects. And these seats open up in the writer's room, essentially.
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: That's how I got in there in season five. Writers
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: had left and they were hiring new writers. So when
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: I came in there, The feeling was, this is the
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: greatest show ever. This is the highest standard of comedy ever.
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: And the veterans that are sitting around me are the
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: best writers ever. And now the showrunner, David Merkin, says,
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: open your script to page three. We need a new
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: joke for Homer at the bottom of the page. And
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: the room goes into silence as everyone tries to think
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: of a brilliant joke for Homer. And what you would
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: see is very little pitching. I mean... long periods would
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: go by with nobody saying anything. And then, you know,
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: often you would try to pitch something and it would
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: get like a little Twitter titter of laughter. It felt
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: high stakes. There was a guy who sat next to
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: me whose name I will refrain from saying. He was
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: hired at the same time as me. He had a
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: contract in four months. His contract was up. And his
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: job was to pitch jokes. And he said nothing for
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: four months because he just felt like better to get fired,
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: which I know I will be. Rather that than embarrass
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: myself with a bad pitch in front of Greg Daniels,
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: George Meyer, Mike Reese, you know, John Schwarzwalder. And so
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: that's that's what it was. I think that's. It's not
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: the way I lead a room. When I got to
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: the office and finally, you know, in season nine, they
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: let me run that room. And when I ran the
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: room at King of the Hill, anytime I've ever led writers,
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: I do the opposite. I start by lowering the bar.
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: There are no bad pitches. I just want to hear
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: you pitch. If you have the courage to say anything,
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: you get a pat on the back from me. And
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: I literally will have my hands at the keyboard, a
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: screen behind me. And anything you pitch, you'll see me
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: write it down. It appears on the screen. And that's
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: me going, yeah, it's good enough to be up on
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: the screen. You start a room that way and everybody
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: wants to pitch. And I just happen to feel that
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: it's the more efficient way. It's the happier way to
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: do it. Comedy is a trial and error process. In
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: a trial and error process, The team with more trials
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: will typically win. So in my room where everybody's pitching,
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: I will beat the Simpsons room where nobody's pitching.
• 48:14
  Speaker 3: So was that one of the reasons you left the Simpsons? Obviously,
• 48:17
  Speaker 3: you went to King of the Hill, but it sounds
• 48:19
  Speaker 3: like it wasn't a fun experience, but it was a
• 48:21
  Speaker 3: much more stressful experience than, say, King of the Hill.
• 48:24
  Speaker 4: Sounds gladiatorial.
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: Oh, you know, it was challenging, but of course I
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: loved it. I loved the show and I was young
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: and learning and couldn't believe I was there. So I
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: look back on those years very, very fondly. The hours
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: were long, 10 a.m. till 10 p.m. every day you
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: were expected to be there. And the showrunner would drift
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: in and out. Your time was wasted. But we loved it.
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: There were incredible writers there. um so i remember it
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: fondly king of the hill was um was more difficult
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: in some ways for me because i ran the writer's
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: room uh greg daniels who would go on to create
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: the american office uh created king of the hill and
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: he was one of the more senior writers when i
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: was at the simpsons when greg and mike judge created
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: king of the hill greg brought me in to run
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: the writer's room because he knew the I was trained
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: in that Simpsons system of generating scripts. So that was
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: my responsibility there. But, you know, I did only one
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: year at King of the Hill. They wanted me to
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: stay and I wouldn't do it. It was because I
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: was burnt out from one year of running the room.
• 49:35
  Speaker 3: Explain running a writer's room. What does that entail for
• 49:39
  Speaker 3: those at home?
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, traditionally, American TV has involved a lot
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: of episodes. You know, 22 would be a typical order
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: for a season. And you're trying to keep the quality
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: of the scripts up. Comedy is as good as the
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: scripts and the casting. But really, you know, the casting's
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: always good. It's the scripts. So television shows in the States...
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: revolve around the writer's room. The writer's room is the
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: nucleus of the show. The showrunner is also the head
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: writer typically, but the showrunner will, if they are smart,
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: deputize the running of the writer's room itself. The writer's
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: room runs, you know, typically starts at 10 a.m. and
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: goes as late as we got to go. Someone's got
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: to sit at the head of a conference room table
• 50:32
  Speaker 1: and lead these writers through the process of creating stories,
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: generating those stories, breaking the stories, which means figuring out, okay,
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: nice oral pitch, but what are the scenes? What are
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: the act rates? What are the endings? And then when
• 50:46
  Speaker 1: the script comes in, We've got to rewrite that script together.
• 50:50
  Speaker 1: We've got to punch it up. We've got to replace
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: dialogue that isn't funny with dialogue that is funny and
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: solve other story problems along the way. Maybe we're cutting
• 50:59
  Speaker 1: scenes and adding them. So the writer's room is its
• 51:04
  Speaker 1: own thing that has to go on all day. The
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: showrunner is above the head writer. The showrunner can step
• 51:10
  Speaker 1: in and become head writer, but typically is off approving
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: costumes and looking at casting and doing the million things
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: that the showrunner is obliged to do. The showrunner is
• 51:20
  Speaker 1: the decision maker. Everybody's coming to the showrunner. So, you know,
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: I have had a career where many times I've been
• 51:26
  Speaker 1: hired as the head writer beneath the showrunner. And what
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: does that entail? Show up at 10? I mean, when
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: I'm running the room, we start at 10. This is
• 51:36
  Speaker 1: a novelty in my experience. Most writers rooms want to
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: show up at 10, talk about star Wars for 45 minutes.
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: And I never liked that. I'm like, let's, let's get
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: out early, but let's just start on time. So, you know,
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: I always sharp 10 and, um, and then, you know,
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: if you're these, if you're running the room, what you
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: do is you start talking out loud about what we're
• 51:59
  Speaker 1: doing and you try to create a group mind amongst, um,
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: five to eight people. Okay, welcome. What we're doing here
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: is we are talking about episode 104, the A story.
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: We got Michael and Dwight open up in dry cleaners.
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: And we got some great pitches yesterday about act one.
• 52:19
  Speaker 1: We did not get that act break. What are we
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: thinking this morning? What do we think the act break
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: could be here? Okay, so you can see me just
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: starting the thought process and inviting pitches. The writer's room,
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: when it runs well, is the most miraculous thing in
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: the world. It is literally, if I said to you, tomorrow,
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: I want you to do a podcast with a guy
• 52:40
  Speaker 1: who is twice as talented as me. And then the
• 52:43
  Speaker 1: next day, I want you to do a podcast with
• 52:46
  Speaker 1: someone who is five times more talented. And I mean, legitimately,
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: five times more pitches, five times more ideas, five times
• 52:53
  Speaker 1: much life experience, as much perspective. You'd be working with
• 52:59
  Speaker 1: Leonardo da Vinci of comedy, right? That's what the room is.
• 53:03
  Speaker 1: When you get the group mind going, it's five different
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: minds in sync, all working on the same piece of craft,
• 53:12
  Speaker 1: which is the script. It's the greatest.
• 53:16
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and helping those ideas coalesce into an episode. A series. Yes.
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: Yes, exactly. Yeah. So, you know, it's it's something that
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: I've been lucky enough to do many times. But, yeah,
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: it can be exhausting when you're doing 22 episodes. It's
• 53:35
  Speaker 1: just it seems like, well, you know, to give an
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: example of what's so hard about the American TV system.
• 53:43
  Speaker 1: It's deadline driven. You know, you can imagine if you're
• 53:46
  Speaker 1: investing in a television show, you do not want to
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: pay more than you have to for it. So writers
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: are expensive. Something that it took me a long time
• 53:56
  Speaker 1: to learn was that the the deadline driven portion of
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: making TV is is part of what makes it unpleasant
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: at times. Imagine that you are the one investing your money.
• 54:10
  Speaker 1: You don't want to spend more than you have to.
