Back in high school, I wrote a novel about a character named Bart Simpson. I thought it was a very unusual name for a kid at the time. I had this idea of an angry father yelling ‘Bart,’ and Bart sounds kind of like bark – like a barking dog.
I basically drew my own family. My father’s name is Homer. My mother’s name is Margaret. I have a sister Lisa and another sister Maggie, so I drew all of them. I was going to name the main character Matt, but I didn’t think it would go over well in a pitch meeting, so I changed the name to Bart.
When DVDs finally disappear, I’m going to be sad. I’ll miss the commentaries.
We did ‘The Simpsons Movie,’ which took almost four years; it was the same people that do the TV show, and it just killed us. So that’s why there hasn’t been a second movie. But I imagine if the show ever does go off the air, they’ll start doing movies.
The writers led by Mike Scully are fantastic. And they’re creating original stories that not only don’t repeat what we’ve already done, they also don’t repeat anything I’ve seen on television.
The tendency in comedy is to have a character who’s stupid get more stupid, because you’re trying to top yourself and not just repeat.
I’m presently incarcerated. Convicted of a crime I didn’t even commit. Hah! “Attempted murder”? Now honestly, what is that? Do they give a Nobel prize for attempted chemistry? Do they?
We have ‘Doctor Who’ references on ‘Futurama,’ but we have a lot of science fiction references that I don’t get; but in the staff we have experts on ‘Star Trek,’ ‘Star Wars,’ ‘Doctor Who’ and ‘Dungeons and Dragons.’
When The Simpsons came around, there really was nothing else like it on TV. It’s hard to imagine, but when Fox first took the plunge with it, it was considered controversial to put animation on prime time.
With ‘Futurama,’ I wanted to do unrequited love, and David Cohen agreed, and although our original plan was never to have Fry and Leela get together, we finally just said, ‘You can only string the fans along so far.’
I can’t believe it! Reading and writing actually paid off!
The entire world of grown-ups is corrupt and stupid.
The thing that makes me happiest about Simpsons Illustrated are all the drawings that we get from readers. I wish we could print them all. They’re really imaginative. They show a lot of hard work.
The thing about a cartoon is, you can do whatever you want. The tightrope that we are walking on ‘The Simpsons’ and ‘Futurama’ is ‘How do you continue to surprise the audience, but make them good surprises?’ Not every surprise is good, but you want to continue jolting people.
I also found child’s play – stuff that was not considered serious, but goofy – was the stuff I liked to do, so I still do it as an adult.
We’ve been running a little behind schedule. But only by about 15 years or so.
I judge my life by how miserable it used to be. If I could pay my rent, I was deliriously happy. Now I’m deliriously happy all the time.
I don’t know why I did it, I don’t know why I enjoyed it, and I don’t know why I will do it again.
I like the ‘Simpsons’ pinball machines. Those are pretty great.
A lot of our writers, like Conan O’Brien, moved on to other things.