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: One of your big expenses is writers. Every day that
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: you run that writer's room, beyond what you have to,
• 54:19
  Speaker 1: costs you more than you want to pay. So over time,
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: the producers have figured out what is the precisely exact
• 54:27
  Speaker 1: minimum amount of time necessary to get this up to
• 54:31
  Speaker 1: the level of quality that we expect and demand. Okay,
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: they've figured it out. What that means is, The scripts
• 54:39
  Speaker 1: are never up to that level of quality until the
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: last minute. And at every point along the way, anybody
• 54:48
  Speaker 1: can come in and go, Brent, can I talk to
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: you for a minute? You're responsible for these scripts. You
• 54:53
  Speaker 1: run this room. The buck stops with you. The scripts
• 54:56
  Speaker 1: are not good. 104, we're shooting that on Monday. It's
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: not good enough. They can say that and they will
• 55:03
  Speaker 1: be right. Because it's not going to be good enough
• 55:06
  Speaker 1: until Friday night at the last payable moment of the
• 55:12
  Speaker 1: process when we've punched it up. So you have to
• 55:14
  Speaker 1: have a little bit of ice water in your veins
• 55:17
  Speaker 1: to run the room and somehow insulate the staff from
• 55:21
  Speaker 1: that critical energy that can come in at any time.
• 55:24
  Speaker 4: And be a go-between between the suits and the creatives,
• 55:27
  Speaker 4: I guess, as well.
• 55:28
  Speaker 1: You know, the showrunner typically is.
• 55:32
  Speaker 1: You know, I have been lucky that I have been
• 55:36
  Speaker 1: a little insulated from the critical worry warts at the
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: network while running the rooms. But yes, I think in theory...
• 55:45
  Speaker 1: The showrunner has got to listen to the fears of
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: the executives and then essentially ignore them when going back
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: into the writer's room. Because the artistic process, the creative process,
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: does not thrive in a fearful energy. It kind of
• 56:05
  Speaker 1: goes away in a fearful energy. Where you really see
• 56:09
  Speaker 1: this is on the set. The set is where... this
• 56:13
  Speaker 1: artistic vulnerability peaks, what we are asking actors to do
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: is to imagine that what you have written on the
• 56:21
  Speaker 1: page is real, become the characters that you have proposed,
• 56:25
  Speaker 1: and feel the things that the characters are feeling. It
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: is such a bananas thing to ask of a human being.
• 56:32
  Speaker 1: You must create an environment of emotional safety there and,
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: you know, warmth, love. These are the qualities of the
• 56:43
  Speaker 1: directors that last. They project a safety. And the head
• 56:48
  Speaker 1: writer has to do the same for the writers to
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: some degree.
• 56:51
  Speaker 4: It's honestly amazing that stuff gets made. When you break
• 56:55
  Speaker 4: it down like that, there are so many variables, so
• 56:58
  Speaker 4: many disparate elements, and some of them would appear to
• 57:01
  Speaker 4: be in conflict with another, and you have to find
• 57:03
  Speaker 4: a way to balance them. It's remarkable. Yeah. And when
• 57:07
  Speaker 4: it works, I mean, that's why things stay with us
• 57:11
  Speaker 4: so much, whether it's episodes like Lemon of Troy or,
• 57:13
  Speaker 4: I don't know, like The Odyssey, for instance.
• 57:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah.
• 57:17
  Speaker 3: It's uncanny because we also do a King of the
• 57:19
  Speaker 3: Hill podcast as well called Speaking of the Hill. And
• 57:22
  Speaker 3: the last episode we reviewed on the podcast was Peggy's
• 57:25
  Speaker 3: Turtle Song, the episode that you wrote.
• 57:27
  Speaker 1: No kidding.
• 57:28
  Speaker 3: It literally was the last one we reviewed. And we
• 57:30
  Speaker 3: got to the review and we go, written by Brent Forrester.
• 57:33
  Speaker 4: Wow.
• 57:37
  Speaker 1: How would you.
• 57:37
  Speaker 3: Describe the difference in comedy between The Simpsons and King
• 57:39
  Speaker 3: of the Hill? Because King of the Hill for me,
• 57:41
  Speaker 3: as a kid who grew up in the 90s, I didn't...
• 57:44
  Speaker 3: I wouldn't say I didn't like King of the Hill.
• 57:45
  Speaker 3: I never really gave it the chance. I just looked
• 57:47
  Speaker 3: at it and went, this doesn't look like The Simpsons.
• 57:49
  Speaker 3: And I think I maybe watched like five minutes or
• 57:51
  Speaker 3: so and it just felt like, I was like, where's
• 57:53
  Speaker 3: the jokes here? I don't understand it. As an adult now, married,
• 57:56
  Speaker 3: two young kids, I watch it and I go, wow,
• 57:59
  Speaker 3: I arguably find it's just as funny as I find
• 58:01
  Speaker 3: The Simpsons now.
• 58:04
  Speaker 1: As you asked about that, there are two very different
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: shows and deliberately so. Greg Daniels, who was one of
• 58:12
  Speaker 1: the writers in the room when I was at the Simpsons,
• 58:15
  Speaker 1: co-created King of the Hill with Mike Judge. And they
• 58:18
  Speaker 1: very deliberately were trying to do something different in animation. Specifically,
• 58:23
  Speaker 1: it was looking for naturalism in animation. No one had
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: really done it. And by naturalism, I mean that feeling
• 58:32
  Speaker 1: that you're grounded, that the characters are real, the style
• 58:36
  Speaker 1: of the animation to begin with. These are Mike Judge's,
• 58:39
  Speaker 1: you know, freehand drawings. Mike, who is a humble genius.
• 58:45
  Speaker 1: If you talk to Mike, you know, part of his...
• 58:50
  Speaker 1: cleverness is to sort of be a kind of an
• 58:52
  Speaker 1: all shucks kind of a guy. He does talk a
• 58:55
  Speaker 1: bit like this. Ask him questions. Mike, didn't you play
• 58:59
  Speaker 1: in a blues band in Austin, Texas? Oh, yes, I did.
• 59:02
  Speaker 1: I had inherited a base grandfather and i just took
• 59:07
  Speaker 1: a class and uh at the library and learned how
• 59:09
  Speaker 1: to play and and you know he's always downplaying his
• 59:13
  Speaker 1: gifts one of them is his freehand animation king of
• 59:16
  Speaker 1: the hill all those characters those are real people that
• 59:20
  Speaker 1: mike drew by looking at them you know he looked
• 59:22
  Speaker 1: at photographs he would go out on the street he
• 59:24
  Speaker 1: would he would have a a people take pictures in
• 59:28
  Speaker 1: malls of the people walking around and then he would
• 59:31
  Speaker 1: draw them. And those became characters on King of the Hill.
• 59:33
  Speaker 1: So the realism, the naturalism, the pacing of it, they deliberately,
• 59:38
  Speaker 1: they being Greg and Mike, They decided to do an
• 59:43
  Speaker 1: animated show that wasn't at the pace of a Warner
• 59:46
  Speaker 1: Brothers cartoon or of The Simpsons. You know, what we
• 59:49
  Speaker 1: love about animation is that zany speed. No, Mike and
• 59:53
  Speaker 1: Greg said, we're going to put pauses in. We're going
• 59:57
  Speaker 1: to slow it down. You look at the opening credits
• 59:59
  Speaker 1: of King of the Hill. the opening song. I can't
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 1: remember the tune exactly, but it has this, this pace.
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 1: And it slows down and a leaf drifts down into
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 1: Frank and it's Mike and Greg going, we're not doing hyperactive.
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 1: We're slowing it down. And then, you know, in the pilot,
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 1: you start with four guys drinking beer and one of
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 1: them says, yep, And then there's a pause and another
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 1: one goes, yep. I mean, they said, we are putting
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 1: the brakes on. And that was original. So you're feeling
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 1: that for sure in the show. And that's probably why
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 1: as a kid, you were like, what is this? You know,
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 1: I want my zaniness, right? The other thing that you
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 1: see in King of the Hill is political and cultural commentary.
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 1: was at the core of all the early episodes. I mean,
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: I didn't follow the show too much after I left,
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 1: but certainly the template that we set, um, Mike and
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 1: Greg in season one and, and, and me running the
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: writer's room with them in season two, all the episodes were, uh,
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 1: taken from culture conflicts. And, uh, they could be simple
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 1: ones like, um, Husky Bobby was one we did where
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 1: Bobby becomes a model in a catalog for husky kids' clothes, right?
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 1: That was really about the conservative male Hank Hill being
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 1: uncomfortable with his son being a model, being effeminate. You know,
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 1: it was essentially about homophobia. And then you have episodes
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 1: that same season, Hilloween, which was taken right from the headlines.
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 1: We had discovered that there were these Halloween haunted houses
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: that Christian evangelicals were putting on that were these gory,
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 1: anti-abortion haunted houses. We couldn't believe it. And we did
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 1: an episode about it. I can't remember a show as
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 1: effectively going after cultural clashes since all of the family
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 1: in the 60s and 70s in America. And I can't
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 1: imagine anybody really doing it the same way now because
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 1: political conflict has become, you know, something the networks are really...
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 1: I mean, I know the last time I worked at Netflix,
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 1: we tried to do some anti-Trump comedy and they were like, no, no, no, no.
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 1: They really were like, we aren't doing that. And I
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 1: get it. I mean, they're just algorithm driven and they're like,
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 1: why would we alienate some of our audience? But at
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 1: King of the Hill, we did not have that at all.
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 1: It was, again, a pretty young staff. Comedy writers in
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 1: general were quite rebellious, loved taking the shots at the
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 1: sources of power. And in America, the Christian right, the
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 1: moralizing authority figures have always been a target of comedy
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 1: and we would go after them, you know, consistently because
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 1: the characters were Southern and because they were Christian, um,
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 1: there was a natural sort of empathy that, you know,
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 1: as a good writer, you're going to have for your characters.
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 1: So I think, I think we got away with it.
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 1: I know that, you know, um, uh, my friend, Nate Bargatze,
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 1: the comedian, he's from the South. He's from Tennessee. Nate
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 1: said that growing up, he felt like King of the
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 1: Hill was for him. You know, he's, he's a political
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 1: conservative and yet he felt King of the Hill was
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 1: for him. It shows how effectively we, um, we empathized
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 1: with the right while skewering it.
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 3: Well, I just, I just love, there's the episode where
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 3: the Asian family move in next door, the Khan family. And,
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 3: Hank is accused of being racist because he doesn't like
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 3: this guy. And he goes, I'm not racist. He's just
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 3: a prick. Why can I not like a guy because
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 3: he's Asian? He's not a good person. But I love
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 3: the way that he told that story.
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 4: The show is very non-judgmental, King of the Hill. I mean,
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 4: if it is judgmental against anyone or anything, it's more
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 4: like just bad modes of behavior, like self-righteousness or something
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 4: like that. I mean, they're never really taking shots at
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 4: anyone for a political point of view. It's more like, no,
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 4: you're just a shit human being.
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 5: Yes.
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 1: And hypocrisy, you know, comedians love to attack hypocrisy and
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 1: we would, we would attack it on both the right
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 1: and the left. I think, you know, we, we piled
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 1: on the right quite a bit more, but the left,
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 1: you know, took some shots too. Like there was an
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 1: episode in season two called the unfireable employee. And this
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 1: was based on the discovery that voiced him.
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 1: He cast me as the, as the voice of the
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 1: drug addicts.
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 4: Oh my gosh.
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 1: Well, The premise was somebody discovered that in the American workplace,
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 1: if you identify as a drug addict in treatment, you're
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 1: now covered by the Americans with Disabilities Act and you're fired.
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 1: And so the idea that Hank would have some drug
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 1: addicts that he couldn't fire seemed very funny to us.
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 1: And yeah, I got cast as that. The reason I
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 1: got cast in that was you know, when we would
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 1: do the table reads, sometimes the writers would fill in
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 1: and do the voice. And I had a take on
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 1: the drug addict, which was essentially the manic depressive character.
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 1: It says a lot about me that I was able
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 1: to do this. But, you know, it's the character who's like, oh,
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 1: I've got it. We're going to clear out these files.
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 1: We're going to do a whole new system. We're going
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 1: to redo the whole office, Mr.
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 3: Hill.
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 4: Wait!
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 1: And then cut to, he's on the ground like, I
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 1: can't do it.
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 3: I am.
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 4: Very glad you brought this up, Brent, because I think
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 4: this was a question that we were asking more than
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 4: once during that episode when we reviewed it. It's like,
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 4: what drugs is this guy on? Because sometimes he's coked up.
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 4: Sometimes he's taking a couple of hits off a nice
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 4: big split. Sometimes he's on heroin. That's what it seemed like.
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 4: Is this guy a polymath drug user?
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 3: But he's also super relatable because in that scene in particular,
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 3: you don't have to be a drug addict to behave
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 3: that way. I always say to my wife, right, today's
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 3: the day I clean the garage. Get in there with
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 3: the best of intentions and within five minutes I'm just
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 3: on the floor crying. I can't do it. It's too much.
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 3: It's overwhelming to me.
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 1: I get it. That's relatable. I think... First of all,
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 1: I imagine he was a cocaine addict. That was my backstory.
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 1: But the pattern of manic depression, where you get kind
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 1: of too excited and confident, and then you're too much
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 1: in despair, I think is common with artists. I've been
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 1: thinking that maybe Conan O'Brien is essentially– manic depressive. I
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 1: shouldn't speak for this guy, but his ability to pour
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 1: on that energy is so wonderful. And yet I know
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 1: the guy has a kind of a tragic side and, and, uh,
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 1: you know, I'm noticing that more and more with, with artists.
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 1: I certainly relate to it.
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 3: Oh yeah.
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 4: Who among us?
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 3: Did you work, Conan was gone by the time he
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 3: got to the Simpsons, right? Or was he still there just?
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 1: Uh, we overlapped just a little bit, but essentially, you know, uh,
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 1: him leaving was part of how I got hired.
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 3: Um, I had just, how did you join the Simpsons team?
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I had just come off the Ben Stiller show.
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 1: So I was a young writer in my twenties and
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 1: Bob Odenkirk had liked my sketch packet. He, um, he
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 1: actually helped me select seven sketches that of all the
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 1: ones I'd written on the show, he thought were my best.
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 1: He put the packet together and then he gave it to, uh,
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 1: Robert Smigel, who was at Saturday Night Live and Conan O'Brien,
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 1: who was starting his own talk show. Conan liked my
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 1: packet and called me and said, I want to hire
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 1: you as a writer on my show. Just to give
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 1: you the idea of the personal magnetism of Conan O'Brien.
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 1: He got me so hyped up to be a writer
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 1: on his show, to leave LA, come to New York,
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 1: start on a new thing. I was so excited when
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 1: I hung up the phone. I ran through West Hollywood.
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 1: I remember I ran three miles. Just on the secondhand
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 1: energy of Conan, it was like an electric shock. Now,
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 1: what next was that the head writer of The Simpsons,
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 1: David Merkin, was in touch with Conan. And he said, hey, Conan,
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 1: you got any writers? You got anybody you like? And
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 1: Conan said, yeah, I think we're going to hire this guy,
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 1: this Brent Forrester, a kid Bob Odenkirk likes. And David
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 1: Merkin said, oh, really? And called me in for a
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 1: meeting at the Simpsons. And Merkin said, you're going to
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 1: go right for this no-name talk show that's going to
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 1: go down the tubes? How about you join the Simpsons
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 1: in season five? And I was like, obviously, I will
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 1: join the Simpsons. I had to call Conan and apologize
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 1: because I said you were kind enough to believe in
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 1: me and hire me and I'm not going to do it,
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 1: although I had said I was going to. As an apology,
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 1: thank you gift, I wrote up a list of 10
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 1: bits he could do on his new show, and he
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 1: used two of them for 10 years. One of them was,
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 1: I said, announce that you don't have the budget to
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 1: do a satellite interview and just show a photograph of
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 1: a person's face with.
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 4: A clutch cargo. Oh, brilliant.
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 1: So I gave him that one. And the other one was,
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 1: I said, take two celebrities who are dating and merge
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 1: their photos to show what their children might look like.
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 1: I called that if they mated and he did that
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 1: for 10 years as well.
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 3: How does that conversation go? Is that as intimidating as
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 3: being in the Simpsons writers room of James Albrooks? How
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 3: do you, you promised Conan, I'm going to join your show.
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 3: How does that phone call go?
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 1: You know, I mean, it was all to my credit
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 1: that that, you know, more than one show wanted me.
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 1: But I did feel really bad about it. You know,
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 1: I felt like he had believed in me and he
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 1: was being generous and I was like bailing on him.
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 1: And it's literally I gave him this gift of ideas
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 1: as a way of saying, here is something for free
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 1: in gratitude for you doing something nice for me. So,
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 1: you know, he's a great human being, Conan. And people
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 1: wanted him to like them. I think they still do.
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 1: You know, Conan's approval is very valuable to comedy people.
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 3: Have you ever wondered what if?
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 1: If I had stayed with Conan? Yeah, I mean, I
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 1: knew writers on that show. You know, it was a
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 1: wonderful time for them. They had such a blast creating
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 1: that show the first few years. You know, they were
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 1: doing crazy, crazy bits. And Conan loves writers. It was
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 1: a magical place to work, as I understand.
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 3: Have you worked with Conan since or have you ever considered,
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 3: you know, are you still friends with the guy or
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 3: is he just completely just shut you off from life
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 3: now because you disappointed him?
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 1: You know, I've definitely run into Conan over the years.
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 1: We have had a project that we were attached to
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 1: do a couple of times. It was a comedy idea
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 1: that I've had for 30 years about... historical reenactors at
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 1: an American history site, one who plays Thomas Jefferson and
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 1: one who plays Jupiter Evans, who is the famous black
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 1: man servant of Thomas Jefferson. You know, this idea always
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 1: fascinated and amused me. And Conan and I were attached
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 1: to do it as a show for NBC at one point,
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 1: but I never managed to sell that to any network,
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 1: no matter how I did. configured it, at a certain point,
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 1: the networks will go, this is too controversial for us.
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 1: So I finally did it myself as a YouTube series.
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 1: I shot three episodes of something I call Historic Freedom Bird,
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 1: which you can see on my YouTube channel. If you
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 1: love YouTube, go to Professor BFO. That's B-F-O. When I
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 1: sign my emails... instead of writing Brent Forrester, I write
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 1: BFO apostrophe. So Professor BFO, and check out Historic Freedom Burrow,
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 1: I would say it's among my proudest achievements.
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 4: Has the democratization of media, things like YouTube, do you
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 4: feel like that has just given you so much more scope,
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 4: so much more space to, because I imagine that any
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 4: creative person has just got a bunch of stuff in
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 4: the bottom drawer, a bunch of stuff on the hard drive.
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 4: It's like no one's ever going to go for this.
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 4: But I can do it for five bucks and I
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 4: can send it out to the world and I can
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 4: see what happens.
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 1: 100%. I think it's the great transformation of the industry
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 1: in our lifetime. It used to be when I was
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 1: trying to break into the biz, if you wanted to
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 1: make something, if you wanted to shoot something and edit it,
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 1: You had to go to film school because they were
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 1: the ones who had the cameras and the film, which
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 1: was expensive. And God knows the editing equipment, who would
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 1: know how to even get that? All that changed in
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 1: our lifetime. And the places to platform your stuff now
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 1: exist for everybody. So the truth is, certainly in comedy,
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 1: it is a medium that thrives on great writing and
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 1: great performing. If you have that, it does not have
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 1: to have bells and whistles in the capturing of it.
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 1: You know, you can go to a theater and laugh
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 1: your brains out with two characters pantomiming working on a submarine, right?
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 1: That's not high production values, but you will die laughing
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 1: if the writing is good and the performing is good.
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 1: So you can prove this. If you are talented and
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 1: industrious and want to make stuff, you can write good stuff.
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 1: Start with short stuff. It's easier. Find funny people to
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 1: perform it, shoot it with your phone, edit it and
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 1: put it on YouTube. And if you do that and
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 1: it is good, the industry will come to you. This
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 1: is my firm belief and the message that I'm amplifying
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 1: to anybody who's listening. And it's what I'm doing now, too.
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 1: You know, it's frustrating to try to sell stuff to
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 1: the buyers, you know, the beloved buyers, Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, HBO,
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 1: Apple TV, Peacock, you know, these are the buyers. And,
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 1: you know, it can take a year to work up
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 1: a pitch that you take to them and they say no.
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 1: too long, too long for most artists. I think it's
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 1: time for all of us to stop waiting for permission
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 1: to make stuff and just go make it. That's why
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 1: I did Historic Freedom. That's why I launched the YouTube
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 1: channel is I decided I want a place that's like
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 1: an art gallery where I can hang stuff that I make.
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 1: So that's my long answer to your question. Yes, abundantly.
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 1: YouTube is the future for all of us.
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 4: Something interesting you said there, Brent, was that when you're
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 4: naming the, I guess, the power brokers or the gatekeepers
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 4: or whatever, You're mainly, you're naming streamers and cable places.
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 4: You're not really going to the networks anymore. You're not
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 4: going to ABC, NBC, Fox, anywhere like that.
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 1: You're so right. You're so right. And maybe that was self-limiting.
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 1: I mean, I did a lot of pitching in 2025
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 1: and I did pitch to Fox and I did pitch
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 1: to ABC, Hulu. I pitched to NBC, Peacock. When you
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 1: pitch to them now, you're pitching to both sides of
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 1: the hyphen. You know, I pitched a show in 2025,
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 1: which was it's basically the office set in like a
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 1: Wells Fargo, which is a crappy, you know, saving a
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 1: loan out here. And I just called it bank. And I,
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 1: I thought this was an NBC show. So I pitched
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 1: it to NBC and Peacock simultaneously. That's the way it goes. Yeah. Um,
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 1: It's a hard time to sell to the big buyers now.
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 1: They are really driven by celebrity attachment, I would say. So,
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 1: you know, it's all the more reason to make stuff
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 1: outside the system. The encouraging thing that I am saying
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 1: to all the creators out there who found 2024, 2025,
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 1: a shrunken development industry, less buying of scripts. Okay, yeah,
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 1: that's a bummer. The upside, however, is if the big
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 1: buyers are not developing, where will their development come from?
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 1: It will come from the outsiders. Making stuff on YouTube,
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 1: making original stuff, that will get bought by the big buyers.
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 1: And we're already seeing it happen now pretty consistently.
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 4: I am picturing you in that room at a whiteboard
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 4: just writing down, want to make bank?
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 3: This is how it went.
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 4: Don't tell me otherwise.
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 1: Oh, that's great. Very good pitch. Thank you very much.
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 1: And I did open with the main character, the manager,
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 1: the kind of Michael Scott of Bank is a guy
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 1: called Gary Flatt, a short man in cowboy boots. And
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 1: and the opening is him. You just hear a voiceover.
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 1: And you see the definition, you know, money as in
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 1: we're making bank and then bank trust as in you
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 1: can bank on me. So you were one step ahead
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 1: of my opening of that pitch.
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 4: I attribute all my success to the six step system here.
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 4: Of Brent Forrester.
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 1: Oh, thank you. Well, now you're just shilling for me.
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 1: You know, since 2020, I have taught comedy during the
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 1: pandemic when we were all, you know, on our psychological
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 1: deathbeds asking, why are we here? And also Frozen, the
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 1: whole industry stopped. And I started teaching comedy online. It's
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 1: been incredibly gratifying to me. First, because, as I mentioned,
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 1: I've always been the analytical comedy writer. I was not
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 1: naturally talented. I had to learn it through the job,
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 1: and it made me a collector of mechanics, dynamics, devices, tricks,
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 1: and nothing makes me happier than just sharing them all
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 1: with the young, whatever, the novices of any age who
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 1: are trying to learn this craft. More than that, though,
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 1: I have discovered that my mission here is to encourage
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 1: people artists and that is what we need more than
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 1: anything all of you who are artists and listening know
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 1: exactly what i mean it is a tough thing to
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 1: say i am going to use my imagination to change
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 1: my life and the world right and you can do
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 1: it you will do it but sometimes you need encouragement
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 1: and that's that's where i come in as a teacher
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 1: uh my six step system thank you for missing it
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 1: This is, you know, I teach two classes. One is
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 1: called Writing the Pilot and the other is called Joke
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 1: and Comedy Writing. Writing the Pilot is the one that
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 1: everybody wants to take because it's a five week class
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 1: in which I lead you through the process of turning
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 1: your idea into a pilot. And there's six steps that I,
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 1: you know, brought from my experience in writer's rooms. that
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 1: I will lead you through. It is life-changing when you
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 1: have an idea for a script and you actually write it.
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 1: I think this is probably true with all great projects.
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 1: You have an idea for a project and you complete it.
• 1:19:11
  Speaker 1: And I am so happy to have helped so many
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 1: people do it. If you are one of those people
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 1: who wants to do it, go to my website, brentforrester.com.
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 1: I have a class coming up September 20th. I teach
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 1: this a few times a year. So it's rare. It's
• 1:19:29
  Speaker 1: super cheap. I'll just be frank with you. I don't
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 1: like charging people money for anything. My five week class
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 1: is $ 200. It's always less than Taekwondo lessons. And if
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 1: you can't afford $ 200, write me an email. You got
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 1: a scholarship for free. I like helping artists. I hope
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 1: you're one of them and I hope you find me.
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 3: When you're running gags for the Simpsons, because you mentioned earlier,
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 3: the performing was, if the performing is good, then it's
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 3: going to be funny. When you wrote gags on The Simpsons,
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 3: did you write with the voice cast in mind going,
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 3: I know this is a gag that Hank will smash
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 3: or Dan or Julie? Or did you make sure that
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 3: you wrote jokes that you knew could be funny regardless
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 3: of who's saying it?
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 1: Oh, what a great question. The answer that I want
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 1: to break down is... First of all, good jokes generally
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 1: do look good on the page and amuse you on
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 1: the page. So, you know, a good Simpson script, you know,
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 1: you can read that and laugh and chuckle in your bed. Um,
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 1: so it doesn't require performance necessarily good writing, but, um, Yes,
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 1: for sure. When you're writing comedy, you're hearing the voices
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 1: of these performers. And for sure, there is such a
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 1: thing as good comic performance. I was watching Lollapalooza, Homerpalooza, rather,
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 1: the other day. And this is an episode where it's
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 1: about a music festival and we cast a lot of musicians.
• 1:20:56
  Speaker 1: And so there's dialogue in there written by Simpsons writers
• 1:21:00
  Speaker 1: delivered by musicians who are not professional comedy actors. and
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 1: I swear to God, you see well-written material delivered by
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 1: Peter Frampton and Sonic Youth. There's a section where it's
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 1: just them talking to each other and the show just dies.
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 4: Okay.
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 1: And, and then you hear Hank Azaria deliver one line. Uh,
• 1:21:22
  Speaker 1: Hank has to, uh, he, he's the, uh, the MC of, of, uh, Lollapalooza,
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 1: and he's introducing Homer Simpson, who's one of the freaks
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 1: in the freak show getting hit with a cannonball, okay?
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 1: So Homer's become a freak in a freak show at
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 1: a music festival. And Hank Azaria delivers the line like this.
• 1:21:41
  Speaker 1: Ladies and gentlemen, introducing the man who represents everything about
• 1:21:45
  Speaker 1: rock and roll, except the music, Homer Simpson, right? That's
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 1: his delivery, and it's a comic delivery. I'm imitating him.
• 1:21:54
  Speaker 1: You know, that's an example of a comic performer upping
• 1:21:59
  Speaker 1: the comedy. The good voice actors always do. You know,
• 1:22:03
  Speaker 1: they tried to replace the Simpsons voice actors at one point.
• 1:22:06
  Speaker 1: The Fox studios realized they were paying them so much
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 1: and they started bringing in voice actors who could imitate
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 1: Homer and imitate.
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 3: Bart When was this during your time there?
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 1: No, it was after my time. I'm sure I'll be
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 1: banned from Fox for ever mentioning this, but it was
• 1:22:25
  Speaker 1: my understanding that, you know, they were just sick of
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 1: paying the actors this much money and they, and they
• 1:22:30
  Speaker 1: tried to bring in imitators and were completely unable to
• 1:22:35
  Speaker 1: do it. You know, nobody can really do Homer except
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 1: Dan Costellaneta. And that's true across the board for all
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 1: of those, actors, because if Fox could have replaced them,
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 1: they would have.
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 3: It might be easy to sound like them, but you
• 1:22:51
  Speaker 3: can't become the character.
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 4: Yeah, you don't have the soul. You've got the skin,
• 1:22:54
  Speaker 4: but not the soul. Just to rewind just a little bit, Brent, look,
• 1:22:58
  Speaker 4: I'm probably waxing your car a bit too much here,
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 4: but it's one of the top five Simpsons exchanges of
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 4: all time for mine in the Homopalooza, where it's Billy
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 4: Corgan smashing pumpkins, Homer Simpson smiling politely. that just kills me.
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 1: Can I tell you a story about that? That, that
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 1: line is often quoted to me. And, uh, I like
• 1:23:19
  Speaker 1: to point out that in my drafts, uh, I had
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 1: written the part for Courtney love. And when we couldn't
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 1: get Courtney loud, we, we went to a Billy Corrigan.
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 1: So in the original draft, there's a different joke there.
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 1: Now this is a, a little bit of a thinker.
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 1: So forgive yourselves if it takes you a moment to laugh,
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 1: but when Courtney love was in the, uh, the episode, um,
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 1: She walks up to Homer and she says, Homer, I
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 1: saw your act. Courtney Love. And Homer says, Homer, grateful.
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 1: That was the line before Billy Corrin's line.
• 1:23:57
  Speaker 4: Almost as good.
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 3: Oh, man, that's brilliant. But also, they're the kind of
• 1:24:06
  Speaker 3: jokes that when you're a kid watching it, you have
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 3: no idea what's going on. But you know it sounds funny?
• 1:24:12
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 1:24:12
  Speaker 3: You don't quite know why it's funny. Because my kids,
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 3: I watched it with my kids recently, and they laughed
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 3: at that. And I said, why did you laugh at that?
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 3: And he goes, because Homer's silly.
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 1: They didn't get why they were laughing.
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 3: It was just, it sounded silly, you know?
• 1:24:24
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:24:25
  Speaker 1: That's true. You know, when I was a dad with
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 1: a young daughter, when my daughter was, I don't know,
• 1:24:31
  Speaker 1: four or five years old, I noticed that there was
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 1: a joke form that would make her and all her
• 1:24:36
  Speaker 1: friends laugh. And it was the same joke form every time.
• 1:24:39
  Speaker 1: So it always involves an animal at a birthday party
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 1: opening a present and there being a different animal inside
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 1: and the animal then inside would say, boing. So it'd
• 1:24:47
  Speaker 1: be like, okay, so once there was a giraffe having
• 1:24:49
  Speaker 1: a birthday party, she got a present, she opened it
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 1: up and inside was a little tiny dog and the
• 1:24:53
  Speaker 1: dog went, boing, and they would laugh. And then I
• 1:24:59
  Speaker 1: would do, okay, I know another one. You're going to
• 1:25:01
  Speaker 1: love this one. Okay, once there was a monkey, had
• 1:25:03
  Speaker 1: a birthday party, opened up a little present, inside was
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 1: a tiny elephant, and the elephant went, boing. Always would
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 1: get a laugh with five-year-olds. You can use that.
• 1:25:12
  Speaker 3: Why didn't you work then? Oh, obviously you wouldn't have
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 3: been a father yet when you were on The Simpsons,
• 1:25:14
  Speaker 3: so you worked into a Simpsons script somewhere.
• 1:25:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, not anymore.
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 4: This is the sixth step of Brent's six steps of comedy. Boing.
• 1:25:26
  Speaker 3: But that's actually mentioned on The Simpsons. Krusty says it.
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 3: He goes, funny words that sound funny.
• 1:25:30
  Speaker 4: Kookamonga. Yeah.
• 1:25:31
  Speaker 3: Sure. Were there any sort of go-to words or sounds
• 1:25:35
  Speaker 3: you sort of went to and you went, eh, it's
• 1:25:37
  Speaker 3: not quite working. Let's just throw in this.
• 1:25:39
  Speaker 1: Oh, absolutely. You know, this is part of the science
• 1:25:41
  Speaker 1: of comedy. You'll hear old timey comedy writers say the
• 1:25:45
  Speaker 1: K sound is funny. And there's a play by Neil
• 1:25:48
  Speaker 1: Simon called The Sunshine Boys about two old Borscht Belt comedians.
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 1: And they talk about the K sound. The K sound
• 1:25:54
  Speaker 1: is funny. the truth is some words are funnier typically
• 1:26:00
  Speaker 1: than others punchier for sure it comes down to what
• 1:26:03
  Speaker 1: are called plosives like the word explosive without the ex
• 1:26:07
  Speaker 1: on plosive a plosive is a word that is a
• 1:26:10
  Speaker 1: hard consonant so p p d x k uh those
• 1:26:15
  Speaker 1: are are hard consonants those are plosives uh for this
• 1:26:19
  Speaker 1: reason um Two towns, okay? We're punching up a script.
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 1: Where is our character from? Missouri or Kennebunkport? It's pretty
• 1:26:29
  Speaker 1: clear that the second one is going to be easier
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 1: to get a laugh off of. And part of it
• 1:26:32
  Speaker 1: is just delivery, right? Delivering staccato words is a little
• 1:26:38
  Speaker 1: more energetic.
• 1:26:39
  Speaker 3: Did you ever find that you wrote a joke and
• 1:26:41
  Speaker 3: the Simpsons cast delivered it in a way that you
• 1:26:43
  Speaker 3: made it even funnier than you originally intended? You went, oh, wow,
• 1:26:46
  Speaker 3: that's not the way I intended for it to be delivered,
• 1:26:48
  Speaker 3: but that's even better.
• 1:26:50
  Speaker 1: I saw this happen one time. I never forgot it.
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 1: It was in the episode, Lisa gets an elephant. Homer
• 1:26:57
  Speaker 1: gets an elephant.
• 1:26:58
  Speaker 3: Bart gets an elephant. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:26:59
  Speaker 1: Bart?
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 4: Okay.
• 1:27:01
  Speaker 1: So at the table read of that episode, there's a
• 1:27:03
  Speaker 1: scene where Homer is making money by showing off this
• 1:27:07
  Speaker 1: elephant in the backyard. And people are kind of like, oh,
• 1:27:09
  Speaker 1: look at this stupid elephant. And Lisa says, dad, you
• 1:27:12
  Speaker 1: can't do this. How would you like it if people
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 1: came in the yard and made fun of you? And
• 1:27:17
  Speaker 1: then we cut to a character who was called Slack-jawed Yokel.
• 1:27:24
  Speaker 1: Yokel is a term for like a redneck, a country bumpkin.
• 1:27:27
  Speaker 3: He became Cletus, yeah.
• 1:27:29
  Speaker 1: It became cleanest. It became cleanest because of the way
• 1:27:32
  Speaker 1: Hank Azaria delivered the line. Now, the line that was
• 1:27:35
  Speaker 1: written for Slackjaw Yokel was, to give you the setup again,
• 1:27:41
  Speaker 1: Lisa says, how would you like it if people made
• 1:27:42
  Speaker 1: fun of you? Cut to Slackjaw Yokel. Har har, look
• 1:27:46
  Speaker 1: at that pointy-haired girl. That was the line as written.
• 1:27:51
  Speaker 1: Hank Azaria delivered it this way. Har har, look at
• 1:27:54
  Speaker 1: that pointy-haired girl.
• 1:27:56
  Speaker 3: Ha ha ha.
• 1:27:58
  Speaker 1: A little more yokely when he has their hair did
• 1:28:01
  Speaker 1: in there it got a giant laugh at the table
• 1:28:03
  Speaker 1: because of his surprise delivery and the character was born
• 1:28:08
  Speaker 1: i mean i think we did a hundred cletus the
• 1:28:10
  Speaker 1: slack-jawed yokel episodes after that and he was born in
• 1:28:15
  Speaker 1: the funnier than written delivery of the line by hank azaria.
• 1:28:19
  Speaker 4: You see that in this episode though as well i
• 1:28:21
  Speaker 4: think with um The main bully in Shelbyville is called Shelby,
• 1:28:25
  Speaker 4: I believe. Chris McNeil, yeah. His dad, voiced by Hank,
• 1:28:29
  Speaker 4: I believe, is doing a Walter Matthau impersonation, which is
• 1:28:34
  Speaker 4: sort of a play on Dan C basing Homer on
• 1:28:37
  Speaker 4: Walter Matthau as well.
• 1:28:38
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:28:39
  Speaker 4: That's an unexpected twist and one that I really appreciate.
• 1:28:42
  Speaker 1: Yes. Well, you nailed it. It was a Walter Matthau voice.
• 1:28:47
  Speaker 1: And you're right also that in the first few episodes
• 1:28:50
  Speaker 1: of The Simpsons, Dan is doing Walter Matthau as Homer.
• 1:28:53
  Speaker 1: He changed that voice after a few episodes.
• 1:28:55
  Speaker 3: Particularly in the Omen shorts as well. He's really Walter.
• 1:28:58
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 1:28:59
  Speaker 1: That's right.
• 1:29:00
  Speaker 3: So this episode here is at the end of season six.
• 1:29:02
  Speaker 3: Did you write this one almost like it was a
• 1:29:03
  Speaker 3: season finale? Because the real season finale of season six
• 1:29:06
  Speaker 3: is part one of Who Shot Mr. Burns. That's more
• 1:29:08
  Speaker 3: of like a cliffhanger, more of a publicity stunt. This
• 1:29:11
  Speaker 3: one to me always felt like a true season finale.
• 1:29:14
  Speaker 3: Incorporating the town, it feels like a real grand adventure.
• 1:29:17
  Speaker 3: Was it ever sort of pitched that way to be
• 1:29:19
  Speaker 3: the season? Was it selected to be sort of like
• 1:29:23
  Speaker 3: a mini season finale, do you think?
• 1:29:26
  Speaker 1: I think that's really... And astute observation that it could
• 1:29:29
  Speaker 1: have been a season finale because of the scope of it,
• 1:29:34
  Speaker 1: town versus town. No, it was never thought of that way.
• 1:29:38
  Speaker 1: The who shot Mr. Burns was always going to be
• 1:29:40
  Speaker 1: the cliffhanger of that season. And that was the brainchild
• 1:29:46
  Speaker 1: of Bill Oakley and Josh Weinstein, two of the great
• 1:29:49
  Speaker 1: showrunners ever for The Simpsons.
• 1:29:52
  Speaker 3: I always thought, obviously, Bill and Josh took over in
• 1:29:54
  Speaker 3: season seven, season eight as well. For some reason, I've
• 1:29:58
  Speaker 3: always thought this one was like a season seven episode.
• 1:30:00
  Speaker 3: It feels like a Bill and Josh episode. It's got
• 1:30:03
  Speaker 3: that real grounded, emotionally driven core to it that I
• 1:30:06
  Speaker 3: just feel like it would just... It fit perfectly like
• 1:30:09
  Speaker 3: a season seven episode. I've always figured it's the end
• 1:30:12
  Speaker 3: of season six.
• 1:30:14
  Speaker 1: Well, I think maybe what you're perceiving there is the
• 1:30:17
  Speaker 1: way the writers' room came together and evolved. So you
• 1:30:21
  Speaker 1: have the original writers of seasons one through four, and
• 1:30:24
  Speaker 1: then a new crop comes in to replace maybe half
• 1:30:27
  Speaker 1: the staff in seasons five, six, and seven. That new
• 1:30:31
  Speaker 1: group really hits their stride in the latter part of
• 1:30:36
  Speaker 1: six and then going into seven. And so it was
• 1:30:40
  Speaker 1: the young writers coming into their own. And by young writers,
• 1:30:44
  Speaker 1: I'm thinking of me, David Cohen, and Bill and Josh.
• 1:30:48
  Speaker 1: Bill and Josh were youngsters who rose to showrunner status,
• 1:30:55
  Speaker 1: internally promoted. But our showrunner was David Merkin, who had
• 1:30:59
  Speaker 1: come from outside the show. He had come from Sketch,
• 1:31:03
  Speaker 1: and he had come from a show called, oh, it
• 1:31:05
  Speaker 1: was Chris Elliott's show.
• 1:31:07
  Speaker 4: Oh, Get a Life.
• 1:31:08
  Speaker 1: Get a Life.
• 1:31:09
  Speaker 4: Oh, holy moly. I'm sorry, I use this line all
• 1:31:12
  Speaker 4: the time to the point where it's become, quiet, an
• 1:31:15
  Speaker 4: old man's talking. To borrow a line from a wire,
• 1:31:19
  Speaker 4: we used to make things in this country, man. Get
• 1:31:22
  Speaker 4: a life, the Ben Stiller show, Mr.
• 1:31:24
  Speaker 1: Show.
• 1:31:24
  Speaker 4: Oh, my goodness.
• 1:31:25
  Speaker 3: That's also the result of there not being so many
• 1:31:28
  Speaker 3: avenues and various channels and ways to sort of get
• 1:31:30
  Speaker 3: content out there. It was very selective of what was
• 1:31:32
  Speaker 3: put out there. So there wasn't as much as sort of,
• 1:31:34
  Speaker 3: I feel like now there's so much out there, nothing
• 1:31:37
  Speaker 3: sort of stands out anymore.
• 1:31:39
  Speaker 1: I think there's a good point there. What I'm realizing
• 1:31:43
  Speaker 1: now is that there's a tension in the art form
• 1:31:46
  Speaker 1: of television comedy, maybe television entertainment generally, certainly in the
• 1:31:53
  Speaker 1: American system. And the tension is between and quality, you know,
• 1:31:58
  Speaker 1: it's a business. So they're trying to make a lot
• 1:32:00
  Speaker 1: of these things and they're trying to make them quickly.
• 1:32:02
  Speaker 1: And that is not the way to quality. Now the
• 1:32:05
  Speaker 1: audience wants quality and will gravitate towards quality. So, you know,
• 1:32:10
  Speaker 1: how do you get both? Now what I'm noticing is
• 1:32:13
  Speaker 1: these shorter orders that writers are unemployed much longer now
• 1:32:18
  Speaker 1: than they used to be. I think that actually will
• 1:32:21
  Speaker 1: create greater quality potentially because projects will have longer to
• 1:32:29
  Speaker 1: gestate and stuff like Widows Bay, a new show on Apple,
• 1:32:33
  Speaker 1: for example. You know, that's a project that a writer,
• 1:32:36
  Speaker 1: Katie Dippel, had in her, you know, her backpacks for
• 1:32:41
  Speaker 1: 10 years, I've heard. You know, that may become more
• 1:32:44
  Speaker 1: than normal. Yeah.
• 1:32:45
  Speaker 4: There's that old adage, you can have it good, you
• 1:32:48
  Speaker 4: can have it quick, or you can have it cheap.
• 1:32:50
  Speaker 4: You can get two of those at any given time,
• 1:32:52
  Speaker 4: but you can't have all three. Or if you get
• 1:32:54
  Speaker 4: all three, you've got a unicorn.
• 1:32:56
  Speaker 1: It's still very, very true.
• 1:32:58
  Speaker 4: We should maybe talk a bit about Lemon of Troy.
• 1:33:00
  Speaker 3: Well, I feel like we've gone a long time, so
• 1:33:01
  Speaker 3: we won't see through the entire episode. But I just
• 1:33:03
  Speaker 3: want to ask you, what are some of your favorite
• 1:33:05
  Speaker 3: moments from this episode, Brent? What are the ones that
• 1:33:07
  Speaker 3: you're maybe the most proud of when you go back
• 1:33:09
  Speaker 3: and revisit it?
• 1:33:10
  Speaker 1: Well, as I mentioned, I really liked that moment where
• 1:33:13
  Speaker 1: Bart says, I assumed I could read lips. I liked
• 1:33:19
  Speaker 1: the fantasies that the kids had when they try on
• 1:33:23
  Speaker 1: their gear, where Milhouse believes he's invisible. I remember enjoying that.
• 1:33:28
  Speaker 1: um of course the ending you know the the helen
• 1:33:32
  Speaker 1: of troy ending i think it's you know certainly in
• 1:33:35
  Speaker 1: the top two best endings of of uh an episode
• 1:33:40
  Speaker 1: of tv that i have personally written and how did
• 1:33:44
  Speaker 1: i get there is a good question i still ask
• 1:33:46
  Speaker 1: myself that i think really what happened is i saw
• 1:33:50
  Speaker 1: that i was doing an epic and i saw and
• 1:33:52
  Speaker 1: i had always felt that this was like um you
• 1:33:55
  Speaker 1: know ithaca and troy i knew that that the Trojan
• 1:34:00
  Speaker 1: horse was a, was a thing. And I kind of
• 1:34:02
  Speaker 1: back engineered away into it. I think back engineering is
• 1:34:05
  Speaker 1: the secret to clever endings. You kind of know where
• 1:34:08
  Speaker 1: you want to get. And then you're like, how do
• 1:34:10
  Speaker 1: I disguise all the little things I need to make
• 1:34:12
  Speaker 1: it happen?
• 1:34:13
  Speaker 3: Well, I love, I love Schwarzwalder's ideology though, of he
• 1:34:17
  Speaker 3: just wrote a script and then fixed it afterwards.
• 1:34:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:34:20
  Speaker 3: He said that he got the hardest part out of
• 1:34:22
  Speaker 3: the way first. You got the, you got the story
• 1:34:23
  Speaker 3: written and then he just, and then he touched it up. Yeah.
• 1:34:26
  Speaker 4: Got the bones and then put flesh on it. Yeah.
• 1:34:28
  Speaker 4: By the way, as Australians, we do appreciate the Mad
• 1:34:30
  Speaker 4: Max 2 shout out. Or as you call it, the
• 1:34:33
  Speaker 4: road warrior.
• 1:34:37
  Speaker 3: For me, though, I've got a very fond memory of
• 1:34:38
  Speaker 3: watching this with my family. See, my mum, she was
• 1:34:41
  Speaker 3: never a big Simpsons fan. My dad, you know, he
• 1:34:44
  Speaker 3: sometimes would watch it. But I distinctly remember watching this episode.
• 1:34:47
  Speaker 3: And when Homer says, don't worry, boy, I've got a plan,
• 1:34:50
  Speaker 3: he throws the meat out. And the dog just eats it.
• 1:34:53
  Speaker 3: And he's like, hungry boy, he's got a taste for
• 1:34:54
  Speaker 3: meat now. My dad just thought that was the funniest
• 1:34:56
  Speaker 3: fucking thing he's ever heard in his life.
• 1:35:00
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 1:35:01
  Speaker 4: If we are doing frozen, I better say frozen moments.
• 1:35:03
  Speaker 4: If we are doing favorite moments, this is a word
• 1:35:06
  Speaker 4: that you might have invented, Brent. Milhouse has got his
• 1:35:11
  Speaker 4: lemonade stand and realized they're out of lemons. We've squozen
• 1:35:14
  Speaker 4: our whole supply.
• 1:35:15
  Speaker 1: Oh, thank you. Yes.
• 1:35:17
  Speaker 5: Yes.
• 1:35:17
  Speaker 1: I was so happy to use that word, which I'd
• 1:35:19
  Speaker 1: probably carry around in my notebook for years.
• 1:35:22
  Speaker 4: I'm trying to think of other things. Well, the fact
• 1:35:25
  Speaker 4: that Shelbyville, Manhattan is just so nonchalant about his cousin loving,
• 1:35:30
  Speaker 4: because they're attractive. I thought that was the whole point
• 1:35:32
  Speaker 4: of this journey.
• 1:35:33
  Speaker 1: Yes, yes. That's the subversive element of The Simpsons. The
• 1:35:39
  Speaker 1: Simpsons could get away with pretty edgy material like that,
• 1:35:44
  Speaker 1: in part because the innocence of a cartoon balanced it
• 1:35:47
  Speaker 1: out and certainly made moments like that extra funny.
• 1:35:51
  Speaker 4: It goes back to what you were saying before about
• 1:35:52
  Speaker 4: King of the Hill. I mean, I think people, maybe
• 1:35:55
  Speaker 4: not so much now, but tended to regard animation as
• 1:35:58
  Speaker 4: a genre when it's a format. You can tell any
• 1:36:01
  Speaker 4: story with animation. It doesn't necessarily have to be a
• 1:36:04
  Speaker 4: half-hour sitcom. It doesn't have to be the Flintstones, the Jetsons,
• 1:36:07
  Speaker 4: the Simpsons.
• 1:36:08
  Speaker 1: It could be anything. Absolutely. You know, the Simpsons itself
• 1:36:11
  Speaker 1: evolved from a fairly realistic family show, basically an animated sitcom.
• 1:36:17
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:36:17
  Speaker 1: To a show that really started to do movie parodies
• 1:36:21
  Speaker 1: when Conan O'Brien came in. The Monorail Show is basically
• 1:36:24
  Speaker 1: a parody of a musical called The Music Man and
• 1:36:28
  Speaker 1: some disaster movies like Towering Inferno and Earthquake. And it
• 1:36:32
  Speaker 1: was Conan who, more than anybody, discovered the language of
• 1:36:35
  Speaker 1: cinema can be imported into animation very effectively.
• 1:36:39
  Speaker 3: Did you intend for Shelbyville as a town and the
• 1:36:41
  Speaker 3: townspeople to be the villains of this episode? Or do
• 1:36:43
  Speaker 3: we just organically just gravitate towards that mentality?
• 1:36:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they were always the villains, I think. But of course,
• 1:36:49
  Speaker 1: there's that statement being made of like, they're identical. There's
• 1:36:53
  Speaker 1: nothing different about them. You know, the Springfield kids walk through,
• 1:36:58
  Speaker 1: they're going, look at this place. Their fire hydrants are
• 1:37:01
  Speaker 1: a different color. It's the tiniest differences. I think they
• 1:37:04
  Speaker 1: call it the narcissism of small differences.
• 1:37:07
  Speaker 3: And there's one more thing I wanted to ask. So
• 1:37:09
  Speaker 3: you got, you're very selective with who you chose. So
• 1:37:11
  Speaker 3: you took Martin Nelson, who you team up, you got
• 1:37:14
  Speaker 3: Milhouse there, he's essentially with Bart, and then he finds
• 1:37:16
  Speaker 3: the other Milhouse. Then you have, you have Todd and
• 1:37:19
  Speaker 3: you have Database, right?
• 1:37:21
  Speaker 4: Yes.
• 1:37:21
  Speaker 3: You know, get their moments, but were there scenes where
• 1:37:24
  Speaker 3: they did more or were they just sort of just
• 1:37:25
  Speaker 3: there to sort of pad the group out a bit?
• 1:37:27
  Speaker 4: Yeah, free the director's cut.
• 1:37:29
  Speaker 1: No, I don't think I tracked a story for them
• 1:37:31
  Speaker 1: at all. I never really got database. This was a
• 1:37:34
  Speaker 1: character that was unappealing to me and, and unrelatable. So
• 1:37:40
  Speaker 1: there was no hook and I just let him dangle.
• 1:37:42
  Speaker 4: He seems more of a funny voice than anything else,
• 1:37:44
  Speaker 4: but he does get to deploy that very well though,
• 1:37:46
  Speaker 4: because this was also one of my favorite moments. I
• 1:37:48
  Speaker 4: think when Bart and Shelby are having their sort of
• 1:37:53
  Speaker 4: to and fro with all their childish insults, I think
• 1:37:56
  Speaker 4: Bart gets the upper hand at the end. You get
• 1:37:57
  Speaker 4: a great reaction shot from Shelby.
• 1:37:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:38:00
  Speaker 4: And then Darnabate sort of leans in. Checkmate. He's got
• 1:38:05
  Speaker 4: to add his two cents. It's marvellous. Alrighty.
• 1:38:08
  Speaker 3: Well, before we let you go, Brent, we always ask
• 1:38:11
  Speaker 3: our guests about, it's 1998 and Fox have come to
• 1:38:15
  Speaker 3: you to put together a Friday night Simpsons marathon consisting
• 1:38:19
  Speaker 3: of five episodes. Which episodes are you choosing and why?
• 1:38:22
  Speaker 3: And which one are you going to kick off the
• 1:38:24
  Speaker 3: evening with?
• 1:38:24
  Speaker 1: Great, great, great. Oh God, there's too many to choose from.
• 1:38:28
  Speaker 1: So I'll just go randomly here. Lisa the Vegetarian by
• 1:38:32
  Speaker 1: David Cohen.
• 1:38:34
  Speaker 4: Mr.
• 1:38:34
  Speaker 1: Plow. I remember really feeling this is something special here. Oh, gosh.
• 1:38:39
  Speaker 1: The Stonecutters where Homer joins the Masonic cult. I remember
• 1:38:46
  Speaker 1: being very funny. Let's see. from the David Mercenaire. Oh,
• 1:38:53
  Speaker 1: you know, Greg Daniels had an incredible episode that was
• 1:38:56
  Speaker 1: called Homer Badman.
• 1:38:58
  Speaker 3: I watched that with my kids yesterday and I sort
• 1:39:00
  Speaker 3: of went, there's a lot here. There's a lot here
• 1:39:02
  Speaker 3: in this story. They didn't get any of it. I
• 1:39:05
  Speaker 3: skipped the one bit because I was like, when Willie
• 1:39:07
  Speaker 3: arrives at the end, he's got the Quimby video. I'm like, oh,
• 1:39:09
  Speaker 3: we might just fast forward this little section here.
• 1:39:12
  Speaker 1: Wow, I haven't watched it in a while. You know,
• 1:39:15
  Speaker 1: just my fondness for Greg as a You know what?
• 1:39:20
  Speaker 1: Even better is Bart Sells His Soul. That was a
• 1:39:23
  Speaker 1: great script that was exceptional and really has that kind
• 1:39:28
  Speaker 1: of feeling of expert storytelling. I'd put that on there
• 1:39:33
  Speaker 1: instead of Homer Badman. The reason I'm laughing about Homer Badman,
• 1:39:36
  Speaker 1: Greg was so irritated that we would spend all this
• 1:39:41
  Speaker 1: time writing clever titles for Simpsons episodes. People would just
• 1:39:45
  Speaker 1: rack their brains trying to do a clever title. And
• 1:39:48
  Speaker 1: Greg's just like, nobody sees the title. Why are you
• 1:39:51
  Speaker 1: wasting our time? And so as a rebel act... he
• 1:39:54
  Speaker 1: began naming his shows the most generic thing. So one
• 1:39:59
  Speaker 1: of Greg's episodes was Homer versus Apu. He's like, that's
• 1:40:03
  Speaker 1: as hard.
• 1:40:03
  Speaker 4: As I'm working.
• 1:40:05
  Speaker 1: And then Homer Badman was about Homer being accused of
• 1:40:10
  Speaker 1: sexual harassment. And it was like, how much can I
• 1:40:13
  Speaker 1: reduce the effort in the title? Badman was one word.
• 1:40:18
  Speaker 1: He wouldn't even take the effort to put a space
• 1:40:21
  Speaker 1: between bad and bad.
• 1:40:24
  Speaker 3: But that episode is just so great because I watched
• 1:40:26
  Speaker 3: it yesterday, and it's just as relevant now as it
• 1:40:29
  Speaker 3: was back in the mid-90s. It's incredible.
• 1:40:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, how about that sequence where Homer says, I just
• 1:40:37
  Speaker 1: want to get away. I just want to be under
• 1:40:40
  Speaker 1: the sea.
• 1:40:40
  Speaker 4: Yes.
• 1:40:41
  Speaker 1: And there's a whole musical parody of the song Under
• 1:40:44
  Speaker 1: the Sea.
• 1:40:45
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 1:40:45
  Speaker 1: I remember being in the room when we were pitching
• 1:40:48
  Speaker 1: jokes on the lyrics for Homer's Under the Sea, okay?
• 1:40:53
  Speaker 1: And you're looking for funny content about him having been
• 1:40:58
  Speaker 1: accused of sexual harassment, but it's also marine-themed. And I
• 1:41:03
  Speaker 1: remember just racking my brains, what's a funny line? And
• 1:41:06
  Speaker 1: somebody pitched, Under the sea, under the sea, I'll be exonerated,
• 1:41:14
  Speaker 1: down where piranhas mated, under the sea. And I was like,
• 1:41:20
  Speaker 1: let's just go home. No one's going to be behind me.
• 1:41:24
  Speaker 4: Whoever said no accusations, just bring the crustaceans after that, though.
• 1:41:27
  Speaker 4: I think that's when you can go home. I'm sorry,
• 1:41:30
  Speaker 4: we're just name-checking all my favorite lines from The Simpsons.
• 1:41:32
  Speaker 4: This is fantastic.
• 1:41:36
  Speaker 3: Thank you so much, Brent. It's been an absolute pleasure
• 1:41:38
  Speaker 3: to have you on. We feel like we're going to
• 1:41:39
  Speaker 3: have to get you back for Home and Palooza. That's
• 1:41:40
  Speaker 3: one of my favorite episodes. And watching it as an adult,
• 1:41:44
  Speaker 3: I've now hit that point where I'm now Homer. watching it.
• 1:41:47
  Speaker 3: So I'm now watching it through Homer's eyes and that's
• 1:41:49
  Speaker 3: what's so great about The Simpsons. You watch it through
• 1:41:50
  Speaker 3: Bart's eyes when you were a kid. As you get older,
• 1:41:52
  Speaker 3: now you realize you're Homer and I'm slowly becoming Grandpa.
• 1:41:55
  Speaker 1: Oh, wow. That's great. Alrighty.
• 1:41:59
  Speaker 3: Well, thank you again, Brent. It's been an absolute pleasure.
• 1:42:01
  Speaker 3: Make sure you check out the links for all of
• 1:42:02
  Speaker 3: Brent's stuff in the description of this podcast. But for now, Brent,
• 1:42:05
  Speaker 3: thanks for your time and we'll see you in the
• 1:42:06
  Speaker 3: near future. For sure.
• 1:42:07
  Speaker 4: This is what it feels like when dubs cry.
• 1:42:09
  Speaker 1: Nice work. Great job, guys. That was fun.